Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Zealotry over Global Warming

The REAL inconvenient truth: "Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change"

Written by the ex Govenor of the Bank of England, I believe.

But its the picture of the Polar bear that grabs me.
I wonder if Katie, or Amaranth would post the Polar Bear pic into the Forums SCI PICS, for me?

Mike
The article (and book) was wtitten by Nigel Lawson who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, the number 2 position in the Btitish government for the UK between 1983 and 1989 (under Margaret Thatcher). He was primarily responsible for turning the British economy into one of the highest performing ones in Europe.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/ar...in_page_id=1770

A few months ago I predicted that the wheels would have completely fallen off the AGW theory by the end of 2008. With this kind of intervention from someone of this stature, it will happen a lot earlier than that.

Regards
Imran

PS He is also the father of Nigella Lawson - the 'domestic goddess' celebrity chef - which has absolutley nothing to do with Global Warming but may be of general interest.

Nigel tells us (quoting from your link above):

Alistair Darling [who is the current Chancellor of the Exchequer] told us in his recent Budget speech that this would have "catastrophic economic and social consequences". But that is just alarmist poppycock.

Thanks Nigel, for that "fair and balanced" assessment.

I notice Nigel's argument closely parallels Bjorn Loonborg's koolit video [not a characterization; just to prevent him getting a google hit] -bjorn's thesis of "sure it is happening, but it'll be a good thing."

I'm hopeful that folks on this forum are well aware of the misuse of statistics and logical fallacies in Bjorn's video.

So why isn't the current COE a more valid source than the previous COE?
Is it because he uses big fancy words such as catastrophic & consequences; as opposed to the more draconic phrase, "alarmist poppycock?"


p.s.
That is one amazing picture; I share your hope, Mike!

The previous COE possibly has a huge popularity base as his high-profile daughter is a popular and very attractive TV cook in the UK. Shouldn't have anything to do with it, but I bet it does!

Nigel Lawson and Alistair Campbell are utterly incomparable in terms of intellectual ability and proven track record as any investigation of their relative entries in any personal encyclopaedia will tell you. Nigel Lawson is a powerful free thinker and man of principal (as his resignation in 1989 from Margaret Thatchers cabinet will tell you - and yes - he was proven right !) - and he has a hot daughter. Alistair Darling is simply parrotting currently fashionable mantras which are fast becoming yesterdays news.

And please, stop the polar bear AGW sob story. Its pathetic. If you want to get serious about polar bears, lets stop hunting them first (400 killed every year), then we can have a serious conversation about their 'disappearing sea ice' problem.
http://www.adventurenw.com/polar.shtml

I don't sob for the polar bears, I sob for the bare poles.
That picture is dramatic for the ice, not the bear (the bear just gives perspective).

ImranCan
If we just pretend there are no more polar bears, could we have a serious converstation about... ...OUR disappearing sea ice?

Please note that the only reference to increasing ice that I've seen around here, talks about ice extent, not ice mass.
Latest figures (GRACE, last Fall) still show over 100 Billion tonnes/ yr. of mass loss each, from the Arctic, the Antarctic, and also Mountain Glaciers.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2007GL032716.shtml


http://www.damocles-eu.org/artman/uploads/2007-record-low_sea-ice-event.pdf


http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

I'm not sure about all of this. It seems as if people will grasp at any statistic to continue to prove global warming through the measured deterioration of Arctic sea ice.

Firstly it was polar bears 'dwindling' ..... then it is sea ice extent ...... then its sea ice 'thickness' .... and now its "new ice" vs. "old ice". Come on !

Lets get back to some basics ...
• Since the 1970s, while much of the world was warming, polar bear numbers increased dramatically, from roughly 5,000 to 25,000 bears -- a higher polar bear population than has existed at any time in the twentieth century.
• the polar bear population in Canada alone has increased 25 percent from 12,000 to 15,000 during the past decade, with 11 of Canada's 13 polar bear populations stable or increasing in number.
• Only two bear populations -- accounting for about 16.4 percent of the total number of bears -- are decreasing, and they are in areas where air temperatures have actually fallen, such as the Baffin Bay region.
• By contrast, another two populations -- about 13.6 percent of the total number -- are growing, and they live in areas where air temperatures have risen, near the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea.
•As for the rest, 10 populations representing about 45.4 percent of the total number of bears are stable, and the status of the remaining six populations is unknown.

