I'm sick of hearing GLOBAL WARMING AGGHHH

[dazzler]

Hang on, now its the new Toyota Rav4 ........

Come on GM....

[dazzler]

Wait......wait........now Vauxhall Astra Twin Top...with extra gadgets

[rod@plasterbrok]

LOL gotta love that argument re vested interest.

I think that is part of the problem there is vested interest on both sides.

Never before has so much money been poured into the researches pockets no vested interest there?

The environmentalist have never had such a hold over the average joe no vested interest here either?

Vested interests abound. That is why it is so much harder to get to the truth and even more of a reason to look at both sides to get a balanced view.

I am very sceptical of people making hysterical claims like the sea rising 100m etc. And very sceptical of people, when I here these claims repeated as gospel.

Steady as she goes keep researching with an open mind and stick to the facts. In the mean time be practical about reducing emissions not hysterical.

[Studley 2436]

Let's ban coal power stations export of coal oil and gas and go fully Nuclear!

Maybe we can get our Nuclear plants to produce hydrogen for Greenhouse neutral cars?

Actually the Toyota Prius was assesed as saving CO2 at the cost of $600/tonne of CO2. That's the consumer that pays, diesel cars are much better in their cost of each tonne reduced.

Still to be proven that CO2 is the problem historical data suggests the Earth was warming anyway. That being so we should be more concerned with how to cope with the change.

Could kill about 4 billion people and go back to subsitence living, hunter gatherer sort of thing although hopefully that is not where the thing ends up.

Studley

[woodbe]

Re the Swindle documentary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gre...arming_Swindle

Read and weep. It's documentaries like that which derail any sort of sensible debate. Some Media companies will publish anything if it gets their name in lights (ok. I had never heard of Channel 4 before...)

I agree that we need healthy skepticism, but Swindle is rubbish on so many fronts, I'm surprised it even got mentioned here.

Studley, the CO2 benefits of buying a Prius (or a Golf diesel or whatever) pale into insignificance when compared to not needing to drive a car. If you were in Paris for instance, you wouldn't have that hulking V8 in your avatar that we Australians aspire to (and maybe even need), you would have a little Renault or other small economical car and you would use it rarely because your government has installed a decent public transportation system. We in Australia are so far behind the 8-ball on this issue that it makes baby Jesus cry. Most of us don't even know we are behind the game...

woodbe.

[reeves]

Recent news update

http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story...15-421,00.html

No nuclear power, says Rudd

June 10, 2007 10:06am

Article from: AAP
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OPPOSITION Leader Kevin Rudd today insisted Australia could reach ambitious emissions reductions targets without resorting to nuclear power.
Mr Rudd said the key was to establish an emissions trading market, not to adopt nuclear power.

"The science of this is pretty basic. All the scientists around the world agree that we have got to reach a point whereby we actually bring total emissions down. That is the carbon target,'' he said.

Mr Rudd said once the target was set, the emissions trading scheme and the market could establish the most cost-effective means of achieving that target.

"Then you would see a huge investment in alternative clean energies like solar, like wind, like geothermal and the rest. You'd set the right price signals for clean coal technologies and carbon sequestration and also for gas.

"On the question of nuclear ... our position on that is for Australia, with this rich array of other alternative energy options available, we can achieve our overall carbon target without taking on the extra safety and environmental risks which the nuclear option for Australia would represent.''

Mr Rudd said Prime Minister John Howard's commitment to a policy of pledging and reviewing climate change targets sounded like pledging before the election then reviewing afterwards.

"Mr Howard has just got to get fair dinkum about climate change. One of the risks to Australia's economic future is us not acting on climate change and water,'' he said

[Studley 2436]

well actually being a pro Photographer the pic of the GTHO was a top pic of a racer pulling a slide. Actually he was trying to get the beast under control.

He did that slide almost speared off opposite me but it snaked back straight at me, I was set to jump down the embankment when he got a grip on it and was going back the other way pulled it back towards the middle and fishtailed off down the road. HAIRY STUFF.

So I like the pic. My own car is a Mazda 3 which is he most fun of any car I have owned including several twin cam Fiats that were pretty special in their day. The Mazda is cleaner uses less fuel and more fun to boot as well as being a lot safer.

Talking about public transport I would love to see dual rail lines between our capital cities for starters. The number of trucks we have doing interstate transport is ridiculous when rail is just so much better economically. Public transport in Adelaide is as you say a joke with only a few heavy rail lines and most of the city is not serviced by rail. That deserves looking into. We don't know if it is economical or not. When I visited Tokyo you could get the subway anywhere. Short walk from anywhere to a train station. They even sell the walking distance to the station as a feature of their real estate. It is one of the things people ask when they buy a house. I don't think that is realistic in Adelaide as we are one million. Tokyo is more like 30 million in a similar enough space. Over 4 million people go through it's three main stations in each direction each day.

