I wholeheartedly agree with Judy's article. We as a human species seem to spend so much time fighting and qaurrelling over religious beliefs and resources, and trying to get the greatest benifits for ouselves, but we neglect the greater need to secure a decent and safe environment for our children and their families future lives. That's where our number one priorities should definitely be, where the greatest human suffering is today, and where it will occur in the future. If only we had some leadership and an economic system that could help make this happen!

Terrorism is real. Global warming is a load of bullswool.

What load of twaddle. There is no evidence Katrina was caused by AGW. Temperatures are rising as part of a natural cycle and one component of which may be induced by what us humans are of doing, but it is at the smaller end of the scale.

One has to filter out the blatant and well documented distortions by some elements of the science community to deduce that it is not as alarming as they make it out to be.

Terrorism, hunger and the ravages of failed states such as Mr Mugabe's are infinitely more important issues for humanity, at the present moment.

It seems that Leigh and bigmal know something that our Prime Minister doesn't.

From front page of The Australian Financial Review today, chief political correspondent Laura Tingle reports:

PM BACKS NUCLEAR SOLUTION

Mr Howard told The Australian Financial Review he accepted the scientific case on the greenhouse effect and had "no hang-ups at all" about taking advantage of nuclear energy as a solution when it was economically viable...
Asked whether he accepted that the scientific case had been made on the greenhouse gas effect, Mr Howard told the AFR: "I accept that there is strong evidence. The degree is probably debatable.
"I don't think you could argue that there is no scientific case. I don't share that view.
"I spent some time several years ago reading some report put together by a group of American scientists that had been established by the American government and I was pretty convinced the case was there.
"I do think when it comes to the more specific issue of what should Australia do in the near term, we are right on the money in trying to reduce the greenhouse gas consequences of using fossil fuels..."

Howard did not name the report but the chances are that it was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report. For people who are not inconvenienced by review of evidence, the report is available at http://www.ipcc.ch/

Judy, fundamentalism scares me. I lived (with my family) and worked for 5 years in Muslim countries. I was in London for 6 weeks last year, when 5 British citizens blew themselves up on "my" tube line and killed 50-odd people. What worries me here, is that you come close to implying that Hurricane Katrina and The Asian Tsunami of December 2004 are retribution, because we are not looking after our planet. Also, you come close to implying that if we humans "do the right thing" we can regain the benign (but sadly, mythical) stability of a pre-industrial Arcadia without hurricanes or earthquakes (and perhaps, where it only rains at night). If I am reading you right - I detect a whiff of fundamentalism here. Lets face it, widely-variable solar eruptive activity drives our ever-changing climate - from the millennial scale downward to "weather". If you really want a stable climate - please don't pick on us. Just stabilise the Sun.

Don't worry Global dimming is also real, while most scientist through the average of earth's temparature would be 40 degrees now, that is what all their models says!

The pollution that we produced are keeping heat in the earth, however it is deflecting the sun's ray from the earth, which have the effect of cooling the earth, so Global dimming and warming have opposite effect which have mainly neutralise each other.

In fact I saw a program that claim that the days where the earth's termparature was most unstable was 10/11/99 and 11/11/99 when the US grounded all their aircrafts and therefore the jets could not emite enough pollution for global dimming to have an effect. So we can draw a conclusion that if we stop polluting, we as a race would be in trouble.

The facts are no one really know what is going to happen to the earth, the earth had been through many hot spells nad ice ages without any help from human, the odds are as good that a super-volcano eruption or a comet hitting the earth might ends it for all of us.

Since it is all out of our control, don't worry

MikeM,

I dont see any dfference between what the PM said, and my short hand version. Its the degree we are talking about, because its sets the scene about the priority, which is what the author is on about in the first place. She says it should be top priority,because because, others say it is an issue, but when ranked against all others affecting humanity, it is low down the pole.
Quoting the IPCC third assessment report as the definitive answer is rubbish. They cant even get the economic parts even half right.

Global warming, climate change, no threat but a big boon to the world as it will wipe out all the religious As their to stupid to see anything but their delusions of a god saving them. What I can't understand is that they rave so much about how good it is in heaven, yet do all they can to stay alive. If they did the good and right thing and went to their maker, the problems may well be solved.

Those that aren't religious and can't see what is happening to our world, are not very intelligent. The planet is changing, it may be warming, dimming, going through a natural cycle or our planetary system may be entering an unknown area of the universe that is having adverse effects upon our climate. Does it matter what it is, what matters if that we are at least partly to blame. If we had any sense we would be caring for the world, not destroying its ecology.

What the dills refuse to see is that something is happening and faster than we had expected. You could say that we have reached the top of the hill and are now speeding down the other side into climate chaos. Storms in the southern ocean, are now reaching force 12 regularly and up to force 15 in some cases. Where I live, we look out at the southern ocean and in the last 7 years, it has definitely changed.

There are enormous quantities of methane trapped in permafrost and under the oceans in ice-like structures called clathrates. The methane in Arctic permafrost clathrates is estimated at 400 billion tons.

Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as CO2.

The highest temperature increase from global warming is occurring in the arctic regions-an area rich in these unstable clathrates. Simulations from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) show that over half the permafrost will thaw by 2050, and as much as 90 percent by 2100.

Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world, having experienced a rise of some 3C in the past 40 years. The west Siberian peat bog could hold some 70 billion tonnes of methane. Local atmospheric levels of methane on the Siberian shelf are now 25 times higher than global concentrations.

Releases of methane from melting oceanic clathrates have caused severe environmental impacts in the past. The methane in oceanic clathrates has been estimated at 10,000 billion tons.

55 million years ago a global warming chain reaction (probably started by volcanic activity) melted oceanic clathrates. It was one of the most rapid and extreme global warming events in geologic history.

Humans appear to be capable of emitting CO2 in quantities comparable to the volcanic activity that started these chain reactions.

To summarize, human activity is causing the Earth to warm. Bacteria converts carbon in the soil into greenhouse gasses, and enormous quantities are trapped in unstable clathrates. As the earth continues to warm, permafrost clathrates will thaw; peat and soil microbial activity will dramatically increase; and, finally, vast oceanic clathrates will melt. This global warming chain reaction has happened in the past.

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rose by a record amount over the past year. It is the third successive year in which they have increased sharply. Scientists are at a loss to explain why the rapid rise has taken place, but fear the trend could be the first sign of runaway global warming.

I suggest the following article for further information: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0222-27.htm

bigmal has clearly not read the IPCC report that he rubbishes.

I doubt whether he has read Bjorn Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which does discuss the economics of the Kyoto Treaty at some length, http://lomborg.org/. Lomborg does not dispute the effect of greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate but thinks that, if money is to be spent, it would be better spent on other things. Read about The Copenhagen Consensus at http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2724755. Unfortunately its argument depends on the money that might be spent on Kyoto actually being spent on some other things, and that is simply not happening.

In saying that, "when ranked against all others affecting humanity, it is low down the pole", bigmal has also not taken into account the report in last week's New Scientist magazine that 9 million people are at risk by 2050 in the world's most highly populated river deltas (of which the Bengal Delta in Bangladesh is the most heavily populated, but also includes the Mississippi Delta where New Orleans is situated). (Probably available at your local library.)

There are other risk factors with the deltas besides global warming, but it is certainly one of them.

It's rather unlikely that Al Qaeda will kill 9 million people between now and 2050.

dobermanmacledo - just a thought, is it possible to harness all this methane as a substitute for oil? If it is going to be released anyway maybe we could get some use out of it before peak oil strikes.

With Idol threats of De- funding when senior Scientists are forced to withhold REAL SCIENTIFIC findings, and made to fabricate information and findings to suit the Looters quest for more Tax Funding,( Self Perpetuated Employment) and when the sum of total findings debunk the Political Marxist rhetoric of Global warming. It gets shoved away and the cheque book gets hidden away- yes, The whole Global Warming Saga is a total pack of lies and garbage perpetuated by Interest groups and that barrow of Cash the Looters love to steal and the pathological just love to create fear, Fantastic Industry of total fabrication and lies. There is warming, but it is the natural cycle.
I wonder, in another fifty years when we have a Mini Ice age once more, that it must have been those bad Fluorocarbons coming back to haunt us.
Yes, speak to CSIRO scientists, (Not the Looter Installed Commissars), ask the real Scientists, they will spill the beans, and they have. But did you hear about it?
“Another”, I wonder why?

Isn't it great to see people still toadying to every major government now hell bent on 4% and 5% economic and population growth rates for the benefit of their own power and that of a few global corporations. Kyoto is a convenient never ending crutch to stall genuine concerns about climate changes caused by wastewater mismanagement. I mean do people really believe in greenhouse gas warming when governments save trillions of dollars in waste management by dumping in coastal seas.

Scientists are paid by governments and corporations to feed the public what is best for Greenspanian economic growth patterns.

Solving COMPLEX biospheric systems without due regard to TOTAL energy inventories is typical of specialist scientists who are not trained in Applied Mathematics as a first tier subject. People do what they are trained for and if that means solving one dynamic within an exceedingly complex system like the biosphere then that is what they will do. This is a mistake. Scientists make mistakes like anyone.

As time goes on from here, the sheer unpredictability of imminent climate changes will all but rule out global warming as a cause. Global warming theory is very specific about the global homogeneity of it's effects and the gradual increase in its effects with time. For example the 2006 US hurricane season will be worse than 2005 and will all but squash greenhouse warming theories because the change is occurring too quickly.

And remember, the Earth was deemed FLAT in the dark ages because the leading power of the time, the Catholic Church wanted it that way to control the populace and keep it in its place.

Nothing changes it seems.

The way we treat this planet is a lot scarier than any terrorist. But unlike terrorism, we can successfully combat global warming.

Mike M.

You mention Lomborgs book and queried whether I have read that. Well you are wrong, I not only have read it, I bought my own.I have also read the IPCC documents particularly the economic bits.You would do well to read the assessment of Castles and Henderson on how good that has been.

You refer to the Economists article concerning Lomborgs meeting with a group of leading scientist and thinkers who were to prioritize all the word potential calamities on the understanding that if one had $50bn to send what would be the priority order of things. A very practical and commonsensical approach to things.

