According to the author bio, "Mark's original training was in science at Melbourne University from which, after reading material on almost every subject except those pertaining to his course."

Nice that he has a self-depricating sense of humour.

Michael says that climate change is about less rainfall. Err.. No, its about increasing temperatures, and higher temperatures tend to melt ice. So the advice given about "have a house by the beach then by all means keep it." is worthless advice.

Then I thought, if Mark is giving worthless advice, perhaps he is also misquoting from the reports linked in the article? So I had a look.

Marks article: “note that a 3mm a year increase sustained for a century works out to a total increase of 0.3 metres”, whereas a the National Tidal Centre speaks of up to a 0.5 metre change over 50 years. The NTC does not reject the scientific consensus on climate change and makes an important contribution to scientific research.

Mark’s link to Dr Carl Wunsch took me to Joe Barton, Republican Party Ranking Member, The Committee on Energy and Commerce Republicans (USA). The original work is http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/abrupt2006.pdf

Carl Wunsch is Professor of Physical Oceanography who makes a contribution to better understanding of past climatic events. According to his website “Carl Wunsch and his collaborators have focussed on estimating the time varying ocean circulation by combining global general circulation models and the recently available global data sets.” This is science at work, not a radical rejection anthropogenic global warming.

The Insurance Council provides a report about the lack of flood insurance. If someone can find any relevance to this topic, the report is here: http://www.insurancecouncil.com.au/ArticleDocuments/24/ICA%20COAG%20Submission.pdf.aspx

If you worry about your great, great grandkids, take the warnings on global climate change seriously.

For more information on OLO's series of unscientific articles on global warming, click here: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/trackdoc.asp?id=1630&pId=4761

Ev, not to disagree with you but the complaints about the exclusion of research from the ipcc report are not exclusivly from 'sceptics'. a recent new scientist article highlighted the process by which the phrasing of the report is formed, including a whole day spent on an arguement between on one side, government reps from the gulf states and china, and on the other gov reps from europe, canada and others, as to wether current global warming was 'likley' or 'highly likely' to be anthropogenic.

the process seems to have achieved something of a bell curve, with extremes from each end excluded. the problem i guess is that the more radical reports, from both ends may have been excluded, not because they were inaccurate but because they were unpalatable.

“Basically there is no evidence that this fast-track melting has ever occurred, despite much greater swings in temperature in Earth’s history. This suggestion amounts to speculation - until we see evidence of it happening.” Well, how’s this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6368843.stm

Ev I can counter your list of citations with an equal number of mine, but what’s the point? One scientist links global warming on earth with a corresponding change on Mars while another denies it is happening altogether, and yet a third reckons we’re all going to freeze. Talk about clouding the issue. Meanwhile the worlds' governments - even ours - have reached their own conclusion.

Doesn’t stop the melting, though.

Regarding the last post by Bennie - The BBC News link you mentions Kilimanjaro. From another source:

"There's a tendency for people to take this temperature increase and draw quick conclusions, which is a mistake," said Douglas R. Hardy, a climatologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who monitored Kilimanjaro's glaciers from mountaintop weather stations since 2000. "The real explanations are much more complex. Global warming plays a part, but a variety of factors are really involved."

According to Hardy, forest reduction in the areas surrounding Kilimanjaro, and not global warming, might be the strongest human influence on glacial recession. "Clearing for agriculture and forest fires—often caused by honey collectors trying to smoke bees out of their hives—have greatly reduced the surrounding forests," he says. The loss of foliage causes less moisture to be pumped into the atmosphere, leading to reduced cloud cover and precipitation and increased solar radiation and glacial evaporation.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers_2.html

Bennie said, "Ev I can counter your list of citations with an equal number of mine, but what’s the point?"

The point is it would be great! I would love to read them, and it would help myself and other people to perhaps learn more.

When I hear people using words like 'denialist' and 'sceptic' it makes me very sad. The very foundation of science is scepticism. Asking questions ad finitum, not just going along with the herd.

A quote from one of the articles I linked earlier:
As Lindzen wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, "there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=63ab844f-8c55-4059-9ad8-89de085af353&k=0

We've been though all this before Ev.

For example, the National Geographic article you site says forest reduction melts the glaciers of Kilomanjaro. It also says dirty snow melts the glaciers. It says reduced cloud cover melts the glaciers. It certainly says that global warming melts the glaciers there.

Here is the quote from the article you somehow overlooked: "now, with global warming, the glaciers are disappearing eight times faster than before." Oops!

Don't post something, and expect nobody will check your sources and find out how you've distorted and cherry-picked the information.

I’ll be gone a few days Ev but thought I’d leave here a link for your perusal, as suggested. For those of you swayed by miscellaneous blogs and sincere but misguided theories, this may be enlightening.

http://batesmotel.8m.com/