Anonymous@ 5.12 and 4.57pm - you are right to be upset by taxes; absolutely - so am I. Re-read my previous post and understand that there are 3 factors; scientists, big business and regulators. Regulators respond in the way governments always (and can only) respond: By applying tax. We are hooked on fossil fuels, so it is impossible to outlaw their use -the only way to slow their use is to penalize those that use them. I pay just like you do. But, if nothing is done, we have a run-away problem - that is a simple fact of physics. You also must make a distinction between "the media" (aka "papers") and the science media; The science media are unanimous that this is a problem; and the science media aren't on the payroll of any big business; they are subject to peer review and subject to ridicule if they publish false data.

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The people who control most of the money in the world have been smart enough to generate a global tax that will be backed by alarmists who think the world is melting. This tax will fill the pockets of the financial institutions who are in turn owned by people who own the thousands and thousands of polluting businesses. Its a huge money making scam people, some smart people have done this on a global scale and its very impressing how many people they have suckered into this scheme. People the world is going to start smelling like farts because of all the rubbish we eat and all the sheep on earth,and this will heat earth up and it will explode and make the whole universe smell, pay me R5 for every fart you make and Ill make sure the earth is around in 100 years when you are all dead anyway. Sound like a good deal?

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I dont know or dont really care about the god-fathers of climatology, meterology bla bla. All I can say is how convenient it is to have a global tax for carbon emissions that gets paid to who? The people crying wolf that we melting the planet while they throw probably 80% of carbon into the atmosphere. Nice little international money making scheme this climate problem. Even if it is real and im argueing that it isnt, its just turned into a huge money making scheme for some powerful people and thus the coverage in media and all the scares. You really can't believe everything you read in the papers especially when those papers are owned by the people who are crying for carbon taxes!

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Cobus@1.55pm - We can go back and forth on this - but IOL comments section is hardly the forum to do so - the issue is simple; there are 3 legs: Government(s), climate scientists, and business. 1) Climate scientists are unanimous (science media and peer review) - are unanimous that a) global warmingclimate change is real and b) man-made. 2) The oilmotorpetroleum industry is spending billions on denying what climate scientists say [928 peer reviewed 'for' and 0zero denying climate change] - they haul in anyone with doctorates (generally economists) who will put their (inappropriate) credentials on the line to deny and they court the mass media, 3) Governments are on the bandwagon... all governments ever do is distribute wealth - and this is no different - the whole carbon-tax nonsense is a very nice little earner all round; in my opinion, it is iniquitous - it is highly counter productive to what is a very very serious issue.

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@Meme-Man - Do you pull all these assertions of your out of your a..? Handful of deniers? Please! This 'handful of deniers" as you so eloquently put it to make anyone who disagrees a 'denier' and therefore someone to be ignored, are increasing constantly in number as these ‘deniers’ start standing up to those climate change 'alarmists' (see how I use your way of discrediting by name calling?) who just shout down anyone who doesn't agree with 'man-made' climate change. The scandal called ‘Climategate’ must’ve also just passed you by unnoticed, along with the IPCC report assertions that the Himalayas will be ice free in less than 2 decades? And your assertion that big business is behind ‘man-made’ climate change ‘deniers’ is probably true, however it does not make the facts that they give untrue. So who’s behind the scam called “carbon credit trading”? Is it the climate gate ‘alarmists’ perhaps? Perhaps you have come to learn that of every dollar (or whatever currency denomination you want to choose), 30% gets to the country ‘selling’ the carbon credit. 70% goes to carbon credit brokers and financing institutions… can you say ‘money making scam’? I’ll grant you that you seem clued up on the one side of the argument, but you seem to be failing miserably at maintaining an open mind. I was also a believer of ‘man-made’ climate change until I started to research with the other side of the argument. You believe the results a computer simulation gives showing GLOBAL climate change over 50 years from now, when that same model’s input only includes rainfall over 30% of the earth’s surface (yes, it does rain over the oceans) and cherry picked temperature data? Oh, and lets not forget the famous hockey stick graph…

