My goodness, Scot, you have really shocked me. From experience as a moderate Anglican, years ago out in the bush we did work in with the Uniting Church and found them far more liberal than our Anglican hierachy.

The point is, in trying to be more worldly, haven't you followed the wrong road sign by preaching a doctrine that believes the industrial revolution was not only God's gift through nature, but its quicker and easier clearing of forests, etc, and the resultant lack of clarified oxynated air, made worse by the usages of oil and coal, is also God's gift to man.

Well now, Scot, you now have this ordinary Aussie who has studied Greek philosophy in his old age, really now backing Socrates when he declared 'Out with the Gods and in with the Good!.

As a matter of fact, Scot, as regards the industrial age, we've been entangled in it so long now, reckon it could help destroy our great great grandkids if we don't shut it down for a few years and do more than a mite of commonsense thinking.

Pity about your God, mate, but reckon his faith might be much better toned down with Socratic Reasoning - just as St Thomas Aquinas decided, and as a matter of fact, so did Immanuel Kant with his thesis on Pure Reason.

Scott... Seeing you are a religious person I will speak in parables so that you achieve greater understanding.

God who loved his people so much he gave them a planet called Earth which was bountiful and he called it Eden. He gave this special gift so that man would be in paradise.

Once there was a man who loved his son so much that he too gave him a beautiful property with a splendid house on it.... The son tore up the floor boards, threw paint in the rooms, kicked in the doors until the house was almost in ruin. Was the father pleased? Did the son do the right thing? No! He was a vandal!

To explain the parable .... the Earth is being destroyed by us (the sons) the ice sheets are melting, extinctions are occuring on a daily basis (God's creations), the seas are rising and pollution is destroying God's Eden.

So God sent many prophets to try to stop mankind from destroying his work of art not just for his sake but the sake of mankind himself. The Pharisees and Sadducees of modern times still did not hear the word of God - and called those who tried to do the right thing -athiests.

Why haven't priest's and ministers been preaching protecting the Earth - God's greatest gift to us Scott? Churches get mighty annoyed when a church or graveyard is vandalised and rightly so - and yet when it's God's planet Earth they ignore it all - extend your thinking laddy! Jesus is probably thinking Scott needs help!

Perseus:
"Here we go again with Julatron et al and their "get it wrong and we fry/cook/barbeque the planet" bollocks. Get this straight folks, the changes to date are extremely marginal. They are barely, if at all, outside the historical range of variation. Yet we have these hideous replications of some sort of planetary inquisitors who insist on extrapolating to extremes to reel in the gullible."

your 'get this straight folks' isnt actually what the science is predicting (and you know it), particularly with regards to (methane etc) feedback loops and the lag between reduction of emissions now and the temperature rise we are stuck with already, and the variation we are seeing ALREADY is outside what is considered natural variation.

yes perseus, we know you have no scientific background beyond reading a copy of new scientist in the doctors waiting surgery. you'll only ever read the debunked junk-science of the deniers, and then in the same breath attack the science & methodology of the IPCC.
nice paradox there, im glad you're comfortable with it.

From the letters in the Age of Monday Feb 19th

Could we be in for a greenhouse shock?

SENATOR Minchin is right ( The Age, 18/2): there is intense scientific debate about climate change. However, the debate is not about the reality of human-induced climate change; the debate is about whether or not predictions from the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (and similar predictions by Al Gore) underestimate the likely extent of climate change.

The debate is about such things as the strength of climate feedbacks. Feedbacks are when climate impacts add to the causes of climate change and consequently magnify the human influences on climate. Barrie Pittock, formerly of CSIRO, includes several emission feedback mechanisms in a recent summary of ways in which consensus science may be underestimating the degree of climate change. Over the 21st century, the amount of extra carbon dioxide added by such feedbacks may equal all human inputs over the 20th century as warming and drying trigger processes that emit more greenhouse gases.

Currently these concerns fall short of the IPCC's criterion of "well-established science". The IPCC consensus process is slow and cautious. Developing well-established science for climate feedbacks is where the real scientific debate over climate change is taking place.

Meanwhile, the US journal Science is about to publish a study showing that recent years have followed the high end of projections made by the IPCC in 2001.

Professor Ian Enting, former head of the greenhouse gas modelling team at CSIRO, University of Melbourne

I will trust the views of a climate scientist over a theologian any day, and I have been aware environmental issues since the Franklin Dam.

Economic principles might be immutable, but economic conditions are not. It is the most important task of governing authorities to tweak economic variables, so that what we value can be grown and maintained - and this includes our environment.

As the article author implies, globalization poses balancing problems, but this is precisely why the economics of environmentalism must also be globalized, using international standards (Kyoto being one unsuccessful example).

And what could be more moral than that, under the circumstances? We are talking about billions of individuals, not your (or my) own petty personal morality. The only way to organise billions of competing splintered moralities is through sound economic management.

Just praying instead - for billions of people to spontaneously start adhering to a set of simple, common, and compatible moral standards and priorities - is so foolishly naive that I personally consider *it* highly immoral.

I guess Doomsday predictions are the property of the religious nuts. For 2000 years we have been repeatedly told that the world as we know it will come to an end soon and there will be trials and tribulations etc. Now some scientists say it and have some data to back it up, they are attacked by God-botherers. I guess there is always the "We thought of it first" spite one can expect, or perhaps they believe the can be no Armageddon until Jesus turns up.