First, thanks, Chainy, for the praise to an old Chuck for his possible academic success but not for his wisdom, depending of course, how one defines wisdom, whether gained
through academia or through life experience.

Personally, could say that a mixture of both when one reaches 86 or more should leave one pretty well in the centre of politics, giving praise to both sides where it is due.

That is why one gets so angry when obviously intelligent members of our group slate in the lowest intelligent reasoning, people from political parties such as the Greens and the Democrats. By their insults they not only place the said parties lower than the Commies were in our older democratic government, but to use such abusive name-saying, gives the feeling as an experienced oldie that we have here a so-called young intelligentsia hooked onto idealisms that might be far more shaky than those they abuse.

Must say that most of us ex-farmers have admiration for the Greenies, especially the womenfolk Farmer’s wives, also either admire or belong to Greenie groups. My wife, now departed unfortunately, also had a great feeling for picturesque patches of uncleared land, causing arguments with myself about over-clearing.

With the females, much of it began in our little home town of Buntine, situated in a very low-lying area, containing a roofed railway dam allowing steam trains to take in water. In 1954 when diesel locos took over, 13000 acres of sloping railway dam-catchment was opened for farming.

But applicants were shocked when three local farmer’s daughters and a son successfully formed a deputation to have the catchment saved for posterity because years previously a surveyor Nunn, who later became a Ph’d had warned about Buntine town becoming salt if the catchment was cleared

BB Part Two

The WA wheatbelt is now full of such stories, as land areas similar to the railway dam localities are everywhere now white with salt.

It does prove how much we owe the womenfolk for caring for the land, and I do wonder sometimes why there are not more females in our OLO groups. Maybe it is because our contributors are so nasty to the Greenies and even the Democrats.

One even wonders sometimes whether our male leftie-haters are mentally yet much out of diapers?

Also doesn't say much for the future of this re-fangled Corporate Culture if our Greenie and Demo' obsessed abusers belong to 'em

Alex, why on Earth are you skeptical about the effect of man’s behaviour on the Earth’s climate? What makes you qualified to be skeptical? Are you an expert on the interplay between solar physics, atmosphere physics, oceanography, geography, geology, biology and chemistry that results in our climate? Do you have expertise in statistical analysis and its application to stochastic modelling of complex systems? Have you gone through the detail of the IPCC report and identified where it has made its mistakes? Can you enlighten us as to why you are right and every respectable climate scientist in the world is wrong?

Of course you can't. You're a political wannabe who sees this as an opportunity to earn some brownie points with your side of politics by attacking (as you see them) your political enemies. The validity or otherwise of the science has nothing to do with your opinion.

Your article really depressed me. You seem to be someone who has at least a moderate amount of intelligence, yet you treat this issue like a high-school debating competition. But worse than that, you're not even generous in defeat. When you lose a debate (and Durkin sure lost this one for you) you bitch about the unfairness of the adjudicator. For God's sake, this issue deserves to be treated a bit more seriously than this.

Hey Pericles,
Contradiction in terms – sane people don’t get negative – cynical sometimes maybe.

Both Bushrat and Arjay have a point, but you are right – “easy to say, hard to do.”

On the money with your perception of the developed/developing countries' attitude to standard of living – economic growth in common parlance.

But environmental sustainability doesn't mean living in the ‘dark ages’ as you seem to imply. This is where I'm optimistic, and you infer yourself as pessimistic.

No one is asking our government to reduce our standard of living.

Believe it or not, China is very aware of the risks associated with ‘climate change’ – do you really think they are not given that if for example, the water source of their country collapses (Himalayan ice sheet)? Their food bowl for 1.5 billion people would be stuffed. Talk about a security threat or a refugee problem! You get the drift?

China has acceded to the Kyoto Protocol, in fact only the US, Oz and Kazakhstan hasn’t! China (India, Brazil, etc) are doing more to adapt to climate change than we are and per capita, they are doing more than the US or us (OZ).

The government, if it wanted to, could get rid of the huge subsidies to high energy users. The question you have to ask, why haven’t they? This is where it gets “dirty”.

Have I concerns? There are very powerful vested interest groups that want to maintain the status quo, the IPCC refers this as the “business as usual” approach, and is reflected in their SRES (projected future scenarios).

We can go geothermal, solar-thermal. Coal and gas will be a major supplier well into the future, but it will be “cleaner” – Nikki Williams said as much. We can even export this technology (China is already asking us for help in the energy sector, as well as cement manufacture). There will be a role for nuclear (not just yet for Oz) and we can export our uranium to countries like France, Canada, US, Japan and even China.

APEC will be interesting.

PAB, spot on.

Pathetic and pointless article about a pathetic and pointless documentary.

BB, you should be charged with reckless misuse of the word "documentary" :)