Climate Change deniers take note. You're in a very small minority

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Let’s be real here – the answer is nothing. You enjoy the privilege of idiocy. You get to be continously, repeatedly wrong and still hold your head high. You’ll get to say it’s not real; that’s it might be real, but not as bad as everybody says; that it’s real, and bad, but it’s natural; that it’s real, bad, and we caused it, but we don’t have to do anything; oh no, now it’s too late to do anything about; and finally, that it’s real, we’re ****ed, and it’s all those scientists’ fault for not doing something sooner. And there’ll be no shortage of idiots turning up the aircon and nodding right along with you.

Nice work.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

You want to argue a point on someone insulting someone else? Winner.

…says the guy who’s brought absolutely nothing, zip, nada, zero to the ‘argument’. ‘Herp, I must be the only person who noticed that climate changes over time and has done forever, derp.’ Thank you, Carl Sagan, you’ve saved us all with your razor insight into this complex global issue.

How about this: you tell us what it would take to convince you. You’re not convinced by data, you’re not convinced by expert consensus, you’re not convinced by the basic physics you can demonstrate in a coke bottle terrarium. You’re smarter than all the scientists. You’re not bound by the fundamental properties of elemental particles. What will convince you?

Let’s be real here – the answer is nothing. You enjoy the privilege of idiocy. You get to be continously, repeatedly wrong and still hold your head high. You’ll get to say it’s not real; that’s it might be real, but not as bad as everybody says; that it’s real, and bad, but it’s natural; that it’s real, bad, and we caused it, but we don’t have to do anything; oh no, now it’s too late to do anything about; and finally, that it’s real, we’re ****ed, and it’s all those scientists’ fault for not doing something sooner. And there’ll be no shortage of idiots turning up the aircon and nodding right along with you.

If you care to read a few posts up, I thanked Howeph for explaining to me his reasoning, which I now understand.

I was going to write a further reply, but don’t think I’ll bother. Nasty, ugly humans like yourself obviously have enough bagge as it is.

Going on your past performance, it seems unlikely that your reply would be particularly insightful.

Let’s be clear on this: if you don’t know anything much about a particular topic, you should refrain from having an opinion about it, because your opinion is likely to be an insult to those who do know a thing or two.

Jim Jones said :

gazket said :

herp derp communists herp derp

Brilliant! … leaving aside the fact that the cold war ended decades ago and no-one takes that sort of scaremongering McCarythism seriously anymore (with the exception of people mentally living in ‘the good old days’ of course).

Climate change has not demonstrably killed one person. Communism has killed millions. I know what the real danger is.

thebrownstreak69 said :

I was going to write a further reply, but don’t think I’ll bother. Nasty, ugly humans like yourself obviously have enough bagge as it is.

Baggage, not bagge, obviously.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

You want to argue a point on someone insulting someone else? Winner.

…says the guy who’s brought absolutely nothing, zip, nada, zero to the ‘argument’. ‘Herp, I must be the only person who noticed that climate changes over time and has done forever, derp.’ Thank you, Carl Sagan, you’ve saved us all with your razor insight into this complex global issue.

How about this: you tell us what it would take to convince you. You’re not convinced by data, you’re not convinced by expert consensus, you’re not convinced by the basic physics you can demonstrate in a coke bottle terrarium. You’re smarter than all the scientists. You’re not bound by the fundamental properties of elemental particles. What will convince you?

Let’s be real here – the answer is nothing. You enjoy the privilege of idiocy. You get to be continously, repeatedly wrong and still hold your head high. You’ll get to say it’s not real; that’s it might be real, but not as bad as everybody says; that it’s real, and bad, but it’s natural; that it’s real, bad, and we caused it, but we don’t have to do anything; oh no, now it’s too late to do anything about; and finally, that it’s real, we’re ****ed, and it’s all those scientists’ fault for not doing something sooner. And there’ll be no shortage of idiots turning up the aircon and nodding right along with you.

If you care to read a few posts up, I thanked Howeph for explaining to me his reasoning, which I now understand.

I was going to write a further reply, but don’t think I’ll bother. Nasty, ugly humans like yourself obviously have enough bagge as it is.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

If you really want to convince the other side (rather than just shouting at them and calling them names), the first place to start is an agreed data set.

Nobody is ever going to convince idiots that they’re idiots. That’s the thing about idiocy – idiots are too stupid to know they’re idiots.

I have written a lot in this field, and you can make the graphs/maps say anything you want by selecting the right time scale

See? It doesn’t matter what evidence is put before you. You’ll just say ‘oh, but you can make maps / graphs / ice cores / drowning I-Kiribati / all the ****ing scientists in the world for the better part of fifty ****ing years say anything you like. I can tell from the pixels.’

Happy birthday for tomorrow.

You want to argue a point on someone insulting someone else? Winner.

…says the guy who’s brought absolutely nothing, zip, nada, zero to the ‘argument’. ‘Herp, I must be the only person who noticed that climate changes over time and has done forever, derp.’ Thank you, Carl Sagan, you’ve saved us all with your razor insight into this complex global issue.

How about this: you tell us what it would take to convince you. You’re not convinced by data, you’re not convinced by expert consensus, you’re not convinced by the basic physics you can demonstrate in a coke bottle terrarium. You’re smarter than all the scientists. You’re not bound by the fundamental properties of elemental particles. What will convince you?

Let’s be real here – the answer is nothing. You enjoy the privilege of idiocy. You get to be continously, repeatedly wrong and still hold your head high. You’ll get to say it’s not real; that’s it might be real, but not as bad as everybody says; that it’s real, and bad, but it’s natural; that it’s real, bad, and we caused it, but we don’t have to do anything; oh no, now it’s too late to do anything about; and finally, that it’s real, we’re ****ed, and it’s all those scientists’ fault for not doing something sooner. And there’ll be no shortage of idiots turning up the aircon and nodding right along with you.

CraigT said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Not sure what your point is. Is it that it’s only the human-made climate change bits we should worry about, and ignore the rest (because hey, it’s natural duuuuuude)?

The persistence of the ignorant.

If somebody sets you on fire, you won’t do anything about it because the Sun was going to make you hot anyway.

Of course we’re worried about human-caused climate change.
– It’s happening NOW
– It’s happening very very quickly
– Seeing as humans are *causing* it, we can *correct* those of our behaviours that did so.

Sometimes I think a big die-off will be good. There are just *SO* many so VERY stupid people in the world who think they are entitled to an opinion, any opinion, even if it is based on zero understanding of the facts.

You want to argue a point on someone insulting someone else? Winner.

If you really want to convince the other side (rather than just shouting at them and calling them names), the first place to start is an agreed data set.

Nobody is ever going to convince idiots that they’re idiots. That’s the thing about idiocy – idiots are too stupid to know they’re idiots.

I have written a lot in this field, and you can make the graphs/maps say anything you want by selecting the right time scale

See? It doesn’t matter what evidence is put before you. You’ll just say ‘oh, but you can make maps / graphs / ice cores / drowning I-Kiribati / all the ****ing scientists in the world for the better part of fifty ****ing years say anything you like. I can tell from the pixels.’

housebound said :

Go back to this graph and compare it with yours (maps or graphs) and you’ll see the main difference is one of scale -.

The *main* difference is that the first graph’s purpose is not to illustrate recent warming.

Recent warming is illustrated by graphs such as,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Global_temperature_1ka.png/800px-Global_temperature_1ka.png

gazket said :

herp derp communists herp derp

Brilliant! … leaving aside the fact that the cold war ended decades ago and no-one takes that sort of scaremongering McCarythism seriously anymore (with the exception of people mentally living in ‘the good old days’ of course).

Here’s The Australian denying the reality of CO2 levels in the atmosphere:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/glacial-chill-ebbs-and-flows/story-e6frg6z6-1226224280587

“Antarctic ice core (Siple) shows that there were 330 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air in 1900; Mauna Loa Hawaiian measurements in 1960 show that the air then had 260ppm carbon dioxide.”

Erm…..the *correct* figure for Siple was 297 (not 330) and the correct value for 1960 is 317 (not 260).

milkman said :

Jim Jones said :

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Now THAT is how you do satire!

It’s made even better by the fact that the retort was so excruciately lame-ass.

And made even better again by you wading in!

Yeah. Heaps better…

Ian Plimer also tries to push the crank-argument to the effect that CO2 levels were higher 200 years ago:
‘Heaven and Earth”, p419: “Pettenkofer method measurements showing CO2 concentrations far higher than now many times since 1812. “

Utterly Bizarre, this guy’s even a real scientist. Just goes to show, even clever people aren’t immune to becoming cranky deniers.

housebound said :

no one is disputing the CO2 increases or the unprecedented levels of CO2. .

Hmmm…..I don’t think it would take too much effort on my part to show that what you’ve just asserted is incorrect:

First up, Anthony Watts, a uni-dropout who worked as a TV weather-girl and now runs a blog The Australian uses for its climate “research”:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/07/25/beck-on-co2-oceans-are-the-dominant-co2-store/
“Wet chemical analyses indicate three atmospheric CO2 maxima in the northern hemisphere up to approx. 400 ppm over land and sea since about 1812.”

Second, Tim Ball, a Uni Professor who claims to be Canada’s “first climatologist” or something,
http://drtimball.com/2011/ernst-georg-beck-a-major-contributor-to-climate-science-effectively-sidelined-by-climate-deceivers/
“the pre-industrial level little different from the current level, and the variability from year to year was much wider than the ice core and Mauna Loa record showed”

And so on.

If it can be denied, the deniers will deny it.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

The graph you linked to doesn’t show an inordinate recent increase in temperature (temperature is the red line?). Perhaps find something with the temperature increase and you’ll put down the dissenters.
If only there were scientists who could work out how much hotter it is than usual and display that information in some sort of map.

Go back to this graph and compare it with yours (maps or graphs) and you’ll see the main difference is one of scale – hundreds of thousands of years vs an earliest date of around 1880. Both graphs show an increase in temperature, but one of them goes back a long time and shows previous high temperatures. The other goes back less far and show the recent increase that (I assume) is crammed into the tiny bit on the far right hand end of the longer graph.

As for the maps, I repeat: There’s a beautiful piece of work that has interpolated ground and satellite data to estimate temperatures in the Arctic to show that [global] temps have indeed increased (and got rid of that so-called ‘pause’ in temperature increase), but they haven’t ground-truthed it yet. As soon as they do, a lot of the arguments should be settled.

I have written a lot in this field, and you can make the graphs/maps say anything you want by selecting the right time scale. If you really want to convince the other side (rather than just shouting at them and calling them names), the first place to start is an agreed data set.

housebound said :

You have brilliantly just captured what is possibly once of the main points of difference between the various camps: no one is disputing the CO2 increases or the unprecedented levels of CO2. What is in dispute is how much this matters. The graph you linked to doesn’t show an inordinate recent increase in temperature (temperature is the red line?).

And you’ve just captured the difference between the poeople who know what they are talking about and the ideologically-driven deniers.

You haven’t even tried to understand the graph. It *clearly* isn’t trying to provide a granular view of recent temperature change. Its purpose is something else entirely.
If you were truly trying to inform yourself, you could have looked around and found it. Instead, you are making an argument from ignorance. “I can’t see it therefore it’s not there”.

Give up reading the nonsense in The Australian and kook-blogs like WUWT and read the proper explanations from the people are are properly-qualified professionals in this area:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/

Better yet, the whole purpose of the IPCC is to collate all the climate-change related information in one place specifically for people like us who are not experts in this area:
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_All.pdf

(And no, the IPCC is *not* a communist conspiracy by the UN to create a one-world government, no matter how fervently nutters like Pantsman want to believe it).

thebrownstreak69 said :

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Not sure what your point is. Is it that it’s only the human-made climate change bits we should worry about, and ignore the rest (because hey, it’s natural duuuuuude)?

The persistence of the ignorant.

If somebody sets you on fire, you won’t do anything about it because the Sun was going to make you hot anyway.

Of course we’re worried about human-caused climate change.
– It’s happening NOW
– It’s happening very very quickly
– Seeing as humans are *causing* it, we can *correct* those of our behaviours that did so.

Sometimes I think a big die-off will be good. There are just *SO* many so VERY stupid people in the world who think they are entitled to an opinion, any opinion, even if it is based on zero understanding of the facts.

howeph said :

howeph said :

We have no record of CO2 levels EVER being as high as they are now!

Correction:

If you go back some 444 million! years ago (200 million years before the first dinosaurs began to roam the earth and 555 times further ago than the 800,000 years we’ve been discussing) CO2 peeked a LOT higher. See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm

And then…

milkman said :

http://phys.org/news174234562.html

There were higher 15 million years ago it seems. It’s pretty obvious they’ve increased a lot, and rapidly, in the last few decades though.

Yes your right. Thanks for correcting me.

I’ll note from your source that at that time: “global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland.”

housebound said :

The graph you linked to doesn’t show an inordinate recent increase in temperature (temperature is the red line?). Perhaps find something with the temperature increase and you’ll put down the dissenters.

What like this one:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/regemcrufull.jpg

That graph shows temperature change for the last 10,000 years (the last 10 pixels of the previous graph). Does anything stick out at you guys?

Note: the blue bit at the end isn’t a reconstruction or prediction. It’s what the thermometers on the satellites have measured!

Now, if you add the IPPC scenario A1B (middle-of-the-road business-as-usual emission scenario) prediction out to the end of the century (2100) you get the orange bit on the end of this one (which also includes a little bit more of the pre-history showing the end of the last “ice age”. Also note that it has a different vertical scale as well):

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/shakun_marcott_hadcrut4_a1b_eng.png

It’s literally off the chart!

It shows that the rapid change in temperature has started (the red bit is the same satellite measurement data as the previous graph) and it predicts (the orange bit) that the human induced temperature change to come is going to dwarf anything that we have seen in at least the last 20,000 years; and unless we change, it’s going to happen by the end of this century.

For full analysis and source: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/global-temperature-change-the-big-picture/

gazket said :

Another government propaganda survey from Katy Jong-il .

+1

The graph you linked to doesn’t show an inordinate recent increase in temperature (temperature is the red line?). Perhaps find something with the temperature increase and you’ll put down the dissenters.

If only there were scientists who could work out how much hotter it is than usual and display that information in some sort of map.

Another government propaganda survey from Katy Jong-il .

Jim Jones said :

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Now THAT is how you do satire!

It’s made even better by the fact that the retort was so excruciately lame-ass.

Do you ever add value to anything on this site?

howeph said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

I’m wondering if this debate is actually reolving around confusion of ‘climate change’ with ‘human influences on climate’.

I think your confusion in this debate is around timescales.

When you see a graph of past CO2 or temperature with a timescale of say hundreds of thousands of years, like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fluctuations_in_temperature_and_in_the_atmospheric_concentration_of_carbon_dioxide_over_the_past_649,000_years.gif

You see lots of jagged peaks and troughs and you conclude: “see the climate is always changing, no different to now.”

But you are wrong.

The reason why you are wrong is that you haven’t taken into account the time scale difference between then and now.

On that graph each pixel across represents about a 1000 years.

See the red temperature plot covered by the ‘0°C’ label at the far right? The wiggle under that label is just 15 pixels wide but represents the last 15,000 years of constant, warm temperatures and stable CO2 concentrations. All of human civilisation has grown, fallen and grown again during that time.

Now see the “steep” climb in temperature and CO2 just before it? That’s the end of the last “ice age”. That climb took 5 pixels or 5,000 years.

Five thousand years for CO2 to rise by 80 ppm and temperatures to rise by 9°C. A rate of change of about 0.016ppm of CO2 per year and 0.0018 °C per year.

That’s about as fast as natural climate change happens (barring catastrophic events like super volcanoes and massive comment strikes).

Now compare that with what we are seeing today:

Since 1979 CO2 has increased by 64 ppm in 34 years or 1.9 ppm per year.

Therefore CO2 is increasing 118 times faster now than it did at the end of the last ice age

Current warming for the past 50 years is 0.13°C per decade or 0.013°C per year (note this is a very conservative number as most of the warming has happened in just the last couple of decades – the earth has a LOT of thermal inertia).

So temperature (over the last 50 years) has been increasing at least 7 times faster than it did at the end of the last “ice age”.

Can you see how this time it’s different? It’s not like natural climate change. It’s happening on time scales that are orders of magnitude faster than natural climate change.

The only thing that has changed since the end of the last “ice age” that affects climate is the level of CO2. We know where that CO2 came from… burning fossil fuels and land clearing.

Everything else you mentioned… volcanoes erupting, animals farting etc. has been going on, in balance, for millennia. We humans, via the industrial revolution, have upset that balance; and the planet’s climate is changing as a consequence. It’s that simple.

OK, I see where you’re coming from. Your position is that on a short time frame, natural climate change is being discounted because it takes too long to occur.

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Jim Jones said :

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Now THAT is how you do satire!

It’s made even better by the fact that the retort was so excruciately lame-ass.

And made even better again by you wading in!

Jim Jones said :

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Now THAT is how you do satire!

It’s made even better by the fact that the retort was so excruciately lame-ass.

howeph said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Why were CO2 levels higher 800,000 years ago?

They weren’t! We have no record of CO2 levels EVER being as high as they are now!

FFS! Watch the animation for 800,000 years of CO2 history in three and a half minutes and see the answer for your self!

http://phys.org/news174234562.html

There were higher 15 million years ago it seems. It’s pretty obvious they’ve increased a lot, and rapidly, in the last few decades though.

howeph said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

I’m wondering if this debate is actually reolving around confusion of ‘climate change’ with ‘human influences on climate’.

I think your confusion in this debate is around timescales.

When you see a graph of past CO2 or temperature with a timescale of say hundreds of thousands of years, like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fluctuations_in_temperature_and_in_the_atmospheric_concentration_of_carbon_dioxide_over_the_past_649,000_years.gif

You see lots of jagged peaks and troughs and you conclude: “see the climate is always changing, no different to now.”

But you are wrong.

The reason why you are wrong is that you haven’t taken into account the time scale difference between then and now.

On that graph each pixel across represents about a 1000 years.

See the red temperature plot covered by the ‘0°C’ label at the far right? The wiggle under that label is just 15 pixels wide but represents the last 15,000 years of constant, warm temperatures and stable CO2 concentrations. All of human civilisation has grown, fallen and grown again during that time.

Now see the “steep” climb in temperature and CO2 just before it? That’s the end of the last “ice age”. That climb took 5 pixels or 5,000 years.

Five thousand years for CO2 to rise by 80 ppm and temperatures to rise by 9°C. A rate of change of about 0.016ppm of CO2 per year and 0.0018 °C per year.

That’s about as fast as natural climate change happens (barring catastrophic events like super volcanoes and massive comment strikes).

Now compare that with what we are seeing today:

Since 1979 CO2 has increased by 64 ppm in 34 years or 1.9 ppm per year.

Therefore CO2 is increasing 118 times faster now than it did at the end of the last ice age

Current warming for the past 50 years is 0.13°C per decade or 0.013°C per year (note this is a very conservative number as most of the warming has happened in just the last couple of decades – the earth has a LOT of thermal inertia).

So temperature (over the last 50 years) has been increasing at least 7 times faster than it did at the end of the last “ice age”.

Can you see how this time it’s different? It’s not like natural climate change. It’s happening on time scales that are orders of magnitude faster than natural climate change.

