So therefore, would you have us sit on our hands and do nothing about reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
David

In 1690 the world population is thought to have been about 560m in 2019 about 7,700m. In the old days if water, food supply or hostile neighbours were a problem you just relocated a bit. They didn't need aircon, cars or toaster ovens. Whatever is causing increasingly severe weather now has to be managed in place.

Another reason to constrain CO2 is because one day we will run out of things to burn. We'd better get used to low carbon energy. Some pain now is like an insurance premium against grief later on.

The number of rent seekers grew when the money started coming in. What was that about money and the root of all evil?

Peer reviews? I watched a video a couple of days in which climate scam victim, Peter Ridd, said that peer reviews were rubbish. Papers might get read, bit there is no money available to replicate experiments, models etc.

International agreement to meaningfully and transparently cut CO2 emissions has remained elusive for well over 20 years and there is no evidence that this is about to change.

Thinking about things? Really? So, And given the climate is indeed subject to natural variations,i.e., the sun waxes and the joint heats up, then wanes as it has since the mid-seventies, and the joint cools down. Except that has not been the experience with 2017, a La Nina year, being the second hottest on record.

Moreover, we now have a melting tundra a brand new experience and a northwest summer ice-free passage, for the first time in living memory.

If there's one thing we can agree on Don? It is rubbish in rubbish out! And ignoring some of the data while making comparisons supported by actual solar variations, just does not stack this time and only explained by record CO2 levels and now way up there in uncharted territory.

It's said a government is only as good as the (rubbish in, rubbish out) advice they receive and act on! And ours has typically been a science free zone! So much for your invaluable (coal lobbyist) input Don!

I guess it has escaped your "expert" notice Don, but near neighbour, planet Venus is allegedly also in the habitable Goldilocks zone but is the hottest planet in the solar system.

And due, no doubt, to the fact its atmosphere is moisture laden CO2 and sulphides? Rather than its proximity to the sun

A few days ago I learned that one of the oil and gas-rich states, in the M.E. had deployed a vast solar voltaic array to produce unsubsidised power, cheaper than gas! 5 Cents PKWH!?

Yet there are vastly cheaper options than that, coal being one of them with ROM coal producing power for around 3 cents PKWH?

Or MSR thorium tasked as nuclear waste burners, able to get it down to a fraction of one cent PKWH. And paid for in total with other folks (waste disposal) money! As annual billions!

Legitimate problem with that outcome, Don?

If one were constrained to the best science, best economic argument alone and on the safest option available, the latter would win hands down!
Alan B.

Thinking about things? Oh, I see! And explains the strange burning smell and the fact that the smoke alarm has gone ballistic!

You'll have a nice day now, y'hear.
Alan B.

The problem with global warming is that it is now too big to fix.

The UK is boasting that it will phase out fossil fuels over the next 30 years. But as one environmental economist countered, in 30 years there will be four more Chinas, four more Indias and another 1.6 billion people.

Human civilisation is dying so the best thing people can really start doing is learning how to cope with all the bad things that are coming their way.

Come on Taswegian, the stone age did not end because we ran out of stones, nor the bronze age because we ran out of copper.

Nor will the hydrocarbon age end because we ran out of hydrocarbon. As in the past, we discovered improved materials to replace the old. This will happen with hydrocarbons, but it sure has not happened yet.

The fool windmills, & solar panels are in no way a replacement for coal & oil. They have a very minor but useful place in our future, but only if we realise they are merely bit players, & most definitely not the future.

When our new energy source is discovered it will not need government subsidies & mandates or the totally immoral UN to push it. No it's superiority will sweep previous energy sources from the picture, like the spear & arrow did stones.

Trying to power a modern society with 17Th century windmills & solar collecting panels is impossible, & simply a waste of money, better spent elsewhere.

We have over 200 years of hydrocarbons & coal power in which to find the best solution. This stupidity of current alternates will look like the tulip fiasco when it happens.

Hi Mr Opinionated,

"We'll all be doomed, " said Hanrahan, "Before the year is out."

