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Is the Earth's atmosphere warming and, if so, why?
Patti (baconater) wrote: "No, but that was interesting.My question is there actually a net benefit in generating electricity from solar panels when so much energy is required to make and maintain them."
Ah, I see what you mean. Have a look at this site:
http://grist.org/article/2010-01-06-s...
As the lifespan is over 25 years, the energy costs should be more than covered by the energy they produce.
Apparently they are getting more efficient as well as the technology gets cheaper
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "Once again, Will, you misrepresent the points very well.The Wikipedia entry is not peer reviewed in any way. It's quite apparent that you have either not read the FAQ on the petition web site, o..."
The Wikipedia entry is not peer reviewed. But many of its sources are.
And if we are saying that peer review is important - which it most certainly is - just how many of the anti climate change claims are peer reviewed? As opposed to genuine science?
Character assassination is an interesting accusation. I seem to recall that I wasn't the one who first compared Christopher Booker to Sir Paul Nurse. If you want to take the debate there, as you did, then we'll compare their CVs. And it doesn't take more than 5 minutes on Google to spot the difference.
Yes, the IPCC data shows that temperatures measured from satellites differs from temperatures taken on the ground. What do you expect? The Earth isn't a human patient sitting in a hospital where you can stick a thermometer under its tongue or up its jacksie. It is difficult to measure the temperature of the Earth.
Does that mean the climate change isn't happening? Of course it doesn't. It simply means that climate is difficult to measure.
You are quite right to mention urbanisation. It is absolutely true that long term data series from weather stations isn't 100% reliable. For one thing, the stations become more urbanised as humans build houses around them. We also have the problem of calibration and the accuracy of the instruments themselves.
To get around this, the world's weather services adjust temperature readings from individual weather stations. Booker claims that this is tampering. But then it's the only way of dealing with issues like urbanisation.
Here's a short video that explains it:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/kevin...
A poor smear? No - it's called evidence.
David wrote: "How to solve global warming?Simple....
Turn the sun off at night.
Now, on to the next thread."
Huh? I thought they did turn the sun off at night????
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: Of course, we paid cash for these panels, so if you are thinking of taking out a loan for panels, don't forget to factor in the interest on the loan...."And while you're at it, can somebody factor in the 'carbon footprint' of manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels, from the point of extracting raw minerals to finally connecting them to the grid, then recycling them after 25 years? I have an opinion, (which I'm too scared to voice while Will is listening ;-) ) that they're not as 'green' as we are led to believe. There is no such thing as a free ride in nature. The best way to use stored solar energy is to burn trees, just so long as new ones are planted.
Simon (Highwayman) wrote: "If we over populate and pollute we will eventually kill the host or at least make it unsuited for us as parasites. We will die out and the earth will recover and start again. Maybe this isn't the first time anyway..."That's what Malthus was on about a couple of hundred years ago. I read a year or two back that the earth's population has already passed the point of sustainability. In other words, barring some catastrophe that wipes out billions, we are past the point of being able to replenish the resources we use.
That we are doomed is a certainty. The only question that remains is how long have we got?
(I hope it's not before April, because I hope to publish my latest book then.)
As I said before, the only future we have is if we get off this rock, and since we're putting zero effort into that, we're basically doomed when the oil runs out.
I don't think we are doomed, but we are going to have to change the way that we live. We always knew that we were going to have to find alternatives for fossil fuels at some point, because those fossil fuels are finite. We now know that we need to reduce our usage of those fuels before they run out because of the damage they are doing to the atmosphere.Some element of climate change is probably irreversible now. That will mean that we will not want to live on low-lying areas near the coast.
But, Tim, I'm afraid that getting off the Earth is a long way off - if it is ever possible. There are simply too many of us - unless all you want to do is create an outpost for a few humans so that the species doesn't die out. But I don't see that happening. We might see population decreases, but hopefully we'll see sense before we get to the point of extinction.
