Perhaps readers may recall the predictions of the IPCC Chair, a renowned transport engineer, that the Himalayan glaciers would all have melted by 2035.

The Tibetan Plateau is around 15,000-20,000 feet above sea-level. The snow-fields of Australia are what ? three to five thousand feet above sea-level ?

Didn't it occur to anyone that, if the Himalayan glaciers are going to melt in the next twenty five years, then likewise the Australian snow-fields would vanish in what ? the next five years ?

If some renowned scientist makes a prediction, then there would be corollaries associated with that prediction. If one takes, let's say, the melting of the Australian snow-fields as a corollary of the melting of the Himalayas, then as they say, pari passu, if melting is to occur at region A, then it must be occurring at region B as well, and at roughly the same rate.

Is that happening ? Is the snow-line retreating up Mt Wellington or Mt Buller ? At what rate ? This season has been a bumper one for skiers, I'm told.

Scepticism is an honorable course for anybody claiming to be following any sort of scientific approach. Not cynicism, or denialism, but scepticism. I am proud to put myself forward as a sceptic, and to suffer the consequences.

Now I'll wait for the ad hominems from those with no valid arguments.

Cheers,

Joe

:)

Poroit, I have just read the article by John Cook that you reference. It should be obligatory reading for all commenters although for the reasons Cook sets out it is unlikely to alter one iota the invincible ignorance displayed in so many comments.

Leo Lane, you seriously are not going to rely on the Oregon Petition? The overwhelming majority of signers know nothing about climate science. They are MD and vets, engineers and retirees. For some odd reason engineers are particularly well represented. For goodness sake, at least one dead person signed the petition. I wonder how he did that?

If consensus is important, you need the people who know something about the topic. When you ask them, 97% agree that human activity is affecting the climate. They do this for very good reason. The trail of evidence is there. CO2 was demonstrated more than a century ago to be a greenhouse gas. The mechanism behind this is well understood. The amount of carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution. The atmospheric temperature has also increased. 8 of the 10 warmest years on the instrument record have occurred in the last decade.

What we don’t know is exactly how warm it is going to get if we do nothing about it and exactly what impact that will have on the biological ecosystems on Earth and on humans. I doubt it will be pretty. But that is OK, lets go on believing in petitions that dead people can sign, rather than in facts.

"obligatory", eh, James; the believers in AGW would like to make a lot of stuff "obligatory", wouldn't they?

Cook is a joke; his mate Lewandowsky has just done his survey on the conservative/Denier mindset; you know the one which says "Deniers" are prone to believe in conspiracies like the Moon landing was not real.

What a joke! The man who first walked on the moon, the great Armstrong, was a "Denier"; are you telling me he didn't believe he walked on the moon. That would be more viable then accepting your little end of the world crusade, AGW, is a lie, wouldn't it?

Cook links to this rubbish to support his contention that the Stratosphere is cooling, a necessary requirement for AGW to be real:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002GL016377.shtml

The Stratosphere hasn't cooled since 1996:

http://acd.ucar.edu/~randel/SPARC_revised.pdf

Now, how can that be; the Stratosphere has not cooled for 17 years despite, allegedly, AGW going full steam?

Hi Agronomist,

That's an interesting argument: "When you ask them, 97% agree that human activity is affecting the climate."

At the last Census, something like 73 % of all Australians believed in a god of some sort, or gods. As an atheist, I'm not so sure that proves that there must be a god, or gods.

Wouldn't you agree ?

Just putting it out there :)

Joe

I tired to give this a good go, I really did... I went as far as this

...

"b) "The CSIRO got from the Federal Government $A2.8 billion over four years in 2007 (from the Rudd Labour government)" much of which was directed to climate science according to the press release.

If the critical reader concedes from this, that I may have a point, then he or she may be asking cui bono: why would the Big money be on the side of AGW research?"

...

and through my hands up (figuratively, I am not that demonstrative), the quote was "directed to climate science" and the author turned that into "big money on the side of AGW research"...

The money is on "Climate Science", for the same reason the money is on biology, paleontology, geology, astronomy, evolution and a plethora of other "sciences". Stop shooting the messenger just because they are giving you a message you don't like.