And here is the sea ice extent .... you don't need to fish around for something that will get you worried ....
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg

What exactly is the problem here ?

I don't think one can "get back to some basics."
It takes a lot of effort to discover and understand all the basics.

ImranCan,
You are right.
Polar Bears, being so charismatic, lead to a lot of the overzealousness associated with the climate change Zeitgeist.
As Amaranth's Narwhal post points out, it's about "whole ecosystems."
I'd prefer to talk about the whole cryosphere, the key to Earth's weather; and avoid Polar bears. (#1 Threat to America)

How about "grabbing" at all the statistics, or at least a preponderance of the statistics?
...unlike the little snippet at the far end of that low-resolution graph from your link above (talk about grasping...).
How many times have we seen that link over the past 6 months, with comments?
Actually, I haven't even looked this time; I'm just assuming it is the same link provided by either you, Canuk, and/or J.Lowe over the past 6 months, as the only evidence "against" GW to seem scientific enough to be cited. I accept the risk to assume here....
Hey... Why is it that when alarmists point to trends, the deniers say it is not long enough (or accurate enough, or stable enough) to be informative; but that a small deviation from the alarmist's predictions counts as big evidence for our lack of understanding?

Personally I don't care much about the charismatic species that symbolize local/regional habitat loss.
I care about the loss of ecosystem services (cleaning & restoring water & air, and ensuring food supplies) normally provided by those habitats.

Polar bears will evolve again in the future (if the Polar variety disappear now);
but I expect we'll be in another glaciation within 100 years, and they'll be just fine.
It only bugs me that if this happens, the deniers will simply say GW obviously didn't exist after all; not even understanding it was the climate instability that ensured a sudden glacial onset.

So to summarize; after recounting the situation, moving from the general to the specific, you say, "Come on!"?

ummmm... science forum.
Planetary climates (or simply, atoms) at best are bi-stable, multimodal systems; and cannot be understood without going into as much detail as possible.
It's easy to say electrons "orbit" around the nucleus; but you can't explain an atomic spectrograph without the level of specific detail describing electron "shells" and the different s, p, d, & f orbitals and the quantized energy levels available for the electron to occupy.

To describe the cryosphere in terms of keystone species, or the intricate, non-linear behaviour of ice and ice systems in detail (scientifically?) seems like a fair way to begin understanding what is happening. Am I asking too much?

p.s. thanks for the hunting link, but where did you get all those polar bear stats from (not that I want to talk bears)?

This is all getting a little random .... you seem to be critical of me for not toeing the alarmist line but then ...
Quote "but I expect we'll be in another glaciation within 100 years, and they'll be just fine" ...endquote

Whats that based on ? Gut feeling ?

i'm not surprised you don't want to look at the link .... because, and again I quote you :
Quote " Why is it that when alarmists point to trends ...." endquote
- what do you see when you look at the TREND ? Basically its FLAT since 1979. Yes - there was a reduction from 2005-2007 - but that can hardly be a reason for all this panic. How can that be a TREND - its a 3 year period ! And as you point out yourself has now been reversed. Its no wonder you want to start talking about old ice being more important than new ice.

I'll get you the lnks to the polar bear stats - the studies are referenced in Lomborgs book - which I have lent to someone so don't have at hand ...

My main point is this though ... why, if polar bears are in so much danger, have we not banned hunting them ? It can only mean that Nigel lawson may be correct when he states :
"Indeed, the more one examines it, the more it resembles a Da Vinci Code of environmentalism. It is a great story, and a phenomenal bestseller. It contains a grain of truth - and a mountain of nonsense."

...didn't say "don't want to..." Just that I'd seen it so many times before... didn't need to.

Zealotry tends a bit "random" I think.

