Sigh. Another author publishing disinformation on climate with Connor Court (after Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth"), and based on this article, the book is shaping up to be similarly ill-informed.

Here's the first sign that this author doesn't actually know his way around the natural sciences:
"...it is certainly not accepted by the majority of scientists as proven fact, that global warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide..."
Word in your ear there, friend: nothing in the natural sciences is ever "proven fact". This is a "straw man" argument. What you're trying to say is "the balance of probabilities indicates". And the author is utterly incorrect, certainly for climate scientists (rather than the hand-waving term "scientists"): there's a very strong consensus that the current warming trend, if not addressed strongly, will probably have major impacts for human society.

Almost every paragraph in this article contains fundamental misunderstandings of climate science, statistics, the scientific method in general, and/or specific errors and misrepresentations. This kind of rubbish is best ignored.

Obviously climate science is inexact, based on probabilities and best-fit scenarios. Do we really need to be told this? The real question is not whether we can prove some future prospect (a logical impossibility), but whether there is good evidence and prediction (as provided by the best science available) which, in the eyes of a reasonable person, would warrant preventative action.

Much is claimed about the so-called scientific consensus, and it would be useful to have this vague notion made more specific.

For lay people like me, the best we can hope to do is apply a critical eye to the processes by which the evidence and conclusions are produced. It does not require political correctness or doomsday religion to conclude that there is enough evidence around to warrant some action. There will be some chance that such action, with the benefit of hindsight, will have been unnecessary, but that goes with the territory of being cautious.

Given the difficulties of making such judgments, waffle like this is not at all helpful.

For those who doubt global warming, compare the pictures of the Arctic, the Antarctic and Greenland from the 20th century and today. While the Northeast passage has been passable in historical time, the Northwest never been has until the 21th century. These are not theories, not birds nesting earlier and closer to the poles, not trees climbing mountains. Paltridge needs to get the new corporate playbook, which says that global warming is real, but people have nothing to do with it.

Matt,

I agree totally; seems you are "one eyed" if you support GW but a balanced and open individual if not!

I give up really. Had dinner the other night with a senior CEO of one of the largest international global companies who said "I am not a global warming skeptic! I simply don't believe that the world is warming at all". When I queried how he came to this breathtaking conclusion he replied "I have read a lot!".

No doubt the Financial Review or some other worthy expert commentator.

Why do so many hard scientists feel compelled to engage in pop sociology? My theory is they are releasing the contempt they have always secretly felt for colleagues in the arts and social science schools :).

In a desperate attempt to find something original to say that would give his post some point, Paltridge ends by considering 'how a belief in climatic doom became politically correct in the first place'. His answer is that 'the final outcome was inevitable from the start ... given the human addiction to tales of collective guilt'.

I know we social scientists might not have cool million dollar laboratories and stuff like that to use to gather data, but we do actually try to base theories on some kind of evidence. Can Paltridge perhaps cite some to support his bizarre belief that humans (excluding him, one presumes) are addicted to tales of collective guilt and consequently tend to accept misconceived beliefs as political correctness?

Or is he engaging in a wholly uninformed, evidence-free fantasy to bolster his preferred state of climate change denialism?

And this is supposed to be an informed comment by a scientist who perhaps knows his stuff. Yet this is hardly any science in the entire article.

But what is it? Essentially a stringing together of all the usual cliches by the so called skeptics. And like all of the skeptics he accuses those who advocate human caused global warming and climate change of being in the thrall of political correctness, and dependent of bottomless buckets of money for their existence (as advocates of their cause).

And his book is published by an outfit that specializes in promoting essentially right-wing opinions, masquerading as truth.

It never seems to occur to those on the right of the culture wars that they too are heavily biased in their opinions, and that they do not see "reality true", and that they too, promote wide-scale social engineering (while pretending not too).

And that those on the skeptics side (who shout very loudly) are financed by the deep buckets of money provided by the corporately funded right-wing stink tanks.

Speaking of corporate funded political correctness, propaganda, and all pervasive social engineering, why not check out this reference which describes how the process of brain-washing into seeing corporate created reality as reality true, begins (even in the cradle).

http://www.ouw.edu.au/arts/sts/sbeder/kiddy.html

I would go much further than the author in condemning many scientists for refusing to speak up when there is something obviously wrong with the scientific debate on this issue.
As is widely known and is not contested by anyone, the direct effect of increases in CO2 is quite limited. The best estimate of a doubling of CO2 concentrations is an increase of about 0.6 degrees. The climate models that are at the centre of the debate get from 0.6 to 4 or 5 plus degrees by assuming feedback mechanisms - notably the effect of that initial warming on cloud. That feeback factor, or climate gain, is little more than an assumption. There are indications - including the results of the actual physical system - that the gain may be negative rather than positive, and certainly not the big figure assumed by the models.
Yet senior scientists continually insist that the climate models are relevent, based on established science and are not in need of correction. The whole episode is becoming shameful. It is set to overshadow cold fusion as an example of science that has gone completely off the rails.

