I've pointed out before that at least five independent propositions have to be known to be true to make it rational to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on ameliorating 'global warming'.

1. Carbon dioxide levels have to be known to be rising.
2. It has to be known that this will cause catastrophic disruption to climate and weather.
3. It has to be known that, in principle, human action can actually change or reduce this catastrophic disruption.
4. It has to be known that the human action required to do this is feasible given the current numbers and economic status of the human population.
5. It has to be known that spending money on amelioration will be more cost-effective than spending it on adaptation.

Let's be astonishingly generous and assume that premise 1 is 95% certain and that all the others are 85% certain. That gives us 95%*85%*85%*85%*85% = a 49.5% chance that these vast sums of money are being spent effectively, and a greater-than-evens chance that they are all being completely wasted. (But does any sane person really think the probabilities are that high?) Any government with billions of dollars to spend on this would be better off taking it down to a casino and putting it all on red.

Opposition to hysterical spending on 'global warming' is just rational economics.

There are two sides to the global warming story. Firstly, its inconceivable that hundreds of years of human environmental vandalism wouldn't eventually have undesirable consequences. Consider that we've been frantically pumping crap into the ecosystem since the neanderthals or whoever first figured how to light a fire. At the same time we've been chopping down every tree we could & destroying as much of the CO2 - O2 system as humanly possible. I have no doubt that certain interests have told the odd porkie about ill-effects, but despite that, humans have not exactly been responsible custodians of their planet. On the other hand, we have big-business that will do or say anything to maintain its profitability, and devious politicians who never miss an opportunity to levy yet another tax on the unsuspecting sheeple. unfortunately the snouts have control & influence and have used those to push the anti-AGW barrow quite successfully. The real truth is somewhere in the middle of the two opposing viewpoints, although personally I believe its well to the AGW end of the spectrum.

This article only goes to show (again) that it's impossible to write anything nonsensical enough to be rejected for publication in OnlineOpinion.

Don, the "consensus" arguments relate not the a "consensus" among people who know nothing but the consensus among scientists engaged in "rational enquiry". Of course a "consensus" argument is for the beneift of those who don't know/understand the science - rationally assessing and arguing over the science is better. But you don't do that either - I think you have pretty much indicated in the past that you don't have the scientific background to do that.

As for your quote "To be told that 97 per cent of climate scientists believe in AGW, however, ought to produce the reply 'So what?'", if you really think that there's probably nothing anyone can say to you. But when 97% of doctors say you or a loved one have a condition which needs treatment, ask yourself again "So what?"

As for your comparison with priests - are you serious? Priests are self-selected according not only to their knowledge of their field, but also according to their beliefs.

Jon, scientific research consists of more than thinking of a number and writing it down. (As a matter of fact, so does rationalist economics). Your first probability is certainly 5% too low, and your third condition is so imprecise as to be meaningless (how much human action?). Ditto the fourth. Ditto the fifth, in a different way - the optimum is always going to be some expenditure in each category.
As with any calculation, garbage in, garbage out.

What Jeremy said

Just what we needed... an economic historian to set those pesky climate scientists straight.

Don, if you keep drinking at your current fountain of anti-climate science grumpiness, you will continue to display the same signs of (mental) poisoning. Read fewer books written by partisans and shills, regardless of how persuasive you might find them. This discussion should be about building knowledge, not about rubbishing the knowledgeable.

You have spent several years grasping at straws, even straws of opinion generated by those without knowledge of the subject, as in the above.

I recommend strongly that you keep your opinion to yourself on topics for which you are neither trained, experienced nor competent - and that you rank others' opinions on these subjects in accordance with their credibility, most of which is gained through... wait for it... actual, demonstrable knowledge of the subject.

Economics and history? Relevant? No way!

Folks, this one's over. The recanting and backing down are going on all over the place. The latest version is that the climate is changing but we think natural causes might be more important than we previously thought and anyway a further ncrease in CO2 levels probably won't raise the temperature all that much. From the Chairman of the IPCC through James Lovelock and various scientists to the politicians who've wasted billions trying to reduce CO2 emissions, the story is the same. All are now saying: "We weren't wrong. It's just that we weren't fully aware of the possible causes of climate change."

You've got to hand it to Jimmy Hansen and Michael Mann though. Even Phil Jones is backpedalling but these two keep fighting on.

Thanks, Senior Victorian,

You've managed to include almost the entire compendium of denier bulldust into one succinct post.

Well done!

Poirot - You've managed to include almost the entire compendium of denier bulldust into one succinct post.

:) :) :)

Without the necessity of being a fully-fledged member of AGW anonymous, surely it must be possible to conceive the possibility of several centuries of concerted environmental vandalism not exactly being a good thing.

Great article Don. Like a good red, you are just getting better with age. Still I'll bet you could not have written this & kept your old job, even now. Academia particularly in Oz, & the alternate energy people are still trying to hold on to a good thing, even as it dies

I see those committed to the religion of Global warming have been quick to leap in with their sermons. I wonder why so many like Poirot, Jon J & Jeremy all desperately want global warming to be true? Do they hate humanity so much that they want to hurt as many as possible, or can they not, having once fallen for the con, admit they were taken in.

They obviously only read the AGW propaganda rags, or they could not still give any credibility to the fiction.

Europeans are being trampled in the stampede to abandon the now totally proven fallacy of green house gas & global warming, but it appears the missionaries have taught some Ozzies well. The greens we know are rat bags, & the lefties don't have much left to hang their hat on, so keep hanging on.

I am pleasantly surprised to now believe I will live long enough to see the whole fiasco dead & buried, so rapid is the collapse in the so called science. This is something I would not have expected just a couple of years back. May be there is a god after all.

'May be there is a god after all. '

I assure you there is Hasbeen and I suspect He has laughed at how quickly people have abandoned reason and science in order to embrace the gw religion.

runner - I assure you there is Hasbeen and I suspect He has laughed at how quickly people have abandoned reason and science in order to embrace the gw religion.

I don't doubt for a millisecond that there has been an awful lot of utter codswallop pushed around by half-cut greenies & opportunistic politicians seeking another source of revenue, on the other hand is it logical to claim centuries of environmental vandalism hasn't had some ill effect ?? Anyone who invokes the name of the Almighty should be fully aware of prophesies warning about severe consequences for those who 'destroy the earth'. If this doesn't refer to environmental vandalism then I can't imagine what else it could mean.

I have a current post at Jennifer's which looks at 10 of the most prominent pro-AGW papers; these 'papers' are a disgrace:

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/05/ten-of-the-worst-climate-research-papers-5-years-on/comment-page-1/

They exemplify AGW; shoddy science; scare-mongering and lies and ego.

