Pity the author of this piece has such a poor grasp of the topic. Quoting other alarmists is a poor alternative to substance. I presume the book she is working is in the genre of fiction.

I can only agree with CARFAX. The author simply repeats the same old material, without realising that climate alarmism is now more than 20 years old. The first IPCC report was in 1990, swith the first warnings well before that, and the actual changes that anyone can point to for all that time still count as tiny.

My understanding about the "hottest summer on record" is that it, if this is true (there has been some quibble that "the records" only go back 30 years - although they have been recording temps for much longer than that in Aus), we are not talking about a large margin.. perhaps a tiny gain over over hot summers. And this is over decades.

Lyn, don't be disturbed by the myopia of the population concerning climate change. Most human are so dumb that they can't/won't see what is happening before their eyes. A tsunami could be hanging hundreds of metres over their heads and they would deny its existence! When it fell on them they'd say, "Blimey, that was a heavy shower!"

They are exactly the same regarding the attempt by the U.S. to dominate the world using military force. They can't see that that deranged mission will lead to a nuclear holocaust as other nations rightly reject the American grab for control of the world and its resources.

The claim that humans are intelligent is entirely misplaced. Most humans are as thick as two bricks and as wise as a bent nail!

To the author and David G
Stop pretending you haven't been thrashed and beaten on this subject so many times, and so badly, your appeals to absent authority and endless circular reasoning are now a bad joke. Obviously your methodology not being rational, it cannot be scientific. But perhaps your blind religious worship of fraudulent authority may become true if you keep gabbling your liturgy?

The author obviously subscribes to the same school of agitprop as her fellow psychologist, Lewandowsky, does; see:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/09/stephan-lewandowsky-and-john-cook-making-things-up/

That is if you have no evidence and in fact all the evidence is against your paranoic world view, resort to emotion and making things up.

AGW is a failed theory. There was nothing unusal about the bushfires in Australia except they were exacerbated by Green policies which prevented back-burning and therefore made the fires worse and directly led to more deaths and destruction.

There is also no increase in extreme weather globally or in Australia; even a cursory glance of the history of weather in Australia would establish that:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/it-has-been-hotter-before-and-it-will.html

But people like this author have ideological blinkers on and every word they write is useless except as an insight into that miserable ideology:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/our-abc-green-narrative.html

cohenite,

I'll take your two climatescepticsparty and one wattsupwiththat links and raise you a http://climatecrocks.com/2013/03/10/you-can-fool-climate-deniers-but-you-cant-fool-mother-nature-plants-pack-up-and-move-north/ and a http://haveland.com/share/arctic-death-spiral-1979-201301.png

Poirot I addressed your Arctic 'evidence' on another post where you raised Tamino's analysis of Arctic ice levels.

You have a closed mind and a mental blindspot on this issue.

One of your links purports to deal with the migration north of plants under the yoke of AGW. Actually the expansion of the Tropical Belt towards the poles happened in the Holocene [you can google papers on this] and the most recent expansion happened well before AGW, at least in Australia:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2699.1996.tb00035.x/abstract

This expansion, which is cyclical and independent of AGW is a good thing in terms of food production:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/08/a-bridge-in-the-climate-debate-how-to-green-the-worlds-deserts-and-reverse-climate-change/

But food production and raising standards of living for more people is not a priority with the scare mongers of AGW.

Poirot
You have already conceded defeat on this entire topic, remember?
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14688&page=0

It was specifically over your tactic of posting links as if these prove your point when they only prove your appeal to absent authority.

Since appeal to absent authority is a logical fallacy, that means your method is not rational and therefore is scientific.

Yet we NEVER see anything but the following tactics from all you who claim we face a significant problem of global warming which policy can improve,
- assuming it from the outset
- appeal to absent authority
- misrepresentation
- personal argument.

But there is no requirement for us to accept your belief in authorities. You need to be able prove your argument yourself.

So let's settle this once and for all. Post your proof, without anything other than your proof, and to avoid evasion on your part, let's agree that any reply that relies on an appeal to absent authority, or assuming what's in issue, or any of the fallacies named above, means you concede the general issue finally and forever, okay?

If you protest that can't do it in this confined space, then shut up.

You have nothing but the repetition of fallacies and insistence on credulity.

Perhaps all you skeptics could read this:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6123/1060

It might actually open some of your eyes, but then again, you will have your own preconceived mantra response that you assume will debunk these findings, of course...

Jardine K. Jardine, (who sounds incredibly like Peter Hume:)

Telling people to "shut up" isn't cogent argument.

Pretty lame in fact.

: )

It seems the Flat-Earthers are out in force again.

I'll guarantee that, to a man and woman, they all have shares in armament manufacturers, oil and car companies, miners, etc, and operate trusts which avoid tax.

They don't want climate change to be true so they pretend it doesn't exist. Even when nightly, on our televisions, we see calamitous weather events across the world, they tell themselves, "It's not happening. It's a ruse by those climate change people trying to spoil our financial bonanza from fossil fuels!"

Climate-change deniers are like religious fanatics: their brains (such as they are) are in neutral and their eyes are closed. Of course the world is flat, they opine. Their ignorance is infinite!

They should be ignored. Arguing with fanatics is always a waste of time!

Poirot,

The main reason that people want the carbon tax removed is not because they don't believe in the link between GHG emissions and global warming, rather that there is an understanding that Australia going it alone without more than the token effort by the major polluters, Australia is damaging its economy with no measureable gain.

Geoff, the Parrenin et al paper on the synchrony between CO2 and temperature levels is interesting if for no other reason than it contradicts ALL previous research and would be ground-breaking.

The asynchrony or 'lag' between CO2 movements and temperature has been an absolute barrier for AGW theory in that temperature has always risen or moved before temperature; for instance during the 20thC:

http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Bastardi-CO2Temp.gif

During the 20thC it is also apparent that there is no significant statistical relationship between CO2 and temperature as indicated by the low coefficient of determination.

The 20thC is a fair time and the lack or relationship, asynchrony, between CO2 and temperature during the 20thC mirrors what has happened over geologic time periods.

This paper seems to be a maverick for these reasons. I am also cycnical about its timing since it will be eligible to be included in AR5.

Was this the French paper which was going to cut the legs off the 'deniers' that you were rabbiting on about on another thread

Notice how none of the warmist responses actually provided any proof whatsoever of what they're arguing, and ALL of them without exception provided NOTHING BUT the fallacies I named?

No, that's not some kind of strange coincidence. That's all they have, and all they've ever had.

O dear I thought after so much egg on their face the warmist would be on to a new scare by now. We have had global cooling, ozone layer, Y2k bug and now the warmist myth. September can't come quick enough. Please Mr Abbott get rid of all the Government funded scare mongering. Spend the money on real environmental issues.

Runner I agree 100%

Hi there Titanic Deckchair attendants.
I have decided that the pathetic attempts to disprove AGW are as a result of ignorance and a low IQ.
There are a few who do it as a means of earning cash from the despoiler corporations but that would not account for the amount of anti AGW rants that are coming up these days.
If I should live long enough I am going to enjoy watching the denialists squirm and try to explain away the devastation that is coming as it surely will.
It's so nice to know that I am right in my forecasts.
regards from a proven high IQ.

I think to settle the mettle on you sceptics once and for all, let’s consider this: sceptics not only don't know anything about the climate science or very little at the least (example, Cohenite), they don't care to know anything about climate science, why? They don't need to know anything.

Their arguments are based on faith, not reason. What do they place their faith in? In human ingenuity and cleverness, which their faith tells them is unbounded. Theirs is a religious mode of belief.

Sceptics believe progress is destiny. The Earth, the Solar System, and ultimately, the Universe are theirs to do with as they wish.

Their view is based on magical thinking!

Basically they don’t want to stop progress or aren’t willing to pay the price.

Thus the inherent contradictions of the sceptic, who assume endless growth and progress, are laid bare for all to see. To be sceptical of climate change and the growing evidence our climate is changing rapidly is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction.

Ultimately sceptics want to believe science fiction; they want to believe their own various stories. Most importantly they don't want to give up the industrial civilisation they struggled so mightily to build. That's a price they will never be willing to pay.

Sceptics are clueless about themselves, utterly blind as to whom they are, which is why we should dub them Homo laeviculus or Clueless Man.

Those in the human species (in the general case) simply have no idea why they do anything, although they pretend they do. Unfortunately the sceptics continue their mantra and belief in an astonishing capacity for self-deception.

