Q&A ” Whether you believe in AGW or not, we must adapt to a warmer and wetter world.

Whether you believe in AGW or not, we must live in a more sustainable way.

By addressing both, we lessen the threats to food/water resources, energy supply/use, biodiversity/environment, national/international security, etc.”

If you anticipate “global warming” by some means other than anthropogenic activity then come clean and be honest about it

The reasoning goes:

Regardless of what we do the world is getting warmer.

Footnote: Using a carbon tax system to curtail or discourage carbon emissions is a fraud which will make no difference to global warming.

If you wish to debate sustainability the option are more diverse but go like this

We need to recognise our dependence on non-renewable resources and the single most critical influence on this is burgeoning human population growth.

Footnote: Using a carbon tax system to curtail or discourage carbon emissions is a fraud which will make no difference to "sustainability".

Criticism folk and suggesting they are “misguided” because they do not agree with your view is to the appropriateness of your preferred actions will never resolve the problems, if what you claim as AGW is really a non-event and the real issues are “sustainability” or “GW from an indeterminate source”.

Hanging your hat on a AGW fraud belies the quality of both your scientific reasoning and your ethics.

Trying to suck the rest of us into an AGW deception is nothing more than that, deception.

As a scientist but a novice in this field, there are a number of questions that I would like to objectively pose.

We wouldn’t seek to use science to completely describe complex multi-variate systems such as the economy, so why would science be any better at describing the dynamics of the atmosphere and climate? Putting a mathematical slant on things, the climate is likely to be an aggregate of different paradigms/regimes that closely abut each other in time and space. An analogy to this is the fractal diagram in chaos theory. What comes out of this is that a slight difference in the starting point of an equation can lead to it representing a completely different physical mode of behaviour.

So, in a field as complex as climate science, the question is always going to exist, how do scientists know which discrete physical paradigm they are mainly in and studying? How do they know there isn’t a bigger one coming down the track that won’t have an offsetting effect, for example? That’s not to say they’re not learning something useful in the climatic behaviour paradigm they are currently studying, but do they know enough to say conclusively that anthropological effects dominate in controlling our climate?

From a non-scientific perspective, there’s a further argument that I think is reasonable. As man has pumped carbon into the atmosphere, it’s his job to (eventually) mitigate the effect. Not for any scientific reason, but because he put it there – like picking up rubbish that has been dropped by people. It’s a good enough reason on its own.

As to making a difference to carbon emissions, nothing is going to happen until a modern, inspired industrialist/technologist leads the revolution via actions. Talk is only talk and actions will be the only thing that beats the problem.

Geoff Davies, "WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE POSTING ABOUT THIS ARTICLE?".

This *IS* Online Opinion, with the emphasis on the word Opinion. Sadly, many posters limit themselves to just stating their opinion. In doing so they appear to use this forum as a soap box to tell the world how it should be run, usually without much justification as to why it should be that way. I agree this can get a little tedious, even for newcomers. For us regulars its even worse - we know the opinions of the other posters, to the point that they could ghost write the contributions of those that do limit themselves to stating their opinion over and over again.

However once in a while someone rises to the occasion and says something truly novel. It might be a new viewpoint, a new factoid, or a new link. Because there is such a diverse crowd out there, some with real expertise in the area, these posts can be real gems. The art of using these forums is to develop the ability to ignore the oft-repeated opinions and go hunting for the gems. Its a tedious process, but I find that over time it gives you get a better feel for the subject matter by than say reading the popular press articles on the same subject. The popular press seems to limit itself to repeating the accepted orthodoxy, or worse giving a "balanced" view without a lot of information on which way the balance should be leaning.

