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The Forum > Article Comments > Population, resources and climate change - making connections > Comments

Population, resources and climate change - making connections : Comments

By Jenny Goldie, published 7/10/2013

Yet, as Professor Paul Ehrlich will note at a conference in Canberra next week, the more people there are, the more you need to expand food production.

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Oh well I'll just add my tuppeny ha'porth to forestall the usual crowd who claim global warming is a myth or that it peaked in 1998.

It'll help if you open this graphic in a browser tab:

http://skepticalscience.com/graphics/ENSO_Temps_500.gif

It's compiled from data supplied by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the skepticalscience.com website.

The graphic shows mean global temperatures by year classified as follows:

--El Nino present (red squares)

--La Nina present (blue squares)

--Neutral -no El Nino or La Nina (black squares)

The last El Nino year was in 2005. 2009 was not the hottest year on record but it was the hottest La Nina year on record. Ditto 2010 was the hottest neutral year on record while 2012 was the second hottest La Nina year. This gives the lie to claims that global warming stopped in 1998. When we adjust for the effects of El Nino and La Nina we see there has been no "pause" in global warming.

1998, the year the "sceptics" point to when they claim global warming peaked, was an exceptionally strong El Nino year. It is not surprising that it is such an outlier in the temperature record.

For explanations about El Nino and La Nina see:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/history/ln-2010-12/ENSO-what.shtml

Those who are interested might also want to read:

What ocean heating reveals about global warming

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/

Here are links to two excellent websites for people who are interested in learning about climate science:

http://skepticalscience.com/

http://www.realclimate.org/

Real science, not the pseudo-science of either the Murdoch owned media or the ABC.
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Monday, 7 October 2013 8:43:04 AM
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A few more points.

Ehrlich along with people like Flannery, Suzuki and Al Gore are NOT climate scientists. They're not even scientists.

They are members of what has become a CLIMATE CELEBRITY CIRCUIT or CCC. You should pay no more attention to them than to pundits like Andrew Bolt and James Delingpole.

Focus on what actual scientists say in peer reviewed journals, not on the froth emanating from "pro" and "anti" evangelists. The evangelists, "pro" AND "anti" are trying to sell you a product. Trust them as little as you would a used car salesman or politician.
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Monday, 7 October 2013 8:49:08 AM
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Thanks stevenlmayer.

The fundamental message, as hard as it is to swallow, is that fossil-fuels must remain buried. That a (now ex-) Big Oil/Coal/Gas man, Ian Dunlop is saying so is excellent. However it will be business as usual until we again have a government, of whatever political persuasion, that bites the bullet on this.

Australia can, and should, act unilaterally, regardless of where the rest of the world is at right now, and it can do it without adversely affecting our industry while preparing it for a global ETS system when the world is inevitably forced down our same path. (I brainstorm this briefly at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6023#173266 plus see follow-up comments. This is where OLO discussion should now progress rather than dealing with denialism)

The science IS settled, and no amount of squirming and avoidance can bring escape from its fundamental conclusion, expressed by Ian Dunlop.
Posted by Luciferase, Monday, 7 October 2013 10:14:19 AM
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>>Australia can, and should, act unilaterally, regardless of where the rest of the world is at right now>>

Just to be clear:

The science and the policy responses to the science are separable issues. My intent in the previous posts was to point out some facts about the science.

FOR THE RECORD:

I do NOT, repeat NOT, believe Australia acting unilaterally would serve any useful purpose. I do NOT, repeat NOT, endorse any such policy.

I do think we should be building more dams though.
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Monday, 7 October 2013 10:26:21 AM
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Why not, stevenlmeyer?

The resources in the ground will still be there if the world does not follow, become more valuable as their supply becomes shorter. We can sell them off in the future to finance a nice life for all of us until the curtain comes down.

Furthermore, we will have no obligation towards the compensating third world adversely affected by the first world's failure to limit warming to 2 degrees as we will not be culpable for the affects.

Please share your reasons, stevenlmeyer, as this discussion must be had on OLO and everywhere.
Posted by Luciferase, Monday, 7 October 2013 10:50:00 AM
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stevenlmeyer - look, sorry but your first post added precisely nothing to the debate. That attempt to adjust for la ninas and el ninos to explain the 15 year pause, for example, is ludicrous. All it really shows that the la nina and whatnot have heating and cooling effect around an average of the temperature increase. The fact that you can draw lines which sort of averages the increase between the two dates you give, goes without saying. The period is sufficiently long so that on the right graph the pause doesn't look too bad. But to really explain the pause you need the la ninas and volcanic eruptions and so on to be clustered up around the pause.

To make matters worse for you explanation everyone now agrees that there has been a pause. The accepted explanation is that the heat has gone into the oceans, plus some cooling from aerosols. the other approach is to treat the current pause as too short to be worthy of attention. Its all natural variation, so they now tell us. I think that graph has been taken from old material
Posted by Curmudgeon, Monday, 7 October 2013 10:53:27 AM
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