DISCOVER magazine has uploaded the transcript of a recent panel on climate change they hosted in San Francisco, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation. The panellists explain in simple terms how we really know that it really is us humans causing the problem, and not natural processes.

Audience member: What is the most compelling evidence you have that human behavior is actually warming the planet?

Caldeira: To me the most compelling evidence is the fact that the stratosphere—the upper atmosphere—is cooling while the lower atmosphere and the land surface are warming. That’s a sign that greenhouse gases are trapping energy and keeping that energy close to the surface of the earth. I mentioned that in ocean acidification, you actually see animals that should make shells unable to make shells anymore. You could demonstrate the same kind of effect in a bell jar in the lab. There is a level of certainty about it.

One of the panellists, Stephen Schneider, addressed the question of anthropogenic causes as purely a statistical issue. Assuming we knew absolutely nothing about how the environment works...

If you were a cynic and you asked about the probability of the ice sheet in the north going up, it’s 50 percent. Going down? Fifty percent. And the South Pole going up? Fifty percent. Going down? Fifty percent. Probability they are both going together? Twenty-five percent. What’s the probability of the stratosphere cooling while the earth gets warmer? Again, assuming we knew nothing, 50 percent. Troposphere warming? Fifty. The probability that one will go up while the other goes down? Twenty-five percent. Same thing for other patterns, like the way high-latitude continents are warming more than low-latitude ones are. With any single line of evidence, you can say, “Oh, well, there’s still a 25 percent chance it’s random,” but what happens when you put all these events together? The probability of all these events’ lining up the same way is pretty darn low unless we are dealing with global warming.

Finally, the point about the debate being settled:

Caldeira: Climate science has reached the point that plate tectonics reached 30 years ago. It is the basic view of the vast majority of working scientists that human-induced climate change is real. There is a real diversity of informed opinion on how important climate change is going to be to various things that affect humans, and there is a diversity of opinion on how to address this problem, but the debate over human-induced climate change is over.

When asked whether they were optimistic about our ability to deal with the problem, Schneider replied

The first time I was asked that question in a public place was sometime in the 1970s in front of a congressional committee. My answer was a little bit like Ken’s. I said, “I’m technologically optimistic and politically bleak.” That proved to be a pretty good forecast for the next 35 years.

Unfortunately, it appears to be a good forecast for the next 35 years too. While I've no doubt we have the technical ability to fix this, I think we're too stupid to get our shit together and actually do it. The general populace doesn't understand science at all, so they're largely incapable of critically evaluating the scientific evidence and coming to an informed decision.

You might expect the media to inform them, but the mass media is relatively useless too. In this era of newspaper cutbacks specialist science reporters are often discarded, leaving generalist reporters to write science articles, resulting in discredited anti-warming "science" being given equal time and giving their readership the impression that there still is a scientific debate on the topic.

Unfortunately, that leaves personal experience, and by the time the general populace realises they're directly seeing the effects of global warming, it's almost certainly too late.

Earlier this morning I had to sit my citizenship test as the final hurdle before I can apply for Australian citizenship. I call it the Anti-Muslim Test as it was brought in after the Cronulla Riots, partly out of concerns that Muslims weren't fully embracing Australian culture and were part of some sinister plan to encourage Sharia Law. Complete nonsense of course, but the test was the result, as was an extension of the waiting period between becoming a permanent resident and being eligible to apply for citizenship from two years to four.

The test is supposed to ensure that you're aware of your rights and your responsibilities as a citizen and have a passing understanding of the history and government of Australia, and can speak English. Sample questions are "Who is Australia's Head of State?", "How many levels of government are there?" and "Are newspapers free to say what they want in Australia", with the corresponding answers being "The Queen", "3", and "Yes - as long as they don't defame someone or incite hatred/intolerance".

The barrier is set pretty low; there's 20 multiple-choice questions, out of which you have to get 12 right. There are also three questions on values which result in an instant fail if you get any of them wrong. You get 45 minutes to do the test, but, as a guide to how easy it is it took me 90 seconds and I got 100%! I also didn't bother studying for it, skimming the citizenship booklet only once, though I am at an advantage in that I grew up in a Western-style democracy, speak English and have already lived in Australia for close to 10 years.

Despite passing the test comfortably, it turns out I now fall foul of the new waiting period requirements as you are no longer permitted to count time living in Australia before you were granted permanent residency. So now I enter what I call a 'citizen-in-limbo' period where I've met all the requirement, but have to wait until March 2011 before I can do my citizenship conferral ceremony. Bit of a shame really, as this September will see the 10th anniversary of my immigration and I was hoping to have become a citizen before this date.

In the aftermath of 9/11, governments around the world swung into action trying to ensure that their polices agencies were able to root out all terrorist threats within their communities. These efforts usually included passing some form of stop-and-search laws, whether it was people being taken aside for 'random' searches at airports, or being stopping in the street and having their bags searched.

At the time, there were lots of complaints that racial profiling was being used, and that Muslim communities around the world were being unfairly targeted by the new laws, or at least their implementation. Now, it turns out, in the UK at least, police have addressed these concerns, not, as you might expect, by ceasing to unfairly target the Muslim community, but by randomly searching non-Muslims to make up the numbers.

Examples of poor use of section 44 abounded. "I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop."

