Grim - thanks for the hateful little rant, it's everything I've come to expect from the hysterical AGW believer types who deny that climate changes (as it always has) and can't accept that, and now want to stop it. When you close your mind off to any argument, debate or changing facts it's called religion.

So to summarize your rant - "lefties" are all that's good in the world, with broader concerns (and closed minds of course who want violence on anyone who disagrees with them, that's nice isn't it!) and "righties" are evil people who need to get a come uppance.

Folks who doubt, or question AGW, must be:
1. From the right, and thus "you sincerely hope these people and their families get everything they deserve", wow, like death even?
2. Rampant pollutors, do you really believe your own position here, that only the "left" cares about their environment?
3. Having no interest in the welfare of others, jeez, you must be such a saint /sarc. How do you come to that conclusion anyway?
4. Funded by big oil or big industry or .. (insert evil hateful enemy of today here) .. another delusion, I've added that as I figured you must have left it out when you were ranting.

Do you wonder why some folks who doubt the AGW delusion are not swayed by your arguments? We rely on ALL the science available, not the cherry picked bits that agree with the position you set out to reinforce? Do you think you can be from the "left" and not believe in AGW, think about it, it is possible you know.

BTW - some folks think what separates the "left" from anyone and everyone else is their hate, personal abuse and violent threats.

CJ, don't get why you would supply a quote from wiki that supports my point. But anyway, I agree wiki is far from perfect, and am glad to see Britannica stepping in with some much needed competition for this excessively powerful and narrowly controlled locus of info which is seen as the final word on truth by an uncritical public, who say they want a diverse media but can't deal with if it doesn't say what they already think. I find the entry as given more uncivil and offensive than a light-hearted jibe, but I give up arguing at length with numbskulls who can't see the rhetorical tactic behind the use of the word itself. If someone challenges accepted views in one area they are in denial, but if they accept official reports on other things they are blind to conspiracy, all decided by whom? It is Orwellian stuff. See ya in the knackery.

Grim. I respect your wise counsel but you are not left, not right but forward my friend. The dissenters are not heroes but Neroes for they shun the evidence, the reality. They deny the desecration of our lands, our waterways, our soil, our air and our fish stock depletions. They know not of these matters. They do not seek knowledge for they are consumed only by profits.

And as the cabal here describe others as “numbskulls,” “ranters” and the “deluded,” allow yourself the time to peruse the following links. I but refer to the good “corporate citizens” who operate in Australia, who are supported by the “Mark Lawsons” in our society.

These good corporate citizens, plant their young in nests around the corridors of our parliaments, at the EPA's, the IPA and the Lavoisier Group.

They secret the litigious briefs they are bombarded with around the world and vigorously deny they have destroyed the lands, the soils, the rivers, the crops, the dispossessions and the health of other nations or the human rights abuses they have committed.

The evidence is but a portion of the voluminous documented atrocities attributed to these corporate citizens – those who walk on their knuckles:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21504856-401,00.html?from=public_rss

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/contract/2006/0705bhp.htm

http://www.philippinesfactfinding.blogspot.com/

http://www.cathnews.com/news/608/92.php

http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm/sidDN20080228000013

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=14490

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/aug/06/indonesia.johnaglionby

http://www.terradaily.com/2007/071009154249.xytavr0w.html

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,24071770-5017009,00.html

http://protestbarrick.net/downloads/barrick_report.pdf

Though what can one expect when we, the sheeple continue to worship and promote our eco-vandals (clutching brown paper bags) to public office?:

http://www.foe.org.au/anti-nuclear/issues/oz/cartel

Cheerio

"We rely on ALL the science available, not the cherry picked bits that agree with the position you set out to reinforce?" - rpg

Which of these scientific facts do you actually dispute, rpg?

1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (Tyndall 1859).

2. Carbon dioxide in the air is increasing (Keeling et al. 1958).

3. The new carbon dioxide is coming from fossil fuels (Suess 1955).

4 The temperature is rising (NASA GISS, Meet Office Hadley Centre CRU, etc).

I have yet to see any scientific literature rebuking any of these points, and yet it seems slightly disingenuous for rpg to claim that him and his so called 'doubters of the AGW delusion' know better than the 97% of climatologists whom agree that human activity is causing global warming.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php

peachy - I see your 4 points, so what - where is your paper that proves an increase in CO2 is responsible for how much warming? Thanks for proving my point with cherry picking in action .. you could prove the sky was really falling if you pick enough papers with as little linkage as those. What a wonderful thing Google is, but it doesn't prove your case does it?

I keep saying if it's proved, I'll change my mind, but I'm not going to be berated or bullied by little mantas and pithy cliches like the precautionary principle either. (If you go that way then I insist we bomb the crap out of Iran and North Korea.)

Why should there by scientific literature disproving it? There is as much need for that as papers disproving elephants flying .

If you want everyone to change their minds and lifestyles and spend my taxpayer money, you need to prove it. Everytime some new idea comes out to scare people and take their taxpayers $ for "research", you should prove it, I've seen a lot of scares already, including the GBR is going to be eaten by Starfish, all the press and scientists got on board, turns out it was a natural process.

Copernicus was an odd one out when all the thinking of the day, the "consensus" was that the heavens rotated about the earth .. he was right, though he was also into recanting .. sound familiar?

97% agreement isn't enough, you have to have 100% .. and it's not disingenuous, it's science to question, it's religion to suspend thinking in favor of your beliefs.

I didn't say I knew better, I said I'm skeptical and question the whole AGW belief, try to keep up.

“97% agreement isn't enough, you have to have 100%”

rpg. In science there is rarely a 100% consensus. If you were rational rpg, you would know that the “100%” consensus expression is redundant. A consensus is taken in the sense “majority of opinion.”

Take the dinosaur extinction which scientists claim was caused by an outer space missile, however, palaeontologist, Dewey Mclean’s hypothesis, now in favour, is due to the massive volcanic eruptions which occurred during that period. The Siberian Traps could be evidence of that. The volcanic ash and carbon emissions were capable of wiping life from the face of the earth as it then was.

Scientists estimate that humans emit 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes - (Let us pray that the volcanoes never become so angry again!)

“Over 150 States signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in June 1992 at the Rio "Earth Summit". In doing so they recognised climate change as "a common concern of humankind".

"Governments that became Parties to the Convention agreed to achieve its ultimate objective of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [human-made] interference with the climate system."

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change provides the basis for concerted international action to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its impacts.

Its provisions are far-sighted and firmly embedded in the concept of sustainable development. It recognizes that the climate system’s stability can be affected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Now, the Convention enjoys near universal membership, with 192 countries having ratified it.

192 nations' ratifications rpg? And there are some 196 countries on the planet? Not a bad “consensus” eh?

These hundred and ninety two countries now accept that Planet Earth’s hazardous waste repositories of fossil fuels were interred for good reason - to contain excessive carbon.

However, the avaricious "empire builders" do not flinch from an opportunity to scheme and plot, no matter how sordid. Oh but we do enjoy such comical vaudeville from these ethics free, moral pygmies!