More grist for the mill, this time from unleashed.
David P, if you want to discuss some particular aspect of global warming you are having trouble with can you please submit a concise summary of your thoughts?
Hi Dave,
If I may substitute “climate change” for “global warming”, I don’t think I’m having trouble with climate change, I’ve known it all my life. My “trouble” is this: I’m a sceptic about the notion of anthropomorphic induced CO2 climate change - pure and simple.
I undertook a study of the issue around the time of 4th IPCC report which may be found here. I continue to read, collect articles, etc.
My position hasn’t really changed from that evident from p23 on in my paper.
My concern is that Governments in setting to solve a nonexistent problem, (and if it did exist they can do nothing substantial to resolve it - if we are talking the Australian Government), will do great damage to the Australian and World economies and when that happens poor people are the ones to suffer.
This doesn’t mean to say that we shouldn’t try to move to cleaner fuels, more fuel efficient technologies, outlaw 4 wheel drives, develop carbon capture and storage, move to nuclear power, etc. We should and anything to reduce dependence on ME oil has got to be a good thing.
I suppose I also think people are being deliberately misled over climate change and that makes me very cranky.
Sorry David, but it’s the same tired old recycled myths. I thought scientific theories were supposed to develop and evolve? The real climate science shows this evolution and refinement. The sceptics just trot out the same tired old clichés with religious dogma attached to them. EG:
Watch Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth carefully. The only reason he presents for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming is the old ice core data.
Utter rubbish. This person must have been watching a different movie, because in the movie I saw Al Gore clearly explained the BASIC PHYSICS of how Co2 works in the atmosphere. This is not based on any historical data, ice sheets, tree rings, or other long term climate trend… but on spectrometers. You get some Co2 in a lab, zap it with different energy wavelengths and measure what happens. It’s all done in a lab with scientists in white lab coats, machines that go ping, and everything! In other words, how do they get that Co2 has one level of forcing, methane 21 times worse, nitrous oxide 310 times more powerful than Co2… by counting ice-core samples? No. It’s precise, repeatable, testable physics that they can show you in a lab. Not only that, they can measure the amount of Co2 in an atmosphere and give you fairly precise indication of how much more energy there is… and it works out to be about 3 little Christmas tree lights per cubic meter of atmosphere that we are responsible for adding. Not much extra energy, but when spread over this vast planet it’s quite significant.
The sceptics would have us believe it’s based on some whacked out historical theory about ice-ages that can oh-so-easily be proved wrong if we just listened to — well, not the climate experts of course — but our own common sense.
It’s the same tactic used by 9/11 conspiracy theorists asking us to believe the Pentagon was hit by one of their own missiles instead of a plane. Because, I’m an air-crash inspector and know the ‘common sense’ behind when a plane ploughs into the side of a reinforced military grade building? I know what to look for, especially when guided by their oh-so not leading questions.
Anyway, Al Gore made a mistake over-simplifying the ice-age and Co2 link, I’ll give you that. There IS a link, but as the former head of the IPCC (a Christian, did you know?) will tell you he’s never used the ice ages to prove what Co2 does! (I remember mistakenly thinking WOW, THAT ICE CORE GRAPH PROVES IT! But that’s the fault of Al Gore oversimplifying the science.)
This myth is straight out of ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ and has been debunked repeatedly by climate change experts. I’ve even written pieces on it! Al Gore dumbed down the science for the sake of a lay audience, because ultimately Co2 DOES play a role in the extent of the warming and cooling that occurs over these cycles. I won’t bore other readers with the technical reasons why, but to sum it up very quickly those longer term climate forcings run like this.
1. The earth wobbles every 100 thousand years (Milankovitch cycles).
2. Wobble affects sunlight & global heat energy either up or down (going into or out of the ‘glacial period’)
3. Changes temperature which might warm planet, releasing more Co2 (which was trapped under ice), which amplifies the effect.
Summary: It is amazing to think that natural Co2 variations even contribute to the enormously powerful Milankovitch forcings.
More from New Scientist magazine.
The science remains intact.
What I need to know is if this is some sort of conspiracy of misinformation, who’s running the show? I repeat, the former head of the IPCC is a Christian. Is he in on it? Is his Christianity fake, just to appeal to Christian greenies like myself? How far and wide does this conspiracy go?
Because if it is a conspiracy of misinformation, it’s up there with evolution, the USA government orchestrating 9/11, Roswell, and the Moon Landing (that never happened of course!) ;-)
Here is a little example of how ludicrous the whole global warming charade is.
