Steve Fielding today draws analogies between Al Gore and Billy Graham, the famous evangelical preacher of the last century. He has had a piece published in The Australian with a controversial graph which appears to de bunk the central tenet of Green Religion, that man and his CO2 emissions are driving climate change, and it is something else that has been wreaking all that havoc with climates.

His assertion that Al Gore is unwilling to debate and justify himself to an influential Australian Senator, and a similar allegation against M/s Wong, and her two key advisors, who seem to have shifted camp from measuring atmospheric temperature, where at least we the humans meet the elements, most of the time, to measuring sea temperatures, where we are aliens in a foreign environment. Could Senator Fielding be right

Would you even care what Fielding has to say if he didn't share your superstitious beliefs?

Definitely not!

His graph is unrepresentative of CLIMATE trends. His whole approach merely shows he is out of his depth.
As Suggested before he ins an example of why we need an aptitude test for politician.
I have no problem with those competent challenging data sets but it does demand that real knowledge and understanding of ALL the issues involved.
e.g. until last night how many people understood that the threat posed by Luna dust is dependent on the time of the Luna day?
Most would would have intuitively said "dust is dust" it is either a problem or it's not. My point is the same with Climate change it's more complex than we the 'sound bite' informed would think. The idea that Fielding without the prerequisite skills could out guess those who have is 'bum' generated reasoning (just because he sits on parliamentary leather he somehow absorbed the superior wisdom is absurdity on amphetamines.

Could Senator Fielding be disingenuous?

Claiming he is seeking understanding of the reasons given for climate change, Senator Fielding travels to the USA, does he seek scientists actively engaged in the study of the planet? No. He goes to a conference presented by the Heartland Institute, the same institute that argues smoking tobacco is harmless , when I am sure that NASA would've been happy to discuss climatology with him.

Then upon return to Australia, still on his "quest for the truth about climate change", does he seek audience with the B.O.M. or C.S.I.R.O.? Again no, he chats to Penny Wong, no aspersions on MS Wong, but she is not a climatologist, although she was accompanied by Penny Sacket Australia's chief scientist, but Fielding claims they were unable to answer his questions. I posit that Senator Fielding was unable to understand their answers. Finally he meets with Al Gore, while I happen to agree with Mr Gore environmental concerns, I would not seek him out for an in depth analysis on climate.

Senator Fielding, this is just a suggestion, but if you are sincere about discussing climate, TRY A CLIMATOLOGIST for F$cks sake!

It is amazing how people resort to a personal attach on another when they don’t want to face reality. The reality is irrespective of whatever religious beliefs Steve Fielding may have he is an engineer. Engineers look at evidence and when an engineer makes a mistake, people die.

The book State of Fear should be read by all converted Green Religion fanatics, who have been attracted to Green Politics, by the vacuum left by irrelevant teachings in the mainstream churches. It is written by the late Michael Crichton, a former Medical Doctor, highly educated in science, and if you can look past the violent bits at the scientific analysis that goes on in the book, in respect of the basis of climate change, and how lawyers manipulate figures to suit the case they are prosecuting.

Penny Wong is a lawyer. Steve Fielding is an Engineer. Peter Garret is a lawyer, and like all lawyers prosecuting a case, they have found expert witnesses to push their particular wheelbarrow. When an engineer seeks to cross examine the expert witnesses presented by Penny Wong, and Peter Garret including Al Gore, and presents concrete credible evidence in the form of a graph, that can be backed up in Sydney today simply by stepping outside and freezing, it is time the professional lawyers started to produce concrete evidence, and not just rhetoric.

Add to that the fact that State of Fear in Australia is fiction, because we do not have as of right jury trials, so the lawyers tell us, as the United States does, and the scenario proposed by Michael Crighton, that climate change be tried on indictment in a court of law, cannot happen in Australia in 2009.

In 1987, in far North Tropical Queensland, at Mareeba just west of Cairns, where it is mostly very tropical, there were ten consecutive days of seven below zero frosts. Everything was frozen to a crisp. No Coffee in low lying areas survived, all paw paw trees were killed, all banana trees, mango trees were pruned but not killed and yielded no fruit. Warming maybe

Peter

You draw an analogy to a court of law then reference a science fiction book?

You should understand (maybe Fielding doesn't) that science is about weight of evidence ... it is not about guilty or innocent, as your analogy implies.

Yes State of Fear is fiction, but it has like all serious books a bibliography at the back, where as a serious scientist, Crichton shows where he drew his information from. Parliament is a court of law. That is why lying to Parliament is taken as a serious criminal offence. We elect our representatives to the Parliamentary Court of Law, but because it does not have to be unanimous to give a verdict, the delegates to it have organized themselves into Political Parties. To a certain extent this has evaded the necessary procedure to establish the truth in a case such as global warming.

If you want to see where the High Court said Parliament is a court the transcript of the Kable case on the 7th December 1995, makes it abundantly clear. When they brought down that decision almost 10 months later, the “Kable Principle” was established, a principle ignored by almost every Judge in Australia since then. The High Court Transcripts are on the net at Austlii Document Collections. Go read.

For an interesting read enter underwater volcanoes, in Google and you will see that there are a great number of active volcanoes under water across the world. Some of these are in Antarctica, and when they warm the ice above it melts. In deep water the CO2 goes straight into the water just as we make soda water, but when a volcano is closer to the surface, or in the air as in Hawaii the CO2 is spewed directly into the atmosphere, and very high CO2 readings are recorded in Hawaii near the active volcano there.

Sometime a crater lake will accumulate a huge reservoir of CO2, in its deeper waters, over time, and in some weather conditions, when the surface water cools the water in the lake will tip over releasing huge amounts of heavier than air CO2, which flows over the rim of the cone, and fills the valley below killing every man, woman and child and all livestock in the area it covers. Senator Fielding is asking the questions that must be answered

I'd put my money on Al Gore and Steve Fielding both being partly right. As they say, on any controversial topic, the truth is usually somewhere between the polar opposites that mark out the extremities of the debate.

Does AGW contribute to global warming? Certainly. Is draining the atmosphere of excess CO2 going to stop the increase in atmospheric temperature? That's not altogether clear. It could be one of those "necessary but insufficient conditions" that engineers and other scientists talk about. And you won't know the answer until the hypothesis is directly tested. But it probably is correct to say that reducing pollutants in the atmosphere in general will improve human health in terms of reducing the particulate matter is taken into the lungs. The latter sounds to me like a good enough reason to reduce the human contribution to atmospheric gas levels.

Examinator, Feilding can't understand climate, & Penny Wong can. You've got to be kidding mate.

Farctelle, you must thing Wong is an even bigger dill than I do. Don't you think she had access to the CSIRO, & Met Bureau staff if she had wanted to take them with her, to the Fielding meeting.

I'm sure this was not done because her advisers were dead scared that they would have had no chance in a genuine debate with the Fielding crew.

This is the thing they fear the most, genuine debate. Just look at the great Gore fleeing like a frightened rabbit from the simple senator. If he had anything but bull sh#t to offer, here was his chance to secure the critical vote, & he ran like the carpetbagger he is, when confronted with the truth.

Peter,
By a quirk of the system his vote not him is going to make the difference. Yet Fielding has adopted a mantle of the arbiter of truth and fiction WITHOUT either the moral right or the competence to do so.
If we examine his mandate we find he wasn't elected to make laws...that's the purpose of the lower house. Nor was he elected to decide on global warming T or F. At the risk of stating the obvious that was done by the majority of people hence the ALP is government.
He and the Senate are a house of review therefore his question should be is this the best out come to that end.
But true to form of pollies in general representation comes a poor 4th behind ego, being re-elected and party good.
As Fractelle pointed out his investigation is/was no more than self aggrandizement deliberately(?) choosing the scientific equivalent of soothsayers to advise him as opposed to real Climatologists etc. Perhaps to justify his dealing himself into the big game (increase his re election prospects). Well beyond his ambit and competance.
The SA senator who held up the Murray/Darling bill did so to meet the *Additional* needs of his state.
I doubt that the majority of his state would support him second guessing those who have greater competence.
BTW I am on the fence re global warming but not on Catastrophic Anthropomorphic corruption of World ECOLOGY and CLIMATE.The consequences of which will be :-( for us all .

Both Fielding and Gore believe in a supernatural 'Creator' so I wish some people would stop trying to score points by suggesting that only the sceptics are religious. As an atheist, I respect both freedom of religion and freedom of science. The latter is trampled upon every time dissident scientific voices are vilified. Let us not forget Galileo, who spoke out against the orthodox scientific wisdom and authority of Europe's greatest Academy of Science of his time. And let's not forget that Professor Ian Plimer is probably Australia's most effective opponent of the creationists.

Sceptics are people who do not bow to authority but question it rigoroulsy. In doing so, they are not religious, as religion generally requires some kind of obedience toward, or humility in the presence of, authority (god).

Having followed the debate for about 15 years now, it concerns me that both sides are too dogmatic, especially those who say the science is settled. It's not just that the science is never finally settled but more specifically that there are too many dissenting, scientifically qualified, voices. I do not mean those who challenge whether global warming is happening but rather the real issue, which relates to whether or not CO2 is the principal driving force behind any warming and also as to whether the long-term warming that the IPCC demonstrates has happened over the past 150 years is manageable through adaptation or is likely to be catastrophic.

On these key points, the science is not settled no matter how often Rudd and Turnbull continue to dishonestly and ridiculously describe an essential source of life as 'carbon pollution'.

Some of the most 'religious' people I know are atheists - but none more so than die-hard Greens whose god is Nature.

