The price of meat, milk and other British farm products will have to rise to reflect the environmental cost of producing them, a government study has concluded.
A Cabinet Office review of food policy suggests that farmers and consumers should pay extra for farm goods that generate large amounts of greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide.
The proposal, the latest in a string of “green” plans that threaten to increase the cost of living, drew accusations that ministers were imposing taxes and regulations in the name of environmental policy.
….The Department for Business and Enterprise’s new renewable energy strategy warned last month that household electricity bills could rise by 13 per cent and gas by 37 per cent to subsidise green energy sources, and
ministers remain under pressure to raise road taxes in an effort to cut emissions.
Telegraph.co.uk: ‘Meat and milk prices will rise to reflect environmental costs’
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
You’d think politically correct, environmentally-compassionate Germany would be a prime market for eco-friendly cars like the Prius. Well think again. According to Dirk Maxeiner, 1498 Prius cars have been sold in Germany as of the end of May this year. That’s 600 less than last year!
http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/mythos_und_wirklichkeit/
I’m still reeling from an editorial by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in today’s Australian:
“… the fact is if we do not begin reducing the nation’s levels of carbon pollution, Australia’s economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands.
Garnaut’s draft report released on Friday predicted by 2100 a 92per cent decline in irrigated agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin; a reduction of at least 7.8 per cent in real wages; and a $425 billion loss in potential gross domestic product.
But the impact of inaction on climate change will be much more immediate. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics predicts if we don’t act on climate change, Australia’s exports of key commodities will fall by up to 63 per cent in 2030 and by up to 79per cent in 2050.”
How does he know all that? Don’t know, mate.
But that’s our fair dinkum PM talking and he’s no liar. I voted for him. So I reckon we all better do as he says. Sounds pretty bloody serious to me.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23984420-7583,00.html
Pierre, where can I get me one of those Prius so I can reduce me carbon pollution?
The Garnaut report’s Chapter 8 seeks to justify the need for an emission trading scheme with a dramatic graph on page 200 showing statistics comparing Australia and the rest of the world calculated on emissions per person. For the Nation to be given the full picture on GHG emissions, comparisons based on absolute figures as well as per person need to be shown.
Australia is responsible for about 500 Mega tonnes of emissions. The World’s output is about 33,600 Mt to 42,000 Mt if you add estimates of GHG released due to deforestation in the tropics, making Australia’s contribution less than 1.5%. of the World total
Australia’s population of about 20 million means that it has much higher rates per person than more popular countries such as India and China with over a billion people each.
A drastic 60% cut to Australia GHG based only on reducing per person emissions will have less than a 1% impact on World GHG and thus no impact on modelled climate change.
One good result of these increases in food, fuel etc means that the labor fruitcakes will be even more on the nose , if that’s possible.
The UK produces around 2% of the world’s co2 and Aussies produce about 1% and heading south. Currently China, India and Brazil produce around 30% of the world’s co2 and rapidly heading north, so it doesn’t take an Einstein to understand where the problem really lies.
BTW NZ currently produces .1% of the world’s co2, yes that’s right a massive point one of one percent.
Remember this whole argument is about a shift in CO2 levels from .028ppmv in 1800 to .038ppmv in 2008.That’s an increase of .010ppmv or one hundredth of one percent of the atmosphere in the last couple of centuries.
What a load of crap.
Hang on, a minute, Cinders, Neville
You blokes make it sound like no matter what we do it will have NO real effect on the diabolical carbon pollution that threatens our very existence!
But Prime Minister Rudd says that only by acting now to Stop Climate Change can we save the Murray-Darling, Kakadu and the Great Barrier Reef. (I think he forgot to mention Uluru.)
Surely, you must be wrong. Our PM has heaps of professors and the CSIRO to back up his claims. There is a consensus on this, you know.
As Garnaut says, “Delaying now is not postponing a decision. To delay is to deliberately choose to avoid effective steps to reduce the risks of climate change to acceptable levels.”
Surely, this highly respected professor wouldn’t lie to the citizens of Australia?
I’m sorry Wes I take it all back and apologise profusely, of course I was telling a load of porkies.
Please forgive me. ( BS)
OK Wes – we give up. You’re right.
27.3 days*
*
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_great_garnaut_scare/
tee hee
but…you can’t destroy something that isn’t there – I distinctly remember being told a starfish would destroy the great barrier reef so it can’t be there anymore.
