Global Warming

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

With the current rising costs and expenditures of using/buying energy, I'd say we're on a incentive, not a start, to hasten the development of energy-efficient technology and embed with the public. Personally, all the hooey about alternative energy sources is stupid because we have always been innovating and that stuff is going to take 2 or 3 more decades before it is commercially sustaining. In my Environmental Sci class, the emphasis was on Energy Efficiency(not biofuels), slow down population growth, education, et alia....

[caldrail]

At a personal level, all they can do is save an individual money.But go ahead, carry on using energy inefficient appliances, leaving lights on, driving round the block for your pint of milk. I will in the meantime laugh my way to the bank.

Spot on Neil. Its all about money. Thats what the control of the public is in aid of. Our government likes spending money. Ours. So if you save pennies with effiicient appliances, you can afford higher taxes. Also, I would point out that my last two cars were deliberately spiked and as a result its unlikely I'll be driving a car at all for the forseeable future. Does that make me any better off? No, because I've already lost the opportunity for well paid jobs because of my lack of transport.

[caldrail]

Wherein does the hilarity lie brother?

If I were a sole adherent of the Green gospel climate change woudn't spare me but I'm not. If a greater number of people go green there's no reason why climate change can't be slowed down and stabilized to a certain extent.

Stop the earth. Minerva wants to get off. Stop climate change? How? Its been changing for billions of years. The current warming, apart from some variance, has been going on for at least 10,000 years. There weren't any cars back then. So who was responsible for climate change? Nature. The earth wobbles, the whole thing wobbles, and there's absolutely nothing you or anyone else can do except attempt to survive it, which is what we should be looking toward.

 

Christianity was not a global issue or a global policy. Anyway Religion was always a control on the public just take a look at Birtish or Indian history.

The reason I brought up the subject is that green issues are generating exactly the same behaviour as religions. Anyone who doesn't repeat the mantras or obey the rituals gets ostracised.

 

Combatting climate change is an entirely different issue.

You cannot combat climate change. Its just not possible. We don't have anything like the climate engineering potential to do that. Thats the propaganda element. The government is telling us that we can. Nonsense. All they want is a compliant public all pulling together against a common threat. The threat in this case is global warming. The government want to be seen as being positive, as doing something to help their public. Truth is, it won't stop the temperature going up or down will it?

 

I shall definitely keep the faith brother. Even though I may not succeed in changing the world I could atleast be free of the guilt that I left the world a worse place.

Thats exactly what I mean about the religious overtones of the green agenda. You feel absolved because you adopted the desired attitude. Belief is what you hold to be true, religion is what someone tells you to believe. Who cares whether you feel guilty or not? Making the world a better place is a fine motive, but chances are all you've done is follow someone elses guidelines on how to live. You therefore feel you've done your bit, and so feel guiltless, but what have you actually achieved? Nothing. All you've done is stand in line and obey orders without thinking about it.

[Kosmo]

On a lighter note

 

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/29/hea...ence/29tier.php

[ASCLEPIADES]

On a lighter note

 

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/29/hea...ence/29tier.php

Salve, K et gratiam habeo for that link.

You're right; the fundaments of John Tierney's lighter note are mostly excellent. Its main methodological problem is with their multiple quotations; they are not true references, as you can't actually check the sources. Even so, that leaves Tierney many steps ahead from most anti-GW posts on this thread.

 

There are thousands of scientific reports each month; finding ten that you could question in the last year is extremely easy, especially if you include some jokes (the last two "cosmic" risks).

 

Nevertheless, regarding this thread issue, he's as concerned as most of us; #2 is on optimizing fuel consumption; #3 and #5 are on the best way of lessening greenhouse emissions; even #8 didn't challenge GW notion, just one isolated unsourced prediction.

 

As Mr Tierney is trying to make us feel absolved by adopting the desired attitude on the impossible combat against GW, I must conclude he is a prominent part of the global conspiracy's propaganda against the creatures' comfort, pretending to find some substitute of religion for the masses control.

Edited July 30, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Ludovicus]

Cadrail was simply saying that politicians are just pandering for votes from the alarmist/concerned citizen. Honestly, who doesn't want a better world. As a politician, you say what the public think/want to hear is better for mother earth.

Just the same as the non-GW agenda politicians are pandering for votes from the discomforted not-so-alarmed/concerned citizens, who doesn't want a better world either.

 

Rings any bell?

 

Yes, point-taken, it goes 360, but referring to Minerva that GW is modestly not a political issue, it has to be since politicians then also are pandering to just everyone else with votes.

 

 

It wasn't too long ago that politicians were pandering to voters who didn't think GW was a serious issue. Politicians pander.

Beyond politicians, US mainstream churches and now more conservative denominations are seeing GW as an issue. Are the churches pandering?