Space colonisation is fairly inevitable.Remember that at one point in the past, chopping down hundreds of trees, forming them into a galleon, and navigating across the Atlantic would have looked as insurmountable a task as landing on Mars is/was.
The problem about space colonization are the numbers involved. Apols for those who have heard me say this before ...First, we can forget about the idea of space colonization as a solution for hyper-population and overcrowding. We currently stand at 7 billion population and we are adding each new billion roughly every 12-13 years. At current rates of population growth we would need to shift one billion people to a new planet every 12 years for earth's population to stand still.
We would need a fleet of Star Destroyers or Borg cubes to shift that many people.
And even if we did manage to move one billion people every 12 years to a new planet, that new planet would be filling up at twice the rate that Earth is now - its own population growth plus earth's overspill.
Assuming that the new planet is the same size as Earth, we would hit Earth levels of hyper-population within fifty to a hundred years. And then we would need to find another two additional planets to cope with the demand both from Earth and from Earth 2.
And that is always assuming that we manage to find a way to travel fast enough to get to another planet in a reasonable amount of time.
By all means go to the stars because we want to. Go there to enable the species to survive if a catastrophe hits the earth. But space colonisation to solve population problems? I just can't see it.
Tim wrote: "As I said before, the only future we have is if we get off this rock, and since we're putting zero effort into that, we're basically doomed when the oil runs out.""...to the moon, Alice!"
Pete wrote: "David wrote: "How to solve global warming?Simple....
Turn the sun off at night.
Now, on to the next thread."
Huh? I thought they did turn the sun off at night????"
No, they don't.
They leave it on, just so that some hairy folk can howl at the moon.
Apparently it is is lycanthropist to discriminate against them these days.
When will you get beyond "attacking the man", Will?It is apparent that you have done very little study of this subject, in fact it seems you have probably not even read the IPCC report.
With reference to peer reviews, the IPCC report itself is poorly reviewed. Here is the evidence. See what I did here, I PRODUCED EVIDENCE.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/pre...
And the original article.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ori...
Here is a article from NASA outlining that the deep oceans are not a thermal sink. Please note the sentence in paragraph 3 - "In the 21st century, greenhouse gases have continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, just as they did in the 20th century, but global average surface air temperatures have stopped rising in tandem with the gases. The temperature of the top half of the world's oceans -- above the 1.24-mile mark -- is still climbing, but not fast enough to account for the stalled air temperatures."
NASA state in that sentence that air temperature rises have stalled. Let me repeat, stalled. Think about the reajustment of temperatures in Paraguay. It sounds perfectly reasonable that all the weather stations in Paraguay are not reading the correct temperature, however when reajusted they show considerable temperature increases, something NASA have failed to do.
It is no surprise then that the veracity of the "adjustment" in Paraguay should be questioned. I'm afraid I trust NASA a lot more that some blog.
I'm afraid I have now come to the end of my discussion with you. It is apparent that you have not done any research beyond the superficial and that therefore your arguments fail. I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.
I will continue to post on here but will no longer respond to your poorly argued and unsupported comments.
GeoffAhem. My work involves climate change (I am a transport consultant). So yes I have read most of the IPCC reports. That's reports plural and not singular. You do realise that there has been more than one?
While you would love it if I was uninformed on all of this. Unfortunately, it's a part of my day job. Attacking the man, eh?
You have not produced evidence. You have linked to articles from non scientists trying to pick holes in far more credible research. You started the comparison between Christopher Booker and Sir Paul Nurse. And your latest post is an attack on me.
Pot, kettle, black?
By all means continue to post here. It's the right thread for it. And I will continue to point out where you are wrong.
Case in point. You said: "NASA have pointed out that air temperatures have stalled."
Except they haven't said this. Read the article again. Better still, read the full article ...
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/...
What the article is saying is that the ocean abyss has not warmed up as much as the rest of planet.
