Geo-Engineering Dreams in "The Australian"

In an almost surreal article in the Australian by Jonathan Leake and Richard Woods dated March 16, 2009 some weird statements were made:

1. "....:unless emissions of greenhouse gases fall within five years"

After 20 years of research, the IPCC have not shown that greenhouse gases (mainly CO2) cause any rise in temperature.


2 Chairman of the working group John Shepherd said: "Our study aims to separate the science from the science fiction and offer recommendations on which options deserve serious consideration."

Welll, Mr Shepherd, you could start with the ice core samples from world scientists which show that the rise in CO2 FOLLOWS the rise in temperature. You could also check the fact from the samples that a concentration of 288ppmvCo2 at various times in history accompanied both rising and falling temperatures

3 Professor Launder thinks extracting carbon from the atmosphere would be too slow to prevent significant warming. In his view "the only rational scheme is to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth and to reflect back more of it".

So, it's the sun that causes warming and not CO2. Actually we have been without sunspot activity for a while now and have had almost 11 years of global cooling. Is Professor Launder laundering the CO2 theory?