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The Forum > Article Comments > Climate of discontent > Comments

Climate of discontent : Comments

By Des Moore, published 21/4/2011

Julia Gillard's change of course has raised serious questions about both her leadership capacity and community support for policies to reduce emissions.

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Comments on climate change from a “real scientist”, says Leo Lane. This really gives the game away. The “real scientist” he refers to is mining geologist (not climate scientist) Bob Carter, and Carter’s words are in the form of an address to the US Heartland Institute. This has very little to do with real science – it’s not even Australian politics! – it’s the voice of the US mining and fossil fuel lobby, funded by inter alia ExxonMobil and Philip Morris.

rpg, I can only suggest that you take the time to actually look. Climate science has been studied for decades, both the causes and the effects. Below are a couple of references, from the large number freely available, starting with the statement by the Geological Society of London. This is a position paper, not a research paper, but it has copious references at the end.

Meanwhile, LL avoids the issue of probability. Climate change is real, the global temperature is measurably rising, and all the major scientific institutions of the world say that there is at least a 90% probability that this is due to measurable human activity.

http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/webdav/site/GSL/groups/ourviews_edit/public/Climate%20change%20-%20evidence%20from%20the%20geological%20record.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/47/18866.full.pdf
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/11/20/0806318105.full.pdf
Posted by nicco, Sunday, 24 April 2011 5:11:13 PM
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Sorry, nicco, I should have realised that someone who would consider the ridiculous “debunking” of the Oregon Petition to have any validity, would not know what a climate scientist is. nicco has taken the usual warmecile approach to a competent and respected scientist by sliming him with false misrepresentations

“Bob Carter's current research on climate change, sea-level change and stratigraphy is based on field studies of Cenozoic sediments (last 65 million years) from the Southwest Pacific region, especially the Great Barrier Reef and New Zealand, and includes the analysis of marine sediment cores collected during ODP Leg 181.

Bob Carter has acted as an expert witness on climate change before the U.S. Senate Committee of Environment & Public Works, the Australian and N.Z. parliamentary Select Committees into emissions trading and in a meeting in parliament house, Stockholm. He was also a primary science witness in the U.K. High Court case of Dimmock v. H.M.'s Secretary of State for Education, the 2007 judgement from which identified nine major scientific errors in Mr Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth".

He receives no research funding from special interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy companies or government departments.”

http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/

As for previously reputable scientific bodies giving weasel worded statements about human emissions, this is what a scientist, Hal Lewis said when he resigned from the American Physical Society….” the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist”.

Human activity has a local effect, but has not been shown to have a global effect on climate.

Look at reality. If CO2 caused warming as asserted by the alarmists, why has the world not warmed for the past 15 years while CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing? When the temperature shows a trend again it is equally likely that the globe will cool, as it is that it will warm.
Posted by Leo Lane, Sunday, 24 April 2011 9:49:32 PM
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As entertaining as it is to see the jousting back and forth on the GW debate, using science reports and raconteurs as missiles, I am forming the opinion that you can argue the case until worms mutate into egg-laying wombats, and you still won't find the answer.

I will be repeating myself, but the current issue is not GW. It is in fact CO2 and other greenhouse gas emission levels, and whether a carbon tax is warranted or offers any real promise of reducing emission levels.

You may dismiss the environmental scientists who are warning that increased levels of CO2 dissolved in the world's oceans is threatening the marine ecosystem, and thus placing at risk a substantial portion of our food and oxygen supplies. I do not dismiss them.

Increasing sea temperatures are increasing CO2 absorption and decreasing dissolved Oxygen levels. The inevitable consequences of this are massive reductions in marine productivity and mass destruction of the phytoplankton which provide not only the base of the food chain for almost all other marine life but also provide the bulk of the world's oxygen. With the current rate of loss of the world's forests we are also increasingly reliant on the phytoplankton for our survival.

Maybe it's time to realise that the development of alternative energy sources is not optional but essential. The only real concern is how best to change, with least destruction to our economic future.

