Des, this is boringly standard right-wing babble. When someone expresses a complex idea, reduce it to sound bites and ridicule it. Here in more detail is Clive Hamilton on the Gaia concept: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2630879.htm#transcript

The claim that he advocated doing away with democracy is absurd. What he said was that if we do not deal with climate change expeditiously, there would be pressure to deal with consequences using emergency measures. This is not a vaguely theoretical possibility. Look at how individual liberties have been suspended in some countries with very long traditions of human rights in the cause of the war on terror, a problem that, while serious, is not likely to cause catastrophic failure of the world economy or cause food supply to collapse, outcomes that the self-styled climate sceptics are willing to risk in the cause of being right in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. Des, do you disagree with suspending human liberties to deal with a crisis such as the war on terror?

Also, who is this "growing number of scientists" who reject the mainstream theory? I keep on seeing the same short list of names over and over, and, in any case, science is not a democracy. Counting the number of people with a specific position is meaningless if that position is not backed by the evidence. As Einstein said when 100 professors denounced his work, "Were I wrong, one professor would have been enough." On the other hand, if thousands of scientists attacking a problem from many different angles arrive at answers consistent with a theory, it becomes increasingly clear that the theory is good. That's how science usually works.

Traducing a field of science because it opposes a political or economic agenda is not a new thing, and we've seen the same tactics in causes like denying the harmful effects of tobacco (http://opinion-nation.blogspot.com/2008/06/sound-science-and-climate-change-or.html), denying that HIV causes AIDS and denying that asbestos causes health problems. None of these denial campaigns changed the facts that unnecessarily killed millions of people.

From a Green point of view, Des Moore's article is awkward, to put it mildly. He does not agree with the Green's hypothesis that climate change is caused by man made carbon dioxide. I concur with his attitude because we now have a situation where the UN Secretary General, Mr Ban Ki-moon is calling for more food production to enable an increasing world population to be fed.
Green's have insisted that CO2 is a pollutant; that it is the cause of AGW. Mr Ban Ki-moon has also called for a decrease in CO2 but now wants more food production. Why not listen to ABC Radio 'The World Today' where Mr Ban Ki-moon is appealing for more food production. He has to be asking for our National Parks to be de forested and turned into agricultural land. Listen to http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2744994.htm

The next issue is Scientists who don't believe that climate change is man made. What about this site; http://www.oism.org/pproject/ and if you want more, have a look at http://www.climatedepot.com/ as well as
http://www.climatesceptics.com.au/ and this is worth reading
http://www.carbon-sense.com/ but the daddy of them all is
http://www.nipccreport.org/ . Then go to
http://www.sepp.org/publications/artcomm/1992.html

Now of course you are going to say that their science is flawed, that they are financed by the fossil fuel industry or anything that will rationalise your irrational belief in the cause of AGW.
Yes, thirty years ago, I too was taught by my then Green masters to denigrate the man rather than rely upon the science.
With age comes ill health and wisdom.

In recent Federal Elections, it does seems that the attractiveness of a candidate for PM is almost more important than the political party he represents. However, the majority of the public are probably not yet ready to notice that Rudd isn't looking so shiny, or wonder if Costello may actually scrub up pretty well by comparison.

This is a thinly disguised plug for a climate sceptic candidate in the Higgins by-election.

The latest fashionable sceptic claim is that sea level is actually falling! For those who would like to see some reputable evidence on this, you can look at
http://betternature.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/is-sea-level-falling/

Des, what is your source for the claim that sea level is falling. Is this one of Ian Plimer's gems?

Typical Des a waste of space,still pushing the same discredited right wing barrow

The sea level thing got a bit of coverage in that leading scientific journal The Australian recently (spun to sound as if sea level rise was insignificant though they did for once quote some informed opinion http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/science-is-in-on-climate-change-sea-level-rise-17mm/story-e6frg6nf-1225795202916). The article cherry-picked the latest sea level report http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60202/IDO60202.2009.pdf focussing on a few low numbers. The article in the Oz naturally failed to mention a few other details from the report, like that sea level change is highly variable from place to place and year to year, and a relatively short data set of less than 20 years is insufficient to quantify the trend accurately.

Read the report yourself; Bob Carter outdoes himself for being idiotic in the Oz article. He says we should do our planning based on local tide gauges, not global data. He is presumably unaware that the oceans as a whole are connected, and any local variation cannot overturn a major global shift. You have to wonder sometimes ...