This is an improvement on an article written by a political "scientist", however the writer still doesn't have the appropriate qualifications. When do we see an article written by a skeptical climatologist?

Surely the point, no matter which side of the fence you sit, is that we humans are destroying our habitat, denying the rights of and justice to the poor and that climate change of any description will not be a worry to anyone if humans manage to send themselves to extinction through unsustainable living!

I'm tired of the raging debates about climate change. It's time for the rubber to hit the road and start changing our attitudes, overconsumption and egotistical lifestyles NOW!

Stanners,

Good post. Hopefully some of the earth worshiping preachers will take note.

Phil,
You're talking about a Maunder minimum. However your mathematics are all over the shop.

Maunder minimum solar forcing 0.17W/m2. Current level of Solar forcing 0.23W/m2. Radiative forcing of CO2 added to the atmosphere since the pre-industrial era 1.66W/m2 (does not include additional CO2 to be emitted in the future)

So, even if the sun went into a Maunder minimum right now and stayed there. It would only reduce the rate of warming.

"During the last major ice age, the entire planet wasn't under ice. While Europe was frozen, Australia was tropical. A small change in AVERAGE temperature still allows for extreme changes at either end."

Rubbish. During the last Glacial Maximum Australia was joined to Tasmania and New Guinea and rainfall was much lower due less ocean evaporation, windiness and greater continentality. That's where all those sand dunes in central Australia came from (the formerly mobile Sahara-type ones now fixed and in many cases vegetated), not to mention glacial and periglacial features in Tasmanian highlands and the Snowy Mountains.

"I may be wrong but wouldn't dirtying-up the snow in Siberia and Canada make it more likely to absorb heat from the sun and increase melting?"

The whole idea is to absorb heat from the sun- otherwise the white snow/ice would reflect energy to space. The idea of bulldozers is stupid, in reality coal black (powder) would be dispersed by aeroplanes.

"Surely the point... I'm tired of the raging debates about climate change. It's time for the rubber to hit the road and start changing our attitudes, overconsumption and egotistical lifestyles NOW!"

How about recognising that the planet's simply overpopulated, and dictators like Mugabe have turned their countries from breadbaskets to a basket-cases? Why is it the responsibility of agriculturally efficient nations like ours to feed the rest of the world when they get off their rear ends and farm their own land efficiently? Or be happy to pay market price for food whatever the price might be?