Several years ago I saw pages of statistical analysis of long term temperature records from sites all over the world. Of those that varied significantly about 60% showed upward trends and 40% downward trends which was about what I would have expected when the heat sink effects around many city recording sites were taken into account.

I decided to look through the data for a few sites that were well isolated and therefore little subject to unusual events or effects. Two I recall stood out - Malta and Tahiti. Neither showed any long term trend!

Fossil carbon is too valuable for future use as a reducing agent and chemical feedstock to be wasted solely for its calorific content. Money spent on clean coal research is completely a waste of effort and the funds should be diverted to electric power storage research.

All recent discussion on nuclear power seems to avoid discussing the French successes.

The webpage url was a reference to This Little Kiddy Went To Market by Sharon Beder.

Speaking of the market and kiddys and corporate propaganda there is chap who published a book titled The Enemies of Progress there is chap who gave a key-note address at a CIS gab-fest, arguing the case that school children are being relentlessly brain-washed by green environmental propaganda.

Greens of course being the enemies of progress.

If you check out the extensively foot-noted Kiddy book (she has done her homework) it is quite easy to see what our children are being propagandized by.

And who is financing this 24/7 wall to wall project. Arguably the most relentless exercise in deliberate social engineering ever conducted on this planet.

I have to hand it to On Line Opinion. There are so few of them out there, but you manage to keep digging them up. Congratulations to your research department.

'The bottom line in the global warming story is that the potential for bias is overwhelmingly towards the politically correct. If for no other reason, the money lies on that side of the fence.'

Professor Garth is partly right here. He fails to answer the moral questions that lead to the gw doctrine and dogmas. Man is so corrupt that he needs to try and display some outward disgust. That is why those who claim to want to save the earth are often the most inwardly corrupt and hypocritical. They are happy to fly around in personal jets and preach to others that they can't have electricity.

For those following the desperate attempts of the alarmist it is rather amusing if not sad. It is a pity so many people have devoted their lives to the lie of gw.

Godo “Obviously climate science is inexact, based on probabilities and best-fit scenarios. Do we really need to be told this?”

When a government is attempting to turn the economy on its head by introducing a carbon tax system upon an unsuspecting (of what it really means ) Australian Public, in pursuit of a political agenda which can only be called “Socialism by Stealth” ….

especially considering the league of greenie / climate change zealots / vested interests have manufactured a vast amount of lies and corruption and are prepared to go to almost any length to impose their monocular view upon the rest of us.

I would suggest we most certainly do need to “be told this” !

Or would you prefer to go around with your head stuck in the sand, ostrich fashion?

Very interesting article indeed.
One question need to be asked however, which is, WHAT spurred the climate change research in the first place?
I think here is the answer to that question, which by the way might take two hours plus of your time.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6745627342652553091

Dear Col Rouge
My comment was provoked by the author's reference to the need for 'proven fact', which is a devious red herring in an area which, as I was pointing out, can only ever be based on prediction. We do not need to be told that predictions are just predictions.

The key question is whether the predictions are as valid as we can make them. I agree that major policy decisions need to be made on secure evidence, that these are complex matters, and even that some scientists on both sides have special interests to pursue. (Climate change scientists are no doubt enjoying their day in the sun, but note also the number of geologists among the skeptics, a branch of science unfortunately close to the mining industry.)

The argument should be about the evidence, not name calling.

I am beginning to really enjoy the team sport aspect of anthropogenic global warming science.
A new paper comes out by a luminary of one of the participating teams and the supporters are there to snipe at the latest move.
Senior team players will then move with a different statistical analysis to trounce of their opposite number's research.
Is this a new version of chess or a round of the AFL, NRL or RU.
Perhaps the term sport science has a new meaning.
Will the villains and hero's of the future sport science be Mann, McIntyre, Steig, Watt, Pielke Snr and Jnr, Lomborg et al.
Will they take a page out of Premier Beattie's book and become media tarts.
I can only wait to see what the transfer fee will be when a major player changes teams mid season like Craig Lowndes did when he moved from Holden to Ford.
I for one follow the Copenhagen Consensus Team with that great mid fielder Bjorn Lomborg and their team ethos of accepting there is nought we can do about AGW and are better off keeping the money in the public purse available to deal with the consequences of a climate doing its thing and changing.
I for one will be getting in some calves and lambs for the time when meat gets to $100/kg as predicated in the mornings papers.
There is a advantage in living well outside the cities after all

When you consider that everyone who is pro Intelligent Design is also anti-AGW theory, it makes sense that an article like this is considered worthy of publication. But that's the only reason.

