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Evidence please.
Evidence to the contrary please.
Seriously I would love to spend all day compiling the evidence for this, but I would rather you did this for yourself if you are interested. As it stands, I will do my best to gather information for you without wasting too much of my own time.
Watch this space...
PS were you this critical when presented with the arguments in favour of GW?
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Oh, and CO2 is not a 'pollutant'. It is actually a plant fertiliser, and the increase in Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased plant growth by something like 12% in the last 3 decades. As for CO2 driving global warming: It hasn't ever done in the past, and the fact that it is among the lesser greenhouse gases makes you wonder who no-one is worried about their 'water vapour footprints'?
CO2 is not a pollutant, no. It is a 'greenhouse gas' however, and thus can be treated as a pollutant.
The bit about 'has increased plant growth by something like 12% in the last 3 decades' is laughable - or have I missed the huge carbon swallowing forests springing up left, right and centre?
And as for 'the fact that it is among the lesser greenhouse gases makes you wonder who no-one is worried about their 'water vapour footprints'?'
Go and read about residence times of various gases in the atmosphere, then try that argument again.unfortunately the concensus is among politicians, not scientists. Many scientists are also afraid to speak out against the 'warmists' as there has been talk of Nuremburg-style trials against global warming (GW) deniers
This is drivel.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6036529.ece
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1717925/posts
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1782/
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cleared-jury-decides-that-threat-of-global-warming-justifies-breaking-the-law-925561.htmlCO2 is not a pollutant, no. It is a 'greenhouse gas' however, and thus can be treated as a pollutant.
^"This is drivel"
If anyone can present any decent evidence of any of the following statements being true I will be thoroughly impressed:
- CO2 has driven, is driving or will drive the temperature of the globe.
- The Earth has been warming over the last 10 years (I accept that CO2 levels are rising).
- If the Earth warms disease will spread, weather will become more extreme and polar bears will drown.
- CO2 has driven, is driving or will drive the temperature of the globe.
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CO2 is not a greenhouse gas?
or
CO2 is a greenhouse gas but greenhouse gasses are not a problem?Which is your position?
As i understand it, the earth's surface temperature is primarily set by the balance between adsorption and re-radiation of vast quantities of solar energy. Anything that affects that process has the potential to affect the earth's surface temperature. CO2 scatters certain frequencies of light, so reducing their flux through the atmosphere. The frequencies it scatters form a larger proportion of the re-radiated spectrum than the arriving spectrum, so all else being equal, increasing the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere would tend to increase the surface temperature of the planet.
Of course, all else will not be equal as the climate is a really complicated system with lots of feedback loops. I've heard of mechanisms that look like they'll oppose the warming, and of many others that will exacerbate it. Because water vapour plays a larger roll than CO2 in determining the energy balance it seems theoretically possible that feedback mechanisms involving it could overcome the effect of CO2 on surface temperature, but i haven't seen any evidence that they will, and it seems a pretty scant hope to me. (At least without major human-unfriendly re-jigging of the biosphere.)
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If anyone can present any decent evidence of any of the following statements being true I will be thoroughly impressed:
If the Earth warms disease will spreadEven the most cursory google search brings up a wiki entry that contains some excellent peer reviewed articles on increasing temperature increasing the range and prevelence of diseases.
The obvious one is malaria but any arthropod bourne disease is likely in increase in the event of an altered climate.
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@ cernan
I've been in the desert for 3 weeks and missed this cherry of a thread. As such i shall only contribute:
Global warming affecting the Lake District then !!but seriously ...............
What about things like Mount St Helens / Gulf Wars one and two where they burnt billions of tonnes of oil when the wells had been blown up by retreating Iraqui troops. How much crap did that chuck into the sky ? That would surely be the equivalent of millions of cars with catalytic converters. Are these events creating short term temp rises, that governments are using as tax vehicles ?
Add that to a general rise in Global Temps because we are coming out of an Ice Age and hey presto unusually large rises ?
Any comments or are these too small a scale events to have any influence on the mighty Globe ?
