The final paragraph says it all; but still the hysterics will blunder on, and the politicians will continue to use false information and downright lies to fool and frighten people to prop up their corrupt regimes.

With your attitude, Leigh, a course in historical philosophy would do you a lot of good.

Being an old retired cockie with Honours in the above, one simply asks you to read below.

Thinking back back philosophically when the Age of Enlightenment delivered its wonderful birth-child, the Industrial Revolution, the so-called necessary change from - manhandled axe rake and hoe - to miraculously powered machinery now so scientific that though wonderfully beneficial it has trapped the average man's mind to the extent that most production now includes the thrill of the chase, sweetly clouding any fear of the danger to our Planet - even to its end - that our advancing Powered Enlightenment is now very capable of.

I am utterly confused.

All these words about CO2 being recycled and in balance. Yet not one acknowledgement that the CO2 concentration started rising at the begining of the industrial revolution, and hasn't stopped rising since. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_History_and_Flux_Rev.png As far as I can tell, no one disputes this. Even the article doesn't dispute this.

So I am lost. What is Ian Read's point?

Your wasting your time trying to talk sense with Leigh,Runner et al because don,t like being told they might be wrong, with that lot whatever comes out of the Right wing noise machine in the US, and the backsides of Bolt and Ackerman two more loathsome people you could never hope to meet,is correct
They are followers of the Beck,Faux News, NEWS LTD liars,so you are just wasting your time on them

Rstuart, Ian's point is simply, he wishes to confuse you, and he has done that. If you want answers to this go the real climate dot org.
Whether its AIDS, germ theory or even 911 conspiracy guys, what these people tend to do is focus on one little thing a try to poke a hole in it. What Ian is really saying is the most climate scientist are lying, that they are doing it for the money and that they are all dumb and he has found the magic bullet that proves it all, only his facts are as effective as the weapons of mass destruction that Sadam had.

Ian Read's conclusion is precise and correct.

An ETS or carbon tax will deliver nothing except a massive increase in national and international bureaucracy at vast cost - and a major reduction in our standard of living to pay for it.

Sound like a good deal?

And yet the ice melts, the temperatures soar and the denialists winge, winge winge...
These pseudo expert pieces are starting to crack me up!
A bunch of scientists around the world collude together to fool the world for...mediocre pay! Is this really credible?

Free market theory has just recently faced it's ultimate test...and failed totally, but none of the newly crowned "sceptics" give a rat's proverbial for the lies of industry...they just want to label the scientists "Lefties" and continue to sink the boot. Bugger reality, evidence and honour...just keep the attention off your own sins.

Whether anyone understands or agrees with the bulk of the article,the first paragraph is significant because the quality of the data from the East Anglia Climate Research Unit is critical because:
1) It has been a major source of the predictions about Climate change
2) It has refused to release its original data even to scientific colleagues and supporters and has thus become suspect
3) It now appears to have deliberately manipulated data

It is the "Rome" of the new climate religion and empire is now in danger of falling.

The article seems to me to be carefully thought out, well structured, raises some significant scientific issues (all of which have been known for some time)and is couched in moderate language. I am hence puzzled as to why some of the comments are so downright bad tempered and nasty. They add nothing to what is meant to be a scientific discussion and merely serve to give the impression that their aim is to bludgeon people into silence. I cannot really see that intemperate language will persuade any person who doubts the AGW/IPCC line to change their mind.

May I suggest that some of the comment writers should consider taking a course in anger management?

Lies, deceit, fraud and hatred has been clearly demonstrated by climategate. You would think the gullible would go and hide but they continue to push their dogma despite being exposed. There must be so many 'scientist' nervous now about whether they will get the dollars to continue to produce propaganda after being exposed. One can only hope Mr Rudd has the guts to take this to an election. By that time Ms Wong's lies dressed in science will be well and truely out in the open. The slow American public have caught on despite the lying leftist media steal trying to hide the truth. Australians are just a little bit slower. Mr Obama is about to commit to Kyoto 2. It might stroke his ego but he knows the Americans are to smart to continue to believe the lying alarmist.

Well put, Eyejaw. There have been far too many people using the AGW debate to vent their spleen on other issues. They add nothing to the discussion and, of course, persuade nobody.

