Climate common sense?
Discussion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4102144.stm
Naturally reported with a sense of horror by the British Broadcasting Commies.
[quote=BBC Breakfast]In the new version the words "our world is warming" appear in square brackets, meaning at least one country disagrees, and all financial pledges have gone.[/quote]
Finally some people are willing to challenge the dogma. Well, at a guess, it's the Americans. Good on 'em. Of course, they're up against narrow-minded dogma like this:
[quote=Fiends of the Earth]"There is not agreement on the science of climate change. There is no real agreement and commitment in terms of what can be done to bring down emissions."[/quote]
Science is about disagreement! If everyone agreed, then there'd be nobody to challenge established thinking. Nobody to make new discoveries.
I feel like crying sometimes. Is this the future of humanity?
Naturally reported with a sense of horror by the British Broadcasting Commies.
[quote=BBC Breakfast]In the new version the words "our world is warming" appear in square brackets, meaning at least one country disagrees, and all financial pledges have gone.[/quote]
Finally some people are willing to challenge the dogma. Well, at a guess, it's the Americans. Good on 'em. Of course, they're up against narrow-minded dogma like this:
[quote=Fiends of the Earth]"There is not agreement on the science of climate change. There is no real agreement and commitment in terms of what can be done to bring down emissions."[/quote]
Science is about disagreement! If everyone agreed, then there'd be nobody to challenge established thinking. Nobody to make new discoveries.
I feel like crying sometimes. Is this the future of humanity?
Leaving aside the question of whether it is man made global warming, which I believe it is.
The question is what can we do about it?
The cost of limiting Co2 emissions is billions of pounds, through the switch to cleaner more costly methods of power generation.
Even with wide ranging cuts in emissions global warming will still happen but at a slower pace.
The question is what can we do about it?
The cost of limiting Co2 emissions is billions of pounds, through the switch to cleaner more costly methods of power generation.
Even with wide ranging cuts in emissions global warming will still happen but at a slower pace.
Actually we're merely returning the CO2 to the air that was captured by the carboniferous forests millions of years ago. Nowt more than long-term recycling.
I'm not sure that science is about disagreement. To me science is about trying to find facts and truth. Beyond those facts you get philosophy. Before those facts you get dangerous cretins like FoE.
I'm not sure that science is about disagreement. To me science is about trying to find facts and truth. Beyond those facts you get philosophy. Before those facts you get dangerous cretins like FoE.
mutt k said:
The question is what can we do about it?
Plant trees. And lots of them. God's original air filter.
can someone help me out here. I have never understood this.
let me explain.
When a tree is alive it absorbs CO2.
but then it dies and rots.
and all that CO2 goes back in the atmosphere.
I realise I am simple and my brain feeble so have I got this wrong?
so in my theorie teh best thing to do is cut down all the trees and make furnature.
Bah, all we need is a few big volcanic eruptions in the next 50 years and the last decade of CO2 and Sulphur cuts from mankind will look pathetic in comparison to what they will pump out!
Why do we bother THAT much. Obviously be clean with our cars etc, but do we need to be THAT clean and worry so much?
Dave
Why do we bother THAT much. Obviously be clean with our cars etc, but do we need to be THAT clean and worry so much?
Dave
turbobloke!!pesty said:
so in my theorie teh best thing to do is cut down all the trees and make furnature.
Looking at it a slightly different way.
All the biomass power generation systems work on the basis that CO2 is absorbed by the plant growth, and then using the wood as fuel is released back to the atmosphere but this is not considered a bad thing as it is CO2 neutral.
So if you don't burn the fuel the CO2 remains in the wood and hence there are thoughts that the best thing to do is to grow lots of trees and use wood far more in building and .. er .. furniture, so your theory is correct it appears.
Does this make a Morgan environmentally friendly then?
Yes, it's the sort of car Douglas Bader would drive, and he might have been a git to others but that makes it OK with me.
Witchfinder said:
Finally some people are willing to challenge the dogma. Well, at a guess, it's the Americans. Good on 'em. Of course, they're up against narrow-minded dogma...