Great idea. Let’s make food cost more. Surely, that will make our economies grow faster. Here is my solution to the expensive food problem:
http://depriest-mpu.blogspot.com/2008/04/let-them-eat-coal.html
If consumers should pay more for GHG-generating goods then give them discounts for CO2-absorbing ones. Oh wait…what about fart-producing beans, cabbage, etc? Hmmm, I’ll have to consult my official carbon counselor on this one.
Wes Rudd is right of course don’t you realise GHG is personal. If you generate GHG then it hangs over you and affects just your area. Farmers produce CO2 and methane so there you go drought or floods. Which one depends on alarmist expediency. The science is in it has been proved by a new computer model FIG (Fairies In Garden). It has been validated by finding a definite correlation between living and the climate changing.
Paul you are sounding like chicken little.
A 13% increase – well most of us pay about $1-2 a day for electricity which makes for an extra 13-26C a day.
My morning coffee just went up by 30C and my local power company just put up the price by 17% blaming the drought (which has been made worse by climate change).
Still scare by that 26C increase – well just remember to turn the microwave and TV off at the wall when not in use and you’ll save yourself that much every day.
Speaking of fairies in the garden, Bob Brown was on ABC this morning and I was stunned by his apparent ignorance on the topic of AGW.
Of course, I expected a hard environmentalist socio-economic position from Brown, but I also expected the former academic to be hip to all the latest climatological facts.
He was shockingly ill informed. Brown said that the Earth’s temperature was up by 2c and would very shortly be up by 3c.
At 3c “runaway global warming feedback” would “kick in” due to the high CO2 levels and we would “lose the planet,” he claimed.
Brown thinks temperature will soar by 6c and more. Apparently, he is still with the long discarded 1970’s idea that like Venus the Earth could fall into a positive feedback loop of heating as CO2 concentrations rise.
According to Bob, if we don’t cut CO2 emissions by 90% by 2050 “we will lose the planet.”
I would find that argument more convincing if Bob didn’t believe in the myth of Venusian runaway warming feedback.
If this is the standard level climatological ignorance among our political leadership. We’re really are all dooooooooomed!!!!!
Europe discovered long ago that the solution to ecological crises was to divert tax dollars to gang-greens.
Maybe Australia should experiment with giving more money to the gang-greens.
Europe found that funding these critters worked, don’t you know?
Well, no. They just come back for more.
“My morning coffee just went up by 30C”
Wow, now that’s the kind of Venusian runaway greenhouse effect that Bob Brown should be worried about!
Wes,
The worry with Watermelon Bob is that he now has the bop in the senate.
Interesting times ahead!
Btw, coldest morning in SEQ this year. Frost everywhere.
Well, we know how Bob Brown will vote.
He also said on Radio National this morning that the 38,000 coal mining workers could all be retrained to manage resorts on the Great Barrier Reef when we close down the mines and the coal fired plants. So he is looking after the working families!!!!!!
This is really insane stuff. It’s like listening to Bob Mugabe talk about his economic reform plans for Zimbabwe.
At least my computer modelling has solved the Uluru Anomaly. Increasing temperatures will result in stronger monsoons in Northern Australia.
The extra rain will reduce Uluru to a sand castle by 2040.
Implement all these ‘action plans’ and the question then is – what effing Barrier Reef resorts !??
Ever been on one – I have once and they are pretty dependent on energy: energy to get the groceries out there; energy to get the tourists and staff out there; energy to keep the lights, a/c and pool pumps on….and so on.
The one I was one was crying because a fishing trawler had cut the electricity cable to the mainland and they were all paying a fortune for diesel generators and fuel.
So in a post-carbon world, just how are the tourists getting out to the resorts run by the re-deployed coal miners – row ?
And do what – sit on the beach and eat raw fish ??
And they get to the Reef coast how once you squeeze recreational air travel out of the equation ??
Apart from the fact that your average coal miner is probably not much interested in running resorts – there won’t be any resorts anyway !!
Nor much of anything else except sitting quietly in a circle around the campfire weaving baskets and banging drums in honour of Gaia.
Australia’s portion of global CO2 emissions is about 1.4 per cent or just six months’ growth in China’s emissions. Natural uptakes of CO2 over Australia’s land and Exclusive Economic Zone area of surrounding ocean absorb much more than this. Our net contribution to global CO2 emissions is already negative. Whatever we do or don’t do will be trivial to the global situation, either in quantity or even as an example.
“Australia’s portion of global CO2 emissions is about 1.4 per cent or just six months’ growth in China’s emissions. Natural uptakes of CO2 over Australia’s land and Exclusive Economic Zone area of surrounding ocean absorb much more than this. Our net contribution to global CO2 emissions is already negative. Whatever we do or don’t do will be trivial to the global situation, either in quantity or even as an example.”