Last night I went to a meeting about Lake Macquarie Council's intent to regulate and rate housing according to the IPCC projections about sea level rise. This policy is causing immense damage, loss and fear amongst home-owners in the district; there were numerous testimonials about how homes could not be sold or insured due to the council's policies.

I made a short speech about Houston and Dean's and Phil Watson's papers both from 2011 which showed uneqivocally that sea level rate of rise is declining, a result consistent with the cooling Antarctic which removes the eustatic source for sea rise and a cooling atmosphere which removes the steric component of sea rise.

After I sat down the council officers and sustainability manager from the council made derogatory comments about the testimonials. I pointed out their arrogance. And indeed they are arrogant; one was a green supporter and showed no remorse or concern for the damage his policies were causing; all on the back of a scam and a lie.

The people who have supported AGW should get their comeuppance even if it is only to see their corrupt government removed at the next election; a few lost jobs amongst these people would also be good.

"I made a short speech about Houston and Dean's and Phil Watson's papers both from 2011 which showed uneqivocally that sea level rate of rise is declining"

Some more cherry picking from Anthony Cox. The rate of sea level rise is not declining http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/index.html

Do you actually know how to calculate a tangent to a curve?

"Do you actually know how to calculate a tangent to a curve?"

Show us how to apply the chain rule to the issue.

"The rate of sea level rise is not declining"

Yes it is:

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/slr_rate_to2012.png

CSIRO I see relies on Church and White 2011; 2011 shows that the simple average of tide gauges shows much less exponential curve rather then two linear trends that show the the rate of rise has not changed since 1930.

So even by C&W's cherry-picked choice of data presentation there is no change.

But Houston and Dean and Watson have used different methods to analyse sea level rise; in H&D they measure sea level rise as a function of time, as does Watson who uses:

"relative 20-year moving average water level time series and fitted to second-order polynomial functions to consider trends of acceleration in mean sea level over time."

Perhaps agro can explain the relative merits of these methods, which find deceleration of sea level rise, with the CSIRO method which finds a constant rate of sea level rise.

Anthony, there is no need to apply the chain rule. If you want to know the rate of change, one merely needs the tangent to the curve at any point.

"CSIRO I see relies on Church and White 2011; 2011 shows that the simple average of tide gauges shows much less exponential curve rather then two linear trends that show the the rate of rise has not changed since 1930.

So even by C&W's cherry-picked choice of data presentation there is no change."

You do realise that no change is not a decline? For a decline in rate, the curve needs to flatten out.

Watson http://www.jcronline.org/doi/full/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1 looked at 4 sites only within the Australasian region, used a moving average of the data and failed to account for divergences in the data sets. For example, Newcastle is clearly very different to Sydney, despite them being within a couple of hundred km of each other. Why would the sea level change with time be so different at two sites so close to each other? Then Watson analyses the moving average data. This is an analytical no no. If the bins overlap, then the noise in the data is not independent. This invalidates the assumption of independence required for the statistical model. Lastly, Watson uses the wrong model, one where the rate of change is assumed to be constant across the time series, when it is clearly not - and indeed Watson concludes himself that it is not. Sadly, Watson's paper is so flawed statistically as to be bunk.

As for Houston and Dean? They cherry-picked 1930 as a start. Starting at years between about 1920 and 1940 will give no rise or a small decline. Starting at any other year between 1870 and 1960 gives an acceleration of sea level rise. I wonder why that would be?

Ok, the default position here is that rate of sea level rise should be accelerating; anything other than that is a spanner in the works.

The 4 sites Watson looked at were chosen because they were the longest running sites; I don't see how you can reasonably object to that.

"Newcastle is clearly very different to Sydney, despite them being within a couple of hundred km of each other. Why would the sea level change with time be so different at two sites so close to each other?"

A couple of things about that; the records differ in length so will reflect different time based climatic conditions. It has been known that different locations on the East coast have differing sea level rates of rise; see:

http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/digitaltheses/public/adt-acuvp29.29082005/05chapters_5-7.pdf

A host of factors can produce this difference, most natural but the man-made ones include, in the case of Newcastle, harbour dredging and local subsidence. Bob Carter has written on the disparate sea level rates around Australia:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/RMC%20-%20aspects%20of%20sea-level%20rise%20in%20southern%20Australia%20Z.pdf

You have misunderstood both H&D and Watson. In respect of H&D they say:

"Woodworth et al. (2009) concluded there was consensus among the authors that acceleration occurred from around 1870 to the end of the 20th century; however, with the major acceleration occurring prior to 1930,the sea-level rise (Figure 1) appears approximately linear from 1930 to 2004. Church and White (2006) did not separately analyze this specific period."

They did not cherry pick 1930; the data did; as to why sea level rise accelerated upto 1930 my money is on solar recovery post LIA.

Watson doesn't overlap bins in his moving average; in fact he does the opposite; statistically this is the equivalent of a histogram with the trend being indicated in the sign of the leading coefficient.

I don't see where Watson assumes a constant rate; he says changes in the time series are non-linear and uses a method to cater for that; the only thing he appears to be finding is acceleration and deceleration of the trend.

The question you have to ask is why isn't the trend accelerating?

You are clutching at straws now Anthony.

I will go through your arguments carefully so you can see the flaws.

“The 4 sites Watson looked at were chosen because they were the longest running sites; I don't see how you can reasonably object to that.”

That is not what I objected to. I objected to the fact that 4 sites cannot represent what is happening across the globe.

“A couple of things about that; the records differ in length so will reflect different time based climatic conditions.”

Anthony, you need to go and read the paper, carefully. Have a look at Figure 2. You should notice that the pattern of change at Newcastle (top line) is totally different to that at Sydney (3rd line) both before and after the anchor point of 1940. Yet the sites are less than 200 km apart. What on earth is happening? Is sea level rising faster in Newcastle than Sydney?

“They did not cherry pick 1930; the data did; as to why sea level rise accelerated upto 1930 my money is on solar recovery post LIA.”

They chose 1930. But 1930 is the only starting time period from 1870 to 1970 when sea level rise will come out with a negative acceleration. All other starting times come out with a positive acceleration. What does that tell you?

“Watson doesn't overlap bins in his moving average; in fact he does the opposite; statistically this is the equivalent of a histogram with the trend being indicated in the sign of the leading coefficient.”

Are you on something hard tonight? Do you understand what a moving average is? Let me help you out. A moving average is where you take a series of consecutive data (i.e. years) and average them. You then move the data by one and average them again. That is why it is called a moving average. Of course the bins (i.e. years used) overlap. If the bins didn’t overlap, it wouldn’t be a moving average.