But I see I was right in characterizing this as a Bjorn Based Argument (my first post on this thread).
However, I am in favor of ignoring Polar Bears on this thread, please; I didn't bring them up.

There is no "alarmist's line" to toe. There are a plethora of lines (of evidence) leading to a multitude of molehills.
There is thus a mountain of mounting evidence that non-linear climate systems are being destabilized (while we concomitantly degrade the resiliency of global ecosystems).

I try to criticize toeing the illogical, misrepresentative, conflationary (and deflationary), denialist's line.

===
As for the link (was I wrong to assume?); I have looked at it many other times and, along with others, commented on it ...not temperature, but rate of increase.... regardless of slope, still above" zero increase" for the whole time....
A graph must be viewed in context. If you really want to discuss it (most Dec. '07 posts were deleted on this subject) again, there are still several Topics featuring this graph; and I'll participate.
===

As for Nigel ...equating the mountain of evidence with a "mountain of nonsense."
Some people just don't have a very high opinion of science and it's use of evidence.

There is no truth, only consequences.

...no true answer as to what the future climate will be.
It could be a runaway greenhouse, but I doubt it. Earth seems to have only two modes; Ice-Age or Not.
The Not Ice-Age usually just amounts to "struggling" to get out of the Ice-Age until some other catastrophe comes along to knock the system back to it's "ground state" Ice-Age (please don't quote this, I realize it is unjustifiably oversimplified to the point of being completely wrong... but I think it conveys my "gut feeling" of how to interpret a climate system).

Regardless of what the Truth turns out to be, there will be Consequences for the decreasing resilience that we impose on our ecosystem services, and for the increasing instability that we place on the climate systems.

Denialist can point out that plenty of meteors have missed Earth before; but....
If a meteor is headed for your planet, I think it's okay to raise some alarm bells. Don't you?

No - this is where I completely disagree. History is rife with well-intentioned, but mis-informed and mis-guided actions based on FALSE ALARMS which resulted in the introduction of disastrous policies. A good example of this is the 'push' for increased use of BioFuels. It is becoming very clear (and you can get a nice journalistic overview from a recent April edition of Time magazine) of the unintended consequences of this total environmental disaster. Nothing has done more for the acceleration of the destruction of the rainforests than this initiative. Additionally it is a contributing factor to the increasing levels of hunger - not surpising when we start burning our food for energy. My own company is specifically mentioned in the Time piece as having pushed biofuels to be fashionably envronmentally friendly. I took my CEO to task on this very issue last December asking him to think very carefully about our direction - the unintended consequences of which might increase world hunger levels. He told me "the debate was over and it was time for action". Action which is now seen to be casuing an environmental catastrophe and, as Time quotes, is helping to cause an estimated doubling of world hunger by 2020 - an aditional 800 million people !!! Well done him ! All helped along by well intentioned people like yourself ringing nonsensical alarm bells.

Another example is the treatment of the chemical DDT which well meaning environmentalists had banned with the resultant effect that Malaria continues to thrive in Africa. Up to 3 million people a year die from this - WHERE IS THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF THOSE WHO HAVE CAUSED THIS TRAGEDY ? People who thought they were doing the right thing but who have caused untold himan suffering.

If I sound angry it is because I am - I live in the third world and see the unintended consequences of people like yourself pushing the AGW alarm bell based on bad science and appalling politics. I am ashamed that my own company that pushes policies that may be partially responsbile for increase world hunger - all to suit currently fashionable but totally misguided environmental views.

Nigel Lawson is right - the real danger is not CO2, but the would-be saviours of the planet whio are, in practice, the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world.

Just because the reaction is nonsensical, doesn't mean that the alarm bells are false.

In general, without looking at the big picture, specific "solutions" usually end up just treating symptoms; overlooking the underlying cause.

I completely agree that this biofuel thing has been a relative disaster, so far.
Most of the time that I hear about some new "green" program or product, I find myself screaming at the absurdity of their "green reasoning."
I have never advocated using food for fuel.
This was quickly obvious to you (and to me), and probably to anyone who wasn't thinking only of short-term profits.

