Yeah, why have the earth's temperatures not risen in 10 years and in fact has fallen slightly? Why has the ice on the north pole increased this year? Why has the sea levels not risen at all recently? Why is the area of Bangladesh growing? Where is the evidence linking global warming with man made CO2? Let's export our jobs, put up power costs by 30%, fuel prices by 15 cents and the price of everything else we use by 10% on the say so of some scientists and their computer models.

Bobby, you have been listening to the outer, uninformed element who have vested interests in coal and oil and not looking at the facts as they have been proven over the last decade. If you were to read mainstream publications like Scientific American, Science, New Scientist and similar magazines on a regular basis, you would find that every statement you have made is false in more ways than one. If you want serious information, read publications such as "Nature" and the "Journal of Climate". If you had you would have seen first hand reports of huge slabs of the Antarctic ice shelf dissapearing, the almost clear passage that is now evident through the once impassable North-West Passage above Canada, the photographic and satelite evidence of the Greenland ice shelf melting and many other confirming facts concerning global warming. You would also know that because the CO2 levels have risen so high, the Arctic AND Antarctic waters are becoming acidified due to the rising levels of CO2 that is dissolving into the cold water and causing shelfish to lose the ability to grow their shells. If you had read these things, you would also know that the oceanic acidification is slowly moving towards equatorial waters and that when it gets to Queensland, the Barrier Reef will start to disappear. So I would suggest that you take your kids to see the Barrier Reef now, because it won't be there in a few years if we do nothing about CO2 emissions.

Hey Bobby, I would'nt go that far, remember the "millennium bug"??? According to most scientist, computer engineers, "Experts" etc. on January 1 2000 the sky was going to fall in!! Even the toaster in the kitchen was not supposed to work..... Every crack pot in the world had some very costly solution, computer programs, cleaners, data controllers, computer clocks fixers etc. What happened? N O T H I N G!! My very very very old machine built in 1984 is still humming away... not good for much but keeping my DOS skills up! The club in town uses a similar machine for the raffle every Thursday, 8 years after the world was supposed to end. Money to be made= con job!!

Socrates taught his students that the pursuit of truth can only begin once they start to question and analyse every belief that they ever held dear. If a certain belief passes the tests of evidence, deduction, and logic, it should be kept. If it doesn't, the belief should not only be discarded, but the thinker must also then question why he was led to believe the erroneous information in the first place.

A few years ago The New York Times ran a cartoon that showed two Washington DC policy experts having a conversation. "In Washington the search for truth is a creative process. First, you create a premise. Next you create a statistic to back it up. Then you create an audience by repeating it over and over again, until the media pick it up. That's when you know that you've done it."

"Done what?"

"Created a fact!"

Emission Control is political and nothing more!

Congratulations on this article which signals a major change in policy. If I was choosing a surgeon to operate on my child's brain I would want a brain specialist rather than a retired GP to do the job. There appears to be hundreds of retired engineers who believe they can speak with authority on the relatively new science of climatology. They denigrate the professionalism and question the motives of the scientists who spend all day every day studying the climate. No one has challenged the science published by the Australian Greenhouse Office more than the Carbon Coalition, but we have never had cause to doubt the excellence and integrity of the scientists, nor the intentions ofthe organisation. Readers who want to know what is behind the attacks on climate science in Australia should read two books: "Scorcher" Clive Hamilton, and “High & Dry”, by Guy Pearce.

11 of the last 13 have been the hottest on record, the north pole ice is by all accounts thinning and covering less area, Bangladesh land area is growing due to increased erosion as the glaciers that feed the rivers melt quicker in a hotter atmosphere, sure man can keep burning the candle in the bottle, don't metnion all the money spent on the war, or lost by AWB or the 17% increase in power costs at the start of 08, or the increse in everything because of mismanagement of your super funds in the sub prime market. All people want is to not bugger the planet and you are worried about a few cents - how about you consume less and you will not even notice the difference or is that too much like hard work, let's just keep being lazy because polluition is someone elses problem and it is all a left wing conspiracy to get the farmers of the land and give it back to the kangarooos, yep that sound more plausible than an international conspiracy.

And you guys believe we Aussies can make a difference with reducing our 1.5% co2? Pull the other one you guys (fools).

Zulu, I can't believe the total selfishness of this attitude. It's not about the global impact of our share of carbon pollution reduction, it's about sharing the cost of saving the planet, and for the incredibly wealthy first world nations (i.e. you and me) showing some leadership and willingness to shoulder our responsibility. After all, most of the troublesome CO2 was generated in the process of delivering us a favoured lifestyle compared with the rest of the world. We are beginning to realise the real cost, and it's time to pay the piper.

Perhaps somebody may believe the bloke that wrote the computer modeling programs. This story appeared in the Australian on the 18/07/2008. Dr Bob.

No smoking hot spot – The Australian 18/07/2008 David Evans | July 18, 2008 I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector. FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects. The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet. But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts: 1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it. Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever. If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again. When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot. Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you'd believe anything. 2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming. 3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling. 4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect. None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance. The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician's assertion. Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming. So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved. If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now? The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory. What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise. The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy. Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.

Zulu, international politics is a dynamic process, not a static process. Australia's decision to move on its emissions has greased the wheels for the global action we need. The second Australia ratified the Kyoto Protocol was the second the US was left as the only major developed nation on earth that had not ratified the protocol. Now look what is happening - both Obama and McCain have campaigned on taking on deep cuts in emissions and rejoining the international community. Now that the US is looking to move, China and India are beginning to move. China is predicted to have the highest level of renewable energy investment in the world next year and India has just released its National Action Plan on climate change which commits its per capita emissions to never exceed that of the developed world. The greater the cuts the developed world takes on the greater the action that India will take on its emissions. International politics is not a static process, it's a dynamic process. Australia's decision to address its emissions has set in motion the kind of action we need the world to take.