Poirot pontificates; climate science doesn't exist so one can't have qualifications in it; related areas such as meteorology or hydrology perhaps, but climate science as espoused by the likes of Steffan and the rest of the elite academics and CSIRO little indians is nothing more than computer gaming.

Let me add the thought that since we already have more books, more films and and more music than anyone could get through in several lifetimes, it would be an enormous economic boon if people stopped making new ones and did something useful instead.

Hasbeen you state "Perhaps our greatest excess, Valerie, is that of the fools, who can't understand the math, & won't read what is available, but who still believe in & promote climate change."

Beg to differ, it's more likely those who obviously don't understand chemistry and physics that clearly show the climate change occuring and the alteration of our oceans, ice caps, extreme weather events, etc etc.

Fire away, broad-side obviously going to be unleashed against me for stating the obvious.

Valerie Yule's trip down memory lane is of some interest but of little use, and her historical analogy is very shaky indeed. Excesses lead to the collpase of the Western Roman or the Assyrian civilisations? I think where that can be said to have happened Yule means the excesses of the ruling classes. The lower orders certainly didn't get any excesses, and that's where her analogy gets shaky.

You can point to a collapse of production systems in the Mayan and Kymer civilisations (please no one respond with Diamond, his writing is in the same wako catagory as that of Toynbee), but its not a universal rule by any stretch of the imagination. Western Rome collapsed for a host of reasons, the Assyrians, from memory, came to be hated and over-reached themselves. Other failures can be put down to dynastic problems.

Another part of the problem is that you're facing a situation where the rate of innovation is very much higher than in previous periods, and the benefits of civilisation are far more widely spread. In any case, the civilisation to which Yuke refers is worldwide, or nearly so..

Best to dump the dodgy analogies.

Excess is followed by collapse etc...

The title and byline got me quite interested. Unfortunately the text left me disappointed. In fact I left off reading half way through. Never mind - I guess the sentiment was there.

On the other hand, cohenite's post above is very good. He raises a valid point about climate science and subject titles. I was thinking about this exact thing, just this morning.

I was wondering if the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) might change their name to become the Bureau of Climate (change) - BOC.

Then I realised that that's already the name of a global "polluter" who bottles and sells CO2 gas, liquids and solids. That must be shockingly disappointing for them.

Geoff of Perth and Poirot

Guys, the only qualifications you need is some knowledge of arithmetic, a basic ability to read graphs and commonsense.

Go and look at some of the projections now being issued. Now go and look at the temperature charts for past increases on the Bureau of Meteorology site. The minimum temperature increase requires a far greater increase per decade than anything we have experienced since the start of industrialisation.

If even the minimum projected increase requires a major change on anything we've seen to date then maybe we should treat the projections with caution.