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GanGreen - On Saturday I posted the following - but it never listed - here it is again: Hello GanGreen@08.25pm; With all respect, Bryson was a meteorologist, not a climatologist. He was born in 1920 and so was well into his senile years as the climatic realizations took hold; his grasp of modern climatic studies is questionable. Dr. Patrick Michaels is one of the handful of deniers. He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science. The only "climate contention" exists in mass media, among politicians and a confused public. Scientists are unanimous - of the 928 peer reviewed papers on climate change, NOT A SINGLE ONE OPPOSES the finding that CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL and human activity is to blame. So where does the controversy come from? Well, big business (who fund politicians - particularly in the US) has massive vested interest in the status quo; acceptance of responsibility would hammer short-term profits (of course; "business as usual" will devastate you, me and everything in the long term); but politics and business operate on a shorter interest cycle. Let's cast your contrarian net a bit wider to see a few more of the deniers: Benny Peiser and Lawrence Solomon; both funded by sponsored by [ExxonMobil, Western Fuels Association and American Automakers (to name a few)] are the most vociferous climate change deniers. They are not climate specialists, they do no research; they are effectively PR consultants who concentrate on hyping up politicians and the general public via the mass media (a media who are unavoidably, through advertising, in large part, financed by the motor fuel and other industries and whose advertising budgets would be heavily impacted if responsibility for climate change were to be accepted) - yet, in 15 years of well funded seeking, Messrs Peiser and Solomon have NEVER managed to find a single peer review article that opposes climate change. Instead they have repeated been repeatedly caught out making claims of petitions ostensibly signed by hundreds and thousands of climate scientists; but when interrogated, those lists don't hold up - they are padded with long-dead scientists and non-climate scientists; and infused with actual climate scientists who never did sign the petitions; reputable scientists who have since brought lawsuits against the fraudstersand their well funded organizations. So, the issue is simple; scientists (who are generally mass media shy) and science media who require stringent proof and credentials are unanimous that humans are causing climate change; on the other hand, non-scientists on the payroll of the polluters who actively court mainstream media and politicians are tell us all is fine. Who do you want to gamble on?

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@Meme-Man you might want to do yourself a favor and check out drspencer.com and icecap.us to get some real climate science news that isn't filled with government grant-based bias. While you are correct that weather is not climate, considering that the climate models have been oh so very wrong, it just proves that we no better at forcasting long range climate trends than we are getting the 5 day forcast right, which is also based on similar computer generated models. When the god-father of modern climatology, Reid Bryson, was asked if he believed the climate prognostication of the IPCC, he replied "Do you beleiev the 5 day forecast?" No wonder Dr. Patrick Michaels has compared computer generated climate models to astrology and climate malpractice!

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Anon@01:33pm - I can only guess at what your reference to “There was high tech spaceships in 1880... etc” means - you're saying that since these instruments didn't exist then, the data cannot be accurate? Well, again you expose your own small minded idiocy - weather, carbon levels, etc... all leave an indelible mark in the environment that can be read for centuries and aeons - I won't bother to explain as you clearly don't have the intellect to understand anyway. “Weather” and “Climate” are two different things - go look them up on Wikki. Weather is a short-range interaction of prevailing conditions at a particular location that is very much under the influence of turbulence; as such, predicting its changes is extremely data intensive. “Weather”, by contrast, is a long cycle trend; impacted by known variables; that is pretty well understood and tracked.

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There was high tech spaceships in 1880 and high tech computers and high tech instruments. The why did we only get it in the 1960's? And before anyone try to convince me with mathematical models etc. Here is a new one, how is it that we can only predict a 30 to 60 Accuracy on weather but we are so convinced about Global Warming (Sorry Climate Change) because it did not get hotter everywhere. No wonder COP17 was such a waste

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