Hardly, it has just begun:

GreenpeaceGate

HansenGate

Cooking the Books

4 Gates of the Apocalypse

But then I guess all that is left of the religious AGW is slander, slurs and lies.

What?  It's not like it would clash with all the horseshit we teach regarding history.  The entire subject from kindergarten to college is utter bollocks.  Since we've doomed ourselves into repeating history, over and over and over, we might as well apply the same standards to science.  Anything someone makes up should be included.

The more I've read about this issue, the more convinced I've become that the 'problem' is not so much with the science as it is with the notion of an 'IPCC.'  It's a fundamentally political institution, created by a political body (the UN) under entirely false pretenses at worst (foolish pretenses at best), the favor of which has become as important (to many) as the science, if not more so.

I know of no other scientific discipline that has allowed itself to be seduced by such a process, and for, by now obvious, good reason.  No one should really be surprised that such a process has led to such behavior, powerfully influenced by the understanding that there is a single 'referee' - politicization of the science was virtually inevitable.  Trying, through a vehicle such as IPCC, to impose order on the (normal & healthy) chaos of science was doomed from the beginning.

A climate change is occurring, ask the pacific island countries that are going underwater. Polar ice caps are shrinking. Change is occurring. But why? And what do we do about it?

CO2 levels are rising, of that there is no doubt. Ecosystems will change in response, for example increased CO2 translates to increased acidity in the oceans, which translates to increased stress on corals and shell producing organisms. Increased CO2 will benefit plants that make maximum use of CO2.

There is alot of change in ecosystems around the world, overfishing seems to be leading to jelly swarms, humans are polluting and overusing water supplies and acid rain has been around for years. Apparently you can go to any ocean in the world with a shifting device and scoop up heaps of plastic waste. Increased consumption, especially with more countries developing, will lead to more damage and change.

Even if climate change is not due to human activity we are screwing things up for our future generations due to our appetite for consumption.

Your right, while I choose not to use air-con and not to use heating in winter I do consume more than my fill, simply because I live in a western society. I drive my car and scooter alot (1.3L Nissan Micra and 125cc Honda, both very cheap) and out household has 3 laptops and a TV. Our house is rented and constructed in an energy inefficient way. We want to build our own home using strawbale and have a composting toilet. We would love to include solar and wind energy into our home. We will have two goats to mow the lawn, to go along with the three chicken we have for eggs.

So yes, the entire worlds population couldn't live like me, simply because there is not enough materials to support what I (and my share of my society) have. But I am part of a movement to change away from excess and I do my part.

I don't know about going back to the stone age, any reduction would be beneficial.

This thread is still going, eh? And I still am seeing a lot of crappy media articles being thrown around still.

I only read the one about Antarctic ice (didn't have much time), but talk about a huge pile of misquoted exerpts that miss the context completely. Here is a transcript from Dr. Ian Allison (the scientist that pretty much the article is based on).

http://www.aussmc.org/documents/IanAllisontranscript.pdf

Almost all of the quotes in that article takes things he said out of context. The article titled "Antarctic ice is growing not melting away" has a completely different tone than his actual transcript. If you read his transcript (which is not out of context) you will understand Dr. Ian Allison's take on Antarctic ice melting and how he clearly feels that Antarctic melting is going to contribute to sea level rises and that it is definitely shrinking in mass. Yet, if you were to read that article that Dr Guy posted, you'd come away thinking that Dr. Ian Allison thinks the southern ice cap is actually growing.

Yet another misleading media article that takes a scientists words and twists them. And I like how Dr Guy says "please research" as if looking up media articles counts as research.

I gotta go.

I see you cannot even take your own medicine.  And please re-examine the referenced quote.  I dont care if antartica is turning purple!  But one thing they all show is it aint melting!  So take your own advice and RTFM.

Yes, your response was.  Please do better next time.

Funny, I thought environmentalists were to blame for the increased forest fires, at least in my state.  There are significant prohibitions on brush clearing in my state, which means a great deal of dry brush builds up every summer, and every summer a fire or two starts.

And would you prefer "sustainable growth"?  Growth is growth, and sooner or later you will hit the limits.  Our only real option is to expand into space.  A zero-growth policy would only work if every single nation on Earth enforces it, and I seriously doubt that will happen.  If the West adopts such a policy, do you think the Middle East and Asia will go along with it?  No, they would keep on expanding and eventually overrun the West.  What will happen to democracy in that situation?