To conclude with Karl Marx's motto: De Omnibus Dubitandum ("Doubt Everything")!

No never the bloke is a dud an idiot unlikely to be right on any issue.
Yes I truly think just that, such a fool in the senate is making us all look like fools.
His primitive belief system, God is in control stuff, is well why bother he is going going gone soon roll on double house election please.

Belly, Senator Fiedling is a Christian and arguably his type of "primitive belief system" with "God in control" is no less reactionary than the green world outlook with its belief that Nature is in control. Both outlooks work against progress by denying the liberating potential of humanity's control over, and mastery of, Nature. The green outlook is rather more primitive than the Christian one in so far as it predates systematic religion and is essentially pagan (Nature worshipping). In the twentieth century, it became very dangerous - just read Hitler's Mein Kampf and his hatred of Bolsheviks and Jews whom he believed to be behind modernity's march forward, bringing humanity out of harmony with natural law. Despite the fact that nearly everyone thinks of the Greens as a variant of the Left, their belief system is on the Right.

The best answer to the question -
"Could Senator Fielding be right?"
I discovered on another website.
The poster said that, "Fielding
believes that a God created the earth
and all the universe in seven days ...
But he doesn't believe that digging up
and burning fossil fuels and sending
noxious fumes into the atmosphere must
be wound back lest the earth's atmosphere
becomes uninhabitable? I question his
rationality!"

I question it as well.

As soon as Peter The believer mentioned "Green Religion" in his first post, I IMMEDIATELY knew he was off with the pixies again.

Recognition that the world's environment is vitally important and that the presence of humans affects the environment, does NOT mean that one "worships" the planet. Being "green" is NOT a religion. A religion recognises and worships a "DEITY". The planet is NOT a deity.

PTB, your "green" comment was just DUMB, DUMB, DUMB!

Anyone who has seen a tree hugger fiercely esconced about eighty feet off the ground in a rainforest tree, trying to stop the Skyrail project from going ahead, near Cairns can have no doubt that there are fanatical Greens, every bit as passionate as the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Poor old Master must have failing eyesight not to be able to see that in practical terms the Greens are a type of religion and earth worship is what they do. It is diametrically and dogmatically opposed to Christianity, which allows us to enjoy the fruits of the earth, and says that if we have a brain we should use it. It is the absolute manifestation of half education to fail to recognize that CO2 is actually one of the essential elements of life on earth, and without it all life would perish.

Every person consists of carbon atoms, along with lots of other essential minerals, all our food is produced by plants taking carbon out of the air and fixing it in cellulose so that plants can produce, and while there is heaps of oxygen and nitrogen in the air, there are minimal parts of carbon dioxide.

It is not fashionable to be a keen believer in Almighty God, but the people who have believed in Almighty God are the people who put our country on the map. The belief in hard work, a fair go, and the desire to see justice done in all our dealings is a hallmark of a Christian, or at least the Christians I associate with. There are plenty of cases where unexplained miracles have occurred and that is why the Roman Catholic Church believes in Saints. The Christians believe Almighty God does not work directly but through the agency of His people.

When David went out to confront Goliath, it was not Almighty God who killed Goliath. It would not have happened if David had not used his slingshot to deadly effect. God may have guided the stone, but David had to throw it. That’s why Steve asks the questions

sen fielding reveals he studies the topic..much more that the other followers of the party line...thus is the multiheaded hydra is exposed inherant in the two party system of voter's coping ever more abusing/punitive taxation...

noting to mention the fed v state levels of 2 party abuse..allways result's in new laws..[made by lawyers folowing party policy..resulting in lol NEW TAXES..to save us from our own stupidity

the party system aint it neat..[just as neat as the divide of state/national..feed-de-rat/federal]...just as neat that sees reduction of smoking..result in ever higher cancer statistic's.more taxes is its legislated/remedy...

its funny how a case is made in the courts..[ie in private by the boys club lawyers]...and the news reports..one party conspired to decieve us in a conspiricy..while selling us the new tax on smoking..[yet the new-tax..isnt a conspiricy...lol..]

and the sukkers..[sorry voters..just do as their told..[by lawyers running govt as their own 2 party franchise..and their own law making state/fed frannchise..and the fools..[sorry voters..are none the wiser

just as neat as carbon taxes..being..the cure.for global warming..[oops sorry carbon blamed/.climate change...that will be made.by lawyers..and never tested in courts...

but even if they were,..they would be tested by yet other lawyers..[so much for the sepperation of powers lol]

lawyers making laws...any of you ever study the shear ammount of law beaty passed/changed and adopted...his over two hundred secerataries wernt all needed to monitor the ever reducing media...but as usual not a word..from the sheeple of the media...

nor those godheads of virtue..on talkback radio/blogs or letters to the editor..[no doudt a lawyer..in the boys club as well]..discussing sports as news lol..

just like rome old boy..just like rome...any wonder history isnt taught in school anymore...lol..how come smokers/..got their tax,.how come boozers//.got their tax..

how come we are now paying gst tax..how come we soon will be paying carbon tax ..lol..go figure...shhhh dont wake the sheeple...but its NOT/sepperation of law..from lawyers running the two party/two states scam...following the big/boy...big/business..2 party line...peer revieued by lawyers

30,000 thousend scientists sue al gore over lies about global warming
http://republicbroadcasting.org/?p=3036

alex jones on the carbon tax deceoption
http://revolutionarypolitics.com/?p=1723

Cap and Trade Emissions Bill is The Latest Pyramid Debt Scam
http://newsblaze.com/story/20090716053414zzzz.nb/topstory.html
Wall Street financial banking barons,..exploitative imperious arrogant elites,..and opportunistic cronies by their backing of yet another illegal controlled pyramid scam law presented to the U.S. House of Representatives implicate themselves in massive world wide criminal conspiracy and fraud in the latest debt scheme Cap and Trade Carbon Emissions Bill HR 2454.

its about new taxes
http://www.prisonplanet.com/paulson-threatened-great-depression-food-riots-to-get-bailout-bill-passed.html
cause the capitalists/fed are bankrupt
http://revolutionarypolitics.com/?p=1711

[and corrupt
http://borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=7047
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/07/16/on-goldmans-giganto-profits/

...a new global tax will do as well as any other tax...its about new taxes
http://dprogram.net/2009/07/17/joe-biden-%e2%80%98we-have-to-go-spend-money-to-keep-from-going-bankrupt%e2%80%99/

Hasbeen

I have the greatest respect for Penny Wong in her abilities as a pollie and her ability to understand, to a fair extent, climate science.

What I question is Fielding's methodology. He appears to deliberately avoid seeking answers from the very people who could offer all the information, examples and evidence he could require; institutions like NASA, CSIRO or even BOM, or the many other independent science-based organisations who have been studying and observing climate around the globe for decades.

Fielding would be a 'non-event' if it wasn't for his public profile and the influence he may exert on those who are even less educated and informed than he.

The simple truth is we cannot continue to consume all and natural resources and pollute the atmosphere, land and water systems. Whether you accept AGW or not is irrelevant; the treatment of the planet as a magic pudding must cease. And we have the knowledge, the technology and the ability, what we appear to lack is the will.

This will to change is being undermined by the likes of Fielding and others who have a vested interest in business-as-usual.

Dear Fractelle,

Well said!
You've summed it up beautifully!

Anyone who questions the fact that we
seriously need to wind back the pollution we're
doing to our planet - should try living in places
like Los Angeles (or Tokyo) for a few years.

Come on you are all computer literate, or you would not be here. You should all be Googlers. Google underwater volcanoes and warming seas, and you will see that today, the sea if warming is not warming from what the sun is doing, but from what the earth is doing. Climatologists may be observing the effects of a warming ocean, but unless they consult a vulcanologist they are shooting the wrong dog. Steve is asking the hard questions, and they need honest answers. There are lots of people posting here who are convinced by the hype that is necessary to get green preferences, but if we are really seeing the oceans warmed from below, taxing carbon will not help.

Volcanoes are erupting all over the world. They claim that there are five thousand of them, and that is a lot. Maybe this little space rock is in for a rumble or two, and there is probably bugger all we can do about it. It may well be that like the Prophets of Baal, in the First Book of Kings, we can do whatever we will and it will not make one iota of difference, except increase homelessness, destroy families, and redirect resources away from necessary purposes.

One volcano spews more CO2 in a day that all the power stations in Australia if we can believe the vulcanologists. I am not a genius but duh. It could be volcanoes, putting the heat under the oceans, and warming them up from underneath rather that heat from the atmosphere warming them from above. In deep water the CO2 would go straight into solution, but the heat is still a problem. If Steve’s report in the Australian is correct Penny Wong’s scientists say that the problem is water temperature, not atmospheric temperature, and just because his questions are unpopular with some, does not mean they do not need an answer. He may just be right, and that would have nothing to do with his Christianity. Christians can be right and wrong, just like anyone else, but they deserve to be given a fair go.

it is sad intelligent and reasonable posters..foxey and fractile at last call..think the global carbon tax is going to cure polution./.great one guys..

it will also cure dumping polution into the oceans..[and all carcenogenic polution of water air and soil everywhere..as well as stop them peskey plastic bahgs strangling tutrles..[god knows they so full of carbon

look its greatr you guys are getting off on this tax..and supporting each other like your blogging from the same depo..but lets get real the tax wont fix a single thing..as has repeaTEDLY BEEN STATED BY OTHERS READING THE POSTS..

not meaning to yell...but the facts are clear..coal fired power generation are still being planned and built...so aRE petro/GAS CONSUMING auto's still being built..and will continue to for a long time,,,you deney the corrective evidences..imply fielding hasnt done the research...

present your proof..he didnt talk to nasa or csiro..your peddling rumours..stop flirting with dubious facts..and go flirt with each other some other place

Dear OUG,

We can't keep on doing
what we're currently doing - and
expect different results. It's
obvious we've got to find alternative
solutions. (We have alternative solutions -
but big business and greed - stock-market
speculators - don't want to lose their
big profits). The pollution tax would bring
revenue to fund alternative energy sources.

