A balanced approach to climate change
Post categories: World Tonight
| 17:20 UK time, Thursday, 12 November 2009
Will the Copenhagen climate conference next month get a global deal on measures to control the rise in global temperatures?
That was one of the questions discussed this week when The World Tonight, co-hosted a conference at Chatham House with the journal International Affairs and the Royal Society looking at the challenges governments all over the world face with climate change and the potential scarcity of natural resources.
We also discussed how measures to deal with climate change could make food, energy and water shortages worse. You can listen to the programme we did from the conference here.
Most of the people at the conference were climate experts, technology specialists, politicians, lobbyists and activists, but there were also journalists ie us.
At one point, the discussion turned to concerns that many climate scientists have that public scepticism about climate change may be growing just as the models these scientists use to project the rise in global temperatures and the impact that will have on ice melt in places like the Himalayas, are suggesting a worse scenario in the next few decades.
They expressed surprise that this should be so.
One explanation offered was that the counter-message from climate change sceptics and lobby groups, especially in the US, that climate change is part of a natural cycle and nothing to worry about is a much simpler message to convey than the arguments for taking action which are based on a precautionary principle and complex climate modelling.
Others asked if the problem was a decline in public trust in scientists generally, because they are often asked to make projections which may not be subsequently borne out by experience.
Still others asked whether the media was responsible for the apparent rise in scepticism, arguing that the media in the interests of balance give airtime too much prominence to climate change sceptics, given the overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree climate change is happening and it is man-made and measures need to be taken to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
From the BBC's perspective, the answer to this question is that our journalistic role is not to campaign for anything. Impartiality means not taking sides in a debate, while accurately representing the balance of argument.
So, in the case of climate change we need proportionately to reflect the sceptical view but also, for example, reflect the debate among climate scientists about the most effective way of dealing with global warming.
On our programme, for instance, one of our panellists argued an all-encompassing global conference like Copenhagen is not the way to make progress as it is trying to deal with too many issues at once.
Another of the panellists argued that capping emissions and developing a market to trade in carbon is too slow and uncertain a way of dealing with the problem and we should invest in technical solutions to reducing the amount of CO2.
On the wider issue of reporting risk which is often what reporting what scientists are saying involves, the BBC has specific guidelines which you may be interested in reading.
Anyway, take a listen to the programme and let us know what you think.
Alistair Burnett is the editor of The World Tonight.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~20~RS~)
Comments
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Did journalists not learn from the MMR fiasco that the emptiest pots make the loudest noise? On one side we have all the world's leading scientists, and on the other side we have a handful of journalists scrabbling around for a "story".
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Biggest problem is that the average punter does not trust anything politicians say, probably rightly. In addition so many of the claims of " man made global warming " seem to come from scientists employed by people with vested interests, this itself makes the message questionable, and ally this to the constant tax increases to help stop " global warming "and the whole concept becomes a question of how believeable is it?Whether man causes it or not is still debateable, but it is happening, and whether adding to taxes and the futile gestures of humanity will stop it is extremely unlikely.
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Why are people sceptical? Could it be something to do with the fact that computer models of several years ago have predicted increasing temperatures but the observed temperature has stayed almost flat for nearly a decade. Despite this scientists make proclamations that things are "worse than we thought" and they predict ever more extreme events what will occur in ever shorter times scales.
In my opinion media reporting of scientists claims has departed from the realm of plausibility - people are right to be sceptical especially when legislation like the climate change bill will cost the tax payer over £18 billion per year.
The simple fact it that the models have failed to accurately predict climate change - everyone knows the models are seriously flawed therefore why should we take any notice of any theories based upon them when the cost of action is extremely high.
Perhaps the pubic just aren't as gullible as the scientists thought.
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How anybody can claim that too much airtime is given to sceptics escapes me.
The media & in particular you, the BBC, are guilty of the most biased reporting in favour of climate change fanatics & fantasists,so much so that I now refuse to watch BBC news programmes.
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Willodweesp is right. For instance, back in mis October reported on Pen Hadow and Co and their prediction that the Arctic will disappear in the nest 10 - 20 years. This was based on the rather comical saga of the Catlin arctic ice survey who's primary measuring equipment failed to work due to the cold - in fact the severe conditions meant less than half the planned distance was covered.
On the same day the met office issued a press release stating the Arctic ice cap was unlikely to disappear for at least 60 years. I saw no coverage of this but there was on the more extreme and pessimistic story. This was a clear demonstration of bias in the BBC - there is no point in denying it.
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May I suggest that the reason many scientifically educated people are sceptical is that the science is not settled. Unfortunately the BBC does not help itself by the crass ignorance of presenters such as Justin Webb, I think it was, who interviewed Professor Ian Plimer on the Today programme this morning. This is what Justin Webb said: “Most scientists say that if you look at the warming that there has been (and that I think you accept there has been) over the last 100/150 years and you look at the huge increase in carbon dioxide emissions that there have been and you put two and two together.”
First Justin Webb made the assertion, without any evidence whatsoever, that “most” scientists hold a particular viewpoint. The IPCC is not “most scientists”. It is not a scientific body. It is a political body led by an economist who started out as a railway engineer.
Justin Webb proposed that “most” scientists would put two and two together and deduce that because two values are apparently correlated, one causes the other. But correlation does not imply causation, as any scientist will tell you. In fact the Vostok ice-core data, so abused by Al Gore, provide evidence that temperature leads carbon dioxide by approximately 800 years - the complete reverse of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.
Why does the BBC fail to report the brilliant forensic work by Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre who conclusively destroyed Michael Mann’s and Keith Briffa’s notorious hockey sticks? Climate scientists unfortunately appear to be incompetent statisticians who peer review each others work and do not detect the obvious blunders and, even worse, are prone to the withholding of data on which their hypotheses are based.
The BBC has got it disastrously wrong over climate change. Its biased position is harming the broadcaster’s precious reputation for truth-telling.
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Sadly I have now come to know the BBC as the British Brainwashing Corporation. It is self evident that corporate policy is decided, man made warming is the message the only message and is assiduously followed by presenters. This policy is producing, whether intentionally or not, a climate of fear and mass hysteria.
Where is the balance?
The honourable recent exception of Clive James’ recent broadcast, making rational observations in respect of the science. was subsequently vilified by the fanatics
It was notable, during the brief interview on the Today programme this morning that too much sceptism was being aired by Professor Ian Plimer a highly qualified geologist. He, having analysed the warming and cooling history of the earth from core samples, was not given a full hearing and the interview seemed to be cut short to go to some matter of far less importance.
It is also evident that the much-respected botanist David Bellamy was unceremoniously dumped from broadcasting because he did not espouse the corporate policy.
Of course the worlds resources are finite and should not be wasted. New technologies need to be developed but the man made climate change fanatics and fantasists do not want to hear any other view, even from highly respected scientists.
The sun dictates warming and cooling cycles of the earth. The very idea that man can control the warming by the sun by a degree or two is in the same order as that of King Canute believing he could control the ebb and flow of the tides.
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"So, in the case of climate change we need proportionately to reflect the sceptical view ..."
Note the logical implications of this position for responsible journalistic practice: Naomi Oreskes' seminal study in Science found that precisely 0% of the peer-reviewed scientific literature diverges from the consensus on the question of anthropogenic climate change (see in particular Figure 4.1, p. 71, in this document: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]The representation of the divergent point of view on the BBC has, by my count, been rather higher. Judging by the standards you yourselves profess here - that "we need ++proportionately++ to reflect the sceptical view" - what exactly does this say about your own coverage? And how, one wonders, will future generations look back on your efforts?
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Interesting. A few thousand words about the climate change debate and not a single mention of McIntyre & McKitrick's mathematical deconstruction of Mann & Briffa's so-called 'hockey stick' graph.
It's as though you either haven't heard the storm of protest about Briffa'a data fraud or are hoping to just ignore it.
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How often does the BBC present doom laden prophecies concerning Climate Change? Many times, often through journalists who have not one iota of science in their blood. Conversely how often does the BBC raise the possibility that the opposite view is worth mentioning? The ratio is about 100:1 in favour of hyped up warmist guesses [most of which are turning out to be false/manipulated/downright lies].
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Well, if you leave the Arts graduates in charge of the science output, what do you expect?
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The BBC is not reporting the very high costs of taking action against global warming. Currently this has just been used as an excuse for tax rises. However large reduction in CO2 output means that the organisations making the CO2 will have to either use very different processes or be closed down. Closed down means that the workers get fired. When all the companies and civil service departments are firing people this is likely to result in high unemployment. The government will lose the taxes currently paid by those people and private sector companies.
A government getting less taxes will have to reduce pensions, social security and the number of people it employs. The sort of things that happened in the 1920s and 1930s. Very bad news.
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“public scepticism about climate change may be growing”
Gee, could it be that the predictions in the 1980-1990’s with “the models these scientists use to project rise in global temperatures” were way off?
I’ve got an idea for your net meeting. It’s a novel idea. Forget the smoke and mirrors, tell the people the truth.
Discuss the facts. http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Fact: Since the inception of Satellite temperature reading technology global temperatures have risen 13 tenths (.13) of a degree. (hardly the 2-6 degree change predicted by now)
Fact: Global temperatures have been trending DOWN, not up for over a decade now.
Fact: Co2 has continued to rise in direct contrast to temperature decline for over a decade now
Deduction: There is little or no correlation between Co2 and temperature rise.
Declaration: “We have saved the planet!”
Meeting adjourned
Go home wondering why you didn’t think of this sooner…
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This is very refreshing - honest coverage of the issues rather than fear based propanganda.
You state....
"Another of the panellists argued that capping emissions and developing a market to trade in carbon is too slow and uncertain a way of dealing with the problem and we should invest in technical solutions to reducing the amount of CO2."
If people are really worried about CO2 (not some other agenda) then this is a much easier message to sell.
Trying to persuade me to abandon my car and be unemployed on shaky evidence is not going to work. To persuade me to keep my car and fuel it on new, non-fossil, fuels is pushing at an open door. Why would I resist that?
Stop the climate of fear approach and start with some measures to shift away from fossil fuels.
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Climate change - the big picture
The Met Office:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html
NASA - Eyes on Earth:
http://climate.nasa.gov/
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Regarding the piece on Europe coming out of recession. I noticed the correspondant (Nigel Cassidy) stated that the UK was Europe's second biggest economy. That was the case until 2007. In both 2008 & foreseeably in 2009 & 2010 the UK has dropped back to 3rd with just a very small lead over Italy in 4th place. The spectacular fall has been due to the recession but also the devaluation of the pound.
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General Jack
They realy do a good job of "Hiding" the facts don't they.
I'll stick with the facts, not smoke and mirrors.
Don't let yourself be duped.
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Brief though it was, Professor Plimer's slot on the Today programme was a welcome contribution to balanced debate. I thoroughly enjoyed his response to the interviewer patronisingly telling him he was entitled to his beliefs. Without quite getting shirty, Plimer said that Belief is the currency of politics and religion; that science in contrast proceeds by accumulation of evidence in support of, or in refutation of, a given hypothesis.
If the current cooling trend continues, we the public will mock and scorn the bent scientists with their seats on the apocalypse gravy train.
However, the vast economic forces being wheeled out to combat non-existent AGW will take some stopping. With such momentum, I fear it will take a decade or more to dismantle the Global Warming Bandwagon.
Montaigne put it succinctly: "Nothing is so fervently believed as that which is not known."
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You've got to love the irony.
The lead article is about 'balance'.
Most of the people commenting have absolutely no interest in anything that might dispove their own conspiracy theories, and are actually offended by the presentation of opposing arguments by the BBC.
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Another day, another 'From the BBC's perspective, the answer to this question is that our journalistic role is not to campaign for anything. Impartiality means not taking sides in a debate, while accurately representing the balance of argument that rather presupposes the notion that because it is said that means it is true.
There is a heck of a critical message out there. Sadly, the mostly self-elected messengers seem to be woeful at conveying it, and are now blaming everyone and everything but themselves that the public is either confused or dubious.
Trust in the media, especially certain ones, is indeed low and plummeting. But I don't think it is down to their noble commitment to 'balance'.
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An important factor must be that some powerful corporations see action to reduce emissions as a threat to their profits. They are quite right. Effective action is only possible with a drastic reduction in the use and production of fossil fuel and probably meat production. Naturally, they have reacted by a substantial investment in a disinformation campaign.
In our market based economic system the easiest way to make changes is by engineering substantial price increases for products with bad footprints. Unfortunately the governments of the world have let themselves be talked into a trading system to do this rather than the alternative of taxes.This means that the extra revenue generated by the higher prices, accrues to the companies and speculators in the market, rather than to governments who could have used it to reduce other taxes and subsidise things like home insulation and the development of alternative technologies.
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"...the answer to this question is that our journalistic role is not to campaign for anything..."
That's the best laugh I've had in a long time.
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Maybe the theory is that if you pop in the odd massive extreme in every so often, and pit them against the B team for poor measure, that sorta 'balances' out the others?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/nov/13/climate-deniers-today-programme?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments
Heck of a way to secure trust or credibility from any quarter.
But, certainly, like so much... unique.
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When I was at school in the seventies the prediction was that north sea oil would run out by the nineties. We still haven't hit 'peak oil' yet.
This and many other examples illustrate why the public distrust the advice/opinions given by politicians and experts.
Add in the fact that all we hear about are tax rises to pay for prevention of an unknown event and not a peep about the billions of humands on the other side of the world doing anything about it themselves and it's no wonder the public are sceptical.
The only solution is through population reduction. We are naturally going down this route in Europe, despite the bleatings of the religious/low cost worker brigade. If the rest of the world did this, not only would global warming if it exists be reduced but the finite resources of the world would last a lot longer.
How about green taxes on those who have more than one child?? The biggest impact any person can have in terms of carbon footprint is to have a child so why not shift the tax burden on to them?
Automation and productivity will naturally take the place of low pay/low skill jobs and I for one would prefer factories of robots to sweatshops.
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The biggest problem with the whole subject of science in the media is that the stories are, mostly, reported on by people with degrees in Law, politics, economics, classics and other non-science subjects. There are a few well qualified people in the industry but they are few and far between and rarely are the ones conducting the interviews, on the front page or reporting the story on TV or Radio.
The problem with that is people outside of the science world don't propperly understand the way scientists talk about things. They don't understand the complex details of the reports or papers so just focus on the conclusions of the research. They then often misunderstand the real world implications of the subject and don't spot any mistakes or unfounded conclusions made.
They also tend to focus on the 'worst case scenarios' and potential extreme results without realising that these are very unlikley to take place.
Above all else they don't understand the scientific method, they don't realise that scientific assumptions are not the same as assumptions people make in day to day life.
When a scientist looks for a solution or outcome to a problem they sometimes make an assumption about what is going on, that assuption is then tested with the evidence and results and if it doesn't fit it is either refined or totally changed. The assumption is based on previous knowledge and the known trends etc.
For example when working out how planets move around the sun the fair, but obviously not perfect, assumption was made that they move in circular orbits. This was then compared with the evidence and found to be not quite true so the theory was refined to the point where it was realised they move in eliptical orbits and are not perfectly alligned with each other. (admitidly it's quite a simplistic example but you see the point)
There needs to be much better education of kids and adults about science.
For most people it may as well be magic with the wizards wearing white coats instead of pointy hats.
People don't understand and frequently neither do journalists, couple this with sensationilist reporting and the slightly synical view that politicians are always lying (Yes they do lie, but not as much as most people think) and you get unfounded mistrust of the theories that people are coming up with.
Add in the over reporting of research which goes against current theory (which is only natural) and it just adds to the problem.
It happens all the time, MMR jabs, mobile phone masts, waste incinerators, endangered species awareness, GM food etc. etc.
Climate change is nothing special in this regard at all.
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I was wondering how long it would take for population control to be brought up in this debate. Ok if there were less of us then there would be less of a problem, but it's not the silver bullet argument that some people think it is.
Even if it would reduce CO2 to an 'acceptable level' we should be trying to stop our emissions completely. In the ideal world nothing would require us to give off any emmsisons, plus theres some really nasty stuff in the emissions apart from CO2. We need to try to remember that polution is a really big problem with the potential for disasterous climate change if we dont tackle CO2 emissions aswell.
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It is quite entertaining to see a bunch of 'warmists' being perplexed by the increase in scepticism. Ordinary people lost trust in politics and the press ages ago. Now eco-campaigning scientists and scare mongering environmentalists are starting to get in the neck too. People will simply not make drastic changes to their lives and pay more in taxes and energy costs on the basis of a flawed hypothesis.
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whoopee.. scientists arguing amongst themselves and suddenly the BBC wakes up to its own worse nightmare; it has backed a losing horse. Well don't worry Auntie because neither horse has a hope in hell of winning this race. Scientists have attacked a "problem" by trying to prove or disprove something in their lifetime when they'll all be dead long before the eventual winner romps home in what becomes much more than a two horse race.
As for now, the world is over populated, we make far too many decisions for short term financial gain, and too many scientists have heads in "sponsored" troughs. And the BBC has lost it knack for presenting genuinely interesting and balanced science.
Is the climate change debate evidence that as science becomes more sophisticated its practitioners become less and less clever?
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I think some of the scepticism comes from many of the public seeing no one in a position of (corporate or other) responsibility taking things seriously. Aviation is still actively promoted (to preserve profit), nothing is done about importing food while we export food of exactly the same sort; and office lights everywhere (including those of government buildings) blaze throughout the night while computers tick over silently waiting for an inout so they can do something.
Simultaneously we are treated to endless patronising lectures (particularly on news reports) about how we can "reduce our carbon footprint". We're told we're going to have smart meters foisted on us that, aside from invading our privacy yet again, will tell us when to switch things off, as if we don't KNOW when we're using electricity... well, most of use do and we're happy to reduce our consumption. We also know that the more electricity and gas we save, the higher the unit prices will get because the suppliers have to keep their shareholders amped.
So why should we take it seriously? I'm not a sceptic. I've just given up caring. It's pretty obvious the ecology will rebalance itself in response to the ravages of 20th century humanity. It isn't so much that twice the population are "polluting" than in, say, 1960, but that 'twice' is about 3 billion. As the forests go, so the atmosphere will change - you don't need a Nobel Prize to realise that! Just needs a bit of systems thinking - something that most scientists and sceptical public aren't too good at.
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> From the BBC's perspective, ... Impartiality means not taking sides in a debate, while accurately representing the balance of argument.
> So, in the case of climate change we need proportionately to reflect the sceptical view but also, for example, reflect the debate among climate scientists about the most effective way of dealing with global warming.
Every national science academy of every major industrialised country on the planet, representing thousands of scientists, confirms that recent climate warming is due to human activity. 97% of published climate scientists confirm the same.
The BBC is not providing balance by giving air time to the Deniers - people like Ian Plimer - it is providing false balance and unjustifiable equivalence.
The BBC does not balance their natural history and scientific output on evolution with programs from creationists. It does not balance programs about the Holocaust with programs that deny it ever happened.
The BBC is doing the public a great disservice by pretending there are two legitimate sides to this 'debate'. There are not. There is the science on one side, and delusional, ranting anti-science on the other.
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DavidCognito, in my opinion you are wrong.I am a Darwinist. I do not believe that I am delusional, nor am I rantingly anti-science. I have a legitimate point of view. Can I suggest that you examine the work of Steve McIntyre? It seems to me that climate change has been comprehensively hijacked by politicised, statistically innumerate scientists with an agenda. Polar bears are not in danger. The Maldives are not sinking. Check the science. Don't rely on authority.
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"31. At 10:31pm on 13 Nov 2009, MikeRavenor wrote:
DavidCognito, in my opinion you are wrong.I am a Darwinist. I do not believe that I am delusional, nor am I rantingly anti-science. I have a legitimate point of view. Can I suggest that you examine the work of Steve McIntyre? It seems to me that climate change has been comprehensively hijacked by politicised, statistically innumerate scientists with an agenda. Polar bears are not in danger. The Maldives are not sinking. Check the science. Don't rely on authority."
Those of us, like myself, with scientific qualifications (mine being a master degree in astrophysics) or a background in scientific research will partially agree with you.
People should never rely on authority, they should rely on the evidence.
The evidence is almot universally pointing towards man made cliamte change and the extreme results of climate change (like the maldives and the polar bears that you mention) are used to make people realise the potential implications.
No doubt you will try to counter my arguments with mention of or quotes from one particular research paper which questions man made climate change. I have met people who lecture at respected british universities, who are Dr not Mr, who have a prolific history of scientific papers and also publish research based on wildy inacurate or even false results or data. These people are 'not part of the mainstream' of science, the reason being they are wrong or unethically reporting the facts. They are also most often opposing a well knoen and well supported theory. I wonder where the anti climate change researchers fit in?
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MikeRavenor:
> Can I suggest that you examine the work of Steve McIntyre?
Why are you suggesting getting climate science from a mining executive with absolutely no expertise in the subject? Is it because he provides the answer you want to hear?
And in the same way, you reject the total consensus from the planet's climate scientists because you don't like what they're telling you.
Furthermore, you accuse the Royal Society, NASA and every other national science academy on the planet of lying - without providing a shred of evidence for the accusation.
Here's a partial definition of denialism, see if you recognise anything in it:
> Almost every denialist argument will eventually devolve into a conspiracy. This is because denialist theories that oppose well-established science eventually need to assert deception on the part of their opponents to explain things like why every reputable scientist, journal, and opponent seems to be able to operate from the same page. In the crank mind, it isn't because their opponents are operating from the same set of facts, it's that all their opponents are liars (or fools) who are using the same false set of information.
Stop getting your 'science' from agenda-driven amateurs and start getting real science from credible scientific sources and you may alleviate your ignorance about what is going to happen to polar bears and the Maldives.
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"Why are you suggesting getting climate science from a mining executive with absolutely no expertise in the subject? Is it because he provides the answer you want to hear?"
Actually, Steve McIntyre does have the expertise required to apply the correct statistical process to a data set. There is no point in bad mouthing McIntyre as he has published the entirety of his work on the internet. Thats more than can be said for Briffa who wouldn't release his data at any cost until he was caught out. If MyIntyre was wrong then why doesn't one of the "experts" prove it?
But, I have to say that although it was interesting, the tree ring story is probably irrelevant anyway. If CO2 is meant to be increasing at a record rate then we should be able to see its effect using direct measurement rather than using proxies.
The problem is that I have seen no evidence at all of any correlation between CO2 and temperatures. Yes, both temperatures and CO2 seem to have risen at the same time but how much of this was down to natural causes and how much was down to the CO2? If you exclude the other climate effects (feedbacks) there should be just over 1 degree temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 - in that case there should be no problems. The models used by climate scientists use feedbacks to come up with higher temperature increases but the understanding of climate feedbacks is incomplete and fraught uncertainty. There is no proof that the net effect of feedbacks will increase sensitivity to CO2. Previous predications from climate models have overestimated warming - what is the true scale of the problem? From what I have seen nobody knows - climate scientists have yet to prove it is worth trying to take action on climate change.
Of course the media don't seem to think about these things - all we seem to see is the most extreme predictions trying to cause panic in the population. If you actually read the IPCCs reports (the full ones not the shortened ones for the politicians) the language if a lot more reserved and there are a lot of caveats putting a lot of statements into context and pointing out uncertainties.
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"Why are you suggesting getting climate science from a mining executive with absolutely no expertise in the subject?"
Because Steve McIntyre has demonstrated statistical skill which the tree-ring boys appear to lack or disregard. McIntyre has also displayed perseverance in getting access to data which the published, peer-reviewed tree-ringers withhold or hide.
I shall not reply to your personal attack.
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In supporting #34 and #35 I should like to point to the cautionary tale of our ancestors. Of necessity they used careful observation and collection of evidence over many centuries to piece together their ideas of our world. Sometimes the deductions proved false and sometimes they provided "half" the picture; occasionally they were correct. The evidence remained; it was the interpretation that was right, "half" right, or wrong.
Supplementing observation, evidence and interpretation with serious computer power (as in weather forecasting) narrows our propensity for giving poor prediction but it does not eliminate it. We are still predicting on shaky ground and we need to be very careful indeed about making something out of what may be a very incomplete data set.
What politicians should concentrate on is how population numbers and economics may be making our planet impossible to sustain at its current rate. These are entirely within our control unlike climate.
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Hi Alistair !
I know what the beeb is thinking and will be saying: criticism from many directions means we are balanced and impartial.
This just doesn't work: "The vicar was criticised from within his church and from outside his church therefore his sermon was a great sermon".
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Are science advisors gagged on climate change?
Since Hominins (Homo sapiens being the latest) that used tools have been on this planet 2 million years have gone by. During their evolution in the last 2.5 million years there have been 21 cycles of glaciation (H M McHenry 2009).
We are the proof they survived. To understand climate change we should listen to the geologists.
The old ideas are often the best, so heed this world politicians:-
"... the present may only be a pause during the slow restoration of a more genial climate under which the existing ice-sheets will melt away. If this happens, the liberated melt-water will raise the level of the oceans by about 100 feet. London and New York and all other ports and lowland cities throughout the world will be submerged, and ..." Regius Professor of Geology (Edinburgh) A Holmes DSc FRS [1944]
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One page on the BBC website tells you everything you need to know about the BBC's bias:
Climate scepticism: The top 10
The biggest bias is
not the way the page gives more space to the "anti-sceptic" arguments
nor is it giving the "anti-sceptics" the last word.
No the biggest problem is that the page exists at all.
There is no other page like this anywhere on the BBC where problems with a theory are listed and attacked with the theory's fans given more time and given the last word.
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Well, after several years passed and a few weeks to go, let's see where we stand then...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6916648.ece
And the response in some quarters seems not to be to question the content and/or efficacy of the message (much less change it), or shoot (OK, change... it's a word with hope behind it and has worked before) some rather less than credible messengers a tad tainted by less than sterling rigour in checking before passing on, but it's.... to blame the public for not buying in?! Or being too thick to resist the seduction of siren whispers that a select bunch on the Argo have somehow managed to resist?
Unique.
And the solution being espoused from some, essentially, 'we know better, so...', has uncomfortable resonances from history.
Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, said that growing awareness of the scale of the problem appeared to be resulting in people taking refuge in denial...
Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said: “The overwhelming body of scientific information is stacked up against the deniers
I. am. not. a. 'denier'. It is a phrase that makes no sense and hence I have no clue what it means. Or why it is so used.. and abused... by those in theory seeking to win over and persuade.
What I am interested in what all the measures and money are going to really be used for, and how it will all work, be measured effectively to assess value, etc.
Some questions I (and others) posed, by invitation, for Newsnight's Ethical Man kitchen cabinet of top minds at the beginning of the week, and which remain unanswered.
I think the climate is changing, for the worse, and 'man' sure is not helping. But giving carte blanche to blow the farm to the current crop of 'leaders' and their mantra-chanting cheerleading squads, especially when both sets seem to be getting a bit less enthusiastic about democratic free speech as their arguments falter, is hardly the way to get me onside.
Lord knows what the impact is on folk who know little or don't care much for advocacy that, with the best will in the world, is going to involve some less than fun options.
This smacks of bum's rush at best. 'Half price Armageddon if you give us your savings now! It's a time critical deal, so no fussing about the t&cs, just sign here!'
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MikeRavenor:
> ...McIntyre has demonstrated statistical skill... displayed perseverance in getting access to data...
Questionable ability with statistics and an obsession over harassing real scientists to gain access to obsolete data. That's how you judge him to be competent and worth listening to? That is why you remain confused and misinformed.
> I shall not reply to your personal attack.
You mean you have no response to my challenge for you to provide evidence for your accusation that every national science academy on the planet is lying. I understand why that is.
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DavidCognito: Oh dear, oh dear!
