At risk of being repetitious, the way I see it, the proponents of cutting carbon emissions policies in Britain have a whole series of hurdles to jump. The onus is on them to persuade us: 1. That the climate of the planet is in fact changing. 2. That the change is consistent, significant, measurable and predictable. 3. That the change is caused by human actions, not just natural effects. 4. That the change is a bad thing which ought to be stopped. 5. That it is possible to take human action to reverse the change. 6. That the best or only way to achieve this is reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the air. 7. That such action taken in Britain would have a worldwide effect. 8. That potentially the harm done to civilisation by reducing carbon dioxide emissions would not be greater than the harm done by global warming. Only if we are convinced of the validity of all eight of those propositions are we obliged to support their policy proposals, in my view. Item 1 is easy, even trivial; we all know the climate has always changed, in the short-term, medium-term and long-term. Items 2-8 remain topics of debate and personally I am not fully convinced on any one of them. Even if anthropogenic global warming were assumed to be proved, that takes us only to point 3, and there is still a long way to go in the argument. The proponents of AGW have severely damaged their case by overstating it, exaggerating effects, suppressing opposition, falsifying figures, making apocalyptic predictions, etc, etc. But we should avoid falling into a trap: the follies and errors of those putting the case forward do not mean their underlying case may not be valid after all. That remains to be seen. In short: the jury’s still out.
Judging from most predictions, if you wait until the entire world, and all the vested interests are convinced about all of your points (which will never happen - no one ever unanimously agrees on anything), it will be far too late to do anything at all. We may have already reached a tipping point, we may not have. When you say that the jury is out, is this based on any reading or research you have done personally into the matter, or only what the mainstream media (not a highly reliable source for balanced debate) have to say? I reiterate that the anti-climate change PR machine has been doing its level best to make us all think that the climate change proponents have been "exaggerating effects, suppressing opposition, falsifying figures and making apocalyptic predictions". For every falsified figure and dodgy email, there are countless thousands of carefully calculated figures and genuine emails. "The jury is out" - this is exactly what the anti-climate change lobby wants you to think. It is exactly the same tactic that was used in the 70s to pretend that we didn't know whether or not cigarette smoking caused cancer and these tactics have been proven and documented. So long as we want to think that "the jury is out" we don't have to do anything or give the problem consideration. Until the jury is "in" we don't have a problem. The success of this tactic is demonstrated by the results to this poll.
If climate change has nothing to do with the human race - which if you voted in the poll I take to be your view - why would the population explosion have anything to do with it? The answers to this poll seem very inconsistent with the comments that have been made on the thread.
You are being disingenuous, Dave. You also said "if we continue down the road we are on now we are effectively stealing from the future generations are we not?" That implies that climate change is caused by mankind and that we should be doing something to stop it. So if you think that, why haven't you voted, even if it seems to be an unpopular vote? If you are the one person who since yesterday voted for this option, then I retract my critique!
If you look at earth cycles we are at a verge of another ice age. Now some will say that proves global warming as it gets hotter. Thing is no one knows what triggered previous ice age. It is possible that due to constant heating up we will head towards a collapse of current cycles and it will lead to ice age. Most popular being complete collapse of the main Atlantic currents that transport heat/cold around the globe. When you think about it that makes sense. Gets hotter so ice melts, plenty of fresh water gets dumped to salty Atlantic waters disturbing currents on top of that as ice is melted water does not cool down enough to drop to the bottom of the ocean (which is what creates the actual current flow) creating the current so it slows down until it stops. As current has stopped heated water is not carried around the globe so areas that depend on it get colder until ice age starts. When it gets cold enough currents start moving again as water gets cooled and drops to the bottom of ocean slowly restarting the process so ice age starts coming to an end. However those theory's then suggests this warming up is normal so does not match with plans.
We can take away the future of your children without creating global warming. Current resources will run out at one stage if we do not develop ways to recycle them effectively, if we do not develop new ways of powering our cars, planes, city's by the time resources are almost depleted it might be to late due to social unrest, society collapse and general lack of resources.
Historically all civilisations have collapsed and that was without GW, caused either by civil unrest, invasion, drought or bad managment (and we elect ours).