From an article in the Saturday Age, 9th Aug:
RISING temperatures are likely to bring increased levels of violence to Melbourne by 2010, and are highly likely to by 2030, a report being considered by the city council finds.
A climate change risk assessment says increased temperatures are expected to exacerbate the relationship between hot weather, violence and anti-social behaviour.
Fortunately someone asked the police what they thought about it all
The report also says Victorian police acknowledge the need to prepare for increased violence in hotter conditions.
But a police spokesman said considering the effect of climate change was not a priority for the force.
“Drug, alcohol and youth related violence are our main concerns at this time, they form the focus of our attention in reducing violence,” he said.
“The possible effect of global warming is well down the list of priorities at this time.”
Fortunately in making the prediction for 2010, most of us will be around to make the assessment, and because all these predictions have to be vindicated, at some stage the hot air balloon will be pricked.
I am not opposed to Governments taking seriously the threat of global warming (indeed favour them doing so), provided they act cautiously with a two eyed stance. What doesn’t help is exaggeration, misrepresention, hysteria, selective reporting - but judgment will come, time will tell. Will the emperor have clothes or not?
I think I need another label for another common straw-man? Let’s see, I’ve already done the “Absolute Correlation Strawman"… I need a quick and handy label for the following straw-man.
“The truth of a movement can always be evaluated by the nutty fringe elements of the movement.”
Of course, no Christians have ever made whacky predictions. At least we’re safe from that particular test. Oh, wait…
Meanwhile, have you still got anything against the basic physics of Co2 warming the planet?
I’m not that worried about increased violence in Melbourne — but I am concerned for the poor (where according to WHO 200 thousand people are already supposed to be dying directly from Global Warming), I’m concerned about glacial retreat in Central Asia resulting in a BILLION people losing summer melt-water and crops in the coming decades, I’m concerned about shrinking biodiversity and handing a poorer planet onto our children, I’m concerned about mismanaging God’s world. But we can forget about all this because some nutters in Melbourne said something silly…
Here is a little example of how ludicrous the whole global warming charade is.....
Hi David P,
Is this also ludicrous - or just ‘thinking outside the square’ ?
Kangaroo farming would cut greenhouse gases: study
Thu Aug 7, 2008
By Michael Perry
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Farming kangaroos instead of sheep and cattle in Australia could cut by almost a quarter the greenhouse gases produced by grazing livestock, which account for 11 percent of the nation’s annual emissions, said a new study.
Removing seven million cattle and 36 million sheep by 2020 and replacing them with 175 million kangaroos, to produce the same amount of meat, could lower national greenhouse gases by 3 percent a year, said the University of New South Wales study.
Methane from the foregut of cattle and sheep constitutes 11 percent of Australia’s total greenhouse emissions, but kangaroos produce negligible amounts of methane, said the study.
The study said methane was a principal concern in climate change because more than 500 million metric tons of the gas entered the atmosphere annually, which exceeds the amount that can be naturally removed.
Methane’s warming potential over a 100-year time frame is 21 times higher than that of carbon dioxide, but its chemical lifetime in the atmosphere is only 8 to 12 years compared with carbon dioxide’s 100 years.
“Therefore, reducing methane production is an attractive short-term target for mitigating global warming,” said the study published in the latest edition of the international journal “Conservation Letters”...............
Hmmmm, yummy, kangaroo. I still remember the way the Rustic Cafe in Surry Hills used to serve it. Ahhh, those were the days.
However, why is this silly? IF the basic physics of Co2 and methane (21 times more powerful) actually DO warm the planet, and actually DO kill 200 thousand people a year, and actually DO make El Nino seasons even worse, more prolonged droughts hitting Australia, then surely it’s up to every nation to do their bit.
David P has mentioned concerns about our nation suffering economically if we go ahead first, but I take the other view that with the solar and wind jobs moving to Germany and China, we’ve got to get in now or be left behind. Besides, why should oil, coal and gas still get the 10’s of billions of dollars in subsidies they currently enjoy (just in Australia alone!?) If we pumped that into renewables we’d eventually be energy independent, instead of the ever increasing import of oil.
We’ve got to support renewables because:
1. Global warming is simply true
2. We’re running out of the non-renewables… that’s why they’re not called renewable.
It is well known that cattle and sheep and other agricultural interests in Australia produce more GHG than transport - that is not a ludicrous statement it is factual.
