Which scientist is right and which one is wrong?

Dammed if I know, however I do know that before this climate change debate and the hysteria over greenhouse gases, the earths climate has changed many times before the industrial age.

The Sahara desert was once productive land. Australia was once a lot wetter than it is now, long before white man discovered it.

Ancient civilizations disappeared without trace because of climate change and to my knowledge they were not producing much in the way of carbon dioxide.

Great article! Certainly a lot more truthful than George "just yell louder than anybody else" Monbiot's article. PS Monbiot has just bought his first car (a real clunker too), right when the Earth is in such crisis! lol

I urge everybody to watch the Great Global Warming Swindle documentary to be shown on the ABC 12th July 8:30pm. Look at both sides of the debate and make up your own mind.

The docco was widely discredited long before the ABC tweaked it

Very surprised the ABC is even showing snippets. It is highly unlike them to show the counter view to the socialist left who are using climate change as a political tool. Makes for a good laugh. I am glad that at least some of the many sensible scientist are getting a little airplay. I just wondered what happened to all those scientist who warned of global cooling 30 years ago.

"The docco was widely discredited long before the ABC tweaked it"
Only in warmer's world...

"Very surprised the ABC is even showing snippets. "
Robyn Williams kicked up one hell of a stink. Luckily everyone remembered his only science training was gained on the set of Doctor Who and promptly ignored him.

"I just wondered what happened to all those scientist who warned of global cooling 30 years ago."
I think most of them that are still alive head up the IPCC now. ;)

There are many compelling reasons in life ...... political, pragmatic, economic, health and environmental, for improving our environment, for conservation of energy and water, for developing alternative fuels to finite fossil fuels, etc, but human contributed global warming with its CO2 fear mongering is not one of them.

Monbiot is just a petite fart but assumes he is a hurricane.

None of us here can say either way can we?

What has been clear is that there was a sudden shift about a year ago from the term "global warming" to "climate change". That's no coincidence is it?

It indicates there has been some political awareness that the climate change, which as others here note, is a part of Earth's history. And the past changes have had nothing to do with human activity at all.

So I have to listen when another group says carbon has little or nothing to do with it.

You also have to suspect the political motives for suggesting what is effectively a tax as the solution. Only a greedy fool (Hello John Howard) would suggest a tax will change climate, regardless of the efffect of that tax, or market if you want to call it that.

So what I see is some acknowledgement at the highest levels that carbon may not have anything to do with the problem but that it is a very powerful political tool and a great way to make money out of nothing.

What more could a politician want? Public fear, free money and no chance their perfromance can be measured as all they have to say is "This will take decades".

Once again here Runner shouts from the rooftops that he, Runner, lives in the 50's as he shouts about the left which doesn't exist. Neither do socialists. You really should update your reading list mate. Try Billy Bunter books, they are closer to current history. And Biggles.

As to the ABC and it's "bias" do try researching this urban myth. It's only the Liberal Party that says this stuff so we know your membership don't we.

Wonder what synthetic burrows all you sceptics climbed out of?

What none of you mention, is that our earth has never had modern man before, or rather the materialist technology that admittedly has its good as well as its bad capabilities.

As an old cockie have seen so much change even in my own life -at first only saw good as we cleared thousands of acres to grow more crops, as well as feeling less lonely to get a full sight of town over fifteen miles off.

Did not worry at first to see the last of the scrub turkeys, the last of the malley fowl, the last of the chubby little native bush mice, carrying their babies on their backs.

More the yappy bark of the imported foxes at night, taking the place of the sharp coo of the native plover foolishing disappearing through their age-old habits of nesting on the ground, modern man and his farm machinery finishing the job.

Further the precious high yielding low grounds all now white with salt, applaudable ag' scientific research resultantly trying amends.

Yes, an old retired cockie does muse a lot about man and his ever-more capable technology, now no trouble getting rid of tropical forests surely nature must have grown there for a purpose.

Will say looking back that hungry greedy man deserves what is happening to this earth, for modern man, who should know better, is surely capable of ruining this earth far more than nature ever did.

Is it too late to turn back the tide on our so-called need for stupid materialistic things and somehow claw back some of what nature intended for this continent before humans used it to get more possessions than the next guy.
Let the ABC air this piece and judge it on its' merits or lack thereof.

I'd be very surprised if it changed anybody's mind, shortened or not. If you really wanted a lot of people to believe this program the ABC is not the place to do it.

Why not insist it be screened on commercial media where the big audiences are? Big Brother could have a special on it. You could force the Home and Away people to write it into a script.

