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RogerM 28 Jan 2009 10:25

Thank god global warming is over!!!
 
Adelaide expecting 46C tomorrow, Melbourne 42C, at least a week above 40C. Back to the good ole days of the 1960s and 70s when summers were warm, none of this mamby pamby cool 30C-35C summers that we've had for the past 20 years.

Walkabout 28 Jan 2009 18:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by RogerM (Post 225728)
Adelaide expecting 46C tomorrow, Melbourne 42C, at least a week above 40C. Back to the good ole days of the 1960s and 70s when summers were warm, none of this mamby pamby cool 30C-35C summers that we've had for the past 20 years.


Here, here, good stuff - can we have some of that for summer 09 in the northern hemisphere?!
I'm all for it. We have not had a heatwave since summer 03 and that was a good 'un.

PocketHead 29 Jan 2009 01:41

I've always thought global warming was a con, that aside the only thing I am missing right now whilst on the road is Melbourne's summer heat :) 46 is incredibly hot though I recall a 47 degree day I think it was '05 and Sharapova was in the open final or semi final, it was extremely uncomfortable with no aircon

mollydog 29 Jan 2009 04:52

Grab your paddles boys!
 
Tipping point anyone? :rofl:

RogerM 29 Jan 2009 05:26

Well I have to admit to being a global warming sceptic, mainly because historical records show that the climate has changed back and forth - not globally but by various parts of the world. You only have to look at the known climates in SE Asia when their civilisations were forging ahead - whilst Europe sat in the cold and fog after the end of the Roman Empire. Much the same for the Chinese Empire, Japan, S American, etc. all had their turn. A temperate and wet climate leads to easy food production, having an excess of food allows for the arts/sciences to flourish and civilisation takes a big step forward, as the climate changes again those civilisations wane and die out - Indian sub continent, Aztec/Inca, Indochina, Greco Roman.

If the global warming proponents would care to take a look at the evidence (not theories) about the position of the North & South Poles and their influence on climate then I would feel happier. Magnetic maps are available and can easily be referenced to weather patterns from writings, observations and plant/tree remains going back to about 4000BC.

The position of the North Pole was heading South until the 1980s - under Canada. It then started moving North North West in the direction of Central Siberia at about 10kms per year. In the late 80s it sped up to 40kms per year - causing the limp wrists to scream "global warming and its all your fault!!". The pollies were only to quick to see the opportunity to increase taxation, "we'll tax you to save you from yourselves".

It wont matter how much carbon tax you pay, the Earth's magnetic core will do whatever it wants, and at present it wants to warm the North Atlantic and Eastern Pacific. No doubt the areas where people benefit from the changes to global weather patterns will be ignored - much as we have ignored them by migrating to more temperate climates when the going got tough in the past.

PocketHead 29 Jan 2009 23:08

I certainly think cleaning up our act and respecting the environment is of the utmost importance but people have been making these claims of Armageddon for many years, since they thought the sky was falling but most of all is that it has such a heavy political agenda and none of the science shows that the world is warmer today than before, where I am from the hottest day on record was 100 years ago when there were hardly any cars and powerplants not to mention while the arctic shrunk the antarctic was growing plus the polar bears have just about doubled their numbers since the 70s but you never hear of these things because nobody publishes it, doom and gloom gets the highest ratings.

Another thing is that I never trust politicians who aren't scientists telling us we have to 'act now'.

Then of course there are the false predictions which nobody ever seems to be held accountable for yet these people make an awfully large amount of money from, if a doctor misdiagnosed like these people he/she would go to jail.

Linzi 30 Jan 2009 08:44

Warming
 
Hi Mollydog, you come across as being a very switched on individual. I have come to the conclusion that man made global warming is definitely happening. But I see also what very varied ideas and belief systems humans have. In this case it's more serious though than an entertaining bar room chat. Humans seem programmed to be optimistic to survive. People cherry pick evidence and quotes to fit their own present idea. That's just the way we are. I wonder why I have decided we have a big problem? I'm not the only one to have traveled. It's bloody cold here now but it still doesn't disuade me. Linzi.

Bronze 30 Jan 2009 10:04

We were taught to fear the coming ice-age when I was at primary school.

I don't entirely grasp how change is bad. Getting warmer (or colder) is good for some, bad for some, and makes no odds for some. On balance it doesn't make much odds.

Threewheelbonnie 30 Jan 2009 11:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bronze (Post 226079)
We were taught to fear the coming ice-age when I was at primary school.

