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The Forum > Article Comments > A Stern review > Comments

A Stern review : Comments

By Andrew Hewett, published 6/11/2006

The debate about whether climate change is occurring is over. The question now is how do we respond?

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I have been watching this thread for some days.

Owen, the Daily Telegraph, my favourite daily read when I was in UK.

Personally, “Climate Change and Global Warming” is a product of the greens obsession with controlling what the rest of us are allowed to do. Probably a result of the entryism by the extremist left into the environmental movement, following the collapse of the socialist governments in previous decades.

The issues are not about global warming and if they were the sunspot activity graph would suggest warming will continue, regardless what we do.

The issue is about economic control. The left continue to denounce (although they have already lost) the efforts of deregulation of the trade markets because it is against their interests in demanding to control the rest of us.
Leaving people to get on and trade freely without quotas, tariffs and duties which reduces the opportunity for governmental interference and social engineering (you can almost feel the shudders of withdraw wracking the corpse of socialism).
The rabble who burn and riot at every WTO meeting are just the weevils trying to despoil the free trade harvest, the mindless face of the debunked forces of Socialism, Marxism and Trotskyism.

Certainly the world has a lot of issues to face, deforestation, land degradation, water limitations, land, air and sea pollution and fish stock erosion.

All these problems are real and all are urgent but they are all solvable by a single action.

The action required is population control.

Fix the explosion of population and the “stress” we place the planet under will evaporate.

These real problems disappear, forests and fish stocks recover, air land and water quality improve.

Developed countries are at zero population growth.
Underdeveloped are not. Part of their reason for burgeoning population growth is the efforts of “developed world” folk to reduce mortality rates without balancing their efforts to reduce birth rates.

Lets talk about fixing the real problem and leave this climate sideshow to the pixies and others who are happier wandering around at the bottom of the garden.
Posted by Col Rouge, Wednesday, 8 November 2006 1:25:33 PM
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Pers, your use of ‘mathematics’ on this forum on numerous occasions has not exactly helped support your causes. All it has done is show how easily very selective and often very woolly figures can be used to support just about any conclusion, especially when you start adding and multiplying several of them together, thus compounding the error margins and giving end-of-the-spectrum results.

Obviously, Al Gore's projections of the depletion of the Greenland ice sheet are vastly different to yours.

I have faith in Al Gore and the message presented in “An Inconvenient Truth’, for these reasons;

He presents a lot of basic irrefutable evidence, as Professor Bob Carter, an arch anti-climate-change advocate admits,

He has been concerned about this issue for a very long time and is not just jumping on some current band-wagon,

US politics works and squarely within the pro-expansionist paradigm, and yet he is advocating real caution and awareness in ways that run strongly contrary to this. What motives could he have if they weren’t based on a deep and sincere concern for the direction we are heading in?

Up until recently at least, he hasn’t won many influential friends with his environmental concerns, compared to what he would have won if he’d followed the good old buddy of big-business line that GWB follows. Clearly, just about all other politicians at anywhere near his level, would have found success in taking an opposing line and abject failure in following his line.

And more recently the fact that the likes of Howard and many big business 'dinosaurs' have come to admit that global warming is real, partly as a result of his efforts, is surely indicative that his message is pretty close to rock solid.

continued

But even if you are right Perseus, so what?

Surely we have to do what we can to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, or at least a scenario well up there in the bad part of the spectrum.
Posted by Ludwig, Wednesday, 8 November 2006 3:46:24 PM
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Ludwig “Surely we have to do what we can to be prepared for the worst-case scenario, or at least a scenario well up there in the bad part of the spectrum.”

Why?

Why not "best case scenario" or “Most likely scenario”

It is pursuing the “most likely case” which the real problems lies. When there is no consensus over what is the likely scenario or even worst case, it is very difficult to decide what action to take to rectify it.

Kyoto and a lot of other “strategies” are exercises in playing socialist politics with the problem and represent solutions to nothing, other than giving the social engineers and manipulators a rod to beat the rest of us with.

Suggesting we all walk around in second hand clothing, ride bicycles or travel in horse drawn carriages or worse be forced to wait around for public transport services to get their performance standards back up to fourth class is not a “solution” to anything.

Innovation and inspiration is only present in those who have the energy and countenance to see beyond the present. Those who cannot project or envision are left to prepare for the worst.

I have lived through several revolutions. Not military revolutions but economic, technological and social revolutions. I see more in the future than the past. I see people being valued more for being different than the same.

I see and work toward an environment where people have greater opportunity to distinguish themselves and which we will benefit from greater innovation and invention than we have ever seen before.