But what really puzzles me is that all these references you have pointed to actually show the case that AGW is not the most important issue for the world. This is completely contrary to the point I believe you were trying to make and the point the author of this article was trying to make, all very unsuccessfully. It is highly unlikely that no money is being spent on these things, so your next argument is also fallacious. Ineffective it may be, but they are trying.

You then conclude with a ridiculous comment to the effect that Al Quaida won’t be drowning 9-m people. This completely overlooks the blindingly obvious fact that in the unlikely event that sea levels were to rise, it would hardly happen over night, decades more likely.

Further, you also over look the imminent danger that we are all exposed to with that raving lunatic in Iran Ahmadinejad, threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the map with their own Atomic bomb, and the myriad of other dilemmas the west faces, created by the Islamofascists.

As the Lomborg book, and the Economist report shows, it is quite clear, that AGW does not even rate in the top 10.

Like I said back at the beginning, this article and your commentary are complete twaddle, and that’s being polite.

I reckon Bush and Howard are about right on Greenhouse. Give them lip service, but don’t invest too much of the tax payer’s monies on the will-o-the-wisp schemes, that are so much loved by the green lobby.

Who knows in a little while the professional doomsters will be threaten us again with the deep freeze and shrinking oceans. Alternatively they may renew their attention to atmospheric pollution, or even give an extra hard wack to their infamous anti-nuclear drum.

The paradigm of anthropogenic global will one day go out of fashion. None-the-less it is a certainty that there will always be an environmentalist on hand to moan about something or other.

I've just read estimates that atmospheric carbon dioxide contains about 730 Gigatonnes of carbon (70 GtC), that land to atmosphere transfers each year are around 120 GtC and atmosphere to ocean transfers are around 90 GtC. By comparison, human activity adds about 7 GtC a year. While I don't know the dynamics of the transfer/retention processes, the human contribution is relatively small scale. ("Nine lies about global warming," www.lavoisier.com.au. Lavoisier's president is ex-Senator Peter Walsh, one of the most intelligent politicians I've met.)

As I've posted before, and an earlier poster has alluded to, ALL of the IPCC global warming scenarios are based on economic modelling. The modelling has shown to be seriously flawed, e.g. by Ian Castles & Henderson; but several years after their critique, it has not been corrected. I estimated (as an economist who has directed a modelling team) that if the most likely IPCC scenario were revised to take account of the CH critique, it is likely that the most-likely scenario would show GW in the 21st C not significantly different from zero.

It is often claimed that "the debate is over, there is a scientific consensus that human induced global warming is real and serious." In fact, many eminent scientists in relevant fields do not agree, in some cases because the very complex mechanisms involved are not yet understood.

There may be grounds for being cautious - e.g. adopting cost-effective buildsing methods which reduce energy use - but there are not yet grounds for acting as if a catastrophe is imminent.

bigmal,

I am aware of the Castles and Henderson critique. But let's untangle the separate issues.

* Is the Earth's atmosphere getting warmer than it's been in the last 100,000 years?

* If so, is it partly or largely anthropogenic?

* If it is, is the Kyoto Protocol an effective step toward ameliorating it?

The short answers appear on the best evidence to be "yes", "yes" and "no".

In defence of Kyoto though it can be argued firstly that a long journey begins with the first step, and secondly, that if nations cannot agree on a first step, then there is no chance of arriving at the destination.

Furthermore, the $50 billion is simply not being spent. To argue about whether a strategy that nobody is ever going to implement is better than a half-hearted strategy that is unlikely to be effective but might be a starting point is rather a waste of time.

bigmal, perhaps you could explain to us what is "ridiculous" about observing that Al Qaeda won't drown 9 million people. I would have thought it was common sense.

Evidence that Ahmadinehad is a "raving lunatic"? Perhaps you could provide us with a link.

From one who has grown up with only simple proofs about how man has contributed to global warming. Lived long enough to see in much of the Westralian wheatbelt freshwater lagoons now just permanent sheets of saline whiteness, which in summertime a child must not dare to cross with bare feet, the moisty salty loam close to boiling point.

Around these former lagoons in summertime, picnics were held with fresh water fit to drink, yet it seems from some of our critics there has been little change midst the apparent belief that modern man and his ken for invention has built mechanical monsters that can change the landscape far more rapidly, but with little harm to our climate.

It makes an oldie feel how lucky he has been to live in the better times, using the former freshwater lagoons on scorching days, to cool off, rather than having to sit in an airconditioned car to get away from the glare and heat of what is now a hideous saltpan. Now there are only memories left, as with all the clearing of our tropical jungles, scarring the earth from a hundred K's out in space.

Okay, go for it you younger fellas, keep on reporting that man has had little effect on global warming or climate change, but just maybe you guys have spent most of yourlives either by a seashore where climate change has little effect, or even in slightly perfumed airconditioned office apartments, were even human insights can certainly become a mite synthetic.

Interesting that so many folk still feel so threatened by the prospect of global warming that they not only shoot the messengers, they use their limited grasp of science to disagree with a concensus that has merged amongst virtually all professional climate scientists the world over. That's thousands of top scientists.

Sure you can still find the odd skeptic scientist, but these are almost in oblivion as the evidence mounts before our very eyes in the daily media and in our observations around us.

Talk about heads in the sand. More like heads in Araldyte

Faustino,

Before the Industrial Revolution, the transfer of carbon from soil to atmosphere and, via vegetation from atmosphere to biomass and soil, was in balance for many centuries at under 300 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Since 1800, concentration has climbed and is currently 360 ppm. If present increasing rates continue, by 2100 it will be somewhere around 520 ppm. See the short video at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Laboratory/PlanetEarthScience/GlobalWarming/GW_Movie5.html.

This cannot be described as small scale. Furthermore atmospheric carbon concentration for the last 1000 years is based on actual measurements, not models - flawed or otherwise.

Since bigmal appears to set some store by The Economist as a reputable source, it is worth reporting from this week's edition
that new findings about prehistoric periods when the Earth's atmosphere was much warmer than today were reported at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting last week:

"The drama came when several researchers... tried to draw a link between... palaeo-results and the computer models that have been developed to study the modern climate. The snag is that today's climate models, when fed conditions resembling ancient periods, do not produce nearly enough warming to match the levels implied by the fossil record... it may be that the climate models are not sensitive enough to carbon dioxide, and so come up with temperatures that are too low. Mark Chandler, of Columbia University, who also presented research to the meeting, shares [a] worry that this indicates these models may also be producing forecasts of future warming that are much too low."

In other words, current models may be wrong, but the problem may actually be worse than we thought.

Mike M

Let me respond in reverse order
1. If you are not aware of Irans nuclear ambitions, and the outrageous statements being made by Ahmadinejad by just following the MSM, then you clearly dont know what is going on in the world about anything.You should be able to get any number of links to attest to this. Just google his name for starters.

2. The $50bn was scaling figure used by the Copenhagen Group when they were working through the issues to determine how best to spend this amount of money for the best public good. The key point to come out of this was that AGW came stone motherly last.

3.You claim that the earth is the warmest it has been for 100,000. years. This is very doubtful. It is true that some of the recent evident warming is attributable to AGW, but at the small end of the scale. I am so glad that you recognise that Kyoto is a poor solution to an even more poorly defined problem.

4 It would appear from your posts that you have little comprehension of how governments and business have to rank expenditure in order to get the best value for money, and society. The Copenhagen project was but one example of the tools used to do this.

Are you by any chance an academic with a barrow to push.?

I totally agree with Judy Cannon.

Every indication is that human-induced climate change started decades ago and is now well advanced.

But what can we do about it? The most extraordinary changes are needed. Kyoto has been an abject failure, in fact even worse than that – it has allowed its signatory countries to continue polluting at slightly reduced rates or even slightly increased rates in some cases. So it has in fact cemented business as usual. Even if Kyoto was to suddenly become highly successful, it still wouldn’t count for much for as long as China, USA and India are outside the circle.

The only way forward that I can see is for a new US president to take the strongest possible action to reduce CO2 emissions and then bring China into a bilateral agreement. Then once the two really big players are heading in the right direction, the rest of the world will follow.

If we are to stave off a massive escalation of the CO2 chain reaction by way of methane and clathrate release, the world needs to start lobbying for the right US president to replace the atrocious incumbent at the next election.

“But unlike terrorism, we can successfully combat global warming.”

How would you go about it Tubley?

Dear Bushbred,

Your observations in the WA wheatbelt are of course correct, regarding the transformation of many freshwater lagoons into salt pans.

I take it you're not stating that climate change is the main reason for that. You seem to be referring to the global overuse of contraptions and their effect on the Earth.

I read that in the dreamtime stories of some South Australian aboriginal tribes, they 'document' a change from a time when the region around Lake Eyre was fertile and rich with flora and fauna. (I'm sorry I don't have a reference for that right now).

Those vast saltpans called Lake Eyre and Friends formed naturally of course, whereas the wheatbelt(s) - (the wheatfields in the east too) are suffering much from long term monoculture farming practices.

This country's ecology is indeed very fragile! The soil in which plants grow is wafer thin relative to the underlying strata!

It is perhaps the loss of topsoil that is the greatest threat to humans, together with scarceness of fresh water. It would seem that one solution that is developing is that of creating synthetic foods using nanotechnology (worth reading up about). Companies like Kraft and Nestle are investing billions into research in this field. One of the first milestones will apparently be drinks that can change colour! Possibly available as soon as 2010 (only 5 years away!). Well I guess the worldwide suffering caused by monochrome beverages really should be dealt with. ;)

The actions of international criminals could and do cause great loss of life. But polluting the biosphere and stripping its diversity away will and does cause more. This and the development of nuclear energy.

What is needed above all is a rational means to evaluate risks (whether global warming, religious loonies, rampaging duck hunters or whatever) and develop practical, adequate responses. The threat of terrorism pales into insignificance against a major asteroid impact, but planning for the latter contingency dovetails nicely into planning a response to climate change that will, human-caused or otherwise, inevitably occur and affect billions of people adversely.

