Eminently sensible stuff, Professor Ridd.

But as I have said umpteen times on this forum, it really shouldn’t matter if we can’t accurately, or even in a generalised manner, tell what the anthropogenic release of carbon might be doing to the climate. We should just be erring on the side of caution regardless!

There is potential for enormous strife if we just keep doing what we are doing. No one can deny that. We don’t know if all this extremely rapid release of fossil carbon will lead to a massive release of methane from the tundra and seabed, or whether more water vapour in the atmosphere will be a much more significant factor than more clouds, or indeed as you point out; whether more clouds would have a net cooling or heating effect on the planet. But for as long as there is the possibility of massive climate change, or of any significant climate change, we should just damn well be doing everything that we can to get the bejeezuz off of our addiction to fossil fuels!

Sceptics should be in exactly the same camp as the ardent climate-change worriers in fighting for a global switch away from fossil fuels. Only the ardent denialists need not be in this camp. But then, no one can possibly be a credible denialist because none of us can possibly assert that anthropogenic global warming is not real or significant.

Quite apart from climate change, we need to develop clean energy sources anyway, in order to prevent a massive peak oil upheaval, and then peak coal event, and in order to just come into balance with our resource base and environment and embrace the essential philosophy of sustainability.

In fact, if we just leave out climate modelling, and climate change altogether, there are still absolutely compelling reasons to wind down our rate of fossil fuel usage.

Great stuff Peter, it is really good to see an academic trying to tell the truth, as he sees it, rather than follow the dictates of the gravy train. Keep wrestling with that truth, you may do some real good for us all.

Ludwig, for heavens sake mate, the time to give up fossil fuel will be when it is proven to cause some detriment. If anything, global warming, if it occurs, will improve the earth for habitation, with vast areas of tundra opened up for farming.

Of course greenie ratbags hate this idea, do you?

There is no point in having a major catastrophe now, by pricing carbon based fuels out of the market, just to avoid a possible future catastrophe if or when we reach peak anything.

Bill Gates in recent times, has shown us again that major breakthroughs come from one, or a few people think privately, not by billions of government spending. I can spend my income much more wisely than can this or almost any other government. WE don't need a carbon price at any cost.

A sane, sensible and well-written piece. Thanks very much.

For Ludwig: I rather agree with 'Hasbeen'. If there are powerful and compelling reasons to abandon the use of fossil fuels, quite apart from alleged AGW, let's hear about them. I agree that that we in Australia should be looking for alternatives to oil, because we have to import it, and it seems likely to get more expensive as time goes on.

But unless you can show the CO2--->catastrophic warming link powerfully, let's leave coal out of it. It's what runs our electricity system, and will do so for decades to come.

Nice to hear a voice of sanity. Here's another one that actually made its way on to the BBC.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/its_just_weather_or_else/

Things are looking up -- and I mean that in a weather sense, of course, not a climatic one. Heaven forbid!

<< Ludwig, for heavens sake mate, the time to give up fossil fuel will be when it is proven to cause some detriment. >>

Oh heavens no, Hazza!!

This is exactly the crux of my point.

We dare not wait until there is proof, or even very strong evidence, that climate change is real before we act, because by then it would be TOO LATE (if it isn’t already)!

Crikey, what is wrong or illogical about erring on the side of caution??

Can’t you see the critical flaw in your’s and Don’s argument – you congratulate Peter Ridd for explaining about just how complex climate modelling is and how impossible it is for us to get proof of anthropogenic climate change or of the absence thereof, but you are demanding proof before we act!!

<< If anything, global warming, if it occurs, will improve the earth for habitation, with vast areas of tundra opened up for farming. >>

My goodness!

Firstly, you can not assert that AGW will have a net positive effect. It might have, but we just don’t know.

And secondly, for the enormous ecological change that would necessary for the Siberian and Canadian tundra to become climatically suitable for farming, just imagine the enormous ecological upheaval that would have to occur, across the globe, with massive extinctions of plants and animals, complete changes from desert to rainforest and vice-versa, and the death and displacement of thousands of millions of people!