 

Evangelical Leaders See Global Warming as an Issue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/08/national/08warm.html

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

Yes, but then Churches will lobby their elective leaders and so the politicians again are the lifeline. I don't disagree with you, but the GW-issue will ultimately come down to politics if you want anything done.

[Northern Neil]

Spot on Neil. Its all about money. Thats what the control of the public is in aid of. Our government likes spending money. Ours. So if you save pennies with effiicient appliances, you can afford higher taxes.

Actually Calders, I agree with you entirely about governments and money, and I also agree with you that the Government is using the global warming issue to levy more taxes. Those things do not in themselves negate the global warming theory though, and far from approaching this issue with religious zeal, I hardly think about it on a day to day basis. Most of my activities which just happen to reduce my carbon footprint, happen to save me cash too.

 

A representative of Friends of the Earth recently stated that if everyone simply kept to speed limits, 1.5 Billion litres of fuel would be saved in Britain every year. That equates roughly to about

[FLavius Valerius Constantinus]

Is it me or it is that the oil baron's are the ones who are responsible introducing the new biofuels on the markets? I just realized that Shell and BP, for example, seem to be too focused in drilling instead urging US farmers to stop using corn for ethanol.

[caldrail]

A representative of Friends of the Earth recently stated that if everyone simply kept to speed limits, 1.5 Billion litres of fuel would be saved in Britain every year. That equates roughly to about

[Northern Neil]

There will always be some who want to enjoy driving from place to place (that doesn't mean irresponsibly) and therefore prefer cars that challenge and reward the driver. I happen to be one of them, and in all honesty I just cannot bear the thought of driving a little eurobox no matter how enviromentally friendly it may be, not that I can afford one anyway.

But regarding oil barons bank accounts, do you really believe that falling sales won't generate increased prices to compensate their loss of profit?

Well, I'm with you on that one - and I admit that my 1969 BSA Spitfire is a toy not an essential, and I get fun out of riding it (The BSA equivalent to the Triumph Bonneville, BTW, so it shifts, despite its antiquity). This I believe I compensate for greenhouse-wise, by cycling at other times and using cooking oil in the old transit. And a whole host of other measures I now do instinctively, which are not related to driving, but in curbing waste in other areas.

 

But, people who think green are not all puritanical and identical in their thinking, Calders. I do not regard the recreational use of a vehicle as an unneccessary journey, if the individual has a love of fast cars, motorbikes, or whatever - it is what they are into, and interests / hobbies are as we know something that makes an individual healthy. It is more the everyday uneccessary driving that millions do, because they cant bear the thought of a walk that is slightly longer than the distance from their armchair to the fridge.

[Faustus]

There will always be some who want to enjoy driving from place to place (that doesn't mean irresponsibly) and therefore prefer cars that challenge and reward the driver....It is more the everyday uneccessary driving that millions do, because they cant bear the thought of a walk that is slightly longer than the distance from their armchair to the fridge.

A representative of Friends of the Earth recently stated that if everyone simply kept to speed limits, 1.5 Billion litres of fuel would be saved in Britain every year. That equates roughly to about

Edited July 31, 2008 by Faustus

[Faustus]

"According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749."

First Spotless Month in a Century

 

"In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats." Sorokhtin, who calls man's contribution to climate change "a drop in the bucket," predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond."

Researchers Predict Another Ice Age

 

"Such research dates back to 1991, when the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study showing that world temperatures over the past several centuries correlated very closely with solar cycles. A 2004 study by the Max Planck Institute found a similar correlation, but concluded the timing was only coincidental, as the solar variance seemed too small to explain temperature changes.

 

"... researchers at DMI continued to work, eventually discovering what they believe to be the link. The key factor isn't changes in solar output, but rather changes in the sun's magnetosphere A stronger field shields the earth more from cosmic rays, which act as "seeds" for cloud formation. The result is less cloud cover, and a warming planet. When the field weakens, clouds increases, reflecting more light back to space, and the earth cools off."

 

"Recently, lead researcher Henrik Svensmark was able to experimentally verify the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation, in a cloud chamber experiment called "SKY" at the Danish National Space Center. CERN plans a similar experiment this year."

Edited September 7, 2008 by Faustus

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, Amici.

 

Here comes a lecture by the environmental scientist David Keith, who proposes a cheap, effective, shocking means to address climate change:

GEOENGINEERING THE CLIMATE

 

What if we injected a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat?

 

(The first country that gets it may rule the Global climate... A wild fantasy?)

Edited September 18, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[caldrail]

Meddling with the earths delicate balance is all going to end with tears. Roll with the punches or die out. Nature is quite adamant about survival of the fittest and for good reason, and as for any hopes of climate engineering, mankind seriously hasn't a clue. We're still arguing over it for crying out loud.

 

I've always maintained that Global Warming is hype. So it is. People have created a growth industry out of it and some peoples political careers are based on the climate catastrophe that has been prophesied.