I don't entirely grasp how change is bad. Getting warmer (or colder) is good for some, bad for some, and makes no odds for some. On balance it doesn't make much odds.

This is the problem IMHO. The scientists act like a bunch of train spotters, they'll argue for years about the wheel nut size on a 4-2-4 Pacific class when the question was "does it burn coal". The polliticians can't see further than next week and will never bite the hand of the big corporations that feed them or the confused people who have to try and vote. The big corporations need to keep selling stuff no one needs or the system will destroy them too. The PR people and journalists haven't a clue and will cut out big chunks of information in order to get anywhere near something anyone but a scientist might THINK they understand at the end of a 90 second piece. The result is lots of ammunition for the people who really love their V8 lawn mower and think only having a V6 somehow diminishes their manhood.

To me it's as simple as this. There are too many people for too few resources, we are on a planet of a fixed size and breeding like crazy. If everyone in China and India owns a V8 pick up truck, a flat screen telly and enough air conditioning units to freeze the Gobi, the bits of the planet that fix the mess the US and Europe make now won't be able to cope. Like any mechanism in failure it'll overheat or over cool, or make noxious gasses or leak or whatever. We are talking about a failure on a planetary scale, it'll take hundreds of years, one hot summer or cold winter is just noise and proves nothing.

So, forget global warming, it's just a phrase like "knackered engine", it can mean all sorts in practical terms and in no way helps you find the solution. Forget buying your way out of it, Hybrid cars and energy efficient lightbulbs are just sales gimics unless your old ones were in actual need of replacement and the alternative uses even more resources. Forget carbon credits and green taxes, that's just a way of saying to someone "I'll pay you to stay poor" :confused1:

Basically, if we keep on the way things are, the whole world will look like Hull docks only without the sea breeze to shift the smell of fish. It won't be very nice. If more people are mean rather than green we'll slow the transition until we work out how to let everyone have the pick up/Tv/aircon or we convince people they don't need some of them, or find a comet we can mine, or we have a ****** great war and reduce the population to what the planet can handle without ending up as one huge trading estate.

If anyone can prove that the whole world's population can have a UK standard of living, constantly increasing, without changing the world I'd be interested to see the numbers.

Andy

sv130 30 Jan 2009 12:10

Global warming...the biggest world threat since??
The last Ice age.
How many ice ages have we actually had?
What caused the previous ice ages to disappear? It certainly wasnt man.
Must have been a natural event,
Like moving closer to the Sun, in an elliptical pattern maybe?


A friend came up with a theory I like tho,
"The world is getting hotter because there is no longer all that soot and stuff in the air that used to filter the sun out"
Absolute genius, wish I had thought of that.

Gaz

Threewheelbonnie 30 Jan 2009 12:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by sv130 (Post 226105)
Global warming...the biggest world threat since??
Like moving closer to the Sun, in an elliptical pattern maybe?


I don't get this. The Earth goes round the sun every year in an elipse (thats the definition of a year). This motion is well understood, we've about 3000 years of data, the last five hundred in fine detail. We undestand the length of a year to the point of being able to add one second to 2008 so our atomic clocks once again agree with the earths position. How would we miss even a few thousand kilometers movement nearer or away from the sun that would cause a temperature change?

Might as well blame angry Sun Elves for making a second, invisible sun and start sacrificing chickens to please them until we understand it.

Andy

Bronze 30 Jan 2009 13:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Threewheelbonnie (Post 226099)
To me it's as simple as this. There are too many people for too few resources

Yep. Couldn't agree more.

Paying people not to reproduce (or only have one child) would be the cheapest solution.

MarkE 30 Jan 2009 16:57

Sceptical, but not complacent
 
As an opener, I will happily agree that there is room for us to clean up our act, and that doing so would be a good thing, on many levels. I also believe the climate is changing. As to whether that change is caused wholly, partly or not at all by human action, I am very doubtful, for three reasons:

1/. Putting all eggs in the carbon reduction basket seems to be very high risk as this can only work if (a) carbon emissions are a major cause of warming; (b) stopping such emissions is likely to stop climate change; (c) anthropogenic emissions are significant given the level of natural carbon emmitted; (d) the proposed actions will end/reduce such emissions enough; and (e) the whole world is willing to buy in which is far from certain, or even likely. Taxation seems to be the politicians' panacea to reduce carbon emissions and save the world, which seems very convenient (for them).

