Lost for words

i am not a big global warming believer have seen the programmes read the articles and still think that gaia / mother earth is big enough to look after itself the amount of co2 we produce in comparison to all the decaying vegetation in the jungles / oceans / the co2 produced by volcanoes / produced by all the animals / produced by even sulight on the ocean
the globe has been warmer and colder than it is now without any help from us humans intervention ( don't forget london was under a mile of ice not more that a few 10's of '000's of years ago )
it cools itself when hot, and warms itself when cold the ocean currents and jetstream / global climate re distribute temperatures to keep it pretty even
humans are pretty insignificant really in the greater scheme of things
saying all this however i haven't taken a carrier bag from any shop in the last 5 years
i gave up my car / don't use central heating in the house unless it is real cold
recycle everything
compost household waste in the garden
i do my bit because it is the right thing to do consumerism is what is killing the planet
now saying that does anyone have a bike for sale i have only 7 and don't think that is enough yet ! i have only 6 spare wheels in the shed but i feel i need more !! DOH !

Oh and the bit about 'more CO2 = more plants' is fantasy.

+1. There might be more plants if we didn't keep cutting 'em down.

t we have cut down all the trees to raise cows to make burgers to feed fat americans

The last I checked there were a lot of fat Brits as well, who love their steak and potatoes as much as the next fat American...

you know, what would be really good and would really be helpful, was if the world's experts were to get together and collate all the information from over 50 years of data. and then put forward their findings and present a case for what they suggest is the best course of action.

i wonder if it's possible that such a co-ordinated group could do such a thing, and furthermore, be able to present their report freely for the world to see.
that would really help us determine what the state of the climate is.

hey that's amazing, you know what?
they have.

they only went and won the noble prize for it last year as well!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change

We can discuss, argue and think all we like about climate change, the big problem is overpopulation. Stopping the population growth is the best course of action.

The sea levels thing is a bit of a weird one. It's based on the assumption that the poles are land masses covered in ice. Which as far as I know, is still not established.

What? It's now difficult to take your opinion into consideration on this matter if your this uninformed?

Here's a map of Antartica:

Here's a bit of land sticking out:

world war 3 anyone ?
there are so many divergent parties in the global warming debate it would be very difficult to get a consensus agreement

hey that's amazing, you know what?
they have.

they only went and won the noble prize for it last year as well!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change

'Nobel Prize'

i thought it was quite worthy.

We can discuss, argue and think all we like about climate change, the big problem is overpopulation. Stopping the population growth is the best course of action.

fine. ok. who do you fancy culling first?

bagsie being michael york in logan's run.

What about the majority of the Arctic?
What about all the floating ice?
What about the fact that the earth isn't getting warmer anyway?
What about the fact that humans are responsible for a tiny proportion of CO2 output?
What about the fact that CO2 barely registers on the scale of greehouse gases.
What about the fact that the "greenhouse effect" is a fantasy that has never been proved?

Floating ice - what about it? is a potential sea-level rise of 10m from less than half of antarctica's ice sheets not enough for you? Arctic ice melting will effect the thermohaline circulation. The ice sheet on Greenland melting (note the 'land' bit) would cause a sea-level rise. Greenland is very very big.
Warming - The earth is getting warmer at the moment (i.e. it is going through a warming phase - read the IPCC report)
CO2 output by humans - well it may be a tiny proportion but it's the most important one
CO2 as a GHG - it is not the most powerful GHG, but it is by far and away the predominant one - methane is more powerful but is so inconsequential in volume that until gas hydrates are released by the warming tundra you should really not ignore CO2 input - 'CO2 barely registers on the scale of greehouse gases' does not actually mean anything at all
Greenhouse effect as a fantasy that has never been proved - well that's just a Melanie Phillips type of argument. It has never been proved that the earth is not flat. And the greenhouse effect is now as much a part of scientific fact as AIDS and gravity. To deny it's existence is daft, unless you can prove otherwise, which I doubt you can.

I personally don't give a shit as the world will carry on once the human race and many other species have died out, including me. But those who think it's all just a conspiracy backed up by lies and bad science are just being silly.

Over population is going to be a problem exacerbated by climatic change, as the tropics will soon (relatively) become mostly uninhabitable. There will then be several hundred million 'climate refugees' looking (quite rightly) for somewhere else to live.

i've got rooms to rent !

