Bush Bunny, I don't think it is correct to say, re Climategate, that 'They were paid to provide evidence for Global warming... they failed...'. I think what they were meant to be doing was collect and model climate data and report their findings, whatever they were. It seems they were very bad at it, and that some of them were trying to find or create evidence of global warming, and that they have been sprung. This doesn't mean that their behaviour provides evidence for either the AGW or sceptic case, or is typical of all climate scientists.

Well done Bush Bunny for putting in a rain water tank and collecting money from Governments Federal and State BUT! They do not tell you that the limit for water you pay over their arbitrary limit is reduced by the size of your tank. You might fill the tank many times a year but you will pay a lot more for your water from now on. Tell me you did not think the Government were "Giving" you something? Do not feel bad, a friendly plumber told me this and it seems all the scientific geniuses and politicians forget that little bit of news.
after finding this out I got a tank but happily paid for it myself.

Bazz,

I still think the climate models most likely do predict the climate.

What you see is my frustration at not understanding how they work. Because water is the dominate "short term" (ie the few couple of centuries), I don't have a clue how they model it, thus I clue about global warming. This is despite Q&A's gallant effort on trying explain it to me here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3312#78892

Given I don't understand the models criticisms that you, GrahamY throw at them are meaningless to me. I can't evaluate them any more than I can evaluate the models.

The availably carbon is something I can get my head around. The climate guys have just taken the estimates from the US Geological Survey, the IEA and so on, and plugged them into their models. Fair enough - anything else isn't really defensible. You are right in saying if Rutledge's calculations hold all the worrying about AGW is a complete waste of time. But not even Rutledge knows why his model works. If they broke tomorrow no one would no why, and no one would be surprised. His models are built on far weaker sand than the climate models you distrust so much.

GrahamY: "what studies are you relying on to say that the "do nothing" scenario is more expensive than the "do something" scenario? ... The only reputable independent studies I am aware of say the opposite."

This surprises me. I admit to not looking closely, but my understanding the Stern Review and the Garnaut report were reasonable attempts at this. They took the climate scientists models as a starting point of course - but that was their brief. Are you are saying given the climate models are correct, their conclusions are wrong?

GrahamY: "there is no claim in it from Carter that global warming stopped in 1998"

True. But what a twisted thread. Leo Lane is claiming warming stopped in 1998 and quoting Carter as his authority. Q&A is condemning Carter for making that claim. And you are saying it is all a fiction.

rstuart, you're asking me about a couple of things here. I'm not sure how you can be sure that the models predict anything when you don't have access to any model results that can reproduce the past - just an assertion that they exist from a video lecture. And then you'd need someone to reproduce the results because until you do you only have the researchers' word that they have been successful.

When it comes to economic modelling, Stern is regarded as a joke by good economists. The report was commissioned by a government that wanted to prove something. The major fiddle was selecting an unrealisticly low discount rate which meant that he slanted the analysis towards immediate action. A more realistic discount rate would not have come to the same conclusion. See Nordhaus.

However, on top of that Stern relied on the IPCC estimates of the increase in damage from storms due to global warming. I think they are calling that "hurricanegate" now. The paper that the IPCC rely on was not even published, and the author has now retracted the claim that damage will increase. We already knew that the claim that storm activity would increase was dodgy, as there had been a previous controversy where Chris Landsea resigned over the misrepresentation in the summary of the actual research.

And re: Carter - I take no responsibility for other people's failure to read accurately. Go to the source. Neither Lane nor Q&A can provide a quote (Q&A I thought had admitted that).

GrahamY: "I'm not sure how you can be sure that the models predict anything"

I can't be sure. Thus my frustration.

Of the people commenting here, only Q&A seems to have a understanding of how water is modeled. I don't see how it is possible for anyone who doesn't have that understanding to criticise the technical details of models. The rest of us end up deciding on some political basis. For me, that is an easy decision while a large majority of climate scientists are in agreement. But as I said, having to decide on that basis sucks.

GrahamY: "Q&A I thought had admitted that"

Indeed. I did say you were right about Carter. It just struck me as odd that everybody else in the thread on both sides of the debate were basing their arguments on a falsehood.

GrahamY: "programmer tasked with the job of replicating the plots gave up in despair."

Yeah I read his comments. He was whinging about the Australian data which was a bit of an embarrassment. I can imagine he got dump consisting of a mishmash of formats, encodings, and poorly identified data that took a zillion phone calls to a different time zone to sort out. Poor bastard.

As for climate gate - wasn't one. Instead we have a bunch of people trying to guard their high position in the climate science hierarchy. They did that by exploiting their position as keepers of the data. By making access difficult, by not publishing the code required to normalise that data, they made it very difficult for others to build upon their work and provide a better "service" than they did. It was all about job security. Perfectly understandable, and acceptable in most professions. Just not in science.

A climate gate would require them to lie in their published papers. Somewhere in a paper, in their explanation of how they got from raw data to conclusions, they would have to deliberately hide, distort or deceive. I haven't seen any evidence they did.

Rstuart said;
You are right in saying if Rutledge's calculations hold all the
worrying about AGW is a complete waste of time.

Was that directed at me ? I never mentioned Rutledge.
Re the climate models, I know virtually nothing about them, but I do
have a gut feeling from understanding that something running so many
arithmetic calculations on something like weather would run into
chaos and fractal complications. So much so that I cannot see how you
could keep it sensible after a few iterations.
Sure they are not trying to calculate whether it will rain next week
which could be harder, but to try and go out to 50 years or more seems
just far fetched, There could be many very small non linear changes
in the real world, of which they are unaware.
Their effect would get larger and larger or smaller and smaller.

Any way I guess we will have to wait to see what Scotland Yard comes
up with as they have now got in the act.
It appears they had a contract with the government to do the work that
required them to maintain the data and make it available for which
they were paid. Aside from the FOI, it has been alleged they are in
breach of their contract and have acted fraudulently.
I would imagine that would be pretty serious stuff.

In view of the Chinese attitude at Copenhagen and there being no
agreement it would be totally useless for the government to proceed
as anything done here would have no measurable effect.
The opposition should not bother with their proposal either.
The whole thing is stalled and has become meaningless.
There is no way we can crank up enough alternative electrical energy
to enable the shutting down of coal fired stations, it just won't
happen. We will however have to get cracking on something else as
peak coal is expected round 2025.