Thread: Is the climate change debate realy over?

Originally Posted by johnc

David,

That's to do with Ozone levels not CO2, and I thought the hole was showing signs of finally repairing itself?

This link updates ozone layer information http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/index.html and http://www.theozonehole.com/fact.htm its not over although the reduction in atmospheric halogens is starting to be effective.

/Rave on

One of the problems with this debate is that it is so presented to be black and white. There are vested interests everywhere and a lot of money at stake. There is also an old world / new world divide and the result of all of this is paralysis. Interesting feature on Catalyst last night on the politics of it all. The most telling conference clip was the NG delegate "If you're not willing to lead, then please get out of the way". The science is clear, the problem is political.

I dont trust any research funded by commercial vested interests, Cigarette companies, Oil companies, Fast Food companies or Drug companies. Even if it is washed through private institutes. They have been caught out too often. There is plenty of sham science around and it usually gets trotted out at large privately funded conferences with lots of freebees and enticements for delegates. I also deeply distrust any claims from the US (particularly the US Senate or senators) as they have gone to war to secure oil reserves and the rot is top down. These pollies need to look after those who fund their election campaigns. Bush was an oil man and large chunks of the Republican party are funded by oil. These supposed leaders of the free world are nothing more than bully boy thieves and will use any tactic to line their sponsors pockets. They lied to wage war in Iraq.

Its like asking Ronald McDonald for nutrition advice or Philip Morris on the safety on cigarettes. /Rave off

Ive been doing a bit of a trawl, I have not been able to find much climate change debunking on the net that is not US based. Now maybe this is because the net is overwhelmingly US based, I dont know. Has anyone found sites from any other countries with such a strong leaning? Genuine curiosity here.

Originally Posted by rod@plasterbrok

What cease all activity that releases co2? are you serious?

No.

I think all countries should be allowed to pollute equally. So we should reduce activity that releases co2 (or any other pollutant) to an agreed PER CAPITA level.

In the absence of any other agreement, how about using the current mean levels per capita as a base? I suspect that would involve something like a 70% reduction, but I haven't done the sums.

Isn't this all about greed really? We're already in the richest 10% on the planet, and what we are doing by continuing to relentlessly consume, is to set objectives for the other 90%, they want to be like us (fair enough).

We are in a position wealth and resource wise to set an example to the world on how to live with minimal impact. We can't control their activities, but my spider senses tell me that when they catch up, it'll be a bit gruesome.

There is no balance at the moment. We are such an insignificant blip in the statistics that whatever we do makes no difference, UNLESS we do something so startling that the world takes notice.

Maybe it's time for that?

http://www.miniature-earth.com/

Cheers,
P

I think you will find the site may be US based but the scientist are from all over the World.

So do we let all the under developed / overpopulated countries catch up to our emissions per capita?

Or do we drag our infrastructure and living stadards down to their level to to equal their emissions per capita?

yeah that will work!!!

And exactly what will this achieve?

How much will doing this reduce world temperatures?

You can forget about emissions equal per capita It will and could never happen!

Originally Posted by rod@plasterbrok

Or do we drag our infrastructure and living standards down to their level to to equal their emissions per capita?

What do you mean by living standards? If you mean get rid of water and sanitation and electricity supply, then I'd say no, they can meet ours.

If you mean minimise consumption, waste, packaging, inefficient transport (who needs 200 hp just to drive to work?), and all the other excesses of our life"style", then yes.

yeah that will work!!!

Glad you agree.

And exactly what will this achieve?

It will buy time. Time to find alternatives to the resources we are depleting rapidly. Time to create efficiencies in recycling so we don't have to run out. Time to invent technologies to enable us to go on another century.

I'll be dead, but my Grandchildren might appreciate that.

How much will doing this reduce world temperatures?

It doesn't matter what the temperatures are, if we've run out of stuff to heat things with, cool things with, eat and drink, no one will worry about the odd heat wave.

This conversation is oh so seventies, when the ciggie companies were denying any negative health issues with cigs, and the manufacturing companies were happily spilling stuff into rivers and killing off everything and denying it had an impact.

Sometimes it pays to turn off the tele and go outside. By outside I don't mean Australia, we are such an insignificant overprivileged self righteous bunch who are completely insulated from the real issues of the world.

Go to India or the back blocks of China or Indonesia or any of the former Soviet countries, and take a look at the WORLD.

You don't need scientific arguments to tell you that something isn't quite right.

You can forget about emissions equal per capita It will and could never happen!

Trust me, it could and it WILL, it's just a matter of whether we want it to happen in a controlled way, or whether we want to wait till we run out of resources.

And this on a day when they are calling for the government to make petrol cheaper, so we can use more!

Cheers,

P

Hey Peter,

I personally think that peak oil will be the big short term challenge and will probably consume more attention than AGW very soon. Im also curious to see some maths on the potential atmospheric CO2 if all the oil was burnt. IMHO oil is way to important for solvents, plastics etc to waste on burning for energy. But its where the infrastructure is. We need other solutions.

As long as its not bio fuel, burning food to drive around the burbs is the next level of insanity. Particularly ethanol - what a waste!

Sebastiaan

I agree Sebastiaan, but the challenge will be here an not in the third world.

We won't like not being able to drive a kilometre to the shop to pick up a paper! It won't impact significantly on the third world guys though, or even in Europe where there is less reliance on our grand "half acre" lifestyle.

In "civilised" cities, the markets are below the accommodation, but that's "unAustralian" if you talk to the urban planners!

