gecko,

Look at my posts on the Clive Hamilton complementary tread. I asked Clive for a model and data. The response? Nothing.

Recently, I submitted an article to The "A" journal in my discipline. All five reviewers said the same thing, "excellent idea, but come back when you have empirically tested the model and can provide results. We don't print propositions untested". Well, gecko, that is their standard. I accept that and I am not spitting the dumming. A year from now they will probablly accept my submission with the data. Then comes two years of revisions. Then it is printed.

How can Graham be picking on Clive, when Clive has noth substantive, which is supported, to say? Clive might be right, but he didn't prove it. Graham has standards to uphold.

What also was misleading and created so much attention was Clive's title alluding to OLO finishing up. That was unethical, I feel.

Absolutely Passy, this forum is the only place where I get so close (and personal!)to persons who think totally differently from myself. Both posters and article contributors. Being on a blog with like-minded posters is cute, but not as intellectually stimulating.

Examinator, my modus operandi is to skim over posts that contribute nothing or little other than venting some personal spray. My take is that that could very well be seen as being for the public good. You know, rather heatedly banging on a keyboard than road raging or worse. I do have to confess though, that resisting flaming some posters can at times be such a challenge, that I've occasionally slipped up.

CJ says that the quality of contributing articles has declined somewhat over the year. It would be a shame if article contributors became reluctant because they are taking some of potential heated/obnoxious posts personally. Surely if you have an opinion about something and others see 'the gaps' in your thinking/analysis that can only be a good thing. Nothing like reflection to tighten up an argument. It surely is not about changing other people's opinions, but about presenting another way of looking or seeing things.

This forum is open to the public and not an in-house professional site. I think that is what makes it so very interesting. It is like a little window on my fellow voters.

As for bias on Graham's part. Of course he is biased. His political views are no secret, so I'm not sure if that is really relevant in determining whether OLO is a quality forum.

It's a lot better than what the newspapers dish up in this country. Some of the 'opposing opinions' can be so ridiculous that I wonder if it is not a set-up. Janet Albrechtsen comes to mind. I'm sure she's a stooge for the left. I always end up 'rooting' for the other side after reading one of her opinion pieces. How does she do that?

I listened to Guano yesterday but for some reason i drifted off into a mid-day nap which is unusual. I guess i have a problem listening to this joker whose mind is as effective as a blocked drain pipe but i did hear him long enough to put in his disclaimer. i.e. He says clearly that his response is based on what the "scientists" are telling him.

Some posters here like Mercurius feel we now can move on and conveniently ignore this disclaimer that will assist to absolve Guano's pre-Copernican report when eventually it will be found as based on fraudulent claims. So now it all moves on to Rudd and his mob although it was just yesterday he said "that in this business there is one thing we cannot do and that is make it rain." So can he make climate? It is not surprising that Guano "described climate change as a diabolical problem" because it is simply a paradox in the first place. Paradoxes can only exist in people's minds and are not part of the natural world.

Before relying on any information Guano presents as an endorsement people should seek confirmation from the originating authority, the "scientists". He in fact expressly disclaims all and any liability and responsibility on this basis. If these "scientists" turn out to be wrong the consequences of anything done or omitted to be done by Guano can only be referred back to what he understood as the expert professional scientific advice.

It will be the political measures taken from Guano's diabolical that propel the people to go back and seriously examine the "science" or lack of it.

For years now the global warming advocates and doomsayers have had a free run and, as far as I can see, not put forward one ounce of solid evidence that humans are to blame. Anyone questioning their theory has been derided and ridiculed.

Now a few articles are being put forward countering the theory of man made global warming, and not only on OLO, the warming advocates are crying foul and critisising the referee. Apparently there is also some evidence that it has been cooling for the last X years, dispite increased CO2.

There are many natural occurances that we have no control over. Such as earthquakes, volcanos, tsunarmies, continental drift, the shifting of the poles and changing rotational axis. These could all have an influence on a changing climate. Then there are other influences outside Earth.

