John Le Mesurier seems to have got some of his measures wrong. In the paragraph beginning…“We are being asked to believe…” The tonnages he cites as millions should be billions and the tonnages cited as thousands should be millions. But otherwise the article is reasonable and sound, though weather it offers practical solution is another matter.

While I agree that measuring emissions in a uniform, verifiable and fair manner is fundamental and needed, that does not necessarily mean it is going to be accepted by every country. China has already made it emphatically clear that it will not tolerate independent verification of what it claims its emissions to be.

Jon J would no doubt agree that the very idea is nothing more than a wicked conspiracy to undermine the sovereignty of nations and totally unnecessary because CO2 is so good for us.

The reality of course is that if we don’t measure it, we will never manage to effectively control it or its seriously deleterious effects. And those are likely to be experienced by Australia sooner than by other continents. So the sooner we think up effective measures to enforce the independent measuring of emissions, the better.

Interesting graphs JonJ, but eyeballing the data I suspect the trend has been flat over the time. If my memory is correct of earlier cooling periods, like the one in the 60s and 70s, there were actually temperature declines not a plateau. I don't see the temperature increase halt as being fatal to the IPCC case, at least at the lower end of projections.

So are we still on track for 2010 being the hottest year ever?

Will 2011 be even hotter?

Talking about being 'measured' ? "mene mene tekel uparshin"

James Carman

You are right in stating that skeptics make up their mind on evidence.

Conversely, in the absence of evidence to support their cause, warmists make up their mind on emotive claims, assertion, and environmentalist ideology.

Just do us all a favour and table the scientific evidence that proves that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have caused global warming.

Deniers of global warming and climate change may be sufficiently gullible – or desperate – to believe that global temperatures are in decline because select measurements covering a few days or months show a fall. Anyone can draw a graph to show what they want but not one that is based on accurate, comprehensive data.

Others may feel that a greater range of temperatures over a longer term provide a much more accurate measure of trend. Statistically valid measurements of global temperature regrettably show that it is rising and that the first decade of this century is the warmest on record. The second decade of the century is not going to be cooler.

For inconvenient data try http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=globa