Green energy!? Well, Yes. And the subtitle of a book on thorium, super fuel. By prize winning investigate journalist Richard Martin.

As you say, ice ages produce the most famine and are heralded and accompanied by a waning phase of the sun.

Ours has been in this lower activity cycle since the mid-seventies, all while we have experienced some of the hottest years on record and more extreme weather events, alongside increased average wind speed.

And the displaced by desertification, refugee population eking out a miserable existence in this or that refugee camp, is now north of fifty million. Displaced by desertification and seasonal rains which fail to show season after season.

Yes, someday we could be farming in Antartica, and mining the artic for coal and gas? And given the ice melts that accompany it trillions in damage to the world's most populated coastal cities!

As ours are inundated we lose 70% of our total economy! CO2 may well increase plant growth (the greenhouse effect) Buf far poorer in nutrient value. Not to worry we'll all b able to migrate to cooler climes and grow our food there? Even as the oceans become even more acidic and overfished by starving billions?

Yes, no need to worry Viv, just shovel that coal and open the throttle.
And full speed ahead for there are no longer any summer ice floes to interrupt the northern passage, as millions of tons of formerly frozen methane assists the defrost of the northern tundra and Antarctica.

Anyway, you and I will be pushing the daisies by then and unperturbed by the destruction o all life as we know it as we follow the example of Venus. "Suitably modified" by CO2!

Think, it possibly could have sustained human life once, now it just melts the rubber soles of your boots, even at the poles!

The atmosphere is much thicker given all the oceans have evaporated to become part of the atmosphere! And consequently, trap even more heat!
TBC Alan B

Just as fossil-fuelled combustion engines progressively replaced steam so also will nuclear power and electricity.

Why, one can now buy electric powered tractors that'll do around six hours work before needing to be recharged!?

We already mine open cut mines with electric draglines and carry the spoils away with diesel-electric trucks, which could just as easily be all electric, completely autonomous and recharged by underground magnetic interfaces as they dump their loads.

And we already see the production of all-electric heavy haulage trucks, which could be similarly recharged in/at obligatory truck stops?

The best future for coal will be as a source of coal-derived petroleum and diesel fuel as we transition to an all-electric nuclear powered and vastly more prosperous future!

Given we will have liberated ourselves from a slavish dependency on ultra expensive fossil fuels and replaced it with something cheap enough to effectively drought-proof Australia and turn our desert regions into productive and ultra reliable food bowls able to accommodate millions more.

Moreover, create an example that ends both poverty and famine wherever it's replicated. Furthermore, ends many conflicts fought over receding supplies of potable water and arable land.

All the prevents it are coal addicts like the airhead Author and completely self-serving greed!
Alan B.

Struth, what a dumb article! You'd think that, as a farmer, Viv would know that the limiting factors in farm production are normally economic rather than technical! And that crop failures are usually due to extreme weather events which occur far more frequently in a warmer climate.

Well for someone who professes to be a farmer, I can't believe that Viv Forbes completely fails to understand the drivers of productivity.

In Australia, too little water is the main contributor to low productivity, not too little heat. Too little heat is only a problem in places where it is frozen for too much of the year. Climate warming is going to be fabulous for agriculture in Greenland, but a disaster for agriculture in Australia. Winter growing seasons will get shorter as crops will have to finish before earlier spring heat hits. Winter and spring rainfall across the south and east will decrease leading to more droughts. Summer cropping will become more risky due to higher potranspiration demands using more of what little water there is.

"extreme weather events which occur far more frequently in a warmer climate."

Sounds pretty scary, heh? Now if only there was convincing empirical evidence for that claim. But alas....

These are a few quotes from the most recent IPCC report....

"There is low confidence in any observed long-term... increases in tropical cyclone activity"

" There is low confidence in observed trends in...tornadoes and hail"

On floods "there is..low confidence at the global scale regarding even the sign of these changes"

" low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences"

"There is low confidence in projections of changes in large-scale patterns of natural climate variability".

and so on, and on and on. Go to the SREX and search "low". There is a large amount of "low confidence".

FYG "low confidence" is IPCCese for, we just don't know.

But those who want to push the scare just continue to claim that these things are/will get worse. Remember when we were told that hurricane/cyclone/typhoon activity would get worse? didn't happen.
In fact the opposite.

But as far as the great GW debate is concerned, the facts and the data long since ceased to matter.

Viv has always been at the belligerent end of the so-called sceptics. There are some who feel that the way to combat those who say we're all gunna die because of warming, is to assert we're all gunna die because of lack of warming or cooling.

In terms of food, things are going along just nicely. We create more food per capita pretty much every year (despite population growth) and have done for the last 50 years or so. We currently have the capacity to grow even more but the need to do so isn't there.

When/if things start to deteriorate then we might need to make a few adjustments but that appears to be somewhat in the future. There are several options if the need arises especially now that the green zealots appear to be surrendering in their anti-science opposition to GM foods.

I'm in the camp that thinks we are entering a cooling phase and that the decades around 2000 may be seen to have been the high point of the warming phase.

But that doesn't mean we are entering a new ice age, or not at any rate that ought to concern us or our grandkids. We might be entering a new Dalton minimum or even a Maunder minimum. But unlike our ancestors who suffered badly in those times, we are much better placed to ride out such a cycle and continue to thrive.

Zealots and extremists on both sides are inevitable ad probably of some value in setting the limits of the insanity. The problem is they tend to shout down those with a more nuanced view being that we aren't gunna suffer from any purported warming and we aren't gunna suffer when the warming ameliorates.

This really is a load of rubbish. Yes, the trend is for global cooling were it not for greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming. One degree Centigrade so far and expected to be 1.5 by 2040. If it goes to 2 degrees that will be the end of tropical coral reefs and all the associated fisheries. And while the acreage of farmland increases in the northern hemisphere, it will be too hot to farm in the tropics. On balance, it will be one big negative for farming. And all the studies show that global warming will reduce the nutrition in food staples, not least rice. The relative amounts of nitrogen (the basis of amino acids and proteins) will decline compared to the calories.