I reckon that one of the reasons that both sides are spinning out the Godwin Grech et al e:mail saga is that both see that issue as sucking oxygen away from the discussion that the really don't want to have - ie, answering Steve Fielding's three questions. The fact is that both Labor and Liberals realise that there are no satisfactory answers, and that the lack of satisfactory answers throws the whole ETS scheme into doubt.

The fact is that Steve Fielding, by his simple insistence on common sense questions that all MPs and Senators should have already asked, has shown up most parliamentarians as shallow followers of what they think is the public mood. When will they all wake up and realise that what Steve Fielding is showing them the way to get re-elected!

The next issue to address is the cost/benefit of the ETS scheme for the average voter. It will cost me how much? And the benefit to me is? And the benefit to the planet? Then why on earth is it being rammed down my throat? Who benefits?

Herb, The only ones who would benefit from the ETS would be large corporations and the banks. You and I will pay through the nose for no benefit whatsoever to our enviroment. It will be another stock market style trading floor.

It is interesting to note that most of the attendees at international climate change conferences are representitives of these large corporations seeking to spend money on anything that will give them carbon credits.

"Not a climate scientist" is mentioned by some warming alarmists, recently in relation to Ian Plimer. If a geologist who can tell us about climate over the ages from cores, bores, sea beds etc., doesn't know a great deal about climate, I'll eat my hat.

Detractors of 'non-climate' scientists would do well to investigate the qualifications of people who came up with the IPCC 'consensus'. Most of them were not scientists of any kind - merely your old fashioned enviro-nuts. The 'science' used by the IPCC has been discredited by independent researchers many times.

Science has be so corrupted and mis-used in this climate farce that it will take generations for people to have any faith in it again.

James, thanks for clarifying. I do agree that the press loves a panic and bad news, of which AGW is full of.

It's easy to write, easy to defend (there's a consensus you know) and you can flame anyone you don't like.

I think the Google wars on OLO are getting pretty run down, though some will defend their favorite site to the death, or the alter whichever. Everyone can find a point of view on the internet to support their pet claim, theory, hate or scorn.

Rational thought is rarely entered into, it's all a panic and it has to be fixed now! Yet time passes and still there are no effects, climate goes on ever changing at the same pace that it always did, slowly, so what.

Leigh - isn't the head of the IPCC, Pachauri, a railway engineer? (Is that a new branch of climate science now?)

Dear me, you really can't have any engineers dipping in can you? (Q&A will bite for sure)

Leigh, yesterday in the "Global Warming basics" thread you wrote "I would be interested to know what you regard as the "intellectual depths" Plimer had to plummet to in order to support his argument
...
I'm not a scientist myself, and I may not have recognised the relevant material."

So I provided you with a review of Plimer's book - published in an anti-environment, pro-industry paper - which spells out the deficiencies, pseudo-science and even plagiarism which Plimer sank to in writing Heaven & Earth.

And yet here you are today still writing about Plimer as if he has an unquestionable and scientifically solid reputation.

Here's the link again. Demonstrate to us that you've read and understood it before you come back with more tiresome ranting about "corrupted and mis-used" science. You really are painting yourself as king of the online hypocrites.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25433059-5003900,00.html

Sancho, today, with all our media staffed by people who have done a literary subject at any of our uni's, it is not a matter of some of our papers being to the right.

It's a matter of some of them being just a little less left.

I know it's hard for many of you to accept as you have no idea of where the middle is.

I often wonder how our AGW folk can spend so much time flying. I sometimes get a picture of them crowding so far left, in the palne, that it tips over. Better still is the one where they crowd so far out onto the port wing, to avoid any middle ground, that one by one, they slide off.

It does tickle my fancy to think there is still some justice left in the world, even if only in my imagination.