This article is typical of the writings of fanatical global warming alarm people. Within 5 years or so it will become clear that Carbon Dioxide is actually good for the world, beneficial for man and not the prime cause of global warming. In any case the world has been cooling since 2001 and there are predictions that we may in fact be entering into a period of significant cooling.

There have been many periods of significant warming throughout history with far higher percentages of CO2 in the atmosphere. Life has survided, even flourished. The big threat is significant cooling, not warming. Man can live is a warmed world, but when the next ice age comes we will be in real trouble.

Methinks Mike Pope is about to become a great writer of scientific fiction. Where is his evidence that universal global warming is a fact? OK South East Australia is enjoying a heat wave. In Perth temperatures are moderate and in North America a cold spell.

By what statistical trick does Pope average out these diverse effects? What is the evidence that certain gaseous emissions (artificial and natural) are the sole or at least main climate forcing factors?

Then there are the disease phantasies so beloved members of the medical profession. It is sheer speculation to claim that as a consequence of alleged global warming there will be epidemics of this and that tropical disease as far south as Sydney- thankfully Perth is at slightly higher latitude.

A warm climate and higher CO2 levels usually means greater crop yields. Evolution by natural selection means animals and plants continuously having to adapt to environmental changes. In the case of mankind and the associated domestic species the extremes of temperature can be modified by central heating on the one hand and air conditioning on the other. Now these adaptations require lots of energy. So in the interest of furthering human adaption to his fantasies Mr Pope ought to be supporting Dr. Switkowski call for fifty Australian nuclear power stations

Hey Mike run that bit about Ozone again? See Greenpeace reckon that they solved the problem of the ozone depleating chemicals and a resultant hole in the "Ozone Layer" by banning those chemicals. Are you saying the ozone is building up? Wow lets get back to the Greenpeace chick who lambasted me for saying it was all nonsense and how her and the Green Nazi's saved the planet.
OK you two can argue amongst yourself and I will just put a bee up you both every chance I get.
Mike I think the term "Drama Queen" suits you and little Miss Adolf Greenpeace.

Your comments on the range of temperature that humans can live in may come as a surprise to the Bedouin, Laplanders, Sudanese and Eskimos.
As to increased bushfire risk a much greater effect was the misguided politicians who changed the prescribed burning legislation in the mid 1990's.
By preventing sensible fuel reduction in the nineties it allowed the 'mega' fires of 2000's to occur with all that accumulated fuel.
Fortunately with the new RFS commissioner in NSW we have started to gingerly get in the cool autumn prescribed burns as we did in the 1980's.
There is just so much fuel in the bush now in areas that have not burnt in the past decade that prescibed burns need to be carefuly managed.
We still have quite a few years of wildfires to come till the balance returns.
1 or 2 degrees extra on a 40 deg day is neither here or there. Fuel and wind are the biggies.
I am surprised that the thawing of the tundra was not brought up, all that captured methane.
But that avoids having to explain how all that vegetation that grew in the far north when earth was warmer than now and by what global climate mechanism the last ice age was initiated and then thawed out.

Alas, time for a confession, I worked on the studies in to heatwaves in SA last year and the year before.

I'm afraid the reason why about 70 percent of those people died was because they were elderly and/or were taking kidney or heart medications. They were old and living alone. Nothing to do with global warming, people 'breeding' or 20 foot rises in sea levels.

I could go case by case and show how the climate change gnomes have stuffed up their arguments but in the case of heatwaves, it's a fact that we need to keep an eye on our elderly and make sure they turn the bloody airconditioner on (if they have one).

The writer has a point re mossies and other airbornes. You get hot seasons, the little buggers head south.

What is it about the training of economists that makes them so gullible. Most of them seem to fall for this, or another con, than any other group. Remember Y2K.

Yes Cheryl, we do need to keep an eye on our elderly, but that's not only for AGW. The other day, about 9.30, I went into my 90+ year old mothers granney flat, to give her breakfast. She had got up early, & turned the radiator on, because it was cold.

A little later she was hot, so she turned the Air Con on. She's not dumb, just a bit forgetful. I think the air con was winning.

You don't have to have it get hot, to get your plague of mossies, just ask the Laps, & their reindeer herds. They'll tell you there are more mossies, & other bities per square foot in the tundra, than anywhere else.

I note that alarmists always make a big noise about people dying from heatwaves, but are spectacularly silent about the much greater numbers of people dying from cold.

