"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945
Of course, the above can be true both for the pro-AGW people and the anti-AGW people.
Both sides have economic and political motivations for their claims to the truth.
I’m not a climatologist, so who to believe?
We know that the climate has changed enormously throughout the Earth’s history, without any input from mankind. Only a few years ago, but probably before most of the pro-AGW posters here were alive, there was the "Global Cooling-new ice age is coming" scare.
Nowadays, all the doomsayers have changed to the AGW theory.
The fact that the pro-AGW people insist that there is no question about AGW anymore; references to “compelling consensus” and “the debate is over”, coupled with the fact that I know that dissent exists, leads me to disbelieve the pro-AGW people, or at least not take them too seriously.
Mark Byrne’s political motivation is obvious, as he has been kind enough to spell it out for us.
The debate appears to be more about ideology than science.
However, what about some speedy investment in nuclear energy, just in case?

Froggie,

The science is settled. Global warming is happening.

People have a variety of reasons for disputing the fact.

Nuclear energy is not as benign for the world as might be supposed, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, construction and dismantling of nuclear power plants requires substantial fossil fuel energy. I have not seen an account that factors that into the per-KWh price of nuclear energy, nor on its impact on greenhouse gas emission.

More importantly, I am unaware of any nuclear plant that has been fully decommissioned, with low radioactive waste securely stored for the thousand or so years required for it to become just part of the scenery, and for its high radioactive components stored for the necessary hundred thousand to million years. So we don't actually know what this is going to cost. An op-ed piece in The Australian Financial Review last week, "Nuclear power now an affordable option" by Martin Sevior quoted charges of around US0.2c/ KWh to US0.5c as a charge sufficient to cover decommissioning, but provided no evidence as to how that was arrived at.

Nuclear fusion energy (fusing hydrogen nuclei to produce helium and other byproducts) is less messy and produces less radioactive waste than fission (splitting uranium or plutonium). Unfortunately the technology has remained 20 years away from full commercialisation for the past half century; indications are that it will continue to do so.

Solving COMPLEX biospheric systems without due regard to TOTAL energy inventories is typical of specialist (biology/climateology) scientists who are not trained in Applied Mathematics as a first tier subject. People do what they are trained for and if that means solving one dynamic within an exceedingly complex system like the biosphere then that is what they will do. This is a mistake. Scientists make mistakes like anyone. It is arrant nonsense to assume the IPCC report is not based on this type of mistake.

As time goes on from here, the sheer unpredictability of imminent climate changes will all but rule out global warming as a cause. Global warming theory is very specific about the global homogeneity of it's effects and the gradual increase in its effects with time. The 2006 US hurricane season starting in June will be worse than 2005 and will all but squash greenhouse warming theories because the change is occurring too quickly. Additionally thermodynamic data correlation will be tested and refined in these coming hurricane events.

And remember, the Earth was deemed FLAT in the dark ages because the leading power of the time, the Catholic Church wanted it that way to control the populace and keep it in its place. No discussion would be entered into except by the executioner's axe ... eh Mike?

There does not need to be greenhouse warming for climate changes to be real and violent consequences of human activity. The bulk of our wastes and the greatest heat capacitance is in coastal pollution plumes from urbanisiation, agriculture and mining. Even 40% of all greenhouse gases end up in the oceans. Only rank amateur scientists will continue to ignore this vital fact and the fact that marine creatures are crying out, like the Thame's whale, to tell us: "If we are in harm's way then so are YOU".

The extent of the contribution of human activity to global warming may or may not be significant. I suspect global warming is mostly due to natural cycles but human activity is probably not helping things. I may be wrong but it hardly matters what the cause is as it is extremely unlikely that anyone (either government or your average citizen) is going to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to make any real difference - at least until it is far too late. We will however need to determine what we are up against and work out how to cope with the changes as we can be sure no-one is going to stop it from happening. That is where the IPCC comes in. No doubt someone will be making a few millions out of it somewhere along the line but it still needs to be done.

If there really is a serious gap in the IPCC collaboration then something needs to be done about it. KAEP - if your calculations are correct then what are you doing to fill in the gaps?

With or without global warming it is a known fact that pollution is causing significant damage to our environment and health and for this reason alone we should be determining the cause and extent of the damage and doing whatever we can to minimise it. Thermodynamics alone cannot solve everything.

I can't quite see the point of the article - is Judy trying to say that we should stop worrying about terrorism because climate change is more important? Shouldn't we be worrying about both?

The Thermodynamics of Life,

Nature "wants" to get rid of gradients. They're unnatural. Statistically improbable. What the thermodynamics shows is that complex living systems are more efficient than simple systems at wiping out gradients. Even examples of spontaneous self-organization in open systems like hurricanes and ball lightning are known. Prigogine calls them "dissipative-structures" — they are structures that dissipate energy gradients.
This is no vague, abstract theory, but a tested hypothesis: an integrated ecosystem is better than any predecessor at reducing the gradient between the sun and space. The fact that mature tropical ecosystems stay cool displays the system’s power of gradient reduction. Wetlands are nature's coup de grace for reducing gradients and the man engineered version, the EWB, is far more efficient, than any natural wetland on the planet.

So, life feeds on gradients and, in the process, helps to reduce them. In so doing, life does Nature's work. And-if-its-doing-nature's-work-its-not-causing-climate-change. The bottom line: thermodynamic principles do not oppose life, like God, they practically command it into existence. Life is an integral part of the universe, completely consistent with the thermodynamic principles that unite both living and nonliving matter. It is naive to suggest other approaches to environmental problems exist that could be better than a Thermodynamic approach.

Recent studies have shown that the sun-space gradient is influenced by ecosystems in riverine catchments, abnormal thermodynamic instabilities in coastal waters, circumpolar currents and black body radiations from the poles which are immune from greenhouse conditioning. The harmonic solutions to this differential topology forms a unique dissipative-structure which is easily influenced by human activity at two important points: coastal oceans and saddle points within riverine catchments. If we can clean coastal ocean pollution by treating wastewaters at 1-5 acre EWBs at saddle points in catchment then both sensitive areas in the heat gradient can be controlled to allow new harmonic solutions that reverse a wide range of climate changes. The other advantage here is that EWBs are efficient enough in large numbers (100,000 Australia-wide) to solve the human intractability problem where landholders refuse to reinstate forests and natural wetlands for commercial reasons.

KAEP - Your idea of using EWB's is quite fascinating. It does however demonstrate why we need to take a multidisciplinary approach to solving complex problems. I would have hoped the IPCC was taking such an approach but perhaps not. You may think it naive for specialist scientists to try to find all the answers ( I would agree on this) however a biologist would also think it equally naive not to have an understanding of gene-environment interactions and population dynamics when dealing with ecosystems. I can see many problems with EWBs, not least cost, as it would disrupt coastal ecosystems considerably. However any system that addresses pollution is well worth investigating - just make sure it is looked at from more than one persepective. Good luck in your research. Oh - and much better presentation thank you.