If the tundra was to become productive, the net effect for humanity would be hugely negative.... in all probability.

A price on carbon will be a big pusher to get off fossil fuel. The system has got to be made viable to look into alternatives.
Clean up the air and it could have more benefits than is known about.
Nature can only take so much, and human manufacture has overstepped the limit. So clean up your own act, and don't wait to be told to.

This article raises a number of issues that I think are most important.
Firstly it brings home the basic truth that climatic analysis is inevitably Physics. That, for me, is important because I am sick and tired of people rabbiting on about a species called 'climate scientists'. 'Climate science' can legitimately be viewed as being an example of applied science, overwhelmingly applied Physics. 'Climate science' is not a branch of science, it is an application. (Even less is it THE science, you know, that thing that is 'settled')
Secondly it emphasises the importance of accuracy and knowing how accurate a piece of data is. The data being inserted into models is inevitably of variable accuracy. Those rubbery figures are put together using a number of assumptions. Of course the outcome of that process has vast error bars. To operate, as 'climate scientists' seem to do, as if they had highly accurate predictions available is simply wrong - bad science. Recent claims that 'if we keep emissions below xyz% we can hold temperature rise to 2 degrees' is palpable rubbish.
The greatest tragedy that has/is happening re the climate isssue is the degredation of science itself. No longer is evidence the driving force; instead we have opinion, consensus and negotiation. It is a rot that is widespread
A couple of weeks ago I was at a supposedly 'technical' panel dealing with water useage in Far North Queensland rivers. Clearly what is required is analysis, measurement of issues such as current flows, their variation and flow regimes required for maintaining the ecology of the streams. I was appalled when it was made clear that a driving force was 'negotiation', negotiation between water users, mainly irrigators and (presumably) environmental scientists and environmentalists. Do not let the facts get in the way; this lot are making more noise. Deeply discouraging. But that is how far science has been degraded.

579

A price on carbon will make many left wing politicians RICH.

http://www.generationim.com/about/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2086494/posts "Maurice Strong"

http://www.marketswiki.com/mwiki/Richard_Sandor

http://www.envex.com.au/ BOB CARR

and so it goes on....and on...and on.... The Greens, the Left, Democrats and Labor.. all on the 'make' though policies they try to implement.

579: Just a question. In what sense is carbon dioxide 'unclean'? You DO know plants breathe the stuff, right?

Plants do live on it; plants were doing quite well before the atmosphere was overloaded. Nature has it's own balance and that it seems has been overdone by man made carbon. It's the worlds most common additive to the atmosphere, by man, so it's got to go.
The trees around the world have been depleted, concrete laid on the ground, it's too much to ask from nature to right mans wrongs.
That is what you are up against 'nature' When has nature ever been defeated.
So pull ya finger out and get on with sustainable life.

Ludwig
I have asked in here numerous times who is the "we" referred to by advocates of AGW policy. In particular, do you presume to include people who don’t agree with you, or whose interests would be violated by such policies?

No-one ever answers. The idea that there is a single unitary decision-making entity
a) is false
b) serves to cover the real, and literally lethal, conflicts of interest that must be advanced by any policy agenda.

It is not enough to say that there will be great disadvantages without policy action. There will be great disadvantages with them! The issue is precisely the knowledge which you assert does not matter.

While there are people going hungry in the world, AGW policies are restricting food production on a massive scale in the most productive countries. Energy production is being restricted, and prices raised. These negatively affect human welfare.

Now obviously if the advocates of policy action do not count the detriments to human welfare of their policies, then anything will seem advantageous! And that is the only method by which they are able to conclude that their policies would be worthwhile. Once we take into account their downside, we are able to see that they are afflicted with multiple fatal flaws of positive science, epistemology and ethics.

