Global Warming - How Valid and Serious?

[Happy]

I would love to see some insulation improvements in building code.

It is not that long ago that roof insulation was optional in ACT region.

Next step? Double-glazed or even triple-glazed windows, maybe with non-metal frames.

Maybe water ponds specifically designed for heat collection in winter during sunny day and heat loss at night during summer.

Compulsory awnings and many more simple changes that make big difference.

 

[wayneL]

whatever.

speaking of investigative logic, I'll accept your position as given in your first post (#22) ... at least you are (or were then, whatever) in favour of action (I think)

My view has always been action on general pollution and environmental degradation, which will do more for the planet than freaking over co2.

How many times must I repeat that?

 

[nioka]

Could someone please send me a little of that surplus global warming. It is a very cold day here again today (for this area which boasts nice winters). There was a news item saying this month is the coldest on record. With electric heaters going full bore I'll need to plant a few more trees next week to lighten up my carbon footprint.

 

[Julia]

On the other hand, "carbon trading money" might "un-luckily" make the filthy rich richer and the desperately poor poorer - without having any significant effect in fighting global cooling or warming.....

Personally, I tend toward the latter viewpoint.

I agree, AJ. many people are already living below the poverty line now, e.g. old people not turning on heaters because they simply can't afford to pay the power bill. This is really happening. We should be so ashamed. And Mr Rudd is going to make it worse for these people.

 

[Julia]

Could someone please send me a little of that surplus global warming. It is a very cold day here again today (for this area which boasts nice winters). There was a news item saying this month is the coldest on record. With electric heaters going full bore I'll need to plant a few more trees next week to lighten up my carbon footprint.

And when you've had what you need of that global warming, Nioka, could you send the remainder up to Qld where also it has been unbelievably cold in the last couple of weeks. Almost every morning down to 3 or 4 degrees, and zero once! So much for the subtropics.

 

[wayneL]

I agree, AJ. many people are already living below the poverty line now, e.g. old people not turning on heaters because they simply can't afford to pay the power bill. This is really happening. We should be so ashamed. And Mr Rudd is going to make it worse for these people.

Julia,

It's interesting that those on the conservative side of politics are charged with social Darwinism, yet it's the Labo(u)r party that usually actually practices it.

The Labour party here is screwing over the virtuous poor big-time, in favour of the middle/upper middle classes (who just coincidently happen to be the swinging voters).

It's the conservatives who seem to "have a heart" these days who seem to at least spare a thought for the poor in their pork barreling exercises.

Hmmmmm.

 

[derty]

It's funny that people are saying their their winter have been exceptionally cold this year. Out in here in Kalgoorlie it has been the opposite. A very dry winter so far and warm. I have only used a little over 1 load of wood so far (usually 3-4), didn't light the fire until 2nd week of June and haven't had it lit for at least a week now (probably should have lit it last night though ). The deciduous tree in the back yard didn't lose it's leaves until mid June and already some of the wattles in the area are in flower.

Hopefully the summer will be as mild as the winter was.

 

[Aussiejeff]

It's funny that people are saying their their winter have been exceptionally cold this year. Out in here in Kalgoorlie it has been the opposite. A very dry winter so far and warm. I have only used a little over 1 load of wood so far (usually 3-4), didn't light the fire until 2nd week of June and haven't had it lit for at least a week now (probably should have lit it last night though ). The deciduous tree in the back yard didn't lose it's leaves until mid June and already some of the wattles in the area are in flower.

Hopefully the summer will be as mild as the winter was.

Shame on you Mr Derty Sandgroper for daring to be *different* to Eastern Staters! Why don't you just take a big mining pick and carve off WA, to set sail into the setting sun and leave us poor Croweaters, Cockroaches, Banana-Benders and Mexicans to bask in our misery?






aj

 

[Calliope]

Where I live it has been the coldest winter in my memory. If I had to pick between global warming and global cooling I would take the former. A lot of Southeners migrate to Southern Queensland and most of them are seeking the warmth. You rarely see Northern Australians coming south for the cold.

 

[Smurf1976]

A bit of warming would have been nice this winter. I've lost count of the number of times the car's been iced up in the morning. One day was so bad the whole place looked like it was covered in snow - but it was just frost.

Needless to say this is getting rather expensive in terms of heating. About 2.5 tonnes of wood used so far this year and still lighting the fire every day. And that's just to supplement the 6.4 MWh of electricity I've used just to run the electric heater (separate meter so the figure is spot on). That's about $1000 worth of heating since the beginning of the year and still counting. Thankfully it does seem to be getting slightly warmer now.

Still not raining much though. A bit lately but that's been the pattern - normal rain for a couple of weeks then back to the decade long drought.

 

[Julia]

A bit of warming would have been nice this winter. I've lost count of the number of times the car's been iced up in the morning. One day was so bad the whole place looked like it was covered in snow - but it was just frost.

Needless to say this is getting rather expensive in terms of heating. About 2.5 tonnes of wood used so far this year and still lighting the fire every day. And that's just to supplement the 6.4 MWh of electricity I've used just to run the electric heater (separate meter so the figure is spot on). That's about $1000 worth of heating since the beginning of the year and still counting. Thankfully it does seem to be getting slightly warmer now.

Still not raining much though. A bit lately but that's been the pattern - normal rain for a couple of weeks then back to the decade long drought.

