'Is global warming happening?' Poll discussion/results

janbanan

I think one needs more than anecdotal evidence to answer this one. And you can prove almost anything, or the opposite, with statistics.

The environmental systems are so infinitely complex and chaotic not even scientists understand them. How could I possibly....

jetstream_2

Did anybody see the documentary on channel 4 when they said Thatcher started the research into climate change in the eighties, because she wanted to reduce her dependency on fossil fuels. (I don’t mean her personally I mean the country)
One thing we can be sure of, whether they are right or wrong about climate change, we are definitely on the brink of an energy crisis maybe that’s why all we have seen on the TV recently is climate change and reduce your CO² footprint. I think they call it spin.

ZTD

davetrousers wrote: »

You are having a laugh, you really cannot be serious with that statement!

I am being perfectly serious. Trees grow, taking in carbon to produce trunks, branches, leaves and in general - wood.

Then they die.

They then rot, "unproducing" trunks, branches, leaves and wood and emitting carbon dioxide until they're all gone.

Then the cycle is complete.

davetrousers wrote: »

Someone else take the bait on this one please?

If someone wants to argue with the obvious - be my guest. I didn't think that statement was contentious to be honest.

There are processes which take carbon permanently out of circulation - but tree growing isn't one of them.

ZTD

pezza88 wrote: »

This is ludicrous! Go to any science department and you will severely struggle to find any scientist who does not accept climate change. This is because they actually see the data and do not base their reasoning upon what they read in the Sun combined with last week's weather forecast.

Because that's where the money is.

Go to the research department of a major oil company - you will severely struggle to find a scientist who believes burning oil should be banned immediately.

pezza88 wrote: »

A small minority of people put global warming down to changes in sun intensity, etc. but this falls down on one major point - there is virtually no evidence to suggest that the Sun's intensity has increased!

Are you sure?

pezza88 wrote: »

There is no problem investigating other possibilities but to believe it is ludicrous.

I don't understand this statement. It looks like a declaration of religious faith - but it can't be that surely. Could you explain it?

pezza88 wrote: »

WAKE UP!

I have.

cuttersblade

Well i'm pretty sure there is evidence the suns intensity has increased, its very easy to find data on th number of sunspots. and if you put this raw data on a graph with temperature they correlate very well.

At the end of the day climate change is happening but its nothing we can control, and it certainly isnt something we should be trying to stop.

ZTD

feesh wrote: »

ZTD - recycling is NOT an environmental issue.

It depends how you define environmental. Not living near a landfill is enviromental under some definitions.

It's not all that likely to be a climate-change issue.

feesh wrote: »

It's more often an economic one (because we're running out of landfill space and it's costing Local Authorities more and more to dispose of it).

This is untrue. A landfill is just a big hole in the ground. I could go up into the Scottish mountains and dig a hole large enough to take our waste for the next millenium.

Getting the Scots to agree to this may prove to be difficult however...

But certainly the space is there.

As for the economic issue - if it was economic, we wouldn't have to pass laws enforcing it.

feesh wrote: »

It really winds me up when people think they're being green because they recycle. It aint that black and white (is anything?!).

So what would you consider to be "green" then?

feesh wrote: »

Recycling can use a lot of energy and fossil fuels. I do recycle almost everything we use at home (although we try and reduce our consumption too) but I don't think I'm doing it because I'm saving the planet from climate change - I do it because I used to live near a landfill site and I can't bear to think of all these plastics and godknowswhat just being left to rot in the ground.

But you may end up causing more of earths natural resources to be used up in order to do that. Is that sensible, merely because you can't "bear it"?

feesh wrote: »

And to address another of your points, actually there is a heck of a lot of research going into life cycle analyses now, in fact I'd say it was one of the fastest growing areas of the industry.

This is confirming my point - not addressing it. If it's a growth area - then "future=more". This then implies "past=less". Which is what I said. We've made all these "green" decisions without looking at lifecycle costs. The fact we're starting to do more of this doesn't take anything away from that we haven't been up to this point.

