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The Forum > Article Comments > It's no global warming storm in a tea cup! > Comments

It's no global warming storm in a tea cup! : Comments

By Gareth Walton, published 4/2/2005

Gareth Walton argues that we need to act now to halt global warming.

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Germany during the twenties and thirties had a number of severe economic problems. There was no doubt that Germany had a problem and today there is no doubt that global warming is a problem. But many Germans blamed the Jews for their problems and today the Green Left blames the multi-nationals.

Global warming is a problem, however, for many on the Green Left the solution is as simplistic as that adopted by the Nazis. Substitute the multi-nationals for the Jews and one has a battle cry to rally support. The recent anti-global protests owed nothing to logic but were simply a vehicle for people to express their visceral hatred of capitalism.

Signing the Kyoto Protocol may well be today's equivalent of Nazi book burning. It solves nothing but makes one feel good. If the Green Left really believed their alarmist statements then at the very least they might consider some of the following as a possible solution to global warming:

More nuclear power stations.

The trialling and adoption of GM crops.
More R&D involving better use of technology.
Support multinationals in setting up companies in third world countries. (A long bow this one, but I think that factory workers have less children than peasant farmers).

The fact that the Green Left opposes all of the above may indicate that they are not interested in solving the problem of Global Warming but they are really interested in destroying capitalism.

The Green Left may well be using the environmental movement—a movement that contains its share of ‘useful idiots’—as a vehicle to political power. The radical left has been consistently defeated and capitalism appears to have been universally adopted worldwide. However, as the Nazi party obtained power by demonising the Jews—so it may be that the radical left is trying once again to obtain power through demonising the corporation.

More development and more consumerism may well be the only way to reduce the world’s population to a sustainable level. GM crops might be the only way to feed the world’s population in the short-term and nuclear power might be the least environmentally damaging way of providing humans with the energy they need. The multi-national corporation may not be the villain but instead may be the means to solve the problem of global warming. The lessons of Nazi Germany might have to be relearned but in a fresh context.
Posted by JB1, Sunday, 6 February 2005 9:33:25 AM
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I see, Gareth, that you are from Greenpeace.

I should have guessed. It's their typical spin!

You start by regarding an insurance company as a reliable(!) direct source of information but I dare say like most of Greenpeace you consider any research funding from the fossil-fuel industry to be tainted. Please tell me why insurance companies would not be using a global warming scare campaign to increase their income !

You seem to believe that science should be resolved by consensus. Christians around the world have the consensus that God exists and will claim to have evidence so do you expect us all to believe that God really does exist ?

If all the fossil fuels are to blame Gareth, then why have global temperatures not exceeded the levels set in 1998? It would appear that the extra 10ppm of carbon dioxide has either had no effect or that other climate forces have counteracted it. Don't you think we should learn more about those other, more powerful forces ? And wouldn't Kyoto be a complete waste of time/money/effort if CO2's influence is minor compared to these other forces.

Proper scientifc studies - not excited media reports - have shown that extreme events have decreased in several regions and been unchanged in many more. I see that you claim that "better reporting of extreme events" has played a part in the increase of these events. Huh ?

You claim that climate change has made the current Australian drought and the European heatwave of 2003 worse than it would have been. (By the way, it was only a western European Heatwave; Moscow suffered from unseasonably cold weather.) Take a good hard look at the assumptions used in the computer models and you will find them dubious to say the least. Drawing - or repeating - these claims in relation to perfectly explicable natural events is either stupid or playing politics. On the other hand, maybe you believe everything that comes from a computer...

If you had bothered to look at Bureau of Meteorology data (at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/cyc.shtml) you would find that there is no correlation between temperatures in northern Australia and either the number of cyclones or their intensity.

It is obvious that you have blind faith in the CSIRO's projections and never attempt to validate their claims. You really should try to, especially when their projections for temperature and rainfall from 1960 until today are very different from Bureau of Met observations. Temperature has varied less than their projection and rainfall has been about double the projections and the decline in rainfall is far less. (See http://mclean.ch/climate/Murray_Darling_climate.htm)

If the validation of the CSIRO models against known climate conditions shows it to be in error, then why on earth would we assume that their predictions of future climate would be even ball-park ?

Your article is absolute farce. You rely on assertions without bothering to take just a few steps to confirm them. Note that I am being kind and crediting you with hopeless research rather than deciding not to let the facts get in the way of a good story.


