More specifically...

When Jones was asked this question about no statistically significant warming he replied "Yes, but only just". i.e. The certainty level had dropped below 95%... to 93%. In other words - there is a 7% chance that the planet had not warmed; that the warming observed could be put down to a noisy weather signal.

That's a SEVEN percent chance that as you put it "The world is NOT continuing to get warmer" is an accurate statement.

We in Australia can play around with ideas like low-energy futures - we'll be fine if we use the aircon less or ride a bike.

The problem is this vision also means less energy for most of the world, who don't enjoy our affluence. The world needs cheap and abundant energy so people can escape poverty and malnutrition, and dare aspire to a comfortable and enjoyable life.

Yep couldn't agree more. And folks have been living in big cities in hot places for a long time. Not us I'd hastily mention.

But one sees some very clever gadgets in the middle east and India for keeping life bearable - less so of late as the ubiquitous box airconditioner has made all sorts architectural crimes possible.

Going up actually makes excellent sense when you're trying to get airmovement - of cool courtyards pouring cool humid air into the surrounding towers... the Moors had this down pat and the influence is still obvious all over southern Spain.

Lord knows there might be even something we can do to lighten the burden of life in those high rise filing cabinets - specially if you can strap a turbine to them.

But yep - big cities have some benefits as well as costs.

Dense cities with continuous concrete nd asphalt also creates a heat island effect.

So increased air movement and cooling from 'going up' may well be nullified by the increased heating caused by building denser cities and suburbs.

So thanks Peter but no thanks!

LA has considered painting streets white! Problem with tall buildings also is the heat storage in their walls & roofs, so some cities, even Beijing, are opting for rooftop gardens.

Light coloured concrete, e.g. at pubic pools, still gets damn hot on a summer's day.

Such strategies are just cosmetic pi$$ing against the wind.

Oh I don't see too much asphalt happening in our cities if they are to survive at all. Or concrete for that matter what with its CO2 output - we'll be doing something else or nothing at all.

But there are some logistical benefits of cities that even cud-chewing bush dwellers like myself can see. Mostly things to do with movement, with transport, of people and things with economies of scale and efficiency of infrastructure ... Especially if there a lot of us.

And it's not impossible to pack a decent density into a small place - Venice is kinda cute. The tourists seem to think so anyway. And quite a few pop into Paris or lob into London. But no I wouldn't want to live there. Maybe Venice - I reckon I could cope with that.

But actually I think suburbs are a much more difficult and wicked problem. Short of wholesale demolition, I don't see any easy routes to making the urban sprawl of the last 50 years habitable.

Then perhaps we should compulsorarily acquire your rural property, fill it up with high rise appartments and of course you can have one of them for free.

Would you be OK with that Peter?

It is all very well to impose high density living on others when you have no intention of living with the personal and social consequences of it yourself.

There you go again Greg tilting at the wobbly windmills of your own imaginings.

Strangely, for some reason or another - mostly overwhelmingly economic - folks seem to like living in cities. More do than don't now.

And even if they all get an attack of common sense and go bush - chances are we will be stuck with the dubious heritage of our cities for a long while.

Hydroponics and aquaponics sound useful when it comes to asphalt and concrete incidentally and I've seen some extremely productive hydroponic gardens in converted multi-storey car parks. Cuba has also done some interesting things with bringing agriculture - particularly community agriculture - back into their cities. They had to.

But no it would ill-behove me with his rural idyll of a life here in Wollibuddha to be shoe-horning screaming residents into concrete filing cabinets. Nor was that my intent, strangely enough.

That unless you are considering slipping a few chapters of Exodus into your vision of the "Appoccolypse", a mass migration to a yawning suburban sprawl reaching from the Gold Coast to Melbourne ...then we will have to deal with cities and how to live in them.

And like I say - it's not all bad news. Not like our recent power addicted suburbs.

Greg Boyles wrote; " .... compulsorily acquire your rural property, fill it up with high rise appartments and of course you can have one of them for free." Your tone over high density living through the demand for exponential profit and growth is understandable. Walking backwards and looking at 'our' record it is not very encouraging.
On the positive side of this issue, many architects have been working toward humanising cities, by taking back streets from motor vehicles and 'form based building' designs. There is a growing trend in even in the US to develop whole communities with central density, that can be accessed by foot, convenient for business and empty nesters.
One of the most famous urban designers is worth listening to, Jan Gehl;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbp95LNgV_I&feature=share&list=PL1BE9A8FAB3FDA95D

Well given that city appartement sales have stalled in many of our capital cities, it seems clear to me that many Australians and many people who come to Australia don't want to live in high rise dog boxes.

