Cognitive dissonance at the Canberra Times

In a long and rambling article about the Copenhagen meeting taking place to discuss how much worse climate change will be compared to what the IPCC predicted, these gems from Chris Field (well known to this blog...):

One of the lead authors of [the 2007 IPCC] report said last month it had probably seriously underestimated the consequences of climate change. Professor Chris Field, a Stanford University climate scientist, said ''we now have data showing that, from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries like China and India saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal''.

Yes, emissions have risen faster than expected, and what has happened to global temperature? It's actually dropped in the same period.

Coal and other fossil fuels are large contributors to releases of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas [Wrong - the main greenhouse gas is naturally occurring water vapour, by a long, long way - Ed]. Professor Field, who co-chairs the IPCC working group charged with assessing the impacts of climate change, said he was particularly concerned about new evidence that tropical forests would dry out and catch fire...

That'll really happen...

Read it here.