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Hah! Not our green and verdant pastures but the badlands of Arizona and Utah freezing of my extremities.
Volcanic eruptions actually result in small decreases in temperature by allowing the formation of layers in the stratosphere that reduce transmission of solar radiation. This is due to sulphur dioxide reactions with water vapour.
The Kuwatii oil fires also created local cooling, although for a different reason. The huge smoke clouds blocked out the sun and again prevent solar radiation transmission. Forest fires might also have the same effect (NASA's mission database might have something on this. The mission/instruments used was CRYSTAL-FACE. But from what i can figure out that was mainly looking at atmospheric chemistry and mixing and i haven't found anything specifically on radiation transmission. Yet. But again this is from very basic searching of nature and NASA sites, i'm yet to try the ESA but they maybe a really good source)
The Nature search engine seems to provide abstracts to both topics but is error ridden for me at the moment.
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Even the most cursory google search brings up a wiki entry that contains some excellent peer reviewed articles on increasing temperature increasing the range and prevelence of diseases.
The obvious one is malaria but any arthropod bourne disease is likely in increase in the event of an altered climate.
^ http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090409/full/news.2009.361.html
Malaria will not spread due to warming of the globe. The main reason Malaria is currently a big problem in the 10/40 window (near the equator) is due to the lack of money in those areas, not the abundance of warmth.
http://www.sdnetwork.net/briefing_papers/malaria_climatechange.pdfCO2 is not a greenhouse gas?
or
CO2 is a greenhouse gas but greenhouse gasses are not a problem?Which is your position?
^ greenhouse gas does not = "pollutant" (is my position).
Sorry I really would like to stop posting on this thread as I have a feeling lots of people either have or will become pissed off with me (hence the apology cake). I will only say this: CO2 is not a pollutant IMO.
hope we can all still be friends!
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I wouldn't worry about upsetting people. I value discussion as a promoter of friendship!
I'll admit that climate and disease spread is a very complex topic but:
The SDN release seems flawed to me for a couple of reasons:Its comes from an organisation with an agenda. Be that agenda positive or negative I find releases by these groups problematic as their use of science tends to be biased.
It makes unreferenced statements and takes single events as proof of concept.
it only presents one side of the debate unlike the nature paper you quoted which i much prefer (although they don't have any references frustratingly).
I'd disagree with your use of that article as indicating no increased spread of malaria. Whilst I am already convinced of a spread by my own unfortunately unpublished dabblings in epidemiology research, I prefer the hypotheses of the pro-spread sections of that article. I would still like to read the orginal references however.
The spread of other vector/disease combos (culex mosquito/west nile in the states, ticks/lymes disease, mosquitos and european dengue, tsetse fly expansion and sleeping sickness in africa) is much convincing evidence than the "insects are already such good adaptors why haven't the spread already" counter.
I will accept ecosystem collapse as a pretty good counter arguement but that's not going to be modelable any time soon.
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What a very strange comment. Embarrassed? Paid!? It's a link to a review of a new book by a scientist. Why does that rattle you?
Rattled? Maybe, but not for the reasons you imply. The phrase 'linky dinky' got on my tits to the extent i felt uncomfortable sharing a thread with such a cringingly pathetic piece of rhetoric. I couldn't let it stand unchallenged and took the piss.
The earlier wounded pleas for fair assessment of your point of view at least had some hopeless logic to them. But that that simply isn't a reasonable expectation.
It is fine and rational for people to base their own opinions on the assertions of sources they trust. Working things out for yourself is great where it's practical, but very limiting as a policy. It makes a lot of sense to reuse other people's hard thought & hard-won experience to quickly increase your knowledge of a subject, but argument from authority is a rubbish basis for a debate.
The trouble is that given two people with slightly different prior beliefs about a subject and a stream of relevant infomation, it is possible for each to rationally arrive at the opposite conclusion. This comes right out of the maths of Bayesian probability, and seems to be an even stronger feature of the buggy approximation to probabalistic inference that most people run. It happens because a piece of information is also evidence of the trustworthiness of its source. I read your link, weighed the assertions it contains against the rest of my knowledge, and quickly lost all trust in you, Ian Pilmer and Paul Sheehan. Someone starting from different knowlege could just as rationally find the same assertions plausible and judge the three of you sound and insighful.