But where did this biofuels push come from?
Wasn't it the only "economically viable" option, out of a plethora of options proffered by scientists?
...and I know that when this first came up, scientists were talking about algae and waste matter as the bio-part; not foodstuffs! It was the big-businessfolks, who already had the corn/ethanol technology in place, that decided to go for the easiest quick profit (hey, the market will adjust).
The science-based, small start-ups, that I'm familiar with are experimenting with different high-oil biomass that grows on marginal soils; that's synergy.

However, I would suggest that arguments such as Nigel's, and the Bjorn Based Arguments, are the alarmist ones in this case.
They are creating the impression that scientist and social activists are the "enemies of poverty reduction."

I have been advocating that the poor and starving could be lifted out of poverty and disease by assisting with carbon sequestration (in the soil). This kind of solution is the only quick, short-term (40 yr.), non-technical method for GHG remediation available; and it would reduce the need to be so strict on emissions, over the short term (and there's the whole ...way to achieve Millennium Development Goals). This synergizes solutions; that's good business practice.

It sounds as if we have similar goals, but differ on how to reach them.
Business As Usual seems to have gotten us into this state.
Just because we try solving ancillary problems and we don't ever have wild success, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to improve and do it better as we develop. ...or words to that effect.
Social Darwinism isn't a good basis for a political philospohy. IMHO

We should try to be a bit more Type I.
It's only been within the past half century, or less, that we've even had the capability to attempt a coordinated, management program for global resources and services.

G'day all,

Finally, evidence that my medical condition is causing me to lose understanding. Because I have no idea about what is being discussed in this thread at all and I read every post.

Polar bears are important! Are Not! Forget the polar bears. Look at the ice behind it. All the evidence adds up to proof. Sheesh. None of this is even remotely scientific.

Polar bears are a terrific topic to use in arguing just how ridiculous the arguments used for global warming can become. Apparently global warming is killing them off. Al Gore tells us so and basis this on an aerial study that included an anecdotal comment that four dead polar bears were found in a survey because of sudden melting. Actually it didn't prove anything and certainly did not prove that polar bears were dying off. Indeed all the statistics indicate they are growing in population especially where the area is a little warmer and that the only areas where populations are decreasing is were they are being hunted as part of a State funded program to reduce deaths and maulings by polar bears. But as an indicator of whether there is any global warming or not, they are a total bust.

The same with a great deal of "evidence" that is piled up to suggest global warming is an overwhelming fact. The Antartic is melting. Well actually it isn't in total volume. It is actually increasing dramatically in total ice. Ah, but that ice is over the land and is thus somehow far less important. This is the type of response you get to any reasoned argument to any particular piece of "evidence" relating to global warming. Whether the Antarctic is losing or gaining ice would not prove global warming by the way. Nor would the mating habits of the sea otter, the migration tracks of the Nahwhale, the CO2 conversion of the Southern Ocean, etc, etc, etc.

Proof or at least an indication of global warming would be, average surface temperatures over very large sections of the world being warmer with time and the method of the recording of the temperatures being consistent. Ocean water temperatures increasing in the mid latitudes and in the colder regions in very large areas, again with the caviet that the method adopted is consistent and comparable over time. There are some limited other indicators but not many.

So I would suggest, if you want to argue about global warming being real you start with the fundamentals. The temperature records, their accuracy over time and whether they have shown any warming. These can be surface air temperatures over land or the sea or water temperatures near the surface or atmospheric temperatures providing they are widespread enough and have a standard method of measurement, recording, data collection and data compression.

It is the question of whether glaciers are decreasing; CO2 is less in ice cores thousands of years ago; tree rings; etc that really through spanners into the works of any estimations of the world's climate. They have so many things going wrong with them that they just cannot be reliable to determine anything to do with climate.

Any argument that suggests intervention needs to get approval of everyone on this earth, and I mean everyone. One person disagrees and you can't do it. For that matter, this should also be applied to science such as CERN's experiments that have a minute chance of destroying the Universe. I don't like minute chances of destroying a Universe I or my children live in and didn't give my permission to take that chance, minute or otherwise. Same with any attempt to cool the planet.

