Three or four weeks ago we had a couple of scorchers, and all the hacks were screaming it was sure fire proof of AGW.

The last week and a half (in my area at least) we have had a spate of days & nights more reminiscent of winter than late spring, and the hacks are hiding under their beds --typical!

Dear Poirot. There were scientists trained in climate subjects who confidently predicted that the Earth was returning to a new Ice Age. Now they are saying that the Earth is heating up. There were people who knew all about climate and weather twho predicted that "the dams would never fill " and that "Australia did not get bushfires in September." They were wrong.

There were scientists who knew all about agriculture and horticulture who predicted that humans were going to run out of food. They were wrong. There were scientists who work in the oil industry who predicted that we would run out of oil by the 1990's. They were wrong.

There were scientists who know all about comnputers who predicted catastrophe over the Millennium bug. They were wrong. Same for meteorites and epidemics.

Scientists need to earn their living, and if they can think up a doomsday scenario which will panic governments into giving them millions, they will do it. And they will be backed by the public service who can't help themselves where it comes to empire building with the public picking up the tab.

What we have have a dispute between two branches of science with the climatologists and their computer modelling predicting catastrophe from carbon emissions, and the geologists with their physical proof that the Earth's atmosphere once contained 50m times more carbon dioxide than at present, and the Earth was colder than it is now.

The biggest factor in Earth's temperature is the amount of energy output from the sun which varies, and there is nothing we can do about that. Although I hear that Tim Flannery is trying to start a new government department that will regulate the sun and tax it's output.

SPQR,:
If you had read and absorbed any of the climate science about AGW you would have realised that there will be "extremes" of weather events. That means both hot and cold, wet and dry.

Poirot:
I admire your persistence in trying to educate the cretinous suburbanites but it is a futile task. They are not able to reason or are trolls only able to argue nonsense.

LEGO:
"I don't even click on them, because I was once invited to click on a link and I got the worst virus I have ever had, so bad that my computer shop recommended that I retire that computer. "

Just wipe the drive and reinstall the system next time this happens, you will be able to continue to annoy us then with your old computer.

LRGO,

With all due respect, this statement is trite.

"What we have have a dispute between two branches of science with the climatologists and their computer modelling predicting catastrophe from carbon emissions, and the geologists with their physical proof that the Earth's atmosphere once contained 50m times more carbon dioxide than at present, and the Earth was colder than it is now."

The overwhelming majority of scientists concerned with the "many" disciplines associated with climate "agree" with AGW....that is - their investigations, and their papers confirm those findings.

Yes there are a minority who dispute it, like the author of the DVD you cited, but they are a "vast minority"

You can waffle on about a time when C02 was this and when it was that...the point is that humans have enjoyed a "rare" epoch when planetary climate has been stable enough for human civilisation to thrive.

There are a plethora of mitigating factors dictating earth's climate...which for some reason all the "skeptics' appear to think are ignored by scientists when conducting investigations in their own particular areas of climate science.

Here's Muller again:

"How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase."

Humans burning fossil fuels at the rate they have since the Industrial Revolution have contributed to what is considered on a geological time scale as - a "sudden outgassing".

Sudden outgassings change planetary climate.

Robert LePage,

Yes I'm familiar with the AGW advocates catch all clause. Unless it is --Goldilocks like --not too hot and not too cold, not too dry and not too wet it has to be AGW at play.

It has never been a Goldilocks world!

Hey, is it safe for you guys to crawl out from under your bed yet?

Thanks Poirot, you've answered my question.

I will not bother with you, or [deleted for abuse] Robert LePage, again.