To ABC regulars it's pretty obvious that this is only being shown to meet the "balance" requirements of conservative commentators. What'll it be next? Creationism? Flat Earth? A documentary put together by Wiccans on wart cures?

Mr Kinninmonths recitation of GGWS’s claims on temperature data are commendable only because he leaves out all the other skeptic talking points that GGWS gambols thru. See
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/ for the science flaws and http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php
for autopsy on the RightThink full-media-press that preceded its showing in the UK. How depressingly unsurprising we see the same here. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=William_Kininmonth for lowdown on Mr Kinninmonths .. objectivity – and no, Hugh Morgan does not count as a character reference.

Why show it on the ABC, Chainsmoker? Because they can – the ABC board is now the Liberal Partys great pasture in the sky, from whence its more aged hacks deposit their wisdom for our benefit. The cuts were probably from Legal as believe the ‘documentary’ maker and some of his misquoted guests are still swapping threats.

For the record, the ABC lists Robyn Williams' early accomplishments thus: "Although he graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in England, Robyn admits to spending as much time acting as studying. Early in his career he made guest appearances in The Goodies, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Dr Who and stood in for Tom Jones for four months in his TV series."
What puzzles me is why the AGW enthusiasts are so single minded?
Where is the problem in investigating factors other than CO2 which may be just as important, or more important, as drivers of the Earth's climate?

Liam, you’ve got be kidding!
You cite a web site for the “Center for Media and Democracy” (I’ll forgive them for mis-spelling “Center” as they are only Americans, after all) as some sort of “exposé” of Mr Kininmonth. Have you looked at the “profiles” of the people behind that organisation? Not a scientist among them, much less anyone with any knowledge of climatology.
Half of them are so-called “activists” –another code word.
As far as I’m concerned, it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black- please forgive the cliché.
I agree with Admiral von Schneider, I’m puzzled as to the motivation behind this attempt to blame everything on CO2, as if there weren’t any other influences operating

Bushbred, you bring me to tears.

You’ve seen all of that terrible degradation in the Western Australia wheatbelt – the country of my heart…even though I haven’t lived in that part of the world for quarter of a century.

The weather’s going whacko. We had our coldest day on record yesterday in Townsville. We’ve had weeks of cold wet weather, when it is supposed to be sunny and dry and reasonably warm in June. It is just like a good Dalwallinu winter and completely unlike anything I’ve seen here in 24 years.

It is hard to imagine that anthropogenic climate change is a furphy, after all the hype, scientific opinion and wonky weather.

But I can’t wait to see the ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’.

As George Monbiot says;

“to form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question.”

Thanks Liam for your insightful comments. The ABC is showing a cut-down version in the name of objectivity and balance, the same reason it is screening a debate after the program. It does not restore their diminished credibility one iota. It is an attempt to be seen to be responding to the will of much of the public.

People on the ABC Board such as Albrechtsen and Windschuttle have been climate change sceptics for years. Just read their articles. They and other journalists of like mind will pick out the few scientists who deny human-induced climate change, against the overwhelming majority (>95%) of the world's best scientists who agree with it, and say "There! There is a debate!" and report this in the name of balance.

This is why the debate really is over. You will never be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change is human-induced, just like you can never prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Holocaust happened, or that evolution is not true. But the overwhelming evidence tells us that the Holocaust did happen and that evolution is true. You go where the evidence leads and you make a judgment accordingly.

Showing this documentary, cut-down or not, is like showing a documentary denying the Holocaust, despite what Simon Castles in The Age reported recently.

Carl Wunch, the scientist interveiwed in the GGWS who claims to have been mis-represented, has written a response here:

http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/responseto_channel4.htm

He has also posted a variety of articles on this program on his website:

http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/CHANNEL4.html

The one I particularly liked was GGWS producer Martin Durkin's response to some critism (coarse language warning):

http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/durkinemails.htm

Another scientist interviewed, Hans Friis-Christensen and one of his students have made claims that their research was distorted and partially fabricated by the producers:

http://folk.uio.no/nathan/web/statement.html

"Firstly, we have reason to believe that parts of the graph were made up of fabricated data that were presented as genuine. The inclusion of the artificial data is both misleading and pointless. Secondly, although the narrator commentary during the presentation of the graph is consistent with the conclusions of the paper from which the figure originates, it incorrectly rules out a contribution by anthropogenic greenhouse gases to 20th century global warming".

As for Christy's research, in the executive summary of a US CCSP report he authored, he states:

"Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected. New data sets have also been developed that do not show such discrepancies"

The full report can be dowloaded at realclimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/

along with a discussion of the film. It's good reading if you're interested.