We won't achieve anything near what is necessary or possible, either by piddling along with our current systems of national governments, which apart perhaps from those of Continental Europe remain mutated forms of monarchic dictatorship, or by moving towards dependency upon a beefed-up United Nations, which would deliver only more corruption and waste (don't even mention The World Bank).

Like all success stories in public policy, the solution needs a mix of motivated people with a range of talents - inciteful genius in a particular field, plodding devotion to R&D, people with the ability to network, people with a knack to organise and apply resources. To enable such people to achieve what they can, individuals with the means to communicate can, by themselves or in organised groups, make representation to, influence, and change governments. Or become governments.

It can begin with as little as a plea on an internet forum.

O, and religion? Send a donation to a firm that promises to come up with a reliable antidote.

You reckon Bush and Howard are right, Anti_Green? Are they scientists? Professors? No. They are good at what they do... talking bulls_hit and relying on millions of stupid people to believe it.

Don't believe that human induced global warming and climate change aren't happening, or not much of a problem. Your living in a day dream, economists, or totally blind to reality.

When I was young, if you looked into the sky you would see birds everywhere. Now the skies are empty, it's rare to see one bird except for introduced species.

Thirty years ago when you walked into the bush, it was full of the sound of birds, little animals, and wildlife in abundance. Now in 95% of places, its totally silent, then there is the lack of frogs, bugs and spiders, snakes and the many varieties of other wildlife that used to abound.

So do all the number crunching and theoretical models you like, they won't help when the ecology collapses completely. What you all fail to see is that our survival is intricately linked to the survival of other species and climatology that regulates the biodiversity and biology of the planet. But back to your macca's, latte's indoor gyms and closeted lives, whats outside your delusions won't exist until it hits you in the face with full force.

I understand that a lot of younger people have never ever seen a forest full of life and believe that things have been the way they are forever. Just like the way you have been de-educated, programmed and indoctrinated, so have you been blinded to anything but the “I am” mentality. Pity none of you know the beauty and reality of the living world of the past, all you can see is concrete streets and wall to wall people everywhere you go. You are never seen in the real world, just flash through it in you insulated worlds, that won't be usable very soon, as your modeling doesn't take into account what your going to do without your fossils fuels to support you and degrade the environment. I only feel sorry for the rapidly becoming extinct life of the planet. Not the deluded blind humans that believe they are superior to all other life forms and can sustain the unsustainable

Tubley,

You are correct in saying Bush and Howard are not scientifically qualified. However, the same can be said for most politicians and/or journalists, Green advocacy groups and so on, that comment on this issue. I myself for instance have no formal qualifications in this area.

There is no doubt that the differential equations that describe global climate are horrendously complex. Thus to claim a direct causal relationship between human activity and climate is to say the least simplistic.

An earlier post referred to a paper on the Lavoisier site: Evans R. Nine lies about Global Warming. Evans makes the point that there is a good correlation between global Fossil-Fuel use and Temperature change from 1970 20 2000, but NOT if the graph is extended back to the year 1860.

About 200 years ago David Hume in his philosophical writings speculated, if a correlation was sufficient to establish a cause.

A recent article in the BMJ commented on publication bias in medical studies. I am certain the same can be said of media reporting of climate studies.

Anti Green,
Your sentiment is on the money in my view.
Just read this recent addition for all the confirmation any one would need. It is a trifle long but well written and well worth it.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/779fgpcf.asp

Alchemist,
If your instincts are as you say, why not try to back them up with some hard evidence,and then try and make a causal link between what you observe, and the marginal rise of temperature and Co2. It probably has nothing to do with AGW.

There are two groups of scientests, equally qualified, who hold opposing views on the subject of global warming.

There is no point in the unqualified arguing about it.

So much data available on global warming yet so much tut-tutting from the skeptics. We're finding out more every day, how subtle changes to the atmosphere are manifesting themselves in changes to weather patterns. It isn't possible to point to any single weather event and say it is a direct result of global warming; changes are measured in trends and tendencies, not single occurrences . But there is no shortage of warning signs, and there are enough examples of this already on this thread there's no point offering more.

The amazing thing is it's fashionable to label anyone advocating restraint - and yes, that includes cutting down on fuel usage, minimising ecological footprints and other such highbrow concepts - as 'elite'. The greatest achievement of the anti-intellectual crowd has been framing anyone championing the well-being of the world at large as out of touch.

My long-term prediction? There will come a day when tree-huggers the world over will be able to stand up and say "I told you so". Funny thing is, the wilfully (and blissfully) ignorant will still be proudly displaying their one-finger-salute, responding "It wasn't us"

Evidently bigmal is impressed by the scientific authority of The Weekly Standard and the outpourings of its contributors from the American Enterprise Institute.

It is true that right wing publications have been, shall we say, cautious in attaching credence to the evidence for global warming.

So let's hop over to that other esteemed right wing publication The Wall Street Journal, to see what it's been reporting.

Is Global Warming Killing Polar Bears?
By JIM CARLTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 14, 2005; page B1

It may be the latest evidence of global warming: Polar bears are drowning.

Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of their time hunting and raising their young on ice floes.

In a quarter-century of aerial surveys of the Alaskan coastline before 2004, researchers from the U.S. Minerals Management Service said they typically spotted a lone polar bear swimming in the ocean far from ice about once every two years. Polar-bear drownings were so rare that they have never been documented in the surveys.

But in September 2004, when the polar ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of the northern coast of Alaska, researchers counted 10 polar bears swimming as far as 60 miles offshore. Polar bears can swim long distances but have evolved to mainly swim between sheets of ice, scientists say...

While the government researchers won't speculate on why a climate change is taking place in the Arctic, environmentalists unconnected to the survey say U.S. policies emphasizing oil and gas development are exacerbating global warming, which is accelerating the melting of the ice. "For anyone who has wondered how global warming and reduced sea ice will affect polar bears, the answer is simple -- they die," said Richard Steiner, a marine-biology professor at the University of Alaska...

It took time for some skeptics to accept that the world was indeed round.

Others still argue, against overwhelming scientific evidence, that Darwinian evolution does not occur.

In the case of these two issues it really didn't matter.

In the case of climate change it matters a lot. Because climate change (unlike the shape of the world and the evolution of species) is a threat to humanity. And not even a future threat.

If we want to turn to experts, let's talk to psychologists about the human frailty of Denial. Its a natural reaction to imminent threat, so we should treat the skeptics with gentle compassion.

As for the science behind global warming, it is all but sealed

MikeM,

Well if the polar bears are declining, it can’t have much to do variations in the cover of sea ice, as the following graph depicts

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg

The seasonal variation is huge compared with any marginal decline over recent years.

I still reckon your are an academic with a barrow to push, and probably one with a part-time job in a Member of Parliaments office.

Gecko,
The science is a long way from being sealed as you call it. The principal argument of the alarmists still rests upon highly suspect computer modelling, underpinned by almost fraudulent reporting akin to the Hwang case. I have yet to see a rebuttal of any worth to Douglas Hoyts table of win/lose/draw on the IPCC claims. The last time I looked it was still 28 /32 loss to the IPCC on claims that are just not proven, or are plainly falsified even by the current measurements.

Leigh,
Don’t give up because you might think you are unqualified. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in mathematics or whatever, to follow what is happening. If you have had experience in business and government you will have a nose for a con job, and these people are adept at it. They do so precisely because of the arrogance of their position.

They think plebs can’t think, can’t read, and can’t make good decisions, have no experience on making decisions involving large sums of money, and have no experience in computing and data modelling. When you do your homework you will quickly learn that it is not as straight forward as they make it out to be. There is one golden rule though. Don’t get between a scientist and a bucket of money, particularly public money. A “greeny” scientist is even worse.

Seasonal variation is indeed huge. Lets look at further data from the same source - NSIDC, NASA and associates, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/arcticice_decline.html .

QUOTE
On Sept. 21, 2005, sea ice extent dropped to 2.05 million sq. miles, the lowest extent yet recorded in the satellite record. Incorporating the 2005 minimum, with a projection for ice growth in the last few days of this September, brings the estimated decline in Arctic sea ice to 8.5 percent per decade...

Since 2002, satellite records have revealed unusually early onsets of springtime melting in the areas north of Alaska and Siberia. In addition, the 2004-2005 winter season showed a smaller recovery of sea ice extent than any previous winter in the satellite record...

"Since 1979, by using passive microwave satellite data, we've seen that Arctic perennial sea ice cover has been declining at 9.6 percent per decade," said Joey Comiso, senior scientist at GSFC...
END QUOTE

The satellite photos and animations in the link make it clear what is happening.

And from http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/6/wa/SRStoryDetails?ArticleID=11532

QUOTE
The current warming trends in the Arctic may shove the Arctic system into a seasonally ice-free state not seen for more than one million years... The melting is accelerating, and a team of researchers were unable to identify any natural processes that might slow the de-icing of the Arctic...

The past climates in the Arctic include glacial periods, where sea ice coverage expanded and ice sheets extended into Northern America and Europe, and warmer interglacial periods during which the ice retreats, as it has during the past 10,000 years.

By studying natural data loggers such as ice cores and marine sediments, scientists have a good idea what the “natural envelope” for Arctic climate variations has been for the past million years...

In addition to sea and land ice melting, Overpeck warned that permafrost—the permanently frozen layer of soil that underlies much of the Arctic—will melt and eventually disappear in some areas. Such thawing could release additional greenhouse gases stored in the permafrost for thousands of years, which would amplify human-induced climate change...
END QUOTE

Seasonal temperature variation is NOT indeed huge. Its within natural geological limits.

The estimated decline in Arctic sea ice to 8.5 percent per decade is a joke because scientists do not take take global energy sources and sink inventories into account. They are the LEAST competent to make such phoney extrapolations..

Since 2002, satellite records have revealed unusually early onsets of springtime melting in the areas north of Alaska and Siberia. This is because transfer of heat from temperate zones has been accelerated by accelerating coastal urbanisation, mining and agriculture. Subsequently this accelerates coastal ocean pollution plumes which act as major heat sinks. These increasingly large and persistent heat sinks are the media, like the base in a transistor, that facilitates extraordinary global energy movement to polar regions. They focus this energy transfer in particular to the roaring forties where much of the 'panic' melts are occurring.