Modern people today do not know themselves in the sense Socrates meant, and thus cannot master their appetites to create a world of lasting social or ecological harmony. Seeming masters of the physical world, their mental world remains terra incognita, a black box. We destroy our earthly habitat, and ultimately, ourselves and it is apparent the sceptics are happy to support this road to nowhere.

Flannery is a goose, who seemingly, gets both dates and data wrong? That said, someone as personally successful as Malcolm,[return bill,] Turnbull, is not a dunce!
Looked at rationally, climate change, real or imagined, man-made or just part of natural variation, creates some quite enormous economic/wealth and job creating opportunities, for Australia and Australians
Algae farms, located near Power stations, created as closed cycle smoke stack scrubbers, would eliminate emission, as well as create a brand new source of transport fuel!
Given coal-fired power creates half of the atmospheric carbon we produce, capturing this in endlessly sustainable, closed cycle algae farms, would also create 100% of our total transport fuel requirements!
As an eternally sustainable, very low cost model. That we could keep and endlessly rely on, long after our last coal-fired power station was decommissioned, in favour of carbon free thorium reactors; and, converting all our biological waste into even cheaper power, free hot water, day or night.
And, completely sanitised and safe, carbon rich organic fertilizer; and a nutrient rich water source, ready made, for carbon absorbing algae production.
The key to our downside free future and future prosperity, is very cheap carbon free power.
This is a path the rest of the world seems to be taking? One we also take, or be left behind!
We really seem to have just two options, convert our economy to a carbon neutral/free one, or a third world banana republic.
The available choices are really, just that stark or glaring!
And we can get there with just a clean air act, with teeth!
Rather than an ETS, filled to the gunwales, [as Tony Abbott, and the public record would contest,] with opportunities for crooks and shysters, to deceive and collect billions from a completely captive market; and or, what seems on the surface, quite massive fraud, or entirely unproductive, or even counter productive, massive and costly, money churning?
Rhrosty.

Here's some recent evidence of global warming in action - 7 cubic km of ice breaking off a glacier, sending huge slabs of ice hundreds of meters into the air. It was the size of Manhattan, and although it is the largest ever filmed is only half the size of the largest ever known.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2012/dec/12/chasing-ice-iceberg-greenland-video

I can understand people not being able to face up to our collective responsibility for warming the planet, but to actually pretend the warming isn't happening is on the blunt side of thick. I challenge them to find any graph of world temperatures covering the past hundred or more years which shows anything other than an upward trajectory.

The unbridled arrogance of alarmists once again proves the point that AGW is to a large extent sustained by the egoes of its advocates, see:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/lewandowskys-ego.html

Of course Geoff and Bob and the rest of the boofheads here aren't at the academic level of Lewandowsky and the other egoes running around claiming the sky is going to fall; but they are just as mean and vicious with Bob looking forward to his Schadenfreude and Geoff once again treating us to another pompous lecture about how we should all strive to be just as little in our ambitions personally and in terms of what the human race can achieve as he is.

At heart this is the key to understanding the alarmist mindset; they are small people in both outlook and tolerance of others; but they have enormous egoes. That combination allows them to similtaneously believe they can 'save' the Earth while presenting their only solution of a return to Ludditism and a reduction of all of humanity back down to their own small level.

They are pathetic really, except their stupidity is costing billions and corrupting science and the social structure; they are like white-ants eating out a grand structure which humanity has built up.

Pests!

Hi Candide,

Well, what would you expect, either way ? Do you suppose that polar ice-sheets are supposed to grow and extend right to the the equator ? Sooner or later, bits of the ice shelves have to break away, and if anything, if AGW was a major factor, the icebergs would be getting smaller, bits breaking off their parent shelves earlier. No ?

Yes, of course there has been a degree of AGW, 0.8 degree rise in world temperatures in 140 years. At least that's the excuse the US and Europe can use to move away from a dependence on foreign oil, and fair enough. After all, either way, we SHOULD be moving away from the use of polluting energy sources - I have no problem with that.

So, the story so far:

* there has been some relatively small temperature rise in 140 years.

* the massive dependence of Western economies on Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil has been increasing.

* Western economies are desperately searching for alternatives to that foreign energy dependence, and for some reason, preferably based on science, to reduce their dependence on their Middle Eastern 'friends'.