Of all the climategate emails published so far (and they would presumably be only a very small percentage of emails exchanged between climate change scientists and others), only a couple actually seem to raise any serious case for academic fraud. Even if there has been such fraud by a few climate change scientists (and that is far from certain so far) that does not, by itself, prove the whole AGW theory wrong. There have been plenty of people who have misused Darwin's evolution theory, yet the theory remains entirely valid!! In any major debate, there will always be those on either side that believe in the morality their cause so passionately they have no qualms about telling fibs or skewing data. AGW is no exception.

On the basis of the current science (as distinct from the pseudo science on both sides), it makes sense to take action now to reduce the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere. Essentially, it's like Pascal's dilemma. But we need to act in a way that can be adjusted later on as we learn more about the science of AGW and about the options we have. Surely nobody believes that the current science of AGW is the last word and no further scientific inquiry is warranted. That's one of the many reasons an ETS is a mistake and a carbon tax a much better option.

"And yet the ice melts, the temperatures soar and the denialists winge, winge winge..."

Which temperatures are those? Not in the US, where they have had their coldest winter for some years. Not in Australia, where we have had our coldest October for some time. Or do you mean the 'adjusted' temperatures derived from manipulating the figures by people like the CRU? The manipulations without which 80% of 'global warming' would disappear? See http://beforeitsnews.com/story/0000000000000736 for details. Nothing is 'soaring' here except climate alarmists' hopes for ever-increasing government funds stemming from public panic and hysteria.

*What Ian is really saying is the most climate scientist are lying, that they are doing it for the money and that they are all dumb and he has found the magic bullet that proves it all*

Sheesh, I never interpreted the article in that way at all. The
way I understand it, what Ian is saying is that scientists, as other
humans, sometimes act in their own self interest and we should
be skeptical. Sometimes assumptions are made and claimed as facts,
when that is not the case, as in this case.

Climate science is not my area of expertise, but I find the
questioning and nit picking going on, very valid. Climategate
is indeed exposing a rort of some of the figures and includes
vanishing data, so the alarm bells should surely ring. The
science needs to stand to all scrutiny, or its just an assumption
and not valid.

If this was just about a minor issue, nobody would care. But given
the money involved and the politics involved, IMHO the more
questions asked, the better.

It certainly seems to me that some of this Climatechange story is
becoming a bit of a religion for some, for its blamed for just about
everything.

What I like about the skeptics that I have read, is their reasoning
skills. None of them are denying that climate changes, our historical
records show that it does. What is claimed is that we simply arn't
sure about how much of this is due to human influence and how
much is natural, like effects of the sun etc. Given that the
scientists making claims about climate are seemingly unable to
forecast its changes accurately, using their models, I would
have to agree with the skeptics that there are flaws in the system,
which we simply don't yet understand.

Trying to cover up these flaws, is not the way to go about it.

Jon J: "in Australia, where we have had our coldest October for some time"

From http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/archive/200910.summary.shtml describing the Australian weather this October 2009:
"monthly mean temperatures for the [Australian] continent were still slightly above average"

From http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/aus/summary.shtml describing November 2009:
"it was still Australia’s hottest November on record with a mean temperature anomaly of +1.87°C"

Over 2yrs ago I have questioned the logic of this populist science of AGW theory and now it seems that I'm right.

Money it seems, can buy almost anything,even scientific fraud.

Comment by Andrew Glikson
Earth and paleoclimate scientist,
Australian National University

The article overlooks direct observations and recent climate trends around the globe, as well as the basic laws of physics and chemistry of the atmosphere. Models are used to project future trends, not to substitute for direct observations.

Since the industrial revolution the combustion of fossil fuel resulted in the emission of more than 320 billion tons of carbon (BtC) as CO2. This is more than half the pre-industrial carbon content of the atmosphere of 590 BtC. About 200 BtC stayed in the atmosphere, raising CO2 levels from 280 parts per million (ppm) to the current level of 388 ppm. When the effects of methane are included the total rise of greenhouse gases is equivalent to 460 ppm CO2.

Since the 18th century mean global temperature rose by about 0.8oC. A further rise by about 0.5oC is masked by short-lived effect of sulphur aerosols emitted from fossil fuel combustion, and which reflect solar radiation back to space. It is the aerosol effect, combined with a solar minimum, which resulted in a lull in global warming during 1965-1975.