Satellite photos and animations DO NOT make it clear what is happening because of INHOMOGENEITIES like the roaring forties wind systems where heat can be selectively trapped for half times of the order of weeks.

The current warming trends in the Arctic will not shove the Arctic system into a seasonally ice-free state. Overall melting is not accelerating but REGIONAL imbalances are occuring due to the redistribution of global heat mediated by coastal pollution plumes which are heat sink disturbances. Biology based teams of researchers are unable to identify any natural processes that might slow the de-icing of the Arctic because they have have forgotten physics 101 about black body radiation. The arctic is way above outer space in temperature and no matter how cold we THINK it is, it will still radiate a net amount of heat to space in the absence of sunlight.

to continue...

continued ...

The past climates in the Arctic including glacial, and warmer interglacial periods occur because of fluctuations in solar and geothermal (composite interior nuclear reactor) heat inputs to the biosphere. Greenhouse gases follow these energy fluctuations but are in no way causal to them. How could they be, they are NOT prima facie an energy source in a biosphere that is continually ravaged by energy fluctuations.

By studying natural data loggers such as ice cores and marine sediments, scientists do NOT have a good idea what the “natural envelope” for Arctic climate variations has been, because compaction and contamination within core strata blur or average peak measurements and disprove that 'peak now' current measurements are unique.

Until people like Overpeck bone up on their thermodynamics 101 I suggest they keep their permafrost melting predictions to themselves. They have no basis, other than if they could measure solar and geothermal changes, to predict permafrost melting based on current regional redistributions of heat in the biosphere, where some ices are melting and others are thickening.

QUOTE: Second Law Of Thermodynamics: All energy in the Universe moves from heat sources to heat sinks, hot to cold, ordered to disordered.
If mankind creates persistent and growing pollution heat sinks in strategic oceanic zones across the globe, heat sources will come and they will bring destruction the likes of which clearly, no one here is yet capable of imagining. And when its all over, the biosphere will go on, unwarmed, unfrozen, as it has done for 41/2 billion years.
None of us has the 'global warmer' luxury of the next 100 years to plan for these changes. They will begin within the next 10 years and the looming 2006 US hurricane season will just be openers.

It is amusing that the salaries for worldwide global warmer scientists, diplomats and their flunkies total up to enough for the creation of sufficient Engineered Wetlands across the globe to clean coastal runoffs and halt climate change in its tracks.

What I find interesting with these comments by KAEP and MikeM is just how confused and uncertain it all is. Well here is some more for readers to ponder.
http://mclean.ch/climate/Arctic_ice.htm

It is pertinent to remember that IPCC/AGW theory has it that AGW will first appear in the polar regions. This is an article of faith with the alarmists.

Us cynics and realists want to know why, if the Arctic is warming, why isnt the same happening in the Antarctic, which by all accounts is inceasing in thickness, and extent.

When that has been dealt with, the author and readers of this blog article might like to explain how all this is more certain and/or more damaging in the short term to humanity than the imminent threat of a mad mullah some where (and there are plenty of them) letting go with an atomic bomb in a container in a western harbour, or any number of other equally devastating terrorist activity, all of which could happen tomorrow.

I note that Mike M hasnt not come back and explained his ignorance of the antics of the maddest of all the mullahs namely Ahmadinejad, who incidentally believes that he was put on earth to prepare the way for the 12th Mahdi, and that Isreal should be wiped off the map.

But then as an academic he wouldnt be aware of real world matters, they never are.

These are excellent points Bigmal, but when it comes to Mad Mullahs, The grand Ayatollah proclaimed also to be a prophet of Allah, and also married a nine year old child, so chronic delusions and criminality comes in abundance- maybe there is a link in Pathological traits? Yes perhaps a neurological disorder through a Polygamists existence? I wonder when Islam and the Left – departed this world, what do they see? Smog or Virgins?

MikeM I found the satellite of the artic ice interesting and alarming.
The data about the Greenland glacier flow also alarming as this ice falling into the sea raises sea levels.

gecko what makes you think that everyone believes the earth is not flat? The evidence showing it to be round (almost)is only a few hundred years old so some have not had the chance to absorb it.

Religous fundamentalists (both sides) are a great threat to us all,they kill people in the name of God the same as they did when the world was flat and the sun moved round the earth.

I am well aware of the belligerent posture of Iran's president as I am of North Korea's president and of rumours that the US and Israel are planning to attack Iran.

A small, 1 kiloton nuclear device might wipe a few thousand people (the Hiroshima death toll from a 20 kiloton device is estimated, http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp10.shtml to have been 66,000 and Nagasaki 39,000, although other estimates put it at rather more than twice that.)

A few suitcase atomic bombs won't stop a nation in its stride. Global warming could.

KAEP assures that scientists are "the least competent" to extrapolate what is happening to the world's climate.

I don't know what KAEP is (astrologist? water diviner?), but presumably he is far more competent than a scientist - my word then, we are SO lucky to have him in this forum.

Just a small quibble though: he seems to be about a century behind the times in understanding the second law of thermodynamics, http://www.complexsystems.net.au/content/irreversibility

QUOTE
... most systems are not isolated: they are open in various ways, being subject to mass, energy, entropy, (and, more abstractly, information fluxes across their boundaries). Although the total entropy of a system plus its environment (which together constitute an isolated system) must increase, we emphasise again that it does not follow that the entropy of an open system must increase. Instead, there are many remarkable instances of self-organization of such systems into coherent structures, ranging from tropical cyclones through individual biological organisms to human civilizations...
END QUOTE

If KAEP's statement of the theory were correct, refrigerators would be thermodynamically impossible.

Big Mal, I'm not a scientist nor a beaurucrat, and only have my own observations. I understand where your coming from and even though I think otherwise I agree with your supposition from a viewpoint that there is no apparent correlation. The last thing I wish to see is our ecology collapse, because if it does then all the stats in the world will make no difference.

The workings of our universe are in a state of chaos, yet that chaos in most cases appears to be localised and randomly placed. We all know that a flood in most cases begins with rises and falls of the river before moving into full flood.

If we put all the isolated cases of climate change and ecological breakdown together, they may have the desired effect of bringing about what people fear. I don't think it's one cause, KAEP has this agenda about coastal water warming as a big cause, and it has its place as does mine and many others in the country that see changes that certainly aren't normal. Where I live, we are growing avocados and have tropical sea life being found in our waters. Thats weird considering we sit on the edge of the southern ocean and the water used to be so cold, now its not to bad. The local salmon farms are struggling with rising water temperatures. So there are a lot of isolated little bits happening, that combined to tip us quickly over the edge.

When you add that to the religious cranks that are trying to take over the world for the 2000th time, what can we expect. On one side we have the warmongers called religion overflowing throughout the world and the other, ecological changes caused by the combination of thousands of detrimental actions against the ecology of this planet.

Think I'll catch the next passing neutrino to another universe.

WE NEED MORE RESEACH OBSEVATIONS OF HARMFUL EFFECT WITH METHANE GAS IN CLIMATE CHANGE WHICH WILL BE REQUIRED IN CONTRLLING OUR ECONOMY OF DOMESTIC ANIMALS' PRODUCTIVITY,HEALTH,WELFARE OF SOCIETY.

Judy,
Fear not Johhny "Bonsai" Howard will fix the problem, he may have already done so, after all we have had the benefit of our fearless leader for 10 years, in that time surely he has made a major contribution to this cause.

Bonsai is a little bush.

Shonga, I like your 'bonsai' moniker for our esteemed PM. Not only is he 'a little bush' but he has dwarfed and stunted Australia's dreams and visions and our care for our land and the world. We are a nation that cares most about the material things in the here and now, and Bonsai has played a large role in that. He has taught us that it is OK to be 'I'm alright, Jack'. To me, that is his biggest negative legacy.

The environemental problems facing Australia and the world have not been tackled in any meaningful fashion during the past 10 years. Why? because they are still really a problem for the future that can be put off or even denied. We don't want anything to get in the way of current prosperity. We cannot have a debate about alternative energy sources becuase that is a threat to coal exports. Ditto old growth forest logging. We can't do anything about salinity and degradation in the Murray-darling basin because...well, what is the reason. Sheer inertia probably. We are squandering our future.But hey, as long as we feel relaxed and comfortable and voting for Bonsai Johnny, then what else matters? The future is someone else's problem, right?

If Mike M was already aware of the threat posed by Ahmadinejad et al, then why were you asking me for a reference. Embarrassed by your own ignorance more likely.

I find it absolutely bizarre, and more than a little disgusting that based upon highly disputed and very uncertain probabilities MikeM says that global warming has the potential to upset nation states more than the odd atomic bomb, and to prove this he trots out precise figures for deaths per kilo ton of bomb.

Apart from the fact that one would create absolute panic and alarm world wide, the other would be accommodated over time. Including just turning the air conditioner on for a bit longer.

Thank god academics dills like you dont have a real say in government policy

When it comes to dilldom, bigmal, you're a pretty fair specimen yourself. Or maybe you have a limited attention span. Or both. I asked for a link to evidence that Ahmadinejad is, as you claimed, "a raving lunatic", not evidence for the fact, which is patently obvious, that he is hostile to the Western world in general and Israel in particular.

That you find something "absolutely bizarre" is a fact about you that is likely of no interest to most readers. Why do you mention it?

I'm not aware of any academics like me. Who are they?

Mikem,

Greenhouse warming scientists are "the least competent" to extrapolate what is happening to the world's climate. The context was and is obvious.
Why do posters assume you are an academic? The 'century behind the times in understanding the second law of thermodynamics' comment is a dead giveaway that you are not. Physical laws are timeless n'est ce pas?
However, you can google and I appreciated the thermodynamics quote. I've not seen that 'cyclonic self organisation into coherent structures' before. Full marks.
Your refrigerator remark however would be laughable except it answers a question people have beeen asking me. How do Engineered Wetlands (EWBs) make internal desert heat in Australia perform work for the nation? It seems people understand how they can keep coastal waters cleaner and they even understand that this can halt climate changes by treating dangerous high entropy masses of pollutants over land in wetlands where they are fixed and can do little damage. But how do EWBs make deserts work for us?