Walter Starck,
Thank you. Concise. To the point. Well researched. And utterly devastating to Garnaut’s folly. 586 pages of nonsense laid on its nose with 70 words. Lovely.
If the ABC or the Australian could only speak the truth so clearly. If the Australian public was aware of the scale of the fraud, the demagoguery that was being foisted upon them.
I hope you don’t mind if I repeated paraphrase your content in various ways in various venues for the next year.
Wes, Walter, yes you are correct, the Australian GHG contribution as a percentage of global production is quite small, and you are correct that anything Australia does to reduce emissions will have minimal direct impact on climate change.
Unless you can be absolutely certain that the “climate scientists” have got it totally wrong, you would have to be a serious risk taker to advocate business as usual. While I question the details of climate projections (I have some inside knowledge), a simple risk assessment calculation would suggest the global community should act immediately to drastically reduce GHG emissions. (Afterall the insurance industry have taken climate change seriously for many years.)
As an Australian and a global citizen my GHG production is one or two orders of magnitude greater than the emissions of the average Chinese and Indian global citizens. It would seem fair to me that global citizens of Australian origin act early to rectify this inequality.
I hope that if we lead by example the Chinese and Indian governments will follow. If they choose not to, and the climate change projections are accurate, then we potentially face the collapse of our civilization. Even if this is only a small risk, the consequences are so enormous that I’m not willing to stand by silently and take the chance.
I ask you all, how confident are you that climate change science is a scam? If you are 100% certain then continue the banter, but if you have even the smallest of doubts…
KT
This is simple to answer:
1. the fundamental assumption of climate sensitivity, that doubling CO2 results in a specific rise in earth temperature, has never been experimentally verified.
2. The idea that rducing atmospheric CO2 content will cause an ice age was first proposed by Arrhenius. However, Arrhenius never bothered to prove this and instead inverted the burden of proof and insisted others disprove him. This is not the scientific method.
3. CO2 lags temperature at all time scales, and thus cannot be regarded scientically as a greenhoouse gase, despite the theory. CO2 induced global warming has never been observed to require a theory to explain it. So why has one been proposed?
4. I don’t think it is a scam, the proponents really believe it, and that is because their science is dominated by the deductive method, not the empirical.
The whole edifice of AGW theory rests on one unproven assumption – that increasing CO2 raises the earth’s temperature. If this does not happen, then the rest must fall as well.
KT, you have nailed the issue on the head. Risk management is the crux of the matter.
Let’s start with a metaphor:
You’re in your car hurling down the highway on the coldest night in the last 40 years in SEQ. You hit black ice and begin to slide sideways. Should you….
A. Unlatch your seat belt and leap from the speeding car (Bob Brown’s choice)
B. Stomp on the brakes while screaming, “We are doooooooomed!” (Ross Garnaut’s draft report)
C. Calmly steer your vehicle into the slide while letting up on the accelerator. (doubt we have anyone this clever in Canberra)
If I keep on insisting that p=mv, then I’m a dogmatist.
No, you’re bull-sjt.
It is worth stating what is contained in India’s Action Plan on Climate Change released recently.
“The success of our national efforts would be significantly enhanced provided the developed countries affirm their responsibility for accumulated greenhouse gas emissions and fulfill their commitments under the UNFCCC, to transfer additional financial resources and climate friendly technologies to support both adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.
… India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries even as we pursue our development objectives.”
According to the World Resource Institute (Al Gore is a Director) in its Navigating the Numbers in Chapter 4 per capita emission in 2000 were 25.6 tons CO2 e for Australia (based on 491 Mt CO2 total for 2000), Developed World average 14.1 tons and India only 1.9 tons.
Therefore we may see up to a seven (7) fold increase in India emissions currently at 1,884 Mt CO2 equivalents (WRI 2000 figure).
And if we don’t curb OUR emissions the planet will go phaff, but if India increases hers, the planet will not fo phaff!
Now have I got his right?
Hi Louis,
1. I agree, but in the absence of actually doubling CO2 and seeing what happens, we can only fall back on an imprecise scientific method; modelling. The hypothesis is that increasing GHG will lead to warming. Using a very simple energy budget calculation the result is a no brainer. But the atmosphere is very complex with a number of positive and negative feedbacks. We can only hope that the imprecise models more or less give us the right answer. The models projected an increase in temperatures on average over the globe. This does appear to be occuring. I agree that we can’t be exactly sure why, but as a scientist I have to be open to the possibility that human induced GHG production may be the cause.
