Protagoras - Your attempt to divert the forum by a strange and irrelevant rant about oil companies, pollution and drunken sailors trashing ecosystems is completely unrelated to the fact that there are major credibility issues now facing the AGW proponents.

Oil spills, oil companies and other environmental issues have NOTHING to do with the fact that AGW is a major scam which is rapidly falling apart.

Hacking emails pales into insignificance as a crime in comparison to what the hacking uncovered. Apart from fudging data, the emails reveal your beloved CRU attempted were having talks with oil companies (which you seem to regard as demonic) regarding sponsorship money.

Your post is typical of many AGW supporters; laced with vilification, lacking relevant facts, high levels of emotion and attempts to link the problem to emotive but ultimately unrelated issues.

Global Warming is not about pollution nor is it even about energy efficiency despite the Green left attempting to lump these topics together. We wait with baited breath as to what lengths AGW proponents will go to in an attempt to salvage their sinking ship.

Loudmouth - Unfortunately, your type of arguments are what predominate in the climate denialist world. That’s not to say that there aren’t legitimate skeptics arguing with legitimate science.

I’m told that Phil Jones and friends even published multiple, peer-reviewed skeptics in the last IPCC report (which, by the way, would debunk the whole “they corrupted peer review!” swill, propagated by denialists. Check it out!

And have you ever noticed how many of the ‘big’ names in the climate deniers’ camp are also the people who have claimed and are claiming:

a) that acid rain was a hoax made up by money-grubbing scientists

b) that the hole in the ozone layer was a politically-motivated sham

c) that secondhand tobacco smoke was harmless

d) DDT is harmless

e) man-made chlorofluorocarbons come from volcanoes

and

f) there has been no global warming for fifteen years

That kind of track record should speak volumes: Stupid denialism is no match for the informed type and the rules of nature are the same throughout the Universe.

The CRU team will overcome; there will be more transparency as a result and you guys will need to remove that yellow egg that shows up so vividly after your strawmen are carted off to landfill.

Cheers

Protagoras,

Most of us 'deniers' and sceptics would broadly agree with you on (a) to (e), it's the precise details of (f) we're not sure of. Neither are we now confident that your Gods can deliver them. Not being religious, most of us require evidence rather than faith.

Joe Lane

Examinator

Thank you for referring me to a most enjoyable set of photographs of selected mountain scenery.

I make the following observations.

1. How can you be sure that changes in glacier length are due to man made global warming or atmospheric CO2 levels?
2. Am I correct in assuming that glacial length is a function of precipitation (or replenishment) and the rate of glacial melt? If so is a decrease in precipitation, specifically located at the head of glaciers discussed by IPCC?
3. Are you making the assumption that mountain scenery is static? I would have thought it would be in a state of flux over a period of decades. Surely, glaciers are alternating over time by either growing or retreating.
4. Aesthetically pleasing photographs can not reflect the actual volume of ice that is present. Since this must depend on the depth of the glacier.
5. How do your pictures compensate for the sloppy IPCC science in respect to Himalayan glaciers as reported in the Australian?

I'd like to propose Protagoras' effort as an early entrant to the Mixed Metaphor of the Year contest.

>>you guys will need to remove that yellow egg that shows up so vividly after your strawmen are carted off to landfill<<

Picturesque.

But what really annoys me about all this is that there is now so much heat and noise, the chances of anyone actually discerning the reality of the issues have totally disappeared.

I tend towards the sceptical - some would even say cynical - end of the spectrum, whenever I see legions of folk making a living out of a story that cannot be tested ahead of time. Financial planners do it all the time, they give advice and take your money. If it turns out to be bad advice, you lose, they don't. Drug companies work in a similar fashion. They spin a story, you take the pills, if they don't work, they have your money and you still have the problem you started with.

AGW works in the same way. A prediction is put together that cannot be checked out ahead of time, and before you can say "Al Gore" we have a multi-billion dollar industry.

There is now so much money invested - "other people's" money - that the train has long since left the station. Millions of folk around the world now owe their livings to the existence of AGW, and nobody is going to tell them anything different.

They used to say that in war, truth is the first victim.

I'd add to that. Where there is money, truth is your first discretionary purchase.

That goes for both sides in this discussion, by the way. I am equally cynical of the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry.

Which only goes to make the individual's problem of uncovering the truth, that much more difficult.

>> But what really annoys me about all this is that there is now so much heat and noise,

pericles, the "heat and noise" is a deliberate political tactic.

>> the chances of anyone actually discerning the reality of the issues have totally disappeared.

nonsense, only if you're looking in The Australian.

pericles, read what scientists say, not what journalists say scientists say.

i don't get it, pericles. you're very smart and very thoughtful. what are you doing throwing out trite "who can know?" lines. why are you slumming with these denialist loons?