ZTD

jetstream wrote: »

Did anybody see the documentary on channel 4 when they said Thatcher started the research into climate change in the eighties, because she wanted to reduce her dependency on fossil fuels. (I don’t mean her personally I mean the country)
One thing we can be sure of, whether they are right or wrong about climate change, we are definitely on the brink of an energy crisis maybe that’s why all we have seen on the TV recently is climate change and reduce your CO² footprint. I think they call it spin.

This is certainly true. Look up "Hubbert's Peak" - (no relation to Dante... )

That peak has already been passed for North Sea oil.

tomhill

Couple of points guys.

1) If the motive behind Climatologists' support for CC was to increase their funding then surely they would say that the problem isn't 'solved' but rather is 'unsolved' and needs further research. They aren't doing this. Therefore any economic benefit is moving away from Climatologists into other research departments and into the amelioration industries.

2) Eco-taxes are necessarily bad. For instance if increases in eco-taxes were matched by an decrease in income tax this would help sure up the job market. This is because when times are tough the high tax on people's income makes it cheaper to sack people than to cut resource use. Making 'people' cheaper and resources more expensive would both help the environment and stabalise the job market.

3) Global warming is a natural phenomena. Without it the average temperature on the earth would be freezing. However, the effect of anthropogenic global warming will shift the natural background levels up a knotch. Its a bit like swapping your 4.5 togs summer quilt for a 13 tog winter one.

scott1985_2

There has always been issues regarding weather patterns. From the fear of a new ice age in 1975, to the more recent global warming threat that looms over a majority of news casts today. The representation of data within this “not so new” topical matter is one of the primary reasons as to the recent introduction of many new measures to reduce pollution.


It wasn't until the mid 90's that a whole new wave of climate perception took place, with many unexpected weather phenomenon taking the population by surprise. This naturally led the government to invest more money into climate research.


As more money was spent upon the effects of climate change there was a political bandwagon that soon followed. Surprisingly many “green” activists followed suit. The pressure put upon scientists to present information was huge. Many followed a cash incentive to produce the results that politicians and campaigners wanted to see.


Most climate models work upon the assumption of data entered into it's system. As with any system the information it presents is only as plausible as the variables that are placed into it.
The composition of the earth's atmosphere is shown below;



Nitrogen 78.084%
Oxygen 20.946%
Argon 0.934%
Carbon dioxide 0.038%
Water vapour 1%
Other 0.002%

(Source Wiki)

Carbon Dioxide is a relatively minor part within the atmosphere. But it has caused many people to alter the way they think. In actual fact man made carbon emissions only account for 0.1% of the above figure. Hardly a catastrophic sum.


What many people do not understand that all living beings produce Carbon Dioxide, purely a by product of being alive. Man made contributions are insignificant compared to the natural world (other land animals and vegetation). Geological events such as volcanoes, and thermal springs produce more carbon than both man and nature combined. Even more so the oceans account for over 48% of Carbon Dioxide produced on the earth today.

Carbon Dioxide is considered a greenhouse gas, a relatively minor one at that. Surprisingly water vapour is also a contributor to the green house effect, and it is recognised as having a stronger effect than that of Carbon Dioxide. (Will we expect a media farce the next time we boil the kettle or have a shower?)


Much like the lottery is a tax on those who are bad at Math, Carbon Offset payments are tax on those who are bad at Science.

The idea of creating a scare to highlight any matter has always been one of the general media's strong points. The misrepresentation and sometimes falsification of data produce results that are designed to shock the public into adopting a different lifestyle. Many examples have been seen over time and a few very large incidents within the last 6 years have shown the extent of falsified data designed to sway the public's thoughts and motives behind major political movements.


