I think the Hadley Centre "Climate Gate" will put so called AGW in perspective.

Arjay,

Thanks for the site very interesting. The climate for Aust +2050 more than a bit scary.

Oscar, Welcome.

I do not feel a bit sorry for Turnbull. I disagree with you here. Turnbull, in dealing with the government on the ETS was simply pushing his own personal agenda. Frankly I think he is too smart to believe in AGW, so I think his motive was so he and his merchant banker mates could be involved in carbon credits trading here. The ETS is simply a tax on us that does nothing to lower CO2.

His own arrogance was his undoing. His reluctance to accept majority opinion. His chant of "I am the leader", "I am the leader" shows that clearly.

I don't know how you can say our society sustains an ignorance of human rights and social justice that is outdated and obsolete.

I also have not met anyone yet that does not agree that the climate changes and has done forever. However there are plenty that do not consider the changes are brought about by human activity. AGW is still only a theory.

I am a sceptic. I know we cannot influence the tides, earthquakes, volcanos, our orbit or rotation, continental drift, etc. yet some seem to think we are of such importance that we influence the climate. We cannot even accurately predict the weather or make it rain!

I certainly agree with you about us having to pay for an ETS and i suggest it would be quite a bit.

Banjo, you state: "I know we cannot influence the tides, earthquakes, volcanos, our orbit or rotation, continental drift, etc. yet some seem to think we are of such importance that we influence the climate. We cannot even accurately predict the weather or make it rain!"

This seems like pretty spurious reasoning to me. Applying this logic, then because we haven't affected something in the past then it won't be affected in the future.

"We can't influence earthquakes!" you say. Don't be so sure. It's all a matter of scale.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/ap_051203_tallest_building.html

"Lin Cheng-horng, an earthquake specialist at the National Taiwan Normal University in the capital, Taipei, says the 1,679-foot Taipei 101 building -- named for the number of floors -- might rest on an earthquake fault line.
In the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, Lin wrote that the pressure of the building's 700,000 tons on the ground may be leading to increased seismic activity."

Also, you said "we can't even make it rain!"

Uh, that seems like a bit of a simplification. Recently Beijing was hit by snow remarkably early in the year due to cloud seeding.

Have you ever heard of acid rain? Last time I checked, that nifty piece of weather was all our work.

You're arguing that because we haven't caused global changes before, we never will. Before nukes, I imagine people could have made a similar argument about destroying entire cities.

Banjo, I take umbrage at your somewhat incredulous tone. The weight of peer-reviewed science stands behind anthropogenic global warming.

The vested interests in maintaining the status quo are apparent, however the motivation for a global conspiracy of scientists who have some machiavellian plot to make us reduce carbon emissions because... well... because they're evil lefty smartypantses who want grants?

Hrm. Perhaps theres a place in this argument for incredulous tones after all.

Dear Banjo.
You quote
''I don't know how you can say our society sustains an ignorance of human rights and social justice that is outdated and obsolete''.

As a country we do this because we promote a living standard for the majority that is classed as ''First world'' ,however we allow Aboriginals and certain others to live in ''third world'' conditions and we allow this very easily without too much guilt,in fact, as a nation ,we have been reported to the U.N on serveral occasions for human rights abuses against Aboriginals and refugees.
I suggest you do some research as this imformation is easily available and a first year university sociology student or a year 12 sociology student could tell you that!
Why is it outdated?
Because this way of thinking allows our nation to be behind any other world trends and this applies to Global warming also.I suspect we will be one of the last nations on earth to embrace climate change princibles because of our conservative liberal philosophies.
Why?
Because our economy and corporate intertest comes first ahead of our nations people and welfare.

TRTL,
You can take umbrage all you like, I'll stick by my opinion until there is proof otherwise. AGW is only a theory and that theory seems to be crumbling as each day passes. Believers put their faith in the top scientists and now it is revealed that they fudged figures and had other shonky practices, like carrying out their 'peer reviews' for their mates and excluding others.

I pointed out there are quite a number of things we have no influence over and I include climate in that, until proven otherwise. I notice that in your eartquake example the bloke said 'may' which means he doesn't know. Its a clear blue sky here today and I would love to see someone make it rain, but alas, that research did not prove effective. 25-50 ml over our catchment would be good.

Thanks for reminding me about acid rain. Another scare that seems to have pettered out, like the Y2K bug and atomic bombs making all the rain in the 50s. One doesn't hear of the 'hole in the ozone layer' anymore, but the upcoming scare is 'acidfacation of the oceans' which is, of course, caused by us and we will be required to pay for that.

I do not care if these scares are put up by leftys, rightys or whoever but they come and go from time to time.

There have been about a dozen,or more, occasions, in the last 100 years, that the New York Times has reported that the Earth is warming or that another ice age is pending, all with the support of eminant scientists

So why would anyone not be sceptical.

Hey, our PM claimed that a couple of hot days in Adelaide was proof of AGW, now I see that Texas had their earliest snow ever. Is that proof that the earth is cooling. Oh no! not another ice age!