In God's good time down came the rain;
And all the afternoon
On iron roof and window-pane
It drummed a homely tune.

And through the night it pattered still,
And lightsome, gladsome elves
On dripping spout and window-sill
Kept talking to themselves.

It pelted, pelted all day long,
A-singing at its work,
Till every heart took up the song
Way out to Back-o'-Bourke.

And every creek a banker ran,
And dams filled overtop;
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"If this rain doesn't stop."

And stop it did, in God's good time;
And spring came in to fold
A mantle o'er the hills sublime
Of green and pink and gold.

And days went by on dancing feet,
With harvest-hopes immense,
And laughing eyes beheld the wheat
Nid-nodding o'er the fence.

And, oh, the smiles on every face,
As happy lad and lass
Through grass knee-deep on Casey's place
Went riding down to Mass.

While round the church in clothes genteel
Discoursed the men of mark,
And each man squatted on his heel,
And chewed his piece of bark.

"There'll be bush-fires for sure, me man,
There will, without a doubt;
We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out."

Cheers,

Tony

Agronomist, I wouldn't be too harsh on Dyson:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Scroll down to Global Warming where he acknowledges AGW is real, contrary to what Leo asserts, but ...

Oops, that damn Wikipedia again!

Oh well, this is Dyson on Wikipedia;

"Even in the noisiest system, errors can be reliably corrected and accurate information transmitted, provided that the transmission is sufficiently redundant.

That is, in a nutshell, how Wikipedia works. ... Science is the sum total of a great multitude of mysteries. It is an unending argument between a great multitude of voices.

It resembles Wikipedia much more than it resembles the Encyclopaedia Britannica."

The debating has as usual degenerated into mild (so far) abuse and total disregard of valid points used in argument.
At least one of the persons involved has for some reason given a link to a perfectly good graph and says that it does not make sense to him.
I do not want to descend to the levels of vehemence sometimes used but I wonder if he can not see the graph for the truth it clearly tells ( of an ascending trend of temperature) them he should consult an optician at the first opportunity.
I would thank the person who was solicitous for my foot health and assure him that I have not "put my foot in it" or shot my self either there or anywhere else.

Look again, Robert, it dips over the last few years. Since about 1998.

Thanks, Tony, that puts things into perspective.

Of course there has been global warming over the past century - sea-level rise of 2 inches, and temperature rise of 0.8 degrees. The questions that immediately arise are:

* are these changes cataclysmic an should we head for the Tasmanian highlands ? Are the changes exponential and at what sort of rates ? Will the glaciers be gone by 2035 ? [Sorry, cheap shot]

* how much of this is man-made - and therefore, presumably, up to economy and technology to remedy ? And can capitalism, as the dominant vehicle of both, fix it ? Can incentives be devised (subsidies, tax breaks, etc.) to encourage capitalist firms to do so ?

* how much is natural, cyclical, due to sun-spots, etc., which may more or less self-correct over time ?

I have to apologise that I can't really get all that worked-up about any of this: I remember the 1956 floods on the Murrumbidgee-Murray and I've picked apricots in 46 degrees back in about 1980, and there hasn't been a flood or heat-wave like those since, in my experience. Live in hope.

Like Hanrahan, we find it tempting to pronounce doom and gloom - 'and that there's nothing we can do about it, isn't it terrible, but as sinners, don't we deserve it' - that sort of stuff. But as I noted above somewhere, capitalism will try to make a buck out of anything (lock up your grandmothers) not because it is Good and Pure, but precisely because some capitalist or other will always be on the look-out for the main chance. Even Marx noted its revolutionary potential in that regard, and for that reason.

And why aren't we painting our rooves white, to reflect some of that solar energy back ? Just a thought - it probably shows clearly what a dill I am.

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth,

"...it probably shows clearly what a dill I am."

I know you meant that last remark sarcastically, but....
....................

"Look again, Robert, it dips over the last few years..."

Perhaps this will explain it a little better:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticsvRealistsv3.gif

Thank you, Poirot, but there are, after all, lies, damned lies, statistics and statistical representations like trend lines and bell curves.

And your graph still show a dip over the last few years, and seems to be levelling off over a longer period, and getting flatter too: perhaps instead of a straight-line trend line, from point A to point B, a five- or ten-year rolling average might avoid this sort of distortion. I recommend all readers to click on it and check it out carefully.

Perhaps what might be occurring - from a layman's point of view - is a combination of long cycles of fifty to seventy years, with smaller cycles, of six or seven years each imposed on the longer cycles. In other words, much to the horror of so many of us here, that the long-term curve is in fact levelling off, perhaps over the next ten or twenty years ? So what are we going to do in the absence of an Armageddon ?! Don't we deserve one ?!

IF AGW, AND an accelerating trend, wouldn't one expect to see a large proportion of recorded incidents BELOW that trend line ? i.e. a concave line, that was inevitably trending upwards, at an increasing rate ? That it would not be flattening out (or ever-so-slightly convex), but that those little mini-trend-lines would be getting further apart ?

Just asking. Please try to respond, if you intend to, with some civility: please no insults, just an explanation. Insults after all, mean that you have NO explanation.

:)