"Put simply, weather is natural variability measured over short time intervals and narrow spatial areas (seasonal and regionally) while climate is weather averaged out over longer time frames (decades) and broader regions (nationally, hemispheres and globally)."

Some people should spend less time looking at "proverbials" or reading propaganda blogs (eg. realclimate.com) and more time reading from a greater variety of sources. All 4 major "global" temperature time series are showing around or less than 0 deg C anomalies. By your definition these are measuring climate ie. spatially and temporally broad. Put SIMPLY the globe has cooled and lost most of the gains from supposed CO2 induced causes. If this is possible while the globe is blanketed in the most CO2 since the age of the dinosaurs what is there to fear.

GLOBAL TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES
RSS MSU -0.08 C Satellite measurements since 1979
UAH MSU -0.05 C Satellite measurements since 1979
HadCRUT3 +0.04 C The "official" measure used by IPCC
GISTEMP +0.12 C The "dodgy" measure run by Hansen himself
Hardly scary numbers here. Nobody (or poor wee beasties - dickie dear) can even feel a 0.1 C temperature difference.

"Australia experienced its sixth warmest year on record in 2007."
Was also the coolest for this century and it does seem to be dropping.
If you look at the satellite measurements, especially for the southern hemisphere, temperatures are definitely declining. Something else driving climate? A much safer bet.

"They certainly don’t understand climate science, linear regression or trend analysis."
Of course if you disagree then you obviously "don't understand" or are "ignorant" possibly even "malicious" or "recalcitrant". Linear regression and trend analyses are after all such complex concepts. As for climate science I don't think anyone fully or even largely understands it.

The Blefuscudians and the Lilliputians provide as much light as you people on this argument. Is there any common ground on which you both agree? Is there one measure of climate that is equally respected? Or should we be left to contemplate our boiled egg in perpetual fear of opening the wrong end. This is what happens when ideology overtakes science.

Dickie,

Firstly, I have no special knowledge or interest in; Amazon rain forests, mangrove forests, land salinity, polychlorinated biphenols, “ocean dead zones”, or fish kills. I would suspect that you too lack expert knowledge in these areas.

I can and do claim professional and hands on experience with some applications of radioactive nuclides in the health field. However, I am retired and not up to-date. Further I recognise this does not make me a walking encyclopaedia on all things nuclear. My experience of life allows me to acknowledge expertise and scholarship in diverse fields; I can also detect the converse.

Let us return to global warming (GW). I was drawing attention to one of many internet articles and blogs that question the GW paradigm.

GW has for many years entered the political arena which allows you and me to have opinions. GW propaganda played a prominent role in the last federal election. Now that the Kruddites are faced with the economic and financial reality of office, I predicted they will go into a vigorous “back pedalling mode” on GW.

Meanwhile I will continue to use as much electrical energy as I can reasonably afford. I will continue to drive my car to the extent of my reasonable requirements. I will do these things as freely as I am able within constrains set by law.

I'm a greenie from way back. But when I say I'm a greenie I am not associating myself with the religious Green Party that operates with the ridiculous premise that nature has been designed as if it were some printed circuit board forcing electrons to follow a certain path, and where the human influence is like unsoldering and replacing a component. Even with such a maladaptive, fixed in place mindset it is quite strange that the Green Party regard CO2 as a very dangerous pollutant. I know that if I happened to be a little or even big plant somewhere I would be lapping up all this extra free carbon dioxide because I would want to grow healthier, bigger, stronger and greeener. I'd be very keen on coal fired power stations too but have little regard for the self centered, ungrateful Christine Milne's of this world.

It is laughable that a warmer like Q and A is keen to point out the difference between what we refer to as “climate” and “weather”. The problem for the warmers with this argument is precisely that they only have a few hundred years worth of historical data, which may or may not have been accurately recorded. They are trying to apply that to climatic behavior that has had its own cyclic changes, unaffected by man, for eons. As a recent example witness the shonky efforts of one Michael Mann who tried to write the "Little Ice Age" which was an effect driven by solar/cosmic changes, right out of the history books.

However, when we take the data for an actual year like 2007 which appears to radically break from the thirty or so year trend by a factor of six times in the opposite direction (i.e. average temp falling 2.4C (jan 2007 to jan 2008) in 12 months), it certainly needs to be considered in context. e.g. The IPCC is the one projecting that we will get that amount of warming in 50 years and saying it will be a catastrophe.

GC theorists appear convinced that if it’s cool, fossil fuel pollution has no impact on human or environmental health – even those trained in “some applications of radioactive nuclides!”

This conviction appears firm, despite the established, scientific consensus formed many many decades ago by medical and environmental toxicologists that fossil fuel emissions are extremely hazardous.

It is curious that the GC theorists have not debated the science of atmospheric SO2 and its relationship to global cooling. Perhaps it is too unpalatable?

“Opposite to greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosol particles are expected to cause climate cooling, but uncertainties exist about source variability and strength.

We analysed an ice core from a European glacier to quantify source strengths of aerosol-borne sulphate over a 200-year period. Sulphate from emissions of SO2 increased by more than an order of magnitude during this century.

This anthropogenic source is responsible for about 80% of total sulphate in the industrial period, and reflects emissions of west European countries. (Blackwell-Synergy)

CO2

"Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991).

This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.].

Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)"

“Even with such a maladaptive, fixed in place mindset it is quite strange that the Green Party regard CO2 as a very dangerous pollutant.” (Keiran)

How rude of you, Keiran. Have you endeavoured to understand the basic science of industrial CO2 emissions? This would prevent the egg on your face.

Please buy yourself a manual on environmental toxicology before you continue with your "fairies in the garden" stuff!

Dickie don't be rude, even if I was an obnoxious little weed, I would be thankful of all this extra and free CO2 that would allow me to grow healthier, bigger, stronger and greeener.

For your information CO2 is not really anything much of a greenhouse gas for planet earth once it gets the early work done and above 0 degrees Celsius. So far every last scrap of existing scientific evidence confirms overwhelmingly that industrial CO2 release is good for people and enhances the biosphere/environment. If you find any plausible evidence you are welcome to let everyone know.