I would hesitate to suggest that Americans are the last bastion of sense and scientific truth. This is a nation where a significant proportion of the population believe that creationism is a proven fact, and evolution is 'just a theory'.
The problem here is that the document was 'corrected' by someone who (a) has no scientific knowledge of the subject and (b) has receieved money from the oil companies who would be hardest hit by environmental measures. Would you feel happy if the next transport minister had no driving license and was previously employed by Greenpeace? I suspect not, and this is no different.
The fuss people make about trees is laughable. The rainforests aren't the "lungs" of the planet at all, the majority of CO2 absorption comes from photosynthetic microorganisms living in our oceans. Chopping all the trees in the world down would have an effect on our climate due to localised weather pattern alterations, but i'm pretty sure it would have no effect on the atmospheric gaseous composition...
Wasn't there a proposal a few years ago to dump millions of tons of iron filings into the ocean to increase the levels of photosynthetic microorganisms?
That leads me onto another thought, if sea temperature rise then won't the proliferation of photsynthetis organisms also increase
Wasn't there a proposal a few years ago to dump millions of tons of iron filings into the ocean to increase the levels of photosynthetic microorganisms?
That leads me onto another thought, if sea temperature rise then won't the proliferation of photsynthetis organisms also increase
Yup, exactly.
More heat in the atmosphere, more atmospheric water, more sun energy bounced back out into space.
It's a big bloody cycle and it's just ping ponging back and forth. Always has done, always will do.
Just gotta sit and ride. What we are trying to do is akin to being on the Big Dipper and trying to use our hands on the rails to stop it going up the other side... (ie, getting hotter).
Bumbass humans
Dave
More heat in the atmosphere, more atmospheric water, more sun energy bounced back out into space.
It's a big bloody cycle and it's just ping ponging back and forth. Always has done, always will do.
Just gotta sit and ride. What we are trying to do is akin to being on the Big Dipper and trying to use our hands on the rails to stop it going up the other side... (ie, getting hotter).
Bumbass humans
Dave
This article in the Telegraph on Monday seems relevant
Selected quotes
"Indeed, far from joining the calls for action, some now warn that trying to prevent climate change could prove far more catastrophic than learning to live with it."
"Even if we shut every fossil-fuel power station, crushed every car and grounded every aircraft, the Earth's climate would still continue to get warmer, according to Prof Stott. "The trouble is, we would all be too impoverished to cope with the consequences," he said"
FULL ARTICLE
Just when it seemed that the dark clouds had lifted, they all came back again. Not Britain's on-again, off-again summer, but climate scientists calling for action to prevent global catastrophe.
Last Wednesday, the scientific academies of all the G8 major industrial nations, as well as Brazil, China and India, said that they were now convinced that humans were chiefly to blame for making the planet hotter, and that measures must be taken to combat climate change.
In an unprecedented joint communiqué, the academies declared that: "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action," adding that the threat posed "is clear and increasing".
Lord May, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific institution, put it more bluntly: "Never before have we faced such a global threat. And if we do not begin effective action now, it will be much harder to stop the runaway train as it continues to gather momentum."
Lord May is clearly hoping that his apocalyptic statement will win the ear of policymakers who have so far shown a reluctance to take any kind of drastic action. He may also be hoping that it will see off those dissenting scientists who remain sceptical of claims that humans are causing potentially catastrophic climate change.
Vilified as "climate-change deniers", they have been accused of being everything from lackeys of the oil industry to just plain stupid.
Yet, just as the clamour for action grows in anticipation of next month's G8 meeting in Scotland, another group of academics has begun fighting to have its voice heard. It includes experts in fields ranging from agriculture to medicine, and most of them agree that something strange is happening to the Earth's climate.
Where they part company with Lord May is in their assessment of the threat it poses. After studying the likely consequences for everything from crop yields to human health, their results are anything but apocalyptic. They have found that a hotter planet brings with it many benefits, and that humans can adapt perfectly well to it.