So while your high rise appartments and greenhouses may be a solution for a small number of Australians it is clearly not an acceptible solution for the majority who still want their little bit of private land for their kids to play in!

And you haven't answered my question. Why aren't you setting the example by living in a high rise appartment yourself........hypocrit!

Look Greg the name calling really doesn't worry me at all - says more about you than me. But the spelling is too much to tolerate.

Editors ... can we have another principle - that's right not "principal" Greg - slipped into the community standard page please. Something along these lines: "when abusing fellow contributors to the Conversation's comments section, please ensure that your grammar, spelling and punctuation are of a decent working adequacy".

Just a note of reality here Greg - Australia - this one here - is the most urbanised country on earth. Try getting doctors to come and set down roots in Woolibuddha. They'd rather live in Elizabeth Bay, overlooking the water, with a string of yachts.

Aren't some folks plumb silly?

I would go right along with designing better more humanised housing developments etc etc.

But that is not what Peter and others are on about. They are more about turning our suburbs into glorified high rise slums as in Singapore and Hong Kong in order to maximise profit or maximise the number of asylum seekers we can accomodate.

At least King Cnut knew he couldn't hold back the tide. The deniers pick and choose media/inet comment and run with it. It is a little like debating creationists. There is a common misconception that scientific rigor, peer review and dissent means that the issue doesn't have "any" consensus.

This mantra about the past 16yrs having no "statistically significant" warming ignores the big picture seen when looking at an accurate graph of the past 120 years. The complexitiy of climate science means that it is a lot more than just temperature that should ring alarm bells. Change in the movement of water into an out of the atmosphere (more precipitation, less precipitation), change in ocean currents etc. Are none of the deniers worried about the loss of the ice caps or the potential health effects on them and their children?

"This mantra about the past 16yrs having no "statistically significant" warming ignores the big picture"

There is an interesting statistical significance calculator at Skeptical Science: http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php

Is Australia & the world warming?

The Climate Commission answers:

" Just because 2011 was cooler than 2010,... One or two cooler years does not provide evidence that warming of the Earth has stopped."

http://climatecommission.gov.au/questions/is-the-world-still-warming/

If not 'stopped', this 'pause' in warming was NOT forecast, modelled or predicted by any of the links you cite.

Matter of fact, NONE of the 'recommended sources' predict, model or forecast the end of drought in Australia (official):

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/its-official-australia-no-longer-in-drought-20120427-1xpsp.html

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/archive/20120405.shtml

As for the credibility of UN-IPCC/ WWF/Greenpeace/FotE activist reports of non-peer reviewed grey literature, good luck citing that.

I invite you to read Donna Laframboise:

http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/01/08/the-secret-santa-leak/

Consequently, in answer to your question, "And to those who shun climate science, I ask if they also shun enigneering, physics & biomedical science," the answer would have to be "yes", if said "experts" continually fail in their chosen line of work.

Liz Hanna wrote ; "I invite the doubters to read the scientific literature .... " Thanks for the effort.
The doubters do actually read scientific literature. However, without hard critical thinking it is pointless. A open mind or different perspective might work, hope is always there.

If as I suspect you are giving the authors a nudge towards the effects of ocean acidification - couldn't agree more.

Bit more to this than how comfy we feel. But after reading your previously posted links on acidification, the consequences - immediate inevitable - do not even bear thinking about. But it provides incontrovertible final proof of our impact on the place.

Perhaps this is what it takes to serve as a "warning". Hell of a way to learn isn't it?

Yep, Peter. Humans need bats to the head to wake up to reality, when thinking of that reality interferes with immediate comforts.
;]
At least in Scandinavia, they are very concerned with acidification, given their dependence on fisheries and damage already seen there.

David, I see paid or unpaid fibbers as an opportunity to get good info out to the rest of the folks here.

In essence, whether they're paid or not, the deniers/fact-avoiders are easily called out and dispensed with, to the benefit of others who may need more info.