2. Arguing over good and bad scientific method doesn’t help solve the problem. In all areas of science there is good and bad science. And I’m sure climate change science has its fair share of both. Hopefully, in time we will weed out the bad. Again this debate, while important, does not help solve the problem.
3. It doesn’t surprise me that CO2 lags the temperature change in the historical record, because in the past the Milanchovich cycle has driven the changing climate. However, if a positive feedback between CO2 and temperature exists then it doesn’t matter which comes first. (We know both positive and negative feedbacks exist in the real atmosphere.)
4. Agreed. I find the science frustrating because of this, but it is all we have. Just because it is not perfect doesn’t mean we should disregard it completely.
Now Wes, I don’t think your metaphor advances this discussion very far because it is biased by your opinion. If I was to add my opionion just for the fun of it, I would say there is another option,
D. Do nothing because there is no good scientific method to prove that it is black ice.
In my opinion the Garnaut report is C. (So you see we get no where by just voicing opinions.)
I don’t like metaphor either, KT. I couldn’t resist. Sorry.
You’re right it is all about risk management. But first you must assess the risk.
Here are the big problems with AGW theory in a nutshell:
AGW theory predicts that the troposphere should be warming. It isn’t. All researchers realize this is a fatal flaw in the theory, but are hoping against the odds that new data will eventually show tropospheric warming.
AGW theory predicts that the oceans, as the Earth’s great heat sink, should be warming deeply. They aren’t. Combined with the cool troposphere the Earth is missing the latent heat that AGW theory predicts must be hiding somewhere. Researchers are desperately searching for the missing heat everywhere.
Climate sensitivity to CO2 concentration is unknown, as Louis says, however due to the failure of the hypothesis to predict rising air and oceanic warming accurately, it is probably something below 2c.
Normally a hypothesis is only as good as it comports to empirical evidence while yielding useful predictions. A decade ago, AGW theory was a reasonable assumption.
Today AGW theory is dead in the water, but it will take decades for its tenured patrons with careers invested in the theory to abandon ship, if ever. This is not unusual in academia, rather it’s the norm. What’s unusual is the arousal of the public’s imagination this particular theory has inspired.
Whole bureaucratic institutions now exist whose funding is dependent on a false premise. Of course, that’s part of the subtle shifting from AGW terminology to the tautological “Climate Change.” Everyone is aware of the facts listed above.
Meanwhile, professors like Garnaut are doing their bloody best to intimidate graduate students and researchers from coming up with any alternative hypotheses. Imagine if the Big Man himself were to memo your research at the CSIRO as “denialist.” Your career would be over. It’s all part of the fear campaign. So the missing latent heat in the troposphere and the oceans is the elephant in the lab that everyone tiptoes around while whistling Dixie. Pathetic, really.
AGW as “settled science” has become an orthodoxy. This is not a metaphor, but a definition. The facts don’t matter any more, not to Garnaut, not to Rudd, not to Bush, not to the IPCC and certainly not to the burgeoning global technocratic class who see climate management schemes as a path to great power.
AGW orthodoxy has gained immense etiological momentum through the mass media and has tremendous psychological appeal for a post-Christian, post-modern society yearning for an epic and tragic eschatology we can believe in. Volumes will be written about the mythological dimensions of AGW and its transformation from phenomena to noumena.
My point is AGW orthodoxy has morphed into a zeitgeist of irrational human fear fueling a lynch mob mentality in our polity. It’s the stuff of nightmares and phantoms, of collective consciousness and witch-hunts, of pogroms, oracles, dragons and crusades. This dark aspect of AGW has utterly overwhelmed the science to the point where empiricism isn’t important in the public debate any longer. The Dionysian dimension of AGW has trumped reason in our political discourse. Bob Brown can thunder in Parliament or on the ABC “we will lose the planet,” and nary a voice will dare a snicker. This is Orwellian fear of the likes that have we never experienced in Australia.
The risk to be managed is the harm that human irrationality will inflict upon humanity while possessed by the AGW ecstasy. The actual consequences of increased CO2 in the atmosphere pale in comparison to the enemy within.
Of course, that’s just my risk assessment opinion. What’s yours?
I particularly liked the reference to this report as “The Guano Report”. A grain of truth, at last.
But then, the guano/left always did have problems with cause and effect as our KRuddite mate has made so very clear.
