Climate change in the past led to the extinction of a number of animals.

When Humans first walked out of Africa the sea levels were much lower than they are today.

Yep climate changes all the time that is a fact.

Sea levels have risen and fallen, that is a fact.

A good article but disheartening all the same. By the time we convince all the conservative men in suits that global warming is real, the planet will be fried. It does bear out, however, what I've been saying for years, that if you want to convince the middle class of your position (land rights, shut down coal-fired power stations or whatever) don't come to the demo wearing dreadlocks and bare feet. The audience has to identify with you.

Perhaps the real answer is that the facts are not facts at all but contrivances made by a rag tag group of NGOs and scientists not doing their jobs properly, and a corrupt and incompetent UN/IPCC

On the whole tax payers are not stupid.They see the money trails and who benefits eg Banks, Greengroups, shonkademics and shonky politicians like Al Gore and his mates,incompetent professional societies like the RS in the UK, and say whoah.

http://climatedepot.com/a/9035/SPECIAL-REPORT-More-Than-1000-International-Scientists-Dissent-Over-ManMade-Global-Warming-Claims--Challenge-UN-IPCC--Gore

This is the first genuinely convincing argument that I have seen in the entire debate. Unfortunately, it merely highlights the problem, which is both very "human", and thoroughly intractable.

Even the "solution" offered, however logical and sensible it appears on the surface, will gain little traction against the entrenched positions that have been established over the past ten years or so.

"...to finally end the expensive and highly divisive climate debate in favor of rational climate and energy policy"

Underneath the emotion and hype, pretty much everyone can be persuaded to a position that says "we need a more sustainable energy policy", whether at a national or a global level. But the idea of dropping all the personal positional baggage that has been gathered along the way - from "mega-disaster" to "she'll be right" - will not happen in this lifetime.

Perhaps the next generations will take a more sanguine and practical view, and be less prone to the hysteria that characterises much of the debate today.

One can only hope.

Seems like a useful thesis to me.
Meanwhile the latest posting at Tom Dispatch is related to this topic. It is titled Bill McKibben Climate-Deniers Have Done Their Job Well.

As James said, the climate changes. I agree. What I see is that the changes appear to be driven by other external factors and cycles. Any human impact is minor. This research just shows that most people bring far more to a discussion than so called pure reason. This is especially so when people find there is disagreement as to whether the science is settled (eg climate change) or conflicts with religious beliefs (eg evolution).

Given how climate has changed and is changing regardless of us humans, I for one am not concerned with stopping it. This isn't the perfect world that needs to be preserved. It just happens to be the one we live in NOW. I believe we just need to get on with life and make the most of what we have.

I see the logical conclusion of the green movement being the destruction of everything built up on this entire planet and the resultant destruction of most if not nearly all humans. I for one will have nothing to do with such a strategy.

DKit

A good article. It is true that the communitarians (i.e. the Left) are the strongest proponents of strong climate change mitigation actions.

But why do they focus on just one risk - climate change - rather than looking at all risks in proper balance? Climate change is just one risk that confronts us at the global scale, and it is nowhere near the highest, according to World Economic Forum “Global Risks 2012” http://www.weforum.org/reports/global-risks-2012-seventh-edition .

I believe the answer to this question is that what the communitarians really want is an issue they can use to achieve their real agendas which are, IMO: World Government, world taxation, more regulation and more control by bureaucrats. What the communitarians really want is control over other people’s lives.

They advocae distributed electricity generation rather than the large power stations run by evil big business. However, they are not interested in the cost difference. They are not interested in the consequences (the human consequences) of imposing this enormous cost difference on society.

When it comes to analysing the costs and benefits of their proposed climate action policies they are not interested in the benefit/cost results, nor in the consequences of what the tax or ETS will do to the economy (i.e. to human wellbeing). If they were interested in the benefit/cost analyses, they would not be advocating Australia implementing a CO2 tax and ETS. The benefit/cost of Australia’s CO2 tax and ETS, to 2050, is just 0.11 (that is the costs are nine times greater than the benefits). http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#80580

But it’s even worse than this. The 0.11 number assumes that Australia’s CO2 tax and ETS is part of an economically efficient, optimal, world CO2 price that all countries implement in unison and maintain as optimal.

