..."Why would the scientists have any axe to grind ?"

Er - funding, prestige, wanting the approval of their peers, upgrading the status of their science -- is that enough?

Supporting climate change hysteria is a no-loss strategy for the average working scientist - the longer they can keep global warming from being proved false, then the longer they keep their jobs and the more often they get to pontificate on telly.

Ask rather why anyone would want to put their career and funding at risk by bucking the trend: could it be because they have integrity and a conscience?

In the Executive Summary of his report Prof .Garnaut said “Australia playing its full part in international efforts on climate change can have a positive effect on global outcomes. The direct effects of Australia’s emissions reduction efforts are of secondary importance”. Given that Australia only produces around 0.3 Gt CO2 (out of a world total approaching 30 Gt and currently increasing by one Gt / year) he could have said, more correctly, that the direct effects of our reduction efforts will be negligible.

Garnaut does make about a dozen references to “renewable energy” which is, of course, the code word for “any non CO2 emitting energy generator as long as it is not nuclear”. (I could not find the dreaded N-word anywhere in his 63 page report) He does however indicate that, with our large reserves of exportable high grade uranium, we will be able to help the global CO2 mitigation efforts by selling it other countries – presumably ones that are not as confident as we are about being able to meet all their energy needs with renewables. This could be regarded as our “playing our full part in international efforts” if it was not governed by local petty political considerations which result (e.g.) in our refusal to supply uranium fuel to India to help them cut their CO2 emissions

I hope that that in his further review he may look at the possibilities of thorium which many are coming to regard as the nuclear fuel of the future because it is more plentiful than uranium, non-fissile and potentially enables intrinsically safe reactors to be built which produce far less radio-active waste. Thorium reactors are being actively researched in India, USA, Russia and Europe’s CERN establishment and the developments are being backed by people of the stature of Dr. Hans Blix. Why should Australia be particularly interested in thorium - perhaps because, as Prof. Garnaut may discover, as with uranium, we also happen to have the world’s largest reserves of the element?

How about this:
Those who deeply and truly believe in the soul of their conscience that human activity is causing the planet to die, get out their abacas and calculate the cost of doing whatever it is they want to do to save our miserable existence on a yearly basis. Calculate this in monetary terms. Then each country pays six months of this into a global research fund and provides the brainpower necessary to really determine irrefutable proof. If they reckon it’s a reality, we go ahead and take the bitter medicine, if they come up with zip, we will have created a precedent where we can work stuff out in a collaborative and sane way. We might even take a look at a few other ideas to improve our lot.

"January 2008 - 4 sources say “globally cooler” in the past 12 months
19 02 2008
January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet. While January 2007 started out well above normal.
January 2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature drops on all of the major well respected indicators. I have reported in the past two weeks that HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year.
Here are the 4 major temperature metrics compared top to bottom, with the most recently released at the top:......."
[A long article with graphs]
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/

anti-green

Don't quote facts. It does not align with the fanciful evolutionary gw dogmas

Grn...excellent point about it not making a jot of difference.
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/2008/02/australian-version-of-report-was.html
.000043 degrees a year, IF we cripple our economy and throw millions into poverty.

It makes a mockery of the claim that we need to act quickly....which is just more pathetic scaremongering.