The more this goes on, the more it polarises an intitally continuous specturm of opinion into two opposing camps who don't believe a word the other says. Attacking the motivation of others is both symptom and further fuel for the fire.
So we have the weird situation that many of the good reasons that each of us holds our position are not good reasons for the other to change their minds, and your attempt to pass some of your reasons off as uncontroversial ends up annoying me.
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^^Not sure I fully understand all of that (I'll google probabalistic inference in a mo) but I have the feeling that's a nicely balanced post. I'll re-read it when the Duvel's worn off.
Informative thread! Shame Richard couldn't keep his cool though.
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Oh shit, apologies for that, I was in a fucking bad mood last night.
Think I'll have to christen my ignore list with this thread as it winds me up too much. Just glad there isn't a creationism thread... -
Just glad there isn't a creationism thread...
Oh, I'm sure someone could create one if the need arose.
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straw man argument. Who made the IPCC the final and only opinion on climate change? Look at the politics behind the IPCC - it was set up by the UN.
evidence please, not conjecture.
see both comments above.
Evidence please.
you are kidding with this right?
again. citation required. I frankly don't believe this statement.
because people can't manage two problems at once? it's possible that as people take on board the enormity of GW as an environmental issue, they'll acknowledge other environmental issues too? My experience of social behaviour leads me to believe that people need a catastrophe to adjust their thinking (small issues get ignored), but once people do change their mindset they can embrace new similar ideas easliy.
Deeply interested in all this, supposed to be informed being employed by a sustainable transport charity.
Have picked up on a fantastic book by Dan Gardner 'Risk, the Science and Politics of Fear' which makes a really good attempt at explaining how we come to believe what we believe--heartily recommend it as essential reading for following this thread.
specifically r.e- the IPCC info he says this:-
"Unfortunately, the language of science is the opposite of the simple, definitive statements the media want. In science, all knowledge is tentative, every fact open to challenge. Science never delivers absolute certainty.Instead facts are said to be known with degrees of confidence. is the earth getting warmer and is human activity the cause? In 1995, the IPCC answered that question with this statement:
'The balance of evidence sugggestsa discernable human influence on global climate.'
In 2001, the IPCC said, 'There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities' And in 2007, with further research pointing to the same conclusion, the IPCC reported that 'Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.' The phrase 'very likely' is about as strong as sciencegets. In the 2007 IPCC report it was defined as meaning a 95 per cent chance that it is so. Thats a common scientific convention: something is taken as established fact if there is 95 per cent confidencethat it is correct."We live in a mediated world, but just being selective about what sources of information you access definately helps.
Personally it amazes me that apparently intelligent people will pay regularly and handsomely for insurance policies that protect them against 'what ifs', and at the same time carry on blithely with the same lifestyles when presented with the evidence of climate change.
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The phrase 'very likely' is about as strong as sciencegets. In the 2007 IPCC report it was defined as meaning a 95 per cent chance that it is so. Thats a common scientific convention: something is taken as established fact if there is 95 per cent confidencethat it is correct."
That very much depends on which bits of science you are referring to. Despite its inherent randomness and unresolved questions about its philosophical foundations, the predictive power of quantum mechanics has been proved with often astonishing precision, and some physical constants are known to 9 or 10 significant figures.
Also, 95% is a very rough rule of thumb. Every day we rationally act on information far less certain than that, while in other situations 99% certainty would be recklessly insufficient.
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Moth
Rattled? Maybe, but not for the reasons you imply.
I didn’t imply any reasons; I simply asked why you were rattled.a cringingly pathetic piece of rhetoric
(Rhetoric - the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing OED). I made a couple of statements and asked a question.The earlier wounded pleas for fair assessment of your point of view at least had some hopeless logic to them. But that that simply isn't a reasonable expectation.
