Yeah really,

His name is Dr Bill Worner and he lectures in Asian Economies among other things at the Uni Western Sydney.

He knows his stuff, and he is defintely no greeny, that comment was just one small aside he made, but its very true.

Infact all economists should think like this if they are TRUE economists. After all, economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources - We rarely recognise or act as though the earth's resources are scarce.

A true economist would take a genuine long term outlook and realise that the way we are using and allocating the earth's resources cant continue forever, but we like to conveniantly ignore this fact.

Just looking at Bob's other articles in a similar vein,he must own a lot of oil and coal shares.

The polar caps are melting and our weather and climate is changing.We are stripping the vegetation from this planet polluting the land,atmosphere, oceans and reducing bio-diversity through extinctions as never seen before.[except when the dinosaurs disappeared 120 milliom yrs ago]Can we wait another 120 million yrs for things to improve?

You cannot eat more than a portion of large ocean fish per week for fear of mercury poisoning.Pregnant mothers none at all.

Once China and India swing into full industrialisation,pollution and demand on resources will more than double.

There is nothing wrong with being cautious since we have but one good planet in this solar system and no one has seen or sensed another as good as this mother earth,let alone be able to travel through time to get there,if we do find one.

I'm not being alarmist,just concerned that the changes may be irreversible and may well be the death nell for our little spaceship called earth.If people like Bob like playing Russian Rulett with their children's future,then it doesn't say much for our humanity.We don't deserve to live on this planet.

Why do we hurry such ot our demise?
The universe of years billions aged,
Has secrets for our children's surprise!

Hey on a lighter note since there is a religious tilt in the what the article says. Why did God not have a 11th commandment?

Thou shall not burn Hydrocarbons, thou will make things very very hot.

I think some of the people posting here should do some more research before opening their mouths...or keyboards..LOL

If you believe in man having a siginficant influence on climate change then you also believe the IPCC policy document reports, MBH98 ( michael mann et al report on climate change)etc. that the media & government are always right and that scientists that disagree are all stupid. mad, deranged or otherwise mentally deficent. You believe that political/environmental retoric is always correct & that any data showing them to be wrong is manipulated or incorrect.

Go do a search of global warming & find a few serious sites that deal with the issues based in recorded scientific data, rather than ideas & retoric. Look at global trends over the last 100 years & you will see a warmer period in the middle ages...with no greenhouse gasses from man, look at the temperature & carbon record & see how the CO2 levels follow the temperature change, not cause it, look at upper & lower atmospheric temperatures & tell me they show an uncharacteristic increase, . There is more but if you realy wnat to know the truth go look,if you are happy being lied to.....suit yourself.

Live for today for tomorrow we may die philosophy mike os.What if this is the only planet in the universe that semi-intelligent beings such as humans happened to evolve?It shows no responsibility for future generations.

Personally I've noticed our climate and weather change rapidly in the last 10yrs.It is not that we want to believe that climate and pollution is taking it's toll because we all know life will be harder.Getting off burning fossil fuels over the next 50yrs will have a lot of positive outcomes.

Many nations will be independant of oil companies and they will loose their oligopoly power,no more fighting in the Middle East over security of oil supplies to the rest of the world.Cleaner air and healthier people in the cities.The down side is we will all live longer and be more of a burdon to our children,and petrol heads will have to forego their throbbing, pulsating extentions of their sexuality,the V8.

As nuclear power grows the real downside is the secure storage of waste and the greater chance of nuclear conflict.It only takes one lunatic.

We have no choice,fossil fuels will run out one day and it better to be forewarned and prepared.

mike os,

Sure, there are certain errors in the IPCC reports, as there are bound to be in any scientific investiagtion of this magnitude.
However, the IPCC third assesement report, as stated by Rob Gelbspan on Lateline is "the largest peer reviewed scietific undertaking in human history". For a start that gives it some weight I think.

As I mentioned before, something like the warmest 8 years on record have all occurred in the last decade. Sure, this could just be a natural trend - thats entirely possible.
But given it is a known fact that CO2 warms the atmosphere (does anyone dispute that??!) it just seems silly to keep pumping out millions upon millions of tonnes of it!

Even if we are wrong, it does not hurt to adpot the 'precautionary principle' does it? What is the worst that will happen if we are wrong? As Arjay says, we will have cut our dependence on fossil fuels, we will still enjoy all the comforts of life (Im sure they will come up with a gutsy hydrogen based V8 equivilant before too long) without the guilt of knowing what it may be costing.
Sounds great to me!

If we are right though...Well, then what happens?
Well at the low level, probably more extreme weather, especially hailstorms like the 99 Sydney one (over $1B damage), hurricanes etc. Less rainfall for us, which we defintely dont need.

On a world scale, food shortages, probably wars over water, food etc as climates become unpredictable.

Worst case scenario Europe goes into another ice age, food shortages / environmental refugees all over the world, up to 1B dead...

Seems to me that it wouldnt hurt just to be safe and assume climate change is real...