Maybe it is 124c4u who should be looking at some photos. How about http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/0857806.jpg which shows a US submarine surfacing at the North Pole in open water on 17 March 1959. Something which was repeated in 1987 this time by three submarines. And I am sure Amundsen would be displeased that you are denying him his place in history in relation to his navigation of the North-west passage over a hundred years ago. And the SS Manhatton as the first commercial vessel to do it 1969. And how about a more modern record - the fact that 2009 is the first year in over 50 years that the North Pole weather station has failed to record a temperature above freezing before the end of June. Real facts never got in the way of a good rant by a warmaholic, did they? But if you really want to get some credible records about the arctic you could try http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm

A number of things worry me about this whole global warming business.
One worry is the computer model.
A while back I read an article by a computer modeling expert.
He had used the IPCC's model, I understand you can change inputs and
use it yourself.
Well he had done that and had some reservations about the program.
He asked for a copy of the source code, but was refused.

To his mind and mine that is a worry if the operation of the program
cannot be independently verified.
There is just too much money and effort depending on this one computer
program to keep its source code confidential.
Until other experts can examine the source code it seems the output
has to be questionable.

GIGO

Someone commented on the French nuclear power stations.
A friend of mine was at the 1956 International Energy Authority
conference in Vienna.
At that conference the Russians described their power station
reactors. The same type as Chernobyl.

One of the conference delegates pointed out to the Russians that there
was a possible problem with the design in that it could fail and boil
the cooling water, due to energy being released from the carbon
moderators in certain circumstances.
The Russians dismissed the suggestion.

This fault was exactly what happened at Chernobyl.
My friend was supplied with the detailed technical report.

To me that means while technical problems can always occur good
engineering review will reduce risk to very low levels as the French
have demonstrated.

As is so often the case (lamentably) in such debates where there are quite polarised views and no reliable way of "proving" the case to either side, the "science" becomes irrelevant.
What DOES become clear is that as a community we can become sensitised to the greatest problem of our time and simply move to deal with it ..... whether led by governments or not !
Surely most of us have become aware that we cannot continue as we do to consume the finite resources of our home planet. And we seem to have the nous to realise that utilising so called "Renewable" energy sources presents as a best longterm solution .....
SO Why don't we just get on with it ...... and do that ?
We would need to cope with the backlash from vested interests, and the stranglehold they have on governments - and so THAT becomes the REAL challenge!
Marvellous isn't it how these things move about and morph into something entirely different !!

KenL
I think there is a kind of collective superego at work when issues such as this come along. Indeed I suspect that for a cohort of "dark" greens it becomes the death-drive. People have after all been weaned on doomsday scenarios, from nuclear winters, to millennial angst, to armageddon. Guilt and self-loathing are part of western life, and this is a morbid bias that should be factored in to popular support. In this case though, that might be a good thing, as we might actually get to deal with GW before it deals with us.

Of course there's doubt over the details of GW, but there's broad scientific consensus apropos the phenomenon.
It's interesting that the sceptics in this forum are the usual conservatives, the same ones, I suspect, who have no trouble putting their faith God, the economy and their own hubris.

Interesting website, malrob.

Interesting because all the embedded "links to GW info sites" only point to what are commonly referred to as anti-global warming sites or so called 'denialist' blogs, e.g.

Anthony Watts blog
ICECAP
World Climate Report
Bob Tisdale Data Analysis
Tom Nelson blog
Climate Change Happ/Wolk
Climate Depot
Climate Science - Roger Pielke
Climate Research News
Jennifer Marohasy
CO2 Science
Climate Audit - Steve McIntyre
Gore Lied Blog
Unbearable OmniClimate
The Air Vent
Minnesotans For GW
Heliogenic Climate Change
Climate 4 You
CO2 Sceptics
Lucia's Blackboard
Climate Change Fraud
Climate Skeptic
Junk Science GW
NZ Climate Science Coalition
Climate Sanity
C3 Headlines
National Post Deniers Series
Honest Debate
Roy Spencer
Questioning Climate
Prometheus - RogerPielke Jr
John McLean GW Info
John Daly Climate Info
AGW Heretic Blog
Global Warming Hoax
Science & Public Policy (The Lord Christopher Monckton)
Michael Asher (Dailytech) blog
US Senate EPW Report
Lucy Skywalker
Niche Modeling
Gore's Falsehoods
Heartland Institute
Climate Resistance
Paul Macrae - False Alarm
Coleman's Corner (KUSI)
Theodor Landscheidt
Global Warming Quiz
Skeptic GW Summary
Global Cooling
OISM - Petition and Paper

I think it's good for people to seek answers to questions that trouble them.

I also think a real 'sceptic' should seek answers from all sources - not just those that support their unqualified opinions.

To be fair, AppInSys have linked to some research/data sites (although it bothers me that they have left out some others, e.g. Argo.)

I honestly don't understand why people like the author of this article bother.
A target of 20% renewable energy by 2020 isn't socialism by stealth.
It's apathy by ennui.

