Rusty (the UQ tutor),

If I had a dollar for every time I see someone come on a forum like this claiming to have some sort of special education or expertise, I'd have more than enough to pay for UQ tuition. Of coarse these claims are entirely untestable which is why they are made. It dispenses with the need to actually show some logic and sense. Inevitably, these self-proclaimed experts make some kindergarten level error, and disappear from the forum as quickly as they came, unlamented and unremembered. I assume they reappear later with some other nickname, claiming as usual to have some special knowledge with absolves them from actually demonstrating any learning.

Anyway...
"My own preference is that no-one sitting in "judgement" has not Recently re-sat at absolute minimum, first-year thermodynamics or chemistry."

Why? The chemistry of climate change isn't the issue. No one, at least no one of any repute, disputes the basic chemistry of the greenhouse effect. No one, at least no one of any repute, disputes that, all else being equal, an increase in the various GHG will cause some warming. The issue is not whether there will be some warming but how much, how quickly and how dangerous it is.

Rusty, having an RC to look into the basic science would be like having a RC into whether we revolve on our axis.

Strange that someone so well versed in the topic would make such a rookie mistake </sarc>

I've said a RC would be useless but if it were held,better that it be run by, say, an economist since the whole issue of where we'll be in 2100 is predicated on economic scenarios that result in the various RCP. Or perhaps it could be run by an expert in modelling who could look into the efficacy of the various climate models which so wonderfully predicted the hiatus </sarc>. Or perhaps a statistician, or a solar astrophysicist since the big yellow thing might have a say in what happens in the next 100 years. Or perhaps....

I have been reading the comments and wish to make two points...to start with

First, it seems apparent that many discussants are unaware that many scientists disagree with the IPCC executive summary. There is quite a disconnect between the summary and the modelling and other data in the AR5 and previous reports. Many scientists hold different positions, but do not get a look-in because they are on the ‘wrong’ side. I am referring to e.g., Freeman Dyson, Mike Hulme, Judith Curry, Ross McKitrick, James Lovelock (originator of the Gaia hypothesis), Roy Spencer, Stephen McIntyre, Richard Lindzen (meteorologist, lead author IPCC AR3) and Ivar Giaever (Nobel laureate in Physics).

There are also many Australian scientists who hold similar sceptical views now out of favour. I list a few, who are qualified to be called ‘climate scientists’. Michael Asten, Professor of geophysics, Monash University; Robert M. Carter, former head of the school of earth sciences at James Cook University; Stewart Franks, Professor of Environmental Engineering, U Tasmania, current President of the International Commission on the Coupled Land Atmosphere System (ICCLAS); William Kininmonth, meteorologist, Head Australia’s National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology from 1986 to 1998, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology; Garth Paltridge, retired chief research scientist, CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research and retired director of the Institute of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre, visiting fellow Australian National University; Murry Salby, Former professor at Macquarie University, author of two textbooks on atmospheric science.

Second point. It is mean-spirited to libel the author of the article because he belongs to a minority party or because he is not a climate scientist. It is similarly mean-spirited to persist with the term denier because of its obvious allusion to those who dont believe in the holocaust. By analogy, not all believers in the holy trinity are high priests. Similarly one does not have to be a high priest to be sceptical about the concept of the holy trinity.

Here you all go again.
Pages and pages of argument all of it pointless.
It does not matter whether AGW is true or not.
It is the wrong argument.

We have to leave oil & coal before they leave us !
We have a limited time in which to use them to build the next energy regime.
Solar & wind cannot build our new energy systems and we need to use
the coal & oil for the reconstruction of our civilisation because if
we miss this opertunity we will go back to the 19th century IF we are lucky.

For God's sake WAKE UP !

@ megatherium, Monday, 14 December 2015 5:02:21 PM

Terms Of Reference of a Royal Commission would have to include thorough examination of how and why scientists with a different and/or conflicting point of view are gagged, shut out of climate change debate.

Is there any scientific evidence there is only one cause of anthropogenic climate change, being emissions of CO2?

Could there be more than one cause of increasingly severe weather conditions?

Can the United Nations justify failing to take due action to examine all possible causes of climate change?

New data. LOL.
Cattle in Australia emit 24% less methane than previously thought.

"Thought"?

Was this new data presented at the Paris climate summit during the past 2 weeks

Oop's, I forgot the link:
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4371857.htm