Look at a histogram;

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.pqsystems.com/products/SPC/CHARTrunnerLean/samples/histogram.png&imgrefurl=http://www.pqsystems.com/qualityadvisor/DataAnalysisTools/histogram.php&h=675&w=900&sz=84&tbnid=DCIX7zdKzf3geM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhistogram%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=histogram&usg=__IPYrvB-8KY7SC0e0Auc71kAQcZM=&docid=LUWa_swnbjkUpM&sa=X&ei=TzunUfj6KcmViQeuk4GACw&ved=0CEIQ9QEwBA&dur=929

Each column is a bin; the line is the trend as a 2nd degree poly; a moving average can disguise the trend unless it is spread sufficiently wide to as Watson states:

"The fixed averaging window of 20 years is sufficiently wide to dampen the dynamic influences to reveal a transformed time series from
which signals of comparatively low-amplitude sea level rise (or
fall) can be more readily isolated."

By doing this Watson overcomes this problem:

11, 12, 13 ,14 ,15, 15, 14 ,13 ,12 11

With a 6 unit wide spread you get an increasing trend until the end of the data, which contradicts the real trend. The bins overlap and produce a false result; the trick is selecting the correct moving average; Watson has done that.

I repeat H&D DID NOT select 1930; they replicated Church and White's paper which chose 1930; H&D actually looked at the full range of data which is why they were able to isolate the problems with C&W.

I also rpepeat the issue for AGW supporters such as yourself is why isn't the trend increasing?

Anthony, you really are a chump.

“Look at a histogram”

Anthony, that histogram has non-overlapping bins. It is not made up of a moving average. The “trend-line” in that example is just a normal plot of the data. It is not a moving average.

Why not admit that you don’t understand this statistical stuff rather than continuing to parade your ignorance?

"The fixed averaging window of 20 years is sufficiently wide to dampen the dynamic influences to reveal a transformed time series from which signals of comparatively low-amplitude sea level rise (or fall) can be more readily isolated."

This is a bit of goalpost moving. The problem is not that Watson used a moving average as a smoothing exercise; it is that he then ran a statistical model over it as if each bin was independent. They are not. He also used the wrong model.

“I repeat H&D DID NOT select 1930; they replicated Church and White's paper which chose 1930; H&D actually looked at the full range of data which is why they were able to isolate the problems with C&W.” Perhaps we should see what Houston and Dean actually wrote about this?

“Since the worldwide data of Church and White (2006) from 1870–2001 (Figure 1) appear to have a linear rise since around 1930, we analyzed the period 1930 to 2010 for 25 of the 57 gauge records that had records during that period.”

It seems Houston and Dean did select 1930 and did so on the basis that Church and White “appear to have a linear rise since around 1930”

http://www.jcronline.org/doi/full/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1

Regardless, the fact remains that if Houston and Dean had chosen any other starting between 1870 and 1960, they would have found an acceleration in sea level rise. Only 1930 as a starting point gives a deceleration

Agronomist,

I don’t pretend I understand any of what you are discussing with cohenite but it does seem to me that there are many in this world that do understand, or at least once did understand.

They understood so profoundly that they built a global infrastructure to implement global action in support of the case you make for this global problem.

Unfortunately for you, that global infrastructure has collapsed. Kyoto passed away quietly on the evening of December 31st 2012. The global renewables industry has collapsed by 90% and the global emissions trading markets have either closed or collapsed by 90%. Political sponsorship and funding is evaporating, legislation is stalled or being reversed and public interest is decaying at the same rate as the alarmist forecasts and predictions fail to eventuate.

In addition to all this bad news, many of the scientific and political opinions on which we based this global response have now either scaled back their alarmism or recanted.

Since these trend lines are all downward, I was wondering why you still persist with the science that has already failed in its purpose? Also, why are you still persisting in trying to “sell” this science to blogs when you should be selling it to those who have abandoned you and were once totally dependent upon this science?

Since you do understand the science, perhaps you might help people like me to understand why it has all gone belly up?

spindoc,

You keep saying that somehow the science has been negated because nations decide to be guided by short-term economic imperatives instead of acting on scientific advice.

It doesn't negate the veracity of the science.

You ignore the concerted efforts of oil companies and big business to fund the denial industry through the dissemination of shonky science, media and political partisanship of those with vested interests, and a veritable army of no-science drones invading the net, all in order to muddy the pervading and overwhelming scientific consensus.

Agree Poirot. As the PM put it who do you believe? CSIRO or Alan Jones?

Poirot,

You said, << You keep saying that somehow the science has been negated because nations decide to be guided by short-term economic imperatives instead of acting on scientific advice.>>

I said nothing of the sort. I made no assertion that the collapse had anything to do with “short term economic imperatives”, you did.

I suggested that the science is no longer strong enough to sustain its own CAGW infrastructure.

We have been told so many times, by so many warmers, that this science will create jobs, improve economics, create wealth, save future costs, subsidize the economic interests of third world and developing nations, create a pool of funds for de-carbonization and provide cheap, cleaner energy. If you really believe that these objectives have even come close to being achieved, then why is there any need for the “short term economic imperatives” in the first place?

You can’t have it both ways. Are you now saying that because the global response to CO2 reduction failed to deliver the promised economic benefits, that this has now become your primary excuse for the collapse?

You’re chasing your tail Poirot.

spindoc,

"I suggested that the science is no longer strong enough...."

It's got nothing to do with the "strength" or veracity of the science.

That's another way of saying the science is negated.

The science is stronger than ever...

As is the "concerted effort" by those who defend the status quo to deny it.

Poirot,

So if the science is just as good as ever and it’s not “negated”, and the short term economic imperatives can’t be the reason for 117 nations (not all of which are dealing with economic imperatives) to refuse to sign up to a new Kyoto, what went wrong?

Poirot, it’s not my science that is causing the problem, I don’t understand either side of the scientific debate. But you do, so can you please explain what has gone wrong?

We have one global theory to get you started, Alan Jones? See below.

Shalmaneser,

Good point, CSIRO versus Alan Jones?

Never thought of that but now you come to mention it, I just wondered how many of the original 117 Kyoto signatories would have heard of Alan Jones? Then I thought, I wonder how many of the world’s top 30 renewable energy corporations as listed on the RENIXX stocks index, would have been listening to Alan Jones?

Then I turned my attention to the worlds collapsing emissions trading markets and thought Ah Ha! They’ve all been listening to Alan Jones.