It also drives any handlers of these few inconsiderate folks crazy to see that every time they puff themselves up, as if having 'gotchas' to drop on real scientists, they expose both their ignorance and motives.

The long, $-laden arms of scurrilous groups like Heartland, American Traditions, etc. really dislike exposure of their puppetry. Just look at how they reacted to the Glieck expose.
;]
Again, as a US citizen, I must apologize for our garbage groups like Heartland.

To add to what you pointed out Ivan ...

Give or take ... 86 million barrels of oil a day; 21 million tonne of coal a day and 9 billion cubic metres of gas is burned every day ... not counting bush fires, Amazon and the like burn-offs and fugitive gasses caused by mining (CSG and the like) ... all contributing to the C02e ...

I can't recall the scientist's name (deceased American), but he explained it like a bathtub, with water / C02 pouring in and the waste (the world's vegetation) as the waste releasing a similar quantity ... a balance; however, we have increased the flow in while restricting the waste out ...

If you referred to me, 'schoolroom eagerness' ... at 60, I am happy with that ... that fact is, verandahs and lattice do not a comfortable / energy efficient house make ... its to do with orientation, design and choice - and placement - of building materials

Yes, verandahs as such are usually wider than is optimal and a galvanised-iron vrandah will radiate down almost as much heat as it shades you from, but shading and airflow are part of the appropriate pacement of building materials.

Orientation is important, as is choice of materials, and their placement, but there is a lot more to it than those factors alone.

Having lived in a couple of places in Amsterdam that were unbearably hot from solar gain through their south-facing windows, I am familiar with some of the limitations of current "Green building" dogma.

John, it depends on what you're smoking at the time ... the use of double glazed in Europe is high (which captures heat) which is pretty much useless in Australia aside from the most extreme cold ...

I'd be more interested what you do know rather than what you're familiar with ... association is not the same as articulation in energy efficient home design and build ...

Double-glazed, north-facing, windows are commonly recommended and installed, in southern Australia.

Generic comments such s "useless in Australia" imply a similarity of climate across Australia, and across Europe.

"too little ... too late "

Now there's a leadership statement!

Consider the old, retired general, who'd asked his gardener to plant one of his favorite trees.

The gardener, holding the sapling thought and said: "But sir, you'll likely pass before this tree matures.".

The general replied: "Then we must not hesitate. Plant it at once".

...In case one misunderstands why successful generals are successful in getting things done that need doing.
;]
If Daniel wanted to contribute, he'd read up on the Carbon Cycle and realize that though we're now committed to thousands of years of adversity, doing nothing will guaranteed more than just "adversity". Our descendents are watching.\

A statement both courageous and true, for all populations.

Then why are you and 99,99% of the others in here afraid to acknowledge the elephant in the room?

Are you afraid you will loose your job if you speak out?

Or cop a bit of flack from morons like Peter Ormande?

"Then why are you and 99,99% of the others in here afraid to acknowledge the elephant in the room?"

Isn't that what he did?

It seems that I am the only one prepared to keep on population message as it relates to all these sustainability issues.

Everyone else seems to just fall into lock step on the 'cosmetic' fixes - solar, wind, cost,........ and largely ignore the population issue.

What ever we do with renewable energy sources, population reduction must be an integral part of the strategy.

Because I just don't see that any renewable energy sources can provide enough energy on their own without 'subsidization' by fossil fuel energy.

On the contrary Greg, though I havent mentioned that issue on this particular forum, I have on many occasions before indicated that population pressure is our fundamentally most serious problem to address. Trouble is that with so many nation stations, such disproportionate wealth and power influence, the question arises, how to you achieve serious population reduction fairly.

The population is already unsustainable but any serious population reduction policy is going to have serious political and economic implications. Our whole economic structure is built on increasing population, not reducing it.

It will probably be natural processes that will finally decimate our population, lest we find some cheap way of leaving the planet and living satisfactorily elsewhere. And that seems unlikely at this time.

Pandemics have been the most effective catalyst for temporary population reduction in the past. And with the number of unknown potential cross species viruses and bacteria exposing us to a myriad of potential new ailments for which we have no resistance through our increasing link with various fauna, it is very probable that one of these diseases will introduce an unprecedented pandemic that truly decimates our species back to a sustainable level or even less.