DRW,

Yours is the most sensible post so far ... but I'd add greemies and environmentalists to the list of vested interests strangling our governments.

I agree lets just move onto alternative fuels and stop all this crap about emissions costs.

Simple for the industralists, while costly in the short term, mostly would easily adapt and survive ... but what about the greemies and environmentalists? They'll still be beating the same wornout old drum way down the track.

Peter King, really you had dinner with a really really important business man and he was so stupid whereas you are so smart. Get a grip King Peter. He was so important however that he soon shut you up and you gave up. why on earth was such a smart person as you so spineless?.
Andrew Bolt says that the world is cooling. Senator Field has asked for proof it is still warming and for all the ranting and raving no one including Penny Wong has disproved these two men. I have been told that of the last ten years nine were the hottest on record but where and how was this conclusion arrived at? This should be easily sorted out.
15,000 years ago the ice age climate with five kilometres of ice over Northern England changed (warmed) and in 50 years it was all gone and there was the North Sea and the Channel.
So what is your science on that King Peter?

Godo,
Well put it seems that some on this site hold the view that there are two opinions their's and the wrong one but they're very generous about it everyone has the right to be wrong and abused by them.

I must admit that I wonder what the point of the profs piece was....it seems to me if the topic is so complex and interconnected as he indicates why then and by what reasoning can simplistic refutation (denial) make any more sense.

It seems to me that the prof had it right with his bat analogy if we have multiple evidence of the systemic failures as one poster indicate by what logic does business as usual make sense?
One wonders what scenario does the prof offer for the list 124C4U offers. Is he suggesting that we should ignore them until we find an exact SINGULAR culprit?

It seems clear to me that there are multiple interrelated issues going on here.

Logic dictates we attack all the issues rather than behave like the man falling off the empire state building heard saying, "where's the problem? so far so good."

Sancho - I don't know where you got the idea that anti-AGWers also believe in intelligent design together. In fact, if pro intelligent design people think anything at all about global warming they would go for the orthodoxy.. true sceptics are opposed to both..

As for proving one case or another, true the debate is polorised but the problem the AGW people have is that the physical system is just not paying attention to the doomsaying. Even on the most charitable interpretation of the sites that follow global temperatures nothing is happening, and nothing has happened for a decade. Temperatures may currently be high but they have been higher before. There is growing evidence that they were higher in the medieval warming period, and it is now widely accepted that past natural variations have been substantial. To try and work out whether humans have added perhaps a few tenths of a degree (that is what the debate is about) to current temperatures is nearly impossible. But emissions have been increasingly sharply in the past decade, with nothing much happening and there is no explanation for this lack of activity. The AGWers need to find a convincing explanation of this lack of activity before anything else happens.

Hello another member of Dads’ Army and recent guest of honour at the Lavoisier launch of the Professor’s book, “Climate Capers,” where mining baron, Hugh Morgan kindly did the introduction.

Naturally, as one has witnessed in the past with climate sceptic spin, the biodiversity crisis takes a back seat. Naturally with stark, empirical evidence it would be far more difficult to spin the science on biodiversity, the impacts nowhere more evident than in Australia.

Rivers on life support – a result of industrial pollution, threatened species and habitat destruction, fish and bird kills, zoonoses on the loose worldwide, freshwater supplies contaminated with carcinogens and the creeping white death engulfing the equivalent of 19 footie fields a day and that’s just in WA.

Let’s not forget the Professor’s buddies either, the mining and oil corporations, slaughtering wildlife during their operations and continuing on rampage worldwide, plundering and poisoning the planet and trashing the ecologies and livelihoods of defenceless poor nations.

Ah but that’s a mere peccadillo for the good Professor and other planet rapists!

“All recent discussion on nuclear power seems to avoid discussing the French successes.” Well I was endeavouring to be polite Foyle and avoid speaking about the French in the nuclear debate.

You see, the French who are trying to flog their nuclear technology to the world, have' recently had two very embarrassing nuclear incidents. What's more, by 2002, France had already stored 978,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste. In 2020, the annual amount is expected to be 1.9 million cubic metres, so for poor old France, so dependent on nuclear, keeping the lights on means the radioactive waste just keeps growing and growing …………and…growing…....and.......!

As has been noted elsewhere, temperatures measured at the Mauna Loa laboratory that provides the standard measurements of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 show no correlation with the level of atmospheric CO2. For reasons yet to be explained by James Hansen's GISS, it like the NOAA and HadleyCRUT relies on temperature readings at Honolulu Airport (obviously heavily influenced by the ever growing volume of air traffic since 1960) and at Hilo, a fast growing town at the foot of the Mauna Loa mountain, but refuse to acknowledge the existence of the flat trend temperature readings at the Mauna Loa lab. itself. Why would that be?