Here's the bit of the article that you chose not to quote:
"Study coauthor Josh Willis of JPL said these findings do not throw suspicion on climate change itself.
"The sea level is still rising," Willis noted. "We're just trying to understand the nitty-gritty details."
And this is what NASA have to say about global warming:
http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2221/
Here is a quote:
“This is the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades. While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt.
In other words, you have sifted through a lot of information provided by NASA to find something ... anything ... that slightly seems to support your argument. When quoted out of context.
NASA is unequivocally not saying that temperatures have levelled off. Yes, there are variations from one year to the next. Yes, we don't fully understand the linkages between CO2 and global temperatures. Yes, there is an interesting question about why the deep ocean abysses aren't warming up as much as we might expect.
But the overall trend is undeniably upwards.
By all means let's have a debate about this. You put up your evidence and I will show you mine. But let's quote the full facts, not just the convenient bits that seem to justify one side of the argument.
And let's have some ground rules. If we are going to trust NASA over a blog, then let's do exactly that. I trust NASA instead of Christopher Booker's blog.
And if we are going to insist on peer review, let's expect all claims on both sides of the argument to have been peer reviewed.
And if we are going to complain about attacking the man, maybe we should ... oh, I don't know ... stop attacking the man?
Tis cold here, still snowing. I'm going back to my writing now…
We're all doomed, Captain Mainwaring. Doomed!
Arguing on the internet is a lot like the Western Front in WWI.Wave after wave of posts are hurled again and again at firmly entrenched positions with little or nothing changing and - sometimes - years going by without any perceptual change in position by either side.
Each side continues on hoping to wear the other down by attrition, but neither can admit defeat or walk away and both sides think that just one more big push could win the day, but it never does.
Everybody else just cowers down in their own bit of trench hoping to stay out of the firing line and longing for that day when the ceasefire finally comes.
http://www.ww1westernfront.gov.au/fro...
oh no they don't ;-)the level of online 'argument' rarely rises above that of pantomime audience call & response
Oh grief.Are they behind me?
Marc wrote: "oh no they don't ;-)the level of online 'argument' rarely rises above that of pantomime audience call & response"
Prove it!
I'm not letting you get away with that without 3 links to articles of dubious provenance, a Wikipedia article that has been removed by the editors and a link to a picture of a cute cat doing something cute.
Then it is your turn to mention Hitler.
David wrote: "Pete wrote: "David wrote: "How to solve global warming?Simple....
Turn the sun off at night.
Now, on to the next thread."
Pete said: Huh? I thought they did turn the sun off at night????"
David said: No, they don't.
They leave it on, just so that some hairy folk can howl at the moon.
Apparently it is is lycanthropist to discriminate against them these days.'
Ha, you must think I was born yesterday. If they leave the sun on all the time, how come it gets dark at night? Talk your way out of that one, smartypants!
Pete wrote: "Ha, you must think I was born yesterday. If they leave the sun on all the time, how come it gets dark at night? Talk your way out of that one, smartypants!..."The chariot tows the sun to the storage area below the earth every night. But they don't turn it off.
David wrote: "Pete wrote: "Ha, you must think I was born yesterday. If they leave the sun on all the time, how come it gets dark at night? Talk your way out of that one, smartypants!..."The chariot tows the sun to the storage area below the earth every night. But they don't turn it off...."
Oh. Well, you could have said that at the beginning.
David wrote: "Arguing on the internet is a lot like the Western Front in WWI.Wave after wave of posts are hurled again and again at firmly entrenched positions with little or nothing changing and - sometimes -..."
Nice analogy! I think it works with at least 50% of the topics discussed on the internet. My car is faster than yours. Oh, no it isn't. There is a god. Oh, no there isn't. I liked Harry Potter. Oh, no it's crap.
And with topics like that, we argue for the fun of it but we don't really expect to reach a conclusion. And frankly it doesn't much matter.
