The trouble with Don Aitkin's articles on climate science is that Don does not understand enough of the basics and has tended to follow the Murdoch empire's lead that it is not happening or that humans are not contributing.

The fact that the Earth is currently warming and that humans are contributing to this is unequivocal. Despite the climate deniers cherry picking of the noise, the underlying signal is up.

What is unknown is how much the Earth will warm or whether we can stop it happening. These are dependent on so many factors that making predictions is difficult. Climate models give an idea of the potential range of scenarios that might come to be.

The real questions should not be "is the Earth warming?", but more "how much warming are we going to be comfortable with?" and "what action de we need to take to keep warming within the bounds we are comfortable with".

I admit to having too little expertise to answer either of these last questions accurately; however, I do know that taking no action will result in a world very different to the current world in 50 years time.

Obama has recently announced a plan for radical action on 'climate change' which -- assuming it is implemented by him and his successors -- is going to increase power costs substantially across the US and force many companies out of business, with the attendant unemployment and human misery that entails. According to the climate scientists themselves, the net outcome of this enormous, concerted attack on the US economy -- already staggering -- will be to reduce the projected temperature for Jan 1, 2100 by -- wait for it -- less than 0.02 degrees Centigrade.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/12/epa-leaves-out-the-most-vital-number-in-their-fact-sheet/

Is this not a ludicrous waste of resources for a minimal result? Is it not almost religious in its complete disregard for logic and reason in the pursuit of a meaningless goal?

Perhaps you should become a little more 'conservative' yourself, Chas. It might improve your reasoning powers.

@JonJ:

Surely you know that wattsupwiththat is a thoroughly discredited site which exists solely to publish stories and opinion contrary to the 97% or 98%.

If you want your point to be taken seriously, you will have to use statistics from reputable sources, preferably per reviewed ones.

Peter Lang, I understand you are a Geologist. You seem to equate climate science with a left wing point of view.
But, how would it be if people who do not have any experience in your specialist field saying that it is nothing but crap. I'm not saying that; but that is the process that is going on in relation to climate change.
You might bring up the matter of reverse continental drift and the view is seen to be just a mechanism to gain more funds. The spot where you are working may have been just lower than Iceland but moved to near the equator and when working there it is halfway between the equator and Iceland. The proof you have is coral fossils. It would be mighty disheartening to be screamed down by people without any experience if you were the first to make such a discovery. I understand that this reverse continental drift is a fairly new view of what has happened in the past.

Physicists tell us there is a reaction between CO2 and light.
Those people with a science background who are skeptics really need to be giving a view as to where climate science is going wrong.

Glaciologists working in the Arctic region get quite frustrated as the situation is moving quite quickly there in comparison to other areas. Temperatures are up form the long term average by 2C. Check out the paper by Lance Lesack. Natalia Shakhova has talked about the sea temperature of the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf as being 6-7 degrees higher than expected when working there Winter 2014.
Natalia Shakhova is wanting to investigate further methane leakage from the shallow waters of the ESAS. I gather that at present ice is being melted rapidly from this area. It is cold temperature that holds methane in place. Though already methane levels are being measured at 1950 ppb. Prior to the Industrial Revolution it had been something like 790 ppb.

Quote from: http://www.state.gov/e/oes/rls/remarks/2012/196004.htm

" ...A power company executive was quoted in the New York Times last week (July 26) saying “we’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now,” and it’s starting to look that way. Consider:

A searing heat wave struck Moscow in late June 2010, spawning massive wildfires, killing tens of thousands, and cutting Russia's wheat crop by 40%, contributing to a sharp spike in world food prices.
The 2010 floods in Pakistan were the most expensive natural disaster in Pakistani history, killing nearly 2000 people, affecting 20 million, and causing $9.5 billion in damage.
Heavy rains triggered floods and landslides in Colombia in 2010 and 2011, killing over 600 people and causing nearly $7 billion in damage, the biggest natural disaster in the nation’s history.
The Queensland flood of 2010-2011 was Australia's most expensive natural disaster, with a price tag as high as $30 billion.
In 2010, the second “100-year drought” in five years in the Amazon led to net emissions of 5 billion tons of CO2 – a stunning amount roughly equivalent to a fifth of the global CO2 emissions produced that year from burning fossil fuels.
In Greenland, more ice melted in 2010 than any time since the start of accurate record-keeping in 1958.
This year, Colorado has been ravaged by wildfires that burned an area six times the size of Manhattan. In 2011, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, and Minnesota all had record-breaking wildfires, with Texas losing an area larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.
Severe drought is currently scorching nearly 40% of the continental United States, the largest stretch of country this dry in nearly a half-century, affecting 88% of the nation’s corn crop...."

There were huge floods in 2013, and there have been major weather events around the globe in 2014.

The ice level in the Arctic region at present is identical to how it was in 2012, a record year. The Arctic area has it's ice minimum in September of every year. It is weather events from now on that will determine whether ice levels diminish or increase.

Chas, I can see nothing in your resume to indicate you would be any more likely to be correct in your assumptions than Don Aitkin. In fact it is my experience that the most usual failures in emergency management has been at head office, where failure to understand just what was happening actually reduced the effectiveness of the troops on the ground.

Queensland's recent flood, the Canberra & Victorian fires are recent glaring examples of incompetence at the top of these organisations.

Given this fact, I find it very unlikely that your ideas are any where near as well considered as Dons.