What do you suggest we do?

cont'd...

Senator Fielding couldn't be more wrong.

Tor Hundloe in his book,
"From Buddha to Bono: seeking sustainability,"
tells us:

"Economists know that pollution, resource degradation
and all sorts of negative environmental impacts come
at a genuine cost to society - usually not all of
society, but significant parts of it. One person's
free disposal of toxic waste is another person's cost.
That cost can be severe and life-threatening, as with
water-borne diseases and particular air pollutants.
These facts we are all aware of... extreme weather
events could be more like a nuclear war, and come at the
expense of all..."

Hundloe goes on to say that, "There is a tired and true
way of reducing and, if need be, completely curtailing
adverse environmental impacts: taxation on pollution.
Taxes reduce consumption. If high enough they curtail it."

Hundloe is an economist. He's worked as a professional
economist at the highest levels of his profession (in both
public and private sectors) and he's never met an economist
or read a report by an economist, which didn't advocate
pollution taxes as the preferred means of dealing with
environmental harm.

As Hundloe reminds us, "It took the medical profession
from the 1960s to the present era to get the public, and
the governments we elect, to act on the toxic, life-taking
efforts of tobacco. Eventually sanity prevailed, but it
took 40 years... it is clearly time for economists to
commence their campaign for pollution taxes and getting
prices to tell the truth. With all the power and influence
in society and government, economists are sitting on their
collective hands... Not good enough."

the simple thing is legislate that poluters pay for polution,..if your found to have poluted a river..anywhere in the world there is no safe place...SIMPLY>>apply the rules we allready have..its that simple

i have heard people paid to enforce the rules..get a rough time when they simply try to do the job..their paid to do...

as i wrote at other posts the carbon tax/shrills are simply being used/conned by the nuclear/wind/solar industries..needing to sell their product

it is noticable that many spokes-people are economists...their spiel is its cheaper to start now...lol..[what their really saying is we want the trillion dollar income now...to do more polution..

to create the new green bubble...to start trading ever reducing carbon credits...and get our big bonus on the limited..[and reducing..capped carbon permits..[dispensations to keep poluting

as i said before..if carbon credits were a real solution...we all would get a fair share of allocated carbon credits..[globally]...

and people who dont use theirs could sell them..[think of the poor of the world able to sell their carbon/shares..to eat..or by medicine or school/educate/cloth..their kids

how it should go..is every person in the world..gets a new carbon/credit card..[just for carbon credits componant..of a new gst type tax,..that when you run out of credit you THEN pay..[buy more...but no..its a tax..we get put on everything...from when it becomes compulsory..day 1

worse..a tax govt gives to the biggest poluters..who then get the proffit ..from selling them to their mate..[al gore]...who has allready set up the carbon trading bank..lol...no wonder he is selling franchises...

we been conned again..[to lobby..for nice clean nuke power..lol...[or nice expensive wind..or solar cells..[that need to be cleaned by a special solvent..1000 times worse than carbon]...yes..special intrests are at it..with fear mongering..yet again...

so the wealthy..take the govt/created-credits..onto the global/carbon commodities trading-floor..to sell to the highest poluters..

even taxing the poorest of the poor..[who never get any credit..[nor food..but will get the tax...lol

Under One God - please explain -

If this is all simply about raising new taxes then why are all those governments who consider such actions so keen on committing collective electoral suicide?

Where are the extra votes in further penalising people and economies already in the grip of a financial crisis?

The politicians who introduce such measures will have been long gone before any financial "benefit" flows into government coffers.

What of the non-democratic countries who don't need to win the support of voters - why are they even talking about it?

If this is just a baseless scam, it would be politically better to just ignore it until it goes away or come out strongly against it.

It doesn't matter what Fielding or the rest of the "unrepresentative swill" think - I doubt he'll still be around after the next Senate election - but when is Turnbull going to make a stand and declare himself a born-again denier?

Like far too many threads this one has gone to the Gods.
Yes all of them, religions and even nature gets its followers.
Fact is this senator is a dill, watch this space he is telling science it is wrong.
Do we truly think temperatures are not rising.
We humanity, must soon understand its us not God not anything but us who must be accountable for our actions and damage to the planet.
In the name not of the many Gods, yes yours too, but humanity look at the issue not your religious beliefs.
Worth searching the story this morning in Punch, see a link at the Sydney tele, the bloke is a few marbles short of bag a joke in fact.

Belly, "Do we truly think temperatures are not rising?": The IPCC estimates that global temperature has warmed by less than a degree over the past 150 years. IPCC says there's a 90% certainty that CO2 is a "significant factor" (not the single or necessarily principal factor). Some sceptics point to the Urban Heat Island Effect, which suggests that the temperature measuring stations in some places are measuring heat from energy caused by urbanisation, infrastructure development, etc. The counterpoint to this view is that the Heat Island Effect is accounted for in the computer models as an assumption. The sceptics then respond by saying this is unreliable, too, as no actual scientific surveys of the stations has been undertaken on behalf of the IPCC.

And on it goes.... It's called a debate. It happens when things aren't settled.

Then there's another layer: Okay, yes, the planet is warming over 150 years BUT is this potentially catastrophic? No scientific consensus here at all, just competing views. The computer models can be useful but nothing trumps observation and theory in science.

But, let's assume that global warming is potentially catastrophic. What next? Well, there's another unresolved scientific issue: is CO2 really the principal driver of the warming?

But, hey, it gets more complicated. Let's assume the above is true, then the next question is: what to do about it?! Scientists are no better on this one than the rest of us. Nuclear is an obvious solution if the concern is CO2. In fact, it was at the behest of the nuclear industry, against the coal industry and uinons, that Margaret Thatcher first made 'global warming' an international issue back in 1979 or 1980.

Questions questions questions! Doubts doubts doubts. Anything else strikes me as essentially religious and dogmatic, on either side; though it is the greenies who display the greater dogmatism by far. This is because, contrary to impressions, they are backed by political power and an extremely sympathetic mainstream media.

The chance of my house burning down is relatively small, yet I choose to take out insurance - just in case.

The chance of me winning Lotto is astronomically small, yet I believe every ticket I buy may win.

The chance that those Global Warming predictions are correct are better than the odds of either of the two incidents above but I'm not ready to "bet the whole planet" that they are wrong.

There are people who insist that the Nazi Holocaust never happened and some really believe the Moon landing was a hoax.

Some say that there could not have been a US Government conspiracy involved in 911 but blindly accept a global conspiracy on Global Warming.

In truth nobody KNOWS for sure, although there is significant consensus in one direction. It comes down to what people are prepared to accept or willing to reject.

Rache, You say you're not willing to bet the 'whole planet' on the chance that "those Global Warming predictions" are incorrect.

A problem with this is that the IPCC does not make predictions. It deals with scenarios that are computer-modelled. Nothing wrong with that - except when the scenarios aren't matching observed data. What are the 'predictions' you speak of? What is the scientific consensus behind them? IPCC concludes that in the worst scenario, sea levels will rise by 59 cms, if we take no action. Yet Al Gore reckons sea levels could rise by 100 metres!

The difference is between a scenario, backed by a scientific consensus through the IPCC, that points to an entirely manageable 'worst outcome', on one hand, and a scenario that lacks any scientific consensus whatsoever but which makes for an effective and successful Hollywood movie/doco, on the other. Fifty-nine centimetres requires an adaptive response rather than one that would put scores of thousands of workers out of work in Australia alone, and reduce energy consumption (standard of living) through higher energy costs. It's the poor who will suffer most.

This one example - and I could systematically go through others - shows how the risk is not the future of the whole planet at all - not if you follow the IPCC instead of Al Gore.

A genuine sceptic could never believe the Holocaust didn't happen, or that the Moon landing was a hoax, because scpeticism is about intellectual rebellion, about questioning authority and received wisdom rather than accepting it just because it comes from authority (be that authority the state, or a religious leader, or an Academy of Science).

I share your view on one point, though: sceptics who imply that there is some kind of conspiracy among the thousands of scientists who take an alarmist stance on global warming are wrong and do their cause no credit on that point. Having worked in the research field as an academic, however, I also know how individuals and research centres become dependent on funding and career advancement and end up toeing a self-perpetuating line.

The biggest problem I have with the whole debate it seems to me that most people just can't see past the first step.
i.e. the difference between weather and climate and reason(?) in minutia missing the point. A bit like reasoning that if the arch duke hadn't have been assassinated in 1914 WW1 wouldn't have happened...

Tell the public that there are 10,000s of people starving/dying unnecessarily daily and you'll get little response tell them that 4000 people died in a spectacular fashion and you get panic out pourings of sympathy and a culprit must be found at any cost, Because it is personalized.
The real issue is well beyond any argument about IPC, Gore, Penny Wong's understanding, modeling and CO2. These are all irrelevant figureheads...over simplifications for the public consumption.
Put simply the science of ACC is complex, multi-disciplined....and requires a perspective beyond the first person imperative.