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I saw this piece of research the other day. Looks like green party supporters are on average much smarter than the other parties except the Lib Dems. Makes you wonder if libral evironmentally friendly ideas might be the intelligent options in politics.
http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Newspublications/News/MRC005139
"Mean age 10 IQ scores for people voting in the 2001 general election for various parties were as follows:
Green 108.3;
Liberal Democrat 108.2;
Conservative 103.7;
Labour 103.0;
Plaid Cymru 102.5;
Scottish National 102.2,
UK Independent 101.1,
British National 98.4;
Did not vote/None 99.7."
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The problem is mainly with the media and the BBC in particular IMHO. For years there have been alarmist news stories about this issue from Greenpeace, the UN, scientific and political institutions etc which the BBC have eagerly fed to us. There was a time when, for example, when Greenpeace appeared to have an umbilical cord attached to the BBC and the ability to preach to us virtually unchallenged.
As the BBC appears to have cried wolf too often in the past, it appears the message is no longer getting across. What is more, although the problem is still not defined in the public’s mind, the solutions promoted by the BBC tend to be of the left wing variety. The environmental campaigners seem to have formed a rainbow alliance with left-wing organisations and left-liberal media such as the BBC/Guardian have been used to push the message they want us to hear. Market solutions too uncertain we are told. How about command and control solutions using fictional international law? How about bypassing the People and using binding treaties instead?
It is no wonder why many people, especially those on the Right of politics – are sceptical.
The trouble is, just like the eu problem and immigration, the majority of us have been left behind while the BBC and its friends have cosy fire-side chats.
Despite what appear to be recent efforts for BBC News to be more balanced on environmental issues, the rest of the corporation has run away with itself, pumping out green propaganda. This is especially evident in output aimed at younger audiences. This propaganda tends to undermine any efforts made by BBC journalists to make amends mistakes of the past.
The environment is too important to be hijacked by a few BBC journos/editors/managers and their friends. We need unfettered facts. If this can only be achieved by a major culling of BBC management and journalists then so be it.
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There are currently 44 posts on this blog with just short of 40 of them expressing various degrees of scepticism about so-called anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and about the perceived bias of the BBC against sceptical commentators. In general, I agree with those views. I am a scientist of mature years, versed in its methods and thinking. I am also a former referee for the Chemical Society and have published a small number of papers in the chemical areas. I have spent considerable time over the last 18 months reviewing thousands of blogs, published papers, basic science, and rants and raves from all constituencies to the debate. I have found NO convincing or credible evidence that mankind, through its use of fossil fuels and subsequent production of carbon dioxide, is contributing either at all or even marginally to global climate change.
As a scientist, I am appalled at the way some in the scientific community have used and abused statistics, scientific method and their professional positions. As a former reviewer, I am appalled at the way information used to bolster published papers has been withheld from scrutiny by the wider scientific community (re McIntyre v Briffa, Mann et al.). The lack of transparency of methods, the hiding of computer code, the "loss" of embarrassing results are all shameful.
But, all of this is of no import to the BBC and the main stream media, so long as they can peddle alarmism and give it a veneer of respectability.
I would make three further points. First, in view of the Professor Nutt affair, those scientists who have allied themselves with AGW and its political implications would do well to remember that politicians have no sense of loyalty. It is a concept alien to those in power. Once the job is done, the treaties and taxes in place, society coerced into thinking that it is responsible for a non-existent disaster far in the future, then the alarmists will be redundant. Indeed, they will become a liability because they might just see their errors and start to recant. So, they will become expendable. No more super-computers for the MET Office, no more huge grants for University of East Anglia, no more limelight, no more trips to far-flung places, the science will have been settled.
Second, if the AGW proponents can try to suspend their beliefs for say 5 minutes and try to imagine climate change occurring without mankind's contribution (as they would see it). What do you think the Government's response would be? You will probably dismiss such a question as hypothetical, academic, or meaningless, but it is not. Climate does change, as sceptics point out, and such change may be severe. What are you going to do about it if humankind is not to blame?
Finally, one of the contributers above, DavidCognito, is disparaging of sceptic views. From the tone and style of his comments I believe he contributes to a number of other blogs under different names. However, he does make an important point regarding learned societies and their adoption of a pro-warmist stance. I have to point out that the governing bodies of such societies may well take such a view, but most such societies do not consult their members.
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The votes are in. Yesterday the Times front page noted that only 41% of people in the UK think we are directly responsible for climate change. I feel the reason is that we have been brought up with the well worn term "There is no scientific evidence that......" thus if someone could tell me:
How much CO2 reduction will it take to reverse the trend (and about a million other questions like it)?
I might start to believe it.
It worries me that a global unstppable trend will have devastating effects and if the Governments of the world stopped telling the tide not to come in and started spending a fraction of whats been splashed on the credit crunch the we might lessen the effects in areas we care about.
Cynically, this way the Superpowers get the peasant to pay for the (inevitable) fossil fuel switch off whilst diverting us demanding that they do something to help the 3rd world from drown and drought.
Thats why we don't believe them - lack of credibile evidence and we know it.
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It would be wonderful if the BBC gave a balanced airing to opinion on climate change instead of favouring The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis. There are many of us who are highly sceptical of what is said by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There has been no convincing evidence provided that any climate change that we may be experiencing across the globe is anything other than the natural change experienced between all previous ice ages. The last ice age was only a few thousand years ago and it has been slowly warming ever since. What's new?
The UN's Copenhagen Conference has two major objectives with nothing to do with climate change:
- redistribution of wealth from developed to underdeveloped economies,
- establishment of a framework for future global government.
Give Lord Monkton an airing.
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What Pete says is very correct. Greg here in America, and the Climatic change they talk about on the mainstream news programs save for Fox News is all a bunch of hot air, excuse the pun. It is all about government striving to usurp more power from the people and take away our liberty. Global warming my foot.
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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Part of the issue is that many people think we are still discussing "Global Warming" rather than "Climate Change" and base their opinions on their own (localised) personal experience. This is especially so of the UK as we "bask" in the relative warmth of the Gulf Stream, any variation or fluctuation of which is likely to see massive drops in temperature. The natural cycle of this planet has seen extremes of temperature at both ends of the structure where life was almost extinguished from the planet. Volcanic activity also makes Mankinds contribution seem negligible. However, both of these arguments ignore the fact that what we're trying to preserve are the conditions to ensure Civilisation or at least survival of the human race. If we preserve our environment (or at least live harmoniously within it) there just might be enough of that environment left to afford survival in the event of near cataclysmic "natural" geological events, the sceptics use to "prove" Anthropogenic Climate Change doesn't exist.
It took the Germans and Scandinavian countries decades to prove (to UK sceptics) that their "Acid Rain" problems originated from the UK. We have used up whatever "safety margin" we have and we are overdue a change in geomagnetic polarity, fluctuating solar activity and unpredictable tectonic activity.
Our current levels of technology and the available resources could provide a decent living to everyone currently on the planet if we had fair & equitable distribution of wealth. This would correspondingly lead to a decrease in the population expansion rate, because the inbuilt reaction to a harsh environment with high infant mortality is to increase the breeding rate.
The other problem in the UK is the wholesale belief (strengthened by politicians and the media) that a "Scientific Opinion" is only equal to anyone else's opinion (that's Democracy, innit). This opinion is to be ignored when politically expedient,and ridiculed at every opportunity,e.g. "stating the bleeding obvious" University studies, labelling as "geeks", the belief that "Blue Sky Research" is a waste of money and that funding should only go to projects using already obsolete technology (i.e. The ones that "Business Interests" can see "profit" in.) On Dragons Den an engineer turned up with a gearbox he claimed was 100% more efficient than existing models. They turned him down because they didn't understand what he was offering, potentially Wind Farms with double the power output, 100mpg cars as standard, improvements in power generation generally. Rejected because of lack of "Commercial Viability" (as seen through Business eyes).
The 'Capitalists' and their army of Bean Counterstruly run the world now.
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Here is today's example of reporting bias:
Greenland ice loss 'accelerating'
The Greenland ice sheet is losing its mass faster than in previous years and making an increasing contribution to sea level rise, a study has confirmed.
Published in the journal Science, it has also given scientists a clearer view of why the sheet is shrinking.
The team used weather data, satellite readings and models of ice sheet behaviour to analyse the annual loss of 273 thousand million tonnes of ice.
Melting of the entire sheet would raise sea levels globally by about 7m (20ft).
The last sentence about the entire ice sheet melting was just slipped in by the BBC author. None of the studies mentions this angle. The scientists are not talking about all the ice melting. Nobody except the BBC author is talking about all the ice melting.
The scientists are trying to estimate the rate of melt today and comparing this to other estimates and estimates of other times.
I would also take issue with the use of "confirm" in the opening sentence. You can only confirm something by direct observation. This study is an estimate that confirms nothing.
"My guess confirmed Fred's guess"
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"Even if it would reduce CO2 to an 'acceptable level' we should be trying to stop our emissions completely."
Interesting. Last time I tried that, I suffocated.
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#43. Colonicus42:
And one might interpret this as showing that upper-middle class voters, who always score higher on IQ tests designed by and for them, have both the time and money to play at being "Green". Meanwhile, the rest of us are living in the real world and trying to scratch a living.
That may, of course, be pure rowlocks, but it's consistent with the data.
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I welcome the government's current ad campaign on climate. The latest figures show the world is warming quicker than expected. Now is the time to just act rather than talk: reduce C02 emissions and plant some trees. It's national tree week soon (see the BBC's Tree O'Clock) - the perfect time to leave your car at home and get planting, or get someone to do it for you, e.g. the Woodland Trust or Woodland Friends.
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"The latest figures show the world is warming quicker than expected." Err, which figures and who expected what?
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#54
Thank you Mike. Actually, the latest figures show the exact opposite, but why let facts get in the way of a good story?
Nothing wrong with planting trees, mind. It just doesn't need the fertiliser beforehand.
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#53 to #55
Who knows what the figures "show"? Are we plugged into every darned nuance of our environment, our star system, our galaxy? Nothing wrong with wanting a "cleaner" planet; problem is what do we mean by "cleaner"?
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Alistair,
I received a good UK scientific university education in the early sixties. Many of my peer group received a similar education. It is my impression that the majority of my peers are sceptical about AGW.
The BBC, with its extensive news-gathering capacity, could do the UK a service by surveying my peer group, educated in the hard sciences, maths and statistics, to find out whether or not my impression is based on fact.
I agree, by the way, nothing wrong with trees!
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" 52. At 8:17pm on 16 Nov 2009, Spiny Norman wrote:
#43. Colonicus42:
And one might interpret this as showing that upper-middle class voters, who always score higher on IQ tests designed by and for them, have both the time and money to play at being "Green". Meanwhile, the rest of us are living in the real world and trying to scratch a living.
That may, of course, be pure rowlocks, but it's consistent with the data."
Well I'm from a mining family in the south wales valleys and have an IQ of 162 so.... Anyway, the only reason IQ tests are designed by 'upper middle class' people is because anyone who works in the related fields are usually fairly well paid and end up being called middle class. I hate using class as a definition, it doesn't mean anything, all it tells you is how successful you are.
Also, IQ tests are the accepted way of working out your analyitical intelligence. Ok there are other forms of intellegence that are arguably more important, emotional, perception, memory etc. And they arn't necesarily perfect, you get different scores from different tests and as with any test it only tests you on that day at that time.
However the data does show a definate link between the lib dems and the greens and a high IQ score, 5 points is actually an outwardly noticable difference.
The implication from your point is that there is a link between upper middle class and voting green/libral. So your saying that those who are, generally, better educated vote for environmental or liberal ideas. Just kinda proves the same point I was making from a different angle.
What you are saying doesn't fit the data, it fit the data but also makes a massive unfounded assumption about the data and doesn't take all of the data into account.
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@ goldCaesar, post #19;
"Most of the people commenting have absolutely no interest in anything that might dispove their own conspiracy theories, and are actually offended by the presentation of opposing arguments by the BBC."
Indeed; I would say that roughly half the comments so far can be roughly translated as "The BBC is biased and wrong because it's not exclusively reporting the view that I, in my infinite wisdom, have decided is correct". (Which is, let's face it, no different from 99% of the allegations of "BBC bias" which tend to clog up every discussion on these blogs!)
It's not the BBC's job to decide right from wrong on an issue like this. Merely to report on what's being said by the scientists. And, whether some of you might like it or not, there are far more scientists speaking out in favour of the various climate change theories, than there are sceptics. That's just the way it is - it's not the BBC's fault, or anybody else's.
Which is not to say that the sceptics' position is necessarily invalid, nor that it shouldn't be examined; merely that the BBC are in the difficult position of being expected to provide "balance" on an issue which is, inherently, not balanced.
And they do this very well - they give the majority of airtime to the majority viewpoint, but also dedicate occasional reports to the sceptics' position.
The "right" and "wrong" of each argument is up to us - the readers/viewers - to decide, not the BBC. So please stop criticising them for not solely putting forward whichever view each of you so badly want to be the truth.
Here's a hint - if you're scared of seeing viewpoints that oppose your own, it's usually a sign that your viewpoints are, basically, a load of poorly-conceived rubbish.
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"they give the majority of airtime to the majority viewpoint"
Precisely my point. How do you know it is the majority viewpoint? It is certainly not according to the latest Times poll. Nor in my scientifically-educated and practically experienced peer group. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with seeing viewpoints which oppose my own. I have seen nothing from the BBC about the dodgy tree-ring thermometer statistics and the scandalous withholding of data.
Kind regards
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Ha ha ha a Russian icebreaker carrying over 100 tourists, scientists and journalists on a cruise around Antarctica was struggling to free itself from sea ice but was not in any danger, a shipping company said Tuesday. Now a Russian news agency said that a BBC camera crew filming a documentary about the Antarctic was also on board.
Here’s the link:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gmsVpgaIiXXnNyJXTyVsKrxNyYhwD9C1BGFG0
For years the BBC’s key message is that the ice caps are melting and have inserted this message into their programmes at any given opportunity.
However that wasn't supposed to happen now, was it Beebiods?
Man-made Global Warming works in mysterious ways.
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Ex-Beeboid,
You have made a very good point. I have searched the BBC News website and, despite apparently having an in-house BBC documentary film crew on board, there is no mention of this, in my opinion, newsworthy event. The BBC seems to have a bias towards only reporting melting events.
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#59
I think the comments at #61 and #62 rather suggest that the BBC has "formed an opinion" about "what is news" which is quite different to reporting what various scientists, politicians, people, sheep and goats think about the climate. Has it become fashionable for journalism to pay into the "league tables of accountability" (popularity) so beloved by our image ridden society?
Since when was a majority such an effective measure of efficacy? Didn't Darwin face torpor, challenge and ridicule from his scientist colleagues at first?
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I would suggest the popular media, and I will not mention names, please choose, are more intent on bringing to our attention what is the most popular mis/conception of what is going on with the climate. And this includes the lies and obfuscations made by most politicians and no doubt certain scientists from the Tyndall Centre.
Where has the wonderful speech by Lord Monckton ( St. pauls, minnesota)ever been mentioned on the BBC for one thing? Has he ever been on the news programmes or are his view so contrary to what the politicians wish us to believe there is some deep self censorship at hand in the hallowed corporation? And any other arm of the media? ITV or Sky even?
The greatest tool of all political propaganda is to keep on message as they say, to keep bringing up one theme until it is such a common part of the collective thought patterns it s taken for granted. Thus once this threshold is reached then any rational discussion of the subject is like talking Thomas Paines 'Age of Reason' to a devout catholic. Thomas Paine is one of my great heroes of sensible rational thinking, may I say.
The whole subject of anthropogenic climate change takes on /has taken on a religious overtone such that when this Copenhagen summit and treaty is finalized we will be even more manipulated than before and God help us thereafter. By succumbing to this climate change nonsense we become ever more enslaved to the globalist/Bilderberger agenda.
Finally there is indeed, climate change and we have a bearing on this but FAR FAR LESS than nature herself and the sun. We have been here a few thousands of years, they have been here billions.
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Just to say "thanks" to Khrystalar, the author of #59. Well put!
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@ MikeRavenor, post #60;
"Precisely my point. How do you know it is the majority viewpoint? It is certainly not according to the latest Times poll."
My apologies, I should've been more clear - I was talking about the majority viewpoint of the scientific community, not the general perception of members of the public. I'm not sure that the BBC should be obliged to report something as 'fact' on the basis that some people have simply decided it's true. After all, there's plenty of wackos out there who believe that Elvis is still alive; but I wouldn't expect to see a huge amount of airtime devoted to his possible whereabouts on the BBC!
Two points I'd make about the Times Poll, though. Apart from it being a random selection of opinions from members of the public without necessarily any scientific knowledge, I mean.
Firstly, it DOES confirm what I wrote above - that the majority view is that the Climate is changing; that climate change is happening (83% of respondants said that). The difference of opinion being on whether it is largely man-made, of course. Note the word "largely".
Of the vast majority who believe climate change IS happening, the largest group (41%) believe that it IS largely the fault of man. About one third (32%) of respondants believe that it's not entirely, or even mainly, our fault. (I'm in this camp, personally). 15% apparently think that the climate isn't changing at all, and I can only assume that these people have actually been living under a rock for most of their lives.
What the poll doesn't say, is how many believe that man is having a significant effect, although we're not the main cause of global warming or climate change. This is certainly the category I'm in personally - and I would imagine a large portion of the 32% who think it's not "largely" man-made would probably also fall into this catergory. I personally have never met anybody who believes Climate Change is happening who doesn't think that man is at least contributing to it in some way. Have you?
But whichever way you look at it; the majority view is that Climate Change is happening, that it's a pretty serious problem, and that man is having some sort of effect even if we're not largely to blame - which the majority of people who accept that it's happening, believe we are. (As proved by the poll).
Nor in my scientifically-educated and practically experienced peer group."
Well then by all means; feel free to put your heads together and publish your conclusions, methodology, reasons, etc. as a scientific paper for peer review - as most of the thousands of scientists "officially" commenting on the issue, both for and against, have had to.
Otherwise, with due respect, you're just taking the attitude I parodied above - "Me and my buddies have decided that this is the truth, therefore the media must reflect our views as fact or answer to accusations of bias".
No, I'm sorry; I would have no objection to the BBC interviewing you and giving your views airtime - that's part of it's job, after all - but you can't claim to outweigh the opinions of published and respected scientists all over the world, just because you say so.
Pleasure discussing this with you; any further comments you have would be welcomed.
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Just quickly, something else I'll pull several correspondants up on, at this stage - nick-ynysmon, MikeRavenor are two of the recent ones, but there's plenty of others scattered through the discussion.
Please stop saying "The BBC hasn't mentioned [insert random study or notable person here], that proves they're biased". It's nonsense.
There are hundreds of thousands - maybe even millions - of voices currently expressing differing opinions on Global Warming and Climate Change. No, the Beeb hasn't covered each and every single comment made by a sceptic - they haven't covered each and every single thing done by the Climate Change theorists either. There simply isn't enough airtime; which is why they have to have a selection of some of the best-researched and most coherent studies from the different widely-held views, in order to fulfil their duty of giving us a picture of the world at large.
I imagine that the reason many of the people people/reports you guys mentioned haven't seen the light of the day on the BBC is either because they didn't make sense, or they were simply obviously wrong - just the same as thousands of pro-GW/pro-CC fanatics who've never been mentioned on the Beeb, either.
If you go into something looking for reasons to believe there's biased reporting going on, you'll probably find them. Whether or not they're actually there!
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Khrystalar
"I was talking about the majority viewpoint of the scientific community"
Evidence please.
Regards
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There is no longer any room for "scepticism" on climate change. Just travel to the melting ice sheets and see for yourself.
The reason some sceptics are still given airtime in the US is because American education declines further & further: all kinds of nonsense gets play there, and if it has a political camp it can feed off of, all the more so. Climate science has some bad news for the investment camps, so they do the ostrich thing and encourage others to continue playing their games even while the threats are already in plain sight.
And because Europeans, in particular, seem very credulous and disinclined ever to think ill of Americans -- whom they tend to find devastatingly charming and irresistibly sexy in their relaxed, easygoing demeanour -- European media then believe it is only "fair" to emulate Americans who give sceptics airspace.
In fact, it is dangerous. The science on the threats caused by human irresponsibility & waste has been incontrovertible for decades now. It is time to move on to actual practical solutions, and let the fringe bellow amongst themselves.
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Maria: "Just travel to the melting ice sheets and see for yourself." You could also go to the Antarctic where ice is accumulating.
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maria-ashot wrote:
“The reason some sceptics are still given airtime in the US is because American education declines further & further: all kinds of nonsense gets play there, and if it has a political camp it can feed off of, all the more so.”
Oh the irony;-)
And please can we keep bigotry out of science, there are skeptics in Japan, India and China and I doubt you’d say the same about them.
All
More and more people are becoming skeptical of journalist when they talk about climate change; this is because they have been involved in scare mongering in the past. Here’s an example from a BBC link from 10 years ago, extract below:
“These and other findings - for instance that the Antarctic ice cap is melting, and could eventually raise sea levels by 70 metres - are coming in all the time.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/563127.stm
Now the politicians use climate change to impose more taxes on us and other political groups use climate change to push their own political beliefs onto us.
I still have an open mind on the subject, but I would rather listen to facts from scientist from both side of the debate.
Now how many people here can say the same?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
All forgot to mention, the ten year old link tells us the Antarctic ice caps are melting yet almost ten years to the day it was written a BBC camera crew are struggling to free themselves because of freezing ice in the Antarctic.
I bet John Simpson could never have imaged this scenario when he wrote his article.
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"73. At 2:12pm on 18 Nov 2009, Ex-Beebiod wrote:
All forgot to mention, the ten year old link tells us the Antarctic ice caps are melting yet almost ten years to the day it was written a BBC camera crew are struggling to free themselves because of freezing ice in the Antarctic.
I bet John Simpson could never have imaged this scenario when he wrote his article."
________________________________________________________
Wow, thats an appauling lack of knowledge there!
It's November!
Winter in the northen hemisphere!
Or the time when the north gets colder!
The ice caps shrink every summer and expand every winter, the problem is the high and low points are getting smaller. I bet you'd get annoyed if I used the summer to prove my point!
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#74
Antarctica = Southern Hemisphere.
November 18th = late spring (one month from summer).
But otherwise sound....
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It's very easy to see why there are so many so-called "skeptics". The mainstream media, and the BBC in particular, would prefer to use the word "heretic" but tyou would be hard pressed to get away with quite such a strong label.
There are too many vested interests in the field of climate change. Didn't it use to be called "global warming" - until the greedy marketing folk discovered that the more generic label of "change" would be even less provable. There is a vast amount of money, mostly public money, to be diverted in this field in everything from spurious research grants to carbon trading to replacement products to consumers.
The absolute distruction of the Briffa fakery has made me feel even more strongly about the smoke and mirrors. For a more readable report - since the BBC refuses to report on it - try http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/yamal_scandal/
The problem is that there is an entire parade of people shouting "the Emporer is wearing nothing!" but the media is ignoring those views that don't fit with their agenda. BBC guilty even more than most.
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@ MikeRavenor, post #68
"Evidence please"
Well, I'm basing my view of "majority" largely on the fact that there were over 600 seperate authors and contributors to the IPCC's 2007 Working Group Report alone - that's just the scientists who wrote ONE single report endorsing the theory of man's effect on Climate Change.
Whereas I've been unable to find more than a handful of scientists who've publicly stated that either CC isn't happening, or that man is having little or no effect upon it. Wikipedia seems to have the most complete list, actually;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
There's about 40 names there. By all means feel free to add some other names, if you can find any more. But unless you can come up with at least 600 dissenters, to match those involved in a single report on Climate Change who endorsed the theory of man's effect, I'm afraid my assertion stands.
While we're on the subject of proof, then; let's see YOUR evidence for the claim "The BBC has a bias towards only reporting melting events"; or for your claim that "tree-ring theorists have tried to hide data"? Or that Climate scientists are "imcompetent statisticians"? Or, indeed, any of the other claims you've made in this discussion?
Or are you simply one of these people who bleats "show me proof!" every time somebody questions them whilst at the same time believing they have free reign to make any sort of unquantified/unqualified claim they choose, without being called upon it?
Frankly, I hope not, because I'm enjoying this discussion - and if you're just another time waster of the sort I just mentioned, there's not a lot of point in me continuing with it.
Hope you're well.
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Khrystalar: The 600 authors of whom you speak are employed in the AGW industry. That is where their grant money comes from. Confirmation bias is to be expected. That is not evidence that the majority of the scientific community support man-made global warming.
Neither Michael Mann nor Keith Briffa would not release their tree-ring data/computer code for replication purposes. When Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre finally gained access, he was able to demolish the hockey-sticks - see the Wegman report to the US congress (I think it was). That is where the incompetent statistics comes in.
The BBC report melting in the same way that after a major air accident they report every minor aeronautical failure for the next few weeks.
I suggest you rely on evidence and science rather than invoking the dubious authority of the IPCC.
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Whoops that should read "Neither Michael Mann nor Keith Briffa would release their tree-ring data/computer ....."
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@ MikeRavenor, posts #78 and #79;
"I suggest you rely on evidence and science rather than invoking the dubious authority of the IPCC."
Mike; I'm not "invoking the authority" of the IPCC, or anybody else. I'm not saying that they're necessarily correct in their assertions. I'm merely pointing out that there are more scientists who've put their name to one single report from one single organisation in favour of the man-made climate change theory, than there are - as far as I can tell - who've ever come out for the sceptics' camp. Again, feel free to provide some supplementary evidence if you'd like to question this statement - otherwise, as I said, my assertion about "majority view" stands.
Incidentally, something I noticed whilst searching Wikipedia for that list of sceptics' names; their main article on Global Warming Controversy makes the claim that - whilst the list of scientific bodies who've published various "man-made CC" theories is as long as your arm - not a single nationally or internationally recognised scientific body has officially come out against the man-made climate change theory. I think one did - the US Society of Petroleum Geologists, or something - but retracted their report and changed their position shortly after.
Now, there's no reason to belive that Wikipedia is entirely accurate - anybody can edit it at any time, after all - nonetheless, I haven't been able to find one, either. Can you?
And if not, I'd have to ask the question - why do you not think that the majority of the world's scientists who've weighed in on the Climate Change issue, have come out in favour of man's actions playing a major part? Exactly what are you basing YOUR assumptions on?
Thanks for the info on the Hockey Sticks thing, by the way - I was wondering exactly what you meant by that when you mentioned it earlier. But now I know enough to research it, I must take grave issue with your comments about the IPCC.
Well, not the comments in themselves - you say that people employed by an international panel on Climate Change are more likely to come out in favour of it being man-made. That's not necessarily true, but it's certainly possible.
What I must take issue with, though, is the fact that you can push THAT assertion - that people employed in the AGW industry might fiddle their data a little bit - but fail to mention that Steve McIntyre is a long-time employee of the mineral exploration, oil and gas industries (who would surely be amongst those who have the most to lose from Climate Change legislation restricting air travel, for example, or the use of "gas guzzling" SUVs, etc.); nor that his co-author for the report you're talking about which challenged the "Hockey Stick" theory, a chap called Ross McKitrick, is a member of a right-wing think-tank called the Frasier Institute, the policies of which - as well as things like greater privatisation of public services and the removal of gun control restrictions - include opposition to climate change legislation?
Surely, then, this report you're talking about is equally - if not more - likely to suffer from "conformation bias", given that both authors are employed by parties with a vested interest in proving GW data to be flawed...? How come you didn't mention THAT while you were claiming that Mann & Briffa's conclusions had been "demolished" in Congress?
Incidentally, this wasn't the Wegman report - that came later. Mann was asked to testify before a special Senate Sub-Committee as to why he hadn't released all the data to McIntyre. His response, I believe, was basically that he thought McIntyre was simply looking for reasons to discredit his work for his own ends - not an uncommon complaint in the scientific community, I'm afraid - rather than seeking any sort of scientific understanding. The committee asked him to produce all his data and he did indeed make it publically available.
A seperate Committee was then set up to investigate the data and came to the conlusion that, whilst there a few minor errors, these were not enough to have any real effect on the eventual model. How this translates to McIntyre "demolishing the hockey-stick theory", in your mind, is beyond me to guess.
