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Resisting Climate Hysteria

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Increased cloud??????? I have been looking around for the past 80 years....nothing has changed in my time.....sounds like all woop woop belong bulla ma cow.
 

I think blind freddy is changing the story ad hoc.
 
Here's my theory on it and it comes down to coal. Not CO2, but coal as such.

In developed countries coal is really only used in 3 situations. Power stations (by far the largest use), steel works (second largest) and large factories (things like cement works, smelters etc).

A key point there is that these facilities, with very few exceptions these days, have electrostatic precipitators and/or fabric filters to remove 99%+ of particles that would otherwise go up the stack. In most cases there are also fairly strict limits on sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions - either they are using coal with a low sulphur content (generally the case in Australia) or have equipment to remove the sulphur on site.

In developed countries there is very little use of coal for heating homes etc. And what little is used, is in most cases either naturally rather clean (anthracite coal) or is a manufactured "smokeless" fuel.

Coal use in developed countries hasn't changed a lot over the past 15 or so years. A bit of growth here, a bit of decline there, but no huge change overall. Meanwhile global coal use has risen 65% since the year 2000 with China alone accounting for around 70% of that increase. India accounts for 8% of the increase. All other countries combined account for the remaining 22% of the rise.

But a look at air quality in China reveals that quite obviously they don't have the same level of particulate and SO2 control on coal combustion that we have in Australia (for example). Indeed they use coal not only a power stations etc where such controls are practical (but not always fitted) but also at millions of smaller facilities (including individual homes) where pollution controls are completely impractical to implement. Hence the "brown cloud" of smog.

Go back to 2000 and the accepted explanation for global temperatures not rising between about 1950 and 1975 related to "dirt" going into the atmpsphere and in particular sulphur which reflects sunlight.

Well guess what? The earth appears to have again stopped warming at the same time as a huge rise in coal use in China and the associated emission of SO2 and particles.

In the long term CO2 may well increase temperature. But SO2 and particles have a much shorter life in the atmosphere, such that it current activity directly determines their concentration (ie stop burning coal tomorrow and the levels of SO2 and particles will fall a lot faster than CO2 would). The short term effect of coal use with minimal pollution controls is thus to reduce temperature until such time as the increasing CO2 offsets the effect of SO2 and particles.

I'm not putting this forward a proven theory. It's just my own thoughts although it is based on past research of others regarding SO2 and other visible ("smoke") pollution and the effect it has of reflecting sunlight.

Note that my comments about China aren't intended to be in any way racist etc. I'd be saying the exact same thing if it were Australia, the US, UK or anywhere else that had the same set of circumstances. But nobody would deny that China is burning a huge amount of coal now, and that the amount used has greatly increased in recent years. And the Chinese themselves are all too aware of air pollution issues caused by it.

Coal production figures for China and (rest of world excluding China) as follows. Figures are billions of tonnes.

1999 = 1.46 (3.57)
2000 = 1.51 (3.63)
2001 = 1.63 (3.76)
2002 = 1.72 (3.72)
2003 = 1.95 (3.81)
2004 = 2.13 (3.93)
2005 = 2.48 (4.06)
2006 = 2.65 (4.23)
2007 = 2.84 (4.31)
2008 = 3.02 (4.39)
2009 = 3.30 (4.36)
2010 = 3.51 (4.44)
2011 = 3.84 (4.62)
 
I like that theory Smurf. I mean the pollution sometimes gets to Malaysia.

So if the Chinese clean up their act, we all get cooked!
 

Setting aside the fact that your post was intelligent, well constructed and plausible - there was no 'computer modelling which involved perametres/variables set by humans - which means you are just a dirty stinking climate change denier......
 
Brendan O'Neill nailed it in my view: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/...raldsun/comments/in_praise_of_george_brandis/ (My bolds)

 
noco said:
Logique, What you are saying is the way communism works.....suppress all opposition...control
the media.
Click to expand...

This is also the modus operandi of the Greenies comrades.....They want to govern the world through Bank-ki- Moon and the united nations.
 
My personal opinion, having read a lot on the subject and even gone as far as conducting my own lab experiments, is that increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is likely to result in a change in climate with that change likely to be a warming of surface temperatures.

That said, the way the debate was conducted in recent times has a lot to do with the public's apparent loss of interest in the subject. Go back to 2008 and it was everywhere - you couldn't watch TV or read a newspaper without hearing about climate change and most surveys showed that Australians wanted action on the subject. But look at it today - there is still a core group of individuals who are concerned but the issue has lost prominence overall.

