I used to think that it was probably warming a little (we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age), but that we probably had little effect on the temperature. I also suspect that a little warming is probably a good thing what with more arable land and longer growing seasons. The Midieval Warm period being a model for what we might expect to see.

But, not it’s not clear that it’s even been warming. In emails to each other, they admit that it hasn’t warmed for about 9 years in clear violation of their models.

New things out that are interesting:

Some geo-magneticists put together their own dataset when CRU wouldn’t cough up the raw data. Their data shows no warming.

Some outside scientists have gotten the raw New Zealand data and it again shows: no warming.

Apparently the CRU guys were intentionally not correcting for the Urban Heat Island Effect.

The geologic record shows periods of very high CO2 with no associated warming and periods of warming with low CO2.

Government rebates and silly ETS will hopefully become a thing of the past as “cleaner” methods become more competitive.

To double-check, I scanned the RealClimate site (they go through most of the skeptics’ arguments at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/#Responses), and I found this about the Medieval Warm Period: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/werent-temperatures-warmer-during-the-medieval-warm-period-than-they-are-today/.

I agree wholeheartedly that permaculture is an excellent response to a number of other concerns as well, e.g. energy scarcity, pollution, water issues, biodiversity, etc. etc. Not sure that we can just “get the technology cheaper than oil and the problem goes away” though. It takes more than just money to produce renewable energy infrastructure. The production of devices to capture and store renewable energy is itself very energy-intensive, and it’s not at all clear that we can use solar or wind energy, for example, to create enough solar panels and windmills to meet the world’s energy needs. After all, the production of such devices involves mining for metal, for example, and those gigantic vehicles are not running on rechargeable batteries, that’s for sure.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much for these technologies – it’s just that I expect events in time will adjust our expectations for us, bringing energy demand into synch with actual supply).

As for Copenhagen, I too have rather low expectations that anything that actually makes a difference will come out of it. It’s not the communists I worry about, but obfuscation, posturing and boondoggles to feed the (already obese) fat cats. If they can displace poor people in the 2/3 world in order to replace intact ecosystems with monoculture biodiesel plantations (and call it forest so as to get carbon credits), they’ll pat each other on the back and call it saving the environment.

It wont effect Copenhagen, nothing will happen there, governments are broke. No-one can afford cap and trade or carbon taxes. Yes there are communists and others trying to takeover the world at Copenhagen. So what? They’ve always been there and always been vocal. They’re dangerous because their plans may get up and will fail, blocking real solutions in the process. Its the technology and ecology that matters, get the technology cheaper than oil and the problem goes away. Build robust diverse productive ecologies and climate change does no damage.

Yes I’m a sceptic about CO2 driven climate change, I know too much about the Medieval Climate Optimum, temperatures 1 to 3 degree’s warmer, known through records, sediment and pollen analysis. Yet there was no catastrophes, extinctions or sea level rise seen.
There are far better reasons to shift to sustainable agriculture and sustainable energy. Never tie yourself to a single issue or cause. If it goes down, so do you.

some know less than others… I have read so many conflicting believes and predictions in so many areas of our lives and environment that I have made up my mind… Permaculture is the way to go no matter whether the climate will cool or warm, inflation/deflation, muslim/christion, complex society collapse or not, whether we run out of oil soon or have 20 more years to go or not. Increasong diversity, decreasing compmlexity and ongoing food security – you can hardly argue against that… right?

So get out there and Permaculture..

Monbiot’s point is that exactly that – the kerfuffle over the hacked emails is a blow for ‘his side’ not because it actually disproves their argument, but rather in the sense that many people on ‘the other side’ immediately go “AHA! There we have it! It was ALL a hoax, there is no climate change, and in any case climate has always changed without our help, and they can’t prove that humans are causing any of it and actually the world is cooling, not warming and whatever you say is just part of the big conspiracy to install world government!”.

Just because politicians may want to capitalize on the issue and may suggest counterproductive responses (typically ones that reinforce the influence of politicians), and just because big (and not so big) business will look for ways to milk this for profit, that doesn’t mean we should stop listening to scientists. Business will always look for ways to coopt any popular cause, even anti-corporate ones (“Anarchist t-shirts, now made entirely of organic hemp, only $29.99!”).

@Adrian I – yes, climate changes naturally, going through cycles and experiencing intermittent sudden events (volcano eruptions, etc), even without human intervention. All climatologists worth their salt acknowledge this and have described it in detail. The issue is our additional impact. I mean, it’s like a bunch of people in a boat who get rowdy and the boat looks like it is going to tip – does it make sense to say “It’s not us. All boats rock in the waves. It’s all natural”?

As for the idea that the scientific community used to say back in the seventies that it was global cooling we needed to worry about, wasn’t it mostly the popular press that warned of that? I don’t know of many climatologists who did.

@Wheeds – “vested interests”? Who’s got the bigger vested interests? Scientists looking to max their research funding (measured in five to seven digit dollar sums) or fossil fuel business (with profits measured in nine, ten or eleven digit dollar sums) and their hired scientists?

For those who think governments are behind the movement to mitigate climate change, note that most politicians, while pandering to the public in their speeches, have actually been actively putting the brakes on concrete measures, trying to get away with doing as little as possible about the problem. They mostly seem to answer to the people who fund their campaigns.

As for your assertion (@Wheedz) that “the global warming data was false” – No, the emails do not show that the full body of scientific findings underpinning the AGW position was falsified, only that a small part of the data was manipulated.