It is of little interest to me (personally I'll probably be some surgery students practice cadaver or ashes before the worst scenarios eventuate) whether the sea raises 1 or 10 meters, the mean temperature goes up by 1 or 5 deg et al, per se. As several people have said it is the COLLECTIVE and CONSEQUENCE issue that is at stake.

Concentrating on the minutia is simply an exercise in denial-ism. A bit like telling the Titanic passengers that they missed 40 bigger icebergs and then reasoning that they were safe the risk of catastrophe was the product of quasi doom sayers fanatics.

Fielding's vote by extraordinary circumstances has been elevated to a level beyond its real importance(see my earlier comments)

byork,

So many 'sceptics' (I use the term loosely on OLO) don't "follow" the IPCC (or trust its process).

I don't think it helps to suggest that even the likes of Al Gore thinks sea levels could rise by 100 metres (there is not that much water locked up in all the ice of the world combined).

Nevertheless, the IPCC have reviewed their 59cm projection from AR4, upwards to 80 - 120cm (I suspect you knew this). This is worrying enough.

fieldings vote is NOW..nothing....the opposition has decided to pass the bill...[after lobby...lol...from big business...now you get the point?

its about the new busines..bubble..carbon credits...to prop up big business..[capitalism..via speculation on the carbon-credits...ie a compulsory tax..paid by any taxpayer..[directly to prop up big busines carbon derivitives specualators]

govt creates them..[like it used to create money...except now its only ...lol..a carbon credit...convertable to cash...lol..[then business speculates UP..their cost to as much..as you tax paying mugs.. will pay for them...ha ha

thus...they..big busines lobby WANTED cap and trade...yet/not give tax payers an upfront credit...to offest a carbon minimum..[but that the worst poluters their carbon credit..that..THEY can sell off direct to the carbon trading floor..lol..owned/created by the very business lobby..lobbying for carbon tax...lol,..credit

[like any other derivitive]..a reducing cap..ensuring an ever more valuable/rare.. carbon credit to trade..[for huge commisions...their new trillion dollar a year cash cow..[subsidy]..from the pay as you earn[spend]..taxed wage-slaves...

the great unwashed/unrepresented swill subsidising the black suits..[as usual]...but now directly...via compulsory taxation..[without representation...as usual...the loudest lobby got the cheese..

,,..that will only be traded..via companies owned by al gore..[and leighman'sax]..the oppositions wealth provider..[and past empolyer...who leaned on the opposition...so it can quietly cave/in..on the issue..while the press,tax payer's and two party loyalists..[govt/servants..lol.]..sleeps

OUG

So, one minute the whole issue is driven by 'socialism' and the next it's by 'capitalism'? Why can't you make up your mind?

Let me try and make it simple for you:

The issue is NOT about the science. The issues IS about how we (humanity) are going to deal with the problems now on the horizon. The politicians AND economists are in a bun fight, NOT the scientists.

Examinator, The difference between weather and climate is a difference in short-term and longer-term but measurements of both are necessary - otherwise the hypothesis cannot be subjected to testing. On climate, the long-term - the 150 year period for which consistent measurements have been available - shows a warming of about 0.8 degrees (less than one degree). Almost half of that increase occured in the past three decades - hence Margaret Thatcher's taking of the warming issue to the international stage around 1980 in her attempts to discredit coal, defeat the miners' union and promote nuclear. As for weather, given the initial emphasis on the past 30 years by those who were alarmed by the spike in global temperature 30 to 20 years ago, it is reasonable of sceptics, like myself, to draw attention to the levelling of temperature of the past decade, despite the increase in CO2 emissions.

Q&A, sceptics question and even dispute the IPCC - just as Galileo challenged the authority of Europe's greatest Academy of Science in his time. Sceptics appeal neither to authority nor to popularity but rather to reason. I think it's a sign of our very conservative times that scepticism is seen so negatively.

Q&A, I didn't know the IPCC had updated its estimate of sea level rises from 59 cms to 80 cms - 120 cms. The figures are worst case scenarios (again, those computer models) for the year 2100. That's 90 years away and nine decades in which to adapt to any observed actual increase. As I've said before, observed change matters more than computer modelled scenarios, especially when the two don't tally.

Several countries and cities live quite happily below sea-level. A quarter of the Netherlands, an affluent, modern and in some ways progressive country, is below sea-level - almost 7 metres below sea-level at its deepest point. No need to worry too much about an increase of 1.2 metres (which is a little more than a centimetre per year), should the computer models turn out to be right. Human beings already know how to deal with much worse.

Indeed byork.

While Svante Arrhenius is no Galileo, he also challenged the "thinking of the time" when he postulated the enhanced greenhouse effect - now a well established and robust problemo.

I agree with you;

"sceptics appeal neither to authority nor to popularity but rather to reason. I think it's a sign of our very conservative times that scepticism is seen so negatively."

A true sceptic evaluates, tests, etc all components of an argument. With respect to AGW, this is not done by the 'casual' sceptic (they can't) - preferring rather to base their 'scepticism' on ideological grounds.

As to sea level rise. Yes, it is oh-so-slow in humanity's frame of reference (but the observed increase is quick in geological time).

Adapt we must, because it will take decades to do so, as you say. However, populations in low-lying developing nations will have a harder time trying to adapt than the people in Denmark. This will increase pressure on all sorts of other things - international security being one.

Anyway, some species of fauna and flora can't adapt as quickly, you know this.

Q&A, the greenhouse effect is not in dispute - by Senator Fielding or anyone else.

It strikes me that you are suggesting that those scientists who reject global warming (oops, isn't it 'climate change' these days?) alarmism are ideological rather than genuinely sceptical. This is a big part of the problem, I think, as such vilification works against freedom of science.

The science is not settled and the scientists who are sceptical or becoming sceptics is growing. Here's a list as of May 2007, which has their names, qualifications and reasons for changing from 'believers' to sceptics: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=927B9303-802A-23AD-494B-DCCB00B51A12

Media bias is so overwhelming that the sceptics rarely receive a fair go. Yet Al gore's movie seems to have been shown in most of our schools, without the counterpoint of either the IPCC or the scientists who are sceptical of the alarmism. Q&A, kids out there actually believe we're under threat of 100 metre sea rises unless we refrain from fossil fuels as an energy source

byork

It strikes me that a comment like "oops, isn't it 'climate change' these days?" shows a lack of understanding of how the term "climate change" was popularised (by George W Bush and his climate change policy advisor).

I am NOT "suggesting that those scientists who reject (anthropogenic) global warming alarmism are ideological rather than genuinely sceptical" (although some are).

I am suggesting that the 'casual sceptic', a layperson, a non-scientist or a person who is anti-science in general, cannot possibly test and evaluate the science themselves. It is they who most often form opinions (on complex science) based on an ideological perspective.

Both you and I know that the vast majority of scientists are not 'alarmists' (although some are).

Of course the science is not settled, you will always find robust debate in the corridors of science or from peer review on pre-publication or upon formal publication in scientific journals.

What most people (and it appears you as well) don't appreciate is that they most often debate the minutiae, the details, the fine print, crossing the 't's and dotting the 'i's (we're a pedantic lot).

I am quite aware of 'that list' (and Senator Inhofe and Marc Marano) byork.

Perhaps you have misinterpreted where I am coming from. If that is the case, can you suggest a better format or process other than the IPCC in getting the 'science' out there? Media shock-jocks, the popular press and so called 'denialist' blog-sites don't cut it for me.

For what it's worth, even if the planet were to enter into a climate change 'tipping point' (which imho it isn't) it would take 100's (if not 1000's) of years to experience the sea level rises spruiked by Al Gore.

As for fossil fuels, they will be around a while yet, we just have to find better (and alternative) ways of utilising a mix of energy resources.

Besides, the planet doesn't end in 2100.

There is an article in Quadrant which demonstrates (albeit tongue-in-cheek) the strong correlation between Aztec human sacrifice and weather patterns.

Centuries of data now suggest that global temperatures are rising because the Sun God is angry and needs to be appeased in that time-proven Aztec manner. Even if we ignore the data, if it didn't work they certainly would have discontinued the practice.

Is this reasoning any different from blaming it on sunspot activity, undersea volcanos or the numerous other alternative explanations - anything but conceding the remote possibility that what's happening may have been aggravated by human activity?

How many of you have seen fleas on a dog. Even six billion of us are little more than fleas on this big sphere spinning around the sun. Fleas on a dog are a nuisance but usually won’t kill him. The difference that the few humans in Australia can make to the atmosphere pale into insignificance in relation to the flatulence generated by a good evenings curry in India. We need to get things into perspective.

Just because we have a better education system than most should not allow us to frighten the daylights out of our kids. When I was a kid we were told to be aware that the world could end any day, by a war of the nuclear powers, and that it was only a balance of terror that kept us alive. Neither side ever let off a nuke in anger since World War II.

I am all for science, it has the ability to give us a continuing increase in our living standards, and improve our health. It is why we are six billion now, and still increasing. It is why we have proven doomsayers wrong time and time again. When I was a kid, the average ton of corn took an acre to grow. Now four tonnes an acre are nor unusual, and there is enough food in the world if properly distributed. Once the land was only capable of producing what it made from its own resources, but now we can add minerals and trace elements and not only produce better food but more of it.