The claims made are not supported by data. They have misrepresented scientists, fabricated data and mislead audiences.

Some advice for William Kinnimonth. In order to maintain your professional reputation, put as much distance between yourself and Martin Durkin and the GGWS as possible.

Some people think that the United Nations is conspiring against their individual freedoms. Others think that the UN is there to try and protect those freedoms, now and for the generations that follow.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (comprising all countries) is trying to address the problems of Global Warming – as are businesses, cultures, religions and individuals worldwide – dare I say it, so too is Oz and US – why?

Some people seem to think that the United Nations IPCC is also involved in a conspiracy to swindle people – but, the IPCC is only the messenger. They review the scientific literature that has been published and present it to the world – for the world to act as they see fit.

The only consensus is that the vast amount of published scientific literature out there says the world has a global warming problem, we can do something about it but we have only a certain amount of time to do it.

Smart people listen and act appropriately, even if that means hedging your bets – a decision based fundamentally on risk analysis, if not logic.

Some people want to argue/debate ad infinitum, put their head in the sand or just want to pretend it is not happening – others want virtually 100% certainty before they will act.

Admiral, there is no problem in “investigating factors other than CO2”. We have been looking at these factors in attribution studies on climate change for a long time, and our findings you may wish to ignore, but that is your problem.

Global warming is a reality. I hope the politicians will do something before is too late. I hope one day we can buy cars that won't need petrol to work, for example.
http://saveourbushland.blogspot.com/

Yeah, dunno if we can trust this Kininmonth bloke, what with his links to those evil organisations, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the World Meteorological Organisation (cue Dr. Evil laugh).

Whatever strange reasons gave rise to the embarrassments - as the saying goes "some mothers do have 'em".

Global warming - it's a measurable fact - but who or what is responsible? Do we take action to reduce greenhouse gasses or do nothing except pointing fingers at Sol? Sol is unquestionably the all powerful source of life on planet Earth - a fact known to the Incas, Pharaohs and Aborigines many solar orbits ago.

The truth of the matter is that both fossil man and Sol are culpable for Global warming. It's collaboration - combustion and fusion.

Fossil man has a serious carbon addiction that measurably changes the composition of Earth's atmosphere, while Sol - our middle aged sun every so often let's off flares that cause all manner of problems to electricity grids on the fourth rock out from the sol.

What course should policy makers take? The precautionary principle is a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.

The precautionary principle is most often applied in the context of the impact of human actions on the environment and human health, as both involve complex systems where the consequences of actions may be unpredictable and irreversible.

As applied to environmental policy, the precautionary principle stipulates that for practices such as the release of radiation or toxins, massive deforestation or overpopulation, the burden of proof lies with the advocates.

Clearly we need to get over our carbon addiction. We cannot do much about Sol's fusion - unless, the ancients were right and sacrifices can work to save mankind - the heads of the biggest petroleum companies and their advocates may just make a difference.

Richard Castles, its not for William Kininmonths work for BoM & WMO as an administrator and weather forcaster (last science paper in 1973) that i ref'd Sourcewatch, not the bit about support by the Lavoisier Group or WKs support for any-excuse-will-do skeptics like Hugh Morgan and fudgers like David Bellamy.

It was this line:
In a letter to to The Age newspaper, Kininmonth wrote that "Greenhouse gases emit more radiation than they absorb and their direct impact is to cool the atmosphere."
He's pulling our leg, isn't he?

BB Part One

Still there, Ludwig, nice to make your acquaintance again, and surprised to find you possibly more a Queensland T’othersider than a West Aussie Sandgroper.

Must say that my publication you gave admirable comment on, was more my philosophical thoughts from way back in the 1950s when my young wife became very interested in a book by the American writer Louis Bromfield called Malabar Farm.

As it was, the block us both ex-WW2 army persons received a military loan for, was a partly cleared but unused property so similar to so many at the end of the war.

Typical of those partly cleared properties it had been mostly used to run sheep and cattle, and with watering points feeding low lying dams, the hillside stock-trails were deeply scoured, the lighter formerly cleared land with odd regrown bush, unlovely deserted through prevailing winds.

Thus it was the bush wives who became the first Westralian Greenies, even when we established the first local town golf course on a large railway dam catchment, who made us skirt the fairways around scenic patches of timber they admired. Further, my young wife told she would leave me if I didn’t do the same as I cleared the rest of the farm.
We along with another farmer 25 miles down south, were the first to buy the recommended Malabar style chisel ploughs to dig deep but leave the natural shallow topsoil on top, rather than to lose it in the sour yellow subsoil, through discing or furrowing in with standard ploughs.
But such farming according to ag’ advisers was too expensive, and as the years went on it was on to 1000 acre paddocks, the Malabar-style recommended measured contour banks ploughed over to make way for true broad acre modern agriculture

BB Part Two

Hope you are still there, Ludwig.