2/. If there was a real threat pure self preservation would mean politicians would be looking at effective solutions. Such solutions might include strategies to reduce carbon emissions, but they would also include such matters as engineering solutions to greater risks of flooding, the development of crops better suited to a changed climate, and strategies for dealing with the social consequences of mass migration if parts of the world become uninhabitable. Obviously these (especially the last) are matters politicians don't like to address, because they may be unpopular and that ministerial car is very comfortable, but in the face of a real threat they would have to do something. There have only been very isolated examples of such planning that I have heard of.

3/. The models used by the supporters of warming cannot accurately predict climate change for known periods suggesting there are gaps in their logic which casts doubt on their predictions for the future. By comparrison, I read an article in late 2007 (print media, no link, sorry) that said that, due to a very low level of sun spot activity we could expect 2008 and possibly 2009 to be colder than trend. Apart from a hiccup when the IPCC "accidentally" repeated Russian data for September in October, this prediction has proved accurate. Apparently 2008 saw the lowest level of sun spot activity since 1912 (not sure how accurately they could count sun spots back then, so 2008 may be lower than that, and sun spots are not caused by human activity).

I am prepared to make some changes to my lifestyle to reduce the amount of pollution I generate, but I will fight back if it is suggested that I should impoverish myself and my children on an altar of what remains very speculative science, and for which the much vaunted "consensus" is a myth.

Further reading for those who are interested is at: Watts Up With That?

It is biased of course, but no more so than the pro warming sites.

Threewheelbonnie 31 Jan 2009 08:11

Basically agree on the carbon emissions/proof thing, but, Carbon emissions are a general measure of industrial activity and also represent how fast we are moving to self sustaining energy. Carbon targets look better than having a target for reducing GDP in the developed world (which is flawed anyway as it would encourage living in caves not a gradual switch away from oil). It is a fact that the oil is going to run out and coal gas/synthetic oil etc. will result in a horrible mess. The carbon targets are at least making the Live In Cave brigade drop some objections to nuclear power, wind farms, tidal barages and so on.

What is really really lacking is whole life impact calculations. Scrapping a 2004 bike so you can have a 2009 with an extra catalytic convertor (like the manufacturers want you do) must be a waste. Likewise keeping your 1970 MZ 125 going like Arkwrights brush (four new heads, six new handles) can't be good. Where is the tipping point at which replacement uses less resources than repair?

Andy

DLbiten 31 Jan 2009 20:05

Dose not matter 12/12/2012 11:11 am well all die anyway. The TV told me so. I got my tin hat you need to get one too.

But as far as WE did it I dont see any proof volcanoes and cows put out more organic carbon than people do. The earth heats up from time to time and then cools off. Mabe we will go in to ice age we are past dew for one. Read some place the sun is on cooling cycle so you never know.

Pollutants in clouds do play a grate role seems they deflect heat better than clean ones. So do plain contrails It was tested 9/12 till the plains started flying. NOVA | Dimming the Sun | The Contrail Effect | PBS

Will the global environment change? Yes it has and will.
Will the change be good for man? Probably not.
Can we fix it? Nope we will not even try.
Poluting is still a bad idea

Linzi 10 Feb 2009 19:28

Happy now?
 
RogerM began it with, "...none of this mamby, pamby cool 3oC-35C summers." Walkabout followed with,"....I'm all for it." Hope you're still happy and smug guys. Linzi.

CornishDaddy 10 Feb 2009 19:53

Scientifically we are still in an ice age RIGHT NOW! It is defined by ice sheets at the poles (tick) and alpline glaciers (tick). We are in the fact in the middle of a warm period of an ice age.

BTW this neither proves nor disproves global warming, but it is a shame to see such bad science spoken on such a debate.

A good book for the layman that touches on this and much more is Bill Brysons a A Breif History of Nearly Everything. From my science interest and teaching I think all he says is correct, but I'm sure someone will argue different.

I'll await incoming flack ......

SDR 10 Feb 2009 20:10

Scientific opinion on climate change - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

QUOTE:
Although there have been some individual scientists who have made statements opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, with the release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate changes.[65]

mollydog 10 Feb 2009 20:14

Bit off topic here Heat Waves, fires and Global Warming are all somehow connected.

Warthog 10 Feb 2009 22:06

My opinion.
 
Global Warming.
Do I think its happening?
Yes.
Has it happened before?
Yes.
What is different this time?
We are making it happen this time, or at least making it happen faster. A natural cycle such as this does not establish itself in 50- 70 years, and yet that is the time scale things have started to change: about the time its taken air travel, cars, industry etc to reach the level their at today, no?