Joe

If we do nothing except business as usual and burning coal, in clean coal power stations, we can it's claimed, geosequester the CO2 output and generate electrical power with around or less than a 6% energy coefficient that then is subject to an 11% averaged, transmission line losses and a further 64% distribution losses.

I say and confirm these facts, as a former science related employee of a state-owned power authority.

So, the 6% of actual usable energy that leaves a clean coal-fired power station is reduced to around 2% by the time it arrives at your premises, but you the consumer will be charged for 100% of the burn and power reticulation and whatever profit margin is deemed essential or available!

And usually discarded by the lending/financial sector as being totally unprofitable and the financial input totally unrecoverable during the operational life of the same! Whereas, A traditional ROM coal-fired variant can get it down as low as 3 cents PKWH.

And makes one wonder, why most bankers and lenders and various miners, have completely closed their doors on any fossil fuel investments/tenements? MSR thorium delivers everything fusion promised but has never ever been able to deliver!

Moreover, thorium is the most energy dense material, on the planet!

Further, if this technology is deployed as nuclear waste burners, it will reduce the world's current stockpile of hazardous nuclear waste and in complete, CARBON-FREE Safety! And for a fraction of one cent PKWH as other folks pay us annual billions to provide the disposal and storage service!

Furthermore, should we so choose, weapons-grade plutonium?

Forget about carbon pollution or CO levels, and just make the indisputable and massive economic argument! AS HERE!

As for future liquid fuels, all of them? With almost endless ultra cheap safest of all, nuclear power at our disposal, they can all be got from endless transformed seawater, forever, with proven technology!

And as we do the latter, draw down the CO2 levels in both the seawater and the atmosphere! There is now, no other viable way!
Alan B.

Thanks Don and I'll try to avoid temptation and stick to the spirit of your piece. I think your question is, why if there are several other possible explanations do climate scientists in general put the blame on carbon dioxide emissions? And a corollary: Why do geologists in general not? Here is my view.

I'm a physical chemist. Svante Arrhenius was one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. He won a Nobel Prize in 1903. Around 1896 Arrhenius was the first to use basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning coal could increase the Earth's surface temperature. My understanding (it's not worth my while going back to the papers) is that he decided that the effect was too small to be significant. Of course the amounts of carbon dioxide he considered were many time smaller than emitted today.

So chemical science predisposes to greenhouse effect explanations. Simple as that. Does this mean other explanations must be excluded? I don't think so, and that's why so much effort is put into identifying unique markers of rising CO2 levels. I don't believe that work is conclusive yet but I'm not a climate scientist. Conceding to other possible explanations is a political decision. That's the way to look at it.

Regarding my earlier post, I should add that the influence of the Earth's atmosphere on raising its surface temperature, what was later called the greenhouse effect, had clearly been established over the period 1825 to 1900. Without its atmosphere Earth would be, if I remember correctly, some 30 degrees colder. This is not disputed. Carbon dioxide, even at its small concentration of around 300 ppm, was known to be one atmospheric component contributing to this effect, which was why Arrhenius was interested in it. What's more, his interest in the effect of a possible rising concentration was unexceptional. In the 1933 edition of Partington's then standard textbook of inorganic chemistry, it says: "On the whole, the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere appears to be slowly increasing, and slight changes of climate may be due partly to this cause". The 1949 edition I had at high school omits this! I can only try to imagine why.

So I think it should be clear that scientists need a good reason to reject rather than accept rising CO2 levels as potentially influencing climate.

Tom Biegler

Dear TomBie,

I thought Arrhenius' principal contribution was in showing how the atmospheric greenhouse gas effect worked.

CO2 level at the start of the Industrial Revolution was 280ppm and is currently running at 385ppm and this increase has been shown to have been caused by human beings burning fossil fuels. This increase in CO2 has resulted in a rise of about 1.6 deg C in average global temperature over the past 230 years and if it gets to 560ppm will result in an average rise of 6 deg C, at which point sea temperatures at the Equator will be around 30+ deg C and some parts of the Earth will begin to boil.