I just hope I dont live to see it because if it happens, civilisation will collapse and chaos will be the norm in communities, until an eventual balance is achieved. It will be a hard unsafe world.

Clearly we cannot promote third world population reduction through the barrel of a gun so to speak.

But also very clearly Australia could set the example and implement a zero net population growth policy and stop panerdering to developing world immigrants by providing THEM and their Nations with an easy option for dealing with their excess population, i.e. dump them in Australia.

Stop spending money of infratsructure and services demanded by our currently growing population and start increasing overseas aid, particularly contraception and family planing services.

As far as economic growth goes, the only way I can see it can be decoupled from population growth would be to abolish the federal reserve act and place the power to 'create' new money back in the hands of the federal government. Or at least equal (to the private banks) power to do so .

We need to get off this money as private bank debt titanic before it is too late.

If private banks can create new money simply by writing a loan amount into the borrower's loan account, then I see no reason what so ever why new money could not also be created by the government writing loan amounts (in a judicious manner) into its own accounts and then spending that new money on infrastructure, services and general job creation.

Perhaps we need to re-create a new nationalised bank along the lines of the Commonwealth bank before it was privatised.

War doesn't do a bad job of culling either Ron. Far too pacific of late obviously. Not enough WMDs. It's not enough just to be rude and unpleasant to refugees - we've gotta get proactive and thin the flock fmore decisively.

So who should we take out? - a large mob of skinny hard working poor brown folks who don't eat much or all these fat white rich folks who do nothing but eat. Decisions decisions.

Seems that for every complex problem there is an obvious and simple solution. And it is invariably wrong.

War can slow populations down but then you have a reaction after, such as the baby boom after WW2.

Besides in that short 1918-9 period when the Spanish Flu hit world wide (and a pandemic has to be continent or world wide), it is believed that significantly more people died than the combined number of people lost in war in WW1 and WW2 combined (and dont forget as many people at least die of disease in war as war wounds) ...something in the order of 100 million (a lot of articles suggest less but that's because they didnt have sufficient records to count the devastating effect in third world countries at the time such as China).

It is assessed for example that the impact of the Black Death in 1347-8 killed at least half the European population (no adequate records exist regarding its impact elsewhere). It wasnt until the mid to late 1600s that population levels returned to pre-1310 levels (I say pre-1310, because famine struck after that time and also decimated the population).

The population faltered and further reduced throughout the late 1300s, partly because the Black Death and famine kept coming back. It continued to do so until the mid 1600s. In fact its overall impact, its suggested, wiped out 2/3 of the population in total.

There were so few people remaining that the wealthy had to start paying serfs to work their property, thus bringing an end to feudalism and the introduction of capitalism.

Yes war temporarily reduces population but pandemics decimate populations. Its believed that the indigenous populations of the Americas and Australia were reduced by over 90% primarily as a result of European diseases such as small pox, measles, chicken pox, illnesses Europeans, through natural selection, had established an immunity generally to the worst impact of those illnesses. That's what we face with new cross species diseases of which we have no resistance. AIDS is chicken feed compared to what could be coming

I realise all that Ivan, but in the end it is irrelevant.

If the west halved its consumption tomorrow it would not suddenly cause the developing world to develop a global conscience and not follow our former wasteful example.

There would simply be a swap or roles. We would become responsible frugal consumers and the developing world would become wasteful consumers as we were. It is human nature. They want we we have had for decades and nothing will change that.

So if the developing world seeks to become rich like us then there simply must be far less of all of us. But the fact is that the developing world has by far the biggest obligation to cut its fertility.

We can do our bit by ending at least some of our outrageously wasteful, indulgent and entirely unecessary consumption.

We consume the amount of energy generated by burning ~3 cubic miles of oil each year.

"A Cubic Mile of Oil" is a good read. I know the author, who was trying to get a metric for our energy profligacy that people could grasp.

We did an alternate calculation. A top athlete can generate 1/2 horsepower for a while. That's about 373 Watts. If athletes could be found to work full out all day every day, at that rate, then we'd need 116 trillion of them working 24/7, including Xmas, just to do what burning that fuel does.

Now, if we give them 8-hour days, we'd need 348 trillion Olympic athletes, working hard 8/7, including on Australia Day.