The polar regions warm about 4 times faster than low latitudes, to date by as much 3 to 4oC, with consequent large scale melting of the sea ice and ice sheets. Thus the Arctic Sea ice cover was reduced by some 32% from 1979 to 2007, far in excess of IPCC projections (Figure 3), rendering the latter conservative. Greenland September melt area increased from 14 to 21 million square km from 1979 to 2007. The west Antarctic ice sheet and East Antarctic ice sheet lost between 113 and 267 billion tons of ice per year since 2006. Both ice sheets have been loosing more than 0.5 meter ice thickness per year and in parts up to 1.5 meter per year. The polar ice sheets constitute the "thermostats" of the Earth's climate. Once they are gone, the climate shifts to a new state contrasted with that which allowed agricultural cultivation and thus the rise of civilization.

Andy

1. Haven't there been periods when there has been less ice cover than there is currently?
2. If all that ice has melted why hasn't the ocean level risen?
3. Where has your raw data come from?

Yabby ,

Perhaps you need to listen to this 2 min answer to the impact of 'climate gate' on the data.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8396035.stm

The author has overstated much of *his* assumptions and therefore his conclusions are biased. He needs a scandal to justify his book much like Chariots of the Gods and the Lapsang Rampa sagas
Recent data is far more accurate than he claims.
Also note he is a geographer only an interest in climatology.

You might like to look at http://www.realclimate.org/

The major source for the 'terrible crime' is at best over stated at worse cherry picking By Christopher Moncton trained as a classics scholar and a dipl. of journalism.

Most are based on some spurious notion that there is a large scale fraud or a conspiracy.

keith,

You don't need Andy to answer the first two questions. It is easy enough to find your answers yourself.

keith: "Haven't there been periods when there has been less ice cover than there is currently?"

Yes. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic#Climate

keith: "If all that ice has melted why hasn't the ocean level risen?"

It did rise. It is actually lowish by geological standards. See the graphic on the right and its comment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level#Changes_through_geologic_time

rstuart

Your references to wikipedia are enlightening. Just goes to show climate changes... naturally.

I doubt any scientist worth anything would be happy with references to wikipedia to support his contentions.

keith: "I doubt any scientist worth anything would be happy with references to wikipedia to support his contentions."

Partially correct. If Andy was conversing with another scientist in his area of expertise both would be well aware of everything Wikipedia had to say on the subject, so there would be no point in quoting it.

But for anything else Wikipedia is an excellent first stop. Particularly as it does cite the references, usually published peer reviewed papers. For example, in the case of sea levels these two papers are cited:

# Hallam, A., Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. B 325, 437-455 (1989).
# Harland, W.B. and many others, A Geologic Time Scale, (1982).

So if you really feel the urge to look at the original source material, go for it.

Have you actually ever done this? It is really heavy going. The published papers are written for other experts in the field. A lay person like myself find himself spending an inordinate amount of time reading background material just so I can understand the words on the page. Peter Doherty, Australian scientist and Nobel Prize winner, says he has the same difficulties when reading material outside of his area of expertise: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/06/26/2609568.htm .

Anyway, the point of my post wasn't to provide a complete and authoritative answer to your questions. The point was to demonstrate that if you are really interested in the answers, it is isn't hard to find them yourself. There is no need to unload that task onto Andy or anybody else here. But of course if your goal is merely to score points in a debate while not being too interested in investigating the subject being debated, then you went the right way about it.

Keith, there are inherent problems with Wikipedia in that it relies on outside sources for their information often not actual scientists nor is it up to date on all topics. As a general source for a 'quick reference' it's fine.
a better scientific source is http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/ and then select from the topics for the latest news.

There is no one source that is authoritative on everything. You need to have several *specific* discipline sites. Hence my Bookmarked sites are grouped on topics often with multiple in each discipline.

note too that the integrity of the site. i.e. Moncton's site is not authoritative. for the reasons Rstuart gives.

Almost everything Ian Read says is wrong and much is deliberately deceptive. I'll go on taking my climate science off the people and institutions that study climate, the vast majority of which have not been implicated in anything sinister.

The fundamental conclusions of climate science are still true, the urgent need for action is undiminished and the efforts of people like Ian Read to smear reputations are the desperate tactics of those who can't present a scientifically credible case otherwise.

