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.

Professor Garnaut is not a climate change expert but an economist. It is entirely reasonable that he should take the human contribution to climate change as given, and focus on his own area of expertise – namely devising policy responses that minimise the economic costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change. It may be true that most of the areas he covers have been mentioned elsewhere, but he does a valuable task in drawing together current thinking on climate change and responses to it. Areas where I think Garnaut’s contribution has been particularly useful and distinctive include:

- Focusing on how Australia’s climate change response might integrate in the longer term with international policies and initiatives to address climate change post-Kyoto;

- Proposing tough but realistic conditions for dealing with trade exposed emissions intensive industries;

- Debunking, albeit politely and obliquely, the special pleading of generators for compensation;

- Emphasising that there is an economic cost to not acting, as well as to acting; and

- Reinforcing the case for broad ETS coverage, including the transport sector.

Tomorrow’s green paper will reveal how far the Government accepts his arguments.

I haven’t seen these figures showing that ‘all our climate predictions are fast becoming climate change fact.’There are however some high-profile climate predictions made in the recent past that have not, and almost certainly will not, become fact.

For example, IPCC Coordinating Lead Author Phil Jones told BBC News Online in 2003 that ‘Globally, I expect the five years from 2006 to 2010 will be about a tenth of a degree warmer than 2001 to 2005.’ Now, with nearly five more years of temperature data available, it seems highly likely that global temperatures over the 2006-10 quinquennium will be COOLER than in the previous five years. That is the message that emerges from the monthly data published by Professor Jones’s own Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, in conjunction with the UK Met Office Hadley Centre.

According to the CRU/Hadley data, global temperatures were fractionally lower in 2006 than on average from 2001 to 2005. There was a further slight decline in 2007 to the lowest level this century, and yet further cooling was predicted for 2008 last January. The figures now available up to the end of May 2008 suggest that the average for the year as a whole will be well below the CRU/Hadley Centre forecast.

Disturbingly, the CRU/Hadley Centre news releases have obscured the failure of global temperatures to rise under misleading headings such as ‘Another warm year as Bali conference ends’ and ‘2008 another top ten year’, and misleading statements of the form ‘x of the past y years have been among the hottest z years ever recorded.’

Nigel Lawson has deftly observed of such formulations that ‘It is as if the world’s population had stopped rising and all the demographers could say was that in eleven of the past twelve years the world population had been the highest ever recorded’ (‘An Appeal to Reason’, 2007, p. 8)

My hope is that I live long enough to see climate change alarmism exposed for what it really is, just another left wing fad. The real danger is that in attempting to control the perceived myth of AGW, the polititians will wreck western economies.

To give jokers like Guano any platform or credibility is monumental foolishness. What makes Guano look diabolically ridiculous and a barefaced liar are these temp charts ... i.e. The Southern Hemisphere .. where we live ..... has been trendless for thirty years.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3231
Even a dumbo banker would see this fact as relevant. All this talk about carbon pollution (?) coming from Rudd and Guano is bat poop designed to fertilise some special people's pockets ... an outrageous, superstitious climateering fraud on Australia.

At the Brisbane Town Hall meeting on Friday, only one speaker challenged Garnaut’s acceptance of “mainstream” science, a retired physicist who said he’d been dealing with related science for decades, and knew few scientists who did not dispute the “settled” view. He pointed out that climate science was extremely complex, and wondered what efforts Garnaut had made to understand contrary views. Garnaut said that he had sought the views of the most reputable dissidents [no names mentioned], but accepted, and adopted for the Draft Report, the mainstream view. He said that it would be irrational and imprudent not to take this view seriously.

And also, in my view, to treat it as gospel. It has been suggested by another eminent economist, Henry Ergas, that Garnaut is at times partisan rather than professional. In Brisbane, on the question of Australia “not taking a leadership role”, Garnaut said that we were not leading but following many years behind 20-odd EU countries. In fact, Australia has actually done better than the EU at containing emissions post-Kyoto, and the EU ETS was a bad joke which did little if anything to reduce emissions and provided huge windfall gains to many companies. Garnaut must know this, and that Australia will be out on front if it proceeds as currently proposed. In The Australian yesterday, Ergas expressed concern that Garnaut does not fulfil his brief, failing to compare costs and benefits of alternative policy responses and failing to stress that the costs for AGW he estimates are relatively small [especially as Garnaut models a four-fold increase in GDP by end-century] and do not support his argument for urgent action.

So Garnaut's recommendations can be queried on economic as well as scientific grounds

Don Aitkin says in “An initial reaction to Garnaut”:

‘Climate change occurs everywhere and is a slow natural process…..I could accept that the existence of AGW was taken as given by his (Garnaut’s) terms of reference. But its extent? Surely that is the nub of the question?”

Is it the knub? Why not a bet each way? Forget the vitriol in general debate. Let’s get on with practical ways in which we can save energy or use energy more efficiently, and devising practical solutions to rising sea levels.

Much “climate change” debate is akin to debating the cause of the sinking of the Titanic while it is sinking! Why debate the cause – why not try to minimise the effects of the sinking?

Unless we get policy-makers to think in a more strategic way, we will end up as experts in gymnastics (jumping up and down on the spot) but without any plan as to how we deal with the immediate future and the proximate challenges of climate change.

I have to declare an interest in constructing composite seawalls to protect coastlines and sea-side communities against inundation and erosion by rising sea levels. We are talking about every harbour, bay and canal in Australia.

There are practical solutions – education and things which ordinary people can do – which, while they may not solve the “Ultimate Problem”, contribute in a practical way which people understand. Like with “saving water”, why not “save energy” with simple things like double glazing, solar hot water systems, efficient light bulbs, better education on settings for home heating and cooling, etc. People have shown good-will with saving water, why not harness that goodwill to energy use?

To me, this is so obvious. It is something that everyone can understand and appreciate. It may postpone the building of a new power station by some years – so, what is the harm in that? The downside of not adopting a pragmatic strategy is that people get confused and disillusioned by quasi-theological debates about “how many climate change angels can you fit on the end of a pin?

Don Aitkin: " measured global temperature has faltered since 1998, and that there has been no sustained increase since."

Sorry, this is wrong, unless DA can provide an up-to-date reference. DA seems to be sadly out of touch with modern climate science. This is why we should listen to climate scientists, not economists, when we want scientific interpretations of climatic data. Perhaps DA refers to this old chestnut:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere.htm
that seemed to show, just for a little while, that one layer of the atmosphere might be cooling slightly instead of warning. This turned out to be incorrect. Even if it hadn't, so what? Does DA deem that all layers of the atmosphere must increase in temperature monotonically, or else ACC is a bust? Do we ignore all of the other rising temperatures? Do we leave it to hacks to decide that this means that ACC is a myth? I don't think so.

DA: "Why cripple the economy for an increasingly doubtful theory?"

Firstly, there is no basis in fact that it is an increasingly doubtful theory, unless DA can show evidence - perhaps he can show increasing numbers of counter-claims in peer-reviewed climate science journals. I'm prepared to be amazed. Secondly, we are not going to "cripple the economy" unless we keep delaying. Thirdly, even if it would cripple the economy (which it won't) we are probably all going to die unless we do something.

DA: "Remember the Y2K millennium bug scare?"

I remember many IT companies spending a lot of time and money making sure that they were prepared.

DA: "Australia's portion of global CO2 emissions" ...

Australia's pollution is its pollution to deal with, regardless of how much. Granted if China doesn't clean up its act, we are in deep trouble, but its hardly going to do so while we sit back and do nothing, so what are your options?

To Q&A: I'm sorry that you see my writing as 'sneering and sniping'. That was not my intention. To you (and Sams), there is ample evidence that the upward rise in temperatures from 1975 to 1998 has faltered in the last ten years. All the standard measurers show this in their data (GISS, Hadley etc). They differ a little in detail, but not in substance. In other writings I have made the point again and again that oil-based energy , water management and population pressures are the source of our problems, and we should deal with them. It may be that AGW makes things worse, but as yet there is no compelling evidence of the extent to which this is true, if it is true at all.

To geoffalford: If climate change as we are experiencing it is caused through forces external to us (orbit etc) then we simply have to adapt to it. If it is human-induced, then we can do something about it, or try to. It seems important to me to find out first.

To Sams: You put me in quotes four times. The first is a direct quote, and I've dealt with it above. I don't recognise the others and won't comment on them. They are not drawn from this article. The fourth might be from another article but is not directly connected to what i wrote here.

