NASA thanks. There is more to ice melting than C02 it's called climate change. If you don't think there is a link, that is your prerogative.
This has been going on since the 70's when i noticed different happenings. QLD is not a perfect state for recognising change because of humidity, but you will suffer the consequences.
Co2 locked up in Perma Frost is for real. The world's Co2 output is in decline. The rest is up to you.

I have one of Pindyck's books on the shelf so I hesitate to criticise. I agree that modelling must be difficult. For example the WA wheatbelt or the Perisher skifield will still have good years under a drying trend so an expiry date is hard to pinpoint. However there are non-climate reasons which could be quantified. For example there is an early mover advantage to weaning ourselves off coal. We'll avoid some health and social upheaval problems while getting further up the low carbon learning curve.

It is exceeding strange we nixed $25 carbon pricing while apparently endorsing the RET's high abatement cost, the average figure I recall being $59 per tCO2. I think both oil and gas shortages will loom in the next decade so we could be saved by the bell, the bell curve of depletion that is. We'll have to decarbonise regardless of what some climate models say.

Thanks, Mark. You make us feel less guilty about generating smoke and CO2 by putting another log – a renewable fuel -- on the fire on a day of below-normal temperature – and there is colder weather on its way, if you believe the weather forecasters: “A strong cold front is set to deliver heavy snow and wild winds for much of Australia” – see http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/a-strong-cold-front-is-set-to-deliver-heavy-snow-and-wild-winds-for-much-of-australia/story-e6frflp0-1227434649892

Of course, we could have turned on our electric heaters. But we are deterred by the mandatory pursuit of RETs that effectively line the pockets of the unreliable-uneconomic-renewable-energy entrepreneurs who have so forced up energy prices that consumer pockets are quickly emptied.

By ignoring the fact that there is no empirical scientific evidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions cause dangerous global warming, billions and billions of dollars have gone up in smoke thanks to the pointless pursuit of RETS. Yet, there is no measurable impact on temperature.

Sorry, got to pull you up there Mark. The link you provided
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo

has a graph that shows Annual Mean Growth Rate for CO2 at Mauna Loa, and it clearly shows that the growth rate has been increasing pretty much decade on decade since the 60s, an increase in the rate of increase is by definition acceleration.

The rate of increase is in CO2 is definitely accelerating, according to the data from your sources.

Anyway, this whole thing is a two-edged sword isn't it? If the modelling for the cost of environmental damage is BS, then of course any modelling that purports to show some benefit or no cost is also BS isn't it?

I will have to ask you for support if I have to point this next time someone mentions that some random academic or somesuch has a calculated an overall benefit from climate change.

You'll support me on that right?

Bugsy - you're right.. it does show a decade on decade increase.. I actually point that out in my book I sent you. Nothing much has changed since then. The point I was making is that its nothing like the increases that would be required for the doomsday scenarios we are bombarded with .. for example its still about 2 ppm a year (the year on year current is 2.6 or so but that figure varies a lot) and has been for some time - well over a decade. The increase is slow and steady. Reports often talk about doubling of CO2 concentrations (from when?) but we're not going to get there fast.

In this I've left aside the point about what it might be due to or whether natural variation might swamp that increase. Sufficed to say we don't have a disaster yet..

Come on doog, the ice has been melting since the little ice age. It does appear to have stopped in the Arctic, increasing for the last few years, & of course we all know it has been increasing for decades in the Antarctic.

It sounds like you have been eating someone else's straw for a few years.