I am for clean energy and technology. I believe as Rachel Carson did, that corporations should pay for the clean up of the environment and not the consumer who purchased the products.We pay a Carbon Tax and the polluters keep polluting....makes no sense.

Every couple of years over the past decade we are shown images of receding permanent ice caps, both north and south.Melting glaciers and snowless mountain peaks. But the tidal records for Fort Dennison in Sydney from 2000 to 2010 show a lower than average high tide point than the previous 100 years...where did the water go?

Nathan, rehctub here again, just a correction, when I said inherit a Mach better environment than we did, what I should have said is, if we hadn't acted as we did in the 70's and 80's.

You do need to check who is showing you those images sonofgloin. It is definitely best if you only trust the satellite ones, including temperature. The others get "corrected" every few months.

Just the other day we had some "scientists" probably as part of a grant application, screaming the Antarctic sea ice is melting.

This is interesting when the satellite story is we have had an increase of almost a million square kilometres more sea form there in the last few years.

The bleating was that a warmer ocean would melt it from underneath, & raise the sea level some tens of meters.

They really must be talking only to people who believe Labor party economics. Anyone else understands that frozen or melted, floating sea ice doesn't effect sea level.

It really is important these days that when some academic is talking, you only listen with a pinch of salt, & another tinny in hand, otherwise you may take them seriously.

Hasbeen I think you misunderstood what they were saying. The problem isn't the sea ice, but rather the land ice. Ice melting on land raises the sea level. It also reduces the local salinity of the sea slightly, particularly near the surface (as fresh water is less dense than salt water). This makes it easier to form sea ice in the winter.

No Aidan, it is they who must miss understand.

Yes I know they said land ice, but they also said it was the warm ocean under it, that they claimed was melting it. I do understand they are academics & concepts that only sea ice has ocean water under it may be a bit advanced for them, but we do try not to laugh in their faces.

I think they may be as confused as the ship of fools, who were trapped in the ice they told us had gone.

With all the bulldust in the media there must be a new funding round, & a big fly in fly out conference, with a cast of millions, just around the corner.

I'm getting worried. A few more years of pause, & a few more frigid winters up north, & the best joke in decades will be finished. Who/what will we have to laugh at then?

No, Hasbeen, the misunderstanding is on your part. There is some water under the ice on the land, though we don't yet know how much. If there's a lot of it then global warming's more of a problem because it reduces friction between the ice and the rocks so the ice will reach the sea more quickly.

Rising sea levels (from thermal expansion as well as from melting ice) will mean more seawater will get under ice that's currently on land, which could be an even bigger problem because of its salinity and temperature, meaning it will melt the ice more quickly.

And the recent melting of the ice shelves (where the sea ice remained all year round) has also resulted in faster movement of ice from the land to the sea.

What would it take to convince you that what you've regarded as a joke is a very serious problem? Or are you so arrogant that you think you're always right regardless of the evidence?