"..despite the noisy deniers, the science has tended to underestimate rather than overestimate the pace and extent of climate change.."

No significant warming for the last fifteen years, according to Phil Jones. It's kind of hard to see how anyone could have underestimated that, Ken.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention.

For a well-referenced view of what is happening and what may happen in the Murray Darling Basin, have a look at SEACI (South East Australian Climate Initiative) CSIRO, May 2010. And before any knees start jerking, and denialists start clamouring about closing down CSIRO, look at the pages of references: researchers in their dozens, from many different agencies, all providing evidence based on measurement and observation. Also, as mentioned in another post, look at The Copenhagen Diagnosis, University of New South Wales, 2009; again, pages of well-referenced science. It is simply not possible to assert as a fact, that "there is no evidence". What is important to MDB farmers is that variability is the new normal. And no, variability is not the same as change, and calls for much smarter adaptation than simply "hotter" or even "colder".

Yabby, month to month or year to year variability - and the difficulties in accurate predictions on those time scales - do not invalidate understanding of the longer term trends or the climate processes underlying them. Australian agriculture is very much at risk from those longer term trends, especially if they continue to be intensified by global failure to rein in emissions. And Australia is a major contributor to global emissions via the fossil fuels we export as well as being leading per capita emitters; global action will not be advanced by Australia continuing to encourage the global consumption of coal and gas and then going on to do no more than the least it can get away with locally rather than the most it is capable of. And claiming it's contribution to emissions don't count; lots of Australians might be happy to think we make no difference to global climate but you can be sure that the rest of the world is not so easily fooled.

We are participating partners and profiteers in Chinese and Indian emissions growth but, should we decide to seriously act on climate we would not be going it alone.

Ken, the most valuable thing that climatologists can do for farmers,
is to understand enough about about how climate works, that they
can at least make somewhat accurate short term predictions.

Its quite simple really. If its going to be a crook year, they
won't risk that half a million$ on inputs to grow a crop and go
fishing instead.

Given that they cannot do that, farmers are deducting that they
seemingly don't know enough yet, to understand what is really going
on.

Blaming Australia for what others burn in terms of coal, is like
blaming Saudi Arabia for our oil use. If you think that they could
not find other coal on the planet, you are mistaken.

The thing is, the genie is now out of the bottle. A large chunk
of the third world is now intent on achieving our kind of cushy
lifestyle and will do whatever it takes to achieve it. Building
power plants of one sort or another will continue at a massive
rate. The sheer mass of people involved, plus another 3 billion
or so added to the global population, will overwhelm everything
else.

Even if every Australian was wiped out tomorrow, within 100 days
they would have replaced us, given that the global population
keeps growing at around a quarter million per day.

Whatever Australia does, in the bigger scheme of things, we simply
don't matter.

You won't put the genie back in the bottle and the best way for
farmers to deal with climate change, is to lessen risk as climate
changes. More accurate forecasts from those who claim to understand
climate, would be a huge help.