The only thing that has changed since the end of the last “ice age” that affects climate is the level of CO2. We know where that CO2 came from… burning fossil fuels and land clearing.

Everything else you mentioned… volcanoes erupting, animals farting etc. has been going on, in balance, for millennia. We humans, via the industrial revolution, have upset that balance; and the planet’s climate is changing as a consequence. It’s that simple.

You have brilliantly just captured what is possibly once of the main points of difference between the various camps: no one is disputing the CO2 increases or the unprecedented levels of CO2. What is in dispute is how much this matters. The graph you linked to doesn’t show an inordinate recent increase in temperature (temperature is the red line?). Perhaps find something with the temperature increase and you’ll put down the dissenters.

There’s a beautiful piece of work that has interpolated ground and satellite data to estimate temperatures in the Arctic to show that temps have indeed increased (and got rid of that so-called ‘pause’ in temperature increase), but they haven’t ground-truthed it yet. As soon as they do, a lot of the arguments should be settled.

howeph said :

We have no record of CO2 levels EVER being as high as they are now!

Correction:

If you go back some 444 million! years ago (200 million years before the first dinosaurs began to roam the earth and 555 times further ago than the 800,000 years we’ve been discussing) CO2 peeked a LOT higher. See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm

thebrownstreak69 said :

I’m wondering if this debate is actually reolving around confusion of ‘climate change’ with ‘human influences on climate’.

I think your confusion in this debate is around timescales.

When you see a graph of past CO2 or temperature with a timescale of say hundreds of thousands of years, like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fluctuations_in_temperature_and_in_the_atmospheric_concentration_of_carbon_dioxide_over_the_past_649,000_years.gif

You see lots of jagged peaks and troughs and you conclude: “see the climate is always changing, no different to now.”

But you are wrong.

The reason why you are wrong is that you haven’t taken into account the time scale difference between then and now.

On that graph each pixel across represents about a 1000 years.

See the red temperature plot covered by the ‘0°C’ label at the far right? The wiggle under that label is just 15 pixels wide but represents the last 15,000 years of constant, warm temperatures and stable CO2 concentrations. All of human civilisation has grown, fallen and grown again during that time.

Now see the “steep” climb in temperature and CO2 just before it? That’s the end of the last “ice age”. That climb took 5 pixels or 5,000 years.

Five thousand years for CO2 to rise by 80 ppm and temperatures to rise by 9°C. A rate of change of about 0.016ppm of CO2 per year and 0.0018 °C per year.

That’s about as fast as natural climate change happens (barring catastrophic events like super volcanoes and massive comment strikes).

Now compare that with what we are seeing today:

Since 1979 CO2 has increased by 64 ppm in 34 years or 1.9 ppm per year.

Therefore CO2 is increasing 118 times faster now than it did at the end of the last ice age

Current warming for the past 50 years is 0.13°C per decade or 0.013°C per year (note this is a very conservative number as most of the warming has happened in just the last couple of decades – the earth has a LOT of thermal inertia).

So temperature (over the last 50 years) has been increasing at least 7 times faster than it did at the end of the last “ice age”.

Can you see how this time it’s different? It’s not like natural climate change. It’s happening on time scales that are orders of magnitude faster than natural climate change.

The only thing that has changed since the end of the last “ice age” that affects climate is the level of CO2. We know where that CO2 came from… burning fossil fuels and land clearing.

Everything else you mentioned… volcanoes erupting, animals farting etc. has been going on, in balance, for millennia. We humans, via the industrial revolution, have upset that balance; and the planet’s climate is changing as a consequence. It’s that simple.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Why were CO2 levels higher 800,000 years ago?

They weren’t! We have no record of CO2 levels EVER being as high as they are now!

FFS! Watch the animation for 800,000 years of CO2 history in three and a half minutes and see the answer for your self!

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Now THAT is how you do satire!

It’s made even better by the fact that the retort was so excruciately lame-ass.

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

Not sure what your point is. Is it that it’s only the human-made climate change bits we should worry about, and ignore the rest (because hey, it’s natural duuuuuude)?

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans

Exactly. It’s like how you’ll get warmer or cooler because the sun moves across the sky, and with the changing of the seasons.

And so when I set you on fire, you won’t do anything about it, because you were just going to get warmer and then colder through natural means, and you understand things were much warmer a few million years ago anyway.

pajs said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Robertson said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

The part that is in dispute is whether current climate change is wholly human related. You state that “Those other examples of forcing are not occurring right now” but this is simply untrue. Volcanoes erupt every year. Bushfires happen constantly. Cows fart, etc. These things are all contributing to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On the other side of the equation there are examples of carbon capture, including biomass, oceans, etc. The maths tell part of the story, but these things all act and react as part of one big system.

Humans are a big factor is all this. But they are not the whole story. We need to work out how much of this is human related, to help work out the best path forward.

You say volcanoes erupt all the time. Exactly. All the time. For volcanoes to be responsible for the current climate change, there would have to be *more* volcanoes erupting than usual. A *lot* more.
Currently, that isn’t happening.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased from 280ppm to 400ppm. This is at its highest for hundreds of thousands of years.
The annual observed increase is *less* than the annual human contribution.
This tells you that the equilibrium point in atmospheric CO2 levels is *lower* than the current level.
This in turn means that if humans stopped emitting CO2, CO2 levels would start dropping and return to the equilibrium point.

I’m not sure if this can be explained any more simply.

The bottom line is that a lot of very intelligent and highly-educated experts look into this and provide us with expert opinions.
*Your* opinion is clearly not based on any in-depth analysis of the facts. *Your* opinion is contradicted by the experts. *Your* opinion is wrong.

Simply, then, are you stating that if all human-related climate change stopped immediately, that the climate would stop changing?

Why then, at 400ppm, is the level still lower than at other points in time?

There is no equilibrium. Evidence shows CO2 levels, and temperatures, varying considerably across the ages.

Your opinion is invalid. You clearly don’t understand the science you are trying to support.

More like the other factors (things like solar activity and where we in the Milankovitch orbital cycles) are pushing against warming in recent times. That the result of the different factors in play is warming, when key alternate causes of change are pushing in a cooling direction, gets you to a point of saying the warming we are seeing has a mainly-human cause. That in no way means if you stopped human warming, you’d stop all change in the climate.

Quite possibly. My position is that climate changes occurs with or without humans, and as with any complex system there are factors pushing in multiple ways. It’s entirely reasonable to suggest that humans are a major contributor to warming, and that the results would be quite different if the other factors weren’t at play.

I’m wondering if this debate is actually reolving around confusion of ‘climate change’ with ‘human influences on climate’.

CraigT said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Simply, then, are you stating that if all human-related climate change stopped immediately, that the climate would stop changing?

If there is only once factor currently causing climate change, and you eliminate that factor, then climate stops changing. Duh!

thebrownstreak69 said :

Why then, at 400ppm, is the level still lower than at other points in time?

Look in the thread above. You’ve been told several times that different things happened at different times and for different reasons. Today, human-emitted CO2 is behind the rise to 400ppm, which is at an unprecedented level in 800,00 years.

thebrownstreak69 said :

There is no equilibrium. Evidence shows CO2 levels, and temperatures, varying considerably across the ages.

You haven’t looked at any evidence. You’re pulling this stuff straight out of your bum. It’s in equilibrium when the uptake is in balance with the emissions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

thebrownstreak69 said :

Your opinion is invalid. You clearly don’t understand the science you are trying to support.

Projection. Your half-baked opinions are the result of fantasy & wishful-thinking on your part. The smart people say you are wrong.

This cannot be serious. You realise the climate was changing constantly before humans were even around right? Duh indeed!

Why were CO2 levels higher 800,000 years ago? Did humans do that too?

The uptake ISN’T exactly in balance with the emissions and never has been. That’s exactly the point. Your link even shows this, it shows a CO2 concentration based on the aggregate of natural cycles and human influence together.

You have zero idea what you are on about.

Yes, humans are causing some of the climate change, but the climate changes constantly anyway. We need to consider this when we develop solutions.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Robertson said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

The part that is in dispute is whether current climate change is wholly human related. You state that “Those other examples of forcing are not occurring right now” but this is simply untrue. Volcanoes erupt every year. Bushfires happen constantly. Cows fart, etc. These things are all contributing to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On the other side of the equation there are examples of carbon capture, including biomass, oceans, etc. The maths tell part of the story, but these things all act and react as part of one big system.

Humans are a big factor is all this. But they are not the whole story. We need to work out how much of this is human related, to help work out the best path forward.

You say volcanoes erupt all the time. Exactly. All the time. For volcanoes to be responsible for the current climate change, there would have to be *more* volcanoes erupting than usual. A *lot* more.
Currently, that isn’t happening.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased from 280ppm to 400ppm. This is at its highest for hundreds of thousands of years.
The annual observed increase is *less* than the annual human contribution.
This tells you that the equilibrium point in atmospheric CO2 levels is *lower* than the current level.
This in turn means that if humans stopped emitting CO2, CO2 levels would start dropping and return to the equilibrium point.

I’m not sure if this can be explained any more simply.

The bottom line is that a lot of very intelligent and highly-educated experts look into this and provide us with expert opinions.
*Your* opinion is clearly not based on any in-depth analysis of the facts. *Your* opinion is contradicted by the experts. *Your* opinion is wrong.

Simply, then, are you stating that if all human-related climate change stopped immediately, that the climate would stop changing?

Why then, at 400ppm, is the level still lower than at other points in time?

There is no equilibrium. Evidence shows CO2 levels, and temperatures, varying considerably across the ages.

Your opinion is invalid. You clearly don’t understand the science you are trying to support.

More like the other factors (things like solar activity and where we in the Milankovitch orbital cycles) are pushing against warming in recent times. That the result of the different factors in play is warming, when key alternate causes of change are pushing in a cooling direction, gets you to a point of saying the warming we are seeing has a mainly-human cause. That in no way means if you stopped human warming, you’d stop all change in the climate.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Simply, then, are you stating that if all human-related climate change stopped immediately, that the climate would stop changing?

If there is only once factor currently causing climate change, and you eliminate that factor, then climate stops changing. Duh!

thebrownstreak69 said :

Why then, at 400ppm, is the level still lower than at other points in time?

Look in the thread above. You’ve been told several times that different things happened at different times and for different reasons. Today, human-emitted CO2 is behind the rise to 400ppm, which is at an unprecedented level in 800,00 years.

thebrownstreak69 said :

There is no equilibrium. Evidence shows CO2 levels, and temperatures, varying considerably across the ages.

You haven’t looked at any evidence. You’re pulling this stuff straight out of your bum. It’s in equilibrium when the uptake is in balance with the emissions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

thebrownstreak69 said :

Your opinion is invalid. You clearly don’t understand the science you are trying to support.

Projection. Your half-baked opinions are the result of fantasy & wishful-thinking on your part. The smart people say you are wrong.

Robertson said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

The part that is in dispute is whether current climate change is wholly human related. You state that “Those other examples of forcing are not occurring right now” but this is simply untrue. Volcanoes erupt every year. Bushfires happen constantly. Cows fart, etc. These things are all contributing to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On the other side of the equation there are examples of carbon capture, including biomass, oceans, etc. The maths tell part of the story, but these things all act and react as part of one big system.

Humans are a big factor is all this. But they are not the whole story. We need to work out how much of this is human related, to help work out the best path forward.

You say volcanoes erupt all the time. Exactly. All the time. For volcanoes to be responsible for the current climate change, there would have to be *more* volcanoes erupting than usual. A *lot* more.
Currently, that isn’t happening.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased from 280ppm to 400ppm. This is at its highest for hundreds of thousands of years.
The annual observed increase is *less* than the annual human contribution.
This tells you that the equilibrium point in atmospheric CO2 levels is *lower* than the current level.
This in turn means that if humans stopped emitting CO2, CO2 levels would start dropping and return to the equilibrium point.

I’m not sure if this can be explained any more simply.

The bottom line is that a lot of very intelligent and highly-educated experts look into this and provide us with expert opinions.
*Your* opinion is clearly not based on any in-depth analysis of the facts. *Your* opinion is contradicted by the experts. *Your* opinion is wrong.

Simply, then, are you stating that if all human-related climate change stopped immediately, that the climate would stop changing?

Why then, at 400ppm, is the level still lower than at other points in time?

There is no equilibrium. Evidence shows CO2 levels, and temperatures, varying considerably across the ages.

Your opinion is invalid. You clearly don’t understand the science you are trying to support.

thebrownstreak69 said :

The part that is in dispute is whether current climate change is wholly human related. You state that “Those other examples of forcing are not occurring right now” but this is simply untrue. Volcanoes erupt every year. Bushfires happen constantly. Cows fart, etc. These things are all contributing to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On the other side of the equation there are examples of carbon capture, including biomass, oceans, etc. The maths tell part of the story, but these things all act and react as part of one big system.

Humans are a big factor is all this. But they are not the whole story. We need to work out how much of this is human related, to help work out the best path forward.

You say volcanoes erupt all the time. Exactly. All the time. For volcanoes to be responsible for the current climate change, there would have to be *more* volcanoes erupting than usual. A *lot* more.
Currently, that isn’t happening.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased from 280ppm to 400ppm. This is at its highest for hundreds of thousands of years.
The annual observed increase is *less* than the annual human contribution.
This tells you that the equilibrium point in atmospheric CO2 levels is *lower* than the current level.
This in turn means that if humans stopped emitting CO2, CO2 levels would start dropping and return to the equilibrium point.

I’m not sure if this can be explained any more simply.

The bottom line is that a lot of very intelligent and highly-educated experts look into this and provide us with expert opinions.
*Your* opinion is clearly not based on any in-depth analysis of the facts. *Your* opinion is contradicted by the experts. *Your* opinion is wrong.

Robertson said :

And you don’t seem to be reading the information you are being given: there no factors currently forcing the climate except for the man-made increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Past climate change has always occurred for a reason. Orbital forcing, super-volcanoes, meteorite strikes, etc…

Current climate change is also occurring for a reason. Those other examples of forcing are not occurring right now. We know what is occurring. We know Man is responsible. We therefore know that Man can do something about it. We strongly suspect Man *should* do something about it.

Your links don’t support this.

Leaving aside for a moment their credibility, what you links show is that humans are causing a variety of pollutants to be emitted, and this is changing various things within the environment, including carbon emissions and uptake. This part is not in dispute, at least not between you and I.

The part that is in dispute is whether current climate change is wholly human related. You state that “Those other examples of forcing are not occurring right now” but this is simply untrue. Volcanoes erupt every year. Bushfires happen constantly. Cows fart, etc. These things are all contributing to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. On the other side of the equation there are examples of carbon capture, including biomass, oceans, etc. The maths tell part of the story, but these things all act and react as part of one big system.

Humans are a big factor is all this. But they are not the whole story. We need to work out how much of this is human related, to help work out the best path forward.

thebrownstreak69 said :

howeph said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Answer me this simple question. If the climate has been changing constantly for as long as the earth has left scientific evidence for us to find, why is climate change of the last 50 years solely attributable to humans?

Simple Answer: Because human activity has increased the quantity of the principle greenhouse gas that warms the planet by 40%.

(from a steady 278ppm pre the industrial revolution to > 400ppm in 2013; see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html)

Also for more info see my comment #135 directly quoting from the IPCC documents.

Now I’ve got a simple question for you: Why do you think that the current, unprecedented rate of climate change is not caused by humans?

You need to learn to read. Seriously. I have not said that the current rate of climate change is not caused by humans. My point is that climate has been changing since the earth consolidated from a bunch of dust in space, and that while humans are influencing climate change they are NOT the sole reason for the change. The issues are working out how much influence humans are really having, and what the best ways of reducing this influence are.

And you don’t seem to be reading the information you are being given: there no factors currently forcing the climate except for the man-made increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Past climate change has always occurred for a reason. Orbital forcing, super-volcanoes, meteorite strikes, etc…

Current climate change is also occurring for a reason. Those other examples of forcing are not occurring right now. We know what is occurring. We know Man is responsible. We therefore know that Man can do something about it. We strongly suspect Man *should* do something about it.

Masquara said :

Robertson said :

Masquara said :

Do please award the November Mully to Dr Tim Flannery!

This would be the same Tim Flannery who accurately warned of changing rainfall patterns in Eastern Queensland and the effects this would have on water resources?

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps&tQ%5Bmap%5D=rain&tQ%5Barea%5D=aus&tQ%5Bseason%5D=0112&tQ%5Bperiod%5D=1970

I’m guessing you mention his name because you have absorbed some misinformation about him from Andrew Bolt?

You read Andrew Bolt? I don’t!

So explain your reference to Tim Flannery then.

davo101 said :

PantsMan said :

The good thing about knowing I’m right is that I don’t have to engage with nutters to have my ideas validated. Some people are clearly not so sure of their thinking.

Priceless! You must be right because you are so obviously a swivelled eyed loon that anyone prepared to argue with you must be wrong. Congratulations, this would have to be the least self-aware comment I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.

Swivelled eyed loon? Maybe. Communist believer in climate change, one world government, radical wealth redistribution, central economic planning? No.

thebrownstreak69 said :

You need to learn to read. Seriously. I have not said that the current rate of climate change is not caused by humans. My point is that climate has been changing since the earth consolidated from a bunch of dust in space, and that while humans are influencing climate change they are NOT the sole reason for the change. The issues are working out how much influence humans are really having, and what the best ways of reducing this influence are.

Watch the linked animation and then tell us that it is natural and nothing to worry about:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

P.S. you still haven’t provided anything to back up your position, answered my question or show where I have made any errors.

howeph said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Answer me this simple question. If the climate has been changing constantly for as long as the earth has left scientific evidence for us to find, why is climate change of the last 50 years solely attributable to humans?

Simple Answer: Because human activity has increased the quantity of the principle greenhouse gas that warms the planet by 40%.

(from a steady 278ppm pre the industrial revolution to > 400ppm in 2013; see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html)

Also for more info see my comment #135 directly quoting from the IPCC documents.

Now I’ve got a simple question for you: Why do you think that the current, unprecedented rate of climate change is not caused by humans?

You need to learn to read. Seriously. I have not said that the current rate of climate change is not caused by humans. My point is that climate has been changing since the earth consolidated from a bunch of dust in space, and that while humans are influencing climate change they are NOT the sole reason for the change. The issues are working out how much influence humans are really having, and what the best ways of reducing this influence are.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Answer me this simple question. If the climate has been changing constantly for as long as the earth has left scientific evidence for us to find, why is climate change of the last 50 years solely attributable to humans?

Simple Answer: Because human activity has increased the quantity of the principle greenhouse gas that warms the planet by 40%.

(from a steady 278ppm pre the industrial revolution to > 400ppm in 2013; see http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html)

Also for more info see my comment #135 directly quoting from the IPCC documents.

Now I’ve got a simple question for you: Why do you think that the current, unprecedented rate of climate change is not caused by humans?

thebrownstreak69 said :

Howeph: I did some very quick googling and found a number of links regarding how much carbon dioxide is emitted from bushfires. One link, from a credible source, showed bushfires in Victoria alone in 2009 emitting 8.5 million tonnes. Other links show other amounts.

Realistically, I’m more likely to believe a link from a research organisation than the conversation.

Give us your link then.

Robertson said :

Masquara said :

Do please award the November Mully to Dr Tim Flannery!

