There is not a scientific argument that has been put forth to date by the anthropogenic global warming skeptic crowd that hasn't already been debated and debunked.

It's not the Sun.
It's not galactic cosmic rays.
It's not changing ocean currents.
It's not natural variations.
No, volcanoes do not emit more CO2 than mankind.
Yes, Mars is warming for completely different reasons.
Things will not be "better" when it's warmer.
No, the oceans and plants will not absorb all of the extra CO2.
No, the upper atmosphere is not warming at a slower rate than the lower atmosphere.
Carbon reductions do not equate with fiscal bankruptcy.
Yes, a small group of scientists in the 70's talked about global cooling, and that's exactly what it was, a small group of scientists.
Weather is NOT the same as climate.
It's not some socialist global conspiracy.
It's not about politics.
It's not about Al Gore.
It's not about the financial success or failure of Live Earth.
It's not about talk radio.
It's not about hypocritical Hollywood elitists.

It's about the science. And the science has been clear for quite a while, regardless of the periodic straw man arguments thrown out by the "skeptic" crowd intended to sow confusion.

As for the "Swindle", here are a few more links on that subject...

Channel 4 : Great Global Warming Swindle
http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820

Deconstructing Channel 4's Great Global Warming Swindle
http://inthegreen.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/deconstructing_.html

C4’s debate on global warming boils over
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1517515.ece

Video: ABC Australia's Tony Jones Dissects, Debunks Martin Durkin
http://www.desmogblog.com/video-abc-australias-tony-jones-dissects-debunks-martin-durkin

Here's news of Professor Ian Plimer featuring at the National Party Conference in Brisbane this week.

see:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Climate-sceptic-to-address-Nats-Qld-meet/2007/07/23/1185043002185.html

How do I reconcile the above news with The Prof's Grand Pronunciamento?

"Science has no consensus, science is anarchistic as it submits to no authority, and the latest scientific view is only transitory. Science is apolitical, and when it has submitted to political pressure in the past, it has been at great human cost."

Keeping science safe from politics, no doubt - but what's the National Party attitude toward anarchists?

Kieran, Arjay and ilk… there’s been plenty of vitriol and name calling, but no further debate on the science put forward.

So let’s talk about the sun-as-single-climate-driver theory shall we?

The amount of sun the earth receives is an enormous driver of climate, but over vast 100 thousand year time frames. Yet it’s not the sun that changes, it’s us. The earth “wobbles”, changing the angle that sunlight hits us. Milancovitch studied these wobbles decades ago.

Milancovitch wobbles in the earth’s angle relative to the sun drove those ice ages Al Gore presented in his graph of 600 thousand years. Changes in sunlight received triggering the temperature change first. 500 odd years later, the CO2 rose or fell. So the temperature changed first, then the Co2. Global Warming disproved?

No because:-
1. Global warming theory never relied on that graph in the first place. It just illustrates that we human beings have pumped CO2 levels higher than any natural variation over the last million years.
2. Even though the Milancovitch wobbles reduced the sunlight received, this does not account for the MASSIVE changes in temperature that eventually occurred. Co2 interacted with changes in ice cover and other feedback mechanisms to massively amplify the effects.

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11659

In other words the million year old ice-core samples DO prove that CO2 is a powerful climate driver by amplifying other effects, even though the temperature changed first IN THAT CASE.

Climate science is really complex. It’s the sum total of a whole host of interacting forcings, feedback mechanisms, geology, continental drift, ocean activity, volcanic activity, Milancovitch cycles, sulfur-particulate induced global DIMMING (masking warming trends for the period after WW2), gases, and yes even solar activity. Any summary theory that tries to ignore all of these and focuses on one simple forcing driving climate is bound to be wrong. Example: Your precious “solar-only” forcing theory was blown out of the water by Tony Jones showing the sun’s activity and global temperatures diverging immensely in the last few years.

"Milancovitch wobbles in the earth’s angle relative to the sun"
I think you will find it's Milankovitch.

"Yet it’s not the sun that changes, it’s us."
I think you will find that the sun does change, not just us. Very Earth centric of you.

"Co2 interacted with changes in ice cover and other feedback mechanisms to massively amplify the effects."
If CO2 is such a massive amplifier of temperature compared with the sun why didn't the earth go into a runaway greenhouse. Maybe because it was swamped by a much greater forcing ie. the sun's decreasing effect as a result of an orbital wobble. In fact the ice cores reveal that the temperature dropped 800 - 1000 years before CO2 started to drop. So much for its massive amplifying effect.

"Climate science is really complex."
Yes you really shouldn't be dabbling, a little knowledge is often more dangerous than none.

"Any summary theory that tries to ignore all of these and focuses on one simple forcing driving climate is bound to be wrong."
Oh you mean like CO2 caused gloabl warming...wrong!

"Your precious “solar-only” forcing theory was blown out of the water by Tony Jones showing the sun’s activity and global temperatures diverging immensely in the last few years."
Heaven help us, Tony Jones the "Journalist" has dismissed all of the solar physicist's theories. They better start looking for new jobs, maybe the ABC? Except they're not up to Tony Jones' level of scientific understanding.
Divergence may be a lag effect of 10-20 years. Might explain why the global temperature stopped rising post 2000.

Alzo, if you buy the single-forcing model we call "The Sun did it!", can you please explain something?

If Durkin and his ilk are allowed to point at Co2 increasing post WW2 while temperatures decreased — and NOT LISTEN to the fact that Global Dimming was involved — then why on earth do you think we are going to listen to your explanation that — "Divergence may be a lag effect of 10-20 years"?

(I'm glad you accept the glaring fact that global temperature stopped rising post 2000).

Where's your proof? Where's the paper that solar changes wait 1 to 2 decades before showing up? Come on Alzo... Durkin was at such pains to show how IMMEDIATELY solar MATCHED temperatures — through his highly selective use of the solar forcings graphs.
(For more on Solar forcings try the ABC real player at...)
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/scienceshow&d=rn/scienceshow/audio&r=ssw_14072007_2856.ram&w=ssw_14072007_28M.asx&t=Saturday%2014%20July%202007&p=1

On the other hand, REAL climatologists admit all sorts of forcings. Yes there are the TINY changes in solar activity over it's 11 year cycle, even smaller forcings changes over it's 20 to 30 year cycles. Then of course there's the massive forcings such as Milankovitch cycles which many papers have analyzed and found wanting as a total explanation of the final temperature differential. Check this out...

"At the 100,000-year period, atmospheric carbon dioxide, Vostok air temperature, and deep-water temperature are in phase with orbital eccentricity, whereas ice volume lags these three variables. Hence, the 100,000-year cycle does not arise from ice sheet dynamics; instead, it is probably the response of the global carbon cycle that generates the eccentricity signal by causing changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/289/5486/1897

So Alzo, I'm waiting on the solar lag papers please. ;-)

Posted by davsab, Thursday, 26 July 2007 11:33:46 PM:
"But what of Plimer’s (Ian Plimer emeritus professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne and professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide) use of term 'global warming zealots', or others’ use of the term “high priests”? Maybe we should all pull our heads in and show some kind of respect."
Quite.