**Curmudgeon**
RE: Hanson's "fiddling". Strong evidence or back off! That guy has already been through a lot of persecution from White House denialists as documented by the CBC's "The Denial Machine" and countless other sources. I'm ashamed of Australian journalists acting like British Tabloids. Will the AFR start Page 3 girls next?

RE: the MWP. Even *IF* it was as warm as today for a little bit,
* what was the source of the warming?
* how long was it for?
If it wasn't sustained long enough then the feedbacks probably didn't have time to kick in and we avoided disaster. As a debunker of this fairly vigorously studied consensus view of there being no MWP, I'd have thought you had access to a strong counter-theory as to what actually does drive climate.

(Not that I'm buying there even WAS a MWP — yet, need *real* evidence).

Climate theory is NOT in disaster because your opening paragraph contests a straw-man. Climate theory NEVER stated that Co2 would gently nudge temperatures a teeny bit every year in defiance of other climate trends. Do you deny that 1998 was a super-strong El Nino? Are you really that recalcitrant? Or do you just not know what an El Nino IS, and how it interacts with climate? Far out man, your paragraph after Penny Wong's quote indicates that you think you can set air temperatures and ocean temperatures at each other's throats when they both contribute to the climate story!

Also, can you please justify this statement?
(much of the theory concerning Milankovich cycles was recently overturned)

What paper? "overturned"? Evidence or it is not so.

Also, the papers that so called 'contradict each other'... at what stage of the peer review process are they? What official responses are there? The more extreme comments on the 55million year old event seem outside the mainstream because I have DEFINITELY read that this was totally consistent with Co2 models.

Mate, how do they even measure Co2 and methane as greenhouse gases? Did you cover that when you did science all those years ago?

Protagoras is very desperate when he/she cites the so called lead contamination at Esperance relating somehow to climate change. Speak to many locals at Esperance and they will tell you what a beat up this little incident was. The birds falling out of the sky was attributed to the lead but no conclusive evidence was ever produced. Local farmers had told that this had happened well before lead was shipped out of Esperance during extremely dry periods. The small noisy minority in Esperance who have had their lives improved by the shipping port seemed to get all the press (surprise surprise). This is typical of green propaganda where hysterics rule.

I’m with GrahamY on this.

If you want to reduce pollution, development alternate forms of energy, eliminate inefficient use of resources –few would begrudge that.But the AGW bandwagon is not ONLY about that –and it’s probably not even MOSTLY about that.

While our politicians sweet talk us about new green industries/jobs –and sketching minimum cost scenarios’ .
The world bank is preaching that the cost of climate change in the developing world will be AUD 547 billion EACH YEAR by 2030.
And, they continue,they already have our politicians IOUs to bankroll it –funny our pollies haven’t talked much about that side of things!

It’s looking more and more like a giant funding-scam which is using AGW as justification.

.

"In fact its an open scandle that the GISS [...] is different from the rest and shows the peak at 2005, rather than 1998. [...] There have been very strong suggestions that Prof Hanson, as GISS director, has been fiddling the results"

It's only an "open scandle" (sic) among the flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists who inhabit "Watts Up With That", "Climate Audit" and other outposts of the anti-science "denialosphere".

Back in the real world, among actual scientists and those who bother to familiarise themselves with the science, it's pretty straightforward actually: there are significant differences between Hadley and GISS in how the Arctic region is incorporated into global averages. GISS extrapolates from measuring stations around the Arctic Ocean to make temperature estimates covering the whole Arctic, whereas Hadley only incorporates the coastal areas immediately surrounding Arctic measuring stations, and do not incorporate the Arctic Ocean directly into their averages. Hence there are differences, since the rate of warming in the Arctic has been higher than anywhere else on the planet.

Satellite estimates of temperature run a poor second in data quality to direct surface measurements, due to the nature and extent of the systemic adjustments required in their data.

And, as I mentioned earlier, the land/sea surface temperature is a very small part of the global energy big picture. Again, read this and read it carefully:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-do-we-know-global-warming-is-still-happening.html

As for supposed "very strong suggestions" that "Hanson" (sic) has been "fiddling the results"... no such suggestions have arisen in the scientific arena, actually. GISS has a very high reputation indeed.

Someone is taking the ignorant rantings found on denial blogs waaaay too seriously.

Eclipse Now and Matt Andrews - I regret that suggestions concerning Hanson have arisen because the difference is so obvious and, as he started all this, he has a great deal to answer for. Its not something that can be dealt with in the refereed data, but McKitrick and the other fellow who exposed the hockey stick are always going over the data. You should see the stuff they recently turned up on tree rings. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/27/quote-of-the-week-20-ding-dong-the-stick-is-dead/
Dear dear what a fuss that will cause. They had a real battle to get that data too.. As for where the papers cited in the article are at in the approval process, they are all full scientific papers. The Milankovic cycles don't show much in the fossil record, or just one does, as I understand it but, in any case, the reference is tiny part of the story. I have read this in Plimer but I have also seen it elsewhere. That's it for now fellas - onto other topics..

can someone tell me why we are worrying about co2 and global warming when water vapour is the major driver of global warming?