This'll be interesting

Professor Murry Salby from Macquarie University gave a talk at the Sydney Institute last week in which he claimed to have shown that CO2 is "at the back of the bus" as regards driving the climate. The details were a tad sketchy, and seemingly left his audience a little bewildered, and no one has yet been able to get their hands on a copy of his slides. But the whole issue is to do with the carbon cycle. He says he has a peer reviewed paper coming out on this in about 6 weeks, although I don't think anyone knows in which journal either.

The claims are so extraordinary that several people in comments threads at Deltoid and Tamino (see link at side) have wondered if it is all a hoax.

The reasons as to why virtually everyone in the mainstream climate science field thinks the Professor (who appears to have done detailed and creditable work on the ozone hole and has no previous reputation as a climate change skeptic) has managed to fool himself are many, and will be apparent from the two links in the previous paragraph. I see that even John Neilsen-Gammon, a climatologist "believer" who tends to be very polite and non political in his handling of the topic, can't see that it can possibly be right.

One thing I don't think many people have noticed is that skeptic Roy Spencer turned up at Catallaxy and also didn't seem to think it was at all likely either.

So what is the explanation for this? We will have to wait a few weeks to see.

In the meantime, I can predict this: those climate change denying sites who have promoted this talk will simply move on and never mention it again if it compellingly proved to be a massive misinterpretation that convinces no one. That is how they work: raise any doubt possible, and move on when it is shown to be wrong.