Those that have blind faith that humans are causing global warming must have a very high opinion of our importance in the scheme of things. We cannot even influence the amount of rain, the temperature, wind, tides, snow or frost let alone the whole climate.

Untill concrete evidence is forthcoming showing human influence, I will stick to advocating natural occurances for changing climate.

Years ago I believed in many alarms that claimed AGW as established scientific fact: cars, planes, cow farts, forests as “carbon banks”, and so on. If I had been born later, I probably would have believed in metaphorical “black balloons” squeezing themselves out of household appliances, like in more recent government advertisements pushing AGW onto their subjects. But in those earlier years (early to mid 1990s) I also believed in several assumptions supporting the “green” or “new age” faith about how technology and improved living standards threatened to kill us all.

One major assumption in my earlier faith was ideological. Energy production was, it seemed, an intrinisically greedy capitalist activity with only self-interested profit motives, oblivious to the natural environment and its inhabitants. The assumption was tantalizingly simple, and apparently proved by infamous pollution cases like the Exxon Valdez spill and Union Carbide's Bhopal atrocity. The sectoral greed seemed self-evident too, especially since state energy and other assets were flogged into private ownership, where short-term gain triumphed over concern for consumer needs and rights.

However, the big lie in that ideological assumption was clear from the now proven fallacy about purported “efficiency” in privatized energy and other infrastructure. How could investors agree to fund development of energy infrastructure when, for example, facilities degraded with age or city populations increased? Well, investors usually could not do such a thing, because such far-sighted, properly responsible action would eat away their profits – egads, they might have to work for a living! Therefore, the great privatizing fat cats simply kept raising the prices of their indispensable products. The supposed “market self-regulation” (an oxymoron) showed itself repeatedly to be a mere veil for opportunistic speculation in a casino economy – just as we can now see in a related process with oil and food speculation.

But perhaps the biggest flawed assumption in my earlier susceptibility to the AGW scare was a pseudo-scientific one spread via misleading metaphor. AGW language has a ritualistic power that compels attention by redefining reality in very alarming ways: think “black balloons”. Therefore,
carbon dioxide is

the most prevalent “greenhouse gas”, and not a common, natural substance essential to sustaining and creating life itself. Thus another seductively simple notion: anthropogenic “Global Warming” must be happening because, well, it is like a “greenhouse” that is warmer inside that out, and it is caused by “greenhouse gases”. AGW language, if taken to its logical conclusion, would depict the entire earth shrouded in a never-ending swirl of ominous black balloons. But nearly all of those balloons would actually come from the ocean and natural vegetation!

Then there is Al Gore, hedge fund manager and inheritor of vast riches from ruthless mining and other ventures, but supposed “darling of the left”. Al never had to work for a living and, it seems, never had to study for it either. By sloppy reference to ice core samples, Al Gore's “Inconvenient Truth” bases its claim about AGW on one of the most outlandish pseudo-scientific fallacies I have seen, depicting carbon dioxide as PRECEDING global temperature rises during past millenia. In fact, the actual evidence depicts carbon dioxide increases AFTER global temperature rises, which is a concept even the lay observer grasps in the comparison with say the human body's processes in summer or during physical exercise. Al Gore's ignorance in that case is astonishing; such basic, major error would seriously discredit any undergraduate. To grasp just how silly Al Gore really is, think of the South Park episodes about “Manbearpig”. Many commoners understand the flaws of such sloppy, but very influential, AGW pseudo-science. However, his film is lauded to the skies, while he himself is continually feted by a multitide of other ambitious, rich and well-connected people.

Another aspect giving the lie to AGW is strategic. China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, and others all offer the prospect of burgeoning economies with a brighter future for their populations; development is imperative there, and those states generally recognize their cross-sectoral responsibilities in that regard. AGW's “emissions trading” casino would help western oligarchs to speculate bigger, and manipulate popular support, thus keeping power and preventing other countries from developing.