The problem of global warming with its effects of climate change, droughts and floods, etc along with causing diminishing fresh water supplies, consequential famines, etc is now so big that it cannot be fixed and we are now looking down the barrel at our own extinction event.

science has continually become dumbed down and full of group think since our Creator was written out of the texts and replaced with the total irrationality of something from nothing. Hilarous to hear the jokers saying we are making ourselves extinct while believing we are evolving to a higher level. Can't be both although I know you are unable to think past your dogmas. To many now on the gravy train and unless we get some brave people like Izzy in the field of science it will continue down the toilet. God however will laugh at the stupidity and arrogance of those 'true believers' who think man can control the climate. Meanwhile the charlatans in the UN, the Gores and alarmist will continue to fill their pockets by proclaiming the nonsense they do.

The only evidence of dumbing down and locked to dogma as demonstrated in these pages is every contribution by a scientific illiterate runner.

Who almost never ever, misses an opportunity, regardless of the topic to push his hate speech agenda and megalomaniac homophobic meltdown!

Q: Was a never ever married, 33-year-old Jesus a homosexual? When all Jewish boys were partnered as early as thirteen and possibly consummated their arranged unions as early a fifteen, runner?

And, should all left-handed humans be condemned to hell for daring to masturbate with the left rather than the right hand? Or just for masturbation, regardless of the hand used, runner?
Alan B.

"So therefore, would you have us sit on our hands and do nothing about reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
David"

Don't bother sitting on your hands, David. Just forget about it because it's irrelevant and I'm surprised you give it any credence at all, given that you previously had access to the research services of the federal parliamentary library.

Percentage of C02 in the atmosphere? 0.04 per cent. Percentage generated by humans? 3.0 per cent of 0.04 per cent. Percentage generated in Australia? 1.3 per cent of three per cent of 0.04 per cent. I can't be bothered calculating that final number, but from memory it has at least four zeros after the decimal point.

Of course, if you can demonstrate a dangerous causal relationship between carbon dioxide and any significant effect on global average temperature (if such a concept is in any way meaningful*) then a Nobel Prize is yours. Strange that nobody has been able to do that, right? And the scam has been running since the mid-1970s.

Percentage of water vapour in the atmosphere? Four per cent. Water vapour is far and away the most powerful greenhouse gas, probably accounting for about 60 per cent of the warming effect. But there's no money in scamming research grants about water vapour.

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html

*If it's -30degC in Moscow and +30degC in Sydney, the average is...? And is that number useful in any way?

thanks Alan b your usual bile is becoming predicable.

So is yours Runner, so just get down off your high horse.

How much energy do climate scientists produce and how much do they waste?
We should round them all up and put them in a room full of exercise bikes and treadmills that generate power and maybe we could power some light poles of something.

Put a plaque on the power pole that says 'Powered by Climate Scientists'.

Or else we could always go for the number one option;
Which is simply throw these upstarts into an active volcano to appease the climate gods...

When it comes to global warming and climate change there are three types of people:

1. The denialists who refuse to believe that global warming and climate change are happening simply because they do not want their world to change.

2. Those (the bulk of people) who simply do not care and believe that it is someone else's problem.

3. Those who believe that global warming and climate change are real and are a threat to both the planet and human civilisation.

As an environmental sociologist I belong to the third group.

'As an environmental sociologist I belong to the third group.'

My opinion is you would do far more good going to an Indigeneous community and picking up rubbish than sprouting your blind faith. At least we could see something useful.

Finding an alternative explanation for the warming is only half the story. A credible alternative hypothesis also hs to explain why the CO2 isn't causing the warming that it theoretically would.

Back in the 20th century, when we didn't have as much data as we do now, those alternative hypotheses could have been seen as credible explanations. But just looking at the temperature data over a longer timescale changes the 1970s cooling trend to a warming one, we have enough different data sources to rule out false instrumentation as a cause. and we even know the relative contributions of variations in solar activity and of cooling pollutant levels - and they're nowhere near as big as from CO2.

A lot of work has also been done to calculate the effects of the AMO and other ocean currents. We can be sure the AMO is not the cause of global warming, but there's some concern it may be masking it.

