This topic is boring at best. The GW High Priests have made their money and the manipulation of temperature data continues on. In 10 years time we will have another group of alarmist cashing in on the latest hollywood scare. The weather will change from day to day, from week to week like it always has. Australia will be the sunburn't country most of the time as it has been for a long time. The earth worshippers will continue to cash in on the gullible and use 'science' as their weapon.

I find much to commend this article. Whilst our nest fouling activities are undoubtably having some effect on the planet's weather patterns the main outcome of on-going atmospheric pollution, greenhouse gasses etc. is the adverse effect on universal human health and well-being rather than any macro scale climatic change. Uninformed comment only serves to distract attention from this most significant issue. We have to clean up our act - not for the planet's sake but for our own. The earth doesn't care - another hundred million years is nothing to the earth. The earth will be here when we have all gone, ice ages and all, and hosting any number of future evolved species. Either we clean things up, or we perish as a viable species. It is as simple as that, although we can always take the John Howard option which is to do nothing and pray for rain.

We don't know enough about the earth and its real climatic cycles to be making truly informed judgments about what's happening and causing increasing temperatures. Our human experience and record keeping is simply far too short for a planet that has seen changes over billions of years.

At the same time, we cannot absolve ourselves of some effect on the environment. Our high and aspirational living standards and consumerist attitudes are without doubt fueling effects on the climate and the environment. We need to take personal stock of what we do in our lives at home, at work, on the way to and from work, and in government offices and businesses that may be having a detrimental effect on, most especially, but not emissions alone.

Humans are growing in numbers, while all other species seem to be shrinking. Diversity is decreasing. That's telling and worrying in itself.

I'm fed up with hearing from people and groups who blame government for the cause of global warming. I do expect governments to have their collective fingers on the pulse of the environment and the people they are supposed to represent. But government is not the cause of the problem, but representative of our collective problem.

Change in attitude, habits and practices starts with individuals in their daily lives and the decisions and choices they make, not just for the present but for the future. I'd like every individual or organisation to state what they're doing, or, even better, what they've done to not just have a nil effect, but that they have actually improved the environment in their daily lives, before they accuse governments of not doing enough.

Saying a government has not done enough is silly, unless the accusers are so dependent, or believe that everyone ought to be so dependent on government that they're waiting on government to act or to tell them what to do. In Australia, that doesn't work. Australians don't like being told what to do. We don't need more regulation, but more individual and co-operative efforts to have positive effects on the climate and the environment.

Terpstra claims that there was little opposition to the round earth concept - he doesn't go into much detail about the imprisonment of Copernicus there...

runner: "The earth worshippers will continue to cash in on the gullible and use 'science' as their weapon."

Yeah. God's a much better weapon to use against the gullible.

Sorry to other christians if that sounds a little insulting, but so too does blanket condemnation of science - why not just trek back to the dark ages when all was fine and dandy.

Derek@Booroobin,

While consumers certainly bear some responsibility, you are far too quick to let government off the hook. All else being equal, greenhouse gas emissions are approximately proportional to the number of people, and there has been bipartisan agreement on the part of the major parties to boost the population. Originally this was through mass migration, but now the Coalition has introduced the baby bonus as well. The politicians maintained the mass migration when polls showed that the public was overwhelmingly against the very high numbers. Our current 1.3% growth rate gives us a population doubling time of 53 years. From ABS figures, total household energy consumption increased by about 50% between 1975 and 1995, but only a quarter of it was due to growth in per capita consumption. All the rest was due to there simply being more people. Howard and Bush can't sign up to Kyoto or anything similar because population growth will make it impossible to meet the targets.

It is only fairly recently that government has woken up to the need for houses that have good passive solar design and for informing consumers about which appliances work efficiently. They could also do more to limit standby features that waste power and to discourage planned obsolescence.

TurnRightThenLeft,

'Sorry to other christians if that sounds a little insulting, but so too does blanket condemnation of science'

Your conclusion that I give science a condemnation is totally wrong. The point is that the 'science' used by many in the GW has nothing to do with true science. It is simply a manipulation of facts. At best it is error and at worst deceitful.