Scientific debate is traditionally settled by evidence. Of course this may take years before a defining experiment is performed and confirmed by repetition by other research groups.

However, climate science has long ceased to be an entirely a matter for scientific adjudication. The climate arguments are taken up by politicicians, economists, financial or banking businesses and so on. The implications of this or that political decision on the conduct of business enterprises, or the social impact on ordinary citizens are enormous.

It is because of the societal impact of climate decision making and the uncompromising attitude of the principal proponents a judicial solution has to be sought.

Therefore the only valid response is the setting up of a Royal Commission with wide terms of reference. The Commissioners must have the power to compel witnesses to give evidence on oath. The evidence before the commission is subject to the test of cross examination. It is possible that individual countries will conduct their own investigation in accord with their individual legal systems. One can not trust the United Nations in this matter.

The leaked emails known as “climategate” make this a matter of urgency. Until such a Commission, as proposed above can complete its work, I suggest a strict moratorium on all so called climate change matters. Therefore the Copenhagen Climate Conference should be abandoned.

Kevin Trenbirth Hadley Centre,"The fact is we cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

Email from Jonathon Overpeck to Prof Denning."We must get rid if the Medievil warm period."

These are the same clowns that invented the infamous "Hockey Stick" all based on doctored stats.They have even according to Dr Tim Ball reduced past temps to embellish their present stats.They keep the peer reviews in house to avoid real scrutiny.

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo2Mwnwpac&feature=related This a short audio by Dr Tim Ball {historical climatogolist} that is well worth listening to.

so so funny seeing Flannery on the news tonight speaking of the the world's biggest challenge this century. The next item was America in places receiving the earliest snowfalls in History. No wonder they had to change gw into climate change. God must be laughing like crazy as the snow falls on the White House and these high priests talk crap at CopenHagen

Ah the new form of "Denial", ignoring the fact that the skeptics were right all along and the "climate science" is dodgy.

Which is why we were skeptical, it all sounded wrong, there was no link between CO2 and temperature no matter how much you all wanted it, and lo and behold it is all contrived .. oh, and now the original data is lost, wow, what a forking surprise that is, "scientists" losing, or destroying data, yep, that's a real corner of hard science isn't it .. not!

But you all go ahead and firmly fix your heads in the sand and ignore the drama unfolding as "climate scientists" are unveiled for the money grubbing and power hungry little cartels and conspiracies that they they are.

While your heads are stuck in the sand though, you run the risk of someone firmly kicking you up the backside, which you all soundly deserve for being such gullible idiots.

there, someone had to say it .. arrogant sods who didn't understand the reason science, true science, not pseudo "consensus science" is by definition, skeptical!

rstuart

I couldn't seem to locate the two references you cited. However I did start to check the references at the foot of the wikipedia article and lo and behold the first two contained direct reference to a certain English university centre or the UN committeee on climate change, the IPCC ... so I laughed and gave up. Obviously the fraudsters from Hadley were thorough.

keith,

It looks like your penchant for peer reviewed papers supporting AGW can be found in spades in one of todays OLO articles: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=9793&page=0

Who knows, if Andy1 and and author of that article, Andrew Glikson, are one and the same, he made have given a better answer to your original three questions that you could have possibly been hoping for.

You should post a comment to the article thanking him for the effort he put in.

I'd love to see some of the emails from the denialists leaked into the public domain.

“What difference to global warming or climate change will this make? The simple answer is: none whatsoever.”

So why all the hype

Why the three-ring circus?

Why?

Socialism by Stealth

Thats why!

Having failed the economic test, the small, envious minds of the left have infiltrated the soft underbelly of the environmentalists, with the intention of forcing their (previously failed) collectivist ideology upon the world.

I only hope I don’t get dragged along by all the dullard sheep who, despite their stupidity, also get to vote.

Like Leigh said “The final paragraph says it all; but still the hysterics will blunder on, and the politicians will continue to use false information and downright lies to fool and frighten people to prop up their corrupt regimes.”

Johnm Ryan “Your wasting your time trying to talk sense with Leigh,Runner et al because don,t like being told they might be wrong, with that lot whatever comes out of the Right wing noise machine in the US, and the backsides of Bolt and Ackerman two more loathsome people you could never hope to meet,is correct”

Ah less than objective statement … typical, moronic, monocular, left wing rubbish..
Arjay “Money it seems, can buy almost anything,even scientific fraud.”