I don't think I am unbalanced in my views although I am accused of being on drugs. All I want is a reasoned and sensible approach to the whole issue.

Studley

[Honorary Bloke]

I don't know about any of you guys, but I am sick to death of hearing about how doomed we are from global warming. Just my bitch.

Poor Rod. Obviously having a small rant only served to exacerbate the debate, at least around here. The moral of the story, I'm afraid, is that if you are tired of hearing about something, don't say so out loud in a thread.

[reeves]

So maybe we reduce C02 emissions from cars, planes and coal fired power stations, what about people?

http://timworstall.typepad.com/timwo...g_global_.html

The Basics.

The essential idea is that human beings are pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere than the environment can successfully pull out of it. This leads to a rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and thus, given the undoubted existence of the greenhouse effect, higher temperatures.

The Blame.

The blame tends to be placed on either land use changes, such as deforestation, or the use of fossil fuels. As an example, according to GEO 2000, (a UN type organisation and thus, like the IPCC, a reasonable source of figures and numbers) some 24 billion tonnes of carbon in 1996. No doubt there are later more accurate figures for later years but let’s stay with this one I’ve just found.

The Humans.

According to Heavy Lifting, a human being at rest emits:

30 minutes x 18 breaths x 0.5 liters CO2 x 0.001997 KG/L = 0.419 KG of CO2.

Which, if my maths is correct (30 mins x 2 x 24 x 365) means 7 tonnes CO2 per human per year. There’s 6 billion of us so that’s 42 billion tonnes CO2 per year globally just from our own breath.

However, a human exercising (or performing physical labour, pretty much the same thing) emits:

30 minutes x 42 breaths x 3 liters CO2 x 0.001997 KG/L = 7.5 KG of CO2.

18 times as much or so.

Sports.

Obviously, as Craig points out, in order to save the planet we must ban exercise and sport.

But we can go further. Those 3 billion of our fellows in poverty are indeed doing hard physical labour in order to survive. It’s pretty much the definition of poverty, that you don’t have indoor work, no heavy lifting (sorry Craig).

The Effect of Physical Labour.

So, if we take those 3 billion, they work 8 hours a day, 300 days a year, at the higher CO2 emission rates, we get:

3 billion x 8 x 300 x 2 x 7.5 kg CO2....108 billion tonnes of CO2.

CO2 to Carbon.

In order to make our figures comparable we now have to convert CO2 to carbon. We do this by multiplying by 12 divided by 44 .

This gives us 29 billion tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere by the poor of the planet.

The Responsibility of the Rich and Poor.

Clearly we rich bastards contribute in two ways. We are responsible for all (at least, let us assume we are for this example) the carbon released by fossil fuels, cement and so on.

We are also responsible for the higher emissions caused when we exercise, or when sport is played. We also contribute some 6 billion tonnes carbon from our at rest breathing.

The poor, through no fault of their own, are responsible for roughly the same emissions, given the hard physical labour they must do to survive.

The Solution.

There is one obvious solution. Let’s go kill all the poor people, as they are emitting as much as we are.

This may not find favour amongst some bleeding heart liberal types.

Another would be to help them all get rich, so that they emit as we do. If we at the same time ban all forms of sport and exercise then global emissions will be lower than they currently are.

Clearly and obviously there is something wrong with these numbers. For it cannot actually be true that the poor emit as much as the rich, can it? Surely we rich world consumers are entirely to blame?

[rhancock]

What about 'treading lightly'? Isn't that the basic argument here? How much of an impact are you happy to leave behind you?

If we start from the premise that the less damage we do to our environmet the better, then the whole global warming is irrelevant. The problem of course, is that its much more attractive to drive a state of the art gas guzzler than to share a bus seat with that smelly bloke who talks loudly all the way to the city, so most people need a rocket somewhere painful before they'll consider changing habits they've never had to think about. If the current global warming 'crisis' serves that purpose, then thats great.

BTW, 20 years ago I was a spotty teenager reading about global warming in New Scientist and wondering why nothing was being done about it then. Since then, I've worked hard to reduce my impact on the planet, often with a feeling of shoveling s$%t uphill while the guy next door sits in his yard revving his ute pumping black smoke into the air while plastic bags float around in pools of oil....

[johnc]

Studley,

Don't get to excited about the drug jab, it was in jest. However I will take the opportunity to comment on the thrust of your last comments.