Senator Steve has got it right, questioning the alarmists. Some one has to ask the hard questions and it should be Senators who do so. Sure there are reasons why the Liberals are against carbon taxes, but why should they be denigrated for that. They are probably looking after their big business mates, but it is the poor who will pay, not the wealthy. Someone has to generate the wealth to sustain our living standards. Killing off some of our biggest moneymakers does not make sense

Rache, sceptics do accept that human activity could be a significant contributor to the 0.8 degree increase in warming over the past 150 years. It's just that the other hypotheses are also plausible. And, as I said in previous posts, there's no consensus as to the extent to which human activity plays a part. Yet we're asked to take such drastic measures as a carbon tax and to subsidize less efficient alternative energies. This is a real problem, especially for poorer people, as it can only reduce living standards, not to mention scores of thousands of workers made redundant.

The difference between the hypotheses that discount human activity and the hypothesis about the Aztec sun god is that the former (sun spots, etc) are scientific whereas the sun god hypothesis isn't. For a hypothesis to be scientific it needs to be able to be subjected to tests of falsification not just verification. Gods of any kind cannot be subjected to such tests but any scientific hypothesis can be, and is, and that is why we have progressed in science - our mastery over Nature.

Q&A, thanks for clarificiation of 'casual sceptics'. Still the alarmists call the tune, receive the headlines, and influence policy. The public generally think the planet is doomed unless they accept carbon taxes. Most people think carbon is a pollutant. 'Nuff said.

10/2008


Excerpt:

“Of course, the reason Fielding is hitting the headlines this week is his decision to vote with the Government to raise the Medicare levy surcharge threshold and increase the tax on alcopops.

"This was remarkable because he had previously refused to vote for the legislation, bravely standing up for the Aussie battler in the form of private health insurance companies, just as Jesus would have. Yet now he has had a change of heart, possibly after being visited by angels in the night, which is nothing more than a continuation of the freewheeling, off-the-cuff, devil-may-care, don't-really-understand-my-job approach that Fielding brings to all his endlessly entertaining shenanigans.

“And of course that impish sense of razzle-dazzle is at the heart of Fielding's most powerful political weapon: stunts! In his time in parliament, Senator Fielding has taught us all that there is no pressing social crisis so bad that it cannot be solved by wackiness.

"Do we need to recycle more to avoid being suffocated under an enormous pile of garbage? Uh-oh, I guess it's time to prance about outside Parliament House dressed as a beer bottle! Problem... solved.

“His zany escapades know no bounds: take off your shirt for pensioners; push around a tiny trolley for grocery prices; call for amendments to the luxury car tax and then vote it down without suggesting any. Outrageous!

“I can't help thinking that in our modern obsession with "policy" and "process" and "thought", we've forgotten the virtues of good old-fashioned insanity.

"Maybe, just maybe, we could all use a dose of Senator Fielding's jolly Christian dementia in our lives. In these times of panic and despair, when questions abound and answers spring but scarcely from the stony ground of leadership, what's wrong with rolling up our sleeves, knuckling down, and acting stupid?

“You didn't want him. You didn't vote for him. You don't have the slightest idea what he's talking about. But you need him, now more than ever. We all do.”

How easy would it be for the Heartland Institute's grim reapers to indoctrinate Mr Flip Flop? Pushover mate!

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:oMRHZoVA364J:newmatilda.com/2008/10/16/thank-god-steve-fielding+steve+fielding+climate+change&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

Dear Examinator,
The ALP may control the house of reps BUT I do not believe that they have the right to waste the common wealth of the Australian people on their own pet projects. Taxes are collected from the people to provide goods and services for the people not toys for the boys as the ALP seems to think. If there was no money involved in global warming do you believe The true believers whould be as pashenit. Steve Fielding is trying to do the job he was elected to do in the house of revue

Dear Q&A,
Sadly through experience I have Found Out that education never replaces commonsence for when you educate a fool you get an educated fool not wisdom as your post seems to imply.

Richie 10

I wasn't implying anything to byork, if anything I was trying to clarify something.

Education is a tool, and most would agree a very important tool to have. Generally I would agree with you - you can't teach common sense, but I think a wise teacher could (there is a difference between wisdom and common sense).

I would have been interested in your response to my last reply to you;

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=2650#59850

The teaching of wisdom is a step up and something else, this link may be of interest;

http://www.pentirepress.plus.com/

It touches on the teaching of wisdom in humanities and the sciences.

Dear Richie 10,

What you need to seriously consider are the following
facts - the planet does not have an infinite amount
of resources - it cannot continue to tolerate unlimited
amounts of pollution. If our world population continues
to grow and if our pollution and resource depletion
also continues at an increasing rate - where are we headed?

Something needs to be done.

An intelligent person should be able to see that.

re the issue of finite resources furphy...we have barely explored one quater of the earths resources...

there are oceans of mineral recources out there...then there is the issue of recycling that we have allready harvested...those old enough will recall how aluminium/rubber etc were accumulated during the war shortages

there is more oil etc still in the ground than what mankind has been able to find so far...ie we have not reached peak oil[and never will..oil can be grown from algie..[just like how it was made in the past]

as for foods there are people who deliberatly create shortages[to keep the price up[for egsample milk production per cow has doubled in the past 20 years...we have not even explored growing food in highrises...or high rise cattle lots...the food and resources shortage is a beat up by eugenisists who will allways be wanting to murder those theyt deem..infiriour types

im sick of people in thisd age of plenty saying were going to run out of xxx...there is more than enough of everything to go round...the water shortage is a beat up as well..

[we still have so much water we cccrap in it...you just name any shortage and the capitalists will flood the market with it next year...all you eugenisists wakeup is your own petty fears...

poor blooming you..you been on your darwinian eugenics crusades for 100;s of years now ...just wake up to yourselves and off your self first...

nice people seem easilly taken in by your fear-mongering..but those wanting the big final solution..cant be as nice as they like to pretend...as jesus said...by their works will ye know them...well by your words are you lot revealed and reviled

Dear Foxie,
The wourld DOES have am infinate amount of wisdom, pride and selfishness. With a change of heart and different choices I am pqsitave mankind can do a much better job of tending Gods GREAT GARDEN, planet earth for we are the caretakers not the owners. Because of greed we have almost buggered up the place.A good friend of mine died last week and he couldn't take anything with him so he knows who really owns the earth. The glory and honour belongs to the owner not mankind.

Dear QA,
Fear and reverence of God is the beginning of wisdom. If man wasn't so prideful he would put the word of God in its right place and wisdom would once again flow out the land bringing life to a parched land.

Richie ten I see your footprints in other threads this morning.
While we must defend free speech on every subject I find it sad.
Sad that you find the need to evangelize in such places.
Yes we have other Christians here, and all have the right to say as they wish.
It to me seems like shouting into an empty water tank, inflicting your views on passing people.
Increasingly such methods are being used in this country as numbers attending Church's fall, maybe that is for the good.

Foxy says we "cannot continue to tolerate unlimited amounts of pollution" but this makes no sense when applied to the question of CO2 emissions - CO2 is not a pollutant. Yet this kind of logical shift occurs frequently in debates about 'global warming'. I'm all for policies and technologies that reduce toxic pollution and the advanced capitalist countries have made great progress in this regard but I'm not in favour of global warming alarmism that seeks to justify reductions in energy consumption and carbon taxes and subsidies to less efficient alternative energy sources, all of which can only lower standards of living, slow down progress, and hurt the poor in particular.

Richie 10, I will defend to the last your right to your belief in, and understanding of religion, but to place humanity as anything other than the 'owner' of the natural world is little different to what the Greens do with their form of nature worship (ie, humans are seen as subservient to Nature). Human progress and freedom have both come from the mastery of Nature and that can be measured in recent centuries by the growth of secularism, democracy (the people are sovereign, not the gods or God), materialism and science. Simply put: the gods and God need us more than we need them; indeed, without us, they would not even exist.

CO2 isn't a pollutant, byork? Well, cyanide isn't a poison either - people eat almonds all the time, even though millions were gassed to death with it by the Nazis. Nor is chlorine - drinking water is full of the stuff. Does that mean you could be persuaded to drink the it straight? And what about morphine? Great for pain management, but potentially lethal in quantity.

Dose is often the difference between poison and remedy, and the same goes for atmospheric gases.

The same principle applies to humans and nature. There is no green religion, just the sober recognition that humans are a product of the natural world, not vice versa, and have currently outstripped a sustainable level of population . It's truly ironic that conservatives sneer at environmentalism by branding it "nature worship" when the egocentric exceptionalism they cling to is solely the product of fundamentalist Christianity.

Dear Richie 10,

Over the past century, pollution of the environment
has begun to threaten the ecological balance of the
planet and the health of many of its species,
including ourselves. The pollution problem is an
exceedingly difficult one to solve, for several
reasons. First, some people and governments see
pollution as a regrettable but inevitable by-product
of desired economic development - "where there's
smoke, there's jobs."

Second, control of pollution, sometimes requires
international co-ordination, for one country's
emissions or pesticides can end up in other
countries' air or food. Third, the effects of
pollution may not show up for many years, so
severe environmental damage can occur with little
public awareness that it is taking place.

Fourth, preventing or correcting pollution can be
costly, technically complex, and sometimes - when
the damage is irreversible - impossible.

However, in general, the most industrialized nations
are now actively trying to limit the effects of
pollution. But the populous less developed societies
are more concerned with economic growth, and tend to
see pollution as part of the price they have to pay
for it.

Senator Fielding's thinking belongs with
that of the less developed societies. It's time he
realized in what sort of society he lives - and what
sort of constituents he represents.

“CO2 is not a pollutant….Most people think carbon is a pollutant. 'Nuff said.”

Byork

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant and fossil fuels were interred for good reason but man in his wisdom, dug them up.

