Clancy, I note that the case that you make that Tuvalu needs help is not made on the rising sea level meme (clearly because that has been effectively disproven), but on the issue of seawater contamination of the fresh water lens.

You probably know a lot about that issue. If you do, you will know that the typical Pacific Island built on a coral atoll has a freshwater "lens" that is surrounded by seawater. Overdraw fresh water, and you will begin to draw seawater. Or if the fresh water is not replenished by sufficient rainfall. That says that the problem could be either or both a land-management issue, and a precipitation issue.

You might want to point out to us the research that proves that increased anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing less rainfall on Pacific Islands. I would have thought it had a lot more to do with ENSO cycles, La Nina and El Nino. But I'm listening.

The effects attributed to climate change by the writer are in fact due to climate cycles. For example, the back to back La Ninas we've had have caused floods in eastern Australia, but also cause droughts in Africa - the La Ninas in turn, may be due to the Pacific Decadal Osciallation flipping from warm to cool.

Climate is proving to be very complicated, and even if any of the suggestions linking global temperatures to industrial emissions turn out to be true, it is not clear what the effects will be..

It is all very real, Pacific islands will become inundated, Polar ice is melting at an alarming rate. Warmth in the northern hemisphere is likely highest for 1300 years. Breeds of fish that have never before been in certain areas, are now being caught, due to warmer waters. Increases in extreme temperatures and extreme cold temperatures. More intense cyclones. Oceans more acidic. Oceans giving up co2 with warmer water temps. Shifts in plant and animal locations and behaviour. This has gone beyond the norm.

Who really believes this Man made global warming jungle juice any more outside the public service and their agencies who seek rent from this expensive waste of public resources as the lefts fictional bedtime stories took center stage to avoid any real productive gains outside nefarious regulations.

Sorry Clancy but climate change does not matter. Why? Because the economy is everything.

Stopping or slowing emissions would require us to shrink the economy. Why? Because modern industrial economies require lots of energy to function. As the economy grows, energy consumption grows. Unless we have alternative renewable sources of energy that scale to the levels required to support a growing global economy, we must shrink that economy to reduce emissions. At present, and in the foreseeable future, those viable energy alternatives do not or very likely will not exist.

Nobody is going to buy off on the idea that we must shrink the economy, get back to 350ppm, which is proposed by most climate scientists. We would have to tear down industrial civilization.

Even if an alternative energy miracle occurs, it would take decades to replace oil, natural gas and coal with wind, solar, hydropower etc. All that time the economy would need to be growing, because that's what human beings want.

If the economy grows, energy flows must increase. It is naive to believe that we wouldn't have to burn even more fossil fuels in the future. But where are those going to come from? Even if viable alternatives to fossil fuels appear, the possibility that GDP growth will continue year-after-year in the 21st century seems very remote there are all sorts of constraints on that growth, not just cheap energy.

So this ongoing climate debate madness just doesn't matter, whether it comes from deniers or environmentalists. Why?
1. For humans, the economy is everything, trying to grow the economy is everything, regardless of the consequences of the expansion. This has become the purpose of life in the 21st century.
2. To expand human economies, you must increase energy consumption.
3. To increase energy consumption humans will have to burn more fossil fuels. But the question then becomes where is all that oil, natural gas and coal going to come from?

So go ahead, argue about climate change until you're blue in the face. It won't make any difference in the end.

579 - how does anyone know what the norm is.. and this reference..

"Warmth in the northern hemisphere is likely highest for 1300 years"

destroys your own case.

Its actually about 1,000 years as that's when the medieval warming period occured .. but whatever the date, why was it so warm back then? There were no factories generating CO2.. In fact it was part of a natural cycle.. temperatures also known to have peaked in Roman and Minoan times?

So how do we know we aren't in the warm part of another cycle? How can you separate natural warming from induced warming? Perhaps you should ask your sources those inconvenient questions.