This would be the same Tim Flannery who accurately warned of changing rainfall patterns in Eastern Queensland and the effects this would have on water resources?

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps&tQ%5Bmap%5D=rain&tQ%5Barea%5D=aus&tQ%5Bseason%5D=0112&tQ%5Bperiod%5D=1970

I’m guessing you mention his name because you have absorbed some misinformation about him from Andrew Bolt?

You read Andrew Bolt? I don’t!

Masquara said :

Do please award the November Mully to Dr Tim Flannery!

This would be the same Tim Flannery who accurately warned of changing rainfall patterns in Eastern Queensland and the effects this would have on water resources?

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=trend-maps&tQ%5Bmap%5D=rain&tQ%5Barea%5D=aus&tQ%5Bseason%5D=0112&tQ%5Bperiod%5D=1970

I’m guessing you mention his name because you have absorbed some misinformation about him from Andrew Bolt?

Masquara said :

Robertson said :

Here are a few facts about China and its extensive engagement with renewable energy and emissions reduction:

… … … …
“China will launch two new pilot carbon trading schemes this week in Beijing and Shanghai as it strives to cut soaring rates of greenhouse gas

By your logic, it’s all under control then and li’l Australia needn’t worry, as it contributes half a percent to emissions ……. phew! We’re on the same page then!

So, either nobody is doing anything so we shouldn’t either, or, everybody else is doing their bit so we don’t have to bother.

You don’t care which of these contradictory propositions is true.

You don’t give a flying fig for facts.

Why not just come out and admit that you are simply an irresponsible, ignorant, selfish @*%$?

Masquara said :

Robertson said :

Sounds like Chewy and Masqara are getting their “information” from liars like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt instead of informing themselves properly.

Dissing Herald and Tele readers won’t help the climate cause.

You think lies and stupid opinions are going to trump scientific facts, do you?

chewy14 said :

I see that you completely ignored the question about how Australia is meant to reduce world emissions by itself.
…

Yes as you’ve pointed out China is investing heavily in renewables.

Arguing with yourself now, I see. Who’s winning?

As I pointed out, almost the entire EU has committed to at least a 25% reduction by 2020, with some going for 40%. Some have already achieved 20-25%.

There is no question of “going it alone” – that is a dishonest strawman argument and shame on your for waving it around.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Howeph: I did some very quick googling and found a number of links regarding how much carbon dioxide is emitted from bushfires. One link, from a credible source, showed bushfires in Victoria alone in 2009 emitting 8.5 million tonnes. Other links show other amounts.

Realistically, I’m more likely to believe a link from a research organisation than the conversation.

If you think its credible them why to post the link?

HiddenDragon said :

In the interests of keeping this impressively epic thread alive – perhaps our immigration (including the humanitarian component) policies and programs should take account of the environmental costs of moving people from low(er) carbon emitting countries to a very high carbon emitting country such as Australia.

Open the gate, these poor people simply yearn to increase their carbon footprint, let’s not deny them a computer in every room of the house and a 50″ TV.

Robertson said :

Here are a few facts about China and its extensive engagement with renewable energy and emissions reduction

Another considering is the air quality is major Chinese cities is terrible, and many of these measures are probably aimed at not poisoning people, not at reducing global warming.

Howeph: I did some very quick googling and found a number of links regarding how much carbon dioxide is emitted from bushfires. One link, from a credible source, showed bushfires in Victoria alone in 2009 emitting 8.5 million tonnes. Other links show other amounts.

Realistically, I’m more likely to believe a link from a research organisation than the conversation.

howeph said :

I wonder why that is… ?

Because arguing with zealots is a waste of time.

Answer me this simple question. If the climate has been changing constantly for as long as the earth has left scientific evidence for us to find, why is climate change of the last 50 years solely attributable to humans?

I agree humans are having an impact, but it’s not the whole story.

thebrownstreak69 said :

howeph said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Volcanoes? Bushfires? Decomposition of plant and animal material?

Volcanoes:
We are pumping out 30 Billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year – aproximately 100 times as much as all volcanoes combined.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf

Bushfires: “the amount of carbon that is emitted by bushfires is insignificant relative to our principle sources of greenhouse gas emissions such as coal-fired power”
http://theconversation.com/fact-check-do-bushfires-emit-more-carbon-than-burning-coal-11543

Decomposition:
Part of the natural carbon cycle. Ignoring human land clearing – an equal amount of CO2 will be sequestered from the atmosphere through plant growth. I.e. plant and animal decay is in balance with plant and animal growth.

thebrownstreak69 said :

What about water vapour and other non-CO2 gases?

“When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture,” said Benjamin Santer, lead author from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Modeling and Intercomparison. “The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

“More water vapor – which is itself a greenhouse gas – amplifies the warming effect of increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. This is what scientists call a “positive feedback.”
https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-earth_sciences-moisture

Next.

Volcanoes – not a bad link.

Bushfires – lacks credibility. I saw a link posted (here I think) once that stated bushfires could be up to a third of all Australian CO2 emissions.

How does it lack credibility. You can’t just say “lacks credibility” without providing a justification. The article links to the sources for the data it uses to come to the conclusion I quoted. Show how those sources lack credibility or show how the conclusion drawn is invalid. Otherwise it is you who is lacking credibility.

Also provide your link. According to the IEA we (Australia) produce around 200,000,000 tonnes of CO2 per year by burning fossil fuels. To support your claim you need to show that bushfires produce at least a third of that amount.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Decomposition – no link or credible response.

How was my response not creditable? Again you can’t just say “lacks credibility” without providing a justification.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Water vapour – we know more water is held in the atmosphere as temperature increases.

Yes, and we know water vapour is a greenhouse gas (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/greenhouse-gases.php). Water vapour is a greenhouse gas that AMPLIFIES the warming caused by man made CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Got it?

thebrownstreak69 said :

You aren’t doing the science many favours here.

Please show where I have got my figures, quotes or explanations wrong. I’ll gladly fix any mistakes. In contrast you haven’t provided anything to back up your position at all.

I wonder why that is… ?

Do please award the November Mully to Dr Tim Flannery!

In the interests of keeping this impressively epic thread alive – perhaps our immigration (including the humanitarian component) policies and programs should take account of the environmental costs of moving people from low(er) carbon emitting countries to a very high carbon emitting country such as Australia.

howeph said :

thebrownstreak69 said :

Volcanoes? Bushfires? Decomposition of plant and animal material?

Volcanoes:
We are pumping out 30 Billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year – aproximately 100 times as much as all volcanoes combined.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf

Bushfires: “the amount of carbon that is emitted by bushfires is insignificant relative to our principle sources of greenhouse gas emissions such as coal-fired power”
http://theconversation.com/fact-check-do-bushfires-emit-more-carbon-than-burning-coal-11543

Decomposition:
Part of the natural carbon cycle. Ignoring human land clearing – an equal amount of CO2 will be sequestered from the atmosphere through plant growth. I.e. plant and animal decay is in balance with plant and animal growth.

thebrownstreak69 said :

What about water vapour and other non-CO2 gases?

“When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture,” said Benjamin Santer, lead author from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Modeling and Intercomparison. “The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

“More water vapor – which is itself a greenhouse gas – amplifies the warming effect of increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. This is what scientists call a “positive feedback.”
https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-earth_sciences-moisture

Next.

Volcanoes – not a bad link.

Bushfires – lacks credibility. I saw a link posted (here I think) once that stated bushfires could be up to a third of all Australian CO2 emissions.

Decomposition – no link or credible response.

Water vapour – we know more water is held in the atmosphere as temperature increases.

You aren’t doing the science many favours here.

IrishPete said :

chewy14 said :

What part of we need a broad ranging global agreement don’t you get?

The part that goes “Australia won’t send anyone important to the negotiations and nor will we do anything meaningful at a local level”.

Seems Oz wants to have its cake and eat it, and bugger the rest of the world.

Australia didn’t wait for a global agreement before invading Iraq and Afghanistan. We need global agreements on a whole lot of things, but should we allow slavery, child abuse or any number of other evil things until the whole world comes on board?

The people who don’t want to act on climate change are desperately rummaging around for an excuse not to. There are no acceptable excuses folks – if you are too tight or lazy to do anything, just admit it. Stop trying to blame the rest of the world for your own inaction.

I think I have more respect for the “deniers” who don’t want to do anything than for the “believers” who won’t – at least the deniers are being consistent.

IP

Because I have full control of what the Abbott government does right?

The current government’s actions and policies have been more than ridiculous. They clearly don’t want to act at all but are caught in the political game of being seen to do “something”, even if that something is extremely expensive and inefficient. I don’t agree with any of their policies on this issue.

As for slavery, child abuse etc. Banning them can have direct positive results immediately in this country without actions by other countries. Climate change is a global problem that requires global solution and isn’t comparable.

chewy14 said :

What part of we need a broad ranging global agreement don’t you get?

The part that goes “Australia won’t send anyone important to the negotiations and nor will we do anything meaningful at a local level”.

Seems Oz wants to have its cake and eat it, and bugger the rest of the world.

Australia didn’t wait for a global agreement before invading Iraq and Afghanistan. We need global agreements on a whole lot of things, but should we allow slavery, child abuse or any number of other evil things until the whole world comes on board?

The people who don’t want to act on climate change are desperately rummaging around for an excuse not to. There are no acceptable excuses folks – if you are too tight or lazy to do anything, just admit it. Stop trying to blame the rest of the world for your own inaction.

I think I have more respect for the “deniers” who don’t want to do anything than for the “believers” who won’t – at least the deniers are being consistent.

IP

Masquara said :

IrishPete said :

Incidentally, folks, Australia has the highest per capita domestic emissions. Add in all the coal and gas we export, and we are responsible for rather a lot more. I haven’t seen any stats on what Australia contributes to the global greenhouse gas emissions, but I bet it IS significant.

IP

Highest per capita – but as I said, no point doing anything until the big players (particularly China) kick in. It’s the total effect on climate change that matters, not whether we happen to have lucked in historically and generationally. Not until Dr Tim Flannery and his ilk start videoconferencing rather than streaming jet emissions each time he participates in anything to do with climate change, will I consider adjusting my own contribution to carbon emissions.

So you’re happy for Oz to profit from exporting coal to China? Hmmm….

IP

thebrownstreak69 said :

Volcanoes? Bushfires? Decomposition of plant and animal material?

Volcanoes:
We are pumping out 30 Billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year – aproximately 100 times as much as all volcanoes combined.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf

Bushfires: “the amount of carbon that is emitted by bushfires is insignificant relative to our principle sources of greenhouse gas emissions such as coal-fired power”
http://theconversation.com/fact-check-do-bushfires-emit-more-carbon-than-burning-coal-11543

Decomposition:
Part of the natural carbon cycle. Ignoring human land clearing – an equal amount of CO2 will be sequestered from the atmosphere through plant growth. I.e. plant and animal decay is in balance with plant and animal growth.

thebrownstreak69 said :

What about water vapour and other non-CO2 gases?

“When you heat the planet, you increase the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture,” said Benjamin Santer, lead author from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Program for Climate Modeling and Intercomparison. “The atmosphere’s water vapor content has increased by about 0.41 kilograms per square meter (kg/m²) per decade since 1988, and natural variability in climate just can’t explain this moisture change. The most plausible explanation is that it’s due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gases.”

“More water vapor – which is itself a greenhouse gas – amplifies the warming effect of increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. This is what scientists call a “positive feedback.”
https://www-pls.llnl.gov/?url=science_and_technology-earth_sciences-moisture

Next.

Robertson said :

Here are a few facts about China and its extensive engagement with renewable energy and emissions reduction:

… … … …
“China will launch two new pilot carbon trading schemes this week in Beijing and Shanghai as it strives to cut soaring rates of greenhouse gas

By your logic, it’s all under control then and li’l Australia needn’t worry, as it contributes half a percent to emissions ……. phew! We’re on the same page then!

Robertson said :

howeph said :

chewy14 said :

Pray tell how Australia is going to achieve this reduction in world emissions by itself?

Masquara said :

AND whether “failing to act” alone on Australia’s part will make an iota of difference.

You guys and girls seem to think that the action being proposed for Australia is somehow ahead of the rest of the world. That we would be acting alone.

You are wrong.

The independent ranking of industrialised countries’ performance on climate change puts Australia ranked number 57 (down from 51st under Labor) , with only four countries ranked lower (Canada, Iran, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia).

https://germanwatch.org/en/download/8600.pdf

Australia under abbott is lagging behind and out of step with the rest of the developed world.

The Germans already reduced their emissions by 25%. The Spanish by almost 20%.

The Germans and the Danes are committed to 40% in the very near future. The rest of the EU has committed to 25% by 2020 with the exception of Croatia.

So a great many countries are forging ahead with modernising their economies.
Meanwhile, Australia has committed to 5% by 2020 (pathetic) and our plan to achieve this is an immensely costly plan that contradicts what the sensible economists propose and is likely to achieve nothing (beyond the huge expense).

Sounds like Chewy and Masqara are getting their “information” from liars like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt instead of informing themselves properly.

Such a shame they feel compelled to publicly broadcast their ignorance here, isn’t it?

Wow, ad homs. Great argument.

I see that you completely ignored the question about how Australia is meant to reduce world emissions by itself.

What part of we need a broad ranging global agreement don’t you get?

Yes as you’ve pointed out China is investing heavily in renewables. Their emissions still went up massively last year as they have done every year in the last decade. Yes, the rate of growth is slowing but it doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon. Without curbing the biggest total emitters, our efforts will result in sweet FA.

I’ve agreed that we should be investing in new technologies and not enacting ridiculous policies like direct action. But any action we take should be measured against its potential benefits and potential effects on climate change when compared to what other countries are doing.

Robertson said :

Sounds like Chewy and Masqara are getting their “information” from liars like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt instead of informing themselves properly.

Dissing Herald and Tele readers won’t help the climate cause.

thebrownstreak69 said :

we have clear evidence of climate change since before humans were around, is simply untrue.

What you are clearly having trouble understanding is this: climate changes for a reason. There has to be a reason.
Solar irradiance goes up, climate gets warmer.
Albedo shoots up, climate gets cooler.
etc…
And,
CO2 goes up, climate gets warmer.

It is of course interesting and useful to find out when climate changed in the past, and why, because that helps us understand the climate change that is occurring now and helps us develop models that assist us in determining the effects of the ongoing change in our climate.

The bottom line is this, though:
Solar irradiance is not the factor behind the current change in climate.
There is no supervolcano currently erupting.
There has not been a recent strike by a massive meteorite.
The only thing that is now changing is the level of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, a change humans are causing.

There are lots of dishonest lobby groups out there who are paying to muddy the waters and make this seem a lot more uncertain and a lot more controversial than it really is. And there are a lot of fools who buy into the misinformation being manufactured by those lobby groups.

IrishPete said :

Incidentally, folks, Australia has the highest per capita domestic emissions. Add in all the coal and gas we export, and we are responsible for rather a lot more. I haven’t seen any stats on what Australia contributes to the global greenhouse gas emissions, but I bet it IS significant.

IP

Highest per capita – but as I said, no point doing anything until the big players (particularly China) kick in. It’s the total effect on climate change that matters, not whether we happen to have lucked in historically and generationally. Not until Dr Tim Flannery and his ilk start videoconferencing rather than streaming jet emissions each time he participates in anything to do with climate change, will I consider adjusting my own contribution to carbon emissions.

Robertson said :

Why are nights getting warmer? Any ideas?

It’s obviously part of the leftist communist conspiracy

thebrownstreak69 said :

Robertson said :

Ergo, the entirety of current climate change is our own doing, and this will remain the case until solar output changes, the composition of the atmosphere changes, or the laws of physics adjust themselves to match the Tony Abbott fantasy-world of science.

Volcanoes? Bushfires? Decomposition of plant and animal material?

What about water vapour and other non-CO2 gases?

Humans are contributing for sure, but say that “the entirety of current climate change is our own doing”, when we have clear evidence of climate change since before humans were around, is simply untrue.

You obviously didn’t read what I typed.

We *know* the amount of CO2 we are emitting every year.
The amount of extra CO2 in the atmosphere every year is *less* than this amount.

Do you understand what this means?

(Incidentally, volcanoes emit a tiny fraction of the CO2 humans do, just in case you got the “volcanoes” misinformation from Ian Plimers complete and utter lies in his retarded climate change book. Watch Plimer squirm here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGvULld37Is)

thebrownstreak69 said :

Robertson said :

Ergo, the entirety of current climate change is our own doing, and this will remain the case until solar output changes, the composition of the atmosphere changes, or the laws of physics adjust themselves to match the Tony Abbott fantasy-world of science.

Volcanoes? Bushfires? Decomposition of plant and animal material?

What about water vapour and other non-CO2 gases?

Humans are contributing for sure, but say that “the entirety of current climate change is our own doing”, when we have clear evidence of climate change since before humans were around, is simply untrue.

Volcanoes and decomposition have always occurred. Occasional meteors also have na impact (pun intended).

Bushfires? Well, if you accept that it is at least possible that they are more common because of climate change, then they become part of an escalating situation. More extreme weather events = more bushfires = more CO2 = more extreme weather events.

Similarly, if water vapour is a greenhouse contributor (I’m unsure), then you can also expect more of it, due to increased evaporation, if the earth is warming on average

Deforestation is one of mankind’s contributions to stuffing up the cycle – removing the straws that suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere, and.releasing the CO2 (especially if it is just burnt to clear it) that they have locked up for a few decades. Perhaps not as bad as burning fossil fuels, and releasing the CO2 they have locked up for thousands (millions?) of years, but contributing nonetheless.

We live in a bubble – we shouldn’t be farting in it and expecting the smell to dissipate.

IP

Darkfalz said :

markjohnconley said :

I’m only worried about the ‘climate change’ caused by anthopogenic activities.

Let’s say the man-made stuff was responsible for 5% of it. 5% of a 1% increase in cyclones or whatever other thing you want to believe….

Instead of “let’s say the man made stuff… ” let’s not guess. Let’s see what the science is saying:

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased”

“The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial times, primarily from fossil fuel emissions and secondarily from net land use change emissions. The ocean has absorbed about 30% of the emitted anthropogenic carbon dioxide, causing ocean acidification”

“Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system. The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750”

“Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system.”

“Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes (see Figure SPM.6 and Table SPM.1). This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4. It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.“
[Emphasis is mine]

“It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together“

So Darkfalz, you can take you 5% and change it to ‘greater than 50%’

You can read the report to check your “1% increaes in cyclones… ” guestimate too. Go on; I dare you.

(all quotes taken from IPCC Climate CHange 2013, The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers)

Robertson said :

Ergo, the entirety of current climate change is our own doing, and this will remain the case until solar output changes, the composition of the atmosphere changes, or the laws of physics adjust themselves to match the Tony Abbott fantasy-world of science.

Volcanoes? Bushfires? Decomposition of plant and animal material?

What about water vapour and other non-CO2 gases?

Humans are contributing for sure, but say that “the entirety of current climate change is our own doing”, when we have clear evidence of climate change since before humans were around, is simply untrue.

Darkfalz said :

Jim Jones said :

Look! Climate change is real because there was just a tsunami or typhoon or heat wave, that proves it.

Cool story, bro.