PS. Advanced warning - it is not worth producing evidence in your arguments with Grace because she made it quite clear wrt Des Griffins recent similar nonsense about global warming that she is not interested in evidence, only persuasive argument.

cheers
Posted by Snowman, Monday, 7 February 2005 10:28:38 AM
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Snowman, you say: "Advanced warning - it is not worth producing evidence in your arguments with Grace because she made it quite clear wrt Des Griffins recent similar nonsense about global warming that she is not interested in evidence, only persuasive argument."

Your rhetoric is heating up again Snowman.

This is what I said in part in responding to you on Des Griffin's essay: "Like most people, I am content to let the experts slug it out, and make my conclusions on what is available before me, including my reading and listening elsewhere. There is a universe of information out there, and I don't live on this website.."

And this is what Peter King said in responding to you in the same forum: "The problem is as Grace commented, that most of us don't have the time to research every article written and analyze every data set collected. This leaves us with having to rely on generalist articles in forums such as Online Opinion and robust discussion in this specific forum.." and, "We may be entirely wrong in blaming our outputs for warming but if we are not wrong the consequences are disastrous. As Grace says our children and grandchildren will not look kindly on our response or lack thereof..."

I stand by my comments, and those of Peter King.

However, I am bemused by your increasingly heated rhetorical play with religious doctrine and scientific consensus. Perhaps you have been reading too much Thomas Kuhn. But to continue the analogy, you remind me of a religious fundamentalist, lacking the perspective that might allow you see a little further beyond the set of evidence that you find persuasive, but hundreds of thousands of other scientists around the world in the WMO, the IPCC and various National Academies of Science do not. They cannot all be deluded.

And you entirely miss the point about the insurance industry. These companies are in the game for profit, and use the best research available to set their prices and their profit margins. If they find that the number of damage claims from extreme weather events and the like are increasing around the world, then they must increase their premiums or face extinction. To my mind, the hard-headed behaviour of the insurance industries around the world is of real interest in the global warming debate, and is likely to end up being the one of the most persuasive to governments. Perhaps you could let us know just how deluded they are too.
Posted by grace pettigrew, Monday, 7 February 2005 2:24:59 PM
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Grace,

I think you are being very selective in your quotes and you only give part of the picture.

I provided links to a variety of information and you said "- sorry, but you will have to argue your case here or not at all. I will not be following any of your links, or reading your further writing on the subject. Like most people, I am content to let the experts slug it out, and make my conclusions on what is available before me, including my reading and listening elsewhere. There is a universe of information out there, and I don't live on this website.

"Nothing you have said so far has persuaded me that I should agree with your personal take on the evidence, selective as it appears to be, any more than I should agree with the Bush/Howard administrations and their business cronies, on the political context of the global warming debate. In any case, my interest in your postings is more to do with the way you aggressively argue your case. The harder you push, the less convincing you are."

So there we have it. You refuse to look any further even when the links are provided to you and you clearly indicate that your position will be based on the persuasiveness of the arguments.

Put together that means "Forget the facts I just want to be persuaded; I don't care if the argument has no basis in reality."

You also made statements then refused to back them up and to show why your claims of "self interested tripe" did not also apply to the arguments of proponents of global warming.

You then claimed that your stance on global warming was facing reality but it seems that you were unwilling to look at the evident to see that your concept of reality was not reality at all.

You seem to not be aware of some basics about that IPCC TAR of 2001. The Observation section of that report was generally not too far off the mark (except for Mann's "hockey stick" which was highly praised in the chapter in which he was lead author). Together the Scientific sections contained statements honestly expressing uncertainties and doubts.

The problems lay with the Summary document which, according to authors that I have had contact with, was (a) written by policy-makers, not scientists and (b) replaced uncertainties with absolutes. This misleading summary is regarded as the "abridged edition" of teh entire document but it is no such thing.

You may have heard that 2500 scientists signed off the TAR of 2001. The reality is that each section was signed off by the respective contributors and authors, not by everyone. Further, the summary document was signed-off by the policy-makers who created it, not by the scientists on whose work it was based.

Several authors - including some lead authors - of the scientific section have objected so much to the Summary that they now oppose the the claims that man's carbon dioxide is the cause of warming.


It is also worth remembering that both the IPCC and WMO are international organisations created by the UN with the support of governments. It is almost inconceivable that the UN would disagree with its own organsaitions or that governments would openly disagree with a UN body.

