Tim Flannery, is a white hot warmist turned sceptic...

...and who would of course hate the term denier. (Although he now admits the science of AGW is by no means settled, and therefore must have some doubts re AGW. ) Shock ! horror ! But never mind...we now appear to have a new sceptical chum. Professor Flannery is Chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council and has had to swallow a dead rat and admit "We can't admit we have perfect knowledge, we don't." Flannery is the very highly respected author of the wonderful "The Future Eaters" (an un PC look at species extinction in Australasia) and "Throwim Away Leg", (pidgin for "go on a long walk" ) re his scientific observations and travels in Papua New Guinea, and also the IPCC orthodox "The Weather Makers" which may need major revision after the CRU leaks. More on Tim Flannery and his record here...and, a summary below of the first day's activity and chaos in Copenhagen as seen by Michael Asten, professorial fellow in the school of geosciences at Monash University, Melbourne, and titled Climate claims fail science test, published in The Australian...

...THE UN Climate Change Summit started this week in Copenhagen with far more dissent than its organisers hoped for from two extremes of the climate change debate. We had the "grandfather of climate change", James Hansen, describing the proceedings as counter-productive and "a farce", while the chief Saudi Arabian negotiator to the summit, Mohammed al-Sabban, doubts the current science and suggests there is no longer any point in seeking agreement to reduce emissions. It is therefore certain that the global political debate on managing carbon emissions and climate change will continue well beyond the Copenhagen summit. It is to be hoped that the scientific debate is also permitted to continue...

Results released this year suggest that the degree of scientific certainty falls short of that desirable before we set binding targets and dollar values on carbon emissions. Indeed, Tim Flannery, chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council admitted that: "We can't pretend we have perfect knowledge: we don't"...meanwhile two recent results published by top scientists cast doubt on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's theory about the link between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming. These are of of significance because whereas the climate models used by the IPCC rely on software to represent a large number of highly complex Earth processes, these results are equivalent to experimental observations on the Earth itself...more here...

AND what did it take to turn Tim Flannery into a sceptic ? Maybe something like this...

...sent by paleoclimatologist Ed Cook to the CRU's Keith Briffa, outlining his opinions on the current (2003) state of knowledge of past temperatures: "The results of this study will show that we can probably say a fair bit about (less than)100 year extra-tropical NH temperature variability (at least as far as we believe the proxy estimates), but honestly know fuck-all about what the (greater than) 100 year variability was like with any certainty (i.e. we know with certainty that we know fuck-all).. H/T Bishop Hill...

...and on the fourth, fifth and sixth days of Christmas, my true love sent to me...six doctors lying, five declines a hiding, four suspect graphs,three hockey sticks, two tricks to play and a cross section of a pine tree...