Gruen backs - even admires, it seems - people like Soros. Gruen backs the massive bail-out scams too (in "moderate" packages for "good" publicity effect, of course). Gruen accepts the bizarre neolib fantasy that World Bank monetarists like Stern and Garnault should somehow be viewed as scientific authorities on planetary climate.

But like the above-named too, Gruen makes his name and fortune from usury a.k.a. "money from nothing" except working people's miserable enslavement and the nasty crushing of their higher potential - a potential much higher than that of their exploiters and oppressors.

Furthermore, Gruen cites the British East India Company's Adam Smith and his imperialist "free trade" quackery as an authoritatively serious, ancestral ideological basis for studying economics.

Of course Gruen backs AGW. Of course he pooh-poohs any discussion of morals in the contexts of both the bail-out heists and the AGW scam. We should not be surprised if some political guts, with proper investigation and legal reform, brought threat of jail for those same people who gave us us that other major, causal crime in the derivatives' debt-farming scams, underlying all of this ongoing systemic implosion.

Now Gruen would almost certainly ridicule such legal retribution as "empty moralising", perhaps "old fashioned". Why would that be? Ah, his vested interest: "discount mortgage broking"...

"Would you like some 'carbon offsets' with your (state-subsidised) toxic MBS?"

Bronwyn,

Nobody could rely on you to report the facts. I did not state that climate change was irreversible. I merely reported what the NOAA said. In fact, I said that it was UNLIKELY that it was irreversible because the climate would change, as it always has, when it was ‘good and ready’.

I really wish that you could overcome your habit of criticising people without reading what they actually said.

Q & A,

Thank you for your gratuitous advice.

For starters, the article you have referred to is not the one I read; it was in The Australia.

Don’t you dare to tell me that I have “misrepresented” anything, you pompous twit. If I did not read the article you think I did, you little smart aleck, I cannot have mis-quoted it either!

Don’t bother to apologise; it wouldn’t mean anything from a person like you.

Q&A .. maybe it's the font used on this site, but can you tell me which if these is correct

"specifically the Working Group I co-chair" (as in I, myself Q&A chair.)

or is it ..

"specifically the Working Group I co-chair" (as in 1 (0ne) co chair)

because if it's the first, you would seem to have a vested interest in defending your position and funding, much like those accused of Big Oil funding. Which would explain your lack of objective view, nothing more needs to be said.

if it's the second, then you really got pwned by Leigh didn't you, because you really were gratuitous and belittling in your response. We see now just how petty and small minded yet another AGW fanatic is when dealing with dreaded heretics (with open minds).

So you cherry pick from the wrong source when accusing someone of cherry picking, and get caught out .. dear oh dear !

Ok, that explains it ... you read the popular press and don't go directly to the primary source. I suppose you subscribe to Andrew Bolt in the Herald-Sun as well.

No wonder there is confusion, distortion and misrepresentation - it seems some people would rather get their info from anyone but those directly involved.

Taswegian has it about right I reckon. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Leigh and runner conform to the pattern of anti-GW folk being aggressive, rude and totally deluded. (Why always rude?)

I am fairly sure that we will not make the cuts in time...but we need to make changes anyway. Killing two birds with one stone is a good policy. Trouble is the stone suppliers (to push the analogy) don't like this and see "two birds, one stone" as a moral position instead of just a thrift issue.

Making a bunch of uber-rich Lords even richer is not only silly, it is unaffordable. Surely now we can see the "totally free market" emperor has no brain, let alone clothes!

The silence of the Right on the economic follies of PPPs, banking, insurance, etc shows their true "moral" stance. The Left may be useless bleeding hearts at times, but at least they try and be virtuous. Being "do gooder" is used as an insult by the Right, which again indicates the direction of their moral compass.

Seems to me the Left can get bogged down in many contradicting issues, and can be confused by the trade-offs required to balance things. The Right on the other hand is less confused because the focus is much tighter: "what is good for me and mine". Trouble is, this stance means shifting morality depending on circumstances.

Personally I prefer idealistic stupidity to selfish stupidity.

rpg

ROFL ... yes, it’s OLO’s font. You may have seen the IPCC’s reports referred by the various working groups as WG I, WG II and WG III.

I was referring to WG I ... and no, I am not Susan Solomon. The report she co-chaired can be found at:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

If you do have an “open mind” you would have read WG I (notwithstanding its length or required bandwidth). If you do have an understanding of global warming, you would also know it does not mean “each year would get successively warmer” or “every year gets hotter and hotter” ... as you have recently claimed.

As to Leigh’s post, he said he merely reported what NOAA said.

No he did not – he reported some of what he read (so he says) in The Australia(n). He did not say this in his original post (which I was responding to), he certainly did not cite the source.

What I linked to was NOAA itself, in full (so I certainly did not cherry-pick as you claim). If anyone was doing the selective picking, it was he.

It’s worth repeating, if anyone wants some kind of rational discussion about global warming issues, it would help if they at least read the AR4 and any primary research source. Most don’t.

They acquire their “expertise” from media shock-jocks who thrive on controversy, or glean it from ideologues that have a vested interest in delaying action at best, or denying what the science is telling them altogether.

Have you ever wondered why governments, oppositions and businesses around the world are taking global warming seriously, from whatever side of politics they come from?