People who argue against the idea of climate change live in blissed ignorance thinking that the supermarket shelves will always be full of food. We ignore that people are starving all over the world and that food shortage is increasing and will affect all of us.

Yes our planet will sort itself out but should not we try to save what we have now? How much more suffering do we want to see?

bluequinn:
are you involved in this area of research?

Guess what chaps, this is alarmist bullshit.

CO2 is not a fucking pollutant. it is the very stuff of life. Without it there would be no plant life. And without plant life there would be no animal life. The more CO2 there is the more plants there will be to absorb it. Rebranding CO2 it as "nasty poisonous carbon" is a marketing move designed to sell taxation to the guilt-ridden developed world whilst simutaneously preventing the developing world from actually developing.

You are confusing governments and the scientific community. It's true governments are using climate change (cc) for a tax but the scientific community has been on about cc for 30 years. It is well established. Your point about C02 not being a pollutant shows a lack of understanding. It is perfectly possible for something to be beneficial at low levels and detrimental at higher levels. The earths ecosystem is a complex dynamical system.

The Earth is an ecosystem and we as humans are a tiny stupid pointless insignificant blip on that ecosystem. Geologically we are less than a microsecond. It is nothing but hubris and self-obsession to assume we have a cat in hell's chance of affecting the climate of this planet in any meaningful way. The earth will look after itself, and if we remain viable as a species we will adapt.

Geologically we are insignificant but that has nothing to do with the argument in hand. We have had a massive effect on the earth in a short time. That is point. There have been changes in the climate before but none so severe on such a small time scale. Rate of the change is important. We have effected the climate the fact that you are denying that again shows no knowledge of the evidence.

Coal, oil, gas, it's all exactly the same natural fuel as wood, just a hell of a lot older. We are not creating "carbon". At a simple level we are merely moving CO2 it from under the sea to above it. .

Again lack of understanding of the carbon cycle.

Releasing what was once a tree into the ecosystem so that it may be a new tree. It doesn't matter how much coal the developing world burns. Or oil. Because we all know for a fact how much oil and coal and gas humans are going to use. All of it. Every last drop.

I'll agree with you here because of human nature.

And it won't make the slightest bit of difference to mother earth. We, like King Canute, are conceited in the extreme to think that the changing the climate has ever been something in our power, or indeed that preventing climate change will ever be.

Now cheer up.

I know that I have just wasted my time tying this reply really as if you can not be convinced by a large group of scientist over a wide area of subjects who are world experts in their fields no one can convince you.

I'm sure you have gone on to type similar post blowing apart the climate change arguments with questions that are so original they have not already been thought of by any of the people researching climate change. You truly are one of the most original thinkers of this century.

The only reason people deny something with it's vast amount of scientific evidence over 30+ years of researching, using techniques and understanding of the underlying mechanisms which go back hundreds of years, is because they are a religious nut, or excepting the truth may result in them having to make sacrifices / changes them self, and noone likes to make sacrifices.

Soylent green is people

full length.
charlton heston. 1970s. prediction of the future. soylent green.

But those who think it's all just a conspiracy backed up by lies and bad science are just being silly.

Bad science...? Like Heavy Electricity?

YouTube - Brasseye - Heavy Electricity

content deleted for sake of not having a massive post
Amem Tommy.

Food shortages are caused by entirely political / socio-economic factors, and very rarely by a lack of food (in the sense of there not being enough production).

Blaming food shortages to political / socio-economic factors does not make things better, people are dying because of starvation all over the world.

How can we produce enough if the population continues to grow and arable and farmable land continues to shrink?

We can discuss, argue and think all we like about climate change, the big problem is overpopulation.

Sorry, Vee. I have to hold my hand up to this one. It's just that my wife is very attractive, and after a couple of glasses of wine the lights go down....

@Ru, make sure you give your children a proper sex education and no wine! Your mistakes are an opportunity for them to learn differently ;)

can we relate this to mosques, and mother theresa and get Tynan involved?

Well, Mother Theresa was presumably anti-contraception, so there's overpopulation accounted for... muslims/oil/fossil-fuel burning? I mean, it's their carbon we're burning after all