It’s not his story even – it’s the story the science is telling us.
Look at this:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=extremes-timeseries&tQ%5Bgraph%5D=TN90&tQ%5Bave_yr%5D=0

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=extremes-timeseries&tQ%5Bgraph%5D=TN10&tQ%5Bave_yr%5D=5

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/index.shtml#tabs=Tracker&tracker=extremes-trend-maps&tQ%5Bmap%5D=TN90&tQ%5Bperiod%5D=1970

Why are nights getting warmer? Any ideas?

Darkfalz said :

climate change is a leftist conspiracy because left wing meeja hates Abbott

hmmm … compelling argument

Darkfalz said :

Let’s say the man-made stuff was responsible for 5% of it.

What a ridiculous assertion.

We know how much CO2 was in the atmosphere in the past and we know how much is in it now: it has increased from 280ppm to 400ppm.

We also know how much CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere: we know how much oil, coal, and gas we are burning, we know how much agriculture we conduct.

So here’s the thing, loon: the amount that atmospheric concentration of CO2 is increasing by every year IS LESS than the amount we are releasing through human activity. It’s basic maths.

So the earth (and sea) uptake of CO2 is being forced by the additional CO2 we are emitting. And yet the concentration in the atmosphere continues to increase.

Ergo, the entirety of current climate change is our own doing, and this will remain the case until solar output changes, the composition of the atmosphere changes, or the laws of physics adjust themselves to match the Tony Abbott fantasy-world of science.

Masquara said :

Why the hell should China? Because it is China and the US that are causing climate change, not Australia.

I’m afraid I will decline your invitation to suffer under Hanson-Young-esque guilt trips. The per capita rate of emission isn’t the issue. If you think that, had history put the shoe on the other foot, the Chinese would give a rat’s about us, then think again.

What bears upon emissions is the total. That’s to say, the billion Chinese will need to get their act together. I’m sure Australians will be happy to join the effort once the problem’s perpetrators get started.

ONE US state has a PARTIAL, very limited and ineffective emissions scheme. There is simply no comparison with Australia’s (ineffective) carbon tax.

Windfarms are horrible. We should be waiting for wave energy. By the time the big emitters have gone green, and it’s time for us to join in, wave energy will be viable.

Your problem is, you have no idea what you are talking about. You believe that reality has no independent existence outside the fevered imaginings of your politically-motivated pea-brain.

Here are a few facts about China and its extensive engagement with renewable energy and emissions reduction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_China:
“China has identified wind power as a key growth component of the country’s economy”
“By the end of 2008, at least 15 Chinese companies were commercially producing wind turbines and several dozen more were producing components”
“In 2010, China became the largest wind energy provider worldwide”
“At the end of 2012, there were 76GW of electricity generating capacity installed in China”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China:
” China has over 400 photovoltaic (PV) companies”
” As of 2012, about 8.3 GW of photovoltaics contribute towards power generation in China”

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/china-extends-carbon-trading-to-beijing-and-shanghai-20131126-2y6jl.html
“China will launch two new pilot carbon trading schemes this week in Beijing and Shanghai as it strives to cut soaring rates of greenhouse gas

Jim Jones said :

Look! Climate change is real because there was just a tsunami or typhoon or heat wave, that proves it.

Cool story, bro.

thebrownstreak69 said :

Agree. The actual science is quite sensible, and recognises the possibility of errors.

Just as you said. However, somewhere along the way “the science is decided” has become “predictions are infallible and going to happen” (even when said predictions often don’t agree with each other).

markjohnconley said :

I’m only worried about the ‘climate change’ caused by anthopogenic activities.

Let’s say the man-made stuff was responsible for 5% of it. 5% of a 1% increase in cyclones or whatever other thing you want to believe. Does this make it logical to blame Tony Abbott for typhoons in the Phillipines as people like Bandt do? For Australian bushfires? Would it seem logical to credit him with a drop in the number of cold related deaths worldwide? It’s interesting to me that climate change stuff has almost been hijacked by people who want to turn it into an extension of Abbott Derangement Syndrome.

I think trying to count these weather events except over very, very long periods ie. centuries is pointless, but people seem to be obsessed with linking every natural disaster these days to climate change, usually without any scientific backing and often contrary to actual evidence. If the media won’t challenge them though, they’ll continue to get away with it.

howeph said :

chewy14 said :

Pray tell how Australia is going to achieve this reduction in world emissions by itself?

Masquara said :

AND whether “failing to act” alone on Australia’s part will make an iota of difference.

You guys and girls seem to think that the action being proposed for Australia is somehow ahead of the rest of the world. That we would be acting alone.

You are wrong.

The independent ranking of industrialised countries’ performance on climate change puts Australia ranked number 57 (down from 51st under Labor) , with only four countries ranked lower (Canada, Iran, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia).

https://germanwatch.org/en/download/8600.pdf

Australia under abbott is lagging behind and out of step with the rest of the developed world.

The Germans already reduced their emissions by 25%. The Spanish by almost 20%.

The Germans and the Danes are committed to 40% in the very near future. The rest of the EU has committed to 25% by 2020 with the exception of Croatia.

So a great many countries are forging ahead with modernising their economies.
Meanwhile, Australia has committed to 5% by 2020 (pathetic) and our plan to achieve this is an immensely costly plan that contradicts what the sensible economists propose and is likely to achieve nothing (beyond the huge expense).

Sounds like Chewy and Masqara are getting their “information” from liars like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt instead of informing themselves properly.

Such a shame they feel compelled to publicly broadcast their ignorance here, isn’t it?

Darkfalz said :

Climate change isn’t real because rah rah lefties rah rah

:yawn:

whateverdude

Darkfalz said :

I would however say it’s not generally the scientists making the more ridiculous claims about 100m sea rises, permanent drought, a Hurricane Katrina every year and so on – we’ll leave that to Gore, Flannery and the left wing media.

Agree. The actual science is quite sensible, and recognises the possibility of errors. It also tends to report in a factual and unemotive sense, rather than the brainless headless the media screams out at us.

There’s no doubt the climate is changing. What’s interesting is seeing science tackle the problems of:
a) how much of it is due to human activity; and
b) how best to respond.

Robertson said :

There’s something very wrong with Pantsman’s brain: he says he doesn’t engage with nutters, but instead of learning the science, he posts links here to the lunatic ravings of nuts like Screaming Lord Monckton.

Case in point to last statement.

The more hysterically you need to attack and label people who think differently to you, the more likely it is you either have an extremely weak case, or have a different agenda to the one you are ostensibly promoting.

“Denier” the new favourite word for this one, trying to equate people to Nazi sympathisers, and “bigot” and various other slurs for the other hot button debate, this is straight from the Marxist handbook for combating counter-revolutionaries.

howeph said :

PantsMan said :

The good thing about knowing I’m right is that I don’t have to engage with nutters to have my ideas validated. Some people are clearly not so sure of their thinking.

What the?

There’s something very wrong with Pantsman’s brain: he says he doesn’t engage with nutters, but instead of learning the science, he posts links here to the lunatic ravings of nuts like Screaming Lord Monckton.

IrishPete said :

Incidentally, folks, Australia has the highest per capita domestic emissions.

I suspect leftist hipsters have the highest per-person carbon footprints, with their obsession with lattes, eating out, iphones and ipads, ultrabooks and so on – I propose a new tax on hipsters.

The notion it is isn’t scientists best interests to keep the chicken little stuff going is silly. It keeps the grants and funding coming. I would however say it’s not generally the scientists making the more ridiculous claims about 100m sea rises, permanent drought, a Hurricane Katrina every year and so on – we’ll leave that to Gore, Flannery and the left wing media.

PantsMan said :

Just to recap:
• The whole climate change hypothesis is junk science spouted by taxpayer funded shonks and wonks with massive conflicts of interest.
• The whole idea has become something synonymous with a mad green religion, which has been picked up by the hardcore left that had nothing to believe in — or scare people with — after the fall of communism.
• There is no ‘moral’ or economic reason to do anything about climate change. The bizarre idea of intergenerational guilt or indebtedness presupposes that the world is inexorably becoming a worse place by the week. The world has never been a better place to live in. In fact, doing anything about climate change would reduce our economic welfare and therefore be about the worst economic, social, and political action any government could take.
• I don’t care what the ACT Government thinks people think about climate change on the basis of this survey.

Is the International Energy Agency (IEA) part of your communist conspiracy theory too?
http://www.iea.org/topics/climatechange/

Is the World Bank part of your communist conspiracy theory too?
http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange

Is the International Monetary Fund (IMF) part of your communist conspiracy theory too?
http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/enviro.htm

Perhaps all those free market economists are part of your communist conspiracy theory as well.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-new-direct-action-sceptics-20131027-2w9va.html

Or is it possible that it’s your conspiracy theory that’s wrong? Just asking.

Dear Pantsman, It must be hard to talk with your head in the sand. Pity that you can still type.

It should also be stated that Australia isn’t acting alone.

http://theconversation.com/carbon-trading-in-the-asian-century-chinas-ets-on-track-11438

http://www.politifact.com.au/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/01/liberal-party-australia/Labor-carbon-tax-world-biggest/

chewy14 said :

Pray tell how Australia is going to achieve this reduction in world emissions by itself?

Masquara said :

AND whether “failing to act” alone on Australia’s part will make an iota of difference.

You guys and girls seem to think that the action being proposed for Australia is somehow ahead of the rest of the world. That we would be acting alone.

You are wrong.

The independent ranking of industrialised countries’ performance on climate change puts Australia ranked number 57 (down from 51st under Labor) , with only four countries ranked lower (Canada, Iran, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia).

https://germanwatch.org/en/download/8600.pdf

Australia under abbott is lagging behind and out of step with the rest of the developed world.

PantsMan said :

Climate change isn’t real because all the scientists are part of a communist conspiracy

Whoah … okay dude … *backing away slowly*

Masquara said :

howeph said :

And this debate must openly canvas the ethical and moral implications of failing to act. .

AND whether “failing to act” alone on Australia’s part will make an iota of difference.

That’s a fair question. If people argue that Australia needs to set an example, it has to be asked if anyone is paying attention to that example.

A recent reaction and expression of disappointed at the pending repeal of the carbon tax from China as it starts to roll out its own ETSs in different provinces:

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/china-surprised-and-disappointed-by-australias-carbon-repeal-11338

This is a limited example and doesn’t provide hard proof that decisions that Australia makes has any real effect on other countries, but it is an indicator.

China has previously said that rich countries like Australia should lead by example if they expect China to do the same.
http://theconversation.com/rich-nations-should-do-more-on-climate-say-chinese-8417
Whether or not that’s a cynical ploy to gain an economic advantage, it’s still a legitimate argument.

Other countries have also noted Australia’s repeal:

http://news.gc.ca/web/article-eng.do?mthd=tp&crtr.page=1&nid=790619&crtr.tp1D=4

Just to recap:
• The whole climate change hypothesis is junk science spouted by taxpayer funded shonks and wonks with massive conflicts of interest.
• The whole idea has become something synonymous with a mad green religion, which has been picked up by the hardcore left that had nothing to believe in — or scare people with — after the fall of communism.
• There is no ‘moral’ or economic reason to do anything about climate change. The bizarre idea of intergenerational guilt or indebtedness presupposes that the world is inexorably becoming a worse place by the week. The world has never been a better place to live in. In fact, doing anything about climate change would reduce our economic welfare and therefore be about the worst economic, social, and political action any government could take.
• I don’t care what the ACT Government thinks people think about climate change on the basis of this survey.

Incidentally, folks, Australia has the highest per capita domestic emissions. Add in all the coal and gas we export, and we are responsible for rather a lot more. I haven’t seen any stats on what Australia contributes to the global greenhouse gas emissions, but I bet it IS significant.

IP

Masquara said :

Why the hell should China? Because it is China and the US that are causing climate change, not Australia.

I’m afraid I will decline your invitation to suffer under Hanson-Young-esque guilt trips. The per capita rate of emission isn’t the issue. If you think that, had history put the shoe on the other foot, the Chinese would give a rat’s about us, then think again.

What bears upon emissions is the total. That’s to say, the billion Chinese will need to get their act together. I’m sure Australians will be happy to join the effort once the problem’s perpetrators get started.

ONE US state has a PARTIAL, very limited and ineffective emissions scheme. There is simply no comparison with Australia’s (ineffective) carbon tax.

Windfarms are horrible. We should be waiting for wave energy. By the time the big emitters have gone green, and it’s time for us to join in, wave energy will be viable.

The reason China’s emissions are growing is because they want to be like us and the USA. They want that kind of “developed” economy where everyone has a car, an air conditioner and so on. If we reduce out per capita emissions, then their increase will flatten out sooner.

Personally I find it a complete embarrassment that Australia has the highest per capita emissions – yes we have hot summers and we have long distances to travel, but there are countries which have huge heating costs instead of or as well as cooling. Oh to be number 2 at least… But no, the majority of Australians are happy to be worst in the world.

No doubt when tidal power starts to be promoted some NIMBY surfers, boaties and fisherpeople will object.

Personalising it to Sarah Hanson-Young is a transparent and childish trick – it was the last Federal Government that introduced the Carbon Tax, and all the benefits that came with it. If they didn’t want to, they could have cooperated with the Right to not do so.

IP

chewy14 said :

Ah to stop the worst effects of climate change? As we should be doing after a broad ranging, global agreement is made.

See talking about people’s consciences and assuming you’re on the high moral ground is where this issue really gives me the shits.

It’s not moral or better to handicap our economy when the result of climate change will still be the same.

This whole thread has been about science and logical arguments and that’s where it should stay.

Invest in renewable energy sources because they will be (are becoming) cheaper than fossil fuel sources. The economic argument will stack up.

Reduce pollution and invest in better technologies because it will improve our environment, health and living standards. Those arguments have merit.

Enact carbon trading schemes as part of a global agreement or leave the carbon tax set at a low level that will ramp up the price as other countries get on board. These arguments stack up.

But talking about a moral imperative to go above other countries actions ’cause we’re rich’, sorry not buying it. The US and China (whose emissions are growing massively as their economy expands) are over 40% of global emissions. Without them being involved, along with every other big emitter including us, our actions will mean nothing.

Actually, what could be more moral than to suffer some pain for the greater good?

Everything else you say is fine – except that it contradicts the “moral” statement. You support adopting renewables for financial reasons, or to reduce pollution, but not for “morality” reasons. These are moral arguments.

IP

howeph said :

And this debate must openly canvas the ethical and moral implications of failing to act. .

AND whether “failing to act” alone on Australia’s part will make an iota of difference.

howeph said :

chewy14 said :

See talking about people’s consciences and assuming you’re on the high moral ground is where this issue really gives me the shits.

chewy14 said :

This whole thread has been about science and logical arguments and that’s where it should stay.

Whilst the debate should continue to convince those who still deny or are yet to decide if they believe the science or not; the reality of climate change is not going to wait until every single Australian agrees with the science.

A parallel debate can be carried out to discuss how to act in response to climate change. And this debate must openly canvas the ethical and moral implications of failing to act. Ethics and morals can be discussed using logical arguments, as IP has done. I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. Perhaps you should try and figure out why such discussions make you angry.

I know exactly why it gives me the shits and that’s because a) I think it’s an irrelevant argument to what our actions should be and b)it’s an attempt to convince people by the use of guilt and shaming tactics rather than logic or reason.

howeph said :

The science disputes your claim. The science shows that if emissions are reduced and eventually eliminated then, the worst effects of climate change will be averted. Therefore the decision to act or not to act IS a moral as well as an economic question..

Yes, that was my point, If total world emissions are reduced and eventually eliminated. Pray tell how Australia is going to achieve this reduction in world emissions by itself?

And even then the level of action should still be primarily an economic question. How much money will it cost to act vs the potential economic effects of climate change. The world response needs to be balanced.

chewy14 said :

See talking about people’s consciences and assuming you’re on the high moral ground is where this issue really gives me the shits.

I’m sorry that it gives you the shits.

chewy14 said :

It’s not moral or better to handicap our economy when the result of climate change will still be the same.

The science disputes your claim. The science shows that if emissions are reduced and eventually eliminated then, the worst effects of climate change will be averted. Therefore the decision to act or not to act IS a moral as well as an economic question.

chewy14 said :

This whole thread has been about science and logical arguments and that’s where it should stay.

Whilst the debate should continue to convince those who still deny or are yet to decide if they believe the science or not; the reality of climate change is not going to wait until every single Australian agrees with the science.

A parallel debate can be carried out to discuss how to act in response to climate change. And this debate must openly canvas the ethical and moral implications of failing to act. Ethics and morals can be discussed using logical arguments, as IP has done. I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. Perhaps you should try and figure out why such discussions make you angry.

IrishPete said :

[

Perhaps it is possible to believe as you do, but what I find difficult to believe is that your conscience lets you sleep at night. If just about the richest country in the world, and the one with the highest per capita emissions in the world, isn’t willing to act, then why the hell should China, or anyone else?

The USA is actually doing a lot, just mainly at State level not Federal because their federal government is so dysfunctional. Look at all the subsidies they have for electric cars, for example. Not a cent of subsidy in Oz. Some of the US States have emissions trading schemes, TAbbott is trying to dismantle ours.

When I visit Ireland the UK there are windfarms everywhere. In Oz, right-wing denialist governments won’t even allow them to be built anywhere near where people live (even though that’s where the electricity is used). Never mind subsidising them, they are actually obstructing them.

IP

Why the hell should China? Because it is China and the US that are causing climate change, not Australia.

I’m afraid I will decline your invitation to suffer under Hanson-Young-esque guilt trips. The per capita rate of emission isn’t the issue. If you think that, had history put the shoe on the other foot, the Chinese would give a rat’s about us, then think again.

What bears upon emissions is the total. That’s to say, the billion Chinese will need to get their act together. I’m sure Australians will be happy to join the effort once the problem’s perpetrators get started.

ONE US state has a PARTIAL, very limited and ineffective emissions scheme. There is simply no comparison with Australia’s (ineffective) carbon tax.

Windfarms are horrible. We should be waiting for wave energy. By the time the big emitters have gone green, and it’s time for us to join in, wave energy will be viable.

IrishPete said :

Masquara said :

You can in fact believe wholeheartedly in climate change WHILE thinking that Australians shouldn’t be required to race ahead of the big polluters (China and the US) to address it – because anything Australia does on its own will do NOTHING to address global warming. Nada. Nix. Nuffink. But will have disadvantaged us economically in comparison with the rest of the world.

I am firmly in that camp. Global warming? Yep, according to the scientists, so I must agree (not having any knowledge on the topic). Compulsory expensive solar energy at huge cost to Australian business and individuals and with nil effect on climate change? Bad idea.

Not happy about being required to pay for this ideological stretch. Especially with Tim Flannery buying waterfront property (“What sea level rise? Qui, moi? Did I say that?”) and flying everywhere!

Perhaps it is possible to believe as you do, but what I find difficult to believe is that your conscience lets you sleep at night. If just about the richest country in the world, and the one with the highest per capita emissions in the world, isn’t willing to act, then why the hell should China, or anyone else?
IP

Ah to stop the worst effects of climate change? As we should be doing after a broad ranging, global agreement is made.

See talking about people’s consciences and assuming you’re on the high moral ground is where this issue really gives me the shits.

It’s not moral or better to handicap our economy when the result of climate change will still be the same.

