Yes, a succinct and beautiful article. Ian has primarily, and simply, compared the governments comments with the IPCC's own words, but negative contributors here (Sams, cornonthecob) seem quite unwilling, or unable, to read it for what it is, and respond. billie does, but in a lapse in comprehension, attributes the IPCC's words to Ian, and finds himself inadvertently doubting the very organization that tops Sams' list. Beautiful.

Sams, your quote from wiki comes under the domain of informal logic (a post-modern invention of the 70s by the looks), as ad hominem attacks, according to the entry, are fallacious and “always invalid” in formal logic. If the credibility of the ‘witness’ is your basis for judgment, rather than the content, then one might begin by suggesting that someone who publishes under their own name, and whose qualifications and career are on the public record, is more accountable than someone who uses a pseudonym like yourself. (You may wish to address this by giving your name and position.)

Such would not be the case using purely formal logic, where anonymity has no bearing, but as you choose the former, you render yourself impotent: ‘informally’ there is no basis to judge the value of your ad hominem attacks; ‘formally’ they are invalid.

In fact, you switch inconsistently between the two ‘modes’ to suit your agenda. Eg, you accept the truth of Ian’s corrective statement about not writing for Lavoisier in order to make another ad hominem attack: “Yes, I’m sure you were glad.” But you don’t acknowledge your original statement, which ipso facto, you have accepted as untrue. An honest person would acknowledge the mistake/falsehood, and perhaps even apologise. (The wiki entry mentions the critique of Massey, who says that informal logic "requires detailed classification schemes to organize it, whereas in other disciplines the underlying theory would provides (sic) this structure. He maintains that there is no method of establishing the invalidity of an argument aside from the formal method, and that the study of fallacies may be of more interest to other disciplines, like psychology...")

Sadly, beyond all this, no one seems terribly concerned that farmers and graziers may be making decisions on their livlihoods, in an already harsh land, based on these misrepresentative statements - hopefully, this wasn't part of the "terror" Dorothy McKellar was writing about.

Ian an excellent article on what is a very serious issue. It's unfortunate that we are served by politicians who see themselves as "saving the world" but appear to be clueless when it comes to actual facts.

As well as David Stockwell's critique of the the CSIRO's Exceptional Circumstances report readers of this thread should be aware of the following paper by D. Koutsoyiannis et al "On the credibility of climate predictions / De la crédibilité des prévisions climatiques" Hydrological Sciences–Journal–des Sciences Hydrologiques, 53 (2008).

http://www.atypon-link.com/IAHS/doi/abs/10.1623/hysj.53.4.671

Abstract:
“Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.”

Bottom line: climate models have no predictive power, in precipitation & temperature, at least at the local level.

For 3 different blog discussions on this paper see: -

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3361

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/08/koutsoyiannis-vs-realclimateorg.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/08/hypothesis-testing-and-long-term-memory/

Thanks Geoff and Fungochumley.

I was surprised at Minister Wong’s claim that the IPCC’s expectation was for a 25 per cent reduction in rainfall in the southern part of Australia by 2050. This doesn’t square with the Panel’s finding that ‘The percentage JJA [i.e., winter] change in 2100 under the A1B scenario for southern Australia has an interquartile range of minus 26% to minus 7%’ (Chapter 11, WGI report, p. 900).

And even this statement turns out to be wrong – the correct range is minus 20% to minus 4% (Table 11.1, p. 856). The IPCC authors inadvertently quoted the corresponding ‘% precipitation bias’ (Table S11.1, Supplementary Information, p. SM.11-5).

The Chapter was the product of 2 Coordinating Lead Authors, 15 Lead Authors and 40 Contributing Authors, and was reviewed by a small army of experts and government representatives. It is part of a Report that is billed as ‘probably the most scrutinised scientific document in the world’ (Stephen Schneider onOckham’s Razor, ABC Radio, 18 May). And these key figures were transcribed from the wrong table.

The interquartile range for the projected change in ANNUAL precipitation in the 21st century in ‘South Australia’ is –13 to +3%, implying that at least 5 of the 21 global models in the IPCC’s Multi-Model Dataset project show an INCREASE in rainfall. And the median projected change is 4% by the end of the century - a far cry from Senator Wong’s claim that the Panel’s expectation was for a 25% reduction by 2050.

CSIRO’s grimmer projections from a sub-set of the models that are supposed to perform well under Australian conditions seem to me to be implausible. But in any case, what do they mean in the context of the IPCC’s overall assessment? The projected median decreases in rainfall for the ‘Southern Europe and Mediterranean’ and ‘Caribbean’ regions are 12%. Is it all right for the Italians, Spaniards and Jamaicans to produce independent assessments of their future climate, based on their own favoured sub-sets of the IPCC’s ensemble of models?

Apparently the answer is ‘Yes’. This is beyond parody.

fungochumley: "Sams, your quote from wiki comes under the domain of informal logic (a post-modern invention of the 70s by the looks), as ad hominem attacks, according to the entry, are fallacious and “always invalid” in formal logic."

Had a good laugh at this. Saying that informal logic looks like "a post-modern invention of the 70s" is like saying gravity is a post-modern invention of the 70s.

You are *using* informal logic all the time. Science uses informal logic extensively. Everybody does.

"[Informal logic] is the study of arguments as presented in ordinary language, as contrasted with the presentations of arguments in an artificial, formal, or technical language (see formal logic)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic

We do not use formal logic here, a mathematical field that deals with looks like this:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Sentential_Logic/The_Sentential_Language

This is why the argument "you can't prove anything" is not valid for denying climate change, unless you are going to try to prove everything from mathematics.

Sams, rule 1 of the online forum is to keep responses on topic, so although I could respond to your strange comment about gravity, I fear it would only be following your avoidance away from the content of the article, which, as I said, you seem quite unwilling or unable to respond to, despite Ian's invitation to do so.

Alas, I WILL try a mathematical approach:

Penny Wong's statement of the figures (a) IS NOT EQUAL TO the IPCC's (b).

It's really quite black and white. That you cannot distinguish between the two is not something I feel I have the time or the duty to help you with here.

Of course, Ian goes further, but let's not stretch you, although it seems many lesser people who have read the article haven't had such difficulties. The article is attracting significant public attention - one comment at a major newspaper blog says it should be compulsory reading for every journalist in Australia.

As I also said, your "informal" pseudonymous ad hominem attacks are impotent, as we have no basis on which to value them against those whom you smear (Ian summarises his credentials in the commentary to his previous article here on 08/08/08 - not responded to by Sams), but if perhaps what you are trying to say is that - if not you - then we should at least place our trust in organizations like the IPCC, which heads your list, then I would have thought you would be slightly concerned that our government is misrepresenting their figures. !?

Is this a sound basis for policy on the supposedly "most challenging issue faced by humanity"? You repeatedly say this is a policy forum, so may I suggest that if you cannot, or will not, address the content of the article, that you proceed to another thread and stop wasting time and space here - two concepts that I would have thought you, as a former physicist apparently, would have the utmost respect for.