Problems which are seen presently as insurmountable are simply challenges waiting human ingenuity.


Al Gore is a failed politician who has nailed his final thrust for power to an evangelical three ring circus starring a doomsday disaster act. Don’t get mugged by him, he is wrong.
Posted by Col Rouge, Wednesday, 8 November 2006 5:45:20 PM
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KAEP, you haven’t carefully examined your argument. Read this +aloud+ to yourself :

“Despite increased US economic and CO2 output this year the … ocean started to COOL down during the most dangerous time of the season thereby stalling hurricane formations. This can only have been human induced and shows climate can be controlled and climate has little or nought to do with CO2 levels”

Doesn’t your argument sound to you, on reflection, a bit like someone giving credit to a rain dance because it’s followed by rain?

(1) How do you rule out all other possible causes for your interpretation of Tropical Atlantic SST temperatures?
(2) Why can the pattern you have observed +only+ be “human induced”? How can you rule out other causes or coincidences?
(3) What mechanism (or technological fix) are you suggesting has “solved the problem”?
(4) What evidence can you offer that your mechanism may be relevant to other sea surface areas?
(5) What systematically gathered and peer-reviewed evidence can you offer to support your claim “that climate can be controlled”?
(6) What is it about your argument that allows you to conclude that “climate has little or nought to do with CO2”?

KAEP, if you read my posts carefully and follow the links, you may appreciate more fully that I am interested in market-driven energy conservation measures.
Listen to the Background Briefing program linked in my first post. Visit the Rocky Mountain Institute website linked to my second post.

By the way, I have no direct or indirect association, or financial interest, in with Rocky Mountain Institute (rmi), beyond my interest in useful energy conservation strategies. Nor do I have any direct or indirect financial interest in any specific commercial ventures marketing energy technologies. I wonder how many of our fellow contributors are willing to declare their vested interests?

Perhaps I should declare my children and their children as a vested interest - - -
Posted by Sir Vivor, Wednesday, 8 November 2006 7:41:03 PM
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Vivor,

"Doesn’t your argument sound to you, on reflection, a bit like someone giving credit to a rain dance because it’s followed by rain?"

Pomposity doesn't make SCIENCE.

OBSERVATION and EXPERIMENT are what makes SCIENCE.

All the GW evidence you so slavishly adhere to has been stymied for many years now, bound up in controversies that are well documented.

Your stance on the subject is thus nothing more than a reflection of your own prejudices and fears and is not scientific at all.

What is necessary here is new data and new EXPERIMENTS to determine what is causing climate changes and what can be done about it.

I am in the process of a geophysical experiment that involves oceanic surface pollution and its impact on climate change.
Results so far from SST and SHA maps of the TWA this year indicate a corelation between wastewater pollution reduction and the absence of hurricanes and the increase in large storm events.

The Australian cyclone season and US 2007 season will further test these ideas. Based on 2006 results I have every confidence there will not be any 2007 US hurricanes.

Now its up to you to look at the data I presented before making your assertions.
You have not done so and thus your assertions are just vanity and your questions are meaningless.

Meanwhile the EXPERIMENT continues. With or without your lack of curiosity.
Posted by KAEP, Thursday, 9 November 2006 10:22:35 AM
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Col

“Why not ‘best case scenario’ or Most likely scenario’ “

I don’t understand. Isn’t it just obvious that we need to err on the side of caution? Being prepared for worse things than we might expect is a very sensible and very basic principle.

Of course I agree with you that population growth and overall size is a huge part of the problem. But…

“Fix the explosion of population and the “stress” we place the planet under will evaporate.”

No. It isn’t anywhere near as simple as that. Especially with per-capita consumption continuing to increase rapidly in China, and with India to follow.

“Developed countries are at zero population growth.”

No. Not by a long way. Australia and the US continue to grow pretty rapidly, and when this growth is combined with very high and still increasing per-capita consumption, growth rates in overall environmental impact are substantial. The US has just reached a population of 300 million and won’t be stopping its growth any time soon….unless perhaps if Al Gore becomes president!

“Al Gore is a failed politician who has nailed his final thrust for power to an evangelical three ring circus starring a doomsday disaster act. Don’t get mugged by him, he is wrong.”

He was vice president for 8 years, and won more than 50% of the vote in 2000, only to be denied the presidency by a very dodgy court decision….and you call him a failed pollie?!!

Col, there seems to be a real contradiction in your complete dismissal of anthropogenic climate change while being very concerned about population growth and various other huge environmental issues.

Why do you see global warming in a different way?
Posted by Ludwig, Thursday, 9 November 2006 12:32:48 PM
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