Leigh

I too am concerned with the latest Kyoto commitment but probably not for the same reasons.

Committing to assisting other countries with their GHG emissions is not so bad, however, I am opposed to Australia receiving carbon credits without a firm commitment to reducing its own emissions.

The latest aid commitment to developing nations will see the polluters at the big end of town in Australia continuing to emit excessive amounts of pollutants including the incessant discharge of extreme amounts of particulate matter which is hovering over our region. Scientists hold PM's responsible for a good deal of the drought conditions and they are also held responsible for some 73% of acid rain (the devastating impacts of PMs on human health have already been scientifically established.)

And remember, regulation of the environment (including atmospheric CO2) in Australia is controlled by state governments. Hazardous, industrial emissions in my state are soaring - big time. Enforcements to adhere to conditions set down by the EPA legislation are minimal or non-existent. Breaches are committed 24/7, rendering the Act, null and void.

Carbon credits, supposedly to offset CO2 emissions are my greatest concern. I believe the edict is ambiguous and a ploy to assist in eliminating any obstacles towards excessive resource and economic growth for Australia.

Fickle Pickle,

I'm not sure whose post you read insted of mine, but I said absolutley nothing about the cost of generating any energy. I know nothing about it.

What I DID say was that the cost of helping out backward countries with climate change at $1.5 billion per annum was over $70,000 per year per head, which is clearly RIGHT.

I am also "continually amazed at the failure of allegedly educated people to understand simple arithmetic".

Take Leigh for example: 1,500,000,000/21,000,000 = 71.43. However, according to Leigh's calculations

"...the cost of helping out backward countries with climate change at $1.5 billion per annum was over $70,000 per year per head, which is clearly RIGHT".

Er, no old chap - you're clearly WRONG. I guess the missus does the books at your place, eh?

to dnicholson:

I simply asked a question. As it happens I think I know what is meant by annual and decadal variations, but they do not assist in answering my question.

It would help us all if those raising questions were not treated as idiots or 'deniers' — a Holocaust smear. The science surrounding AGW is ambiguous in its findings and their implications. It is certainly not 'settled'. Science is never 'settled'; it involves the continual testing of hypotheses, and one successful test will overturn any settled assumption.

adventures007 “we will need to redistribute wealth internationally so as to bring in the poorer nations, and within nations so as to redirect resources.”

I knew I missed a line in my post, which adventures007 has reminded me of..

"(International) Socialism by Stealth"

Tax the comparatively rich to subsidise the comparatively poor.

Having failed in the “cold” war, the notion of the opposite, a “warming” war is a deflection and the ideal vehicle for the meddlers and fumblers to pursue.

Ultimately, the outcome will be another recession, exasperated by a coalition of socialist minded federal and state governments.

I see Krudd has already genuflected by signing off on the Kyoto charade, assuring himself a sainthood (side joke for anyone who happened to see the bald-archys).

The problems of the developing world are largely attributable to the attitudes of the developing world. Imposing artificial constraints by way of unmeasurable carbon emissions onto Australians will not improve, one iota , the domestic circumstances of a Bangladeshi or African.

Unless someone wants to recolonise Africa and Bangladesh and a few other places, nothing will ever be achieved, except the aspirations and potential of individual Australians and others in the developed world will be “leveled”, as dictated by the socialist’s creed.

This is nothing new, Oliver Cromwell had his levelers and so too the citizenry of France, following the French revolution. Both those events were brought about by civil war, I find it sad that we should sign up for more of the same when the cold war was a resounding success of libertarianism over socialism..

Well Don, I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt.
As I said, 1998 (or 1934) is the hottest year on record for the continental United States. However, a 5-year running average from 1900 to 2007 shows a reasonably consistent trend upward (with a flat or slighty declining period from about 1940-1970, due to high aerosol pollution). Indeed, if you measure from the end of 1998 onward, it's a very dramatic trend.
1998 was a big El Nino year, hence the especially high temperatures in much of the Northern Hemisphere that year.

Globally, however, the hottest year on record is 2005. Again, a 5-year running average from 1900 to 2007 shows a consistent upward trend, allowing for the 1940-1970 hiatus.

I don't believe there are any serious deniers left that actually question whether warming is happening. In fact there are very few questioning whether it is man-made; we're now pretty much into the "well it's only a few degrees, we can adapt" phase.

As for science being "settled", while you are correct that all scientific knowledge is open to new findings, plenty of things are certain enough that we can base significant decisions upon them.
Indeed, Newtonian physics, even though technically proven incorrect by Einstein, is still more than adequate for landing spacecraft on the moon. I think it's not unreasonable to suggest that scientists are collectively as certain that currently observed warming is primarily man-made as they are that, say, plate tectonics is a valid theory, or that HIV causes AIDS. Indeed, there are almost certainly far more deniers of those two theories than there are of anthropogenic global warming - they just don't receive funding from industry think tanks.