British journalist George Monbiot's pessimism that "Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease" has been echoed by an Australian climate scientist. Professor Andy Pitman, co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW and a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2001 and 2007 reports, saays he believe sceptics are winning the fight. He told the ABC's World Today program:

"Oh, my personal view is that climate scientists are losing the fight with the sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organised, have nothing else to do. They kind of don't have day jobs. They can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the general public whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this actually isn't one of them.

"All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily for no funding and no pay whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full-scale misinformation campaigns and are doing a damn good job I think. They are doing a superb job at misinforming and miscommunicating the general public, state and federal governments."

The result is potentially catastrophic:

A survey of climate-related news reports by the US Daily Climate website suggests media coverage in 2009 was greater than the year before, but still down from a 2007 peak (driven in part by Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth). The problem, from the perspective of the general public being more informed about the issue, is that coverage of the science tended to take a back seat to the anthropocentric angles – namely the political and economic arguments that rage about the merits of taking action.

Us conspiracy nut Alex Jones is finding it hard to stick to a consistent line in the face of Copenhagen.

Professor Ian Plimer may believe the proof of anthropogenic climate change is the biggest scientific fraud in history, but it's not a conspiracy. At least, that is what he told the ABC's Lateline presenter Tony Jones in his appearance to debate Guardian columnist George Monbiot. But a less moderate impression was conveyed when Plimer was interviewed four months ago by Alex Jones, the number-one media peddler of wacky conspiracy theories in the United States, and agreed the motive behind curbing carbon emissions was to kill off most of the world's population.

Our grandmothers didn't make bread-and-butter pudding just for the taste sensation; "Bread is a staple food in our home: we eat a lot of it, especially when it’s freshly baked. Bread making is passion of mine. Nothing compares to the aroma of a loaf just out of the oven!  But when fresh bread is on the table, what to do with the old one?  Don’t throw old bread in the bin!"

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Accusations of hypocrisy against former Nuclear Disarmament Party candidate Peter Garrett over uranium mining are mired in the past, argues Sam Wylie: "When I hear people say that they will never consider nuclear power as part of the solution to global warming I wonder how much they really care about global warming. There are no easy choices here. The problems with nuclear are real and large, but the problems with burning fossils fuels are even greater."

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Salt-tolerant GM plants could help feed the world?: "It sounds impressive until you read the actual scientific article that the report is referring to and discover that the research is still at proof of concept stage and was done in rockcress (Arabdopsis) - hardly an important food crop! Whilst this research may be interesting from an academic perspective, genetically engineered (GE) salt tolerant crops are still likely to be at least a decade away. And the important question remains – do we really need them?"

Seamas McCaffrey wonder's which city is an environmentalist’s ultimate living hell: "Is it Linfen, the Chinese city rated the most polluted on earth? Or the excessive developments of oil-rich desert capital Dubai, with it’s man-made islands and indoor ski slopes? Or, on the flip side of fortune, the burning rubbish piles of Phnom Penh and the terrible plight of press-ganged child recyclers? Mark Hertsgaard’s amazing Earth Odyssey offers several more compelling nominations."

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The unpalatable reality of artificial presevatives, colours and flavours: "Not all food additives are made same:  some are natural and ok to use, others, however whether natural or artificial are unsafe for consumption, and have been banned in different countries.  While researching the food additives, I came across several food additives tables that listed potentially unsafe additives.  Every source was different so I decided to make a table of food additives for myself as my personal shopping guide."

Humans have not destroyed the planet, so why worry: "The headline over Brendan O’Neill’s opinion piece in this morning’s The Australian cries, 'Beware the greenies who think people are parasites - Eco terrorism is a manifestation of the human-baiting in modern culture.' As an excercise in emotional pot-stirring, it’s a wonderfully crafted piece (complete with bible quotes) which jumps from one extreme view to another to get to a conclusion which is so far removed from everything we know about human’s impact on the planet, that surely O’Neill must be living on a different one."

Handkerchiefs are not to be sneezed at: "As part of my ongoing project to buy and use less paper, I’ve decided to switch to handkerchiefs instead of tissues. I was originally inspired to make the switch by the lovely ladies at Tiny Choices, but have finally gotten fed up with the attitude from logging companies. And according to G Magazine’s Tissues vs Handkerchiefs article, by doing this I’ll also be cutting back on water waste, energy waste, and landfill at the same time."

Upper ocean heat has dropped since mid-2007. John Cook explains why: "By recognising that La Niña causes short term cooling in upper ocean waters and that we've been in La Niña conditions since mid-2007, we see that current ocean cooling is a case of internal variability imposed upon the long term trend."

New data buoys the skeptics: "In climate discussions, the most common error is focusing on a single piece of the puzzle while ignoring the big picture. The ocean cooling meme commits this error twofold. Firstly, it scrutinises six years worth of data while ignoring the last 40 years of ocean warming. Secondly, it hangs its hat on one particular reconstruction that shows cooling, while other results and independent analyses indicate slight warming."

The environmental benefits of laundry balls come out in the wash: "The ball has ceramic beads inside it, which are meant to create negative ions in the water, and convert it to oxygen and hydroxide using the power of it’s far-infrared rays. This all sounded very science-fiction-y to me, so I looked it up. That’s when I discovered that this product is a scam."

Julien Vincent sees a $7 billion black hole in the federal budget: "A report from the OECD in 2002 showed that removing all of the world’s fossil fuel subsidies would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6 per cent and increase real income by 0.1 per cent by 2010. So if we’re in an environmental and economic crisis right now, wouldn’t removing fossil fuel subsidies in Australia be an ideal measure for tackling climate change?"