And the part you wrote about the BBC and the "melting" thing isn't proof; it's just another of your opinions. For "proof" you need to provide at leat some sort of point of reference that can be checked - not simply say "Yes, they do it, they definitely do it, because I say so!"
Hope you're well, Mr Ravenor!
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@ Angel_in_Transit, post #76;
"Antarctica = Southern Hemisphere.
November 18th = late spring (one month from summer)"
Indeed; except that summer is only 3 months long in Antartica. Spring and Autum last barely a month; the rest of the year being entirely winter. It's late spring there now, yes. A couple of weeks ago, it eas EARLY spring. A week before that, it was still winter.
But, here's a challenge for yourself, Mike, Colonicus, Beeboid and Maria, if they're still reading; let's see if any of you actually have any scientific acumen to backup your various assertions, eh?
Anybody with the most basic grasp of chemistry should be able to give me a reason why the melting of the ice-caps should logically be followed, after X-amount of time, by a sudden re-freezing - leaving aside for now the question of whether GW was to blame for the melting in the first place. Can anybody tell me what it is? Anyone?
If you need a hint; try a little sodium chloride.
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Khrystalar:
I am quite well thank you. Science is not done by consensus. I think by the way you mean "confirmation bias" not "conformation bias". I think you mean both authors were employed - in the mining industry. Why does that prevent them from making objective criticism? It seems to me that Mann and Briffa have been demolished by McIntyre. You are entitled to your opinion, but your opinion lowers mine of you.
"I noticed whilst searching Wikipedia For starters." For goodness sake. Wikipedia! Some scientist. "Then came the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s Petition Project of 2001, which far surpassed all previous efforts and by all rights should have settled the issue of whether the science was settled on climate change. To establish that the effort was bona fide, and not spawned by kooks on the fringes of science, as global warming advocates often label the skeptics, the effort was spearheaded by Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences and of Rockefeller University, and as reputable as they come.
The Oregon petition garnered an astounding 17,800 signatures, a number all the more astounding because of the unequivocal stance that these scientists took: Not only did they dispute that there was convincing evidence of harm from carbon dioxide emissions, they asserted that Kyoto itself would harm the global environment because “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”"
As an aside, I first started researching CAGW properly in 2007 after Mr Gore flew (in his private jet, I believe, but am not sure) into Edinburgh (Scotland) to give a 40 minute presentation to the British National Association of Pension Funds investment conference, at which I was a delegate. He made a terrible impression with his ad hominem attacks on critics of his extreme viewpoint. He then flew out again (in his private jet, I believe, but am not sure). His mind-blowing hypocrisy rang alarm bells all over the conference floor.
Kind regards
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Khrystalar
And
Like the Heidelberg Appeal, the Oregon petition was blown away. But now it is blowing back. Original signatories to the petition and others, outraged at Kyoto’s corruption of science, wrote to the Oregon Institute and its director, Arthur Robinson, asking that the petition be brought back.
“E-mails started coming in every day,” he explained. “And they kept coming. “ The writers were outraged at the way Al Gore and company were abusing the science to their own ends. “We decided to do the survey again.”
Using a subset of the mailing list of American Men and Women of Science, a who’s who of Science, Robinson mailed out his solicitations through the postal service, requesting signed petitions of those who agreed that Kyoto was a danger to humanity. The response rate was extraordinary, “much, much higher than anyone expected, much higher than you’d ordinarily expect,” he explained. He’s processed more than 31,000 at this point, more than 9,000 of them with PhDs, and has another 1,000 or so to go — most of them are already posted on a Web site at petitionproject.org.
Why go to this immense effort all over again, when the press might well ignore the tens of thousands of scientists who are standing up against global warming alarmism?
“I hope the general public will become aware that there is no consensus on global warming,” he says, “and I hope that scientists who have been reluctant to speak up will now do so, knowing that they aren’t alone.”
At one level, Robinson, a PhD scientist himself, recoils at his petition. Science shouldn’t be done by poll, he explains. “The numbers shouldn’t matter. But if they want warm bodies, we have them.”
Some 32,000 scientists is more than the number of environmentalists that descended on Rio in 1992. Is this enough to establish that the science is not settled on global warming? The press conference releasing these names occurs on Monday at the National Press Club in Washington.
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/17/32-000-deniers.aspx#ixzz0XG12WOPO
The New Financial Post Stock Market Challenge starts in October. You could WIN your share of $60,000 in prizing. Register NOW
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"81. At 8:44pm on 18 Nov 2009, Khrystalar wrote:
@ Angel_in_Transit, post #76;
"Antarctica = Southern Hemisphere.
November 18th = late spring (one month from summer)"
Indeed; except that summer is only 3 months long in Antartica. Spring and Autum last barely a month; the rest of the year being entirely winter. It's late spring there now, yes. A couple of weeks ago, it eas EARLY spring. A week before that, it was still winter.
But, here's a challenge for yourself, Mike, Colonicus, Beeboid and Maria, if they're still reading; let's see if any of you actually have any scientific acumen to backup your various assertions, eh?
Anybody with the most basic grasp of chemistry should be able to give me a reason why the melting of the ice-caps should logically be followed, after X-amount of time, by a sudden re-freezing - leaving aside for now the question of whether GW was to blame for the melting in the first place. Can anybody tell me what it is? Anyone?
If you need a hint; try a little sodium chloride."
________________________________________
Boy did I make me-self look silly.
Ok I missread the post, but still an ice-self is an 'Ice' shelf. Nightly re-freezing happens, as do cold snaps in the local weather.
Anyway, I assume your pointing out that salt water freezes at a lower temperature than pure water (I believe that sea water actually freezes at about -4C, may be wrong though). The salt water change in the ocean would indead reduce it's salinity and therefore increase it's freezing point.
The difference however would be very small, but indeed may actually level the melting out at a point. There would not be any rapid re-freezing, and any change in global temperatures (which incidentally may happen because the ice will have melted, the white ice shelfs reflect light and water absorbs) would shift the balance, if the area is hotter and the freezing point is higher they will cancel out each other effect slightly. There would however be significantly less ice on average and there may potentially be a significant sea level increase. Also in any system like this there would not be an 'on off' situation as you describe, there would be a more analog style variation.
There is also the problem of salt water and fresh water having different densities, this is the basic reason for the great atlantic conveyer, upset the ballance on one end and it may stop, there is some evidence that this has occured in the past. The gulf stream is inextricably linked with the conveyer and if it stops we would have a local climate much like the east coast of canada and north USA, which is much colder in winter than the UK.
Now your queiry about scientific acumen, I happen to be a university graduate, I happen to have studied Astrophysics, I happen to have done a Masters degree, I happen to have gotten a 2:1, I also happen to have an IQ of 162, I currently work in intelectual property law and have a big (slightly geeky to be honest) interest in planetary physics and climate science. My sister has a 1st class Masters in Chemistry and is curently doing a Phd. I am very good friends with people who are doing, or have done, PhDs in subjects like quantum mechanics and Genetics. We frequently end up chatting about research that has been done in all sorts of scientific subjects. I'm actually one of those wierd people that enjoys learning new things, especially if it proves or indicates something that goes against my current knowledge.
I've gone out of my way to read as many scientific papers as I can on the subject, and not just the sorts of papers that are mentioned in the press and freqently brought up in debates and have specifically looked at both sides of the argument in detail (I used to think there was a potenitial outside effect from orbit changes or changes in the suns activity, but that doesn't weight up when you look at the evidence). I mean the actually research, the actually guts of the reports not just the abstracts and conclusions that the press focus on. Most of the mainstream science doesn't get the press interest but just slots into the body of research and evidence supporting the view that climate change is happening, that it could have massive consequences and that it is in all probability massivly effected by man made effects.
I really do hope that the thousands of people who have done this sort of research haave gotten it totally wrong, but from my knowledge of the basic and fundamental science involved and the evidence that is available it looks like they are mostly pretty much right.
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A few things convince me that climate change is more of a profitable & political opportunity than such a serious threat.
1. If the threat is as real and as great as stated by political/media propaganda then why is the reaction to it so tepid, especially as all government propaganda data & evidence points to such supposid gigantuous national damage namely:-
a)loss of productive industrial land to rising seas
b)reduction in food production
c)increase in seriousness and regularity of floods
d)loss of significant national coastal assets
e)growth in flood repair/damage expense
f)reduced land for housing
g)major & expensive disruption & dislocation to society
h) progressive constant/regular increases in all the above
2.Why is the threat not responded to with the same instant reaction & resources as a military threat.
3. Why, in building more nuclear powerstations to combat emissions, WHY are they mainly being built
a) on old existing sites and
b) on new sites
in coastal areas which are stated by climate change information/facts to be areas that will be lost to rising seas.
4.Why are not ALL significant developments, housing/industrial etc , especially in most threatened areas, made to take account of expected & stated flooding & land loss and counter measures taken/added to ensure the security of these developments.
5.If the threat & dangers are as stated, why is there not a climate change (war) cabinet.
6.Why are resources being directed at building new & more nuclear & coal/gas powerstations when once built, they will still waste 25% of all generated electricity transmitted down present overhead pylons as well as being in many locations that are at risk.
7.Just by solely changing electricity transmission cables to an underground buried network, it will reduce use of combined fuels, coal/gas & nuke by 25%+ also greatly reduce the transport to power statiions emissions, also ultimately reduce prices by 25% & ultimately reduce required electricity energy output by 25%+.
I just do not understand the total lack of rationality in UK energy policy, because it just does not fit in with governments own facts & statistics & propaganda information, or long term sustainability.
Either the world is secretly expected to end or there is a capitalist or other energy conspiracy or government are just totally negligent irresponsible & inept
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85. At 00:31am on 19 Nov 2009, MrWonderfulReality
Ah you are forgetting the fundamental fact that politicians are inept and don't listen to scientific advise until it reaches the point where they have to to avoid losing money.
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@ MikeRavenor, post #82;
"I think you mean both authors were employed - in the mining industry. Why does that prevent them from making objective criticism?"
Well... for the same reason that - apparently - the 600+ scientists I mentioned in connection with the IPCC report are 'likely to suffer "confirmation bias", because their grant money comes from the AGW industry', as you asserted above.
By which I mean; it doesn't, necessarily. Nevertheless, it could well do. Just like McIntyre and McKitrick.
All I'm saying is that you can't, on the one hand, dismiss the pro-CC scientists as being "biased" because they're in the pay of people who may have vested interests, without applying that same sceptism to the anti-CC crowd. Not if you're attempting to be objective in any real sense. It's just silly.
"I noticed whilst searching Wikipedia For starters." For goodness sake. Wikipedia! Some scientist. "
Indeed. I noticed, as I said, whilst finding that list of names on Wikipedia that they claimed there were no recognised scientific bodies on record as opposing Global Warming. I did point out that Wikipedia is far from being guarenteed accurate; quite where you get the impression that I'm using it as a scientific source - which I assume you are, as you appear to be using that as an excuse to berate my 'scientific prowess' - I have no idea. You should try reading what's actually there, rather than making stuff up. I just wondered if you knew of any such bodies who had.
On, then, to your point - you named the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, in support of your assertion; the OISM, however, is not a nationally or internationally recognised scientific body; it's a small, self-proclaimed 'research institute' run from a tiny farm just outside of Oregon. It lists eight members in it's faculty, at least two of which have been dead for some time.
The paper upon which the petition was based has never been peer-reviewd anywhere outside of the members of the OISM; nor has it ever been accepted for publication in any scientific journal (the best they managed was a "review" of the paper in some science magazine or other). It came in for much criticism because it appeared to have been designed - down to the typeface and formatting - to look exactly like a report from the National Academy of Sciences (which IS an internationally-recognised scientific body). When many of the scientists who had signed realised what it was they were actually basing their signatures on, many angrily demanded to be removed. The likeness to a genuine release from the NAS was so complete - it was even signed off by an ex-president of the organisation - that the National Academy was forced to make a press release shortly after the report came out, reassuring people that the NAS had not, in fact, completely reversed its position on the GW issue.
Also; a large number of the names on the list - difficult to tell exactly how many, but I understand that it's many thousands - aren't even scientists at all, let alone scientists with any experience in Climatology; the only requirement for signing was having a batchelors degree in some sort of scientific discipline. Dentists, fitness instructors and even IT professionals qualified under those terms; all of whom were found on the petition.
Still, this is the closest you've come so far to providing any sort of proof for your assertions that there are more than just a handful of scientist-dissenters from the man-made climate change theory, so I guess I should at least give you credit for trying. It's not really a list of scientists who opposed the generally accepted theories, though, is it? It's more of a list of random degree students, many of whose names were obtained under dubious pretenses.
So I'll ask again - do you know of any recognised scientific bodies who have officially come out against the established man-made climate change theory?
Have a good evening, my friend.
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@ Colonicus42, post #84;
"Anyway, I assume your pointing out that salt water freezes at a lower temperature than pure water (I believe that sea water actually freezes at about -4C, may be wrong though). The salt water change in the ocean would indead reduce it's salinity and therefore increase it's freezing point."
Quite right, well done! I wondered if anyone would actually get it; clearly, you do have some genuine scientific prowess.
Indeed, as the ice melts, it dilutes the seawater slightly and therefore raises its freezing point. Hence, after a long period of the antarctic (or arctic, for that matter) ice melting, we would expect to see re-freezing, for exactly this reason. (I guess you're right, too - it wouldn't necessarily be 'sudden', I don't know why I said that!)
I wonder how long Angel and Beeboid would've gone on ranting before they realised that, far from disproving the Climate Change/Global Warming theories in respect of the polar ice caps by bringing up this story, they're actually highlighting an effect which is predicted by them...
But then - as I believe somebody else said, above - this is the problem with calling the theory "Global Warming" in the first place. It encourages the less educated members of society to believe that the name means that every time they find an instance of it getting cold, somewhere, this means they've "proved" Global Warming to be fake...
Anyway, bed-time for me. Thanks for your response.
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I laughed when I ran across the remark about balanced content on the BBC. The very fact that you refer to those who regard the greenhouse gas issue as "skeptics" reveals your bias. How very good of you to feel that in the interests of fair play you should present some dismissive reports of their views.
In the interest of "balance" should we not refer to those (like the BBC) who howl unceasingly about climate change as "zealots?"
In the end, as China follows it's policy of relentless development, massive growth and spreads it's tentacles to the developing world, it won't matter whether you are a climate change zealot or a skeptic...there will be a MASSIVE explosion of CO2 and pollution of air, land and water in the next few decades that this issue is irrelevant.
Copenhagen is about taxation. A great new way to tax people, MASSIVE new agencies, new power bases, more contracts to award, more influence. It is a politicians wet dream!
I was in Kyoto when the protocol was worked out and believe me, it was a joke in Japan after the protocol was announced. A feel-good exercise that no-one took seriously. The US quite rightly rejected it, Japan rejected it.
The US isn't going to check China's expansionism, so you can kiss your fantasies about reduced emissions goodbye! But not the taxes! You had better LOVE to pay new taxes, live with more government regulation, red tape, bureaucracy because that is rolling toward you like a jugernaut!
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Perhaps there is some truth in clichés such as 'history repeats itself' and 'there is nothing new'? And that the debate on mankinds impact on climate is no exception?
A propos of which, I really enjoyed a recent article in the NYT, which features no lesser personage than Benjamin Franklin debating man's impact on weather patterns back in the 18th century! (he asserted that the clearing of forests by settlers was disturbing local weather).
If the moderators allow, the article can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/opinion/18gelber.html?scp=1&sq=franklin%20climate&st=cse
Otherwise, search for "Ben Franklin on Global Warming" by Ben Gelber, published in the new York Times on 17 November 2009.
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Re #90 - sorry, it was Thomas Jefferson who argued the bit about the forests.
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#81
The seasons are fixed by the Sun's position on the Ecliptic; regardless of where you are the season's occur at the same time Spring/Fall = 21 March approx; Summer/Winter = 21 June approx; Fall/Spring = 21 Sept approx and Winter/Summer = 21 December approx. The length of day and night are determined by latitude and season. The harshness of the weather is determined by local conditions at that latitude. Both poles are incredibly harsh and risky environments at any time of year.
If we can agree on something it is that, for some reason, the planet appears to be getting warmer in a very short observation period. We also know that, aside from burning and processing fossil fuel, we have been polluting with chemicals from our waste products for an indeterminate time. Technology has enabled us to engage many "short term" fixes, and despite our closeness to nature we worry about the deaths of those dear to us. We constantly hear about "increasing longevity". Our diets are, perhaps, more sophisticated than ever before. Some are healthier physically than ever before but, perhaps, less so mentally (than ever before).
So we have become more impatient, anxious, and demanding than ever before. We have an intense idea of pseudo-intelligence and we are much less truthful. We have twisted the logic of selfishness via the "me, me, me" syndrome. There is a theme here about human nature and what has gone AWOL in our recent history and what has become more influential in our lives. I suggest nature may be telling us that what has gone missing should never have been thrown away.
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Angel_in_Transit #92
"the planet appears to be getting warmer in a very short observation period"
I don't think that is correct. It is only imperfect (to say the least) climate models which are projecting rapid warming on the basis of unproven assumptions.
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#93
Thank you for pointing out the "risk" of climate models. I did use the words "appears" and "very short" in an attempt to point out the "vagueness" of our knowledge. Perhaps I was trying to convey the thoughts of the average Jo in the street who is basking in warm weather at times of year when s/he may have expected otherwise. That science is preying on our "natural" ignorance is, in my opinion, indisputable.
Perhaps the last great "readers" of nature have left our consciousness for good although, in Siberia for example, there may be a few who can still tell us what is "really" going on. But they are not scientists are they?
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What happened to global dimming? I've heard it's been reversed, we now have global brightening!
Bright and informed people..., ready to scrutinise what's been served by the administrate whose ranks are filled with treasonous and murderous enemies of our kind kind.
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@ Angel_in_Transit, post #92;
"If we can agree on something it is that, for some reason, the planet appears to be getting warmer in a very short observation period. We also know that, aside from burning and processing fossil fuel, we have been polluting with chemicals from our waste products for an indeterminate time."
Indeed; this is what gets me about those who seem to think that man's actions are having no effect - or even a very minimal effect - on the environment. As you say; we've been putting not only CO2, but also many other chemicals, toxins and agents, into our environment for so many years now, it's difficult to understand how anybody could possibly think that we're NOT having an effect on the world around us.
Re; your comments on Antarctica's seasons - I think you may be right, although I'm not sure. I looked around on Google; there's actually a few different explanations of how the seasons work down there, it seems. National Geographic, for instance - whom one might expect to be fairly accurate with this sort of thing - seem to think that there are only two seasons, winter and summer, with the winter's being very long and the summers only lasting a matter of months.
But I did find the blog of a climate scientist actually working at some sort of research base in Antarctica, who explained the mechanics almost exactly the same way you did; which is good enough for me.
As for the rest; interesting and thought-provoking stuff. Thanks.
Hope you're well.
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" 93. At 09:21am on 19 Nov 2009, MikeRavenor wrote:
Angel_in_Transit #92
"the planet appears to be getting warmer in a very short observation period"
I don't think that is correct. It is only imperfect (to say the least) climate models which are projecting rapid warming on the basis of unproven assumptions."
And 8 of the 10 warmest years on record were in the last 15 years, and yes 1998 was a freak high point.
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#97 "And 8 of the 10 warmest years on record were in the last 15 years, and yes 1998 was a freak high point." So? The earth is emerging from an ice age. Temperature records do not exist for the MWP or the Roman Warming or the numerous warm epochs before. What do you suggest is the correct earth temperature?
On another point, Mr Gore's new book of science fiction, 'Our Choice', has a delicious picture of a hurricane off Florida spinning clockwise. Novel! Come on BBC, report that! (See it at WUWT)
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"98. At 3:21pm on 19 Nov 2009, MikeRavenor wrote:
#97 "And 8 of the 10 warmest years on record were in the last 15 years, and yes 1998 was a freak high point." So? The earth is emerging from an ice age. Temperature records do not exist for the MWP or the Roman Warming or the numerous warm epochs before. What do you suggest is the correct earth temperature?"
So?
Brilliant argument that!
Anyway, yes we are coming out of an ice age, but changes in the climate on that sort of level happen on geological timescales of many generations.
The problem isn't that the earth is getting warmer it's that it's getting warmer much quicker than we think it should be, there are some serious implications to that and it's probably being made alot worse by human effects.
The same arguement is true of your challange of what the right temperature for the earth should be. The temperature isn't the problem, its the speed of the change.
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Indian Philosophy says every things in this world has an END. Present civilization may also have an end. Climate change is no more a speculation or prediction. It has emerged as a reality and it can be felt in every corner of the World. Technology and and it's unruly adoption may have lead us into this disastrous path. We can calmly wait till the end or we may adopt to act( The Karma).I don't see any hopes in Copenhagen submit etc. With the development of science and technological advances we could have able to carve a beautiful World. But where we failed? We must think about the problem in totality............saroj mishra
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@100
Defying gravity? Are we?
''The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Now, listen... hear? Each and everyone, the voices... see the universally diverse..,
creation of reality.
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#99
Commenting as someone who doesn't believe either camp has produced convincing evidence to back their respective cases, and therefore remains sceptical, the problem may be nothing to do with what is going on "on" our planet but something to do with the eccentricities "orbiting objects" demonstrate, in this case planet Earth.
We know that the amounts of energy within, for example, an electric storm are huge compared to what homo sapiens can create. Hence nature demonstrates its capacity to harness much more than we can ever throw at it. For a long time short term changes in weather patterns were attributed to Sun spot cycles to acknowledge the huge differences a very small change in Solar output can have.
So we are a floating object in space moving along an orbital path, not in a straight line but wavering imperceptibly as numerous forces interact with us.
Have we ever passed the same point in space that we are in now? No.
Have we ever been in a similar situation to 2009 before? No.
Is our solar system the same as it was "x", "y" or "z" years ago? No.
The problem with our "world" and our understanding of "it" is that we have maybe half a dozen words of a huge book of infinitive size. That is not to say we should not be cautious; but we must be cautious for the correct reasons and we need a much greater affinity with our environment on the planet. "We" had that until recently with our ancient tribes and their knowledge based on thousands of years of observation passed on from father to son. We threw it away; exorcised on the altar of "civilised progress" simply because we have, and have had, such a dogmatic (or dog in manger) attitude to "observation, understanding, and knowledge".
Shame on us. Are we now getting our just desserts?
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#102
I used to think orbital path changes and solar fluctuations were a potential cause for the climate changes we are seeing. It does on face value appear to be a fairly obvious source of change. However when you look at the data it doesn't stack up. The numbers don't work and the changes don't correlate with each other.
You can go through the list, sunspots, solar flares, the 11 year solar cycle, the effects of the moon slowing the earths rotation, the gravity of the other planets, small gravitational effects from asteroids, interstellar dust effects on the sun, movements of the stars etc.etc. none of it fits the trend and none of the numbers fit. Even if a change would effect the earth the change isn't happening quickley enough or isn't big enough to have the effect we are seeing.
A planets local environment has far more of an effect on it's temperature that the sun directly (due to the fact that the sun is a fairly constant temperature even on a geological scale). Venus for example should be about twice the temperature of the earth at the surface, but is more like 600C because of it's atmospheric composition.
I don't mean to sound like I'm braggin but I just wan't to point out that I know what I'm talking about, I have a 2:1 masters degree in astrophysicsn and have a big interest in star formation and planetary physics in gereral. (would be doing a PhD in planetary formation if the goverment hadn't cut the levels of funding, but thats a rant for another occasion) It's a personal pet hate when you see some people, who have little or no knowledge of the science behind a subject, challanging people (who sometimes spend their lives researching nad working in the particular scientific area) with basically fundamentally wrong assertions and statements.
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As a sceptic in all things, can I sceptically refer you to the CRU scandal. If just of a few of the emails were to be verified as genuine, we will be living in interesting times.
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"People will simply not make drastic changes to their lives and pay more in taxes and energy costs on the basis of a flawed hypothesis."
the funny thing is, you'll have no choice but to pay. this whole idea of paying carbon taxes which governments across the world are currenly grooming their citizens to accept is not being put to "the vote".
In the UK, the 2005 Climate Change Bill means that the current and ALL future Priministers are LEGALLY bound to reduce "carbon emissions" and the only way that these people seem to want to do that is through bogus eco-taxes.
they dress it up as being a "corporate tax" and we all say: "oh, well that's ok then, lets hit those rich corporations in the pocket with carbon taxes". but ultimately those taxes will be passed on to the public. so expect future gigantic hikes in food prices, domestic energy and just about EVERY other essential resource we depend on in life.
you have to give it to these crooks, this carbon tax scheme is genius. they will have the freedom to tax (directly or indirectly) just about EVERY aspect of our lives as everything we do produces CO2. We are a carbon-based lifeform - after all. And their isn't a single thing we can do about it apart from some kind of mass revolt and of course that will never happen.
Global Warming is the biggest government scam - ever! and it's not a "labour party" thing. this is an orchestrated effort between all major parties.
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The level of scepticism from the public is dangerously high but when it appears that the goverment , BBC and climate change lobby are brainwashing young children with a philosophy that is flawed te public have every right to be outraged. This will ultimately lead to international war as developing countries resent the implied guilt they have to shoulder for trying to generate employment within their own countries. This will rebound as they attack the developed countries for not sharing responsibility to a far greater extent.
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I think the man-made warming scam is about to unravel, if the hacked CRU emails are correct.
How about a real comment from the BBC on that?
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I am astonished that the BBC in this article claims to be unbiased regarding so-called man-made climate change.
My experience is that the BBC is one of the principal advocates of this neo-religious propaganda.
What factual evidence do the BBC have that the "overwhelming majority of climate scientists (whatever THEY are) agree climate change is happening and it is man-made and measures need to be taken to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" ?
Certainly the small cadre of IPCC "climate science advisers" have carved out a lucrative niche for themselves from propagating this hysterical and non-scientific nonsense.
I (BSc and PhD Geology with three decades of research experience) and the majority of scientists that I speak with on this matter very firmly believe that this is little evidence and even less science involved in this modern doomsday cult.
I only hope that the reputation of science is not fatally wounded by the irresponsible predictions of so-called "climate scientists" generated by nothing more than very expensive, public-funded computer games.
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I'm surprised that more has not already been posted about the hacking at CRU, re comment 107. For those who have not heard about this check on the wattsupwiththat.com site. However, the spin that the BBC can exert on this matter can be readily appreciated by Roger Harrabin's response: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]. This response might be summarised as "embarrassing but not really damaging". Even a cursory survey of the emails that have been released via the hack show that is not true.
If you are truly unbiased BBC, then have one of your top investigative reporters (not one of the usual suspects)follow this up.
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#103
I acknowledge your 2:1. It didn't help you read and understand my posting did it? Or maybe you want to blame me for not having written it in a style you understand?
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I have been watching this storm unfold across the UK and Ireland since last weekend. Are the UK Met office, the Highways Agency and the emergency response services, unable to accept that for the majority of extreme events, that understanding solar activity is the only answer for preparedness for such events? You have had Piers Corbyn of WeatherAction on your channel warning about the limitations of standard metrology to predict such events. His technique has predicted this storm and the last similar storm (the 6 November 2007, see the Met office site for their report on this storm) over 100 days before they occurred, accurately, while the Met Office could detect it five days before! We cannot continue to ignore that the Sun drives our weather. How many more innocent and unprepared rescue, emergency response and police service personnel a need to die before we finally admit that weather and climate prediction cannot be a political matter, when the public need accurate and timely storm prediction.
At the Weather conference at Imperial college (29 October 2009), two members of the BBC weather and climate reporting staff were in attendance when Piers predicted these storms. Why are they not circulated through the BBC weather services?
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The BBC are reporting, in the way that the media do, that "scientists" are delighted that the CERN collider is working again. Should not the BBC point out that the CERN people are in fact real scientists who do real science?