___________________________________________________________________________________

runner,
Scientific method has proven not to be very useful for finding out about God. Indeed it can not even prove (nor disprove) the existence of God. All it can say is that unless God is trying to deceive us, your literalist explanation of creation is wrong.

___________________________________________________________________________________

calwest,
>Percentage of C02 in the atmosphere? 0.04 per cent.
Percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere in preindustrial times: 0.028%

>Percentage generated by humans? 3.0 per cent of 0.04 per cent.
The amount of CO2 generated by humans is more than enough to have raised its atmospheric contribution from 0.028% to its present level of 0.041%. Nature has been a net absorber of CO2.

But nature has a large turnover of CO2, destroying and creating so many CO2 molecules that the proportion of those molecules directly created by humans is only 3%.

It is deceptive to pretend that humans are not responsible for the rest of the increase in atmospheric CO2, but it fits your denialist ideology. And like nearly all denialists, you don't care about the truth.

If I'm wrong about that, let's see some evidence!

My question to the denialists is this: What evidence would be needed to prove that the current levels of global warming are due to anthropogenic activity viz burning of fossil fuels?

"As an environmental sociologist I belong to the third group".

And as a sociologist you would be most unlikely to have enough math to have any chance of actually understanding the science which totally disproves CO2 is more than a very minor bit player in the scheme of things. Also as a sociologist you are pretty desperate to get anyone to actually take your pseudo science seriously, so join the new religion.

Come on Aidan, we need a laugh. Give us your rationalisation of why all this global warming is making our winters so much colder.

Again I pose the question to all of you global warming/climate change denialists:

What evidence would you need to have presented to you for you to be convinced that the current levels of global warming are due to anthropogenic activity viz burning of fossil fuels?

Hasbeen,
>Give us your rationalisation of why all this global warming is making our winters so much colder.
Simple: it isn't!
It may make Europe's winters colder by changing ocean currents, but we don't rely on ocean currents to keep us warm in winter, and as there's no sea ice anywhere near here it wouldn't affect the currents in that way anyway.

You're really deluded if you think you're better at maths than everyone else. Your conclusion that science "totally disproves CO2 is more than a very minor bit player in the scheme of things" is based not on better mathematics but on false assumptions and willingness to ignore evidence that doesn't fit your predetermined conclusion.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Alan B,
>If we do nothing except business as usual and burning coal, in clean coal power stations, we can it's claimed,
>geosequester the CO2 output and generate electrical power with around or less than a 6% energy coefficient that
>then is subject to an 11% averaged, transmission line losses and a further 64% distribution losses.

Your 6% figure is out by a factor of 4 to 7; it varies between power stations but 30% is a more realistic figure for their efficiency. And your "64% distribution losses" figure is similarly suspect.

Mr Opinion and Aiden think the onus of proof is on those who are waiting for evidence rather than on the numerous who have told lies.

I made a mistake. I said the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere was 385ppm. In fact it was 385ppm in 2007. In 2019 the latest recorded figure is 410ppm, which is really quite a significant jump in the last 12 years. Probably the result of exponentially increasing greenhouse gas emissions from China and India.

Looks like global warming is really ramping up! Denialist or non-denialist, whichever way you look at it the planet is getting hotter and no one can fix whatever it is that is causing it. Welcome to your extinction event!

Dear Mr. Opinion,

«What evidence would you need to have presented to you for you to be convinced that the current levels of global warming are due to anthropogenic activity viz burning of fossil fuels?»

Hmmm, the exact sum would likely (and also based on past examples) differ between individuals, but being presented by a cheque (once respected by the bank) for around $1M would probably seem as convincing evidence.

Mr Opinion,
What steps are you taking to reduce emission ? What commodities are you now going without ?
Let us know, perhaps we could follow your example !

Dear individual,

Why should I reduce my greenhouse gas emissions? I'm purely an observer. As an environmental sociologist I am interested in studying the effects of global warming and want to observe how societies cope with all the bad things that global warming will bring about.

In fact I think the problem is too big to fix and that it is now too late to do anything to reverse global warming and prevent the environmental disaster that is coming.

Why should you worry anyway? Isn't global warming to you and your friends just a lie or someone else's problem?