Eh, Dickie, am going on 86, and back in 1982, when after doing a social science degree in political philosophy, was kidded on to back up my politics with a social science post-grad in macro-economics.

Would you believe, though the economics manual contained a couple of chapters on Supply Side Reaganomics, in the fly leaf section it also had suggestions on protecting the environment.

Simply it said that because most pollution was caused by the use of fossil fuels in power stations - the suggestion was - wait for it - was that all smokestacks and discharge pipes on the above factories should have monitors on them and the companies made to pay a fee accordingly.

Apparently the greenies were all for it, but looks like they lost the battle.

Bloody typical - ain't it?

From George C - an old retired Cockie

Climate change seems to be well under way and whether aided by human activity or not is probably unstoppable or even un-slowable. Most of the worlds politicians would know the inevitable outcome of the next 30 years or so but why cause mass panic. Better to go with the flow and do the best we can as and when it happens. Most of the people now alive and under 50 are probably in for a rough time as it is highly probable that world population by the end of this century will be only a fraction of todays as the double wammy of heat up and then chill down play out.
Maworless.

Thanks Clive for a decent article. You seem to have brought a few denialists out to the surface. Many of whom seem rather ignorant of the basic science.

I'll quickly try to address a few.

1) Natural climate variability.

You will not find a trained climatologist who claims that there has not been climate change in the past. As a matter of fact, there is a whole chapter on it in the IPCC. Most of the natural variation is well understood.

It doesn't follow logically, or scientifically to say that:
-Warming has occured naturally in the past;
-the Earth is warming;
-therefore, natural variability is the cause.

Numerous detection and attribution studies have stated that greenhouse gas emmissions and land use changes cause the vast majority of current warming. Not to mention that the basic physics of GHG forcing is well understoof

Numerous natural mechanisms have been proposed to explain the current observed warming. Neither cosmic rays, nor the sun have been shown to explain current warming.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/attribution-of-20th-century-climate-change-to-cosub2sub/

2) Models.
- Models are used in climate science, but they do form the basis of climate science. As I say (ad nausem) the basic physics is well understood. Increasing the 2nd most important GHG by 35% is bound to have some effect on the atmosphere.
- Besides, the models are pretty good. They've been pretty much on the money for the last 100 years.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-4.htm

In general, they are quite consistent with observations (within tolerable error).

By the by, models have been simulating clouds for years
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/11/221311/27

c) Climate is changing on Mars.

So? Yes it's changing. The mechanism for doing so is not the same as on Earth. Mars' climate is due to peculiar geography of the South Pole, and the eliptic nature of the orbit. Also, since Mars has a thin atmosphere and no oceans, it has low thermal inertia, so is very sensitive to changes.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/

4) The Medievil Warm Period.

The MWP was:
a) Not as warm as present;
b) Caused by a completly different mechanism (most likley land use changes in Europe and Solar);
c) Most likely a regional phenomena.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/medieval.html

5) Solar Variation

Has been responsible for changes to climate in the past. But is not the likely culprit now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

(This graph is a little out of date, but illustrates the point)

The Solar constant has remained pretty much the same since 1978, according to PODW

http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant

And not since 1940 according to the Max Plank institute.

http://www.mps.mpg.de/images/projekte/sun-climate/climate.gif

In addition, the sensitivity of climate to solar forcing may be overstated.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/

In short, variations in solar forcing do not explain the current warming. They may explain some of it (jury is still out) but not all of it.

Much of this information is availiable on the net. I encourage people to read up on it.

Thank you very much for the info ChrisC

I was interested to note that the majority of the deniers of the main article displayed a distinctive style of response that lacked any form of logical or scientific reason for their position. In fact the lack of grammar and spelling coupled with conspiritorial reasons advanced, promoted a sad lack of education or research that might be expected from them.