Now that Prof. Garnaut has replied the rest of us can get in on this :)

quote: We've moved beyond self blame to calls for action. The real question is how are we going to respond to the threat. endquote:

There is no threat therefore no need for action. No one has proven man's actions are involved in climate change and there's no reason to assume anything we do will alter the situation. Additionally no one has proven that the current climate change is a bad.

I actually support most of the agenda regarding altering our use of energy but I will NOT support a divisive, corrupt method of bringing about change.

what happened to the previous post from Prof Garnaut?? I didn't quote from thin air.

“The sleight of hand is most obvious in his recognition that a substantial body of opinion has it that the onward and upward rise in measured global temperature has faltered since 1998, and that there has been no sustained increase since.”

Yes. Unfortunately this substantial body of opinion – all scientific; remember we ‘deniers’ are damned for not being scientific – is simply ignored or denied as Greens senator Milne did with her ‘it’s not true, so there’ snit in response to Andrew Bolt on last week’s “Q & A” on ABC.

As Bolt said, if she (and others of her ilk) don’t know that, what else don’t they know?

“…the issue of course is not the existence of a warming trend…but the extent to which it is and has been caused by human activity.”
Hear, Hear! When people who refer to the fact that many scientists discount or reject the human-cause theory of climate change, they are accused of denying the fact of climate change itself; human-blamers cannot accept, or will not accept, natural causes of climate which their god – science- has been aware of for ages.

As Don Aitkin points out, Professor Garnaut also dodges this issue, whether he has been forced to by the terms of those who commissioned the report or not.

Climate change is real, but if we keep going down the human-cause trail without much more investigation and less blind acceptance, we are heading for economic catastrophe that might very well see no improvement in climate, but cripple the economy and our standard of living irreparably.

Don Aitkin further says, of Professor Garnaut: ““The outsider to climate science,” he writes, “has no rational choice but to accept that, on the balance of probabilities, the mainstream science is right”. And then immediately he covers himself, in case later on it turns out that the mainstream was wrong, as it sometimes is. “There are nevertheless large uncertainties in the science.”

...continued

Continued...

That is a damning indictment of the Garnaut Report, and it gives us every reason to believe that we are heading up the wrong path (NB “…large uncertainties in the science.”) if we accept the knee-jerk plans of the Government to push though punishing measures by certain dates, without much more investigation and consideration to those scientists not part of the mythical ‘consensus’.

If it was not Professor Garnaut’s job to:”… debate the existence or extent of human-induced climate change”, then he has just accepted what SOME people have told him and, therefore, his report should not be acted on. If he was commissioned to make a report based on the ‘evidence’ accepted by the Government, then it’s not his fault; but the report still should not be used.

Professor Garnaut’s response to Don Aitkin here and his “That question (human cause) has become largely academic now” is disappointing: completely overlooking the real possibility that none of his recommendations and their ensuing hardship and possible irreparable effects on Australia would make a damn of difference to climate change, even if they were implemented.

Yes, Janama, the Prof's post was there.

I for one would be interested in constructive ideas as to how we could tackle what is obviously a global problem and improve our understanding of it.

Don Aitken
You seem intent on derailing a national and international response by peddling the inactivist propaganda that emanates from the so called ‘denialist’ camp.

Rather than sneering and sniping at what, in my opinion, you perceive as deluded, why don’t you make some suggestions as to; how to set it right, who should do it, what scale that would require, when to do it and who should pay for it?

It is typical of the ‘deny and delay brigade’ to spruik global warming stopped in 1998. It is the peddling of misinformation and distorted analysis like this that gives science a bad name – one could be forgiven for thinking your motive is just a continuum of the ‘war between the Humanities and the Sciences’.

The state of science and technology is what it is for a number of reasons. Climate related science these days is unexceptional except in having to deliver some very disconcerting news. Of course the science continues to be researched, but you would have us think that there is real division amongst the scientists, when in fact there is not.

All I can do is state that I have complete confidence in the intellectual competence and moral integrity of those leading figures in the related fields I have been privileged to work with.

As you so poignantly demonstrate, trust on which humanity progresses is badly frayed these days. I don’t think you have made matters any better. Indeed, I would suggest it is people like you that distort and misrepresent the science to the detriment of progress.

Garnaut’s post was there, and was removed for some reason that we may never know.

Ross Garnaut
I have dealt with plenty of scientists, as a journalist, and looked carefully at the scientific material and I can say there is no evidence at all that,
"the figures coming in from around the world indicate that all our climate change predictions are fast becoming climate change fact", as you state in your post.

However, I do not blame you so much as your scientific advisors. Parts of one of your first report even suggested that temperatures were increasing at the top of the IPCC projections. But that was from a particularly ridiculous scientific paper you were handed. In fact, they are now below the bottom end of the panel's projections.

Temperatures have not moved at all since 1998 and are now declining. Part of the present decline is due to la Nina effect, but on three of the four temperature tracking sites (Hadley, RSS and UAH) but not on the GISS site controlled by Prof Hanson, the decline started well before la Nina. Greenhousers have since been forced to declare that climate cycles are masking the expected warming.

There is no evidence at all that the models work - despite what your advisors may tell you - and some evidence to the contrary. This whole exercise is an expensive folly.