 

I do not believe in Global Warming. I dislike the religious overtones of it and the manner in which activists and governments seek to inodctrinate us with messages of impending calamity unless we all obey the new rules. I certainly don't deny temperatures have risen, nor can I deny that humanity has played a part in it.

 

I do believe in Climate Change. The Earths climate has identifiably changed since the Earth formed.. In Britain for instance, there are positive signs of carboniferous swamps, triassic deserts, jurassic seas, ice ages, and many other variable periods in-between. Arguably, the climate changes all the time, usually only in such a small way to escape our attention or our memory. Since the argument about our modern day is effectively based on a statistical study of averages, why has the sample been limited to recent times? Surely that distorts the image created by graphs showing dramatic rises in the last century?

 

The data that the prophets of climate doom have used is recent. Whether or not its entirely accurate has been debated by experts, which I'm not, so I'll have to defer to their consensus. Problem is, they haven't reached one. Its still a matter of argument about the nature of climate change. The fact is they're using data compiled from weather stations, satellites, or information proxies such as tree rings to provide estimates of temperature change. That means the available data is not accurate at all, and our sample stretches back no more than 4,000 years with proxy information or to the last few decades for the world-wide coverage of climate data. As we go further back, it becomes more difficult to extract reliable information. However, its clear from paleo-climatology that changes in the Earths climates are nothing new, and that we're only focusing on recent changes to guide our understanding.

 

Nonetheless, the long term history of Earth's climate has shown periods of change. Discounting the very earliest periods of Earth's past (whose atmosphere was quite unlike the one we breathe today) there are still long periods of relative stability. There have however been at least two, possibly more, colder periods which make the Ice Age look positively tame. The Ice Age itself was not a single event, but recurrent ebb and flow of glaciation with warm periods in between. In theory, thats where we are now - in a period of warmth before another glaciation which is estimated by some experts to be fifty thousand years away in the future.

 

These variations in climate change during the Ice Age are of interest. Although there's a tendency for temperature to settle at a given average level, this average rises and falls forming smaller periods of differing climate, such as the so-called 'Mini-Ice Age' of the 18th century, or the Medieval Warm Period. The fossil record in Britain also suggests that at least one inter-glacial period was warm enough to sustain animals we associate with modern Africa. In fact, evidence suggests that around ten or eleven thousand years ago the mean temperature in Britain rose seven degrees in fifteen years, causing catastrophic melting of glaciers and inundating the Doggerland Plains that now form the bed of the North Sea.

 

Clearly then, climate change can occur very quickly indeed - which is exactly the fear many people have of our own current situation. Obviously though these changes cannot be linked to human activity before our current industrialisation, urbanisation, and exponential population growth.

 

But there's a curiosity in this assumption that man is entirely to blame. With wartime production in the 1940's at its height, with thousands upon thousands of vehicles, ships, and planes, many of which employed large powerful engines without any form of ecological sensitivity, you might expect some rise in temperature as a result of a much higher concentration of greenhouse gas emission. No such rise occured, and in fact, the temperatures fell.

 

So perhaps we're guilty, perhaps we're not. The weather on our planet is driven and influenced by changes in the sun, possibly even interacting with the cosmic particles arriving here from the galaxy around us which ionise the air to promote cloud formation. The woobles on its axis too, the culprit behind our recent ice ages. Ultimately, this side of climate change is beyond our control. As yet, there's little if any real evidence that greenhouse gases have caused our recent upward temperature rise. Carbon dioxide is after all a gas that exists in Earths atmosphere naturally and for some previous ages in our four billion year history, the concentration of CO2 in the air was considerably greater than today. I also note the current rise in CO2 levels began long before the Ice Ages, thus the culpabillity of Humanity in causing this is suspect. Of course we contribute to thse levels with greenhouse emissions, but the percentage of these gases given off by us is not as great as compared to natural sources.

 

Part of the problem is and always will be is mans arrogance. Not toward his enviroment, but to his own place within it. The human mastery over nature is little more than self-aggrandisement. It is true we can now manipulate the enviroment to a small degree, or create our own, but what we cannot do is contain the forces that nature can force upon us. The evening news demonstrates this well with images of storm damage, tsunami's, forest fires, and volcanic activity. Our own success as a species has brought about a change in that we are becoming more specialised. We now build extensive and complex nest systems (we call them towns and cities) whose infrastructure is very vulnerable and often built in convenient but very vulnerable places. This means in Darwinian terms that we have adapted to be more succesful in our enviroment, but that we're now more dependent on that enviroment for continued success.

 

I must point out that the current upward trend in temperatures does not automatically mean the earth is heading for a greenhouse effect that will damage the planet irrevocably. With or without us, the Earth will carry on for another three or four billion years before conditions become impossible for life to continue.

Edited September 18, 2008 by caldrail