This whole global warming business, together with the problem of peak oil, could be solved if the federal government installed a machine in parliament house to recycle hot air into crude oil.

"Over the past two years climate all over the world has inexplicably begun a pronounced cooling."

I struggled with motivation to read the rest of the article after this line. What's wrong with learning a bit of statistics, and understanding what a five year average is?!

"Global warming is a distant and uncertain possibility of a problem that most likely does not even exist, at least in the catastrophic form being predicted."
Most likely? Er, I understand what the author's trying to say, but that's an extremely bad choice of words. The IPCC reports all talk about percentage possibilities of catastrophic or otherwise happening, and that's over the 50% mark. Hence, it is *not* "mosy likely".

Arjay, why would Ross Garnaut be able to explain it. He's not a scientist, and not able to understand the science fully. He's even said that. So, GG.

Chade,NASA has found that the oceans have been cooling for the last 5yrs.So from next yr they should be cooling?The Oceans absorb 80-90% of the sun's energy and are the prime driver of climate.

If you look at the long history of climate,CO2 has never led temp change.CO2 always follows by some 800 yrs.The temps variations we are experiencing now,all fall within the parameters of normal variations covering the last two thousand yrs.

My mind is open to the influences of CO2,the AGW zealots have no doubts at all.This is not a healthy sign of either good science or good judgement.

Ross Garnaut has set himself up as some sort of authority and thus like god,needs to be made accountable.

I know someone who bought shares in the Chinchilla coal-to-liquids operation a few years ago for about 18 cents each. They were not far off $4 the other week.

However, as far as providing all our petroleum needs, I think the EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) is rather low. I will just pull these figures out of my head becuase I can't quite remember (will check up later) but if memory serves, there is nothing like light, sweet crude which returns about 100 barrels for every 1 barrel used in the extraction process. As long as it is an easy to extract spot and not extremely deep/in very deep water/ in savage tundra conditions etc. Compare this with shale oil which the best technology has managed to push to about 4 barrels for every 1 used. Unlike light crude which we simply drill down to and up it comes (initially) under it's own pressure, we have to expend petroleum mining and processing shale oil before we even get something like crude oil to crack.

So with coal being so superabundant, if it were as viable as pumping up crude, we would have developed a huge global industry by now.

I think we are probably reaching the end of the easy, cheap oil and will have to make do with less. Which will likely be very painfull and force a great deal of change.

Arjay

If the ocean is cooling, then why are sea levels rising? A research team has found that ocean warming has been underestimated, explaining the apparent contradiction.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/06/18/scisea118.xml

Arjay, I see you've got a lot of sources there backing up your claims. And by a lot I mean none.

"Ross Garnaut has set himself up as some sort of authority and thus like god,needs to be made accountable."
No, you asked for Garnaut to explain your claim that the "planet" has cooled (but now you say only the oceans have cooled). He's not able to explain either for or against. He's also not accountable for the science. So, again, GG.
He also did not "set himself up", and that's a silly statement. The Government appointed him to do a job, and he's doing it - and you're here raging against him for it.