I don't regard carbon dioxide as a pollutant.It is one of the sources of life on earth, and indispensable to plants and animals. The more of it the better.

What better demonstration of the worth of Don Aitkin’s pontifications is his statement: “I don't regard carbon dioxide as a pollutant. It is one of the sources of life on earth, and indispensable to plants and animals. The more of it the better.”

Even half a millennia ago there was recognition, by Paracelsus at least, that the difference between a remedy and a poison might be the dose rate.

Phosphorus is also “indispensable to plants and animals”, and it did terrible things such as “fossimouth” and early demise to the match-factory girls a century ago. It has also provided useful service as a rat poison.

Was carbon dioxide so beneficial when it drowned every living beast it enveloped when it burped up from below Lake Nyas in the Cameroons’ in 1986?

Clearly this carbon debate is a lie
YES global warning is undeniable!

but the point in debate is
ARE WE CAUSING IT ?
NO WE ARE NOT

plus will this 83 trillion NEW tax cure it !
NO
CLEARLY europe's experience has proven the tax changes nothing
thus this NEW TAX wont fix anything!

YES some MIGHT go to alternatives
[but very very little]
most will be going to just WHO EGSACTLY?

HOWARD was against it

just as busche is now AGAINST it

BUT that is the old brair rabbit [2 party quick fix

THEY know they are disbelieved ,
thus hope to con- fuse us via their unpopularity !
to convince ourselves it must be good
IF THEY are against it.

IT isnt [this is across party !
we are being conned yet again]

the two party farce BOTH push the same adgenda!

if we hate howard
up pops a rudd or a keating [or a brendon nelson]
that takes over and does the next stage!

look at the camels we have swallowed gst ,super contribution, deregulation, privatising our comunity assets [our water ,electruicity [its all an ONGOING con game]using the media to sell us lies

its the same adgenda
the NWO adgenda

when we going to wake up
and tell these servants of the new world taxation reordering
their collusions are over?

stop stealing our farms
stop gmo
stop polution

so here is the new guy !
with his same old EXTRA tax think tanked idea

dont keep being fooled by the new faces
its the same old lie folks

the sun puts more energy intoi this plannet in one day
than all our coal fired stations
cant you see how fast they are stealing it from our ground?

this tax grab farce must end!
dont be fooled by the worlds braer rabbits AGAIN

Australia HAS to do its part
right?

so here is the plan

we stop exporting coal
phase it out gradually
NONE AT ALL by 2020

its as simple as that
if coal IS THE PROBLEM
do like we did with uranium!

that is all!

no new burdon
no new cash cow
we stop supply of this EVil substance killing the world

of course it isnt evil it is just being villified
by great decievers

but if it is the problem
lets just fix the problem

how easy is that
or put the full BURDON on the PROBLEM
if coal is the problem
tax that

not create the next proplem [ie the neo con tax grab]

if coal is the cause
shut down the drug supply at the source
right here
right now

we will learn to survive
without the 'income' we get from coal
its clearly not worth the guilt

if it is the REAL problem
lets fix the REAL problem [at the root]
leave it in the ground

and claim the carbon offset for leaving it in the ground
same with clearing our forrests [the real cause for co2 going up
trees use co2 to make oxegen

go figure cutting them down has increased the co2

so step two is stop logging old growth

step 3 is retrain those affected
into tourism [eco tourism]

not nwo eco TAX terrorism

To Don Aitkin, my sincerest apologies for the misquotes, I had another OLO article open (http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7628&page=0) at the time.

However ...

DA - "there is ample evidence that the upward rise in temperatures from 1975 to 1998 has faltered in the last ten years. All the standard measurers show this in their data"

Sorry you are just plain wrong. Case in point:
eg. graph on http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/ (GISS)
If not, provide direct links to the latest data.
Besides, even if the data showed this, interpreting a short-term dip in temperature as 'disproving' ACC would be incredibly (or conveniently?) naive.

Colinsett, you have a frozen in mindsett. Human CO2 emissions represent a tiny proportion of a tiny proportion of a natural atmospheric gas that is absolutely essential to life itself. To my way of thinking this is blindingly obvious but if your mindsett is separate from your very own biology as with Rudd then you can say stooopidities like "carbon pollution".

Quite frankly, I scratch my head and ask how can we have a pm basically so ignorant of science and importantly art as well? On this basis, one certainly wonders about his desire for an education revolution in Australia.

Your mention of Lake Nyas just tells you of the dangers and stooopidities of concentrated sequestration behaviours. However with the length and intensity of a solar cool down this human portion of any extra CO2 would be stripped out quite ruthlessly locking it away in the carbon cycle again.

This is actually the issue of concern on our planet over the very, very long term. There is a cooling bias operating over millions of years that is progressively sequestrating CO2 and depleting atmospheric CO2. If we really want to save the planet then let's not in effect starve the biosphere

Don Aitken

You know little of environmental toxicology when you claim:

“I don't regard carbon dioxide as a pollutant. It is one of the sources of life on earth, and indispensable to plants and animals. The more of it the better.”

A recent report on the causes of cancer titled "Environmental and Occupational Causes of Cancer; A Review of Recent Scientific Literature” tells us why cancer has been steadily increasing for 50 years.

The report tells us that between 1950 and 2001 the incidence rate for all types of cancer increased 85%, using age-adjusted data, which means cancer isn't increasing because people are living longer.

Cancer experts and health professionals who advocate prevention will most likely find themselves without funding, ridiculed and despised by the chemical industry, the pesticide industry, the oil industry, the mining industry and all their minions - lawyers, bankers, engineers, reporters, professors, and politicians - who make a fat living off those who pump out carbon-based, cancer-causing products and dump out cancer-causing by-products, aka toxic waste.

Even in 1964, Wilhelm Hueper et al, senior USNCI scientists, described patterns in cancer incidence as "an epidemic in slow motion":

"Through a continued, unrestrained, needless, avoidable and, in part reckless increasing contamination of the human environment with chemical and physical carcinogens and with chemicals supporting and potentiating their action, the stage is being set indeed for a future occurrence of an acute, catastrophic epidemic, which once present cannot effectively be checked for several decades with the means available nor can its course appreciably be altered once it has been set in motion." .

Warming or not, think metals and metallic dusts (arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, nickel); solvents (benzene, carbon tet, TCE, PCE, xylene, toluene, among others); aromatic amines; petrochemicals and combustion by-products (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs); diesel exhaust; petroleum products; PCBs; dioxins etc etc - mostly carbon based.

We have shaken off the stupor induced by your misleading arithmetic Don, where you pretend that environmental and occupational exposures are of no consequence to the survival of this planet and its inhabitants.

Shame on you.

to Sams: your GISS links supports my statement. The upward rise from 1975 has indeed faltered since 1998, even on GISS figures. Other measurers show it much more starkly. Go to UAH MSU Lower Troposphere, and to Hadley CRUT 3v. The point is that in this time carbon dioxide concentrations have gone on steadily increasing. Those data are there too. I'II go on thinking that this lack of fit is a problem for the proposition that carbon dioxide increases must cause temperature increases.

to Dickie: Nowhere in your warning about the problem of cancer do you provide any evidence at all that carbon dioxide has anything to do with its apparently increasing incidence. As someone who has had cancer himself I found your post, to say the least, unhelpful, and its last words quite baffling.

Don

Carbon based chemicals, when burnt, convert to CO2. I am talking stack emissions from refineries such as aluminium, nickel, coal, oil etc. The Australian government’s urging of industry to burn hazardous waste oil over unsuspecting communities, as a fuel, adds to the mix and is to the serious detriment of human health and the environment.

I reiterate, many carbon-based chemicals such as VOCs are proven or suspected carcinogens such as benzene, trichloroethylene, and formaldehyde.

Benzene is a Class 1 carcinogen in Australia and other Western nations.

Dioxin and furan formation is dependent on carbon and chlorine in the mix and related to the presence of carbon monoxide, a result of incomplete combustion.

CO elevates atmospheric ozone and methane before converting to CO2.

There is an urgent need to mitigate the releases of carcinogenic carbon-based industrial chemicals. These chemicals have invaded every part of the biosphere and have contaminated the entire food chain.

Mitigating hazardous industrial chemicals cannot be achieved without mitigating the releases of industrial CO2.