Uranium 238 (not a fossil fuel) but nevertheless, interred to keep the planet healthy and in equilibrium, has a decay chain of 4 billion 500 million years where its final progeny is lead 206.

When you burn fossil fuels the final progeny is carbon dioxide. Fossil fuels are deadly chemicals which desecrate biodiversity, ecosystems, human and animal health. CO2 is the final progeny of many fossil fuel chemicals.

When you burn benzene, a category 1 carcinogen, it oxidizes to carbon dioxide. When you burn fossil fuels, you create carbon monoxide from incomplete combustion. Carbon monoxide elevates atmospheric methane and ground level ozone before oxidizing to carbon dioxide etc etc.

Hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds (VOC) burn to carbon dioxide. Add a few more nasties such as a bit of chlorine in the feed stock and the unintended man-made polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin/furans (dioxins and furans) are formed to wreak havoc on the planet.

Dioxins have no respect for geographical boundaries. The Arctic Inuits have a high body burden of dioxins from their marine diet. Dioxins are gender benders - they feminize embryros and are teratogens - think Agent Orange.

Pollution kills - so does carbon dioxide. And that’s why the USEPA deem carbon dioxide, a pollutant.

All things are bound together - all things connect – and that’s not guess work – it’s scientific. If we want to stop polluting the planet, we must stop polluting with CO2.

Would Mr Fielding know a VOC from a sock?

Richie 10,
Fielding isn't doing the job he was elected for ....
as I said if you polled the state on yes or no on that question the answer IS clearly NO. He was elected as a lesser evil by the majority. The rump of his support is from a SMALL minority.(check out the voting trends)

Secondly your argument is inconsistent on one hand you argue that he has a mandate (voted in). Yet you contradict this mandate concept by denying the MAJORITY elected govt's.
The house of review is to exactly that not make policy by default. Likewise as previously explained it is NOT up to him to decide on GW but to ensure the elected policy is the scrutinized.
Ultimately you offer no rebuttal only gain saying .

By Sancho’s logic, everything is toxic. And Sancho is technically correct: CO2 can have toxic levels. But so too can oxygen. Sancho even seems to think that people are pollutants – the world is over-populated, he claims (very wrongly in my view).

When Rudd/Turnbull speak of "carbon pollution" they are referring to the current state of affairs, not just the future. They are saying that we have carbon pollution now and we need to do something about it to stop it getting 'worse'. Well, the current global levels fluctuate between 360ppm and 390ppm. So, the question must be asked as to when CO2 becomes toxic (a pollutant) rather than an essential source of life. No-one in this thread has disputed that we cannot live without CO2.

At what ‘dosage’ does CO2 become toxic? Well, if any of us has ever been in a confined space with lots of people (breathing out the stuff with little room for oxygen to be drawn in) for an extended period, we have experienced the toxicity of CO2. We usually feel drowsy in such an environment. Here’s the facts: at a level of 10,000 ppm, some people (not all) will feel drowsy. Now just consider again that the current levels of this ‘pollution’ are at 387ppm. No-one, not even Al Gore, suggests that the combustion of fossil fuels will create a volume of emissions at anywhere near the 10,000 ppm level in the future.

At 50,000 ppm, things become more serious – dizziness and headaches – and at 80,000 ppm, very serious (loss of consciousness).

All the above (though with different measurements) equally applies to the toxicity of oxygen.

Thus, it remains dishonest and extremely misleading to speak of "carbon pollution". And this essential source of life doesn't turn into its opposite just because the US Supreme Court defined it as a pollutant in 2007.

Byork

Your argument has nothing to do with the reality. And it is extremely dishonest to speak of carbon as a non-pollutant. You appear not to understand that many carbon-based industrial chemicals are bioaccumulative. That means that a small emission of a carbon chemical can cause a large amount of damage when it invades the food chain and biomagnifies. And I have not yet touched on man-made CFCs responsible for depleting ozone.

“At 50,000 ppm, things become more serious – dizziness and headaches – and at 80,000 ppm, very serious (loss of consciousness).”

A vacuous unrealistic argument Byork. While the levels of atmospheric CO2 are not yet catastrophic, the long-term chemical formations of those CO2 levels have been. Exposure to carbon based chemicals has an insidious impact on human health and there may be a significant lag time before symptoms of illness appear. Of course the Greenhouse Mafia is well aware that the source or causes of these illnesses are very hard to prove.

The rampant unregulated industrial emissions in Australia remain out of control and humans and ecosystems have been used as cannon fodder with impunity. That’s why Australia is coming dead last in the Annex 1 Kyoto countries for mitigating carbon emissions.

You may offer a suggestion as to why two hundred and fifty Australian citizens have had to go offshore to commence a class action against Alcoa if you think carbon is harmless and when you and I have propped up the impotent EPA and departments of environment for forty years while Australian citizens succumb to serious illnesses from industrial pollution.

Now a nervous Department of Environment has charged Alcoa with criminal activity. "Let's do a deal eh?"

Alcoa’s Australian Managing Director Alan Cransberg demanded that Alcoa receive free permits to continue emitting carbon emissions under the CPRS. Even before the announcement of the scheme, it was reported Cransberg was threatening that Alcoa would move offshore if the government didn't provide compensation.

Polluters are rewarded for desecrating a once healthy planet and the Greenhouse Mafia call those who object, “alarmists?” Huh?

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,25624988-948,00.html

That's an odd response, byork.

Have you been under the misapprehension that the problem with excess CO2 is mass asphyxiation of human beings? Where have you been for this debate?

As for humans being pollutants, well, you can keep putting words in my mouth, but it doesn't constitute an argument.

Farmers are currently poisoning, en masse, rabbits and mice, because their vast numbers are stripping the countryside of vegetation. Based on hyper-populationist ethics, however, they have every right to, because it's god's will that they should reproduce so fruitfully. Or do you have better justification for counting humans above and separate from the laws of nature?

This link is to a website that clearly believes Senator Fielding is right.

http://www.jonchristianryter.com/2009/090308.html

I post it without comment as it contains quite a lot of argument that I have not had time to check out.

There is so much doubt in my head that it is human activity that causes global warming.This site seems to argue that it is only a capitalist plot to export American and Australian Jobs to third world countries like India, where the cost of living is fractional, and wages very low. This is so the rich Americans can get richer, and make their fellow Americans poorer.

I think that may well be the motivation behind the whole idea.

Great post, PtB.

It's Occam's Razor, after all: if given a choice between the validated conclusions of several thousand scientific researchers, or the conspiracy theories of a lone fundamentalist Christian blogger, a rational human being should endorse the most unverified, batsh-t insane option available.

When Turnbull and Rudd speak of 'carbon pollution' they do so in the context of 'global warming'. They mean CO2.

Yet no-one disputes - here or elsewhere - that CO2 is esential to life. Sancho argues that it's a matter of dosage. I responded by pointing out how, for CO2 to be a pollutant (toxic), it would require dosages of CO2 of such volume that even Al Gore does not suggest they will be reached. Sancho responds by saying my argument is "odd" - which may appeal to the like-minded but does not advance an argument. He suggests that I am arguing that "mass asphyxiation" is the problem with "excess CO2". He does this, I think, because he cannot argue rationally against the proposition that CO2 is essential to life and indeed (to quote the Marxist-influenced Spiked website) "Makes the world go round". He cannot counter the fact that before CO2 becomes toxic it has to reach levels that are around five hundred times the present levels.

Protagoras responds by saying I'm being dishonest because I must know that "many carbon-based industrial chemicals are bioaccumulative". But the issue is not "many carbon-based chemicals" but rather whether CO2 is a pollutant. He/she then offers a link to a news report - a report that in no way provides supporting evidence for his/her belief that CO2 is a pollutant.

Sancho and Protagoras are examples of how the promotion of the idea that CO2 is a toxic pollutant is designed to conjure an emotional rather than a reasoned response.

I don't want to buy into a debate about over-population here, but will say that it's just more right-wing reactionary claptrap from the future-fearers.

I always appreciate a good bait-and-switch, byork, but I addressed exactly what you said: that carbon pollution only becomes a problem if it saturates the atmosphere to the point that people begin asphyxiating. You even used an example of oxygen deprivation.

Then you had to invent a statement I never made in order to try and score some points for self-righteous morality.

You appear to know almost nothing about this topic, and try to carry an irrelevant and bizarre argument with straw men and insults. Pretty weak.

Explain for us, in your own words, just what you think this debate is about, because so far you've made a convincing case that you haven't a clue.

I must say, though, that I'm chuffed at being branded a "right-wing reactionary...future-fearer". You'd have been closer if you claimed I'm actually a Martian invader. But I suppose it doesn't really matter, since you only want to invent arguments on my behalf that you can shoot down triumphantly.

Byork,
The problem with your reasoning is that CO2 is essential to life but in prescribed concentration RANGE.
Exceed that optimum level and things start to go wrong. We are not talking about a binary state (enough/too much). Anthropomorphic Climate Change can be likened to an INERTIA wheel....it takes a lot to get it rotating but once rolling it takes a little to keep it going. Note also once in motion it takes disproportionately smaller increases to move it faster. But it takes incredible effort to stop it. The wheel will continue for some time for it to return to stop on it's own.

Arguments about CO2 being toxic are irrelevant ALL life (as we know it?) on earth will have gone long before we reach that scenario think Venus etc.

Where that actual "instant" (tipping point) is where the increase in speed of change becomes anti life depends on which element/component of the environment you are looking at.