There are those who genuinely marvel at the power and international reach of our humble Sydney shock jocks, awesome.

“that histogram has non-overlapping bins. It is not made up of a moving average”

I never said it was. I used the histogram to show the discrete nature of the yearly/monthly or whatever bin division of data you use. The notion that a moving average causes bin overlap is a statistical fiction; the bins remain discrete, however the average parameters will cause an overlap of the data value of the bins as it moves along the data. I showed how that can produce false results.

I also used the histogram to show the 2nd degree polynomial which Watson uses; this is appropriate when you are looking for either a rise/acceleration or decrease/deceleration in the data. Watson uses a 20 year moving average to isolate long-term sea trend free of the short perturbations.

I have explained to you why Newcastle has a different sea level history than Sydney; you have ignored that reasonable explanation; go away and research isostatic effects.

Your persistent misrepresentation of H&D is egregious; they say:

“To determine this acceleration, we analyze monthly-averaged records for 57 U.S. tide gauges in the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) data base that have lengths of 60–156 years. Least-squares quadratic analysis of each of the 57 records are performed to quantify accelerations, and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed. In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations. To compare these results with worldwide data, we extend the analysis of Douglas (1992) by an additional 25 years and analyze revised data of Church and White (2006) from 1930 to 2007 and also obtain small sea-level decelerations similar to those we obtain from U.S. gauge records.”

In short they do represent the full range of data well beyond your 1930.

Good to read your resort to insult; as a chump I’d like to respond in kind but I’ll stick with disingenuous.

Poirot:

“The science is stronger than ever...”

No, just your gullibility.

Poirot,

OK, we are making real progress here. It’s not the science of CAGW that has failed; in fact it is “stronger than ever”.

So it is categorically not the science. OK?

It can’t be the “short term economic imperatives” because most of those nations who originally signed up for Kyoto don’t exhibit economic pain. It can’t relate to the global renewables industry because they actually wanted to make money out of it, as do the emissions trading markets.

So, short term economic imperatives are out. OK?

Given that Alan Jones has a spectrum license for NSW and as far as I know, he does not broadcast globally, but I could be wrong.

So I think we can safely rule out Alan Jones as a major global influence. OK?

As for the “denial industry through the dissemination of shonky science”. I thought that the warmertariat had always said that they never accepted the denialists’ science. In fact for the last 15 years the skeptic, denialist, flat earthers and their science have been roundly rejected and abused. So how can your team now claim that it is someone else’s shonky science that’s to blame when you never accepted it in the first place? The CAGW infrastructure was never built on skeptical science, it was built on yours.

So if shonky science was never accepted or used, I think that too is out. OK?

Now let’s look at the “veritable army of no-science drones invading the net” Ah those pesky drones. But hang on a minute, if these drones are no-science net invaders, who was listening to them and how have they brought down this monumental global infrastructure?

No, I think this reason has to go as well. Net drones are out I’m afraid. OK?

So tell us. What precisely did the CAGW infrastructure hear from us and our fearless international broadcaster Alan Jones that caused them to up stumps and leave a global market worth some Trillion Dollars 5 years ago? Did they know that the science was “stronger than ever”? Have you told them Poirot?

spindoc,

I made no reference at all to Alan Jones.

Having said that, shock jocks do their bit for the denial movement by disseminating junk science, but only as an adjunct to their main purpose of dog-whistling the gullible right.

It's a thrill a minute!

This is the best History of Climate Change Science I know of.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

Of course if you are interested in conspiracy theories I am afraid you will be badly disappointed.

Anthony, you really aren’t getting this are you? As soon as you have a moving average, some of the data occurs in more than one bin. For example, with a 20-year moving average, each year will be represented 20 times – i.e. in 20 different 20-year averages. This is all pretty simple and I am struggling as to why you keep claiming it is not so. Any analyses that assumes the data in the different bins is independent will be wrong, because the same data are represented over and over again.

“I have explained to you why Newcastle has a different sea level history than Sydney”

So if other (non-climate change) factors are dramatically changing the sea level at Newcastle, they should be corrected for before trying to analyse the data for sea level effects. Don’t you think? So why did Watson not do this? That was exactly my point.

“In short they do represent the full range of data well beyond your 1930.”

An valiant attempt at goalpost moving, but one doomed to failure.

My argument about Houston and Dean was not that they didn’t include other years of data, but that they started the analysis at 1930. Had they started the analysis at any other year between 1870 and 1960, there would have seen no deceleration and for most of those start years there would have been an acceleration of sea level rise

As is so often the case, the discussion has two principal flaws. The first is that there are unquestioned assumptions that carbon dioxide concentration is causally proportional to global free energy and that this, in turn, is causally proportional to global temperature. The second is the silly theological debate about textual authority in relation to metrics of second-order effects.

The second is not worth discussing. There is no question that there are many natural phenomena which vary over time. So what?

The first deserves some thought. It is unquestionably true that CO2 absorbs and re-radiates some incident IR at the lower energy (longer wavelength) part of the spectrum, which happens to be in a similar range to the frequency of the IR that the planetary body emits. It is also true that about half of that absorbed will be re-radiated in the direction of the original source, so about half of all the IR emitted or reflected by the planet which hits a CO2 molecule will be effectively reflected back at the planet, while the CO2 molecules will have no net change in free energy. It is also true that almost all energy lost by the planet to space is due to the IR it emits, with a small amount due to the loss of upper atmosphere molecules. These are readily observed facts.

Also beyond dispute is that the free energy of a system is available to do work and that the work can cause the bound energy (entropy and temperature) of parts of the system to change. In a closed system, the net energy will not change, with the energy simply moving from one part of the system to another. In an open system, the work will transfer energy into or out of the system and so the net energy embodied within the system will be changed, either up or down.

So far, so good; any senior school chemistry student should be able to tell us these things.

Unfortunately, it gets harder.

[cont]

"This is all pretty simple and I am struggling as to why you keep claiming it is not so"

I would suggest the struggle is with your reading and comprehension since I said:

"the bins remain discrete, however the average parameters will cause an overlap of the data value of the bins as it moves along the data. I showed how that can produce false results."

Anyway, I showed a graph of a simple 10 year runing mean based on Colarado data:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/28/obama-was-rightthe-rise-of-the-oceans-began-to-slow/

There is plenty of evidence that sea level rate is decreasing; for example the Cazanave and Ablain papers discussed by me at Bolt:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/n/

And TAR showed a decrease:

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/425.htm

And you haven't explained why sea level rate of rise is not increasing, when according to Poirot's 'stronger' science it should be.