What we do know from the historic records is that transitions between glaciations and interglacial periods are abrupt and do not seem to need much of a kick to get going or to be irreversable. The best evidence that is available suggests that a complete flip takes around 3 years. It could be 7 years but that still isn't that long.

Then we get some comment about us returning to a glaciation within 100 years so we are worring needlessly. Huh? Whoever made that comment, and I could only find the quote, not the comment, must not have thought anything through at all. If the flip from an interglacial period to a glaciation that occurred a little over 70,000 years ago can result in the human population shrinking from around 5 million to between 2,000 and 10,000, just what do you think the numbers would be like today?

A glaciation changes Europe, China etc, from an area that can agriculturally sustain several hundred people per hectare to 1 in 5,000 hectares, it requires almost no brains to work out just how many people might perish with a glaciation. If you do the simple maths and base the figures on the last interglacial period with an extent of say 17,000 years ago, it isn't really all that bad but still works out to a loss of population amounting to around 95%. And that assumes a pleasant organised transition. How about those people in say the People's Republican Army of China realisisng that there is no food to feed them, their fellow troops or their family but there is plenty of Food in Australia and South America? Do you think they would simply pay more for the goods?

So if humans behave the way they do with any major disaster the 95% loss gets to 98% because of wars, 99% because of disease and civil disobedience and the killing of those that have a few cans of beans who don't want to share, and another 0.5% because there is no medical care or fresh water and a great many waste disposal systems and so many other containment systems simply break down, including nuclear subs, air craft carriers, power plants, etc, etc. So if someone manages to work out a way to reduce "global warming" so we get a glaciation instead they will most likely manage to kill all but perhaps 2 or 300 million people. It might end up to be a great deal less alive but it is pretty impossible to work out just what might happen. Perhaps Australia manages to convince the US Navy to throw their luck in with them in return for blasting everything out of the water or ski that comes anywhere near the Continent. I don't think so but, hey, when it is clear that the Continental US is totally down the toilet, those in the fleets that can last at sea for many months may decide that keeping themselves and some of their family alive is more important than blasting people out of the sky or air that will die of starvation within days anyway? Oh and it could be Southern Africa or South America that makes the deal. But in the scheme of things, such things would alter the losses by only a little bit.

Now I'm personally not at all adverse to having a planet with 100 million people or even 50 million but I'm not sure killing them all at once or in an extremely short period is a good way of getting there. I'd prefer birth rates to drop to below sustainable rates so that our almost 7 billion population first of all never reaches 8 billion and then gradually cuts back down.

And while we are on the subject of really stupid things to do, what about conservation, using hybrid fuels, wind power, solar power, recycling products etc, etc. Almost all of these actually use up more of the world's precious resources than they are meant to protect but, hey, they make people feel good. News paper recycling is just the most obvious and the most universal. It takes a massive 6 times the energy to recycle paper by the most economic means possible than it does to produce it from scratch from plantation timber. Of course, if carbon is such a big deal then recycling newspaper is an appalling thing to do. It releases carbon into the atmosphere that was locked for a time out of it. If it is dumped in landfill then it locks the carbon away for very long times. That is a good thing. Recycling it just wastes enormous energy and is only economic because it is massively subsidised by Governments or more likely by local authorities who charge more for collecting your rubbish so that they can say they are doing their bit for the environment. Some recycling is a good thing. Aluminium is one. Steel isn't bad either. But the equations just don't add up for most of them. Try it for youself. You will see just how bad it is.


Richard

Hello Ric,

Hope you are better. I would like to ask you a question, because you seem to be well versed in the global warming phenomenon. This question may be a stupid question, but if you will humor me because I am curious.

In your opinion, what do you think we should do to stop the process in the free world, assuming it is us that has caused the imbalance in chemical makeup in the atmosphere. And do you think we should try to reverse any part of the global warming that is a natural occurance, assuming that we can?

Thanks,
odin1

Good question, Odin1 (deserving of it's own Topic).
I've been waiting for ImranCan to respond;

...I guess I'll just add for Richard's benefit....
RicS,
Regarding your comments about this thread:
I completely agree, and reiterate: Let's leave Polar Bears out of this completely! They are a "red herring."
Now herring; that's something to talk about....