If these assumptions are not fulfilled, the benefit to Australia is zero. But we’ll still pay the costs.

By the way, the costs are probably underestimated. It sees the compliance cost for the system that will ultimately be required, has not been estimated and not included in Treasury’s projections: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578&page=

Can you run that past me again? A bunch of psychologists, lawyers et al have discovered that people's views on a scientific issue are or are not determined by the scientific facts presented to them, depending on their cultural and social world view? What a surprise! I shall now spend the rest of my day pondering on which of my or my friends' views, or the views I read every day in the media, on just about anything are NOT connected with their cultural and social world view, because in the first 10 minutes of such reflection I have been unable to think of one.

Here is a random sample. Just yesterday I debated with two friends whether or not the mining industry in Australia should be regarded as valuable. Two for, one against. I would have thought the facts are clear. But world views over-rode all else.

The only issue here is why a refereed journal would publish such a statement of the bleeding obvious.

Pericles

Much of what you say is true but unless we tackle population growth, the underlying cause of all our environmental problems, its all meaningless. Without a policy to tackle population growth everything else is a just so much hot air.

"...to finally end the expensive and highly divisive climate debate in favor of rational population and energy policy"

The author maybe doesn't realise that these findings don't support either case for Global Warming. In fact it shows that Alarmists are just as influenced by socio-political views as their opponents.

Nobody is that interested anymore, anyway. It was always simply a way to get our money as the carbon tax shows. If it wasn't, the world would be trying to stifle the growth of China and India who will spew billions of tonnes of CO2 into the air yet apparently it is deemed OK by the IPCC.

Tom. You say: "These findings will dishearten traditional science educators who for years have focused on disseminating clear and well-supported descriptions of the way nature works in the hopes that the public will come to more rational conclusions on issues such as global warming."

This shows that you really have no idea about the so-called 'science' of climate change. For a start, while most sceptics accept that there is some warming from a doubling of CO2 (according to the physics perhaps 1 deg C warming), the real issue is whether the feedbacks are positive, neutral or negative. The IPCC ASSUMES that the feedbacks are strongly positive, but with very little evidence for that from either historic records, or from anything other than computer models. There are numerous credible climate scientists that argue that the feedbacks are actually neutral or even negative, meaning that the temperature change from a doubling of CO2 is likely to be 1 deg C or even less. At the very least, the science is not settled.

The IPCC effectively ignores natural cycles which history shows are a major contributor to climate change. They also ignore the strong evidence that human land-use factors affect local and regional climate in many areas (think US dustbowl of the 30s) which many confuse with global warming.

The fact is that the climate scientists have NOT conveyed clear and well-supported descriptions. Examine the issues and you will see that their work has been shown to be illogical, poorly done, and not credible.

Why indeed? Perhaps we should wait until the facts are entirely irrefutable? Say when enough of the ice sheets have melted to increase sea levels by as much as 10 metres? 10 metres would inundate most of our coastal plains, which by the way contain most of our population, capital cities and around 70% of our economy.
Its a great plan, that would simply end all the contentious debate?
Maybe not, given there is an entirely self serving extremely influential element, that will swear blind that humans have nothing whatsoever to do with climate change, even if and when it becomes abundantly clear we have passed a tipping point that virtually condemns all remaining life.
The best solutions will be ones that walk out the door.
Those interested in resuscitating our manufacturing base, will entirely agree and argue for localised generation/cheaper power provision, that can be trucked onto industrial estates.
Thorium reactors are the best bet; given, thorium can't be weaponised, and we have heaps of the stuff.
Algae farming shows similar low cost benefits that allow coal fired power to continue, with virtual impunity; given algae are a first class mop crop that absorb 2.5 times their bodyweight in Co2 emission and under optimised conditions double that bodyweight every 24 hours!
It would hurt nothing except the balance sheets of extremely powerful international oil cartels, if in so doing, we also became entirely independent in endlessly sustainable very low cost transport fuel!
And saved the Murray/Darling, by providing an alternative very low water use bio-diesel production outcome, that could be entirely serviced with effluent currently flowing out to sea, carrying millions of annual tons of plant nutrient, that simply creates quite massive environmental problems, which would end, if we but used it up on land!
Climate change? Who gives a dam? Lets just do it because the proffered solutions make perfect endlessly sustainable economic sense; and will advantage us and our economy enormously! Rhrosty.

