Program: The Great Global Warming Swindle

[Judd]

Planet Earth has been getting hotter and colder all by itself without any help from humans.

If you want to cool the Earth down, blow up a couple of huge volcano's or steer an asteroid into the Planet. It's worked in the past and I'm sure it'll work in again the future.

Planet Earth is a pretty dynamic place, it's always been changing and I suspect it will continue to keep changing regardless of what humans do...

Um, yes. Try Tombora, Indonesia, 1815. 150 times more powerful than Mt St Helens. Lots of Co2 and other greenhouse gases. Pity that it lowered the world's average temperature by about 1 degree and caused the loss of a few summers.

Climate change is an fact - heck, with some 10% of the earth still under ice you could argue that we are in the latter stages of an ice-age.

Global warming? Yep, I, like others, are concerned about toxic waste but to what degree it is adding to climate change I am still open to views.

 

[rederob]

Planet Earth has been getting hotter and colder all by itself without any help from humans.

If you want to cool the Earth down, blow up a couple of huge volcano's or steer an asteroid into the Planet. It's worked in the past and I'm sure it'll work in again the future.

Planet Earth is a pretty dynamic place, it's always been changing and I suspect it will continue to keep changing regardless of what humans do...

Yes
And these changes have been imperceptible at a "human generational" level.
That is no longer the case.
The clearing of the world's forests since the beginning of the industrial revolution have ratcheted the pace of global climate change to a new level.
It is a fallacy to suggest "human" impacts cannot influence climate change, and the decision to rid the world of chlorofluorocarbons (Montreal Protocol) is possibly the best recent demonstration of the good and bad we can do.
Volcanic and astronomic events are largely outside of our control, although the US is investing millions into researching near-Earth impact objects (NASA's Spaceguard Survey program).
If you want to remain ignorant to scientific evidence, because there is a smidgeon of doubt cast by loony disbelievers funded by Bush (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKJ2fu_Gluo) and the dirty energy protagonists, then by all means believe what you will.

 

[wayneL]

If the CO2 side is right, Oz seems to be in a spot of bother

http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2007/02/throw_another_aussie_on_the_ba_1.html

 

[billhill]

The difference between climate change now and in the past is that this time its happening more rapidly then ever. I think the evidence supports a warming earth at least in part due to human activities. Point is what happens if we ignore a possible threat and it eventually manifests. Personally i would rather be safe then sorry.

 

[Kimosabi]

And in the 60's - 70's they were worried about global cooling, crop failing etc...

 

[chops_a_must]

Yes
And these changes have been imperceptible at a "human generational" level.
That is no longer the case.
The clearing of the world's forests since the beginning of the industrial revolution have ratcheted the pace of global climate change to a new level.
It is a fallacy to suggest "human" impacts cannot influence climate change, and the decision to rid the world of chlorofluorocarbons (Montreal Protocol) is possibly the best recent demonstration of the good and bad we can do.

For the uneducated, there a few really important matters that need discussion. And a part of the argument in this area relates to fundamental problems in scientific method. Mainly, that of inductivist proclamations. Here, we have the main line of argument:

In that CO2 emissions have risen consistently with the global temperatures.

But here is a similar case:

Undoubtedly therefore, the attempt to reduce bullying has interfered with the natural selection process, and resulted in spiraling obesity in children. But this an absurd conclusion, when we take into account other issues. But it is the type of argument the global warming brigade has used.

And another spanner in the works:

Contrary to popular opinion, vegetation levels are actually increasing. It is one of the facts that has survived scrutiny from Bjørn Lomborg's work. Even my environmental studies lecturers don't dispute this (no matter how much it pains them to say so). What is in dispute, is how much O2 rubber and oil trees in SE Asia contribute to the atmosphere.

But to me this leads to an obvious conclusion. In that rising CO2 levels CANNOT be the ONLY contributing factor to global warming. Although, it obviously plays a part.

Cheers,

Chops.

 

[2020hindsight]

chops, wayne , all you sandgropers out there
great show on SBS tonight 8.30 - all about solar energy - fantassstic!!!

PS in 5 billionyears the sun will reach out and burn up the earth !!!

so much for generation ZZ (bags not being reincarnated then ).