...but seriously, you say:
"Well actually it [Antarctica] isn't in total volume. It is actually increasing dramatically in total ice. ...that ice is over the land...." -RicS.

Where do you get this from? Other threads on this forum have referenced net mass loss (despite regional gains over E. Antarctica) of from 70 to 150 Billion tonnes/year (with 2007 being the worst).

...also....

You've demonstrated that past records are inadequate. If we adopt this strategy and move forward with careful measurements, we should have a definitive answer by 2150-2200, don't you think?

...later....

As opposed to the massive "intervention" that our rapacious economies are currently imposing on our resources, environment, and ecosystems?

...later....

I'm very intrigued by this information.
Do you have any links, or suggestions on what to google, to find out more about this?
This deserves a new Thread/Topic!

===
My apologies to those who mistake literally the various devices of rhetoric; speculation, metaphor or hyperbole; and who may not see that some references are from other recent Topics.

I've sure enjoyed this rhetorical excursion into the integrated nature of climate, our physical and biological resources, and our population and future.

...moving beyond general rhetoric, to specific details....
If anyone is interested in a perspective (other than ice, the oceans, and atmosphere) on climate change, this cited, peer-reviewed, report from Journal of Geophysical Research offers the chance to dig into some "facts and figures."
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=25277#Post25277
"Crustal Heating"
There is a link to the full text, as well as a brief history of this topic already discussed (without disgust) here on SAGG.
===

...or stay here and continue enjoying the zealotry!

Ok - I will ....

What should we be doing ?

We add 1 molecule of CO2 to every 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years. It's like taking an aerial view of a full Pasadena superbowl and adding 1 extra person to it every 5 years. Should we be doing it ? Probably not. Is it worth worrying about ? Absolutely not.

1) I don't believe the current warming is man made.
2) Even if it is, why is a warmer earth necessarily worse ? Who said that 57degrees F was the absolute optimal average global temperature ?
3) An even if it is worse, is the best way of dealing with it to impoverish the 3rd world by denying the access to cheap energy ?

We should invest in R+D in alternative sources of energy, we should continue to strive for higher efficiencies and we should pursue the Millenium Development Goals - remember those ? In the time you hve taken to read this note, 50 people (half of them children) will have died from malnutrition, AIDS, diahorrea, lung disease from indoor pollution and malaria.

And yet we have been consumed by concern for that that extra molecule of CO2 we add every 5 years.

G'day Odin,

You obviously didn't read my rant all that well but hey I tend to waffle on. In answer to your question I think we should do everything we can to reduce the footprint humans make on this earth. That is reduce rainforest destruction, overgrazing, and many other things that obviously are doing damage to the world or at least some part of it. This is simply enlightened self interest. Overgrazing destroys land for a very long time. Reducing the overgrazing allows the land to be better used without much damage and so you make more money by not overgrazing than you do by doing it. But just like poaching, it is not always the self interest of those that are being harmed by the environmental damage, that is easily controlled.

If you need 100 cows to get a wife because infant killing of femails has changed the mix of humans so there are too many males, then you somehow find them or breed them if you can even if this results in overgrazing. You want a wife, damm it! And it wasn't your fault that they killed all the girl babies or even that overgrazing started in the first place.

It would seem that humans came to North America and were faced with animals that terrified them. You had a short snort bear that was over 3 metres high and could run for hours at 40 km/h. You had a saber tooth lion that had a hide that even the famed clovis spear heads had trouble penetrating. You had Mammoths that left you alone but also tasted good so if you tried to eat one of them you were liable to get a whole bunch of them made and attempt to trample you to death. Faced with such enormous obstacles it would seem that hunting the prey of the most dangerous enemy was done much more than was necessary just for food and within 1,000 years there were no mammoths, or flat faced bears, or pointy toothed lions or any number of other animals. This made little sense because the Clovis people came to rely on the Mammoth for almost their entire existence but it happened anyway. All this shows is humans, far from living in tune with nature, can quite easily even when "primitive" overwhelm the natural systems.

