stevenlmeyer makes an excellent point in that there is no way we can curb CO2 emissions. But perhaps he does not realise, and few of our scientists do, that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (as opposed to the emissions - the stuff going into the atmsophere) are already far below the estimates made for their increase. Same for the other big one, methane. they simply will not make the levels set out in the 2007 Garnaut report business as usual projections for 2020, for example. Baring a massive change in present increases it just won't happen.

This is just one of many problems raised with the present orthodoxy which global warmers immediately scream and shout cannot be right, and accuse the person pointing it out by being in someone's pay.

You can accept a part of the global warming orthodoxy as Ridely has done but ther are just so many problems with the projections as they stand that they really have to be dumped, and done again - this time taking climate cycles into account, among many other things.

But then as Ridely also notes, any exercise in projecting future results of a chaotic system - particularly through computer models - are of very limited use.

Matt Ridley, like most climate "sceptics," mis-states the question:

The question is NOT:

>>Have scientists proved we are heading for climate catastrophe beyond all reasonable doubt?>>

The claims of some over-enthusiastic climate modellers notwithstanding, the answer is no. The only way of proving we're headed for climate catastrophe is to run the experiment – ie to continue pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and see what happens.

The REAL question is this:

>>Is the available evidence strong enough to cause a prudent rational person to take action?>>

In real life we almost never have the luxury of 100% certainty on any important issue. If we demanded 100% certainty we'd never act. We almost always have to take important decisions based on our estimate of the probabilities.

In the case of climate the evidence, taken as a whole, without cherry picking, plus the basic physics of atmospheric greenhouse gases, points to a high likelihood, not a certainty but a high likelihood, of catastrophe if we continue pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

However since we're not going to curtail greenhouse gas emissions anyway this is a purely academic argument. Our children will just have to take their chances.

Curmudgeon

I did not say we cannot curb CO2 emissions.

I said we won't.

There is a difference.

pseudo science is smelt miles away by people who think rationally. When scientist tell the general public that their theories or fudges are to complex for the average Joe to understand, you can smell a rat. Usually honest scientist with no vested interest will then be silenced whent challenging the çonsensus'. We see it with the idiotic evolution fantasy as well as the money grabbing climate 'scientist'. Climategate revealled the lenghts that dishonest pollies and scienctist will go to in order impose their dogmas on people. Fraudsters like Al Gore and some prominent Australians have made large amounts of money from pseudo science.

Climate change is real and man made, look at the latest on cyclonic events and say there is nothing in it. Carbon + co2 = disaster. The way it is going it will end up a legal matter.

There needs to be a lot more of this sort of intelligent lay criticism of Science. It is not just the IPCC and its self-serving propaganda; in my view a good deal of science is corrupt or dysfunctional and frequently both, particularly in the environmental area. My own experience as a researcher in the Ocean Surface Wave field is a case in point (see http://www.scienceheresy.com/2011_04/index.html#1). The IPCC is just the most recent and most egregious example.

These guys have been getting away with it for decades mainly because they are not subject to external appraisal of the kind routinely applied to the work of medicos, lawyers and engineers. Once evidence and reason were abandoned, sycophancy and patronage came to hold sway. It’s almost mediaeval.

Runner. It might be intructional for you to read some real science from the Smithsonian Institute. Possibly the world's leading authority on the origins of man, including the bible.

http://humanorigins.si.edu/

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-timeline-interactive

http://humanorigins.si.edu/resources/intro-human-evolution

You will notice that between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, there were several hominids with similar characteristics to modern man (homo sapiens). For various reasons these others have died out, the most recent being homo neanderthalensis, whose fossil remains, dated about 28,000 years ago were found in a cave in Gibralter.

I would also urge you to look at

http://cogweb.ucla.edu/ep/Paleoanthropology.html#Family and

http://news.discovery.com/human/human-ancestor-australopithecus-sediba.html

I hope you find the above enlightening.

David