The answer is ... working fluids. The same answer as to how fridges work.
By creating a network of up to 100,000 1-5 acre EWBs at strategic saddle points throughout catchments all over Australia, it is possible not only to keep our coasts clean but also force inland heat to evaporate H20 as it moves down gullys, creeks and rivers to the coasts. This has innumerable benefits for inland Australia. Currently there is little or no working fluid in most catchments. Dispersant heat picks up dust, causes soil loss and gets caught up in gyres that take it to high entropy areas: first to pollution plumes off coasts and then to the roaring forties and onto the Sth Pole.
By increasing the permanent working fluid charge in our catchments, we make desert heat work in inland hydrological loops rather than blasting its way to melt the ice shelfs off the Sth Pole. This latter issue provides employment for bevys of GW scientists but drags the planet down by IGNORING the prime thermodynamic causes of climate change.

Apparantly the summers without ice are getting longer in the Arctic. But whatever. The people who have an interest in denying any climate changes due to fossil fuel will contiue to do so. Those of us who cant survive without the air con running 24/7 or have to drive the car everywhere are going to not feel so good about accepting any suggestion or posssibility of their lifestyle is effecting the planet.
I wonder what our grand children & great grand children will say about us IF our lifestyles does seriously degrade their quality of life?
Also its just a matter of arguing about when not if re Peak Oil. Some geogogists say as soon as 2008. After that demand for oil is going to increasingly exceed suply. One also wonders how our future grand or great grand kids are going to view us if we use up all the fossil fuel for things like air cons and driving around the city.

Forget science. The Alchemist reckons there's less birds about so let's put him/her in charge.

Does the word SCIENCE mean anything at all to you natasha?

We have a unique chance to solve climate change for Australia in the context of the Sth Pacific REGION. We can then concentrate on the easier problem of learning to adapt to alternate energy sources. Australia is a world leader here too with a major geothermal power station in Sth Australia's Cooper Basin.
You need to learn some Physics and especially Thermodynamics before letting your fears get the better of you. And remember, don't make that cardinal mistake that greenhouse warming scientists are making. You must account for all the heat energy sources in the Biosphere BEFORE applying dynamic solutions to scenarios like arctic melts and rising sea levels. There are alternate solutions to these scenarios and they are far more comprehensive when ALL the energy sources are knitted into them.

In the meantime the biggest problem for Australia and the world will not be climate change and peak oil. We will find solutions to these problems as I have hinted here. What we cannot find a solution for at the moment is the scouge of perpetual Americanised Greenspanian 3-5% economic growth rates and commensurate population growth rates in an already overcrowded world where everyone wants to live in just a few thousand square kilometers of highly sought after residential habitat.

Women in particular have a role to play here in lowering their environmental footprint by giving up their assumed right to as many children as they wish for. The strains of this deep conflict for women and for full throttle economies in an increasingly competetive world market will come to a head as peak oil bites. As I say, peak oil can be solved by technology but the technological solution for overcrowding is too dire to even contemplate. It is far easier for thinking women to restrict the urge to have kids and to demand an end to the brutal immigration schemes of the short sighted and mean spirited Howard government.

KAEP - if your were to ditch the arrogance and show some appreciation of the input of others (even the dreaded scientists!) then you might find your ideas are given more credibility and maybe you might get some way towards solving the problem.

"Why do posters assume you are an academic?"

KAEP, bigmal is the only poster who seems to think that, and you'll have to ask him. Perhaps he resorts to ad hominem slurs when he is out of his depth with the facts of the discussion.

"Physical laws are timeless n'est ce pas?"

No.

Newton's physics was different from Aristotle's, and Einstein's was different from Newton's. And quantum mechanics, discovered by Werner Heisenberg, Max Planck and Erwin Schrödinger, paints a different picture of reality again.

It is also worth pondering the fact that the general theory of relativity and quantum theory, whilst both are well established in their own right, conflict with one another. One or the other or both cannot be the last word.

Likewise, thermodynamics is an evolving science. Quoting from his Nobel Prize lecture in 1977, awarded "for his contributions to non-equilibrium thermodynamics, particularly the theory of dissipative structures", http://nobelprize.org/chemistry/laureates/1977/prigogine-lecture.pdf , Ilya Prigogine noted:

"It is a remarkable fact that the second law of thermodynamics has played in the history of science a fundamental role far beyond its original scope. Suffice it to mention Boltzmann’s work on kinetic theory, Planck’s discovery of quantum theory or Einstein’s theory of spontaneous emission, which were all based on the second law of thermodynamics.

"It is the main thesis of this lecture that we are only at the beginning of a new development of theoretical chemistry and physics in which thermodynamic concepts will play an even more basic role."

So, KAEP, your original statement of the second law of thermodynamics, as indicated in my brief quote from the Australian Research Council Complex Open Systems Research Network, is sadly behind the times. Study Prigogine. You will see.

I'm unmoved by the value of EWBs. Why don't you discuss this with broadcaster Alan Jones? At one stage he was a great proponent of turning rivers inland, http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/stories/popups/281002_s5c2.ram

And I think, KAEP, if you took onboard sajo's helpful suggestion you would find it would genuinely improve your contributions.

Yep. More alarmist rubbish from the green.

Even if global warming was caused by human actions (and that is a big if), dealing with it with rubbish like kyoto is a sure way to cause more suffering and problems than it solves.

All the global warming solutions are cures that are worse than the disease.

Posters are generally disparaging of academics because of the appalling naivety that gets displayed. Not all,just some.

Given the previous references by the doom and gloom merchants to the current state of the Arctic, then this document puts a more balanced interpretation on it.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=021706G

As one would have expected it is all part of the cycles and oscillations of nature, of which there are many, and only a few of which we fully understand.In our region we seem to understand the El Nino cycle and its effect on Australian climate fairly well. Why then would there not be a Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation as depicted.

Even if one doesnt agree with this analysis it still has to be explained why the Artcic is changing in this way, but the Antarctic isnt.

Comparing the improbability of AGW being as bad as the doomers say it is,with the problems and deaths already caused, and likely in the future caused by the Islamofascists, terrorism is infinitely more important. And that is with or without the odd atomic bomb.

The insiduous effects of the radical Islamists has already reshaped western society in very negative ways. Restrictions on our liberties just to pander to their feelings has already changed us in ways more serious than we seem to care about. But toss in more extremist major events such as a A bomb, then we are in real trouble.

Who will then care if the temperature is a smidgin higher,when the attibution of the cause of that increase is almost impossible to prove.

A lot hangs on this debate. A lot of money, and lot power, not to mention the systems of life support provided by nature.

I’ve surveyed many of the sources referred to during this posting. I’ve found thousands of reputable sources explaining the reality and dangers of climate change. I’ve also learned that Prime Minister Howard and Bush have agreed that human induced climate change is a real problem.

On the other side of the debate is what appears to a selective pseudo-science. The climate change deniers tackle the debate by focusing on selective minor points & try to portray the to and frow of scientific process as poor science. It shows a clearly biased agenda. Much of it brings to mind the type research funded by the pro-tobacco lobby.

Some of you may be aware that right wing think tanks are running underhanded campaigns to hijack community debates with their agenda. For more information see http://www.tai.org.au/Newsletter_Files/Newsletters/NL44final.pdf

Bigmal, I invite you to use your real name, as you will surely want to be acknowledged by future generations. Also, why is it important to you to portray the views of Mike as thoughts of an academic? Would it challenge you if his these views were held by people from all walks of life, like myself.

Unlike the selective bias relied on by some climate change deniers, the reports of Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are authoritative and have credibility. Thousands of the most competent climate scientist have consensus on the answers to three clear questions asked of them by the UN:

1. Is global warming is occurring. Yes (IPCC 2001 report).
2. Is human activity significantly contributing to global warming? Yes. The overwhelmingly strongest contribution to global warming is human pollution with greenhouse gases.(IPCC 2001 report).
3. Will global warming continue if we continue business as usual. Yes, business as usual is likely to produce global average temperature to increase by between 2 to 5.8 degrees C. (IPCC 2001 report).

Even our Greenhous Mafia hijacked federal government accepts these findings.

bigmal wrote, "Even if one doesnt agree with this analysis it still has to be explained why the Artcic is changing in this way, but the Antarctic isnt."

This is completely untrue on two counts. Firstly the Antarctic is changing, although more slowly that the Arctic, http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6962

Secondly, the climate change models predict that the effect will be more pronounced in the Arctic than the Antarctic. This is for two reasons. The southern hemisphere oceans act as a heat sink, moderating atmospheric temperature rise. Secondly, retreat of snow and ice over arctic land and water reduces reflectance, causing more of the sun's heat to be absorbed than before.

It seems that bigmal has made no effort to review the science on the matter, otherwise he'd know that.

He has linked to a report appearing on TCSDaily. That site numbers ExxonMobil and General Motors Corporation amongst its 8 sponsors. The site's publisher, Tech Central Station, is a division of DCI Group, a major Republican lobby group, http://www.publicintegrity.org/lobby/profile.aspx?act=firms&year=2003&lo=L001520

Only the naive or the credulous would attach scientific credibility to material appearing there.

Mikem,

PHYSICAL LAWS like Newton's and Thermodynamic laws ARE TIMELESS

Newton's physics was different from Aristotle's because Aristotle hadn't discovered laws 1 to 3. No matter if another person had discovered Newton's laws or the laws of thermodynamics, they always have and always will be the same. They get modified with refined measurement and data but they NEVER change in their most fundamental form. Further, I have spent 4 years dumbing down the basic interpretation of the 2Lof T for forums where you CANNOT introduce concepts like Prigogine's especially in 350 words or less. There are few physical laws associated with quantum mechanics because our measurement strategies do not extend well beyond the femto second range at this time. Our understandinng of Quantum laws is yet to mature. It does you little credit to accuse me of arrogance when you display such a PARANOID, sajoesque attitude to the thermodynamic approach to climate change which not only provides an immediate solution but also confronts the political interests that wish to prolong climate change for reasons of economy and global control.