How did this happen? Artificially boosting CO2 levels in Earth's athmosphere. Tens, if not hundreds of millions of years ago, continents were not where they are and parts that are now desert, sea, plain, or city were once forest, the same way that some mountain peaks were once seabeds.
These forests died out, and their combined organic matter was buried overtime, compressed, heated and matured into oil, coal and natural gas. That is billions of tons of organic matter.
The complete combustion of organic matter gives us, amongst other compounds, predominantly water and CO2. The combustions of these fossil fuels releases the carbon from a bygone era, that was completely locked out of our ecosystem by a couple of miles of rock, into our athmosphere.
So you now have CO2 from then being added to the CO2 from now.

Yes, cows fart and they put some CO2 out, but they are only putting out what they consumed from plants existing now: the carbon of now, rather than of then, hence cows are relatively carbon neutral. Volcanoes throw out all sorts, but lava is not made of organic matter: there you are looking at complex inorganic compounds: so not as many greenhouse gases as you think.

So all this means is that the nature around us that might have time to adapt if things occured at their normal pace does not have time now that things have accelerated.
Reason enough for us to change our ways, isn't it?

But let's say that is all wrong:
Why bother changing? Lets see... The same fuels that are mentioned above, particularly the first, are the lifeblood of every economy in the world, particularly the western ones. Those fuels are running out and we have not rationed ourselves in the slightest. So now if we carry on the way we are, without trying to wean our selves off oil and onto a renewable energy source we are basically going to catapult ouselves back to the middle ages, but not before having a few dozen wars over Antartica, the Arctic etc etc. What a bright future our kids are going to have, eh?
Reason enough for us to change our ways, isn't it?

No? Ok, how about the simple case of what is right and wrong?
Most of us on here have either travelled or want to travel or both. We will have collectively seen some amazing places, both man-made and natural. I think that should make us keenly aware of what is at stake from human activity. Which species are at risk because we want a mahogany dining table, which ecosytems are under the chainsaw so that we can grow more biodiesel crops instead of just getting a smaller CC car and which fish stocks are on the brink of non-replenishable collapse etc. Not to mention that the rainforests are the just about the only system in exixstence with the ability to fight CO2 levels by converting the CO2 to sugars through photosynthesis, but instead its chopperty-chop all the way to the bank.
Reason enough for us to change our ways, isn't it?

I'm an only child, and I don't know if I plan to have kids, so you could say that I don't give a rat's @rse about Global Warming or economic collapse through apathy: I'll be long gone, but I have seen a tiny bit of a planet that has taken my breath away and I certainly want to try and leave it in a slightly better state than I found it. If the first two scenarios are not enough to make a few changes to one's life I hope the last might be...

The changes needed to make a difference to any or all the above scenarios are remarkably similar, funnily enough...

My 2p, or judging by the word count, my £2.38...

Bennett 10 Feb 2009 23:58

Thank god global warming is over!!!
 
Patrick:
Just to make it clear,our country firefighters,except for adminastrator staff are volunteers(no pay).But we still have had one volunteer member that I know of who has been charged with arson,stated he liked the excitement of fires.
Ben

mollydog 11 Feb 2009 05:14

Burn him at the stake? :innocent:

mollydog 11 Feb 2009 05:17

But let's say that is all wrong:

Excellent post! :thumbup1:

RogerM 11 Feb 2009 22:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Linzi (Post 227939)
RogerM began it with, "...none of this mamby, pamby cool 3oC-35C summers." Walkabout followed with,"....I'm all for it." Hope you're still happy and smug guys. Linzi.

Hi Roger, it gives me pleasure to note how your arrogant glumness has changed. Man made or this is exactly what you wanted. "Bring it on". Linzi. (in a PM to me last night)

Bushfires in Australia have nothing to do with climate change, but an awful lot to do with the lack of small man made bush fires every year. We just dont learn, in the aftermath of the 1939 bushfires there were years of "10%" controlled burning to reduce fuel at ground level. Then in the 1970s it all became too expensive and controlled burning ended and we had to suffer the 1984/5 fires so that a new generation could learn. The controlled burning started up for a few years then by the mid 90s the Greenies had got State and local Government laws in place to stop cool burning - who wants to look at black sooty trees for 6 months when green ones are just as good. Hence the 2009 wild fires - so we'll now go back to controlled burns for about 10 years, forget about these fires, and have another devastating wildfire in 2030. Its almost a natural 40 year cycle now.

Australian Aboriginals burnt small pockets of the land for 50,000 years as a method of hunting - its part of the ecology if it goes on that long. Cook's journals report fires on the Australian coast. Cool burning was a method of germinating seeds and improving hunting for wildlife, problem now is that there are so few man made fires and so much ground fuel that the wildfires are horrendously hot and completely incinerate everything and do exactly the opposite of what the Greenies want by killing everything in the path of the fires.