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111. At 09:31am on 21 Nov 2009, Ken Gannon
The numbers just don't add up. The sun has a much smaller effect n weather and climate than you would expect, see my post at 103.
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#111, Ken Gannon, the prediction that Piers Corbyn made was:
"The period from 17-19 November, he says, carries an 85% probability of a storm surge in the North Sea. This will probably lead to snow and blizzards in Scotland and northern England, perhaps a few days later. There are likely to be coastal flood warnings for East Anglia and Holland."
How does this resemble what has been happening over the past few days?
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MikeRavenor, please provide data of "accumulating ice" in the Antarctic. I can find none.
While you are at it, please find data on increasing oxygen supplies. None available.
Please tell us where to get more fresh water (short of desalination plants, which are costly, bad for the kidneys, and ultimately consume more energy in the process of production than we gain benefit from drinking).
Do you think there are enough desalination plants that could potentially be built to make Africa a paradise for farmers, as President Obama has suggested the wealthier nations resolve to achieve? Have you done the calculations on the energy requirements of creating such plants -- and the impact on other areas of the energy markets?
Fresh water from melting ice is flooding into the oceans, altering currents, marine life cycles and weather patterns. Suggesting "this is part of natural cycles that we have had over millions of years" is an absurd argument, yet some Americans persist in making it. We don't live millions of years ago. We live now. Nor will we be here in 100 years (most of us) after significant episodes of famine, disease and water deprivation reduce the human population sufficiently to make life sustainable for humans again.
What we are trying to do is make sure as few people die as possible. That is really where it already is.
Today in the States they are once again speaking of "the Year Global Warming Stood Still." More cheap slogans from people who really cannot face the fact that now is not the time to invest in Mattel toys, additional cars or trucks, new game boxes for spoiled brats, or a second hundred pairs of shoes. It is America's principal shopping season that is driving this nonsense: God forbid anyone should stint on the gift wrap!
This is my quarrel with education American-style. Take a glass of ice on a hot day. Pour water over it. Watch the water get nice and cold. Watch the glass get chilly to the touch. Then watch the ice melt, the water slowly evaporate -- and eventually you will have a warm, grimy glass with disgusting-tasting fetid water that has gone from chilled, to cool, to room temperature -- to unpleasantly warm. It will become as refreshing as bathing in your own sweat.
I did not learn this in any American school. I learnt this as a teenager, watching the water in my glass on a hot summer day in Madrid, sitting in the shade in a cafe.
We have American legislators who cannot grasp this basic principle of hydroscience. As ice melts, first the water and the air around it gets very cold. Then it is cool. That is all part of the Warming Process -- feeling the coolness as the ice melts. Then the water and air appear to stop cooling -- and do not yet feel at all warm. In fact, they feel quite pleasant: just like the very mild late autumn/early winter most of us are experiencing in the Northern Hemisphere.
A moment of equilibrium arrives just before everything then quickly accelerates in the wrong direction.
That is the moment in which we are right now. We should be alarmed, not pleased, that so much ice has melted and entered the oceans that it appears "warming" has paused. It has not.
It is your perception that is momentarily relieved. What is happening with climate change requires that responsible parties get their heads properly wrapped around the huge numbers of population growth, increasing energy consumed by the medical industry, the energy costs of developing and promoting expensive new "life-saving" pharma- and farm-products (where we should be allowing agricultural enterprises to instead concentrate on cultivating Traditional, Native forms of flora & fauna that require less intervention, because they originate in that particular area) -- and the costs of out-of-control global financial and legal sectors, not to mention media and entertainment, that are huge energy-gluttons.
Each time a person breathes they consume oxygen. There is a finite amount of it. Hard to believe, but true.
And today, unlike just 60 years ago, medical science goes to extreme lengths to conceive lives that nature will not of its own deliver -- to extend lives that nature would long ago have extinguished -- to create all kinds of "essential" life-improving "treatments" for afflictions that in the past people simply put up with.
How much have Lasik surgery or liposuction or breast implants actually contributed to human civilization?
Do you know how much they add to our net energy burden? The porn industry? Texting by tots? Casinos in every backwater? Cosmetics for youths and pre-teens?
At some point, we just have to accept the fact that we are indulging ourselves and all our wildest whims even at the expense of human survival on the planet. And no, writing a cheque to Oxfam won't fix it.
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@115.
lack of water on water world? You know, you can even get it from air... we've been successfully doing that for some 2000 years...
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Maria "MikeRavenor, please provide data of "accumulating ice" in the Antarctic. I can find none." Try Google!
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Moriaeencomium, No. 116: do you know the composition of the water we had on the planet 2000 years ago? or of the air that, according to you, we were "converting" into water?
Yes, we have the metabolic process. We also have much larger populations of biological organisms engaged in metabolic processes, while there has not been a corresponding increase in available elements to metabolise.
The biosphere is vast. It is also, in spite of being vast, finite. And all this data has now even become quantifiable.
Yes, we even have a brilliant Russian scientist who has created working super-nanofilters for water and (reportedly) gadgets that draw oxygen from the air and convert it into potable water.
All these nice inventions aside, plus whatever else is new, there is a cost, time & energy burden associated with producing them, distributing them, and using them.
Meanwhile, North Americans love nothing better than wasting time. Everyone else's. They have some Canadians and Australians pitching in, but basically it is the "don't bother me while I am raking in the dough" camp.
The "accumulating ice" in the Antarctic is a reference to the -- scant -- new ice that forms as the temperatures go up or down according to the season.
This "accumulating ice" is not in any sense of the word equivalent to the millenial glaciers that are being irretrievably lost at terrifying speed. It is like saying fresh spring grass is "just as good as" old-growth forests.
The composition of the precipitates we have today, the dead zones and wastelands forming in oceans as hard wastes are unceremoniously dumped by ignoramuses (rich ignoramuses), the rapidly altering chemical composition of the atmosphere we have no alternative but to inhale all have an obvious and incontrovertible health impact on all of us.
Go ahead, change nothing. Watch what happens.
Let's just watch the permafrost release all the methane. Isn't that exactly what the fools in charge of a certain nuclear power plant at Chernobyl did in April 1986? Watch to "see if the theoretical tolerances had any actual real-life significance?"
Those who fail to study their maths are condemned to die for their imbecility. That is where the Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest" and the Christian teachings about an "Ultimate Day of Reckoning" actually converge.
In our real world.
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So what does this esteemed bastion of journalistic "integrity" do wrt the hacked CRU data that damns the participants with incriminating withholding of data, of manipulation of data, of outright fraud? It "reports" on the fact that the data was hacked and ignores the rest - BBC needs to use intellectual honesty in its reporting, not a blind devotion to discredited political claptrap masquerading as "settled science"
"Hackers target leading climate research unit"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8370282.stm
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maria-ascot - a "died-(excuse the pun) in-the-wool "believer". So sad. So misguided. So typical.
As for you ad hominems about us North Americans "wasting time", many of us are a skeptical bunch by nature. We don't fall for nonsense about the much hyped "food shortages" and "run away population explosion" or the next "ice age" which was all the rage 30 years ago. But from your silly ramblings, I surmise you weren't around then. And you know the old truism that "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it", well it seems you've proved it yet again. Do a bit of Googling, rather than attempting to defend an indefensible "settled science"...
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BeneGesserit, FYI I began to study climate change in 1975 at Harvard with Owen Gingerich. That was well over 30 years ago.
Google all you want: you can choose your experts and I can choose mine.
But the reality does not change.
The American response -- ad hominem attacks on messengers -- would just be business as usual if it were not for the fact that every time an American teenager receives an automobile as a 16th birthday present, someone else gets to inhale the exhaust.
Where we live in California, it is fashionable to walk around telling people to put out their cigars if they light up outdoors, because second-hand smoke hurts everyone, even the nonsmokers.
Yet our sons classmates at the high school get to drive 4 blocks in their individual personal cars to attend school -- because God forbid anyone should strain a muscle walking.
yes, America and Americans are the problem. Other people are paying the price. Not enough Americans are making the effort to get serious about this matter. It is a considerably bigger drama than half a million cases of lung cancer or heart disease every year.
Banning TV screen excess is a start: but it should have happened long ago. And it is only scratching the surface, albeit (at last) in a meaningful way.
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Why is it that the internet story-now on your website and the telegraph website about the hacked e mail and data files from the Hadley centre discusses it in terms of burglary/security rather than the infinitely more important point that they appear to have been falsifying climate data to support the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument-an insult to a thousand years of scientific method.
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"122. At 9:01pm on 21 Nov 2009, JG wrote:
Why is it that the internet story-now on your website and the telegraph website about the hacked e mail and data files from the Hadley centre discusses it in terms of burglary/security rather than the infinitely more important point that they appear to have been falsifying climate data to support the Anthropogenic Global Warming argument-an insult to a thousand years of scientific method."
What about, I break into your computer steal some files, then tweak them so it looks like your a paedophille. Then the report should obviously be about you being a paedophille, not about me breaking the law.
Untill they are confirmed as genuine, then they are not worth looking at. Also as is always important in these sorts of things, context!
Also far from AGW being an insult to thousands of years of scientific method, it's more of a 'oh look mud is brown' level of science than most research. It doesn't take a genious to look at the simple undeniable basic facts and come up with the man made gloal warming theory. It's actually an insult to science (and in fact evolution) when people argue against a theory when anyone with half a brain should be able to see it's correct. Seriously you could explain it to a 5 year old and they would get it!
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What we have is a culture of careerists making money out of hot air (to use a phrase), the silent majority of ordinary people without a voice and a modern set of governments so used to the banal mind numbing effectiveness of PR that they think we will all roll over and accept sooner or later. Whatever we do it matters not much in the western world - we will get by.
The tragedy is that there is still no debate on how we provide for communities on the coasts and in the deserts of third world countries to stop human suffering.
What we need are some more John Pilgers to investigate and report what really matters.
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The fascinating story within 13 years of emails is only just beginning to be dissected. Let us hope it is not lost. It may some day be the basis for a great novel about a giant deception that scared the world.
The admittedly hacked (but now beyond doubt genuine) emails chronicle the most important media story of the last 2 decades. I say media because every day brings a new crazy story about warming read the emails and you realise this is not the message the scientists are trying to send (only enough to get funded and published). It is not surprising this group of scientists worked hard to manipulate and massage their data, but as one follows the story of scientists sweating with data and getting published, in creeps the politics.
At the same time that famous scientist Mr Gore makes it a truly Global buisness and suddenly the discussions are about the IPCC and not allowing skeptics to get air time or access to peer review journals. This is now global politics and global money and the monster of AGW is on the loose. But read on and see how they themselves are frustrated by the lack of warming in the last 10 years and try furiously to explain it.
This story needs to be told and understood if we are not to waste vast amounts of money. Yes the world has climatic change but why? The emails do not reveal scientists who are obsessed with co2 or the greenhouse effect. Shame on you BBC! for hiding the story. As a public funded body you have a duty to tell this story
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Re. No. 125, Again, a uniquely US-centric view prevails in North America.
Because so many Americans were oblivious to the substance of the debate until Al Gore, for whom so many frustrated millions of Americans voted and beat the bushes in 2000, brilliantly re-invented himself as the purveyor of "An Inconvenient Truth," millions of Americans to this day believe that somehow Al Gore plus-or-minus some Democrats "own" climate change -- and that therefore it is a fiction, a plot, a hoax, a business model and so on.
By the way, neither do "scientists" (in either camp) "own" the story.
We all own it. We all contribute. And we can all contribute to reducing waste and increasing common-sense improvements to industry and lifestyle -- or we can all collectively wait until a steady deterioration in an already degraded biosphere drives us, via panic and upheaval, to an altogether different way of scraping by.
Even in America, if you remember watching films such as "A Civil Action" or "Erin Brockovich" (or better yet reading the books that narrated those true stories), the information about toxic negligence and corporate coverups has been widely disseminated for many decades.
No sane person can plausibly claim the data we are dealing with has been cooked up, doctored, falsified or slanted to fit some "international conspiracy's" agenda to "destroy the American way of life."
In California, we have written for decades about the hard facts pertaining to our looming water crisis. Pick up some of those reports from the 1970s: lo and behold! The forecasts were actually milder than what we have reaped.
We have a budget catastrophe on top of a water and population crisis in California, meaning we literally lack the funds necessary to hire all the firefighters needed to protect property and commercial interests from increasingly dangerous firestorms.
Can anyone seriously pretend Australians are faking their fire statistics? And California is headed in precisely the same direction as the great continent Down Under...
And please, please, please: keep in mind it is not just about carbon dioxide. Not just about methane. It is about a number of other more exotic and even more harmful compounds, about methylethyls, about particulates, about metals in emissions, about phthalates -- about threatened oxygen levels, impaired organ tissue, endocrine systems in chaos and the cost of delivering oxygen supplies should those be needed.
It is about something as basic as spreading epidemics of inexplicable fatigue leading to reduced immune function and greater susceptibility to infections. It is about populations being just well enough to sort of function, but not well enough to function properly, increasing stresses on public services and requiring rising per capita expenditures.
All these phenomena are already in evidence to researchers in the field. The papers will take a little longer to appear. But this problem concerns everyone's health: no minority faction, however well-lubricated with resources, has the right to deprive the rest of the human race from access to policy interventions that may help mitigate a crisis we have already allowed to go too far.
If you are still in the mood to play ostrich, just hold a conference of your own and stew in your own juices. Let the rest of us work in peace. The air we save may be the very one you find you need, down the road.
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126 'And we can all contribute to reducing waste and increasing common-sense improvements to industry and lifestyle'
Yes we can! and most of us do.The rivers that I caught trout in as a child are polluted and fish free but this has nothing to do with climate change or CO2.
Most educated people I know care for the planet(and their health)
The point I am trying to make is the rollercoaster of simplisitc global warming is currently obscuring the way the planet and its people is being damaged and poisoned in so many other ways
Education including the teaching of the 4rs is the answer as usual.
A large amount of reason and rationality is missing is the point
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#126
Thank you for this and all your previous thoughtful and profound contributions demonstrating the range of problems that we all face, with or without "confirmed" global warming. That we have, unashamedly, unleashed such devilry from our consumer-manic economic models is indisputable. There is an irony that parts of America seized from the indigenous Indians in both North and South hemispheres should be central to the wares of our senselessness.
Nomadic people the world over have been and are being spun out of their lifestyles by an undemocratic force called "buck making". From "controlled by nature" (Darwinism) and natural population controls we have contrived "controlled by bucks" homo sapiens population growth in crawling, sprawling, filthy cities. It matters very little that kids are driven to school or that tobacco, alcohol and other drugs MAY do us harm because the damage was done when we lost respect for what had made us what we are.
Plundering by the rich (and/or powerful) didn't start one, two, three, four or five hundred years ago; it has been going on forever. No, what has been driven out is "choice" and that other important component of Darwinism "freedom". The freedom to be eaten by a predator or become a superior predator ourselves if nature so condones.
We are an arrogant and unforgiving species. Always have been. We have grown to believe in our "superiority" on such fancifully scant knowledge. Even now we have an "experiment" to discover the beginnings of "time" when we do not even know the trajectory of all the major objects in our local star system. We do not even know if there was ever a "Big Bang". And all the time money changes hands to fund our dens of academic iniquity. So much better to die an intellectual than die having passed on useful common sense and knowledge of life to those who survive.
We took a wrong turning. Let's hope that there are many parallel universes and that in at least one other we were not so damned stupid.
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Looks like your Roger Harrabin is maybe chums with the CRU people...
My contacts at the CRU tell me the e-mails are being taken out of context and insist they are part of the normal hurly-burly of conversations between scientists
'Scuse me, Roger. One of the emails is telling colleagues to delete all emails because of a pending Freedom Of Information request. Normal hurly-burly ?
Other emails show deep misgivings among people on the edge of "the team".
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"From the BBC's perspective, the answer to this question is that our journalistic role is not to campaign for anything. Impartiality means not taking sides in a debate, while accurately representing the balance of argument."
Great sentiment Alister, so perhaps you can explain why the biggest story of the year, ie the exposure of the CRU scientists in fiddling with the global warming data and its publication has received such scant coverage from the BBC. All I can say is . . .Thank god for the Internet!
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Thank you, Angel_in_Transit.
Yes, most emphatically.
About the CRU emails: while any hacking of private correspondence, much less exchanges between a group of scientists working on critical research is, indeed, disturbing to say the least, and provokes justifiable outrage, it is not a secret that digital communications can also be forged.
It takes some skill but it can be done, especially if you have the right set of controllers watching out for you.
Therefore, while concerned for the CRU team I find the story a bit of a red herring. It is being used as a distraction.
Consider to what lengths the US was prepared to go punish a Briton with a disability who had -- characteristically for a young and not entirely competent person -- breached their systems in search of data on aliens.
These kinds of occurrences, while naturally enough upsetting to those whose protocols have been circumvented, do not deserve too much overreaction: because they get in the way of the bigger issues.
Clearly security measures must be upgraded and checks ongoing & thorough. Fortunately, the UK is one of possibly six or seven places on earth where I would trust the ultimate protectors to actually know what they are doing.
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130#
I agree with your sentiments VW. However why is anyone taking the release of the hacked data seriously? I'm playing devils advocate here, so bear with me!
Whenever information on any subject is uncovered that could potentially embarrass, bring to book, or cause upheaval to recieved wisdom is published on the internet, it is almost always never the BBC that gets in first. (The Iraq 'sexing up' story being an exception-but look what happened there). If people post links to web sites, what will happen is you'll get messages suggesting the poster get the men in white coats round to take them away. Basically generate ridicule against the poster rather than actually investigate why the official story might be fabricated or spun out of context. Even when the official story is later proven to be wrong, you never see apologies, you never see retractions of the ridicule. have you noticed for example that Global warming is now re-birthed as Climate change? The BBC must have a memo that is circulated as and when required to keep all the journos on message with the required buzz phrase.
If anyone had posted the stuff that is within these e mails on a blog such as this in such detail (a disgruntled insider perhaps) without the e mail addresses, he/she would be condemmed as a barking mad fruitloop who took too many drugs. Yet, it would still be true. Because the Telegraph got the story, doesn't make it any more true or false.
As we're seeing, unfortunatly the BBC have questions to answer regarding their policy of reporting the hack, but not the potentially explosive data revealed-which hasn't been refuted incidentally.
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"(The Iraq 'sexing up' story being an exception-but look what happened there)"#
You will note that in today's Sunday Telegraph,Andrew Gilligan, the journalist fired by the BBC over the sexing up story, is getting his revenge over several pages starting at the front page.
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133# Thank you for bringing it to my attention Mike. Mr Gilligan I'm sure will be smiling quite broadly as the weeks go on!
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#117, Mike - tried Google and found this:
NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission has shown that West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing ice. West Antarctica appears to be losing about 132 billion tonnes per year, and more recent analysis for Greenland using a combination of measurements indicates a loss of about 273 billion tonnes a year. For the East Antarctica ice sheet there appears to have been no net ice loss between 2002 and 2006. After 2006, the rate of loss of ice from East Antarctica has been about 57 billion tonnes per year.
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#132, Define_real
You wrote "have you noticed for example that Global warming is now re-birthed as Climate change?"
I hadn't. I had noticed that we have had a UNFCCC and an IPCC from the outset - not a UNFCGW or an IPGW.
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Ice shelves in Antarctica are melting - fact. Whether it's a natural phenomena or not has been argued in many of the comments on these pages regarding the change in the climate of planet Earth.
At the forthcoming Copenhagen summit all this will be discussed - except for one thing that has been highlighted by the United Nations and no less a person than Sir David Attenborough.
That is the fact that the population of the world is running out of control. It's a very sensitive subject and one that most politicians wouldn't dare to mention but they are going to have to get to grips with it eventually - in all countries of the world.
We ignore the problem at our peril!
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Isn't a great deal of coverage of the CRU hacking by the BBC, a lot of inconvenient truths?
Isn't it also strange that at the World Tonight jolly no dissenting voices were reported. Speaks for itself!
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Frankly, I think you are insulting the intelligence and motives of AGW sceptics everywhere in assuming our beliefs are motivated by ignorance or selfishness.
I'm a scientist, and used to take AGW science and global warming for granted until I found out about the atrocity that was the "hockey stick". And then I looked into the matter, and the more I looked, the more horrified I became. These so-called experts were simply not acting like scientists. Hiding behind authority; hiding behind group-think peer reviews; refusing to publish data or algorithms; trashing the careers of anyone who dared question their conclusions; publishing any piece of rubbish if it gets the "right" answer; denying contrary views any entry to IPCC papers; refusing to acknowledge errors even when caught red-handed; whatever it was, it wasn't "science". And meanwhile the climate steadfastly refused to follow even the most optimistic of their model predictions - the models which are the ONLY 'proof' that it is man-made CO2 which is significantly affecting any global warming.
And then this weekend, we get to see the truth of what these so-called scientists are like in the leaked/hacked emails [personally I think they were leaked by a whistleblower as it follows too closely on the denial of Freedom of Information requests]. How they fix peer reviews and/or journals who publish papers which are off-message. How they maltreat the data at random until they find a method/combination that produces a graph they like; how they conspire, probably criminally, to break the Freedom of Information act; how they themselves do not have great confidence in the outputs of their models but ruthlessly quash any public mention of this. Not fraud so much - they clearly believe with a scientological fervour - but a group-think so obsessive that they've lost touch with how a scientist should act and no longer deserve that title.
I don't disbelieve in climate change (ironically, exactly the opposite). I don't even disbelieve that man has some effect on climate. What I do disbelieve in is catastrophic man-made climate change or that anything we do, have done or will do will be more than "noise" in the background of Earth's climate. And everything but everything I've seen of climate "science" screams at me that I'm correct.
Show me a 10 year climate projection that has proved accurate for observed levels of CO2 then I'd think again. But "because others say so" is not a scientific argument - as the Royal Society ought to know better than most (given that's its motto!).
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Rachel: #139. Quite. Bravo!
BSc Hons Eng (1965)
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136#
I hadn't. I had noticed that we have had a UNFCCC and an IPCC from the outset - not a UNFCGW or an IPGW.
Might I suggest then your inform the BBC, the commercial televison channels and newspapers that they've been carrying the wrong moniker for what is popularly known as climate change/global warming. I'm not aware I've ever seen any reference to UNFCCC or IPCC used in the press.
Ultimatly it doesn't excuse the cosy arrangement that seems to have been going on to fabricate, massage or simply forget facts and figures that wouldn't support earth climate changes being exclusively a humanly made problem. They've been caught, and the least the BBC could do is broadcast the truth..in the same way they did with MP's expenses. Coincidentally, that originated in the DT.
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re SKEGGY RESIDENT
They melt they freeze and so on, but what is the recent data as I seem to remember recently that some one was coming up with reasons why the melt wasn't increasing.
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I have always detested conspiracy culture and the tabloid press. But I cant help feeling times have changed. The freedom of information on the internet has made bodies like the the BBC and even scientists particularly the Royal society run for cover using the glib North American culture of simplistic soundbites when trying to explain a difficult issue.
Instead of debate 'we' must have a website explaining AGW like Gore or the tabloid press forget science forget independant confirmation of the facts.Funding for the BBC, just like the scientists, relies on keeping a good scare story going. It is much easer to go with the bandwagon and see how it turns out rather than risk political disfavour. Given that millions have been spent trying to persuade the public we are harming our childrens future we must ask for proper debate.
The skeptics are the ones subject to the Ad Hominem attacks not the advocates of global warming
Read Carl Sagans, 'The Demon Haunted World' ... 'The fine art of baoney detection' it has a real resonance in this context
I sense great fear of losing the argument from adverse consequences as the mass media makes news with this. Is good science and rationality just too difficult to sell? The BBC has lost my respect as a paragon of true and independant reporting (perhaps a childish memory).
The contents of the hacked emails are a great story. If it was fraudulent expense claims or bankers bonuses no problem!
No one is denying the authenticity of this material and I dont believe some of you are not aware of the significance however mundane most of the material it is still a global argument. Science is never satisfied with closed doors or a refusal to question a perceived wisdom.
Just to remind your policy states
'Serving the public interest
We seek to report stories of significance. We will be vigorous in driving to the heart of the story and well informed when explaining it.'
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How anybody can claim that too much airtime is given to sceptics escapes me.
The media & in particular you, the BBC, are guilty of the most biased reporting in favour of climate change fanatics & fantasists,so much so that I now refuse to watch BBC news programmes.
Instead the above writer watches Countryfile (22/11/09), which panders to his blinkered notions and sets science back some 2,000 years! Here lies Fanaticism: that wood-burning is preferable to coal-burning. Just one reminder to take note of. The Sahara Desert is direct evidence of slash-and burn as practised by Europeans -and the Roman Empire in particular. If forests are so renewable, how come, 2,000 years later, North Africa is still a desert? And if Man has no hand in climate change, how come Land use of the surface area of this planet is given over entirely to the needs of just one species? - Homo Imbecilius, of which we have many examples posting here.
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Whilst the BBC hype the Copenhagen Conference for all its worth it is unbelievable that they have not covered the scandal of the CRU leaked mails in any depth. There is an excellent summary of some of the main points from
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
This must have major implications for Copenhagen as it seems the very basis of AGW has been utterly undermined.
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If Anthropogenic Global Warming is so obvious, why would Phil Jones suggest to delete all raw CRU Station data?
If Climate Science is so robust, why would you agree to "hide the decline"?
If Science is settled, why would Lead Author Kevin Trenberth say:
"The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can't."
And why is there no information from the icon of the world BBC, here in England, one of the greatest countries ever!
Henrik The Dane
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Rachel and Mike:
So you essentially believe that "climate change is beyond human capacity to influence" one way or another, so we may as well go home and carry on and wait for the other shoe to drop, because if anything happens it will be like being in a nasty earthquake or tsunami one is powerless to stop -- and if "nothing happens," well, we can just continue using coal to fire 70% or more of US power plants, filling landfills with discarded Barbie dolls and disposable diapers (for adults as well as infants), crushing unsold new cars to make room for new models that are overproduced and will also not sell, producing and discarding fancy nail lacquers by the trillions of bottles (that wind up in the landfill also, 85% of the time, as only a few drops of the precious stuff are ever even used), cramming closets with the latest fashions a couple of times a year only to then give them away barely worn because they look ridiculous to begin with -- and throwing out 30-40% of the food we purchase because we couldn't be bothered to eat it, after the supermarkets do their part and throw out perhaps 20-30% of what they originally stocked because they couldn't sell it?
You sound like scientists, or attempt to. Maybe you are in a science class somewhere and this is your freelance sideline. But your credibility is mighty shaky, because, clearly, for some peculiar reason there is something about the number Six Point Eight Billion Give or Take a Few Hundred Million that simply does not register with you.
One billion are at the point of starving: some will make it, some won't. But the ones that won't make it will still have time to reproduce, leaving other starved waifs to demand and expect some kind of help from someone resembling a regional institution: and they, too, will reproduce, even if substantial proportions of them die the agonizing death that starvation is. Obviously enough, the above-mentioned lifestyle excesses are not to be laid at their door. However, once they are conceived and alive, their metabolic processes and survival needs, for as long as they manage to survive, do consume the same precious resources that have now been calculated as finite, and quantified.
Of the next Five Point Eight B, approximately another Billion scrape by. These are the people living on one to two dollars a day. Many of them are consumers, of whatever limited capacity. These are the people, for example, who scrounge as scavengers through rubbish mountains and landfills, spreading diseases too costly to treat much less contain; they attack oil pipelines in the hope of siphoning off something to sell, setting off massive disasters... They slave for precious metals or diamonds, are driven into crime and even dangerous militant formations... And they have dreams. Ambitions. They seek to attain the lifestyle we promote on the shiny mammoth TVs we occasionally try to sell in their vicinity, to keep their dreams of becoming Arnold Schwarzenegger or Barack Obama alive.