Yes “whoring” is not contained within the back streets of St Kilda.

Ken Fabos “the desperate tactics of those who can't present a scientifically credible case otherwise.”

Proving a negative is impossible.. hoevwer, climate scientists are still postulating theories (based on bodgey data) and claiming it as “positive proof”

Reality.. “scientific bull-tish” remains “bull-tish” regardless of who is spreading it.

Wobbles “I'd love to see some of the emails from the denialists leaked into the public domain.”

Unfortunately they get lost . buried under the avalanche of pro-AGW lies and phoney research papers

Wobbles point about sceptic emails being leaked is flawed.All the sceptics want is an open and honest debate.We have nothing to hide.

rstuart

Yes it would be interesting to see Andy1's answers to my questions.

I think they would be probably be based on info and 'data' from IPCC too. At which I would still be laughing.

Yes I thank Andrew/Andy for the humour they have provided.

I guess you are not laughing though ... I doubt you'd appreciate the irony.

But you know what really astonishes me is the utter lack of comment by the media in Australia about the revelations of Climate-gate and the dishonesty of the climo-nazis.

If you'd read the NYTimes the Washington Post the Manchester Guardian and Fox News you'd understand the ridicule these so-called scientists are drawing.
Anyone in Australia who continues to hang onto the ideas presented by the IPCC are just making complete and utter fools of themselves.

Did you know that the US Senate is being pressured by both Republican and Democrat senators to hold an inquiry into the UN position on climate change and it's misnamed IPCC. One of the reasons OBama cannot promise anything at Copenhagan is that his Democrat controlled Senate cannot pass any climate change mitigation legislation. I cannot wait to see empty vessels like OBama and Rudd speak at Copenhagan. Both represent countries who parliamentery institutions have or are rejecting any sort of emmissions trading or carbon taxing. Laughable isn't it as these two think they lead the world.

keith: "what really astonishes me is the utter lack of comment by the media in Australia about the revelations of Climate-gate"

It shouldn't keith. The nasty gossip like tone in the emails would be good fodder for a society column I guess, but your average gossip column reader is used to a far better class of snipe than your average scientist can muster.

As for the impact on the science, it is unlikely there will be any. The data they talk about tweaking in the emails is decades old, and all but 5% of it has been publicly available for most of that time. As a consequence everyone who wanted to do their own analysis of it has done so. For example Steve Mcintyre did his own analysis, and disagreed with the conclusions the CRU and other scientists came up with. I believe the climate scientists ended up agreeing some of their tweaks were in fact wrong, fixed them and thanked Steve for his contribution. However on the whole there is general agreement among the scientists that the conclusions in the published papers were sound despite these fixes.

The IPCC's job is to survey and summarise the scientists peer reviewed papers into a form digestible by us plebs. As their report is based on published peer reviewed papers and not emails, it should be unaffected. This assumes the IPCC authors they did their job honestly, but if they didn't you would have expected to see an outcry from climate scientists about how their view were miss-represented, and that hasn't happened.

Which leaves the political sphere, where the emails are definitely producing a lot noise as the political tribes use them as a proxy for their never ending word wars. However as you can see from above they should not have any substantive effect beyond that, and newspapers usually only report on meaningful political clashes - ie those between our politicians. That is why you haven't seen much about it. Given they are little more than gossip fodder, I hope it stays that way.

"Socialism by stealth" Col Rouge?

As practiced by such well-know lefty climate-change adherents as Obama, the Pope, the Dalai Lama and the Queen, just to name a few?

Arjay, an open and honest debate is OK by me and long as it excludes half-truths and lies from both sides.

Wobbles,

The "denialists" emails would be directly lifted from the tobacco lobby of past times;

1. call any opponent a left wing commie
2. deny that smoking causes cancer (the world is warming)
3. justify point 2 by making unsubstantiated assertions that the medical profession is not agreed that smoking is related to cancer
4. develop a "spam" list of doctors who sign a petition that there is no link between cancer and smoking
5. make repeated statements that you only wish to have a true debate on the issue while always referring to 1,2,3,4 above but never address the reality
6. call for a senate inquiry or Royal commission; as if they somehow are in a better position than the "experts" to assess the scientific/medical issues
7. find a group of doctors who are sure there is no link between smoking and cancer (plenty of those as they are on the Rothmans payroll)