If necessary I suppose we could kill off the cattle and sheep industries but then what will we do for milk (goats are fairly flatulent?) and a replacement for wool - walk around in Kangaroo skins(?) and what might the animal rights people have to say about the scheme - so maybe this proposal is ludicrous?
As far as Dave
but I am concerned for the poor (where according to WHO 200 thousand people are already supposed to be dying directly from Global Warming), I’m concerned about glacial retreat in Central Asia resulting in a BILLION people losing summer melt-water and crops in the coming decades, I’m concerned about shrinking biodiversity and handing a poorer planet onto our children, I’m concerned about mismanaging God’s world.
I think this is way over the top, hysterical is not too strong a word.
Far more people die of the cold than from the heat unless you’re elderly and left to roast in your Parisian flat w/o air conditioning while your children take their a summer holiday by the sea.
As I said earlier, I’m not opposed to Governments promoting research into alternative fuels, putting in nuclear energy and the like, but I think Australia should be cautious - we are strictly bit players in this game, and frankly if it doesn’t start to warm again within the next 5+ years, the current science has a lot to answer for. I will be on your number Dave.
As I say let’s wait and see and pray that the politicians don’t make a mess of the economy and bring on another depression. As I have written previously, if global warming continues for whatever reason, not just CO2, then the name of the game will be adaptation, something humans have historically proved wonderfully suited to.
Those glaciers are retreating, serious people with multiple Phd’s in this stuff are raising the alarm, multiple reports are confirming the risk, and WHO — not me — states that 200 thousand die each from global warming. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t make the facts go away, OK? It’s about time right-wing Christians stopped thinking of Global Warming as some ‘Greenie fad that will pass when they grow up — along with their university dreadlocks’, and start to see that the serious scientists are sometimes the ones raising more alarm than the hippies.
The reason the climatologists are jumping up and down about it David P is the real warming hasn’t even started yet. Another 1.5 or 2 degrees, and because the energy is not spread evenly across the planet but concentrates in the north, we’ll have Siberian and Canadian permafrosts ready to melt. When that happens we’ve lost… natural feedbacks will take over, and together they’ll dwarf anything we’ve done so far.
Human Co2 nudges a small snowball down the hill. The natural systems can gather it into a global avalanche. Some economies might adapt, but it’ll be those with the money and capital to do so, and who already have significant headway into the renewable energy business. (Because don’t forget, peak oil and gas are on their way. Nearly $150 and we haven’t even hit peak yet, let alone the permanent decline curve). So it will be nations that are half way there, are not too devastated by peak oil and gas, and whose ecological systems and farmlands are not too devastated.
Old assumptions about resources western nations take for granted will change. Water-wars are possible. This stuff is for real, and as a result there are real Christian responsibilities. Avoiding it by whining about Al Gore just ain’t going to cut it I’m afraid.
We’ve got to support renewables because:
1. Global warming is simply true
2. We’re running out of the non-renewables… that’s why they’re not called renewable.
Re point 1: we can express this a little better I think.
1. Climate change is simply true.
Regarding global temperature we can say this (and being British at heart I work with the Hadley centre combined land and marine data):
1. through the second half of the 19th C up to around 1910 global temperature was stable,
2. between 1910 and 1940 it went up by 0.4 degrees C,
3. then was more or less stable up to 1980
4. when it started to increase again, rising by a further 0.4 degree C,
5. to pause again around 2000 -
what no one knows for sure is a) if and when it will resume an upward trend and b) what is driving temperature. Historically across the centuries of time we know that there have been far greater temperature shifts up AND down.
Re point 2:
Yes, we are running down renewables - and in my opinion the sooner we break free of dependence upon the ME the better though I have to say that when they run out of oil they have massive reservoirs of LNG, however coal has quite a few centuries to go before running out and as for nuclear I don’t know the figures, but there is no shortage of uranium, and goodness me we mine it to sell it for nuclear power all over the world.
I agree about research into renewables, but they are not without well known difficulties, and please I don’t want a wind farm near me. Please, you can keep the windfarms up in Sydney - I reckon you could put at least 1,000 turbines around the harbour, starting at Palm Beach, working down the beaches, 20 would look good at Newport, at least 30 for Manly, more at North Head to greet all the maxi liners, work around, up the Harbour, I can see everyone drooling over them, and back to South Head, down to Bondi, at least 15 turbines there. To improve the aesthetics, I think the towers could be painted in the full range of psychedelic colours, lovely spirals, maybe some tasteful graffiti - should look great, but Sydney please, not Melbourne.