* Lo ! AGW provides a fair rationale to move away from low-profit, traditional, and imported, energy sources, and towards innovative, higher-profit, home-grown, energy sources. As it happens, these new technologies tend to much less polluting, less foreign-dependent, so good-o !

* Capitalism develop a new lease of life, based on new technologies, which serendipitously are less polluting, more autonomous, while attracting public funding - win-win-win !

Invest in new, non-polluting, enterprises, folks. That's where the new money will be :)

Joe

Thanks Cohenite, here are some more 'Pests' and their evidence:

"Under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios,the world is on track to surpass temperatures not seen since the dawn of civilization, according to new research."

Confirming "unprecedented" global warming, the new study published in Friday's issue of the journal Science shows that the earth's temperatures catapulted in just the last century at a rate that had previously taken 4,000 years.

"In 100 years, we've gone from the cold end of the spectrum to the warm end of the spectrum," said climatologist Shaun Marcott, lead author of the study. "We've never seen something this rapid. Even in the ice age the global temperature never changed this quickly."

Marcott said that current "global temperatures are warmer than about 75 percent of anything we've seen over the last 11,000 years or so."

By 2100, he said, global temperatures will be "well above anything we've ever seen in the last 11,000 years."

"The climate changes to come are going to be larger than anything that human civilisation and agriculture has seen in its entire existence," Gavin Schmidt, a climate researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said, "And that is quite a sobering thought."

Cohenite fails to recognise or acknowledge that there is no planet B.

It seemed to sum up what is potentially at stake: a planet to live reasonably comfortably on. You really can’t get much more basic than that, which is why hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, should be out in the streets demanding that our leaders begin to attend to climate change before it’s quite literally too late.

Cohenite and his ilk will continue to follow their science fiction, to the detriment to the rest of us and the planet as a whole.

I just hope that when the evidence is so beyond doubt and we are all suffering, those who continue and will continue to blow the sceptic trumpet from the roof tops are held to account as they should be.

Just imagine all the money the warmist have wasted had been spent on cleaning up the earth. Are there any real environmentalist who truely care about polution and the great earth we live on? The Greens, greenpeace and other political groups have shown themselves to be more greedy than corporations and yet want to impose their little dogmas ion everyone else. Like the AWU who have pretended to support workers, so the Greens have pretended to support the environment. The voters have finally woken up.

@David G: "I'll guarantee that, to a man and woman, they all have shares in armament manufacturers, oil and car companies, miners, etc, and operate trusts which avoid tax."

Who are these 'flat-earthers' of whom you speak? Are they perhaps people who ignore the obvious for a long time -- say, seventeen years or so -- because of a passionate conviction that can't be supported by the facts?

I have shares in oil and gas companies, because they make money. They make money because they supply people with what they want and need, at a price they can afford. I had quite a few shares in a couple of environmental companies once, but they both went broke. It's not that having shares in them drives my convictions, rather that the knowledge gained from research to justify my convictions determines what shares I buy.

How many shares did YOU have in Solyndra and its bankrupt colleagues, I wonder? No wonder you're cross...

PS: I certainly don't have money in a trust, and if I did, what would be wrong with legally avoiding tax? Do you front up eagerly at the Tax Office to hand over some extra dough as a reward for the Gillard government's brilliant achievements?

Lyn. Quoting Flannery is no way to introduce an article on climate change, the man is completely discredited on this topic. For you to DENY that this summer is nothing unusual, for you to DENY that 'isolated weather events' as witnessed over the past year are not connected to AGW, for you to DENY the lack of statistically significant temperature anomaly for the past 23 years then.... I am afraid that you are the denialist.

Lyn, you are another fraud backer who does not know the difference between climate and weather. There has been no global warming for fifteen years.

The global warming last century amounted to a paltry seven tenths of one degree.

All of Flannery’s predictions have turned out to be wrong, as reality has caught up to the prediction date. This is the clown who said that our dams would never fill again, because the rain would be insufficient.

The AGW Fraud is dead, and nonsense from people like you does not even make the corpse twitch.

As for Denial, there is no science to deny. There is no science which shows any effect of human emissions on climate. The IPCC, having no science, comes forward with a statement that it is “very likely”. About as likely as a CO2 increase in the atmosphere causing increased warming of the globe. Reality shows that it has not, despite all the failed predictions of the climate modelling.

