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While the recent vote by the US House of Representatives on clean energy and climate legislation has the rest of the world rejoicing, it has brought out a huge attack by the skeptics.They are out in force.
These people mainly come from two groups; the ultra conservatives, many of whom are also religious fundamentalists, and they hate change even more than the rest of us do and the other main group is the geologists whose research is largely funded by the mining and especially the coal and oil industry.

We need to remember that geologists are trained to look DOWN at the soil, earth's crust and BACK to the past and Atmospheric physicists look UP at the atmosphere and at what is happening NOW and in the future. They have totally different training.

In face many geologists do not study physics at all and there is less training in common between geologists and atmospheric physicists than a gynaecologist and a dentist and you would not dream of mixing those two groups of medical professionals up. Climate change and changing weather patterns are as important as the global warming and the odd cool summer is irrelevant.

In Australia we have Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist and one whose work has discredited by the majority of the scientific community because it defies some of the laws of physics, publicising his new anti climate change book. He has labelled climate change theory an "ascientific, urban, religious, fundamentalist movement" promoted by academics and activists who would be "unemployable outside taxpayer-funded climate institutes". Plimer says that climate change has become the new Western religion with the elements of failed European socialism and Christianity and it imposes guilt on the community, creates a fear of damnation, demands appeasement by selling indulgences to the faithful, ignores any contrary information, demonises dissenters." This all sounds a bit UGH to me.

He is partially right in that climate always changes and there have been greater and more rapid changes in the past and we've had varying carbon levels in the past. But what is happening now is different, the atmospheric changes have been measured and are purely caused by man made pollution. The current problem is superimposed on top of the history described by Plimer and has a shorter time frame.

The greenhouse effect is not new it was predicted over 30 years ago to my certain knowledge because while my kids were small I taught secondary school biology so that I had school hours and holidays to fit in with my family. I taught about the potential for global warming then but never seriously thinking we would let things get as bad as they are now.

In Australia our Family First Senator Steve Fielding has made up his mind on climate change and apparently according to this self appointed "expert" the world is not warming now, and humans are not changing the climate.

The government and the country's top scientists have tried to convince Senator Fielding, who holds a crucial vote in the upper house, that global warming is real. But he's released a document setting out his position and he says "Global temperature isn't rising". I would love the bulk of scientists who are warning us of the need for urgent action to be wrong but there is too much evidence they are right and the risk to my grandchildren is too great to take. I refuse to gamble with their future!

The naysayers are having campaigns on TV and behind closed doors to scare politicians and put our children's future at risk. Exxon, the world's largest oil company still funds lobby groups to question global warming, despite its public pledge to cut support for climate change denial. ExxonMobil has an ethical problem in that while it tells us all that is has stopped funding the skeptics to spread misinformation, in fact it continues to do so.

ExxonMobil's company records show they gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the National Centre for Policy Analysis in Dallas, which received $75,000, and the Heritage Foundation in Washington, which received $50,000. The very same climate-change skeptics conference in Washington last month Family First Senator Steve Fielding attended was cosponsored by the latter.

Oil and coal are big business and I guess we can expect them to be reluctant to move their investment into new areas but we should also expect our large corporations to have basic honesty.