Dear Hasbeen. Perhaps the US Navy has its own agenda but who is to say? What is evident is that the Arctic summer sea ice is shrinking in area at a rapid rate and you can see that from the photos. There are too many of them from too many sources for it to be a lie. What the thickness is doesn't matter as much but clearly it must be thinning if it's melting sufficiently for us to see water rather than ice from the air. And your comments about Gillard and cheques are misogynist nonsense. Would you have said the same of Rudd or Howard?

popnperish says:

Well, the carbon tax is a start and it should be sufficiently high to give impetus to the renewable energies (geothermal, solar, wind).

*geothermal is lttle use to us since we are not on a fault line, current attempts have all failed. Wind and Solar will never supply base load.

We can remove all subsidies for fossil fuel industries.

*why? but regardless, these will be replaced by biofuels

We don't open any new coal power stations.

*if we don't others will

We can close down Hazelwood and all the other dirty power stations.

*how do we power the desal plant at WOnthaggi?

We can change transport rapidly towards electrified rail and cars.

*Powered by what? closed power stations

We can facilitate people using bicycles.

*yep, till it rains. This is a fantasy that everyone can do all their travel on PT

We can mandate that all new houses be energy efficient, sited correctly and have solar hot water on their roofs.

*will it be free?

We can stop flying as much.

*how will I get to meetings that require my physical presence, you can't "network" by telecommuting, ask all the folks who went to Copenhagen or Cancun, why didn't they all telecommute?

We can buy locally grown food.

*where do I get local steaks in inner city Melbourne?

We can reduce, reuse, recycle.

*to a point

We can limit the number of children to two and reward those who have none or one.

*good luck on that

We can ensure that priority is given in our foreign aid program to reproductive health care, including family planning, so that it is available to all women everywhere.

* since most of us will no longer have jobs since there will be bugger all electricity and our industries will all be gone since they are unreliable, we'll have no money to pay taxes or give away

Andrew is one of those many academics that seems to have an aversion to checking his own theories.

If any of the graphs and figures he quotes actually meant anything then we should be seeing some increase in sea levels now right?

Unfortunately for Andrew a check of the site that records satellite observations of sea levels - http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ - indicates that sea levels are still moseying along at 3.1 mm a year or about one third of a metre (about a foot in the old measures) over a century. That rate of increase has been the same since the mid-90s when satellite measurements started. If anything the average has declined in recent years rather than increased, although this is marginal.

This is also very difficult to reconcile with recent statements by Prof Garnaut that sea level increases have been accelerating since he made his original reports. Nor is there anything in the tidal guage records (the land based instruments) to suggest an acceleration. What figures are these academics relying on??

In the article Andrew partially gets around this lack of real world results by suggesting we will reach what amounts to tipping points. Everything will be alright until we get to these tipping points, when ever that may be. Then we will get this long-delayed, much promised watery apocalypse. Right.

Thanks, Andrew for your observations on uncharted territory.

It may be more constructive to wait for it to be charted and give some sort of scientific analysis, rather than the incoherent and disjointed comment you present in this article,

You make frequent reference to studies of Al Gore’s adviser James Hansen, who, despite his ability, has shown himself to be incapable of scientific objectivity.

Hansen continually revises NASA’s figures on global temperature to make them warmer, so his ability to exercise objective judgement as a scientist has encountered serious doubt among objective scientists.

Sea levels have not risen for 50 years, so there is something seriously wrong with your data. Perhaps it is AGW fraudulent. There is a lot of that going around. We may be in danger of reaching a tipping point, there is so much of it.

You say: “The extreme rate of greenhouse gas forcing, rising at ~2 ppm CO2/year, leads potentially to tipping points such as high-rate methane release from permafrost and Arctic sediments, and the potential collapse of the North Atlantic Thermohaline Stream.” .

In that short statement you have one “potentially” and one “potential”. Why not look at the actual. The so called greenhouse gas forcing has not forced anything. In reality (unfamiliar territory to you, Andrew) the increase in CO2 said to have occurred has resulted in no rise in global temperature, despite the forecasts of pseudo scientific bodies like the IPCC.

Perhaps if you read Ian Plimer, and Robert Carter, you might sort yourself out.

If you want an assurance of their integrity, look at the scurrilous and baseless attacks on them by the pro AGW fraud backers. That is a great assurance of their worth. Some “scientist” even came up with an opinion that human activity emits 130 times more CO2 than all of the worlds volcanoes put together.

This nonsense will be used to denigrate Plimer until it is refuted scientifically, by someone without government funding.

Andrew Glikson. Clearly you are personally convinced that man's anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic warming and sea level rise. It would be good to see your evidence for such propositions.

It would be good too to see your evidence for assumptions of positive feedback that increase the likely around 1 deg C warming for a doubling of CO2 to 3 deg C or more. The evidence I see suggests that the feedbacks are likely negative, not positive.

And it would be good to hear your comments on two questions. How much will it cost us to impose a Carbon Dioxide Tax? And how much will global mean temperature in 2050 be reduced by us taking that action?

And Andrew. I've noticed in the past when you posted here that you didn't bother responding to any of the questions. You made your poorly presented and largely incoherent pronouncements from the mount. And left.

Losing tract with the middle? Being exposed as alarmist? Gross exhaggerations no longer convincing people to Take Action Now to prevent The End of All Things?

Quickly! Wheel our the "worse than was thought!" grenade.

Global Climate Disruption! Worse than was thought! Herpdy Derp Derp.