[Don’t know why that link looks like that - can’t fix it!]

In response, Prof Barry Brook advised:

This is quite correct - as I explain in seminar 1 of Climate Q&A, NASA’s GISTEMP extrapolates over a wider area of the Arctic land surface, and so tends to show a little more warming than the Hadley CRUT temperature series (which lists 1998 as the hottest year).

Of course Bolt gives James Hansen, one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists, a juvenile put-down:

Only one of the four, in fact, claims temperatures are still rising. That’s NASA, whose program is run by Dr James Hansen, Al Gore’s global warming adviser and a controversial catastrophist whose team’s reworking of data has been heavily criticised for exaggerating any heating.

First, Hansen wasn’t Gore’s GW adviser. Gore asked Hansen to cast his eye over his slide show, that’s all.

Second, most climate scientists thought Gore got the science pretty right.

Third, the reworking of data was a minor correction to the US record which nominally made 1934 the hottest year in the US rather then 1998. But the differences, both before and after were not statistically significant. Much ado about nothing!

I think the sea change in Australian attitudes occurred in the few months after the Al Gore movie was released. Not sure why, but.

Environmental awareness? vocal local scientists talking about it for years? publicity about the drought? water restrictions? [yes, I know the drought may not be a symtom of AGW].

Back (around 1989 I think) a similar sudden change occurred concerning recycling paper in big cities. The national debate about a proposed pulp mill in Tassie; concerns about possible toxic releases from a bleaching process there; the recognition that toilet paper (FFS) didn’t need to be made from bleached paper… Within a couple of months, waste paper recycling in Melbourne SHOT UP. (Schemes had been running at a low level for years…..). The APM plant at Fairfield couldn’t cope with the arrival of too many bales of waste paper for recycling.

Sudden awareness: immediate action by citizens. It can happen. I think it’s started already (in a small way) with CO2 emission reductions. Now the citizens look to their politicians to take further positive steps.

And for argument’s sake I would offer very generous terms to the time-series statistics adduced by AGW deniers. I would accept a lower level of confidence from AGW deniers than from proponents of AGW.

Your turn…

It’s the Vast Pagan Lefty Conspiracy to be precise, to drive us back to the caves and force us to knit our own clothes out of lentils or something.

Oh, and Greens = Hitler, according to Bolt. Truly repulsive.

I’m quite surprised by the level of AGW belief in Australia. Those numbers have to be some of, if not, the highest in the world. Bolt gets his hysterical columns published in the Herald Sun and the Courier Mail (combined readership of more than 500,000), and has his blog promoted all over news.com.au websites, as well as his regular appearances on the ABC and commercial TV. But few appear to be listening to him on the Vast Pagan Lefty Global Warming Conspiracy. Obviously, his audience is mostly laughing at him instead.

Is climate change occurring?

Yes - 84
No - 12
Uncommitted - 4

Labor - 91% yes
‘Coalition’ - 73% yes

Interesting age split too - 18-49 87%*, 50+ 78%

Not caused by human activity - 3

Uncommitted - 3

While the policy switch is not supported by many key players in shadow cabinet - including climate change spokesman Greg Hunt, Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop and Treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull - it is strongly backed by the right-wing of the party. These include frontbenchers Nick Minchin, Tony Abbott, Eric Abetz and a significant group of backbenchers including Western Australia’s Denis Jensen and NSW’s Concetta Fiervanti-Wells.]
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24093309-601,00.html

It is instructive that those expert in the politics of hate, spite and the extreme right wing are also the driving force for a LNP party policy of climate change denial. They are standing their shaking their fist at the sky, living in denial and determined to let their ignorance push the LNP further into irrelevance - which this stance will do.

Cue Obama, Gore and others around next election time.

Bolt either thinks that most governments of the world have been suckered by false science or some global conspiracy and, that his two seconds of Googling are superior to the vast majority of scientists.

Obviously Bolt’s position is nothing to do with science and everything to do with right-wing politics.

I look forward to his calling forth those minority of doctors who believe smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. Bolt would have had fun during those years denigrating the reports and analysis of the majority of scientists and doctors revealing the dangers of smoking.

Katz - in the meantime you could lead by example and say what you would need to observe to decide AGW is not happening.

Fair enough.

1. A persuasive argument that CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas.

or

2. A persuasive argument that human activity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (c. 1750) is not responsible for a majority of the measured major increase in atmospheric CO2.

Now it’s your turn.

You need to do 11 year averages, OLS (whatever that is) take a 30 year trend, squint your eyes and then…get any answer you want.

With due respect, chrisl, that’s not the case. You have to have a reason for selecting particular averages.