Tony
Stop your snivelling childish tantrum.

Assuming what is in issue is a logical fallacy. This means that your argument is irrational. You really need to catch up on intellectual developments over the last 2500 years before you start shrieking heretic.

As to the science, it is common ground that the globe is not warming, it has been cooling since 1998. Thus the government-funded 'consensus' that it's warming was wrong.

The question how far back we should go to identify the start of a warming trend is a matter of interpretation. Science does not supply the answer.

In any event, warming is good for life. Where is there more life - at the poles, or at the tropics?

How much would you personally be prepared to pay voluntarily to stop global warming?

Similarly its possible that neutrinos from a massive solar flare are causing the temperature of the Earth's core to increase rapidly. This will trigger a catastrophic chain of natural disasters. In, 2010 international leaders, begin a massive, secret project intended to ensure humanity survives. Approximately 400,000 people are chosen to board ships called "arks" that are constructed in the Himalayas. Additional funding for the project is raised by selling tickets to the private sector for one billion euros per person. By 2011 they start to move humanity's valuable treasures to the Himalayas, so that their history can survive when the end comes.

The question is, how come there’s no publicly funded lottery? Secondly, what part do cackling geese play in conspiracy theories?

Whoops, wrong post re neutrinos and the end of the world. Apols

Let me spell it out, without reference to individual letter-writers.

The anthropogenic global climate crisis, whose early effects we are now experiencing, is a fact, in the sense that the science supporting it has now been verified to at least a 90% probability level. Anyone who disputes the climate science at this point is, simply, a deluded fool, as is anyone who believes that cigarette smoking does not cause lung cancer, or that the earth is flat, or that the evidence for the US Apollo moon landing was faked.

That Kevin Rudd lost his nerve two weeks ago and abandoned any attempt to maintain any kind of counter-global warming national policy - of any kind - simply shows that Rudd was weak in the face of tough opposition - not that the case in Australia for anti-global warming public policy has been weakened.

Denialists may crow at their short-term 'victory' - but it will not get them far. Under a more resolute and clear-headed national government, climate change public policy will be pursued. Meanwhile, the Australian public is quietly educating itself about the climate crisis, and learning the difference between real climate policy and phoney climate policy tokenism and spin.

The 40% resources super-profits tax is another example, perhaps, of a government that enunciates great principles and then backs away from them in the face of determined opposition from the powerful mining lobby. We shall see.

Meanwhile, the opinion polls are showing Rudd has a real credibility problem now. I doubt if he can ever recover his reputation as a strong national leader. I am sure his abandonment of ETS when the going got tough has a bit to do with this. The only thing that might save him this year is the fear of a rabidly denialist Coalition leader taking power - the Australian people are too smart to let this happen. But that's another issue.

Tony how right you are about the impact of the cackling geese on this forum. They are doing nothing to move the discussion forward and seem to be out of touch with reality. Peter Hume is still pushing the discredited idea that the world is cooling. By the way Peter, don't bother sending url's through, I've seen them all before. Amicus on another thread has been reduced to petty name calling. However, they are providing some amusing examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Tony Kevin, you say “a few people might have read my article in the wider audience OLO offers to essayists, and been stimulated into thought by it.”
Stimulated –yes, into responding with thanks to you for publishing your thoughts. Those thoughts deserve to be aired. The biggest disagreement I have with them is your statement about Rudd, beginning with “He is too intelligent a man to deny the science”. If that is the case then he has a counterpart in Norway’s Edvard Quisling of half a century ago.