spindoc. The enquiries have been held and the scientists have been exonerated of fraud. They may be guilty of getting angry and acting a bit unprofessionally, but they *are* human!
I dare say most folks would get annoyed if they were accused of lying and constantly hassled for their workings in a dishonest way.
This particular beat-up has been and gone...yet the *huge* quantity of data world wide is just getting stronger.
Check out New Scientist magazines summary of the email "scandal" for a balanced assessment of the situation. Yes, a cooperative effort involving thousands of people across many countries will have some errors. Given they are less than 1% of the content, this is actually pretty good compared to say...economists predictions, accountants reports and politicians "facts".
Did you see the SST data? Do you care, or is the slip-up of one or two hassled academics *that* important that data is irrelevant?

Hasbeen

Thanks for your response. You still haven’t explained where the CSIRO and BOM have got it “wrong” (or cheated and lied).

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough;

1. Can you provide the evidence (link) that the CSIRO and BOM have "doctored figures"?

2. The "satellite figures" you have found, can you link to them please?

________

spindoc

You continue to trot out the ‘same old same old’ – you are sounding desperate.

Thank you, Professor Johnson - your article is exactly right. In conversations with various industry representatives, many are baffled as to why the Greens - of all parties - are as dogmatic and impractical as they have been. One can only assume this is an attempt to win over the green socialist vote? There are (hopefully) not that many, but their blocking tactics, and the reality that we could be on the way to implementing, and in time, refining, the world's most comprehensive emissions reduction scheme, is regretful.

While the comments on any pro-ETS/CPRS article are dominated constantly by a vocal minority, I hope you have received many personal expressions of support. THIS is what the media should be writing about.

The Liberal Party, in a post-Howard scramble for identity, are finding it in negation. But they are not the only ones to blame for Australia's failure to act. Labor's terrible PR, the silence of business groups (in fact, and in time, crippled by legislative uncertainty), extremist green groups who want it all at once, are all contributing.

Legislation will come, it's just a matter of how much we will lose in the wrangling.

I think Carol Johnson is wrong; this is not a failure of the Greens but the utter failure of Labor and Liberal - of mainstream politics - to come up with effective and appropriate policy to deal with a problem of unprecedented scale. Sure the Greens could have voted for a policy that Labor bent over backwards to weaken in order to get Liberal support, but the Liberals could have and should have supported a policy they proposed first.

So, yes, this is the fault of Liberals (and Nationals). They've invested heavily in climate change denial for the sake of the easy votes inherent in the apathy of the uninformed and misplaced fears of an increasingly misinformed public.

Policy that can deal effectively with climate change is reasonable, achievable and desirable, but for the sake of short term advantage Liberals and Nationals have no qualms in bequeathing irreversible climate damage on our future. And they do know better; they have full access to the same scientific advice that the government gets, from Australia's and the world's leading scientific institutions. And from an international panel they helped set up and that Australia's leading scientists contribute to.

Senior Liberals who have made the effort to be genuinely informed know there is no grand conspiracy ala Monckton and know that Plimer and Carter are hacks who wouldn't know a scientific argument if it bit them but denialism is undeniably popular and the capacity for people to ignore good advice in order to avoid a short term cost is bottomless.

For the sake of political opportunism mainstream politics will sell out our future and plenty of Australian's will cheer them on.

Maybe my comment above that Plimer and Carter wouldn't know a scientific argument if it bit them was over the top; they almost certainly do know but are unable to come up with any that have real merit, that can stand the kind of real sceptical scrutiny that got AGW the widespread scientific acceptance it has. Unable to make inroads on the real science front they confine their efforts to persuading non-scientists using arguments that would get a first year undergraduate failing grades. These guys are the darlings of the Liberal and National denialists and I suspect they are the primary source for Abbott's prevarication on climate change. Scary to think any future PM would choose to believe them in preference to the CSIRO, BoM and Chief Scientist for no better reason than that they feed the denialism that gets them votes.

I endorse those commenters who have defended the Greens' position in the Senate. However I would also challenge Dr. Johnson's attribution of the defeat of the 1999 republic referendum to "sections of the left".

The only prominent left-wing individuals associated with the "No" campaign were Phil Cleary and Clem Jones. Only a few tiny Trotskyist organisations supported the "No" campaign. The entire Labor Left, the Greens in all States, and left-identified Democrats such as Natasha Stott-Despoja advocated a "Yes" vote. The ACTU and the Women's Electoral Lobby both called for a "Yes" vote. The Democratic Socialist Party and Green Left Weekly advocated a "Yes" vote. The SEARCH Foundation and a range of well-known left-wing individuals such as Tim Costello and Dorothy McRae-McMahon advocated a "Yes - and more" vote which entailed advocating a "Yes" vote in the referendum whilst calling for issues such as direct election to be reviewed if the referendum was carried. These facts are all on the public record.