But I want to concentrate on your assertion that the different rates of sea level rise between Newcastle and Sydney is so fatal to Watson's paper. The relevant graph is Figure 2 from Watson:

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/sea-level/sea-level-australia-new-zealand-watson.gif

What is striking about this is the surge in Newcastle rise from the early 1940's to 1960. Watson says this:

"One of the probable reasons for the clear disparity in the
relative water level record from the Pilot Station gauge at
Newcastle is that it is sited on a large area known to be affected by mine subsidence."

Watson goes on to reject the Newcastle record for this reason.

Your criticism of his paper is spurious.

"My argument about Houston and Dean was not that they didn’t include other years of data, but that they started the analysis at 1930."

No. They started their comparitive analysis of C&W then because that is what C&W did; they did longer analyses of the other sites and found the same result!

Please source your assertion about 1930

The net energy of a thermodynamic system such as the one that defines climate is in 3 forms: entropy, heat and unbound, or free energy.

Entropy is a property that is intrinsic to a system and is dependent on the particular conditions of the system. It describes the energy that the system contains which cannot be used to do work (transfer energy into or out of the system) or to change the temperature.

Temperature describes the energy that is held by the system in the form of vibrations of its component particles.

Free energy is what's left and it is free energy which is available to do work, or transfer energy, in or out of the system.

For example, adding energy to water will change its temperature as the molecules absorb energy and it will increase its free energy by making them move around more in relation to each other. Once the free energy of any molecule exceeds the strength of the hydrogen bonds that hold it to the other molecules as a liquid it will do work by stretching the bonds to breaking point to become a molecule of gas with the same temperature that it had before it evaporated. Because it did work to break the bonds, although its net energy is the same as it was before evaporating, some of it has been transferred to itself (absorbed) which increases its entropy.

Everything has entropy, temperature and more or less free energy. The behaviour of different materials to having work done in the form of heating is very different, however, as is the response of the same material to heat energy in different forms.

Still so far, so good. We're doing some first year thermodynamics.

Take home message: all energy is not created equal.

Now it gets easier. Or not.

[cont]

I'll continue tomorrow. The topic is complex and I'm tired.

Antiseptic when you do continue would you please address this fact along with your thermodynamics 101.

As CO2 in the upper atmosphere rises the humidity is falling. This indicates that the CO2 is not adding more of the so called green house gas to the atmosphere, but displacing another, that is replacing water vapor. Increases in CO2 are causing a similar reduction in water vapor.

A few peer reviewed papers have shown this effect, although none have yet any sound reason for it. If it could be taxed I'm sure there would be generous research grants to find out though.

Now I'm sure you would be aware that water vapor is much more efficient at doing the job you are explaining CO2 does, in absorbing & reemitting that radiation.

This being the case, I'm sure you can only draw the same conclusion as those papers, that any increase in CO2 will actually have a cooling effect, if there is indeed any really measurable AGW effect.

I'm sure the global warming gravy train passengers will soon switch their train to the new global cooling scare, seeing as how all the gathered data points to this anyway. It should be a relief for the poor dears, it must pain even them, having to claim that global warming makes it colder.

Any statistics advanced to 'prove' one side of the GW argument or the other must be regarded as suspect thanks to that famous line from Benjamin Disraeli. Big business will always conspire to deflect anything that interferes with its worship of profit & gubmunts will always embrace anything to do with revenue. Unfortunately 'truth' is never a definite fixed quantity but merely something to be created in order to to prove whatever end result is sought.

Regardless of hype, the following are indisputable matters of fact.

* human civilization has been responsible for pumping all manner of crap into the ecosystem ever since neanderthals discovered fire

* 'development' has systematically destroyed much the natural regulation system

* profit is invariably rated higher than sustainability

* gubmunts of whatever colour have always seized on any possible opportunities to create new sources of revenue

* no gubmunt in history has ever had more than fleeting acquaintance with truth

* the scientific community is not, nor ever has been totally independent, it relies on funding from either industry or gubmunt, consequently researchers tend to 'discover' facts that favour their source of funding

Conclusions

* humans are environmental vandals, infinitely more so in the case of big business

* all statistics are full of crap

* we only have one planet available on which to dwell

* logic suggests its sensible to minimize any adverse impact on this planet, at least until we have an alternative

* allowing EITHER profit-centred entities eg big-business & gubmunts, OR rabid tree-huggers to single-handedly dictate environmental policy isn't a particularly smart move

Garbage praxidice!

Big business has jumped on the scam & is coining it thanks to the idealistic fools who "believe".

GE is one of the biggest companies on earth. It doesn't matter a damn to them how we generate our power. They have a finger in every technology, & will still make a pile. In fact alternate power gives them, & many others better profits.

We see many people from the green, left & right factions of the elites raking in the cash from our skyrocketing power bills, with what is effectively insider trading.

What do you think about wood chips, shipped from the USA to the UK replacing coal in power generation. If it had been used as a plot for a movie, people would say it couldn't happen, but it does when green bullsh#t ideology, politics & business get together on the same gravy train.

Au contraire, Hasbeen.

Nice try - excellent spin and all that - but...

Perhaps you'd like to examine where the overwhelming majority of government subsidies end up?

Clue: it ain't the renewable industry.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-21/when-it-comes-to-government-subsidies-dirty-energy-still-cleans-up

this article from2012 states that in 2010:

"Global subsidies for oil, gas and coal amounted to $409 billion in 2010 - compared with $60 billion for renewable energy that year..."

So it's your dirty energy mates who are scooping the cream off taxpayers contributions globally.

Have a nice day....

A few responses.

Praxidice: if you use terms like 'human vandalism' it would be hard not to find
'undesirable consequences' wouldn't it? Later on you talk about indisputable facts (I think) but most of what you put forward as such are propositions, not facts.

Jeremy: In my view arguments from consensus do little more than show that the person using them is not able to find decent evidence himself or herself. And I have greater respect for my doctor than I do for many climate scientists. Not only does he have more than 30 years knowledge of me and my health, he also knows a great deal about health in general, and about other practitioners to whom to send me if he's not sure what to do. The same cannot be said for climate science, which is, in some respects, not even 30 years old.

John Bennetts: It would be nice to learn who these people are who have 'demonstrable knowledge' of climate. The lack of them is one reason why I occasionally become a Grumpy Old Man!

Don Aitkin,

"Consensus" on this issue pertains to the fact that peer-reviewed literature tends to agree by overhwelming majority on AGW.

That's a far cry from your take that "...arguments from consensus do little more than show that the person using them is not able to find decent evidence himself or herself...."

The catalogue of peer-reviewed papers detailing evidence - what's that?