As a "catastrophic fire warning" in NSW is issued today and we have had the hottest November ever and the country suffers the worst drought in recent times there is of course no evidence of global warming and so we should leave these forums to the denialists who can muse over the global conspiracy headed by the IPCC

Peter King “The "denialists" emails would be directly lifted from the tobacco lobby of past times;”

And the AGW advocates forget that “science” also brought
Oxygen for premature babies (which blinded them)
DDT
Lead in petrol
The wonders of a sick free pregnancy using thalidomide

Before we are drawn down a path of squandering opportunity on a red herring, the notion that humans cause, influence and can control “Climate Change”, I want an absolute guarantee that we are not imposing

Another excuse for extended governmental control on individual discretion, through excessive taxation and monopoly pricing policies.

We are not just being hood-winked into a yet another system of “collectivism” (by any name), when the world has already seen, time and time again, that such philosophies fail to deliver anything worth repeating.

We are not being defrauded by a group of pseudo-scientists who present papers based on bodgey data, defective modelling, emotional hysteria and good old fashioned lies.

The Climate Change lobby is very good at predicting catastrophe should their chosen path be ignored

But the climate change lobby has failed, at every turn, to give any assurances to the outcomes for humanity should their recommendations be implemented.

Like most people, I find it difficult to justify a response based on a threat

Nor the scientific "intimidation" which the AGW / ETS lobby repeatedly rely on.

The AGW/ETS strategy is no different to the ancient demands for “danegeld” or, as seen in more recent events, the strategies of terrorists, kidnappers and blackmailers.

Finally “As a "catastrophic fire warning" in NSW is issued today and we have had the hottest November ever”

Wrong.. since records were maintained and that has only been for a couple of hundred years (and the “scientific rigor” of past readings being less than consistent) Melbourne is experiencing torrential rain.. all that proves is the weather changes… but weather patterns change on short cycles, seasonally and they also change on longer cycles and they are also influenced by other “natural erratics” which all add up to say

“Weather Changes by the day"

rstuart

You are quite behind the times. The director of the East Anglia research unit has stood aside. Not because of the content of the leaked e-mails but because the research unit has lost the hard copy raw information of temperaturre history from around the world. That is the information upon which their 'tweaked' data, as supplied to the IPCC, is based.

Nobody can check the data calculations these 'scientists' produced because there is nothing to check it against anymore. ie there is no longer any factual proof backing their assertions that the earth is cooling.

So it is eminently possible, given the contents of some of those e-mails, that the original data supplied in their reports is manufactured to support their claims to global warming. It now cannot be proven.

sssssh you blokes must think people are totally gullible.

keith: "The director of the East Anglia research unit has stood aside. Not because of the content of the leaked e-mails but because the research unit has lost the hard copy raw information of temperaturre history from around the world."

I know he has stood aside. I trust it wasn't because of the "lost" data. The data concerned was 5% of the total. It wasn't lost so much as deliberately destroyed. It was on magnetic tape and paper. They were moving to new premises, had no way to read it and so they just ditched it.

keith: "Nobody can check the data calculations these 'scientists' produced because there is nothing to check it against anymore"

Actually, that isn't true. The CRU certainly destroyed copies of the data - but it wasn't their data. It was data given to them by various meteorological agencies, and of course those meteorological agencies still have it. I imagine that is one of the reasons they ditched the tapes and paper - if they need it again it would have been far easier to get a new electronic copy from the original owners than read it from those old media.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010030

Yes Runner,

Your god, whom you think created a pristine earth, must be "laughing" at those who wish to reduce the production of a poisonous gas, with vast amounts of associated sulphur and heavy metals.

You poor ignorant, stupid, blighter.

The best proof of non-existence of a god is the fact that you, your very self, are not just a smoking pair of boots. You presume on behalf of your supposed god that pollution is good , that opposing it is bad, and further, to know it's mind about others, whose thought processes you cannot match on your best day with the wind behind you.

I agree with Examinator on this one, that you are the greatest extant disendorsement of your religion. I hope your Pastor reads this.

By the way, had any luck with the "first cause" problem? Your supreme arrogance before failing to address such suggests that your pastor (let alone yourself) has never heard of this problem. I advise you maintain a respectful silence in the presence of your betters till you have.

Rusty