We are at Four Point Eight B. Fully One Point Eight reside in China. They are nowhere near the most advanced societies -- including the ones from which we blog -- but they are gaining on us fast. No one is telling them they should be different. No one is saying "the American dream kills; it's a lie; it's a sham; it's a dead end; it will cost you your sanity and your physical health." And so this particular One Point Eight is really very much gung ho on the whole California dreamin', New York/New York fantasy... Just look at Shanghai. Only their economy is at this moment so much more revved up than anyone else's; it is like having four or five US of A clones working double shifts 365 days out of the year, with 8% or 9% GDP... More power to them, they deserve it and they have earned it with backbreaking work and discipline, after decades of privation.
But do you have any idea just how much paper is being generated & consumed for China alone? Just the paper? And do you know the chemical processes involved in making paper. Somehow, Mike & Rachel, I doubt you do. You would be a lot less chirpy about how "nothing humans do impacts the planet."
OK, we're down to Three. Three Bill. India, Pakistan & Bangladesh account for more than half of that. A great deal of poverty in those lands. But also Boom Times. Out of One point Two to One point Four Billions Indians (and the exact number is not known), at least 20% belong to the segment that consumes as much as your typical middle class American. That's about the size of the entire population of the US about 30 years ago. All of them consuming electronics (which Americans did not consume 30 years ago), automobiles, foreign travel, nice appliances and cars, expensive education, big weddings... Did I mention food? And even without factoring in Pakistan or Bangladesh?
The remaining One Point Five, roughly, give or take an Indonesia here or there (merely another 250 million humans, with a high growth rate and a petroleum economy that as a sideline caters to high-end tourism with high-end luxury services & conveniences) lives very, very, very well indeed.
That would be the rest of us.
Let us now remind you also that the oil wealthy, polygamous, super-fertile superstar states of the Middle East live, um, well, much more grandly than even our top 5% of the developed world. By and large.
Have I mentioned the superyachts and the superjets? And the supermodels and the superparties?
And yes, it actually does have an impact, all the consumption, all the overproduction that precedes the consumption -- believe it or not, it has a Calculable Impact, fully quantifiable -- on dear old Terra.
Believe it or not, centuries of shipping and all that more recent fantastic globalised distribution of Samsungs, Sonys, Philipses, Benzes, Hummers, Gap Kids, Nintendos, PCs, iPhones, Nike shoes -- you name it -- has cluttered up oceans only our ancestors could have imagined to be "infinite."
And the smart ones never were so deluded. The Greeks were studying Geometry for purposes of navigation and measuring distances many thousands of years ago. So were the Chinese and the Phoenicians. No one had the temerity to suggest, as US-educated scientists do today, that the seas are some kind of bottomless abyss, that can be turned into a shore-to-shore cesspool without someone having to pay a price.
You are welcome to just leave this field altogether and relax on your porch with a Bud while you wait for time to prove you were right because nothing changes.
Or is someone paying you to argue that the rest of us should just take your word for it -- like the word of the people who built the Titanic and sent it on its way, full of human lives, without adequate lifeboats, because "nothing could possibly go wrong -- and if it were to, how much would it matter?"
That is the essence of your argument. Only for the life of me I can't begin to comprehend why you keep making it, since it obviously "does not matter..." to you.
Mike, I found the reference to "accumulating ice in the Antarctic" that you did not wish to provide. And now I see exactly why you did not wish to:
The "accumulating ice" (pretty minimal stuff) is actually the result of --
-- the Ozone Hole Getting So Big That Part of the Planet is Now Being Chilled By the Frigid Temperatures Of...
OUTER SPACE.
How wonderful. Mike's reassuring news: the fact that the protective ozone layer (not to be confused with the other 'ozone,' neophytes) has worn so thin we are now getting a dose of the dangerously extreme cold that exists beyond the atmosphere of this planet.
This is like saying, in New Orleans the day after Katrina: "I have good news: half the roof is beat up but still intact, but we won't be needing air conditioning any more so it's OK that it got blown off."
In other words, for the "don't-you-dare-do-anything-about-it" camp, we can just continue to lose atmosphere, continue to befoul the seas, continue to contaminate the water supply, continue to overharvest the planet, continue to simply turn into landfill anything we should have known better than to produce or buy in the first place, continue to shrug at the now billions of hopelessly hungry people whose parents were never told there was not going to be work, or food, or school, or fuel, or credit, or medicine... We can just continue.
The planet can just take it forever.
Of course. The planet can take it.
But can We?
Can our bodies handle the stress? Can we live without oxygen? Can we skip drinking or eating? Can we live in the open, in the streets, in caves?
Can we hunt or forage? Fight with sticks? Make our own shoes?
Because that is what the "developed" One Point Five will have to learn how to do, as the living standards -- and troubles -- of the disadvantaged Five Point Something (maybe even Six, before long) inevitably, inexorably creep closer and closer into our neighbourhoods, when famine, anarchy, chaos, disease, unemployment, drought & flood erode the minimal conventions that have thus far kept us safely nonchalant on our upper decks.
Because the Titanic is sinking. And there aren't enough lifeboats... There may be enough time, however, and enough human resources, even at this late juncture, to steer the ship and to patch the damage long enough to drift to safety.
If we can only get the chorus singing "nothing really matters to me" to shut up, once and for all. That act got boring a long, long time ago.
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I wonder what if any effect the hacked e-mail and documents will have in the ‘real world’, away from the feeding frenzy of the blogosphere. So far, my impression is ‘not much’. For now, at least, I suspect this will most likely confirm people in views they already hold.
As an article in the New York Times on the 20th November put it: “The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists.”
For those that dispute or reject the case for AGW, the data and analysis was already discounted or outright disbelieved. What the leaked material – the e-mails especially - appear to do is add further fuel to their sense of indignation and frustration that something is wrong with the scientific and political debate about climate change. Some of the posts above illustrate this well.
For those that consider AGW to be a serious problem, the real concern is not so much with the e-mails, however crass some of them appear to be. The concern will be whether detailed analysis of the material shows up genuine scientific shenanigans. Even then, the question is not likely to be whether this fatally undermines the AGW case as it is based on multiple, independant lines of scientific enquiry and observation, but rather to what extent it might impact on particular lines of research or interpretation of results.
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147#
Very extensive rebuke to Rachel and Mike, Maria, but what has any of that to do with massaging scientific data to form opinion? I'm sure no-one on here agrees with the rape of the planet, the wanton and diabolical pollution and waste. However, that isn't what the issue is regarding the leaked e mails.
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#147
Powerful stuff, Maria.
And hardly more than a few sentences on climate change. It is a pity that the IPCC and all the other "bent over double exploring private places" people who try to influence our daily lives cannot bring this world crisis down to showing how it impacts on each and every one of us, now.
I have always felt the tragic irony of mighty corporates who fritter a few dollars away to sponsor green policies within our media. The way it is now our kids have little future, aside from the damage we have done and are doing to the planet. Don't worry they say, they'll be a bigger and better Titanic along soon. And, since it really will be unsinkable this time, it won't need lifeboats!
And, after the wickedness of the WW2 concentration camps, we give you the emaciated bodies of the starving poor all over the world - no need for barbed wire or guards here - what economies of scale we do learn.
If there is one thing I am sure of it is that the climate debate is a tiny part of a much bigger problem. Nature has been screaming at us as loudly as she can for centuries but we do not listen, we do not look, we do not touch the truth she gives us. Much better a virtual reality than the real thing. And soon that may be all that is left.
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'Copenhagen will fail - and quite right too '
in 'The Times' today. Well done Nigel Lawson!
a good discussion of the issues with particular reference to Copenhagen, CRU emails, and the real world. Yes life will go on and maybe some new rational debate on the worlds climate will take place.
Bleating about impartiality and so called journalistic role does not excuse a plain refusal to report a fascinating and evolving story like this , Again I have too say shame on you BBC!
PS Maria-ashot why do you think we are all Americans with no interest in the enviroment, I am not and I care passionately about some of the issues you mention but the discussion is about climate and the politics
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I'm well aware that my opinion may well be deleted because it does not slot in with the BBC's, however I shall give it a go.
I've watched with deepening interest the man made GW issue. I've seen the censoring of all opposite thinking and the derision of all who disagreed. I've seen the belittling and even loss of jobs of those who dared to stand up and question the party 'thinking'. I've noticed those who don't even research the so-called facts deride and abuse those who have a different opinion - and finally come to the conclusion that when a simple question can't be answered, when one doubts and gets shouted down without having their thoughts both reasonably and scientifically debated that there is something seriously wrong. Something smells fishier than Lady Godiva's Saddle.
Ben Elton wrote "Blind Faith" I suggest little realising that he was prophesising about the world and MMGW.
31,000 scientists wrodte that they disagree and they were ridiculed. The BBC sends how many correspondents to attend a conference on GW that according to their own bible will emit bucket loads of carbon into the atmosphere and who protests? Who stands up and cries "Liars, Hypocrites"?
A couple of years ago there were 17,000 who attended a 'green' conference in Bali. How much carbon was pumped into the air? Both ways? No one questioned. How many stray animals did the Bali officials kill to make the streets more 'acceptable'? The media didn't tell you about that one did they? You had to be there to watch and you would have seen.
Global Warming? Bah F*#kin Humbug. Wake up we are being conned BIG time.
Will this letter/blog get on to this blog site? Not.
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Copenhagen, like Kyoto, will be all waffle and no targets (ie. waffle). Everyone has admitted as much.
Just as the EU's attempt to stitch up a climate deal failed. So there you have it, nobody can agree on CO2/AGW, we're flogging a dead horse as well as a clapped out theory.
And no George Bush to blame for the lefties and the BBC. What a shame!
Meanwhile we have the Climategate scandal of hackers exposing fabrication at Uni of East Anglia, top Govt paid crony scientists altering cooling temperature trends to suit their political paymasters for warming trends. Not only suppression of the truth and honest scientific data but suppression of honest scientists in "the peer review" process and "respectable" science journals.
AGW is a busted flush. the BBC are suppressing the scandal. The lefties at the BBC are doomed as is the BBC
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152#
If one thing comes out of this debacle that is 'a balanced approach to climate chnage' I hope it's that those who doubted previously that the news given out by most of the media is skewed to manipulate how the general public think and behave wake up and smell the coffee. As you say, those who put their hand up and point out the disparity of facts are shouted down, ridiculed and in some cases made unemployed. BBC; When are you going to broadcast the alternative view in an unbiased and 'balanced' way?
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#152 So Chris, wrong again?
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There is nothing to debate. There never was.
The second half of the twentieth century saw the rise of a global superpower -- not quite a Civilisation -- that promoted unsustainable consumption, reckless "fun" all the time, watered-down learning, thought police and the utterly novel & unprecedented notion that the purpose of life is to get rich, and everyone ought to be.
Those of you who are not Americans are enamoured of Americans.
Stop pretending. I live amongst you. I shop with you. I watch the drooling drivel you produce at enormous cost for your behemoth TVs, and I have been in "middle-class" homes with two Hummers, five gigantic TV screens and over 100 Barbies... for one artificially-created child who has more toys than the Sun King ever had in Versailles.
Take a hard look at yourselves.
What is needed in Copenhagen? Why, nothing at all. It would be lovely if something was agreed to. It was significant that in Kyoto there was a near-unanimity from human societies across the planet about the need to stop the insanity.
Who never endorsed Kyoto? Clinton. That's right, Mr & Mrs, with Al Gore as Veep. Putin: it took years and years of pressure to get the Russians to overcome their own internal fifth column. Now of course, they are all true blue believers. Between the Clintons & Bushes we lost 16 years of time to fix this thing. Well, 24 if you count Bush-41, as you should. the science has been out there for almost four decades now.
What is necessary, and not from Copenhagen, from this moment, from last week, from years ago, is for every single human household of the Six Billion that are viable (not already in the process of starving) to stop dead in their tracks and re-orient themselves mentally towards a life of Moderation, Reason, Learning, Virtue, Compassion for others and Basic Common Sense.
Can this happen? In our dreams! In the real world, we will be lucky if 40% of the viable human population makes some permanent change in their attitudes and habits. A true achievement will be if the top 20% of the population (not the 20% wealthiest: the 20% Smartest) by very carefully thinking about how they lead their lives, procreate and manage their households and/or businesses, achieve a 10-15% Total Global reduction from pre-global crisis levels (2005 works, 2006 is a better figure) of their consumption & emissions & overproduction & "junk everything" lifestyles.
That is entirely achievable. It will not require political upheaval. It will not bankrupt anyone. It does not require acts of Congress or public acts of penance.
All it takes is thoughtfully reorganising your own lives. Probably calls for changing how you spend and/or invest assets: which is why there are such howls from certain quarters. Wasteful firms and promoters of utterly mindless and destructive financial deals (trading & speculation, default-swaps, brick-thick contracts, for example) or providers of breast implants, or the fertility businesses, may lose customers.
Even just these kinds of simple decisions by private citizens, not to endorse the excess with their attention or participation, can in fact make a huge collective impact -- because the "Smartest 20%" also happen to make up much of the wealthier, more influential portions of the human race. And that includes me.
The film "No-Impact Man" actually did a disservice to us all by suggesting "no one should use elevators" or "kids learn to live without heat" as a means of saving the planet.
That is complete nonsense. But making a decision to travel by train instead of plane, take longer holidays more rarely to distant countries, and instead travel more frequently to places nearby -- or to buy used books rather than new books, and recirculate children's items (including toys) as much as possible -- actually will in the end make a difference, if done consistently by enough people.
Publishers, for example, who print all kinds of junk by the millions and then pulp the unsold copies, are committing a Crime Against Nature. This is the kind of waste that can easily be rectified. It does not take years of policy re-engineering. It takes one smart publisher. And then another. And so on.
American schools (the ones I specifically know most about) are epitomes of waste. They get allocations of shiny stuff and then by the end of the year a huge portion of the less well run schools just throw it all in the rubbish. I have watched this with my own eyes: "dumpster"–size bins full of spiral notebooks headed for the landfill after just 1 or 2 pages had been scribbled on by unruly pupils. I have watched 9 y. olds in US schools simply take boxes of pencils and break them, one by one, for "fun." Just like that.
Those who think the problem has been exaggerated need to get out more, look around and see what really goes on in the world. Here's a game for some day you have free: take a full day, all your waking hours, to go about your business in the world out there and simply analyse everything you see that is pointlessly wasteful. Count it up. You will be staggered, I promise you: especially if you do this in America.
Go read about how Whole Foods destroys all its unsold food, day after day after day, by the ton. Because if they only stocked as much as they actually sell, their stadium-sized venues would shrink to about the size of your nearest Tesco's. That is how much they actually are able to sell. The rest is just staging & illusions.
There are smart business in America (Trader Joe's) and there are p.c. ones on crack (WHole Foods). Go see for yourself and make the comparison. If you don't live in the US, you can just find these examples on You Tube and online.
As for the politics of it: well, how about if in America they just stopped printing and mass-spreading all that agitprop that floods our homes every day, all year round? Don't think there's an environmental impact from "democracy US-style"?
Those of you who still insist this is all hype, and swear you are not American: well, try visiting there then. Try visiting China. Maybe that is precisely the missing piece of the puzzle in your heads. You have not seen it.
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@ MikeRavenor, post #117;
"Maria "MikeRavenor, please provide data of "accumulating ice" in the Antarctic. I can find none." Try Google!"
Ah, so THAT'S what I should've said when you asked me to provide evidence for my "majority view" opinion, above, huh? "Try Google", and then I could've gone on pretending like I had a point, and that you were merely slightly dim for being unable to research my assertions, without me having to actually do any work?
I was correct in my assertion above, then, right? You ARE one of these people who uses "Proof, please!" as a handy get-out clause for having to continue any argument you know you'll lose, whilst at the same time feeling at liberty to make up any nonsense you want and spout it as Gospel Truth and ignore anybody who asks you to back up your rantings with some data?
You accuse the BBC of over-emphasising the "melting" issue; and yet despite two seperate requests from myself, you fail to provide even one single example of them mentioning it, let alone over-reporting it.
You claim to have some sort of scientific background; and yet apparently aren't even capable of querying Google yourself to find this supposed abundance of information on accumulating ice, as you were challenged to by maria.
Well, I think at least you've pretty much solved the 'bias' issue beyond any further doubt. The BBC is entirely right to give priority reporting time to the majority view; that climate change exists and is at least partially down to man's actions. I'm sure those sceptical of the theory would be given more time, despite their reduced numbers... if so many of them didn't sound like YOU, Mike. Decided, for whatever reason, (scared they might have to pay more tax?) that they will convince everybody that the GW theories are incorrect, regardless of whether they are or not. And prepared to make up any nonsense; repeat any lie; espouse any hypocrisy in order to make the public at large believe it.
Seems you're right - there ARE quite a few people, within this particular debate, who are "...politicised, statistically innumerate scientists with an agenda.", as you said back in your post #31 right at the start.
It's just that - as you've then gone on to comprehensively prove, throughout this debate - they're not all on the pro-GW side of things.
Not nearly all.
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156#
Yes, very nice, but exactly what does that have to do with a #balanced approach to climate change'.We're not discussing conspicuous consumption. Oh, I'm not American..
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Face it. We haven't a clue what's happening. As smart and as advanced as we think we are, we have no idea if our activities are messing up planet Earth, and still less idea of what to do about it. And even if we did, we would need to unite the whole world in order to undo the damage. We are merely showing how desperately primitive the human race is.
Stick two bunnies in a room and let them reproduce, and they will continue to do so all the time there is enough water, food, air and space. When they run out of any of these things they will start to die. What they will not do is attempt to forecast the future and modify their lives and/or consumption to prolong their existences. Why? Because they can't. And nor can we. We are running head-down into oblivion just the same, and the fact that we can see the edge of the cliff (or think we can) doesn't make any difference. We keep running just the same. Sad, but there you are. I'm sure those who scream about MMGW and running out of resources and global catstrophe are right, but they are like flies in the way of a juggernaut.
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LiipyLippo, actually you are wrong: yes, we do. We do.
We have more then "clues." It has been known for some time by a large number of specialists, and some careful thinkers, of all backgrounds and schools of thought, exactly how are activities are "messing up planet Earth."
All this has been known even during the Cold War, on both sides of the ideological divide: it was known in certain circles in America, in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in many European countries, and quite probably by more than a few Chinese scientists as well.
After all, people in China protested against Three Gorges Dam, and in the USSR against similar environmental lunacy. I personally met and studied with, learned from legendary academics on both sides of the Iron Curtain who had very specific and alarming data -- that happened to virtually coincide in its projections, independently obtained without the benefit of some of the advanced computers and institutes we now have to tackle the problem.
Either you do not yourself know the extent and age of this precise knowledge, or you deliberately mislead with squishy phrases. Which is it?
We are not "bunnies." Bunnies do not compose poetry, compile encyclopaedias, elect governments, pay taxes or attain university degrees.
If you see human beings as being at about the developmental level of bunnies, do you only eat lettuce? Do you ever watch TV? What are you doing at a computer keyboard? Do you pay a bill for the access rights?
Does your bunny?
And just as we do know exactly what we are doing wrong, have done wrong, for how long, by how much -- just as some researchers have added up the total tonnage in scrap metal of all automobiles ever junked since the day the first automobile was ever made, and calculated the combined impact over time of all the chemical reactions from the decomposing paint and lacquers and vinyls sweating under the sun and weather -- we also do know, some of us, what do to next.
There is a map. Some people know it. There may be disagreements over the precise sequence of steps to be taken, but a plan for survival actually exists, can be articulated, and can be implemented.
Just because something stretches the limits of your capacity to understand does not mean it is not true, does not exist, or cannot be addressed by someone else, with a different set of skills.
As for No. 158, "Define_real" (may I suggest dictionary.com?):
"A balanced approach to climate change" is one in which no more time is lost; in which each individual and household has access to the information, methods, incentives and resources needed to achieve, on a per household level, significant permanent reductions in their consumption & emissions & lifestyle habits.
Obviously, those who are already careful, frugal, low-consuming, low-emitting are going to be able to make only small changes. But even these changes can make a difference.
Those who are more extravagant, consumption-oriented, habituated to excess (e.g.: require several automobiles; require several TVs, or fridges or freezers; can't live without a microwave; have an addiction to shoe shopping or handbags; need their nails done every week or even twice a week; must have a freshly mowed lawn and a freshly waxed floor, every week, come hell or high water; subscribe to dozens of magazines at a time that they scarcely even read) -- these people will need to make adjustments in their life.
The adjustments ought to be voluntary and not everyone need to make all the same ones. But we have to see a result from the self-regulation. Because if results are not noticeable -- if 16 y. olds in the US still get new cars by the millions just for being "of driving age" -- then laws will indeed need to be passed, and quickly, to impose regulation on an unthinking public.
We have middle-class friends in the valley near LA. They have three children, the youngest just 16. That means SIX private vehicles, all shiny and new. One of the daughters had a fit -- for almost 7 months -- that
her parents would not automatically buy her a BMW, and instead offered an Infiniti "as a compromise." She tortured them into submission. That is America. These are nice people, in a 9000 sq. ft. house. Both daughters, both Grandmothers and Mother get their weekly hair salon appointment.
It is a crazy way to live. A lot of people who do not even think of themselves as "rich" -- merely "prosperous" -- live this way.
We have three kids, too. None of them drives: they don't need to. One son goes to the barber, about once every six weeks, because he works in an office. No one else bothers. We take turns trimming each other's hair. Do you think we enjoy our lives any less?
"A balanced response to climate change" begins at home, and requires only a tiny amount of effort.
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Thank you Maria for pointing out my reprehensible shortcomings. I can guarantee it won't be taken by anyone else.;-) Back to your rant. Conspicuous consumption and the 'me, yes, now and more' society that you paint so vividly is unfortunately one that has it's origins in all capitalist countries. We make, we modify, we sell, we dispose..and so on. It's laudable that you seem to not buy into that which your fellow countrymen and women find impossible to live without. The 16 year old brat spitting her braces out with the dummy is symptomatic of being spoiled from early in her life-she knows no better, and she's not alone. It's rife in this country too, not simply cars and clothes, but everything.
Although we still make 'things' to satisfy the lust for 'things' that replace the perfectly serviceable but week old 'things' and using the concomitant energy to make 'things'--less so in the UK, as we simply have it made abroad, it doesn't answer the issue of the data to climate change/warming being suppressed to alter not only perception, but policies and legislation implemented because of that data.
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Data/statistics/expert's opinion/submits/agreements will not help to fight climate change. The balanced use/exploration of natural resources may help. Can it be possible in this Capitalist Controlled World? If it cross the limit The Nature will balance it in its won way. It has given the warning.We have to respect the Nature or we will perish. It is too much. We must fight climate change with utmost honesty and sincerity.
....................saroj mishra
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How people live is not a question of capitalism or non-capitalism. Communist societies were guilty of the same kind of nonsense, not to mention monumental waste. You have to have been there to see (as many of us remember) the Little Red Books with quotations from Mao, the lavish editions of "The Writings of Leonid Brezhnev" (in something like 80 volumes), the endless assault of slogans printed in vivid five-metre tall lettering plastered all over the place... In the USSR, fish belonged to one bureaucracy, caviar to another: ergo, when sturgeon was caught, depending on which bureaucracy booked the boat, either the fish would be thrown back after having its roe ripped out, or the roe from the gutted fish would be dumped, and the hollowed out carcass thrown into the freezer.
The name for all this is human failure, pure and simple: moral turpitude.
That data is being changed, and possibly changed again does not surprise me enough to make it a subject for outrage. If we know anything from the past quarter-century, it is all about how data-miners package and prettify whatever suits. Outright data suppression & corruption is commonplace in every sensitive field.
Again, that is all a distraction. The purpose of the distraction is to get as many people as possible worried about whether "we have the actual facts."
Yes, we have the actual facts. Ad nauseam.
What would normally be called "conspicuous consumption" -- but I actually believe is something far worse: an addiction to money, "winning," vainglory & status –– is at the very crux of the climate change awareness response.
A great deal of this is simply obsessive behaviour. Consider the oil business. It has become about: Who pumped how much today? Who pumped more? Who sold what? Who earned what? Who's ahead?
The same kind of behaviour dominates science, academia, medicine, the American political establishment, news media (ratings), fashion, viticulture... you name it.
When the IPCC reports were being written in 2007, those who followed heard about the various types of pressure and redacting applied to shape the report. Entirely possible the same is happening now. If so, the penalty for ostrich-games inevitably goes up, since the situation only becomes more aggravating.
For the record, I am personally grateful for everyone who cares enough about both humanity and the truth -- the planet and the future -- to read, to write, to argue: whether or not we see things from the same perspective. But yes, I have felt a strong sense of urgency about this subject since 31 Dec 1983. And I write from that position.
I urge that strong, committed action be taken by individuals. The least any of us can do is get informed. It does not cost a great deal, just a little time, to educate yourself. And then don't just wait for Someone to say, "OK, now we must do something." By then it may very well be too late. Do something yourselves starting today.
The policies and legislation, Define_real, will inevitably fall short & be full of missteps (at least I can speak for the States, where I know the process thoroughly). Precisely for that reason, we must act on behalf of our own families, and use our own intelligence. And you know, as I do (otherwise we wouldn't both be here at this moment), that there are many different uses for intelligence. Many different ways to apply what one knows to what one has, and to make the right decisions on behalf of those nearest & dearest.
All I am saying is that the "Time" we have all been waiting for & worrying about for a while is indeed here already. That time is Now. Batten down your hatches and make some serious plans. No one is going to ride to the rescue. Form networks & communities of like-minded, resourceful people. Alter your lifestyles. Talk sense into your children. Think ahead. What's the smartest place for you to live, and the safest way to?
Choose: don't blink. There isn't actual money to solve this thing; there's only just enough time, with a will, to slow it down.
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If the BBC claims that it operates a balanced approach to climate change, please provide particulars of any instance in the past five years when anyone who questioned global warming was allowed to appear on any BBC programme, either television or radio.
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Is energy saving messures just for the lower classes so the local councils and govornment departments can have all their lights left on in empty offices or are their offices carbon neutral.
This climate change debate is a scam to grind more money out of the dwindling working classes to subsidise the rich their tax breaks and perks none of the corporate types have an intrest in renewable fuel sources as they are not profitable as say oil and other fossile fuels are.
The electorate are rightly skecptical of politicans and their tame scienctists and all pridictions have failed spectaculaly
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@ AlanLeon, post #164;
"...please provide particulars of any instance in the past five years when anyone who questioned global warming was allowed to appear on any BBC programme, either television or radio."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8322513.stm
Clive James, writing a column in defense of climate sceptics recently. He has a regular programme on Radio 4, details in the link.
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166#
How refreshing of the BBC.. and presumably you don't need to 'love the show' to get a mention? I've always had a liking for Clive James, comes across as a reasonably modest, witty and personable sort of chap..unlike some ;-)
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AlanLeon, I have watched BBC broadcasts from America via satellite for as long as they have been available.
I have seen the argument that "environmentalists are alarmists" (and variations on that theme) presented, in detail, many times. Ditto for Deutsche Welle, not to mention US networks -- with have generally only warmed to the topic recently.
No, not all Americans are dense, of course. But many are. I have been part of a group that has spent years pro bono working towards the minimal new policy shifts we have today in the States, with Sen. Barbara Boxer leading the fray in Congress, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lending his stature to the cause, albeit a touch late and without enough vigour.
The reason for finally shushing the "sceptics" is because they really have had a good three decades to interfere -- have interfered effectively -- and been proven wrong every time.
(FYI, the people whose right to be heard you are insisting upon are actually not sceptics at all; scepticism implies a willingness to consider the evidence. These are simply people who refuse to imagine the planet is destructible and their lifestyles -- chiefly in terms of financial investments and laissez-faire corporate operations -- can be open to public commentary.)
These are the "sceptics" who, like certain fanatical members of sects, with their child grievously injured in an accident, refuse to allow blood transfusions because it violates their cherished beliefs. They watch the life ebb from the child; the pray over it... Will they or won't they relent and allow medics to save the life?