Indeed, far from joining the calls for action, some now warn that trying to prevent climate change could prove far more catastrophic than learning to live with it. Nor is this cheery vision based solely on questionable computer models. Analysis of past episodes of dramatic - but entirely natural - climate change repeatedly shows the benefits of a warmer world.
"If you could vote for a change in climate, you would always want a warmer one," says Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London. "Cold is nearly always worse for everything - the economy, agriculture, disease, biodiversity".
According to Prof Stott, times of historical prosperity have often been tied to unusually warm periods, such as the so-called Medieval Warm Period between 1100 and 1300. In contrast, the Little Ice Age between 1450 to 1890 was characterised by famines, pandemics and social upheaval. "We should be glad we've left that behind," he said.
The possibility that a warmer future could bring further benefits has long been noted by climate-change scientists, albeit reluctantly. The draft of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - regarded as the voice of mainstream scientific opinion - conceded that many developed nations could make "net economic gains", at least for moderate levels of warming. This rare glimmer of optimism was watered down when the final report emerged in 2001.
Since then, however, studies by researchers in a host of fields have cast doubt on the relentlessly gloomy forecasts. The heat-wave that struck much of Europe in 2003, killing more than 11,000 in France alone - was seized on by ecoactivists as proof-positive of the lethal effects of global warming.
Yet a review published last year by scientists at the University of London pointed out a basic medical fact: in many countries, cold kills far more people each year than heat. For the kind of temperature rise predicted for the UK over the next 50 years, the team estimated that heat-related deaths would rise by about 2,000 a year - but that this figure would be dwarfed by a cut in cold-related deaths of 20,000.
Other climate-related health scares have collapsed under close scrutiny. In 2002, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, added his voice to claims that Britain could be facing the return of malaria.
A subsequent analysis by experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded that changes in land use and socio-economic trends made the risk "highly unlikely". Oddly, the lifting of this eco-threat was not widely reported.
It is a similar story with agriculture. During the 1990s, researchers repeatedly claimed that global warming would have dire consequences for key crops. Even developed nations such as America were predicted to suffer. Apocalyptic scenarios of a sweltering world unable to feed itself began to gain currency.
Once again, however, more sophisticated studies are revealing a different picture, having taken account of a factor so often ignored: human adaptability. Global warming is also routinely regarded as disastrous for everything from Alpine ski resorts to tropical beaches.
Yet the picture now emerging from more sophisticated studies is far less apocalyptic. Last year, a team at the University of Hamburg showed that a modest temperature rise would lead to 30 per cent more tourists visiting countries such as Russia and Canada.
The benefits to UK tourism may also be substantial, according to a recent study by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which concluded: "We may witness not only an expansion in the domestic market, but an expansion in the inbound international market as the UK develops a more Mediterranean climate."
Even the frightening prospect of rising sea-levels caused by the melting of the polar ice caps - widely regarded within the climate-change lobby as one of the most devastating consequences of global warming - is now under serious scrutiny. Millions of people, from those living in the coastal cities of the West to the inhabitants of Pacific islands, are at risk, we were warned.
But then the early claims of 5ft rises started to give way to far less dramatic predictions; the most recent estimate, published last year by the International Quaternary Association, puts the figure at a sea-level rise of somewhere between 8in and zero. A recent study found that sea levels around the allegedly threatened Maldives have actually fallen.
In any case, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now concedes that there is little fear of millions being made permanently homeless by flooding. Its most recent report states: "Human settlements are expected to be among the sectors that could be most easily adapted to climate change, given appropriate planning and foresight."
Climate scientists have made little of the benefits of a warming planet, and even less of the ability of humans to cope with the consequences. From the changes in irrigation and new crops made by American farmers that prevented a repetition of the 1930s Dust Bowl, to the sea-wall system that protects northern Vietnam, there is no lack of evidence for human inventiveness in the face of climate change.
Yet this is routinely left out or played down in predictions of the impact of climate change. Describing the likely impact of extremes in weather in his recent book, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, Sir John Houghton cites 23 threats - adding only in a footnote that all of them could be "lessened by appropriate response measures".