Your post brings unpleasant reminders of winters in Christchurch, Smurf.
Perhaps you might be consoled a little to know that up here in Qld, four hours north of Brisbane we have had an overnight temp of zero, and every night in the last fortnight has been down to 3 or 4 degrees!
So, no, I hardly think we are experiencing global ****** warming!

 

[Calliope]

There have been very few posts on this thread recently on the Emissions Trading Scheme and yet the ETS is the Rudd government"s response to the global warming debate. Paul Kelly said in The Australian on Saturday "Any Australian climate change policy that seriously damaged our economy would be seen as a global and domestic failure, not a success."

Most contributors to Aussie Stock Forums, I imagine, couple the success of Australia's economy and our own future wellbeing to the success of our resources boom. Any down turn in energy and commodity prices recently has resulted in a downturn in the market. We should be fearful of any scenario which could put our extractive and export industries at risk.

And yet the Government must pander to five Green senators to have any chance of getting any legislation through the upper house. The Greens avowed policy is to bring the resources boom to its knees. They are opposed to the mining of coal in any form. They would close down the export of coal. The would stop coal-fired electrictity generation. They airily dismiss the spectre of thousand of workers being thrown out of jobs, by saying they could get jobs in renewable energy industries. The are not too keen on gas either even with its lower CO2 emissions.

How the government navigates its ETS program through the minefield between the realists and and the idealistic Greens will determine our future wellbeing.

 

[Smurf1976]

The Greens avowed policy is to bring the resources boom to its knees. They are opposed to the mining of coal in any form. They would close down the export of coal. The would stop coal-fired electrictity generation. They airily dismiss the spectre of thousand of workers being thrown out of jobs...

If we'd built / scrapped every specific project that environmentalists have wanted / opposed with energy over the past 40 years then we'd have less renewable energy, less gas-fired power, Loy Yang brown coal power station would be one third larger and Tassie would have a coal-fired plant and a mine in the middle of a National Park.

No, that's not some engineer's wet dream or the plans of some power company. It's the sum total of what environmentalists have asked for in relation to electricity generation. Hence why I'm not too keen on them.

 

[Calliope]

Following Qld Premier Bligh's decision to pander to the environmentalists and ban any new shale oil mines in the state, Greenpeace climate campaigner John Hepburn wants more. He said "soon she is going to have to make the tough decision to put the future of the state ahead of the vested interests of the coal lobby." He could have added... and ahead of the interests of those working in the coal mining and power industries. It is easy for pampered Greenspeace campaigners to put their selfish, holier than thou, interests ahead of the interests of working families. After all they are members of a very rich organisation which is funded by weathy organisations which have made their millions by ravaging the earth's resources in the past and are now seeking absolution.

 

[jonojpsg]

Regarding the cold weather at the moment, this has been a cold year, but from what I've read it is due mainly to a strong La Nina pattern being established which has a major cooling effect on the Pacific coast?

Still strongly in uptrend though when you look at moving averages over last thirty years. Actually its interesting that the sort of chart analysis that we do with shares isn't applied to global warming? If we take the same approach, then long term trend is up similar to sharemarket over last twenty years. The weather (global av temp) is obviously being dragged down by the big bad BEAR but will resume its upward march eventually IMO

 

[Pat]

A most interesting article...
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text

Could kill a few birds with one stone...

A black revolution might even help combat global warming. Agriculture accounts for more than one-eighth of humankind's production of greenhouse gases. Heavily plowed soil releases carbon dioxide as it exposes once buried organic matter. Sombroek argued that creating terra preta around the world would use so much carbon-rich charcoal that it could more than offset the release of soil carbon into the atmosphere. According to William I. Woods, a geographer and soil scientist at the University of Kansas, charcoal-rich terra preta has 10 or 20 times more carbon than typical tropical soils, and the carbon can be buried much deeper down. Rough calculations show that "the amount of carbon we can put into the soil is staggering," Woods says. Last year Cornell University soil scientist Johannes Lehmann estimated in Nature that simply converting residues from commercial forestry, fallow farm fields, and annual crops to charcoal could compensate for about a third of U.S. fossil-fuel emissions. Indeed, Lehmann and two colleagues have argued that humankind's use of fossil fuels worldwide could be wholly offset by storing carbon in terra preta nova.

 

[Julia]

Well, folks, enjoy your meat eating while you can. I heard a climate change enthusiast this morning advise that cows produce so much greenhouse gas that they are a decided hazard. He thought we should all become vegetarians.

We might as well just all stop breathing. That might save the planet.

 

[Pat]

Well, folks, enjoy your meat eating while you can. I heard a climate change enthusiast this morning advise that cows produce so much greenhouse gas that they are a decided hazard. He thought we should all become vegetarians.

We might as well just all stop breathing. That might save the planet.

I think a little improvement in 'green' energies here and there would suffice. No need to go to extremes. :
And... putting them into practice, eg. electric cars

 

[wayneL]

Well, folks, enjoy your meat eating while you can. I heard a climate change enthusiast this morning advise that cows produce so much greenhouse gas that they are a decided hazard. He thought we should all become vegetarians.

We might as well just all stop breathing. That might save the planet.

Actually the animals that creates the most methane by a LoOOOOOng way are...





















...ants!

Let's kill all ants, we'll all be saved!

 

[2020hindsight]

wayne,
But you're still in favour of action right ? (option c above)?