PS Galileo knew that the sunspot activity worked around an 11 year cycle!!
I just learned that today lol.
(PPS even so, I suspect that the pope is still in denial lol)

 

[2020hindsight]

chops."here we have zis jumping flea. "ZHUMP" notice how he zhumps.... unt now I cut off his legs ... SHOP..now, "ZHUMP"... he no longer zhumps....
hence shentlemen, this proves zat when you cut off the legs , a flea is completely deaf"

 

[wayneL]

chops, wayne , all you sandgropers out there
great show on SBS tonight 8.30 - all about solar energy - fantassstic!!!

PS in 5 billionyears the sun will reach out and burn up the earth !!!

so much for generation ZZ (bags not being reincarnated then ).

PS Galileo knew that the sunspot activity worked around an 11 year cycle!!
I just learned that today lol.
(PPS even so, I suspect that the pope is still in denial lol)

This reminds me of another group of dissenting scientists; those that follow the theory of the electric universe.

A link on GW from them http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=8gfbewe7

 

[rederob]

Contrary to popular opinion, vegetation levels are actually increasing. It is one of the facts that has survived scrutiny from Bjørn Lomborg's work. Even my environmental studies lecturers don't dispute this (no matter how much it pains them to say so). What is in dispute, is how much O2 rubber and oil trees in SE Asia contribute to the atmosphere.

But to me this leads to an obvious conclusion. In that rising CO2 levels CANNOT be the ONLY contributing factor to global warming. Although, it obviously plays a part.

Cheers,

Chops.

Chops
It's a complex organism, is the Earth.
For example, the ice caps reflect an incredible amount of heat, and as they recede, the potential of the greater surface area of the oceans to "absorb" energy effectively doubles the heating mechanism from this event alone.
Additionally, although we cannot see the natural atmospheric barrier thinning, it is, thereby increasing the sun's radiation effects on the Earth's surface.
In relation to there being more "vegetation", compare that to there being less "forests": The carbon absorption potential of a forest is significantly greater than a vegetative crop, for example, after clearing.
The metaphoric black American in the woodpile is the extent that increased cloud cover through higher CO2 emissions prevents oceans from warming as greatly as they otherwise would. To date there are measurable instances (such as last summer over the Great Barrier Reef), but not on the global scale needed to make a meaningful impact.

 

[Smurf1976]

This topic has become so political that there's basically nobody left who isn't biased in some way either intentionally of by virtue of some personal vested interest.

Those doing government funded research can hardly come out and say that global warming doesn't exist. If enough people belived them then there goes research funding into climate change. Politicians aren't going to pump millions of $ into funding resarch into something that even the scientists are saying doesn't exist, especially when the notion that it does exist runs counter to so many other objectives.

On the other hand, those funded by the fossil fuel industry or major energy consumers have a strong incentive to downplay the seriousness of climate change or deny that it exists at all.

In reality, the truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle. It probably is a problem but not to the extent that the most dire predictions suggest.

Play it safe? The problem there is that, whilst scientifically sensible, it comes at the cost of not pursuing development in the poorer countries to the same extent that it would otherwise occur. Renewable energy generally costs more than fossil fuels, especially coal (though there are exceptions - mostly using waste biomass, remote solar etc applications, large scale hydro and in a few locations geothermal). If energy is more expensive then that in itself tends to reduce overall economic development and this comes at a massive social and human cost in the poorer countries where basics like clean food and water are still lacking (noting that fixing this will in practice require an increase in energy use).

As for me, I've done my own experiments in the lab (though they are by no means proof - they were fairly simplistic) and studied the theory. I believe that climate change is real and is happening now. But I don't think we can blame it for every drought, flood or cyclone when we have non-climate change valid explanations for such recent events (El Niño in the case of the past Summer's lack of rain in Australia). Climate change may have had an influence but it isn't likely to be the sole or even dominant cause and it's misleading at best for anyone to claim that it is.

One of the real issues with climate change that I have is that most research into it seems to ignore the effects of both global dimming and heat islands. There's just no point in measuring temperature anywhere near cities when we know they are artificially heated above background levels even without climate change. Many seem to conveniently ignore this. Likewise global dimming must surely have an impact even though there is a lack of certainty as to the extent. Ignorance or uncertainty is no excuse for sloppy reasearch producting dire conclusions, especially not when so much is potentially depending on that research.

The oil situation also attracts bias by its very nature although there are fewer strong incentives than with climate change and a narrower range of opinions.