But there are some topics that we need to take just a little bit more seriously. If climate change is real and if it continues to worsen at current rates - "if" - than a lot of people are going to die. The UK can't afford its welfare state at the moment - and we certainly won't be able to afford anything like it when we are dealing with the costs associated with worsening climate change.
Every expert I speak to says the same thing. They are seeing real and tangible impacts of climate change right now. It is demonstrably getting worse. We will not be able to cope on current levels of funding and we can't afford to increase the funding.
I was at a meeting with the Environment Agency the other day. They are very worried about rising trends for flooding, coastal erosion and drought. There is a very real possibility that parts of the UK's drinking water system could fail. Turn the tap and nothing happens. And because we get a lot of our water from groundwater sources and not reservoirs, we can have both surface water floods and drought at the same time.
Highway engineers are reporting increasing deterioration of our roads because of flood damage, heat cracking in hot summers and what is known as the freeze-thaw effect in icy winters. Freeze-thaw is when water gets into a crack in the road, then freezes into ice which has a larger volume than water. This causes a crack in the road. And a very expensive repair bill. And we all complain about potholes.
I'm afraid that climate change has long since stopped being a theory. We are seeing its effects right now.
You trench analogy makes it sound like the two sides in the debate are equal. They aren't. The evidence is overwhelming. And anyone with eyes in their head can see that our weather has become more variable and extreme.
And the debate certainly isn't stuck. We are making progress. A few years ago, the main argument of the anti-climate change lobby was the climate change isn't happening. This argument has largely died out in the face of so much evidence. So the argument than shifted to "okay, climate change is happening, but it's not man-made". And for some the argument is shifting again to argue about what proportion of climate change is man-made.
Every now and again someone will come up with another bit of spurious data or misquoted statistic. And if we don't respond to that it can become part of the folklore. People start believing it as if it was real.
Sorry to go all po-faced and serious on this one. But this is important. We can't afford to get it wrong.
Will wrote: "Sorry to go all po-faced and serious on this one. But this is important. We can't afford to get it wrong. "Well, watching from outside the trenches, it doesn't look as though either side is as right as they think thy are.
But getting involved in arguing about it is of no interest to me.
Will wrote: "We can't afford to get it wrong."Won't stop us though.
Will feels very strongly about this, and I respect him for it. But at the end of the day, we as a race can't/won't do anything to slow down, let alone reverse climate change. Sure, we can save half a gallon of petrol a week and think we're making a difference. Brussels can prevent us using vacuum cleaners that work well, and stop us using coffee percolators that keep your coffee hot. And while this is happening, China, India and other emerging economies are building coal fired power stations at the rate of dozens per week. We have neither the moral or physical right to tell developing countries to stop, and they wouldn't anyway.So why don't we plan FOR, and ACCEPT the effects of global warming. Flooding's going to get worse:plan for relocating communities. Coastal erosion:plan for relocating communities. Water supply:more reservoirs using surface water run-off + national water grid. It's relatively easy to put plans in place, not so easy to pay for the consequences.
Would our government, or any government, contemplate such long-term planning? No - they're more interested in spending £50 billion so a few commuters in Birmingham can save half an hour of their journey. They overlook the fact that there won't be any electricity to run the trains, because they should have reinvested in nuclear energy 25 years ago. We donate millions to drought-stricken countries, so people can continue to live in unsustainable areas; millions to flood victims so they can continue to live with the threat. The realistic but more unpalatable option is to suggest they go live someplace else but we can't do that on a global scale.
So, in our blind stupidity, we will run headlong over the edge of the cliff. In the meantime, it doesn't matter who is right or wrong about the causes of global warming. It's already too late. It may have been too late when we emerged from caves, because the earth gets hot, and then it gets cold. Climates change, coastlines change and we can't stop it. Climate change is unlikely to bring about the end of mankind, but it certainly will bring the population down to sustainable levels, and there will be plenty of tragedy along the way.
Am I a pessimist? No, hopefully just a realist.