If someone claims that something is "proven" then it's reasonable to expect that this can be demonstrated in some practical way.

I can "prove" that drinking beer leads to a rise in blood alcohol concentration in humans, that is beyond doubt. If anyone does doubt it, then all you need to do is drink some beer and have a blood test for alcohol.

I can "prove" that water falling down a hill inside a penstock can drive a turbine and generate large amounts of electricity. Should anyone doubt this then there are plenty of such plants in existence for you to have a look at and see for yourself, and at least one of them does regular public tours inside.

I can prove that driving any ordinary car into a concrete barrier at 100km/h results in major damage occurring to the car. Should you doubt this, just find yourself a concrete barrier and drive straight into it. Or watch film of others doing it for vehicle testing purposes etc.

The above are all easy to demonstrate concepts and can thus be considered "proven". Drinking beer raises blood alcohol concentration. Hydro is a practical means of generating electricity. Driving cars into concrete barriers leads to destruction. These are all easy to prove, real concepts and can be considered "settled" and "beyond doubt".

But can anyone actually "prove" that burning coal leads to a change in climate? Not really. We can prove that burning coal emits CO2 (easy to prove in a lab and well accepted as fact in terms of the practical aspects of using coal) but so far as the climate is concerned all we have is a theory backed with some lab experiments and computer modelling - it's not something we can "prove" as such.

We aren't even certain that emitting CO2 from coal directly raises the atmospheric concentration of it - logic says that it would, but this is complicated by natural processes that we don't fully understand. So far as us humans have been able to work out, it's not a 1:1 relationship or anything close to it between emissions of CO2 and atmospheric concentration. So again, we can only theorise that putting CO2 into the atmosphere leads to a rise in CO2 concentration globally - it's in the "theory says it would, but we're not certain in practice" category.

As such nobody can honestly say that anything is "proven" so far as burning coal and the world's climate is concerned. There is a plausible theory but it is not "settled" by any means.

As with any sensible person, I'm willing to accept new ideas. But when someone claims that a theory which cannot be demonstrated in practice with real data is "proven" or "settled" then I know they are telling lies. The theory may or may not be right, but the claim that it is "proven" most certainly isn't.

Do that often enough and slowly but surely, more and more people spot the lie and dismiss the argument as not being important. People don't like effectively being told to stop thinking and just "trust me" - and that's basically what was being said with the "science is settled" argument.

Throw in the "dams will never fill again" type claims, which in reality were more about a "no dams" argument (ie build desalination and gas-fired power instead, ironically using more fossil fuels) rather than anything to do with the climate, and it's not hard to see why the issue has slipped down the agenda.
 
wayneL said:
I think blind freddy is changing the story ad hoc.
Click to expand...

Where are you coming from here?

Like most denying folk you like talking in riddles (ridicule), anything to confuse the emerging truth.
 
denying folk like me....

You know plod, you have no honour nor dignity.
 
wayneL said:
denying folk like me....

You know plod, you have no honour nor dignity.
Click to expand...

You beat about the bush on it to some degree but you do deny that the burning of fossill fuels is leading to ecological disaster.


Your comment is not only rubbish but very nasty.

I have formed views on a lot of direct experience with nature and as a farm boy, the tales of older codgers who knew the weather as it effected thier livelihood. And 20 years ago into real focus on such subject when Bob Brown saved trees in Tasmania.

It is clear that the current fossill fuel burning must be causing a danger. Surely even you should accept that we should at least have two bob each way and so investigate other ways to generate energy etc.

Picking the man is not productive to debate on such an important issue.

I cannot understand how this site can continue to survive when such distractive approaches are maintained.
 
explod said:
Picking the man is not productive to debate on such an important issue.
Click to expand...

I'd argue that playing the man isn't productive in any debate.

Back to climate change and CO2, I used to think that we could solve this but my view changed about a decade ago and here's why.

Energy use is fundamentally linked to real (as distinct from financial transactions etc) GDP. And the world is still very much trying to achieve constant growth despite this being a finite planet. So long as that continues, we'll keep going "business as usual" until some serious event occurs to bring about change. By then it will be too late.

It took the killer smog in London to bring conventional (smoke, sulphur etc) air pollution to attention and get some action. It took actual deaths to focus attention on a problem that had been apparent for decades.

It took the 1973 oil embargo to bring energy in general to attention. But all we really did was switch to coal and gas and drill more oil wells outside the Middle East. It took a great deal of economic dislocation to bring this about - have a look at a chart of practically any economic measure and there's a trend break around 1973-74.

