I guess shelter, food and water are the three main pillars of survival, with a generous dollop of energy to add a veneer of civilisation. I dunno about you, but I prefer my rats cooked.

I worry that the stored reserves of food and water are smaller than I have always smugly imagined them to be. I suppose that our local supermarket would last about one day if it were to be rushed by determined shoppers for grub, waving increasingly useless dollars.

I suspect that the reserve of REAL necessities is about as thin as the screen of a plasma TV.

It's a caution.

War we had to have?

It's not a war. Only if you believe in radically extending the use of that word beyond the preposterous 'war on terror' usage can you claim that.

The second part of the title "we had to have" seems to actually summarize the situation more eloquently. The structural economic changes required for Climate Change will probably remind us of some basic structural changes to our national economic.

Carbon trading will look a bit like floating the dollar. There will be a shakeout in certain industry sectors but ultimately the economy will run more efficiently.

Extremist rhetoric about 'wars' only stalls the debate from moving onto the practical implementation stage.

Where do they find these nutters?

If combating climate change is a war then the truth, has indeed, become the first casualty. The latest IPCC output is nothing more than a brochure, a political summary. The factual report will not be released until May or June and they are busy editing it right now to ensure that the stated "facts" are consistent with the summary.

If a company director did that in a prospectus, anywhere in the OECD, he would be up for a serious criminal offence.

History has repeatedly demonstrated that the vocabulary of warfare is only one step short of the medical euphemism. "The war we had to have" soon gives way to "ethnic cleansing" and political "infection control", the very worst that humanity can stoop to.

So now these Gullible Warmers are at war, ostensibly with climate change but in reality with anyone who disagrees with them. We have already seen the persecution of emminent scientific dissenters and the villification of "sceptics". So how long before the scapegoating starts and the "greenshirts" are let loose on ordinary men and women.

Are we experiencing just another drought, albeit a nasty one, or are we in the throes of climate change? Perhaps the age of people play an unseen role in how we perceive our current environment. Let me explain.
We are currently living in an age of mass communication through media such as television, newpapers, personal communication devices such as mobile phones and of course, computers. More and more people have access to computers and access to forums such as Online Opinion, but such wasn't the case back in the period 1938 to 1947, Eastern Australia experienced the worst drought on record, but was followed by 7 years of flooding rains. http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/drought3.htm will provided the full story.
In those times, people were fortunate to have a simple radio. There was no other means of communication except for telephone and newspapers where available. In the case of the latter, information was slow and unreliable. I could imagine that if people of the day had access to our modern systems, climate change would have been much talked about just as it is today, but in 1938-47 they had more to worry about. Victorian catchments were dry, they had Black Friday and don't forget WW2.
Perhaps Climate change is more about the ability to convey fear to the masses more easily than it is about actual Global warming. I'm sure that if we experience flooding rains for the next several years, climate change will have already been relegated to dusty shelves, archives and forgotten hard drives.

Most of us may now agree that the climate is warming, but to claim that "climate change is not a subjective issue like industrial relations or even economic management, where ideology legitimately shapes policy positions" shows a breathtaking naivety, arrogance or both. The question of exactly what to do about is as messy, contentious and political as any other important policy issue:

How much of our effort should be directed to adaptation and how much to mitigation.?

Can geo-sequestration or carbon stripping be made to work?

Should offsets be allowed?

How far should Australia do down the path of reducing its emissions when its competitors are not?

Should we have a carbon tax or a trading scheme or both, and should we do this unilaterally or push for an international post-Kyoto scheme?

Is it legitimate to expect developing countries to share the burden of reducing emissions, given that rich countries caused the problem and are better able to afford economic costs?

Is taking luke-warm showers and using expensive solar water heaters really going to save the planet?

Dogmatic pseudo-science cannot provide certain answers to any of these questions

Murray says that "the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has delivered to humanity an undisputedly-high level of statistical certainty on global warming." So why do many eminent climatologists, statisticians and economists continue to dispute it?