Increased forest fires due to increased temperatures. Here in Aus we have had some bad fires and fire authorities recently published maps showing how increasing temperatures like we have seen will result in more areas at risk of forest fires (bush fires as we here would say) and existing areas at greater risk.

I don't have the answers to humanities problems, that doesn't stop me from seeing the problems. We can't sustain our growth and with China and India, the worlds two most populous countries, becoming more like wester society in terms of consumption this will only become more apparent. And yes, given the dog eat dog world we currently live in slowing down only leads to our competitors advantage and our loss.

Its easy to dream.....

What Dr Guy said.

Haha, I love it. I go and use the same argument that you and others have been using and you in turn say that it is a crap argument. Brilliant.

Gee, that sounds really familiar.

You then go and link to articles that do nothing to prove that the antarctic isn't melting. Two of the articles talk about sea level rise trends (or lack there of). This does nothing to prove that the ice isn't melting as sea-based ice will not cause any sort of sea level rise (as has been said many times throughout this thread). So showing that there hasn't been much sea level rise after ice shelves have melted in the antarctic proves nothing. The other one is regarding the eastern shelves that have not receded and are considered stable. You've linked to a lot of articles about that same subject, to "prove" that the entire continent of Antarctica is stable. Some shelves are stable, yes. That doesn't account for the entire continent as a whole. What you haven't talked about is the GRACE data which can measure the continent as a whole and has shown that the continent has been losing ice (taking into account the stability of the Fimbul shelf). Further more, much of the stablization of the eastern shelves is in part due to localized climate stability in the region, partly which has to due with the weakened ozone layer above Australia and that region. More energy is being let back out into space which results in a weaker warming effect in that region.

In fact, even in one of the very articles that you linked to says the following in it:

The SEAFRAME network, however, also plays a critical role in contributing to a regional and international early warning capability for climate change. For example, there is a lag from when the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice expanses starts to have a significant impact on global sea levels, and the SEAFRAME network will enable us to detect the early stages and monitor the ongoing trends of those impacts on sea level change in the South Pacific region. We may be detecting those early stages now, but they may not yet be discernable from the prevailing short-term trends.

So they even state that their study does not do anything currently to prove or disprove the effects of ice melt and that due to the lag their findings don't do anything to explain what the current ice situation is like at the southern ice cap. If ice continues to melt, and in turn land-based ice starts to melt, then their study will shed some light as to how sea level rise will be as a result. But, you take irrelevant studies and try to link them to theories that have nothing to do with those studies. They didn't make those absurd connections...you did!

Finally, scientists have also been using seismographs to understand the movement of ice and have found that a lot of land based ice has been shifting recently. Think of it like a bookshelf with bookends on each side. Western Antarctica being one end and Eastern Antarctica being the other. Just because one side is stable and the other isn't, doesn't mean that if you remove one side, then the books will still be stable. That just isn't true. They're showing a lot of instability and even if one side is stable and on the other side all the ice shelves are collapsing, that will still lead to a lot of land-based ice that could be at risk.

Why is it that you've ignored the GRACE data? In fact, the GRACE data is probably our most accurate look into the shifting ice mass in the antarctic.

Important points:
-Sea level rise does nothing to summarize the current ice melt situation in Antarctica and won't for quite some time.

-Just because the eastern shelves are stable does not mean that the continent as a whole is.

Wikipedia for the reaction. To show that while you say increased CO2 will actually form bicarbonate and thus cause the alkalinity of the ocean to increase, in actual fact that may not occur because the preceding compound, carbonic acid, maybe the dominant compound.

Take a look at http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/Caldeira_Science_Anthropogenic%20Carbon%20and%20ocean%20pH.pdf

Quick summery, increased CO2 in atmosphere does decrease ocean pH. Published in Nature, 425 (6956): 365–365.

I decided to find a paper on CO2 effects on oceans, took the easy route and checked the wikipedia Ocean Acidification page, went down to the references and there it was. I wouldn't trust wikipedia 100% either, thats why I look at their references. Yes its only one paper, but it does at least give an indication of the potential size of the problem.

I think its a bloody big bet to be making for our children, that everything is ok with the amount of CO2 we put in the environment because it is having no real effect. I don't think anyone here is actually going to change anyones mind, for every pro article there is a negative article, for every pro article there is the point that climate data not supporting climate change has been ignored and for every negative article there are adgenda's (eg big oil donation to climate skeptic groups).

I can't say I've been swayed from my opinion, that we don't really know what we are doing and that we should take the safe option and slow down to find out.