But current indications across several disciplines indicates different rates. Notwithstanding the trend is progressively towards pending destruction of life supporting environment.
No one is really paraphrasing 'chicken little' only that the inertia wheel is turning and that we have a limited window in which to stop it gaining unstoppable momentum. We will progressively find ourself losing control and ability to influence this environment unless we start the slow down process now. Like the inertia wheel the effort to stop it must be more concentrated and greater than simply 'business as usual' or simply stopping. The process will take decades to slow-stop and reverse what we as humans have done for Millenniums.

Without this CO2 trace gas, the planet would be a frozen snow-ball.

Increase concentration marginally to 350 parts per million - it's sweet.

Double the concentration to 700 parts per million - life as we know it is stuffed - nuff said.

Exterminator, Nothing you say is a case for CO2 being a pollutant.

Sancho, you are yet to prove that CO2 is a pollutant - you do realize that, don't you?

As for your claim that I said that "carbon pollution only becomes a problem if it saturates the atmosphere to the point that people begin asphyxiating. You even used an example of oxygen deprivation". I suggest you read gaain what I actually did say. For the record, I said: "CO2 can have toxic levels. But so too can oxygen". And I then provided data on the levels at which CO2 becomes toxic, a pollutant. The context for all this was and is my refutation of Turnbull and Rudd's use of 'carbon pollution' to account for a current crisis, as they see it.

Yes, I do think the green outlook is right-wing and reactionary - there's certainly no established left-wing theory that justifies it, especially not Marxism. And, yes, when you say there are too many people and they have outsripped a sustainable level of population, I happily rub your face into your own misanthropy

ps:

Could the good Senator Fielding be wrong?

pss:

byork, you have just proved my point. A casual sceptic (aka you) bases their view on climate change, AGW, human induced climate change, whatever - on ideological perspective.

Thank the powers that be we have people like the Governor of California and the President of the USA and the Premier of China, really trying to do something about global warming.

I thank the powers that be we have the likes of Rudd and Turnbull who also want to tackle the problems of climate change, whatever.

Unfortunately, the hardliners in the conservative camp, and a few in the liberal camp - want to play politics. You are no different.

Thanks for the link Peter the Believer and I see the author, Jon Christian Ryter (aka Christian Writer)refers to and has written excerpts very similar to an article published by James M. Taylor, senior fellow of The Heartland Institute.

Jon Christian Ryter is a pseudonym for a one-time reporter for the Parkersburg, West Virginia Sentinel, who wrote a syndicated column called “Answers from the Bible,” and is now a contributor to a far-right wing website called News With Views.

And has this new-age Nostradamus got a hotline to heaven?:

His article, “Has Anti-Christ Arrived” advises:

“Antichrist will be a devout Muslim……We can be certain, however, that the man—regardless of how corrupt and evil he may be—will not be the Kenyan Muslim Barack Hussein Obama.

"While Obama is definitely a Muslim, his ancestral roots do not give him the lineage through Mohammad to Antiochus IV Epiphanes to Esau to Ishmael and, finally, to Abraham to claim the birthright to the deed of inheritance of the Promised Land.”

“Definitely a Muslim?” “Evil and corrupt” eh? That’s a pretty vicious and unsubstantiated attack on Obama by one of your denialist “Christians”, Peter.

I'll continue taking my information from reputable climate scientists thanks.

Protag, your last post - who would have figured?!
Your catalogue (or sleuthing skills) never cease to amaze.
We don't always agree (but mostly we do).
I'm glad you're here.
Cheers
qanda

interesting how the protosoreass when refered to an artivle on clobal warimg cant rebut the actual article...but keeps on digging till he can rebut something

then the qanda idiolises his resque-er..yeah great revelations...great rebuttal of the topic...[not]...lol..great redirection..[to quote a previous post...lol

Thanks Q&A but the contents of Byork's posts remind me that you cannot give some people more information that they are prepared to accept.

UOG - I offer my apologies for I'm not multilingual therefore, would you mind writing in English so I can respond to your post - there's a good lad.

When Sancho says that I "appear to know almost nothing about this topic" and rely on "straw men and insults", I am tempted to return the 'compliment'. But I prefer to debate (and still await evidence from Sancho as to why CO2 is a pollutant rather than an essential source of life).

It is an attribute of religious thinking to be condescending and hostile to those who challenge received wisdom, and Sancho and Protagoras are fine examples of this. They, along with Q&A, are probably much more comfortable among the like-minded (at 'Church'). Q&A dismisses me as a "casual sceptic" while seeing ideologues everywhere but in his own mirror. Q&A, you are as ideological as me -just try to debate.

Another attribute of the religious way of thinking is the 'laying down of the law'. Q&A does this in textbook fashion by pronouncing: "Double the concentration (of CO2) to 700 parts per million - life as we know it is stuffed". I don't know what job Q&A does, but he couldn't possibly be a scientist to pronounce like that. A scientist - well, one in the best tradition of science - would at least insert a "maybe" or a "likely" or an "as far as some of the research suggests".

There is a real debate among qualified scientists inside and outside the IPCC about the role of CO2 - or "carbon pollution" as the believers insist on calling it - in the 0.8 degree global warming of the past 130 years and the idea that 700 ppm will stuff life as we know it highly debatable and probably incorrect. I will post again on this but do not want to exceed the 350 word limit in this post.

Sancho and Q&A can afford to be smug and dismissive only because they reflect the views of those in power in our society.

The claws come out sometimes, and there is a real tendency to play the man and not the ball. If you can’t argue put down the messenger. I still say that before any of you really debate this question you should read State of Fear by Michael Crichton. The argument there is that Global Warming was invented in 1989, when fear of Russian Annihilation by Nuclear Weapons was finally put to bed and the Berlin Wall came down.

North Korea does not quite make the cut as a terror State, and Iran probably doesn’t either. I think it is fair to say that North Korea probably has enough nuclear weapons aimed at it primed ready to go, to wipe it from the face of the earth, if it let off one Nuclear Bomb outside its own borders. Russia has sort of warned Israel it will be annihilated if it preemptively strikes Iran, so we are not really terrified of them either.

The thing is that we have a political system and while the majority rule, there was always room for dissent, and individuals have rights in this country. One of those very important rights is to be able to debate. Debate requires sound evidence and there are more and more scientists who do not agree the ideal levels of CO2. For optimum growth in a greenhouse, the recommendation is 1000 PPM, and greenhouses in temperate climates aim to get maximum production by maintaining that level. No one dies from that concentration. Plants take the maximum amount possible in a day at that concentration, and grow faster.

Climatologists may think they have the answers but computer models are notoriously inaccurate, and a small error can be multiplied many times. To err is human but to really get things wrong it takes a computer. Fortunately we have some man made brains reviewing the computer models, and questioning the results. The Indians say their per capita emissions are some of the lowest in the world, so they have no interest in cutting emissions. Without India and Africa, what we do is insignificant futility

Peter I've not read my way through all the posts on this thread so what I say may already have been said.

My impression, Senator Fielding could be right but on the weight of evidence currently available it is very unlikely. He could be right but it would be very irresponsible to gamble with the viability of the planet as a place to live while so much scientific opinion is against the views he holds and so little with him.

Sometimes the minority is correct but that's generally the minority pushing a change to conventional thinking, not the minority clinging to old idea's long past their use by date.

I suspect that many of the changes we should be making to combat global warming are changes we should be making anyway. They will costs but the cost is better born while we have the capacity and resources remaining to make them, not left until it's to late to do so.

As I've said elsewhere I doubt very much that any part of the answer lies in giving government a new tax to play with but there are some real things we can do which we need to do regardless of global warming.

R0bert

I feel cruel disappointing you when you're so pleased with yourself, byork, but we've seen all of this before.

You eventually realised that you'd submitted a post of quite breathtaking ignorance, and now you're throwing out strawmen and personal attacks in the hope that we'll get distracted and forget the silliness of your statements. No dice, I'm afraid.

So, explain to us again how we only need to be concerned with CO2 if people start suffocating on the stuff. Then I sincerely hope you'll give us your views on gunshot wounds. If your knowledge of climate science is any guide, I expect you'll tell us that the only problem associated with being shot in the face is the risk of lead poisoning.

When you're done with that, I genuinely want to know how you've become so literate, yet so stunningly uninformed about the greatest scientific issue of our time. Have you recently been expelled from an Amish enclave?

Sancho accuses me of being breathtakingly ignorant, silly, and using straw men and personal attacks. How ironic coming from somoene who uses such epithets against me (even sugggesting I belong in an Amish enclave). Sancho continues to misconstrue the point I made about the levels at which CO2 does become toxic - and he does this in order to avoid having to argue a case for CO2 being a 'carbon pollutant' in the sense that Rudd and Turnbull use the term.

I stand by the data on toxic levels of CO2 - Sancho has not actually challenged their accuracy. All he's done is pretend that I am unaware of the hypothesis that the build up of CO2 has a 'tipping point' after which will come a catastrophic run-away effect. Apparently, this hypothesis means that it's accurate for Rudd/Turnbull to classify CO2 as a toxic pollutant.

Yet, poor old silly ignorant me still believes CO2 is an essential source of life, especially plant life, and that hypotheses based on computer-modelling may be correct or incorrect in their scenarios but can never trump observation and scientific theory.

The problem for Rudd/Turnbull and Sancho is that the incorrect and misleading term "carbon pollution" is designed to trigger an emotional response to get people to support certain measures that will harm real people in the real world, especially the less well off. These measures seem to have majority public support at the moment, in large part because 'everyone' thinks CO2 is a toxic pollutant. The media - the capitalist media as us leftists call it - has a lot to answer for in promoting both this view of CO2 and the alarmist elements to the global warming/climate change hypothesis in general.