As with this present season, heavy dry east winds have turned paddocks into deserts, but it has been somewhat prevented interestingly by an annually continuous cropping leaving a measured amount of stubble behind, helped by not overstocking with sheep.

Further though there is a certain resentment about chemical weed-killing, it does mean that the precious shallow topsoil can be preserved by using narrow knife tilling machinery points rather than the old duck-foot shaped weed rooters which also caused hard panning of the subsoil.

So it is thus with reasonable seasons, Ludwig, West Australian farmers have become known over recent years, to produce the most yields from the poorest soils, and even our rural womenfolk have given praise about our land management.

But with seasons seemingly dryer, I do worry about our great grandkids after we’ve gone, and whether learning from us about about the old bush grind or grizzle, will be enough to combat a climate change, which we and our more recent forefathers could have easily caused through
growing greed and tech’ ?

Cheers, George C, WA

Fair go

“…all manner of problems to electricity grids on the fourth rock out from the sol.”

The fourth rock?

Yes we’ve got a serious carbon addiction. Enormously serious. It is an addiction in the strongest sense of the word. It is one we CANNOT get off!! It is just tooo big to deal with.

It’s time to put our energies into how we live with it, and to stop wasting effort on trying to avoid it.

This effort even at its most successful would reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions a little bit, perhaps. Although it is much more likely to simply slow down the rate of increase a little.

It is quite likely that any stretching out of chronic CO2 emissions will actually have a worse effect. Being as profligate as we can now and thus reaching the peak in emissions quickly, may well have the best long term outcome for the climate… and for us stupid humans.

At any rate, peak oil will have a vastly greater effect on reducing CO2 production than any human effort.

Because the documentary is rubbish. Just because the media and commentators lead you to believe the debate is equally two-sided, doesn't mean it is. They may lead you to believe the documentary is credible also, but that would make them liars since they are neither experts, and the critique is very easy to come by. That liars are paid by the mainstream media is no surprise to me.

Enjoy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Reactions_from_scientists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Disputing_a_scientific_consensus_supporting_anthropogenic_global_warming

Liam quotes William Kininmonth: "Greenhouse gases emit more radiation than they absorb and their direct impact is to cool the atmosphere." but, most unusually, fails to provide a link.
Here it is:
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/kinin-fox.html

In reference to comments I made in my last post:

Before I get lambasted left, right and centre for apparently advocating unbridled profligacy, let me say…. I DON’T!

I advocate maximising our rate of conversion from fossil fuel dependency to renewable energy sources, and downsizing our consumption by way of changed practices and improved efficiencies.

But while these are the same things that we essentially need to do in order reduce greenhouse gas emissions, our motivation should be quite different – to smooth the transition that we will be forced to make when peak oil bites. The motivation is to maintain a viable economy and society in the face of radically changed economies due to greatly increased oil prices and availability.

My great fear is that peak oil will send our economy and society into a breakdown… and I don’t just mean a recession. In fact it may not take too much of a price rise to make that happen, because just about every aspect of our lives and economic system is so fundamentally dependent on oil… and dependent on it at somewhere near its current pricing structure.

Strife may come much quicker than we envisage. If the US decides it desperately needs some of Australia’s share of oil, then what would we do? If the Middle East decides that it is going to look after its future by preserving oil stocks and pulling back on production, it could trigger a panic situation which could see prices skyrocket and oil grabs undertaken by the most powerful countries.

This could all happen tomorrow. We are now sitting on a knife-edge.

We’d better accelerate our efforts to wean ourselves off oil…and for much more important reasons than climate change.

I agree with you Ludwig- I think the prospect of Peak Oil, whether it happens in either the very short term or the mid-term (some say out to about 2020) is enough to give us a very good incentive to get off our addiction to the black substance.

Oil companies say that we should not worry too much- technology for extracting oil and unexploited resources are available. However they would say that, wouldn’t they?

One of the main reasons we should diversify our energy resources is that of the risk of political blackmail from oil producers – we have seen in the 1970’s what they can do.

For this reason, we must conserve our own energy resources. In addition, we should develop as far as possible within economic rationality, the alternative energies, such as wind, solar tidal, geothermal etc.

The only possible large-scale base load power producer that is not a producer of large amounts of carbon emissions is nuclear. For this reason I really don’t understand why the anti-nuclear people are so set against it.

