Co2 is both a cause AND a result of temp rises. There's a video on that page if it wasn't clear. & you're doing the middle ground fallacy again. The answer is NOT necessarily the mid point of two extremes. The other issue is that empirical science does not prove, or attempt to prove anything true. Proof is a mathematics concept only. Scientific progress is made by falsification. Whatever current accepted theory happens to be is provisional & always susceptible to change and revision. So the fact that science cannot prove AGW, as Loz points out, is moot.
I think there is middle ground in that you can challenge the degree to which mankind is responsible for some part of climate change and the history of the climate change movement is that it has made what have turned out to be exaggerated claims. Also we have moved beyond scientific principles into politics, economics and human nature. What we should do is use precious resources more responsibly and above all else protect habitat, but that it is easy for us to say because we don't have to worry where our next meal is coming from. Here is another graph, carefully selected to lend weight to my argument
Thing is @johnv you and I may well AGREE on what course of action to take with regards to climate change but good decisions can only be taken on the basis of good scientific evidence. Personally speaking, acting on climate change directly is likely to be ineffectual in the long term (see Lomborg) - the real problem IMO is our obsession with economic growth.
Again you are being patronisingly smug, no one, except you, has mentioned the "mid point" of anything. The earth has many feedback mechanisms to control our climate within a broad range of conditions, that must be the case otherwise we wouldn't be here, I have no doubt that there are some we do not fully understand or are not even aware of and therefore cannot be part of any computer model.
I agree, it is just that I don't think the science is being evenly represented, too much is being based upon literally a handful of computer simulations and the debate is being shut down for political and economic gain. And I absolutely agree regarding our obsession with economic growth.
The climate is getting warmer as a trend. Mankind is changing the composition of the atmosphere in terms of gaseous ratios and particulates. These are observations. You have two choices for your leap of faith. 1. Man isn't significantly affecting the climate. 2. Man is significantly affecting the climate. There is no middle ground. 1. Do nothing of significance, it'll be OK. The outcome is unknown, isn't it exciting? 2. Do something of significance - outcomes can either be: we effect change, or we don't effect change. There is no middle ground. Game theory would then tell us that are creating high stakes, with the major undesirable outcomes being: 1. We trash our planet and our civilisation, with no hope of averting the disaster 2. We handicap ourselves economically until and unless we are able to come up with alternative energy strategies. There is of course, 3. Nothing bad happens no matter what we do, and 4. It all goes tits up, no matter what we do. Which is the highest risk? People living on mountaintops are exempt from this exercise (that's you, finm)
Models are really not the main and certainly not the only justification for AGW. Models being inaccurate at prediction is expected, since they are by definition an approximation. But you'd have to work really hard to justify a denial in the measured data for average temps since the industrial revolution. Problem is that this IS a political issue. There are no two ways around it.
Those choices are not binary though. There is middle ground. Game theory suggests you take the course of action with the least worst downside. We could start a whole new argument on what that might be @finm will be OK, Nippy Sweetie will protect him.
@johnv You still haven't really answered my questions above. I am not a climate change scientist. There is little point in my challenging any of the data, as there are people who are employed to do this permanently who are far more qualified. The IPCC wasn't set up to prove climate change, it was set up to look into the matter and report back. I still don't get what we have to gain from agreeing that Man is warming the climate. I can see plenty of reasons why it would be good to agree that he wasn't. This position has been borne out by politicians who have been very slow to embrace the idea of climate change and do anything about it. The climate change deniers (OK, those who either insist that a. there is no climate change or b. that there is, but we are not responsible or c. that even if we are, it's nothing to worry about and needs no action) like to point at a conspiracy whereby all politicians benefit from man-made climate change being a reality which needs urgent action. This just isn't borne out by the evidence. There are huge vested interests in not doing anything about climate change. Who wants to get rid of proven technologies in favour of a load of developing technologies which are costly to implement? Who wants to give up on their reserves of fossil fuels and write them off as being dangerous? No one. So when you get all the world's leaders coming together to try to get some change to the status quo, you sort of get the idea that it really is an urgent problem that needs addressing, like it or not. And for your info, no, I don't like it either.
dont know if protect them, but i am sure she will question westminster over the disproportionate effects of their energy policy.
BTW, these programmes were very interesting: BBC Radio 4 - Changing Climate Unless, I suppose, you regard the BBC as leftist propaganda.
And even then, there's still the issue of waste heat which is the result of using energy to do work, even with fusion as a 'perfect' energy source. We're fucked either way, just that one will take longer
@gliddofglood Look at climate change from a marketing perspective, do you not feel that it has been marketed brilliantly ? Tony Blair took us to war on a dodgy dossier, did he believe that it was true or did he cynically lie to us ? I suspect he believed what he wanted to believe. Politicians are human just like the rest of us. Climate Change. Can anybody in their right mind deny that climate change is a) happening and b) we are in some way responsible for it ? Timing. We are, rightly, increasingly aware of our effect on the planet and the fact that it is a finite resource. We do need to do something about that by raising our game. Conferences. Everybody likes to go to conferences, strut the stage, reinforce the pecking order and make decisions. It is human nature isn't it ? Politicians like to do things, they like to be on the winning side and they hate being on the losing side. What do they have to lose by championing climate change, very little, what do they have to lose if they don't champion climate change at a time when it is gathering momentum, lots. Developing Nations. They just love it. The developed nations have grown rich by pumping out CO2 and now they want us to curb our CO2 emissions !!!!! Carbon Trading. Yeah. Lets buy and sell the right to emit CO2. We can offset by growing a few trees and sell those credits to some mug. Above all else I think it is an idea that hit the market place at the right time. It was picked up by a few hopefuls and they rode it. It became the new craze, everyone had to buy into it. And is is true, well anyway a little bit of it is true.
The average temperature data has been "normalised". Now I don't know in which way it has been normalised other than the fact it has. Maybe there was bias in the normalising algorithm ? Maybe it was coincidental with a natural cycle. From the graph you posted earlier the rate of temp increase was greater between 1910 - 1940 than 1980 to 2010. How do we account for this ? Or it is a smoking gun. It is a political and economic issue. The science no longer matters.
So they quickly deduced that yes, mankind is affecting the climate, no surprise there, a butterfly on the other side of the Atlantic affects the climate (or is that weather?). Wow. This huge. It is going to take years to get to the bottom of this. We had better produce an interim report and suggest a conference in a few years time. Now about my expenses. Think snowball rolling down a hill.
I'm not sure where you're going with this. One minute you're saying warming is uncontroversial, the next you seem to be calling the data suspicious. I'm trying to isolate your core point - is your objection that warming is being exaggerated for political and financial gain? Do you believe the scientific community are somehow 'in on it' or just that the science is being exploited? (The science AWAYS matters.)
This is the trick that is being missed in the UK (surprise surprise). What the UK has that most other countries don't have is brilliant higher education, research, brainpower and creativity. That is what you want to turn into profit. Climate change represents a superb opportunity for new industries. Britain could be completely leading those industries, with enough investment. As far as Britain is concerned, climate change could actually be good news. All the time you have to convince people that it isn't happening or isn't important is time trickling away to allow other nations to come up with the solutions first as investment will not become forthcoming. This is unwise. We will find that we have missed a golden opportunity. Note that the Germans are once again ahead of the curve. When they decided to can nuclear, post Fukushima, they forced themselves to invest in new energy solutions. Dammit! Beaten by the Huns again!
