Spin doctor's spin, how do these people sleep at night! The tobacco companies never found it hard to find lawyers willing to argue that smoking wasn’t bad for you. It seems oil companies and the like don’t have trouble finding lawyer to argue about GW.

Chris B, mate, agree with you that though the author wants encouragement in R&D research to combat possible global warming, in the latter portion she could be going for a dollar each way. Science and engineering, which apparently she philosophises in, is also related to arguments against global warming

The old dollar each way doctrine is also so common to politics, and certainly what a foxy John Howard is on about with his Solar Energy plan.

Naturally not that little Johnny would have that that sort of engineering brain. Yet it takes somone with national power like him to get things moving. In any case, as Tony Jones was saying on LateLine, with the projected plant able to power sixty five thousand dwellings, plants should be set up all over Australia for the time when fossil fuels like coal and oil run out.

But the real distress about this rather negative just-in-case view is now being felt by one who in his long retirement has learnt to take a philosophical view - and right now gone a bit spiritual. My departed wife, who was an artist was also a natural greenie. Always worried on the farm about over-clearing. Not surprising then that Marjorie also had a kind of spiritual feeling about the avante-guarde, the futuristic thinkers whom so many of our OLO’s regard as left-wing loonies or fruitcakes.

So along with a rough bush nature, one has also acquired over the years, a concern about what we are doing to this earth. Possibly more like a Socrates than a Sanctifier, but - sorry - the feeling is there

I read about global warming and believe the news; I don’t care if it’s fact or fiction.
It forces us to look at how we use our planet, Any industry/corporation that exist in the future should have to prove it’s worth for the vast majority of people and biodiversity of this amazing planet. If that industry/Building/factory, can not show that it benefits the “LONG TERM” sustainability of this planet then it should be squeezed out of existence along with it’s share holders just the same way they are destroy the quality of our air, food, water and forests for profit who knows R&D may save it. (I know Strong opinion).
My wife and I have two small children, I look at the earth through their eyes and their children’s and so on, All I see is a planet that will be destroyed for profit with the short term benefits being distributed amongst a greedy few who will always try to make environmental issues go away, brushed under the carpet, discredited and made to look as though it will cost us or life savings, jobs interest rate hikes ect, ect. It is plainly simple to see that how we live and how the rest of the third world wishes to live will be our undoing. We need to discover that our existence is only possible with clean air, fresh water and social justice, I can already hear all the criticism and you know what I don’t care!

"Finally, Chris adds:

"How anyone could argue that we not play the odds on this issue is beyond me".

That is because you are backing the wrong horse. The most likely climate eventuality in the near future is cooling, not warming.

Cathy"

Cathy, if I'm backing the wrong horse, then the worst outcome is less pollution and a possible financial windfall, as Australian technology is adopted around the world. If base policy on your beliefs, and you turn out to be wrong, then clearly we are in a great deal of trouble.

Another commenter has noted the "dollar each way" nature of many global warming sceptics. It's certainly an apt description for your position in arguing that climate change is natural, but will soon begin cooling, so we shouldn't reduce our emissions (why would that make any difference, if human emissions have no effect?

Unbelievable!

In less than a fortnight, Online Opinion publishes two articles from the global warming disbelievers.

This is despite the following:

‘Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science,’ Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, Science.

What next, fascinating articles questioning the link between smoking and illness. Let's move on and stop giving so much breathing space to the noisy Flat earthers. Particularly those with such a clear vested interest. Sorry, but I won't have an arts/law graduate employed by miners telling me about climate science.

As a member of the small group of anti-smoking activists that won smoke free planes, buses, trains, offices etc and got the tobacco adverts off TV and the billboards away from school yards, and as one who had B.U.G.A.U.P'd his fair share of billboards in the 1980's, I find it really offensive that all sorts of low life are now trying to claim that greenhouse scepticism is on par with tobacco industry spin. What a load of bovine faeces.

I was there fellas. It is chalk and cheese. The people drowning in their own lung fluid were not the product of some sort of abstract modelling, they were real live victims. The cause and effects were far beyond speculation and far beyond Al Gore's sleazy political spin.

So could you kindly crawl back under whatever rock you came from and stick your ignorant mctheories into an appropriate cavity.