It has been working perfectly well in France for over 50 years – to name only one nation.

All the arguments raised against it are specious. They say that uranium resources are limited to a supply of fifty years- this is false. Nuclear waste is manageable, and included in the cost of nuclear energy from the outset. Modern reactor designs are extremely safe.

The only thing I can think of is that most of the anti-nuclear people have grown up believing that it is dangerous, and are now too old to change their minds.

Many ecologists support it- James Lovelock and Patrick Moore are just two of them. Please visit this web-site “Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy””

http://www.ecolo.org

True about ‘Peak Oil’, but don’t be short-sighted – it’s “Peak Hydrocarbons” (aka oil, gas and coal).

I would be interested in comments on this forum regarding David Rutledge’s webcast video talk on May 11 (55 mins to watch, listen and learn) at;

http://rutledge.caltech.edu/

It was posted on another forum and did not receive much comment. However, Rutledge says “there is an intense effort to predict the contribution to future climate change that will result from consuming ‘fossil fuels’. There has been surprisingly little effort to connect these two. Do we have a fossil-fuel supply problem? Do we have a climate-change problem? Do we have both? Which comes first? We will see that trends for future fossil-fuel production are less than any of the 40 UN scenarios considered in climate-change assessments.”

Humanity must live in a sustainable way.

I agree Froggie, “we should diversify our energy resources” and “develop as far as possible within economic rationality, the alternative energies, such as wind, solar, tidal, geothermal,” and I would add solar-thermal. The latter two of which can produce so called based load power.

I am not anti-nuclear, but we don’t need it here in Australia yet. There are too many issues to contend with, some expressed in this forum, some not.

Ludwig, I appreciate your views – hang in there.

As for climate change, there definitely is correlation to fossil fuel (mis)use.

Any documentary in which a major participant claims that he or she was misrepresented, and can justify said claims, should not be classed as a documentary. This mocumentary should be retitled: "Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Fossil Fuel Industries"

According to Carl Wunsch's own website, he has filed a formal complaint with the UK oversight body Office of Communications, Ofcom. http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/CHANNEL4.html

The strategy to involve Wunsch also is explained in some detail, including how particular footage was handled to say, "diametrically opposite to the point [he] was making---which is that global warming is both real and threatening."

This is the "evidence" that Kininmonth attempts to gloss over. No good ever comes through dishonesty or through defending dishonesty.

Hi Bushbred. No doubt about the effect of modern man mate. We wipe out X species every day don't we? And we can never go back. How do we stop this? I have no answers.

But you don't actually address the topic mate.

Global warming isn't called global warming any more. That's for the others on this thread. It's climate change. It's a political change.

Why? Well the Earth has been through this many times in the past. Before man had any modern tools or used carbon emitting equipment.

To say carbon emission is the problem and that we can reverse it if so is just insane.

We can change light bulbs, use nuclear power and walk everywhere but Mother Nature isn't going to suddenly change the climate. The ice falling into the oceans at both poles will take decades to rebuild. If they do at all.

Humans today are too busy trying to blame something or someone for what is actually nature at work. We may have added something to the climate problem but the reality is our climate changes regularly. For us regularly means every year or decade. For the Earth it means every hundred, or thousand years.

As to global warming fans. Explain the cold weather right now? Explain the sudden deluge of rain in various parts of the country. It is the switch from El Nino to La Nina. As scientists everywhere know and have said. They are just arguing about if that has happened or is just starting to happen.

Like all the other frauds (God, astrology, numerology, satanism, consumerism, Party Political honesty), if it's said often enough and widely enough eventually the bulk of people believe it.

If anyone here can prove global warming on their own please tell us how. All you are doing is spouting what some people say. That's all. And so am I. It's called OPINION. It's not fact as for every scientific theory there are others who can prove otherwise.

So many web sites quouted here and none of you actually know any of this for yourselves.

Carl Wunsch is quite categorical when he claims to have been misrepresented in the Channel 4 film and has protested.
As quoted above he believes that "climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component."
However he is also highly critical of those who make extreme claims of coming catastrophe.
He says (paraphrasing) that the science of climate change remains incomplete and stresses that at all times good scientists should admit that they may be wrong.
He asks, what I think is most important question of all, "How much is it worth to society to restrain CO2 emissions---will that guarantee protection against global warming?"
Almost daily, the ABC runs 'news' items containing predictions of an imminent AGW catastrophe - speculation presented as facts.
The Science Show, run by 'Gaiaist', Robyn William, has consistently run AGW catastrophic predictions without balance.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle" may be polemics, but it provides a welcome (I won't say balance which implies equal treatment) counterpoint.

