Bashir, you know as well as any that climate-change science is much more advanced now than in decades past and the wealth of expertise and knowledge is getting better with each passing year. Scientists will keep on doing what they do best - science.

What needs to be understood (and your article helps) as we move on and take our collective heads out of the sand ... is that economics and political ideology was, is and will always be, the albatross around our necks in dealing with climate change.

World leaders recognise the problems (evidenced in Bali) as do Big Business. All of us plebs will be sitting on the sidelines (ranting and raging on OLO and the like) expecting, hoping and praying our political and business leaders do the right thing.

The world is a stage, just watch each scene being played out over the next 15 years by the rich and powerful - I for one am not looking forward to it.

Q&A - oddly, I *am* partly looking forward to it. It's pretty obvious that there are big corporations out there with a lot to lose from a move towards a less-carbon-intensive economy. While I don't deny that those corporations have, until now, played a critical role in supplying the energy that fuels our standard of living, I for one won't be shedding any tears if many of them are forced to downsize considerably due to any failure to adapt to new realities.

As for the article's claim that global warming politics might be a "tacit strategy to liberate the developed economies from the stranglehold of oil-producing countries", this is certainly not the first time such a suggestion has been put forward, and I've wondered about it myself: I don't question the motives of the scientists, just whether it's what's really driving the politicans that are just now (after 20+ years of scientists' increasingly strenous warnings) beginning to get serious about the need to reduce emissions. However, George Bush has been quite forthright about the need to reduce America's dependency on oil, without any reference to reducing emissions. I agree with him entirely, and that the same holds just as strongly for Australia. Our dependency on Middle Eastern oil is extremely dangerous, in more ways than one.
Further, the other problem with the theory is that main substitutes for oil imported from developing countries are coal-to-liquids and Canadian tar sands, and given the carbon emissions both involve, you would hardly want to be pushing the seriousness of global warming to encourage a move towards such alternatives.

Further, wanting to reduce dependency on foreign oil has nothing to do with "holding a technological edge" over developing nations, purely about ensuring that any inevitable disruptions to supply (whether political or geological) don't throw our economies into chaos and severely threaten our standard of living. It is a sad fact that in Australia the only serious political party that has even recognised this threat is the Greens.

wizofaus,
The oil sands in Venezuala are actually larger than those in Canada. George Dubya has already rather rudely suggested to Canada that thier sands are essential to supply USA needs and the American press gets quite excited occasionally about the political situation in Venezuala. That excitement sounds oil based to me. Dubya and his father have both commented at one time or another that the American standard of living is not negotiable. All the world's grain and sugar production each year could only be converted to meet about 10% of the liquid fuel demand so conversion is largely a waste of time with the poor and hungry the victims.
Contrary to the article oil has not found in very many new areas of the world. I have seen a comment that the about 70% of production is now from fields discovered more than 30 years ago. Any net search will show that USA peek production was about 35 years ago and that the North Sea fields are approaching exhaustion. Production from USA and North Sea is now less than half the past peak.

"Drawing lessons from history and the nuances of international politics, one cannot but question the honesty of the whole issue."

Indded - when you see oil barons starting wars and grabbing resources which belong to another nation whilst denying their particular industry is to blame, I too, cannot but question the honesty of the whole issue. Science is in hock to the paymasters and is no longer a source of objective proof - of anything.

This article is sheer paranoid conspiracy-theory rubbish.

"Why did the conscience of academia, politicians and drum-beating lobby groups suddenly awaken when oil gushed from every, hitherto unsuspected, region in Africa, Central Asia and elsewhere?"

Mr Goth fails to realise it isn't an issue of conscience, but of science. It has taken many years to surmount the in-built scepticism of scientists about AGW. It recently reached the point that they took the unprecedented step of telling politicians what needed to be done to prevent disaster. That coincided with the surge that China and India (and Russia and Brazil and others) are experiencing, but is not caused by their surge.

"I assume that the main motive of the global warming campaign is about economics. It is a desperate effort by advanced nations, regardless of the position of the US, to deny the shift of world trade dominance to China, India, Russia and elsewhere."

Mr Goth assumes wrongly. The main motive is concern for those least able to deal with AGW - the poor in general, specifically the poor in developing countries, where the poor are concentrated. These are the people who will be hardest hit by the consequences of global warming. That this is the main motive is supported by the evidence - it was NGOs and scientific organisations that led the push for political action, not governments (who spent the last few decades denying the obvious).