And spare us the cop-out, KT. The community has had long established standards that are required of anyone who seeks to make a call on the resources of others for a particular course of action, ie standards required of those who are promoting a prospectus. And neither the IPCC nor Garnaut nor KRudd has come anywhere near meeting those standards in terms of accuracy, transparency or verifiability.
And the normal response of intelligent, rational beings when confronted with a gonzo prospectus is to go about their business without any regard for what certain spivs might be spruiking in the market place.
And that brings us to what could be called the “prime directive” that overrides all questions of what you would like to claim is “risk management”. That is, never, ever, do business with shonks and spivs.
Absent this “prime directive” and all that is left of ‘risk management’ is a vague fear of being seen to miss the latest fad.
Wes – you really are an ignorant doofus. There has been as massive warming in the oceans – your grasp on this entire issue is about a pico-second worth from the blogosphere and talk-back radio. Anything that may be happening of late is another matter of complexity.
Do you really come up with the gunge you pen yourself or is a team of script writers at Lavoisier?
Anyway wasted on you though it is …
Science 8 July 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5732, pp. 284 – 287
Penetration of Human-Induced Warming into the World’s Oceans
Tim P. Barnett,1* David W. Pierce,1 Krishna M. AchutaRao,2 Peter J. Gleckler,2 Benjamin D. Santer,2 Jonathan M. Gregory,3 Warren M. Washington4
A warming signal has penetrated into the world’s oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically forced climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences. Changes in advection combine with surface forcing to give the overall warming pattern. The implications of this study suggest that society needs to seriously consider model predictions of future climate change.
Anyway you’ve got boofhead back from tending his herbs and sheep to back you up now. More boring rants about his insights to endure. Oh bliss.
Back to the conga line guys. Resume the elephant walk.
Wes,
Luke has cited an article that suggests the oceans are warming. The following link points to an article that alludes to warming in the troposphere, and discusses the now well known observational error that led to confusion over the upper tropospheric warming signal.
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/temperature-trends/
For this reason, I believe the hypothesis of AGW, as you put it, is being more-or-less supported.
I am also aware of the “climate change religion” that has emerged throughout the globe, and I understand your reaction to it, and yes it makes me cringe when people who have no understanding of the science get so worked up by it, mis-quote the science, and screw up the arguments. However, like politicians they can only act on advice from the “experts”. The “experts” are now predicting climate disaster, so I have empathy for people caught up in the movement. If the experts are generally correct, then it will be the climate change “sect members” that will drive change that may save us from climate disaster.
If you are correct and there is nothing in it, then the cost we will have to bear, would seem to be a temporary interruption to economic growth (and no, coal miners will not have to move to reef resorts, the coal industry will only gradually decline, because we are currently so dependent on coal). The other costs might include, improved air quality, habitat regeneration, healthier more active population…
Ian, you question the accuracy, transparancy and verifiability of climate change projections, and whether they are sufficient to justify calling on the community to change the way it uses resources. I guess that is also an opinion.
With regard to accuracy, we all know climate models are far from perfect, but I think there is evidence that the earth is warming. Perhaps surprisingly, we are seeing areas of southern Aus experiencing a prolonged dry period, consistent with model projections. Temperature records at a variety of locations throughout the globe are being broken at an increasing rate. While this is no proof of AGW, it is consistent with it, and makes me think that we do need to seriously consider it as a possibility.
As to transparency, all the science that has gone into the IPCC reports, is peer reviewed work open to everyone. Admittedly, very few people, if any, have a good enough knowledge of the science to be suitably critical of all the science across the board.
Lastly verifiability, it is the nature of this science that it is largely unverifiable. That is one of the frustrating aspects of climate science. We don’t know what the future emissions will be, we know the models are far from perfect, and we can only verify them by waiting and seeing. We can verify them to a certain extent by modelling recent climate, and by looking at earlier projections and seeing how well they are tracking. Because this is not my exact area of expertise, I can’t report on such verification.
I am very much aware of the uncertainties of climate change projections, but I believe the evidence is sufficient to suggest that they may be on the right track, and given the potential consequences, it would be unwise to wait for more evidence.
It surprises me that many people posting to this list are so certain that there’s nothing in climate change. Are any of you scientists? Wouldn’t you agree that to be a scientist you must be open to possibilities. For sure, make decisions based on the balance of evidence as you see it. But to so strongly deny the possibility of other options is very bad science. Can you see that you are falling into the same trap as the members of the climate change “sect”?
Thats just fine KT. So why don’t you just put it to the test and launch a prospectus to raise money in the financial markets and apply the same level of rigour as employed by the IPCC?