Yes DavoP, the Earth has been through climate change many times before, the glacial – interglacial periods is often a more correct turn of phrase. However, this latest climate change is due in large part (with 90 – 95% confidence) to human activity since about 1850.

The term used is anthropogenic global warming, but you are right – it has been marginalised to “climate change”. BTW, weather variations due to El Nino/La Nina are not aspects of ‘climate change’, although I can understand why the layperson can get confused.

We can do something about GHG emissions (many countries, businesses and people are) - you can choose not to do anything about it and that is your choice.

There are internet sites you could look at that explains the science (the AR4 report does indeed try to explain the science as well as answer some frequently asked questions) but many don’t bother – they rather criticise the science rather than try and understand it or what the fuss is all about.

DavoP, I am a scientist (not funded by the taxpayer in any way shape or form) and heavily involved in water resource management in Oz. I am very familiar with CSIRO studies and satellite (GRACE – google it) investigations. I can assure you the vast majority of scientists are not frauds.

Indeed, the vast majority of scientists are telling the world we have a problem, we have the technology to do something about it and the sooner the better – so why not try? It really is about sustainability.

Having an opinion is fine, but it helps if opinion is based on knowledge of a subject. I would be pleased to talk about GW but 350 word limits and post restraints make it difficult, especially if ‘off-topic’.

This is the very reason why scientists don’t generally join forums such as this – while the issues you may want to talk about appear simple and straight forward, they are often not.

Try http://www.realclimate.org/

Good for starters and you can ask as many questions as you like, without word limits.

Real Climate has 11 members:
Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Eric Steig, William Connolley, Ray Bradley, Stefan Rahmstorf, Rasmus Benestad, Caspar Ammann, Thibault de Garidel, David Archer and Raymond Pierrehumbert
Who knows if "the vast majority of scientists are telling the world we have a problem"?

The admiral exemplifies my point; not very many climate scientists involve themselves in forums such as this. It's easier for people like us to go to their site than for them to visit all the world's forums.

RealClimate is run and organised by climate scientists working in the real world. I am a sceptic by nature (all scientists are) – this is why I had a look at their site in the first place.

Check their links.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

If you really want to get technical, you can see references to published literature in the IPCC reports like;

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

Not many people do, this is why sites like RealClimate are valued.

To rephrase a previous point; some matters concerning climate change are very technical. A public forum like this does create a lot of hot air and has the propensity to confuse people who have not been trained in science.

realclimate is run by Michael Mann of "hockeystick" fame, and was set up to defend his now discredited temperature reconstruction study. In other words, a very biased website which can hardly be construed as run by "real" scientists. Stick to the legitimate IPCC reports mentioned above as they are written without the hysteria found on realclimate.

realclimate scientists like to tell everybody about their expertise almost as much as davsab.

Davsab claims to be a scientist who feels all humans exhale carbon with original sin believing that nature is but a subset of humanity. If this is true then it would require little effort here for him to provide information like the total concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the proportion that humans sinfully contribute ....... along with the exact process by which this can be calculated.

I personally don't see how the world is warming up (Adelaide has experienced her coldest winter in quite some years). Nor how sea levels are supposed to rise to dramatic levels because of ice melting at the poles (ever put ice into a glass, allowed it to melt, and noticed it overflow? Nope? Neither have I).

Indeed, a great web site about the truth of climate change is http://www.co2science.org/ - it is a virtual library of facts and figures on why the world is not warming up. I must say, for the record, I am not involved in the website at any level or the organisation/s behind it.

Interestingly, when I wrote a letter to the ABC about a recent episode of Four Corners which attacked those with critical opinions on global warming/climate change. I received a reply stating that my opinions were a "minority view" and that the ABC had no time for such opinions because of some UN report (UNreliable). I could have written to the Minister and taken it higher in the ABC complaints/disputes hierarchy but what would be the point when our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster has taken such a single, hard line on an issue?

Furthermore, what annoys me is the coming "Climate in Crisis" concerts. Another stunt by the populist artists (and where has all that money gone that was raised from Live Aid and Live Earth - poverty could have been eradicated with the amount that was raised!!)

I have just read an article that questions the whole concept of global
temperature as being meaningless. This by a professor of mathermatics
and physics at a Canadian university.

I have read couple of other papers recently along the same lines.

Before we go haring off spending multi giga dollars on carbon taxes
etc we should really find out if we know what we are doing.

Matbe John Howard was right after all.

