Very interesting Poirot.

<< Free market - it appears the only freedom is the freedom of the corporate world to control the market and usurp the common man's right… >>

Exactly. The freeer the market, that is: the less government control, the more unbalanced and unethical it will become, with the big, powerful and ruthless elements winning the day.

For all the problems we have with government, and one of them is the strong degree of facilitation of big business interests, it is still vastly better than no government or much weaker government regulation over the market.

And this extends into the fields of climate change, peak oil and overall sustainability.

I just totally disagree with those who desire to see government butt out and just leave it all to the whims of the market or economic forces.

Ludwig,

Yes, I agree that a "totally" free enterprise market with no government regulations is scary in the modern industrial world...yet it seems that governments and the corporate world have worked a ruse quite well taking autonomy in agriculture away from ordinary people, while at the same time making them pay for the privilege of obtaining the new "sanctioned" hybrid seeds.

That documentary is called "Think Global, Act Rural" - worth a look.

Ludwig and Poirot; good luck getting the balance right between big business and big government; one of the ironies of life is that a big ALP government has facilitated more erosion of transparency in the operation of big business than the Coalition; and transparency is the key along with meaningful imput by the individual into the operation of big business and government; that occurs through laws which give teeth and balance to small shareholder say in business decisions, and transparent, fair and representitive electoral processes.

csteele; you are being disingenuous; I have addressed the 33C Greenhouse caused GAT and proposed 5 [the list is not exhaustive] points which establish the relatively minor contribution of CO2 to causing that 33C and also show a declining influence of CO2 over further increases in GAT, and even the irrelevance of the GAT to describing the "Greenhouse" effect.

Yet all you can say is:

'do you agree that such a mechanism exists and has a role in warming our planet?'

I have answered that; but let me more succinct: yes, not much. Now address the issues I have raised beginning with number 1.

Dear cohenite,

I am a little lost. You assert that for a doubling of CO2 “Foster and Rahmstorf [F&R] isolate a non-feedback climate sensitivity of between 1.4-1.8C.”.

Then a couple of post later you say; “the heating capacity of CO2 is effectively exhausted, with further increases having almost immeasurable influence.”

When I pressed you on whether “you agree that such a mechanism exists and has a role in warming our planet?”

You responded with “assume you are right about the 33C global average temperature”. I certainly don't mind you giving an equivocal answer but that wasn't really an answer as such at all.

Where I see the state of play is that I agree with the accepted science on the Green House Effect and its temperature implications for our climate. You finally acknowledge the effect but say in the case of future CO2 increases they will be almost immeasurable.

So is the climate sensitivity of between 1.4-1.8C for a doubling of CO2 as described by Foster and Rahmstorf what you would describe as almost immeasurable?

What am I missing?

Csteel the thing that all the global warming effect of CO2 founders on is the fact that water vapor, & CO2 absorb the same spectrum of radiation.

Once you have 10% humidity, there is enough water vapor to absorb all the radiation in that spectrum.

You can quadruple the CO2, but it will have no effect on how much radiation is absorbed. Any that is absorbed by CO2 simply means it is not available to be absorbed by the water vapor, which would absorb it, if no CO2 was involved.

The above is the reason that none of the global warming crowd will ever engage sceptical scientists in debate, as there is no answer to this fact.

As Mr Abbott says, that's 'crap', Hasbeen.