As for the climate, ownership of the sky is a real stretch…. and my imagination is about as elastic as they come.

stay well
BJ

You’re misrepresenting and / or misunderstanding my position. I am not an anarchist; I am a Libertarian. There is a very real need for Government, courts, Police, etc. - and part of that is to uphold a framework of common law, so that people can take legal action against those who cause them material harm, be it through selling faulty products, pollution, etc. etc.

You “Caveat Emptor” types are pathetic… as if you’d have a snowballs chance of defending yourself against a corporation that sold you something like a Pinto or flammable PJ’s without the help of the government… as if the whole world could suddenly change and make human business organizations act more responsibly than individual humans that make them up. The BALANCE of government versus business has to be maintained and where it fails, the society follows. Please pay attention to the word BALANCE as well as to the implied opposition. No corporation has any duty to do anything but make money for its shareholders.

BJ

what is wrong with “economics as if people mattered”? it sounds great.

Groups and people who believe in AGW are a very broad church, and run the full range of political opinion from Greenleft to respectable sustainable business networks, major intergovernmental bodies, august scientific bodies, the UN, NGOs, and very many right-wing pro-business people, including Tony Blair.

The fact that you say that Tony Blair is anti-growth and anti-industry just goes to show that everything else you say is heap of steaming …

> In an article in The Observer late last year, Geoffrey Lean suggested
> that the proposals of Fritz Schumacher, whose ideas were launched 25
> years ago, merited much closer attention than they were accorded.
>
> Schumacher, a German-born, naturalised Briton, had formally
> enunciated in his 1973 book Small is Beautiful theories first published in
> The Observer in 1965. According to Lean: “His ideas swept the world.
> But the movement he founded … has curiously failed to take off.”
>
> Schumacher’s approach was certainly unorthodox. Strangely for an
> economist, he attacked the convention of considering the soundness of
> an industrial or commercial project on the basis of whether it was
> economic or uneconomic, insisting that there was a deeper,
> metaphysical aspect to such questions which outweighed ordinary
> material considerations. He envisaged a higher science — he called
> meta-economics — whose principles are conveyed by the sub-title of his
> book: A study of Economics as if People Mattered. He argued that giving
> overriding weight to the needs and circumstances of the people when
> taking economic decisions would not only bring a much-needed breath of
> humanity into a cold, conscience-less science, but would give new hope
> of solving the world’s basic social problems.

You say “university funded”. Do you mean that the universities in question are commercial entities that make money to spend on research - or do you *really* mean taxpayer-funded? If the latter, just how independant do you think their research will really be?

Haven’t got time to look into the rest (at the moment). I will get back to it though.

http://www.realclimate.org
these are university-funded scientists, not associate with any NGO.

and the national academies of science. What’s their bias? http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf

What about today’s herald, for example.
please inform us about the bias of this scientist who has just published this paper. And also,while you’re there, tell us about the bias of the Independent and Geoffrey Lean.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10385259

Restrictions on CO2 & other emissions are a godsend to such groups, who rightly see such restrictions as a gigantic boat-anchor slowing down (or even reversing) growth in Western countries.

GreenLeft.org.au is a great example; note their prominent links to Communist organisations, and the image of the mass-murderer Che Guevara on their banner.

Whenever you’re investigating a claim, try to look beyond the spin. That warning applies equally to claims by oil-company executives, and claims by tree-hugging communists.

Take your arguments to the climate scientists. It’s all full referenced and whatever your question they will probably answer it. I’m sure you’ll be able to give a full reference rebuttal of everything they say there. Do let us know how you get on.

The IPCC is made up of about 1500-2000 people, drawing on a vast number of studies about oceans, clouds, forests, icecaps, rainfall, snowfall, meteorology, etc etc etc.

They have decided that climate change is happening and that we are causing it. This despite the efforts of the fossil fuel industry to lobby against their conclusions.

And, if you refuse to acknowledge the UN, then 17 National academies of science agree. And Last year 11 national academies from the G8 countries (the UK, the US, Canada, Italy, Japan, Russia, France, Germany), plus Brazil, India and China came out and said that the science said that climate change was happening and we are causing it through the burning of fossil fuels.

The Royal Society - in the UK and here, all agree. Every country that has signed the Kyoto Protocol agree.

Oh, but no! Hold your horses! Augie Auer, Bob Carter and Vincent Gray, three scientists (last peer reviewed published papers on climate when???) say that it’s not happening!

Stop all action. Continue to pump shit into the atmosphere. Bring on the fossil fuels. Pump the oil dry. Dig up the coal. Buy SUV’s. Don’t save energy. Cut down the windfarms.

Because Augie Auer, that INCREDIBLY distinguished, internationally renowned climate scientist who’s been a pioneering scientist in the area of climate, doesn’t believe it.

Augie, Vince and Bob, and their mates Owen and Brian (none of whom have any links to the fossil fuel industry, definitely not!) say it’s not happening, so we’d better believe them.