Wounded pleas? Hopeless logic? Apart from the fact that I made no pleas wounded or otherwise, that sentence makes no sense whatsoever.If you had read my posts, you would see that I have not made any arguments or even expressed my own opinion (except on no cooling for 10 years). You couldn’t on that basis know what I thought.
It makes me sad to see so many accepting the Gore line without ever having heard any opposing arguments. You will not see those arguments on the BBC where most people get their news.
How can people know there is another side to this? How can we as a society make informed decisions? Decisions which will cost billions and affect us for decades to come. Those decisions had better be right and not based on fiction.
Debate is important. Calling people half-wits because they take a different view is not helpful (that wasn’t you Moth and I think it’s since been deleted).
Without proper debate we (or the US) get this:“WASHINGTON (AP) — The EPA on Friday declared that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases sent off by cars and many industrial plants "endanger public health and welfare," setting the stage for regulating them under federal clean air laws. The action by the Environmental Protection Agency marks the first step toward requiring power plants, cars and trucks to curtail their release of climate-changing pollution, especially carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Friday's action by the EPA triggered a 60-day comment period before the agency issues a final endangerment ruling. That would be followed by a proposal on how to regulate the emissions.”But the politicians and bureaucrats are out of whack with the people of the US:
“Just one-out-of-three voters (34%) now believe global warming is caused by human activity, the lowest finding yet in Rasmussen Reports national surveying. However, a plurality (48%) of the Political Class believes humans are to blame.
Forty-eight percent (48%) of all likely voters attribute climate change to long-term planetary trends, while seven percent (7%) blame some other reason. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.
These numbers reflect a reversal from a year ago when 47% blamed human activity while 34% said long-term planetary trends http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/environment/energy_updateHow did we get here? I suppose politicians are briefed on IPPC reports and get no counterbalancing arguments so they believe it. I hope the IPCC are using the top scientists in their fields but perhaps they aren't -
“The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is very particular about the scientists it selects to investigate the health consequences of global warming. Those the likes of Paul Reiter needn't apply.
"Prof. Reiter heads the Insects and Infectious Disease Unit at the Pasteur Institute, famed for its founding by Louis Pasteur in 1887 and the eight Nobel Prizes that its later scientists received.
“As Prof. Reiter testified to a U.K. parliamentary committee in 2005 (about his own field), "The paucity of information was hardly surprising: Not one of the lead authors had ever written a research paper on the subject! Moreover, two of the authors, both physicians, had spent their entire career as environmental activists. One of these activists has published "professional" articles as an "expert" on 32 different subjects, ranging from mercury poisoning to land mines, globalization to allergies and West Nile virus to AIDS.
"Among the contributing authors there was one professional entomologist, and a person who had written an obscure article on dengue and El Nino, but whose principal interest was the effectiveness of motorcycle crash helmets (plus one paper on the health effects of cellphones)."
The full written evidence is at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we21.htm and is an insteresting read.Also interesting is Climate of Fear - http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 - By Richard Lindzen Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT
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no. The moon is getting further away. The gravitational pull of the earth's tidal bulge is continually pushing it into a higher, slower orbit. The energy it gains (a small part of the energy of the tides) comes from slowing the rotation of the earth. In the distant past the moon was much closer, the earth span faster, and tides were much bigger.
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In the distant past the moon was much closer, the earth span faster, and tides were much bigger.
Hence the Deluge. :)
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"Among the contributing authors there was one professional entomologist, and a person who had written an obscure article on dengue and El Nino, but whose principal interest was the effectiveness of motorcycle crash helmets (plus one paper on the health effects of cellphones)."
For the love of God, don't let's bring that into the discussion!
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waking this thread up to point out this little lot of interesting reading:-
http://www.juliesbicycle.com/cycle-diaries/climate-change
bavski
Richard_Cheese
moth
cernan
dicki
Bobby_Dids
Dylan
Oliver Schick
deleted
IndianRunner
VanUden
Seeds-
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About
Wilkins ice shelf breaking away?
Posted by
@freddo
I've been in the desert for 3 weeks and missed this cherry of a thread. As such i shall only contribute: