# the great global warming swindle



## engineer one (8 Mar 2007)

ok guys so are we all going to watch channel 4 tonight at 9.00 tonight and find some ACTUAL facts about global warming and the REAL causes. :roll: 

personally i just see that so much of the so called science is not factually based, and we all know that cows fart co2 so who knows????

be nice to see the other side of the story for once :twisted: 

paul :wink:


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

Yes, looking forward to it. ACTUAL facts and REAL causes as opposed to...?

Before we get started proper, regarding cows and farting and CO2, unless you feed cows fossil fuels it matters not a jot how much CO2 you, me or cows fart into the atmosphere, because it is CO2 that is already in the system - the amount of carbon floating around in the carbon cycle remains constant. Farting is carbon neutral.

The Carbon released by burning fossil fuels is carbon that was taken out of the system millions of years ago (no apologies if you're willfully dumb enough to think the world is only 6000 years old). Releasing said carbon is increasing the amount of carbon currently in the carbon cycle and kills polar bears.

So while it's jolly to note that cows fart a lot, it is irrelevant to the debate (let's be honest, it's not really a debate anymore) on climate change.

Jay


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## engineer one (8 Mar 2007)

speculation, bs, and computer projections NOT based in fact

paul :wink:


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

So you're confident that this evenings telly fest will be free of speculation, bs and projections not based on fact. This will be fun.


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## engineer one (8 Mar 2007)

well, because it is contrary to the well publicised view, i am sure that many will consider it full of bs, but there are an awful lot of PROPER scientists
and people like David Bellamy, who question that we are totally responsible, and able to change things just by using and producing less CO2.

if you look at the industry around global warming, many of the promoters are those who need to ensure that their university jobs are funded and secure.

if you study what goes on in university funding these days you will know that "political correctness and populist studies" are those which get the best funding. :? 

paul :wink:


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## Slim (8 Mar 2007)

I watched an interesting debate on Newsnight a few weeks ago. It was between a guy who has his own theory on global warming and an advocate of man made global warming.

His theory is based around cosmic rays. Now before you all go pfff! and stop reading, it was actually very interesting.

There is a proven link between the amount of cosmic rays entering our athmosphere and the formation of clouds. Apparently, cosmic rays reduce the amount of airborne particles that water droplets condense around when they form clouds (condensation nuclei). He said there has be a large increase in the amount of cosmic rays detected in the past decade. Meaning less clouds. Less clouds means less of the suns rays are reflected back into space. Ergo, global warming.

He also put forward some good arguments to disprove the Co2 argument. When the Romans invaded britain, the temperature was higher than it is now. They planted groves of meteranian fruit trees such as olives which simply wouldn't survive in our climate now. Yet a few hundred years ago the Thames froze over every year.

I don't know which side to take at the moment. I think the main problem we have as a race, is that we have an overwhelming need to understand things. Consequently, we come up with explanations as to why things happen. eg. Earth is at the centre of the universe, Sun orbits the earth etc. All completely viable and believed at the time, but all completely wrong.

Just my 2p's worth.


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

engineer one":2c9cu38x said:


> if you look at the industry around global warming, many of the promoters are those who need to ensure that their university jobs are funded and secure.


You mean climatologists?

I'm not going to consider this evenings program to be batdung unless it's full of twaddle. I don't win anything if I drown in my low lying village, I won't be triumphantly gargling 'I told you so' as I go down. If climate change isn't a worry after all I'll be as happy as you.



> ...PROPER scientists and people like David Bellamy...


 Poor Mr Bellamy. Still, if you'd like to run some of David Bellamy's (or the proper scientist's) specific criticisms of climate change past me I'll be happy to try and explain where the lovable old botanist is leading you astray.

Climate change has only been pervasive and mainstream in the very recent. Given that the US has been at the fore front of climate research and that the US has been politically and socially hostile to the the notion of man made climate change until, well, about 60 days ago, I think you're being a little unfair in your criticism of popularist academic funding.


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

I'm watching it, and trying to convince my indoctrinated kids to watch it with me. :roll: 

Brad


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## Nick W (8 Mar 2007)

Whatever happend to Global Dimming? That didn't last long as an idea.


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## engineer one (8 Mar 2007)

simple logic, although humans are profligate and we waste much of our natural resources, when you study history, it shows weather changes which cannot be related to the excess production of co2, which is a recent
phenomonen.

we are not the only things to produce CO2, but more interestingly is the fact that co2 makes up so small a percentage of our atmosphere, so how come it so overwhelms things?????? :? 

the sun, and other external items have as big or bigger effect than we do.

yes we should waste less, but how come when these great issues come up, we the mug public have to spend our money on the new products without them being proven. look at the wind turbine issue. THEY DO NOT WORK to the level of efficiency which makes them sensible for the investment. the household ones just about produce the power for an electric shaver, and for what.

as for battery cars, etc no one does the sums on the production costs of 
these items whereas the figures for internal combustion engines are well known. as for the carbon footprint of battery production, and what about the residuals of things you can't dispose of, like the rare metals used in some of these products.

interestingly, i am reading a book which suggests that in 1420-23, the chinese sailed massive boats around the world, and discovered america and australia before the europeans. one of the interesting items is that
in mining for lead in australia, the chinese had to open up a uranium mine which of course led to long term deaths because they did not know what it was.

there is too much speculation and computer modelling in the global warming business which is not based on proveable facts.

paul :wink:


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## Anonymous (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":ifpc5j3p said:


> (let's be honest, it's not really a debate anymore)



Once you accept that enforced concensus mindset, theres no room for debate any way. Isn't there always at least 2 side's to any story? I always thought that the point of having a debate was to hear all sides and make an informed choice/vote etc??
I honestly dont know who or what to believe, if all the talk of climate change is exaggerated for a way for loonie left field control freaks to frighten folks into their agenda of global collectivism and a way to attack "capitalism" :roll: 
We just have a lot of greenhouse gas/carbon neutral/reduce/reuse/recycle/global warming etc etc propoganda at the mo which is designed to creat that enforced concensus mindset (repeat it often enough and folk will accept it), but I am left wondering is it a hoax, or is there genuine substance to it? Like is it just a way of creating a new taxable commodity at local and national level to fund government beauracracy? Or a powerful global political lever to facilitate global collectivism by paralysing energy dependent industry?:


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

engineer one":1f2q0j0a said:


> there is too much speculation and computer modelling in the global warming business which is not based on proveable facts.
> 
> paul :wink:



And in no other scientific field is the most extreme speculative scenario accepted as scientific fact.

Brad


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

mr spanton":21u8uz5e said:


> MrJay":21u8uz5e said:
> 
> 
> > (let's be honest, it's not really a debate anymore)
> ...



My mindset is neither enforced or consensus. I think if you'd care to put that thought in the context of this thread you'll see how very wrong you are. So far the consensus here is that man made climate change is a swindle or something that one should be healthily skeptical about.

I'm also going to take great personal offense to the notion that I'm not up for good honest debate, when the evidence in this thread is that I'm happy to politley debate the unpopular using reasoned arguments. Infact, I'd quite like you to demonstrate how exactly I am supposed to be stifling debate.



Paul said:


> simple logic, although humans are profligate and we waste much of our natural resources, when you study history, it shows weather changes which cannot be related to the excess production of co2, which is a recent phenomonen.



Certainly. A few hundredy million years ago the planet was covered in vomiting volcanoes, every 1200 years or so we seem to have an ice age, the sun has an eleven year activity cycle (and is by fay the biggest influence on climate), we have well understood cyclical weather systems like the gulf stream and el-nino. Oddly the climatologists are aware of these things (they're a clever bunch and read books on this sort of stuff) and the message is that what we are experiencing in the here and now is something different. Something that on top of all the natural influences one might expect is consistent with effects of human activity and sufficient that we can't rely on natural processes to balance the effects.


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":t086asd6 said:


> Before we get started proper, regarding cows and farting and CO2, unless you feed cows fossil fuels it matters not a jot how much CO2 you, me or cows fart into the atmosphere, because it is CO2 that is already in the system - the amount of carbon floating around in the carbon cycle remains constant. Farting is carbon neutral...
> 
> ...So while it's jolly to note that cows fart a lot, it is irrelevant to the debate (let's be honest, it's not really a debate anymore) on climate change.
> 
> Jay



Actually, as I understand it, the cow issue is methane, which is supposed to be 10 times as effective as CO2 in holding in the earth's heat. Can't remember any scientific study to back that up, but I've heard or read it on a number of occasions. (But neither do a lot of the Friends of the Earth types often reference scientific data to back up their claims.) :roll: 

Brad


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## ike (8 Mar 2007)

I think anyone who believes that climate change is not linked to human activity must be deaf/blind/in denial/barking or any combination thereof.

Anyone who thinks global collective action will reverse the trend must also be one or more of the above. We're all DOOMED cap'n Mannering!, I said DOOMED! aye.

Ike


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## engineer one (8 Mar 2007)

whilst you may be right mr jay, i wonder when any opposed view is always blasted down by noise, not fact.

an oxford don is being pushed out of his job because he moaned about uk population influx. by whom is he being pushed out ,the very students he is supposed to be teaching.

show me how the production of human co2 is greater than that produced by cows, rotting vegitation, trees( yes i know they are supposed to be carbon neutral, but recent german test show they produce more co2 than we imagine) but prove it with facts not hopes.

paul :wink:


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

wrightclan":3nog1yvu said:


> stuff


Regardless, and I was answering a criticism levied directly to cows about they're CO2 emissions specifically; cows only process, they don't increase or decrease or have any noticeable effect on the quantity of elements floating around in the environment, regardless of whether the elements in question are 10x as likely to kill polar bears as another element.

Cows eat stuff already in the environment and then fart it out again. Cows are not the cause of climate change. My argument; and it remains, is that cows are irrelevant and that considering them is a distraction.


engineer one,

The difference with carbon is that humans currently burn a lot of fossil fuels: oil, coal etc.
The process that takes carbon out of the carbon cycle and fossilises it is very slow, we are burning it (and thus releasing the carbon back into the carbon cycle) rather quicker. The net effect is that the amount of carbon in the carbon cycle increases when we process fossil fuels. Cows don't burn fossil fuels, cows eat grass. The carbon in grass is carbon that already exists in the carbon cycle and is just being temporarily stored until the grass becomes cow food or rots or whatever. Overall, the amount of carbon in the system remains constant.


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":8vjzstm9 said:


> wrightclan":8vjzstm9 said:
> 
> 
> > stuff



Excuse me :?: :?: :?:


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":2pu2ypta said:


> Cows are not the cause of climate change. My argument; and it remains, is that cows are irrelevant and that considering them is a distraction.




:-k Exactly where did I say that cows are the cause of climate change? I have no idea what the cause of climate change is. There is historical evidence for significant climate change prior to the current heavy usage of fossil fuels. That would suggest that perhaps climate change is affected by factors other than fossil fuels; and indeed that any climate change that is occurring is within the realms of historical variations. (i.e. we're not doomed by climate change).

Brad


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## engineer one (8 Mar 2007)

i agree brad, we are not doomed only by climate change :twisted: :lol: 

newton i think suggested that the total amount of matter in the earth stays the same, so why should carbon production cause more problems.

are there any figures which show how the nitrogen levels have reduced in the last 50 years. or indeed since nasa started puncturing the ozone level to send spaceships up???? :roll: 

climatologists may well read, but why is it so wrong to question the results
of computer modelling when our weather bureaus cannot tell us what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, let alone in two hours???? 

as a simple engineer, i just wonder why it is only the car that gets blamed :roll: 

paul :wink:


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

wrightclan":e2604x9b said:


> More stuff



There is no question that there are other, non man made, factors that influence climate change.

The man made climate change issue is that on top of these naturally occurring influences human activity is also having an effect and to such an extent that we cannot simply rely on natural processes to balance things out for us. We are tipping the balance so to speak.


Engineerone,
It is true that the quantity of elements in the universe remains constant. However the quantity of gases in the atmosphere and their effects on our climate do not. If you pour £20 worth of petrol on your back seat the argument that you filled your car up might not wash when you run out of vroom vroom down the road. Location is important.

It is perfectly proper to question the validity and use of speculative computer modelling. But it also helps to try and understand the role and extent in which modeling is used in science before criticising climate science for using computers to do stuff.


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## Slim (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":3ee77scu said:


> wrightclan":3ee77scu said:
> 
> 
> > stuff





MrJay":3ee77scu said:


> wrightclan":3ee77scu said:
> 
> 
> > More stuff



Thats not very respectful... is it?


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":h3aldeci said:


> Popular platitudes


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

Off to watch the show.

Brad


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

Slimjim81":2py4bzad said:


> MrJay":2py4bzad said:
> 
> 
> > wrightclan":2py4bzad said:
> ...



Not a particularly constructive contribution to the discussion is it? You'll notice me being disrespectful when I don't give decent, fair and meaningful replies to comments. Feel free to turn this into a personality contest.



wrightclan":2py4bzad said:


> platitudes


Once again, I think this thread doesn't show me platituding a popularist agenda. Amongst the prevailing attitudes here I seem to be somewhat not popularist.


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

Why is any discussion which does not agree with you, referred to as "stuff," or as "Not a particularly constructive contribution to the discussion."?

Brad


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## Anonymous (8 Mar 2007)

engineer one":3saagmbq said:


> personally i just see that so much of the so called science is not factually based



:roll:


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## A_n_g_e_l_a (8 Mar 2007)

engineer one":1dqvqdzv said:


> ... and we all know that cows fart co2 ...



Sorry to be so punctilious but cows exhale CO2 and fart CH4 (methane).


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## ike (8 Mar 2007)

Actually, fart gas is a mixture of both, something like a 60/40 or 70/30 CH4 to Co2. well there's quite a bit of H20 in the mix if it's a particularly wet one, along with various aromatic hydrocarbons.


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## Losos (8 Mar 2007)

Wow, this thread is getting really scientific, :wink: I'll really take more interest in the cows in the field opposite me when walking the dogs tomorrow :lol: 

By the way anyone know the ratio of CO2 to CH4 in a dogs fart, 'cos our two do quite a lot of that and I sometimes think they are entirely responsible for global warming :roll:


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

wrightclan":qlpkklnc said:


> Why is any discussion which does not agree with you, referred to as "stuff," or as "Not a particularly constructive contribution to the discussion."?
> 
> Brad



You'll notice I made proper replies to your comments, "stuff" was simply shorthand to show I was replying to the comments you made. I could have copied and pasted word for word, but frankly the stuff is there on record a couple of posts before mine for anyone to reference should they wish.

Slimjim made no contribution to a discussion on the validity of human influence on climate change, and preferred to try for a sideways character assination movement instead hoping the popular sway would carry the sideswipe. I think my call was proper.


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## Slim (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":31ane6mf said:


> Slimjim made no contribution to a discussion on the validity of human influence on climate change



Perhaps you should read my comment on page 1. I simply thought that referring to wrightclan's comments as "stuff" showed a distincted lack of respect for his opinion.

Anyway, I don't want to get drawn into an argument, so in the words of the Dragons.... I'm out.


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## wrightclan (8 Mar 2007)

MrJay":3jw49g2w said:


> wrightclan":3jw49g2w said:
> 
> 
> > Why is any discussion which does not agree with you, referred to as "stuff," or as "Not a particularly constructive contribution to the discussion."?
> ...



Yeah right, that's why slimjim and I both saw the same implication, and why you felt the need to add the adjective "more" in your second instance, and why you don't normally use the descriptive "stuff" in other posts. If you believe the explanation you just wrote; then you're deceiving yourself, not me.

Brad


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## Gill (8 Mar 2007)

Can we please stop bickering? I don't care who started it or who's scored the most puppy points. I'd just like to see this thread return to a civilized discussion in the hope that I might become better informed.

Gill


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## Paul Chapman (8 Mar 2007)

Well I watched the programme and thought it was all pretty convincing. Looks like a lot of people have been telling a lot of porkies.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## MrJay (8 Mar 2007)

writeclan":12tktvih said:


> yadda yadda yadda



Once again, I made proper, polite and considered responses to your comments. If you want to get hung up on my use and misuse of quotes rather than the meat and bones of the discussion then knock yourself out. Frankly I don't like your socks.

Still, seeing as you insist. When replying to the post directly above I tend not to use the quote function. It is unnecessary as there is a clear narrative for anyone caring to read the thread to follow. Every now and then someone slips a post in the middle before I can get my reply in and I retrospectively edit my post with the appropriate quote so it is clear that my own post is a reply to elsewhere. When editing a post the automatic quote function is not available and one needs to resort to manual editing. I used shorthand because the frequency of posts making points and comments replying to things I said were occurring faster than I could make replies. Speed was an issue. Your comments weren't actually relevant to the discussion - cows have no impact at all whatsoever on the makeup gasses in the atmosphere - but I thought you deserved a response because I felt you were posting in good faith. In order to get a response out quickly and retain some easy to follow narrative in the thread I used shorthand rather than copy and paste - you'll notice if you edit a post the edit screen doesn't display earlier posts to reference, which can make things a bit of a chore. From then on I did it for personal amusement, so there. If you think it's worth further discussion I recommend Personal Messaging as the appropriate forum.

Back to the thing on the telly...

The description of the temperature record leading atmospheric CO2 levels I thought was interesting - it's well known that there are positive feedback loops in peat bogs and similar that cause increased natural emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere. It'll be fun finding out more. Unfortunately that was pretty much the sum of the science bit; and being (probably unashamedly) a one sided account and only very brief before wandering off into something about how marxists can't be trusted because they don't wash, my interest was piqued and then left wanting.

The rest of what I saw was predictably politicised cat fighting. And given that much of the program was a critique of the left's politicisation of climate change then it didn't much carry; which is a shame because a lot of the criticism is valid and deserves proper consideration.


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## engineer one (9 Mar 2007)

well obviously we all watched it from a different viewpoint, but with my experience of the way in which band wagons get going. i thought the programme was pretty fair and more objective than those who promote the global warming story.

animal rights protestors seem to work in the same way as the global warmers. if you disagree with us, then you are wrong.

the particular science which makes sense is that CO2 is only 0.54% of the overall gases within the atmosphere. memory serves to remind me that nitrogen is over 80 % seems a long way to go.

the other thing is that clearly the sun has a real impact on our atmosphere, and we ignore that at our peril. 

the interesting thought from the end is that much of the anti global warming thought process wishes to keep the poor in the gutter. i wondered how many of the global warming promoters have considered that their efforts will in fact keep millions in poverty rather than help them out of it.

it is a definate fact that wind power, solar power and wave power will for a considerable time be marginal in their ability to mass produce power, mainly because we cannot store electricity very well.

the thing that still concerns me is that despite considerable investment over the last 30 years since i was first involved, it is still not practical to have a battery powered car which can reach 60 within less than about 30 seconds, and travel for more than about an hour, and that does not need re-charging over night to recover. if it can't happen with my electric toothbrush, then #-o 

producing electricity through batteries is expensive in production, re-charging and then disposal and until that changes then everything else is moot.

paul :wink:


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## Paul Chapman (9 Mar 2007)

I felt that the programme presented its case very well. I would summarise the main points as follows:

1. Statistical evidence (if it was accurate) shows that increases in CO2 follow increases in temperature, and that increases in temperature are caused by activity in the sun, known as sun spots. This, of course, is the exact reverse of what the global warming doom-mongers have been telling us and was, I feel, the most significant part of the programme.

2. The bulk of CO2 emissions come from the sea and, by comparison, the CO2 emissions caused by people are relatively insignificant.

3. Going back over hundreds of years, periods of global warming and freezing have happened before and have not had the catastrophic effects that people are predicting. 

4. Politicians for many years have found the arguments of the global warming lobby convenient, for a variety of reasons, and their global warming advisors have therefore found many receptive politicians who have repeatedly been told what they want to hear, irrespective of whether it was the truth. This, by and large, has been responsible for the global warming bandwagon. 

All in all a very interesting programme which provided much food for thought.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## MrJay (9 Mar 2007)

engineer one":139rot98 said:


> well obviously we all watched it from a different viewpoint, but with my experience of the way in which band wagons get going. i thought the programme was pretty fair and more objective than those who promote the global warming story.



Fair the programme wasn't. It was unadulterated politicised propaganda that presented a single viewpoint without debate or challenge. Rather like Al Gore's film (which unlike this one I haven't bothered to watch as I've better things to do than listen to what Al Gore has to say about anything) this was a piece of film designed to preach to the already converted. One tends to trust and agree with things that reinforce our point of view.

Animal rights protesters are irrelevant to the discussion. There are muppets with stupid arguments on both sides of the fence.



> the interesting thought from the end is that much of the anti global warming thought process wishes to keep the poor in the gutter. i wondered how many of the global warming promoters have considered that their efforts will in fact keep millions in poverty rather than help them out of it.


If it were so simple. For example I am more than happy for developing nations in Africa and the Middle East to develop nuclear programmes. The film conveniently forgot to mention that Africa was rich in natural resources of uranium. But then the film was a politically charged attempt to make an argument based on the notion that you can't trust what the lefties say; which might be a fair standpoint, but it doesn't make the righties any better.

Batteries are indeed a technological stumbling block to mass uptake of renewable energy.


Paul,
Certainly this is not the exact reverse of what the global warming doom-mongers have been saying. The Sun is the biggest influence on planet earth full stop. Cycles in solar activity are well known and well documented, but do not match long term trends in climate change. If it were the case the climate would be much more erratic than it is. What was interesting was the charge that the nature of the link between CO2 and Temperature wasn't causal, but symptomatic. Unfortunately the programme fluffed over this without exploring the ideas with any depth.

It's never been debated that the bulk of CO2 in the system is naturally occurring. It's not the quantity of CO2 that is the cornerstone of the argument 'for' man made climate change, rather the increase in CO2 that comes from burning fossil fuels and the effect that this may have on the climate.

One can certainly look at previous extremes in climate and notice catastrophic effects on people. It's nice and comfy in the UK and in the short term we may have more grapes, but if you're living next door to a desert things probably aren't looking so rosy.


For me politicising climate change does nothing to further the debate, it's not about political allegiance. This film was no different in that respect and disappointed. Perhaps if it had a narrower remit and concentrated on elements of the science, or for that matter had stuck to criticising the left's enthusiasm for climate change it might have got somewhere; but this was a film made by people less interested in debate than with scoring political points against the BBC and lefties everywhere.


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## kafkaian (9 Mar 2007)

I certainly don't know what to believe or what the truth holds but one thing I do know; this (and any) government will do anything to bring about the changes they require through stealth and hypocrisy. I've not long returned from a trip to Russia and China. Like many, I've been to the States. These three countries alone, leaving aside Europe, India and Brazil for the moment, have more heavy industry, vehicle emissions and CO2 formers to negate ANYTHING we try to do in this country. These countries will probably continue to belch out "greenhouse" gases for many, many, many years to come. And we haven't finished yet, Africa is the next continent to want to progress like any other. When they start, they will add an even bigger carbon footprint to the debate. 

If the doom merchants are correct, then we're doomed anyway as far as I can see.

Oh, and in future, if I get on a plane to go to these places, I will make sure trees are planted to counter the ensuing carbon footprint 

However, I am sufficiently concerned to try to put SVO in my diesel vehicle and look at purchasing a wind turbine as well as reducing my waste output. I don't know what else, as individuals, we can do. For you that live in the sticks, to be told to get on a bus is a bit of a joke!

One thing is for sure though, this planet will survive into the period of solar expansion/enlargement probably a long time after the human race has pressed the self-destruct button. If global warming due to our intervention is true, then we're not destroying the planet, only our species!


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## Anonymous (9 Mar 2007)

you seem more wound up than any body on this mr jay :lol: 

I was surprized to hear Piers (Corbyn) sticking his neck out and challenging the assumed "Global warming polemmic" Him and his brother Jeremy are both committed "lefties" Good on him winning bet's at william Hill's he was always poor, I remember him scrounging meals at the ambulance station C1985 8) 
One thing that stuck out was the cutesie convention in Kenya, with some delegate or other arriving in a mercedes 4X4 :roll: , meanwhile the locals "banned" from access to African coal or oil and reduced to making cute little trinket's for the international visitors. Some of them even have wooden scooters and bikes (no bad engines of course) The producer's hinted at the _deep green_ issues but perhaps should have looked at that more closely.
Why would these scientist's challenge what is generally now regarded as the concensus view of climate change if doing so makes life so difficult for them? Why would they present a view that costs them, their job, funding, peer respect, generates media hostility and witch hunt mentality against them?? Not for the good of their health as one put it!. Engineer's comment about A.R.P's _was_ relevant. Theres the same extreme bigoted intolerance of an alternative view-you disagree therefore your wrong, and we reserve the right to attack you mercilessly. Why would anyone need to issue death threat's to a dissenting scientist unless they are desperate? 
And what of the global warming industry? I bet all the delegates at these conferences dont travel their on rowing boat's or eco bikes :lol: :idea: If this whole CO2 thing was debunked as a modern superstitious myth, there would be no basis for the new emision taxes/obligations to recycle/ban flights (unless your going to a climate change conference!) etc. /offsetting/buy a tree to offset your holiday flight?!

ModEdit Newbie_Neil


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## Newbie_Neil (9 Mar 2007)

Gentlemen and Ladies

Please keep politics out of this thread.

It is an interesting discussion that deserves better.

Thanks
Neil


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## StevieB (9 Mar 2007)

Speaking as a scientist, put two of us in a room together and you will get an argument about something - generally to the death!

Science as a field is based on developing a theory, testing that theory, and once you are as happy as can be that the theory is sound you present it to your peers for discussion. Climate change is a science (albeit one in its infancy) and as such theories get proposed and trumpeted, then discredited or reworked until a consensus view or accumulating evidence supports or refutes them and they become 'fact' or 'fiction'. The real trouble with climate change is that nobody really knows - both sides of the debate are presenting theories (sometimes as fact, sometimes as hype) but facts in this field are few and far between. We know the earth is warming, the discussion is about why and whether we can or need to stop it.

As someone mentioned earlier, we cannot predict local weather 2 weeks in advance, why should we be any better at understanding global patterns?

Last night programme was a sensible, calm presetation of the side of climate change you do not hear as often as the doom laden side. Strip away the hype and the 'global warming is bad' camp could have made an equally reasoned and plausible case for the opposing view.

The bottom line is, nobody knows to any great degree of certainty. The problem is that money, business and politics have a vested interest in persuading the general public one way or the other, and true to form facts and theories tend to get hyped, blurred and seconded to whatever cause suits.

Please, believe whichever side you wish, but bear in mind that advancing scientific knowledge of climatology is not the primary aim of either side of the debate.

Steve.


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## wrightclan (9 Mar 2007)

I find it funny(but predictable) how when the scientists in this film present scientific data that the other side accuses them of being superficial. Here's a newsflash: documentaries by their very nature and due to the constraints of presenting a complex issue to a wide audience, are always superficial. That said, I think they did explain some of the data quite clearly, and indeed, showed quite clearly where the other side has ignored scientific data.

As for the issue of the latter part of the film being a supposed diatribe against the left, I heard arguments from scientists and commentators on both sides of the political spectrum (and including at least one prominent environmentalist) who think the path we are being told to go down by the extreme environmental movement is a dangerous path. 

I'm all for conserving natural resources and personal resources. It makes good sense both personally and for business to be aware of how we can use all resources more efficiently. However, the reason I wanted my kids to watch this film, is that I think the consequences of following the path of the extreme eco/anti-globalist agenda will be more catastrophic than the supposed consequences of allowing the developing nations to develop and allowing the developed nations to continue having strong economies. 

In the same way as the doomsayers say that anthropogenic global warming/climate change will hurt the poorest; I believe that following their path will hurt the poorest, and to a lesser extent the average person in both the developing and developed world. The rich can afford to wring their hands and spout platitudes, and take the brunt of a higher cost of living. Most of the world's population are just trying to put food on the table and stay well. Allowing developing nations to develop in the same way we have, can only be good for them and for us.

Brad


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## dedee (9 Mar 2007)

This whole debate is a bit like listening to the experts debate the merits of the UK joining the Euro.

When both sides of the argument are equally well represented, and the majority of the public (well possibly only me :wink: ) can't possibly keep up on an intellectual level, I give up and watch the footie :lol: 

Andy, 
who did his bit and bought low energy light bulbs the other day. When I took them back complaining they they were a bit dim the chap asked whether I had given them time to warm up, didn't know they had to said I. Why does it not say so that on the box?


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## woodbloke (9 Mar 2007)

There was a programme on the TV some time ago exploring this issue, it was to do with the climate change experiment that we were encouraged to run on our computers at home. At the end of the show, a large graph was produced (I think the axes were time and temperature) with 4 lines of varying colours (forget what they represented now). The lines were fairly constant up to the point about 1850 (the start of industrialisation on a big scale) and from that point on to the present day you could see a gradual increase in the amount of carbon produced. The amount of carbon produced started to rise alarmingly in the 1970's and has continued at an exponential rate.... and with it has come the corresponding rise in temperature. The whole graph looked like a horizontal hockey stick and the conclusion at the end was that the exponential increase in temperature (ie the blade of the stick) was *not* a natural phenomenon but due solely to man's activity and the production of carbon - Rob


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## Anonymous (9 Mar 2007)

Although I didn’t see the program, one thing that always strikes me when we are faced with a disaster or crisis of some sort is the figures and facts.
The thing that always eludes me is that the planet was tiny a few hundred years ago, we were all fledgling voyagers and discoverers but disasters still happened, famines, floods, earthquake, but we were never aware of them. Who knows, the polar ice caps could have melted much the same as now.
We certainly never had the scientific knowledge to record or try and predict impending doom, we used to fall of the end of the earth if we sailed too far. Mind you, nor did we have a multi millionaire Bob Geldof swearing at the proles for cash when a disaster loomed either…
And there’s the rub sometimes. The popstar/filmstar do gooders can have a big impact on how we contribute to certain aspects of our daily lives, but when you have Bonio, the lead singer of U2 spouting about global warming, famine aids etc, and then chartering a jet to fly his hat across the atlantic, well…in my mind, not a valid reason to listen some times!
Anyway, doesn’t affect the for or against arguments I suppose, but as I see it, the data collected for or against is based on a very small timescale. Just my 2p you understand!

Andy


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## misterfish (9 Mar 2007)

Some weeks ago we watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Until then I'd always been sceptical about global warming while SWMBO and my son were much more convinced. It's worth a watch even if you have an (understandable) aversion to American politicians.

Having seen the film I certainly questioned my beliefs and after a bit of soul searching decided that if it was all hype then nothing I or anybody else could do would make any difference. But, if it was all true then and if we all did our little bit to alleviate the perceived problem then it may help. As a result we have 'brought forward' our plan to use low energy light fittings where possible, rather than wait for the bulbs to blow. With our current house refurbishment we are installing new efficient plumbing, heating and appliances along with timber double glazed windows and doors. Hopefully when all this is done we will have a comfortable house with a much lower potential environmental impact. We also bought an Electrisave monitor that shows us how much electricity we're using, and since the lighting upgrade there is an appreciable reduction - it is good at indicatiing (nagging) that things are left switched on and there is a slight smugness when we can get the consumption lower.

After last night's program which showed that the carbon levels followed the temperature changes rather than caused them, I'm still not sure where I stand. The problem is that I'm a trained scientist and demand proof before I'm convinced of anything (don't ask me about religion). But despite that, there is a degree of self satisfaction in that we are starting to see the differences we have made to our own consumption and environment.

I'm always sceptical when politicians or big business get involved in anything - they almost always have their own agenda of taking care of themselves at others expense and that they are frequently 'economical with the truth'. Whether its politicians or environmentalists, they nearly always seem to be at one extreme or the other.

So here I am, still not fully convinced one way or another.

MisterFish


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## Paul Chapman (9 Mar 2007)

woodbloke":1w9bhkx0 said:


> At the end of the show, a large graph was produced (I think the axes were time and temperature) with 4 lines of varying colours (forget what they represented now). The lines were fairly constant up to the point about 1850 (the start of industrialisation on a big scale) and from that point on to the present day you could see a gradual increase in the amount of carbon produced.



What I found interesting about last night's programme was the question of whether CO2 causes warming or increased warming causes increased CO2 (they also pointed out that reduced warming - when there were no sun spots - caused a reduction of CO2). They also produced historical data to show that during periods of expanding industrial activity there was not increased warming caused by increases in CO2 production.

Unfortunately, Joe Public is always left having to decide who to believe. Personally I feel a lot more comfortable about the whole situation after last night's programme.

What would be interesting would be a programme setting out what Governments in the industrial countries had actually done to back up what they say. At the moment it feels to me that they are clobbering us with increased taxation to pay for global warming but there seems to be little data on what they are doing with that money to deal with the situation. They are all telling us that the situation is catastrophic but their actions don't appear to support that.

Maybe I'm just an old cynic :roll: :lol: 

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## kafkaian (9 Mar 2007)

misterfish":2xoubxea said:


> .... As a result we have 'brought forward' our plan to use low energy light fittings where possible, rather than wait for the bulbs to blow. With our current house refurbishment we are installing new efficient plumbing, heating and appliances along with timber double glazed windows and doors. Hopefully when all this is done we will have a comfortable house with a much lower potential environmental impact. We also bought an Electrisave monitor that shows us how much electricity we're using, and since the lighting upgrade there is an appreciable reduction - it is good at indicatiing (nagging) that things are left switched on and there is a slight smugness when we can get the consumption lower..



And regardless, the efficacy behind what you are doing will, in the long term, reduce your own bills and make your home 'green' marketable etc


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## Gill (9 Mar 2007)

I watched the programme last night. Reading through some of the contributions that have been made to this thread since the programme was broadcast, I suspect some people are commenting without the benefit of having seen it.

One thing that impressed me was the way that data was adduced and presented in a logical fashion, dispelling established notions that have been readily accepted but where cause and effect has not been established. A lot of this accepted data simply does not show cause and effect. I thought the explanations of climactic change given last night were much more persuasive than anything presented hitherto, although I would like to see the data in greater detail.

I also thought the political analysis was intriguing. Even if you don't agree with the programme's interpretation of the history of climate research, it has to be worth knowing that there are potential conflicts of interest among major players who are involved in this sort of research.

Gill


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## kafkaian (9 Mar 2007)

Gill":dxf0wfvd said:


> worth knowing that there are potential conflicts of interest among major players who are involved in this sort of research.....



Agreed. And any research ranging from tobacco to pharmaceutical drugs to genetically modified foodstuffs


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## engineer one (9 Mar 2007)

this issue will always be political, and therein lies the rub, whatever we do or say, the politicos will always find a way to increase their impact on our world, and probably tax us on it too.

i will say it again, we the "developed" human society waste too many resources, and that is the fault of globalisation and mass production. almost every body on the site has been affected by the movement of production to china, and white collar jobs to india. these are accountant lead decisions, and cost untold jobs in the uk, because accountants are able to fiddle the figures to make them tell any story.

most of us here have excel or lotus 123 as a programme lying around, and if you have done a business proposal, then you know how just changing one variable can make an unbelievable difference to the way in which a bank recieves your numbers. one comment stood out last night,
to get funding for squirrel research i have to add the global warming rubric.

the last twelve months have taught us all that reducing the amount of power we use actually does save us money, but how many have done it because of a concern about global warming, and how many because their gas and electricity bills went up by up to 50%???

but how many then waste that money and those resources by throwing away the tv and getting a new one, even though it still works, or the ps2, or etc etc? and now we have our local government telling us to recycle and save energy, then leaving the lights on in all their buildings. 
but they can fine us for putting the wrong piece of paper in the re-cycling bag.

i am sure that many of those promoting global warming really do believe 
it, but why do they need to discourage the contrary view so voilently??

it is well known that much of the evidence originally presented by green peace was "modified" after the author had resigned, and i thought it quite interesting that after the IPCC report was published recently many of the so called signatories stated that they had not actually agreed to being on the list, although the UN stated because they had been members they would be there. the un arms like unesco are political and will always work to their own agenda. but that does not make them right all the time.

i say again, if carbon is only 0.54% of the earth's atmosphere and about 70% is produced by the oceans, then what overall impact will the doubling of human output have on it.Is there actually any experimental data to show the impact???

the most important part of this programme is that we at least are talking and taking a more considered view, maybe then we can stop idiots behaving like bono, or his charity spending 52 millions to raise 9 :roll: 

paul :wink:


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## engineer one (10 Mar 2007)

I do worry that today the EU agreed to a green programme.

so far they are not on their target to meet kyoto, how in the hell are they going to meet the 20% by 2020???

and guess who will pay for it, and pay extra taxes too?????? :roll: 

paul :wink:

ModEdit Newbie_Neil


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## engineer one (10 Mar 2007)

interesting thought got my latest issue of pc pro magazine called may 2007.
on the rear page, a jon honeyball moans about computer modelling.
in particular he mentions the recent model about the epxansion of stansted airport.

his point is that you can make a computer model do what you want, you just change the parameters that you include,in this case the type and sort of customers, how they arrive, and how long each takes to go through security and what happens when the trains are late or whatever???

i just wonder how much computer modelling of the atmosphere has also been somewhat "massaged" to meet the end requirements??? :twisted: 

i note that no one has yet come back to prove my thing about the amount of c02 in the atmosphere wrong???

we should save our resources, i agree, indeed i like the old patek phillipe ad where they say you do not own the watch rather you keep it for the next generations. we should think of all our resources in the same way, but not just to reduce carbon.

paul :wink:


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## Nick W (10 Mar 2007)

engineer one":gsr428lb said:


> i note that no one has yet come back to prove my thing about the amount of c02 in the atmosphere wrong???



Unfortunately no one can *prove* that your 'thing' is wrong. However you are assuming that a small change in CO2 can only have a small change in the average temperature of the planet. It may be that the planet's temperature is extremely sensitive to CO2 content. As you're an engineer I'm surprised that you have never come across unstable systems or even positive feedback systems - at least in theory if not in practice.


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2007)

Nick W":35k9ri61 said:


> engineer one":35k9ri61 said:
> 
> 
> > i note that no one has yet come back to prove my thing about the amount of c02 in the atmosphere wrong???
> ...


What's more if Paul really has a new angle on the problem then he is duty bound to present it to the the AGW lobby as soon as poss. There is a huge international majority consensus of informed scientific opinion and research in favour of the AGW hypothesis - either they are all wrong, or Paul is. He could save them a lot of bother. :lol: 

cheers
Jacob


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## Gill (10 Mar 2007)

The problem though, is that there doesn't seem to be a consensus. We're _told _there is a consensus, but there's an awful lot of well qualified dissenters too, as was apparent in that programme. It also showed that many scientists who argue the case for global warming being generated by human CO2 production have vested interests.

Gill


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2007)

Gill":14uc9thi said:


> The problem though, is that there doesn't seem to be a consensus. We're _told _there is a consensus, but there's an awful lot of well qualified dissenters too, as was apparent in that programme.


Well not that many in fact. It's a media thing - in the interests of balance they regularly wheel out the deniers - but usually from a small group of the same people. Lindzgen is best known in the states but he is heavily funded by oil interests and is conspicuously eccentric. Bellamy is not even a climatologist - it's not his subject.


> It also showed that many scientists who argue the case for global warming being generated by human CO2 production have vested interests.
> 
> Gill


I think that is total nonsense - do you really believe that there is a massive conspiracy of weather experts just desperate to hang on to their jobs by forecasting doomsday? Ridiculous. 
There is however a massive vested interest on the side of the oil producers who are the principle orchestraters of GW denial. Even Bush is having doubts about them. You don't have to be very bright to spot it!
I've been following the debate for quite some time and it is true that the scientists are continually getting it wrong - their estimates of temp rise and time scale are regularly being adjusted higher and nearer - it's happening faster and sooner than expected.

cheers
Jacob


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## engineer one (10 Mar 2007)

gee jacob, you are right, but does kind of prove the point that nick makes.
how do we know what would happen if co2 replaced another gas.

but since i remember school experiments where people blew things up, i wonder why there have been very few verifiable experiments to see what happen in laboratory conditions when you change the atmospheric make up.

like most reasonable people all i want is a reasoned q and a which gives us the chance to make a real impact on our world, and the mutual raising of all nations out of poverty. but the global warming people must provide proper evidence and not complain when their theories are questioned.

as one of the many on this forum who are the actual post war generation, i remember many climatic changes which were supposed to be cataclysmic, and yet we are still here.

smog was the great killer in the 50's, and that used to block out the sun, so we had the clean air act. did anyone ever check what impact it really had?? :twisted: 
in the late 60's and early 70's we saw the threat of global cooling, whatever happened to that????? :twisted: 

much is kind of like the cigarette cancer scare. the baccy companies knew for years that cancer was produced, but chose to hide it. however we now have more people dying of cancer after all this work. why well in the days of cigarettes without filters, the tobacco was not covered in fertilisers etc.
i have always wondered how anyone can think it good for you to burn the residues of a dead plant that was covered in fertiliser, and then draw that smoke through a plastic filter. have you ever burnt a filter, boy that is scary. :roll: 

what about the old saccharin scare. for years it was banned and then later someone checked back on the research and discovered that the dosages had been enough to kill elephants not just rats. :roll: 
seems to me that whilst we must cut waste, we must also approach this with a reasoned and even jaundiced eye. we know for sure that the politicians are out to con us, and the uni guys need funding so what about fair funding either way.

paul who loves the wind up :wink:


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## Paul Chapman (10 Mar 2007)

engineer one":13ih8j4h said:


> smog was the great killer in the 50's, and that used to block out the sun, so we had the clean air act. did anyone ever check what impact it really had?? :twisted:



Has anyone else noticed that when we had filthy air hardly anyone suffered from hayfever. Ever since the clean air act everyone seems to have it :shock: Is there a link :?: I think we need to be told :shock: :lol: 

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2007)

engineer one":3eg4vwjc said:


> snip
> why there have been very few verifiable experiments to see what happen in laboratory conditions when you change the atmospheric make up.


The experiments were done in the 19C showing the greenhouse effect of certain gasses. It's all there on the net if you search


> snip
> in the late 60's and early 70's we saw the threat of global cooling, whatever happened to that?????


Actually global cooling and a new ice age was presumed to be the countervailing factor which might prevent global warming. Unfortunately it wasn't to be.


> snip
> i have always wondered how anyone can think it good for you to burn the residues of a dead plant that was covered in fertiliser, and then draw that smoke through a plastic filter. have you ever burnt a filter, boy that is scary. :roll:


So organic tobacco in unfiltered cigarettes is harmless! That's amazing, how come the fag companies didn't know this - you could make a fortune Paul :lol:

cheers
Jacob


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## MrJay (10 Mar 2007)

paul":exlivxqi said:


> Has anyone else noticed that when we had filthy air hardly anyone suffered from hayfever. Ever since the clean air act everyone seems to have it. Is there a link? I think we need to be told


Are you suggesting a global pollen conspiracy, or did you mean asthma?


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## Nick W (10 Mar 2007)

engineer one":r1ih4n1q said:


> gee jacob, you are right, but does kind of prove the point that nick makes.



Don't misunderstand me please. The only point I was making was that your assumption that small input = small output does not necessarily hold. I was not making a statement of support of either side of this discussion.


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2007)

Paul Chapman":2hb3y4m2 said:


> engineer one":2hb3y4m2 said:
> 
> 
> > smog was the great killer in the 50's, and that used to block out the sun, so we had the clean air act. did anyone ever check what impact it really had?? :twisted:
> ...


What I've noticed is that since the Clean Air Act my hair has been thinning and now I'm nearly bald! 
A great international conspiracy of trichologists. 8)
Bring back the smog I say. I wonder if my curls would grow back?

cheers
Jacob


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## Paul Chapman (10 Mar 2007)

MrJay":2wx6frgo said:


> paul":2wx6frgo said:
> 
> 
> > Has anyone else noticed that when we had filthy air hardly anyone suffered from hayfever. Ever since the clean air act everyone seems to have it. Is there a link? I think we need to be told
> ...



I wasn't suggesting anything in particular, just stating my observations. I was born in 1945 so I grew up in the days of filthy air. Up until the 1960s, when the clean air act was introduced, my observations were that only a handful of the people I knew suffered from hayfever. However, since then I have observed that an ever-increasing number of people suffer from it. I've often wondered if there was a link - something simple like everything being smothered in a layer of soot (as it was in the old days) which possibly kept the pollen down. 

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## engineer one (10 Mar 2007)

no jacob i am not saying that organic cigs are pure only that there was a cancer scare, they changed the design and cancer did not change in fact it increased.. :? 

as for your comments about the scientists.
1/ i am always interested that people say " he is eccentric and sponsored by the oil companies so his view can be ignored" surely the oil companies have an interest in staying in business and most people think that eventually the oil as we know it will run out. then what do they do??
so it is a little silly to say because someone is supported by an oil company their view is less acceptable than that of someone who is supported by a battery company for instance.
2/ according to Isaac Newton, all matter is within the earth, and if the carbon that cows produce is actually already in their food, then how is the corollary that cars produce "extra" carbon, since the product comes from a previous carbon input :roll: 
3/galileo stated the earth was round and nearly got killed by the catholic church, however the chinese astronomers and astrologers had been using the roundness of the earth for centuries before it became an accepted fact in the west. so what was galileo ???

4/ einstein is generally accepted as the outstanding scientist of the 20th century, but for years his work was demeaned and called false and untrue.
later the "great and good" said that setting off atom bombs would 
de-stabilise the earth but that hasn't happened either.

5/go back 170 years and at a parliamentary committee George Stephenson was told that railways could not work because above 25 miles per hour, the human could not breath .
wonder what happened to that theory???? not least since i have ridden a motor bike at over 175 mph and not died because of lack of oxygen

6/ about david bellamy, i agree he is not a climatologist, but as a botanist his view point is as valid since he studies the evolution of plants flora and fauna. since he has questioned the actual impact of so called warming, he has got less and less media work. "why are opposing views not allowed"

7/ as for internet, i asked my doctor about a treatment he was suggesting for my heart, and said that i had seen it on the web. his answer was "be careful" the research is so fast moved that often the information there is out of date and designed to scare, not to inform and promote.
sure something is happening, but global warming who can be sure???

without doubt we will all have diverse views, but until the so called science makes sense i will question being forced to accept unproved theories.

maybe i am wacky, but in the old days we were called eccentrics and respected, because we questioned things, these days we have to be politically correct and not question what we are drip fed by people with their own agendas. :twisted: 

paul :wink:


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## MrJay (10 Mar 2007)

1. Sure, the scientific arguments should be considered on their own merits. Being funded by private industry or government body or university doesn't necessarily produce bad science. Funding is a fact of life; and if you want to earn a living as a research scientist a rather happy one.

2. We can agree that the quantity of elements is fixed, however their location is not. Crucially for the argument supporting man made climate change is the quantity of carbon actively in the carbon cycle. Cows, oceans and plants do not produce carbon, they process it - carbon goes in, carbon comes out. Fossil fuels contain carbon not currently in the carbon cycle - the process of fossilisation takes carbon out of the carbon cycle and stores it in the earth's geology. Burning fossil fuels releases that carbon back into the carbon cycle. We burn fossil fuels at a faster rate than fossilisation takes the carbon out of the carbon system, so the net quantity of carbon actively in the carbon cycle increases.

3. Galileo was a banana.

4. Association fallacy.

5. Association fallacy.

6. David Bellamy's arguments about climate change have been flat out demonstrably pants. But I take your point, Bjorn Lomborg's book was god awful, but the point he was trying to make was interesting and his detractors were wrong to lambast him so.

7. How can we ever know anything? Normally how it works is we amass an ever growing body evidence and test it to see if the wheels fall off. Which brings us to the point about proof. Proof is a mathematical concept, not a scientific one. There is no proof that gravity works, only a substantial body of supporting evidence.


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## engineer one (10 Mar 2007)

so we are moving together in some ways

i think however it is not good practice to look at the past and think 
this was an accepted fact, and now we know it not to be true. should we consider other so called evidence in such a way??

but another point to the melting point.

hydrogen power is promoted as one of the "cure-alls", but consider this.
in most cases, the hydrogen is produced from water, and technically, the end product is extra oxygen. but of more interest is the fact that many would say that the next great war will be fought over water or the lack of it. but how do we replace water when we are expending it to produce hydrogen for motive power???? :roll: 

there are no simple answers, only simple questions :twisted: :roll: 


paul :wink:


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## Nick W (10 Mar 2007)

engineer one":1b4xaacb said:


> hydrogen power is promoted as one of the "cure-alls", but consider this.
> in most cases, the hydrogen is produced from water, and technically, the end product is extra oxygen. but of more interest is the fact that many would say that the next great war will be fought over water or the lack of it. but how do we replace water when we are expending it to produce hydrogen for motive power????



And as soon as you burn the hydrogen (to produce motive power), it combines with oxygen to produce ....... water - oh my god, now that's a surprise, *not*.

The energy that you get out of this burning process is 'supplied' at the time that water is separated into Hydrogen and Oxygen via electrolysis. If you do this using electricity supplied by fossil fuel burning power stations then the end effect is the same - you can choose to burn the fossil fuel in a power station or in your car but you still pump carbon from a 'locked up' geological source into the air. Hydrogen is just an energy dense substance that you can (with the necessary precautions) carry around, like petrol and diesel.

The real benefits only come if the hydrogen is produced by some non fossil fuel method, be that wind power, tidal power, atomic power, or collecting and burning cow fart.

At the risk of getting personal, if you don't already know and understand this, how can you justify calling yourself Engineer? You're giving real Engineers (those with at least a first degree in the subject) a bad name.

Oh, and there are _some _simple answers, you just don't seem to know them.


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2007)

Good site here; http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/landing.asp?id=1278

There are simple answers - it's a single issue problem: fossil fuel, the answer: stop using it.

cheers
Jacob


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## andycktm (10 Mar 2007)

Nick, there was once a progam on ch4 called equinox i believe .Anyway it showed you a man who found a way to extract hydrogen from water for pennys and the bloke got death threats :shock: Also another person created a machine that gave out more energy than you put in :shock: something like 110 % efficient.I don't know it's it's poss or was true.One thing i am sure of though is until the need for greed or competition to be excessively whealthy is gone things won't get any better.
Europe is going green :roll: yet funding China to polute the world :evil:


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2007)

andycktm":6c0zssco said:


> Nick, there was once a progam on ch4 called equinox i believe .Anyway it showed you a man who found a way to extract hydrogen from water for pennys and the bloke got death threats :shock: Also another person created a machine that gave out more energy than you put in :shock: something like 110 % efficient.I don't know it's it's poss or was true.


Don't worry - not poss, not true.


> One thing i am sure of though is until the need for greed or competition to be excessively whealthy is gone things won't get any better.
> Europe is going green :roll: yet funding China to polute the world :evil:


Chinese have a long way to catch up before their pollution reaches European/American levels. American "carbon footprint" is 20 times higher per person than Chinese.


cheers
Jacob


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## Nick W (10 Mar 2007)

andycktm":2xnb6cfp said:


> ... extract hydrogen from water for pennys ...


If you can generate electricity for pennies then you can extract hydrogen from water for the same amount. It's called the Electrolysis of Water


andycktm":2xnb6cfp said:


> ... the bloke got death threats...


Then we should all be shaking in our boots. We've all done it; it's part of the year 6/7 Science Curriculum. 


andycktm":2xnb6cfp said:


> ... another person created a machine that gave out more energy than you put in


That's Perpetual Motion. Can't be done. Responses that include the phrase 'That's what they used to say about...' will be treated with the scorn they deserve.


andycktm":2xnb6cfp said:


> ... until the need for greed or competition to be excessively whealthy is gone things won't get any better...


Hear, hear. But also not until the promulgation of factually incorrect material is made, somehow, impossible. And let's be clear here; I mean factually incorrect; everyone is entitled to their opinions and beliefs where they do not contradict fact.



andycktm":2xnb6cfp said:


> ... Europe is going green :roll: yet funding China to polute the world ...


 Yup, we're all going to hell in a handcart.


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## andycktm (10 Mar 2007)

Mr-grimsdale
Which the hydrogen or 110 % 


The usa is not bragging about it though
China 1X coal fired powerstation a day

ps I'm not worried about it(bit of a strange comment!)


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## Anonymous (10 Mar 2007)

andycktm":3lmw2yo9 said:


> Mr-grimsdale
> Which the hydrogen or 110 %


Both


> The usa is not bragging about it though
> China 1X coal fired powerstation a day


Whaddya mean? :shock: :shock: They certainly do brag about it (the american way of life etc etc) and also are extremely reluctant to do anything about it - although that's changing latterly as the evidence piles up.


> ps I'm not worried about it(bit of a strange comment!)


OK so you're not worried I accept that, I thought it was supposed to be a scary story. :lol:

cheers
Jacob


----------



## andycktm (10 Mar 2007)

They've (yanks) just got a better economy than us and the average family is well off,were as over here the average family is poor(in comparison) :evil: .
But the usa is getting the message so maybe......... but China is just starting.


----------



## Sailor (10 Mar 2007)

Evening,

As the BBC reported, (I think it was last weekend,) the expectation that China's emissions wouldn't equal or overtake those of the USA until 2015, have now had to be revised. They now expect China to overtake the USA's total emissions by the end of 2008!

I think that the majority of people agree though, we cannot just go on consuming resources as if there were no tomorrow - or there might not be one. But, I also feel,being cynical that quite a few politicians see it as a God-given opportunity to raise extra taxes.
In fact, it's already started, we have had solar panels and a 'green roof' installed and like a fool, I consulted the Local Council prior to installation. They now say it will mean that our house will move up at least one Tax Band when the appraisals are next done.

Colin


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## engineer one (10 Mar 2007)

nick no offence, i just picked a name which showed i was not a "proper woodworker".

the relevance is that learning changes everyday, and much of the information readily available is vague and unclear. that you have a degree i commend you on, i don't but then i don't think a degree ensures that you either know everything, or can't question.

in fact there are a number of so called hydrogen process which don't actually produce water as a waste product, and most of these are supposed to be more efficient in their output, even if not so in their production of waste products. so hence the question.

everyone seems to be concentrating on producing hydrogen fuel cells, but if they are as efficient as present fuel cells, then will they be worth the effort, expense and aggro.?

paul :wink:


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## engineer one (10 Mar 2007)

ok so final thought for the night.

why are we only concerned with global warming and carbon dioxide as the problem??

what about the sulphur production, the volatile by products of combustion,
nitrogen dioxide and other such things.

i learnt engineering in the bad old days when we thought the car was going to save the world, and internal combustion engines were the better replacement for steam engines, none of which are particularly efficient
but so far no one seems to have made much in the way of improvements in the efficiency of anything. experiments in battery power and hydrogen production do not seem to have kept up with the increases in car engine efficiency.

my 2p :twisted: 

g'night all back to learning about engineering :lol: 

paul :wink:


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## Anonymous (11 Mar 2007)

Sailor":12vknm3t said:


> Evening,
> 
> As the BBC reported, (I think it was last weekend,) the expectation that China's emissions wouldn't equal or overtake those of the USA until 2015, have now had to be revised. They now expect China to overtake the USA's total emissions by the end of 2008!


Except that population of China is slightly more than 4 times that of USA so they have a long way to go before they reach parity per capita - and can then be accused of being as bad as the USA, or Western Europe which is almost as bad in terms of excess consumption. We are the bad guys.

cheers
Jacob


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## mrs. sliver (11 Mar 2007)

I have to be honest and say right off that I did not see the program. but I think there are always going to be people passionately debating their opposing views on such important issues. and rightly so, but on this one? 
no doubt we are not helping slow global warming with our high emissions,
though I doubt is is ALL down to us.
But either way, should we be using up all the earth's resources anyway? should we be polluting the air we breathe? regardless of the 'the end is neigh' brigade? I WILL continue to recycle all I can and do my minute bit, not because of what 'they' tell me, but because it makes sense! PLUS, if it makes world powers cut down pollution and resource wasting why complain?


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## Nick W (11 Mar 2007)

engineer one":sesim56c said:


> ...in fact there are a number of so called hydrogen process which don't actually produce water as a waste product...



Please give an example.


----------



## Slim (11 Mar 2007)

mrs. sliver":1bcb4h0o said:


> PLUS, if it makes world powers cut down pollution and resource wasting why complain?


Because the world powers are forcing other undeveloped countrys to cut down aswell, with a side effect of preventing them from developing.


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## MrJay (11 Mar 2007)

Indeed, as can be currently witnessed in the way the "world powers" are forcing developing countries like China and India to cut down on power consumption.

Oh wait.

I'm sure you'll recall the cute little health centre in the swindle programme that could either run a fridge or a light bulb off the single solar panel and how it was all the fault of do-gooders. But I'm guessing there wasn't a gang of hippies lurking around the corner ready to accost the health centre worker if he wanted to nip down the shops and buy a petrol generator, or a gas powered fridge, or install a mains ring.

Solar power is common in remoter parts of Africa because it is portable; there are vast tracts of the continent that simply do not have the infrastructure and resources to supply power or fuel generated centrally. Substantially changing that situation is a generation away at the very best.

Solar power meant the health centre got to use a fridge. That's a win.

Modedit: Newbie_Neil


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## Newbie_Neil (11 Mar 2007)

Gentlemen and Ladies

I'll ask again, _*please*_ keep politics out of this thread. If you don't, as a minimum your post will be edited.

This is an interesting discussion that deserves better.

Thanks
Neil


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## engineer one (11 Mar 2007)

well i have spent at least some of the day looking at what is posted on the web in relation to the by products of hydrogen combustion.

interesting, and although BMW and maybe Ford are aiming to have a hydrogen powered car on the market within 2 years, and i know that Honda have a fuel cell car they are positioning for the market place, there do seem many problems still to be solved, not least the ability of hydrogen powered units to be easily and cheaply made on a mass production basis.

much of the data on the web seems to be at least 4 years out of date, so either people are not posting for secrecy reasons, or funding for large scale research is difficult to find. that i think is particularly so.

however one major problem seems to be that in open combustion, the units produce NOx which is a nasty, and requires the expenditure of considerable sums to clean up. catalytic converters etc are required
and there so far seem to be no plans to retain the water by product for either re-use, or to stop waste. no where could i find accurate data that suggests that the water produced is "potable" ie drinkable.

although the research seems to suggest that the hydrogen engine is more efficient than a petrol or diesel one, the whole driving process is different and the range of the hydrogen unit seems to be as small at this time as that of a battery car.

BMW will i understand put the engine into a 7 series vehicle, but that means that it will not in the short term become a mass item, and you do wonder how many garages are going to be available to re-charge the tanks. or do you just go down to BOC for a fill up, if so what are the tax implications :twisted: 

nowhere so far have i found any actual figures showing how efficient producing hydrogen from water, using it and then taking the water by product is. 

and as you nick have said the initial process seems very expensive to produce enough product to work and replace gasoline in the immediate future. i also wonder how much expensive extra materials are needed to be used in the production engines to take advantage?

as an old fashioned engineer who learnt much about aerodynamics, and
car dynamics from practical experience, i do not mind being told i am ignorant. it is too easy to believe the computer models, and not to take account of practicality.

final thought for the day, the major problem wherever for solar and even wind power is the storage of the electricity produced, that is why the unit in the clinic is so useless. it may well be able to produce enough power to run the fridge and light bulb, but not if the power input cannot be stored and then re-processed. if solar power is so good, why are so many africans using the trevor bayliss wind up gadgets?

i am happy to have learnt more about areas of which i am ignorant or have less knowledge than i hoped. however the diversity of opinion shows that there is no one way to cure this perceived problem.

still say that denying the naysayers does the promoters of global warming any favours cause the costs of developing the new technologies will be so high, they will marginalise people, and probably cause more strife than we already have.

paul :wink:


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## Slim (11 Mar 2007)

Just come across this website about the program. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414. Its a long read, but there are some interesting points.

Edit: Comment #108 is very interesting


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## Nick W (11 Mar 2007)

engineer one":1xk7sgkp said:


> ... and as you nick have said the initial process seems very expensive ...



Errm, don't think I did.

With in-car hydrogen production there is no open combustion, even if it is used with an i.c. engine, so no NOx. Neither do fuel cells produce anything except pure water. That seems to be the way things will progress. The great advantage with in-car Hydgrogen generation is that you don't need to compress, store, or distribute pure Hydrogen, so there is never much of it around to be a fire hazard.

Anyway I'm out - getting a bit peeved with being misrepresented, like Prof. Wunsch in a very small way.


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## andycktm (11 Mar 2007)

Just before you go nick...Is it possible today to extract hydrogen from water cheaply enough and in enough quantity to be viable as fuel?.The progamme equinox i saw was year's ago, and then it couldn't be done!That's of course if the person who was doing it then was faking it.

on a side note people do get killed for pushing things to far :shock: .


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## Nick W (11 Mar 2007)

Andy,

Try these links - and the links that they contain - should be enough of a starting point for anyone's research. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuel_cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fuelled_car


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## Gill (12 Mar 2007)

I've visited quite a range of websites this weekend and even watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", but I haven't been able to find data which proves that global warming is due to CO2 production as opposed to more CO2 being naturally produced as a consequence of global warming. Can anyone tell me where to look?

Gill


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":1a5ee5i7 said:


> I've visited quite a range of websites this weekend and even watched Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", but I haven't been able to find data which proves that global warming is due to CO2 production as opposed to more CO2 being naturally produced as a consequence of global warming. Can anyone tell me where to look?
> 
> Gill


There isn't any "direct" proof, it's about correlation and hypothesis. 
What _is_ known is that CO2 and other gasses do create the greenhouse effect in experiments, that CO2 in the atmosphere has increased roughly in proportion to it's generation by our burning of fossil fuels, that global temperatures have increased roughly in proportion to the CO2 increase (the famous "hockey stick" graph) and that climate change appears to be happening.
The climate change hypothesis is an attempt to explain and relate these phenomena.
What we should take note of is that the theory is supported by a very large majority of the scientific community. 
There is no evidence of an international scientific conspiracy to save jobs and raise research money! That is perhaps the most hilariously silly idea to have come out of the whole debate.

cheers
Jacob


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## Gill (12 Mar 2007)

To my eyes, it appears that despite a lot of effort having been put into global warming research, cause and effect has not yet been established with regard to CO2 production and the earth's temperature. Yet we are being told that we need to reduce CO2 emissions to curtail the effects of global warming. I find this strange.

Gill


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":3mocg2os said:


> To my eyes, it appears that despite a lot of effort having been put into global warming research, cause and effect has not yet been established with regard to CO2 production and the earth's temperature. Yet we are being told that we need to reduce CO2 emissions to curtail the effects of global warming. I find this strange.
> 
> Gill


You will just have to read more of the research - there's plenty of it out there. You will get the idea eventually. Some good links in previous posts above.
If you don't think there is a correlation you would have to explain how CO2 in the atmosphere DOES NOT cause a greenhouse effect when it DOES in laboratory experiments, and also explain where all the CO2 from fossil fuel burning has gone, if not into the atmosphere, and also come up with a better explanation of why climate change is occurring.

cheers
Jacob


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":vo6ynedl said:


> To my eyes, it appears that despite a lot of effort having been put into global warming research, cause and effect has not yet been established with regard to CO2 production and the earth's temperature. Yet we are being told that we need to reduce CO2 emissions to curtail the effects of global warming. I find this strange.
> 
> Gill


You will just have to read more of the research - there's plenty of it out there. You will get the idea eventually. Some good links in previous posts above.
If you don't think there is a correlation you would have to explain how CO2 in the atmosphere DOES NOT cause a greenhouse effect when it DOES in laboratory experiments, and also explain where all the CO2 from fossil fuel burning has gone, if not into the atmosphere, and also come up with a better explanation of why climate change is occurring.

cheers
Jacob
PS and while you are at it - come up with some better ideas about how to prevent worsening climate change.


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## Gill (12 Mar 2007)

Those links do not provide convincing data.

I'm open minded about this. Global warming is a fact - I just want reassurance that the actions being taken to deal with it will be effective. There's no point throwing vast resources into curtailing CO2 production if CO2 isn't responsible for global warming. If CO2 can be shown to be causing global warming, then I'll be very supportive of measures to curtail it. However, I have yet to see proof that CO2 is responsible. I see a lot of reports about the consensus of opinion and scientific models, but those simply do not establish the proof that I'm looking for.

Gill


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":ymlzqyfo said:


> Those links do not provide convincing data.
> 
> I'm open minded about this. Global warming is a fact - I just want reassurance that the actions being taken to deal with it will be effective. There's no point throwing vast resources into curtailing CO2 production if CO2 isn't responsible for global warming. If CO2 can be shown to be causing global warming, then I'll be very supportive of measures to curtail it. However, I have yet to see proof that CO2 is responsible. I see a lot of reports about the consensus of opinion and scientific models, but those simply do not establish the proof that I'm looking for.
> 
> Gill


What sort of proof would you want?

cheers
Jacob


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## engineer one (12 Mar 2007)

well, jacob as usual, you make pedantic statements, and then 
conclude with the phrase that it is actually a hypothosis, well strike me down with a feather, that is not what we are being told by allegedly "the good and the great" we are told that categorically it is true.

laboratory tests are no more real than computer models, they can be biased to produce the results you want. we have all seen the claims of fresh air machines that work in a laboratory, but not in public view, and not in mass production. 

50-60 years ago Dr Mengele was hunted throughout the world as a man who had undertaken awful experiments that were so against us that it was the first defined crime against humanity. today we have cloned sheep, and companies wishing to put human genes into our food to stop one thing,
but no research to show what else will happen. i remind us all of Thalidomide. scientists have no scruples once they get a bee in their bonnet, and they never consider the contrary side because it does not fit within their ideas of the progress they want to make. look at the recent "elephant man" tests at northwick park hospital. 6 guys nearly killed for a drug that was successfully tested on animals. and when you check the reports the test in volved feeding them the stuff more quickly than with the animals :roll: 

every week foodstuffs that were safe, become unsafe, and then a couple of years later they are safe again. it happened to saccharin in the 70's
tea and coffee in the 80's. like all things you have to include ALL the variables, and not have an aim in mind that you wish to prove.

your contention about research funding not being related to the popularity of the subject shows how little you understand the process of getting either university or publically funded research grants. 

final point to really consider. a massive amount of evidence now exists that around 1420-25 the chinese circumnavigated the world in a number of big fleets. amongst the KNOWN facts is the one that shows that then it was possible to go to the north of Greenland toward the end of the year, and using a sailing boat, get within 200 miles of so of the north pole. proper evidence exists to show that there were green fields in greenland at that time. forensic science has shown the development of various generations of flys which can only live in certain temperatures.

now no one can say that 1420 was a period when we were using hydro carbon fuels in mass producing co2. so what was the cause??????

without doubt we are a wasteful society, but cutting back on air travel, or car rides may well only be p*****g in the wind compared to other things we need to do. without a car, it takes me 3-4 hours to get to a hospital less than 10 miles away. with the car about 1-1.5 hours and those times include sitting in the hospital. the same goes for shopping. with all the out of town stores built if you do not have decent transport links and the ability to carry things then you are stuffed.

i am sure that in some of my comments i am as wrong as anyone, but i do not try to force my views down the hearts and minds of everyone by forceably promoting scare stories, i want cold hard real world facts.
lab tests frankly don't cut it. [-X 

paul :wink:


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## Gill (12 Mar 2007)

Mr_Grimsdale":2gtxxllo said:


> What sort of proof would you want?
> 
> cheers
> Jacob


I'd like to see a long term set of data that shows a correlation between CO2 levels and changes in global temperature. I'd like to see evidence that CO2 production leads temperature variation.

Gill


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

engineer one":38884l7m said:


> well, jacob as usual, you make pedantic statements, and then
> conclude with the phrase that it is actually a hypothosis, well strike me down with a feather, that is not what we are being told by allegedly "the good and the great" we are told that categorically it is true.


There is no categorical or absolute truth in science - it's all theory and hypothesis confirmed or otherwise by experimental or other data. You only get absolute truth in religion (until you see another light!).


> snip i want cold hard real world facts.


What for you would constitute "cold hard real world facts" apropos climate change hypotheses? There seems to be a vast amount of cold (warming!) hard facts on this subject, which bits are missing? What would convince you?

cheers
Jacob


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":3gbjh9kv said:


> Mr_Grimsdale":3gbjh9kv said:
> 
> 
> > What sort of proof would you want?
> ...


Oh that's easy - just read the research it's all there. Thats what the whole issue is about :roll: :roll: Where have you been? :lol:
Start with the hockey stick graph, look at ice core research, and so on and on and on . Many hours of (un)happy reading!

cheers
Jacob :lol:


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## engineer one (12 Mar 2007)

ok jacob but what about "global warming" in the 1420's????

paul :wink:


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## Gill (12 Mar 2007)

Mr Grimsdale

You know what evidence I'm looking for. If it is there, where is it? Don't just say, "It's out there, look harder". I've looked for it and I can't find it although I can find evidence to the contrary. Believe me, I _want _to find the evidence you're describing - it would be so much more comforting if I could find it and accept its credibility.

Gill


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

engineer one":2fectgoo said:


> ok jacob but what about "global warming" in the 1420's????
> 
> paul :wink:


What about it? You weren't there then were you? If not then you don't have any "cold hard real world facts" so it means nothing to you and presumably didn't happen as far as you know.

cheers
Jacob


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":1e84q6bg said:


> Mr Grimsdale
> 
> You know what evidence I'm looking for.


No I don't - I've really no idea, there seems to be evidence in plenty out there. 
You seem to want a much higher standard of proof/evidence than the majority of the scientific community. 
You must think that a bit of evidence is missing. Which bit? If we knew what you wanted we could help you find it!
Er - I've got to go off and do a bit of work so won't be replying to anything for some time! See yer later.:lol:

cheers
Jacob [/quote]


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## engineer one (12 Mar 2007)

no jacob you are wrong since the concept by many scientists is to ignore things which did happen 600 years ago, and state that it has never happened before. :? 

paul :wink:


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## Benchwayze (12 Mar 2007)

Says Ike, who seems to drive a four-wheel 'off-road' vehicle. :lol: 
John


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## Benchwayze (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":1ns7c8mo said:


> Mr_Grimsdale":1ns7c8mo said:
> 
> 
> > What sort of proof would you want?
> ...



That data was presented in the program last week. It showed that temperatures went down, during a period of high, economic 'boom' 1940 - 1970/ish. After the boom slowed, temperatures rose. The opposite of the scenario we are supposed to believe. 
John


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## engineer one (12 Mar 2007)

there is still one massive piece of maths that everyone seems to dismiss.
CO 2 represents about 1/2% of total atmospheric gases. no one has yet shown which gases are displaced by the extra production of CO2, and what the real effect of this is.

remember in the nineties we were all told to replace our fridges because the freon in them was making holes in the ozone layer. well one fridge mountain later has the effect reduced?? don't seem to hear much about it these days :? 

when everybody says i am wrong, but they do so by ignoring my questions then i wonder who is actually right :roll: 

paul :wink:


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## Gill (12 Mar 2007)

Benchwayze":15tar6hf said:


> That data was presented in the program last week... The opposite of the scenario we are supposed to believe.
> John


That's very much what I'm driving at, John. If this data is erroneous or controversial, I'd expect a corrected version to be published somewhere. The absence of a rebuttal is significant in itself.

Paul - The BBC certainly reported last year that the hole had stopped widening and scientists are predicting that it will be 'cured' within sixty years. However, this information might now be out of date - I seem to recall hearing somewhere that the hole in the ozone layer is no longer there but I can't remember where I heard it.

As for which gases have been displaced... I might be happy to consider that _after _we've settled what impact CO2 is having :lol: !

Gill


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

engineer one":3hicnmay said:


> laboratory tests are no more real than computer models, they can be biased to produce the results you want.



I have refrained from contributing here because of ridiculous statements like this. Ill informed cynicism is not the same as being open minded

Maybe we should simply guess.
Forget investigation/experimentation/modelling (i.e good science) etc., it is no matter than such approaches exposed quantum mechanics to us and a developing understanding of the universe itself. 

The global weather system is extremely complex and the best models are flawed (all models are compromises - ask any scientist), but they are all we have to help us make an _informed_ decision.

The only people who can really understand and act on this problem are the scientists and climatologists who work on it day-in, day-out.


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## Canadian Scroller (12 Mar 2007)

I recall a cartoon many years ago with a man who had a new invention and was trying to market it.