Post 1939 the small townships up in the forests around Marysville all had "dugouts" to protect the popualtion from wildfire - the Royal Commission into the fires advised that dugouts be built for all bushfire prone communities. Taking the old logging road upto to Matlock you can still get into some of them - one I used to visit has had road building gravel tipped over it!! Just a ditch with logs and earth over the top - really high tech (sic), would take a day to build now with modern machinery. Not one community had a dugout to protect their people in these recent fires. People who had built their own dugouts survived whilst neighbours perished.

PocketHead 12 Feb 2009 02:31

Australians are used to fighting fires (every year) but this years were different because of a number of reasons such as high temperatures, strong winds which kept changing, multiple arsonists, build up of fuel, illegal to clear trees on your own property, these amongst others.

A couple of stories I read today, mostly in regards to the build up of fuel:

Angry survivors blame council 'green' policy | theage.com.au

Fined for illegal clearing, family now feel vindicated | theage.com.au

Also in response to Warthog I don't think there is a shortage of oil otherwise the price per barrel wouldn't have dropped with the financial crisis and certainly many scientists are working on renewable energies, I think research is underfunded but constructing useless structures such as wind farms is an incredible waste of resources and thats precisely what seems to happen when there are deadlines put on things.

In Aus the govt. wants to install insulation batts in everyones roof, when the minister for climate change was asked if it would use more energy to create them than they would save she was left stumped for an answer. This sort of thing seems awfully common at the moment, a whole lot of duck and weaving from politicians whom once elected seem to care very little and only come up with silly ideas that make them look like they're doing something.

Warthog 12 Feb 2009 13:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by PocketHead (Post 228198)
Also in response to Warthog I don't think there is a shortage of oil otherwise the price per barrel wouldn't have dropped with the financial crisis and certainly many scientists are working on renewable energies, I think research is underfunded but constructing useless structures such as wind farms is an incredible waste of resources and thats precisely what seems to happen when there are deadlines put on things.


Not running out? Why is Russia now the number one producer , rather than the Saudi´s (but producing less than Saudi did at its peak?)? Because the Saudi wells are drying up and with the Western world is not curbing its consumption one jot, as well as the Indian and Chinese economies picking up steam: how long do you think its going to last?

Oil prices fluctuate week by week, month by month dues to economic and political influences, ie OPEC getting the most they can per barrel at any given time (got to keep people on the habit...). They do this, also by setting production embargoes. You´ll more of those as the next successful wells dig get harder and harder to find. Fact is that it takes more drilling attempts to find new fields and they are a lot smaller than the were 30 years ago. Its running out alright.

As for windfarms and the like: I´m all for it. Its a new area of development so its bound to take time to get efficiency higher and higher: compare the petrol engine of the 1930´s with today: that improvement in output doesn´t happen over night. Meanwhile why aren´t solar panels a compulsory part of any new-builds or major renovation when applying for planning permission, any of a number of other easily obtained domestic improvements?

Bottom-line is oil price will fluctuate to meet market demands and renewable energy will stay on the back burner until we, the end-users, make it clear we want change: so far we just tank up as usual, buy 2.5 litre cars and bigger even though urban cars travel about the same average speed as a bicycle. You can´t wait for the governments to make the changes for you...

Xander 12 Feb 2009 16:30

Almost all scientist say there is no thing as GLOBAL WARMING
 
I hoped that title may get your attention.
but it is true...

I am not going to get into the debate about if you believe it or not. (I am sick of arguing about it, and dont care if you do or dont.) The bottom line is that "Global warming" is a misnomer and a something the lay press can not get out of using. This does not help acceptance and debates like this run wild based a missunderstanding.

We (well most of us scientist , and yes i am one of them) agree that what we are looking at is CLIMATE CHANGE!



Yes the planet' s average temperatures are increasing, but it is not a global wide increase (hence the misnomer), some places are cooling (dramatically).

It is, however, all bad, it may or may not be exacerbated by the natural cycle of climate change but it is a fact the the oscillations in temperture variation (both hotter and colder) are greater then ever before (that we can tell from fossil records). This IS having an effect on weather patterns and ocean currents.



Beleive in it or not I dont care.. ..just PLEASE used the correct term, you will note that many aruments are nule and void when you use the correct term of CLIMATE CHANGE (and know what it actually means)!...



I am sorry if some one has already noted this.. I could not bring myself to read all the posts..


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