For a believing Christian, as I am, there is no problem whatsoever with the human race dying from climate change. The good will go to Heaven, and the bad shall receive their just deserts.
But from the standpoint of logic & responsibility -- also required of a believing Christian -- I am not allowed to stand idly by while an afflicted fellow being suffers and asks for help. Christ's Commandments also apply to the Planet itself, and of course to all other fellow creatures God put here, to be "my neighbours."
The purpose of the planet is to facilitate, nurture & protect Life.
The purpose of Life is Joy.
Joy can only be obtained through Love.
Love that only looks inward, serving the shallow selfish needs of an individual, is not really love at all. It is vanity, and it withers away without completely satisfying anyone. It feeds addictions.
Love -- True Love -- goes outward from a human presence, and encompasses, incrementally, more and more, until at last it has embraced All.
The Joy that comes from Love can only be sustained if the objects of that Love are present and thriving.
We can modify our lives, our plans, our philosophies, our attitudes, our corporate & national goals sufficiently to allow more Life to go on for longer than it otherwise will, if selfishness, addictions, excess and mismanagement are allowed to dominate.
Sceptics?
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I wonder what people here think about the "two hundred year solar cycle" which is supported by quite a few scientists including a couple of prominent people in NASA.
There is evidence in this research suggesting that a one degree increase above the average surface temperature can produce all the climate artefacts we are witnessing. It further suggests that a one degree decrease from the average could provoke severe cold and possibly trigger an ice age. It is predicted that the earth will return to the average within 10 to 15 years. Orbital "wobbles" are known to produce a one degree increase or decrease in temperature on other monitored space objects.
Similar research also links the effects of NEO (Near Earth Objects mainly large asteroids), sometimes known to play havoc with our atmosphere and the earth's magnetic fields, to "short term" climate change although this is unsupported by the global warming lobby.
It is also argued that although increasing quantity and variety of aerosols leads to higher temperature, other aerosols can diminish temperatures, and that much more is needed to be known about how all the atmospheric gases interact. These factors are considered so important they are getting more time devoted to them by NASA's super computer which has been made available to climate research groups.
I guess all this is suggesting or saying whatever IS going on in the atmosphere it is much more difficult than first thought to distinguish natural changes from unnatural changes.
I wonder if there are any computer models demonstrating the effects of halving the population. Would they see daylight?
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Solar cycles have been studied in great depth by astronomers armed with advanced instruments for many, many centuries actually. With simpler tools, for millenia.
Hiding behind the idea "it's a solar cycle" is the search for an excuse that will allow insanity to continue rule the lifestyles of the upper third of the social strata of the developed nations of the world: since that is where most of the excess, addiction to greed, and ingrained mismanagement originate.
We are not going to be around in 200 years, and most of us in 100 years (even if we get past the present Scylla & Charybdis of the climate threat), to know if "it was only the sun."
On the other hand, we do have, within a very short horizon, a major solar flare-up to look forward to, within the next 3-4 years. Yes, that will add data. Is it likely that solar cycles alone account for what is happening?
Is the sun slowly engulfing us?
Well, if it had been, wouldn't we have noticed it engulfing the planets closest to it at a faster rate by now? Has anything changed in Mercury's orbit? No.
The sun is not a vacuum cleaner and we are not debris to it.
On the other hand, read Big Coal and find out about the extent of reliance on coal just in the US power structures alone. Factor in China, Russia, EU, India (charcoal consumption). Just look at the numbers!
There have been many, many outstanding works published for years now that shed light on all the various theories put forth.
OK, gamma ray bursts from far away may zap us literally at any moment. And we can do nothing about that.
But exponentially accelerating pollution from manmade sources -- which is what we are talking about, which we can influence, and which has been calculated to have already adversely affected the health of every living organism on the planet as of the last couple of decades -- we can do something about.
Why should we hesitate to do something that we are fully capable of doing that we know will make us healthier, extend our lives and very likely improve the long-term quality & sustainability of our air, soil and water resources?
How can anyone resist an invitation to choose to survive, instead of wait for cancer rates to rise even more steeply, because cancers thrive as oxygen levels go down?
You think solar cycles or "planet X" cause cancers? Or birth defects (gestational abnormalities)? We already know that what we already have, as a direct byproduct of inefficient over-industrialisation, does make these terrible scourges worse and more common.
We don't have to keep rediscovering and reconfirming what is already known. The effect of solar cycles or NEOs is still in the realm of speculation. Highly specialised speculation, to put it mildly. No one would be calling a conference in Copenhagen, much less leaving their Oval Office or Kremlin Office to attend it, if they thought we were about to be hit by a space rock, or swallowed by an angry sun.
The reason we have these conferences is that we have a problem we can indeed address. Intelligent people do not need to have new proof every day of a problem that has been on the global VIP agenda for over twenty years now. This is not some Hollywood disaster movie. This is reality.
No one is going to ask half the human population to get off the planet. But we do need to plan for the future -- and encourage people (especially young males) to be more thoughtful before they get intimate. We have reached the point of no return, and passed it: now time to carefully back away from the precipice, if we can manage to.
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My apologies for the delay to this posting, but I had lost the reference. The BBC is hopelessly biased and compromised, quite possibly by listening to UEA CRU's "scientists" - Roger Harrabin's sources. See below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_21century/report.pdf
Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular. There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening, and that it is at least predominantly man-made. But the second part of that consensus still has some intelligent and articulate opponents, even if a small minority.
Jana Bennett, Director of Television, argued at the seminar that ‘as journalists, we have the duty to understand where the weight of the evidence has got to. And that is an incredibly important thing in terms of public understanding – equipping citizens, informing the public as to what’s going to happen or not happen possibly over the next couple of hundred years.’
Roger Mosey, Director of Sport, said that in his former job as head of TV News, he had been lobbied by scientists ‘about what they thought was a disproportionate number of people denying climate change getting on our airwaves and being part of a balanced discussion – because they believe, absolutely sincerely, that climate change is now scientific fact.
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space. ‘Bias by elimination’ is even more offensive today than it was in 1926. The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit – but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them. The BBC’s best contribution is to increase public awareness of the issues and possible solutions through impartial and accurate programming. Acceptance of a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution. It remains important that programme-makers relish the full range of debate that such a central and absorbing subject offers, scientifically, politically and ethically, and avoid being misrepresented as standard-bearers. The wagon wheel remains a model shape. But the trundle of the bandwagon is not a model sound.
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My apologies for the delay to this posting but I had lost the reference. The BBC does not have a balance view of reporting climate change. See below:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_21century/report.pdf
Climate change is another subject where dissenters can be unpopular. There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening, and that it is at least predominantly man-made. But the second part of that consensus still has some intelligent and articulate opponents, even if a small minority.
Jana Bennett, Director of Television, argued at the seminar that ‘as journalists, we have the duty to understand where the weight of the evidence has got to. And that is an incredibly important thing in terms of public understanding – equipping citizens, informing the public as to what’s going to happen or not happen possibly over the next couple of hundred years.’
Roger Mosey, Director of Sport, said that in his former job as head of TV News, he had been lobbied by scientists ‘about what they thought was a disproportionate number of people denying climate change getting on our airwaves and being part of a balanced discussion – because they believe, absolutely sincerely, that climate change is now scientific fact.
The BBC has held a high-level seminar with some of the best scientific experts, and has come to the view that the weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to the opponents of the consensus. But these dissenters (or even sceptics) will still be heard, as they should, because it is not the BBC’s role to close down this debate. They cannot be simply dismissed as ‘flat-earthers’ or ‘deniers’, who ‘should not be given a platform’ by the BBC. Impartiality always requires a breadth of view: for as long as minority opinions are coherently and honestly expressed, the BBC must give them appropriate space. ‘Bias by elimination’ is even more offensive today than it was in 1926. The BBC has many public purposes of both ambition and merit – but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them. The BBC’s best contribution is to increase public awareness of the issues and possible solutions through impartial and accurate programming. Acceptance of a basic scientific consensus only sharpens the need for hawk-eyed scrutiny of the arguments surrounding both causation and solution. It remains important that programme-makers relish the full range of debate that such a central and absorbing subject offers, scientifically, politically and ethically, and avoid being misrepresented as standard-bearers. The wagon wheel remains a model shape. But the trundle of the bandwagon is not a model sound.
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Mods - please feel free to delete #174 - double posting due apparent disappearance of #173
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Surly any investigations should not become one sided.
The emails that have been published around the world show to all that any dissenting voices have been pushed outside the rim of the arguments.
If the scientists are true to their original impartiality then there should not be any reason to try to block one side of the argument but instead investigation of the opposite view should have the same value as the other.
When scientists become besotted with one sided views it is we the general public that are left picking up the pieces in years to come.
The suspicion of the public is that this has been jumped upon as a new reason to raise new taxes.
I don't know if man is responsible for speeding up global warming.
We do know that nature is likely on a path to warm up the globe and that nothing 'we' do will stop that.
The only thing that is being argued about is if man has any say in how fast the globe warms up. I.e. does the amount of CO2 we produce really have a significant effect especially as when water vapor is heralded as the greatest of all the green house gas?.
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#172
Thank you Maria.
I am mindful of the seriousness of our plight but I am also rather fearful of logical remedies - for example a mass cull of human beings - regardless of how present climate change works out in the next fifty to one hundred years. Standing people up against a wall is a great way to get others to walk into buildings without exits and for every good use there is an equal and opposite bad use of science.
For a moment lets equate human beings with the humble honey bee. Stress has been offered as one of the most likely causes of their sudden decline. A reaction to being boxed up and moved around for economic reasons perhaps? Because huge "orchards" are not as nature intended?
And although Hollywood has its own micro economic reasons for producing the odd disaster film with intent, a script marking out the supremacy of the dinosaurs shortly before a very large meteor hit their "homes" could easily have been entitled "Judgement Day".
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Mike & chris: Dissenting voices have not been pushed outside the rim. As your own contributions demonstrate, they remain quite active, audible, visible in the conversation.
But your dealing with two factors here:
(1) Democracy does imply that a preponderance of views inevitably carries more weight than the voice of dissent.
In many areas that matter to me almost as much as the survival of the planet, or just as much, I am part of the "dissenting" voice, and being outnumbered recognise the futility of trying to swim against a powerful current.
For example, I would prefer compulsory voting in America. Or the full sovereignty of California. Or a restoration of the monarchy in Hawai'i. Many people might argue for those views, but they cannot overcome the intense convictions of others.
(2) Overwhelming scientific data indicating there is a grave danger to human health and indeed survival from existing trends.
If you look at the thoughtful graphics BBC research teams so obligingly put together, you will notice the clarification: CO2 while by far the must abundant in toxic molecules is not in fact the one that does the most direct damage per se. Some of the compounds lumped together under "methane(s)" or "Nitrogen(s)" include quite esoteric man-made pollutants from the plastics, fuel (including rocket fuel), pesticides, fertilizers and armaments industries. Some of these things do enormous damage even in minute concentrations.
Dealing with them, reducing their presence (most cannot be recaptured, at least not with existing technology), giving up using them is going to take considerably more complex agreements & intense research. The reason this is hardly ever even brought up is it actually strikes so deeply at the very heart of where we are during this phase of the Industrial Era, that some cannot even conceive a solution might be possible.
In fact, one of the best things that would need to come out of Copenhagen, as a priority even before "helping the afflicted and so on" is a commitment, with money, to International, even Inter-Disciplinary research teams to thoroughly examine (via new institutes if necessary) the role of these more exotic toxins & byproducts, and formulate effective strategies for tackling them, via innovation, substitution or even outright proscription.
Indeed, there is a pro-climate component to the Obama disarmament proposal, and the upper-strata leadership knows this.
If we can find the Higgs boson, for heaven's sakes, we can certainly develop a completely different approach to propulsion, fuel and agriculture. The best approach may not be to follow the precepts of the utterly misguided "green revolution" (go to Wiki for the details) but rather to revert to low-tech, low-intervention, low-tampering farming -- the kind described in the first part of Omnivore's Dilemma. And maybe that is what we should be teaching, instead of a chemical-rich "faux-food" assembly line that enriches an enormous chemical and bioengineering sector intent on inventing problems where none exist.
When you and others argue about "is it warming up or not" you are in fact responding to a deliberate over-simplifiction of the question. This oversimplification is the result of decisions made at some point in the policy hierarchy, where they think "the masses cannot really understand complexity" so they reduce everything to monosyllabic primary-school level messages.
Al Gore's very worthy effort got Americans' attention. When Americans pay attention, a lot of McDonald's' constituents also cue in. But the Gore film was actually a very careful simplification, calculated not to alarm too much...
We have known for several generations the true name of this problem: it is industrial pollution. The reason it causes an overall warming trend at the sea level zone where most humans congregate is that, just like any site of refuse dumping, decomposition raises temperatures.
We are literally turning our land, seas and airs into dumps. We are living in the midst of our own wastes, and inhaling the fumes. After it took centuries (millenia) for the genius Pasteur to prove the role unsanitary habits play in disease, and the necessity of cleanliness, we have basically cleared very small personal areas from filth (and if you walk around most large cities in the US, UK and even parts of the EU, certainly Russia, China, India, Mexico, Brazil, you know the public areas are increasingly allowed to go dirty) but just beyond our dwelling-places, beneath our floors, through soil, fields, drains, waterways and wetlands, the muck is rising. And it is all above us in the air: finely ground-up, mostly, but everywhere all the same.
Our wastes are killing us. It is time to scrub, literally, physically, metaphorically. It is the principal task of the next 100 years (if we are blessed enough to get a reprieve).
For all of you dissenters who, as your comments clearly indicate, do indeed care about the substance of the issues, and are simply not yet convinced (and not merely being obstructionists in the pay of Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Cargill or some coal syndicate), I strongly recommend a few hundred hours of reading. Not reading the opinions of fellow dissenters, but instead reading about the various industries and how they operate: about Big Coal (in the book of the same name), about the American food industry (Omnivore's Dilemma, a 100% brilliant read; or any of the works of Jeremy Rifkin). Read a little about what Ralph Nader did before he became a Presidential candidate (and thereby lost some credibility); read some of what Noam Chomsky has to say about American public policy processes; read the memoirs of the US FDA chief David Kessler, The End of Overeating (how American science & industry promote and reinforce obesity)... There are masses of works out there, of all political hues and angles, that provide accurate, reliable data shedding light on the completely bizarre ways in which poor planning, thoughtlessness and rampant greed, largely through American marketing genius, have derailed human health on the planet, and now threaten our survival.
There is a reason why, per capita, the worst impacts on the planetary climate originate in the US of A and its buddies the oil titans in the Middle East. These are the people with the greatest wealth, the least discipline as far as personal habits are concerned and also -- regrettably -- the least learning. Wealth buys pretty transcripts and even degrees from the right institutions. But when someone who has never personally attended a chemistry lecture, or read a book on economics, or used their own brain to count is then placed at the head of a petroleum division, or presides over a financial exchange (as Madoff once did) -- if such a person never once calculates the impact of all the paper coming in and out of his building every 24 hours, because his eyes are trained firmly on the yacht, the girl, the racing car, the colt, the golf ball or the next line of coke, you Do Get exactly what We Do Have, today.
A big, big, big mess. And not enough people to fix it.
The upside, my friends, is that it is indeed an opportunity to create jobs for smart, efficient, honest people, including in non-technical areas, such as oversight and HR.
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Chris, water vapour per se will not harm you. Unless it is overheated (which could happen). Your observations about water vapour originate from some other source that is either deliberately misleading or appears, fro example, in a US secondary school text on "the water cycle." I have scrutinised those texts. I have no idea why they are published or why there is so little oversight involved in educational publishing.
In the US, we get little leaflets about water composition every so often with our water bill. If you read the fine print, you will discover that there are Parts Per Billion concentrations of all kinds of substances and microorganisms that need to be taken into account when consuming water, providing water for human needs, testing water.
The 25 to 40 different items listed on that leaflet are only the ones required to be listed. There are others that are not legally required to be listed, that are also relevant.
In the case of many substances and molecules, even a Part Per Billion -- one atom per billion atoms -- one ounce per billion ounces -- can be relevant to human health. We are exceedingly complex, finely-tuned organisms. Our endocrine systems alone are the stuff of genius, enormously subtle and as yet rather poorly understood.
When you consider "water vapour" you must understand you are referring to a great deal more than Two Hydrogens and one Oxygen. That is just the shorthand for what we call Water. There are many, many other tiny bits of stuff mixed in with that water vapour that are the real problem. Th concentrations are changing; the combinations are changing.
When you inhale or take a sip or simply absorb the "water vapour" from the air via your skin, the Hydrogen + the Oxtgen will do their healthy metabolic functions. But all the other micro-substances that come mixed in -- your ethylmethyls that I keep harping about, described in great detail in the New York Times some years ago and very much a preoccupation of scientists -- will remain attached to your tissues, and the tissues of the animals and plants you eat, harming you.
Ever change a filter, or looked at a filter being changed? In your car? In a restaurant's ventilation system?
That's the inside of your body. How often do you change your lungs or liver? Or kidneys? We have bodies that can replace some tissues at defined cycles... But we are making it more difficult for our own bodies to do this, by allowing too much junk, literally, to get mixed into our vital food, water & air supply. It may be too small for you to see it (most of the time) but it is still there. This situation simply cannot continue.
Even miniscule changes in temperature (and ours are well beyond that), extrapolated to an entire planet the size of this one (not very big, but big enough in human terms) indicate -- unambiguously! -- that the total accumulation of toxins resulting from human industrial activities & lifestyle choices has reached unsustainable, literally fatal levels. The health impact is reflected in cancer rates, cardiovascular disorders, diabetes and susceptibility to new strains of infectious diseases, not to mention declining naturally fertility in humans and increases in certain types of gestational anomalies, asthma, allergies, even certain kinds of CNS disorders: all signs of impaired natural immunity, overloaded human organisms, tissue stress & disrupted chemical processes in humans.
These are not fictions. No one has time to invent these things. Why do you think even someone like me, who would much rather be sitting down writing poetry or the next novel, is giving so much time and energy to explaining these things -- giving you a distillation of my own 30+ years of research?
Because if you have children, and I have three, their future, their survival, really matters. Since I bothered to situate them in this reality, I am now responsible for helping make it tolerable for another century or so. Although I may well discourage them from having further offspring. This really has become a tough slog: I am not sure it is in fact worth it, in the long run.
WHAT ANYONE CAN DO:
China, the US, the UK, EU, Russia and some others have indeed signaled some worthy intentions for making serious efforts to stop and potentially reverse climate change. These are all welcome and meritorious beginnings.
Here is what you, Dear Reader, can do, at a personal level, to help clean up the planet, in just a few steps that are still meaningful, regardless of your income level:
(1) If you have children on your gift list, think long hard and carefully about what you are buying for them, especially as gifts or treats.
To illustrate: A really nice meal in a delightful restaurant with exquisite food produced via sustainable farming or sound practices might actually be a much better choice than another flashy plastic handbag for a teen-age daughter. It becomes a wonderful opportunity to spend time together, discuss healthy choices and wise ways to spend money; it contributes to local jobs & the economy; it creates an unforgettable memory.
The handbag just winds up on eBay or in the landfill, at the end.
(I say this because girls love being fussed over and young men just don't do proper courtship anymore. It is up to the parents to actually demonstrate what it means to be civilised.)
(2) Reconsider that car. Insist on greater fuel-efficiency. Make the environment your first priority, not a subject for discussion at all. Walk as much as possible. Use low-impact transport the rest of the time, whenever you can.
(3) Reduce paper waste. Obviously, recycle. But whenever possible & feasible discourage print pollution.
In the US, there is continuous tsunami of electioneering glossy print materials consumed by the tonne. It is revolting, obnoxious, wasteful, costly and ultimately changes nothing.
Share newspapers willingly; recycle books; thin your periodicals; support libraries; buy & exchange used books as much as possible. Only buy a new book when you know it will not wind up in a bin.
Resist mightily when schools, libraries and institutions simply throw away books. Many "obsolete" books can have a home. Remember, anything that winds up in a dump contributes to pollution two times: once when it was produced, and a second time -- far worse -- when it decomposes into the soil. Books are often readily safely kept somewhere in someone's building, where they merely sit and do not rot away. Even if they gather dust they do less harm than in the rubbish bins.
(4) Don't buy too much -- especially of cheap quality. It is cheap for a reason: the producer counts on selling millions of units.
(5) Try exercising with less equipment. Generally, try to do more with less equipment. Pay more for a collapsible tent of lighter-weight fabric, for example -- because the warehousing impact and the shipping impact must also be smaller. Encourage manufacturers who bother to try to be more efficient.
(6) As often as you can, find someone who can use your unwanted items in good condition. Parishes & community centres used to be really good at this.
(7) If you have wealth: take a hard look at your investments, your land use & practices. What messages are you sending? How much oversight to you exercise? What are your priorities? How pro-earth is your alma mater, for example? Your favourite charity?
If you have space, install some solar panels. The roof is a perfect place. Get your local school or club or church to do it, too. Resell the power you generate back to the utility. It will reduce their overall burden to supply their subscribers.
None of the above are difficult to do. All it takes is a bit of attention, thought, and will power.
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This evening's news reported [a] the biggest cruise ship ever and [b] the collapse of Dubai. Not a word in either case of the climate impact.
The BBC is neglecting its duty to inform the public, by failing to give us some very basic information, for example:
- the average European produces 8 tons per year of CO2, while the planet can cope with at most 2 tons per year per person
- 8 tons/yr is about 20kg per day, 2 tons/yr about 5kg/day - numbers that most people can get their heads around, and compare with simple actions they take, like filling their car or taking a plane flight.
So ... how many thousands of tons were used to build that obscene vessel, and how kg will be used by every person who uses it?
... and how many millions of tons were produced creating that absurd folly of Dubai City?
You also reported that China aims to reduce the 'carbon-intensity' of its economic growth, and implied this will help tackle climate change. Surely you could explain the very simple point that *any* emissions add to CO2 in the atmosphere, so *any* increase will accelerate climate change, not 'tackle' it.
Come on BBC - give the public some very basic facts on climate change in terms that relate to their day-to-day behaviour, so we can arrive at informed views and make well-informed decisions. If your own correspondents don't understand these issues, I hope you will be covering the simple simulation of the Copenhagen climate negotiations to be held at the Science Museum Dana Centre on December 9th.
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Thank you, kimwarren: too true.
At the same time, tonight in the Science/Environment we have the serving up of warmed-over outdated theories that maybe this is all "exactly like the little ice age or the mediaeval climate fluctuations."
As if (1) we were alive than and (2) our population has not increased and (3) there has been no industrial age.
It's the same El Niño / La Niña / Los Niñitos smokescreen. Again.
As kimwarren points out, building these monumental colossi actually does consume energy and generate waste, emissions, rubbish for the dumps.
Anyone who has ever tackled even a small do-it-yourself project knows how energy-intensive and waste-rich such undertakings are...
The various "ocean cycle" theories, like the "solar cycle" theories are being fished out, dusted off and polished up be people who are really far behind the curve in terms of the data.
All this has been studied, checked and verified again and again and again and again. We have been generating wastes, toxins, solid rubbish, carcinogenic smoke and Himalayas of plastic in just the past 60-70 years that could not logically have simply vanished without a trace in order to conveniently allow us to keep our environment as pristine as it truly was in the last "small ice age."
Come on! What was the human population then? 300 million? About the size of the USA today, dispersed and with no technology to speak of?
Please Just Stop Polluting. And Start Counting.
the very fact that the affected interests are squirming so resolutely in their seats out of fear we cannot keep up Business As Usual tells you everything about which side the Truth is on. Give it up already: you all sound quite pathetic. It won't work. Time's up. The other shoe has officially dropped.
If you believe these are merely "anomalies" and we should all just be sitting on our hands, why don't you just go sit on yours?
And don't forget the duct tape. The Republicans have a truckload for you.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
"I've just completed Mike's trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 to hide the decline."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6672875/Whos-to-blame-for-Climategate.html
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Tell you what, this 'Climategate' monkey business is most unfortunate, it is such from many perspectives and the more i read about it... Perhaps it even beats the grand global collapse fallacy perpetrated by NIST, perhaps It may stand as the greatest antithesis of science to date.
Now, we've been sharing all sorts of thoughts on these blogs, so let me ask, if the 'administrate' wants to 'make things better' why it has to do it with lies, fear and murder? Is there really no other frame but 'framework of fear', we've been on the brink in one lengthy constant, it's duck and cover, shock and awe, inoculate... end is neigh, on pretence.
And where does BBC stand on the issue? You folks are breaking those guidelines again, on massive scale, you're aiding to fearmongering wrapped in the 'help for the poor' package, we've been sold another lie by the administrate incapable to function outside their atavistic programming and this public service is there to support and perpetuate the lie? Why? Because lies and deceit are needed to take us into better place?
Why in the world you have those guidelines? I've said it before and I'll say it again, those rules are fraudulent and misleading and you're trying hard to prove that fact again and again.
Duck, cover, shock, awe, terror, virus, warming... it's the darn constant, it should be enough of the warning even for those who earned mastery in naivete.
Good night and good luck!
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Speaking of 'atavistic programming' have you folks seen the source code behind the data?
http://fascistsoup.com/2009/11/25/more-on-the-climategate-source-code/
I'll stay polite.
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Not only am I completely unconvinced about the apocalyptic carbon-based predictions of the current cozy consensus of MMCC alarmists, I also think they're doing massive damage to the much more legitimate and demonstrable causes of ecology, responsible use of resources and pollution control. Because every single environmental issue has in recent years been grouped under this 'climate change' umbrella, many people accordingly dismiss anything green-related as being part of the same overall con.
Those who remain skeptical not only about the existence / degree of MMCC are being alienated and made resentful at constant Govt / pressure group demands that Joe Public, particularly those on lower incomes, forfeit many of the comforts of modern living (forced to give up their long-awaited last-minute package holiday by rising 'green' taxes, or get up three hours earlier to use an overpriced and unreliable bus or train to their 60hr/wk minimum wage job instead of the car they've been priced out of. Meanwhile the rich and powerful continue to get a free pass to leave office lights on all night and discard massive quantities of perfectly good unsold food from supermarkets, first sprayed with chemicals to prevent freegans and homeless people benefiting from it. Unsurprisingly it's then all the more difficult to then enlist their support for recycling / reusing, energy-saving measures etc which have other factors in their favour besides the obsession with 'carbon' and cutting it to levels that are unsustainable unless half the population are euthanased and the rest forced to return to feudal-style living standards - all whilst China continue to open a new coal-fired power station each week because no-one dare say 'boo' to them.
But then those who think being a climate change skeptic is like banging one's head against a brick wall of closed ranks and accusations of crass irresponsibility should try coming out in favour of size acceptance and challenging any of the assumptions behind the other current moral panic of the moment - the so-called obesity epidemic. Believe it or not and despite over a decade (since the WHO's 1998 recalibration of the BMI 'obese' and 'overweight' definitions) of it being held as truth that fat is bad and the number of fat, bad people is increasing, there are literally vast quantities of counter-research, in the public domain and awaiting a wider audience, all doing exactly what good scientific research should do and pouring doubt on the all this received wisdom - everything from the reliability of the BMI scale to the link between weight and illnesses (and associated costs; Google 'obesity paradoxes), the effectiveness and long-term safety of weight-loss attempts, the degree to which body size is determined by genes and lifestyle, the extent to which our weight and size should be considered part of our complex identities, and more importantly questioning the legitimacy of recent moves to 'punish' or incentivise fat people through moves such as denial of parenting / adoption rights, healthcare or this week's example of the US university which is witholding the degrees of those over a certain BMI who haven't demonstrated sufficient attempts to lose weight. These sociologists and scientists, nutritionists and social justice advocates reject the idea that weight loss is a simple matter of caloric consumption vs expenditure ('eat less, move more') and many of the simplistic connections being drawn between size, health, lifestyle, personality, corporate exploitation (ie by the food industry) and individual morality.