The raw data of the climate sciences are merely reams of temperature measurements for places and dates. To make sense of them requires statistical operations, which requires data manipulations, which requires value judgments that are *not* supplied by the data. The climate science worldwide is riddled with manipulations unidirectionally *up*. If the same adjustments were made to the same degree *down*, they would show global cooling.

Science does not supply value judgments, so those climate scientists who allege the urgent need of global warming policies are not speaking in their capacity as scientists. But if we subtract from their number those with a vested symbiotic interest in global warming policies, what a different landscape of professional opinion emerges!

But even if the climatology were conceded, which it’s not, the problems of ecological…

The particular conditions of the distribution and abundance of species are notoriously obscure, even to ecologists. It is simply false to assert, with a wave of the hand covering entire continents, that temperatures slightly warmer automatically spell ecological disaster. If anything, the opposite is true. Where are there more biomass and biodiversity, at the poles, or at the tropics?

Even if the ecology were conceded, which it’s not, the inescapable fact is that there are many people today whose lives depend on modern fuels and production which the effect, and the purpose, of AGW policies is to disrupt. Yet while many prominent environmentalists openly dream of genocide, not AGW policy advocate will admit that these policies will cost one life, let alone hundreds of millions.

As a matter of ethics, how do you decide who will be forced to forego which benefit now, for whose benefit when? And how do you value a certain known related life now, versus an uncertain unknown life in 10,000 years time? Who would be qualified to decide that? And how? And why? These unanswerable questions do *not* provide support for AGW policies – on the contrary.

The potential for corruption and free-riding on a grand scale is already obvious. Ethically, how do you justify that? If we can’t calculate, and can’t even know that such policy action would be worth it in its own terms, how can you possibly advocate such destructive, corrupt and anti-social measures?

People in general don’t use alternative energies because they are so much more expensive. If you who advocate quitting fossil fuels as a highest priority won’t pay for alternative energies at your own expense voluntarily, why should those who disagree with you, and who may be right, be forced to pay for them under compulsion?

The idea that all the scientists blithely assume, is that government has the knowledge, the capacity, and the selflessness to manage the world’s ecology and economy. Far from being scientific, this idea has no basis in evidence or reason and is no better than a completely irrational superstition

I believe one of the great failures here by climate scientists is believing that climate can be forecast or modeled at all.

Climate is clearly so complex, that current modelers, as Peter says, have to fudge all manner of effects and variations.

Our current science is too primitive, regardless of the arrogance and posturing of scientists and politicians (mainly the green variety) to even be run in hindsight, with any meaningful success.

The amusing trend now is to defend all weather effects as having been forecast, so Europe will have warmer and cold winters, which are both consistent with climate science.

This alone should have everyone in hysterical amusement of climate science, it is a joke, not a mature region of study or research.

Mind you the fascination factor is driving loads of money into climate science and its associated "remora" like, fellow sciences (those that study the effects of climate change on ..). So, great AV slide shows, Gore like movies generate fleeting glimpses for the layman and are entertaining.. there's always the attraction too, that someone you don't like will lose something or be inconvenienced by AGW. How delicious is that!

They have a word in German that I believe sums up the attitude of many AGW believers, it's Shadenfreud, and most AGW believers, just want this so badly, to see others inconvenienced and unable to enjoy their societies wealth, is what drives them.

Ludwig, doesn't care about anything, except being cautious, but on ly on AGW, if I asked him to apply the same cautious, "let's do something now" to say North Korea, would he get it? Probably not.

<< Ludwig I have asked in here numerous times who is the "we" referred to by advocates of AGW policy. >>

Peter, ‘we’ as I have used it, means humanity. WE (all us humans, including those who think that it is just fine to continue on with business as usual, including massive population growth and increasing per-capita energy consumption, as if this could be sustained into the far distant future!) should be erring on the side of caution!