When there is a hypothesis that it is the atmospheric concetration of CO2 that is "95% responsible for global warming", but no warming at all is evident where the CO2 is measured, the hypothesis is demonstrably false.

This is not to say there is no anthropogenic warming, for indeed there is wherever there are large numbers of people using energy on a large scale as at Hoolulu Airport and all other such, and indeed in all urban areas not excluding modern farming areas. The 1st Law of Thermodynamics says use of energy creates heat, the 2nd law says that failure to keep maintain energy use leads inevitably to increasing entropy and ultimate death of all living matter.

Replacing coal fired electricity etc with wind etc will do nothing to reduce warming arising from humans' energy-based activity except to the extent that it reduces such activity - and that is of course the hidden agenda of all too many Greens and their fellow travellers. CO2 is a trivial by-product of fossil fuel energy. None of the IPCC's dubious formulae for guessing at the radiative forcing of CO2 show that the CO2 generated at coalfired power stations has a fraction of the heat potential of the energy produced by the power station itself.

Unlike many others who claim to "know" the truth, I'm prepared to admit that I'm not qualified to make an independent scientific assessment.

However, if I go to 5 doctors and 4 tell me that I have a disease and must start treatment immediately but the other says that the other four are wrong, I would tend to go with the majority - if only out of self interest.

Furthermore if the single doctor adds the claim that the other four are basing their false diagnoses on the fact that they are all in the pay of pharmaceutical companies but conveniently ignores the fact that the organisation backing him also claims that smoking is harmless, it doesn't add much credence to his claim does it?

Meanwhile the obvious melting of the Arctic ice, Russian tundra and several glaciers seems to be following and reinforcing scientific predictions - just as the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer were analysed and reduced some time ago.

Just as there are people who insist that the holocaust never happened, the moon landings were faked, there is a secret society guiding humanity behind the scenes and the myriad of other conspiratorial theories around us, there's no point trying to convince people who have already created their own version of reality and happy to live in it.

Whatever the outcome, we're all going to experience it together and either side saying "I told you so" won't mean much in the end.

Tom Tiddler,

You're really onto something. Suggest you contact Garth Paltridge ... there's got to be a Nobel in it - chemistry or physics no doubt.

The quicker the onslaught, the more obvious that you have pushed some buttons.

Protog, you’re ad hom attacks are off message. It’s “dinosaurs”, not “Dad’s Army” at the moment.

Q&A, thanks, that's an impressive list.

Ho Hum, ho hum.

This is a wise, brilliantly written article.

Some extracts from Robert Youngson’s book Scientific Blunders:

“The history of science is littered with remarkable errors, many of which are, of course, no more than aspects of the scientific ignorance of the time. Even so, they are among the most momentous errors in the history of humankind and many of them have had serious consequences…Some blunders are the result of carelessness; some arise from plain, stubborn wrong-headedness; some from arrogance (…hubris has always been common in the upper echelons of the scientific establishment); some arise from wilful and culpable ignorance; some from spectacular bad luck, and some from human moral frailty.

“The scientist who finds himself, or herself, ignoring – or explaining away – uncomfortable results that don’t fit in with the preconceived hypothesis is on a slippery slope and is liable to end up in disgrace and ruin. Most scientific workers are aware of their fallibility and take precautions to avoid the blunder of bias in the interpretation of results. The best of them are said always see to it that if findings are susceptible to such bias it always acts AGAINST the favoured hypothesis. I may be cynical, but I take leave to doubt that such angelic behaviour can be very common. Scientists are just people and are not exempt from the human weaknesses that beset us all.

“Some of the most breathtaking blunders have been the work of non-scientists – groups motivated by political, religious or other ideologies. The influence of such groups in opposing demonstrable truth can be enormously damaging.”

The Professor is right about the one-eyed view. Climate science is ticking all the boxes for blunderama

A beautifully written article by Garth Paltridge on how political correctness stands in for the real thing in climate science. I am encouraged to purchase his book. The fastest way to put an AGW promoting scientist on the back foot is to ask for the actual evidence on which he/she bases their beliefs. When you look under the hood, what you find is.... nothing. Are the real scientists going to turn up one day, or is junk science now the norm for the next couple of generations at least?

Q&A,

I've never visited most of the 50 sites which you say "are commonly referred to as anti-global warming sites or so called 'denialist' blogs", but I regular visit a few of them including Climate Audit, Lucia's Blackboard and the website of Roger Pielke Jr.

These are NOT 'denialist blogs'. In all of the hundreds of posts by Steve McIntyre, Lucia and RP Jr on the excellent websites that they maintain, I challenge you to find any statement denying that the world may be warming and that humans may be the cause.

Incidentally, Steve McIntyre is currently attending a conference of the World Federation of Scientists at Erice, Italy, at which Garth Paltridge, Bill Kininmonth and Richard Lindzen are making presentations.