"Well Mr Fahrenheit, I am sure people will know if it is cold enough to put some more coal on the fire or if they are warm enough to remove their sweater!"

I have read though much of the debate on this thread. There is as much sound information as there is unfounded.

The bottom line is we live on a planet full of resources, if we squander our resources and pollute the environment in search of profits then we are hardly a civilization worth saving. If we are an intelligent species we will do what we can to save the planet for future generations of all life.

I believe that over the course of history global warming and cooling trends have always been present. I also believe we are not helping the situation with the way we squander energy and resources. In our efforts to stay warmer in winter and cooler in summer we have extracted a great deal of energy and released it into the atmosphere, It is impossible for that not to affect the environment as a whole.

I am sure that any adult would scream at a child for leaving the window open when the heat is on in the house. Yet we are doing the same with our own planet. It doesnt hurt to conserve and keep things clean.


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## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Gill":1xa9upc0 said:


> Benchwayze":1xa9upc0 said:
> 
> 
> > That data was presented in the program last week... The opposite of the scenario we are supposed to believe.
> ...


Lotta info here - including your graph blip. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperatur ... 1000_years
If you choose to look at just a particular part of the graph you don't get the picture - you need to look at the whole thing and the data too.
There's non so blind etc :roll:

cheers
Jacob


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## Argee (12 Mar 2007)

Since "global warming" or "climate change" became an "issue" back in the early 70s, it appears to have gained disproportionate, even fashionable, support - without the much-needed balance of debate. It seems to have got to a point where it is viewed as disrespectful to challenge it. I don't think there are many topics where opinions are so firmly entrenched, yet - it seems - often without evidence or scientific basis.

Loads of "facts" are trotted out _ad nauseam _- but when carefully examined, bear more resemblance to folklore or old wives' tales. The classic is probably the rise in sea level that will occur when (not, apparently, *if*) the polar ice melts. It occurs to me that there is a finite amount of water on the planet, from which the ice formed in the first place. If melting occurs, then the water will replace (in mass) the melting ice - because if the ice does melt, it will leave a void to be filled. When the ice cube melts in your glass (another finite amount of liquid), the glass does not overflow.

My simplistic view is taken in the total absence of anything more believable, to me, than the opinion of the head of the research centre on the ice cap - bearing in mind that I remember the winter of 1963, the view that another Ice Age was on its way in the early 70s, then the summer of 1976 - all climatic "blips" that we will probably see again.

In a nutshell, as a long-term cynic, my view could be summarised as believing the "climate change" issue to be little more than a stealth tax, driven by promoting fear. Does anyone _really _believe that, for example, increasing flight prices (via taxation) will _*actually *_lessen air traffic, as it is, supposedly, designed to do? 

*Of course *it makes sense to re-cycle, to make the very best use of all finite resources, to clean up after us for future generations, but then *it always has done*. In real terms, this planet has coped with so much already (yet with so minute an evidential impact), that this topic will probably still be running several millenia down the road - without my input, obviously! 

Ray.


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## engineer one (12 Mar 2007)

why is any cynicism ill informed. on certain subjects we all have less knowledge than is ideal, it is the nature of the beast.

the whole value of quantum mechanics seems to me more readily understandable than climate change, since having checked again the various references, the experiments since they are working at an atomic or sub atomic level can be readily undertaken within the lab, and thus have much more value.

i seem to remember much of this work initiated with the expansion of space travel and the discovery that certain things happened in a way in which einsteins' theories and certain other existing theories did not make sense. so the questions were asked, and eventually answered by practical experiments which had a smaller number of potential variables.

therefore to relate this to climatology is rather a stretch i think.

when a guy in an office in west london can make money predicting weather using sun spot activity, and the weather bureaus with all their cray machines seem to get it more wrong than right it does seem prudent to question the various expertises. :roll: 

at this point seems to me that all of us who question the climate change theory are rather like the kid in the hans christian anderson story about the kings new clothes :twisted: :lol: 

and like argee i like to think that my cold drink with ice is a suitable laboratory for the whole theory of water displacement. :roll: :? 

paul :wink: 

i know that i know very little, so am prepared to ask the dumb questions to learn more, but am surprised how many people just accept???


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## Gill (12 Mar 2007)

Mr_Grimsdale":1qzt1gyx said:


> Gill":1qzt1gyx said:
> 
> 
> > Benchwayze":1qzt1gyx said:
> ...


Yet another useless link.

As for your other comment - there's none so rude etc :roll: .

Gill


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## Nick W (12 Mar 2007)

Argee":jq2c5wqg said:


> Loads of "facts" are trotted out _ad nauseam _- but when carefully examined, bear more resemblance to folklore or old wives' tales. The classic is probably the rise in sea level that will occur when (not, apparently, *if*) the polar ice melts. It occurs to me that there is a finite amount of water on the planet, from which the ice formed in the first place. If melting occurs, then the water will replace (in mass) the melting ice - because if the ice does melt, it will leave a void to be filled. When the ice cube melts in your glass (another finite amount of liquid), the glass does not overflow..



The problem with that thought is that the vast majority of the polar ice caps are not floating in/on the sea, but are sitting on the land mass at the poles and thereabouts. If you want to know how much ice that is see here

And, as it appears that I can't stay away, :evil: ](*,) ](*,) 




Engineer one":jq2c5wqg said:


> there is still one massive piece of maths that everyone seems to dismiss.
> CO 2 represents about 1/2% of total atmospheric gases. no one has yet shown which gases are displaced by the extra production of CO2, and what the real effect of this is.


The extra CO2 does not displace anything else, it adds to the toal volume. 

Think of it like this: Your wife thinks you are trying to loose weight, so when she offers you a cuppa you say 'Oh, yes please love, milk and just the six sugars' - all virtuous like. As soon as she leaves the kitchen you ladle in another 12. Now, nothing that was already in the cup has been lost (assuming the cup to be large enough), but the concentration of sugar has gone up to (nearly) three times its original value. The concentration of water, tea leaf extracts and cow extract has fallen in comparison.

Now please do me a favour and ask the mods to change your moniker. I keep having visions of innocent people out there in interweb land saying, 'There's this Engineer on UKW and he says..., and he's an engineer so it must be true'

A lie repeated often enough becomes truth. 
— Lenin


----------



## Anonymous (12 Mar 2007)

Argee":31eey95z said:


> Since "global warming" or "climate change" became an "issue" back in the early 70s, it appears to have gained disproportionate, even fashionable, support - without the much-needed balance of debate. It seems to have got to a point where it is viewed as disrespectful to challenge it. I don't think there are many topics where opinions are so firmly entrenched, yet - it seems - often without evidence or scientific basis.


The debate has been going on for much longer than you think. the idea was first raised in the 19C. It's not "disrespectful" to challenge , it's just stupid - there is a huge mountain of information and detailed thorough research out there.


> Loads of "facts" are trotted out _ad nauseam _- but when carefully examined, bear more resemblance to folklore or old wives' tales. The classic is probably the rise in sea level that will occur when (not, apparently, *if*) the polar ice melts. It occurs to me that there is a finite amount of water on the planet, from which the ice formed in the first place. If melting occurs, then the water will replace (in mass) the melting ice - because if the ice does melt, it will leave a void to be filled. When the ice cube melts in your glass (another finite amount of liquid), the glass does not overflow.


Floating ice does not raise sea levels (or water levels in a glass) when it melts. This is well known. Archimedes spotted it a long time ago. The ice melt problem are the *land* based ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica and other mountain areas. If these melt - as they are doing, *the water runs in to the sea* and sea levels rise by many metres and life as we know it on earth changes radically

cheers
Jacob


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## Argee (12 Mar 2007)

Mr_Grimsdale":2gvh3sss said:


> The debate has been going on for much longer than you think. the idea was first raised in the 19C. It's not "disrespectful" to challenge , it's just stupid - there is a huge mountain of information and detailed thorough research out there.


It may well have been raised in the 19th. Century, but the *current *momentum has it's roots in the early 70s. I must, it seems, apologise for being "stupid."


Mr_Grimsdale":2gvh3sss said:


> Floating ice does not raise sea levels (or water levels in a glass) when it melts.


I was not suggesting that polar ice caps *were *floating, but that there was a *finite amount *of water on the planet. Previous freezing and thawing seems to have taken quite a while, as generations go, yet modern pundits seem to suggest that were now in an headlong spiral. 

The scientists I choose to listen to seem - to me - to be just as eminent as anyone else in their field, but - because they're not those that others agree with - I *must *be wrong. I'll just have to live with the disappointment.

Ray.


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## dedee (12 Mar 2007)

Argee":2b07ylse said:


> Does anyone _really _believe that, for example, increasing flight prices (via taxation) will _*actually *_lessen air traffic, as it is, supposedly, designed to do?
> Ray.



too true.

I cannot even imagine the uproar there would have been had the 1970s politicians told the public how much tax they would be paying on petrol in 2007 and as we all know it has done nothing to halt congestion.

Andy


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## Jake (12 Mar 2007)

Argee":zns897iu said:


> I'll just have to live with the disappointment.



More likely to be the next generation who really has to live with it.


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## Canadian Scroller (13 Mar 2007)

I feel the amount of energy expended on this thread and the ensuing frustration wrought by people drawn together with the common interest of wood working has also contributed to the global warming effect. :wink: 

I am not against exercising ones mind or voicing ones opinions. Both sides can substantiate their own points and negate their opponents.
If we didn't have discussions we could hardly evolve as a civilization.

I also see why it is often said "God created all the creatures on the earth and left the Platypus to a committee."

I am sure glad this is a woodworking forum and not a way to solve world issues :lol:


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## Matt_S (13 Mar 2007)

Now I've missed this thread which is a shame cos I'm rather interested in it. But this may hav been said before but whether or not human intervention has contributed is it really worth the risk of not reducing our CO2? As someone who lives in Kent I'd say no as I fancy staying above water.

PS I can understand why people doubt the "facts" I have studied global warming as part of a degree and I believe totally us to be the biggest contributer, not the only one.


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## Anonymous (13 Mar 2007)

Interesting article in today's grauniad
Letter from Wunsch in comments is very relevant.
BTW we are still waiting for Paul and Gill to tell us which bit of the information jigsaw is missing in their opinion.

cheers
Jacob


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## innesm (13 Mar 2007)

Matt_S":2i7lo4cl said:


> ...whether or not human intervention has contributed is it really worth the risk of not reducing our CO2? As someone who lives in Kent I'd say no as I fancy staying above water.



Imagine you lived in a house which you suspected had dry rot. You could sell your car, TV, computer, take your kids out of school and put them to work in your restaurant, and cancel your health insurance in order to pay for the entire house to have its timber components replaced --- because "is it really worth the risk" that there might be dry rot leading to the house collapsing and killing you all?

The way of deciding if it's worth the risk is to try and quantify the risk and then weigh up the pros and cons of spending lots on reducing that risk - leading to sacrifices in other areas.

Coming back to global warming, you decide how much warming you can deal with for a given cost - since spending the money on mitigating the warming means you cant spend it elsewhere. Also, retarding growth for developing nations will have a massive effect on billions of people, so you need to be sure any global warming response is worth it.

Recently the Stern report attempted to weigh up the costs, but this was derided by some economists for the way it fiddled the figures (however, I Am Not An Economist). What bugs me is that Climate Change has become a 'movement', and lots of adherents pay no attention to reality when it comes to deciding how to actually deal with it.

</rant>


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## Gill (13 Mar 2007)

Mr_Grimsdale":3jqzyjb1 said:


> Interesting article in today's grauniad
> Letter from Wunsch in comments is very relevant.
> BTW we are still waiting for Paul and Gill to tell us which bit of the information jigsaw is missing in their opinion.
> 
> ...


It is an interesting article but it's based on opinion, not data. All I want to see are long term statistics which show that changes in CO2 levels precede corresponding changes in global temperature. This would establish that there _could _be a link between the two. It would still not be conclusive because other (possibly as yet unidentified) factors might be involved. However, it would be a starting point.

I just want to see some good science!

Gill

Modedit: Newbie_Neil


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## Anonymous (13 Mar 2007)

Gill":u04h1pmm said:


> Mr_Grimsdale":u04h1pmm said:
> 
> 
> > Interesting article in today's grauniad
> ...


The whole gist of all the science quoted in all the links referred to in this thread, point to "long term statistics which show that changes in CO2 levels precede corresponding changes in global temperature". 
*That's what it's all about.* 
*It's all there* :roll: . 
*Thats the whole point of the concern amongst climatologists.* 
If you choose not to see it in front of you then no-one can help!

cheers
Jacob


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## engineer one (13 Mar 2007)

like gil, jacob i disagree with your conclusions about this article, it was no less selective than they claim the programme was.
personally the problem with anything the grauniad says is that once a week it pays ALL its bills by carrying adverts for jobs that the national and local governments want to fill to make us all "green"

perhaps of more interest is the article in today's mail which looks at these new lights the eu will demand that we buy. less light, expensive to make of products that we can't dispose of, and if you use them like we do at this time,then no cheaper because constant turning off and on reduces their life.

i amhappy to admit that i may be wrong, but my training was to look at things practically and based upon what i could see in real life, whether it was turning a lump of scrap into a useable piece of metal, or discovering that all the aerodynamics work done in a wind tunnel is fine as a starting point, but can be a complete flop on the race track, if you do not allow for some potential errors in your figures. it happens every year in F1.

actually what intregues me most jacob is you are the guy who says that woodworking stopped being done properly before the first world war, and we should only use the old methods, and indeed you cycle around france,
but you seem to have taken the hook,line and sinker approach to warming
now that is more of a dichotomy than me claiming to be an engineer when i don't have a degree. somehow don't remember Brunel, Robert Stephenson, or Nigel Gresley having degrees in engineering :roll: 

as a student of the railways, those with the most qualifications seem to have made the most expensive mistakes when trying to make things more efficient, and that is verifiable. :? 

paul :wink:


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## Gill (13 Mar 2007)

Not so, Mr Grimsdale!

The data from the Vostok core samples shows that CO2 levels _trail _global temperature by approximately 800 years! That's why I can't find any information to show that they precede global temperature.

In fact, the data up to 1940 indicates that global temperatures should have been rising in the early middle ages. Lo and behold, they did.

The data from Vostok is available here.