I still hope to post again - but on the on-going debate about the role of CO2 in all this. Q&A's declaration that life will be "stuffed" once we reach 700 pmm is part of a debate, not the end of one, and it seems to me that the number of qualified scientists who are becoming sceptical is growing rather than diminishing.

rather indepth defense of steve fiel-ding here
http://www.infowars.com/global-warming-or-global-cooling-a-new-trend-in-climate-alarmism/

quote extract
Figure 1: Wong’s graph.

This is the new trend in climate alarmism...Previously the measure of global warming has always been air temperatures...But all the satellite data says air temperatures have been in a mild down trend starting 2002.
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/RSSglobe.html

The land thermometers preferred by the alarmists showed warming until 2006,..but even they show a cooling trend developing since then.

(Land thermometers cannot be trusted because,..even in the USA,..89 per cent of them fail siting guidelines that they be more than 30 meters from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source,..and their data is forever being "corrected".)
http://www.surfacestations.org/

Ocean temperatures were not properly measured until mid-2003,..when the Argo network became operational.

Before Argo,..ocean temperatures were measured with bathythermographs (XBTs)—expendable probes fired into the water by a gun from ships along the main commercial shipping lanes...Geographical coverage of the world’s oceans was poor,..XBTs do not go as deep as Argo,..and their data is much less accurate.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/marine/observations/gathering_data/argo.html

The Argo network consists of over 3,000 small,..drifting oceanic robot probes,..floating around all of the world’s oceans...Argo floats duck dive down to 1,000 meters or more,..record temperatures, then come up and radio back the results....continued..[begins+ends]..at link...feel free to rebutt...lol

http://www.infowars.com/global-warming-or-global-cooling-a-new-trend-in-climate-alarmism/

Please, god, never let your fundamentalist children, Stephen Fielding and bjork, get together.

Fielding would be only to keen to embrace the ""essential sources of life" cannot be harmful" theory, and begin using the Senate as a platform to argue that humans can't drown in life-giving water, that we may inhale pure oxygen safely, and that a diet of nothing but salt is healthy and desirable.

All of this is so because the almighty has placed mankind above the natural order. Amen.

One Under God (lol)

Do you ever actually go to the prime source of science data?
Why do you always link to so called 'sceptics' or 'denialist' blogs?
Do you really think the experts haven't considered the stuff you've stumbled on?

You haven't got a clue.

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/

I fear your good-god Senator Fielding is swimming in deep water and he's drowning. God save him.

byork

It's a subtle difference, but it's important.

I did not declare "that life will be 'stuffed' once we reach 700 pmm".

I said, "... life as we know it is stuffed".

You are probably taking things out of context, or misinterpreting what the science says - 'sceptics' have a history of doing this, intentionally or otherwise.

For the sake of argument (no, not debate) - please do a basic wiki or google on what 'climate sensitivity' is all about. If you're really interested, read the chapter in AR4 (or search the papers in google scholar).

You tell me what the average global increase in temperature will be if [CO2] reaches 700 ppm. Of course, you would know what the term 'average' means - some regions will have higher temps, others less.

(If you really want to understand, study Earth 's radiative budget.)

Nevertheless, temperatures this high will have serious consequences (on various things, including: food, water, energy, sea level, transport, agriculture, storms, insurance, border protection, immigration, security, add your own.

And don't get me started on ecological biodiversity - fisheries, fauna, flora, corals, etc.

Yes, life as we know it will be stuffed, but life will go on.

Btw, I have always said on OLO that extremists on all sides should pull their head in - you are obviously new here (and your link to your website does not work).

BtwBtw
There is no point in debating an accountant (for example) on the merits or otherwise of the algorithms needed to correct for the errors in Argo float pressure sensitive switches that lead to Roy Spencer wrongly asserting (in a paper 'published' on a denialist blog-site for God's sake) that ocean temperatures were cooling.

Ergo, I am happy to debate with real scientists my work. I don't debate with the likes of the 'casual sceptic'.

BtwBtwBtw
You can post 4 times in 24 hrs on an OLO general discussion thread (I think) - so, you have 1400 words at your disposal. You and OUG can have a real debate.

Q&A, you are backing down from a position that sought to give an impression of catastrophe should CO2 levels reach 700 ppm. No wonder you're not keen to debate!

The science is not settled on the issue of how much responsiblity can be attributed to increased CO2 emissions in global warming/climate change; it is not settled on the question of how much temperature will change nor what the consequences will be.

William Kininmonth and other qualified scientists argue that the computer models greatly exaggerate the role of CO2 because of a basic deficiency in the way they represent the hydrological cycle. Evaporation of water vapour constrains surface temperature increase.

You are certain that a 700ppm level will end life "as we know it" yet the IPCC estimates the first order impact from a doubling of CO2 to be around 1.2 degrees. And, yes, I know about the second order impact, the feedbacks, but these are based on computer models and cannot be regarded with certainty. They are speculative.

Kininmonth was appointed by the Hawke government in 1986 to head Australia's National Climate Centre in the Bureau of Meteorology, a post he held until 1998. He represented Australia at the World Meterology Organisation's Commission for Climatology. I can imagine you not wanting to debate him, too!

Considering a couple of posts ago you were so arrogant, it now seems you're backing down from argument and debate. Of course, you can afford to do so - you need not convince anyone of your position because you have institutional (and state) power on your side, and the mass media behind your position.

Q&A, you might like to condescend to debate with David Evans, who was a climate-modeller with the Australian Greenhouse Office for several years. He reckons "the IPCC modelers will eventually turn down the water vapor feedback in their models to bring them into line with observed reality. That will reduce their predicted temperature increases due to CO2 increases by about a half to two-thirds, and the 'crisis' will be well on the way to becoming manageable".

Further: "... the evidence is pretty good that the assumed positive feedback in the IPCC climate models due to water vapor (and the positive water vapor feedback dominates the total feedback in the IPCC climate models) is wrong - the hotspot is missing, so the water vapor feedback must be small or negative".

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying Dr. Evans is correct. I wouldn't know - it's not my area of expertise. But it strikes me that he cannot be dismissed either - in other words, the science is not settled.

Gee, I enjoy giving reactionaries who are backed by institutional power a hard time!

By the way, I blog at a Marxist-influenced left-wing website called Strange Times: http://strangetimes.lastsuperpower.net/ (Just wait for the ad hominem attacks now!)

I'll have to disengage from this thread now - but, hey, it's been fun.

byork, sea level rises of 80 cm by 2100 (for example) are bad enough, don’t you think? Of course, the world doesn’t stop then either.

I have never said the science is settled on climate sensitivity or attribution – so please refrain from inferring I have, it’s boring.

Yes, there is robust debate in the scientific community – but it is the detail they’re debating, not the guff that you wish to ‘debate’.

My work and research has much to do with the ‘hydrological cycle’ - land/ocean/atmosphere coupled systems in particular, thanks.

I am bemused by ‘sceptics’ put-down of computer models when it goes against their beliefs, but they gladly trot them out when the models appear to suit their beliefs – epitome of hypocrisy.

Wait, another post from you.

Ah yes, David Evans – one of those pesky modelers, for goodness sake!

I understand you’re new here. Any earlier and you would have seen I am very interested (see above) in things water (clouds, water vapour feedback, ocean/atmosphere currents, oscillations, etc) but guess what, we haven’t been able to present robust science to counter AGW.

We keep trying though. If we can knock AGW for six we can clean the mantle for a Nobel or Fields – and save a lot of people a lot of money and a lot of worry.

Here's some homework, tell me what you think of 'stratospheric cooling'. Hint: is it hot enough for you?

The rest of your waffle I’ll let slide to the keeper, sorry.

Peter the Believer and Byork - Who are the more and more “scientists” you claim disagree? Why, have you not provided us with evidence to support this “revelation?” One could hardly describe the links you provided as “compelling” evidence Peter and, written by:

1: Jon Christian Ryter - an anonymous, mediocre hack
2. Michael Crichton - a novelist and past shill for the tobacco and oil companies

Crichton, won the Journalism Award from the Petroleum Association (AAPG) for penning the “ State of Fear” which uses a load of discredited and fallacious arguments to attempt to disprove the reality of climate change. What do you do when a fictional work takes a position you like? Call it science, of course!

"It is fiction," conceded Larry Nation, communications director for the AAPG association. "But it has the absolute ring of truth." Yeah right!

Crichton’s “State of Fear” is widely reviled amongst the rest of the scientific community:

The book is "demonstrably garbage," Stephen Schneider, a Stanford climatologist, advised. Petroleum geologists may like it, he said, but only because "they are ideologically connected to their product, which fills up the gas tanks of Hummers."

Daniel P. Schrag, a geochemist from Harvard University, called the award "a total embarrassment which reflects the politics of the oil industry, a lack of professionalism" and Crichton’s profound ignorance.”

Ironically Crichton, died from metastasized melanoma (peace be upon him) and though he initially trained in medicine, failed to recognise the symptoms. The planet is suffering a malignant tumour which he couldn’t recognise either - he should have stuck to creating fictional melodramas like ER.

Similarly OLO’s rabid evangelists, addicted to money, persist in peddling junk science (though usually it’s no science at all) whilst genu-flexing to a wooden altar - (“Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch!”) Meanwhile they keep the “heretics” focused and outraged about their lack of eco-mindedness, so they can continue screwing the planet all over.

“And he (knucklehead Fielding) shall speak for you to the people and he shall be your mouth.” (Exodus. IV:16.)