A most revealing post, sarnian. You demonstrate the typical holier-than-thou arrogance of the faithful.

Firstly, there is the collective dismissal of anyone who deviates from the received climate change dogma as a "denialist". This is the Godwin's Law of climate change debate, akin to shouting "Nazi! Fascist!" at one's opponent.

It's also curious that you lump climate change, peak oil and overpopulation together. This is as honest and helpful as someone like Rush Limbaugh calling an opponent a tree-hugging, homosexual liberal abortionist.

Secondly, you cannot bring yourself to allow a category of people who are well acquainted with the evidence available, and simply express honest doubt. Anyone who honestly disagrees with you is living in a "fantasy".

This is not debate. This is a cadre of dogmatic inquisitors, absolutely convinced that they, and only they, have received the one, true revelation. The holy words of the prophets are inerrant and must not be doubted. Heretics are assiduously sought out, reviled and banished from the community of the faithful.

Craig Scutt links to a DFAT publication that says two thirds of Australia's agriculture was exported in 2006-7 then lists the products that contributed to exports. 18% of agricultural exports are beef, 7% are sheep 12% is wine, 10% is wheat and 8% is dairy. Most of these exports are grown on irrigated land in the Murray Darling Basin.

Australia risks not being able to feed itself, already our garlic and green beans are imported from China, although Tasmania used to be England's appple orchard there is a push to import New Zealand and Chinese apples, our orange juice is made from imported concentrate.

Although 2% of our agricultural exports were vegtables and 2% of our exports were fruit and nuts I think our imports probably outweighed our exports and we are on track to import more in these categories.

Melbourne is about to enter its 13th year of drought as Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting another dry autumn. When I was growing up I was told to expect a drought once in 7 years, a flood once in 7 years and average years for 5 years out of 7. The climatic conditions this year were very favourable for above average rainfall as the Pacific Ocean currents produced a La Nina event. Although coastal Australia has been sodden south eastern Australia had its 12th dry year.

Is southern Australia in drought or after 12 years do you have to admit its desertification.

With all change, we have different viewpoints and none more galvanising as global warming. From what I've read, they gauge warming across the whole planet as local areas may not show any changes and some will show dramatic ones.

Everything happening now has happened in the past, the Antarctic was once warm so it's not unusual for it to be melting now. It's hard to accept the planet is cooling as glaciers and ice shelves collapse, snow fields providing water for the river systems dry up.

We are witnessing change, whatever is happening requires action from us as a race to mitigate the effects for the best outcome. Under the present regimes it appears impossible, as it will effect their elitist status quo of control over resources, energies and society.

It really doesn't matter if it's global warming or climate change, we can cope with those changes. Everyone is neglecting the sleeping giant of human calamity, collapsing biodiversity and ecology. This is resulting in a breakdown of the food chain and along with acidification of the oceans, is like a pot ready to boil over. The great southern Ocean is the engine room of the worlds climate, as it changes so does our climate. atmospheric balance is changing, which effects the oceans, driving changes further.

The truth is we haven't got a clue about what is happening and won't know until it actually happens, as there are to many other parameters we have to take into account. One super volcanic eruption anywhere on the planet, would change our climate drastically very quickly, by pumping huge amount of carbon, ash and other particles into the atmosphere, blocking the sun and cooling the planet. We're emulating a volcanic eruption with our way of life, it's just a lot slower and along with our ecological destruction agenda, the accumulated effects of all these things may be fatal for many species including humans.

Billie,
Australia's agricultural exports vastly outweigh its imports and Australian farms produce most of what is needed to stock supermarket shelves and farmer's markets across the nation.

The DFAT figures you quoted were the percentages by which the various agricultural goods (i.e. beef, cotton, wheat) contributed to the total (i.e. 100 percent) of Australia's agri exports in 2006/7.

I think this information from the National Farmers' Union should clarify my point:
(http://www.nff.org.au/farm-facts.html)

"Australian farmers produce 93% of Australia's domestic food supply. Food imports contribute 7.5% of the total value of Australian retail food sales.
[source - Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Australian Food Statistics 2007]

"Yet, Australia exports a massive 61% (in volume) of total agricultural production. In terms of value, this represents around 80% of the total gross value of Australian agricultural production."
[source - ABARE, Australian Commodity Statistics, 2007]

What these figures suggest is that if tomorrow we all woke up and there were no ships or planes capable of importing or exporting Australia's agricultural produce, the country would still be capable of keeping its population alive with home-grown goods. Not only that, we'd have 60 percent more produce to consume. Although, to satisfy our taste and dietary requirements, we'd probably want to look at increasing the diversity of the products produced

Clownfish,

"Denialist" is not code for "Nazi". As per the Wikipedia definition

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

it refers to someone who stubbornly refuses to entertain a proposition, even though overwhelming evidence has accumulated, leading to a scholarly or scientific consensus. See the following survey from the earth science journal Eos for evidence of an overwhelming consensus among active climate scientists (97% of those responding) that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) exists and is significant.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

See also

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus.htm#international

100% agreement is almost never attained. Scientists are people too and can be as dishonest or quirky as anyone else. Some examples of mavericks deviating from the consensus in their fields are John Mack, a Harvard psychologist, who believed that alien abduction was a genuine phenomenon, and Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who disputes that the HIV virus causes AIDS.

The consensus does not mean that there is absolute proof of AGW or that there haven't been cases where the maverick was right and the scientific establishment wrong, as with Alfred Wegener and continental drift. Statistically, however, such cases are rare. The climate scientists have passed stiff examinations on mathematics, physics, and chemistry. They serve a long apprenticeship under experienced scientists, publish in peer reviewed journals, and have the time and background to think about climate all the time. Why do you think that you know more than they do about their own field? Why is your opinion (or mine) on AGW worth more than your opinions on brain surgery or 18th century Turkish architecture? Are you willing to bet your children's future that Bob Carter (or Peter Duesberg) are right? Do you really want to claim that there is a vast global conspiracy to suppress the truth?

Clownfish.
I am wondering if you are a 1 or 4, under my definitions?

Craig Scutt.
We would have a large surplus of food for a time till market forces so beloved by the Globalists reduced the output and some of the land was returned to nature, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
It would also reduce the amount of water exported abroad, embodied in the crops shipped out.
I know that there would be an outcry about all the farmers “jobs” lost but they would eventually diversify into managing the new forests and into manufacturing local products again.