Even the leading cheerleaders for the exponentially increasing 'timebomb' model have been forced to concede that the catastrophic-sounding figures in which many of the worldwide Government crusades and knee-jerk policies against larger people have been rooted were over-exaggerated by a considerable degree. However you'll rarely hear or read any of these counter-perspectives outside of specialist blogs or journals, because the relevant Establishment have colluded to ensure that only one point of view is ever heard and that their 'case' is not weakened by being exposed to scrutiny (never mind that many of the scientists who would have argued against have either been recruited by the prospects of headlines and grant money or ostracised and subsequnetly ignored for refusing to toe the correct line).
They've also managed to enlist the owners of the mass media to their cause. And in any case it doesn't really matter, for with obesity and MMCC alike they're succeeded in their original purpose of 'raising awareness' and the moral panic which they spawned has now become a terrifying, self-propelling phenomenon outside the control of any one organisation or body. It's also taken on a moral dimension, with thin-ness being equated to virtue, social responsibility and enlightenment, in other words much how the climate change lobby have attempted to first demonise and then legislate against those who don't fall into line.
I've long believed that even if obesity is the claimed world-ending 'biggest single threat we face' (despite every grant-hungry research department on earth, including the climate alarmists, now routinely insisting the same is true of their sphere of interest) the cost to our democratic society and individual freedoms of abolishing, outlawing and obliterating it are likely to be much, much too great and involve the state regulating and policing the individual lifestyle habits of the individual to an as-yet unprecedented degree. Unfortunately we're already seeing the beginning of this 'therapeutic' (ie for our own good) nanny state along with widespread public acceptance of it. Individual freedom and personal autonomy have become dirty words in the new era of 'it's for y/our own good' - and that needs to change.
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Climategate: The BBC is still pretending not to notice
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100018211/climategate-the-bbc-is-still-pretending-not-to-notice/
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Richie79, "lower income 'Joe Public'" really is not the problem.
Sometimes 'lower income "Joe Public'" gets very angry, saying: "Me? Waste food? Me? Waste fuel? When I can barely afford to get by?"
All too often though, even 'lower income "Joe Public'" spends his last hundred on a seven-hour baseball game in an illuminated stadium, or on a bender in a casino in Sin City, Las Vegas -- which could most certainly do something about its power consumption.
"Joe Public" is not the biggest cause of the trouble, but contribute Joe does... And when Joe won't vote, or votes without integrity (which happened in California during the crazy recall vote, or Prop. 13), Joe Public most certainly could do better.
The real culprits are not the people living on meagre income. The real culprits are out there, nonetheless... And they won't come to their senses and put the brakes on their bad habits unless enough of us get really serious about explaining the facts.
Don't focus on the details if they confuse you. Look at the big picture: the waste is all around you. Really, just look. Why is it in the UK 16 aspiring tablets come in a small paper (recyclable) package that takes up a tiny amount of space (and costs 15 p), but in the US 24 aspirin tablets come in a large, mostly empty, heavy-duty indestructible plastic bottle (and cost about $5, maybe more)?
Why are UK food shops small, compact and cheaper to run than American stadium-sized supermarkets or club stores that actually destroy about 40% of what they have on display because it goes unsold? Why not have more Trader Joe's type food suppliers in the US, that are small, compact, more efficient and have less food to throw out as waste?
Why should any unspoiled food be thrown out when there is hunger and food pantries? Wouldn't it ultimately be more efficient to lower prices on food (which you could if you were not factoring in the cost of "processing" the discarded food), produce less in the first place, sell more of it more cheaply, have less to discard and help improve the health of your community?
I mean it is only fair to ask.
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Richie, you make some quite interesting and pertinent points. My guess is that many readng what you say will nod in agreement at the growing realisation that we've been sold a bum steer over the years on the many 'single biggest threat we face' and glibbly accepted it. Until as in animal farm, we accept that the outsider should be hunted down by a pack of wolves as long as we're left alone to get on with things--dictated by those who are more equal than others. A scientist declaring that data on MMCC is skewed towards everyone toeing the party line would be/is professional suicide. So much better to not question and instead write papers that get published, secure the grant and pay the rent--simple, basic, uncomplicated but morally bankrupt. However, who would be any the wiser? Who will tell the masses they've been lied to? Certainly not the world leaders, and certainly not the MSM. The BBC cannot afford to rock the boat, they're facing an uncertain future whatever the outcome of the next general election, so it wouldn't pay to tick off those who will hold the purse strings. It doesn't however excuse them. We have to ask ourselves just what other things that are reaping great amounts of money from us are/have been dressed up and made the bogey man to terrify us into compliance?
Interestingly, I wonder how many people who may have now changed their minds on MMCC since the e mail revelations would previously have denounced those who suggested an alternative hypothesis, as tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists?
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In aftermath of 2001 we've entered 'dual reality', we have people who live in ivory towers and we have people who are walking in monstrous actuality.
One of these realities is redundant, it is false and it has to go.
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Why is there no balance on this issue at the BBC? If you don't agree the major reason for climate change(CC) is man-made CO2 you are a CC heretic. If you point out that the majority of so called climate change "scientists" have no grounding in meteorology - they are just lay-preachers. If you point out that the Ice cap on Mars is also disappearing - this fact is ignored. If you point out that the Earth has been cooling since 1998 - this fact is ignored. If you point out that the polar ice cap is now expanding - this fact is ignored. If you point out that actual meteorologists scientists are not unanimous in the that climate change is man made - this fact is ignored.
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Merv 191#
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Brought peace.
Oh. Peace? Shut up!
Replace the Life of Brian dialogue for the facts you've outlined and you get the same 'I'll be right whatever anyone else says or proves' mentality that governments have that keeps us all in line..aided and abetted by a supine MSM and scientific community funded by vested interests. It won't make the slightest difference what the facts are, (anyone here still believe Saddam Hussain had anything to do with the WTC's? Or that Bin Laden is still alive [US Bin Laden expert said he died end of 2001]? Or that Iraq had WMD?--all those have been presented as fact for our consumption).The western governments will make absolutely sure we'll do whatever they want us to do, and how they want us to do it (Pay higher taxes, accept draconian laws and regulations to counter non existant problems-noticed for example how OFSTEDS remit has extended many fold since it's inception?). When the majority wake up though, it will be too late to do much about it.
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Are we supposed to wait until every single meteorologist -- that would be weather forecaster -- is in agreement, in order for your requirement for "complete unanimity" to be met, merv c?
The 27 members of the EU often struggle with the challenge of "unanimity." So do Congressional committees, corporate boards, many other small bodies of members, of varying degrees of significance. Do you actually expect it to be possible to attain "unanimity" in a community of perhaps scores of thousands of members of the meteorological profession -- some of the bigger experts than others, with different areas of specialisation?
Should the lives of almost seven billion humans be held hostage to the requirements by a small vocal group of doubting Thomases that everyone drop everything and "prove it" to their satisfaction, and theirs alone? That no one else's criteria or judgement matters: just theirs?
How convenient, to dismiss everyone else as a member of some "conspiracy" or as members of the "duped masses" -- when all you need do is travel through the American Southwest, or Australia, to see terrifying evidence of accelerating desertification, beach erosion, or increasingly deadly firestorms.
Basically, the dissenting interpretation of the climate data (when there is any actual effort to interpret data) boils down to this: it is inconceivable that egregious mismanagement of resources, rampant lack of concern for the consequences of dumping toxins into the biosphere, and an addiction to amassing fortunes by any means possible could result in six and a half billion human beings present on the planet so thoroughly fouling the air, water and soil they depend on, as to disturb their own habitat's natural finely-tuned balance.
An overwhelming majority of experts worldwide rejects that view.
What possible objection could anyone have to efforts to clean up the environment in the hope that by so doing we might bring back some positive adjustments -- even small incremental recalibrations that are more beneficial for our collective future health?
I remember when there was an outcry from smokers about the imposition of restrictions on where they could smoke, or how cigarettes could be marketed. I remember a time when Californians were upset about having to pay for a stricter air quality control standard.
To me, those who complain about the agreements about to be signed that will require a collective effort by people with a conscience to make reasonable modifications in their lifestyle so that the planet's prospects improve, sound exactly like those earlier vocal groups who hated the very idea of any kind of air quality standard or health standard being invoked in shaping public policy. They lost; everyone was pleased with the results, since replicated in other places. And now hardly anyone even remembers any controversy.
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193# What possible objection could anyone have to efforts to clean up the environment in the hope that by so doing we might bring back some positive adjustments -- even small incremental recalibrations that are more beneficial for our collective future health?
The pollution of our planet isn't being contested Maria. No right thinking person would take issue with preventing dirty rivers/seas/soil or air. Or the fact that raping habitats should be stopped. However these things have been lumped together with MMCC, and done in such a way that leaves any descenters being told they're not of sound mind. (Al Gore isn't into the self flagelation for the sake of the planet! Look up his net worth) The fact that barely a mention is made on the airwaves of the e mails from UEA speaks volumes. If the UEA had nothing to fear in their findings, why would they manipulate them?
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I suspect Copenhagen is irrelevant - schemes like carbon credit trading, offsetting, etc promise to make so much money for the city folks that they're unstoppable. The only obstacle would have been vested interests in oil & transport, but they've all been brought 'on-side' with "a realistic rate of change" and opportunities to get their own share of the gravy train. The science is pretty much irrelevant at this point.
Wont do much for anyone else of course, but hey, the UK government / civil service stopped all that helping the world's poorest stuff years ago - no money in it.
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For those truly concerned about the future wellbeing of the world, I suggest you'll get a better return by campaigning for the creation of a proper system for detecting incoming rocks - you know, like the one that exploded with the power of ~3 Hiroshima a-bombs above Burma a few weeks ago. Just a slightly bigger one of those would make our impact on the planet look a tad irrelevant.
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=28&month=10&year=2009
Who knows, protecting the Earth in this way could be Why We're Here.
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I would like to see a proper article on Climategate.
People don't buy that its a plot to de rail Copenhagen.
The Times has a story on the rising sea levels and how it will wipe out Nations.
The comments are very telling.
Of 10 pages of comments 9 out of 10 are viewing the headline with hilarity
If Times readers (more educated than most and surely not all right wing oil company executives you would think) don't buy this stuff anymore surely Politicians and the media in general should acknowledge the tide is turning and people just don't trust the official line on Climate Change.
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Just another addition to this blog.
The climate change debate is a lot less convincing than the "we have a dirty, filthy planet" debate is, and yet the latter actually MAY run into the former. So we clean up our act, not in the pussyfooting way that the "haves" may advocate in case they lose their "power" over us, but in ensuring that science actually does its job properly i.e. If we make "x" what effects will this have on "y", "z" etc etc.
A cleaner planet means ending our reliance on dirty processes which includes mass consumerism as well as burning fossil fuels, and not understanding what our waste products and all our widely consumed drugs may do when let loose in the ground and in the water. But we do not change overnight as if these problems are the four horsemen themselves, we make science look at all the processes and come up with proof (i.e. hard evidence) that they know what they are doing.
As #184 puts it so well "shock, horror, fear" are right wing tools of oppression with the tag that if you want to be on the "inside" then make a lot of money first. The fact is science does NOT know what we are doing to our planet; science does NOT know what the long term affects of its experiments are; science is not a "new" religion that begs us to follow and neither is it a hat full of clever people. Science is a job no more or less worthy of any other job to become celebrity or divine.
We have too many brain dead people happy to appear "green" because they mistakenly believe that it is no longer the colour of naivety. Humanity will not go on forever on Planet Earth - period.
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Define_real, Al Gore is not my homeboy, as they say in the barrios -- but I do believe he has done some good, and for that, I am willing to give him credit as a recognizable spokesman who helped bring the broad scope of the problem into the awareness of many people, especially in North America and amongst groups who had some clout (e.g. members of the US Congress) as well as a history of respecting his career, his family's record.
There was a time when Al Gore was Armand Hammer's "golden boy" and that inevitably also carried some wight with members of the petroleum community and other elites. And some saw him as the "anti-W" which both helps and hinders his message, depending on the audience.
The whole point about climate change is in fact The Pollution. That is what is in fact meant by "climate stressors originating in human activities." Maybe they should have just stuck to the older, more familiar term -- Pollution, Toxins from Waste -- but in fact the terms "global warming" and "climate change" are just catch-phrases meant to call attention to the consequences of processes lacking sound approaches to the resulting harmful wastes.
The purpose of any agreement to be formulated in Copenhagen is to remind everyone, everywhere, that waste has to be dealt with intelligently. There are mountains of it that billions of human lives amass -- and it will take probably at least a significant number of billions out of that entire polluting humanity to commit to long-term waste reduction through lifestyle & industrial modifications... actually, improvements.
Everyone will not be doing everything, but it would be best if most people did something.
The best film on this subject is not Al Gore's (in my view) but Leonardo Di Caprio's "The Eleventh Hour". I do not agree with everything in that film, but it is an excellent quick review of where we are today -- or rather a few years back.
As for the hacked emails, I still feel they are meant to distract from the issues at hand. The hacking itself is offensive -- from a statutory perspective, illegal. Certainly, it is unethical. The assumption that data is being "doctored" is a slur that is not being spread under any kind of controlled evidentiary proceeding in which allegations may be weighed, sources confronted & credibility verified. It becomes a campaign of rumours.
Many of us who have been active pro bono for decades suspect that data has been frequently interfered with, or deliberately misinterpreted (as, for example, the "latest" report from India on Himalayan glaciers that relies on numbers from the 1970s!) -- not to make the situation seem worse than it is, but to make the situation actually look better than it is, in order to slow down the pace of clean-up efforts.
Powerful industries are going to have to spend money adapting. This will have an inevitable effect on share price -- not always negative, by the way, but the number-crunchers & prognosticators of Wall Street do seem a rather timorous sort who dread anything they cannot confirm with certainty. Naturally there is an intense desire in some quarters to "make the whole headache go away."
But it can't until we change how we process stuff. We can't simply dump indefinitely. It is a very simple, logical principle that operates in the real world: Clean Up After Yourself. It doesn't have to be a perfect job, but it has to be significantly clean -- sufficiently clean to sustain healthy life.
On another discussion thread, Richard Black's, we have people who still imagine we can get through this just by planting enough trees: totally overlooking the enormous amount of plant life being lost constantly, especially to make paper for mushrooming populations. Even if you recycle some paper (in developed countries), the net loss, on a daily basis is staggering. No, "reducing squares of t.p. used" (as a celebrity once advocated) is not a viable solution. But at least facing the facts -- recognising that we are not going to "plant enough trees & shrubs" to make up for our rate of forest consumption plus our automotive emissions plus all the particulates dumped into the air by US coal, which delivers more than 70% of home & industrial power across the US -- is something that can no longer be postponed.
Read "Big Coal." Read it. Read "Omnivore's Dilemma." Read Jeremy Rifkin. Read about how we actually distribute & then destroy the highly-processed food we produce, export & hype to others. Read "The End of Overeating."
Read -- and weep. America has come to stand for corporate policies gone mad, in some of our most vaunted sectors. Most of us never give it a thought. I certainly only "discovered" the problem of food waste a few years ago (with a significant assist from the BBC & the New York Times.) These are Real Problems, Define_real: they have been well defined.
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No. 196: Burma? Heard of the ones over Indonesia, Utah and South Africa, as well as the "Latvian hoax." Thanks for adding to our knowledge.
Two ways of looking at it: the Cosmos is bigger than we (humankind) are.
Hardly likely we could defeat it in a game of billiards. Kind of like asking one of the balls to launch a deflecting molecule of some kind at the object headed your way (if you can see it).
Maybe the Cosmos is trying to send us a message. Maybe it is tired of our behaviour. Maybe our Civilisation's run its course. What do you think?
Should we invest a trillion or so into making a fleet of space-rock deflecting rockets -- so we can carry on with the wars, the greed, the slavery, the hatred, the rap music? Never for a second questioning that we are Perfect & Supreme As Is?
Maybe there is intelligent life out there. Maybe it wants us to rise to the occasion, and is trying to send a message no one can miss seeing.
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Angel_in_Transit, No. 198, OK, so your last line implies it is a good thing if humanity does not go on forever on Planet Earth. Right: there are those present, who, for not always bad reasons, almost look longingly to the day when the collective imbecility of morally dead humans ultimately brings down our demise as a species.
It is a valid position, although not one I personally endorse.
If one is Rooting for Extinction, there is no need to try to discourage human beings from attempting to save themselves. The likelihood of enough of the right kinds of decisions being made by a critical mass of humans to at least slow down the process is kind of tiny.
That is one reason I am advocating for it. This is a difficult, unlikely proposition: that People Might Get Better After All.
We really don't need quite so much insistence from those who would like to see Human History End that it's pointless & hopeless to try to lead cleaner, saner, more sober lives for whatever time we can still manage.
"Science" is a lot bigger than a cabal of "bad scientists", just as Art is a lot more than a collection of phoney "artists." To deride the very idea of Knowledge as a matter of principle -- as if ascribing credit to the achievements that have allowed us to lighten human suffering is somehow "naive" or worse some kind of "new religion", part of 'right-wing tools of oppression' -- defies Logic.
It doesn't hold water. You are obviously using a computer provided by scientists. You probably own a cell phone and watch movies. As an infant, you received an inoculation against polio. If you are injured, in some unfortunate accident, you look to a trauma centre to attend to you.
In a world of Six+ Billion, there are many millions working in scientific fields. Maybe even a whole billion. Not all of these people are engaged in trying to help "those in power" oppress you. Not all are morally bankrupt; not all are "enemies of God"; not all are not be trusted. Even putting it that way -- in terms of any proposal to modify how we live having necessarily a "power-enshrining" component -- exposes one of the biggest challenges we all face as human beings: everyone seems obsessed with power. Either amassing more of it, or wresting it away from someone they perceive as having it.
Objectively, Power is simply an illusion. Anyone can free themselves from any "power system" they resent simply by opting out of its offerings. Lots of people do this.
People who are hopping mad at "whoever [they perceive] is in power" are often convinced that "if only we were in power, we would do everything right." This is the thinking that underlies all revolutions.
But once a revolution takes place, it turns out that the people who have "freed themselves from the oppressor" are not only not better than whomever they overthrew: they are often far worse...
They then invent a history which makes them appear better than what they replaced.
But if you participate even in local government, or even at the level of a school board or PTA (PTSA), you discover human beings are all flawed; they do petty, even foolish thing when offered the opportunity to "lead" -- and yes, the kind of people willing to take on "a challenge" often also like to dominate those who were too shy (or too lazy) to step forward and volunteer.
There is not going to be an escape clause that will alter how human beings behave, alone or in groups.
What we may yet achieve, however, is a modus vivendi and a modus operandi in which the individual citizen, who actually has great discretion over how s/he lives, increasingly sees the connection between personal choices, quality of life, and quality of health.
If Humanity can delay the inevitable for a century, why not go for it?
And must we indeed all sit around and wait, engaging in Business As Usual, while teams of scientists armed with huge budgets put their heads together for a couple of decades and come up with a "solid plan for [yet another] New World Order"? Wouldn't that be like sitting by the side of the road waiting for Someone to design & build a better vehicle, instead of simply changing the flat that is right in front of you, and driving home? And then maybe buying a new set of tires later, and even later, a better car? Or no car at all?
What's so offensive about scientists recommending more of us walk, bike, take trains more? Why should that require "further research?"
Why are all the dissenting arguments always about: "Wait! Wait! Wait! you haven't waited long enough yet!"
We have been waiting for well over 30 years since the confirmed data was first available. Enough.
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Dear maria-ashot, the data is not confirmed it is fabricated, the change is not proposed but imposed upon us.
Of course that we need to move on from these 'murder based economies', but we will not move on if we have the same ol' monkey on our back and that's exactly what's slipping through.
I understand your motus, but we are about to start building a new reality on false data, it is a false reality by definition.
We should tread lightly.
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#201
Dear, dear, Maria. Nothing is forever; even science is contemplating that at this very moment in our comparatively short history as a life form. My aside about humanity was to emphasize our ridiculous notion that, through advances in technology, which has actually contrived to get us into the mess we are in, we will overcome nature. Even your examples of computers, A&E, and inoculation are actually things that came from an age when advance was much slower than it has been in the past three decades. And the medical side has something of a dilemma in that it prolongs life at a time when we have too many bodies already and that is a big, big part of the problem.
So what is it with our pre-occupation with staying alive at any cost? Where does hope, belief, faith and inspiration enter into "staying alive"? What was that big, big message that was written large on the walls of our monuments to those who died in our bloodiest of wars? And what have we made of that "freedom" they died for? What has anyone made of the "freedom" that others provide for us?
We are caught up in a desperate cycle of misunderstanding - that we must live this one life we are given to the full. And what exactly does that mean to those whose turn on this planet means a death at twenty after giving birth to children who may die even younger?
Science is embroiled in this breakdown in hope, belief, faith and inspiration because it believes it can deliver Christmas everyday of the year; it cannot. Science, with its less than half baked theories, cannot beat a simple virus; it cannot beat a simple bacteria; it cannot help predict an earthquake, a tsunami, or even make accurate storm predictions. Yet there are beetles that can predict the coming of an ice age. There are birds that can accurately fly thousands of miles with no instruments at all. How many humans know right now where to find the Pole Star?
And where would we be if our power systems crashed one sunny day and didn't recover in a matter of days or months let alone several hours? We have all our eggs in the same basket; isn't that just as disturbing as believing we can overcome nature by simply changing our lifestyles by just a few percentage points here and there? Where has our real spiritual base disappeared to? Don't we deserve a little more choice about what is good or bad for us than some Neo telling us that we can "save" ourselves but only by denying others the very same lifestyle we have plundered in hedonistic mayhem? Are we really worth saving or wouldn't it be better to admit that we have been wrong for a very long time? Almost seven billion and set to double in no time at all. Is it really possible to fit all those people on a reducing land mass?
I am not talking gloom and doom Maria, I am trying to put our plight in perspective. The problem is this blog is about climate change when what it should be about is humanity (or our complete lack of it). Our sun has a few billion years left, who knows how many? A decade or so back it was sixty billion; now a lot less; but actually we simply do not know. That is what I meant about humans not surviving on Planet Earth.
One day we may come to understand what our consciousness is there for and I have a feeling that it will not be too far from what was said by not so very scientific people a few thousand years ago - it is there to get in our way if we make it too important. Understand that, they suggested, and you really do begin to tap into wisdom and enlightenment.
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"The data is not confirmed, it is fabricated" is a slogan. A smear campaign.
Maybe some of you are participating in it out of all sincerity, but a smear campaign is still what it is.
A whole lot of data has been gathered by a great many people over many years, independently of each other.
As far back as 1983, at the time of the Cold War, there were independently developed models on either side of the Iron Curtain that all pointed in exactly the same direction. They were based on data available then, without benefit of the latest computer technology we have today and the latest inputs from some of the newest satellites; they did not include -- because at the time it was no foreseeable -- the rapid advances that swiftly followed in China & India.
They were based on reasonable extrapolations of conservative, solid data, and published as books with which many specialists are familiar. I came into contact with this material late in 1983, through an unimpeachable primary source -- a leading Geophysicist ["climate scientist"] of the time, author of a book called simply, "the Biosphere" and published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in a limited edition of 500 copies...
He was not "fabricating data." He had no axe to grind -- and he was in touch with scientists in the US, and Europe, who had independently arrived at similar interpretations based on what was then known, for example, about the various nations' automotive industries, and about the amount of fuel being combusted daily, annually, per capita: all these figures were readily available to those specialists with access to figures from the various petroleum institutes.
Back in 1983, he told me: "We have, at most, 30 years left before the oxygen runs out, at present rates of consumption." A few years later the Soviet Union changed forever -- their industrial profile and consumption were dramatically altered -- but China & India went into overdrive.
I asked him to specify what he meant by "oxygen runs out." He replied: "Exactly that. Beginning over the most polluted cities, oxygen levels will begin to decline perceptibly, so that more and more vulnerable populations experience respiratory distress... Children, the frail, the elderly will struggle to get sufficient oxygen into their bloodstream. This will adversely affect their health. Unless we stop destroying oxygen (which is what we are doing), human life will gradually become unsustainable. First we will lose our lifestyle. Then our health. And finally our life."
We have been "treading lightly" for the past fifty years -- but industry has not been treading lightly at all.
Today, I looked at yesterday's Guardian's Environmental supplement. Scrutinised what they had published. There are obvious discrepancies -- but not from "fabrication"; from sloppy typing and poor copy editing.
That is because so many people writing on the topic are new to the subject they find it difficult to believe we are already at 50 Billion Tonnes (Billion with a B) of Carbon Dioxide emissions Per Annum. And that's just Carbon Dioxide: the most abundant, but not the Most Harmful of all the toxins we are dumping into our air as wastes.
The graphic on pp. 6-7 of the supplement, "Global emissions since Kyoto" clearly reads: "World, 1997-2007: 283,500m tonnes of CO2." Obviously, the two figures don't square. Why not? Because Fifty Billion Tonnes is the current Annual figure -- not slightly above a quarter-billion tonnes over ten years.
So is that sabotage at the Guardian? Fabrication somewhere else? No, it is just careless typing and poor copy editing by people who are simply not familiar with the subject, and struggle to get their heads around the really 'ginormous' numbers.
As for "monkeys on backs": that is not a subject relevant to the discussion of climate change. That is a different battle altogether that will probably never get addressed, because we will have neither the time, nor the resources to address it: we will be busy just surviving.
It is already too late for many things. It may not be too late yet to save Civilisation in some form.
Persons who are not happy with whoever they feel is in charge are not going to be given the chance to sit around and wait for a better leadership or an altogether different form of social arrangements. There just isn't that kind of time anymore. Two billion drivers will not stop driving overnight; Americans will not get a re-vote; the banks will not suddenly relent and help everyone fund a better life.
Now, if you or your parents had stepped aside and let the climate problems get addressed back in 1992, 1995, 1997 -- as we were desperately trying to -- maybe you would have then been able to take care of other pressing matters at the same time. But since, in North America certainly, the chief measure used to assess any decision were catch-phrases such as "increasing shareholder value", "free trade", "globalisation" and "New World Order" -- in other words, opportunities to get richer quicker if you caught the right wave and had few scruples -- nobody paid any attention at all to the climate problems already on the doorstep.
I keenly remember an entire issue of TIME Magazine devoted to the warming of the planet from fossil fuel combustion. This was well over 20 years ago, maybe 25 or even 30. I was a young girl. Now TIME Magazine is not a specialised publication. You cannot go anywhere in America and not know what is the cover story of the week's TIME.
Nobody cared. All that mattered was money, speculation, ways to beat the system or to exploit new laws and opportunities in "emerging economies."
The changes that are going to be "imposed" will be imposed imperfectly, as all such changes are when filtered by a bureaucracy. Nevertheless, they will have significance, just as laws about driving in the Vehicle Code have significance: you may drive above the speed limit, but if you do, you invite trouble.
No one gets to vote on their medicine. You ruin your health by doing bad things: you get a lecture from the doctor & a prescription. You don't get to vote on it.
But many, many of us will have to voluntarily do a great deal more than anyone recommends or "imposes": simply because we understand the urgency of the situation. It is our only chance.
Yes, you ought to have a Plan B and a Plan C -- and probably a place to retreat to, in some hills, that is both secure and well-supplied.
I have mine. Don't waste any more time wondering if you need to do this: get crackin'. Get it together and make it happen. No one is "building" any kind of "new reality": the ground may not be shifting under our feet, but the invisible air around us is changing its composition to "less friendly to humans." That IS the reality; it is already here. You know the air you breathe does not feel the same as it did when you were a kid. You know that when you go out to a dense forest, or to Cornwall, for example, and stand at the very edge of the water, and the wind comes, it is a little more like what you remember from before.
