anti-green,
2. You ask me about population growth. Well some 40years ago Paul Erlich published his book on population. Population was going to explode; yet we are still here, enjoying for the most part an improved standard of living.

I wonder if the fifty million at any one time who are starving agree with that?

The world's current growth rate is about 1.3%, representing a doubling time of 54 years.
I do not think we will all be living a good standard of living with a world population of 14 billion, considering that there is starvation now.
Also of course, by then the world’s oil supply will have depleted to near zero.
You can grow very little food without oil.

Oops sorry, sarnian,
but it wasn't wasted, it's always nice to get up the noses of minimifidianists who, I agree with bonmot, tend to fit a certain demographic and right-wing political profile. I've tried to convince them elsewhere that however much they prevaricate and cherry-pick over the minutia of AGW (other impacts of our carbon emissions, such as ocean acidification, are indisputable) there is no disputing the ethics of human indifference to its devastating impact on the biosphere. For ethical/spiritual reasons alone we should be confronting the damage we've done.
As Chief Seattle, famously said:

"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's grave behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children, and he does not care. His father's grave, and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert".

Well he got these unspeakable creatures right!

Ludwig, you are not just pessimistic, you are without a shred of backing for your assertions.

The global warming which occurred up to 1998 was .7 of a degree. All the alarmist nonsense is based on warming of less than one degree, with a degree of error of plus or minus one degree.

There is no science which shows any measurable effect by human emissions on global warming.

You do not need to be an optimist to know that CO2 is a beneficial gas, part of the carbon cycle essential to all life on earth. It is not pollution.

Despite the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since 1998, there has been no warming, since then, and there have been periods of cooling, despite the best efforts of the Climategate miscreants to hide the fact.

Mr. Climategate himself, Phil Jones, has said that there has been no global warming for 15 years.

The IPCC based its assertion that AGW was “very likely”, on estimates which, if correct would have resulted in the satellite instruments showing a “hotspot” in the troposphere, the “signature” of AGW. There is no hotspot, no signature, and no AGW.

Does being a pessimist preclude recognition of facts?

In your case, Ludwig, it appears so.

"I wasn’t sure who Cliff Ollier was until the first few pages of a web search returned his “status” - then it all made sense..."
-bonmot

Wow, ad hominem fallacy much? The validity of an argument is not contingent upon the person advancing said argument. It doesn't matter if it's Cliff Ollier or Chief Seattle advancing an argument: arguments must be assessed on their own merits, not on one's attitude toward the arguer.

"As far the article goes, you will find that the vast majority of scientists involved in studying climate change do not suggest or invoke a "dangerous" warming anytime soon. Typically though, it is the so called "sceptics" that play on this word..."
-bonmot

I agree with the first sentence. However, in my experience, it is invariably the hippy camp who wax hyperbolic about the dangers of climate change.

"As Chief Seattle, famously said:..."
-Squeers

What does this quote have to do with climatology? Folk in the hippy camp advancing poetical waffle in place of rational arguments is precisely the sort of thing that pisses off us minimifidianists, who would like to see the argument based on science and rationality rather than faith and spirituality.

Leo Lane
"You do not need to be an optimist to know that CO2 is a beneficial gas, part of the carbon cycle essential to all life on earth. It is not pollution."

CO2 in the atmosphere is pollution and not benificial, if it forms carboxylic acid and increases acidity of the oceans.

Whether or not an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere has created a global warming effect is debateable, but the formation of carboxylic acid in the oceans is a straight forward chemical reaction, that has to be occurring.

Curmudgeon -

No, you need to understand the argument better. I did not say an ice sheet would "slide" out of a basin, I said a thick ice sheet would spread and thin. The top can move even if the bottom does not. Unless it's in a 3-km-deep hole, which it's not. My point stands and this article's point is invalid.