Politically, I wonder if this boils down to do we go nuclear or not ?

This seems to me the likely battleground in 2007 with the Coalition going nuclear and Labor not. Both appear to concede that energy will cost more regardless of who does what.

Labor need to win seats in Queensland which produces lots of coal, ergo Labor should favour "clean coal" solutions.

Anti Green

Your questions are very clever and spot on.
May I add.
In all the hysteria and hype we would do well to remember that the projections for temp and rainfall etc, are still the result of computer based models that could not possibly properly reflect the complexity of the earths system. Even the SPM basically says this.

Some little reminders that the models still cant get the way clouds behave right, or properly model the effect of aerosols.

Then there is the embarrassment that the Antarctic wont do what they want it to do.

The fact that the modellers can run multiple ensembles and multiple model types on multiple machines of ever increasing computational power does not increase the accuracy one jot. The old adage of garbage in and garbage out still applies, and ipso facto the bigger the machine the bigger the pile of garbage out

bennie,

I understand your point that you can find a hack scientist to dispute just about anything; however, I don't think this applies to the people I mentioned. Richard Lindzen is a professor of meteorology at MIT and was previously teaching at Harvard and the University of Chicago. Christopher Landsea is a lead scientist at the National Hurrican Centre. Paul Reiter is at the Pasteur Institute. Their qualifications aside, the most telling fact is that they were all invited to contribute to the IPCC reports at one state or another and all were either dismissed or left because their research didn't fit the IPCC agenda. Furthermore, they all complained that the summary documents (such as the one released last week) frequently misrepresent or distort the findings of the scientists.

As someone who likes to read views from all sides of an issue, I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by the rhetoric coming from those who accept the anthropogenic explanation of global warming. They frequently use emotive language and ad hominem attacks against those who disagree with them. Your comparison between global warming skeptics and HIV-AIDS skeptics is a prime example. Those who question the conventional wisdom are often bombarded with accusations that they are betraying their grandchildren and they will one day be tried for crimes against humanity. Those who level these charges then accuse their opponents of ignoring the science.

Contrary to what many say, the debate is not over and this is still a scientific issue not a moral one.

Yes, the debate will continue, regardless of what eventually does happen to the climate. I would be less unsettled if those disputing the majority concensus among scientists (and we're never going to get anything better) ceased niggling about the minutiae of a single finding by this set of scientists, or a report issued by that set of economists. I think the latest IPCC report is the most definitive we're about to get until another comes along. No-one here questions the concensus on AIDS, nor will they until a better theory comes along. Why is that?

If you saw last night's program on this you would realise the amount of research done on just this. You still might not agree with why some things are happening, but you would realise we novices are only toying at the edges. I happen to agree with them; it's simply my luck the IPCC and about 95% of the world's scientific community on 'my' side. The head of the IPCC is perfectly entitled to express his opinion and not be cast as a false prophet, since he's doing what we do - expressing an opinion. Thing is, he knows a little more than us.

It's my view much of this debate boils down to political/economic ideologies. Green is leftwing/bad for the economy/we're all gonna be unemployed/the economy is more important than the planet/science is bunkum.

Too much politics. Not enough affinity for what really sustains us.

I find it interesting that there is so much discussion in this forum about scientific objectivity, and yet anti-green apparently has no problem demonstrating his/her outright hostility towards environmentalism. Quite apart from how this undermines your argument, I am, as always, perplexed by this attitude. Environmentalists are not your enemies, we are people who want the same things as you, but without large-scale destruction of the natural world and everything sustained by it. With this definition, you would no doubt count as a greenie too - anyone who doesn’t want this would seem to have somewhat suicidal tendencies. And unlike many in politics and industry, environmentalists generally don’t have vested interests. If we advocate a course of action, it is not likely that we are profitting financially from it. Surely this should give greenies credence over those whose arguments are very clearly motivated by self-interest.
anti-green, if you have so many questions about the methodology of the IPCC reports, why not spend some time reading them, rather than diverting this forum from a real discussion about the implications of their findings.
As to the validity of those findings, and the reliability of climate models, I direct you to these graphs (from the previous IPCC report in 2001): http://www.ipcc.ch/present/graphics/2001syr/large/05.18.jpg
They demonstrate just how closely the observed temperature rise correlates with the climate models that factor in human influences. Whereas the models based on no human impact OR no natural (non-human) impact do not match observed data anywhere near as well. In other words, the models accurately predicted and verified what the scientists have been saying.
Nevertheless bigmal, you will always be able to find instances of scientific models failing. This is part of the scientific process: science learns by testing out hypotheses and continually refining models so they better predict outcomes. There will always be error in this learning process, but the level of accuracy tends to keep improving over time.

(continued) It is inconsistent to revere scientific objectivity on the one hand, and then attack the scientific process when it fails. The important thing is that the incredibly rigorous IPCC peer review process (unparalleled by any other, as far as I’m aware) means we are getting the best scientific minds brought to bear on the subject, and the science will keep being tested and improved. Peer review minimises individual bias (and, as the article points out, also produces quite conservative estimates). What more can we expect than that? If we believe in science, then we are obliged to listen to what it tells us, whether we like the answers or not.
It is also unfair (and to my mind, quite unscientific) to represent Friends of the Earth as doomsayers, when their comments are backed up by what is now absolutely mainstream science. We have had scientists from the Government-funded CSIRO telling us how serious this is, we have had a former World Bank economist declare the scale of the problem compares to both world wars and the depression combined. We even have some of Australia’s largest companies saying we need to take urgent action. You can no longer marginalise those ringing the alarm bells as hysterics or extremists. (Though this sort of emotive language is frequently used against environmentalists in just the way that MonashLibertarian claims is done in reverse.)
As David Latimer points out, we have much to gain by taking action to address climate change. We will see many other benefits. It is basically common sense. Do you doubters really dispute that?
I return to my earlier point, that whether we identify as green or anti-green, I think most of us ultimately want the same things: a safe, secure world, with good jobs and a healthy balance between the needs of humans and all other species.
So why don’t we just pull together and get on with it?