Now Waterworld was bad. As in really atrocious. It was so bad, that I very nearly didn't return for the second half after the interval (yes, we have "intermission - time to enjoy" here). It is perhaps the worst film I have ever paid to see. Sort of Mad Max on the ocean. Total dross.
If you have ever had no electric, no water, no food and no way of knowing if you`l see tomorrow`s morning sun rise then you will know that all our trivial concerns are nothing more than selfish greed; the worst virtues of human nature. When you have none of the above, save for the later, you soon forget about material possessions and the more real, important things in life come clearly into focus. Like family, well-being in happieness. Oil is only a luxury,to you and me, its when water and food runs out that we should concern ourselves with. But until that day arrives; use what ever you can afford to put in your bike cos when it gets critical, the Gov` will turn the taps off and then all we have is a relic of a by-gone era.ride it like you stole it, if you dont burn the fuel, someone else will. Back on topic; if you ever saw that program BBC1 think called `Orbit` they follow the earth`s solar orbit through a yr going deep into angles tilts etc etc. and the fact the MET Office has only what, the last 100 yrs of solid weather data its had to make hypothesis about climate change when taking into account the size and time of space and the universe. But im not gonna say we dont have a part to play cos we most certainly do.
You have jumped to conclusions about a number of the issues here, I think my dear Glidd. Perhaps I might comment on a few of them. It is perfectly possible that the Earth was heading for an ice age about now, and that AGW is happening but has come just in time to save us from a worse fate. There is also the point that vast areas of Canada, Russia and Greenland have long been virtually uninhabitable and uncultivable because they are too cold, and would become useful if they were warmer. These and some other scenarios would mean that AGW is happening, but is beneficial. It is not enough simply to assume AGW must be a bad thing, as you seem to be doing [my point 4]. Even if AGW is true, and is caused by carbon dioxide emissions into the air, you have made another unwarranted assumption – that the only solution is reducing CO2 emissions. It is perfectly possible that other means could be found of reducing the temperature of the Earth, if that were thought desirable and some practicable technological means have already been suggested. These are routinely ignored by ‘Green’ enthusiasts, who are fixated on reducing carbon emissions and will consider no other options [point 6]. Britain is a small player in this (admittedly not as small as Switzerland), and getting smaller every year. The annual increase in CO2 emissions in China is probably more than the UK’s total – I say probably because statistics for these sorts of thing are all wildly inaccurate, little more than guesses really. USA, China, India, Brazil etc etc industrial economies are much larger, and some are rapidly expanding. Shutting down the UK completely and going back to the stone age would be a drop in a bucket globally; doing so really would be “petty posturing” [point 7]. Your comment about “…having a crappy, rainy summer” neatly illustrates one of my points. Every time we have a weather event which is unusually wet/dry/hot/cold, some dimwit has to attribute it to global warming. Actually, even if AGW is really happening, that fact is not demonstrated by random local weather events – we have always had unusually wet/dry/hot/cold spells from time to time, and they don’t prove anything much. That is an example of what I meant by proponents of AGW exaggerating and overstating their case, and in consequence damaging their credibility with populations and electorates [point 8]. The chain of connection is long and tenuous between climate change at one end and taking drastic political action with carbon taxes, caps, and trading schemes at the other end. The whole case is made out only if all the links in the chain are there. Gaps destroy the logical imperative, rather like the chain linking a defendant to a crime (one link missing means an acquittal). What I was discussing was the process whereby an individual person like you, me, or a forum member makes up their mind what to believe, not the whole planet making its decision. There seem to have arisen two opposing groups in the world, each with its own set of vested interests. In them individuals advance their careers and fortunes by sticking to the script, sometimes in the teeth of today’s news, and often disregarding inconvenient facts. That applies to both groups, not just to one side. By the way, may I say I am glad you feel able to put forward your views vigorously, even where you are in a small minority. Long may you continue.
Lol can of worms this one Glidd:biggrin: Bring on some cataclysmic event be it world war, mass extinction or dear I say `aliens`! maybe if the human race survives can we abolish the greed of money, the need to abuse resourses, religion and the view that any one person is better than the next. Standing by!!
I spent 3 brain mushing Days on a course renewing my F gas Re-fridge license! We spent hours going over the Ozone, green house effect, global warming and climate change. Even had to do a exam! then 1/2 day doing practical to make sure you know what your doing! Bloody joke!