Pete - good points. A lot of the planning around climate change is now shifting to what is known in the trade as "mitigation". It's going to happen, it is happening, so we need to make the best of it. We are now building new homes and transport infrastructure to higher standards to make them more resistant to unusual weather patterns.Those small individual savings on fuel with things like lower powered vacuum cleaners, actually do make a huge difference. They may seem small in themselves but they add up when we all do them.
The developing world is a huge problem. They want the high energy lifestyles that we have been enjoying. Mind you, their carbon footprint per person is still a long way below ours.
The internal UK politics are fascinating, if a little depressing. We are getting to the point where we all know what we need to do, but politicians are too afraid of the electorate to do the right thing. For example, we didn't build those nuclear power stations largely because of public opposition to nuclear power.
In a democracy it can be very hard to do the right thing if that thing happens to be unpopular. Few politicians want to commit political suicide by saying something that the public don't want to hear.
That's why it's important to educate the public and build a consensus around what we need to do. And that means knocking over the un-evidenced claims that there isn't a problem here.
The funny thing about climate change is that the answers are actually a win-win. The bottom line on climate change is that we need to consume less. It's as simple as that. We need to use less electricity, less petrol, less water. We need to eat less meat. Take fewer overseas flights. Buy fewer disposable products with too much packaging.
If we do that, we all save money, we make the fossil fuel reserves last longer, we don't have to deal with throwing away so much rubbish and we reduce the impact on the environment. Win-win-win-win.
That incidentally is why it is silly to talk about a climate change conspiracy. It is not in big business's interest for us to consume less. They want us to buy more of their products.
As you say, in our blind stupidity we will run headlong over the edge of the cliff. I like to think we are a bit smarter than that. We just need enough people to spot the cliff and start saying "whoa".
Reminds me. Must book our flights for spring break.
I suppose at 35,000 feet there's not much point looking for cliffs.Earth is in a warming phase and it seems to me that our activities are, at the very least, marginally speeding up the process. If we can do anything to reduce our contribution it will give us more time to accept the situation and adjust.
Most of the debate centres on carbon emissions, but methane looks more dangerous to me. Not only does it have more effect as a greenhouse gas, but there's a double whammy in that some atmospheric methane is oxidised to produce carbon dioxide and water, and the oxidant is ozone. So methane not only warms the atmosphere, but depletes the ozone layer. The thawing of the permafrost is going to increase methane emission.
Whereas it's true that cattle (and all herbivores) also contribute to the rapidly increasing methane emissions, veggies can't feel it's not their problem. For every 1 kilogram of rice produced, 100g of methane are produced.
But as with most of our emission activities, we can do something about it. Strains of rice plants have been developed that grow in much drier conditions than the traditional methane-producing paddy fields. We have to find the money to enable producers to make the change.
Do we not have a moral obligation to do what we can to steer away from the cliff?
If we wait until the science has accurately proved any quantitative link between our activities and the rate of global warming, the problems may be much greater than they need be.
The problem with trying to fight global temperature change is the tragedy of the commons. See here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_...
As it has already stalled, what happens now?
I suspect that the real problem is that nobody actually believes it.If people believed it, investment in London in all but the short term would have stopped and government would be working on plans to build new towns on hill areas around Sheffield and Manchester and plan the slow evacuation of much of London while there is still time
Can anyone not believe that Earth is warming after all the coverage of the melting Arctic sea ice, the melting Antarctic land ice and the thawing permafrost? Particularly the permafrost when we've had the television coverage of the dissection of the mammoths that had been frozen for thousands of years.But I'm sure you're right, Jim - either people don't believe that global warming will greatly affect their own lives, or they don't believe that any personal action on their part will make any difference.
Will wrote: "The developing world is a huge problem. They want the high energy lifestyles that we have been enjoying. Mind you, their carbon footprint per person is still a long way below ours.."But they have a lot more persons than we have.
