Clownfish: there is "no debate" with Q&A's beloved, pseudo-leftist and fashion-conscious Sourcewatch mob either (a.k.a. "Center for Media & Democracy). Consider this extract from one of their sites (http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/index.html):

"The Center for Media and Democracy is run by a Board of Directors whose current members are... [several named apparatchiks]. The Center serves journalists, researchers, policymakers and citizens at large in the following ways:

* Countering propaganda by investigating and reporting on behind-the-scenes public relations campaigns by corporations, industries, governments and other powerful institutions.
* Informing and assisting grassroots citizen activism that promotes public health, economic justice, ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY and human rights.
* Promoting media literacy to help the public recognize the forces shaping the information they receive about issues that affect their lives.
* Sponsoring "open content" media that enable citizens from all walks of life to "be the media" and to participate in creating media content.

Toward these ends, the Center sponsors the following projects:

* SourceWatch, an Internet-based "open content" encyclopedia of people, groups and issues shaping the public agenda. SOURCEWATCH IS THE HOME FOR A GROWING NUMBER OF COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIPS INCLUDING portals on Global Corporations; Front Groups; CLIMATE CHANGE AND COP15 AND INTERLOCKED ISSUES OF COAL AND NUCLEAR POWER; Election Protection in the U.S.; and, the Tobacco Industry."

[my upper case]

Sourcewatch's obvious conflicts of interest arise where: 1) their claims to intrepid dissent fall down wherever their purported corporate and government targets do not challenge their green and pseudo-left dogmatism, and; 2) their lavish funding traces to clear and explicit corporate motives of self-interested publicity.

Therefore, Sourcewatch is not "critical thinking" or dissent at all; it is criticism based on the predetermined certainties and assumptions of conformist groupthink.

Clownfish <<Q&A, I wouldn't be basing your opinions on sourcewatch, if I were you.>>

I don't. That is why I gave links to both sites with alternative views.

Nevertheless, you followed up by:

<<Sourcewatch is so obviously biased that it's laughable. Anyone on the wrong side of their political good guys-bad guys divide is ruthlessly excoriated, while the good guys are all but given a rhetorical bl*w-j*b.>>

In effect you are saying the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and its founders/executive are not biased. I disagree.

Clownfish, you obviously like to "sex up" your comments. I think by doing so you lose credibility, imo.

Um ... I don't recall saying anything about the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Please don't assume that because I say that A is biased, that I am necessarily saying that B is not.

Quite probably it's a case of a plague on both their houses.

If I've been taking the stick to what may be loosely characterised as the "green left" (a broad brush, true, but useful enough for our general purpose), it's because I'm fed up with the saintly aura of virtue too many of them try and assume, when quite often they're lying and distorting just as much as the other guys.

I'll admit that there's not a little sense of personal betrayal there, too. Much like Frank Hardy, in "The dead are many", railed at how Stalinism had betrayed his most sincere beliefs, I have come to be outraged at how my own sincere environmental beliefs have been betrayed by the lies and half-truths of manipulative hypocrites.

Hell hath no fury, indeed.

At heart, though, what it comes down to is a fundamental dislike of hypocrisy. If we're to make sensible decisions on such matters, then let it be on the basis of truth, not wild exaggerations (from either side: I'm not impressed with the whackier assertions of the folk who truly are "deniers", either).

Finally, it's too bad if it offends you when I "sex up" my comments, but then some folk didn't like Paul Keating's rhetorical flair either. C'est la vie.

You are right ALL, methane does oxidize to CO2 over time. (Wikapedia gives half life of 7 yrs which seems a bit low.) However, the concentration of methane is sufficient for methane to make a significant contribution to the greenhouse effect. In addition, the % of methane is rising.

There is the potential risk of a surge in methane concentration if we reach a temperature that is high enough to decompose a large amount of methane hydrate. In such a case a rapid jump in temperature might be expected followed by an equally rapid decline as the methane oxidizes.

My apologies but I was wrong to link the 100,000 yr cycle to axial tilt. This particular cycle is actually linked to orbit eccentricty changes. For a good summary of the various solar, tilt etc. cycles that impact on temperature see:

http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm

Marginalizing the petition does not change anything; there remains a significant body of scientific opposition to current AGW thinking.

For some reason, any potential AGW cause has been “welded” to atmospheric carbon to the exclusion of all other possibilities or probabilities, as evidenced by ETS’s as a “solution”. This is precisely what many scientists are objecting to, not the probability of AGW but the “single threaded assumption” that it is caused by atmospheric carbon.

In making my case and the basis for my acceptance of AGW as a probability was simple:

Take the three sets of data upon which everyone seems to agree. Atmospheric Carbon content, global temperature records and the total emissions records since 1850.

The fact that there is no direct link that any scientist can point to between temperatures and atmospheric carbon content (ACC), does not invalidate the possibility that measured warming could be anthropogenic. I make the point again; any indicators published by scientists in relation to links are scientific “interpretation” or “modeled”, not factual data, otherwise there would be no debate.

The total emissions data does not provide any direct link either, but it does tell us that we have increased carbon emissions since 1850 by factor of 12.8.

Incredibly, ACC has only increased by a factor of .3.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2657#59852

This evidences only one thing; that total human emissions are “forcing” the biosphere to work much harder, 12.8 times harder in fact, hence there is undeniably a quantifiable human effect.

It does not deliver direct evidence that there is global warming, man made global warming or long term climate change. What we can measure may be natural for hundreds of other natural reasons.

If we can accept this as a “circuit breaker” we can liberate ourselves and the debate from being forced to accept the embedded assumption that residual atmospheric carbon is “the cause”, and ETS is “the solution”, whilst at the same time accepting the possibility/probability that there is a measurable human induced effect.

This concept is obviously hard to contemplate, it has resulted in Protagoras blowing a fuse and mumbling poetry.

Q&A,

The link I provided 15 May to the Petition Project was not incorrect, as you claimed 17 May 2009 at 5.36pm.

I provided two links one to the Petition Project and another to a separate document signed by 100 prominent scientists who dispute AGW.

Try harder to get your facts right.