Please, Ev and Arjay, read the IPCC summary. All your points are covered. Talking about this year's winter or last year's summer is pointless as we are dealing with events on a geological time scale.

Climate INSTABILITY is intrinsic to global warming. Indeed Europe has suffered mini ice ages during periods of global warming, when the Gulf Stream stops.

Yes, the Antarctic may not melt and the Arctic might. There are a million climatic factors which can cause this and it has nothing to do with the existence of greenhouse effect. Atmospheric carbon levels (plus methane etc etc) are massively higher than they have been in 650 million years. This has to have some effect and we are putting the stuff there.

As for the Russians welcoming a bit of warmth, the real issue is that the frozen Tundra IS thawing and the organic CO2 stored in that giant ice block is being released -- one of the many greenhouse feedback loops which have been activated.

The conservative IPCC report stopped collecting data two years ago and, as Tim Flannery points out, the ice melt has accelerated alarmingly since then. This is another inexorable feedback loop because ice reflects sunlight while water absorbs its heat. This is real. It is happening. I fear the legacy we are leaving the next generation.

Thanks to those who have taken the time to read and respond to my article, (even those who think I am full of it!)

I think Faustino has hit the nail on the head when he (or she?) says that it will be impossible for any government to enforce reduction in carbon emissions. The problem for anthropogenic global warming/climate change believers who want carbon emissions cut, is that the warming/climate change is virtually invisible in the lives of the people who will have to pay for it. If it were not for the media and internet, who would know or care about climate change?

The practical absurdity of a state such as South Australia, which emits less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gases, legislating to reduce it's greenhouse emissions in order to affect the global climate is obvious. My cynical theory is that Mike Rann (South Australian premier, and Australia's first Minister for Climate Change) is building his climate change CV so he can snag a plum UN job after the voters get fed up with having windfarms built all over the prettiest bits of SA, and boot him out.

The IPPC SPM says it is 90% certain that humans are affecting the climate. Of course they are talking about the output of computer models. If they were discussing actual hard data, and there was a 10% chance that the results were due to chance, that would be termed statistically insignificant.

Those of us able to recall the late 1990s will be aware of the great paper tiger of the time - the supposed Y2K bug. Many respected computer scientists had decided that this was likely to destroy life as we knew it. Vast amounts of money was expended by corporations and individuals alike to ward of this unseen but apparently imminent peril. Ultimately it turned out to be the wettest of damp squibs! However it did have a great benefit to those gurus who were predicting calamity - they woke up on January 1st 2000 with large amounts of money in their pockets.

While it is clear that global temperatures are rising, the evidence that this is anything other than a normal fluctuation - which recently gave us the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age - is dubious. I am very much afraid that the Y2K spruikers have been replaced by the Greenhouse Effect spruikers.

While I am not a climatologist, I am a mathematical modeller. It seems to me that the IPCC line of thought is as follows: our models for temperature don't work; if we include an effect due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then we can adjust them work; therefore carbon dioxide in the atmosphere must be the sole factor in the present global warming. This is a process of reasoning not unlike retrofitting the prophesies of Nostradamus to World War 2, the Kennedy assasinations, or the loss of the Ashes.

This process of reasoning (as mentioned by the Author) ignores other possible factors contributing to global warming, some of which may be unknown to us at present. Increased solar radiation is a clear candidate as a further factor. A simple test of this hypothesis is that the effect should be not only felt on earth but on other planets. Funnily enough this is the case - global warming has been reported on Mars. (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age_031208.html or just put "mars nasa warming" into your favourite search engine!)

Have they tried running the models without the output of CO2 from humans, just nature's CO2 output? That would be interesting. The Victorian fires were supposed to emit enough CO2 to account for 1000 coal-fired power stations for 1 year. When you consider the regularly and severity of natural fires around the globe, that's a lot of carbon. How much worse would it be if humans didnt intervene to put them out sooner than nature would have?

Consider also the CO2 released from rotting wood, and the fact that old growth forests rarely soak up CO2 (which implies that we have actually done the climate a favour by cutting down old forests and replanting).

Its not that I dont believe that the pollution that we emit doesnt have a negative impact on the environment - I'm sure it does, and we need to act to stem it. I just dont think the doomsday prophesies are called for until science understands ALL the factors influencing climate changes. There have been too many scienctific backflips over the years to rush in too quickly. Besides, higher sea levels and more droughts are infinitely more manageable than nuclear-wasted land. Until we know how to make the waste safe again, we need to stay away from that evil stuff.

Reynard,

That is a good post Reynard, and from a mathematcial modeller to boot.
Is there any more material like that. What about also making comment or two on the material comming out from Jonathan Lowes blog.

http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/

Reynard's post may be 'good' but it does not stack up. Comparing the world body of scientific investigation into climate change to the Y2K scare or Nostrodamus has no basis whatever. It is like comparing the Oxford Dictionary to a Cheezels ad. Personally I never gave Y2K, Nostrodamus or Kennedy conspiracy theories a moment's notice.

I repeat, please read the IPCC summary. All your theories about modelling are way off. Models are only one of thousands of factors considered.

And Country Gal, when trees burn or rot they simply return the same carbon to the atmosphere they took out in the first place so they kind of balance out. The planet's carbon output has been roughly the same for about 650,000 years -- until industrialisation, since when it has skyrocketed along with global warming. The onus is really on you guys to prove there is no causal link.

As for 'other causes' such as increased solar radiation, yes, they have thought about that, measured it and discounted it. At least have a look at Time magazine April 2006. It's all there, fact-checked.