While climate change and the global warming has been at the heart of most recent discussions within all developed nations, this has caused the breed of a new industry. The environmental carbon offset business.
In a nutshell, these are companies that are willing to offset the carbon you produce by planting trees. Mainly designed for people unable or unwilling to offset the carbon they produce by themselves.


There is even plans to introduce the Carbon Offset Tax, designed to hit businesses and individuals alike. Another tax that is being funded into bad science. The idea of companies and government organisations cashing in on the idea generated by bad science, is unethical and not required. Policies like this are designed to cause a devastating blow smaller businesses and people on a low income. Effectively another poll tax.


The concept is to force the developed world into an alternative method of thinking. While there are advantages to this including further R&D into new technologies and advancements into future forms of transportation that do not depend upon oil. There are also disadvantages to this method, this fails to correctly motivate businesses and individuals to change their behaviour as the information they have been presented is false. The idea of taxing businesses and individuals based upon a media enforced fad is entirely unethical.


Furthermore, while developed nations are altering their ideologies, the main damage is being forced upon developing nations such as Africa.



The developing world is under new pressure to adopt the same strategies that are in place within “Western Cultures” this includes solar and wind power alternative to coal and oil. As a result the African nation is finding it difficult to adopt expensive and inefficient technologies. So as Africa continues to use coal and oil, they face the prospects of further taxes and restrictions imposed upon them.


As a developing nation, that has fought long and hard with poverty and corruption within its own ranks, it has a new threat to kill the future development from the greed and corruption from that of the “Western World”. This does bear a striking resemblance to the trade restrictions that were in place.


While Africa is host to a large deposit of natural resources, they are being told that they must not use it. They have to adopt the technologies that the Western World uses now. The fact being that solar, and wind generated electrical power is grossly unreliable, and highly inflated in price compared to that of coal and oil, does make sense – to the western world.

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First post, bit of a biggie.

dronid

There really are several questions here.

1 Do humans cause climate change?

2 Does the Earth’s temperature vary normally?

3 Should we worry about waste generally?

4 Is God in charge of it all? And will we, therefore be safe?

I would say….

1 Do humans cause climate change?

It does seem likely – the world is an enclosed relatively isolated system. If you shake a salt cellar the position of a grain of salt is determined by the other grains of salt and the container. In the same way you dump anything in the world you affect something else. There is not absolute evidence that global climate is affected in easily identified ways. The world is a large place to experiment and even now we can’t understand many of its systems. It is possible that the only reason you may not see climate change is that life has a wonderful way of adapting and absorbing change. This buffers the change to climate by, for example, extra plant growth or coral growth in the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere and can mean it is not immediately apparent. Ultimately the continuing stress on the ecosystem will break it if it isn’t reduced. However there are other factors

2 Does the Earth’s temperature vary normally?

Yes it does. The Earth gently wobbles about on its orbit in regular cycles. Also the sun goes through periods of greater activity. Additionally, volcanoes, asteroid strikes, variations in the world’s albedo (how reflective it is to solar radiation and periodic cycles in the Earths magnetic field have effects. So, interestingly enough, does life on Earth. The Earth has has global variations in it’s atmosphere. Oxygen is likely only to exist because of life. Periods when the Earth had non oxygenated oceans caused massive depletion in atmospheric Oxygen, rather knackering life. Even if it doesn’t effect climate, it certainly affects life. Worth remembering.

3 Should we worry about waste generally?

Too right! Even if you’re not worried about climate change do you want to fill up the world with cr*p? If you’re not sure – go and look at a landfill site and wonder how big the pile will be in 10, 50, 100 years!

4 Is God in charge of it all? And will we, therefore be safe?

I think that it has been expressed that God helps those who help themselves. I personally would not second guess what seems apparent without something in any religious text which says that fossil fuels will last forever, affect nothing and disintegrate once used. I also think the Bible specifically says something about taking care of the world somewhere in Genesis, when the world is given to us? Unless God has told you personally that the world will be fine I think I would err on the side of caution and take care what has been given to you.