I'm always fascinated that "skeptics" seem to have so much respect for scientists from other fields...yet somehow draw a distinction between them and the scientific ethics of climate scientists.

Why is that?

Don Aitkin - if you use terms like 'human vandalism' it would be hard not to find 'undesirable consequences' wouldn't it?

Ahh, so you don't believe a few centuries worth of atmospheric & waterway pollution has been in any way harmful to the ecosystem ?? Interestingly every gubmunt on planet earth has mandated some kind of air & water controls on industry, applied a range of measures to minimize vehicular emissions, outlawed dated technology commercial aircraft and instituted a zillion other measures for SOME reason, seems like you believe all these are just stupid ideas some dumbcluck politician dreamed up to pass the time. Meanwhile, before these were put in place, individuals & businesses were merrily dumping who knows what wherever they thought they could get away with it, despite knowledge that the stuff being dumped wasn't exactly something one would ordinarily use to gargle with. But no, we won't describe that as vandalism will we because it just might offend the great god business profit.

The conclusion of nearly all the climate scientists is that AGW is real. Not only that they have demonstrated how and why this is likely. A consensus alone does not prove anything, but when it is open to rigorous testing by others over many decades then it becomes a whole new ball game. All the salient points have been checked and double checked to leave virtually no room for dissent, but that does not prevent numerous people with little or no understanding of the subject shouting from the rooftops ¨Its not true its not true¨.

I am sorry but the laws of physics will decide the issue and unless our understanding of those laws are totally wrong, we and particularly our descendants will pay an enormous price, for ignoring what at this stage is already patently obvious..

The only interesting question left is why otherwise intelligent people are absolutely determined not accept such a well established scientific theory despite it being so thoroughly tested.

Poirot where do you get this stuff, the New Matilda, or some other propaganda sheet?

Do you believe it, or just squirt it out because it suits your ideology?

You see, not charging farmers & shipping the road tax is not a subsidy, but a little justice. Renaming the road tax something else, & using it for other roads is petroleum subsidizing everything else, including the alternate rip off. Yes I know lefty rat bags don't see it that way. Are we to include you in this ever diminishing rabble?

It is difficult to be sure which came first lefty lying, or Gillard's total abhorrence of the truth. I suppose the lefty dislike of truth came first, but Gillard must be their most successful student so far.

Can't your read, Hasbeen?

Did the article I posted have the header "New Matilda"?

I know it's difficult to get something to stand up against your anti-lefty rants, based on nothing but your own bias, but there you go.

Calling people names like ratbag and rabble doesn't change the fact that oil, gas, and coal attract the lion's share of global subsidies, so perhaps you'd like to stop gilding the lily about financial support of renewables, when the hand scooping the money from taxpayers pockets belongs to the purveyors of dirty energy.

Poirot you really are hopeless.

The green/left cry of fossil subsidies is based on the usual tax deductions that all businesses pay.

Green energy is directly subsidised, that is given money; in fact renewable energy starts would not be happening if governments were not giving them billions; Jo sums up the disparity and the lie of parity about subsidies:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/09/government-burn-70-billion-a-year-subsidizing-renewables-and-wild-claims-of-fossil-fuel-subsidies-debunked/

See also:

http://rwdb.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/australian-conservation-foundations.html

The subsidies for solar panel FITs is just obscene expecially since they do not provide any usable power:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industries-want-solar-subsidies-dumped/story-e6frg8zx-1226477631013

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/solar-price-rise-to-end-power-divide/story-fn59niix-1226650277855

Anyway, the real point is that renewables do not work so ANY money spent on them is wasted.

Fossils, nuclear, gas do work; in fact they work so well that they enable any ratbag to get behind a computer and say stupid things about AGW, renewable energy and whatever other thought bubble comes into their silly noggin.

cohenite - The subsidies for solar panel FITs is just obscene expecially since they do not provide any usable power:

Funny about that. One of my systems sends around 60kwh per day to the grid in addition to all the electrons used to keep things running in the house & farm. I certainly 'use' a bit of power myself, at least i think I do because the lights / freezers / computers / pumps etc keep running and I can only guess the 60kwh per day that goes to the grid gets used by someone. After all, that forms a component of the green power that all electricity retailers are legally compelled to purchase.

cohenite,

"....in fact they work so well that they enable any ratbag to get behind a computer and say stupid things about AGW, renewable energy and whatever other thought bubble comes into their silly noggins."

I couldn't agree more......

praxidice; I have no doubt your panels supply power to the grid; however the time they supply it, and the price they supply it and the intermiitant nature of that supply will mean it is not used; it will be bled up a pole at a substation.

The grid transformers cannot handle power from a source which is running at full capacity and then supplying nothing the next minute, which is what wind and solar do.

They will literally go from 100% to 0% in a minute.

Solar panel FIT installations received up to 200% of the capital cost in subsidies depending on when they were installed; and after that initially 60c per Kilowatt hour [compared with 2-3c per Kilowatt hour cost from fossils at wholesale which is what the FIT competes with] for what they put into the grid [sic].

At that price they have cost $billions in subsidies.

Even at the reduced price of 20cper Kilowatt hour they will cost NSW about $2 billion and QLD about $2.8 billion.

This is a national scandal and when the Gillard gang are gone a proper audit of what the value for money of green investments are needs to be urgently done.

I have no problem with people installing the wretched things on their own dollar but I deeply resent my tax dollar being usurpted in this fashion.

Poirot of course has no tax dollars so doesn't care.

cohenite - Solar panel FIT installations received up to 200% of the capital cost in subsidies depending on when they were installed; and after that initially 60c per Kilowatt hour [compared with 2-3c per Kilowatt hour cost from fossils at wholesale which is what the FIT competes with] for what they put into the grid [sic].

I'm certainly not aware of any 200% subsidies. Mine was, as far as I'm aware, the best available at any time and the federal subsidy was around 20% of capital cost. Oh sorry, just forgot another little one I had years ago whereby both state and federal subsidies applied with the result I paid a grand total of $168 for a 1kw system. That arrangement was only ever available to 1000 Queenslanders, 600 odd in Brisbane and the balance spread throughout the state.

Dunno about 60c per kwh, I get 52c for nett to the grid & thats the best I've ever heard of. I believe there was at one point a crazy 'whole of generation' arrangement in NSW but as far as I'm aware thats been switched to a nett arrangement some time back.

