good on you, jennifer

are there any marches in Brisbane tomorrow demanding more tax .. I'm surprised those haven't taken off all over Australia, spontaneous like .. because it's what people want

for Martin N:

I think that you may be confusing 'risk' with 'uncertainty'. Insurance companies have a great deal of data on matters likely to affect your house, and can work out the risk, and charge you accordingly.

To the best of my knowledge, no insurance company has established the risk of catastrophic climate change due to the human burning of fossil fuels. Such a possibility is an example of 'uncertainty'. We simply don't know whether it will happen, and the data are too rubbery, and the arguments too conjectural, for us to know. It is not really clear, for example, by how much the earth has warmed in the last century, and though there is a commonly accepted figure of 0.7 degrees, you only have to look hard at the basic data to wonder whether we know anything at all. If we can't know the present with any accuracy, how can we compare it with the past? And the two central components of the AGW orthodoxy are that the earth has warmed through human burning of fossil fuels, and that this warming is unprecedented.

That may be so, but it is really quite uncertain. There may be no risk at all, or a slight one, or not one for several hundred years, or one in the next fifty. We simply don't know. How much insurance would you be prepared to take out, on your own, were there a company willing to insure you against (something bad due to climate change)?

Can I suggest that you go to Judith Curry's website 'Climate etc' and find the threads about 'Uncertainty', and read the original papers and then the discussions. You might find that useful.

WELCOME TO THE AGE OF "POST-NORMAL" (CLIMATE) SCIENCE

Thanks Jennifer

The government's proposed tax is indeed nonsense on any measure. Its brazen "carbon pollution" propaganda almost surpasses those in the research community who have kept a collective lid on all the uncertainties for far too long.

Intriguing too how so many folk in the social sciences seem to be appropriating "climate change" as a rationale to drive other agendas.

Who, outside the Academy, would have imagined that one "solution" now being proposed to convince the masses of the veracity of climate catastrophism is more (cognitive) psychologists?

With regard to "evidence", alarmists should (i) explore whether "confirmation bias" may have influenced aspects of climate research; (ii) read David Hume on causation, especially as tomorrow is the 300th anniversary of his birth; and (iii) reflect on the following contribution in the Royal Society's 2010 commemorative volume of papers?

The (late) Stephen Schneider noted here that while further research “can reduce uncertainty about the response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, however, this is unlikely to happen quickly, given the complexity of the global climate and the many years of high quality data which will be needed...."

"I have pushed hard for a cultural change in the (IPCC) assessments. As I have said, overcoming uncertainties, the traditional approach of what the philosopher Thomas Kuhn called ‘normal science’, will take an unforeseeably long time."

So dawns the age of "post-normal science", the Age of Storylines. It is an age where obscuram per obscuris arguments (“explaining” an obscure and complex phenomenon - such as climate change - by evoking something even more obscure and complex – such as a climate model) are fashionable again; where facts are fluid and theories fuzzy; where prophets of doom rely on dodgy differential equations in place of entrails; where speculation struggling with its own contradictions can be packaged and promoted not only as a plausible glimpse into the future, but also as sufficient justification for a national carbon (dioxide) tax and fundamental restructuring of Australia’s – and the world’s – energy economy.

Alice (in Warmerland)

"As I see it there are four over-arching facts which are hard to argue with:

1. Greenhouse gases are increasing in the atmosphere,are causing increasing global temperatures (I think you have acknowledged this). We are already seeing the predicted increasingly severe weather events (that is droughts floods, tornadoes)as a result.'

No problem arguing with this one. In the past increasing CO2 levels have followed after global warming, not preceded it. We have no reason to think this is not the same thing happening again. As for the 'severe weather', there has been no statistical increase in major weather events worldwide, and no specific weather events have been convincingly attributed to 'global warming', other than by scaremongers like Professor Flannery.

See? Not hard to argue with at all.

Good post Alice, brilliant even.
Political correctness is not like a religion, it IS a religion.
What's more the post modern theology isn't promoting the idea that God will provide or that we must accept our fate, Insha'Allah.
No, there's no happy clapping or linking of arms to sing "We shall overcome",it's more like some medieval doomsday sect or Crowleyan cult of Magicians and Scriers.
As any medieval religious fanatic worth his salt would have known, you don't terrorise people with horrifying visions of perdition in order to enlighten them, you do it to ensure that they remain under your control

"...in another thirty years the current obsession with carbon dioxide may be recognised as misguided."

MAY be recognised?

But what if it's not misguided? What if it's found to be true and then thirty years too late to do anything about it?

Why should I stop smoking? I may already have cancer or will get it from something else anyway. Better to enjoy myself today because there may not be any consequences anyway. Plenty of people smoke and live to a ripe old age don't they?

If the sceptics have their way and are proven wrong (again) then perhaps humanity will deserve what it gets in the years ahead.

Just remember that the people that run those vast business interests and bogus think-tanks that are behind the sceptic industry will be well cashed-up to cope.