We’ve got to support renewables because:
1. Global warming is simply true
2. We’re running out of the non-renewables… that’s why they’re not called renewable.
Re point 1: we can express this a little better I think.
1. Climate change is simply true.
Regarding global temperature we can say this (and being British at heart I work with the Hadley centre combined land and marine data):
1. through the second half of the 19th C up to around 1910 global temperature was stable,
2. between 1910 and 1940 it went up by 0.4 degrees C,
3. then was more or less stable up to 1980
4. when it started to increase again, rising by a further 0.4 degree C,
Tick
5. to pause again around 2000 -
Cross — No, 12 of the last 13 years are the hottest on record. How is that ‘pausing’? 2005 equalled 1998. There’s no downward trend. Also, read Tim Flannery for ‘magic gates’. Silly name, serious climate concept for pauses in momentum.
what no one knows for sure is a) if and when it will resume an upward trend and b) what is driving temperature. Historically across the centuries of time we know that there have been far greater temperature shifts up AND down.
Sorry, this is where I’m going to have to fail you. Just because you don’t know why climate is changing, doesn’t necessitate the world climate community not knowing why climate changes, OK?
As I understand the climatologists at this stage, before WW2 there were some natural rhythms. Post WW2 a massive wave of industrialisation rapidly increased Co2 which would have increased Co2 concordantly but for the fact that climate is a mix of forcings. The post-WW2 coal was dirty and caused acid rain and Global Dimming. So it masked the effects of Global Warming until clean coal scrubbers were installed, then the human climate forcing became more evident.
You cannot just assert we don’t know why something occurs when the climate community are united on this David P. You need to supply some evidence that they don’t know — because EVERY PEER REVIEWED PAPER says they do (within certain very small margins of error). For all intensive purposes, your assertions above are just not true. The experts we rely on in this field say really do say they understood what has driven the temperature trends you mention.
Re point 2:
Yes, we are running down renewables
I think you meant non-renewables, the fossil fuels…
- and in my opinion the sooner we break free of dependence upon the ME the better
Agreed.
though I have to say that when they run out of oil they have massive reservoirs of LNG
We have LNG we can use for a while in Australia, if we are prepared to renege on selling it dirt cheap overseas on the decade long energy contracts we’ve got into with China.
however coal has quite a few centuries to go before running out and as for nuclear I don’t know the figures, but there is no shortage of uranium, and goodness me we mine it to sell it for nuclear power all over the world.
Try not to think ‘running out’ but ‘peaking’. Coal could peak anywhere from 2025 to mid century. We simply cannot continue to exponentially increase coal use and expect to be able to draw it out of the ground at the same phenomenal increasing rate each and every year. Rates of extraction will peak and then begin to decline, sooner than people think.
As for nuclear, peak uranium would hit before we could build the power plants to run 20% of the world’s electricity, let alone using it to generate hydrogen for our liquid fuels problem.
I agree about research into renewables, but they are not without well known difficulties,
Solved
and please I don’t want a wind farm near me.
Wind, or an empty groceries store? NIMBY’s are going to have to make a choice one day.
Please, you can keep the windfarms up in Sydney - I reckon you could put at least 1,000 turbines around the harbour, starting at Palm Beach, working down the beaches, 20 would look good at Newport, at least 30 for Manly, more at North Head to greet all the maxi liners, work around, up the Harbour, I can see everyone drooling over them, and back to South Head, down to Bondi, at least 15 turbines there. To improve the aesthetics, I think the towers could be painted in the full range of psychedelic colours, lovely spirals, maybe some tasteful graffiti - should look great, but Sydney please, not Melbourne.
We could but then there’s sub-surface CETO wave power that’s 24/7 baseload and can switch to desal overnight. 700 hectares off our coast is all Sydney’s water! 2000 hectares is all our water AND all our electricity!
60% of the world population live within 40km of the coast. If we ramp up CETO exponentially, economies of scale could potentially make it the cheapest source of electricity we know AND solve the world’s urban water problems. (But not agriculture… that’s a LOT more water!)
Sorry for double posting, but I just had to add this comment.
Historically across the centuries of time we know that there have been far greater temperature shifts up AND down.