Human beings have spent a bunch of centuries generating heaps of waste and disturbing the planet's natural balance. Just the fuel industries alone have disrupted it, never mind everything else that you have to also factor in. The paradox is that while our combined collective capacity to do harm has indeed reached some extraordinary heights, we do not actually, as human beings, get to decide how the problem gets fixed.
The planet may well decide for us, by making us obsolete as a species. Just as we try to kill a virus when it causes our children to get sick.
All we can really do is chip away at the mountain of damage we have done, trying to scale back or mitigate the adverse impacts as much as we possibly can, trying to reverse gears to pull back from the brink.
We can't say for a fact it will work. We know -- for a fact -- carrying on without making this last-ditch attempt to Be Better is taking us straight into oblivion: quickly and most unpleasantly.
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#205
It is a very funny thing singing from the same hymn sheet when the words and music are off key, staccato and sound like a menagerie of different species on heat? When you boil it all down Maria, we are saying the same things; are we having an argument about how long our fingers can cling onto the edge of the precipice before we have to let go? Are we both saying "Hold on, help will arrive soon"?
I see a problem though. Just how do we know that the precipice is such a bad place to fall into? Has science conspired to deny us even personal beliefs, personal hopes, personal and inexplicable intuition? Are some of our leading scientists so sure that there is nothing behind this "life" we have? Is spirituality just a product of our feeble minds? Is intuition just a chemical reaction caused by all the E numbers we consume?
Should we deny ourselves a little faith that whatever nature does, she does it to preserve the cycles we cannot see or even conceive in our imaginations? I was very interested about the Soviet scientist from fully twenty five years ago since I recalled USA models from the late sixties that warned against fossil fuel depletion and pollution. "Don't worry lads", was the rallying call, "science will have provided the technology by then...". No mention of spiritual depth, of promises that we would clean up our act over twenty centuries. We just never did; we just couldn't settle on a happy medium; and our "church" was too much a money spinner to find out the depth and profundity of what we ought to have discovered.
Is the "anti-christ" about to arise from the water?
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Maria-ashot seems to have passionately held opinions on climate change as she has decided that there is nothing to debate and there never was. Rather like BBC environmental correspondent David Shukman, who often displays equally unbalanced views.
Steve Jones has been suspended at CRU, pending investigation, by amongst others, the US Office of Science Research Integrity because of the £1,168,5870 his and Prof Wigley's research has received from US DoE. Jones will be very lucky if he is not extradited to USA.
Meanwhile it would be equally appropriate if David Shukman was confined to his office until the results of this investigation are published.
British readers of this blog will be interested in the Number10 petition seeking that the government ignores UEA CRU results until the results of these investigations are available. This petition now has more than 2000 signatures. I checked it out and found that 92% of the signers were men and 8% women. There are many PhDs.
Back in March there was another Number10 petition. http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page18759
This said: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to accept this petition as the unified will of the people of the United Kingdom to address the issue of climate change and mobilise the vast resources of our nation and economy to combat this threat.”
That got a total of 1298 signatures of which 41% were men and 59% women. There were 3 PhDs.
Enough said.
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MalMac, what exactly are you complaining about? Looks like plenty of debating is going on, right here.
One itty-bitty problem: many people tuning in late to this issue. And no, I don't mean on this blog: I mean in general.
Most citizens of the ex-USSR had never heard of any "climate change problem" until just a couple of years ago.
New debating voices inevitably want to keep revisiting ground already covered by others.
The signatories to the petitions you have cited do not add up to even one-millionth of the human population. We have no capacity to interview them as to their deepest thoughts on the subject. Petitions are, by definition, glib distillations of a point of view or grievance.
CRU data does not define all that is known about the climate phenomena ongoing.
The whole purpose of hacking the emails was to create a distraction and the opportunity to undermine the credibility of whatever takes place in Copenhagen.
Angel, on the other hand, seems to argue in favour of a "hands off" approach -- basically, because Humanity has failed and so deserves to die.
Angel, I still disagree with your derisive view of Science. It has, indeed, defeated more than a single virus or bacterium.
If we decide we don't need any of the trappings of Civilisation -- including the capacity to listen to Mozart's 40th Symphony at any hour of the day or night, or to see a dear friend via webcam -- nothing is to prevent any of us from going into full "survivalist" mode, retreating into some remote village in the Andes or the Yukon and living off the land for as long as we are able -- without anesthesia, dentistry, libraries, shoe shops, central heating or indoor plumbing.
It may come to that, for some of us.
Personally, I prefer to try some other strategies first, and I will work with scientists, scientifically, if they will work with me.
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Dearest Maria, 'whatever takes place in Copenhagen' cannot be rolled back, whether you pretend not to notice or simply deny the fact that hacked e-mails and related source code show the fabrication of data is your own choice. Since you seem genuinely concerned about issues at stake, and I'm sad to say that you come about as a doom sayer of a sort, do you think that the issue should be addressed as if we are playing the game of poker? Honestly? What do we have on the table Maria? Is it a blizzard or a firestorm? If we have cooling, should we fight it with strategies that will add to the trend? I don't think that your concern is genuine, because if it would be genuine you'd do what we expect from our leaders to do. That is, you'd express outrage for malicious lies, the construct of 'phantom menace'.
As we've seen, we lack the facts, but we can see what's coming, we already know that the 'new-old' administrate will not let us choose... instead of giving, they'll restrict the choice, on pretence. Why would we go for it? Blindly?
The pattern behind the latest fraud leaves no doubt, this is not about public interest unless the interest is fearful public. We have well known mass murderers at large, we have one gigantic fraud unfolding after another and such logical failures as fraudsters receiving awards for destruction of common lives. If we ever pull out of this and allow history to unfold those who come after us to define these sorrowful times will designate 'em as 'age of global decadence'.
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Maria, I would hate to be stuck next to you at a dinner party!
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Thank you, Mike. I will take that as a compliment.
Obviously, you would only have gained from more dinners with me.
No, to my other interlocutor here: no one is going to get stuck with anything.
That is another distraction: pretending that Kyoto, or Rio, or G8, or G20, or even the UN Charter itself translates into binding, unambigiuous, enforceable documents.
Have you actually read the G20 Communique from the last meeting? I highly recommend it, if you have three or four hours of time.
The most -- the best -- we can achieve in Copenhagen is an overriding consensus and some serious commitments. Ideally, these will translate into Efforts.
The idea that somehow because someone says "the speed limit is 55" everyone actually drives at 55 is absurd.
No one is climbing up into the clouds to actually count up how much is being emitted from where, at any given moment in time; no one is going to go around slapping fines or starting wars because pledged targets are not met.
These are all pledged targets: goals, in other words. Ambitions. Yearnings.
In fact, it is almost comical to see how loudly the anti-Copenhagen crew protests against any agreement. As if there was much likelihood of significant reductions actually occurring on any timetable!
All we can do is Try, Try, Try... That, in and of itself, is praiseworthy.
Some quit smoking on the first try. Some on the 30th. Until you try, you simply cannot say what you might achieve by it.
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Corporate (elite) efforts to seize national sovereignties (and civil liberties) are not new, why in the world we fought the 'Battle in Seattle'? This particular agenda was wrapped up in so many different ways that it became as annoying to watch as all wicked manifestations of Strategy of Tension. Multilateral Agreement on Investment failed because of public concern, we've agreed that public should be more engaged into 'democratic processes' and we decided to make sure public is not harmed by the 'one world government'. And what do we have now? Not only that we're experiencing deja vu, but we have most treacherous effort aimed to impose the very same thing which was rejected in past.
http://www.oocities.com/w_trouble_o/lumier.htm
You know, we already have a global civil society, it would be lovely if (as admirable reflection on Climategate by Mike Hulme and Jerome Ravetz in BBC suggested) the administrate would accept that fact.
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No. 211, I could say the exact same thing right back at you: "Someone" certainly is putting in a lot of effort, very late in the game, to derail consensus about necessary steps to clean up the environment. Which is what we are talking about.
Why is it "an agenda" of the pro-Copenhagen side, but not "an agenda" of your anti-Copenhagen side?
Sure, some lunatics might crave to undermine others' sovereignty, but that is far more easily fantasised about, than in fact achieved.
There is nothing new about attempts to reach agreement on jurisdictions that impact many nations and constituencies. That is why we have maritime law governing international waters, the Geneva Convention, quality standards for exported food products -- not to mention the various institutions, WTO, WHO, IMF and so forth.
Why is it there was much less complaining about "corporate efforts to seize national sovereignties" two years ago? Three months ago?
Because you are working for a carefully orchestrated campaign to assert an American supremacist, America-can-do-no-wrong agenda.
All of a sudden, tonight, The Guardian proclaims James Hansen "the world's foremost climate expert" -- when he is nothing of the sort!
And he is calling for, guess what? Starting from the beginning. Again.
How convenient. And how disgracefully base.
James Hansen used environmental activists to call attention to himself as a "martyr for the climate" at Nasa during the Bush years.
Now, Obama is in, and he is instantly -- overnight -- acclaimed as the Number One oracle on climate?
Shameless, disgraceful, dishonest.
As for Hulme's & Ravetz's proposal that we allow American citizens to vote on what bits of science count, and which do not, that ridiculous idea contravenes basic Logic. It won't fly, however civilised and well-mannered its authors might be.
A fact is not a fact because so many people -- or thus and such person -- believes in it. It is a fact because it is, in fact, a fact.
And there are still plenty of facts that no one knows very much about.
However, the deteriorating condition of the climate due to the conscious neglect and indifference of billions of humans who simply will not be bothered extrapolating the consequences of their irresponsible habits is NOT a fact in question.
Nor can there be any doubt, any longer, as to who is in fact behind the convoluted, increasingly sinister wording of the "Arguments" being put forth by the anti-Copenhagen crowd. Your diction, your techno-socialist lexicon gives you away.
Of course Unity is the last thing the thought police want from Copenhagen.
"Divide & Conquer" has worked well for you thus far, hasn't it?
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Dear Maria, do you ever feel the need to "say" something in a certain way, to your children or to someone close, because there is a "pay-off" you are focused on? So does this slight, or even quite pronounced, choice of words, actions, and/or body play, amount to a "scientific" ploy because you have used it before and it always works? Did the famous "hockey-stick" amount to deliberate scientific manipulation to give global warming prominence because there was money to be made in "that thar'" research? And didn't Al Gore study under Roger Revelle who had had his eyes on CO2 in the atmosphere since the 1950s?
So was the IPCC set up to "confirm" something that had never been "scientifically" examined? And didn't the 1500 or so scientists stand to gain a lot of research money from the IPCC provided they added "something" to the global warming debate? So we have a lot of scientists conspicuously doing something inconspicuous - make a good living whilst getting to generate a lot of anxiety and fear amongst ordinary beings who would need them (the scientists) to deliver the people from evil. And of course were they not on to a winner? We save the planet and they are heroes as temperatures drop or "maybe we were too late" if they do not. And all the time money, big money, changes hands!
Now of course you, when manipulating your children or your husband or whoever, may not be focused on monetary gain, but if you can play the game successfully on others do you not believe that others can, and maybe have, played the game on you?
So spare me the "I'm a do nothing kinda gal" Maria, because what I am saying to you is "What you are doing Maria IS nothing". If the problem IS as BIG as these 1500 or so well paid researchers say it is then we are ALREADY doomed Maria - do you get it? I just don't believe them but you clearly do. So, as population must be the issue, what are you going to do about your children....? That is me getting real Maria.
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Re:Al Gore, it's my understanding that when he gives his doom and gloom seminars, his fee is $300 000, all questions are pre submitted and approved by him before the question is answered. No questions or points that counter what he presents are permitted.. So, no reason to think there's a background to potential fascism then if that kind of behaviour is extrapolated by other vested interests?
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Here, meet one firm neo-Malthusian.
http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/
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#215
It's disturbing isn't it? Especially as it originates from a supposedly "liberal" presidency. Just what have these "climate freaks" signed up to?
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Al Gore has cancelled his speech at Copenhagen..no reason given. I wonder if he's afraid? Interestingly, might be worth listening to Jezza vine today , as the issue with CRU is being discussed--seems that someone in the BBC has at last decided it's worthwhile throwing it to a wider audience..after all, it is sort of important.
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Angel, & everyone, thank you for the insights and the attempt to elucidate a truly enormous problem.
No, I am afraid I don't really get the "manipulation" logic.
Having taught in classrooms, some quite amazing, I am well aware of the fact that some students (workers, scientists) are more diligent -- or basically just brighter -- than others.
Have had classes full of Genius students -- and then, amazingly, two who would be like, the next Evolutionary Stage or something: just above and beyond anything even I could imagine possible. (NB: the ones who really floored my jaded teaching expectations all happened to be Chinese, from different corners of the planet.)
It never surprises me that in collective undertakings someone tries a shortcut, or basically does lower-grade work.
But there is always someone else present in the mix who outshines them.
And so I have great hopes. Yes, even great hopes for Copenhagen. And yes, particularly great hopes for leadership & innovation & discipline from CHINA, from Chinese people not very different from many of my Chinese students at Cal.
Yes, no denying it, to be fair I have had extraordinary students from Japan, Korea (one girl who particularly amazed me was actually I believe smuggled out of N. Korea), India, Pakistan, Iran, Eritrea.
And yes, plenty of Americans & Russians. (Have not taught in UK yet; when that happens, maybe I will add European students to my list!)
Working with students gives me enormous hope as well as the fire to keep fighting: for their future.
I believe they will solve this conundrum if we just give them a basis to start from.
That is why I do not agree with your position, Angel, that the problem is "too big." I believe even the meaningful changes my own household has made, over the past 15 years -- and changes I have encouraged others to make -- while being small in the great scheme of things have a self-evident cumulative effect.
And if a few billion people on earth start using their webcams to see friends -- instead of driving over on a weekend -- or make their kids forgo the idea of a personal car, choosing a car-share service instead, or buy a Prius instead of a Dodge Ram truck they only need three times a year to begin with, or give up on the dream of a McMansion -- I think we can swiftly and efficiently scale back on the emissions.
Even just cutting back on the crackling fires and the barbecues has an impact. No, it is not too high a price to pay for cleaner air and longer life & better survival.
It is not that hard for a woman after her second or third birth to get her tubes tied and no longer be a customer of the contraceptive industry, either. It is not that hard to walk around the neighbourhood instead of running a treadmill. It is not that hard to exchange and reuse baby clothes that are in great condition. You think a baby or toddler actually cares about how many running shoes s/he owns?
There are many, many simple and effective "little things" that people can do that make a huge difference at the end of just one year in terms of energy saved.
I like you, Angel. I have no quarrel with any of you who disagree with me. But I do have a serious beef with people who make money selling petrol or electricity to you, or fertilizers & pesticides to the crazy American agricultural heavyweights (that would be Cargill & Monsanto) who then overproduce food just so it can then be promptly destroyed, driving up the price & peddling "value-added byproducts" no one needs: high-fructose corn syrup.
I really strongly recommend you read Omnivore's Dilemma and the End of Overeating. Even just the first few chapters of these books will leave an indelible mark on your consciousness.
Then you will discover the real reason for parking a McDonald's eatery in every corner of the planet.
And the real reason why so much of this climate change -- actually Pollution -- problem can be dealt with Quite Simply; by forcing US corporate fatcats to accept sensible management & planning policies, over the obscenely inefficient & wasteful ones they have become addicted to.
It is not hard for an intelligent person to prove they are intelligent -- simply by doing the right thing, once their foolishness has been brought out into the open.
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#218
Hi Maria
There is nothing personal in any of this, and I respect you as a worthy member of our species. I also agree with you, as I have said before, on so much that is wrong with our planet. I endorse, wholeheartedly, your attacks on corporate greed, on human greed generally, and on our "fantasy life playing" antics. Where we part company is on how to deal.
I remember a story my gramps told me about red traffic light jumpers. At first it was the odd person or two with an eighty five percent chance of being caught. Then it was the odd hundred or so with a seventy percent chance of getting caught. Then it was.... the odd million or five with a less than one thousandth of one percent chance of getting caught.
We apply the same logic across the board and note how easy it is for people to tart up the milk before we get to taste it. Often it is like a romantic who wants to do good but cannot find a suitable partner to let out all that creative and thoughtful kindness. Our world is chock full of them and, as we increasingly rely on "artificial" interaction and relationships, so it is easier for the "wool to be pulled".
I would gladly join you in an effort to reduce our corporates, our celebrities, our politicians, our lawyers, and our bankers to realistic profiles but I am not sure that will help us to "save the world".
The Chinese have always been clever; you should read their works from a few thousand or so years ago - I loosely quoted from one such document which may be as old as six thousand years in one of my earlier postings - and they have embellished their range of experience from their assimilations throughout their history, with help from Babylon too! But the Chinese will still figure that it is important to show strength to other nations because that has always been the way. They will do their own thing and why not.
My line is that if our species is to survive on this planet then nature will decree it, whether it is a handful of survivors on a tiny island, or scavengers in a once "civilised" corner of the planet or just because in five, ten, twenty years the planet starts cooling again and scientists start hunting for evidence of an ice age.
My hunch is the last of these - and that is a problem in itself!
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Angel, in 20 years, with nothing else done, the planet may start cooling again -- because enough people will have died. Not very pleasantly -- although, from the point of view of Nature as your protagonist, that is probably an irrelevancy.
In five years -- nothing having been done, as you advocate -- there is not a chance of cooling. There may be transitory fluctuations, but the overall trend will be decidedly for an increase in temperatures, with dread implications for permafrosts -- and they are by no means unique to Siberia.
Keep in mind some of that "cooling" having attention called to it is actually the deep chill of outer space zooming in as the ozone layer vanishes... It is not an "improvement" -- it is a worsening of matters.
The problem with the people who over-emphasise the numbers is that they are fixated on some definable "threshold" or "tipping point" and are not seeing the greater phenomenon at work, in all its coherence: not as nice a picture.
Small communities of survivors scattered & isolated from each other is not too bad, but is not so great either.
I am still sticking to my current plan, Angel: and I intend to be here a century from now, aged 152, when the economy of the world operates on an altogether different framework, but we still have concert halls, museums, touring orchestras & art exhibitions, functioning universities, internets (of whatever next generation), travel opportunities and yes, even a few publishers.
Not taking this lying down, no way. But if you must prefer to stay in the hammock, I hope it is at least somewhere nice, like Hawai'i, preferably on one of the bigger islands!
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Oh do elaborate this greater phenomenon Maria, tell us more about it, will you? It is your strongest belief that there will be this and that? Five year from now? Yes? Pray tell, what is the basis of this belief? Will it look much as if in the latest Armageddon pictured by the master of disaster Emmerich?
Wonder if we should have accepted the beliefs of Mr. Holdren on overpopulation and act upon those? He said it will happen some 20 years ago, with the very same determination you spell doom upon us.
I see you like to call upon facts, so do allow a reminder, recently disclosed fraud shows that science is not settled, the fact is, there is no consensus, we'll have to build another one, and this time, we should do our best to base it on factual accuracy and well being of us all.
Here's an opinion, this world would be better if people would stop acting as if they belong to this and that camp. That way, they would be able to stand independent and party lines wouldn't interfere with their (moral) judgements. Eh?
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#220
Maria, your slip is showing. What do you BELIEVE it is that would enable you to live to a "ripe old age"? Is it down to your healthy regime? Or is it just the simple fact that you were always just critical distances away from things that could finish you off there and then? That a day comes when nature decides to target you or that the Grim Reaper cannot find anyone else to trouble in your neighbourhood. We can all throw a coin in the air and call it because that is more likely what determines when our number is up.
And just what is this "horrible death" that was predictable so many years ago and yet was not so severe that it prevented you from bearing children? You know what people are like, I mean really like, so what made you think they would believe that if they took one breath every twenty seconds instead of every two seconds the planet would live ten times longer? And isn't the jogger aspiring to fitness actually making the problem worse as you perceive it?
And please do not keep repeating this "I know how to fight even if you do not" nonsense. When the planes struck and the Twin Towers came down there was barely a whisper on the Richter Scale. A huge disaster for mankind but barely a breeze for nature. If the planet is cooling right now as I write this with your science would you even know it? Get back to perspectives and try to see the bigger picture Maria - we are insignificant but that doesn't stop us caring for each other.
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The whole environmental debate has been taken over by big business to centre on just one subject: Carbon Dioxide and its impact to Climate Change. The fact of the matter is that the environment is all multi-variate with multiple interacting factors. CO2 is not in itself a bad thing: if we stopped chopping down the rainforest and stopped our addiction to Oil then CO2 levels would right itself soon enough. Climate is affected by many factors, particularly cloud cover so why think it is all about CO2/greenhouse gases! (Don't go using Venus as a reference model since Earth is a somewhat more complex system!). As an example of big business cashing-in, any solution to our problems which thinks Nuclear Energy is a good idea is not "green"!
Sorry about arriving late in this discussion. Hi, A-i-T, hi, Moria.
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ynda20, close, but no cigar:
"Addiction to oil" is bad but ending it -- alone -- won't do enough. For example, the brilliant engineers at Tesla in Silicon Valley have come up with a marvelous automobile that runs on electricity. Zero petrol.
One small problem: most electricity in the US is generated from coal. So you relieve the petroleum burden (in theory, if millions were to switch to electric cars) -- but you increase dependence on coal.
Nuclear energy is not a fix-all either, although, realistically, it must now be included in the mix. Fission energy takes years to bring online. True, the latest designs are a whole lot better than what used to be in use.
It is going to take a complex set of measures to arrive at the necessary reductions in emissions & toxins being dumped. No one "magic formula" will do it all. Yes, a major lifestyle rethink is in order. This is precisely what makes so many uncomfortable.
It is not "big business " that has taken over the environmental issues: it is big business trying to stall, and being willing to stoop to anything.: hacking, breaking las, threats & intimidation, rumour-mongering & outright calumny...
Angel, I cannot possibly find common ground with you, sorry. How was the Twin Towers atrocity "a huge disaster for mankind?" It was a huge disaster for NYC, and a very difficult shock for Americans -- and it had a ripple effect of sorts. But as disasters go it does not even rate close to the San Francisco earthquake & Fire of 1906 -- and that was not a disaster for "mankind" either.
I am puzzled by some of your logic. Go ahead, enlighten me.
As for my thoughts about my own mortality: I know for a fact that if you don't plan to try to live longer, you have a higher likelihood of succumbing to something entirely preventable: heart disease, most lung cancers, car wrecks... You have to have a desire to want to keep going before you can even attempt to begin to.
Obviously, some people are self-destructive. And some people believe we can just live in our own filth and when Mother Nature lowers the boom, check out & no regrets. Sure.
But I can't agree with the live in your own filth part. I just like a smarter kind of living more. And I know it feels better to be healthy, than unhealthy -- because I have been, and witnessed, both.
And I also believe a lot of the research going on right now is indeed extending the limits of human longevity by considerable degrees. I have known two supercentenarians, both fit and whole a decade or so after their 100th birthday. Yes, they led disciplined, low-carbon lifestyles.I find that inspiring. Why do you begrudge me my differences with you? Why is it not enough for some people to cave in to a threat -- they must also literally require that others cave in with them?
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Hi Maria
Skipped the question about your children I see....!
Still on a longevity trip I see....!
Still see me as the opposition I see....!
Unable to commit yourself over beliefs I see....!
So let me analyse your, scientific is it, "logic"? We have an overpopulated planet by how many billion? And you want longevity; you are happy for "tubes to be tied" after 2/3 children (personal taste-huh); and you believe it is enough to be healthy, as no doubt did many of the few thousand people who thought 9/11 started as a normal day.
I have also known people who have lived very long lives. In my family are at least five, but, balancing that are many who survived relatively briefly, some in WW1 and some in WW2, both male and female. My parents were ten minutes away from being bombed in the blitz, a direct hit on their home. And you have a somewhat strange take on "disaster", or do you also count the bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima as "events"?
The people who died in Katrina, or who were displaced and effectively discarded for several days, were not in an isolated part of the third world, Maria, they were in the USA! (And all because a bridge in Alaska was more important than maintaining the levels.)
Nature does not discriminate and why should it? Nature isn't working "for us" unless you believe it has a somewhat deeper purpose than simply causing us the occasional misery and sadness. I believe that there is a profound level to nature that eclipses science and leaves it for dead. If it has to be labelled a "religion", a fanatical and irrational belief, then fine I'll cope with the abuse, but I believe it speaks to us in a language that is remote from science, and simple to understand for those who KNOW their environment. Knowing disappears once you start investing money and risk, ask the indigenous Indians, Maria....
"Why go looking for the light when you bear it within you?"
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@224, Hi. Thanks for the comments.
Maria Ashot wrote: "ynda20, close, but no cigar"
Er what? What makes you think that!?
Maria Ashot wrote: ""Addiction to oil" is bad but ending it -- alone -- won't do enough. For example, the brilliant engineers at Tesla in Silicon Valley have come up with a marvelous automobile that runs on electricity. Zero petrol. One small problem: most electricity in the US is generated from coal. So you relieve the petroleum burden (in theory, if millions were to switch to electric cars) -- but you increase dependence on coal."
You don't need the Tesla... The GM EV1 developed over 15 years ago was er... killed off by big business! (And the Bush Administration). As for the coal energy source, even if only a fraction of the money was put into developing clean coal as has gone into nuclear programmes, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Maria Ashot wrote: "Nuclear energy is not a fix-all either, although, realistically, it must now be included in the mix. Fission energy takes years to bring online. True, the latest designs are a whole lot better than what used to be in use."
Better? Based on what assumptions?! There is nothing "realistic" about nuclear energy! Once you take into account build costs, decommissioning costs and the near-infinite cost of averting another nuclear accident (or costing-in the impact of another nuclear disaster).
Maria Ashot wrote: "It is going to take a complex set of measures to arrive at the necessary reductions in emissions & toxins being dumped. No one "magic formula" will do it all. Yes, a major lifestyle rethink is in order. This is precisely what makes so many uncomfortable."
But toxins are not in the equation! Only CO2. The lifestyle rethink, I agree, is in order but since what we need is counter to big business then I am skeptical that it will be allowed to happen...
Maria Ashot wrote: "It is not "big business " that has taken over the environmental issues: it is big business trying to stall, and being willing to stoop to anything.: hacking, breaking las, threats & intimidation, rumour-mongering & outright calumny..."
Big business has been all those things... I had to look up "calumny" - great word! ;-) but who has the politician's ears? It is not the environmentalists! It is the car companies, the oil companies, EDF, (over in the US, the health insurance companies), the banks - it is not the environmentalists (unless they are saying what big business wants to hear - only then do they get a platform!)
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Maria, if we're going down the line of 'innovative' methods of propelling road going vehicles, there have been a few inventions since the invention of the internal combustion engine that have been stamped on variously by the oil and car industries. Okay, most involve the use of water heated up to high temperatures used in conjunction with petrol to increase the economy (it's quite simple actually) but hasn't been taken up commercially as it would involve less oil being used--and we can't have that can we? Instead we now have the industries getting all sanctimonious and prissy as if they're the solution to the problem that in no small part they created in the first place. It isn't new though, Catalytic converters... Hmmm, only run with lead free fuel, lead was taken out of fuel apparently to stop children being stupid, they haven't stopped children being stupid, but it has bolstered the share values of industries that extract the precious metals that go into--you guessed it, catalytic converters that incidentally make engines less efficient than they were before without them! However, that means more oil has to be used, which increases the revenue of the oil AND the revenue generated in taxes, so everyone is happy! You see a pattern here? Invent a problem, get enough spurious evidence to support it, feed a few papers, fund a few sympathetic research departments, generate yet more anxiety in the publics mind.. then wait for the 'something must be done' cries.. and surprise surprise, he's one we made earlier! The trade off is WE pay for it, with the concomitant guilt trip. Interestingly (but no great surprise) The USA (and presumably the UK) has already said that no matter what the evidence that will eventually be presented as 'fact', they're going to carry on with the policy of trotting out that Climate chnage is almost entirely down to humans..Totalitarian fascism? Surely not!
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