This whole thread has been about science and logical arguments and that’s where it should stay.

Invest in renewable energy sources because they will be (are becoming) cheaper than fossil fuel sources. The economic argument will stack up.

Reduce pollution and invest in better technologies because it will improve our environment, health and living standards. Those arguments have merit.

Enact carbon trading schemes as part of a global agreement or leave the carbon tax set at a low level that will ramp up the price as other countries get on board. These arguments stack up.

But talking about a moral imperative to go above other countries actions ’cause we’re rich’, sorry not buying it. The US and China (whose emissions are growing massively as their economy expands) are over 40% of global emissions. Without them being involved, along with every other big emitter including us, our actions will mean nothing.

Masquara said :

You can in fact believe wholeheartedly in climate change WHILE thinking that Australians shouldn’t be required to race ahead of the big polluters (China and the US) to address it – because anything Australia does on its own will do NOTHING to address global warming. Nada. Nix. Nuffink. But will have disadvantaged us economically in comparison with the rest of the world.

I am firmly in that camp. Global warming? Yep, according to the scientists, so I must agree (not having any knowledge on the topic). Compulsory expensive solar energy at huge cost to Australian business and individuals and with nil effect on climate change? Bad idea.

Not happy about being required to pay for this ideological stretch. Especially with Tim Flannery buying waterfront property (“What sea level rise? Qui, moi? Did I say that?”) and flying everywhere!

Perhaps it is possible to believe as you do, but what I find difficult to believe is that your conscience lets you sleep at night. If just about the richest country in the world, and the one with the highest per capita emissions in the world, isn’t willing to act, then why the hell should China, or anyone else?

The USA is actually doing a lot, just mainly at State level not Federal because their federal government is so dysfunctional. Look at all the subsidies they have for electric cars, for example. Not a cent of subsidy in Oz. Some of the US States have emissions trading schemes, TAbbott is trying to dismantle ours.

When I visit Ireland the UK there are windfarms everywhere. In Oz, right-wing denialist governments won’t even allow them to be built anywhere near where people live (even though that’s where the electricity is used). Never mind subsidising them, they are actually obstructing them.

IP

Australians shouldn’t be required to race ahead of the big polluters (China and the US) to address it

So, we’re 26 million of some of the world’s richest people, happily churning our more CO2 per capita than people in the US, and two to three times what that Chinese bloke over there is churning out.

However, because we have the fortune to have just 26 million people in our imaginary line, and they’ve got a billion people inside their imaginary line, they should go first. I mean, sure, I generate more than double the amount of CO2 that guy does, but he’s got lots of friends, so I’m not obligated to do anything. I’m sure all that CO2 they’re generating has nothing to do with me. This imaginary line sure is convenient. It absolves me of any responsibility for my actions, because I’m just one person, and we’re just 26 million people.

And if he looks at me and says ‘maybe you could, I don’t know, reduce your CO2 output so it’s the same as mine’, I can tell him to get f*cked, because surely I’d be in poverty. And when he points out that the lower level is about the same as somebody in New Zealand, and they’re not in poverty, and higher than people in France and Sweden, and they’re not in poverty, I just ignore him again because I just bought a cheap Chinese-manufactured LCD TV. It gives me crystal-clear HD pictures of all the pollution in China. Srsly wtf is wrong with those people, making all that smog for no reason?

You can in fact believe wholeheartedly in climate change WHILE thinking that Australians shouldn’t be required to race ahead of the big polluters (China and the US) to address it – because anything Australia does on its own will do NOTHING to address global warming. Nada. Nix. Nuffink. But will have disadvantaged us economically in comparison with the rest of the world.

I am firmly in that camp. Global warming? Yep, according to the scientists, so I must agree (not having any knowledge on the topic). Compulsory expensive solar energy at huge cost to Australian business and individuals and with nil effect on climate change? Bad idea.

Not happy about being required to pay for this ideological stretch. Especially with Tim Flannery buying waterfront property (“What sea level rise? Qui, moi? Did I say that?”) and flying everywhere!

PantsMan said :

howeph said :

Yes you’re right it does. This challenge will only be met by the the sort of concerted effort and dynamic, innovative solutions that free markets can bring to bare. Hence why putting a price on carbon is recognised as one of the best policy responses to stimulate such innovation.

Well, that approach would put a tax wedge into all economic activity in the World, and reduce our economic welfare.

So you think that innovation, new technologies and building a hole new industry will “reduce our economic welfare” (whatever that means).

Renewable energy represents a MASSIVE economic OPPORTUNITY. Not a cost.

You guys and girls just don’t get it – you’ve voted a climate change denier government in – and Australia is going to miss out on this opportunity. We’ll be left with Billions of dollars tied up in a coal industry that nobody wants. Thanks.

PantsMan said :

Secondly, there can be no true ‘market’ unless there are willing buyers and willing sellers. That seems like a nutjob scheme.

Thanks for your opinion – a pity that the economists disagree with you. But I’m sure you’ve got some pearls of wisdom that trumps the experts… again.

PantsMan said :

In fact, the whole idea of ‘protecting future generations’ is bunkum. It’s like asking your children to hate their grandparents for leaving them medical vaccines, roads, and encyclopaedias of knowledge!

I think that cheap unlimited power that doesn’t screw that planet would be a great legacy for future generations – as good as vaccines and encyclopaedic knowledge. You don’t I take it?

PantsMan said :

The good thing about knowing I’m right is that I don’t have to engage with nutters to have my ideas validated. Some people are clearly not so sure of their thinking.

What the?

buzz819 said :

You have stated in a post “– CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing and has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Which in itself means this has happened before, what happened then? Did the world implode? Or did something happen that balanced it out, if nothing happened, how are we still here today?

You have misunderstood what Robertson, and the scientists are saying.

When Robertson said that CO2 “has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years” he wasn’t saying that hundreds of thousand of years ago the levels were the same, he is saying that in hundreds of thousands of years the CO2 levels have never been anywhere near as high as they are now.

Watch the animation linked to by Gungahlin Al to see how the current CO2 levels compare with 800,000 years of history: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

Then tell us you think it’s natural and nothing to worry about.

PantsMan said :

The good thing about knowing I’m right is that I don’t have to engage with nutters to have my ideas validated. Some people are clearly not so sure of their thinking.

Priceless! You must be right because you are so obviously a swivelled eyed loon that anyone prepared to argue with you must be wrong. Congratulations, this would have to be the least self-aware comment I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.

I’m just going to leave this here:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

Which in itself means this has happened before, what happened then? Did the world implode? Or did something happen that balanced it out, if nothing happened, how are we still here today?

IF WE ELVOVED FROM MONKEES WHY ARE THEIR STILL MOKNIES

howeph said :

Yes you’re right it does. This challenge will only be met by the the sort of concerted effort and dynamic, innovative solutions that free markets can bring to bare. Hence why putting a price on carbon is recognised as one of the best policy responses to stimulate such innovation.

Well, that approach would put a tax wedge into all economic activity in the World, and reduce our economic welfare. Secondly, there can be no true ‘market’ unless there are willing buyers and willing sellers. That seems like a nutjob scheme.

In fact, the whole idea of ‘protecting future generations’ is bunkum. It’s like asking your children to hate their grandparents for leaving them medical vaccines, roads, and encyclopaedias of knowledge!

The good thing about knowing I’m right is that I don’t have to engage with nutters to have my ideas validated. Some people are clearly not so sure of their thinking.

PantsMan said :

Postalgeek said :

To make it easy, you don’t have to write, just links providing evidence relevant to the statements you’ve made.

The socialist plot orchestrated by the UN: http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/12/09/exclusive-un-climate-draft-text-demands-new-international-climate-court-to-compel-reparations-for-climate-debt-also-seeks-rights-of-mother-earth-2cdeg-drop-in-global-temps/

You’ve linked to an article by “Lord” Christopher Monckton… o.k. a man of impeccable integrity … about a draft plan drafted by politicians and bureaucrats (i.e. not scientists) to attack the science…

I think that you need to try harder.

PantsMan said :

Crap science: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/

Case closed: “Climategate” has been debunked over, and over, and over again..

But more important where is the SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that all the climate scientist have got it wrong?

Show us the evidence that CO2 doesn’t trap heat, or that global CO2 levels aren’t rising, or that global surface temperatures have returned to 20th century averages, that global ocean temperatures are not rising, that arctic sea ice isn’t retreating, that global sea levels aren’t rising or that just as many cold weather records are being broken as hot weather records.

Can’t find any? That’s because there isn’t any – if there was then the scientist who found it would be getting a nobel prize.

All of the types of evidence I’ve listed above is not subjective. The data have been measured with satellites or direct experimentation. No computer models are involved to get that data. But all the data gathered by direct measurement supports the computer model predictions.

buzz819 said :

How am I anti-science, el-douche?

You have stated in a post “– CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing and has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Which in itself means this has happened before, what happened then? Did the world implode?

I already dropped a hint.
Orbital forcing.
Look it up instead of persisting with your stupid questions.

Are you a Queenslander or something?

PantsMan said :

The socialist plot orchestrated by the UN: http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/12/09/exclusive-un-climate-draft-text-demands-new-international-climate-court-to-compel-reparations-for-climate-debt-also-seeks-rights-of-mother-earth-2cdeg-drop-in-global-temps/

Crap science: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/

I see, you get your “information” from kook blogs.

We get ours from the science:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/
http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators
http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Climate.aspx

My science says your uni-dropout ex-weatherman Watts is an ignorant, raving looney.

As for basing your beliefs not on facts, but on the ravings of internet-blogger-kooks – WTF is wrong with you? Just try to grow a brain and learn to discriminate between science and misinformed gibberish, will you?

tim_c said :

Since when was ‘fact’ determined by majority?

If you’re now reporting that Climate Change Scaremongers are now in the majority, it suggests they were previously in the minority – does that mean you consider their beliefs were wrong at that time?

It’s a fact that deniers are a tiny minority.

That’s all.

The tortured inferences you try to build up are illogical and irrelevant.

davo101 said :

PantsMan said :

Surely, if the World is going to be so bad in the future, we need free market economic policies to provide the wealth and technological innovation that we will need to deal with it?

That’s it! What we need is some sort of mechanism to put a cost on the externality that emitting CO2 into the atmosphere represents. That way there will be a financial reward for developing ways of avoiding doing this. We could start out with a low cost and then ramp it up over time. We could also even set it up so that there was some sort of market to determine the price.

That’s way to hard for Alan Jones to explain, so Pantsman won’t be familiar with it.

Robertson said :

buzz819 said :

I wonder what caused the last ice age and subsequent thaw. Sounds like Climate change might be very cyclical….

Gosh! I bet no scientists have ever thought of investigating that!

Uh, hang on.

Orbital forcing.

This is the thing about the anti-science knuckleheads – they simply cannot comprehend the vast amount of knowledge that has been amassed through the scientific process. They think any random thought that pops into their uneducated head is as valid as all the in-depth and well-developed science that is out there. and that they don’t know about.

How am I anti-science, el-douche?

You have stated in a post “– CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing and has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Which in itself means this has happened before, what happened then? Did the world implode? Or did something happen that balanced it out, if nothing happened, how are we still here today?

I very muchily am on the side of science on this one, but not on your side.

You crazy, and nobody likes a crazy woman!

Postalgeek said :

PantsMan said :

Please explain the link between the crap science you’ve spouted above, and the socialist agenda it presumably mandates?

Surely, if the World is going to be so bad in the future, we need free market economic policies to provide the wealth and technological innovation that we will need to deal with it?

Demonstrate that the above science is crap. Show me what you know, and that you can intelligently refute something.

And demonstrate the socialist agenda behind it while you’re at it.

To make it easy, you don’t have to write, just links providing evidence relevant to the statements you’ve made.

The socialist plot orchestrated by the UN: http://www.climatedepot.com/2011/12/09/exclusive-un-climate-draft-text-demands-new-international-climate-court-to-compel-reparations-for-climate-debt-also-seeks-rights-of-mother-earth-2cdeg-drop-in-global-temps/

Crap science: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/

Since when was ‘fact’ determined by majority?

If you’re now reporting that Climate Change Scaremongers are now in the majority, it suggests they were previously in the minority – does that mean you consider their beliefs were wrong at that time?

PantsMan said :

Climate change isn’t real because communist conspiracy

YEAH SCIENCE!

PantsMan said :

Please explain the link between the crap science you’ve spouted above, and the socialist agenda it presumably mandates?

Surely, if the World is going to be so bad in the future, we need free market economic policies to provide the wealth and technological innovation that we will need to deal with it?

Demonstrate that the above science is crap. Show me what you know, and that you can intelligently refute something.

And demonstrate the socialist agenda behind it while you’re at it.

To make it easy, you don’t have to write, just links providing evidence relevant to the statements you’ve made.

PantsMan said :

Please explain the link between the crap science you’ve spouted above…

Please provide your evidence for dismissing the collaborative effort of so many luminary international scientific bodies as “crap”.

PantsMan said :

… and the socialist agenda it presumably mandates?

Science doesn’t give a crap about your pet conspiracy theories.

PantsMan said :

Surely, if the World is going to be so bad in the future, we need free market economic policies to provide the wealth and technological innovation that we will need to deal with it?

Yes you’re right it does. This challenge will only be met by the the sort of concerted effort and dynamic, innovative solutions that free markets can bring to bare. Hence why putting a price on carbon is recognised as one of the best policy responses to stimulate such innovation.

What’s your point?

PantsMan said :

Surely, if the World is going to be so bad in the future, we need free market economic policies to provide the wealth and technological innovation that we will need to deal with it?

That’s it! What we need is some sort of mechanism to put a cost on the externality that emitting CO2 into the atmosphere represents. That way there will be a financial reward for developing ways of avoiding doing this. We could start out with a low cost and then ramp it up over time. We could also even set it up so that there was some sort of market to determine the price.

howeph said :

Robertson said :

Here are the facts, Kev:
– CO2 is a greenhouse gas: it traps heat that would otherwise escape to space
– Human activity produces CO2 (mainly burning fossil fuels)
– CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing and has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years.
– 560ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is expected to heat the Earth up by a global average of 3 degrees.

Here is the evidence, to back up Robertsons claims with respect to CO2 concentrations, shown in an animated graphic:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

It shows the history of CO2 concentrations going back 800,000 years from direct atmospheric measurement (1958 – 2012) and ice-core measurements since 800,000BCE.

Please explain the link between the crap science you’ve spouted above, and the socialist agenda it presumably mandates?

Surely, if the World is going to be so bad in the future, we need free market economic policies to provide the wealth and technological innovation that we will need to deal with it?

Robertson said :

Here are the facts, Kev:
– CO2 is a greenhouse gas: it traps heat that would otherwise escape to space
– Human activity produces CO2 (mainly burning fossil fuels)
– CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing and has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years.
– 560ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is expected to heat the Earth up by a global average of 3 degrees.

Here is the evidence, to back up Robertsons claims with respect to CO2 concentrations, shown in an animated graphic:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

It shows the history of CO2 concentrations going back 800,000 years from direct atmospheric measurement (1958 – 2012) and ice-core measurements since 800,000BCE.

Robertson said :

KevFromCanberra said :

Trying to debate with a global warming alarmist is about as fruitful as arguing with a Jehovas Witness..

What is it about the knuckleheads that they can’t stop talking about religion? They are obsessed with it, because to them knowledge is *all* received. They are too stupid to understand any other source of knowledge.

And when do they ever “debate”? They trot out lies from bloggers, journalists and fringedwelling scientists and every time their assertions are shown to be wrong, they go quiet, wait awhile, then pop up sprouting the very same inanities all over again as if nothing had happened.

Here are the facts, Kev:
– CO2 is a greenhouse gas: it traps heat that would otherwise escape to space
– Human activity produces CO2 (mainly burning fossil fuels)
– CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing and has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years.
– 560ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is expected to heat the Earth up by a global average of 3 degrees.

And that’s it in a nutshell – Kev can splutter about this religion and his kooky conspiracy theories as much as he likes, it just makes him look like a sad old nutter, because the laws of physics and the observations say that he is utterly off his tree.

Bing. Bing Bing. You are a climate change loooOOOOooOOooOOoooOOn!

KevFromCanberra said :

Trying to debate with a global warming alarmist is about as fruitful as arguing with a Jehovas Witness..

What is it about the knuckleheads that they can’t stop talking about religion? They are obsessed with it, because to them knowledge is *all* received. They are too stupid to understand any other source of knowledge.

And when do they ever “debate”? They trot out lies from bloggers, journalists and fringedwelling scientists and every time their assertions are shown to be wrong, they go quiet, wait awhile, then pop up sprouting the very same inanities all over again as if nothing had happened.

Here are the facts, Kev:
– CO2 is a greenhouse gas: it traps heat that would otherwise escape to space
– Human activity produces CO2 (mainly burning fossil fuels)
– CO2 in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing and has now reached levels it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of years.
– 560ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is expected to heat the Earth up by a global average of 3 degrees.

And that’s it in a nutshell – Kev can splutter about this religion and his kooky conspiracy theories as much as he likes, it just makes him look like a sad old nutter, because the laws of physics and the observations say that he is utterly off his tree.

buzz819 said :

I wonder what caused the last ice age and subsequent thaw. Sounds like Climate change might be very cyclical….

Gosh! I bet no scientists have ever thought of investigating that!

Uh, hang on.

Orbital forcing.

This is the thing about the anti-science knuckleheads – they simply cannot comprehend the vast amount of knowledge that has been amassed through the scientific process. They think any random thought that pops into their uneducated head is as valid as all the in-depth and well-developed science that is out there. and that they don’t know about.

I wonder what caused the last ice age and subsequent thaw. Sounds like Climate change might be very cyclical….

KevFromCanberra said :

So according to your argument, it all comes down to how many people believe in a thing for it to be correct?

All that those survey results can prove is that the constant barrage of green propaganda in the schools and the left wing press have done their job of brain washing the gullible majority.

A poll taken last year in the USA showed that 46% Americans actually believe In Creationism. Quite sad really. There are millions of supposedly rational people in Australia who still believe that heaven and hell are real places where people go when they die. These are sane people often educated to university level and holding down important jobs in our community yet they believe in ancient myths.

People will believe just about anything really.

That is a sad fact about the current state of the human mind.

Its still a work in progress.

I prefer to read the source material and make my own mind up on issues as important as the climate and listen to biased surveys pushing an agenda.

Anyone who did basic stats knows that you can run a survey and skew it to get whatever result you want.

I certainly do not take much notice of the fear tactics spruiked by the professional climate change alarmists and the global warming doom and gloom mongers.

The Climate Change scam had degenerated into just another religion now.

A religion without a god but with prophets like Al Gore.

And like most religions the prophets do not practice what they preach.

Al Gore owns multiple huge homes and flies around the world belching out a trail of carbon fumes in his wake.

Trying to debate with a global warming alarmist is about as fruitful as arguing with a Jehovas Witness.

They rely on faith, backed up with very flimsy climate models that have already being shown to be deeply flawed.

I would agree that a lot of people believing something doesn’t make it ‘correct’. A group of experts reaching a consensus isn’t about being ‘correct’, it’s about probability. True sceptics don’t demand absolute certainty because they believe certain knowledge is impossible. They look at the probabilities and balance them.

