Yet again on climate change from this sleazy, know-nothing moron. What on Earth are the OO editors thinking?

o dear bushy! What is your problem?
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If this winter is anything to go by, we are in for an ice age real soon. We’ve had record minimum temperatures in many places in Queensland. We saw the coldest day and the coldest and wettest June on record in Townsville, and an entirely different sort of winter compared to the last 24 winters that I have experienced in north Queensland.

What does this mean for climate forecasts that by all indications mean we should be seeing the weather change in the opposite manner? Probably not much at all. We’ll have to wait for the next few winters before we can tell.

But it does drive home the highly uncertain nature of the purportedly definite global warming phenomenon.

I have no doubt that anthropogenic climate change is real. But beyond that I battle to have any idea as to what significance it may have.

So should we continue to try to tackle the climate change issue? Or should we just let it go and address more important things?

We should basically refocus our energies on peak oil and sustainability issues and give climate change the big flick.

Why?

Because it is too big to handle! It is beyond us, especially with China’s rate of expansion, which just overwhelms everything else. And because even with our best efforts, all we could hope to do is reduce the rate of CO2 output a bit (or more likely reduce the rate of increase), which would lengthen the period of high emissions quite possibly resulting in a worse effect on our climate overall.

And because the potential for disruption to our society and most societies around the world wrought by rising fuel prices and shortages of supply is a much more urgent matter.

And because sustainability has surely got to be the underlying goal for all societies. It is an issue which we are currently nowhere near addressing in a meaningful manner.

The claim is that climate scientists impose a kind of groupthink in their ranks that punishes disagreement. Conversely there will be accolades if a genuine flaw can be found in the current theory; that flaw has to stand up to rigorous peer review by actual scientists. So far the disagreements are over technicalities not major conclusions, the hockey stick graph being an example.

However I'm not sure that climate issues are a sideshow to more important matters. If much of Australia's foodbowl can no longer reliably provide that is a serious issue. The precautionary principle may also have links to sustainability. For example world coal production is increasing at 4% a year despite all the CO2 brouhaha. What if economically recoverable coal runs out earlier than we expect? Every scenario must be considered.

"sleazy, know-nothing moron"....spoken like a true warmer bushbasher...the debate is over! the debate is over!

Anybody who actually looks at the radiative forcings table from the IPCC report will be astounded by the very large error bars. Their predictions, oops they don't make predictions do they, their "storylines" and "scenarios" could be out by a lot.

And then as Ludwig says there is the Chinese. A problem too vast to be overcome. We could all go back to living like 14th century peasants and it won't make a scrap of difference to global CO2 levels.

"So far the disagreements are over technicalities not major conclusions, the hockey stick graph being an example."
Actually that was a major disagreement over a major conclusion ie. that it is warmer now than it has been in the last 1600 years.

"much of Australia's foodbowl can no longer reliably provide"
Errr its called a drought. They've happened before and they've been bigger and badder.

Another denialist article.... I tried to read it, but I'm sorry I just couldn't be bothered finishing it. They all start looking alike after a while.

Anyway, here is what I think. I think we have to treat Global Warming as an issue of risk management. If there is a significant risk of cataclysmic climate change then we should take appropriate action to prevent it. Of course that begs the question of what is 'significant' and what is 'cataclysmic' and what sort of 'action' is 'appropriate'?

I don't know the answers. But from what I've seen (including the data omitted by Durkin) I think the case for doing something is stronger than the case for doing nothing. Wishing the problem away doesn't seem very sensible to me

Whenever I see examples of this endless going-nowhere debate I tend to recall all the medical experts over the years, who insisted that smoking was not a health problem.

Despite all the evidence presented, there was always an expert prepared to publicly dispute the current findings.

Even a couple of years ago, the idea that passive smoking was harmless was still in vogue and there were zealots on both sides.

Eventually some degree of common sense prevailed and there would not be many scientists left willing to go public against the current mood but it seems some have found a new frontier.

Likewise, the WW2 Holocaust deniers have had their moment in the sun, but are still there lurking in the background.

It's also like the ongoing mobile phone/cancer debate.
Despite constant ongoing research, there is no definite proven link between RF radiation from mobile phones and cancer but there IS a proven link between RF radiation and genetic damage. The link between genetic damage and cancer is "outside the parameters af the current research" and neatly sidestepped. The path may go from "A to B and then to C" but since there is no direct link between "A and C", the findings cannot be proven. Simple.

This is how the issues get clouded and the original point is lost.

A lot of the findings rolled out by both sides can be interpreted this way.

However, common sense alone should suggest that dumping ever-increasing amounts of anything into the air would eventually have a consequence, especially in a closed system - and that's good enough for me to be concerned.