A fine example of observational selection.

Good Grief. Catch Peter Doherty in the current "Monthly" and compare his scientific expertise with your own.

Mike Pope may gain integrity selling insurance.

I never cease to be amazed at the crackpot utterances of those who reject global warming and deny it has anything to do with human activity, despite irrefutable evidence supporting the opposite. They include Senator Minchin who should no better, to Joe Average who may not.

They also to include the JBowyer who seemingly does not know the difference between an ozone hole in the stratosphere exposing the earths surface to increased harmful solar radiation and the formation of ozone much nearer the earths surface with potential to kill those with lung or heart complaints.

Then there is Sniggid who believes more atmospheric CO2 is good for us and that the earth had been cooling since 2001 – The ice age cometh! Rather like asserting that climate science is wrong, I am right and, like any good sceptic, I don’t have to produce a shred of evidence to support my position. Furthermore, since Tuesday last week was hotter than to-day, its time to buy winter woolies.

Far be it from me to confuse anyone with facts but scientific records show that global temperatures have continued to increase since 2001. There is a nice graph at http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures/temp_ghg_trends/temp.cfm which clearly shows this.

Little Brother thinks a few degrees warmer is neither here nor there. Just burn the fuel load and we shall be spared bushfires. The latter will definitely help but a warmer climate has two effects. It does permit disease carrying insects to move further south bringing their diseases with them and it does melt land based ice causing sea level rise and, probably sooner than later, coastal flooding.

Federal and State governments are beginning to recognise and warn of these dangers, even if sceptics do not. Their concerns and the facts which give rise to them have never troubled the likes of Senator Minichin or his weird conspiracy theories, so I suppose we should not blame others too much.

I think we should be very concerned by global warming. It is not a figment of the imagination, nor is it going to go away simply because a few deny it.

Jonjay (Wow an apt name for a sanctimoneous little prig!)Ozone mate is ozone and The greenpeace nazi princess said they had cured the ozone depletion by making us all use more expensive propellant gases. Now the this diddyman comes along as said the ozone is going to kill us as there is so much of it being generated.
Get your stories straight? Well that is not possible as this all a lot of nonsense. You keep shifting ground as a moving target is harder to hit. First we are going to freeze then AGW and now climate change, perlease! There is no science here and anything to do with the UN has got to be a scam.
This is all a taxation claim from Rudd the irony being is that the biggest winner will be the Wall Street Bankers who will be trading the certificates which we will be paying for.
I arrived in Australia in the early 1970's and some American bird lead the campaign that said all Koalas would be extinct by 2000. Last weekend some other woman is now saying it's 30 years time under her tax free and FBT free status. Nice money if you can get it!

Another BS piece of alarmism from the climate fascists.

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!"

Jonjay, a small increase in the space of nearly nine years!?

A small increase in temperature on a planet that has been in existence for how many billion years? I'm pretty sure that the climate has changed far more dramatically than this many times over before industrialisation occurred, let alone before humans even existed.
That is not evidence of anything.

You claim to have evidence, but everything I've seen is conjecture and 'consensus' among a few scientists, most of whose wages are paid by governments. Which is convenient given it's governments who are angling for more unecessary taxes, and control over the lives of everyone else.
It's either that, or scientists who were nobodies five years ago are trying to carve out a niche for themselves at everyone else's expense.
Wouldn't be the first time.
Even the AGW poster boy Al Gore falls into this category of corrupt AGW pushers, given his interest in companies such as Bloom, and the many inaccuracies/lies contained in his rubbish political piece "An Inconvenient Truth". Just another crook methinks.

There was a time the scientific consensus held that the world was flat, so forgive me if I don't trust scientists when it comes to the way the world works regardless of how far humanity has come since then.

The fact is that humanity's ability to accurately predict the future of the weather (or of anything else for that matter) past about 7 days is non-existent, and none of our long term 'models' can honestly be described as accurate.

Oh, and as a general rule, the burden of proof usually lies with the accuser (AGW alarmists) and not the defender (sceptics), so you've fallen over there as well as in proving AGW is worthy of action.

Jonjay,

Well, I checked out your graphs (highly recommended for all readers) and it appears that:

* world temperatures have gone up by at most one degree Fahrenheit since the forties and possibly only half a degree (Graph 2A). Okay.

* according to Graph 2B, if anything, CO2 concentrations lagged behind rises in temperature from 1920 to 1970 or so. Which causes which ?