By Tom's descriptions I'd have to say I'm mostly communitarian. I'm not very concerned about climate change: I regard it as more as a diversion keeping journalists in work than a grave threat to civilization. And I think the best way to reduce CO2 emissions is nuclear power. I wonder what the Yale Law School would make of me?

Cheers,

Tony

Rhrosty

You said: “Why indeed? Perhaps we should wait until the facts are entirely irrefutable? Say when enough of the ice sheets have melted to increase sea levels by as much as 10 metres? 10 metres would inundate most of our coastal plains, which by the way contain most of our population, capital cities and around 70% of our economy.”

This sort of nonsense is what discredits the Alarmists.

Even if the atmosphere does warm as the IPCC modellers project, it would take thousands of years for sea levels to rise 10 m.

Even if sea level s did rise 10 m over night (it’s impossible), just 4% of world population and 3% of world output (figure 7-5, p145 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf )

Your comment is loaded with scary adjectives. Your alarmism is unconvincing just as is James Hansen’s scaremongering that the oceans will evaporate if we don’t change our ways and become good people very soon, and the Will Steffen’s the “Critical Decade”.

I do agree with you that we will be able to implement cost competitive alternatives to fossil fuels if and when we need them. They should be rolled out first where it is economically rational to do so. In that case, because Australia has cheap coal, Australia will (and should) be one of the last countries in the world to transition from fossil fuels. That’s rational; i.e. unemotional logic.

Rhosty,

So who's waiting ? General Electric, with its wind farms ? Power stations switching from coal to gas ? Vast solar power arrays subsidised by governments around the world ? China with its policy of an extra 1 % p.a. in the proportion of renewable energy generated for its industries ?

No, I'm not saying that capitalism will save the world, out of the fundamental goodness of 'its' heart. But everywhere, 'it' will try to make a dollar out of switching to renewable energy if it is profitable enough. And hopefully, even our own government might have the wits to direct funding far more to research and development of appropriate technologies.

After all, if nobody does anything (which seems to be the preferred position of many environmentalists, or am I wrong ?), sea-levels will rise all around the world by as much as a foot in the next century (even in Fiji), and temperatures might rise by an average of two degrees Celsius. Could these changes have dreadful consequences: e.g., the annual average temperature of Kazakhstan will rise from one degree C to three degrees C ? More grapes will be grown in Tasmania ? Rainfall across the north of Australia will be much greater, falling on perhaps millions of square kilometres of currently un-used land and moving further south over time ?

A few years ago, I recall seeing a documentary about Global Dimming, that with the emission of far more industrial particulates around the world, water vapour in the atmosphere (increasing because of global warming) was able to condense around particles and produce more clouding, fogging and dimming of solar energy reaching the earth's surface, certainly increasing humidity - and perhaps temperature as well, but at a slower rate than would have been the case without the condensation and dimming.

Perhaps you're right, we should take the advice of the old Mad Magazine slogan: "Don't just do something, stand there !"

Cheers,

Joe

Unfortunately for you Tom, & your academic & NGO mates, the public have caught up with the facts. We are well aware that the whole thing is a fraud, with absolutely no hard evidence to back it up.

Yes it took a while, & you could probably have achieved your objective if there had not been so many of you enjoying the annual holidays, & all the grandstanding the rort provided.

By the time you got down to business a few too many had taken most of your computer generated "evidence" apart, & the collapse had started.

Yes keep pushing. The thing will probably still give those like you a living for a few more years. However you had better get that exit strategy lined up now, the need to escape from the tar & feather pit is not too far off.

Attempts by global warmists to explain away waning public support for their assertions in terms of psychological or sociological trends are absurd.

