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The Forum > Article Comments > Climate change crystal ball clouds over > Comments

Climate change crystal ball clouds over : Comments

By Mark S. Lawson, published 24/7/2007

IPCC forecasting: waving a bunch of computers at a set of bad assumptions will not turn them into good forecasts.

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Xoddam said “Climate change contributes to poverty-related deaths, simply by contributing to poverty. So yes, CO2 is a killer, without being a poison.”. You should have given an example if you had one. There is no real evidence to suggest climate change has caused poverty. Overreacting to climate change, on the other hand, could definitely prolong poverty in the third world. “Pollution from .. household fires causes 4 million deaths a year from lung infections. The lack of electricity also means minimal medical facilities, manufacturing, and commerce--and impoverished countries forever dependent on foreign aid.” http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20069. Overreacting has a significant price attached.

“Anyone like myself who has actually studied the subject and become alarmed is called all sorts of names, starting with "alarmist" and carrying on through "greenie", "socialist" and "feral"".
Are the GW supporters the only people who are studying the problem? Distinguished scientists, some at my University, are skeptics in some form or another. These are learned people, without an axe to grind, yet they are placed in the same basket as holocaust deniers. Pretending that climate change skeptics are ill informed is pompous and patently untrue.

Dickie, Your attempt to link pollution with CO2 is obfuscation at it’s best. Clean air is an easy sell to most people. Linking CO2 to particulate and chemical pollution is basically a bait and switch operation to get more customers buying your product. The issues of clean air and CO2 emissions should be dealt with separately when we are talking about climate change. As Alzo said above all organic materials burnt in enough oxygen will produce CO2. You just decided to say it 13 different ways.
Posted by Paul.L, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 4:15:56 PM
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“Are the GW supporters the only people who are studying the problem?” This is such a contemptuous question.

Of course there are, and those that know anything about climate science publish papers on their hypotheses, for all other experts to critique. Not here on OLO.

So some “distinguished scientists” at Paul’s University “are sceptics in some form or another … and they are learned people, without an axe to grind yet they are placed in the same basket as holocaust deniers.”

Are they? These are YOUR words Paul.

Paul, these learned and distinguished scientists you refer to, what science are their fields of expertise? I ask because, unless they have specific expertise in a climate related science, then their thoughts, musings or sayings are just opinions – like yours, like mine.

Just because I have post grad degrees in both science (chemistry) and engineering (chemical) does not make me expert in climate science. However, if I did opine that I knew most of the climate scientists are wrong, then I would indeed be ill informed and clearly pompous.

If people want to debate the science, why don’t they go to the primary sources?

Some would say all this *s..t* fight is not about the science, but rather east/west, us/them, have/have not, capitalism/communism, good/bad, right/wrong, etc. Yep, I couldn't agree more.

“Overreacting to climate change, on the other hand, could definitely prolong poverty in the third world.”

Put another way, “Under-reaction, could definitely prolong poverty in the third world.”

This is very dependent on the reaction … and thus left up to policy makers – WHERE WE CAN HAVE A MEANINGFUL DEBATE.
Posted by davsab, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 5:04:23 PM
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Inclement weather kills. Poor rainfall impoverishes people who rely on subistence agriculture for their livelihood. Unpredictable weather leads to mass migration of vulnerable people and to conflict. The Sahel is being rapidly depopulated (viz. the Darfur conflict and others on the edge of this vast and unreliably productive region).

Because "climate" is a statistical haze and the weather has always been fickle, it is not entirely accurate to blame climate change for any one event. Yet increasing uncertainty of rainfall events and a general decline in net rainfall is our experience in the recent decades of warming and (according to the statistician Armstrong who says all forecasts should extrapolate trends and ignoring chaotic feedbacks) we should expect more of whatever has already been happening.

On purely statistical grounds, CO2 is a killer!

Paul's point about electrification solving the problems of poverty is well-taken, but the implication that greenhouse emission reductions compromise the electrification project is utterly false. In fact investments made by Europeans to reduce their own carbon emissions directly improve the prospects of African electrification.

Electricity doesn't have to be associated with high CO2 emissions. The cheapest technologies for delivering electric power have been, since the early 1990s, small low- or zero-carbon generators, not the 1960s-era behemoths used in Australia:

http://www.smallisprofitable.org/
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2033302

The potential for electricity from ambient energy is far, far greater than many commentators and planners are prepared to admit, living as they do in the 1970s. Both distributed and centralised ambient-energy generators have made leaps and bounds in recent years. "Old-fashioned" concentrating solar thermal generation (using hot pumped oil) is now cost-competitive with coal in the sunnier US states:

http://www.us.schott.com/solarthermal/english/download/schott_white_paper.pdf

And within a few years this grand project could bear results:

http://www.trecers.net/

... which would of course have enormous implications for all Africa, not just the North, though the project focuses on power for European requirements.

With high-voltage DC transmission, power generation no longer has to be especially close to the point of use: trans-continental electric grids are becoming a reality.

Hey what happened to the word limit?
Posted by xoddam, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 5:40:28 PM
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Great stuff xoddam, on the trans-Med. solar thermal network/ TREC didja see this snippet:

"Arab countries urge solar future
Vanya Walker-Leigh, Times of Malta
Palmyra, Syria -- Arab energy ministers and some EU politicians attending a high-level conference in this desert oasis town flanked by the ruins of a vast Roman city, announced support for a revolutionary renewable energy electricity supply system proposed by Germany to link both areas.

The Damascus Declaration adopted here on June 24 by them as well as the several hundred participants (scientists, industrialists, civil servants) at the Fourth Middle East and North Africa Renewable Energy Conference (MENAREC4) advocated "large-scale renewable energy systems" which would permit solar electricity to the EU. All nations were invited to set national renewable energy targets, and donors were asked to massively increase related assistance.

..."A German Aerospace Centre study has shown that solar thermal power plants located in the Arab countries could make a significant contribution to future EU energy supplies. Single plants are already under construction in Morocco, Algeria and Egypt and planned for Libya and Jordan. .."
http://www.timesofmalta.com/core/article.php?id=267515
via http://energybulletin.net/31861.html
(8 July 2007)
Posted by Liam, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 6:03:41 PM
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"I don't mind the name-calling, but I want action."
Thankfully we live in a democracy and you're not a dictator.

"if I did opine that I knew most of the climate scientists are wrong, then I would indeed be ill informed and clearly pompous."
Yet you manage to sound that way regardless.

"Yet increasing uncertainty of rainfall events and a general decline in net rainfall is our experience in the recent decades of warming"
Are you talking here in Australia or globally? Globally there has been no detectable change. Australia has had less net rainfall in the past.

"On purely statistical grounds, CO2 is a killer!"
From what you've said above it sounds like it is H20 that is the killer (too much or not enough).

"Inclement weather kills"
Yes this winter has almost finished me.

"it is not entirely accurate to blame climate change for any one event."
Please pass this on to Al Gore.
Posted by alzo, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 6:39:17 PM
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Alzo's posts yet again demonstrate his ineptitude to confront real issues and exemplify his blasé attitude to what real leaders and visionaries see as basic problems.

Alzo yet again has NOT contributed constructively to any meaningful discussion.
Posted by davsab, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 6:57:14 PM
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