Speaking of probabilities, what is your position as far as the climate change denial PR generated by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Heartland Institute? Do you question the objectivity of the ‘sceptic’ darling Dr Ian Plimer, who is overtly sponsored by Gina Rhinehart, or do you genuinely believe that such powerful magnates, industries and think tanks are championing truth and not self-interest?

You’ve seemingly weighed that against thousands of climate scientists, who by their nature are trained to test each others claims, and leading scientific organisations, and have concluded that the scientists are the ones colluding together and are the ones who have a vested interest in this debate.

What’s your opinion of other professional ‘alarmists’, such as oncologists, who benefit from finding tumours in you, CASA, who benefits from finding fault in planes and pilots, seismologists, who benefit from issuing tsunami alerts etc etc? Should all professional ‘alarmists’ lose all financing so they can be more ‘objective’? If not, why are climate scientists the exception?

The neo-Mccarthyism that is emerging is a truly pathetic emotive strategy, clearly engineered by the American conservative think tanks. The hard Right are reverting back 60 years and then laughably accuse the proponents of sustainable low-emmission energy of trying to stop progress.

So according to your argument, it all comes down to how many people believe in a thing for it to be correct? All that those survey results can prove is that the constant barrage of green propaganda in the schools and the left wing press have done their job of brain washing the gullible majority.

A poll taken last year in the USA showed that 46% Americans actually believe In Creationism. Quite sad really. There are millions of supposedly rational people in Australia who still believe that heaven and hell are real places where people go when they die. These are sane people often educated to university level and holding down important jobs in our community yet they believe in ancient myths. People will believe just about anything really. That is a sad fact about the current state of the human mind. Its still a work in progress.

I prefer to read the source material and make my own mind up on issues as important as the climate and listen to biased surveys pushing an agenda. Anyone who did basic stats knows that you can run a survey and skew it to get whatever result you want.

I certainly do not take much notice of the fear tactics spruiked by the professional climate change alarmists and the global warming doom and gloom mongers.

The Climate Change scam had degenerated into just another religion now. A religion without a god but with prophets like Al Gore. And like most religions the prophets do not practice what they preach. Al Gore owns multiple huge homes and flies around the world belching out a trail of carbon fumes in his wake.

Trying to debate with a global warming alarmist is about as fruitful as arguing with a Jehovas Witness. They rely on faith, backed up with very flimsy climate models that have already being shown to be deeply flawed.

Barcham said :

So take off your goddamn tinfoil hat, roll your sleeves up, and start working towards fixing the problem instead of talking about some political nonsense that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

The problem is no matter how strong the science (and it is fairly well settled at the moment), you cannot ignore the politics because the solution will only come from political and diplomatic measures.

We need a solid global agreement that includes all the major emitters, otherwise no matter how good it makes us feel, our actions are pretty much pissing into the wind. Ignoring this fact is the same as ignoring the science.

Barcham said :

Roundhead89 said :

I’ve been holding off commenting on this thread because I believe JB was mischief-making and deliberately trying to stir controversy with this article. A few points need to be made:

a/ This survey was commissioned by the ACT government which is controlled by a solitary Greens member. It was deliberately designed to give the result it did. It can be compared to the endless grants given by the Labor federal government to climate scientists to produce reports backing up government policy on climate change and supporting the carbon tax/ETS.

b/ The survey was taken in the ACT which is a left wing polity which has the highest support for The Greens in Australia. Therefore the result cannot be taken seriously. It is unrepresentative.

c/ The result demonstrates how mass brainwashing can be so successful. Over the past five or so years The Canberra Times has been pushing the climate change issue every day. They refuse to print letters from people like myself who say climate change is crap. They have never printed an opinion piece expressing scepticism over climate change. Climate sceptics are routinely ridiculed and abused (eg: Lord Monckton). Despite repeated requests to the newspaper to drop the climate change issue they keep publishing items supporting it.

d/ Climate change is simply a new form of socialism forcing so-called rich countries like Australia to subsidise poor countries. It is backed by the UN which is actually considering a proposal at the Warsaw talks for poor countries to be able to sue rich countries if a weather event happens which is deemed climate change related. Australia and other countries gave poor countries $600billion last year in foreign aid grants to deal with climate change. They now want even more backed by legal clout, and a right to blackmail us and extort money when an event like a cyclone happens.

e/ No matter how much abuse is directed at so-called “climate change deniers” the fact is that global warming ended 16 years ago. The weather in Australia is normal. As the Poms would say “Keep calm and carry on”.

Forget the polls, forget politics, forget all that crap.

Science isn’t political, science isn’t based on popular vote, science doesn’t care about socialist plots, tax reductions, or any other conspiracy theory nonsense.

Climate change is not and should not be considered a political issue. It isn’t left or right, no more than gravity, or sunlight are political issues.

Science says this is real, and this is happening.

Science, not a few money grabbing scientists, but science. This is where all the collected evidence points. This is the findings of 97% of climate researching scientists worldwide. Scientists who, I should add, make much less money being involved in climate research than they would using their degrees to work in an industry like mining.

Science doesn’t need you to believe, understand, or like it in order for it to be correct, but sadly we humans need you to believe it in order for us to get to work dealing with this situation as a whole.

So take off your goddamn tinfoil hat, roll your sleeves up, and start working towards fixing the problem instead of talking about some political nonsense that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

This is called winning.

PantsMan said :

Roundhead89 said :

I’ve been holding off commenting on this thread because I believe JB was mischief-making and deliberately trying to stir controversy with this article. A few points need to be made:

a/ This survey was commissioned by the ACT government which is controlled by a solitary Greens member. It was deliberately designed to give the result it did. It can be compared to the endless grants given by the Labor federal government to climate scientists to produce reports backing up government policy on climate change and supporting the carbon tax/ETS.

b/ The survey was taken in the ACT which is a left wing polity which has the highest support for The Greens in Australia. Therefore the result cannot be taken seriously. It is unrepresentative.

c/ The result demonstrates how mass brainwashing can be so successful. Over the past five or so years The Canberra Times has been pushing the climate change issue every day. They refuse to print letters from people like myself who say climate change is crap. They have never printed an opinion piece expressing scepticism over climate change. Climate sceptics are routinely ridiculed and abused (eg: Lord Monckton). Despite repeated requests to the newspaper to drop the climate change issue they keep publishing items supporting it.

d/ Climate change is simply a new form of socialism forcing so-called rich countries like Australia to subsidise poor countries. It is backed by the UN which is actually considering a proposal at the Warsaw talks for poor countries to be able to sue rich countries if a weather event happens which is deemed climate change related. Australia and other countries gave poor countries $600billion last year in foreign aid grants to deal with climate change. They now want even more backed by legal clout, and a right to blackmail us and extort money when an event like a cyclone happens.

e/ No matter how much abuse is directed at so-called “climate change deniers” the fact is that global warming ended 16 years ago. The weather in Australia is normal. As the Poms would say “Keep calm and carry on”.

+1

Aside from Fairfax (which seems hell-bent on going bust) everyone who supports climate change is:
* directly or indirectly taxpayer funded (public service, CSIRO, NGOs, ABC, UN); and
* likely to obtain more power over other people from the adoption of climate change schemes.

Most of these people are hard-core socialists who despise profits and capitalist accumulation. They would prefer to see people living in poverty, subsistence farming with 8 children, than wealthy and free because that gives them more weak people to oppress and exploit. Then they can get on a jet, fly to Africa and deliver some aid program (loaded up with their socialist hegemony) to these poor souls under the auspices of the UN or some NGO.

Wealthy, with one or two children, and healthcare? Not, that’s not what people need. They need to live in dirt and poverty, with 8 children (3 of which will die before the age of 3) and a water well from AusAID, while weaving baskets to sell in craft markets in Canberra.

Effing lol. Just lol.

bikhet said :

Barcham said :

Science doesn’t need you to believe, understand, or like it in order for it to be correct, but sadly we humans need you to believe it in order for us to get to work dealing with this situation as a whole.

So take off your goddamn tinfoil hat, roll your sleeves up, and start working towards fixing the problem instead of talking about some political nonsense that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Ideally yes, but:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

and

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong

Not specifically about climate change, but extent the argument. Science is still an activity undertaken by people, and scientists are not infallible.

Yes. This is why the idea of “consensus” is so important in science. If 50% of (relevant) scientists reckon burnt toast gives you cancer, and 50% reckon it doesn’t, you really can’t make an educated decision either way.

With climate change, however, there simply is no divided opinion on the reality of the following things:
– Greenhouse effect retains heat that would otherwise escape to space.
– Human activity releases CO2
– CO2 levels have risen from 280ppm to 400ppm
– Heat is being retained
– Sea levels are rising
– Ice is melting

The only part of the picture around which there is ongoing debate centres around the complicated system of feedbacks that the increasing amount of heat kicks off: more heat means more water vapour. More water vapour means more heat retained (H2O is also a greenhouse gas). More clouds means less solar radiation reaching the earth. Reduced ice cover means more solar radiation being absorbed. Etc. Etc. Etc.
There are about a dozen serious studies into how this all adds up, and they give ranges of anything from 1 degree total effect from CO2 reaching 560ppm, to 8 degrees. Eliminate the outliers, and you’re left with 2-4 degrees warming from reaching 560ppm CO2. So, on the whole, scientists talk about that “doubling” of CO2 in the atmosphere producing 3 degrees warming. Could be more, could be less, but on the whole it’s probably somewhere in that vicinity.

On the other hand, we have small number of scientists who are happy to deny some or all of the above. It doesn’t take too much research to find out these guys lack credibility. Few of them are involved in climate research and those who are haven’t had much success at getting anything coherent published.

Barcham said :

Forget the polls, forget politics, forget all that crap.

Science isn’t political, science isn’t based on popular vote, science doesn’t care about socialist plots, tax reductions, or any other conspiracy theory nonsense.

Climate change is not and should not be considered a political issue. It isn’t left or right, no more than gravity, or sunlight are political issues.

Science says this is real, and this is happening.

Science, not a few money grabbing scientists, but science. This is where all the collected evidence points. This is the findings of 97% of climate researching scientists worldwide. Scientists who, I should add, make much less money being involved in climate research than they would using their degrees to work in an industry like mining.

Science doesn’t need you to believe, understand, or like it in order for it to be correct, but sadly we humans need you to believe it in order for us to get to work dealing with this situation as a whole.

So take off your goddamn tinfoil hat, roll your sleeves up, and start working towards fixing the problem instead of talking about some political nonsense that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Ideally yes, but:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble

and

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong

Not specifically about climate change, but extent the argument. Science is still an activity undertaken by people, and scientists are not infallible.

Robertson said :

PantsMan said :

IrishPete said :

Your average socialist or Green actually supports population control. So that completely undermines the crux of your argument. And then there’s nothing left.

I know. That is why babies are killed in China. We need that policy in Australia to prevent climate crime. People over 60 who are no longer working should be killed and put into biomass energy generators too.

Gosh, somebody’s leaked the latest copy of the UN’s Agenda21. Looks like our masterplan has been foiled again, especially for the super-cunning bit where babies and people over 60 are going to be mass-murdered by dolphin-loving socialists.

Windfarms ====>> Soylent green.

Panstman *knows* it makes sense.

Hey thanks Robbo. I was an avid science fiction reader in the 70s and I have never heard of Soylent Green nor its source book Make Room! Make Room!

Wikipedia says the movie talks is based on the greenhouse effect, can that really be true of a movie produced in 1973? I’m gonna have to find it and see. Even without climate change, the population focus of the movie will be interesting.

IP

Roundhead89 said :

I’ve been holding off commenting on this thread because I believe JB was mischief-making and deliberately trying to stir controversy with this article. A few points need to be made:

a/ This survey was commissioned by the ACT government which is controlled by a solitary Greens member. It was deliberately designed to give the result it did. It can be compared to the endless grants given by the Labor federal government to climate scientists to produce reports backing up government policy on climate change and supporting the carbon tax/ETS.

b/ The survey was taken in the ACT which is a left wing polity which has the highest support for The Greens in Australia. Therefore the result cannot be taken seriously. It is unrepresentative.

c/ The result demonstrates how mass brainwashing can be so successful. Over the past five or so years The Canberra Times has been pushing the climate change issue every day. They refuse to print letters from people like myself who say climate change is crap. They have never printed an opinion piece expressing scepticism over climate change. Climate sceptics are routinely ridiculed and abused (eg: Lord Monckton). Despite repeated requests to the newspaper to drop the climate change issue they keep publishing items supporting it.

d/ Climate change is simply a new form of socialism forcing so-called rich countries like Australia to subsidise poor countries. It is backed by the UN which is actually considering a proposal at the Warsaw talks for poor countries to be able to sue rich countries if a weather event happens which is deemed climate change related. Australia and other countries gave poor countries $600billion last year in foreign aid grants to deal with climate change. They now want even more backed by legal clout, and a right to blackmail us and extort money when an event like a cyclone happens.

e/ No matter how much abuse is directed at so-called “climate change deniers” the fact is that global warming ended 16 years ago. The weather in Australia is normal. As the Poms would say “Keep calm and carry on”.

Forget the polls, forget politics, forget all that crap.

Science isn’t political, science isn’t based on popular vote, science doesn’t care about socialist plots, tax reductions, or any other conspiracy theory nonsense.

Climate change is not and should not be considered a political issue. It isn’t left or right, no more than gravity, or sunlight are political issues.

Science says this is real, and this is happening.

Science, not a few money grabbing scientists, but science. This is where all the collected evidence points. This is the findings of 97% of climate researching scientists worldwide. Scientists who, I should add, make much less money being involved in climate research than they would using their degrees to work in an industry like mining.

Science doesn’t need you to believe, understand, or like it in order for it to be correct, but sadly we humans need you to believe it in order for us to get to work dealing with this situation as a whole.

So take off your goddamn tinfoil hat, roll your sleeves up, and start working towards fixing the problem instead of talking about some political nonsense that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

PantsMan said :

IrishPete said :

Your average socialist or Green actually supports population control. So that completely undermines the crux of your argument. And then there’s nothing left.

I know. That is why babies are killed in China. We need that policy in Australia to prevent climate crime. People over 60 who are no longer working should be killed and put into biomass energy generators too.

I think you are getting confused with Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. Hitler wasn’t a socialist. And nor is or was China. Calling yourself a socialist does not make you one. Just like Tony Abbott isn’t a Liberal, it’s just a word.

IP

PantsMan said :

IrishPete said :

Your average socialist or Green actually supports population control. So that completely undermines the crux of your argument. And then there’s nothing left.

I know. That is why babies are killed in China. We need that policy in Australia to prevent climate crime. People over 60 who are no longer working should be killed and put into biomass energy generators too.

Gosh, somebody’s leaked the latest copy of the UN’s Agenda21. Looks like our masterplan has been foiled again, especially for the super-cunning bit where babies and people over 60 are going to be mass-murdered by dolphin-loving socialists.

Windfarms ====>> Soylent green.

Panstman *knows* it makes sense.

PantsMan said :

IrishPete said :

Your average socialist or Green actually supports population control. So that completely undermines the crux of your argument. And then there’s nothing left.

I know. That is why babies are killed in China. We need that policy in Australia to prevent climate crime. People over 60 who are no longer working should be killed and put into biomass energy generators too.

Only the stupid ones who regurgitate shock jocks.

IrishPete said :

Your average socialist or Green actually supports population control. So that completely undermines the crux of your argument. And then there’s nothing left.

I know. That is why babies are killed in China. We need that policy in Australia to prevent climate crime. People over 60 who are no longer working should be killed and put into biomass energy generators too.

PantsMan said :

+1

Aside from Fairfax (which seems hell-bent on going bust) everyone who supports climate change is:
* directly or indirectly taxpayer funded (public service, CSIRO, NGOs, ABC, UN); and
* likely to obtain more power over other people from the adoption of climate change schemes.

Most of these people are hard-core socialists who despise profits and capitalist accumulation. They would prefer to see people living in poverty, subsistence farming with 8 children, than wealthy and free because that gives them more weak people to oppress and exploit. Then they can get on a jet, fly to Africa and deliver some aid program (loaded up with their socialist hegemony) to these poor souls under the auspices of the UN or some NGO.

Wealthy, with one or two children, and healthcare? Not, that’s not what people need. They need to live in dirt and poverty, with 8 children (3 of which will die before the age of 3) and a water well from AusAID, while weaving baskets to sell in craft markets in Canberra.

I tho0ught JohnBoy’s linking of climate change deniers with child abusers was a stretch, but this comes close to matching it.

Your average socialist or Green actually supports population control. So that completely undermines the crux of your argument. And then there’s nothing left.

IP

Roundhead89 said :

e/ No matter how much abuse is directed at so-called “climate change deniers” the fact is that global warming ended 16 years ago.

How did that happen? Did the laws of physics change? Did the radiative properties of CO2 change? Did the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere suddenly dip back to 280ppm?

Seeing as the answer to these questions is, no, no, and no, your assertion is quite obviously demented bollocks.

CO2 traps heat that would otherwise escape to space.
CO2 has increased to 400ppm, a level it hasn’t been at for hundreds of thousands of year.
There is currently an imbalance between the amount of incoming radiation reaching the Earth from the Sun, and the amount of radiation emitted by the Earth back to space. That imbalance means the Earth is gaining energy at a steady rate and will continue to do so until,
a/ CO2 levels stabilise
and
b/ the radiative balance achieves equilibrium.

The “warming stopped 16 years ago” is ignorant nonsense used by a political lobby to fool some unthinking sheep.

Roundhead89 said :

I’ve been holding off commenting on this thread because I believe JB was mischief-making and deliberately trying to stir controversy with this article. A few points need to be made:

a/ This survey was commissioned by the ACT government which is controlled by a solitary Greens member. It was deliberately designed to give the result it did. It can be compared to the endless grants given by the Labor federal government to climate scientists to produce reports backing up government policy on climate change and supporting the carbon tax/ETS.

b/ The survey was taken in the ACT which is a left wing polity which has the highest support for The Greens in Australia. Therefore the result cannot be taken seriously. It is unrepresentative.

c/ The result demonstrates how mass brainwashing can be so successful. Over the past five or so years The Canberra Times has been pushing the climate change issue every day. They refuse to print letters from people like myself who say climate change is crap. They have never printed an opinion piece expressing scepticism over climate change. Climate sceptics are routinely ridiculed and abused (eg: Lord Monckton). Despite repeated requests to the newspaper to drop the climate change issue they keep publishing items supporting it.

d/ Climate change is simply a new form of socialism forcing so-called rich countries like Australia to subsidise poor countries. It is backed by the UN which is actually considering a proposal at the Warsaw talks for poor countries to be able to sue rich countries if a weather event happens which is deemed climate change related. Australia and other countries gave poor countries $600billion last year in foreign aid grants to deal with climate change. They now want even more backed by legal clout, and a right to blackmail us and extort money when an event like a cyclone happens.

e/ No matter how much abuse is directed at so-called “climate change deniers” the fact is that global warming ended 16 years ago. The weather in Australia is normal. As the Poms would say “Keep calm and carry on”.

+1

Aside from Fairfax (which seems hell-bent on going bust) everyone who supports climate change is:
* directly or indirectly taxpayer funded (public service, CSIRO, NGOs, ABC, UN); and
* likely to obtain more power over other people from the adoption of climate change schemes.