And you ask whether I think we should do anything in response to global warming? NO! NO. NO. NO. NO. And NO.

For starters what would you suggest? And how would you know when to switch it off, especially if you have no real idea what the real world's average temperature is? Yes you could use the satellite records but they only go for 30 odd years. That doesn't really tell you enough to know what you should be aiming for.

It is clear that the world has warmed since 1880 but that's because of the selection of 1880 as the cut off point. If you used 1920 you might get quite a different answer. The three major cycles of cooling that together are called the Little Ice Age petered out around 1880 and so the world must have got warmer just to have rid the world of the remnants of the LIA. The Thames cannot be walked across in Winter nor can you play ice hockey between New York and New Jersey. It wasn't that many years ago that you could do both in the scheme of things (a couple of hundred years ago is all it really is).

So, no matter whether there has been negligable warming other than coming out of the LIA or more warming than that, it is pretty clear that the world has warmed. Would I want to counter this? Why? This is a good thing not a bad thing. It has meant that there has been far more productive land in the world that during the colder period previously. There is a trade off. You get more hurricanes and more tornados but not that much more and if people were not stupid enough to build trailer parks in the lowest lands in Florida, the damage caused by hurricanes in the US would not be much greater than the average previously.

And please don't quote Katrina. Katrina was a decent hurricane but it was just an "average" that was well overdue to hit. The damage that occurred was due more to the idiocy of having very large poor populations of people living at the delta to a river system many metres below sea level and then not maintaining the levies.

It is my conclusion that the world has warmed a little bit since 1880 but not by much and that during that period there were actually more years where it was cooling than warming. Overall, the effect seems to be negiligible and may even have been a slight cooling overall. The US data suggests that the Continental US cooled very slightly over the period and since this is the area where there is the greatest chance of the record keeping being slightly comparable, it could be suggested that the world cooled from about 1900 to the present. Certainly the satellite data does not suggest a warming. It does suggest that El Ninos have a much bigger effect on the world's climate than anybody remotely imagined but it also seems to show that the effect is quite transitory and an Al Nina has a much longer term effect and a cooling one when it bothers to show up. The Eastern part of Australia has just gone through its coldest month for at least 60 years and it is snowing this week in parts of our hillier areas. Australia is not a place where snow is normal. It has a very small skifields area that can be devoid of snow mid winter.

But this is weather, not climate. It is due to a stalled weather system off the East Coast of Australia. It may have nothing to do with long term climate at all. It certainly seems to be related to the Al Nina but just how much effect it will have for more than a short period is anyone's guess.

So, firstly I'm not at all sure there is a global warming problem. There certainly does not seem to be any good evidence that the world has been warming more than a very small amount in the last hundred years or so. Secondly, I'm firmly in the camp that says that the LIA was a limiter to society's welbeing and human endeavour and caused hardship and a slightly warmer clime is a good thing, not a bad thing. Thirdly, I have no idea how you could alter the world's temperature to cause cooling without the risk of causing a full blown glaciation. I've given this a great deal of thought and believe I could quite economically cause the world to cool a bit. I'm not even going to mention any of the ideas out loud for fear that someone actually thinks one of them is a good idea. It's a bit like working out how an atomic bomb works in your head but choosing not to share it with anyone. If someone works it out, so be it. I'd actively campaign against any practical application but at least I could feel that I didn't put the suggestion out there for some crackpot to actually think was a good idea.

Now if the question was "Would I actively attempt to prevent a glaciation?" my answer might be quite different. My problem is that I have no idea of how to do anything than trigger either a glaciation or interglacial period. I think I could make one start but have no idea how to make one stop once the process got to the point that it was irreversable. I certainly wouldn't want to create a massive warming period in the middle of an already very warm period and am not the type that thinks that man is the reason for all the earth's problems and that we should kill off most or all of mankind to get rid of the problems. So creating a glaciation goes against anything I believe in philosophically.