A rise of 100 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 15 years has seen none of the predicted rise in temperature as asserted by Gore, Hansen and the IPCC.

Gore, in his 90 minute film, told 35 lies. For years he had a cheer squad which assembled whenever he appeared in public, to chant “Liar” and “Fraud”.

You have no reputable science to back anything that you have said, Lyn

The alarmists certainly seem to have a lot of influence. Getting the CIA and the Pentagon to issue warning statements about the threat of Global Warming, and producing false satellite pictures of the shrinking ice caps and glaciers around the world must take a lot of organising.
The insurance companies make money out of assessing risks,I suppose that when they refuse to insure properties in some areas along the coast that they must be staffed by alarmists.

Thank you Lyn for writing what you did. I was well said.
I noticed that denialist ratbags on this list displayed their use sarcasm and rudeness. They learn northing because the latest research In the New scientist , American Scientist is ignored as well as other reputable sources

Oh god, listen to the girl will you. A few twopenny halfpenny towns in oz, getting a bit hot, when the wind blows out of the desert, & she goes off like a two bob watch. Well what else would you expect from a psychologist?

She probably has not heard, [not with her fingers in her ears anyway], that half the northern hemisphere is short of the shovels needed to dig themselves out of an extraordinary amount of snow.

Of course that snow no more disproves global warming, than a few hot Victorians proves it, but when even the IPCC boss is admitting no warming for 16 years, this sort of foolery from a psychologist, is a sure sign of desperation in the carbon tax lobby.

Thank you Hasbeen for just demonstrating that you have no interest at all in the facts of global warming although you seem to be full of hot air (are you perhaps a victim of global warming on an extremely personal level?) If you had bothered to inform yourself you would know that increased snow is one of the markers of global warming. Let me spell it out for you: more heat means more evaporation from the oceans means more moisture in the air means more precipitation, which generally falls as snow in the arctic and antarctic.

Candide,
Up here in the tropics we finally are getting some rain again, rain which has been absent since the early 80"s. People say it's getting worse. They haven't been here long enough to know that we're simply getting back to more normal weather because of the climate change we had over the last three decades. Maybe it was that Tax after all that's bringing back this rain ? Hmmh !

Candida,

If global warming leads to increased moisture, and more precipitation of snow at the poles, this would lead to sea levels dropping, and more rainfall which would indicate that global warning is a good idea.

About 500m years ago C02 was 2000ppm, and life was thriving. Temperatures, and sea levels were different but not significantly. While I personally, believe that global warming is occurring, there is significant evidence that it is not the apocalyse that it is being portrayed, and secondly that Australia going it alone does nothing for the environment or for the cause.

Pest
Referring to absent authority doesn't prove your case, it proves ours. Science means what the data are saying, not what the authorities and the media are saying. You obviously haven't understood the first thing about science.

Okay all you warmists, quit joking with your pretence that you've got nothing but appeal to absent authority, circular argument, and personal argument.

Got that proof of catastrophic global warming that policy can improve, after taking into account the downsides of both options, in units of a lowest common denominator, yet?

No? Didn't think so.

But thanks for proving your moral and intellectual bankruptcy with such spirit anyway.

Excellent article Lyn and good analogies with the Holocaust. Don't be put off by all these ignorant comments which merely reinforce what you are saying.

Wow popnperish
Amazing proof that the world faces catastrophic global warming - your mere unqualified belief. That's real "science", isn't it? You guys are a joke. Black is so fashionable these days, isn't it?

Candide, you complain about sceptics not knowing or caring about the science and you say this:

“increased snow is one of the markers of global warming. Let me spell it out for you: more heat means more evaporation from the oceans means more moisture in the air means more precipitation,”

This is wrong at many levels:

1 Stewart Franks has shown that extra warmth does not cause extra evaporation; the reason is explained here:

http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2009/11/shock-murray-darling-warming-not-due-to-co2/

This is confirmed by Pan Evaporation studies:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169411007487

2 Specific and Relative Humidity are generally falling:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/06/nasa-satellite-data-shows-a-decline-in-water-vapor/

The NASA data shows a slight increase in SH and RH near the surface but declines at every other level. There are 2 things to take from this; firstly evaporation over land is declining but evaporation over water may still be increasing; but secondly that water precipitates very quickly due to saturation near the surface.