Industrial CO2 is the end result of hazardous, life threatening chemicals, Don.

Do you require further evidence that CO2 is hazardous?

A Stanford scientist has spelled out for the first time the direct links between increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increases in human mortality;

"Ultimately, you inhale a greater abundance of deleterious chemicals due to carbon dioxide and the climate change associated with it, and the link appears quite solid," he said. "The logical next step is to reduce carbon dioxide: That would reduce its warming effect and improve the health of people in the U.S. and around the world who are currently suffering from air pollution health problems associated with it."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103135757.htm

However, economists perversely obsess over "externalizing" costs to the detriment of the planet. If I dump my chemicals and make you sick, I gain if I can get you to pay your own medical bills, and I gain again if I can get taxpayers to clean up my mess.

Time for a reality check Don and a crash course in environmental toxicology if you really care.

Dickie - this thread is about CO2 in climate change - if you want to start a thread about CO2 causing cancer, fine, do it in your own time. Don's thread is about climate change so please have the courtesy to address the topic of the thread.

Don's mention of CO2 being beneficial was about CO2 and plants - they love it in concentrations around 2000pmm which is the level nurseypeople use to encourage plant growth. Please don't try and read further into his remarks, it just makes you look stupid.

If anyone can draw an increasing temperature graph from the satellite figures from 1998 to 2008 I'd welcome it provided you also offer an explanation of your math.

This doesn't look like a reasoned article about climate change. It looks more like an effort at political point scoring.

Take these quotes:

- "But he is too sharp not to know that this is a form of sleight of hand."

- "That issue must have engaged his attention"

- "He must have wished, more than once, that he’d had the good sense to decline the original invitation."

These are all pure speculation, used to put words into Garnaut's mouth. The IPCC has issued four reports and this one is not too different from any in that past. If Garnaut took the job on while substantially disagreeing with its content then good for him - he is a wonderful public servant if nothing else. Seems unlikely though.

The bulk of the article takes Garnaut to task for not questioning the IPCC's report. Yet, the report is part of Garnaut's terms of reference. Its not Garnaut's job to question his terms of reference. To me this criticism of Garnaut looks to be a literary device Aitkin uses to present his own issues with the IPCC report and the science behind it.

If Aitkin wants to attack the science, or the politics behind the IPCC report [1], or what Garnaut proposes to do about climate change (eg the ETS), then he should be clear about his intent and do so directly. As it stands, criticising Garnaut for doing his job by taking the IPCC at its word isn't an attempt to contributing to the debate. Its playing politics. Perhaps this is all Aitkin has been doing all along. I hope not.

[1] Aitkin's taking the IPCC's processes to task might make a good read. It would give his side of the argument a real boost if he could show the IPCC's report does not reflect the consensus of practising climate scientists. It would certainly alter my views, anyway.

Dickie (and with apologies to Janama), I've seen work by one of the US's leading cancer epidemiologists (or whatever) expressing great concern at the amount of concern about, and expenditure on, cancer related to environmental hazards. He's found these to cause a small portion of 1% of cancers, but ignorant campaigners ignore the 99%+ of non-environmental cancers, with resources diverted away from more pressing needs. I recall that one piece of US regulation re an allegedly dangerous chemical was estimated to have a cost of several trillion dollars per life saved; i.e., the chances of a fatality from its use were negligible. (Sorry, I can recall the gist but not the sources.)

But as Janama says, that's not relevant to the topic.

"If anyone can draw an increasing temperature graph from the satellite figures from 1998 to 2008 I'd welcome it provided you also offer an explanation of your math."
Janama, despite your attempt at being clever, I'll bite. The point is you wouldn't draw a graph for only those last 10 years. For 5 year averages, there is only 2 data points - which is not significant in any way. 1998 is an outlier, and 5 year averages are still increasing: the last 5 years have all been warmer than the 5 before 1998.
Even if you wanted to do 2 year averages, you'd still get a graph showing increasing temperature.

Why do you think NASA shows the temperature graphs along with the 5 year average?

Anyway, every time this argument is used it shows a sheer lack of understanding about statistics. Seriously, go back to school. Drawing 'best fit' graphs is the sort of thing you do in year 9.

Er, if you weren't trying to be clever, ignore that bit. These threads are usually full of snark and misdirection... >.<

rstuart said.

[1] Aitkin's taking the IPCC's processes to task might make a good read. It would give his side of the argument a real boost if he could show the IPCC's report does not reflect the consensus of practising climate scientists. It would certainly alter my views, anyway.

rstuart - the IPCC AR4 report was published in 2007 yet the cutoff date for data consideration was 2005. In other words the latest report from the IPCC is 3 years out of date.

Science is a moving target, it changes daily. The plethora of papers published since 2005 offer a new set of criteria, for example the Aqua Satellite, the latest NASA climate satellite's data wasn't included in AR4. The global temperature for June 2008 also wasn't included yet it was lower than the temperature for June 1988 when James E Hansen first proposed the global warming theory to the US Congress. Who would have thought.

Since 2005 scientists have questioned the theory James E Hansen proposed and many have decided that it hasn't proven to be true and correct upon further examination. You call them deniers or sceptics. I call them scientists.

I suggest you keep up to date.

rstuart - I agree with your point. It was not Garnaut's role to evaluate the science behind climate change – that’s a debate which we can and should (and do!) have, but it wasn’t his job. Rather, Garnaut’s role was to devise a policy response that, assuming AGW, proposes measures that deal with the multiple objectives of achieving abatement, minimising economic and social costs and being able to respond to whatever global, regional, sectoral or other international agreements and rules emerge in future. I think he did a pretty good job of that. Arguments about whether recent temperature changes are consistent with AGW are all very well, but it’s s different subject to whether petrol should be in an emissions trading scheme.

Janama: "I suggest you keep up to date."

I try to Janama but for the life of me, try as I might, I can't find any direct evidence that consensus of practising climate scientists is that AGW is wrong. Perhaps you can help me out? The best I can do is the study of Peiser, 2005. Its the best because it is the most recent I know of.

Benny Peiser set out to prove that there were published climate scientists who disagreed with AGW. He did a survey of 1,247 peer reviewed papers on the climate, and after reviewing them claimed 34 of them disagreed. If anything 34 in 1,247 would of disproved his point, but sadly for Peiser it went from bad to worse. After he published his paper in the journal of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists AGW supporters started crawling all over it - as you might expect, knowing how the politics is played in this game. They said Peiser was wrong, only one of the papers he reviewed disagreed with AGW. It took a year or so, but eventually Peiser publicly conceded that was the case. The final dagger in the heart is that one paper wasn't peer reviewed. So the final tally: Peiser has done the second study showing that no practising climate scientists disagree with AGW. It wasn't the result he was after. You can read about the whole sorry saga here:

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/BPeiser.html

Anyway, now you tell me I am out of date, and there has been a major shift in the thinking of at least some climate scientists in the interviewing 3 years. Please, I want to know more. Point me to where I can find out more about this great change of heart.

Over the past few years it appears that many observations show that the warming rate that was evident in the 1980's & 1990's, has stalled. Some argue that this is only temporary, flat or negative trends are not rare (see below for a view contrary to this), & the previous rate will re-establish itself.

On Lucia's climate blog (linked below) she monitors the trend of a composite of 5 temperature time series: GISSTEMP, HADCRUT, NCDC & the two satellite lower troposphere temperature series, UAH & RSS. Lucia's main purpose is to test, with monthly data, from Jan 01 to present, the IPPC's statement that the early decades of this century will see temperatures increase at a rate of about .2C per decade. Now with another 6 months she will have 8 years or 96 months of data & at this stage, unless the temperatures start warming quickly, the trend will most likely be negative over these 8 years.

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/do-short-time-series-neglect-energy-at-large-time-scales/

One commenter (see comment 4122 in the link) has pointed that if you look at 8 year periods, from 1900 to the present, in the surface temperature data, the only ones where you have had negative trends are associated with volcanoes near the end of the series (1900's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's & 1990's), except for a series in the 1940's during a period of cooling. Those volcanoes which pump large amounts of SO2 into the stratosphere, such as Mount Pinatubo in the early 1990's, have a significant cooling effect on all these series.

The evidence appears to be accumulating that climate sensitivity, as communicated by the IPPC, is exaggerated. This evidence includes flat or cooling surface & troposphere temperatures, flat or cooling ocean temperatures down to 2,000 m. (recently commissioned ARGO buoys) and tropical mid troposphere temperature observations from radiosondes & satellites, which differ markedly from model predictions.