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## engineer one (13 Mar 2007)

to show i am not a complete heathen, :lol: 

one of my weekly if not daily gripes is the stupidity of the size of reciepts we get from the supermarket, or the cafe or whatever. no matter whether you get one item or a dozen, the paper produced is stupidly long, and so far no one seems to be able tosay why.

my personal thought is that it is to do with the tax man, and his requirements, but if trees are so important to us, and re-cycling of paper is an activity which is dependant upon world prices why do we waste so much paper to buy one item? :twisted: :twisted: 

there are other things like this that we the individuals can do little about, because they are imposed upon us without any real regard to the impact on us, land fill, and waste of resources. recent reports from the audit office suggest that our leaders still leave the lights on in offices all over the country, and they almost certainly do more damage than we individuals.

paul :wink:


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## innesm (13 Mar 2007)

Gill":2fwh751v said:


> The data from the Vostok core samples shows that CO2 levels _trail _global temperature by approximately 800 years!



As I understand it, the response to that is that there is an interrelationship between CO2 and temperature in that CO2 increases with temperature and temperature causes CO2 to rise. The initial warming was not triggered by CO2, but when warming occurred, CO2 rose and caused further warming. Clearly this feedback loop doesnt keep running indefinitely because otherwise we'd already have a Venusian style climate.
One thing we can perhaps take from this is that the nightmare scenarios of runaway global warming cooked up as an excuse for various Horizon disaster-movie-umentaries are rubbish, since we might have expected such runaway effect to have occurred in the past, and it didnt.


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## WellsWood (13 Mar 2007)

engineer one":14dop9kb said:


> ...no matter whether you get one item or a dozen, the paper produced is stupidly long, and so far no one seems to be able tosay why.



Even more annoying to me is that we are supposedly living in the "paperless society" promised to us 20 odd years ago, and yet I get twice as much paper given to me at the checkout when I pay with plastic than with cash. :? 

Mark


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## Anonymous (13 Mar 2007)

Gill":h637eslh said:


> Not so, Mr Grimsdale!
> 
> The data from the Vostok core samples shows that CO2 levels _trail _global temperature by approximately 800 years! That's why I can't find any information to show that they precede global temperature.
> 
> ...


Aha! Glad to see you are on the case and looking at evidence. 
But it is important to look at the whole picture and not just at selected details - it is complicated with all sorts of positive/negative feedbacks and many blips in the graphs.

cheers
Jacob


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## Gill (13 Mar 2007)

All of which brings me back to the start. This is exasperating! My last post details evidence that CO2 levels are a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. I want to know where to find the stronger evidence that this data is misleading. We are constantly being told that rising CO2 levels will bring about a rise in global temperatures, but the Vostok sample actually indicates the contrary. There must be stronger evidence elsewhere in order for mainstream scientists to maintain their stance against the heretics. If not, the claims made in the programme that CO2 does not bring about global warming are difficult to refute.

How have mainstream scientists come to the conclusion that rising CO2 levels will bring about global warming despite the evidence to the contrary?

Gill


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## Anonymous (13 Mar 2007)

Gill":16n5t96s said:


> All of which brings me back to the start. This is exasperating! My last post details evidence that CO2 levels are a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. I want to know where to find the stronger evidence that this data is misleading. We are constantly being told that rising CO2 levels will bring about a rise in global temperatures, but the Vostok sample actually indicates the contrary. There must be stronger evidence elsewhere in order for mainstream scientists to maintain their stance against the heretics. If not, the claims made in the programme that CO2 does not bring about global warming are difficult to refute.
> 
> How have mainstream scientists come to the conclusion that rising CO2 levels will bring about global warming despite the evidence to the contrary?
> 
> Gill


Please let us know the details when you have found the answer!

cheers
Jacob


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## innesm (13 Mar 2007)

Gill":3u5frlsf said:


> How have mainstream scientists come to the conclusion that rising CO2 levels will bring about global warming despite the evidence to the contrary?
> 
> Gill



Evidence to the contrary might consist of a graph of historical temperatures where CO2 falls as temperature rises, rather than one where CO2 lags temperature. It doesnt seem unconvincing to me that CO2 might contribute to temperature and yet also lag temperature.


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## Nick W (13 Mar 2007)

Gill,

I think you are right that the graph shows CO2 lagging T when both are falling, but it is the other way around (though by a considerably smaller margin) when they are rising.

EDIT: Or it might be that I need new glasses. :lol:


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## Jake (13 Mar 2007)

I don't see the problem with that - no-one is saying that the only reason that there are climate variations is because of greenhouse gas concentrations, or that previous 'hot' cycles were triggered by increases in greenhouse gases (as opposed to them playing a contribution, which could well be in a laggy way). The lag seems short compared to the whole hot cycle in question, so the data is perfectly compatible with greenhouse gases contributing to glbal warming if not triggering it in those previous instances. The fact that it wasn't the trigger isn't surprising given that we live in the first industrial carbon-fuelled society in history.

It seems a bit like measuring the course of your intoxication over an evening, and concluding that wine doesn't get you drunk because you were already tipsy after the beer or G&T or whatever.


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## Anonymous (13 Mar 2007)

Jake":2rl66a0s said:


> I don't see the problem with that - no-one is saying that the only reason that there are climate variations is because of greenhouse gas concentrations, or that previous 'hot' cycles were triggered by increases in greenhouse gases (as opposed to them playing a contribution, which could well be in a laggy way). The lag seems short compared to the whole hot cycle in question, so the data is perfectly compatible with greenhouse gases contributing to glbal warming if not triggering it in those previous instances. The fact that it wasn't the trigger isn't surprising given that we live in the first industrial carbon-fuelled society in history.
> 
> It seems a bit like measuring the course of your intoxication over an evening, and concluding that wine doesn't get you drunk because you were already tipsy after the beer or G&T or whatever.


Exactly. Or think of the heat in a living room: central heating, air conditioning, solar gain, radiation loss, air temp in and out, rate of air exchange, anthropogenic room heating!, heat from appliances, greenhouse effect of gasses and glass, conduction loss and surface effects etc all these working in different ways - and thats just a living room not the whole planet!

cheers
Jacob


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## MrJay (13 Mar 2007)

Just to add to the choir. The idea that the oceans act as a sink for CO2 and release more of their store when they are warmer is nothing new. There aren't hordes of climatologists thinking 'gosh, did you see channel 4 last night, perhaps we were wrong all along'. Of course the the CO2 record lags. That's how positive feedback works. It has no connotations at all what so ever to contradict the theory that increasing the quantity of green house gasses increases temperature. If anything it just makes it worse, which is sort of the point.

And the troposphere thing was simply wrong. The tempreature in the lower atmosphere is increasing as it should. The data is readily available if you care to check.

And the thing with cosmic rays.... To quote David Bellamy, "poppycock." We haven't recently learned that cosmic rays make clouds. It's recently been put forward as a yet to be tested theory and the peer review so far hasn't exactly been favorable. (unlike the workings of green house gases which has survived for 180 years.)

And there was the bit where warming didn't happen during peak industrial periods so there nerr nerr nerr as though other forces affecting the climate (such as sulphur aerosols and solar activity) should suddenly stop so we can have a nice graph to look at. The charge of global warming doom-mongers is that a human activity will force the overall trend in temperature record up, not that other shot term climate forcings will cease to happen.

And apparently Environmentalists are making babies in Africa die, despite the Kyoto agreement specifically excluding developing nations and despite the fact that installing a hit tech hole in the roof, or "chimney" will stop you from dying from smoke inhilation if you decide to light a fire in your house.

And with all these charges, why wasn't an argument for man made climate change represented in the entire show, or why wasn't a 'for' scientist invited to respond to the claims? I think you know why.

Broadly speaking, if you bought into the swindle programme you're as guilty of being played like a fiddle as the next person.


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## engineer one (13 Mar 2007)

this gets more and more interesting. when i started the thread, i was kind of expecting some grown up comments and some real discussion.

what we appear to have is a polarisation. 

those who believe the global warming theory seem to think that they have the right to slag off those who don't agree with them. we who are thinking that it is not ALL correct, and ask for more information get castigated and told we are stupid for not believing, yet the evidence is still thin.

nick has earlier suggested the analogy of adding sugar to the tea or coffee, but what he forgot to mention is that you can go too far. i checked all my chemistry books and am reminded that there is something called 
saturation and super saturation. basically it goes you can mix in various substances into various liquids, but eventually these liquids can take no more, so they have become saturated. to get them to accept more of a substance, you have to agitate continuously, or you need add heat.

now if that is true of tea, why not co2????

oh yes i also checked about steam, saturated, superheated and expansive. same thing applies only by heating things can you get the same substance into a the space. but this is where the 1/2% worry comes in. 

i noticed on the news tonight in the conversations with arnie they talked about greenhouse gases, not just carbon, but no mention of what they all are.

so whether i am so blind that my eyes cannot see, or it really is more complex than is being explained, and we are not the whole picture, is still not clear and the name calling will not change that.

again i say we should all save what we can, but we are not the primary producers of CO2, it is big industry, so we as individuals in the west will have little impact on anything. 

but what this discussion has brought to my mind is that maybe airplanes are doing something, but that is as much to do with the height at which they are operating, as the fact that coming in to land often they spray unused fuel into the atmosphere, and as far as i know or can find, no one has studied that at all. and i would venture that until one government is brave enough to look at the flights of its forces planes we will never know.

however it is difficult to consider that the jets have done this since the 60's when jumbos, and DC10's and Tristars made cheap flights eminently affordable. maybe it is cumulative, but it does seem to stretch the point to think it happens that quickly. :roll: :? 

so having upset even more people i shall go back to finding out more. :twisted: 

paul :wink:


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## Travis Byrne (14 Mar 2007)

About the hole in the sky----Don't worry about it!!!!

Bill Gates is comming out with a patch for it, :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: 

Travis


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## Anonymous (14 Mar 2007)

MrJay":8ot196xg said:


> Just to add to the choir. The idea that the oceans act as a sink for CO2 and release more of their store when they are warmer is nothing new. There aren't hordes of climatologists thinking 'gosh, did you see channel 4 last night, perhaps we were wrong all along'.
> snip


Opposite in fact. There is at least one major contributor to the programme (Wunsch) who is complaining that the prog seriously misrepresented and distorted his views.
You can see his letter here in "comments" after the Monbiot article.

cheers
Jacob


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## MrJay (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":214o3hkq said:


> this gets more and more interesting. when i started the thread, i was kind of expecting some grown up comments and some real discussion.
> 
> what we appear to have is a polarisation.



True enough. On the one hand we have Al Gore with an agenda to make the current White House administration look bad, presenting a one sided view and skimping over the facts and figures and a body of people who want to believe it, on the other hand we have the swindle programme with the opposite political agenda presenting a one sided view, skimping over the facts and figures and with a body of people who want to believe it; believe that those are the REAL facts and ACTUAL causes and probably more importantly that the other side can be called wrong.

The fact remains however that the swindle programme was a sham of strawman arguments, misrepresentation and downright falsehoods; which isn't the best of starts for a grown up debate. What we are left with, as you say, is a polarised debate with two groups caught up in an utterly irrelevant catfight, desperate to prove the other wrong by fair means or foul.


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## Nick W (14 Mar 2007)

Did anyone hear the slot about this on the Today programme this morning? I missed the beginning, so will be llistening-again later, but I wonder why Radio4 doesn't try to find articulate scientists to come on the show.


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## Gill (14 Mar 2007)

Anyone who's interested in the heretical approach to climate change might be interested in the links on this site. I must confess, I haven't read them all yet!

I'm still looking for the science that supports the assertion that CO2 is driving global warming  . Bearing in mind that we're constantly being told how critical it is, it's surprisingly hard to find.

Gill


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## Jake (14 Mar 2007)

Interesting article in the Independent this morning - the programme maker seems to be heading into some very deep water...
I'd be surprised if the company emerges with its reputation intact:

http://news.independent.co.uk/environme ... 355956.ece


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## Anonymous (14 Mar 2007)

Nick W":12amvnws said:


> Did anyone hear the slot about this on the Today programme this morning? I missed the beginning, so will be llistening-again later, but I wonder why Radio4 doesn't try to find articulate scientists to come on the show.


Yes heard it. Didn't think he was too bad Prof John Hutton (or whoever it was).
The swindle programme is getting thoroughly slated. Actually I don't think it was "propaganda" as such - just scaremongering **** poor Daily Mail type journalism.
If anything it has reenforced the GW lobby by showing just how dishonest and inadequate are the deniers. Shot in the foot.

cheers
Jacob

Modedit: Newbie_Neil


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## Jake (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":1g3u1t51 said:


> nick has earlier suggested the analogy of adding sugar to the tea or coffee, but what he forgot to mention is that you can go too far. i checked all my chemistry books and am reminded that there is something called
> saturation and super saturation. basically it goes you can mix in various substances into various liquids, but eventually these liquids can take no more, so they have become saturated. to get them to accept more of a substance, you have to agitate continuously, or you need add heat.
> 
> now if that is true of tea, why not co2????



Because you are not dissolving something into something else. A better analogy would be adding milk to tea, not sugar. In an infinite-sized cup.



> oh yes i also checked about steam, saturated, superheated and expansive. same thing applies only by heating things can you get the same substance into a the space. but this is where the 1/2% worry comes in.



The atmosphere isn't held on by a rigid vessel - there is no fixed space in which you have to cram the extra gas into. It can just get thicker - that doesn't mean there isn't more CO2 between earth surface and space.


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## Gill (14 Mar 2007)

That article in the Indie is indeed an interesting criticism, especially:



> The programme failed to point out that scientists had now explained the period of "global cooling" between 1940 and 1970. It was caused by industrial emissions of sulphate pollutants, which tend to reflect sunlight. Subsequent clean-air laws have cleared up some of this pollution, revealing the true scale of global warming - a point that the film failed to mention.



There's no doubt that the programme had its flaws, but only a fool would accept the assertions of a television programme at face value without making further enquiries. Nevertheless, it has made us look more closely at what appear to be questionable assumptions that are guiding policy makers. I'd like to know more about the science that's underlying these assumptions to reassure me that our taxes are being wisely spent and our lifestyles are being safely directed. So far, I've been surprised by how little solid science there is. Perhaps there are other actions that mankind could be taking to stabilize our environment apart from reducing CO2 production. Yet this seems to be the only approach being investigated.

Gill


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## engineer one (14 Mar 2007)

jake i accept your comments about the infinite sized cup, but wonder about the further one about the envelope in which we are supposed to live.

if you accept the gw theory then the envelope must be finite, and encompassing which you now suggest it is not

and we wonder why people get confused. :? 
paul :wink: 

all tv, and media is biased either for or against what it should do is provoke proper discussion, somehow in the last 10 years we seem to have become more and more accepting of everything. seems to question is much to difficult. :-k


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## Jake (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":392f6xst said:


> jake i accept your comments about the infinite sized cup, but wonder about the further one about the envelope in which we are supposed to live.
> 
> if you accept the gw theory then the envelope must be finite, and encompassing which you now suggest it is not
> 
> and we wonder why people get confused. :?