Forestry is another one. Much has been said about it over the past 30 years, particularly in Tasmania, but ultimately it kept going until it simply couldn't continue. It wasn't conservation that killed export woodchipping, but economics. Profit turned to loss, the losses then became bigger, and ultimately it collapsed financially. Many foresaw this outcome and thus considered that clearing native forest and replacing with plantations to be a pointless excercise since by the time the plantations were ready to harvest, doing so would be uneconomic. That day has now well and truly come - timber company Gunns went broke (even their former head office has since been demolished), the state government forestry department loses money, and nobody wants to buy the wood at a price that makes cutting it worthwhile.

Climate change will be the same I expect. Either we run out of things to burn or something happens to force a change. But it would take something drastic, a weather event that does serious damage to a major city or a famine in developed countries, to bring that about. Nobody's going to take global action just because Perth is short on water, it will take something much bigger than that.

I first heard about this issue in 1987. Since then coal and gas consumption are both up by around 90% and oil is up by 50%. Much as I'd like to think we could do something about the CO2 issue, very clearly emissions are trending up not down.
 

I've pretty much come to the same conclusion. The cost of getting new oil discoveries on line is so high, most companies can't actually afford it. Except for a few of the largest state owned oil companies, debt levels in the industry are sky rocketing. That can only occur for so long before lenders just stop lending.

Those who call for nuclear power to be expanded have no idea how ridiculously expensive it is. The UK has had to provide tariff guarantees 3 to 4 times the whole sale rate in Australia last year to get the private sector interested. Imagine the shock electricity prices 2 or 3 times their current levels would cause.

All the economic models and forecasts ignore we live in a finite world. Population growth and increasing demands of the growing "middle class" in the emerging markets means it's practically impossible to reduce global energy demand, let alone all the other resources we're using. The price of a barrel of crude oil has more than trebled since 2004, while global production has practically flat-lined at around 75 million barrels a day over that same period, leading to the view that we have reached the ceiling of our oil supply.

The shale oil boom in the USA costs around $80 a barrel to produce, so if oil prices drop much below $100 that source of extra production will dry up pretty quickly. China has pretty much taken all the reduction in oil use from the rich countries due to their slowing economies and increasing energy efficiency. India, Brazil, Indonesia will also want more as their economies keep growing. If supply can't increase then price will have to reach levels that slow everyone down.

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...e-We-Taking-More-Than-the-Earth-Can-Give.html

"Iowa has some of the best topsoil in the world, yet in the past century it's eroded from an average of 18 inches to less than 10 inches (Pate 2004, Klee 1991). When topsoil reaches 6 inches or less (the average depth of the root zone in crops), productivity drops off sharply (Sundquist 2005). Soil erodes geologically at a rate of about 400 pounds of soil per acre per year (Troeh 2005). But on over half of America's best crop land, the erosion rate is 11,000 pounds per acre, 27 times the natural rate, and double that on the worst 7% of cropland (NCRS 2006), partly because farmers aren't paid to conserve their land, and partly because hired farmers wrench every penny of profit they can on behalf of short-sighted owners."

In the last 40 years, 20 million square kilometers of land have suffered degradation, which accounts for around 15% of the total land area of the Earth, while 30% of the originally available cropland is now unproductive. As noted for Iowa, the degradation of topsoil is occurring many times faster than the rate at which soil is generated by Nature, which can take longer than 500 years to form just an inch of it.

According to the U.S. National Agriculture Statistics there has been a decline from about 6 million bee-hives in 1947 to 2.4 million in 2008, representing a reduction by 60%. Over the past 10 years, beekeepers in both the U.S. and Europe have reported annual hive losses of 30%, and last winter losses of 50% in the U.S. were not uncommon, with worst case examples of 80-90%. Since one third of all food crops rely on bees to pollinate them, if this "bee-collapse" continues, the effect on world food production could be calamitous.

The only hope I have is somehow we do achieve the miracle of relatively cheap alternative energy within the next decade or so. Any longer than that and I don't think the economic systems we have in place now will survive much past mid century, maybe less. Anything that even slows global trade significantly will have massive consequences for all countries. No one produces all the necessities any more, and Australia is far more vulnerable than most. We import practically all our major capital equipment, have no way to produce spares if required. Soon we wont even be able to make basic cars if we can't import. Most workers have become so specialised they 'd have a steep learning curve to make a complete item.
 
The last two posts are the sad truth of it all.

However one's heart breaks for those who are following in this life.

Money rules.
 
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