I can see Paul is going to run an endless series of these. Appeal to ridicule is a good debating technique. Appeal to hypocrisy is good too.

However the global atmosphere doesn't undertand the foibles of human society and will integrate the effects of the various physical forces regardless of what we're laughing about.

None of this affects the true science of the issue which will inevitably be what it will be.

So Paul's risk management approach to say for example - drought stricken Australian farmers who are desperately trying to make a risk managememt caluclation on tactical, strategic and structural issues is I assume (by default):

(1) the CO2 sensitivity is very mild
(2) there will be consequent atmospheric circulation changes you cannot cope with
(3) you may use the last 120 years of climate records for your risk calculations

You see some people do need to treat the issue seriously as opposed to those having a media jolly.

You're disingenuos Luke - you know that CO2 emissions will keep on rising. Even if we reduced man-made CO2 emissions to zero now, it would be at least 50 years before there would be any impact, and then only if CO2 was a big factor. Do farmers farm in the after-life?

The Chinese are burning a third of the world's coal - global CO2 emissions are going up, up, up. Unilateralism is for dummies and water melons.

Luke, I thought it was a great little post from Paul ... and yes, it made me laugh!

If their reports cause people to reduce emissions that exceed their own emissions getting there, can they claim offsets?

What's that have to do with anything? You're sitting in a benign climate where this is all just a big joke with your mates at the Scientific Alliance shotgunning all "greenie" or enviro-science stuff and feeling chuffed about it.

Some people like Aussie framers do have to make decisions about the next 30 years. Australian goverment has to make policy decisions about invest and defend or retreat, move and restructure out 100 years. When you're sitting in a Treasury funding endless streams of cash out the door in drought aid this issue stops to being funny. These people aren't interested in Al Gore or Greenpeace - they want to know what CSIRO, BoM and Hadley Centre seriously reckon and why. What are the knowledge gaps. What's the risk profiles. Consequences of being in or out or trading. Structrual decisions involving billions. Errors of being wrong in too low or TOO HIGH.

You need to do a stint on the drought support hotlines - it will wipe that smirk right off your face.

Chinese are indeed burning heaps of fossil fuels. That's why clean coal sequestration technology is important.

If you take the unilateralism view and everyone goes "you first" - well nothing would ever change. Keeping the Chinese at the table is important. And the Chinese do know that lead in Mattel toys is bad karma for business. They do know a smoky hazy Beijing is bad for Olympic business. They are part of the world not separate.

The point is Paul that climate for you is a big game where you get to throw rocks at another field of science and dream that you're Galileos.
But you're really just kidding yourselves. You're not seriously involved in this issue.

You talk about being disengenuous - this issue is a game for you.

Paul & Co should come to Canberra, the drought Capital downunder or visit some farmers closer to Wilpena Pound.

Here is a fun tour through Paterson’s Curse!

http://www.woodseys.com.au/flinders.html

I have a graph which shows Southern Hemisphere Temperatures about the same as 28 years ago. The planet is currently about half a degree COOLER than a year ago, and the sun has just gone terribly quiet.

Do we really have a problem?

Let's see the graph !

Doug, 'half a degree cooler than a year ago'?

Wow, problem solved. And to think, all this time we just forgot to check what the temperature was last year.

Lets all go home, leave the 4x4 running in the garage, stock the 3rd fridge full of beer and run the plasma and air-con all day. Phew...

Can we now add Paterson's Curse (Salvation Jane) to the list of "bad things that are caused by global warming"?

It strikes me that if NASA could fake the Moon landings in 1969, NBC should be able to fake the appropriate Polar or Equatorial backdrops in 2007.

I see Luke is at it again, blithely ignoring the widely accepted Great Pacific Climate Shift of 1976 in his rush to blame humans.

The climate shift, short and sharp, has resulted in less cold water upwelling in the eastern Pacific and this means that El Nino conditions have been favoured since that time.

No sign of any human involvement in this climate change mate!

The Great Pacific Swindle goes nowhere near explaining what's occurring. And perhaps the decadal signal isn't anything but red noise. So confident John - so dismissive of all the other bits that you keep ignoring. Changing Indian Ocean, warming Tasman, SAM, more evaporative flux during drought, less frost.

Wonder how you could get a La Nina after this Big shift. In any case the IPO which is much more relevant kicked out in 2000.

The decadal signals if they occur modulate - they don't control.

But all by the by - still doesn't help your MDB farmer or your Treasury walla does it? Do you have any recommendations John besides rocks?

http://www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=46230

http://www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=46229

http://www.farmonline.com.au/news_daily.asp?ag_id=46228

Paul Williams,

Stop this rubbish about NASA faking the lunar landings.

The first thing the astronauts did on the moon was to put a laser retroreflector a short distance from the lander.