But I can agree with one aspect of this otherwise entirely wrong article: "It is not fair to ask developing nations to atone for the sin committed over the centuries by industrial nations."

Developed nations, having benefited from cheap energy that is only cheap because its long-term costs have not been part of its price, should be the first and most diligent of groups to move towards a carbon-neutral economy. The stance of the US - that international agreements should mean nations moving in lock-step in reducing emissions - is inequitable. Developed nations should be leading the way in converting our economies, not demanding those who missed out on cheap fossil fuels match our efforts.

From these sorts of articles, one would get the impression that the notion of climate change is something that was dreamed up a few years ago as some sort of panacea to fix some vaguely defined political or economic problem.

I remember hearing about it back in the seventies - only then it was called "the greenhouse effect" and nobody was even dreaming about a hole in the ozone layer.

This is typical of the paranoid parochial comments from Bashir Goth.

Please stop posting him. His commentary is so inane as simply to be irritating not provocative.

Q&A “you know as well as any that climate-change science is much more advanced now than in decades past and the wealth of expertise and knowledge is getting better with each passing year.”

I would observe the science of “national economics” has been around for as many centuries as climate science has been for decades.

I would further observe, the old but true adage – if you want three opinions on national economies, just as two economists to a debate.

That climate –change science is “much more advanced now that in decades past” is the same as saying an infant grows to a toddler before it gets to evolve into an adolescent and then adult.

If we consider “Economics” to be relatively “mature”, yet still full of divisive “views and opinions”, then climate science remains infantile and equally subject to diverse views and opinions.

I find the same inherent risks when relying on the prophecies of an “infant science” as I would find inherent risks in trusting an “infant” to run a national economy.

The matter of climate change and carbon emissions are driving a group of elitist scientists, in consort with UN to promote carbon trading as a solution to what has been beefed up into a supposed “international issue”.

The campaign is an excuse for governments to acquire a greater than otherwise justifiable component of national economies by imposing carbon taxes on their electorates, based on fraudulently science and misrepresentation.

History has shown Libertarian capitalism to be the most effective economic system for individual development. Socialism has failed repeatedly whenever attempted. Carbon taxes are merely another attempt at “Socialism by Stealth”.

As for the article, well expect division of opinion. Not everyone is motivated by the opportunity of some soft grant.

Diversity remains as essential to individual human welfare as it does to food supply, basic biology and sustainability of the resources of the planet.

We have a problem and some people choose to shoot the messenger because they don't like the message.

For anyone to say that the scientists are frauds and misrepresent science just goes to show how ignorant and feeble minded they are.

Thankfully, people that count are tackling the issues and making the decisions.

It appears that the scientific consensus pendlam is swinging back.
Not far yet, but enough to cause some rethinking.

Anyway the whole global warming caravan may be stopped in its tracks
by a shortage of liquid fuels. The solutions are the same to a large
extent for both problems, except for coal.
Coal will be a transition fuel for some 30 years before it peaks.

I don't think global warming is a conspiracy just opinion.
It is not by the end of the century that needs to be worried about
but the end of the decade or the middle of the next decade.

Now that the technology is here, wouldnt it be lovely if texts could be colored
- black for truth, red for lies, green for nobody knows which;
and purple for emotive language out to denigrate such as

<resounding chorus- , it may be tantamount to self-immolation to say anything - One may not even dare to raise one’s voice for fear of becoming a victim of an inquisition- brigades of climate change cheerleaders.
I must risk refusing to follow the herd - my concern is . . the fervour - pushing the agenda of climate change. - one cannot but question the honesty >

If you momentarily put aside the the science and look at the historical record, a thinking mind must sadly conclude that on the balance of probabilities GW is a crock. Doom-sayers have been selling the inevitability of the end in multifarious guises ever since the Evangel's execution.

And when people make up their minds without reason; there is no reasoning them out of a position.

And then there is the Science; Clear, unambiguous, independent and persuasive! But GW has never been a scientific debate; it's adherents apply the language of tyrants: your with us or against us, your for life or of the devil.

Only a coward slovenly complies to that kind of argumentation. And whilst GW remains a point of debate, the cowardice of modern intellectuals does not.