* Graph 2C, long-term trends: changes in CO2 concentrations seem to be as likely to follow, as to anticipate, temperature changes over the past 400,000 years.

* Graph 2D, modelled and observed temperature changes: it's a pity that the series ends in 2000, but even so, given the 95 % uncertainty range, temperatures rose between 1980 and 2000 by half a degree Centigrade above 'natural' background temperature. Presumably, all 'natural' factors were taken into account. Have world temperatures fallen since ? Just asking.

Professor Peter Bellwood, in his magnificent book 'The First Farmers' almost casually notes that world temperatures rose and fell and rose again by four degrees C or so about twelve thousand years ago, and notes that the warmer periods were marked by better rainfall and more favourable conditions for initiating agriculture. I sincerely hope that Professor Bellwood won't henceforth be called a 'denier' or even (horrors!) a sceptic, but what he wrote is worth bearing in mind.

God knows, I'm as paranoid as the next person, and on a bad day, I half-want to believe that the world is somehow doomed and humans are evil, but even for a fruitcake like myself, I need more than those Graphs can provide, Jonjay, because until I looked at them I was a sceptical believer: now I'm not so sure.

Joe Lane

JBowyer: You still fail to see the difference between ozone in the stratosphere (30-50 km. up)which protects against solar radiation and the lower troposphere (0-5km. up) where it is injurious to air breathing animals – like humans – and can kill them if the concentration is too high.

Loudmouth and Rechts: Thanks for correcting Sniggid’s claims that global temperatures have been cooling since 2001. As you point out it has in fact been warming and in recent years doing so with increasing speed. You are quite right about the earth having had warmer periods over the billions of years it has existed – but humans were not around to experience its effects.

Anyone is entitled to hold the view that CO2 had nothing to do with global warming or that ozone is not harmful if breathed in by humans, that global temperatures are falling, not rising or that an ETS is a wicked conspiracy to tax us more or put us under UN domination.

I am more than happy to accept such views, if they are supported by evidence which makes them facts rather than the expression an individuals belief. But in the interests of a good debate, perhaps we should attack the view rather than the person expressing it?

JonJay

Can you please justify this statement in your last post?

“As you point out it has in fact been warming and in recent years doing so with increasing speed.”

I quote from Mr. Andrew Bolt’s blog of to-days date:

“It is also worth pointing out that the fall in temperatures since 2001 is now so clear that even Rudd’s own department grudgingly acknowledges it. The trend lines since 2001 are indisputably down, against predictions, even though our emissions are fast going up:”

Mr. Bolt supports his statement with up to date data and graph from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The Pew Center Graphs seem to terminate a little time before 2005. However, the important point that I make is that the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is NOT universally accepted. Many workers in the field of climate science strongly dispute the IPCC opinion.

Therefore is it not premature to introduce an emission trading scheme at the present time? The current bills before Federal Parliament should be abandoned.

Jonjay Look what is your point on ozone? The amount in the lower atmosphere has not killed anyone and I suspect that it will never reach the levels to do that. Oh! sorry some 90 year old with emphysema perhaps but the media forget about the age and health of the "Victim"
Also Rudd in Parliament said ten of the last some years have been the hottest on record? Andrew Bolt says no? So, an easily ascertainable fact is debated but someone is lying. Now if it was A Bolt I bet the full weight of the Government would fall on him. No dispute from the PM just baldly states a "fact".
Hitler was just like that, keep on and on spewing lies out with total confidence (arrogance) and who cares. The greens of course are first cousins of the nazis, vegetarians like Hitler and full of it too.

No, I feel obliged to break down for you the voice of a 16 year old still studying secondary education. And I don't think it looks pretty for you non-believers.

How can one year (2001) compare with the unfallible results of the past 70 years? Forget your graphs, forget your government admissions, forget everything; this change in the environment has not been so just because the government accepts or rejects it - you can take whatever you like. Look first toward the disasters occurring over only the past 20years. Look second toward the trends in the actual warming, recorded as early as 1950. As humans, we can't say everything is possible, in reference to those who say it is possible that it may only be a subjectively 'temporary' and suddenly the water on the moon may put out the sun. Look at the pure trends; we can only see increases in temperature subsequent to the increases in the use of fossil fuels, ergo the need for this ETS. I'll go by the Machiavellian, and say all that's occurred has so as of the past, and to predict the future we need to analyse the past. Hope is one thing; logic is another.