Oil companies ultimately lose if the oil does dry up. Their incentive is to maintain high consumption as long as possible so all the oil is used. They thus have an incentive to deny that oil supplies will peak until it actually happens. After that, their incentive reverses to promoting peak oil as reality in order to justify rising prices and keep government hands off their profits, arguing that the money is needed to invest in expensive alternatives to conventional oil.

Oil consumers have much the same incentive prior to the peak. Deny that supplies will peak for as long as possible lest a panic start and the exporting countries increase the price. But once it actually happens, companies have an incentive to adapt as fast as possible to ensure long term profitability while governments have an incentive to deny that supplies have peaked lest that scare exporters into reducing production voluntarily and worsening the immediate crisis.

Of course, businesses promoting alternatives to oil do have an incentive to create panic although they are mostly pushing climate change (rather than fossil fuel shortages) at the moment since it achieves the same end result and is politically a more successful argument at present. That said, the Hydro in Tas did run the fossil fuel depletion argument periodically from the late 1950's to the early 1980's and even the Victorian brown coal industry (arguing that coal was far more plentiful than oil or gas) used it in the 70's so it's nothing new.

Technically valid arguments they certainly were, but those pushing them had an obvious bias toward alternatives and an incentive to overstate the urgency of the problem which in practice is just what they did. Ultimately right with the outcome (a finite resource must run out eventually if there is ongoing consumption) but far too early with the timing.

For those who have followed the oil situation for a while, and I first heard of peak oil in 1988, it is all falling disturbingly into place. Big oil starting to acknowledge the finite nature of oil rather than saying there's plenty. Surplus capacity close to zero. Discovery continues to trend down and consumption continues to trend up. Major importers moving to lock up supplies and exporters doing likewise. War in the Middle East. All the things we've been expecting for years and all happening now.

It is undeniable that the oil supply situation is a LOT tighter than it was 20 or even 5 years ago. And the gap between the optimists and pessimists is, with a couple of notable exceptions, frighteningly close. When oil companies start saying their primary resource will be delining in a decade and the pessimists say it already is then it seems we're damn close to hitting peak production. The point has arrived where outright denial no longer makes sense, hence the shifting in public position from some of the major oil companies in recent times.

IMO the most likely scenario is that we get seriously whacked over the head by oil within a decade and probably quite a bit sooner. Then we go down the "The Future Is Electric" track as far as we can plus a serious attempt at coal liquefaction and conversion of road vehicles to natural gas.

And the electricity will come from where? Back to nuclear, coal and some more big dams I expect with a modest contribution from alternatives, primarily wind and geothermal (on a global basis). In the Australian context we'll likely rely more on coal and geothermal and less on nuclear and new hydro than the rest of the world, but I do think we'll end up with some nuclear and a modest amount of new hydro.

 

[rederob]

This reminds me of another group of dissenting scientists; those that follow the theory of the electric universe.

A link on GW from them http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=8gfbewe7

Wayne
Excellent link.
Tesla is/was one of my "heros" and knew more about electricity than probably anyone to this day. Some of his demonstrated experiments remain a mystery to this day, while his patents led Marconi to commercialise "radio".

 

[wayneL]

Interesting program on SBS right now re sun spots and global temps. (WA)

No sun spots age in 18th century correlated to a "mini" ice age.

FWIW

<edit> 2020 posted about it earleir Doh!

 

[chops_a_must]

Chops
It's a complex organism, is the Earth.
For example, the ice caps reflect an incredible amount of heat, and as they recede, the potential of the greater surface area of the oceans to "absorb" energy effectively doubles the heating mechanism from this event alone.

Yes. But is this the result of greenhouse emissions or the result of the ozone layer being thinned over the poles?

Additionally, although we cannot see the natural atmospheric barrier thinning, it is, thereby increasing the sun's radiation effects on the Earth's surface.

Once again, this is a case of the chicken or the egg. Is the thinning of the atmosphere related to greenhouse gases, or other causes, thereby adding to warming?

In relation to there being more "vegetation", compare that to there being less "forests": The carbon absorption potential of a forest is significantly greater than a vegetative crop, for example, after clearing.

Yes, this is after clearing. But, if the number one premise of the greenhouse gas brigade is correct, we should be able to see a result.

