I am having a little difficulty following your argument John. You agree that the climate "is changing". By this, do you mean it is getting warmer on average, across the globe? This is what seems to be being observed. That increased CO2 in the atmosphere produces a greenhouse effect is not in doubt. It was first proven in the 19th century and there are YouTube experiments which have been posted on this forum (not by me) which shows it happening in the lab. CO2 levels in the atmosphere are currently abnormally high. This increase has been observed since the beginning of industrialisation and not before (in the last 2000 years, say). It appears to have grown at an unprecedented speed. Circumstantial evidence would suggest that mankind has put this CO2 there. If not, what is the alternative credible explanation? Everything else seems to be something of a red herring. So which part do you disagree with? a) The climate is warming b) CO2 concentrations are high c) Increased CO2 concentrations produce a greenhouse effect d) Mankind is responsible for the increased CO2 Just so I know which bit we are arguing about!
Sorry Pete. You are correct. What I should have said was, that the more CO2 in the atmosphere, the more will be dissolved in the sea, up until the point of equilibrium, which it seems we are approaching.
Global average temperature hasn't changed since 1997 yet CO2 levels have continued to rise, they clearly don't 'align directly', and even if they did correlation does not prove causation. The Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the Roman Warm Period all had large temperature swings occurred long before industrialisation and the modern rise in CO2. We were led to believe that the effect would be a 'runaway' event that once started could not be stopped, but is has of it's own accord. The truly staggering thing would be that if it was found that the climate was in stasis, which it clearly isn't. The tinkering at the edges in terms of attempting to control global CO2 emissions is transferring wealth from the little people, that is all of us (I assume, unless Wills really is on here) to the rich under the pretence of 'saving the planet'.
You're available to be taxed. The Indonesians are a bit more recalcitrant when it comes to preventing them burning down their rainforests. But the wallet talks. Do you check to see if a product contains palm oil, and if so, refuse to buy it?
Source please? On the other hand, there is this: https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq/how-much-has-global-temperature-risen-last-100-years
We all know the climate will change, that is not an issue, it's a fact. The question is whether or not man is responsible for it. You have said that the industrial revolution (or that general era) produced a sudden increase in CO2 levels, but there seem to be plenty of scientists willing to debunk that theory. Perhaps we should check if there was a sudden growth spurt in trees of that era (as they thrive on CO2). Perhaps someone already has. But there always seems to be controversy surrounding any IPCC report, and it has to be said that most of the scientists predictions for the future of weather, sea levels, plant growth, etc all seem to miss the mark by some distance. No, the only certainty in this world is that the climate will change, and the various governments have cleverly devised a way to tax us on it. Put it another way. Man is Earthbound for the most part, everything we have, everything we grow, every thing we eat and drink, everything we make, everything we burn or freeze, even the media by which we manage this, comes from the Earth. I find it very hard to believe we can harm it with it's own produce.
a) I think the consensus is that global warming has halted as of 1997 b) CO2 concentrations have risen to a modern high. c) Yes d) Yes, our burning of fossil fuels continue to pump out large quantities of CO2 My position is that the climate has always been subjected to natural swings due to complex feedback mechanisms that we are only just beginning to understand. CO2 is a greenhouse gas but so is CH4 and water vapour, all are produce by natural processes. Man has increased CO2 levels and therefore contributes in some way to 'climate change' but at a small level. The whole debate has been twisted, by both sides of the argument, for political and financial gain. The politicians select the viewpoint that fits their requirement at the time, it is very tempting to become the saviour of the planet. Proponents invest in green technology, despite that fact that they only provide marginal gains from large investments requiring subsidies. Oil companies are selective in their use of data, well they would wouldn't they. And academic careers have been built on the paradigm. Big sexy supercomputers running models that are constantly tweaked to correlate with the historical data and then project ahead. But correlation is not causation. So yes, I am a sceptic and proud of it.
In the first wave of studies made public (maybe late '80's when it started making the news..?) the scientists said the sea levels were going to rise by eighteen feet, reducing Britain to a group of very small islands. Then there was a sudden backtrack. "Err, what we actually meant was 18 centimetres..." A couple of years later we were blamed for causing holes in the ozone layer...right up until a volcano erupted and punched a hole in the ozone the size of Europe (or something large, anyway). We should, according to the scientists, be burning to death every time we venture near a window these days - but no records broken this year... It's all a load of bollocks designed to squeeze more money out of us. Remember, they thought our heads would explode if we exceeded 20mph not that many years back.