But before you do so you should duck out and get a big jar of vaseline because you will be doing a long stretch, real quick, and you might appreciate some lubricant.
You just don’t get it do you? Accuracy, data integrity, transparency and verifiability are fundamental attributes of risk management. To take any steps without getting these right first is the hallmark of rash and foolhardy behaviour.
And it is usually followed by elaberate and verbosely casuist justifications for ignoring the need for these fundamentals.
And poor old Luke is still smarting, in denial, after his precious departmental peers had been exposed as a bunch of serial shonks on another thread. Just let him rant, he is doing the “dead cat bounce”.
Huh ?
Hey – isn’t it good to have boofhead back. I missed him. Wes – this is where you come in and discuss standards of blogging. Oh Wes … Wes … gee Wessy must have ducked out for a Chico Roll.
Better look around some more,KT. “although discrepancies remain to be resolved in the tropics.”
The mid tropical troposphere was where the warming was meant to be greater than at the surface. Isn’t happening.
If the hypothesis in the other paper is correct then why have the oceans stopped warming or cooled slightly in recent years? The forcings should be greater. Maybe they got it wrong?
And BTW where did they get the 40 year old data from? No Argo system then. Likely very patchy data. Funny how with better sampling the warming goes away.
You also say: “Temperature records at a variety of locations throughout the globe are being broken at an increasing rate.” Really? Better check on the reliability of the measurements also. This is a matter of debate and inquiry.
I’m a used to be meteorologist and atmospheric researcher (you will find that professional meteorologists are disproportionately sceptical about AGW), now engineer. If you knew much about academia or government research organisations you would be less impressed by their output or impartiality.
The Earth may indeed be warming slightly. This has happened in the past, as has cooling. The issue is what may be causing this. Increased CO2 may play a small part but there is little to no evidence for the hypothesised positive feedbacks that would cause “climate catastrophe”.
From what I see, a slight warming is likely to be nearly wholly beneficial and if CO2 from fossil fuel burning does this this is a good thing along with the enhanced plant growth. We already use technology to clean stack and tailpipe emissions and tremendous progress has been made on this score over the last 50 years. Having said that I think burning coal directly is a bad idea as I’ve flown over coal burning power stations a number of times. If you want to cut CO2 emissions get behind an aggressive nuclear program.
The “reduce emissions because we should be cautious” scenario has in fact got huge costs in lower societal and individual wealth and freedom and given the paucity of evidence for harmful effects of slight warming I’m unwilling to pay this price.
Wes: regarding black ice in SEQ and “doubt we have anyone this clever in Canberra” I say how would you know? Are we assuming Rudd & Co has never driven in say Tassie on a wild week end?
Now I reckon those left behind in SEQ won’t get much practice tire skating over black ice as we go on.
I’m a scientist (geologist – MSc.) and I accept that climate changes but equally accept that we are only able to adapt to it, as we have done in the past, but not to control it.
It seems that climate science has stalled itself in a computerised fantasy where virtual climate can indeed be controlled by adjusting parameters, but this virtual world is not connected to physical reality.
The AGW theory is pseudoscience based on an unproven assumption. Even on this basis measurement has falsified it.
Without CO2 there is no life as we know it.
As India is not going to curb her emissions at all, the whole AGW argument is pointless.
The AGW charade is nothing but another example of post-modernists screwing up yet another human institution – science, turning it into a politically correct science.
“Rational debate, evidence, logic and information are powerless against irrational fear”.
Come off it Eyrie – ALL oceans and to depth !You guys are just soooo selective.
Hissink – your ongoing ignorance and goofiness is breath-taking. I loved the latest ruse of yours – modellers can’t simulate a sphere ! Wow … I await hordes rushing to your defense on this.
Hey Eyrie,
Maybe we were former colleagues. Up to about 5 years ago I would have agreed with you on the veracity of the projections.
The fundamental issue as I see it is that nobody knows how the planet will respond to increasing CO2 levels. I can think of a few possible scenarios (i) negative feedbacks will dominate and we’ll see virtually no change, (ii) a small climate adjustment will occur before the system settles down (iii) positive feedbacks will introduce a climate adjustment, before negative feedbacks will settle things down again, (iv) positive feedbacks will lead to runaway climate change.
I think there is enough evidence consistent with a changing climate (note that is very different to suggesting there is evidence of climate change) for us to consider the possibility of scenarios (iii) and (iv). (My opinion, not fact.)
Ian, I’m not an economist so I can’t offer an intelligent response to your challenge. Your underlying argument appears to be that it is irresponsible for the global community to act on information that you believe to be shonky. I can’t argue against that logic. I’m not going to try and convince you or anyone to change what they think, but I was suprised by everyones level of conviction in what can only be described as an uncertain science.