We have been bouncing laser pulses off it ever since. This enabled an enormous incease in accuracy and precision of geodetic measurement, to the unmeasurable benefit of mankind.

That cannot be faked.

Pete, I guess irony doesn't go down too well on this blog!

irony, moronic jokes... fine line really

Doesn't any of this embarrass the WARMongers at all? Com'n guys, self criticism is the first step to enlightenment. It was compulsory in the best Communist circles, so they tell me.

Settle down Everyone.

They are all flying Goreways, the Green way.
They give me greenbacks and I invest their money in me and as I am completely carbon absorbing( I eat 6 million cows a day), the entire thing is not carbon neautral it is actually carbon negative.

Also they are flying using Goregas, a special type of av gas, which is provided by me in my pants. (for those scientifically interested I has had a sphincter valve for extremely high octane inserted). This is called Cattle Gas carbon conversion.

Gaia's peace be upon thee.

Paul, I agree it is absurd. point made, moving on....

Re see the graph.

I can't post it on this site, but try

http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Archibald/climatepastandfuture2.pdf

As far as the cooling is concerned, because tropical temperatures tend to be nearly invariant, this figure [ a global average] is increasingly geared as you move towards the poles, so is more significant than it looks.

For the graphs, try http://pm-esip.nsstc.nasa.gov/amsutemps/

Use the lowest altitude as the proxy for surface temps.

Better hope the sun does not stay quiet, otherwise the human race is in for a nasty [cold] shock.

Forget the obscure destination AGW-contributing junkets and just update the freakin proxies. The usual catastrophic AGW suspects around here still don't get it (DUH!); 4AR had little/no proxy confirmation post 1980's catastrophic warming warming, and NO PROXY "UPDATED" RECONSTRUCTIONS THAT CONFIRMED 1990's as warmest decade in 1300 years!

So spend just a little of that Matt Lauer & GCM models money on an underpaid grad-student and an auditor to do the tree-, ice-, sediment- and other-coring to verify the proxies one bases this religion on are any good. 4AR demanded and failed to get it (right Lil' Lukefish?) ... 5AR now demands it again. By the time they're done, solar cycle 24 might finally have started and alibi-Mike will quit hedging the next few years of global T anomaly downtrends.

Come on Luke - show us how much Australia needs to reduce carbon emissions, by when, the effect on temperature, rainfall etc, by when?

Paul Williams, I was laughing! Thanks, Jen

Doug:

I wouldn't put any confidence in any graph Archibald produces - why at the bottom. Shonkiferous.

If you look at the lower troposphere here you will get a different more comprehensive picture.
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html

If you want to get all the MSU data sets - all 3 here and stratified by zones.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/msu.html - graph your own.

http://n3xus6.blogspot.com/2007/02/dd.html
n3xus6.blogspot.com/2007/05/holy-train-wreck-batman.html
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/my-model-used-for-deception/

Quickdraw McCall - what twaddle - so you want them to rebore and recore everything to suit you. Has measuring temperature suddenly become a different etchnology in the 90s. What a load of indulgent bunk. "oooo - oooo all the physics of measurement changed in the 90s". "Extrapolation impossible". ROTFL to the nth power.

Biggsy - wrong question and sophistic in nature.

We're climate takers not makers in Aussie. And we're adversely affected by climate variability more than anywhere else on the planet. This is the El Nino subduction zone. Ground zero. The El Nino comes ashore at Point Danger near Surfer's Paradise.

If we do nothing as a nation we have no street creds internationally.

We can provide China with solar, nuclear fuel and clean coal technology.

We can provide proactive international scientific, technological and policy engagement.

We won't cripple our economy and be hair-shirted.

We will see an explosion in clean energy generation if we get rid of the denialist creeps and set some market incentives. We can make good export money out of this and I'd rather have our own than be buying Exxon's latest change of heart technology from our US "friends".

We can sell biosphere carbon stores in our big landscapes given correct non-denialist non-Liberal Govt policies.

We need good climate science on risk management for now and the future. The climate science can inform both now and the future. We can make a global contribution here.

We have major policy decisions and infrastructure decisions to make - hold the line, or retreat, or reform, or invest or move or diversify?? All need calculations.

The negative nihilistic denialists offer nothing. No information, no wealth, no security, no technology, no calculations, no certainty and no future.

You didn't answer my question, Luke.

It's irrelevant.

Also while you guys have been funding funny legal attacks on diversions like Al and attending meeting in white hoods with burning crosses - all serious governments and big business have moved on.

You guys are cold war warriors - out of time and out of the debate, locked in a past era.

You're not in the big policy swim - they're ignoring you. Why - your science is ratshit. Hissinkian even. Archibaldwin in nature.

Luke - could you keep off the magic mushrooms before posting!