<< While there are people going hungry in the world, AGW policies are restricting food production on a massive scale in the most productive countries. >>

We want alternative energy sources from wind, wave, solar and perhaps nuclear… and from ethanol and biodiesel if it doesn’t lead to large-scale replacement of food crops or clearing of rainforests.

Of course we want to develop the right strategies to replace fossil fuel power to a fair extent (and it doesn’t have to be a complete replacement or anything near it). And of course the wrong policies could lead to real problems.

But doing nothing will probably lead to much bigger problems.

Your fall-back position seems to be business as usual, and that we should not deviate from this unless it can be proven, or indicated extremely strongly, that we need to.

My underlying tenet is that we should be doing just about everything that we can to change business as usual, especially in terms of stopping population growth, developing renewable energy sources and just moderating the scale of human impact on the planet and developing a sustainable future, instead of the current fossil-fuel-powered rush-towards-the-cliff scenario.

The business-as-usual scenario scares the crap out of me. It can only possibly end in enormous pain!

Peter, I could go into much greater detail responding to your double post. But I’ll leave it at that for now. If there is anything that you particularly want me to respond to, just let me know. Cheers.

<< Ludwig, doesn't care about anything, except being cautious, but on ly on AGW, if I asked him to apply the same cautious, "let's do something now" to say North Korea, would he get it? Probably not. >>

Hey, why not Amicus? Let’s nuke ‘em to ashes NOW! Before they cause any more trouble!

That’s the way we greenie schadenfreuders are; boots ‘n all.

Yeehaaar!

A very informative article, which the warmists undoubtedly would regard as denialism. Regardless, this is the type of information that has to be brought to the notice of the media and politicians -- especially the Climate Change Committee -- who unquestionably accept that climate science is settled

While there have been some barking mad articles on OLO re climate change and its knock on effects, Ludwig is right to raise the precautionary principle. A world with less carbon emissions makes sense.

"Ludwig is right to raise the precautionary principle. A world with less carbon emissions makes sense."

There might be a meteor about to hit your house. True, we have no evidence of it, but if it did happen it would be a disaster, right? Time to run outside.

But wait! There might be a ton of TNT buried near your house about to explode, and the only safe place would be inside. No evidence, but there MIGHT. And that would be a major catastrophe! Time to run inside.

Inside, outside... how many times do you have to run back and forth before you realise that the 'precautionary principle' is worthless in the absence of evidence? Once we know what -- if anything -- will happen, then we can take steps to deal with it. Until then, knee-jerk panic reactions are not going to help anyone except the politicians and scientists who are eager to take away your rights and your money.

I prefer EE Nesbit's formulation of the Precautionary Principle:

"When in danger, or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout."

It's a lot more honest.

A bit curious Jon as that is not the formulation of the precautionary principle.

While you might not agree about the evidence re carbon emissions and global warming, policy operates on both possibles and probables. For example, China recently launched a new aircraft carrier last month - its first. Does that mean war? No, but you can bet Washington factored that in to its models re its China policy.

The quote you mention was written by Herman Wouk in the 'The Caine Mutiny'.

Ridd makes a fundamental error in his first line. There are not ‘two main lines of argument that are used to show that CO2 induced global warming is a likely proposition’, as he states, but three. The missing argument is the original and still fundamental piece of evidence: as demonstrated by Arrhenius in 1896, the CO2 molecule absorbs long wave radiation such as the heat reflected back into space from the Earth’s surface. On the basis of this alone Arrhenius predicted the greenhouse effect. This fundamental physical argument puts the relation between theory and evidence the other way around from what Ridd imagines. If the climate is not warming due to humans burning fossil fuels we need an explanation, which will have to show one of three things: Arrhenius got the physics wrong; burning fossil fuels does not increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere; in response to the heating induced by an atmosphere richer in CO2, there are other processes in the climate system which cause cooling which is no less than the heating caused by the greenhouse effect.
The fundamental role of climate models is not to establish the fact of global warming, but to predict the amount of warming that will occur given a certain concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

