Steven,

"...damage mitigation measures..."

Like this, for instance.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/31/world/asia/japan-flood-tunnel/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

SPQR,

Us so-called "Luddites" are in favour of intelligent beings implementing wisdom above and beyond greed and rapaciousness.

Poirot

In the end most people will believe what they want to believe and find rationalisations that bolster their beliefs. Thus was it ever. We see this in evolution-denial, in Muslim scientists who claim to have found "scientific miracles" in the koran and in AGW.

There are, as the Japanese statement acknowledges, "major uncertainties."

There is, for example, an outside chance that a certain amount of global warming will have an overall benign effect increasing rainfall and opening up new areas for agriculture.

There is also an outside chance that AGW will reach a tipping point in which we experience a global calamity within a few short decades, one in which billions die.

There is, for now, just no way of knowing.

But the reality of AGW, for good or ill, is not seriously in doubt.

Steven how can you possibly say "But the reality of AGW, for good or ill, is not seriously in doubt", when the promoters of the scam have had to cheat, lie, & "hide the decline", to cover up their complete lack of evidence?

After tens of billions of dollars wasted on their "research" you would think they had something better than the continual "correction" of temperature records to show, to prove their case.

It is unfortunate that we have so many academics, without the math to work out the change from $10 for a bus ticket, now have their credability invested in such a scam

Dear Poirot,

<<I beg to differ, in that a neanderthal would act on his environment in a way that was relatively sustainable and certainly would have his footprint contained simply because his evolutionary stage didn't allow for a greater technological footprint...>>

What are you differing about then? I think we are at perfect agreement. It is just what I meant when I wrote:
"I am not defiling my environment more than you are, nor would a neanderthal."

- nor would a neanderthal defile his environment more than you (and me), so where's the difference?

Stevenmeyer, there is no lack of false assertion that AGW is real. Even the Royal Society, at a time when there was not one climate scientist on its governing committee came out with the false assertion that human emissions contribute to climate.

As Nigel Calder has said, the Royal Society will join all the other backers of AGW in the Hall of Shame, when political correctness is overcome, and the truth is acknowledged about this scientific scandal.

The simple fact is that there is no scientific basis for the assertion.

You have been asked before, on OLO, to produce any such evidence, and you have failed to do so because there is no such science.

Climate follows natural cycles, and despite all the bluster by the AGW fraud backers, human emissions have not been shown to have any measurable effect.

You have been asked before why you support the AGW fraud, and you have no answer, but to point to other baseless statements

Hasbeen wrote:

>>the promoters of the scam have had to cheat, lie, & "hide the decline", to cover up their complete lack of evidence?>>

I deplore all cheating in science and AGW has had more than its fair share by protagonists on BOTH SIDES. Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia should have been sacked in the wake of the "climategate" revelations and Ian Plimer should be stripped of his emeritus professorship at University of Melbourne for declining to issue corrections to the many serious inaccuracies in his book, "Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science."

And before anyone accuses me of trying to "shut down debate" by calling for Plimer's dismissal that is not the issue. Plimer is entitled to his opinion. As a scientist he is not entitled to disseminate information he knows to be false. That is a sackable offence in most science departments in self-respecting universities. I suspect the only reason he has not been sacked is because of the political furor it would cause.

However, the misdeeds of individual scientists ON BOTH SIDES notwithstanding, the fact of AGW is no longer in serious doubt. I could just as easily write about:

"..the deniers of AGW have had to cheat, lie, and cherry pick data to cover up the growing mountain evidence that supports AGW."

Leo Lane

I am not debating with you. I was merely trying to correct the impression your previous post could give readers that the Japanese scientific establishment dissented from the consensus view that AGW is real. They don't.