How would you like to be the person that presented to the scientific community, or worse, some super greenie female or black US President that couldn't sustain their ideas of changes once in office because they were actually pretty bankrupt of real ideas and so jumped at the chance of being seen to do something about the curse of global warming? You create a system that actually cools the planet with a cost of less than $10 billion or even a couple of ones I've thought of that cost around $1 Billion and it is actually tried out, and the world cools, quickly and by enough to return to a full blown glaciation. Congratulations, you've just killed around 6 Billion people. That makes Hitler look like an amateur.

I guess this gives you a remote idea of my opinions of attempting to play with the world's climate. I'm not even a fan of wind farms because they are going to change air flow patterns and enough of them could change the air flow patterns substantially and no one has thought about this issue. They talk about the odd squished bird but there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you get wind to push something around then energy is taken from the wind. That energy otherwise would have ended up somewhere else. You've robbed some part of the system of its energy. On a small scale it probably will do nothing but what if you do it for very large areas or for areas where the end location of that energy was very important to some mechanism of the planet.

Regards


Richard

Hello Ric,

and thank you for your answer. You are a gentleman and a scholar. I think you are right, I have never believed that man is changing the climate to the extend the polar ice caps will melt and the statue of Liberty will be underwater, and this is an exaggeration but some proponents of global warming are trying to sell this, as you well know.

I was not sure exactly where you stood with the subject and like I said felt you had some expertise with the subject and I have often wondered- what would be the plan of action - I have never heard a straight answer from those that preach "a world flood" As I said in an earlier post, I feel it is normal change, weather cycles that we have absolutely no control over and if I may agree with you- if we could - absolutely no-.

Man does have a habit of killing things off-and clearing a lot of land, I guess we need room. We could problably exercise some improvement there.

I am concerned about what some proponents of the global warming phenomenon are willing to concede for the sake of their new religion? That is my interest and the focal point of my two questions to you. I respect the opinions of others on this and agree there is room for improvement. Make more efficient cars, with less pollutants. Save as many of our forest as we can, and be good stewards to the animal life. Try to tap new energy sources - but lets do this without breaking down the economy.
Our two presidential candidates Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama like you said, have no idea what they are talking about, and what scares me is, if either one is elected who will they listen to?

Again, thank you for your answer, we are in agreement.

Best regards,
odin1

Hopefully, we can work this up into a topic also...later.

RicS, that is an excellent essay; a superb contribution to the rhetorical argument. Much better than the usual Bjorn Based stuff. I read this earlier, on my Kindle; and could log on, but couldn't post. As I now reread....

I'm stunned Richard; I'm almost convinced, myself. I could spend hours writing a reply; but until then, let me share a brief....
In fact you are very right. To embark on a new course, especially any like we're talking about here, is an alarming, frightening prospect; and there are so many ways to screw it up.

As we learn more of how impactful our normal living practices have been (and increasingly are) to the bio-geosphere, we can strive to minimize that impact; or better yet, maximize robustness and resiliency in our new, sustainably built, reclaimed environments.
Fear of failure should not be our guiding principle, except in that it makes us cautious and retrospective.

I'm hopeful that as people see possibilities of a brighter, more secure and equitable future, they'll be less frightened by change.
I also suspect that as increasingly alarming, intolerable conditions become the norm, they'll be more desirous of change.

I realize that governments have never been "the solution to our problems" (more the source of our...); but don't you think we can do better. Y'know... if at first you don't succeed; try, try again.

So we screwed it up with the Mammoths; we've got satellites and the internet now.
Maybe we could do better this time?
~Looking forward to more later....

p.s.
Richard, are you familiar with the "Type I" (planetary civilization) references, from Michio Kaku, in this thread?
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=25569#Post25569

p.p.s. Thanks for reiterating my call to focus on the Millennium Development Goals!

I can't believe how quickly a 'fashionable' environmental position can become 'unfashionable'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7381392.stm

A great example of how important it is to allow a healthy debate .... rather than comparing anyone who disagrees with some of the most indefensible positions of our time eg. Flat-earthers or Holocaust denial. And we gave Al Gore a Nobel Prize. Nothing has ever been done to more demean the status of that award.