Again full marks on your googling.
Although out of place here, the Priogine link shows an important stepping stone to understanding stability in climate systems from the macroscopic to the microscopic. Along with many other contributions since 1977 and particularly Morse Theory on harmonic solutions on complex topologies, the qualitative physical basis for EWB networks emerged.
I only expect people on this forum to understand the 2LoT meaning that heat/energy/order/information all have some sort of equivalence and that systems containing them all migrate to cold/low energy/ disorder/loss of information over time as a universal law. I trust even you can understand that much.
This is enough for a basic understanding of how and why EWBs will control climate change.
If people want to bring up deeper thermodynamic issues such as equilibrium, reversibility or stability I will be pleased to engage. Otherwise this is not the proper place.

Continued ..

Continuing ...

As for Jones's turning Northern rivers inland? That would be far too expensive to create and then to PUMP water uphill. It would also encourage current wastewater modalities of ocean dumping which would accelerate climate changes in our REGION. The EWB network concept applies a harmonic topological function at saddle points across landforms based on multiple hydrological loops. In simple terms network EWBs promote interior continental rainfalls that encourage coastal rain band participation where sunlight PUMPS the water uphill for free. The resulting loss of this energy to coastal and polar systems subsequently halts violent climate changes.

And another thing. Anyone who relies on IPCC or government reports to bolster Greenhouse warming claims does not understand that unproven extrapolations abound and that they are hotly debated in the scientific community. These reports are worthless till more data comes in over the next 10 years. One thing is certain, IPCC does not take Thermodynamics into account. IPCC thus fails the most basic of procedural norms when extracting dynamic predictions from systems inbvolving time dependent energy inputs.
As for governments, they simply jump on any bandwagon that cements their global economic agenda. And they aren't too fussy about telling Morris Minor lies in the process.

The IPCC is the most definitive source we have at the moment for looking at the whole AGW picture. Imagine trying to get thousands of the most competent climate scientist to agree on every single point about our developing understanding of climate change. Impossible. What we have gained through the IPCC reports is compelling consensus on three key points.

1. Global warming is happening.
2. We are causing most of it with GH gas pollution.
3. If we don't stop we will produce very rapid warming of between 2 and 6 degrees C in the next 100 years.

KAEP, I can appreciate you have a lot of points to make. However, the tone and language you have chosen can be a turn off to people who would otherwise listen.

Personal attacks and being dismissive of others in this forum is not helpful.

KAEP - thanks for the 'sajoesque' bit - almost as good as having a new species or star named after you! Not sure what it means though. I happen to think you have some interesting ideas (although badly presented) so I can't believe it would be at all patronising.....?? Then again, it seems you don't have a lot of time for a female scientist and mother of three whose PhD is unfortunately not in Applied Mathematics.

1.I am with you Alan Grey.The IPCC (2001)may be the only document we have but it is very inadequate. For a start the Castles and Henderson critiques underscored by the UK House of Lord Report makes it almost certain that the projections for future Co2 emmissions, and temperature, are hopelessly over stated.

2.In the context of the debate over the extent of increasing storms etc, or no, the IPCC itself says:“Changes globally in tropical and extra-tropical storm intensity and frequency are dominated by inter-decadal to multi-decadal variations". Similarly cyclical variations in the AMO are also drivng the variations in artcic sea ice.

3. Mike M has a real problem with the source of one my links (to demonstarte the above) because he says it is from a right wing lobby group connected with the Republican party. This is the same bloke who tries to rebuke others for ad hominems,when,in this case the Author is a climatologist and researcher who has prepared and published a document that is totally based upon both peer reviewed science and government data( ie both the figures included and which clearly demonstrate the point are taken from published data). But no,he cannot possibly have any thing sensible to say. The word hypocrite comes to mind.

4. Fig 1 in the offending link shows the relationship between Atlantic SST and Atlantic Multidecadel Oscillation. They are not the authors plots. Fig 2 is a temperature history from the southern portion of Greenland since 1900. Again, from other sources. These tend to show that the doom and gloom merchants are wrong..yet again.

5. Returning to the theme of this article. On the basis of current knowledge, terrorism and the antics of the Islamacists are already doing more damage than any marginal variation in temperature. One is now, and real word driven, the other may or may not happen sometime in the future, and if it did, it can be ameliorated.

I am still interested in any reasons why methane that is set to be released from permafrost due to global warming cannot be harnessed and used as fuel. If in doing so it becomes twenty times less harmful as a greenhouse gas by converting into CO2 (according to dobermanmacledo), reduces the reliance on middle-eastern oil and extends our fuel reserves considerably isn't it worth considering? Maybe it is a stupid question but as we have so many experts here maybe someone can tell me why not? To me (no engineer I admit), it doesn't sound any more crazy than sequestration of CO2 underground or even drilling for oil in the middle of the North Sea. Should I be buying up large tracts of land in Siberia?

bigmal wrote, "Mike M has a real problem with the source of one my links (to demonstarte the above) because he says it is from a right wing lobby group connected with the Republican party."

TCSDaily itself says, "TCSDaily.com is published by Tech Central Station, a division of DCI Group, L.L.C.", http://www.tcsdaily.com/about.aspx and DCI makes no effort to conceal its connections with the Republican Party, http://www.dcigroup.com/leadership/

Since bigmal pays so little attention to provenance of his sources it's not surprising that he clings to ideas from cranks, weirdos and vested interests connected with Big Energy.

Good idea, sajo.

The question though is whether methane hydrate exists in sufficiently large deposits to be worth extracting. There is a lot of it, but if it is thinly spread, it may not be cost-effective to extract for fuel. Some current research on the topic is reported at http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/oil-gas/FutureSupply/MethaneHydrates/maincontent.htm

I also have problems with the source presented here in an attempt to push a profit motivated lobbyist agenda. The critique presented against the IPCC in this forum does not tackle nor diminish the central findings of the 2001 IPCC report. The critique against the IPCC findings are based on peripheral and selective findings which fail to mount a credible case against the compelling consensus among the thousands of the most competent experts on the three key findings.
1. Global warming is happening.
2. The strongest contributor to this global warming is human greenhouse gas pollution.
3. If we don’t change our current trajectory of atmospheric pollution we will produce a temperature change of between 2 and 6 degrees C.

The real scientific questions and debates are about how these fundamental changes will ultimately impact the earths systems. And how we can abate as much dangerous climate change as possible.

The science related to these three findings is well accepted. We have records that show robust correlation between atmospheric Greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature over hundreds of millennia. We understand the association between greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature through observations of other planets. We know there are also natural climate forcing factors which have produced climate change in the past. We have learned that these factors are producing smaller scale forcing than the far stronger forcing currently produced by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas.

Our understanding of climate is growing. As we observe the impacts of global warming we are increasing are understanding of positive feedback tipping points Yesterday it was revealed that the upper limited of temperature in the 2006 IPCC report has been removed. The most competent science can not put a limit on how hot the earth will get if we continue polluting the atmosphere as usual.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1719607,00.html

IPCC whiners,

Let's be perfectly clear about who is abusing what and whom .

Mike(academic):Since bigmal pays so little attention to provenance of his sources it's not surprising that he clings to ideas from cranks, weirdos and vested interests connected with Big Energy.

Disingenuinesque:To me (no engineer I admit), collecting methane over millions of miles of inhospitable terrain it doesn't sound any more crazy than sequestration of CO2

Tdo( do as I say)t: the tone and language you have chosen can be a turn off to people who would otherwise listen ... and is not helpful.

Mark Byrne (substance abuse): The IPCC is the most definitive source we have

The above arrogance and abuse of persons, and reason itself, by IPCC stooges and shills is an open invitation to retaliation. Do not expect any less than you dish out.
It does little good to hide ignorance behind crumby IPCC reporting and avoid doing necessary APPLIED MATHEMATICS yourself. You have been shown how to analyse climate change from a top down thermodynamic perspective. You must know by now that making dynamic predictions from too few data points and making extrapolations on an ultra complex biospheric system is how predominately IPCC biological scientists cope with the sheer frustration of having reams of data and no synergic methodology to analyse it. Well that methodology is now here in the form of Thermodynamics and advanced mathematical analyses. Despite any Keatingesque retorts to IPCC rubber-stamp rudeness that I may indulge in, real Scientists (even biologists) WILL listen because they know the score.

The following piece in the SMH this morning highlights the shift away from IPCC methodology:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/a-debate-begging-for-more-light/2006/03/01/1141191731122.html

The most important thing in climate change now is to wait 10 years and collect data under more stringent conditions. We should all be looking forward to scientists lifting their game here, commencing in 3 months time with the US-Hurricane-season.
As Americans desperately try to forget Katrina, worse is in store. In the long run this will be a benefit to all mankind because new thermodynamics analysis contains a robust, practical EWB-networking-soultion within it.

1.ALL parties engaged in the AGW debate are doing so from the point of vested interest. It doesnt matter whether it is Big Business, Big Energy or WWF, Australian Insitute, Lavoisier Group, or any of a myriad of groups, they all have a vested interest. Of course academics and publically funded researches are as pure as the driven snow.Pigs

I thought that to any thinking person following this subject, this is a blindingly obvious statement of fact.

I couldn't give a toss if TCS is being funded by Mickey Mouse.I will have a look at what is being written first.

2. When ideological frauds dismiss material out of hand because it also happened to appear where it shouldnt have, they are by implication dimissing the source material as well. In this case MikeM is dismissing the journals "Science", "Journal of Geophysical Research","Physical Research Letters" and all the material emanating from governemnt agencies such as the NCDC/NOAA. (All of which underpins what was being said). That is the implication of not looking at what was being said.

3.What they are also doing is denying that things that are the subject of discussion and which are reasonably well understood, like the AMO, actually doesnt exist, and doesnt affect Atlantic weather patterns at all. Further that there is NO correlation at all between SST and the AMO.All of which goes some way to explain what is going on in the Artic.

