'The religious fundamentalists will tell you there has been no such thing as climate change since the Sky God created the earth 6742 years ago.'

actually Paul what anyone who can think will tell youis that people with puny brains like your own are incapable of logic let alone have the power to change the climate.

Actually, runner, it's not the size of the brains that causes the problem, but the sheer numbers of people on earth, and the compounding effect of their activities. Even when there were a lot less humans, they changed the environment: felling forests, replacing complex ecosystems with monocultures, and in the process wiping out species.

All those vast deposits of coal and oil built up over tens of millions of years of forests growing, trees falling into swamps and fossilising, more forests, more trees, more trees, more forests etc. Time and pressure led to all that organic matter turning in to oil and coal.

Imagine there were no people on earth. Then imagine some natural process (an unusually fast shift in continents etc.) exposed all the coal and oil so that it burnt in a geological instance (which is what 100 odd years is). 20 million or so years deposits - burns in 100 or so years. How would that not impact on the world's atmosphere, and so on the climate?

Humans are in effect that natural process - by burning all that coal and oil in a mere 100 odd so years we've done what no geological process had managed in the past 50 million or so.

Humans with puny brains didn't set out to change the climate. It was the end result of wanting to keep warm, eat pizzas and make a few useful tools (cars, planes, trains etc.). Just like one puny brained termite doesn't set out to destroy your house - but six billion termites - and six billion humans - can do a lot of damage.

'Humans are in effect that natural process - by burning all that coal and oil in a mere 100 odd so years we've done what no geological process had managed in the past 50 million or so. '

certainly fits your world view Cossomby. Just don't insult anyone's intelligence by calling it scientific.

Runner, so I take it you are not in agreement with some of the religious ratbags who believe in "creationism" which through literal interpretation of the bible puts the age of the Earth at 6742 years. Now those good folk defiantly do not have putty brains, they have no brains what so ever. If you are at odds with the creationists and do not believe in the magic number 6742, then how old is the Earth. I believe it is about 4.5 billion years, what's your number? Why I ask is if science is correct on such a basic thing as the age of the planet, why not accept they are also correct on climate change. I'll take science over nonsense any day.

"certainly fits your world view Cossomby. Just don't insult anyone's intelligence by calling it scientific."

runner, you insult our intelligence every day you post on this forum.

If you're not insulting the person you're addressing, then you're dismissing or mangling any scientific consensus that don't match your religious-political stance.

You don't speak from "knowledge" (or even the desire to seek out information on that which you know nothing about, but on which you pontificate)..you speak from "belief" - and an ability to shut your mind and not even contemplate anything which does not match your particular version of faith.

If I was you, I wouldn't lecture other people about what's scientific and what's not.....your mind appears to be akin to a canary in a cage, who upon noting that someone has left the cage door open, prefers to cringe inside and not to take flight to the real world.

The former Environment Secretary attacked a so-called ‘green blob’ at the heart of Government yesterday – accusing Whitehall officials and ministers of raising energy prices for the poor. Owen Paterson said their support for flawed wind and solar power cost billions and made electricity and gas needlessly expensive. He said the ‘green blob’ included civil servants and quangos in thrall to the climate change and environmental lobby. Speaking to the Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank, Mr Paterson claimed the effects of climate change had been ‘consistently and widely exaggerated’, and policies to encourage onshore wind farms will cost £1.3trillion by 2050. --Daniel Martin, Daily Mail, 16 October 2014