I’ve got work to do and wont get back to this forum for some time. Good luck everyone, and I really do hope you are correct in that AGW will not effect the planet negatively. Then we can move on to the more pressing issue of over population, and the related issues of food and resource limitations and environmental degradation.
KT, Luke, Gavin, Louis and Eyrie:
My personal bias: We are in a late interglacial and the climate is warming naturally. Some level of AGW has occurred in the last century and perhaps more will follow this century. Divining the natural from the human induced is an invitation to a game of hyperlink ping-pong. For instance, the MWP was as warm or warmer than today.
Surface temperature is the noisiest and most variable component of climate, i.e. an elastic yardstick. And finally, the whole debate has serious basic epistemological problems, which undermine all propositions for direct radical human intervention at this time based upon the AGW or CC premise. There is a calm, rational approach to address our dependence on fossil fuels, which has little to do with fear driven assaults on reason.
In my risk assessment the balance of evidence is that climate sensitivity to CO2 doesn’t exceed 2c. That’s not enough to cause climate disasters larger than the one we face by allowing irrational fear to coercively deny the economic aspirations of humanity’s billions living in poverty, speciously based on a phantom of our collective consciousness.
No matter how fashionable the trope of “green” energy is to wealthy and free bourgeois, to impose it in a kind of collectivist pseudo-ritualistic frenzy has deep socio-psychological motives that have yet to be exposed in the debate.
Ultimately, a polity driven by a kind of civic madness will come to challenge of the basic principles of our civilization: reason, democratic due process, inalienable rights, freedom of speech, property and movement, scientific progress (ie, integrity of method and freedom of research.) More on this later.
That said: If a preponderance of new research eventually reveals the climate sensitive to CO2 is above 4c. (Bob Brown believes its 6c or more.) Then I would reasonably change my position on the dangers of AGW. I have an open mind to the science and look for new information to update my position all the time.
We should all approach this debate with humility and compassionate reason foremost in our minds, ready to receive and adapt to new information.
I know Luke is capable of compassionate reason should he put his heart in the right place. Personally, I bore of duelling trolls and hereby swear off engaging in ad hominem. (Hope I can resist temptation, beside I always win. ;0) So boring. Personal attacks push us into ideological corners more extreme than we would otherwise chose to defend.
I did not come to this debate with an agenda. I came to it as a young environmentalist in the 1980’s fighting on the ground in the forest to save Redwoods. I first heard of the “Greenhouse Effect” in a lecture given by James Lovelock in the early 1980’s. Today, as an old conservationist, I love nothing better than to sleep out in forest listening to the koalas talk. I live on a large remote property backed up to a national park. Most of it is primary forest. My wife and I planned to bequeath the property to the national park when we depart. So if I am a shill for anyone it would be for rational thought, perspective, Gaia and my favourite “faith”: Evolution.
Luke,
Once again you misprepresent – I never said they can’t model a sphere, I am pointing out that they don’t use a rotating sphere in the models. The one you used as an example used a stationary cube. Others have noted that a flat circular plane was used to simulate the earth.
But since you continue the ad homs in the hope of tiring the sceptics out, perhaps you sould consider it as a failed entreprise. We are not going to go away.
Wes,
Thoughtful comment.
Louis – oh come now – they have all the Coriolis forces, gravity wave drags, frontal systems, clouds – plus all the synoptic features you would expect. Changing sun angles, orbital effects. These are massively complex simulations. If the simulation represents all the features of a rotating system who cares.
You have not apologised for denying a cubic conformal grid model exists.
Your comment is utter irrelevant nonsense. Go and find out what is really done with climate modelling then comment. Desist from fabrication based on your fanciful dreaming. Makes you out to be utterly stupid.
Luke,
I have no desire to immerse myself in climate Alchemy, let alone waste time on computer models of physical phenomena which can’t actually be modelled.
Pathetic response. Run away now.
KT, the last 5 years is where the projections have diverged from measured reality. Even some of the AGW crowd are admitting there is no current warming, but just wait 10 or 15 years!
We know what will happen if CO2 increases – it has increased by 25% or so already and the answer is very little. We have to argue about statistics and subject the measured data to extreme torture to get even that. And none of this is even terribly convincing or outside historical experience when there was no extra CO2.
The human race has lots of real problems to work on and a universe to explore. Let’s get on with it.
Luke,
Anyone who thinks they can computer model non-linear, chaotic systems doesn’r really graspt it.