I am currently reading an analysis of The Royal Society's involvement in the Climate Change debate. It is here and a fascinating read it is.http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories...
Politics will be our downfall, as it has for the last 60 years. Look at the Victorians and visionaries of the 17th/18th centuries. They planted landscapes they knew they would never live to see mature. The Victorians built proper sewers under London, to last 100 years. They built railways to last 100 years. They didn't look to a 5-year profit horizon. The reason our landscape and infrastructure is crumbling is because we have been riding on that Victorian spirit without even bothering to think about maintenance.Regrettably our politicians cannot think in terms beyond the next election, so rarely will they do anything which involves a long-term commitment - especially if it is unpopular. Yes, some long-term infrastructure projects take place (often with private funding i.e the Chunnel) but the reason is more often not the end result, but the 'employment' the project will bring, or benefits for sectors of the community. In other words, things that bring votes.
So I'm afraid we are doomed by the constraints of our own democratic society and the goldfish-like memory of the electorate. (And before someone points out - it's now been proven the goldfish myth is just that.)
That's a rather rose-tinted view of the Victorian era to be honest.There was a huge amount of opposition to the building of those London sewers and it was only given the go ahead when the politicians in Parliament couldn't bear the stench from the Thames during a particularly hot summer.
Corruption amongst the workers put the project in danger and the press were negative towards it for a long time as well.
Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "The problem with trying to fight global temperature change is the tragedy of the commons. See here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_...
As it has already stalled, what happens now?"
It hasn't stalled.
Will wrote: "Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "The problem with trying to fight global temperature change is the tragedy of the commons. See here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_......"
So, you're even arguing with the IPCC now, Will?
message 93:
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Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)
(last edited Feb 01, 2015 03:19PM)
(new)
Followed up with:- Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Quoted from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm
Geoff - Oh dear. Read the article again. In full. Not just the selective bits that agree with your conclusion.How about this part from your article - which you didn't quote?
"E - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?
I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity."
So what you have done - again - is to quote selectively from an article which actually explains that the opposite of what you are claiming.
That's just bad science. You need to look at all data, including the inconvenient parts. Read it again, especially section D.
I could quote any number of articles to explain what is going on, but you might as well start by reading the one you quoted. In full.
But here is a handy guide. There are several factors which affect the Earth's climate. Some are natural, such as volcanic activity and solar flares. Others are man-made, such as the release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
This means that the earth's temperature does not rise and fall at a constant rate. All the readings we have for global temperature going back to the 1880s show the same pattern. In layman's terms - it is not a straight line. It never has been.
That is why we look at an average of the trend over several years and not a single year's temperatures. We also take account of any natural factors that might be influencing the climate.
What has happened to the earth's temperature is that it has been steadily rising from 1910 to the present day. Naturally, this hasn't been a straight line. There have been periods when temperatures have fallen. But on the whole the trend is very clearly upwards. In the early 2000s we reached the highest average temperature that we have recorded for the planet, and that temperature has been sustained since.
Meanwhile, sea levels have continued to rise and the arctic ice has continued to decline.
The reality is that we don't yet fully understand the damage that we have done to our climate. We do know that the planet does not warm up or cool down in a linear fashion.
We don't fully know why average temperatures between 2000 and now are increasingly more slowly than in the previous decade. What we do know is that the average temperatures haven't fallen from the current high level. That pretty much rules out any cyclical natural factors such as volcanoes and solar activity.
Climate change has not stalled.
Will, look at the person interviewing and the person being interviewed. Professor Phil Jones is so committed to the Global Warming cause that he falsified the 'Hockey Stick' chart by truncating the data. The fact that he gave the statement he did, that I highlighted, has enormous significance.Your prejudices are showing again.
Will wrote: "The reality is that we don't yet fully understand the damage that we have done to our climate."Finally, the truth.