This is simply not what the scientists are saying. Temperatures haven’t increased this far this fast in over a million years. The myth that climate moved faster or higher a few centuries ago has been disproved many a time. Again, the Medieval Warm Period in Europe may have actually been a local warming event that occurred because global climate actually cooled a little! (Weird and counter-intuitive I know, but some models show patchy local climate systems resulting as the stratosphere cooled).
However, this doesn’t mean I admit defeat - as I say, time will tell.
By the way just for the record I am an engineer by background and this response
Dave Lankshear - 09 August 2008 03:51 PM
I agree about research into renewables, but they are not without well known difficulties,
Solved
is unsubstantiated nonsense. Possibilities are never certainties.
You make assertions about coal and uranium production peaking rather soon and I’m sceptical that you are correct. I remember back in the late 1960’s oil only had a few more decades before running out. What is your source of information to back up your assertion?
Also I rather thought the Roman empire period, a period I might add noted for high levels of human induced CO2 emissions, was as hot if not hotter than today - as I recalll a kilometre long ice core extracted from the Greenland glacier gave some scientific support to this view.
However, Dave, I’m a simple fellow with a broad range of interests and I propose to keep my eye on these graphs. Scientists come up with all kinds of fanciful things, but it is engineers who have to make things work, which means they need to keep very close to reality, not fanciful speculations which may or may not eventuate.
If the graph resumes an upward trend in the next 5 years, I’m with you, even come up to Sydney to admire all the wind turbines and take you to lunch, but if it remains flat or actually turns down, I’ll let you know about it big time.
When I was 11 (a long, long, loooooooong) time ago, we went on a school excursion to the Yallourn Power Station. I still remember being horrified at the thick, acrid, black smoke emanating from the chimneys. Back in the late ‘70s when my Uni friends were fearing a nuclear (or ‘nuculer’ as GWB says) nightmare, I warned them that the long term effects of conventional power stations, and vehicle emissions would prove far more deadly.
Just call me Cassandra.
Whils’t you seem to appreciate that human activity is having a significant effect on atmospheric conditions, I think you’re naively downplaying what will be the inevitable social chaos that will result from significant climate change.
And Dave,
sad to say that I think you’re naive to believe to that we (the World Community) can actually do something to prevent it.
The Die is Cast
I am worried - Not for us, or even so much our children - but our children’s children’s children’s…
But I am not advocating despair.
Rather we need to focus on self-sustaining communities…
and the colonization of outer space.
Finally David revealed:
...I’m girding myself up for an foray into atheism.
David?
You’re becoming an atheist?
...
(Picks self off floor)
;-p
Rob
PS ‘Go Doggies!’ Since Matty Lloyd took ‘Mark of the Year’ and we beat Collingwood, I’m happy enough to put my full support behind what I truly hope will be ‘The Year of the Dog’*
Cool Dave P, understood. I wish you well in your quest to understand and respond to the ‘New Atheists’. But one day check out my blog ‘Solutions’ pages because I understand there are some issues with solar thermal, wind, etc… and they’re NOT liquid fuels (not going to replace oil any time soon) but at least they look like they could keep now keep the grid running 24/7.
Rob, I understand that fatalism and have felt it myself, especially after briefing politicians on peak oil and seeing exactly nothing happen to turn societal trends around or warn people. And who knows? New car battery technologies are proving exciting, and there’s even the possibility of a scalable super capacitor electric car that almost behaves like oil? I wouldn’t know… Dave P is more technical than I am and might one day be able to comment on the technical feasibility of EV’s any time soon.
It doesn’t solve a bunch of other peak oil and climate change problems, but solving these will be a mix of many little factors, not one ‘silver bullet’. (Especially how we’re going to freight goods around this country when 97% of our food, components, and stuff is freighted by truck, not rail!)
Another hint: If you want to fly somewhere, do it in the next 5 years.
Finally I want to acknowledge that while the climate scientists seem to have a consistent set of explanations for climate up to this point, I’m hoping their projections are wrong because of the x factor, the unknown. Climate science has thrown us a few surprises — and I’m just hoping the Gordo “we don’t know the future” line works in our favour. The science seems pretty solid so far, but just imagine we wake up in a few years, the permafrost is melting and the methane’s all escaped, and the climatologists are waiting for WW3 equivalent droughts and climate chaos, only to discover.... the X factor in climate science! The hereto unknown climate mechanism that acts as a ‘short circuit’ to serious anthropogenic warming.
That thought sometimes comforts me at night (as well as my Christian worldview of course! ;-) Because for all the talk and all the improvements in solar and wind technology, those global Co2 emissions are still going up.