Most of these people are hard-core socialists who despise profits and capitalist accumulation. They would prefer to see people living in poverty, subsistence farming with 8 children, than wealthy and free because that gives them more weak people to oppress and exploit. Then they can get on a jet, fly to Africa and deliver some aid program (loaded up with their socialist hegemony) to these poor souls under the auspices of the UN or some NGO.

Wealthy, with one or two children, and healthcare? Not, that’s not what people need. They need to live in dirt and poverty, with 8 children (3 of which will die before the age of 3) and a water well from AusAID, while weaving baskets to sell in craft markets in Canberra.

So basically climate change denialists are heading down to the tiny minority levels enjoyed by child abusers.
Dare we make the correlation?

Wow.

buzz819 said :

I don’t see how 1,100 people can show how the majority of people think? What is that 0.3% of the population?

If that were the case only 0.3% of the population need to turn up to the voting boths.

It’s called sampling. It is scientific (if done right). It is also confirmed by the results of the poll in today’s (Monday’s) Fairfax papers.

So you really expect everything to be measured by asking every single member of the population? How much tax do you want to pay again to enable governments to do that?

There’s an Isaac Asimov (I think) short story about the USA election being down to one person, randomly selected to vote, because the computers can predict from that person’s vote how the whole population will, and everyone gets to save a whole lot of money and effort. Far-fetched, but the larger the sample the closer to reality this becomes. 0.3% of the population, (in fact the sample was closer to 0.5% of the population of voting age) is a lot more than most opinion polls, which are a thousand or two across the whole country.

IP

I’ve been holding off commenting on this thread because I believe JB was mischief-making and deliberately trying to stir controversy with this article. A few points need to be made:

a/ This survey was commissioned by the ACT government which is controlled by a solitary Greens member. It was deliberately designed to give the result it did. It can be compared to the endless grants given by the Labor federal government to climate scientists to produce reports backing up government policy on climate change and supporting the carbon tax/ETS.

b/ The survey was taken in the ACT which is a left wing polity which has the highest support for The Greens in Australia. Therefore the result cannot be taken seriously. It is unrepresentative.

c/ The result demonstrates how mass brainwashing can be so successful. Over the past five or so years The Canberra Times has been pushing the climate change issue every day. They refuse to print letters from people like myself who say climate change is crap. They have never printed an opinion piece expressing scepticism over climate change. Climate sceptics are routinely ridiculed and abused (eg: Lord Monckton). Despite repeated requests to the newspaper to drop the climate change issue they keep publishing items supporting it.

d/ Climate change is simply a new form of socialism forcing so-called rich countries like Australia to subsidise poor countries. It is backed by the UN which is actually considering a proposal at the Warsaw talks for poor countries to be able to sue rich countries if a weather event happens which is deemed climate change related. Australia and other countries gave poor countries $600billion last year in foreign aid grants to deal with climate change. They now want even more backed by legal clout, and a right to blackmail us and extort money when an event like a cyclone happens.

e/ No matter how much abuse is directed at so-called “climate change deniers” the fact is that global warming ended 16 years ago. The weather in Australia is normal. As the Poms would say “Keep calm and carry on”.

buzz819 said :

I don’t see how 1,100 people can show how the majority of people think? What is that 0.3% of the population?

If that were the case only 0.3% of the population need to turn up to the voting boths.

Yes but which 0.3%?

PantsMan said :

Communism and Nazism were both supported by the majority of people in certain countries at times. This occurred mostly because of mass public manipulation by the state. It is unsurprising the people of Canberra see themselves as the storm-troopers of the climate change movement, because most people who purport to want to work in the government ‘for the public benefit’ are really just sociopaths who desire to manipulate and exploit others. These people would have also turned up at Hitler Youth rallies in a different time and place.

That the ACT Government has sought to undertake a a survey to assess the level of public manipulation is sickening.

The climate change religion is mostly populated by environmental extremists who desire the de-industrialisation of the western world and a dismantling of the capitalist system, a radical redistribution of wealth, and a one world government (of which they will be a key part, of course).

Tim Flannery has had this to say on the end game for his bat-shit crazy socialist/religious/neo-Luddite agenda:

For the first time, this global super-organism, this global intelligence will be able to send a signal, a strong and clear signal to the earth. And what that means in a sense is that we can, we will be a regulating intelligence for the planet, I’m sure, in the future … And lead to a stronger Gaia, if you will, a stronger earth system.

The Gillard Government appointed this nutter to a taxpayer funded position of some apparent authority!

Sorry guys, you can all be as nuts as you want, but climate change is a load of socialist crap proffered by nutters and subscribed to by mindless sheep.

You do not seem to know much about either history or science.

Keep ranting, champ…

I don’t see how 1,100 people can show how the majority of people think? What is that 0.3% of the population?

If that were the case only 0.3% of the population need to turn up to the voting boths.

Communism and Nazism were both supported by the majority of people in certain countries at times. This occurred mostly because of mass public manipulation by the state. It is unsurprising the people of Canberra see themselves as the storm-troopers of the climate change movement, because most people who purport to want to work in the government ‘for the public benefit’ are really just sociopaths who desire to manipulate and exploit others. These people would have also turned up at Hitler Youth rallies in a different time and place.

That the ACT Government has sought to undertake a a survey to assess the level of public manipulation is sickening.

The climate change religion is mostly populated by environmental extremists who desire the de-industrialisation of the western world and a dismantling of the capitalist system, a radical redistribution of wealth, and a one world government (of which they will be a key part, of course).

Tim Flannery has had this to say on the end game for his bat-shit crazy socialist/religious/neo-Luddite agenda:

For the first time, this global super-organism, this global intelligence will be able to send a signal, a strong and clear signal to the earth. And what that means in a sense is that we can, we will be a regulating intelligence for the planet, I’m sure, in the future … And lead to a stronger Gaia, if you will, a stronger earth system.

The Gillard Government appointed this nutter to a taxpayer funded position of some apparent authority!

Sorry guys, you can all be as nuts as you want, but climate change is a load of socialist crap proffered by nutters and subscribed to by mindless sheep.

Or even: from my own anecdotal evidence.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

[
The problem is, most deniers think the world is only a couple of thousand years old and SCIENCE IS CRAP!

Evidence?

How can anyone not understand that climate change is real? 12,000 year ago you could walk to Tasmania. 3,500BP a place called Scara Brae in north Scotland was abandoned as it became too cold and they ran out of resources, wood, fish, etc. 6000BP Batemans Bay was not a bay, but a river some 6-7 kilometres inland. As recently as 1000 years ago temperatures in Europe were 2 degrees higher and yet only a couple of hundred of years ago they dropped immensely, thus the Little Ice Age.

Today it appears that we are experiencing a slow but definite warming over a long period of time. Doing nothing is simply stupid. Whether or not it is wholly human induced, or part thereof doesn’t mean that nothing should be done to help mitigate it in anyway.

And as Miz pointed out, there are so many things we can do that will benefit the environment and us as a species overall. To not do so, or to ignore, is completely ridiculous.

The problem is, most deniers think the world is only a couple of thousand years old and SCIENCE IS CRAP!
If you cannot convince them about basic age of the planet, I doubt you can convince them of something like climate.

2604 said :

Both Virgin and Qantas are indeed subject to the carbon tax, both say so and both openly pass it through to customers. Or are those sneaky lies of theirs, as well?

According to Wikipedia, yes: “The scheme primarily applies to electricity generators and industrial sectors. It does not apply to road transport and agriculture. Domestic aviation does not face the carbon tax per se, but is subject to an additional fuel excise levy of approximately 6 cents per litre.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia

As it isn’t strictly speaking the Carbon Tax, it will be interesting to see if the Coalition Government will reduce it. The ATO says “yes” – http://ato.gov.au/General/New-legislation/In-detail/Indirect-taxes/Excise/Carbon-tax-repeal—fuel-tax-credits-and-excise/

IP

2604 said :

So what you’re saying is that the CERTAINTY of your emissions not being offset at all is preferable to the POSSIBILITY that they won’t be offset for long enough. Sounds like the nitpicking of a tightarse to me. Both the Greenfleet scheme and the Qantas scheme use offsets approved by the Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee, which is good enough for me.
.

Or put another way, the possibility of being defrauded by a scamster deters me from contributing to these schemes, whose effectiveness is dubious in any case (you said yourself the trees last 21 years – that’s pathetic). Nor do I send cheques to Nigerian widows just in case they’re real.

I make no claims for the accuracy of this article, but you can find many others like it http://www.redd-monitor.org/2009/08/25/plantations-as-sinks-the-carbon-fraud-at-its-worst/

Apart from that, on most things we seem to be in furious agreement.

However, if you want behaviour change on an important issue, it needs to be compulsory, not voluntary – voluntary income tax anyone? Voluntary Rates? It’s not just about money – how about voluntary speed limits or blood alcohol limits for driving? Voluntary motorbike and bicycle helmets? Voluntary dog registration?

Incidentally, I own nearly 1000 acres of native trees which will not be harvested while I own them – I don’t think paying someone else to plant some for me makes very much sense.

IP

IrishPete said :

Your trust in large corporations like Qaqntas, GreenFleet and power companies is sweet but probably naive. Do Greenfleet happen to say what will happen to the trees then? if they are harvested, their locked up carbon will soon go right back into the atmosphere. How long will the CO2 emitted, that you were trying to offset, last in the atmosphere? Or put another way, how long was it locked up before it was emitted – not 21 years, but rather a lot longer than that. I fear you are falling for a marketing con.

So what you’re saying is that the CERTAINTY of your emissions not being offset at all is preferable to the POSSIBILITY that they won’t be offset for long enough. Sounds like the nitpicking of a tightarse to me. Both the Greenfleet scheme and the Qantas scheme use offsets approved by the Domestic Offsets Integrity Committee, which is good enough for me.

IrishPete said :

Since you mention subsidies, spare a though for the billions of dollars in subsidies and tax exemptions (which are basically the same thing) for fossil fuels used by mining corporations, transport, farmers. Airlines do not pay the Carbon Tax (is that a subsidy? an economist would say yes).

Anyone using fuel off-road for business purposes can claim the fuel excise rebate. That applies not only to miners and big agriculture, but also families who own farms and small wineries, tourism operators, persons who run remote hotels or B&Bs who operate diesel generators, Corkhill Bros for their heavy machinery at the tip, etc. Anyone who uses his or her vehicle for business purposes is entitled to a per-kilometre tax deduction for doing so – is that also a massive subsidy?

Both Virgin and Qantas are indeed subject to the carbon tax, both say so and both openly pass it through to customers. Or are those sneaky lies of theirs, as well?

IrishPete said :

So if you want to talk about subsidies, be complete and evenhanded. Anti-environmentalists like yourself whinge abut the subsidies to renewable energy schemes, but never mention the industry support to miners, car manufacturers, farmers and so on.

I’m not an “anti-environmentalist”. We have solar hot water, 100% green power, carbon offsets on both cars, and have done everything we can to reduce our power usage. However, that was all our choice and we did it freely and willingly. I am 100% against people being forced to take such measures, or being forced to subsidise others for doing so.

You seem to be an environmentalist, but only if someone else is footing the bill. If they aren’t, you seem to become an “anti-environmentalist”.

And as for subsidies, I’d be happy for all subsidies and industry support for everyone to be cut – mining, manufacturing, agriculture, renewables, the lot. Both taxes and subsidies should be minimised.

So basically climate change denialists are heading down to the tiny minority levels enjoyed by child abusers.

Deniers are at about the same level as people who want to marry someone of the same sex. Does that mean gays are child abusers?

2604 said :

Solar PV, public transport and bicycling are only possible because of massive subsidisation by the taxpayer. When people upgrade their insulation, install double-glazing etc, and change from larger to smaller cars (including hybrids) it’s typically to save money, rather than to reduce their carbon footprints. The fact that only 5-8% of Qantas passengers opt to pay the absolutely minimal cost of offsetting the carbon emissions from their journeys gives some insight into how many people are willing to reach into their own pockets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions when there isn’t some economic incentive to do so.

To answer your question, the trees which are planted to offset the emissions of plane flights and cars will persist for at least long enough to offset those emissions – according to Greenfleet, between 16 and 21 years.

Does your “green energy is a scam” position mean that you choose “dirty” (probably coal-fired) power for your own house?

Your trust in large corporations like Qaqntas, GreenFleet and power companies is sweet but probably naive. Do Greenfleet happen to say what will happen to the trees then? if they are harvested, their locked up carbon will soon go right back into the atmosphere. How long will the CO2 emitted, that you were trying to offset, last in the atmosphere? Or put another way, how long was it locked up before it was emitted – not 21 years, but rather a lot longer than that. I fear you are falling for a marketing con.

ACTEWAGL chooses where to get my power from, I choose to reduce the amount of coal it draws on as much as possible by generating my own (PV) and a heat pump hot water system, and increasing insulation, low energy light bulbs, and the like. Not that electricity is the only CO2 emitter – transport is way up there too, and my regular commuter car does 5.4l/100km.

Since you mention subsidies, spare a though for the billions of dollars in subsidies and tax exemptions (which are basically the same thing) for fossil fuels used by mining corporations, transport, farmers. Airlines do not pay the Carbon Tax (is that a subsidy? an economist would say yes). So if you want to talk about subsidies, be complete and evenhanded. Anti-environmentalists like yourself whinge abut the subsidies to renewable energy schemes, but never mention the industry support to miners, car manufacturers, farmers and so on.

As you say, many people do energy-reduction measures for financial reasons, partly or wholly. That’s why a Carbon Tax works on them, the ones who aren’t motivated by conscience, via the big corporations (like ACTEWAGL) who have the real purchasing power and market influence. And very early signs are that the Carbon Tax did work (does work), despite the lies the Commonwealth Government continues to peddle about it.

IP

IrishPete said :

What, not solar PV? Bicycling? Solar hot water and solar heat pumps? Electric, hybrid or otherwise more economical cars? motorbikes and scooters? catching the bus? Low energy light bulbs? home insulation? Growing their own vegetables? Buying local produce over long-distance produce? double glazing? reverse cycle air conditioners replacing more inefficient heaters? You’re right – no-one is doing anything to reduce their own carbon footprint.

I think Green Electricity is partly a scam (note how they charged the carbon tax on it!), and how long do you think the trees the airlines or car companies plant for you will last? Reduce, reuse, recycle. Planting trees falls into the last category. Buying Green electricity doesn’t fit into any of them.

IP

Solar PV, public transport and bicycling are only possible because of massive subsidisation by the taxpayer. When people upgrade their insulation, install double-glazing etc, and change from larger to smaller cars (including hybrids) it’s typically to save money, rather than to reduce their carbon footprints. The fact that only 5-8% of Qantas passengers opt to pay the absolutely minimal cost of offsetting the carbon emissions from their journeys gives some insight into how many people are willing to reach into their own pockets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions when there isn’t some economic incentive to do so.

To answer your question, the trees which are planted to offset the emissions of plane flights and cars will persist for at least long enough to offset those emissions – according to Greenfleet, between 16 and 21 years.

Does your “green energy is a scam” position mean that you choose “dirty” (probably coal-fired) power for your own house?

miz said :

I reckon we’d all be better off if people stopped trying to ‘prove’ and ‘deny’ climate change, and instead focused on the benefits (globally and to individuals) of being good stewards of the earth’s limited resources through reduced pollution, more efficient energy sources, less waste, not using pesticides and herbicides on food, keeping the oceans clean, encouraging native birds, bees, etc.

Easily the most sensible comment about climate change to appear on this site in a long time.

2604 said :

housebound said :

As for willingness-to-pay surveys, they have been well and truly debunked. Once people have to cough up the real money, the WTP often (admittedly, not always) suffers a sudden decline. The argument against that in this case is that it is an ACT Government department asking if someone would pay more, so it is likely the charges will follow.

Indeed. It’s telling that 84% of respondents believe that householders should take more action, but that only 68% are willing to take such action themselves. I’d be very surprised if anywhere near a majority of respondents had taken any direct action themselves to reduce their emissions – purchasing “green” energy or offsetting the tailpipe emissions from their cars, for example. Much easier and cheaper to get the government to pass a tax or levy which forces all taxpayers to foot the bill for such measures, or indeed (like the Gillard-Swan-Brown carbon tax) effectively forces 20% of taxpayers to foot the bill.

What, not solar PV? Bicycling? Solar hot water and solar heat pumps? Electric, hybrid or otherwise more economical cars? motorbikes and scooters? catching the bus? Low energy light bulbs? home insulation? Growing their own vegetables? Buying local produce over long-distance produce? double glazing? reverse cycle air conditioners replacing more inefficient heaters? You’re right – no-one is doing anything to reduce their own carbon footprint.

I think Green Electricity is partly a scam (note how they charged the carbon tax on it!), and how long do you think the trees the airlines or car companies plant for you will last? Reduce, reuse, recycle. Planting trees falls into the last category. Buying Green electricity doesn’t fit into any of them.

IP

I reckon we’d all be better off if people stopped trying to ‘prove’ and ‘deny’ climate change, and instead focused on the benefits (globally and to individuals) of being good stewards of the earth’s limited resources through reduced pollution, more efficient energy sources, less waste, not using pesticides and herbicides on food, keeping the oceans clean, encouraging native birds, bees, etc.

housebound said :

As for willingness-to-pay surveys, they have been well and truly debunked. Once people have to cough up the real money, the WTP often (admittedly, not always) suffers a sudden decline. The argument against that in this case is that it is an ACT Government department asking if someone would pay more, so it is likely the charges will follow.

Indeed. It’s telling that 84% of respondents believe that householders should take more action, but that only 68% are willing to take such action themselves. I’d be very surprised if anywhere near a majority of respondents had taken any direct action themselves to reduce their emissions – purchasing “green” energy or offsetting the tailpipe emissions from their cars, for example. Much easier and cheaper to get the government to pass a tax or levy which forces all taxpayers to foot the bill for such measures, or indeed (like the Gillard-Swan-Brown carbon tax) effectively forces 20% of taxpayers to foot the bill.

“I have been able to notice some effects of climate change in my own lifetime”

How is one individual’s anecdotal account, or even a sum of 1,000 or them, interpretable as reflecting climate change trends?

Just as there are idiot climate change “deniers”, there is a cluster of climate change “evangelists” in the sector. They clearly put together the survey without any valid methodology. That “question” and the treatment of its “answers” immediately debunks the entire survey.

You claim,

Darkfalz said :

This “denier” stuff is taken straight from the hysterical holocaust

,
then you use,

Darkfalz said :

…..Large numbers of alarmist claims and timelines ….

Darkfalz said :

Indeed, many believe that a slight warming of the planet would be a net benefit in a variety of areas..

A ‘net’ benefit, really, references for these ‘many’?

Darkfalz said :

Whether you believe it or not, the “action” on climate change is a con. The idea you can prevent natural disasters with a tax (a tax you claim has no effect on the economy anyway) is laughable. .

It’s not ‘preventing’ natural disasters it’s ‘decreasing the chances of’.
I’m not an economist but 35 of 37 asked believe a market based method would be more efficacious than a ‘direct action’ Tony Abbott plan of reducing CO2 emissions.

Darkfalz said :

.. The idea you can prevent the planet’s climate from changing over time is also laughable, and takes a bizarre keyhole view of the planet’s history..