The metaphoric black American in the woodpile is the extent that increased cloud cover through higher CO2 emissions prevents oceans from warming as greatly as they otherwise would. To date there are measurable instances (such as last summer over the Great Barrier Reef), but not on the global scale needed to make a meaningful impact.

Really? So cloudy nights are much colder than clear sky nights in Winter? WARM oceans create clouds, which feed on themselves such as in cyclones and hurricanes.

As for warming caused by mankind's production of so-called "greenhouse gases," Professor Nils-Axel Mörner wrote in a submission to the UK parliament on global warming, "The driving idea is that there is a linear relationship between CO2 increase in the atmosphere and global temperature. The fact, however, is that temperature has constantly gone up and down. From 1850 to 1970, we see an almost linear relationship with Solar variability; not CO2. For the last 30 years, our data sets are so contaminated by personal interpretations and personal choices that it is almost impossible to sort up the mess in reliable and unreliable data."

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=8gfbewe7

See my post above.

Cheers.

 

[Kimosabi]

Interesting program on SBS right now re sun spots and global temps. (WA)

No sun spots age in 18th century correlated to a "mini" ice age.

FWIW

<edit> 2020 posted about it earleir Doh!

I'm filling out the "Stop Sun Spots" grant application at the moment and will send it into the Government Tomorrow morning...

 

[rederob]

Originally Posted by chops_a_must
Really? So cloudy nights are much colder than clear sky nights in Winter? WARM oceans create clouds, which feed on themselves such as in cyclones and hurricanes.

Chops
Interpreting a broad statement in a specific and silly context is not good analysis.
Cloud cover at night has many opposite effects to cloud cover at day, and these differ over land and sea.
Warm oceans, of themselves, do not, as you say, "create clouds". There are many mechanisms that come together to cause clouds to form. were that not the case we would have a bit of trouble with rainfall in Central Asia, and snows in the cold arctic regions.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt here, but if you don't want to do the research, take care not to obviously misinterpret events you don't understand well.

 

[Prospector]

Planet Earth has been getting hotter and colder all by itself without any help from humans.

If you want to cool the Earth down, blow up a couple of huge volcano's or steer an asteroid into the Planet. It's worked in the past and I'm sure it'll work in again the future.

Planet Earth is a pretty dynamic place, it's always been changing and I suspect it will continue to keep changing regardless of what humans do...

Exactly my thoughts too! If all of time is considered to be 1 hour, humans have been on this earth for the last few seconds. So where were we before the dinosaurs? The earth was in a naturally occurring warming cycle for thousands of years until the meteors hit to cool it all down. We are so arrogant that we even think we are responsible for global warming? Mother nature will have the last laugh.....

Oh, and you must read 'The Australian' from the last weekend.

 

[2020hindsight]

PS in 5 billionyears the sun will reach out and burn up the earth - so much for generation ZZ (bags not being reincarnated then )

"so much for the news, and now for tomorrow's forecast
chance of scattered showers in the morning, possibly overcast till lunch, then in the afternoon the sun will fry everything in sight. Now for Shirley Bassey with that old favourite from a few centuries back "fry me to the moon and let me play among the stars".

 

[Happy]

Interesting program on SBS right now re sun spots and global temps. (WA)

No sun spots age in 18th century correlated to a "mini" ice age.

FWIW

<edit> 2020 posted about it earleir Doh!

And we have roughly 5 billion years to find another habitable Solar system, as our Sun if will not swallow up the Earth while expanding will definitely kill all life, of course if it lasts that long.

 

[Rafa]

Exactly my thoughts too! If all of time is considered to be 1 hour, humans have been on this earth for the last few seconds. So where were we before the dinosaurs? The earth was in a naturally occurring warming cycle for thousands of years until the meteors hit to cool it all down. We are so arrogant that we even think we are responsible for global warming? Mother nature will have the last laugh.....

well said Prospector... as always...
This global warming movement is simply a new age religious institution, filling a spritual void in peoples lives...

Someone is getting very rich from all this. (EDIT... At the moment its the Nuclear lobby... )

I have no doubt that pollution is a problem, some doubt that CO2 is the problems, especially when you consider methane (the stuff emitted by humans and animals and forests) of which there are now record numbers, is a lot lot worse than CO2.

But, if this religious movement helps put the brakes on our unprecedented love affair with continuos growth, etc, etc... it may be a good thing in the long run...