Last but not least is Roy Spencer's work suggesting that the IPPC's climate sensitivity of 3C +/- 1.5C may be overstated by as much X 6. Roy is presenting a PP presentation on this at the University of Alabama at Huntsville tomorrow, Thursday.

Don Aitken,

I appreciate your response ... we are all busy. However, I can only reiterate: societies, economies and businesses the world over are trying to come to terms with the issues connected with ‘climate change’. Despite its flaws and the difficulties they are presented with, we have an international framework convention dealing with this. It would seem prudent to constructively engage in this process.

To this end, I would be interested to know if you will be making a submission in response to the government’s ‘green paper’,

http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/greenpaper/index.html

either of yourself or in alliance with vested interest groups, particularly since you have adopted a very public stance as a political scientist of stature on the issue.

I realise it requires time and effort to respond to contributors here, and sometimes we have to prioritise our life accordingly. Nevertheless and in terms of your article I would like to ask again, why don’t you make some brief constructive suggestions as to;

“How to set it right, who should do it, what scale would it require, when to do it and who should pay for it?”

Whether you reply or not, I agree with you in that humanity has serious problems. I contend that AGW is compelling – in this we differ.

As to the statistics,

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/giss-ncdc-hadcru/

Extracting: there hasn’t been any 'cooling' since 1998, not according to GISS, HadCRU, or NCDC ... AGW isn't some new theory that hasn't stood the tests of time and intense scrutiny. The basic physics was worked out over a century ago; the details ... have been the focus of some of the most intense scrutiny in the history of science. As the scrutiny has become more intense, confidence in the basic hypothesis has gotten ever stronger. In my opinion, the confidence which should rightly be assigned to this conclusion is far greater than is required to justify not only action, but extreme action.

What if the sceptic side is right? Then we'll have devoted considerable resources to a cleaner environment and a sane, sustainable energy policy.

What if the sceptic side is wrong?

Q&A,while we wring our hands in guilt and self flagellation,China and India will make merry in buying our coal/gas,enjoying better lifestyles.Be it AGW or cooling,our present policy without the major players is economic suicide.Kevin Rudd is just grandstanding at our expense.

Arjay, you just "popped" up, it is getting late, but I will respond - good night.

Don Aitkin: "your GISS links supports my statement"

Nonsense, its clear they don't. Are you are so grossly incompetent that you can't read a technical article, or a graph, or are you just a bald-faced liar who hopes people won't go and read the sources?

From the link, (again: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/) they state with much clarity: "'Global warming stopped in 1998,' has become a recent mantra of those who wish to deny the reality of human-caused global warming. The continued rapid increase of the five-year running mean temperature exposes this assertion as nonsense."

Couldn't have said it better: the entire premise of your article is nonsense.

Q&A says; "What if the sceptic side is right? Then we'll have devoted considerable resources to a cleaner environment and a sane, sustainable energy policy".

Now I know you're not serious. Let me get this right. You are saying that if the IPPC have grossly overestimated their estimates of the effect of increasing CO2 & other GHG's then by imposing costs on a phantom problem, penalising our export & import competing industries, increasing the costs of every household for no resulting benefit in terms of mitigation, this is sane. What it is my friend is the insane misapplication of vast financial resources to a problem which has been grossly exaggerated.

Why do I think this problem has been grossly overstated; why do I think the climate sensitivity as communicated by the IPPC, 3C +/- 1.5C, is actually much less. One reason is the work of Roy Spencer.

Bio: From his site linked below. "Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer is the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite. His research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE".

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Roy-Spencer-on-global-warming.htm

Anyone interested in this issue which affects us all should read the above link. In a nutshell Roy's thesis is that the warming radiative forcing effect of CO2 (& other GHG's), approx. 1C for a doubling of CO2 (2 X CO2), is moderated by negative feedback effects, or cooling effects, of precipitation systems. This is in contrast to the IPPC's position of positive feedback, or an increase from 1.5C to 3C for the median level of warming for a doubling of CO2. That's right, 2/3 of their warming comes from feedback; there lies the Achilles heel of their hypothesis.

to rstuart: I have no 'political' or 'party political' interest in this issue. My attention to it started intellectually, and remains that of someone trying to come to terms with an absorbing puzzle. In retrospect, I think you have made a fair point, at least in part. Yes, once Garnaut started on the job he had to accept the IPCC position, or tell his masters that they were barking up the wrong tree; but they hadn't asked him to do that. I think I am right in arguing that he nonetheless should have struggled with finding out how serious the extent of human-induced climate change was, because he was so gung-ho about urgency. That suggests to me he thinks all the warming is AGW. There was certain irony in my comments about his thought processes.

To Q&A: I have yet to read the Green Paper, and will decide whether or not to make a submission when I have done that. As to the stats, I think Lucia Liljegren is more convincing than Tamino, and suggest you go to the site referred to by G Larsen if you do not already know it.

to Sams: You misquote me. I said that the rise had faltered. I didn't say there had been cooling. They are not the same thing. The GISS data do not show a continued rise after 1998 — that is, the previous rise had faltered. And then you insult me for good measure. Sorry, Sams, you're off the list of people I'll respond to in future

Sams, you can go to your GISS site and believe what you find there to match your belief in belief AL-AGW*. The point is that anthropogenic sources of CO2 are insignificant.... and certainly it's effects have not been observable in the climate system. This has only been imagined but of course can only be found in the minds of infected ant-life opportunists.

The fact is that water vapor is literally everything to our lovely planet earth .... it is our sun's energy and water vapor when it comes to climate and CO2 when it comes to all life here.

The role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is minimal at only 38 out of every 100,000 molecules of air. It takes a full five years of human greenhouse gas emissions to add 1 molecule of CO2 to every 100,000 molecules of air. i.e. Human CO2 emissions represent a tiny proportion of a tiny proportion of a natural atmospheric gas that is absolutely essential to life itself.

I suggest you take a look at Southern Hemisphere temperatures where we live and if you are so seriously alarmed with carbon emissions you will see that our vast landscape and surrounding oceans easily make Australia carbon neutral.

* AL-AGW = alarmist AGW which is based on Algorian science.

Don Aitkin: "You misquote me. I said that the rise had faltered. I didn't say there had been cooling."

Nor did I ever present such a quote, so you in turn misrepresent me.

This is not faltering:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/Fig1_2007annual.gif
If you think it is, may you never be a stock broker.

As NASA says: "It is apparent that there is no letup in the steep global warming trend of the past 30 years."
Everyone should read http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

Thus Don Aitkin are as wrong as ever and the entire premise of his article is false.

DA: "Sorry, Sams, you're off the list of people I'll respond to in future."

No need to apologise. Your responses so far, in the light of strong scientific evidence against your position have been "no, I'm right", so I'm not sure anyone will miss your input. I know I wont.

Keiran: "The role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is minimal at only 38 out of every 100,000 molecules of air."

This is about as valid as saying "your Honour, I only had a fraction of a percentage of alcohol in my blood, and besides its good for staving off Alzheimer's". Clearly you can't grasp simple physical concepts.

Keiran: ""Human CO2 emissions represent a tiny proportion of a tiny proportion of a natural atmospheric gas that is absolutely essential to life itself."

A 35% increase in CO2 over the industrial era is not a tiny proportion.

Keiran: "Sams, you can go to your GISS site and believe what you find there."

I much more likely to believe a NASA research site than a bunch of armchair pseudo-science mumbo jumbo that fails at the first hurdle.

G Larsen: "In a nutshell Roy's thesis ..."

I am sure its a very good thesis. But in order to evaluate it, I'd have to look at a fair sample of the competing theses. But isn't possible for me as there are 1000's of different influences on the climate, each with many competing theories about how relevant they are. It would take me months to get a feel for it all.

So, how do I evaluate Roy's thesis? Do I take your word over say Tim Lambert's or the IPCC's, or do I take their word over yours? Neither option is very appealing. The only sane alternative I can see is to rely on those that do have the undeniable expertise in this area. Fortunately, our society has developed a pretty good way of telling who they are and what they think - they publish in peer reviewed journals.

If Roy Spencer has published his thoughts in those journals, and if his peers show their agreement with them by citing them in their own works then Roy thesis will become the dominant meme in climate science. Until that happens I am more than content to go with the current dominant meme. Right now I am fairly certain it strongly favours AGW.