I’m only worried about the ‘climate change’ caused by anthopogenic activities. And we have ‘changed the planet’s climate over time already’, unfortunately for the worse

Darkfalz said :

.. One thing is pretty clear. Canberra seems to be full of election result deniers.

The coalition parties win doesn’t mean their policies are ‘right’. (Abbott should thank the GFC and that american chap Murdoch for the result)

Pork Hunt said :

Whatever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”?

Sure. I suggest you walk up to the largest Aboriginal Australian man you can find, and call him the name of a well-known Australian cheese. Then tell me how much hurt words can cause, to him and to you.

IP

Pork Hunt said :

Whatever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”?

Most of us stopped being five years old and choose to act like adults.

When making a point, adults don’t need to use use terms that are hurtful to people – including children – who find themselves in a situation utterly beyond their control. If, through error or poor judgment, they happen to use such terms, they apologise when they’re called out for it, and undertake to do better in future.

Then there are those who get all defensive and try to claim it’s OK. We’re yet to have an agreed term for those people, but ‘arsehats’ comes to mind.

Darkfalz said :

One thing is pretty clear. Canberra seems to be full of election result deniers.

Bull.

Tony Abbott’s Liberal/National Government has a mandate to try to run the country as they see fit. Labor, the Greens, and everyone else have a mandate to campaign, and vote for, their preferred policies. And because our constitution is weird, they have more influence to do so until July next year.

A first preference vote well under 50% should never be interpreted as the right to run a virtual dictatorship.

There are serious flaws with our so-called Westminster system, and the idea that it is democratic to have the same number of senators from Tasmania as from NSW, for example, but only two from the ACT. But the only changes anyone ever proposes seem to be about feathering their own nest (e.g. locking minor parties out of the Senate).

So we are stuck with this system, and have to work within it until someone changes it – maybe the advent of a Republic could be the catalyst for a serious review of the constitution. The half-senate elections and the daft numbers of senators really need fixed – only an innumerate Luddite lawyer could defend them.

IP

CraigT said :

Masquara said :

How will ACT residents taking some small steps that don’t affect their standard of living affect climate change? It won’t .

Wrong.

If everybody did that little bit, the overall effect is measurable, therefore every little bit clearly counts.

Your “logic” is just a rationalisation for being a selfish @#$%.

Absolutely correct. If every community took the same attitude that they were too small to make a difference, then nothing could ever change. From little things, but things grow. Lead by example. Early adopter. Moral high ground, etc etc.

And for those complaining about environmentalists flying, well, there are a few defences. One is that aircraft are more efficient than 10 years ago. They are so because environmentalists (and others) have been pushing for it. Do I drive more than when lived in a city? Yes, but my main vehicle averages 5.4l/100km, and can run on biofuel (biodiesel) if the good ole dependable market would actually supply it.

IP

Masquara said :

How will ACT residents taking some small steps that don’t affect their standard of living affect climate change? It won’t .

Wrong.

If everybody did that little bit, the overall effect is measurable, therefore every little bit clearly counts.

Your “logic” is just a rationalisation for being a selfish @#$%.

This “denier” stuff is taken straight from the hysterical holocaust laws of Europe. It’s designed to impose an absolute position on anyone with a shred of suspicion about the claims of climate change pushes (note: not scientists, but people like Gore and Flannery). Just as if you believe maybe 5.9 million Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis, rather than 6, you’re in the same boat as someone who believes the Allies “made it all up” – if you believe the seas might only rise by 0.5cm or even 5 metres and not 100 metres as claimed by some, you’re a “denier”. If you didn’t believe the dams would never be full again after Flannery’s hysterical claims of a few years ago, you were a denier.

So you’re already being correlated with Nazi sympathisers / white supremacists, so why not child abusers? Why not pedophiles? How hysterical do you need to get to impose your political views on people?

Every warm day, every flood, every earthquake, every typhoon is proof of man-made climate change – much as perhaps every sunrise is proof of the existence of a God to Christians.

Most sceptics don’t argue that atmospheric CO2 levels have some effect on the temperature of the planet. What they are interested in is the proportion of this contributed by humans, what percentage of any warming (or now simply “change”) this is causing, and what the outcomes for the planet will be. Large numbers of alarmist claims and timelines have already been shown to be wrong, and these people generally even don’t agree with each other in these predictions either – are they therefore all “deniers” of each other’s versions of AGW?

Indeed, many believe that a slight warming of the planet would be a net benefit in a variety of areas. Whether you believe it or not, the “action” on climate change is a con. The idea you can prevent natural disasters with a tax (a tax you claim has no effect on the economy anyway) is laughable. The idea you can prevent the planet’s climate from changing over time is also laughable, and takes a bizarre keyhole view of the planet’s history.

One thing is pretty clear. Canberra seems to be full of election result deniers.

This is disturbingly close to “one billions Chinese can’t be wrong” – the classic example of false reasoning we all learnt in primary school. Not disputing climate change, just that 88% of 1197 people don’t make something right by believing it.

As for willingness-to-pay surveys, they have been well and truly debunked. Once people have to cough up the real money, the WTP often (admittedly, not always) suffers a sudden decline. The argument against that in this case is that it is an ACT Government department asking if someone would pay more, so it is likely the charges will follow.

CraigT said :

HiddenDragon said :

For many years now, governments, and pro-public sector think tanks, etc. have been running surveys which ask people if they would be prepared to pay more in taxes in return for better services. Almost without fail, the results show a healthy majority saying “yes”. I have long suspected that while a proportion of respondents are sincere in saying this, a substantial proportion really think that other people (whether it’s Gina Rinehart or just the neighbours with the flashy cars) should pay more tax – but not them. I think it will be much the same with climate change measures – it’s OK so long as it doesn’t cost too much, and doesn’t cause too much inconvenience – if and when the policies really start to bite, I reckon the numbers of true believers will dwindle rapidly, particularly with the coming squeeze on household incomes:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/treasury-official-forecasts-brake-on-living-standards-for-next-decade-20131121-2xygm.html

If people were at heart as selfish as you imply, we would be like India, where there is very little sewerage infrrstructure and everybody just chucks their rubbish on the street.

No. We are happy to pay that little bit extra ($200 a quarter) so that our streets aren’t ankle deep in asbestos and turd.

De-externalising the cost of emitting CO2 will cost a good deal less than that. What’s more, it will deliver plenty of other econiomic benefits, too.

Ben Chifley is credited with coining the phrase “hip pocket nerve”, and I very much doubt whether Australians have become more selfless and altruistic in the intervening decades – I will stick to my views about the limits of public tolerance for these policies.

IrishPete said :

HiddenDragon said :

I am looking forward to the survey report on tongue-in-cheek humour.

Just to make it clear – if paying an extra $1.62 or EVEN $1.63 a day reduces the risks of power outages, particularly on those scorching hot summer days when airconditioners are humming and roaring away across the length and breadth of Canberra, I really don’t mind.

Your air conditioner is probably costing you that extra $1.63 a day anyway.

Best way to ensure that it doesn’t kill the grid is to instal enough solar panels on your roof to run it. Unfortunately this would be largely symbolic, because the gubbinment won’t allow you to have an inverter which continues to run when the grid goes down – this is ostensibly to protect any electricians who are too stupid to realise that solar panels continue to generate even though the grid is down.

In my experience, electricians aren’t that stupid, so what the real purpose is, I don’t know.

IP

My airconditioner costs me nothing, because I don’t have one, and am not planning on getting one. Solar panels to power my electric fans might be an option, but for the fact that the “we know what’s best for you mentality” which permeates this town dictates that the evergreen trees on my block, and my neighbour’s block, which shade the north facing sections of my roof, cannot be removed or substantially trimmed.

How will ACT residents taking some small steps that don’t affect their standard of living affect climate change? It won’t . We can believe it but that doesn’t make bit true. And find me a climate campaigner who flies less than they did ten years ago. Tim Flannery’s carbon footprint is massive. And, if the ACT Government cares about emissions, why is it funding the eco-über-wastrel Glassworks? No energy waste matches the Glassworks carbon footprint, which is worse than that of most heavy industry. Add to the above that people tend toe the received wisdom line on ‘moral’ topics and keep their actual, more politically incorrect views to themselves.

IrishPete said :

CraigT said :

arescarti42 said :

johnboy said :

IP if you saw the offtopic comments on this subject these guys throw our way every day I’d suggest you too would use similar language.

Perhaps, but aren’t you more likely to offend people with disabilities than the denialists doing that?

Why disabilities?

Etymologically, “retard” is absolutely apt for describing Christopher Monckton fans. Perhaps the monoglots among us just don’t get it?

Let me put it another way. It is really offensive to people with an intellectual disability, who were born with it or acquired it through no fault of their own, to equate them to F***Wits like Christopher Monckton, Alan Jones, Greg Hunt and Tony Abbott who choose to be stupid.

IP

Whatever happened to “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”?

CraigT said :

arescarti42 said :

johnboy said :

IP if you saw the offtopic comments on this subject these guys throw our way every day I’d suggest you too would use similar language.

Perhaps, but aren’t you more likely to offend people with disabilities than the denialists doing that?

Why disabilities?

Etymologically, “retard” is absolutely apt for describing Christopher Monckton fans. Perhaps the monoglots among us just don’t get it?

Let me put it another way. It is really offensive to people with an intellectual disability, who were born with it or acquired it through no fault of their own, to equate them to F***Wits like Christopher Monckton, Alan Jones, Greg Hunt and Tony Abbott who choose to be stupid.

IP

davo101 said :

You’re in a very small minority in Canberra.

Fixed it for y’ar

You’re in a very small minority everywhere.

Most countries have proven immune to the Murdoch media campaign to sow doubt about climate change. There are virtually no deniers anywhere other than the USA, Canada, Australia, Poland and Russia. The UK has so few even the Tory government now ignores them, despite the ongoing noise from a handful of denier-nutters like Monckton & Lawson.
Russia and Poland have their own brand of denial nuttery, mostly tied to their immensely valuable and powerful energy oligopolies, but he rest of the world doesn’t even hear any of this crap because their rather more professional media tends to sift out garbage of the sort The Australian publishes on a daily basis.

There are still creationists out there – even people who deny plate tectonics (pretty much all climate change deniersm too), but we really don’t need to hear about their befuddled ideas everytime we open a paper or turn on the radio. It really is best to keep kooks out of the limelight.

arescarti42 said :

johnboy said :

IP if you saw the offtopic comments on this subject these guys throw our way every day I’d suggest you too would use similar language.

Perhaps, but aren’t you more likely to offend people with disabilities than the denialists doing that?

Why disabilities?

Etymologically, “retard” is absolutely apt for describing Christopher Monckton fans. Perhaps the monoglots among us just don’t get it?

HiddenDragon said :

For many years now, governments, and pro-public sector think tanks, etc. have been running surveys which ask people if they would be prepared to pay more in taxes in return for better services. Almost without fail, the results show a healthy majority saying “yes”. I have long suspected that while a proportion of respondents are sincere in saying this, a substantial proportion really think that other people (whether it’s Gina Rinehart or just the neighbours with the flashy cars) should pay more tax – but not them. I think it will be much the same with climate change measures – it’s OK so long as it doesn’t cost too much, and doesn’t cause too much inconvenience – if and when the policies really start to bite, I reckon the numbers of true believers will dwindle rapidly, particularly with the coming squeeze on household incomes:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/treasury-official-forecasts-brake-on-living-standards-for-next-decade-20131121-2xygm.html

If people were at heart as selfish as you imply, we would be like India, where there is very little sewerage infrrstructure and everybody just chucks their rubbish on the street.

No. We are happy to pay that little bit extra ($200 a quarter) so that our streets aren’t ankle deep in asbestos and turd.

De-externalising the cost of emitting CO2 will cost a good deal less than that. What’s more, it will deliver plenty of other econiomic benefits, too.

HiddenDragon said :

I am looking forward to the survey report on tongue-in-cheek humour.

Just to make it clear – if paying an extra $1.62 or EVEN $1.63 a day reduces the risks of power outages, particularly on those scorching hot summer days when airconditioners are humming and roaring away across the length and breadth of Canberra, I really don’t mind.

Your air conditioner is probably costing you that extra $1.63 a day anyway.

Best way to ensure that it doesn’t kill the grid is to instal enough solar panels on your roof to run it. Unfortunately this would be largely symbolic, because the gubbinment won’t allow you to have an inverter which continues to run when the grid goes down – this is ostensibly to protect any electricians who are too stupid to realise that solar panels continue to generate even though the grid is down.

In my experience, electricians aren’t that stupid, so what the real purpose is, I don’t know.

IP

PantsMan said :

HiddenDragon said :

From page 3 of the Survey Report – “A total sample size of 1,197 was achieved” – I wonder how this compares with the sample size of the survey which predicted a landslide win for the Labor-Green Government in last year’s Territory election?

There appear to be poor correlation between belief in climate change and the voting patterns amoungst all Australians, as shown in the 2013 election.

Didn’t the ACT Government do a survey that showed everyone loved the pastic bag ban too?

For many years now, governments, and pro-public sector think tanks, etc. have been running surveys which ask people if they would be prepared to pay more in taxes in return for better services. Almost without fail, the results show a healthy majority saying “yes”. I have long suspected that while a proportion of respondents are sincere in saying this, a substantial proportion really think that other people (whether it’s Gina Rinehart or just the neighbours with the flashy cars) should pay more tax – but not them. I think it will be much the same with climate change measures – it’s OK so long as it doesn’t cost too much, and doesn’t cause too much inconvenience – if and when the policies really start to bite, I reckon the numbers of true believers will dwindle rapidly, particularly with the coming squeeze on household incomes:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/treasury-official-forecasts-brake-on-living-standards-for-next-decade-20131121-2xygm.html

IrishPete said :

HiddenDragon said :

From page 3 of the Survey Report – “A total sample size of 1,197 was achieved” – I wonder how this compares with the sample size of the survey which predicted a landslide win for the Labor-Green Government in last year’s Territory election?

Anyway, when the cost per household of reducing carbon emissions goes up to $1.63 per day (as inevitably it will), there will doubtless be an upsurge of denialism (but not, one hopes, off the allegedly correlated behaviour).

$1.63 a day? Less than $600 a year? That pales in comparison to the past and future increases in electricity charges that have nothing to do with the Carbon Tax, or Renewable Energy schemes.

And it’s about the cost of my household insurance which covers bushfire, flood and storm damage, all of which are or will become more likely as we do nothing (like Tony wants)

So $1.63 a day is money well-spent I say – if we don’t spend it direct, we’ll spend it indirectly in increased insurance premiums, and in disaster relief.

IP

I am looking forward to the survey report on tongue-in-cheek humour.

Just to make it clear – if paying an extra $1.62 or EVEN $1.63 a day reduces the risks of power outages, particularly on those scorching hot summer days when airconditioners are humming and roaring away across the length and breadth of Canberra, I really don’t mind.

Solidarity said :

What percentage of people are in the “I care about climate change when asked but in reality I won’t change my ways” or the “Sure that pollution and stuff is bad but do something about India and China before I do anything” or the “Climate Change might be real, might not be real, hey look a distraction!”

The questionnaire is on Page 44 of the report. Judge for yourself if there’s any ambiguity in the questions.

IP

What percentage of people are in the “I care about climate change when asked but in reality I won’t change my ways” or the “Sure that pollution and stuff is bad but do something about India and China before I do anything” or the “Climate Change might be real, might not be real, hey look a distraction!”

PantsMan said :

HiddenDragon said :

From page 3 of the Survey Report – “A total sample size of 1,197 was achieved” – I wonder how this compares with the sample size of the survey which predicted a landslide win for the Labor-Green Government in last year’s Territory election?

There appear to be poor correlation between belief in climate change and the voting patterns amoungst all Australians, as shown in the 2013 election.

Didn’t the ACT Government do a survey that showed everyone loved the pastic bag ban too?

People don’t vote on a single issue. Not climate change, not immigration, not Labor Party corruption. Oh hang on, that’s three issues already. See my point?

IP

HiddenDragon said :

From page 3 of the Survey Report – “A total sample size of 1,197 was achieved” – I wonder how this compares with the sample size of the survey which predicted a landslide win for the Labor-Green Government in last year’s Territory election?

Anyway, when the cost per household of reducing carbon emissions goes up to $1.63 per day (as inevitably it will), there will doubtless be an upsurge of denialism (but not, one hopes, off the allegedly correlated behaviour).

$1.63 a day? Less than $600 a year? That pales in comparison to the past and future increases in electricity charges that have nothing to do with the Carbon Tax, or Renewable Energy schemes.

And it’s about the cost of my household insurance which covers bushfire, flood and storm damage, all of which are or will become more likely as we do nothing (like Tony wants)

So $1.63 a day is money well-spent I say – if we don’t spend it direct, we’ll spend it indirectly in increased insurance premiums, and in disaster relief.

IP

bryansworld said :

Bravo to RA for using the term “denier”. So much more accurate than “sceptic”.

Hear, hear. Not just “more accurate” – accurate as opposed to simply wrong.

It says volumes about the power of the media, and its misuse, that 98% of climate scientists – i.e. people who actually know what they’re talking about – are in no doubt, while the populace at large are nowhere near it.

bryansworld said :

Bravo to RA for using the term “denier”. So much more accurate than “sceptic”.

Indeed. I would love to refer to myself as a Climate Change sceptic, but I can’t because the term is used synonymously with Denier. Although I am sceptical, on just about anything, the weight of evidence for climate change, and its extent, is worth taking efforts to address, just like I have insurance even though I hope my house won’t burn down. We live our lives by probabilities, and the probability that Climate Change is real, and anthropogenic (at least partly), is strong enough for me to want to act. And the side benefits (making our coal, oil and gas last longer, and reducing pollution, and so on) are such that it is simply a no-brainer. (With apologies to any anencephalic readers out there.)

IP

HiddenDragon said :

From page 3 of the Survey Report – “A total sample size of 1,197 was achieved” – I wonder how this compares with the sample size of the survey which predicted a landslide win for the Labor-Green Government in last year’s Territory election?

There appear to be poor correlation between belief in climate change and the voting patterns amoungst all Australians, as shown in the 2013 election.

Didn’t the ACT Government do a survey that showed everyone loved the pastic bag ban too?

From page 3 of the Survey Report – “A total sample size of 1,197 was achieved” – I wonder how this compares with the sample size of the survey which predicted a landslide win for the Labor-Green Government in last year’s Territory election?

Anyway, when the cost per household of reducing carbon emissions goes up to $1.63 per day (as inevitably it will), there will doubtless be an upsurge of denialism (but not, one hopes, off the allegedly correlated behaviour).

IrishPete said :

please don’t use the word retards, or any of its variations such as Mong or Spaz. It is unprofessional.

IP

If it is in the dictionary, use it I say.

Bravo to RA for using the term “denier”. So much more accurate than “sceptic”.

johnboy said :

IP if you saw the offtopic comments on this subject these guys throw our way every day I’d suggest you too would use similar language.

Perhaps, but aren’t you more likely to offend people with disabilities than the denialists doing that?

PantsMan said :

Climate change is socialist crap.

Yes; that Maggie Thatcher was such a red she was probably taking instructions straight from Moscow.

please don’t use the word retards, or any of its variations such as Mong or Spaz. It is unprofessional.

IP

Climate change is socialist crap.

“Dare we make the correlation?”

I think you just did

You’re in a very small minority in Canberra.

Fixed it for y’ar