I don't understand that, I'm afraid. The greenhouse gas theory doesn't depend on the atmosphere being a fixed volume. Think of the atmosphere like a duvet. CO2 is a very efficient filling for your duvet, and nitrogen (etc) is a rubbish one, but we have to have it in our duvet. So if we want to make the duvet more effective, we have to add more CO2. We can't get rid of the nitrogen, so the volume of the duvet increases. The proportion of CO2 in the duvet also increases because the bit we added was 100% CO2, which is much higher than the proportion intnhe pre-existing filling. The fact that the proportion of CO2 in the duvet has increased doesn't suggest that the duvet has to have the same volume as before.



> all tv, and media is biased either for or against what it should do is provoke proper discussion, somehow in the last 10 years we seem to have become more and more accepting of everything. seems to question is much to difficult. :-k



I think the questioning is on the other side of the debate, not on the side of the deniers - who are after all largely funded by right-wing, reactionary conservative US oil barons, who probably think that they will be lifted up to heaven by the hand of god if there is any difficulty down the line.


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## Anonymous (14 Mar 2007)

Gill":222syg71 said:


> That article in the Indie is indeed an interesting criticism, especially:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Rather too much science I thought! Enough to keep you busy for months if you want to follow it in detail. I guess you are slowly finding this out for yourself. Keep up the good work!


> Perhaps there are other actions that mankind could be taking to stabilize our environment apart from reducing CO2 production. Yet this seems to be the only approach being investigated.
> 
> Gill


Well in many ways it's a one issue problem i.e. the carbon balance being altered by the accelerating rate of burning of millions of tons of fossil fuels.
There are plenty of other environmental issues of course - but CO2 is central and critical.

cheers
Jacob


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## innesm (14 Mar 2007)

Gill":3l080z5m said:


> I'm still looking for the science that supports the assertion that CO2 is driving global warming .



CO2 is a 'greenhouse gas'. There is info on it on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse ... ouse_gases
The theory is that more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere result in higher temperatures.

Having watched it, the GGWS documentary made a very convincing argument against the traditional theory of CO2-driven global warming. Those sunspot graphs seemed to make an open-and-shut case against CO2. But subsequently it transpires that the documentary was full of inaccuracies and doesnt stand up to examination. This was annoying for two reasons: it would be nice if the bulk of the recent global warming wasnt our fault. And it would be very nice to shut up the deep-green enviro-nutters. However, there you go.


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## innesm (14 Mar 2007)

Mr_Grimsdale":qn15w30j said:


> Gill":qn15w30j said:
> 
> 
> > > Perhaps there are other actions that mankind could be taking to stabilize our environment apart from reducing CO2 production. Yet this seems to be the only approach being investigated.
> ...



Since the cooling 'blip' between the 40s and 70s (or whatever it was) was anthropogenic and counteracted the greenhouse effect, that means there ought to be alternatives to simply cutting CO2 when it comes to mitigating global warming. We need a combined strategy of building nuclear power stations while simultaneously boosting pollution levels


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## Nick W (14 Mar 2007)

Jake":3i8678jd said:


> Because you are not dissolving something into something else. A better analogy would be adding milk to tea, not sugar. In an infinite-sized cup.



Thanks Jake, your analogy is much better.


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## Gill (14 Mar 2007)

Thank you, innesm. That link is very useful and led me to some more interesting reading material:

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

At last I'm beginning to feel better informed - I've just got to digest it all now  .

Gill


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## engineer one (14 Mar 2007)

ok jake i can kind of accept your duvet theory and it makes an interesting analogy. 

however i then ask the question "if the world rotates, then by definition, it must agitate the air round it. how then can the "duvet" be oddly shaped?"
if the aerodynamics of ground based vehicles are anything to go by, then surely the whole will rotate in a manner to cause it to be "out of balance"

as for the milk, or sugar, you can only add milk up to the brim of the cup, and with sugar, eventually it separates from the water, which is then supersaturated, and thus causes the cup to overflow also.

finally i have read the Independent article, and understand its raising concerns. however i do not regularly get the paper, but feel i would have noticed if its research into de-bunking the GW theory was quite as quick and as sensational. 

had the sunday times still got the effective investigative INSIGHT team it used to have, and they had done an article on the whole issue, not just the programme and its flaws, i would be more impressed. and just because you dislike the daily mail does not make them wrong either, the present alzheimers cause is a very real problem , and having only within the last two years stopped being a pretty full time carer for my now deceased elderly parents, i understand the difficulties experienced by carers, which are easily dismissed by outsiders.

all problems need viewing from both sides, and whilst sensationalising one side or the other is wrong, oftimes it is the only way to get the point into the public gaze.

paul :wink:


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## innesm (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":2qyhikgj said:


> as for the milk, or sugar, you can only add milk up to the brim of the cup, and with sugar, eventually it separates from the water, which is then supersaturated, and thus causes the cup to overflow also.



Imagine an analogy was a piece of rubber sheet. Now, if you stretch the sheet too far it might tear - the analogy breaks down.

(but what is the elasticity of the analogy? If it's warmer, perhaps the sheet will stretch further. And is the analogy being stretched evenly around its border? If not the analogy will break down at a lower amount of stretching. If the analogy is exposed to UV radiation this might reduce its stretchyness - depends on what the analogy is made of. etc etc)

I hope this flawed analogy about abusing analogies is helpful.


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## engineer one (14 Mar 2007)

well taken, and i am sure that my analgesic is finally working too. :? :roll: :twisted: 

paul :wink:


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## Anonymous (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":8kikbr27 said:


> snip
> if the world rotates, then by definition, it must agitate the air round it.
> snip


Well strangely enough it does - leading to the "Coreolis effect".

cheers
Jacob
(trying to kick off a discussion about how water runs down plug holes :lol: )


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## Nick W (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":jan3nwe6 said:


> if the world rotates, then by definition, it must agitate the air round it



On the whole the atmosphere is circulating round in sync. with the spinning earth. If it were not so then at the Equator, where the diameter of the Earth is roughly 24,000 miles, the average wind speed would be around 1,000 mph.


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## engineer one (14 Mar 2007)

i accept that it is working in synch, the question is if you accept the duvet theory, the suerly the shape of the envelope is deformed, and must have some impact :? 

paul :wink:


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## innesm (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":2o5o50z4 said:


> well taken, and i am sure that my analgesic is finally working too. :? :roll: :twisted:



Nothin personal - as we all know global warming is really like a dog with hypertension trapped in a hot car. CO2 is us dangling a cat outside the window and riling up that dog. Do we stop dangling the cat, cover it in a sheet and keep dangling, or somehow administer quick-acting bloodpressure medication to the dog?? If we're not careful that dog will die.
But then we'll still have the cat... Depends if you're a dog person or a cat person.


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## Nick W (14 Mar 2007)

engineer one":2z21gk19 said:


> i accept that it is working in synch, the question is if you accept the duvet theory, the suerly the shape of the envelope is deformed, and must have some impact :?
> 
> paul :wink:



I don't understand what you're getting at, the atmosphere is a gaseous envelope that, due the the reduction of gravity with height, just gets less and less dense, but never actually ends. However because it is fluid it will tend to find its own level: so if you choose some level of atmospheric pressure as your cut off point (for instance 1/1000th of 1 atmosphere) then that 'surface' will be deformed no more than the surface of a pond reflects the shape of the bottom of the pond.

By the way 


> ...the [surface of the] Earth has a tolerance of about one part in about 584, or 0.17%. For comparison, this is less than the 0.22% tolerance allowed in billiard balls.


 Wikipaedia for what it's worth.


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## engineer one (14 Mar 2007)

ok that makes real sense, i was just trying to understand the concept of the duvet envelope.

paul :wink:


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## Gill (18 Mar 2007)

The Telegraph is beginning to look a bit more critically at the causes of global warming:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... een118.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... een218.xml

Gill


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## Anonymous (18 Mar 2007)

Gill":3kvo15sl said:


> The Telegraph is beginning to look a bit more critically at the causes of global warming:
> 
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... een118.xml
> 
> ...


More of the same here, nothing new and can be ignored. 
Durkin is on the defensive as he and his programme are being severely criticised. Well it was rubbish as just about everyone now agrees.
Lindzen, Carter, Easterbrook are well known but remain representative of a tiny minority opinion. They get quoted disproportionately often as there aren't that many "scientists" to call on for comment against the majority view.

cheers
Jacob

ModEdit: Newbie_Neil


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## Newbie_Neil (18 Mar 2007)

OK, this is a final warning. Any more political posting and this thread will be locked down.

Cheers
Neil


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## MrJay (18 Mar 2007)

I'm beginning to wonder where Durkin gets off; plainly he just doesn't get it and it's not like he's witty or anything. Walk away slowly.

I haven't heard anyone saying "Boohoohoo you used the wrong graph." Anyone doing so can be rightly told to shut up (including Durkin). Here's the graph from the data used in the programme. It charts various attempts to reconstruct the climate over the past 1000 years using the evidence available. Somewhere near the end is a black line which represents actual recorded temperature change since we've been using instruments to systematically record temperature change. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to note that Durkin just can't read graphs.

"A critic" suggests that data in another graph has been corrected and shouldn't have been used. Durkin disagrees, but again Durkin barks up the wrong tree. In question is the theory that cloud cover and the lack of it is the cause of climatic warming and cooling. The theory was suggested when data was produced that suggested a recent reduction in cloud cover. It is that data that was corrected, there has been no recorded reduction in cloud cover, only an anomaly produced by a change of methodology for measuring cloud cover. Not only is the cloud cover theory untested, it lacks a reason for existing in the first place. Further, there has been no overall increase in solar radiation since 1978 when we started measuring solar radiation. Yet we seem to be getting hotter regardless. Trying to understand the link between modelled solar activity and climate in the past is useful in helping us piece together how climate works, but is not otherwise relevant to man made climate change which is a thing of the present, or at least ever since we really got into burning fossil fuels in a big way.

Apparently "No one any longer seriously disputes the link between solar activity and temperature in earth's climate history." Which is perfectly correct. In fact, no one has doubted the sun as the driving force for climate since 1824 when the role of green house gases was first suggested. That the Sun drives our climate is central to the case for global warming. Where Durkin goes wrong is that he doesn't realise he hasn't got an argument.

And then there's the thing about temperature leading CO2 in the ice core samples. Oddly enough, it's been known all along what the data says, and those in know are quite content that it supports the role of CO2 as a green house gas and it's warming influence. Jake says it as well as anyone. And for all that the point really needs to be made that the case for man made climate change due to CO2 emissions is not based the data from ice core samples. The jewel in the crown and the meat and bones of the argument are in thermal dynamics and the effect that the green house gases have on infrared radiation; which I don't remember Durkin addressing once.

So we're left with an odd blip where temperature variously fell or did not increase from 1940s to the 1970s. That is all that is left of Durkin's compelling case to demonstrate that the case for man made climate change is wrong wrong wrong; there is a blip in a graph; and a graph about the weather at that.

There are an awful lot of agenda pushers jumping on the climate change bandwagon hoping to use it as a soap box. Durkin is one of them. I'll be a happy boy if climate change is shown to be a lot of fuss over nothing, but only slightly happier than if we don't have to listen to Durkin's nonsense for while.


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## ivan (18 Mar 2007)

On a lighter note, I can state with some certainty that the CH4 produced by cows comes out of their mouths. Ruminants belch rather a lot. Funnily enough, having spent quite along time alongside cows backsides, I don't recall ever hearing one fart, Perhaps they were all silent ones....

It seems to me that many people are hung up on the word 'proof'. In the real world (as distinct from the virtual) proof of anything is in very short supply. Even if CO2 keeps going up AND all the ice does melt, a causal link is not actually proven. At which point, any possible preventative action will be a tad tardy....

Meantime, there are 3 possibilities. 1/ nothing serious is happening so nothing needs doing, 2/ things are getting warmer too quick for comfort but we're not sure of the cause or the cure, or3/ditto, and we're pretty sure it's man's use of fossil fuels that's the main cause. Now ask yourself, if you were a politician (NOT a scientist), are you brave enough to choose option 1, with the understanding that you may be wrong?

I suspect that for the time being the politicos are 'raising the decision profile' so it 'gets on the voter's radar' along with a few windmills and wave farms. By the time these (and other current plans) are up and running we'll have a better idea if it's possibility 1,2 or3. If we _are_ faced with drastic limits in fossil fuel use, then by that time the nuclear option (currently the only possible source of non fossil energy) will look a lot more acceptable to voters with no light, heat and only a pony and trap.

Funny how far we've come is a short time, and how we take it for granted. Pre industrial revolution, the country could support about 10 million people; fossil fuel supported the growth to 60 odd million and the change in lifestyle expectations.


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## sawdust maker (18 Mar 2007)

Hi All

I would like to add my little bit to the thread. I have to admit that I have not read all the posts and will apologise now if these points have been made and I have missed them. I believe that Global warming is happening but do not go along with the view that it is all down to human activity or we can stop it by burning less fossil fuel. The evidence I would like to present in support of my views is historical events in the main. First Greenland, for 500 years up until the 14th century, the climate was mild enough to support its population by agriculture. During this time there was considerably less ice, and have seen no reports that the rest of the World was under water. The second bit is archaeological evidence from South America. We have all seen books and programs etc about the Maya civilisation that created the cities and temples, now hidden deep in tropical forests. But did you know that when this civilisation flourished the land they lived in was not a wet tropical one but dry savannah and the cities were built with vast tanks to hold water during the dry periods, which are estimated to have lasted up to a year. The civilisation died out when the climate became even drier. The climate changed again and hid the cities in tropical rain forests. I believe these two, admittedly small; events prove that the world climate is capable of great changes. It is one of these changes we are going through now. This Global Warming thing is more about Europe not wanting to be dependent on Russia for carbon-based energy.


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## Sailor (19 Mar 2007)

Good evening,

I read that Channel 4 is to broadcast a discussion program, probably sometime next month, with 'experts' from both sides of the argument being represented.

Should be interesting!

Colin


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## ivan (19 Mar 2007)

Trees grow quicker as the concentration of CO2 goes up. There's a thought....


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## MrJay (20 Mar 2007)

Other thoughts include: the amount of CO2 plants can process is limited by all the other things plants need to function and, in the great scheme of things, trees are quite short and only absorb CO2 from underneath them, oh and we're not exactly inundated with spare land to grow trees on. That and at the end of the day, chances are they're only going to end up being burnt or rotting somewhere; releasing all that lovely CO2 back to where it came from.

I wouldn't argue if timber prices dropped though.


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