Protagoras,

Thank you for the clear and concise post above - much appreciated.

Q&A, I'm interested to know how CO2 can act as a negative forcing?

Also what studies are you relying on to say that the "do nothing" scenario is more expensive than the "do something" scenario? I'd be interested what sort of "do something" is costed in, who did them, who commissioned them, and what discount rate they were using. The only reputable independent studies I am aware of say the opposite.

Protagoras;

Should that have been 1.46 w/m3 ?
It is by volume ? not area ?

Here is a laugh for you;
The latest suggestion from the rumour mill is that the reason
politicians try so hard to ignore peak oil is because global warming
is a cover for peak oil.
The pollies figure that the public will accept petrol rationing if it
is because of weather, but not if it is caused by a shortage of oil.
The interesting thing is some take it seriously as it is a good
explanation for the political attitude to peal oil.

Has anyone seen an expert reply to Monkton's letter to Kevin Rudd ?

Yes, there's a nice little article in Today's Australian that deals with costs and the prohibitive pro-con factors for China. We may as well forget about preventative action, it's not going to happen. It's not economic--neither profitable nor affordable. The cost to the biosphere is of course beside the point!
The salient point of the article is that R&D into clean and affordable alternatives that make fossil fuels obsolete, is the best way to drive compliance. Of course an ETS handicap, even a moderate one, that at once funded R&D and gave these new technologies a chance to be competitive, makes far more sense than doing nothing.
The developing world has to be subsidised to some extent, though their emissions still have to be taxed. If there's no compliance or monitoring permitted, then the West should impose an arbitrary tarrif on their exports.
I've softened my view on this issue; a very modest ETS initially, that gradually increases, is better than no action at all. If climate change deteriorates as a result, hopefully without crossing a tipping point, it will at least have the beneficial effect of decimating the human population, which would be a very effective measure.

Q & A

" bigmal

Some very sensible suggestions there old son of which most only need to be tweaked."

I would be grateful if you would do some tweaking. I have the view thst irrespective of whatever gets played out over coming months, or years, the IPCC cannot just blithely carry on using all its old business rules, and organisational arrangements.They have clearly been called into question.

The most competent and ethical thing that could hapeen that these new arrangements are put into effect before any work on the next AR is undertaken.

If you think my 13 changes are near the mark, then what needs to done to make them closer.

I’ve been doing other things and only just back to respond to some comments.

odo (14 Jan, 12:12)
Your question raises a key distinction that is often not made, and that would avoid a lot of the argument. The distinction is between debating the science and debating policy.

The science of global warming is not settled. It’s complicated and there are many continuing debates, trying to sort out many aspects that are still not well understood.

On the other hand, a policy response can’t wait until most of the debate dies away, because we know by then it will be too late to do anything effective. This is because it takes a decade or three before the full effect of CO2 emissions is felt in the climate. If we stop emissions tomorrow, warming will continue for some time. If we wait until things start going seriously awry, it will very likely to too late to stop it running to extreme warming.

This means we must act without complete knowledge. We do this all the time anyway (politicians not being the most informed people around). In this situation, the best we can ask is “What is the collective judgement of those who know the climate system the best”. The IPCC’s job is to collect that judgement. The answer is very clear: the vast majority of climate scientists think humans are causing global warming, and that we are approaching a dangerous amount of warming.

This is NOT the same thing as saying the science is settled. It IS saying that the best professional judgement of most climate scientists is that we are close to dangerous warming and had better start cutting greenhouse gas emissions very soon.

Of course there are many, on both sides, who overstate things, or who haven’t appreciated this distinction.