@GrahamY: How is life supposed to go into "exponential overshoot" and exactly how is that supposed to lead to an anoxic event.

These anoxic events are the favoured theory on how the sediments we get our oil from were laid down. For example, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum#Formation That wikipedia article just blandly says so much sea life dies at a single point in time its rotting robs the ocean floor of all oxygen, stopping the normal breakdown process that would return it to the biosphere. So it stays there and if we get lucky and a few other things happen to it, it becomes crude oil. There aren't too many other ways to explain how a thick uniform sediment of organic matter is laid down in a short period onto the ocean floors.

These anoxic are always accompanied by a rapid variation in CO2 levels. The CO2 rises before the event. The rising CO2 and accompanying temperature increase makes living conditions in the seas ideal, driving the explosion of life. This explosion gets beyond the ability of the ocean floor to recycle it, so the carbon remains on the bottom removing carbon from the system. This reduces CO2 levels and ends the event. The ending is usually accompanied by a mass extinction. The background here explains it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event

I'm using exponential overshoot to mean the system didn't asymptotically approach a stable state where life was abundant, rather it overshot what was sustainable so badly it self destructed into a different stable state.

Triggering one of these things is the only proper use I can see for the term "tripping point" that is often bandied about. As you can see from the Wikipedia article, are a long, long way from it.

@GrahamY: Also not sure what your theory is as to why there is no correlation between CO2 and global temperature over historical time scales. I don't have time to watch a YouTube video.

Explaining it in 350 words without graphs is too hard, so I guess you are never going know what I am on about.

I would like to personally offer my deepest gratitude to Alex Stuart for his novel and unique solution to the climate change problem.
Forget about controlling pollution or reafforestation, that's just silly.
All we have to do is get everyone in the world to buy a large patch of desert, and surround it with a larger stretch of ocean.
Problem solved.
Can't understand why no one else has thought of it.

to arjay:

Dont know where you get your figures from re: co2 from coal fired power stations. My father inlaw is a power station engineer, my wife is a CEO of 2 power station suppliers. FACT: Oz has the cleanest
stations on the planet.
FACT more than 95% of emissions is h2o [ not co2 by a s*it load ]
FACT some of the ash is used in road making material [ your probably driving on one daily ]the rest is used in other products or returned to ground [ I mean it IS carbon after all. or did it magically transmogrify into another element ? ]

rstuart,

thanks for the excellent youtube link, which is very good and shouldn't be despised--especially if Monckton's presentations are a yardstick!
Of course Monckton and his acolytes, the so-called "sceptics" (snicker), are not interested in assessing the arguments, pro-con, around AGW objectively. They have a blind agenda, so naturally suppose everyone else does too.
As for the article, I can't improve on Grim's comment. Only a climate change "sceptic" could take it seriously!

rstuart and TrashcanMan:

Thank you for some excellent and mature discussion - as I suggested, so often missing from this topic. I made some fairly simplistic statements regarding the variation of CO2 levels around 150 - 350 Ma and some of the events that we think occured around that time - it is obviously more complex and covers a much longer timeframe than is being considered in the AGW debate.

The point I was making was that the AGW supporters project a concept of 280ppm "good" and 500ppm "bad" (or whatever). What if it's the other way round?

I consider myself a well educated and read individual. If I am to be taken as the "mean" for all people in the ongoing climate change or what ever you want to call it debate, then heaven help us. I go from pos to neg and back again when I read these blogs and other articles and see the various propositions and arguments put forward. What hope does the ordinary (I am not professing to be extraordinary by the way, far from it) man/woman have to know what is or isn't the truth!! You all have logical reasoning but unfortunately no consensus. Great reading though.