There are several issues you are conveniently ignoring. Firstly, PV system owners entered into a commercial arrangement with the then authorities based on cost / benefit figures provided at the time. Both parties signed a mutually binding contract that in my case expires in 2028. Any attempt to vary the terms of the contract without mutual approval clearly constitutes breach of contract, and that will understandably trigger the biggest class-action lawsuit in history with around a million plaintiffs involved. Queensland Energy Minister McArdle has already been down that track and after being warned of the inevitable consequences, quickly retracted.

to be continued

continued

Secondly, electricity retailers are legally compelled to source 20% or whatever of their power from GREEN providers. In Queensland that means PV systems apart from the itty-bitty Barron Falls hydro station just outside Cairns. For what its worth, PV generation is in fact a significant contributor to power supplies in Queensland due to the number of airconditioners running during peak PV generation times. We'd be in deep do-do without them, well either that or there would be an awful lot of very smelly people :)

Thirdly, the price paid by the Queensland grid for emergency peak power from interstate grids is in fact many times what is shelled out to even the highest FiT recipients (like moi).

Fourthly, the financial wheelings and dealings in Queensland consequent to retail privatization & corporatization of the wholesale infrastructure mean that the average cost per electricity connection in the state associated purely with privatization is in the order of $2500 per annum. Thats made up of gubmunt drawings from wholesale operations (Energex & Ergon), fatcat salaries (Origin, AGL and the rats & mice retailers), shareholder dividends & retail operating profits. Attempts to demonize PV system owners as the prime cause of power price escalation are conceived to divert attention from the privatization debacle.

The NSW rebate of 60c was downgraded to 20c just before Keneally was thrown out.

Initial federal capital subsidies were up to $8000 until this scheme was replaced by credits in 2009. The average roof top FIT was then about $2000-4000.

Then you had the state subsidies on top.

You are incorrect about the MRET. This is the amount of power produced not used. The target is 20% by 2020. It is a complete farce. Because renewables are so unreliable, as I explained, their introduction does not reduce fossil energy because fossils have to be kept running to provide the back-up for the renewables:

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/renewable-power-versus-coal-fired-power-and-the-winner-is/

http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/more-renewable-power-leads-to-an-increase-in-carbon-dioxide-emissions/

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2011/02/%e2%80%98carbon-price%e2%80%99-won%e2%80%99t-reduce-emissions-from-power-stations/

I'm aware of the contractual issues with large groups of people who have contracted with state governments in respect of their solar panels and the so-called sovereign risk if such contracts are not honoured by a succeeding government. But I think you are confusing McArdle's political response with a reasoned legal response; it will be interesting to see Abbott's attempts to get rid of the CO2 tax and whether any parties disadvantaged because they contracted with Gillard, bring action against Abbott. IN respect of FIT contracts I would like to see what obligations FIT owners have in respect of their 'power' supplied to the grid.

No doubt some spot prices are much dearer than FIT prices but FIT is unreliable from minute to minute which is why fossils are used for peaking:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/a-nation-still-drawing-18000mw-in-its-sleep-cant-go-solar/

As a general rule I don't mind people getting one over a government as long as I do not have to pay for it; and that is what I am doing with FIT.

Hasbeen, I can't address specific detailed observations because I simply don't know enough to be able to do so, but I am sure that there is lots of chemistry going on.

Now to my rather long-winded point(s) from the other day.

Thermodynamics tells us that the total energy of any chemical species has 3 forms, two of which are thermodynamically important because they determine whether a particular reaction will occur (free energy) and also what rate it will occur at (temperature). The temperature also determines what the equilibrium between reagents and reaction products will be and how long equilibrium will take to establish.

Because the rates of different reactions are different, the net energy balance of a complex system like earth varies over time as reactions take place to emit or absorb energy. Some reactions can only occur after other reactions, because they require the product of those reactions as reagents or catalysts. As well, the incident energy fluctuates with solar activity and variations in both the planetary orbit and its axis of rotation, while convective flows transfer energy by transporting material and the energy it contains causing local conditions that are considerably different from the planetary mean.

The concern about AGW is entirely because one particular set of reactions has shown a massively rapid rate increase over a very short time frame of a few hundred years and is scavenging the reaction products of earlier cycles which have been sequestered in geological stores making them available to participate in climate thermodynamics once more.

That set of reactions is, of course, us. Biological processes are very fast compared to geological ones and very sensitive to the conditions.

Temperature increase through AGW is likely to be a short-term blip on the scale of hundreds rather than thousands of years which will be followed by a long period of declining temperatures over tens of thousands of years. In terms of survival of the species these temperature changes are not a threat, because the species has survived similar conditions more then once in the past. They are a major problem for carrying capacity though. The long-term average excluding the massive growth that has occurred during the current extended warm phase is a few million, not the 9 billion on the surface today. Even with cheap energy from nuclear sources that would probably not go beyond a hundred million or so.

We need to be focussed on managing the transition from a high-energy, high growth, high population species to a smaller one on about the same time frame as it expanded in a way that doesn't cause our technological capacity to be lost. That must include some consideration of the effects of AGW, but only as part of the overall picture.

In about 20-30 generations we need to reduce our population by around a factor of 10 peacefully and purposefully and then start working to get it down by another factor of 10 over the next couple of hundred generations.

War will probably play a role too, as competition for habitable areas occurs.

Let's hope we learn our lesson and the next interglaciation doesn't see the same thoughtlessly opportunistic growth behaviour.

Time for a change of climate?

Can we now debate the latest peer reviewed science on CFC’s as the old CO2 debate seems to have stalled?

“The peer-reviewed research by Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry at Waterloo University, was published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B”.

"The change in global surface temperature after the removal of the solar effect has shown zero correlation with CO2 but a nearly perfect linear correlation with CFCs,"

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/cfcs-are-the-real-culprit-in-global-warming/story-e6frg8y6-1226655487533

Next, poor Obama.

“But such a carbon price proposal is not coming back, even if Democrats reclaim the house and hold the Senate in the 2014 elections. House Democrats never want to hear the phrase again; next to Obamacare, voting for the cap-and-trade bill in 2009 that was defeated in the Senate the following year was the most unpopular vote they cast during that 2009-10 congressional term”.

“Meanwhile, Obama and the climate campaign are pushing uphill against public opinion as well as the basic economics of energy. The best public polls -- such as Pew and Gallup -- that ask the same questions year-on-year find public belief in catastrophic climate change continues to ebb. Pew's annual issue poll continues to rank climate change last out of the 20 most important issues facing the nation.

This is a movement that has run completely out of gas, so to speak”.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/world-commentary/obamas-carbon-war-running-out-of-gas/story-e6frg6ux-1226655450742

Antiseptic - Let's hope we learn our lesson and the next interglaciation doesn't see the same thoughtlessly opportunistic growth behaviour

Wishful thinking unfortunately. Western type humans are naturally opportunistic and as such there will always be those who regard money /profit as supreme God. The best hope for the ecosystem is that one of the non-money-focussed races will gain the upper hand.