Don, regarding using Wikipedia as a source. I think I may have implied using Wikipedia is better than reading published reviewed papers on the subject, or reading original sources. If so I was wrong. The processes of publishing papers that have been reviewed by anonymous, randomly selected peers is much better political system for establishing "the truth" than Wikipedia will ever be. Learning how to use and contribute to that system must be one of the things imparted by a tertiary education, and to that end if I were a teaching academic I would insist that references sources came from there as well. That said, its not a very accessible system to plebs like me. The papers and their indexing systems are often locked behind "walled gardens" established by the publishers who payment for access. What is worse the information isn't in summary form - it takes a lot of time and effort to figure out what papers are relevant.

Wikipedia is free, summarises the information for me. There are other similar systems that do the same thing - books, forums like this one, magazines and so on. But out of all those, Wikipedia's system of public edits and audit trail seems to lead a much better approximation of "the truth" than the others. For example, the history all Peiser's contributions to Wikipedia is still available, as are the reasons Connolley gave for removing them. If you didn't like Connolley's version, you could always hand out links to Peiser's.

In Clive Hamilton's opinion piece he says .. "The work of climate scientists is subject to the most rigorous testing by the peer review process before it gets the accolade of publication in respected journals."

Geoff Davies here says ..... "He (Hamilton) does a better job than me of giving a fair portrait of science, climate scientists and IPCC, and contrasting them with the shonky denialists, who of course always claim there's a conspiracy to prevent them from publishing."

In issues like AGW it will always come down to ..... does the hypothesis over-ride the evidence? As an example just observe how the blinded IPCC and AGW greenhousers led a chorus of approval when they embraced with a complete lack of critical evaluation M Mann's attempted revision of the last millennium's climatic history with his "hockey stick " chart and hypothesis , ..... and "for one reason and one reason only - it told them exactly what they wanted to hear."

It seems Hamilton and Davies like to raise the high priest argument that the IPCC is the standard of standards with the most rigorous testing by the peer review process. This old fashioned worship of authority cannot work anymore for the IPCC because on this one issue we see an eclipse of reason and total loss of all credibility on climate. This is not some harmless oversight or mere mistake that can be brushed off. It says everything about the delusional or more accurately, shonky IPCC.

If Hamilton and Davies are denying natural climate change then just prove it with observational evidence for AGW ... because it certainly looks like your climate is not going to co-operate with your delusions.

Geoff,
Thanks for the link to Clive Hamilton’s précis; well worth the read.

Col Rouge
You repeatedly distort and misrepresent what I (and many others) say.

You argue for the sake of argument and therefore constructive dialogue with you is pointless.
Your adhoms are tedious and bullying.
You know I have said (many times) that if GHG emissions are taken out as the major radiative forcing of ‘climate change’ then the current warming period cannot be explained by natural forcings alone ...
Not Solar, not Cosmic Rays, not Milankovich cycles, not volcanoes, not whatever … not even your flatulence.

AGW is real, it does not matter to me whether you believe it or not.
I have always said that our current ‘climate change’ is a symptom of unsustainable human activity, and you know it.

RobP
Good questions, methinks better posed and answered at sites like Real Climate:
http://www.realclimate.org/
Are you familiar with the IPCC process or what is in their reports? Much of what you seek can be explained there:
http://www.ipcc.ch/
I agree about walking the walk; a global problem requires a global response.

rstewart
I know what you mean, there are some that are so opinionated they can’t even cite or link to relevant sources – only what comes out of their own mouth, they are ‘experts’ on everything!

Keiran
You keep asking the same old questions and raising the same old crap despite time and time again; answers are given and ‘links’ are provided, that explains it to you. It’s like Hamilton says, blinkered denialists/contrarians can’t offer anything new.

Keiran … can you think of a better way of assessing/disseminating the scientific research in a better way than what the IPCC does? Go on, give it a shot.

You show disdain for science (yet you want to be scientific in your evaluation and assessment of cosmic rays, TSI and sun spots) – Repeat, you contradict yourself.

Btw, NO scientists say natural climate variation does not occur … can you understand?
If this is your opinion, bollocks! If someone else is claiming this, please cite some friggin source.