3 SH and RH at higher levels is crucial for the Earth’s energy balance because it is high water which blocks outgoing infra-red radiation; high water levels are declining as numerous studies have shown, eg:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.abstract

4 In respect of increased snow; this has nothing to do with evaporation but an increased lapse rate or temperature decline with altitude; a decreasing lapse rate CONTRADICTS AGW because AGW says the Troposphere should be warming faster than the surface and producing a THS. This isn’t happening and more snow is falling.

Now, I have gone to some effort to show how and why you are wrong but I bet you will not admit it because you BELIEVE in AGW and the lack of evidence will not bother you at all.

Geoff; you have linked extensively to the new Marcott paper which purports to show that the current warming is quicker and higher than anything over the last 100,000 years; a critique of the paper has been made by Easterbrook:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/11/validity-of-a-reconstruction-of-regional-and-global-temperature-for-the-past-11300-years/

Generally a technique which uses century smoothing will remove all temperature trends especially with the unsmoothed instrument record spliced on at the end. It is a bad paper. Sorry.

Hi Candida,

So, AGW causes both warmer conditions AND heavier snowfalls ? Shrinkage of the Arctic Ice-Cap AND record cold weather in Europe and the US ?

Okay, I can see that. What you say is plausible. I'm a sucker for any half-baked explanation :) I don't even mind watching Dr Who.

AGW also causes extreme weather events ?

Now all we need is a few years of calm weather and somebody will explain to us how that's also caused by AGW. After all, until Sandy, there had not really been a devastating hurricane in the US since Katrina.

I wonder how they are going to do it: maybe winkle out whatever the opposite of whatever the causes of extreme weather events are supposed to be, and somehow relate this to AGW.

Maybe someone will find that the weather during those periods in the earth's history when CO2 levels and temperatures were high, that it was quite a calm period, for millions of years on end. Just a hint.

It's a bit like believing that god is ever-present - he/she rewards you with good times, and punishes you with bad times, and it's all the one god. I couldn't possibly comment, being an unbeliever, but it's just as plausible.

Are we still allowed to joke about all this, or has the Roxon Bill been passed ?

Cheers,

Joe

Earth has only been inhabitable by humans for about 500,000 years. It took all the preceding millions of years to cool, build up and then bury billions of tons of carbon, to produce sufficient oxygen and remove poisonous gasses, to maintain the balance of other gasses, and have weather calm and stable enough to permit long term survival of our species. We inhabit a very delicately balanced system that is about to tip over the edge and once again turn earth into a place hostile to humans. The lack of action on reduction of greenhouse gasses is a deliberate ploy by USA free marketeers to buy time while they grab all the patents on climate modification technologies such as spraying the stratosphere with sulphur, painting the mountains of Peru white and so on. These technologies, while achieving little and exacerbating the problem, will garner trillions of dollars for
the inventors and investors like Bill Gates, when desperate governments search for a quick fix.
It's now too late to do anything radical. If every CO2 producing plant was stopped tomorrow, there would be a sudden increase of global temperature by about 3.5 degrees, due to residual effects and the removal of the Asian cloud of pollution that is reflecting heat. And this would destroy most of life as we know it.
Deniers, like those on this post, are unable to face facts that oppose their world view that our present way of life is just about perfect; therefore they reject them. It's why religionists refuse to accept evolution. Dumb, but that's humans for you.

Loudmouth et al

Global warming can indeed lead to increased cold in some areas. For example, the warming of the Arctic has led to a decrease in both the area and depth of the North Polar icecap and more melt water from Greenland. This fresh water is messing with the flow of northern section of the Gulf Stream, which hitherto has been responsible for the remarkable difference between the climate of Canada and the climate of western Europe. If you take a moment to look at a map, Ottawa and Bordeaux are on roughly the same latitude. Take another moment to imagine them with the same climate. Food for thought.

In case you are hoping to goad me into joining you in the gutter with your rudeness and bile, hope on. It isn't going to happen. Please feel free to make yourselves look stupid and childish, but you would serve your cause better if you were civil and took the trouble to argue your corner.

Hi Candida,

I apologise for my rudeness and bile, and hope to be more civil in future.

Now to get back to what you hypothesise: the early, and late, winter weather in north America and Europe is quite consistent with global warming, you say.

