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The Forum > Article Comments > Climate change and the world's poor > Comments

Climate change and the world's poor : Comments

By Andrew Hewett, published 3/7/2007

Climate change is arguably the gravest threat ever faced by humanity.

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davsab.As you point out 1998 is a hotter year than any since that time. Global warming has ceased, at least for 9 years.

I simply drew your attention to the fact that a graph produced by the IPCC shows no warming since 1998, and various periods of warming and cooling over the last 100 years, with an aggregate warming in that period of one half of one degree.

The graph is in the Summary and is easily checked, as is the misleading statement in the Summary, quoted in my post. No appeal will alter that, or the fact that the evidence given by the expert greenie against Xstrata, was found by the Judge to be exaggerated, which is a euphemism for false.

Your rationalisation of the disregard of scientific method to accommodate politicians is unconvincing. If it is not science, as the Summary clearly is not, then it should not be misrepresented by the UN as science. Call it what it is: a composition to satisfy anti western politicians.

Thanks for the link to IPCC. I cannot believe that this is their scientific report, directing the reader back to the Summary as the overview. I would have thought they would avoid a flawed document like their Summary, but perhaps it has been amended.

I look forward to some amusing reading.

All of the alarmist fuss, unless it is based on a warming of .5 of a degree in 100 years, depends on predictions. The leading predictor is the IPCC, and I do not think I am the first to point out that it has not been right yet.

You say: “There are plenty of safeguards (not least the scientists themselves) to ensure that the SPM is not slanted in any one preferred direction”

I do not know what these alleged “safeguards” are, but I have given you plenty of evidence that they have failed, particularly in the case of the scientists. Did you even look at what Chris Landsea said before making a statement like that. Here is the link:

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/landsea.html
Posted by Nick Lanelaw, Thursday, 5 July 2007 6:13:35 PM
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Attention all REAL scientists, and all unbiased observers of the natural and economic rationalist unnatural world:

The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're just regurgitally quoting other scientists in front of a camera or on a public forum. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is NOT science.

For example, in climate science, what you've gotta do is observe and find out what the biosphere is really doing and put it into your mind. This is SCIENCE.

You must go out and research what the hell is really going on at a raw data level (Experimenting with Ricci flow bluish-green ocean surface 'gutters' on global and regional SHA maps for example).

Not doing so is more and more often, in an unjust and shoehorned global economy environment, just being a witless spokesperson for somebody else's profiteering agenda. That is crazy! It can never be science for it can never form the basis of a TRUTH you can build upon.

And very soon the IPCC and its 50-100 year predictions will find this out to their chagrin. Once petrol hits $5 a litre, anything but climate predictions for the next 15 to 20 years are going to look pretty damn silly.

continued ..
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 6 July 2007 5:54:29 AM
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As for world poverty:

the second law of thermodynamics predicts that the most efficient way to give aid is not money or food but ENERGY. From energy comes ORDER. Money just breeds greed and social division. Australia's best plan to alleviate global poverty and for its own economic security, is to build UF6 centrifuge farms NOW and manufacture Nuclear PEBBLE fuel to power medium to small REACTORS. The kind of reactors that power ships, or medium to small cities. Australian cities of over 50,000 people, Antarctic bases and certain navy ships should all aim to have such reactors within 5-10 years. Larger installations are too unsafe, inefficient and expensive to build and maintain

We can export or use these REACTORS locally. We should give REACTORS as aid to selected cities in poorer nations and supply PBR fuel only if they maintain a flawless one child per family policy. That is how to put an end to world poverty and terrorism! People free to live their lives without poverty and senseless competition will not make enemies.

As for nuclear security:

* You cannot use PBR fuel in breeder reactors nor can you use it to make bombs. You could crush the pebbles and make a dirty bomb but it would be just as effective to use an old car battery, so why bother.

*PBR reactors automatically shut down when they reach critical temperatures and thus nuclear accidents are absolutely impossible.

* Long term wastes, not from safe enclosed PBR pebbles but from tailings and processing, could kill or injure in the thousands WORST CASE. The most likely scenario is that technology will make this waste future safe. However this assessment must be weighed up against the 6 billion folks likely to be exterminated if we reach peakoil (~2025) without a reliable stop-gap, base-load and green energy alternative. Ultimately, unless we develop our own energy generating space program, virtually unlimited GEOTHERMAL power will make Nuclear power obsolete within several decades as laser drilling technology matures.
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 6 July 2007 6:06:20 AM
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KAEP et al

So, we are back on topic after an interlude of dead head space, my apologies for trying to rationalise with the irrational … I know, a contradiction in terms!

The REAL problem the world is facing is not about climate change science (the science is there for all to see, whether you believe it or not).

Rather, the world’s REAL problems are more about philosophical or political ideology, primarily driven by the unsustainable consumerism of the so called developed countries, apparently at all costs.

It seems that unless we as a species converge to one common goal, humanity and many other species are stuffed … simple as.

Ok, the United Nations has problems and its Charter needs to be modified, but at the moment that is all we have got.

At the very basic level, should not we (at the grassroots level) be “encouraging” our political leaders to address the problems raised not only by Oxfam, but by the United Nations itself?
Posted by davsab, Friday, 6 July 2007 6:09:41 PM
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We as a species must converge to one common goal? Whose goal davsab? Yours? Mine? My housemates have never even converged on a common goal on housework. Other societies have converged on someone's idea of a collectivist common goal. Now there's a lesson in REAL problems. Your "so called" developed countries don't look so bad by comparison. And if their wealth is so ill-gotten, how is it morally defensible for unelected NGOs to demand a cut of the loot?
Posted by Richard Castles, Friday, 6 July 2007 9:09:17 PM
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Richard,

Whose goal you ask, mine, yours? This is exactly my point and we may not differ as much as you think. In fact, you allude to the REAL problem as well.

I don’t want to trivialise the issue by comparing it to your housemate’s chores, but I understand where you are coming from.

The United Nations is not a very effective institution because its policies and actions are mainly determined by the interests of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the US, UK, France, Russia and China - each possess the power of veto, which means that decisions taken by the UN in general can be blocked by any one of the ‘big boys’. I’m sure you know this.

Any sphere of influence enjoyed by the ‘big boys’ is therefore seemingly protected; it happened with the war on the “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, it is happening again with the war on the “Weather of Mass Destruction”.

The ‘big boys’ will not tolerate their fundamental interests being challenged. When rival states follow divergent paths, the UN is paralysed.

This is why I say to really solve the world’s problems; we must converge to common goals – and this is the difficulty as you quite rightly point out.

The US, UK and France are ‘developed’, China and Russia want what we have and are adopting policies and strategies to achieve that, they are ‘developing’.

Problem is, the way we have achieved this development (economic growth if you like) is by putting enormous pressure on the environment (how we use and manage non-renewable resources for example). The developed nations have also put extreme pressure on the people and countries that are not as ‘developed’.

Countries in the ‘developed world’ pontificate on ‘human rights’, but they continue to pursue a 'neo-conservative' agenda - privatisation, 'free trade', labour market deregulation, etc - that results in destabilising and sucking wealth out of the poorest countries while at the same time swelling the assets of the big multi-nationals and their mates.

Continued
Posted by davsab, Saturday, 7 July 2007 4:47:53 PM
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