The global warming story first came to real prominance more than a decade ago, although it has been around for much longer (the first IPCC report was in 1990). Since then there have been any number of warnings about how their would be no more snow in the decade's time, only for the snow to be just as plentiful 10 years later. In Australia's case we were told the drought in the South East would be permanent and dams would never be full, just before nearly three years of rain. Until recently, the seasonal forecasts by the Met Office in England, a bastion of global warming theory, were notoriously always wrong.

People who have no idea of the science and are not abouit to try to get to the bottom of it, are now becoming deeply suspicious of global warming theory for the very good reason that they can see for themselves that the forecasts are turning out to be wrong.

There is no need for fancy theory.

Just wanted to make a couple of points. Tom Harris is a skeptic, but it is interesting to read comments which appear to come from the view that he believes in climate catastrophe.

The other point is that there is a real world experiment on the Harvard study happening. The Conservatives in the UK are just as committed to dealing with AGW as Labour was. On the basis of this Harvard theory I would expect there to be some change in the composition of those favouring government action. This would be moderated to some extent by the fact that both Labour and Conservative politicians dress and talk pretty much the same, but still there should be some effect. If not, I'd say that while the theory isn't nullified, it needs to be pretty heavily modified.

To follow on from Curmudgeon's point about snow, I once had a friend who was completely taken in by that. He rushed off to the snow in about 2007 or 08, utterly convinced that he'd better go before it was too late, and urged me to do the same while we still had some snow. Incredible.

The reason people see AGW through their cultural and social worldview is because AGW IS a cultural and social worldview.

The ideology of AGW is all there is; there is no science. AGW is Gaia, pristine nature and humanity's usurpation of the purity of those concepts.

This why there is such a strong, indeed dominant theme of misanthropy running through AGW promulgation; at base AGW is anti-human and all the key parts of AGW theory demonstrate this; see;

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/our-abc-green-narrative.html

Cohenite, yes there is a strong thread of misanthropy running through the climate debate and always has been. What I find most alarming is that those who promote the idea that humans are a 'cancer on the earth' are the last to see themselves as part of the problem. Apparently when you publicly admonish your fellow humans for their apparent sins against Gaia you are entitled to be let off the hook.

As well as being misanthropic AGW believers have other characteristics as well:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/how-to-be-really-good-climate-change.html

Not so much misanthropy, I think -- more like desperate boredom. These are people whose lives are so dreary and dull that only the prospect of the end of the world can give them the motivation to get out of bed. In their minds they're not just pathetic bank clerks and research assistants and data analysts leading comfortable, dull lives; they're eco-warriors, fighting to save a world balanced on the edge of disaster!

And the nice thing is, it's so easy! Turn off a light now and then, abuse a few 'deniers', and you too can look forward to a future where adoring grandchildren cluster round your armchair while you tell them how you saved the planet from those wicked capitalists!

The only reason I can think of why AGW is so compelling for so many people is because it seems to make their trivial existence interesting and important.

Good article. The resistance to the science is almost entirely political in nature as evidenced by the personal hostility shown by sceptics. It's not like they are hearing "something is going on we need to look into"...more like "we are going to take over your freedoms...for your own good!". Alarmism is being used by both "sides" and it is just polarising the opinions (just like politics). Just goes to show that tribal extremism is not good for balanced discussion!
The climate most certainly is changing based on ice loss, ocean currents, sea surface temps, land temps, etc. Unless you subscribe to the "all climate scientists are incompetent or involved in a plot" then we can probably agree that increased CO2 is making something go on. Sadly we are past the point where policy can do much about it.
It is all "adaptation" from here whether we like it or not...but when has this not been the case?

ozandyh

I see we still haven't got through to you the basics of the scepticism. Of course climate has or is changing. Of course glaciers have been melting. The question has always been why. Is it a natural change as has happened so often before, or is there some forcing due to human activities?

Climate scientists insist that it is at least partially due to human forcing but we have no means of judging what they say. The fact that experts have said so, and are using the best science available, is simply not relevent. Experts in and of themselves cannot prove a proposition - they must be able to demonstrate that they have used their knowledge to make successful forecasts. So far their track record on seasonal forecasts is worse than chance, and their short term forcasts (several years) are not much better.

A great deal more could be said, but if you want to convince sceptics first you should make an effort to understand their arguments.