Got to admire your swagger, cohenite.

I've yet to hear of a climate scientist who claimed to be as sure of the science as you are in your denial of it.

Message there somewhere, methinks.

A look at the battle lines here is very instructive. On one side you’ve got a sober group who accept that climate change happens –actually it happens all the time –but dispute the hype that is often written-up as evidence of climate change and dispute it is all due to anthropogenic CO2.

And on the other, AGW–is-real side, you’ve got two broad groups.The party faithful who believe in AGW , ‘cause it's party policy to believe it. Mind you, if their party changed policy tomorrow they'd be equally agen it . They usually can be distinguished by having some strange number associated with their names (perhaps their attempt to count) like 579 or 1405. And another sub-group who might best be described as neo-luddites (whom I will not name, lest I embarrass them). This sub-group are on a personal jihad against capitalism. They believe capitalist robber barons rule the world (the Green Revolution was a giant conspiracy by those robber barons to defraud the poor, and Craig Thompson is a martyr) And the world would be a much better place if the UN took over.

@halduell: "So the Arctic sea-ice is not melting. That's good to know."

The Arctic sea-ice is back to where it was this time last year. It's low by historical standards, but as others have pointed out, our records only extend back about thirty years.

But if the loss in Arctic sea-ice is due to GLOBAL warming -- remember that word -- how do you explain the fact that Antarctic sea-ice is at record levels? Global = world-wide, right? Or didn't the South Pole get the memo?

Julian, human emissions of CO2 are asserted by the backers of your nonsense to affect climate.
Japan sent up a satellite to gather information on CO2. They seem not to be bound by Political Correctness and published the truth about the results.
The West absorbs more CO2 than it emits.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had long claimed that, ‘there is a consensus among scientists that manmade emissions of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide (CO2), are harming global climate’.
The Japanese satellite map shows regions coloured the deepest leaf green (net absorbers of CO2) being predominantly those developed nations of Europe and North America; thus indicating built up environments absorbed more CO2 than they emitted into the atmosphere.”
http://co2insanity.com/2011/11/15/new-satellite-data-contradicts-carbon-dioxide-climate-theory/

This information has been available since October 2011, but there is no change in the misinformation of the AGW fraud backers.

No wonder it is impossible to measure any effect of human emissions on climate. We are net absorbers.

It also seems impossible to stop the false assertions of AGW by fraud backers like you, Julian.

@ Jon J
About the Antarctic ice, and isn't the Ross Ice Shelf showing signs of melting, and don't I remember a story a year or two back about a big piece of it breaking off?
And wasn't there a story recently about the landing strip used by Australia under threat due to melt?
While I suspect our global seven billion population's increased use of hydrocarbons, I have no firm opinion of what is causing the increase melt at both our poles. But there are simply too many stories going around for me to think we can easily discount them all.
Maybe none of the stories are true, and only alarmists repeat them. But if that's the case, why are the hydrocarbon extraction industries tripping over each other staking claims on the recently exposed Arctic sea bed?

Leo Lane's last post gives the impression that Japanese scientists dissent from the consensus that AGW is real.

This is incorrect. Like virtually all the world's peak scientific bodies, the leadership of the Science Council of Japan harbours no illusions about the reality of AGW.

You can access one of their position papers in English here:

http://www.scj.go.jp/ja/info/kohyo/pdf/kohyo-21-h72e-1.pdf

Excerpt:

>>Climate change caused by human activities is already taking place and it is almost certain
that this change is having various effects on the world's ecosystems and human society.
However, major uncertainties still exist in regard to the details of such change and its
effects and the prediction of long-term climate change, all of which form the basis for
policy decisions. In view of the severity of the predicted conditions likely to emerge, the
formulation and implementation of damage mitigation measures, including preventive
measures, is essential to prevent an increase of the damage caused by an unanticipated
situation almost corresponding to the upper limit of the prediction range, while taking the
balance between the economy and the environment into consideration.>>

(Well. It's a translation from Japanese so it's a bit hard to follow but the gist is plain enough)

Almost all the world's actual climatologists agree that AGW is real.

Almost all the world's peak scientific bodies have issued statements warning their governments of the dangers that AGW poses. These include, in addition to the Science Council of Japan, Britain's Royal Society, America's National Academy of Scientists and Germany's Max Planck Institute.

This is as close to a scientific consensus as you can get. (Consensus does not mean unanimity)

You may dissent from the scientific consensus. That is your right.

But if you claim the scientific consensus does not exist you are misleading your readers.