Not a tomorrow we die philosophy mate, just a realistic view of the known data. We need alternatives, & the sooner the better IMO. The whole "environmental" issue is based in emotion not reason, manmade carbon reduction may result in a <1degree drop in temperature by 2100.....how do you measure a 1 degree global change? you can't unless you manipulate the data to suit your preconception.

Please bear in mind that the IPCC is a political, not scientific body, & that policy documents are drawn up by politicians & their representatives, not the scientists providing the supporting data.

Warmest on record? prehaps but the earth has been warmer without mans influence, & the middle ages may have been warmer. (greenland & antartica are actually colder than 25 years ago)

CO2 causes heat retention, the truth is that the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour/cloud, CO2 accounts for very little in real terms & manmade CO2 production is miniscule compared to natural output, real data suggests about a 0.04c rise due to mans influence.

Precautonary principle (PP)is great...as long as it is based in reality, not theory. PP generaly goes for the "anything potentialy bad should be totaly eliminated" approach....wheras a realistic approach is "anything that has a reasonable probability of being harmful should be controled in proportion to the real risk".

just a laugh.." worst case ...europe ....ice age" I thought the issue was warming not cooling LOL. Overall sat data suggests that the atmosphere is cooling ( slightly) at excatly the point where "environmentalists" tell us it should be rising.

Climate change is very real, its happening right now. The falacy is that we (mankind) have any real influence/effect on it. That does not mean we carry on as we are, we need alternatives & we need them now.

Go find the raw data...it's there is you realy want to know.

Actually mike os, ive seen plenty of data. This is what I do for a living - I research global warming.

Ive looked at plenty of data, and thats why I think it is very probable that significant human induced climate change is a reality.

Now ice age - that is a possibility. If warming gets to the point where the polar ice caps melt (as recent evidence has shown) then the fresh cool water could slow or stop the thermohaline circulation - the 'conveyor belt' bringing warm water to Europe. If that stopped then we would have an ice age in the northern hemisphere.

No one has answered my question that I keep asking:

"If global warming is made up, then why do all major governments accept it as a reality? Even ours. We have squat to gain from this position, goodbye all that gas and coal revenue!
Even the Arab nations accept global warming, and its going to cost them their major source of wealth - oil. Sooner or later the world will replace fossil fuels with renewables such as hydrogen cells.

Why on earth would these Arab nations accept the GW theory if it wasnt true??"

Ah ha, Funkster, so you make a living out of this Greenhouse business.
Doen't that make you a lackey with a vested interest in perpetuating the myth?

That's not very nice Perseus, you are only allowed to cast dispersions on people who do not believe in human-induced global warming. I'll forward you a copy of the Green Fanatics Guide to Linking Rationality with Oil Interests so you won't make the same mistake again.

Funkster,
I used the IPCC TAR as the basis for my argument because it cannot be linked to some great oil conspiracy. It is, on the whole, a political document - at least the summaries and executive summaries.
A reading of the scientific arguments is less than convincing -there are plentiful caveats and ambiguity.

As for why do the politicians come running to the global warming. I'd say it is linked to the tremendous amount of propaganda about the environment. After being told the sky is falling so many times, people will start to believe it and the government will try to look to be doing something. That's how politics works.

There is also the argument that I touched on about science being corrupted by lobbyists, the media and eventually politicians.
Such as the Ross Ice Shelf thinning while many other parts of Antartica are getting colder and thicker. Guess which gets picked by Greenpeace and ran in the media - not the colder Antartica studies.

Precautionary principle is nice and we will have to eventually be more efficient with energy - but scaring people by lying we are on the brink of catastrophe is not the way to do it. By that logic - a great way to rid the world of AIDS would be for everyone to stop breeding - no more sex because there is a risk you can catch HIV, even wearing a condom.

t.u.s

hah hah, I guess you are all right, I do have a vested interest!
Hoewever, much of what I am doing is researching BOTH sides of the argument, and keeping an open mind about what I see. I have to say, the balance of opinion definitely falls in favour of the global warming argument.

The usual suspect:

Yeah good comparison.

Having sex without a condom is dangerous because you might get HIV. Putting on a condom significantly reduces that risk, its now 'safe' enough to keep doing it, no one tells you to stop now.

However, we are having sex without condoms. That is why we need to change our behaviour - we havnt yet put the condom on, despite the fact that it's the sensible thing to do, many of us dont think that precaution is nessasary because there's a chance that we wont get HIV anyway....

:)

One day our sun is going to go supernova, the earth will be enveloped by its inferno and all life will end. Now that's what I call global warming.

There is no economics to global warming, so the market will fail to act. The state may try to use the mandate of the people to act, but it will fail as well, since the state is an inefficient allocator of resources and the perceived problem is global and therefore stateless.

Until there is an economic problem to solve, there is little point in trying. This is not fatalism, it is reality. If global warming is real, the best thing we can do is build our wealth such that we are in a position to mitigate the consequences. Burning of fossil fuels will be greatly curtailed once it is no longer economic. If the doomsayers are correct, we will run out of oil and gas in the same sort of timeframe as global warming starts to bite. A new energy source will be utilised, perhaps nuclear, perhaps hydrogen fuel cell, perhaps something we can't yet imagine. If global warming has made life on earth harder for us, then people will have found a way to profit from it and we will overcome. The mother of invention is necessity, and we just don't have the need for a solution yet, we really haven't identified the problem.

On an aside, population growth will only be curtailed through economic growth. Rich people have less children. So the faster India and China grow, the less children they will have, the faster we will get to the point of demand for resources outstripping supply, and the increased likelihood of someone finding a way to make money through inventing an alternative to burning hydrocarbons. In addition, the richer the people, the more they will demand clean air and clean water.

So rather than worrying about the future of the planet, we should concentrate on getting rich so that we'll have less children, demand cleaner air and water, and be better prepared for any consequences of our actions.