Now it just maybe, G Larsen, you have spent the months of full time work required to review the literature, and maybe you have gone to the relevant conferences and inhaled the vibe. But nothing you have posted so far gives me any confidence that is the case, and if you haven't done that any comment you make on the science itself isn't worth much to me.

My apologies if I am wrong about your credentials. If I am right, then please still make the comment, but have the good grace and do what Don Aitkin does and acknowledge its made from the armchair, not the coal face. That way I can put it into its proper context.

Sams, you are a laugh a minute.
e.g.
I think very soon it will be "your Honour, I only had a fraction of a percentage of " CO2 in my system that is part of being alive. Spare me the rod please.

With the pre-industrial atmospheric C02 at 335ppm and todays’ level at 390ppm we get an increase of about 55ppm, or a 16.4% increase in C02, about 1/2 what the alarmists claim plus our contribution is but 3%. I wish there was more CO2 to green the planet but those plants will just need to be patient i'm afraid.

You mean you much prefer the gospel according to diminished integrity Hansen with all that Algorian science. No worries ... each to his own.

I suggested you should take a look at Southern Hemisphere temperatures that easily make Australia carbon neutral. Is this just a bit beyond your comprehension to make a comment? Think so.

rstuart
I became interested in this subject about 6 years ago & read peer reviewed literature whenever possible. However my current personal interest is in cloud, water vapour & associated atmospheric processes & oceanic circulation & their interaction. Apart from Spencer & his colleagues, I find particularly interesting the current work of Piers Forster (School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds), Jonathan Gregory (Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling, Dept. University of Reading), Karl E Taylor, Program for Climate Model Diagnosis & Inter-comparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA, and Joshua Willis, Jet Propulsion laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA.

I'm a retired chemist, trained in the scientific method, and believe I have a pretty sharp eye to sort out the grain from the chaff on what has become a highly politicised subject (and unfortunately I'm only talking at the scientific level here). The issue I have with the current IPPC line is not AGW as such but its degree. I suspect that climate sensitivity to GHG is very small.

Spencer & his colleagues have produced many peer reviewed articles in various journals. On the subject of atmospheric processes see recent articles: -

Spencer et al, "Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations", Geophysical Research Letters, Published 9 Aug 2007.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf

Roy Spencer, "Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Description", Journal of Climate (pending publication).

Spencer, Roy W. "Chaotic Radiative Forcing, Feedback Stripes, and the Overestimation of Climate Sensitivity" in press, J Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (submitted June 25, 2008). See simplified version.

http://www.weatherquestions.com/Climate-Sensitivity-Holy-Grail.htm

See also attached the power point presentation he & William Braswell are giving today (Thurs 17th Jul), at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, with further updated analysis of satellite data. "Feedback vs. Chaotic Radiative Forcing: "Smoking Gun" Evidence for an Insensitive Climate System?' This will break a few rocks.

http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/spencer-ppt.pdf

I will comment on this last link tomorrow, with feedback if possible, as I believe it's content is very important; space prohibits now.

rstuart - perhaps you should read this review of your "peer reviewed" IPCC report by a fellow Aussie.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/McLean_IPCC_bias.pdf

In fact everyone should read it!

and you should read this

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=310&Itemid=1

PROVED: THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS
"The value of this paper lies in its dispassionate but ruthlessly clear exposition – or, rather, exposé – of the IPCC’s method of evaluating climate sensitivity. The detailed arguments in this paper, and, indeed, in a large number of other scientific papers, point up extensive errors, including numerous projection errors of climate models, as well as misleading statements by the IPCC. Consequently, there are no rational grounds for believing either the IPCC or any other claims of dangerous anthropogenic global warming.”

Arjay
Yes, the major players must jump on board. China and India are very aware of the impacts of climate change (I won’t begrudge better lifestyles for them). They are also aware that Australia and the US have been somewhat ‘recalcitrant’ lately – this is changing. Rudd is taking a “measured” approach and both McCain and Obama have more proactive climate change policies than Bush. I think China and India will follow relatively soon thereafter. I was looking forward to Don Aitken’s answers to the questions I twice posed – he is a political scientist after all, but he chooses not to. I can understand people’s confusion over the current warming/cooling ‘debate’ – we have to find a better way to inform the general public, particularly since there is a lot of misinformation (intentional or otherwise) out there.

G Larsen
I am very serious - this planet of ours has a finite resource base and Humanity is living beyond its present and future means. We have to learn, grow and develop in a more sustainable way. Many of our problems are directly associated with our misuse/abuse of energy resources. Further, you may understand the bun-fight that the UNFCCC and IPCC go through in their processes and procedures, and if you do you will also understand that their conclusions are more on the ‘conservative’ side – the US and China makes sure of that.

I respect Roy Spencer’s work (I'm particularly interested in coupled ocean/atmosphere systems) and am looking forward to seeing his team’s research on feedback mechanisms. If his work is robust I will feel some relief, time will tell. However, it disturbs me that neither he nor the sceptics didn't acknowledge the reported errors in the Argo data, leading to a false cooling bias.

Don Aitken
I visit Lucia’s ‘Blackboard’, I prefer Tamino ... not because he's convincing , but because of the proper analysis. Given the stats are correct, you will see the continuation of a rising trend before 2015 – I suspect much sooner.

rstewart
Heard of the ‘Green House Mafia’? Follow the links to John McLean.

Janama: "PROVED: THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS"

Oh please, no one in the right mind is going to take to word of Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, journalist, social policy nutter, and failed extreme right-wing politician, over thousands of real, qualified climate scientists. The fact that you say "PROVED" on the basis of one article indicates that you haven't a clue about scientific research.

The same Monckton is also on record as saying: "there is only one way to stop AIDS. That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month ... all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently."

O .. K ...

To Q&A: Your maths/stats must be better than mine because I can't see that Tamino provides proper analysis and Lucia doesn't. What I can see is a debate, and on the whole I find her outlook, humility and preparedness to argue more appealing.

For all, I also recommend John McLean's incisive account of the authorship and reviewing of Chapter 9 in AR4 fascinating and disturbing reading. Janama above gives the URL. I also think that Roy Spencer is also worth reading.

My original point, first made in April, is increasingly confirmed by observation and new peer-reviewed literature (yes, peer-reviewed, but after reading McLean you may be less dazzled by the peer review process): there has always been much more uncertainty about the extent to which human beings have affected their climate than the IPCC, Garnaut, the Australian Government and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all have maintained. It is now argued (see above) the the warming trend will pick up again in 2015, but none of what has happened in the past few years was predicted by the IPCC, and if 'natural' forces can subdue AGW for 15 years how strong is it anyway?

Janama
You refer to Monckton's 'paper' and make strong assertions. I suggest you slow down.

The American Physical Society reaffirms the following position on climate change, adopted by its governing body, the APS Council, on November 18, 2007:

"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate."

An article at odds with this statement recently appeared in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society, one of 39 units of APS. The header of this newsletter carries the statement that "Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum." This newsletter is not a journal of the APS and it is not peer reviewed.

http://www.aps.org/

Don Aitken
I did not say "the warming trend will pick up again in 2015". Please try and refrain from distorting or misrepresenting what I say. If you don't understand, just ask - that goes for the Argo data and signal/noise as well.


I will be back next week.

Janama: "you should read this review of your 'peer reviewed' IPCC report"

Are you suggesting the IPCC report is a peer reviewed paper published in a recognised journal? Obviously it isn't. For a start, everybody was invited submit comments on the report. Lots of talking heads took up the invitation to become self appointed climate experts, with predictable results. Also it wasn't published a journal that had a reputation to protect. Anyone who suggests the IPCC report is representative of how the normal peer reviewed scientific process works obviously hasn't seen the real one at work.

As for John McLean's work on the IPCC report. Yes it does a good job of pointing out some flaws in the process the IPCC used. It would be easier to take McLean's report seriously if its tone was the balanced, conservative one normally found in academic publications. Perhaps something along the lines of "this is how it is broken, and these are my recommendations for fixing it". Given he doesn't do that it seems his real purpose is to undermine the credibility of the report itself, not improve its contents next time around. As he is reduced to attacking the process, instead of showing directly the report doesn't reflect the state of the science, his argument is pretty weak.

By the by, I don't find the small number of contributors very surprising. Its not original science, and it attracts a huge amount of flak. Getting people to work on it when their main interest is sitting in a quiet corner and pondering must be very hard.

