Andrew, you obviously expected the population stabilisation advocates to jump in quickly and give you a piece of their mind, as they have done on your threads before. I’m pleased to see that Divergence and ericc haven’t let you down.

Of course I agree with them that the great flaw in your reasoning is the complete lack of attention on population growth and the continuous growth paradigm overall.

Everything you have said in your article would be fine, if it sat within an overall sustainability framework. But it still sits within an unquestioned antisustainability continuous-growth-with-no-end-in-site paradigm, and therefore it really is just blather.

It is just so extraordinarily nonsensical to be espousing the need for Australia to implement rapid reductions in fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, while having nothing to say about the rapidly increasing number of consumers and polluters.

I love it Chris Shaw. Well said

Well if we take a closer look at the "Tragedy of the Commons",
an economic theory, only nature can sort it all out in the end.
People around the world will act in their own self interest
first and foremost.

I certainly don't agree with Andrew, that Aussies should go
on any kind of feelgood guilt trips. If we look at the figures
a bit closer, we'll see that for instance, aluminium smelters
consume huge amounts of power. Our figures would look much
better if we moved them to India or China, but would it really
change anything? Nope. The list goes on.

Whilst the world keeps increasing by 80 million people a year,
I see no need to feel guilty about anything. If they were serious,
world leaders would at least make good family planning available
to all women, especially those in the third world. But thats not
the case, a global human population of 9 billion is accepted as
a given. Hey, I am not an Afghan or African with 11 children,
all chopping down trees for firewood etc. I'm not a multimillionare
flying my private Learjet around the world. I'm not the American
army, burning up 53 million litres of petrol a day, now you want
me to feel guilty? Think again!

BTW, please animals that fart alone, its quite natural. Perhaps
those pollies in Canberra should stop flying around the place
on junkets, expelling hot air, before they try to preach to the
rest of us.

Please do your homework before this costs you your economies. So many have been duped by a fraud.

My point in all of this is that CO2 does NOT cause climate change; I am not arguing that a change in the climate might be occurring. The climate on earth changes all the time and that global change is caused by the Sun (a new NASA finding). All life on the planet is carbon based, CO2 is part of our food chain, and it is not a pollutant. The biggest “green house gas” is water vapor. If climate change is caused by human activity then we would need to start eliminating life on the planet, yes this is absurd, so is the assertion that humans are causing climate change. It just is NOT the truth.

Science fact 2+2=4 a scientific fact is a truth that never changes can be reproduced by anyone every time.

Additional information http://www.InteliOrg.com/co2_climate_change.html

2+2=4 is not a scientific fact. It is a mathematical statement.

Nor does Dr Coles understand the meaning of the word "pollutant". Ozone is a pollutant, even though it is also natural and beneficial in the upper atmosphere.

NASA goes against the grain of the Bush Administration by providing evidence and education on the problem of global warming. Check this list of major research topics: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/

The bit about a "need to start eliminating life on the planet" is an example of typical sceptic thinking, but in the raw. So nonsensical, what more do I need to say?

Part 1

You don't have to be an Oxford Scholar. Try this little thought experiment.

1. The diameter of the Earth is 12,700 km.

2. 75% of the mass of the atmosphere is squeezed into a skin of gas only 11 km thick.

3. Stop and digest that for a minute.

4. Think of all the dense carbonaceous material we have gasified (fluffed up volumetrically) over the last 150 years.

5. Imagine all the forests, coal and oil burnt in the service of industry, economics and population increase over that time.

6. We have used our tiny gassy skin as a rubbish tip for 150 years. We "externalised" the costs (or so we thought, until now).

7. Because we couldn't see gas, we thought it didn't matter. Because we dumped our rubbish in the name of a false god (profit), we thought we were being awfully modern and clever.

8. It turns out that we were monkeys in suits all along (apologies if there are any actual monkeys reading this).

No-one is denying that the pulse beat of the Sun and Earth brings about inexorable change. We can measure some of it's history in the rocks, ice and tree-rings. It is the SPEED of the present change which is alarming. It is the speed of the present change which is defeating the biosphere's ability to adapt in time.