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The Forum > Article Comments > Copenhagen: the price of the atmosphere > Comments

Copenhagen: the price of the atmosphere : Comments

By Andrew Glikson, published 31/12/2009

A denial campaign waged by contrarians supported by fossil fuel interests is holding the world to ransom.

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We need to move on from whether climate change is real or not and ask, what can we do about it? Can we fix it the way we did the ozone hole? It's not simply a matter of developing a new aerosol, we need to make radical changes that, let's face it, we're not going to make. The human race will be fine, it just has to go through a mass die-off, like mice do when there's a plague and they've devastated the resources that hitherto sustained them. What's happening is a perfectly natural event, it's just a shame that withal our giant brains we haven't had the sense to prevent it. No, the cornucopia is inexhaustible and we can tuck in for all we're worth! Anyway, God'll fix it, or man's ingenuity, or something.
The thing is we can't stop; if anything happened to hinder production, supply and demand, the same thing would happen. Most people seem to have no conception of just how precarious our situation is, with a panarchic armageddon just waiting to kick in the infrastructure, and positive feed-back loops ensuring a thorough purge. It's just a matter of whether the planet or man-made chaos does us in first.
Moreover, if we want to keep a hand on the tiller while we go down the tubes, then we have to keep capital and production going. Capitalism is the only thing that can fund and manufacture the quantum technological leap needed. The world's billions of consumers are the means of production; they produce the surplus that funds the R&D that will ultimately save us(a few). These vital new technologies will be the by-product of continued and unconscionable human avarice.
Change must be gradual, the least spook could precipitate the system into chaos before the means of survival have been developed. Copenhagen was thus a resounding success; even the rudimentary intellects of the most bovine denialists are persuaded that something should be done, as long as it doesn't affect them.
So be it; we are doomed to die-off suddenly, to suffer the ignominious demise that confronts any plague.
Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 31 December 2009 5:57:06 PM
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De Andrew writes

'Early humans survived a rise of +3 degrees Celsius about 2.8 million years ago. Homo sapiens survived an abrupt temperature rise of about +5oC during the two last glacial terminations ~130,000 and ~14-11,000 years ago, in part through migration'

No wonder so many people treat gw with contempt. Science fiction at its best. The only dishonest campaign was run by scientists willing to prostitute professionalism in order to give the UN what they wanted to hear.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 31 December 2009 8:28:10 PM
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andrew, good article which won't do a bit of good. you'll also notice you've received a (seemingly) genuine request for references from armchair climatologist, don aitkin.

jedimaster, nice summary.

arjay, scientists may generally err on the side of skepticism, but they're not denialist loons.
Posted by bushbasher, Thursday, 31 December 2009 8:31:57 PM
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To all those denialists, a simple question: what evidence would be enough to convince you that AGW exists? You currently dismiss the vast majority of climate scientists and the vast vast majority of peer reivewed literature. You dismiss everything else as part of a global conspiracy. So, what evidence would convince you? Is it temperature? Is it sea level rise? Is it acidification? And what do you require as a source of legitimate data? And what is the nature of the review that this data must undergo? Will anything convince you? I'd love to hear - or are you simply in a zero sum game, where nothing is all you desire and all you accept?
Posted by next, Thursday, 31 December 2009 9:26:12 PM
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It was amusing to see Robert Mugabe having a rant at Copenhagen about how the "rich" countries were ruining his country through climate change. What a hoot! He and his henchmen turned a prosperous country into a basket case, and GW alarmists want to turn cash over to tinpot third world dictators?
Posted by viking13, Thursday, 31 December 2009 10:05:10 PM
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Would a few belts around the ears, with an 8Lb sledge hammer get into the heads of these warmers, that their lot have been caught.

Yes, caught out cheeting lying altering data & in fact conspiring to defraud. It's over, their names are going to be dirty words.

I like to think that their intentions were honourable, that they believed their theory. I think they got into trouble when they saw they could not prove it.

Some of them, like our warmers, probably still believe it, & would do anything to try to keep it alive. That was the problem, they just could not tell the truth, when it went against all they worked for.

Yes, it did become a conspiracy then, & our pollies saw a chance for more tax, they could blame the tax payer for, & helped them.

It's all now stinking like last weeks prawns.

Get off the bandwagon now you blokes, before all the wheels fall off.
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 31 December 2009 10:33:10 PM
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