Well, that is all fair enough - at least it is clear. One thing that the book The Merchants of Doubt made very clear was that although (and I paraphrase here, as I can't be bothered to find the exact quote or start trawling the web) about 95%+ of scientists are in broad agreement about the human responsibility for global warming, the media gives equal weight to both sides of the argument, leading the general public to believe that there is no consensus, and that it is just as valid to disbelieve in a warming trend, or that man has anything to do with it, as it is to believe the contrary. The book laid out how this mechanism works. The same individuals and companies have been employed by the oil companies as were retained by the tobacco companies. It's a great book - highly recommended. The green energy industry has indeed benefitted from subsidies, but this is to accelerate the tipping point at which some of them become far more economically viable. It appears that solar is now at that point. I'm fairly against wind farms in many places as they are eyesores and produce noise which adversely affects local inhabitants. It seems obvious that solar is the way to go. When you think of all the roof space in towns and on already unsightly buildings and factories, it seems clear that locally produced electricity - ie for on site consumption - would make a great deal of sense. This has been resisted because the power companies wouldn't be concerned, whereas with wind farms (capital intensive projects) they are. I don't see all politicians' actions as some manifestation of machiavellian strategy. I have little confidence in them, I think they twist the truth, but I don't believe in a power conspiracy, unless it is that of the most influential corporate players. And they are very much those who want coal, oil, gas and nuclear power. The green lobby pales into insignificance. If the government was really green, there would be a real campaign of rolling out solar on a mammoth scale, accompanied by subsidies - which would be a good way of spending government money. Do you really want to be dependant on Arabs for oil, Russians for gas, or Poles for coal? Anything that can be done to create power at home, without rolling the nuclear dice any more than is necessary, seems like a plan worth pursuing, in my book.
Take a look at the first graph on the source you quote and look at the last 12 years. Ok slightly different from 1997 but close enough surely.
Surely nuclear power must have come on a way in terms of safety since the older plants were designed and built? And surely nuclear energy is the easiest way forward in terms of green-ness?
I don't know where you get that story. There was indeed a worrying large hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, and as a result drastic and urgent action was taken outlawing CFCS in aerosols for example. And happily, most of the problem was solved. Instead of being happy that action was taken and a result achieved, it is typical that people should just pretend the problem was invented, as if we should all be happier that having caused a problem, we were powerless to do anything about it. If it was all down to a volcano, why not bring back CFCs, since they were cheap and got the job done?
I dunno, I was just watching the news> Must've been best part of twenty years ago a large volcano erupted, and the fact it had punched a huge hole in the ozone was very much the main talking point. Again, it begs the question of how much of mans' actions are doing the damage compared to nature. I think what damage we may do is very insignificant.
Well Fukushima was meant to be pretty state of the art, and the Japanese aren't exactly a load of third world people without a clue. Problem with nuclear is that : a) you have to be 100% sure there will never be an accident. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima suggests that is unlikely. There will always be "black swan" events you can't foresee. b) the waste materials have half-lives of thousands of years. There is nothing you can do to get rid of them. Best you can manage is to bury them deep enough to hope they never see the light of day. A bit like shitting down the bottom of your garden and hoping to never have to go down there. c) third problem is susceptibility to attack (could be terrorist, could just be a bomb from someone) d) the culture of secrecy that surrounds the industry. What do you really know about it? e) where do you get the raw material from, who processes it and transports it? blah blah, etc. etc. Friendly, it is not.
The commentary says: "There are slight differences in global records between groups at NCDC, NASA, and theUniversity of East Anglia. Each group calculates global temperature year by year, using slightly different techniques. However, analyses from all three groups point to the decade between 2000 and 2009 as the hottest since modern records began more than a century ago. Temperatures in the 2010s have been running slightly warmer still." Graph fit line does appear to flatten off a bit in the last few years - so much the better. So should we all do nothing and gamble that it's now going to stay flat, or start a downward trend? And why would it? Or should we worry about what is happening in the oceans due to warming and increased acidity? Or just forget about it, order a large V8 and go to sleep?
I haven't done the maths and don't propose to do so but how big do you think a solar array would have to be on your house to provide you with the energy you use ? I suspect it would be very, very, big. It would require a large investment and degrade over some timescale, the return on investment would be poor and it certainly wouldn't be free. The one saving grace of the whole global warming debate is that it focusses our thoughts on energy usage. The cheap plentiful energy that has fuelled the increase in prosperity since the start of the industrial revolution has been derived from fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas. The low hanging fruit in the energy world has been picked and cost of energy is only going to go one way, this puts at risk our prosperity and well being, without energy there is no economic activity. So we do need to embrace alternatives but we need to be realistic. The world we live in will change out of all recognition by the end of this century and quite possibly a lot sooner. Anthropogenic Global Warming was an idea that hit the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending upon your viewpoint). Scientists and politicians were more than willing to pick it up and run with it, for a variety of reasons but it fails to address the real issues we now face. The idea we can have a new 'green' economy based upon windmills and solar is laughable. We need to invest in a new generation of nuclear, yesterday.