Geoff - You chose to quote from him. It is highly misleading to quote from part of a report or interview and to ignore bits from that same report or interview if they don't agree with you.Let's stick to the basics. The fact that we don't fully understand the climate is not "finally the truth". Everybody with the slightest understanding of this subject knows that the Earth's climate is complicated. It is one of the first chaotic systems that science identified.
That's why amateurs are so poor at coming up with theories to explain the climate. That's why the Met Office (and every other meteorological organisation) finds it difficult to predict weather much beyond five days, no matter how many super computers they throw at it.
That's why we need to read articles like the ones you have been posting in full. Listen carefully to what the experts are saying. You have posted at least two articles which are saying the exact opposite of the point you are trying to make.
I posted the BBC article because it gives the lie to your statement that global warming has taken place the last 15 years. The fact that I used that part of the article was to prove that even Professor Jones, someone that has been proven to deliberately misrepresent data in the name of Global Warming, has admitted that there has been no significant increase in temperatures over the period mentioned. It is of absolutely no relevance to the discussion that there are other things that I disagree with in the article. Good attempt at dodging the issue on your part Will, but the truth will out despite your efforts.By your own admission we have no idea whether we have any influence on global warming. You are being driven by politics and money and don't tell me that there are not certain parties that are making enormous amounts of money on the back of scaring the public into thinking that it is all our fault.
The forcing of the consensus in the climate debate is far more damaging to science than global warming itself. We are expected to accept without question that 'mother knows best.'
A healthy understanding of what is happening to our planet is incredibly important and yet vital scientific investigation, like that conducted by Henrik Svensmark, is shouted down by the anthropogenic movement. His work has been widely accepted, yet the GW claque refuse to acknowledge it, let alone accept its conclusion because it does not fit into their narrow mindset.
It is this lack of open investigation and questioning that is the worst effect of demanding a consensus where one does not exist.
Geoff - you're doing it again.I said: "The reality is that we don't yet fully understand the damage that we have done to our climate."
You reinterpreted this as: "By your own admission we have no idea whether we have any influence on global warming"
Spot the difference? Your summary of what I said is way off. It's chalk and cheese. Science and mumbo jumbo.
We know that the planet has warmed. Every instrument we have is telling us that we are warmer now than we have ever been since we started taking measurements.
We are almost 100% certain that man's activities are at least partly to blame. When we strip out all the natural forces impacting on the climate, whatever is left is almost certainly down to us.
There is a lot we don't know - and we are honest enough to admit it. We don't know exactly what proportion of climate change is down to man. We don't know what happens next. We don't know why temperatures have not been rising as fast in the last decade as in the previous decade. Although sea levels have continued to rise and arctic ice has decreased.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem here. Climate change is a complicated subject. People with limited understanding want there to be a simple correlation between cause and effect, such as CO2 causes global warming. Or it's all about volcanoes. Or the ice age. One cause = one effect.
The climate simply does not work that way. We have multiple causes and multiple effects. For example, warming causes wind patterns to change which can mean that the UK gets more cold weather. The layman struggles to understand this - if the planet is getting warmer, why am I getting colder?
If you don't understand something, don't presume to pick holes in the conclusions of experts who do.
Climate change is not a movement. It is not a claque. It is the consensus of the vast majority of the scientific community who are carrying out a very open investigation.
But you keep on doing the same thing. You keep on misreading the evidence put in front of you.
Henrik Svensmark? The cosmic ray man? He hasn't been shouted down. Other scientists have subjected his work to peer review. That is how science works. But even he is not saying that climate change isn't happening or that man isn't partly to blame. Even if we accept his theories (which many do not), all he is saying is that solar activities contribute to global warming in addition to man's activities.
I'd send you some links, but I doubt you would read them accurately.
Will wrote: "Spot the difference? Your summary of what I said is way off. It's chalk and cheese. Science and mumbo jumbo."Yes, but you cannot help spouting mumbo jumbo, as you have shown.
My question is there actually a net benefit in generating electricity from solar panels when so much energy is required to make and maintain them.