hang on,dont people USUALLY try and make the future better...i mean isnt it very shortsited to just htink "oh well who cares if it happens in 50 years time,ill be dead by then"

Umm..... no

@kowenicki

Wow. People who "don't believe in global warming" will be talking about that forever.

They are doing bad science if they falsified the results, bringing down the reputation of all scientists. Unless someone can show otherwise, assume they were acting alone and doing it for personal gain: getting more funding. There is plenty of evidence for a warming trend, and zero accepted [by peer review and time] evidence for a cooling trend, but people will certainly take this the wrong way.

The UEA isn't a respected university, it is a converted polytechnic with no history of good results in climate change or any science.

I would love for global warming to be a myth. But I have yet to be shown that it is, and there continues to be evidence and consensus in the IPCC and other scientific organisations that it exists.

Here is the problem.

If the UEA falsfied data... why wasn't this pointed out in peer review?

Even if the UEA didn't release it's data, other cliamte scientists should be able to know when it's data doesn't match with theirs and mention that it's off as such.

In another form of science, manipulated data would likely not make it through most journals even withholding data.

There should be an independent external review, by the journal it was published in, and when that reports we can start judging them. At the moment there it isn't clear how big the problem is, and a lot can be taken out of context. Not defending them if it was a genuine cover-up.

Most of these emails are from a long time ago... they go as far back as 1996.

I don't know about you... but usually peer reviews take a few weeks at most for the author to get back... with papers deemed inaccurate not published.

I think some people are failing to see my point, here.

The cost of fighting climate change is very expensive, I don't know exact figures but according to (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_Up.htm) it's costing around $100k per billionth of a potential degree Celsius saved, as the site points out, it'll cost $100 trillion at this rate to "save" 1 degrees Celcius by 2050

World GDP is ~$60 trillion, world GDP doubles around every 15 years at current trends, which will mean world GDP will be around $164 trillion by 2050.

Looking at these basic facts we can see that it would be a much smarter idea, from a cost-benefit point of view, if we waited until 2050 to tackle the issues. Of course, you have to consider that the longer you wait, the more it's going to cost - but the cost of technology will fall and the power will increase so rapidly that we will find it much easier to tackle climate change then rather than now, meaning that the cost could actually go down.

What I'm saying is that rather than spending $100k to prevent the temperature from potentially rising 1 billionth of a degree by 2050, when it could cost us $75k to do it in the future, we should spend that $100k on fighting malaria, or buying condoms, to stop the spread of HIV/AIDs.

And I'm short-sighted for thinking this way?

No. Your absolutely right.

People can't see the forest for the trees.

SRS, I think many of the technologies that would reduce or mitigate global warming are needed to cause that doubling of GDP. Such as cheaper/more efficient energy and fuel. I don't think you can separate the issues.

If not from there, where will the GDP increase come from? Inflation? As we've seen, a lot of the GDP increase over the last few years has been artificial in terms of financial 'paper gains' that evaporate when the debts are called in during a recession.

SRS. The cost of technology only falls when that technology is produced - sitting on our hands isn't going to make removing CO2 cheaper - investing in cheaper ways to remove CO2 is going to make removing CO2 cheaper.

Also your link is broken so I can't see where that number came from but it better have some pretty good methodology to back it up, otherwise it would seem like a person just playing with stats.