As an attempt to be logical and rational about an emotional subject for many people I thought this was a useful article.
I think the following sentence though is contrary to being rational: "However this has to be a global effort. Australia on its own can do nothing. We should follow, not attempt to lead." This is not a rational statement on a number of different levels:
Firstly if every country followed this approach then the problem would simply not be solved. It also ignores the difficulty in a country imploring others to take actions that it refuses to undertake itself.
Secondly in the business world if there is a new development or an emerging trend it is generally better to be part of it rather than waiting in the wings to play catch up later.
Thirdly in some contexts where this argument is used there is an implication that no other country is doing anything - this I believe to be far from the truth.
Finally in the age of spin I am amazed so few politicans are prepared to speak for all the advantages in moving to renewable energy - after all burning fossil fuels creates significant pollution and creates warring tensions as countries without oil seek to protect supplies.

Tom Tiddler/Tim Curtin ... ringing a bell:

http://tinyurl.com/Tom-Tiddler-and-Tim-Curtin

Did you have any luck getting 'that paper' published in a credible science journal (not Quadrant or Lavoisier)?

I don't normally "play the man", but Tim Curtin's brand of science has been addressed, rebuked and shown to be twaddle time and time again, yet he still keeps sprouting the same old same old.

Most people with any shred of reason would learn, grow and develop from their perseverance in trying to poke holes into AGW - Tim doesn't and as a consequence, is not held in any regard by real scientists in the subject fields.

Bonmot,

I hope other readers follow the link you posted. It shows the blogsite proprietor offering Tim Curtin a thread where he can defend his paper against criticism, and says, grandly, 'Tim, this is the only thread you are allowed to post on.' What condescension!

I will support anyone who takes the trouble to ask questions of the AGW orthodoxy, and battles with what is one of the most difficult, many-sided and messy domains in science, if only because the stakes have been said to be so high ('the future of humanity/the planet/etc'). Tim may be wrong, and since I know him slightly, I can say that he is looking for people to criticise his work rather than, as so many of the AGW persuasion seem to do, suggesting that it is the last word on the subject and that the rest of us should all just shut up.

I can't say that I have read every page of AR4, though I have read WG1 several times, but I did not see one regression analysis in its pages. And the funny thing is that over the past century the straightforward relationship of increasing CO2 to increasing temperature is at best moderate, as Tim says. Yes, reply the AGW crowd, and we have explanations for that. But none of the explanations is soundly based in data, and most depend hugely on climate models.

That is where people like Tim, and me, and many others, begin to get edgy, given that the future of humanity os said to be at stake...

Don Aitkin says: "But none of the explanations is soundly based in data, and most depend hugely on climate models."

This is wrong. Whether Don Aitkin (in making such misconstrued or distorted statements) does this intentionally or not doesn't really matter, he does so from "authority". As such he does real science (not political science) a disservice.

See and listen to a debate between Professors Andrew Dessler and Richard Lindzen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Sh1B-rV60

Andrew Dessler shows that the science IS soundly based on data, and is NOT dependent hugely on climate models.

Shrode, you write like a new feller, what I mean is a feller who has never really studied history.

Must say I've had to study history mostly in my later life, having had to leave school at 13 early in the Great Depression to drive a wagon team carting bagged wheat to the nearest railway siding.

However, the older I get, it seems the more philosophical I get, remembering my days of clearing after WW2 with a crawler tractor, telling my young wife how it was so wonderful to now be able to view the railway siding over 12 miles away.

But her answer was that if I destroyed any more of the young salmon gums which she liked to view from the kitchen window, she was catching the next train back to her family in Perth.

Looking back from my ninetieth year, present fears of Gobal
Warming remind me of learning about the Industrial Revolution when fortunate man was able to chuck aside the axe and spade to let motorisation make for a much easier earthly life.

But after a further 200 years since the entry of motorisation, any farmer who has cleared land knows philosophically that man is now caught in the Thrill of the Earthly Chase, similar to a young feller telling a copper that making a vehicle roar like a wounded animal made one feel like on top of the world.

As I now have 15 great grandkids and no doubt more to come after I've gone, one trembles a bit worrying about their future, and of course this world's future?

bonmot, sheltering behind anonymity while indulging in personal abuse, as usual! And so useless you cannot even set up an anonymous email address so that you can ask for my regressions and address them rather than offer only ad homs.

Be that as it may, Dessler & Wong 2009 and the rest of his work consists 99% of models devoid of any data analysis at all, let alone regressions. They compare their models with other models. That is NOT statistical validation. But you would't know what that is would you?