I think "Leigh" quite early in the piece had the right comment,and is closer to the truth, vis a vis Terrorism and AGW.

KAEP, I'm noticing you have particular style of communicating your ideas. However, I don’t feel enlightened or persuaded by the approach. I'm happy to read your reasoning and evidence behind your claims. But all I read is dismissive abuse. That won’t cut it for me. Neither will delaying action for ten years.

The evidence already exists. No regrets policy means acting now.

It’s a good thing we’ve got the IPCC and a foundational base line. Imagine the propaganda we’d have to wade through without it as a point from which to work.

I checked the author of the article you posted. Perhaps you’d be interested in following this link. Unless you already knew of Miranda Devine’s pretences.

http://timlambert.org/2005/02/devine/

KAEP, If you are interested in talking, I'd be interested in where you work and what got you interested in climate change? Did the work of the IPCC inform any of your ideas?

KAEP - just for you from the disingenuinesque one (love your vocabulary)

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/02/MethaneHydrate/Williams_Abstract.pdf

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/97/97ng/ng97_pdf/NGP13.PDF

Some advice from someone not as stupid as you seem to think: Assuming you are anticipating a career in a scientific field you may want to brush up on your communication skills. Remember your future employer/funding body may well be reading or contributing to OLO and will readily recognise your unique style. Believe me it is not at all impressive.

Mark Byrne has highlighted the critical point that, "The real scientific questions and debates are about how these fundamental changes will ultimately impact the earths systems. And how we can abate as much dangerous climate change as possible."

Current response of the Australian and US governments is big on rhetoric and missing in action.

There is a subsidiary question though: the psychology of greenhouse warming denial. How do presumably intelligent people such as KAEP and bigmal lock themselves into rejection of convincing evidence?

KAEL may think that it is all an Alan Greenspan plot, although now that Greenspan has retired, we will need to see where that leads him. But how come bigmal believes that "ALL parties engaged in the AGW debate are doing so from the point of vested interest?"

Certainly, some are. ExxonMobil, for one (although Royal Dutch/Shell and BP see it differently). What is IPCC's secret agenda? Jewish conspiracy? Islamic conspiracy? Technocrat conspiracy? Judy Cannon conspiracy? What?

Separate discussion has started at http://www.ethics.org.au/ethics_forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1455&PN=1&TPN=1 on the ethics of global warming denial.

Thanks for the tip Mike,

As I leave this forum, the thing I’ve gained is a greater appreciation for the increasing volume of profit motivated material which is seeking to deny AGW. I don’t want to be too ungenerous, but I think that some see waging this campaign as just another part of profit maximising business.

This creates an interesting convergence at this time as not-for-profits are threatened with funding cuts or tax exemption removal for advocacy on issues sensitive to the government of the day. More and more of life’s opportunities are influenced by dollar wealth (health, education, legal, political). This has become a societal structural positive feedback loop.

The uncreditable sources referred to in this forum are a real problem. In a forum like this there is little accountability. (I sometimes wonder if there are more names being used than individuals who are contributing). To have a serious debate it is far preferable to be open and accountable for what you say. This increases my appreciation of creating systems like peer reviewed journals, though I know these systems are not perfect.

I understand that the fundamentalist free market lobbyists are campaigning to discredit academics, because some of these academics keep raising ideas which get in the way of the acceleration of free market domination.

I’ve heard the claims before. ‘Without troublesome academics or troublesome human rights activists or greens we would be able to sort out the worlds problems with free market principles. Trust us. Just trust us and the market will solve everything. We will have a brave new world. The problems of today are not caused too much, rather by not enough free market.’

As for the UN, the UNEP, UNFCCC, UNCHR, WMO, IPCC, well they also keep creating obstacles to perfect free (to exploit) markets.

On a closing point, the fundamental problem with relying on the free market for too much, is the way the market fails to value vitally important contributions, while perversely rewarding some harmful exploitation.

Bigmal, we are all motivated by something. I’m working for intergenerational equity, social, global and environmental justice.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
-- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945
Of course, the above can be true both for the pro-AGW people and the anti-AGW people.
Both sides have economic and political motivations for their claims to the truth.
I’m not a climatologist, so who to believe?
We know that the climate has changed enormously throughout the Earth’s history, without any input from mankind. Only a few years ago, but probably before most of the pro-AGW posters here were alive, there was the "Global Cooling-new ice age is coming" scare.
Nowadays, all the doomsayers have changed to the AGW theory.
The fact that the pro-AGW people insist that there is no question about AGW anymore; references to “compelling consensus” and “the debate is over”, coupled with the fact that I know that dissent exists, leads me to disbelieve the pro-AGW people, or at least not take them too seriously.
Mark Byrne’s political motivation is obvious, as he has been kind enough to spell it out for us.
The debate appears to be more about ideology than science.
However, what about some speedy investment in nuclear energy, just in case?

Froggie,

The science is settled. Global warming is happening.

People have a variety of reasons for disputing the fact.

Nuclear energy is not as benign for the world as might be supposed, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, construction and dismantling of nuclear power plants requires substantial fossil fuel energy. I have not seen an account that factors that into the per-KWh price of nuclear energy, nor on its impact on greenhouse gas emission.

More importantly, I am unaware of any nuclear plant that has been fully decommissioned, with low radioactive waste securely stored for the thousand or so years required for it to become just part of the scenery, and for its high radioactive components stored for the necessary hundred thousand to million years. So we don't actually know what this is going to cost. An op-ed piece in The Australian Financial Review last week, "Nuclear power now an affordable option" by Martin Sevior quoted charges of around US0.2c/ KWh to US0.5c as a charge sufficient to cover decommissioning, but provided no evidence as to how that was arrived at.

Nuclear fusion energy (fusing hydrogen nuclei to produce helium and other byproducts) is less messy and produces less radioactive waste than fission (splitting uranium or plutonium). Unfortunately the technology has remained 20 years away from full commercialisation for the past half century; indications are that it will continue to do so.

Solving COMPLEX biospheric systems without due regard to TOTAL energy inventories is typical of specialist (biology/climateology) scientists who are not trained in Applied Mathematics as a first tier subject. People do what they are trained for and if that means solving one dynamic within an exceedingly complex system like the biosphere then that is what they will do. This is a mistake. Scientists make mistakes like anyone. It is arrant nonsense to assume the IPCC report is not based on this type of mistake.

As time goes on from here, the sheer unpredictability of imminent climate changes will all but rule out global warming as a cause. Global warming theory is very specific about the global homogeneity of it's effects and the gradual increase in its effects with time. The 2006 US hurricane season starting in June will be worse than 2005 and will all but squash greenhouse warming theories because the change is occurring too quickly. Additionally thermodynamic data correlation will be tested and refined in these coming hurricane events.

And remember, the Earth was deemed FLAT in the dark ages because the leading power of the time, the Catholic Church wanted it that way to control the populace and keep it in its place. No discussion would be entered into except by the executioner's axe ... eh Mike?

There does not need to be greenhouse warming for climate changes to be real and violent consequences of human activity. The bulk of our wastes and the greatest heat capacitance is in coastal pollution plumes from urbanisiation, agriculture and mining. Even 40% of all greenhouse gases end up in the oceans. Only rank amateur scientists will continue to ignore this vital fact and the fact that marine creatures are crying out, like the Thame's whale, to tell us: "If we are in harm's way then so are YOU".

The extent of the contribution of human activity to global warming may or may not be significant. I suspect global warming is mostly due to natural cycles but human activity is probably not helping things. I may be wrong but it hardly matters what the cause is as it is extremely unlikely that anyone (either government or your average citizen) is going to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to make any real difference - at least until it is far too late. We will however need to determine what we are up against and work out how to cope with the changes as we can be sure no-one is going to stop it from happening. That is where the IPCC comes in. No doubt someone will be making a few millions out of it somewhere along the line but it still needs to be done.

If there really is a serious gap in the IPCC collaboration then something needs to be done about it. KAEP - if your calculations are correct then what are you doing to fill in the gaps?

With or without global warming it is a known fact that pollution is causing significant damage to our environment and health and for this reason alone we should be determining the cause and extent of the damage and doing whatever we can to minimise it. Thermodynamics alone cannot solve everything.

I can't quite see the point of the article - is Judy trying to say that we should stop worrying about terrorism because climate change is more important? Shouldn't we be worrying about both?

The Thermodynamics of Life,

Nature "wants" to get rid of gradients. They're unnatural. Statistically improbable. What the thermodynamics shows is that complex living systems are more efficient than simple systems at wiping out gradients. Even examples of spontaneous self-organization in open systems like hurricanes and ball lightning are known. Prigogine calls them "dissipative-structures" — they are structures that dissipate energy gradients.
This is no vague, abstract theory, but a tested hypothesis: an integrated ecosystem is better than any predecessor at reducing the gradient between the sun and space. The fact that mature tropical ecosystems stay cool displays the system’s power of gradient reduction. Wetlands are nature's coup de grace for reducing gradients and the man engineered version, the EWB, is far more efficient, than any natural wetland on the planet.

So, life feeds on gradients and, in the process, helps to reduce them. In so doing, life does Nature's work. And-if-its-doing-nature's-work-its-not-causing-climate-change. The bottom line: thermodynamic principles do not oppose life, like God, they practically command it into existence. Life is an integral part of the universe, completely consistent with the thermodynamic principles that unite both living and nonliving matter. It is naive to suggest other approaches to environmental problems exist that could be better than a Thermodynamic approach.

Recent studies have shown that the sun-space gradient is influenced by ecosystems in riverine catchments, abnormal thermodynamic instabilities in coastal waters, circumpolar currents and black body radiations from the poles which are immune from greenhouse conditioning. The harmonic solutions to this differential topology forms a unique dissipative-structure which is easily influenced by human activity at two important points: coastal oceans and saddle points within riverine catchments. If we can clean coastal ocean pollution by treating wastewaters at 1-5 acre EWBs at saddle points in catchment then both sensitive areas in the heat gradient can be controlled to allow new harmonic solutions that reverse a wide range of climate changes. The other advantage here is that EWBs are efficient enough in large numbers (100,000 Australia-wide) to solve the human intractability problem where landholders refuse to reinstate forests and natural wetlands for commercial reasons.