We have fallen in love with the motor car and in recent years we seem to find our cities clogged with the things, as we sit idling in traffic wondering why every one else is not using public transport or whatever. I couldn't agree with you more on the rail system, surely it is the most logical way to move freight between our major cities if only we could get the on loading and offl oading logistics working smoothly. I think in Oz with large distances and very little public transport away from the major centres the car is going to be with us for some time to come.

There is much about the CO2 issue that can bring about more liveable cities and improve the air around us as well as the enviroment. The science surrounding the global warming debate will continue to grow but since the 1970's there has been an increasing awareness that we cannot keep exploiting the earth the way we are with out regard to future generations, or to our ability to rachet up manufacturing to the point that our tips wont be big enough to take the worn out stuff.

Ultimately we are all consumers and the debate should probably focus on sustainable consumerism, in the products we buy and in recovering as much material as we can from discarded products. We should also look at the way we consume energy in our homes and factories, from the time that Watt invented the steam engine we have been finding ways to produce cleaner energy and more efficient energy to boot. If Government provides the economic incentives and leadership in developing ways to live greener there is no reason why this cannot be acheived. Perhaps we would be better off in smaller homes, without cars and each house producing its own power and recycling water to the point we barely need to call on our rivers. However that is never going to happen if people canot see gains from change including better rather the a poorer lifestyle.

What we need is rather than arguing over climate change is a vision of where we wish to head, the world needs to be in step to a point, and it has to be done in a way that developing nations are not cut out of the opportunity to improve their lives. Oh yeah and as a world we have to stop breeding faster than rabbits. This will never happen, but if sufficient countries come on board great positive change is achievable, not just in this but in advanced nations assisting poorer countries to improve health care and education which is necessary if any of this has a chance of happening. It doesn't mean we ever get there it just means we work at it, and hope a future generation gets close.

We are just going through a phase of whats important to us and whats not, and I hope we get it right.

John

[reeves]

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic


Below is a complete listing of the articles in "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic," a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming. There are four separate taxonomies; arguments are divided by:

• Stages of Denial,
• Scientific Topics,
• Types of Argument, and
• Levels of Sophistication.

Individual articles will appear under multiple headings and may even appear in multiple subcategories in the same heading.

Stages of Denial

1. There's nothing happening
   1. Inadequate evidence
   2. Contradictory evidence
      • It's cold today in Wagga Wagga
      • Antarctic ice is growing
      • The satellites show cooling
      • What about mid-century cooling?
      • Global warming stopped in 1998
      • But the glaciers are not melting
      • Antarctic sea ice is increasing
      • Observations show climate sensitivity is not very high
      • Sea level in the Arctic is falling
      • Some sites show cooling
   3. No consensus
      • Global warming is a hoax
      • There is no consensus
      • Position statements hide debate
      • Consensus is collusion
      • Peiser refuted Oreskes
2. We don't know why it's happening
   1. Models don't work
   2. Prediction is impossible
   3. We can't be sure
3. Climate change is natural
   1. It happened before
   2. It's part of a natural change
   3. It's not caused by CO2
4. Climate change is not bad
   1. The effects are good
   2. The effects are minor
   3. Change is normal
5. Climate change can't be stopped

Scientific Topics

1. Temperature
2. Atmosphere
3. Extreme events
   1. Temperature records
   2. Storms
   3. Droughts
4. Cryosphere
   1. Glaciers
   2. Sea ice
   3. Ice sheets
5. Oceans
   • 
     
6. Modeling
   1. Scenarios
   2. Uncertainties
7. Climate forcings
   1. Solar influences
   2. Greenhouse gases
   3. Aerosols
8. Paleo climate
   1. Holocene
   2. Ice ages
   3. Geologic history
9. Scientific process

Types of Argument

1. Uninformed
2. Misinformed
3. Cherry Picking
4. Urban Myths
5. FUD
6. Non Scientific
7. Underdog Theories
8. Crackpottery

Levels of Sophistication

1. Silly
2. Naive
3. Specious
4. Scientific

[ozwinner]

Hey Reeves, that list looks like the one the Mormons put out to convince people that there really is a god.

Al

[mic-d]

Hey Reeves, that list looks like the one the Mormons put out to convince people that there really is a god.

Al

I thought you were God Al, after what you did to my posts Now I'm not playing in the sand-pit anymore if you keep painting my toys red.

Cheers
Michael

[reeves]

Hey Reeves, that list looks like the one the Mormons put out to convince people that there really is a god.

Al

haha maybe, I found it quite entertaining and somewhat informative in terms of someone taking the time to compile the various sectionss..

there seems to be a kind of fervour developing around the GW issue, personally i try not to buy into it too much 'both' sides have reasonable arguements and then theres the truth..