Science operates on the basis of creating a hypothesis, and when new evidence appears the hypothesis is modified or changed altogether. The evidence available at present is suggestive of CO2 creating climate change; but there could be other factors such as sun spot activity, or created by water vapour or methane. Science does not rely on political philosophy about whether it is right or wrong.

In other words if some scientists suggest there are reasons for climate change other than those commonly accepted, then scientific method should be used to prove or disprove. Strident emotive criticism is pretty useless.

I think we should be petitioning the ABC to show the program in full.

Hey Davsab,

Thank you. I like your response very much. I suspect you and I might get along as I question everything, yes sometimes I get angry by what I see as blind acceptance, but I think about things and tend to oppose particularly anything that suddenly becomes politically hot.

In other words if politicians suddenly discover a problem then I suspect their motives. And anyone who seems to gain sudden prominence as a result of it.

I don't think I said all scientists are frauds and I certainly didn't mean to imply such if that's how it read. To me science is usually the most believeable part of life but even then most topics have scientists of differing opinions.

This is where I do get angry. When people, like myself, without specific personal skills or knowledge in a given area claim they know "for certain" and quote sites of people they have never met etc. Like all of us I do have my expert areas but none of us have many of such.

I think I'd like to email with you, initially on this topic and see if we get along. Here's an email address that th spammers can use. If you contact me I'll give you a regular one.

enuffenuff@fastmail.fm.

Again, thanks for a bit of actual discussion and sanity.

As to Bazz. Howard right about what? Are you saying there has been no change? That's what Howard says. It's just temporary. I guess you could say I wrote that above but my temporary is hundreds or thousands of years. Not just between elections.

Howard hasn't been right except in his political loyalty in that direction, about anything in my memory. How could he be? He lies about everything.

I know this is a bit off topic, but I think this is a really good viewpoint from former CIA Director James Woolsey on the problem we in the west face with oil.

http://www.energybulletin.net/31004.html

As a side effect, reducing our dependence on oil would definitely help to curtail the rise of Islam.

Dinners says "I personally don't see how .... how sea levels are supposed to rise to dramatic levels because of ice melting at the poles (ever put ice into a glass, allowed it to melt, and noticed it overflow? Nope? Neither have I)."

Dinners, I suspect you've imbibed far too much of the stuff in your glass if you can't see the problems with your argument. Granted that the Arctic ice sheet and Antarctic ice shelves are floating, but you've forgotten that Greenland and Antarctica are MOST DEFINITELY not floating. Thus the ice covering both (at depths up to 4.5 kms) will increase sea levels if it melts.

Well, I'm just off to add several million cubic kilometres of ice to my scotch. I'm pretty sure it won't overflow the glass.

Kieren:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/latest-trends-in-co2/

Has a good discussion of CO2 concentrations as measured from Mauna Loa in Hawi'i, how they've been changing and how scientists analyse the data.

At present, around 24 billion tonnes of CO2 is released each year from the burning of fossil fuels alone.

Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased from 280ppm to 379ppm since 1850. Wikipedia has some pretty useful and accurate numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth%27s_atmosphere

The proportion of CO2 stuffed into the atmosphere over the last 150 or so years completly dwarfs the contribution from the natural sources. We know this for several reasons.

For one, carefull book keeping of the amount of fossil fuels extracted and burned should give us an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of about 500ppm. However, the oceans are sucking up about half of what we throw up there. 6 independant studies have confirmed that the amount of CO2 in the oceans is increasing.

For specialists, the ratio of Carbon isotopes 14C/12C and 13C/C12 are also a dead give away (smoking gun if you will), but I'm not skilled enough in expressing science clearly to explain this within the word count, so check out:

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-5/p16a.html

and the ipcc reports

www.ipcc.ch

As for volcanoes, they emit about 250 million tones of CO2 a year according to the US geological survey:

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

This is less than 1% of what humans emit in a year.

CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are measured directly using contrations called infra-red spectrometers. They measure the concentration of CO2 to about a tenth of 1 percent. In the middle atmosphere (about 5km up), we use satellites like NASA's AIRS:

http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov//

Just an aside, can people get over ad homs and stick to the issues.

Well DavoP I was refering to John Howards obvious earlier uncertainty
about global warming. That is that where he might have been right.
It should be obvious to all that there is a scientific rethink going
on about the causes of global warming being caused by human activity.

>As to Bazz. Howard right about what? Are you saying there has been no >change?
That's what Howard says. It's just temporary. I guess you could
>say I wrote that above but my temporary is hundreds or thousands of >years. Not just between elections.

