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.