Including them can transform the implications of climate change. "If you just take an agronomic model and make conditions hotter and drier, then, yes, crop yields go down," says Professor Richard Adams, an agricultural economist at Oregon State University. "But if you're a farmer, you see your crops aren't doing so well and plant a more heatresistant type."
Prof Adams is one of a group of academics pioneering the use of studies that take into account such adaptability. The results frequently contradict the simplistic models, with dire losses turning into sizeable gains.
During the 1990s, studies of the impact of climate change on the US agricultural economy predicted huge declines amounting to more than 20 per cent of US Gross Domestic Product. By taking into account adaptation, studies by Professor Robert Mendelsohn, an economist at Yale University, now point to growth of more than 13 per cent.
Ironically, some of the benefits come from the growth-promoting effect of the very greenhouse gas now causing so much alarm: carbon dioxide. Global yields of wheat and rice are expected to rise by 18 per cent, while yields of clover - a key foodstuff for grazing animals - looks set to rise by 36 per cent.
Global vegetation density seems to be benefiting already, with net gains in growth across the whole planet since the early 1980s. Even tropical forests and the Amazon are reported to be growing more luxuriant as CO2 levels rise.
"I am optimistic about the future," Prof Adams told The Sunday Telegraph. "I am continually amazed by what farmers can do. We are not going to have mass starvation."
According to Prof Adams, the real problems lie in distributing the food that is grown - and ensuring that developing nations have the means to develop new crops. Many economists are convinced that the best hope of that lies in continued economic growth. Their fear is that this is precisely what is now being threatened by the calls for immediate action over global warming.
"Economic studies clearly show it will be far more expensive to cut greenhouse gases than to pay for the cost of adapting to a warmer planet", says Professor Bjorn Lomborg, of Copenhagen Business School and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, whose critique of the climate change debate has incensed environmentalists.
Even if we shut every fossil-fuel power station, crushed every car and grounded every aircraft, the Earth's climate would still continue to get warmer, according to Prof Stott. "The trouble is, we would all be too impoverished to cope with the consequences," he said.
Selected quotes
"Indeed, far from joining the calls for action, some now warn that trying to prevent climate change could prove far more catastrophic than learning to live with it."
"Even if we shut every fossil-fuel power station, crushed every car and grounded every aircraft, the Earth's climate would still continue to get warmer, according to Prof Stott. "The trouble is, we would all be too impoverished to cope with the consequences," he said"
FULL ARTICLE
Just when it seemed that the dark clouds had lifted, they all came back again. Not Britain's on-again, off-again summer, but climate scientists calling for action to prevent global catastrophe.
Last Wednesday, the scientific academies of all the G8 major industrial nations, as well as Brazil, China and India, said that they were now convinced that humans were chiefly to blame for making the planet hotter, and that measures must be taken to combat climate change.
In an unprecedented joint communiqué, the academies declared that: "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action," adding that the threat posed "is clear and increasing".
Lord May, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific institution, put it more bluntly: "Never before have we faced such a global threat. And if we do not begin effective action now, it will be much harder to stop the runaway train as it continues to gather momentum."
Lord May is clearly hoping that his apocalyptic statement will win the ear of policymakers who have so far shown a reluctance to take any kind of drastic action. He may also be hoping that it will see off those dissenting scientists who remain sceptical of claims that humans are causing potentially catastrophic climate change.
Vilified as "climate-change deniers", they have been accused of being everything from lackeys of the oil industry to just plain stupid.
Yet, just as the clamour for action grows in anticipation of next month's G8 meeting in Scotland, another group of academics has begun fighting to have its voice heard. It includes experts in fields ranging from agriculture to medicine, and most of them agree that something strange is happening to the Earth's climate.
Where they part company with Lord May is in their assessment of the threat it poses. After studying the likely consequences for everything from crop yields to human health, their results are anything but apocalyptic. They have found that a hotter planet brings with it many benefits, and that humans can adapt perfectly well to it.