Rafe Champion•a few seconds ago &#8722;

To understand how the climate scare took off so quickly, it helps to understand the infrastructure put in place by the anti-nuclear power movement that morphed out of the Ban the Bomb campaign of the 1950s. The late John Grover told the tale, http://www.the-rathouse.com/2011/Grover-Power.html

Praxidice, ALL humans are opportunistic because we all evolved from ancestry that was opportunistic. The evidence is everywhere on the planet, because this species of African chimpanzee has been so good at exploiting opportunities as they arise, especially the one offered by the extended favourable climate of the past 10,000 years or so. You are confusing a cultural artefact with a biological imperative.

Spindoc, I have no means of evaluating the CFC claim, but it is not hard to see that atmospheric CO2 concentration is a lag indicator of atmospheric temperature, since the mechanisms which contribute to it are temperature sensitive.

Since CO2 concentration is highly responsive to temperature changes, both from lows of less than 200 ppm and from highs of around double that, according to the evidence from ice cores and other geological records and is known to reduce radiative cooling at long IR wavelengths in proportion to concentration, it seems reasonable to suppose that the temperature limitations on the rate of source and sink processes are constraining a runaway positive feedback of both concentration and temperature, even when lots of it is present.

The same thing applies to water vapour, methane and other naturally occurring species, because they have both source and sink mechanisms which are an inherent feature of geochemistry.

On the other hand, CFCs have only one source - us - and no sink other than decomposition by high intensity UV in the upper atmosphere. Since they are causal in the destruction of ozone, they lead to an increase in the amount of high energy UV that penetrates to the lower atmosphere, where it is absorbed and transfers its energy to particles in the form of either kinetic energy or heat. An increase in kinetic energy means an increase in the ability to do work, including by colliding with other particles and transferring some of that energy as heat.

It stands to reason that a correlation exists, the only question is whether the net energy flux to the lower atmosphere caused by CFC-induced ozone depletion is of sufficient scale to be a significant causal influence.

http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/05/31/qing-bin-lu-revives-debunked-claims-about-cosmic-rays-and-cfcs/

We should act upon what we know and not upon what we wishfully think. I wish it was CFC's, volcanoes, anything but CO2, but it ain't. Nor are CFC's candidates for ocean acidification.

Anti and Coh should put up their arguments in scientific fora for scrutiny rather than banging on here. As far as I am aware, there is a world scientific consensus that something needs doing about CO2, so lets do it, be it by a Labor or LNP mechanism.

Luciferase, I've come late to the subject, having seen it to be essentially a religious debate in the long tradition of catastophism with little science to go on.

Having looked at it again recently I've seen that while the science is advancing, there is still a long way to go, because the climate emerges from the combined effects and interactions of so many different processes on so many timescales that it's unpredictable.

I'm simply trying to reason my way through it, rather than adopting an ideological position. As a result I've already said I agree with the proposition that reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions and sequestering what we can is a good idea, since CO2 clearly has a net heating effect. However that doesn't explain the fact that CO2 concentration cycles up and down with temperature, so clearly the other effects are more important, including rate/temperature relationships and of course, solar activity cycles. CFC's are a new factor altogether with a large effect on the upper atmosphere, so clearly their effect needs to be understood in the context of the whole system.

My reasoning isn't complex so I'd have thought that there would be many here who could follow it. If there aren't, then perhaps the subject is simply too complex for useful public discussion?

"My reasoning isn't complex...". Exactly so, but you need it tested in scientific fora rather than thinking aloud here. Yes there are extraneities that weigh into climate models, but through the fog we return to man's impact on CO2 levels as it both correlates and provides a mechanism for global warming that CFC and other theories so far do not.

We should act prudently on the scientific consensus. Bucking it is a political position, not a scientific one, for the vast majority of skeptics. Clinging uncritically to science that obfuscates the consensus, for political reasons, is a luxury that it may well turn out should not have been afforded.

We all know the real LNP position on AGW is that it is simply crap. The likelihood of Australia continuing its leadership role after September looks doomed if the political pundits are right. Indeed, with political developments in Europe and the US and India and China's relaxed attitude towards the environment it seem humanity is to allow an experiment upon itself. IMO, it will get very ugly on many fronts, but man the species will survive (though perhaps without your or my DNA, Antiseptic).

The AGW deal isn't nearly as complicated as some make it out to be.

Firstly, mankind has been pumping crap into the ecosystem for centuries

Secondly, the 'developer' (more correctly atilla, for its propensity to rape & pillage) mentality has destroyed a lot of the natural CO2 regulation system (trees. ocean algae etc)

Thirdly, the combination of the above can't possibly be a good thing

Fourthly, whether or not AGW is factual or otherwise, we do only have one planet on which to dwell, consequently it makes sense to look after it by minimizing the damage we do

I fully agree that carbon tax is a con intended purely to raise consolidated revenue, that said I sincerely wish both the red-headed witch & RAbbott would fall off the planet, ideally taking the Greens with them.

To background this debate it helps to start with the campaign against nuclear power and uranium mining that morphed out of the Ban the Bomb campaign in the 1950s and captured the worldwide environmental movement. This was charted by the late John Grover. http://www.the-rathouse.com/2011/Grover-Power.html It put in place the infrastructure to promote the climate scare with maximum impact.

Second, it is essential to understand how the IPCC is run by insiders and activists, with the scientists in a subordinate and supportive role, cherry-picked to provide the results required for the campaign. http://www.the-rathouse.com/2012/IPCC.html

Third is what Garth Paltridge called the “climate caper”, that is the corruption of science by Big Funding from Big Government and the abuse of models to fabricate scenarios of doom. http://www.the-rathouse.com/2011/Paltridge-Climate-Caper.html

He is a genuine climate scientists but not a part of the so-called “97%” of orthodoxy that supports the agenda of the IPCC and the alarmists.

And on top of all the political interference, there is still enough genuine science in the little-read major scientific reports of the IPCC to indicate that some warning (as much as we could expect in 100 years, until it actually stopped) will do more good than harm. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13019

The popular IPCC report is the thinner “executive summary” that is produced to promote the agenda.

It never ceases to amaze me how much male bovine dropping the big-business lobby & its friends can generate in attempts to justify doing stuff-all

Luciferase, there are lots of people pontificating about the subject here. If they don't know enough to be able to make useful comment on my casual ruminations, why on Earth are they bothering?