<< …they refuse to even consider the influence of increasing population on the use of fossil fuels and the increase in CO2. If they consider humans are responsible then lowering the number of humans has to be the responce. >>

Exactly Banjo. This is the most enormous and extraordinary oversight in the whole AGW business.

I find it flabbergasting that all this concern over AGW hasn’t automatically extended itself into much greater concern over population and sustainability, and led to a concerted effort to address the whole shebang!

This biggest criticism from the AGW detractors should not be that some efforts are being made to address this issue, but that these efforts are basically being far too narrowly focussed or misdirected and should be about the achievement of sustainable societies all over the world and within this, balancing energy supply and demand in an ongoing manner.

As I keep saying it should hardly matter if we think AGW is real or not, we should be addressing the whole sustainability bit, and in doing so, we would be addressing AGW inadvertently if you like… and doing a far better job of it than if we continued to address it in isolation.

This is of paramount importance, but alas, practically all those who are interested in the AGW subject, on both sides of the debate, don’t seem to be interested in this part of the picture at all!!

This really is mind-boggling in the extreme!

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Thanks for the response Leo, but you have just indicated what I am saying beautifully. A well-considered response, but not a thought for the bigger picture of sustainability!!

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Cheers Poirot ( :>)

You know what, Ludwig. I think that I might be agreeing with you, at least to some extent. My concern about the whole mad campaign to blame anthropogenic CO2 emissions as the only culprit for all observed climate change is that not only is it wrong, misguided, and entirely unsupported by evidence (assumptions in computer models do not constitute evidence), and not only that the overwhelming influence of natural cycles is dismissed as minor, but that the serious human impacts relating to land-use are effectively ignored.

Man is having major impacts on local and regional climate in many parts of the world through land-use factors. By land-use factors, we can include deforestation, urbanisation, draining of swamps, industrial agriculture with its use of pesticides, herbicides, monoculture, and GM seeds, and interference with natural hydrological cycles.

Effects of anthropogenic land-use factors are widespread. In the US in the 1930s, they led to the dust-bowl issues. Today, there is desertification going on around west of Beijing, around the Ural Sea, and in other places. The human impacts are profound, and dangerous.

And to the extent that the wider population thinks that there is climate change, it can be that they are observing these local and regional effects, and conflating them with AGW.

The reason that I bang on about CO2 being such a minor problem is that it is vitally important that we begin to address these wider issues. Sustainability if you like

This is it; Flannery rabbits on about China and renewables when in fact the only renewable China is progressing with is hydro, which is opposed by the Greens!

In fact, however, nuclear is renewable too because the first stage enrichment creates a better fuel source; and Thorium can use 'waste' plutonium. China is also proceeding with nuclear, another renewable opposed by the greens/Gais.

It really would make the nonsense science of AGW irrelevant if the Gais would advocate workable alternative energy sources to the fossils; but the fact that they persist in completely failed renewable energies such as wind, solar, wave, geothermal etc informs any reasonable person that the real agenda of the Gais is to restructure society into a poorer more miserable form, as advocated by the likes of Hamilton in such books as "Growth Fetish".

Seen in this light AGW is not about science but about lifestyle ideology; and what a bunch of wowsers the Gais are; it's basically hairshirts all the way!

Remind me, csteele, when did you “engage me”?

I asked you a question, you could not answer it. Is the irrelevant nonsense you posted thereafter your asserted “engagement”? You did not even make it into the ring.

I will extract the relevant part of the post I directed to you on another OLO thread.

“the following statement is a scientific statement: "…no study to date has positively attributed all or part of climate change observed to man-made causes.”

Can you refute that science, csteele?”

Obviously, you cannot.

You now ask: “Is there a specific point you would like me to address?”.

You appear to have a difficulty with comprehension of plain English.

Herbert.

I agree that human disturbance of the earth’s surface and hydrology by way of clearing vegetation, changing transpiration rates, infiltration rates, runoff rates, reflectivity, fire regimes, farting cows, etc, etc, must surely have a great deal to do with any anthropogenically incurred climate change that might be happening.

<< The reason that I bang on about CO2 being such a minor problem is that it is vitally important that we begin to address these wider issues. Sustainability if you like >>

Excellent. You’ve made my day!! ( :>)

Ludwig, noone is disagreeing, least of all me, with the view that humans do impact on the environment.

Now, accepting that fact, the issue becomes a cost/benefit analysis; that is, does the particular action impact on nature in a way which overall is of benefit to humanity.

What the AGW discussion has changed is that criteria of benefit to humans; now the criteria is that ANYTHING which impacts on nature is wrong not because it may be of a detriment to humans but because of the simple fact that nature is compromised. Now we are seeing the right of nature to be left alone by humans regardless of whether the interference with nature is of benefit to humans. This is reflected in the bizarre demands for criminalisation of offences against nature; the so-called offence of ecocide.

Everything humans do impacts on nature; humans have removed themselves from the oppression of nature and built civilizations which allow many more humans to live a lifestyle which is free from the tyranny of nature.

So, when I read people like you go on about sustainability what I understand is that you want some sort of return to "natural" limitations put on the lifestyles of people.

Is that right, is that what you mean by sustainability; and if so what parts of the modern lifestyles enjoyed by people living in Australia do you want curtailed or removed?