Indeed, far from joining the calls for action, some now warn that trying to prevent climate change could prove far more catastrophic than learning to live with it. Nor is this cheery vision based solely on questionable computer models. Analysis of past episodes of dramatic - but entirely natural - climate change repeatedly shows the benefits of a warmer world.
"If you could vote for a change in climate, you would always want a warmer one," says Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London. "Cold is nearly always worse for everything - the economy, agriculture, disease, biodiversity".
According to Prof Stott, times of historical prosperity have often been tied to unusually warm periods, such as the so-called Medieval Warm Period between 1100 and 1300. In contrast, the Little Ice Age between 1450 to 1890 was characterised by famines, pandemics and social upheaval. "We should be glad we've left that behind," he said.
The possibility that a warmer future could bring further benefits has long been noted by climate-change scientists, albeit reluctantly. The draft of the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - regarded as the voice of mainstream scientific opinion - conceded that many developed nations could make "net economic gains", at least for moderate levels of warming. This rare glimmer of optimism was watered down when the final report emerged in 2001.
Since then, however, studies by researchers in a host of fields have cast doubt on the relentlessly gloomy forecasts. The heat-wave that struck much of Europe in 2003, killing more than 11,000 in France alone - was seized on by ecoactivists as proof-positive of the lethal effects of global warming.
Yet a review published last year by scientists at the University of London pointed out a basic medical fact: in many countries, cold kills far more people each year than heat. For the kind of temperature rise predicted for the UK over the next 50 years, the team estimated that heat-related deaths would rise by about 2,000 a year - but that this figure would be dwarfed by a cut in cold-related deaths of 20,000.
Other climate-related health scares have collapsed under close scrutiny. In 2002, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, added his voice to claims that Britain could be facing the return of malaria.
A subsequent analysis by experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded that changes in land use and socio-economic trends made the risk "highly unlikely". Oddly, the lifting of this eco-threat was not widely reported.
It is a similar story with agriculture. During the 1990s, researchers repeatedly claimed that global warming would have dire consequences for key crops. Even developed nations such as America were predicted to suffer. Apocalyptic scenarios of a sweltering world unable to feed itself began to gain currency.
Once again, however, more sophisticated studies are revealing a different picture, having taken account of a factor so often ignored: human adaptability. Global warming is also routinely regarded as disastrous for everything from Alpine ski resorts to tropical beaches.
Yet the picture now emerging from more sophisticated studies is far less apocalyptic. Last year, a team at the University of Hamburg showed that a modest temperature rise would lead to 30 per cent more tourists visiting countries such as Russia and Canada.
The benefits to UK tourism may also be substantial, according to a recent study by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which concluded: "We may witness not only an expansion in the domestic market, but an expansion in the inbound international market as the UK develops a more Mediterranean climate."
Even the frightening prospect of rising sea-levels caused by the melting of the polar ice caps - widely regarded within the climate-change lobby as one of the most devastating consequences of global warming - is now under serious scrutiny. Millions of people, from those living in the coastal cities of the West to the inhabitants of Pacific islands, are at risk, we were warned.
But then the early claims of 5ft rises started to give way to far less dramatic predictions; the most recent estimate, published last year by the International Quaternary Association, puts the figure at a sea-level rise of somewhere between 8in and zero. A recent study found that sea levels around the allegedly threatened Maldives have actually fallen.
In any case, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now concedes that there is little fear of millions being made permanently homeless by flooding. Its most recent report states: "Human settlements are expected to be among the sectors that could be most easily adapted to climate change, given appropriate planning and foresight."
Climate scientists have made little of the benefits of a warming planet, and even less of the ability of humans to cope with the consequences. From the changes in irrigation and new crops made by American farmers that prevented a repetition of the 1930s Dust Bowl, to the sea-wall system that protects northern Vietnam, there is no lack of evidence for human inventiveness in the face of climate change.
Yet this is routinely left out or played down in predictions of the impact of climate change. Describing the likely impact of extremes in weather in his recent book, Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, Sir John Houghton cites 23 threats - adding only in a footnote that all of them could be "lessened by appropriate response measures".