A good article, and the point made is well understood, that vested interests (the eco and AGW lobby) don't like competition, and people with their minds made up don't like discussion.

The usual combatants are all here disparaging anyone who dares to disagree or have an open mind.

I note some who spray around "denialist" don't like to be branded what they are, "believers", but then again when did the fervent ever tolerate dissent?

The disinformation abounds and the implications that anyone who disagrees with the "consensus" must be paid to do so, or gets all their information from coaching sites, as the devout surely do since they quote it so often so fluently. Link references stack up but rarely change anyone's mind since the opposite is always available somewhere.

I'm happy for communications and information to flow, but find it fascinating to watch the ones who clearly want it shut down.

"Consensus" of belief has been wrong in the past, it will be wrong in the future, hubris will not save your reputations. Consider the Australian scientists who went against the entire scientific community and the consensus that stress caused stomach ulcers. They were right, it is possible for a minority view to be correct, science is not democratic - Nobel prize stuff.

I have no idea what the weather is going to be like next week, or next year, or in fifty years time, and I have strong doubts that anyone else does with any certainty, either.
Does that make me a denialist?
What I don't understand is how anyone can look around at what is happening to the world by Human action (or simple existence, in such large numbers) and think it is a good thing.
Whether AGW is real or not, the outcome for the planet, the environment and for unborn children for centuries to come must be improved if we treat it as real, and stop raping, desecrating and befouling our habitat.

Yes Ian, I visit some of those sites too - among others.

I agree, a few of the websites aren’t ‘denialist-blogs’, but many on that list have been referred to as such. Of course, this is no different to the ‘denialosphere’ tarring other sites as ‘alarmist’.

There is no point to the challenge, Ian. For a very long time I have attempted to explain that the overwhelming, vast majority of scientists don’t deny that “the world may be warming and that humans may be (part of) the cause” - although Vince Gray and Tim Ball push the bounds.

Likewise, no scientist has said our current global warming is entirely due to anthropogenic causes. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped popular columnists and media shock-jocks (and ‘denialist’ blog sites) from saying this, or distorting or misrepresenting what the vast majority of scientists do say.

Speaking of the WFS in Sicily; I think you agree with me (and Antonino Zichichi) that the SRES is problematic insofar as ‘climate modelling’ is concerned (hopefully we will get better econometric and statistical input by the time AR5 comes out). I also note that the WFS are re-assessing their response to the increased frequency and severity of so called ‘floods and extreme weather events’, not just droughts ... this is encouraging.

Most people agree that AGW, by definition, is a symptom of human endeavour; the severity of which we won’t know unless we conduct the experiment, and we are.

However, given the potential risks to humanity (and all that relies on it) of a warmer and wetter world, it would be prudent to tread very carefully. The United Nations understand this and through its various divisions (not least the Security Council and Environment Programme) are using ‘climate change’ issues to try and steer member states to growing and developing in a more sustainable way (environmentally, ecologically and economically).

This is ongoing within the UNFCCC and will be 'played-out' in Copenhagen again in December. They won’t be re-inventing the science like some on some obscure forum like OLO are wont to do – but you know this.

You didn't read my post, Curmudgeon. Try again

You didn't read my post, Curmudgeon. Try again.

Q&A you appear to be having a foot in each camp and attempting to sound rational and conciliatory at the same time being derogatory to "Denialists" from your lofty scientology AGW stance - it doesn't fit.

Leaving yourself some wiggle room are you? Setting up a position that all along you have been reasonable and objective, please it's vapor thin.

Scientists may not have said exactly what you say in exactly that way - but many responsible science journalists and some scientists have not held back from inflating the alarm. E.G Prof Barry Brooks, putting in little asides at a conference "and the seas will rise", Robin Williams, national treasure and ABC science fellow, who calls himself a scientist said seas would rise 100metres by the end of the century and under questioning by a JJJ compere admitted that "you have to exagerate to get people's attention"

Your claim that scientists are innocent victims of shock jocks and "denialist blogs" is pure fantasy, nice try to deflect thuogh.

Like I've said time and time again: Extremists on both sides should pull their collective heads in, odo.

You can't understand that - not my problem, odo.

Q&A
I think you are on the money.
There is a propensity in the media to deal with issues in the extremes.
I have often pointed out that many of the POVs are myopically conceived and any challenge is then assumed to be the the opposite extreme. i.e you are either a chicken little doomsayer or a head in the sand denier.

Media is presented with two basic criteria around selling ads and presented in the simplest to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Hence we get the either or poles.

In reality issues like weather aren't black or white nor are they a single point in some continuoum. Rather like people they are a mixture of non linear bits from the entire length of that continuoum. numerically any five issues may range independent from 1-100 in intensity. The real thought is not the reliance on a single point failure. i.e. CO2 isn't THE issue but is clearly one of several.

