Wybong,

You might be onto something, probably all the deniers are being paid by Big Oil and Big Coal, and anyway none of them know all the science, and it's likely that they are all in the thrall of the Vatican as well. Maybe not.

Personally, I think it's all the machinations of the Swedes - have you heard a single reference to the Swedes in this whole debate ? No ! Exactly ! Such clever b*stards, they use the deniers, load the guns for them and let them pull the trigger, but keep their hands squeaky clean. And you'll never see any accusations in the press against the Swedes, they own all the banks and the media and can suppress whatever they don't like. So it's not just refrigerators and IKEA that they control, and infiltrate our society that way, it's their control of the very foundations of our society. And people can't see it ! Amazing !

Then again, maybe not, but I love a good conspiracy theory, espeically one with no holes in it. But as the postmodernists would say, in reference to global warming, all claims to the truth are equal, [although some are more equal than others], including Hansen's and Jones', and anyway AGW just shows that the capitalist narrative was always doomed, and there's nothing any of us can do about AGW, and it serves us right, so there.

Or maybe the real scientists are the 'deniers' - who try to adhere to scientific method, i.e. support for a null hypothesis until there is sufficient evidence to support an alternative theory. For this reason, it would be useful if the warmers could get their story straight, to give us sceptics something to work with.

Joe Lane

No one knows all the science Loudmouth, any one who says they do is a fool

I just think it is better to be safe then sorry, when really all we are asking to turn the speed down a bit,

every one is clawing for money, we are loosing our way to enjoy ourselves.

The footy, not a game any more, commercialised, and the violence at local games. We are all keyed up. Forget the warming not warming, lets slow a bit, build better to last longer, stop burring our resources in garbage dumps.

Just sit behind your car while the engine is running for 5 minutes, then multiply that millions of times, etc etc etc.

There is a thousand things we can do to make life better, less hectic, less stressful, and give us a cleaner environment, conservation, woodlands for our grand children, streams to play in, parks for young mothers to picnic with their babies. Is profit and business success and computers becoming obsolete within months better?

Yes I agree, Wybong, I'm all for the Precautionary Principle: switch to renewables, recycle, etc., cut down on the pollution of rivers and coastal waters and the air, and over-use of natural resources, stop pillaging the ground-water, let the Murray run free, eat less and better, exercise more. All good.

I want to be a believer, but if only the alarmists would get their story straight:

* how much has the Earth warmed in the last fifty years ? Two degrees ? Five degrees ? Half a degree ? Not at all ?

* how much has the sea-level risen in fifty years ? Five cm ? 20 cm ? Not at all ?

* How much of any warming (if any) is due to heat island effects ? How much to solar activity ? Some regular solar cycle or other that we non-scientists don't know about ? How much to other gases besides CO2, or to water vapour or particulates ? All of the above, and more ?

* How much of the sea-level rise (if any) is relative (say, in the Pacific Islands) to land subsidence, how much (say in Bangla Desh) to tectonic plate movement, how much (in many river deltas) to capture of silt upstream and intrusion by the sea ?

* And so on: snow-line retreat, glacial and ice-sheet melt, disruption of ocean currents and regular el Nino-la Nina patterns ?

And most importantly, where humans have been involved, what is being done and what else can be done, about all these factors ? Why aren't governments planting billions of trees to soak up CO2, for example ? Why not jack up pollution taxes ?

Jo