Don Aitkin: "yes, peer-reviewed"

OK Don, if the evidence is as strong as you say, perhaps its time to have another crack at the type of study done previously by Peiser and Oreskes. If it comes up with the result you imply you will be famous. If you do decide to take it on, can you make me a promise? Say you will publish the results regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negative. As you know, its important for the debate to publicise both outcomes.

to Q&A: I'm sorry that I was not more precise in what I wrote. I did not say that you had claimed that warming would resume again in 2015, but I thought I had seen such a claim on this thread and gestured vaguely — '(see above)'. I'm not sure why you think that I had you in mind. I didn't. I think it is the Keenlyside paper that suggests that warming will resume again in 2015. If not, it's there in the literature somewhere. So, I'm sorry that you think I distorted or misrepresented what you say. But I didn't mention you in this context at all.

to rstuart: I have too much to do to take on such a project. In any case, the data are there for all to see, and my view is that we should learn to study them and discuss them. The central issues are plain enough, and the uncertainty about them is increasing, not diminishing. I think my most useful role is as a an ordinary commentator.

Dr David Evans has a well written piece in the Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

He says "The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy."

Rudd and Wong will need to present every last detail of factual, forensic, empirical evidence that explains their reasons for taxing Australian's CO2 emissions because it reads clearly as nothing more than hocus-pocus. Opinions from so called experts is not evidence. Presenting the drying out Murray/Darling rivers is not evidence.

This is such a serious issue and if there is no evidence then it is a giant hoax. Hoaxes that cause mass panics or convey fear for the safety of a person or of property can come under the CRIMES ACT 1900 - SECT 93Q. Like if someone went into a shopping centre or cinema and yelled "fire" to cause mass panic they would be in a great deal of trouble. How does this differ from a hoax from Rudd or Wong on the Australian people?

93Q Conveying false information that a person or property is in danger
(1) A person who conveys information:
(a) that the person knows to be false or misleading, and
(b) that is likely to make the person to whom the information is conveyed fear for the safety of a person or of property, or both, is guilty of an offence.
Maximum penalty: Imprisonment for 5 years.

David Evans: "I am the rocket scientist " ...

A very lofty self-appraisal, while in fact, David Evans is an electrical engineer that, as a consultant, wrote some computer code for the AGO:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/DavidEvansbio.html
If he has any article published in peer-reviewed science journals, please link to them.

Further information on Spencer's & Braswell's PP presentation they gave yesterday. From Roger Pielke Snr's site: -

"Dr. Roy Spencer from The University of Alabama at Huntsville will be presenting a special seminar at CU Boulder in the CIRES Auditorium on Thursday, July 17th. The extended abstract is below and a flyer is available for printing and download at the link below. A pdf of the presentation is linked for download as well".

http://climatesci.org/2008/07/10/special-guest-seminar-at-cu-by-roy-spencer-july-17-2008global-warming-recent-evidence-for-reduced-climate-sensitivity/

http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/spencer-ppt.pdf

http://climatesci.org/wp-content/uploads/spencer-7-17-08.pdf

Abstract

“A simple model and satellite observations are used to demonstrate that previous diagnoses of climate feedbacks from the satellite record have a strong bias in the direction of high climate sensitivity (positive feedback). The source of the bias is chaotic radiative forcing generated within the climate system, most likely due to low clouds. Through analysis of frequency histograms of local regression slopes computed throughout the low-pass filtered time series of temperature and total (reflected shortwave SW and emitted longwave LW) radiative fluxes, the radiative forcing signal is shown to have a unique signature separate from the feedback signature. The global oceanic averages of satellite CERES data during 2000 through 2005 reveal a net (SW+LW) feedback parameter of around 8 W m-2 K-1. This strong negative feedback signal exists independent of the low-pass filter time scale, from 10 day to 2 years. In stark contrast, IPCC AR4 models analyzed with the same method all exhibit positive feedbacks of various strengths. It is suggested that the unrealistically high sensitivity of the climate models is the result of a misinterpretation of the co-variability of clouds and temperature when specifying cloud parameterizations. Since only radiative feedback has been assumed in feedback analysis of natural variability (clouds being forced by temperature), the presence of chaotic radiative forcing of temperature by clouds causes the false appearance of positive feedback. In short, cause and effect have been confused. Finally, if such a strong negative feedback has indeed been operating on multi-decadal time scales, this means that the radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is not nearly strong enough to explain the 1°C warming in the last century.”

Comment from an attendee at Roy Spencer's seminar yesterday at Boulder, Colorado; taken from Steve McIntyre's CA blog.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3258#comment-277300

"Orson says:

July 17th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
I managed to make Roy Spencer’s presentation today at CIRES, University of Colorado at Boulder. (cf #79, Jim Arnt) He elaborated on his work since last year on climate sensitivity, and it is now in press at Journal of Climate.

He comes to a 0.25 C per century delta-T estimate. Mind you, this is derived on only six years of data. Clearly, more and better will yield more and better representations of reality. What stands out starkly is that we have the first realistic modeling of the global climate system in Spencer’s work. As I commented during Q&A, “there is lots left to explore.” Dr Spencer agreed.

He pitted his empirically derived model against selected IPCC models. None of the latter stood up well.

Two points of humor: he named (something important-I’ll check notes later) “the Hansen effect.” The “Smoking gun” in his title was to tweak Hansen for his infamously titled paper wherein he projected catastrophe.

He asked if anyone from (nearby) NCARs climate modeling program was in attendance? No voices or hands went up. He quipped something about some people having a problem with reality….

His line of thought conveyed how a meteorologist thinks practically about climate and its subtleties, as opposed to most modelers, typically trained in math (Connelley) or physics (astro- in Hansen’s case) or other fields, who think more categorically, unable to see tenuous connections in brut nature that meteorologists only find natural.

For instance, the modelers assume the climate system is naturally in equilibrium unless disturbed from the outside, like from mankind. His satellite evidence shows how climate trends tend to persist, on up to decadal timescales, because of internal forcings. But climate never actually equilibriates as these modelers presuppose.

In just the last days or weeks, he has integrated some insights on ENSO and other known oceanic circulatory phenomenon as climatic drivers that he has been pulling together since January on natural climate drivers". (continuing tomorrow)

Q&A and Sams - I linked to a report on Monckton's paper and quoted it's opening remarks that were in quotations, all I said was "you should read this"

Science is NOT about consensus and positions, it's about facts which are a moving target as the science evolves, therefore for the Governing Body of a Society to "reaffirm it's position" is less about science and more about politics.

Furthermore the editorial of their "Newsletter" Physics & Society July 2008 states the following:

"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion. This editor (JJM) invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con. Christopher Monckton responded with this issue's article that argues against the correctness of the IPCC conclusion, and a pair from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, responded with this issue's article in favor of the IPCC conclusion. We, the editors of P&S, invite reasoned rebuttals from the authors as well as further contributions from the physics community. Please contact me (jjmarque@sbcglobal.net) if you wish to jump into this fray with comments or articles that are scientific in nature. However, we will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science! (JJM) "

The statement "there is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion" immediately infers that at least this editor believes there is NO consensus amongst scientists.

Sams, I'll be keen to read your contribution to Monckton's paper, just remember they will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science!

GLarsen: "Comment from an attendee at Roy Spencer's seminar"

Congratualtions! Someone here may have finally come up with one qualified climate scientist that disagrees with Anthropomorphic Climate Change (ACC).

Now contrast that with the thousands represented here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_global_warming

and have a look at real climate science journal, such as this here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/
(many have abstracts available)

and you will see that the vast majority of climate scientists have acknowledged ACC and have moved on to study the impact and ways of dealing with it. If you think they are wrong then publish or perish.

BTW, climatesci.org. is an highly biased WordPress blog, not an academic journal as it tries to appear to be.

on the other hand you could check the website of The US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and see their list.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=37ae6e96-802a-23ad-4c8a-edf6d8150789

GLarsen, i remember you saying four or five months back ... "Clouds for example are modelled as positive FEEDBACKS; does this make intuitive sense?"

I said at the time, if that is the whole hypothesis and the basis of the UN IPCC models, then if true, earth would have overheated eons ago just on water vapour. Forget CO2. The application of such positive feedbacks is neither logical nor intuitive. They can of course be politico/religious beliefs. My efforts to post on the UNreal climate site quite some time ago now, about the importance of understanding relationships with clouds, albedo effects and how positive feedbacks make for an unstable situation, were basically deemed as blasphemous. i.e. This heretic was excluded from posting there again.

