What if in 20 years it doesn't exist?Quote:
Originally Posted by rah
Have you thought of that possibility?
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What if in 20 years it doesn't exist?Quote:
Originally Posted by rah
Have you thought of that possibility?
I think one of the problems here is that we are still using the term Global Warming instead of Global Climate Change.
The world naturally goes through periods of climate change. Some take many ages and some are rapid and happen over a few hundred or thousand years. These aren't the problem because as RAH says, the ecology of the planet changes over time and adapts to the different conditions so the Romans can grow vines in England.
What the big problem happens to be is when these rapid change events are significant (ie. more than a centigrade or so over a hundred years average) and the dramatic effect they have on the ecology of the planet.
What tends to happen then is that rather than just warming (lovely for the Canuks no doubt ;) ) we get extreem shifts in weather patterns. Droughts, floods, Cat five storms etc. The melting of the ice caps leads to dilution of sea water and possible change in global oceanic currents because of the change in density etc.
There appears to be a change in the severity and extreems of weather conditions that could quite possibly be caused by man. That is the stark reality. What the extent of this change could be and the effects it might ultimatly have is not yet obvious. What is obvious though is that the majority of the scientific community believes we have a big problem and as they are the people that are in the best position to know about this, it might be prudent to listen to them.
After all, if you hear a fire alarm, do you react or are you one of the people that sit there saying "I can't smell smoke so I'll stay here till I can". By then, it may be too late but if you take action immediatly and it's a false alarm, then what have you lost?
In the case of a fire alarm, very little. In the case of stopping all emissions, then we are talking about human civilisation as we know it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flat.tyres
I agree. Biofuel is merely another way of releasing CO2. Just like electric cars. Something is burnt to fuel it. So unless the power behind it is clean then it's useless. Biofuels are going to come from Brazil and what are they going to do? Cut down forest (carbon sinks) and create cleared land which when ploughed will absorb more heat from the sun and contribute to the problem. Yeah good one you short sighted environmentalist plonkers! I consider myself someone that cares about the environment. We recycle, compost, have a wormery and recycle when possible even though the local council makes it hard (they don't recycle cardboard ffs!) and I get pissed off when I buy a packet of something and it's sealed in a celophane wrap, has a stiff plastic base and inside the biscuits or cakes or whatever have individual wrapping. I think that by not being wasteful in this way, turning heating on when a jumper could suffice, not buying a new car every three years and so many other things. If there is this problem and it is caused by us we need to really look deeply at the full implications of the technology we are going to use to combat this and not go for the "Lada Samara" solution which is cheap, seems nice at the time but ends up costing more in the long run and doesn't actually solve the problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by rah
The thing is are the extreme weather conditions caused by climate change or is it just natural? As I said there are records of extremes of temperature and so on. For instance with the Thames freezing over in the 60's which is a very strange bit of weather indeed. So merely seeing weird things happening and looking for an explanation is the wrong thing. Global warming was used to explain the strange weather in the UK this summer AFTER it happened. If they had said we've seen warming of .25 degrees celsius and we're going to see a lot of rain and then it rained a lot I could understand. But using these models they've not been able to predict any of the weather. They've merely predicted that climate change will result in unpredictable weather which is about as unscientific as you can be!Quote:
Originally Posted by Flat.tyres
As for your fire alarm example it's a good one. But it still doesn't confirm that man is causing climate change.
My post was looking more at whether mankind is detrimentally influencing Global Climate Patterns which is in dispute on this thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark
What do do about this influence is another matter entirely but it seems that there is a fundemental disagreement about the reality of (for arguements sake) AGW and then some of the people that don't agree in the principle of AGW are proposing solutions to a problem they don't think exists. I find this quite ironic so just decided to post on the thread subject instead :D
It's not ironic. It's called having doubts about something but not discounting it to the extent that you doom yourself if you're wrong. It's called common sense and it's better than thinking there's no problem and not doing anything to combat any possible issues we may have or realising that there's a problem and choosing silly solutions like electric cars, hybrids and biofuel.Quote:
Originally Posted by Flat.tyres
In fact my argument is very much similar to your "fire alarm" argument so you're only disagreeing with yourself here....
Your first sentence is the focal point of the whole debate. Is it natural or not?Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel
We have weather records going back over a small period of time. Of course, things like Ice Core samples can give us a much clearer idea of long term climate patterns but the day to day stuff, the hurricanes, cold spells and floods form 500+ years would have to be on near biblical proportions to have a chance of being recorded.
BUT, there is evidence that the patterns we are seeing are becoming more extreem and from historical evidence, things like CO2 levels are rising.
Interpretation and modelling of this data is in it's infantacy and nobody is really certain of what the long term effects and symptoms will be as we have limited data to base any claims on. It's almost a case of us knowing it's getting worse but untill we've been through it, we wont know how bad it can be. The problem is, if current predictions are accurate, will we be in a position to care?
My Mum told me about when she smoked. it was not considered a problem at the time but people know it make them cough and wheeze. Yet, "There was no evidence it was bad for you" even though it made people feel like hell.
Then, these weirdos said some disgraceful rubbish about it could give you something called cancer which the tobacco companies proved was a load of lies. It got to the point that hundreds of thousands of people were dying of smoking and still there wasn't enough "evidence" around to prove it was linked until a few years ago. I think the tobacco companies still maintain there is no link.
Can we afford to wait 50 years when we have a fairly good idea this stuff is going on but the Oil companies fund more and more slanted research to disprove it or question it through lack of evidence?
You're suggesting that all people who do studies which don't agree with popular concensus and so on are biased. Is this the case? Who knows!Quote:
Originally Posted by Flat.tyres
Is it natural? Is it not? Who knows? No one can say for certain. Not like I can go outside and measure the temperature and say without a doubt that it is 16 degrees celsius exactly. As I said it's a theory and as we all know theories are not fact. We don't know that it's going to get worse. As has been shown many times there really is very little correlation betwen CO2 levels and temperature. There have been times of extreme cold where CO2 levels have been through the roof.
What is an extreme weather pattern? Does weather necessarily follow predefined patterns? We would like it to but it never seems to and these models never seem to predict events such as the hugely abnormal weather patterns in the UK and the rest of Northern Europe. We're not talking a microclimate here. We're talking about a huge part of the world that had totally unexpected weather. Food for thought?
Your body is not a climate. A climate is extremely complicated. If lots of people smoke and have lung problems and the ones who don't smoke don't have problems then that's quite easy to understand. But we don't have another planet to test this theory on ;)
I never said lets ignore a possible problem. You are putting words in my mouth ;)
In a way the tobbaco example is a good one. Yes people who smoked coughed and many died from lung diseases however, smoking has never been proven to be the exclusive cause of theses diseases. I'm not saying smoking is healthy or that smoking will not harm you. What I am saying is that people that don't smoke are afflicted with these same diseases. Also ignored is that many of the people also spent a life time in heavy industries breathing chemicals, coal dust, ash, and silica particles, etc. In the US, the tobbaco companies didn't lose the lawsuits over health issues, they lost them when it was proved they were "juicing" their products to make them more addictive. I don't think anybody here disputes the climate is changing, the dispute is over whether we are the cause, a factor in the cause i.e., speeding up what would occur anyway, or completely innocent of all charges. If additional taxes are to be taken to deal with climate change I feel the money would be better used to help people and animals adapt to the changes as they come instead of trying to prevent what you can't stop. China is often cited as a major emissions player and they are going to do what they want. They are large enough and militarily strong enough to pretty much shrug off any sanctions you may care to hit them with.