Including them can transform the implications of climate change. "If you just take an agronomic model and make conditions hotter and drier, then, yes, crop yields go down," says Professor Richard Adams, an agricultural economist at Oregon State University. "But if you're a farmer, you see your crops aren't doing so well and plant a more heatresistant type."
Prof Adams is one of a group of academics pioneering the use of studies that take into account such adaptability. The results frequently contradict the simplistic models, with dire losses turning into sizeable gains.
During the 1990s, studies of the impact of climate change on the US agricultural economy predicted huge declines amounting to more than 20 per cent of US Gross Domestic Product. By taking into account adaptation, studies by Professor Robert Mendelsohn, an economist at Yale University, now point to growth of more than 13 per cent.
Ironically, some of the benefits come from the growth-promoting effect of the very greenhouse gas now causing so much alarm: carbon dioxide. Global yields of wheat and rice are expected to rise by 18 per cent, while yields of clover - a key foodstuff for grazing animals - looks set to rise by 36 per cent.
Global vegetation density seems to be benefiting already, with net gains in growth across the whole planet since the early 1980s. Even tropical forests and the Amazon are reported to be growing more luxuriant as CO2 levels rise.
"I am optimistic about the future," Prof Adams told The Sunday Telegraph. "I am continually amazed by what farmers can do. We are not going to have mass starvation."
According to Prof Adams, the real problems lie in distributing the food that is grown - and ensuring that developing nations have the means to develop new crops. Many economists are convinced that the best hope of that lies in continued economic growth. Their fear is that this is precisely what is now being threatened by the calls for immediate action over global warming.
"Economic studies clearly show it will be far more expensive to cut greenhouse gases than to pay for the cost of adapting to a warmer planet", says Professor Bjorn Lomborg, of Copenhagen Business School and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, whose critique of the climate change debate has incensed environmentalists.
Even if we shut every fossil-fuel power station, crushed every car and grounded every aircraft, the Earth's climate would still continue to get warmer, according to Prof Stott. "The trouble is, we would all be too impoverished to cope with the consequences," he said.
Mr Whippy said:
Bah, all we need is a few big volcanic eruptions in the next 50 years and the last decade of CO2 and Sulphur cuts from mankind will look pathetic in comparison to what they will pump out!
Interestingly this would appear to be scuttlebutt. Volcanoes don't put out a very big percentage of naturally occurring CO2. I've seem some bollox numbers (3% etc). It *does* appear that they put out a huge percentage of the Sulphur though...
I have yet to see a proper table showing which greenhouse elements contribute most - Water vapour at 95% - CO2 at 3% or something...
And then I have yet to see a proper table showing the breakdown of the sources of those greenhouse elements. (Naturally occurring, from industry, from transport, from home heating etc etc).
And I have yet to see a change/rate of change graph for those elements...coupled with a breakdown as to which are man made and which aren't.
If I could actually find an unbiased web-site which merely presented the information - THE FACTS - and avoideed "scenarios" and "storylines" I'd be a good deal more prepared to listen to how people are choosing to interpret "the facts".
I've done quite a bit of web-searching and all I ever seem to find is scuttlebutt, horror stories - but never base DATA - about which I could make up my own mind.
Anyone have a recommendation?
Don said:
Anyone have a recommendation?
In the back of Michael Crichtons book State of Fear is a series of links to the original data plus a lot of recommended reading and scientific articles.
As an example of the sort of argument.
People show graphs which purport to demonstrate trend of increase in temperature at a particular site.
Many of these sites are near a large urban area.
Therefore this data is "adjusted" by a formula to allow for urban spread.
The adjustment factor is a guess, therefore just as global warming theory and computer models are just that, theories and guesses, people read the massaged data but interpret them as facts.
So you need to look at the raw data, which is where the web links come in.
When you look at the raw data, as opposed to the secondary data which has been massaged in support of an unknown agenda, most, but not all, sites show a flat or even slightly decreasing trend line.
Its like the IPCC climate model, it hasn't predicted even half accurately what has actually happened in the years since the project started. So why should we believe it is accurate 300 years into the future, and why do people quote a computer model as if it were a fact?