All I am suggesting, half in jest, half in 100 % support of your assertion, is that, somehow, global warming can explain pretty much everything:

* if we had a period of heavier-than-average rainfall - AGW. And if we had a period of drought, like Australia has had every few years since long before whitefellas came here - AGW.

* If we had a run of extreme weather events - AGW. And if we had a long period (i.e. longer than usual in Australia's up-and-down climate) of boringly unextreme weather - AGW. Someone could explain it, perhaps Dr Flannery, when it happens.

Yes, Candida, I do believe that AGW is occurring, not at fearfully outrageous rates and with utterly horrific consequences, but enough to cause concern amongst us for our great-grandchildren, IF we do little or nothing now. IF.

But hey presto ! capitalism IS doing something about it, even in China - solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, hot rocks - even our own progressive and far-sighted government is investing R. & D. in renewable technologies, and I certainly applaud all those efforts.

Just don't over-egg the pudding. Stick to the truth, it never hurts :)

Joe

ybgirp, Candide, If you believe that, you'll believe anything.

Now I've got a couple of bridges for sale, I know you'll be interested.

Cherries anyone.

While quoting stuff, how about,

"It ain't gonna rain no more no more"

"The rain is never going to fill the dams again, build desalination plants".

"Pommy kids will not know what snow looks like".

Come on kids, how many times can they pull your legs, before you holler enough?

Dear Joe

“Invest in new, non-polluting, enterprises, and folks’ that's where the new money will be” ….I hope Joe your not including nuclear power in your assessment? Being the number two No No of the world’s dumbest ideas?
The Japanese people are still glowing in the dark, and will for thousands of years to come.
Building a power plant 200 miles from a known fault line was just a master stroke of genius, don’t you think:) Tell me Joe, what’s wrong with building them 5kms underground? That way if anything goes catastrophically belly up, at least the threat of contamination can be contained……or is it money/cost before brains again?

And yes, the great acquisition for wealth….wont it be interesting (or not) to see life as we know it today, as answers to that story unfold;) While most intentions are of the positive nature, mans stupidity however will never stop amazing me:) Human over population ranks at number one on my lists of concerns, with climate change at number three. The growth at our current rate with consumption availability of all resources combined won’t be enough to last out until the end of this century…7 billion people is the problem…food, water etc. Mankind has to get very serious on the amounts of people it allows, as the human organism will for sure, turn into the monster we all fear. Mean while, the small-minded IQ nitwits, can all enjoy going to the Australian beaches of no sand and lots of dead trees plus infrastructure, ready to join the ranks of artificial reefs :) I think I’ll buy a waterfront property soon, a safe investment they say, oh dear:)
You don’t need psychology to figure out that humans lie and here one can find many with delusional non-understandings of their planets inner work-abilities, even with the highest degrees, of which some make for very useful toilet paper.

Hasbeen and Runner seem to reject both claims of the above higher understandings, and maybe they should up-grade their toilet paper from woollies to a Coles brand:)

Aren’t layman terms better understood. Smile.

Planet3:)

And as we move along from Hasbeen's hollow cliches we might like to read something with a little substance.

http://theconversation.edu.au/nature-v-technology-climate-belief-is-politics-not-science-12611

Planet No. 3,

With respect, you do write some rubbish. If I had the wherewithall, and fifty years left, I would have no reluctance to buy a place on the beach - on the one hand, the sea level there will rise by no more than an inch or two before I start feeding the worms, and I'm fairly confident that science and governments and ever-innovating capitalism will fix up the problems sooner or later, maybe even in my own lifetime. I don't see it as a problem, frankly.

As for nuclear power, you might be onto something - clearly, governments will not employ Chernobyl's sixty-year-old technology, or be stupid enough to build on fault-lines - I wouldn't advise it anyway. France and Sweden and even the US are well into fourth- and fifth-generation systems, clean, safe (so far), and probably cheap. Another problem solved.

Well, on to more important matters ......

As for population growth, I'm sorry to inform you that fertility rates are declining rapidly in many countries, to below replacement rate. And if women in Third World countries, especially the more backward Muslim countries, can be provided with far better access to education, right up through higher education, in far greater numbers,and come to assert their rights (who knows, they might even somehow win the support of Western feminists), then the birth rates in those countries - already barely at replacement level - will decline even further.

Yet another problem resolved :)

Cheers,

Joe