He then says that "The panel’s 2,000 or more scientific experts from around the world are 90 per cent-plus sure, which makes it “very likely”, that people are causing a dangerous build-up of greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere." This does not actually mean that those scientists hold that view (and it wouldn't matter if they did - consensus is not proof). What it means is that the results of IPCC computer modelling suggest that the true situation is within plus or minus two standard deviations of the sinulation result. The projections of climate change models are actually based on economic modelling - projecting the rate of economic growth of each country with an assumption (which has been shown to be too high) as to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions realted to this growth. The economic aspects of the modelling have been totally discredited, e.g. by Castles and Henderson, and economists seeking to model much simpler relationships would generally not have confidence in results below the 95% confidence level. Nor would they feel confident about forecasting economic outcomes more than ten years or so ahead.

Anybody that thinks that you can tackle climate change without first tackling the problem of world overpopulation is simply urinating into the breeze. If current trends continue, by 2050 we will have a world population of 12 billion, and the navy will be using refugee boats for target practice. We are going to have a major war over resouces, particularly oil, (if we are not already in it), and billions will die.

The United States could well retreat to its borders, with us hopefully included within them. This can only happen after they make themselves independent of middle east oil. The rest of the world will be left to fend for themselves, like Africa is now.

Nothing will be done about climate change by the countries that matter, such as China, as they will have far more pressing worries.

As usual, Australia will not matter, as has always been the case, and will be unable to influence the global outcome. Thank heavens we have a sea boundary.

Welcome to the 21st century!

"Where do they find these nutters?"

According to a Lowy Institute poll:

http://www.lowyinstitute.org/Publication.asp?pid=470

68% of Australians think global warming to be a serious problem requiring urgent action. 24% think it a problem with gradual effects, so requiring only gradual action. 7% dont believe in taking action until it is certain that there is a problem. 1% dont know.

Going by OLO, it would seem that the denialists are a vocal minority. I also think that the denialists should stop degrading the term sceptic. For me, such a term evokes great scientists going against beliefs of the day on the basis of scientific evidence. The self-appointed sceptics on OLO do no more than dredge up false and misleading stories, suggest alternatives either unsupported by or without evidence, or accuse the scientists involved of being in some grand conspiracy to rip off the public. And now Perseus is developing a persecution complex.

As for nutters, one thing I would never do is acknowledge any truth in their delusions.

http://www.clevelandclinic.org/health/health-info/docs/3800/3840.asp?index=9599&src=newsp

“….while without doubt we’ll have to elevate social and environmental sustainability to equal or greater status as that enjoyed by the economic kind.”

Well at least sustainability got a mention Murray!

Come-on, what on earth are we supposed to do while China continues to expand rapidly, followed by India?

Do you really think that we should be even bothering to address climate change at all in Australia with this world scenario?

Let’s face it, the damn mess has been set in train and we can’t stop it now!

But we can address our own sustainability issues. THIS is where the focus MUST be! And if we do this properly, we will as a matter of course address greenhouse gas emissions pretty damn effectively anyway.

But if try to address climate change in this country outside of a sustainability regime, that is, with the continuous growth paradigm still entrenched, then we are just bloody kidding ourselves.

FOOLS you just don't get it at all

plerdsus,

A nice virulent pandemic will solve a lot of the world's problems about now - population growth and depletion of resources in particular. A halt to international air travel will also have environmental benefits.

I believe this matter was seriously discussed back in the seventies and this was one of the "solutions".

Faustino,

the IPCC estimates can equally be shown to be too conservative regarding economic growth and corresponding pollution increases. Even if the amount of pollution remains static there will, within our lifetime, be a considerable change in climate.

As everyone is happily pointing out, China is responsible for a huge proportion of greenhouse gas emissions, which is growing at a rate higher than previously thought. I think our best option is to bite the bullet, invest in greener technology, & once it's proven just give it to them.

Perhaps you'd prefer to wait...and wait...and wait some more...there are many on this site who would. Sheesh, we're already a wealthy country with the wherewithall to make something happen. It seems we have too many people enamoured of our PM's pie-in-the-sky policy of doing nothing at any expense and hoping it'll all blow over

Alanpoi

I wait with baited breath to read a bit of substance behind your one-liner.

.
Rache

As totally unpalatable as it is, I think you are right. A massive pandemic looks like the only real solution.

.
Bennie

Yes we must invest in greener technology to the greatest possible extent. But we must not be happy with that alone. We’ve got to fervently address the continuous expansion issue as well. If we don’t, the gains made in more efficient and cleaner fossil fuel usage and alternative energy sources will just be progressively diluted or cancelled out completely overwhelmed by the continuously increasing demand base.