How well do they do this? Chapter 8 of the IPCC 4th report deals with the evaluation of climate models. It is based on over 500 scientific papers, and reports numerous uses of observations to test various aspects of the climate models, including a comparison between the observed and ‘predicted’ C20th temperature record. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter8.pdf
In contrast to Ridd’s assertions about the usefulness of the models, the IPCC says that the models used in their report
account for a very large fraction of the global temperature pattern: the correlation coefficient between the simulated and observed spatial patterns of annual mean temperature is typically about 0.98 for individual models [IPCC 4 Volume 1: 608]
If Ridd is seriously interested in contributing to the science he should provide details of which papers cited in the IPCC report contain errors, or references to published papers which the IPCC should include in their next report (in addition to the one he does cite)

Cheryl -- EE Nesbit wrote it long before Herman Wouk.

Michael -- "the IPCC says that the models used in their report
account for a very large fraction of the global temperature pattern"

Another quote, from Mandy Rice-Davies this time: "Well, they would, wouldn't they?"

How about trying to find some financially independent assessment of the IPCC's pet models?

A very well written article and I agree with Ludwig and what Cheryl said in reference to Ludwig. A world without carbon emissions makes sense.

Looking into alternatives and adopting other ways of conserving energy and saving our fossil fuel resources would be invaluable. We can improve on what is already out there. The methods involved with the Mining of coal alone is enough to look for solutions.

Australia needs to look at funding our scientists and manufacturers who work in this area. Looking for realistic alternatives developing solar energy and not just the government throwing money at giving residents discounts. If most homes and newer buildings are built with just the basic solar panels to either help alleviate the financial pressure and eventually remove the need to rely heavily on coal and gas for our fuels. This does not have to have anything at all to do with the is climate change real or is it a fake. Fact it more efficient ways of doing thing need to be looked into.

Great article

Now........since I have seen both sides of this debate.......I think I have found the identical twin of Algoreisrich:) I found this guy on youtube.....Does anyone know or have seen this?

http://tinyurl.com/24w32j9

My next question is...........if mankind increases Co2 to levels... will that effect our breathing?..........If so, wouldn't it be fair to say that we will starving ourselves in times to come?

http://tinyurl.com/2aof938.........and so if we make more co2 than O2......the answer is death, right? Growing populations+pollution+higher-carbon-dioxide+natural-climate-change+chopping down trees/rain-forests...ETC... and no sign of human activity slowing down.........mmmmmm! wonder what that could all mean?

http://tinyurl.com/2a7kzlp now this last link talks about what we could be facing when the ratio of the two gases namely The lack of O2 gets to the point of too much Co2.....What and can this happen?

BLUE

Gothesca states that "Australia needs to look at funding our scientists and manufacturers who work in this area."

We are suffering, or about to suffer more of, the consequences of such Government aid.

Most of the scientists who promote AGW, viz. at universities and Govt instrumentalities, are funded by the Government. They wittingly defend the AGW line so as to get more funding.

The Government's proposed imposition of a carbon tax is designed to subsidise the growth of inefficient and unreliable renewable energy producers, but penalise cost-efficient and reliable coal-derived electricity producers. Electricity consumers will have to bear the resulting steep energy price rises.

It is ironical that the Cancun Conference prescribed that developed countries donate hundreds of billions of dollars to developing countries so as to instal relatively unproductive renewable energy generators, rather than much more productive coal-fired ones.

I would like to ask Prof Ridd if he has plugged the more realistic
fossil fuel availability amounts from Prof Kjell Alklett's paper into
the IPCC modelling program ?

There is such a large difference between the three inputs that the IPCC
has used and the Uppsala amounts of oil and coal burning that maybe
everyone has been wasting all this effort and internet bandwidth to
say nothing of the money spent on conferences and government
expenditure for nothing.

I know that it is like swearing in church but someone had to say that
the emperor has no clothes !