>Howard hasn't been right except in his political loyalty in that
>direction, about anything in my memory. How could he be? He lies about
>everything.
>Posted by DavoP, Monday, 25 June 2007 7:18:55 PM

To blythely say that John Howard lies about everything really removes
you from any meaningful discussion on the matter and you should
concentrate on politrical discussions.

In any case it has now become obvious that there is not enough carbon
available in oil, gas and coal to cause the IPCC predictions of
temperature rise to occur. The peak in these energy sources will
occur too soon.

So you are all, including me, wasting our time arguing about CO2.
The real argument is; what are we going to do about energy ?

Alzo

RealClimate is biased towards the science of CC; other sites are biased against the science of CC – c’est la vie. You have looked at the RealClimate site and have made a value judgement. Why don’t you want other people to have the same freedom?

I agree, the AR4 reports should be read more, but most people don’t. It is impossible to have rational and constructive debate with people who can’t be bothered to read or understand the resource material. The AR4 reports are a comprehensive assessment of the 1000’s of peer reviewed scientific papers that have been published on the aspects of climate change.

Keiran

I don’t “feel all humans exhale carbon with original sin believing that nature is but a subset of humanity” – false conclusion based on false premise, therefore inconsequential. You’re not stupid, you know what the CO2 concentration is and where it has come from, and it’s not rocket science. Fallacious argument does not help your cause or the discussion, I would rather engage with you on substance.

Dinners

Ice-berg melt does not significantly contribute to sea level rise, you got that right. Glacier and ice-sheet (cap) disintegration would increase the sea levels significantly. This is why some scientists are concerned; there is more evidence of this happening since the release of the TER in 2001.

JohnJ eloquently covers ice-melt.

Weather patterns over Adelaide don’t constitute global warming.

The CO2 site is ok, albeit a particular family-line runs it, from the chairman of the board to the coffee-boy. RealClimate has flaws too, but members are marginalised and have expertise in various aspects of climate science.

I understand your frustration with the ABC; I think it is a serious problem with ALL media. They have a huge responsibility to the public – no wonder some people get so confused.

I agree with you entirely about the 7th July concerts, so too does Bob Geldof; we know about GW, it would be much better to spend the time, money and effort to actually do something about the problem.

DavoP

Cheers. I have always questioned things, to seek answers. Some people thought I was so stupid for asking the questions (and evidently some still do). But this is how I learned to be a free-thinker.

You are right of course, GW or climate change is “politically hot” – and that is half the problem.

We have a politician like Gore ‘hamming’ it up on stage (bad move methinks, but he did get a message across, probably will get a saint-hood or Nobel if he keeps going!). He has certainly alienated much of the conservative Republican. Then we have Arnold (“the terminator”) doing a very good job in addressing GW, and he is not acting.

Then we look at George dubya and John dubya, my heart cries! We need leaders with a vision; Liberal, Labour or Martian – I don’t care, as long as they look after the environment, all else follows.

Don’t get me wrong, some scientists are frauds; potential for litigation prevents me naming them.

Thanks for the offer of emailing but now that it has been made, you will probably get all sorts of crap and not know whether it’s me or some looney-toon.

Bazz

You are so right – it really is about Peak Hydrocarbons, sustainable use of energy and resources!

However, the IPCC does have a point, and if adapting to CC and mitigating GHG helps to achieve the same objective, why not?

Does anyone have an opinion on a David Rutledge May 11 webcast at this site, talking about climate change and Peak Fossil Fuels:

http://rutledge.caltech.edu/

Click the video link and scroll to Hubbert’s Peak and Climate Change – an hour long but better than TV

How can you discredit something that discredits itself.

It's opening statement that "You are being lied to" tars all scientists with the same brush. How does Durkin try to prove his case? He asks some scientists. But by his opening statement they are liars.

Welcome to a new phrase "Doing a Durkin".

T. Sett, I think we are being lied to by politicians and economists who almost universally promote continuous human expansion.

In the same way, I can see the possibility that we are being lied to about climate change, although we should refer to it as possibly being misled rather than lied to.

I believe that anthropogenic climate is real and of a huge magnitude. But I’m willing to accept that it might not be the case.

But I’m not willing to accept that continuous human expansion, ie; the constant promotion of economic growth, population growth and ever-more human activity and the ever-greater demand on our resource base and environment, is the right way forward, or that a large portion of politicians and economists know this perfectly well…and are thus lying to us.

THIS is the big lie. This is what we need to be concerned about far more-so than climate change.

I don’t think that Durkin has discredited himself. Obviously he is not including all scientists in his ‘lie’, only those who disagree with him.

And I think his approach of only seeking interviews on his side of the argument is fine. We all know the views on the other side. He didn't need to interview anyone to go that stuff.