Your climate modelers are the modern day analog of witch Doctors with their secret methods of prophesying the future. Then they did it with chicken entrails, now with silicon chips.
Noting much new under the sun, after all.
Even more silly comeback – the Earth’s climate isn’t chaotic – does it suddenly dart off in a chaotic manner – no. Any chaos is bounded.
Indeed chaos modelling is big business.
Louis denys that forecasters can forecast the weather with proven skill. Skill being a mathematical expression.
Off you go now. Toddle off.
Luke
Who said climate was chaotic? Not I and another instance of poor comprehension on your part.
You have on many occasions. LOL.
Luke,
It’s a non-linear chaotic system, quite different to stating climate is chaotic.
As I wrote above, you english comphrension is not good.
Well it’s either chaotic or it isn’t ? If the chaos is bounded it doesn’t matter. Can’t have it both ways. You really have no idea. You’re pig ignorant about all of this. A veritable ignoramus. So stop being boring Louis and talking out of your bum.
“you english comphrension is not good” hahahahahaha – what a clown.
All, I think you need to cut Pukey Luke some slack. He can’t help being a drooling pablum-gobbling AGCC hysterical goober. It’s an affliction worthy of handicap status, so stop picking on the handicapped. You should be ashamed.
It seems that drooling pablum-gobbling are the only words that Bruce Knob knows. All he ever says. Spat on as a child? Is a child? Or perhaps afflicted by one of those mental disorders above. Maybe all of these. A sad case of expectorophilia.
>It’s an affliction worthy of handicap status, so stop picking on the handicapped. You should be ashamed.
Bruce Cobb you are a model citizen of this blog! Mr Biggs and his flock would be very proud of you and can only aspire to achieve such standards in the dis’ing of people with disabilities.
Wes, as an old campaigner, I see another idealist champing on the bit.
Redwoods?
I suspect this might stop them
“How warming really happens is actually quite simple
Email from Jim Peden:
As a dissenting physicist, I simply can no longer buy the notion that CO2 produces any significant warming of the atmosphere at any rate. I’ve studied the atomic absorption physics to death, from John Nicol’s extensive development to the much longer winded dissertation by Gerlich & Tscheuschner and everything in between, it simply doesn’t add up. Even if every single IR photon absorbed by a CO2 molecule were magically transformed into purely thermal translational modes , the pitifully small quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t add up to much additional heat. And if the aforementioned magical 100% transformation from radiation into “heat” were true, then all arguments concerning re-emission ( source of all the wonderful “greenhouse effect” cartoons with their arrows flying in all directions ) are out the window.
More and more, I am becoming convinced that atmospheric heating is primarily by thermal conduction from the surface, whose temperature is determined primarily by solar absorption. I get a lot of email from laymen seeking simple answers ( I’m sure you all do as well ). My simple reply goes like this:
1. The sun heats the earth.
2. The earth heats the atmosphere
3. After the sun sets, the atmosphere cools back down
With a parting comment: “If we were to have 96 continuous hours without sunlight, temperatures would likely be below freezing over all the world’s land masses. The warmest place you could find would be to take a swim in the nearest ocean. There is no physical process in the atmosphere which “traps” heat. The so-called “greenhouse effect ” is a myth.”
Ender and Medusa and your mates – focus on the last paragraph and come up with the physics behind gases trapping heat in the atmosphere. Like I always said, there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas.
Thanks to John Ray.
There is one simple problem with this model – the sun’s “heat” has to first pass through the atmosphere before it reaches the earth, so it’s the atmosphere which heats the earth, not the earth the atmosphere. Simple physics.
Secondly when night falls, the atmosphere, no longer getting the heat from the sun, then has to equilibrate to the temperature of its surroundings – the earth beneath it which is hotter, and space which is colder – heat transfer is to space.
The hotter earth then conducts its thermal energy to the atmosphere which transfers it to space. So the theory goes.
Except for water as clouds or “vapour”. Water acts as a physical barrier to heat leaving the earth into space.
But the thermal state of a planet is dependent on many factors, most of which remain unknown to modern science.
But one thing is certain – the CO2 content of the earth’s atmosphere is an epiphenomenon of its thermal state.
If people could design facilities to “sequester” nitrous oxide, there would likely be many buyers lining up to purchase the gas.
Would they be eligible for Global Warming Credits?
Louis after reading James Peden I’ve changed my mind. The sheer intensity of the intellectual position was devastating. Anyway which position are you in the denialist brownshirt conga line – before or after Schiller?