Therefore disproving that CO2 is the solitary cause to our apparent malaise is overly simplistic (unrealistic) assessment of the true situation.

To my knowledge no single denialist's scenario credibly accounts for the vast majority(certainly not all) of the scientifically arrived at observations.Likewise no climate scientist worth their degrees claim that CO2 is the only cause. What is at stake is the mechanics (is it red or blue or some shade in between.)

Therefore If in cleaning up CO2 it also resolves other issues then "where is the Problem?".
Logically simply doing nothing because of perceived and unprovable economic catastrophic consequences is relying on soft 'science' versus hard science provable observations isn't a plausible issue.

Let's get real here economists predictive skills are some what "soft" if they were as tangible as ice melting at both poles then GFC wouldn't have happened and the recovery would have been 'decades' long as was touted at its height.

Let's stop with this misinterpretation of Occam's razor it in context says 'if there are two COMPARABLE(both explain all the observations equally) THEN the simpler is PROBABLY true.' Not the simpler is true regardless.

Actually, Q&A, odo does have a point.

You seem to have no hesitation in tarring even the mildest disagreement as "denialism" perpetrated by "wingnuts", yet the equally extreme alarmists, from the biggies like Gore, Sting or HRH, to posters on this forum, either get off scot-free, or the occasional mild tut-tut.

So, come on, attack the wingnuts who talk nonsense drowned cities and lifeless planets with the same fearless demeanour you do those of us who merely express doubt.

I love fence sitters... and anything that improves the bottom line for Goldman Sachs. Go AGW!

I especially love the author's line for confirming the "fact" that any injection of CO2 into the atmosphere will increase temperature, thusly: "To be strictly accurate, we should say that its temperature will be higher than it would have been otherwise."

Is it possible to be more strictly accurate? Could we add "barring any mitigating circumstance (like changing solar intensity)." Or does the author believe that CO2 alone causes warming?

Sheesh!

Chant after me... carbon credits, carbon credits, carbon credits.

Sorry but Garth's voice is the voice of the misinformed. Climate change is real already with real world affects, the science is sound and political correctness has nothing to do with it.

Multiple independent lines of research all confirm climate change and mainstream Australia has pretty much accepted the conclusions of our leading scientists on this. I think Garth's low opinion of them and their scientific achievements crosses over into insult.

Ken Fabos No you are wrong. Plenty of people do not accept the politically correct backed "Science". There have not been doubts but down right argument. In the last ten years temperatures have not risen. I have asked for proof (As per Fielding) and seen people assert that in fact the last ten years have shown higher temperatures but then all you get is insults and they have had enough of arguing and they are right rants.
Hitler and his mates were so good at this too. Keep the lie going, attack people who will not accept it and then say they are just a virulent minority. One other thing no one uses the term "Global Warming" now its AGW as acronyms are made to obfuscate and confuse (They think). The globe is not warming and this is just another disgusting tax as the new taxes on water are.
My only relief is that so often what deceitful plans people lay so often trip them up.

Clownfish

Those that talk in terms of 2m plus increases in sea levels by 2100 or 6 degrees C plus in global mean temperatures must have to invoke what is known as 'catastrophic climate change'. This is not likely (although CCC has happened in the geologic past) unless certain ‘tipping points’ are reached. Jim Hansen does spruik this scenario and politicians and celebrities use this ‘doomsday’ stuff to press for action. Please, read my lips ... THIS IS STRIDENTLY NOT NECESSARY, imho.

Why? Because sea level rises of say 80cm, or a GMT increase of 2 degrees C, is bad enough - the science behind this is obviously not understood by some people on this forum, for various reasons.

This is also why the UN Security Council and all the major military powers and advisers are adopting strategies and policies to address the adverse consequences of global warming - on food, energy, water, displaced populations, infrastructure, etc, etc. (I note you don't want to address the latter half of my response to IanC, which is important).

Incidentally, Gore and the IPCC got the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing countries of the world together to tackle an issue that threatens world peace – it’s a global problem. I am sure that if someone could debunk the science of global warming they would get a Nobel for physics or chemistry, or a Fields for maths - they would save everybody, everywhere an awful lot of time, money and anxiety.

Clownfish, if I apply the logic of your argument to you -> you accept the scientific principles of that espoused by Tom Tiddler a few posts back. While I don't buy it, maybe you do :)

Global Warming with a mechanical motif

It is suggested that thoughts about the end of the world began with the later superheated onset of the industrial revolution.

As time went on through the steam train days man began to really believe he was superior to nature.

After WW2 with plenty of General Grant tanks on hand to clear more farmlands, the tanks were soon turned to scrap to make way for crawler tractors big enough in pairs joined by steel cables to clear scads of timbered farmlands in no time -

cockie clearers feeling so divine not to be locked in by tall eucalypts and able to now view the local town fifteen miles away.