Cheers,

P (is this the beginning of a hijack?)

Originally Posted by bitingmidge

(is this the beginning of a hijack?)

Seems more relevant than the entrenched positions that have been thrashed to death with little chance of movement on either side.

You're absolutely right BTW. We will feel it, not those who dont have the oil dependence. Its gonna be a wild old ride and we will do the usual, blame the incumbent government blah blah.

Gotta go, Im driving the V8 4WD to Maccas for lunch......, then off to the other side of Sydney to buy some expensive imported rainforest timber and home for some imported 3rd world beer and delivered pizza.

Sebastiaan

I'd agree that our issue with peak oil, is to reduce the reliance on oil in transport to conserve it for plastics and to a lesser extent the fertilizer market. The future would seem to be more about moving towards electric cars or scooters for local trips, and tram, train and bus for longer hauls. The caravan may be at its heyday, I can't see a bright future for that industry. Bio fuel or more particularly ethanol does not appear to be an option, along with the enormous amount of land required it would also mean the third world would have trouble competing with the bio fuel market for food staples.

It would make sense to get road transports off the freeways and their loads on to flatbed rail cars, then picked up by local transport. One train engine uses a lot less fuel per tonne of freight than a truck. It shouldn't be to hard to create a handling system that minimises handling. If Singapore can do it with the ship based container market surely we can apply similar logic to the freight industry. Congestion in Melbourne now means that if I have to go into the city its public transport, and the same goes for getting around, but not if its across suburbs where the links aren't direct. Just getting the cars off the roads would ease the congestion and allow faster travel times. I do know there are a large number of people in this town that now take the train rather than the car if they can, because on the morning run it cuts at least an hour off the trip, but the problem remains the lack of services. The aging carriages are a turn off as well.

Solar technologies are advancing at a fast rate and may well be a big power source in the future, the new solar power plant on the drawing board in Northern Victoria is an interesting develpment, and if it is a success perhaps we will see more in the future. We still have a long way to go on power wastage in the home, both through poor house design and standby appliances gobbling up power while doing nothing. As a big push to reducing power wastage and the need for more sources of power you have go to wonder why we haven't mandated that this stuff should shut its self right off when not in use.

Regards the supply of crops for bio-fuel, I read the other day in The Australian that one of the big hurdles facing farmers is the very finite supply of phosphate, now seriously dwindling! Think Nauru and Christmas Island. Australian agriculture, using poor soils, is going to be drastically affected and prices have already shot through the roof. Now talk of reclaiming phosphate from sewerage as a real possibility!

Cheers,

I'm happy to contribute.

Good point tho.

Remember the superphosphate subsidy?

Hi Guys,
I'm currently working for a fertiliser company in WA, and we just cant get enough phosphate. We make the stuff as well as import it.
World wide prices are goiing up weekly. While farmers are getting a good price for the wheat, their losing a lot of it on fertiliser.

I found a few websites all claiming to have plans on how to run your car on water(H2O) ... has anybody done any investigation on this ??. The YouTube videos look realistic, but I'm not sure why there isn't more information available on the subject.

I found a few websites all claiming to have plans on how to run your car on water(H2O) .

No. It's all a hoax. They claim to be able to be able to extract the hydrogen from water to run the car. Extracting hydrogen requires a great deal of energy to do. They all look real but they are not. They're really trying to scam for investment money.

There is enough "peer reviewed" evidence that debunks the AGW theory if you care to read it. It is peer reviewed papers everyone wants to see I guess.

I just looked up one of the items in that article you posted.

“New research from Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) assumes,” wrote AEI’s Schwartz, who hold a master’s degree in planetary science from the California Institute of Technology.

This is cherry picking bits of information from the paper that suits the Marc Monaro agenda.

Have a quick read of this article. Link

Stephen Schwartz believes AGW is real.

John and Grunt it is a common and baseless attack on Marc Monaro simply based on some funding sheez arent we over this "big Oil" thing already.

I certainly didn't believe the cigarette companies that said smoking wasn't bad for you. They funded plenty of 'Independent' research and got the results that they wanted. The same is happening in the AGW debate. You should check out the doco 'The Denial Machine' by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. You will find that the same people who are producing papers on denying climate change were producing papers saying cigarettes don't harm.

Originally Posted by Grunt

I certainly didn't believe the cigarette companies that said smoking wasn't bad for you. They funded plenty of 'Independent' research and got the results that they wanted. The same is happening in the AGW debate. You should check out the doco 'The Denial Machine' by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. You will find that the same people who are producing papers on denying climate change were producing papers saying cigarettes don't harm.

has it occurred to you that searching for people who have done a paper on smoking AND AGW would get the result the politicists want?

the problem with this topic, is that nearly all of it is opinion - facts are so rare its somewhat unbelieveable its called a science - more akin to economics or psychology than chemistry.

When someone actually wants some "facts" or at least some empirical forward testing of models they get none, and if they say I dont believ it then, they are labelled a "denier" with all its encumberances.

Never has a field of 'science' tried so hard to gain and promote the word consensus! And people wonder why there is a growing cynicism toward it?

BTW its not cherry picking - its called reporting on a paper - they havent misrepresented it, why oh why do Mann et all have to spend so much effort to argue every single thing that doesnt agree perfectly with their beliefs? Mann has lost his ability to be scientific - he is sure he is right!

Also, everyone should have a look at Crude, a documentary that aired on the ABC last year. It very neatly ties Peak Oil and Global Warming together.

You can see it online here. http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

It is an excellent doco.