He later said that while the police should not discriminate racially, it was equally important that they should not balance the statistics. "If, for example, 50 blonde women are stopped who fall nowhere near any intelligence-led terrorism profile, it's a gross invasion of the civil liberties of those 50 blonde women.

"The police are perfectly entitled to stop people who fall within a terrorism profile even if it creates a racial imbalance, as long as it is not racist."

So, rather than come up with a terrorist profile which is more in-depth than "is a Muslim", the cops just hassle people who don't match any terrorist profile to mask the fact that they're continuing to unfairly target Muslims.

As part of Vivid Sydney the Opera House, Museum of Contemporary Art and other structures were being lit up at night. I'd been at the movies with Neil and Claudia on Tuesday at Circular Quay, and had seen the images being projected on to the Opera House, so I resolved to come back in to the city another night and take some photos.

I'd received a tripod as a present a few years ago and had never got around to using it, so this was the ideal time. On Thursday night, I packed it up, along with my camera and remote shutter release and caught the train to Milsons Point just as it got dark. Not having shot time-lapse photos before I just played around with various settings, experimenting as I went along.

Starting from Milsons Point, I then headed to Kirribilii, then walked over the Harbour Bridge to The Rocks, then Circular Quay and finally to the Opera House itself.

Here are the photos.

Jacqui's grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago. She was 94, and her passing was both peaceful and expected. Jacqui had enough warning to be able to fly up to Ballina, where her grandmother was in a nursing home, and say her goodbyes

The following week the family flew up for the funeral service, and we decided that after the funeral we would all rent an apartment and stay in Lennox Head for the weekend together. It was the perfect antidote to the sorrow of the preceding week.

Here are the photos.

If you're pissing Cheney off you must be on the right track.

The former Vice President Dick Cheney today sharply criticised President Barack Obama's handling of terrorism policy and defended harsh interrogation methods that Obama has labeled torture.

Obama moves to quell Guantanamo fears In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on the same day Obama defended his approach to terrorism, Cheney said Obama's decision to ban tough tactics "is unwise in the extreme."

"It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe," said Cheney, long viewed as a leading hawk in the Bush administration.

And what's with the 'Obama has labelled torture' crap? It's been determined by the courts that waterboarding is torture, and you can bet your last dollar/pound/euro that if it was an American on the receiving end it would be labelled as torture.

The report into historical child abuse in Irish schools run by the Catholic Church was released yesterday in Dublin. It found that abuse, both physical and sexual, was widespread, with sexual abuse "endemic" in Christian Brothers schools.

"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," it said.

Children in industrial schools and reformatories were treated more like convicts and slaves than people with human rights, it said. Rape was particularly common in boys homes and industrial schools run by the Christian Brothers.

While all this was going on, the Catholic Church knowingly protected paedophiles from prosecution, so they were clearly aware of the problem and chose to sweep it under the carpet. I think it says a lot about a religion when its senior members condone the sexual abuse of minors.

Sure, Catholics may claim that the Church never approved of this sort of thing, but if they knew it was happening, was being perpetrated by people over whom they had authority, and they chose not to punish those involved, then that's condoning the behaviour. It's as simple as that.

After the revelations of systematic clerical abuse, Pope Benedict was challenged to hold a Vatican inquiry into the role of Catholic religious orders in Ireland's orphanages and industrial schools. Irish Soca said it was now up to the Vatican to investigate the scandal further.

Kelly said: "Now that the Ryan commission is finished we call upon Pope Benedict to convene a special consistory court to fully investigate the activities of Catholic religious orders in Ireland.

Yeah, good luck with that.

On Saturday, after relaxing on the couch for the day, by 4pm I was starting to get a bit bored and looking for something to do. I remember that, while running in Centennial Park at dawn or dusk, I'd often thought to myself that I should show up with a camera some time, so I figured I'd head down and take some shots.

Bloody traffic was terrible, so I got down there a bit later than I would have liked and was a bit rushed trying to get around to a few different places before the sun went down, but I still got a couple of nice shots.

The Giro d'Italia started on Saturday, and as is usual now, SBS is covering it. However, since the Giro is not as popular as the Tour, they're not doing live coverage of every stage, instead providing a 15min stage summary in the morning (Sydney time - so a couple of hours after the stage finished in Italy), and a longer, half hour summary in the evening.

However, Tom mentioned in an email last week that he has bought himself a SlingBox and rigged it up to his Sky TV setup box back in Ireland. He provided me with the details to log into it and try it out, whereupon I discovered that he has Eurosport, and, as it turns out, Eurosport cover most of the cycling season.

So now, I can log into Tom's set-top box in Ireland, get it to record the Giro stages live, and then log in when I get up in the morning and watch the day's stage! Pretty cool. It works well, and the video quality is pretty good. Isn't technology wonderful :)

Freedom continues to be eroded.

Internet service providers are to keep records of emails and online phone calls under controversial new government regulations that come into force today.

ISPs will be legally obliged to store details of emails and internet telephony for 12 months as a potential tool to aid criminal investigations. Although the content of emails and calls will not be held, ISPs will be asked to record the date, time, duration and recipients of online communications.

The new regulations are contained in an EC directive on data retention that already applies to telecoms providers and is now being extended to ISPs.

People would be up in arms if the UK Government decided to just allocate them each a policeman to follow you around and record all details of your everyday life, yet with laws like these and the prevalence of CCTV cameras, that's essentially what's happening.