The cei report was discredited by a group of leading scientists last week:
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1876538,00.html

and here is the background on CEI:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=CEI

It drives me to tears too ChrisC, whoever you are. Check out the results of the Wegman committee report before you go telling others how to get the yolk out of their mathematical eggs. You can download it from http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf#search=%22wegman%20report%22. Wegman is from George Mason University and is as I understand it President of the American Statistical Association. You can find his biog here: http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/faculty/wegman.resume2.htm.

The Hockey stick is as shonky as Enron's accounts, and when in this case the auditor actually blows the whistle the fraudsters still carry-on as though nothing has happened. And just as with Enron people should have known the accounts were fraudulent from commonsense, so too with the Hockey Stick, because it purports to show that there was no Medieval Warm Period, nor a Little Ice Age, which we know from objective evidence, including human observation, to be incorrect.

And gusi, perhaps you could point to which parts of the CEI report have been discredited, or are you saying that everything that the CEI author says from the moment he gets up in the morning until the moment he goes to bed is wrong?

Has anyone tried going along to an old-persons home and asking the residents what the weather was like when they were young? I come from a family of long livers, and so consquently have had the chance to talk to people who grew up in the late 1800's. We've had extreme weather conditions forever and a day. Storms, droughts (the Murray stopped flowing back in the early 1900's), hail, floods. The main difference now - plenty of mass-media coverage. Is global warming happening - perhaps. Should we try to curb excessive use of resources - of course. Should we panic - cant see the point.

Have you noticed that when a record weather event occurs it is always never the worst in history. Funny that - goes to show we are still not experiencing the most extreme conditions, even within recorded history. Eg it might be getting warmer in October this year, but go back merely to 2000 and we had heavy coats on for new years eve - IT WAS FREEZING! The drought we are having in Australia now - the worst in 100 years. That means 100 years ago we had a worse one. Was that caused by climate change too? Or simply natural weather patterns.

You know... in all this debate, it occurs to me that nobody is questioning the fact that this warming is taking place, the central arguments relate to whether it has been influenced by people, and whether reducing carbon emissions can do any good.

Putting the blame game aside, perhaps we should be doing more to prepare? I know that there is the push to reduce carbon emissions, but can't we treat that as a separate treatment, and in the meantime, start shoring up coastal towns, and start doing whatever we can to protect areas that are the likeliest to experience adverse weather changes? If we're agreed that this is at least happening, regardless of cause, then shouldn't we perhaps at least agree we should be doing something?

GrahamY, the Wegman paper is not without its critics, as you will see here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/07/the-missing-piece-at-the-wegman-hearing/#more-328

We could go on endlessly debating the merits of the science, but increasingly there's not much to debate. Climate change skeptics are increasingly shrill, for example Wegman says that "authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface." This is typical of the sort of cheap shot you use when you don't have any evidence. I'd be surprised if all paleoclimatologists weren't "closely connected", this is the way science works.

Arctic ice is decreasing, glaciers and snowfields are retreating worldwide. Antarctica remains a great unknown, but global climate change is real.

WAKE UP !!

The real points are:

Is humanity responsible for climate change? Don't know.

Does it matter if humanity is responsible for climate change? No.

Is there climate change? Possibly in the next 2 - 3 lifetimes.

If so, should we do something about it? Only if we want our grandchildren to survive.

Is there anything else we should be concerned about? Err... yes.
1. Uncontrolled wasting of resources by a capitalist system that is unsustainable ! (What happens when the oil/gas/coal runs out?)
2. Pollution of the planet on an unprecendented scale as a result of item 1.
3. Deteroiration & destruction planet's ecosystems (and all species) as a result of items 1 & 2.

How's that for starters ??