Your cannot be all that good at 'spotting' and 'skipping',Liam, if you know what we say and take the trouble to comment on what we say.

How could i miss what you 'say' Leigh, its simply regurgutating Andrew Bolt & Alan Jones. They in turn merely garble the spin of the real pro's, the Lavoisor/Institute for Public Affairs/rest of the tax-dodge-funded "think tanks" spawned by the reactionary rich. We've had their hate mail on our tvs & newspapers 24-7 for over twenty years, guess its inevitable they repeat themselves.

Only thing thats different todays is that the web allows open source analysis, as done by Exxonsecrets.org (topic of the thread anyone?). That interested citizens compile such info makes it easier to see thru Durkins GGW Swindle and its "smoking-don't-cause-cancer" science, they altruisticly made their info available (with modest less-than-cost Greenpeace support), for which i'm grateful. Now i know theres no need to pay any attention at all to fossil fools like yourselves, the grownups have moved on and are debating what and how to do. You keep smearing away, 'by your works shall we know you'.

Liegh vs. Liam: I propose mud-wrestling :-)

Fair enough xoddam, after being labelled a Leftist (much more wounding and inaccurate than the many other RightThink smears) i'll take any chance i can get to restore my honour. But where will you find mud willing to sink so low? :)

Nick Lanelaw states “lack of scientific proof that human activity causes global warming has to be the main issue.”

What is people’s definition of scientific proof? But more importantly, Nick thinks this is the main issue. Really?

What are people's opinion that politicians from all ideologies are adopting policies to adapt to global warming and mitigate GHG emissions. Maybe Nick should tell the world's political and business leaders that they have all got it wrong.

Some people are NOT familiar with Carbon isotope analyses, paleobiogeochemistry or climate science. So it is distortion and misrepresentation to assert that there is no science which affirms human activity as a cause.

People, what is your definition of GW?

Nick Lanelaw quotes, “Kevin Trenberth, previously a lead author of the IPCC, and now head of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, in an article in the publication Nature, states that there are no climate predictions by IPCC, and never have been. He says there are only “what if” projections.”

Nick then goes on to say “This is not true, of course, the IPCC constantly made definite predictions.”

It would be interesting to know what other people’s views are about the IPCC’s SRES and confidence levels.

This may seem cryptic, but where is Jono, where are the engineers?

1 of 2

If that was directed at me, I was busy elsewhere, saw nothing new here, and didn't feel like weighing in with anything more substantial than a giggle. My quip hardly lowered the prevailing mud-slinging tone here, though.

My take:

The article is a rehash of the sorts of things I read in "orthodox climate change alarmist" circles four or five months ago. As far as I'm aware the tobacco/greenhouse PR nexus was first publicised by George Monbiot, but I'm not sure he was responsible for the investigation. The speculation about Channel 4's fossil-fueled motives is probably a bit too far fetched -- 4 is sufficiently independent that the most likely explanation is that it was after token "balance" and a bit of sensationalism, just as its replies to Monbiot's indignant correspondence imply.

The climate is too chaotic to be predictable, and anyone claiming they really know what it will be like in a decade or a century is kidding themselves and their readers.

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with having a guess, nor even with being alarmed. And also nothing wrong with trying to come up with computer models that are able to give some kind of an idea about climate sensitivity. The models are not able to give predictions, but they are able to draw investigators' attention to important variables.

The physics of the greenhouse effect are basic, measurable and uncontroversial: Adding a greenhouse gas has a warming effect ("forcing"), whose magnitude depends on the way that particular gas is distributed through the atmosphere (CO2 is the only major one that mixes well at all altitudes) and on the wavelengths which it absorbs (CO2 has a number of absorbtion lines in the infrared). Direct warming due to CO2 alone will cause confirmable warming.

Climate feedbacks like humidity are also observable, but being feedbacks they are chaotic. Water vapour is the least controversial: the gas has a large number of absorbtion lines in the infrared, most of which do not overlap with CO2.