How such politico/religious beliefs can take hold of science has been one of my major philosophic questions. e.g. As a thirteen year old it was glaringly obvious that the bigbang model was a paradox but astoundingly fifty plus years later it still has overwhelming scientific consensus. Unsurprisingly, UNrealclimate with the likes of Schmidt, Ladbury and this Pierre joker will deem you a heretic if you challenge the bigbang belief.

If we ignore the complexity produced by infinity, of course we can imagine some perfect objects, perfect motions and idealised states but we can never actually find them. The point is that this old mode of belief belongs to a now obsolete assumption of finite universal causality. It is this closed, fixed-in-place mindset that Roy Spencer has exposed as emphatically a disorder of perception which can certainly only lead people astray on some pathway to disenchantment.

Only by adopting infinite universal causality can humanity collectively ensure a continued appreciation of the beauty of existence.

G Larsen, thanks for that link to Spencer's slides. I was waiting for something to finish and started browsing through it. I was surprised at how simple it all was, particularly the math he was using. I guess I should not of been surprised at how bad the data was they have to work with, but I was. All in all it was a pleasant read.

As for whether he is right or not - as I said I am in no position to judge. I can only wait and see what his peers have to say. You might want to look at the sorts of models his is competing with. As usual there is a broad overview of them on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model

Don Aitkin: "I have too much to do to take on such a project."

I don't doubt it. The request was tongue in cheek. You could well of asked me to do the same, and I would of given the same response. The point I was making is that until someone does produce a study showing there has been a change of heart, its all just hearsay. You could blunt that criticism to some extent by posting a few links.

Sams: "David Evans: 'I am the rocket scientist' ... A very lofty self-appraisal,"

That's a poorly aimed pot shot. I wish other climate commentators adopted David's tone, and were as honest as he is about the weaknesses in their positions. In fact, I'd recommend everyone planning to comment on scientific issues to read what David's posts - just to see how it should be done.

Janama: "http://epw.senate.gov/ ..."

Ahh yes, a blog from that bastion of science, the Bush Administration. You really know how to pick your sources, Janama.

Janama wrote: "just remember they will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science!"

OK, I then suggested looking at real climate science journals (eg.http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/) to get a decent sampling of real, active climate scientists views.

Janama then ignores this and writes "other hand you could check the website of The US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and see their list". What a hypocrite! This obviously biased public political blog lists references that on cursory inspection are composed of:

- business people calling themselves climate consultants
- self-appointed and self-described "expert IPCC reviewers" (basically, anyone was able to make submissions)
- people self-described described as "meteorologists" who are in fact just ex TV weather presenters
- retired and dead scientists in unrelated fields
- amongst all this junk I spotted one candidate for a real climate scientist (now dead): Reid Bryson

Now back to the sampling climate scientists publishing recently in peer-reviewed climate science journals - what percentage are denying human-caused climate change? Bugger all, that's how many. Stick to the science indeed!

Further comment (221) ex Steve McIntyre's CA from an attendee to Roy Spencer's presentation 17/7.

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3258#comment-277522

"The BIG point is that internal climate variability has been misidentified, heretofore. His model was matched against Forster (et Al, 2006), and improved on his results, indicating that his results are veridical.

His new insight is that ocean PDO-neg and PDO-pos effects are likely driving a more dominant natural climate effect, and his results are unlikely to be coincidental. Forster agreed.

It was an almost full house, maybe 70 (out of 100) seats filled. He says his PP presentation should be up at Roger Pielke (Sr?) web site now, he said.

(Too busy right now to check details right now - this all from memory after work - THIS was full of interest for people here.) I’ll try to fill in gaps later, and see the PPP myself to refresh my notes and memory.

There were also two interesting working elements on display here. First, the fact that he’s doing this all on Excel spreadsheets, not the multi-million dollar super-computers with teams of well-paid researchers like the modelers. Second, when someone asked if he had communicated with Bill Gray, Spencer said he had not seen Bill in ten years time, but bumped into him while registering at a conference awhile ago. Dr Gray got down on his knees and reportedly said “I love you!” “Kind of embarrassing,” said Spencer smirkingly, admitting that Gray is very passionate about observationally driven climate science. NOT what’s become of it these days.

Again, see the PPP at Pielke’s web site for Spencer’s compelling conclusions and implications for what this means for climate modeling. And again, this work opens up a lot more work to do to confirm his teasing inferences.

Spencer admitted to having engaged in the kind of “hand waving” often criticized at CA. But now there are increasing amounts of hard empirical evidence to back up such previously idle claims. Quite fascinating. Could this be a turning point in the theory versus observational debate that has characterized the field since the demise of the Hockey Stick?"

In relation to Spencer's thesis I have been looking for a reference to correspondence he had earlier with Isaac Held & Piers Forster, in connection with the yet to be published paper in Journal of Climate*. I think this will be very relevant to how this progresses.

*Note this is the earlier paper, Spencer, "Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A Simple Model Description", Journal of Climate; not this one, Spencer, Roy W. "Chaotic Radiative Forcing, Feedback Stripes, and the Overestimation of Climate Sensitivity", J Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (submitted June 25, 2008).

Goggling, I found it in a comment I made in response to a comment (Apr 5, 12.06 pm) by Chris Close, in Tamino's blog, on feedback.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/feedback/

My comment is taken from a guest post by Spenser on Roger Pielke Sr's blog, Dec 30, 2007)

http://climatesci.org/2007/12/30/update-cause-versus-effect-in-feedback-diagnosis-by-roy-w-spencer-12302007/

Part of the quote from Spenser:

“On August 8, 2007, I posted here a guest blog entry on the possibility that our observational estimates of feedbacks might be biased in the positive direction. Danny Braswell and I built a simple time-dependent energy balance model to demonstrate the effect and its possible magnitude, and submitted a paper to the Journal of Climate for publication.

The two reviewers of the manuscript (rather uncharacteristically) signed their names to their reviews. To my surprise, both of them (Isaac Held and Piers Forster) agreed that we had raised a legitimate issue. While both reviewers suggested changes in the (conditionally accepted) manuscript, they even took the time to develop their own simple models to demonstrate the effect to themselves.

Of special note is the intellectual honesty shown by Piers Forster. Our paper directly challenges an assumption made by Forster in his 2005 J. Climate paper, which provided a nice theoretical treatment of feedback diagnosis from observational data. Forster admitted in his review that they had erred in this part of their analysis, and encouraged us to get the paper published so that others could be made aware of the issue, too".

A link to the Forster (& Gregory) paper is here: -

http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earpmf/papers/ForsterandGregory2006.pdf

GLarsen, you are spamming on about Roy Spencer, but I hate to point out this following about your singular climate denier hero - he is:

1. part of an organisation that claims it is "bringing a proper and balanced Biblical view of stewardship to the critical issues of environment and development."

2. linked to organisations that have received millions of dollars of private funding by ExxonMobil, and also organisations that " make the claim that 'anti-smoking advocates' are exaggerating the health threats of smoking"

3. His research about cooling in certain parts of the atmosphere was shown to be wrong by independent science teams. He now admits it was wrong but seemingly is too proud to retract the theories that he based on it.

Source: http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1397

So why don't you take up the challenge and look at current research in real climate science journals such as

http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/

and count how many authors deny human-caused climate change. I bet you can't find one amongst the hundreds there.

Sams, you are a laugh a minute with your Algorian science. Keep it up but somehow from what i've seen climate doesn't seem to be obeying your instructions. With Algorian science there is this premise that nature has been designed as if it were a printed circuit board forcing electrons to follow a certain path, and the human influence is like unsoldering and replacing a component. It is a ridiculous disconnected notion and just a new age wrapper for the revival of an insecure pre-Copernican mindset.

Al-AGW always presents as a politico/religious belief. I've mentioned my efforts to post on the UNreal climate site, but in Australia i have ventured, dare i say into these deltoid and JQuiggin blogs and found this closed, frozen-in-place mindset. What a dim captive lot of rote learners in wrong order we find.