Now back to those stirrer greenie types in the steam train days believing that man now had the capacity to clear the whole darned world of timber, jungles and all, causing big backfires from nature, the prediction that most men were still too stupid to realise what they had done.

Some of these types carried on so much that they even locked some of them up saying they'd gone off their rockers.

It is when an old retired cockie indeed becomes a bit philosophical truly wondering about these Bod's who bellieve whatever mess we make of the global countryside, man can fix it.

But there is another story about man you might only hear in the local pubs, that man with all the powerful mechanical monsters at hand, is more likely to f-ck it than fix it?

Cheers, BB, WA.

Q&A, I acknowledge that you have on occasion criticised the "alarmists" as well as the "denialists", which is a welcome (though sadly rare) event.

I've heard it argued that "Gore & Hansen had to lie to get people to listen"; a particularly infuriating sophistry. Not least for the purely moral reason that relationships, especially between citizens and leaders, should be built on trust; the politics of "disinformation" are extremely counter-productive.

But why should a sea level rise of 80cm be so alarming? After all, sea levels rose by about that magnitude over the 20th Century. Did I miss the news about the disastrous consequences?

That's not to say that rising sea levels is without consequence, but surely past experience has shown that it can be managed? So why all the panic?

Your concern for displaced people is admirable, but perhaps a little premature. Bangladesh, for instance, the long-time "climate refugee" poster child, is actually gaining land area in spite of sea level rises. For island nations such as Tuvalu, the story is more complex than climate alarmists are admitting.

In any case, the 20th century alone saw plenty of mass displacements of population. It may not have been a picnic, but by and large we managed.

Why all the emphasis on just the adverse consequences of climate change? What about the benefits?

In other words, I'm not saying we should do nothing at all, but I do think we need to think very carefully about what we do. As best I can understand it, Cap-And-Trade, the political hobby horse du jour is about the worst strategy we could adopt to adapt to climate change.

As Edmund Burke noted, "no passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." So it concerns me greatly that the Australian government is rushing headlong into perhaps the most costly and damaging restructures in our history on the basis of much ado about not much at all.

Oh, and I always love it when people weigh in with the Laws of Thermodynamics: they're science's equivalent of the Templars.

Clownfish
<< But why should a sea level rise of 80cm be so alarming? After all, sea levels rose by about that magnitude over the 20th Century. >>

I don’t think 17cm is about the same magnitude as 80cm – check out NOAA.

<< That's not to say that rising sea levels is without consequence, but surely past experience has shown that it can be managed? So why all the panic? >>

Manage, I’m not so sure. You will have to check the numbers but I think that today, there are about 50 million people living and working within an 80cm mean sea level. That number is expected to increase to 120 million by 2100. It will take decades to adapt. Regardless, many species will not be able to adapt as quickly as humans, and of those of us who can adapt – there are some less able.

<< Why all the emphasis on just the adverse consequences of climate change? What about the benefits? >>

Yep, there will be some benefits, but these are considered (on balance) relatively short term.

Moreover, in referring to ‘tipping points’ in my previous post, it was in reference to some ‘perceived number’, after which life as we know it is dramatically altered. However, what is often overlooked are ecosystem tipping points.

Nature is generally pretty resilient and pliable when impacted by a suite of stresses, particularly over large time scales. However, humanity has pretty much been conducting an experiment on eco-systems that is barely understood. Eco-systems function in profoundly non-linear ways; the change in one minor component in the system has been shown to reverberate throughout the whole system and then to have significant negative effects on the functioning (and persistence) of the system.

In other words, we can alter the environment considerably without noticing any kind of effect until there is a sudden and dramatic shift until it becomes too late to do anything about it.

Clownfish, there are people better able than you or I tackling these problems, they have to. Like you say, it has to be done carefully.

Whoops, Q&A, I misread when I was looking up sea-level rises in the 20th century ("Oh, I forgot to er, carry the one" - Professor John Frink).

Yes, 80cm is a bit more than 20cm; but it's still not 2000cm or 10000cm, as some have claimed. It may even be less. Nor is it going to happen overnight. It's not as if everyone's going to tumble out of bed sometime in 2050 and wonder where the hell all that water came from :)

Also, as the case of Bangladesh shows, it will be a lot more complex than just water going up everywhere.

Your point about ecosystems is a better one; but it's not as if relatively rapid climate change - even the climate change of the 20th century - is entirely unprecedented. Life will muddle on, I'm sure.

What I am sure of is that it makes no sense at all to beggar ourselves chasing after carbon chimaeras

Maybe we wicked humans are exacerbating natural climate change. I used to be convinced this was so; now I'm not so sure. I hae me doots. Reading some of the climate change material that tries manfully to fit the observation to the model, I'm reminded of nothing so much as mediaeval astronomers resorting to ridiculous concatenations of epicycles to make the new observations confirm to their cherished cosmological model.