If memory serves correctly, a survey of US state meteorologists in the late 1990's found that more than 60% disagreed with the fundamental claims about anthropogenic global warming.

I think it is you who is missing the point about the insurance industry. It is in their interests to fan the flames of global warming so they can increase premiums. Their higher pay-outs in extreme events are simply a consequence of greater population in certain areas that are susceptible to weather events (eg. Florida). On a proper inflation-adjusted basis, the hurricanes in the 1920's caused damage of the greatest cost.

But I know that evidence means little to you, and so if you want to be persuaded by people who stand to make significant gains from the spectre of global warming then it is up to you
Posted by Snowman, Monday, 7 February 2005 11:45:06 PM
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Snowman, thank you for posting the full text of my sterling prose, I was trying not to bore other readers with too much of it. And I still stand by what I said. However, you should be very careful about putting words into my mouth. You don't win arguments that way.

You have chosen to re-interpret my words to say, "You refuse to look any further when the links are provided", (I don't always Snowman, but as I said before I don't live on this website, and I don't respond kindly to autocratic demands like yours), "and you clearly indicate that your position will be based on the persuasiveness of the arguments" (that's right Snowman, like most people in this world I have to rely on the experts in most things, and I just do not think that your arguments are more persuasive than the thousands of scientists who take a different view to you).

Then you say, "Put together that means I just want to be persuaded, I don't care if the argument has no basis in reality". That is totally over the top Snowman, and demonstrates better than I could the reason why you are generally so unconvincing, and unable to sustain an intelligent debate without going into meltdown. Nowhere have I said that I am uninterested in the facts or reality.

As to the "self-interested tripe" comment of mine in an earlier forum, you chose to take this personally, when it was clearly directed at others. Go back and check and then stop wasting your time and mine with this sort of childish nonsense.

The rest of your posting is a re-iteration of your position in opposition to the consensus of most scientists on this planet. You should be taking your detailed arguments up to them instead of flooding this small forum with reams of detail. Report back to us when you score a win against the experts..

I see that, with one sweeping gesture, you are prepared to dismiss the views of all major international organisations under the umbrella of the UN just because they represent the views of the contributing governments. I think it is a bit more complicated than that, Snowman, especially as the major polluter on this planet plants itself in opposition to the UN by refusing to sign the Kyoto protocol at the very least, and the Bush administration continues to misrepresent the independent views of its own scientists and prefers the self-serving views of its own giant energy industries. The profit motive has a lot to answer for in this debate.

As for the insurance industry, I suggest you take a closer look at how they are betting on future trends (rather than depending on past history). You are right that the profit motive drives their industry, which is precisely why I am interested, but I think you need to do a bit more research on how and why they are placing their bets as they are.

And finally, whether you like it or not, I will continue to make up my own mind about global warming on the evidence and arguments presented to me by the experts, and if this includes listening to people who stand to gain very little from global warming (such as environmentalists), and treating with some scepticism those who stand to gain enormous profits from ignoring global warming (such as the major international energy cartels), then I am content.

Despite your vitriol, I wish you well in your lonely struggle Snowman, and let me suggest a bit of further reading for you: "Don Quixote" by Cervantes. If you don't read it I will get very cross.
Posted by grace pettigrew, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 11:10:17 AM
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Grace,

You really should take on the responsibility of doing your own research and following up the leads given you, rather than relying on the noisy assertions of others, supported or unsupported, as the case may be. To do otherwise is to leave yourself vulnerable to accepting, uncritically, the position of whoever shouts the loudest. That is the way of the second-hander, not the independent thinker. If that requires time and effort, then that is the price you must pay.

I am not sure what you mean by my original assertion being unclear. I thought it was abundantly clear, that Greenpeace has no credibility in commenting on environmental questions, when they were guilty of perpetrating their typical type of stunt in Norway in 2002. It was a blatant attempt to garner support for a political stance, devoid of rationality or credibility. To use the recession of the Blomstrandbreen glacier as "evidence" of recent warming, when the recession took place in the 1920s, long before global warming became fashionable, is blatantly fraudulent. By going to the opposite side of Svalbard, to the surging Friddjovbreen glacier, they could have made an equally fraudulent case for global cooling. I wonder why they didn’t?
Posted by A is A, Tuesday, 8 February 2005 12:58:51 PM
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