Given that Oz is a minor producer of greenhouse gasses, the burning question is therefore how to change the world. As Oz is also the world's largest producer of wood chips, maybe that would be a good place for us to start. We are also not very good at conserving our forests (or our environment) or at investing in reforestation. We are also not very good at helping others to conserve their forests - viz Indonesia or South America.

Why should we have a carbon tax, when there is so much else we could do more easily and which would have greater immediate and long term effect? Beats me!
Posted by Saltpetre, Monday, 25 April 2011 3:13:50 AM
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soltpeter, I see your point .. but you never mention the obvious energy source which does not produce CO2, which is Nuclear, why is that?

Wind, solar and the other hobby energy producers are still in their infancy and as they are now will not supply base power for domestic or industry reliability. Maybe in another 100 years they might be more energy efficient, and actually return more than it takes to make them in the first place. Regardless of what they produce, the energy used to produce a solar cell or wind turbine is still out of balance with what it finally does and the eco payback period .. but this is ignored by the alarmists and eco wackos in the rush to be fashionable.

Why do any conversations in this area end up in GW discussions, because that's the regular stick taken to anyone who dares doubt, who dares be skeptical about the justification for the big new tax.

nicco, groan .. did you look at the papers at the end of the dscussion paper? Jeez, mate, only a few relate to establishing the cause of GW .. go look.

also nicco, probability is not a sound basis for this science, when we are being asked to give up our future and current lifestyles. The probability of it being wrong and the wrong assumption is being used by the IPCC is very high .. have a look at this paper since you're sending me off reading http://www.informath.org/media/a42.htm this is a discussion paper, the technical details are here http://www.informath.org/media/a41/b8.pdf

many others do the same thing, use authority and probability and statistics to try to gain a foothold on scientific truth. Clearly for some climate scientists and all alarmists, suspension of scientific method an truth is required to make 1+1=2, the rest of us remain skeptical.
Posted by rpg, Monday, 25 April 2011 8:02:50 AM
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Interesting piece in the WSJ, but hardly convincing. To those of us whose heads are not full of conspiracy theories, the IPCC is a body set up by the UN to draw together current scientific knowledge and theory on the important subject of climate change. However, if you think that the UN is a socialist plot, or that the IPCC is part of a movement to impose world government, then let's leave the IPCC out of the conversation. (I don't agree with you, but that's OK. You can leave Al Gore out too, if you want.) There is so much material from outside the IPCC, or before the IPCC, which is hard to dismiss or ignore.

Bob Carter, for instance. LL says that I am guilty of "sliming him with false misrepresentations", when in fact I pointed out, correctly, that Bob Carter is not a climate scientist, and that Carter has a very public and acknowledged political stance, as exemplified by the public appearances which LL enumerates. Surely this is obvious? Even to LL? And he thinks this is "sliming"?

As for LL's assertion that the world has NOT warmed, it is simply incorrect. See: An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950, Murphy et al, http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtm

rpg, you seem to miss the point about probability. Indeed you seem to be asserting that there is a high probability of the high probability noted by climate scientists being wrong. Bizarre
Posted by nicco, Monday, 25 April 2011 9:42:26 AM
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Re: Carbon tax. Have a listen to Philip Adams interview with Geoff Carmody on the 30/03/11. http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2011/03/lnl_20110330.mp3 Its make sense to me. We the mug punter will pay directly or indirectly via the goods and services we buy. I prefer a direct tax as there is less chance of parasites inflating things and bludging off the producers.

When the GFC was at its peak carbon emissions dropped. The clue here is less economic activity, less CO2. Less parasites equals reduced requirement for economic activity.

Corporate government will not solve the issue as they are a reflection of our society. The only individual on the planet that will solve the issue is reflected in your mirror. Perhaps you can do something after the footy? We need more independents in our parliaments. I believe from chaos comes order.

It’s better to drink Ethanol than Methanol. One kills you, the other you die from!
Gas is better than coal! One kills the planet the other causes the planet to die!
Posted by Producer, Monday, 25 April 2011 9:57:35 AM
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