Quiggin for example develops what he calls his ‘litterbug’ argument using the per capita CO2 emissions method to promote the idea that Australians are practically the worst in the world. What i simply tried to say (that met with his complete censoring) was that to use the per capita CO2 method removes the geographic reality. i.e. It sees people removed not just from their biology but from their environment. I view this disconnect as a very serious issue because for starters Australia with its extensive land and ocean environment would have higher energy needs but our emissions would essentially be neutral too.

A natural consequence of this disconnect is seen with our prime minister who from all reports is looking at 300,000 immigrants per year. This may lower per capita emissions but have diabolical effects on the environment. e.g. There is the increased demand for finite water resources in the Murray/Darling basin plus increased demand for food, infrastructure and energy.

Sams
Science isn’t settled by a count of heads. It’s settled by scientists putting forward falsifiable hypothesises (e.g. climate sensitivity = 3C +/- 1.50C) & these hypothesises being able to withstand the test of time. It only takes one researcher to come up with a new insight to overturn a theory. Look at the history of science.
Your points 1 & 2 above are ad hominem & I will not comment. Your point 3 has nothing whatsoever to do with the research I linked; it refers to bias corrections in 2005 that were made on the UAH MSU satellites which measure temperature. See Update 7 Aug 2005 in link.

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/readme.03Jan2008

I’m baffled by your link to SpringerLink. This is not a climate science journal as you say but a link to journal papers on many topics, including papers by, surprise, surprise, Roy Spencer, Richard Lindzen & I daresay many other AGW sceptics.

GLarsen: "I’m baffled by your link to SpringerLink. This is not a climate science journal as you say" ...

Dear me, you seem to be having a bit of trouble driving a web browser. It is a link to "Climatic Change" [Springer Netherlands ISSN 0165-0009] (check again: http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/). Methinks you have read down too far and picked up Janama's link to the EPW blog that I debunked earlier.

GLArsen: "Your points 1 & 2 above are ad hominem & I will not comment."

How convenient for you, but you misunderstand the term 'ad hominem': "The theory of evidence depends to a large degree on assessments of the credibility of witnesses, including eyewitness evidence and expert witness evidence. Evidence that a purported eyewitness is unreliable, or has a *motive for lying*, or that a purported expert witness lacks the claimed expertise can play a major role in making judgements from evidence. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem - '*' are mine).

There is a reason we remove people from juries when they have vested interests or connections to the accused, so had damn well better address 1 & 2.

Point 3 refers again both the the unreliability if the research and the reasons that the truth might be manipulated.

So I repeat my challenge: look at current research in real climate science journals by real climate scientist such as

http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/ "Climatic Change"

and show us the links there to those published works disputing human-caused climate change.If there is another peer-reviewed climate science journal you'd prefer, let us know.

To rstuart

I find it very difficult to take seriously someone who says "I guess I should not of been surprised at how bad the data was they have to work with, but I was."

"You could well of asked me to do the same, and I would of given the same response."

The word is "have" NOT "of".

To Sams: The assertion that the "science is settled", is obviously untrue, as there is a great deal of dissent in the scientific community. You are obviously unwilling to open your mind to the possibility that your beloved AGW may not exist after all.

Froggie wrote: "To Sams: The assertion that the "science is settled", is obviously untrue, as there is a great deal of dissent in the scientific community. You are obviously unwilling to open your mind to the possibility that your beloved AGW may not exist after all."

Firstly, I did not say "science is settled" at all. Please don't falsely quote me. Such a statement would be ignorant of how science works. For example, the IPCC allow a small possiblilty that they may be wrong about certain determinations when they say things like "The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%".

Secondly, I have already lead you to a real climate science journal, with peer-reviwed papers by actual climate scientists. Here is the link again:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/

It is clear for everyone that cares to review the numerous abstracts there that amongst the practising climate scientist there is not "a great deal of dissent" at all - in fact is can't see any there. Can you please point it out?

I think we can safely ignore the sham "scientists" that the desperate deniers have linked to here - retired 86-year year old coal chemists who describe themselves as "IPCC expert reviewers" because they made a public submission to the IPCC that anyone could make, TV weather presenters describing themselves as "meteorologists", and a self-described "rocket scientists" who in fact are electrical engineers that wrote some computer code for the AGO at some time in the past.

Finally, saying "your beloved AGW" is just an ad hominem attack. I have no love of human-caused climate change, and stand to suffer from of it like anybody else. Should everyone tomorrow decide that, yes, climate change is caused by humans, I would not profit from it in any way (except I'd be more optimistic about the future). Contrastingly, almost all of the high-ranking deniers have documented links to big fossil fuel money.

Sams

You make some fine "ad hominem" attacks yourself, don't you?
You can dish it out, but you can't take it. "Sham scientists" indeed!!

If all the scientists having a contrary position to that of the IPCC are rubbish as you imply, then how do you explain this?

http://www.petitionproject.org

What about Richard Lindzen, is he a sham scientist too? Just because he doesn't go along with your particular brand of eco-hysteria?

I can also come up with web site links, just as valid as yours, which don't hold the same view as yours.

Are you a climatologist by the way? Why do you believe that computer models are a proxy for real evidence?

The fact is that the climate is not reacting as predicted by these models. I suggest that some more convincing evidence be provided before the people are taxed to death.

Froggy wrote: "I can also come up with web site links, just as valid as yours, which don't hold the same view as yours."

Except my links are to current research in climate science journals, so I would think that they would be more relevant, don't you? You seem to have gotten all hot under the collar when presented with a real climate science journal that slays your theories with ease.

Froggy: "Are you a climatologist by the way? Why do you believe that computer models are a proxy for real evidence?"

No, I'm a particle physics PhD (I worked in quantum chromodynamics). I am not a climate scientist and neither are you, obviously. So the question comes down to one of authority of knowledge - who to believe. Do we believe the thousands of scientists behind the IPCC, and NASA, or a handful of scientists who invariable have links to big fossil fuel money:

http://www.desmogblog.com/directory_people/richard-lindzen

http://www.desmogblog.com/lindzen-wipes-hands-clean-of-oil-and-gas

As for the petitionproject site, how many signers are working climatologists, or even exist at all? Anyone can sign one of their slips an call themselves a scientist or *equivalent*. There is no independent audit to make sure nothing dodgy is going on.

Sticking to the climate science journals as a representative sampling of climate scientists is more than sufficient to see the consensus that they believe humans are causing the current regime of climate change.

Sams

Well, you certainly have given me something to think about.

The two links you gave me were written by some PR hack, NOT a scientist.

“Richard Littlemore has been trained by Al Gore as part of The Climate Project, an initiative designed to educate the public about climate change.”

http://www.desmogblog.com/richard_littlemore

Now anybody “trained” by that overblown, hypocritical windbag, has to be a complete shill. Al Gore should practice what he preaches.

The second one refers to some BBC article. You’re having a laugh, aren’t you?

The BBC is so far left that its credibility is now in tatters, and people are talking about having it disbanded and privatised, but at least in this article, it tried to give some semblance of impartiality – probably as insurance against when the current AGW scaremongering is proven to be a crock of “merde”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6595369.stm

I had a look at the responses to some of the articles on that web site you pointed me to, and I couldn’t help but notice that the “opposers” were about twice as numerous as the “supporters” of the AGW theory.

Here is an article showing an opinion of the “Climate change” debate that I agree with:

http://blogs.theage.com.au/business/archives/2008/07/climate_change_debate_silenced.html

Read this, too, plus the readers comments.!

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19926634.800-cleaner-skies-explain-surprise-rate-of-warming.html

Don Aitken
This thread has obviously meandered off-topic. I would be happy to discuss Noel Keenlyside's paper with you, but obviously not here - your whole article/discussion has degenerated into a slanging match, something of which you yourself seem not too unperturbed about.

Froggy wrote: "The two links you gave me were written by some PR hack, NOT a scientist."

Why would an exposé of the personal profiles of deniers need to be written by a scientist??

If you want the opinion of climate scientists, see a climate science journal:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/100247/

Reading the abstracts, you see that they are all accepting that the current regime of climate change is caused by humans, a fact that you can't seem to come to terms with.

to Q&A: You are right about the way in which the thread has wandered off the original point. But in my experience this is usually the case for any thread that gets a decent number of posts. It seems to develop a life of its own until something new arrives in the main blog and people go off to that.

I am neither perturbed nor unperturbed about it. I'm really not sure what you had in mind. I can't do anything about it.

Keenlyside: you are right, now is not the time and this is not the place. It will come up somewhere else soon.

Don,
Cheers, another time and place.