Of course, no athlete can do that without food, water, bathroom breaks, etc. So let's figure 400 trillion would do the job.

But, where do 7 billion folks, about 1 billion malnourished, find food for 400 trillion more?

Our energy usage equals each of us having 400,000/7 slaves.

That may finally convey the absurdity of our 'modern' day, and its phantasmagoric unreality -- an unreality soon to collapse into reality.

Alex ... do you have a more detailed / extensive comparisons ?

Also, when I first read of the cubic miles, I thought it was 1.8 miles (which I converted to the 3 k's; the list then showed many comparatives including nuclear ... but world consumption is about 86 million barrels a day nevertheless ...

A link would be good (all my data is trapped on a corrupted hard-drive) ...

Alex .... I am prepared to fight, but with, not against you and would like the PDF

I believe you're wrong John ... pretty much all refugees come to Australia because of over-population / over-running natural resources ... otherwise they wouldn't leave ...

and even well educated ones (deceived by our government) come over to take up positions as well educated cleaners and taxi drivers (as their accreditation of country of origin is not accepted here) ...

As Peter Ormonde said, the numbers will continue to escalate ...

Oooh Daniel, only someone who doesn't know any refugees could make such a statement.

I have met young men and women bearing the physical and psychological scars of horrendous torture and violence - particularly from Africa where this sort of thing seems endemic.

But also they come because they have been thrown out - like the Rohinga Muslims/Bangla from Burma whose not-particularly-Buddhist neighbours just came over and burned down their villages to the ground. They literally have nothing and are living under plastic. They have no future there. No home.

Or they are Harissa from Afghanistan - the wrong sort of Muslim - wrong shaped eyes and funny clothes... Asiatic/mongol in descent. Dancing! The Taliban will exterminate them. I reckon anyone with daughters in Afghanistan today should be getting a ticket out gratis given what we are about to knowingly unleash on them.

It's not that they are economic refugees - or even environmental refugees - that wouldn't get them accepted. These folks are invariably running away from something ugly. just under 80% last time I looked. No shortage of ugliness about. We bankroll some of it.

But if you're looking for greenhouse influences, the thing to watch for is an increase in "economic refugees" - very skinny Sri Lankan fishermen who have pawned themselves and their familes on the lies of some fraudster. Increases in the very class of folks you would immediately reject.

They will reflect things like collapsing economies, dead fishing grounds, no rain, failed crops and the like. And there will be millions after millions of them.

And being rude, shutting everyone out or refusing to provide assistance is not an option - neither humane, nor economically, politically or strategically sustainable.

This problem must be solved not just ignored. And we will be part of solving it.

Only someone who doesn't know me would make that sort of statement Peter ... but you're entitled to your opinion even if you're wrong ...

IMO, competition of resources starts when the abundance diminishes due to over-population ... the three pyramid systems of religion and corporate government all work on increasing revenue and as competition increases, so too does the excesses in maintaining the flow of income to the top ...

Sorry Daniel - this wasn't intended as a personal slight - just that it conflicts so sharply with my own experiences of successful refugee applicants - all of whom carry that twitchy nervousness of a hunted animal - especially in the presence of uniforms.

And some have bits missing and nights of hell.

It is good to offer hope. The time to worry is when folks like this stop coming but go somewhere else - somewhere preferable, somewhere more welcoming, more charitable, more humane than us.

Can you name such a place ... and for how long will the 'welcome mat' be out for before that place too is over-run ?

Not too long at all I'd imagine but here's a few places that punch above their weight refugee-wise ... Sweden, Austria (maybe they think they're coming here) Norway, even Switzerland, Canada, the Netherlands ... heaps actually.

You have to sort through the list here to find countries of final settlement rather than the camps next door. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_refugee_population

And I'm not suggesting that we operate an open slather immigration policy before you start. I am suggesting that we had better get together with the rest of the neighbourhood and start working out what to do and how to pay for it all... it means moving lots of people and "acclimatising" in a global sense. Or we just start killing each other and nuke up.

Yes, Peter, we here in Newcastle, had a whole family from Sudan huddled in the kitchen with all of the lights off, for over a week. They thought that the meter reader (in uniform) was a policeman looking to deport them (or worse).