Kenny,

I work for no pressure group. My primary interest is that the arguments for anthropogenic global warming simply do not hold water. They are assertions and assumptions based on little or no solid evidence. The three pillars of AGW theory are weak. The correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature is poor (because often temperature rise has occurred before CO2 increase); the "hockey stick" graph has been discredited; and the much-loved computer models of climate have known errors.

I'll agree with you that life of earth would be nigh on impossible without the presence of greenhouse gases. (By the way, despite what the media may say, water vapour is the most influential of these gases, not CO2).

Call me mad if you like, but my understanding is that the failure of global (and Australian) temperatures to exceed their 1998 values is a sign that there has been no further warming for the last 7 years. Sure there has been warming in some regions but there has been cooling in others and the average across the globe indicates no rise in temperature.

Unless we know what is causing temperature change then it is pointless to spend huge amolunts of money on something that has no reasonable guarantee of success.

I note, from the ABC online News today, that at the current UK conference the IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said that climate science was still in its infancy.

Then he showed his lack of impartiality (as is demanded by the IPCC's charter) by saying that even if today's emissions were immediately stopped, temperatures will continue to rise for generations to come because of the gas which has already been spewed into the atmosphere.

Unfortunately for him, the evidence doesn't support that assertion because temperatures have fallen since 1998 while CO2 has increased.

John

PS. I'll reply to Des's comment later.

Snowman,

On what basis can you argue that temperatures have not risen over the last 7 years?

What sources of data would indicate net cooling versus warming is neutral?

Peter,

You ask "On what basis can you argue that temperatures have not risen over the last 7 years?"

For all years up to 2003 please see http://www.meto.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Annual/land+sst_web.txt

...and for 2004 see the WMO webpage at http://www.wmo.ch/news/news_december2004.html. (If that doesn't work directly, go to http://www.wmo.ch/index-en.html, then go to "news", then to "Archive", then to "Dec 2004" where you will find the comment and link to a Word document about half-way down the page. Sorry but the WMO website uses frames.)

(Incidentally that WMO note is just about a comment about El Nino conditions and they have a very strong natural influence on temperature. I've also recently heard of a study that tracked El Nino-induced warm water as it moved north. The warm water took about 8 years to reach the polar regions. I guess that might be why there are some signs of polar warming in the regions where the currents bring waters from the south. The 1998 warm water will just about be at the poles by now.)

cheers

John

Stay with us Des Griffin, your patient explanations are an important counter to the muddled tripe and self-interested tosh from the Institute of Public Affairs, and Alan Oxley, amongst others.

The following extract is from "The Book on Bush: How George W Bush (Mis)leads America", by Eric Alterman, Mark Green, Viking 2004, p13:

"Fewer than sixty days into his [first term] presidency Bush declared that he was dropping his campaign pledge to cap carbon dioxide emissions...What then, one asks, had spurred the president to change his mind? A White House spokesman explained that "CO2 should not have been included as a pollutant during the campaign. It was a mistake." Bush himself argued that "important information" had been brought to his attention and that he was "responding to reality".

"That "important information" apparently came directly from the oil and coal industries. Among the documents ultimately prised out of Vice President Cheney's National Energy Policy Task Force was the resignation letter of Jane Hughes Turnbull, a member of the National Coal Council, which warned that Bush's reversal was "profoundly shortsighted [and] and obvious and expedient response to industry interests." The numerous emails and letters of gratitude from coal, oil, and gas industry groups also found among the task force documents hint at the hammerlock in which these businesses held Bush during those early months...

To justify his turnabout on global warming, President Bush has had to reject two decades of climate research - research on which the United States has spent $18 billion between 1990 and 2000, more than Japan and the entire EU combined. Since taking office Bush has repeatedly asked panels of scientists and industry leaders for input, only to disregard it when the results don't please him...

"In 2001 additional reports from the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unequivocally stated that global warming is occurring and that man-made pollution is responsible. Even the Global Climate Coalition, an industry lobby group that for years published anti-climate-change reports, disbanded that year as its members found themselves on the wrong side of scientific and public opinion. Philip Watts, the chairman of Royal Dutch Shell (once a member of the coalition), summed up the revised position of many businesses: "Amid all this uncertainty, we have seen and heard enough in Shell to say we stand with those who believe there is a problem and that it is related to the burning of fossil fuels...

"...the Bush White House has made a habit of of altering data or simply removing references to global warming from otherwise comprehensive environmental reports. The EPA deleted the entire global warming section from its landmark Report on the Environment after the White House Office of Management and Budget insisted that the EPA inject industry-sponsored scientific reports into the chapter. An internal EPA memo leaked to the National Wildlife Federation captured the agency's frustration: "Conclusions of the [National Research Council] are discarded...Uncertainty is inserted where there is essentially none...Most important, the [Report] no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."..

"A 2002 memorandum sent to Republican strategists by Frank Luntz, the pollster who helped craft the 1994 "Contract with America", advises Republicans to call themselves "conservationists", not "environmentalists"' to talk of "climate change" instead of the more alarming "global warming"; and to foster skepticism about the science of environmental problems..."

Grace,

Please explain why the quoting of observational measurements is "self-interested trip"

Please also explain why a proper scientific refutation of Mann's "hockey stick" is "self-interested tripe". (And while you are at it, please explain why Mann's refusal to fully disclose his method and data does NOT make his work "self interested tripe".)

... and why my quoting from a UK Met Office press statement makes my comment "self interested tripe".

... and why an explanation why the known warming caused by carbon dioxide is very small makes it "self interested tripe"

... and why it is that you believe that voting on scientific matters is a suitable way for science to proceeed - or is that your own self interested tripe?

On the subject of consensus, I am sure that Christians are of the consensus that God exists but does their consensus make it at all true?

My introduction of a religious analogy is not an accident. It seems the man-made global warming is accepted on faith and belief rather than rational scientific methods. That belief sounds to me like self-delusional tripe.

cheers

John

Snowman, I thought your name was John McLean, not Alan Moran or Alan Oxley. I am actually quite interested in what you have to say, and I have made no comment on your personal motivations. However, I do find Des Griffin much more convincing. Carry on.