Then there's this, from the article:

"Wood was used for heating and cooking, charcoal for smelting and smithing, wind or water-power for pumps mills and ships, and whale oil for lamps."

Sounds like Vera Lynn was prophesying a return to these halcyon days, when she sang "Whale oil, meat again".

Curmudgeon,
'Tis not me who's redefining what is meant by pollutant (indeed I've seen at least one dictionary give carbon dioxide as an example of a pollutant).

Viv was restricting the definition to local pollutants because it suited his disengenuous argument to do so.

Your claim that "extra CO2 has no local effect" is also incorrect: in certain environments it does have an adverse local effect, such as in calcarious soils where the extra CO2 increases the solubility of calcium, adversely affecting the trees' uptake of iron.

The declining pH of the oceans, which adversely affects the shells of some marine creatures, is a local problem on a global scale, and its damage to the food chain could be catastrophic if CO2 levels get much higher.

You are generally correct when you say CO2 improves plant growth. However this doesn't always make plants more productive — sometimes it Results in them producing more toxins instead.

Hi Cobber,

57.9 asserted something, I knocked it back. I didn't say anything more, certainly not anything about whether or not we would have enjoyed it, about its causes or about what life-forms existed at the time. Simply that CO2 levels had, at some time in the past, been much higher than now. No more than that.

Robert,

Then thank Christ you're not.

Agronomist,

So 2005 was the hottest year ever ? otherwise why not say that 2013 was, and the last two years yadaa yada ? What happened in 2006-2012 ? A pause ?

Thank you, Pericles, I'm honoured. So Jesus probably had no same-age playmates ?

I was trying to suggest to King Robert that exponents of population-reduction never seem to spell out how they intend, once they become Ian McKellens of the World, they will go about it. Is it because the implications are too horrific, even for them, or is it that they are too closed-minded to think through those implications ? "Here's an idea. End of."

I confidently predict that in the next two or three hundred years, after 2060, world population will decline. By entirely natural processes, give or take the odd IS outburst this century.

Joe

Absolutely correct Loudmouth. There was a pause in the increase in temperatures in Australia between 2006 and 2012. There was another pause in 2014. Actually it has started cooling.

Some people see the doughnut. Others spend their time worrying about the hole.

As the Secretary General of the UN uttered yesterday.

Is is the richest trendies from suburbs surrounding Canberra's Capital Hill (Parliament House) who are the worlds greatest air polluters.

It is they - he went onto say - that feed wood into their trendy expensive SLOW COMBUSTION HEATERS - that results in a caustic cloud of smog around Capital Hill during cold Winter nights.

The Pope added that their oversize SUVs and frequent holidays by ozone destroying jets to whoring shores mark these Canberrans out as untermenschen. Make Ebola compulsory! He said.

"Shoot-em all, then sack-em" said Abbott.

My couzie-bro Leroy said "Dayz all Greenie Hoze"

There U have it Ye OLO Gentlemen (and Ladies all too rare ;-)

Why go against science, are they coludists. That is to easy. Religion comes in to the denialist way of thinking. As with Abbott religion plays a big part in his crap theory.
When the oceans start cooling you may have something until then you have nothing.