Grey obviously does not understand basic statistics:

"Nasty cyclone is given as evidence of climate change, but when america has a really quiet hurricane season shouldn't this be given as evidence against?"

No, neither of those events alone can be an argument either for or against. A single data point tells us nothing about anything. It is the ongoing trend shown by a multitude of data points that tells us what is happening. And the overall trend is very clear by now - the climate IS changing, much faster than it ever has before in recorded history.

This accelerating warming trend also correlates with the changes in human activity such as massively increased burning of fossil fuels and industrial-scale land clearing. The vast majority of scientists around the world agree without doubts that the OBSERVED (ie, it has already been seen happening) warming trend is directly caused by humans.
Scientists are people whose stock-in-trade is truth and evidence-backed theories. When there is this much agreement, only the terminally stupid or those with an agenda try to spread doubt.

Forty years ago I was saying that this planet could not sustain the sort of population explosion that was happening. People chose to ignore the predictions of people like Dr Paul Ehrlich and the global population continued to expand. We have to either lower our standard of living or lower the number of people, as it is the quantity of humans that are overpowering the ability of nature to support us. We see it in the continuing and increasing destabilising of our climate with all the disastrous consequences. Yet still most Western governments continue to subsidise us all to breed. The excuse now seems to be to have a workforce to support the elderly in their later years. ( Peter Costello and his "one for father, one for mother and one for the country") In spite of being in my seventies, I think that this is a short sighted course to take as we shall all soon suffer the result of less food availability, and of course higher prices. Unfortunately, too much time has passed and during the time when we were greedily espousing the theory that more was better and that the economics of producing in quantity, was what was required. We should really have realised that expansion had to stop somewhere on a finite planet. It has now been taken out of our hands by nature.

I share your concerns fully snake. To me Peter Costello is the antichrist of Australia, blatantly taking us in the wrong direction; directly away from a sustainable future, with his absurd promotion of our birthrate and endless high economic growth coupled with high population growth.

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Climate change is presumably leading to drought or overall lower rainfall in agricultural areas or overall lower productivity due to both lower rainfall and more floods and cyclones. So I agree with Ben McNeil to that extent.

But while he implores Howard to deal with the issue and thinks that he should have started a long time ago, he doesn’t say how.

Presumably he is thinking along the lines of reducing fossil fuel consumption and hence GHG emissions, and developing alternative energy sources. But quite frankly, even if we had started three decades ago and got right into solar, wind, hydro and biofuels, the climate change situation would not be much different today, unless the rest of the world had done the same.

We need to accept climate change as being too big to deal with.

The thing we absolutely have to do in this country in the face of a probable reduced ability to feed ourselves and reduced quality of life due to water problems and rising food prices… is to direct ourselves as quickly as possible onto a basis of genuine sustainability.

And the first and most important factor is to abandon the incredibly stupid continuous growth paradigm, by reducing immigration right down to a minimum, stabilizing our population, and refocusing our economy away from ever-increasing gross domestic product and onto real per-capita increase indicators.

Howard’s leading us to ruin. None of the various opposition leaders during his reign have addressed the core issues. And the Greens just don’t seem to get it either.

The problem is NOT the lack of attention to climate change issues per se. The big problem is that real sustainability is still just completely outside the mindset of any of our pollies.

Building Solar Thermal Power stations for Sydney would be less expensive than building coal power stations, cost the same to operate as coal power stations, need no subsidies: unlike a nuclear power stations.

Only about 27 sq km for the solar catchment area to produce sufficient power would be needed.

It is not just photo-solar panels, STP is technology that includes a reflective bowl of photo-solar panels into a central point and coal with the water in the throat is heated to over 800 c, circulating into power turbines. Some is also stored into molten salt to power the populace at night.

NSW already has a mini solar power station at Lidell, near Mussellbrook. Science has since found improvements in generation efficiency. It makes the technology feasibility undeniable.

STPs can be built in about 3 years.

Nuclear power stations would take over a decade to build and operate.

STP stations would produce more than enough power for the City of Sydney.

Spain, Germany and the USA already use STP stations: significant in their power grids. Ours would have improved efficiency.

There is more than enough sunny land available near Mooree and Cobar to place the power stations: no pollution.

In this debate, why is it media only ask the ALP or the Liberal Party for comments? All you get from them is fear and doom and gloom. Solutions really are not that difficult.

Nuclear lobbyists in the Liberal Party and Coal Lobbyists in the ALP chose to ignore this technology as they thought that there was no money or labor to benefit from it.

Global warming is a serious fact.

Indirectly, we can not afford not to deny STP technoloy in a sunburnt country any longer.

The Greens have the figures, raw data and information that the major parties don't want you to know: some from other countries.

With sufficient new STP stations you can rest easy with air conditioners and plasma screens as much as you like.

saintfletcher

You might be interested in this article on concentrated solar power in Mail &Guardian Online recently.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=295228&area=/insight/insight__international/

The replies by the would be environmentalist highlight that climate change is more about dogma than anything else