From what I can understand that even if we believe the model AND implement all the Kyoto stuff at whatever expense the most we, humans, could decrease global temperatures by is something like 0.013 degree C about 300 years from now. The 0.013 deg is a made up figure, but its something like that, maybe as much as 0.13 deg C. !!!!!
It seems that selective reporting, careful selection of data and timelines is a tactic used by both sides in the debate to be honest.
As said before the problem is biased research based on who is funding the work. Something as serious as this should be independantly funded.
FiF
edited to add the following. We shouldn't forget the blatant biased scaremongering, aka lies. For example from what I understand people often cite extreme weather events as an example of global warming. IIRC the IPCC model (haha) predicts that extreme weather events will decrease with global warming, so maybe more extreme events are indicative of a coming ice age.
Edited even later to add the link to the raw data i talked about above.
www.giss.nasa.gov/?lat=36.12&lon=-86.68&datatype=gistemp&data_set=1
and edited for a third time.
Scientific journals are now censoring scientists who want to discuss climate change / global warming objectively.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/05/01/ixworld.html
>> Edited by Flat in Fifth on Friday 17th June 12:37
>> Edited by Flat in Fifth on Friday 17th June 20:01
>> Edited by Flat in Fifth on Friday 17th June 20:12
Yes well said Flat in Fifth
My own view is that we should look at low cost ways to reduce CO2 emissions and leave any more drastic measures to when more technologies become viable.
For instance it is claimed that a new design of Nuclear reactor could produce electricity cheaper than Gas, so let’s go for it, reducing Co2 emissions at no extra cost.
Another good course of action, which we have already done, is high petrol tax, so encouraging fuel efficiency.
.
My own view is that we should look at low cost ways to reduce CO2 emissions and leave any more drastic measures to when more technologies become viable.
For instance it is claimed that a new design of Nuclear reactor could produce electricity cheaper than Gas, so let’s go for it, reducing Co2 emissions at no extra cost.
Another good course of action, which we have already done, is high petrol tax, so encouraging fuel efficiency.
.
Well, the sun is BLOODY HOT...
I don't think anything we can do will alter the fact that the natural cycle the world undergoes will continue to do so, no matter how hard we try!
As per volcanoes. OK, fair enough maybe not so much Co2.
How about a huge solar flare or a long period of sustained large solar activity during the suns own cycle of solar flare activity?
The sun could do anything any day, to wipe us all out with radiation if it gets frisky!
We are fighting an up-hill struggle against monumental forces and energy cycles that have always existed, and always will do (read elliptical orbit of earth round sun, suns solar cycle, earths rotation axis angle offset cycle etc) no matter what tiny little changes we make here on the surface of the earth...
What we are trying to stop is a natural effect perhaps exaggerated a little by what we do on earth.
But even if it is, by far the biggest effect that seems to be aknowledged now as a problem is aircraft dumping their crap in the atmosphere. Aircraft could be aiming for better mpg and lower Co2 ratings but are not one bit.
As always, nothing wrong with cleaner cars etc, but do we have to be so obsessive?
Dave
I don't think anything we can do will alter the fact that the natural cycle the world undergoes will continue to do so, no matter how hard we try!
As per volcanoes. OK, fair enough maybe not so much Co2.
How about a huge solar flare or a long period of sustained large solar activity during the suns own cycle of solar flare activity?
The sun could do anything any day, to wipe us all out with radiation if it gets frisky!
We are fighting an up-hill struggle against monumental forces and energy cycles that have always existed, and always will do (read elliptical orbit of earth round sun, suns solar cycle, earths rotation axis angle offset cycle etc) no matter what tiny little changes we make here on the surface of the earth...
What we are trying to stop is a natural effect perhaps exaggerated a little by what we do on earth.
But even if it is, by far the biggest effect that seems to be aknowledged now as a problem is aircraft dumping their crap in the atmosphere. Aircraft could be aiming for better mpg and lower Co2 ratings but are not one bit.
As always, nothing wrong with cleaner cars etc, but do we have to be so obsessive?
Dave
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