KAEP - Your idea of using EWB's is quite fascinating. It does however demonstrate why we need to take a multidisciplinary approach to solving complex problems. I would have hoped the IPCC was taking such an approach but perhaps not. You may think it naive for specialist scientists to try to find all the answers ( I would agree on this) however a biologist would also think it equally naive not to have an understanding of gene-environment interactions and population dynamics when dealing with ecosystems. I can see many problems with EWBs, not least cost, as it would disrupt coastal ecosystems considerably. However any system that addresses pollution is well worth investigating - just make sure it is looked at from more than one persepective. Good luck in your research. Oh - and much better presentation thank you.

Engineered wetlands: questions and answers.

Wouldn't it be equally naive not to have an understanding of gene-environment interactions and population dynamics when dealing with ecosystems?

In thermodynamcs you quantify energy terms first, then apply integral operators like the Hamiltonian to get different levels of dynamic solutions. Given the appropriate boundary conditions you can predict gene environment interactions and any other desired dynamics.

Cost of EWBs?

Metropolitan stormwater fixtures are costing about $1-2 million. I suspect a lot of this is pork barrelling at the moment. With wide spread construction the cost should be about $500,000 each. Further, Community support for solving water issues is phenomenal across all social boundaries. I expect that every EWB installation could have up to 100 citizens donating time and equipment. This could cut costs and completion times dramatically. What a wonderful XTREME way to really feel part of this nation! Pencil me in for Lake Eyre. It would make Clean Up Australia look like a boring day out. Sorry Ian!

Do EWBs disrupt coastal ecosystems?

Each EWB will be custom designed to fit the pollutant load, hydrology, flora and fauna of its locale. It will shield all areas downstream from that pollutant load. This is a significant IMPROVEMENT on EVERY current situation.

Would EWBs hog precious farm waters?

No, after the 100,000 saddle points have been identified, EWBs would be implemented from the coasts inward. Progress of EWB construction inwards will depend on the creation of NET new rainfalls in expansion areas.
There will be exceptions to this in areas that already contain self sustaining wetlands and in Sth Australia's salt lakes where EWBs can be implemented immediately. Salt lakes can have patchwork EWBs using solar desalinated seawater. Some salt lakes are below sea level, minimising pumping costs. Also, the use of highly specialised shadecloths and native plant and animal species will allow optimum heat conversion in extreme desert scenarios. This is important in attracting coastal-rain-bands inland.

Mosquitoes, plagues and bad smells?

Network-Engineered-wetlands are ENGINEERED. For all circumstances they are effectively ultra-efficient-solar-powered-bio-reactors that are network-wide-designed to handle sufficient pollutant loads to halt REGIONAL climate changes.

A new discussion paper released on Sunday morning 5/3/2006,by the Australian Conservation Foundation titled "Out of the Blue", says the existing PATCHWORK of marine laws is not adequate to properly protect the oceans and plan for their future use.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Call-for-streamlining-of-marine-laws/2006/03/05/1141493536688.html

The ACF appears to be reading this forum and are stepping up what is new territory for them marine laws.

Based on what I have been proposing on this forum to mitigate cimate changes in Australia's REGIONALAL area, I agree with this move.

However I urge the ACF to consider:

* that healthy oceans come mainly from healthy river catchments

* Doing what Ian Keirnan does and clean up your own 'backyard' by placing EWB bioreactors at all pollution collecting saddle points across Australia. 100,000 1-5 acre EWBs treating sewage, mining, agricultural, urban and industrial run offs WILL work a lot better than what exists now in keeping rivers and thus oceans clean and healthy.

* Remembering that unhealthy oceans are not caused by climate change ... they are part of a string of harmonic events that CAUSE climate change.

* Remembering that in Environmental matters if you aren't part of the solution you are probably part of the PROBLEM.

KAEP,
one bloke piddling in the ocean and then catching as much fish from it as he is able isn't much of a problem.
When (if) the world wakes up to itself and realises that six and a half billion people trying to do that same thing could be a bit different - only then might there be hope for humanity.

Colinsett,

ASSUMING EACH PERSON HAS AN ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT FACTOR OF 10x (I think its around that) DUE TO AGRICULTURAL, INDUSTRIAL AND OTHER INFRASTRUCTURE OVERHEADS THEN:

That means the equivalent of sixty five billion people are pissin' in the pond. That's a truck load of shifted Entropy that wasn't being shifted until very recently. Kind of like building huge dispersed REGIONAL bombs around population and mining centres really. God, we are so efficient at waste disposal. Pity about the catastrophic climate changes it causes when the 2LoT creates Prigigone dissipative structures to iron out the consequent entropy gradients.

OOOOPS!

You want to take bets on how long it will take the IPCC to wake up from here?

KAEP,
assuming that your scales of possible efficiencies are correct.
Assuming that they not only can be, but will be, implemented immediately.
Assuming that the present attitude to human reproduction continues and similar inefficiencies are maintained in relation to control of malnutrition, water-born diseases, aids, malaria, etc., and warfare's contribution continues (i.e. population increase is maintained at 1.3% annually for the world).
Then the doubling time for world population is about half a century.
Then the 650 million mark is, on the very edge of extreme of optimism, not to be reached in less than two centuries.
By then, Homo sapiens might have had enough time to develope some sense in relation to reproductive matters and change its rabbit-like habits.
If I don't think about what the place will be like to live in by then, - well, maybe you have given us hope??

Berkshire Hathaway is the largest writer of mega-catastrophe reinsurance in the world. In his 2005 letter to shareholders, just released, chairman Warren Buffett writes:

"It’s an open question whether atmospheric, oceanic or other causal factors have dramatically changed the frequency or intensity of hurricanes. Recent experience is worrisome. We know, for instance, that in the 100 years before 2004, about 59 hurricanes of Category 3 strength, or greater, hit the Southeastern and Gulf Coast states, and that only three of these were Category 5s. We further know that in 2004 there were three Category 3 storms that hammered those areas and that these were followed by four more in 2005, one of them, Katrina, the most destructive hurricane in industry history. Moreover, there were three Category 5s near the coast last year that fortunately weakened before landfall.

"Was this onslaught of more frequent and more intense storms merely an anomaly? Or was it caused by changes in climate, water temperature or other variables we don’t fully understand? And could these factors be developing in a manner that will soon produce disasters dwarfing Katrina?

"[We] don’t know the answer to these all-important questions. What we do know is that our ignorance means we must follow the course prescribed by Pascal in his famous wager about the existence of God. As you may recall, he concluded that since he didn’t know the answer, his personal gain/loss ratio dictated an affirmative conclusion.

"So guided, we’ve concluded that we should now write mega-cat policies only at prices far higher than prevailed last year – and then only with an aggregate exposure that would not cause us distress if shifts in some important variable produce far more costly storms in the near future."

- http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2005ltr.pdf

Froggy, You are absolute correct on an important point. The global warming debate has become linked to ideological & political positions.

Froggy has highlighted one position. Some other idological positions have people be making the claim that climate change is a scheme for more tax funding.

“Looters quest for more Tax Funding” (ALL)

Others idological position have people rasing a narative about 'professional doomsters'.

“… the professional doomsters will be threaten us again with the deep freeze and shrinking oceans.” (anti-green).

Ideological associations are clear with involvement of ideological based think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, The Australia Institute, The Institute of Pubic Affairs, as well as their publishing arms such as the TSCdaily.

However the debate is also about science. Its would be incorrect to hold that this debate is either about science or ideology. It is about both.

Point well made about ‘if you repeat a lie long enough’. So, who are we to believe is repeating the lie? Which is the lie? I’ve an idea we might disagree on this these points.

Regarding the IPCC. The IPCC reports have their uses but also major limitations. The modus operandi of the IPCC is one of consensus reaching among experts and government representatives. This severely limits the statements able to be agreed on. For example the representatives of governments with strong fossil fuel interests (Saudi, US & China) are eager to water down wording and slow progress.

The outcome of this is the IPCC does not represent the best science. The IPCC represents the lowest common denominator science. So, The IPCC has access to a lot of the best science. But the statements it makes are watered down to reflect the accepted points that are beyond contention

Froggy, it’s a white wash to claim that greenhouse global warming is a lie. Mainstream science recognises the impact of greenhouse gas. The science used in an attempt to deny the dangers of greenhouse is fringe. Survey and compare this with the balance and findings of articles in serious journals such as Science, Nature, Journal of Oceanography, Journal of Climate.

Denial of the dangers of greenhouse gas is dominated by the vested interests and their ideologues. And more unfortunately by those who are influenced by their strong marketing.

THERMODYNAMICS is not fringe science.

Understanding BLACK BODY radiation at the poles as and escape route for global heating in the prescence of slight CO2 increases is not fringe science.

The fact that the IPCC consensus does not refer to these top down approaches is because their scientists are befuddled with what to do with massive amounts of data collected on Biospheric parameters. They simply haven't got around to a top down approach to solving climate irregularities yet. They will eventually. I promise every one reading this thread that will happen because it is the procedural norm in solving complex problems once you stop farting around with data collection and initial analyses. And don't think that even a century is an abnormal time to spend on this data analysis if people get tunnel vision about their particular part of the puzzle. The Biosphere is a BIG entity. I cannot stress just how much scientists seem to underestimate its true COMPLEXITY. A complexity that can only ever be understood by using Thermodynamics as a unifying tool for all other lines of research.

Additionally, I have been hauled over the coals with accusations of sophistry because certain scientists believe that upper reaches of rivers have fresh water and thus do not need EWBs at upper reach saddle points to purify that water. May I remind them that EWB networking to halt REGIONAL climate changes is about Thermodynamics. Upper reach EWBs may or may not be required to filter pollutants but they are integral in maintaining a particular entropy level in the overall EWB network to facilitate maximum work done by land based heat within land-sea dissipative structures. The current situation is expediting heat transfer from the land to the poles via a circuital route that causes climate irregularities all along its path. This is what we are currently stuck with and will be until the IPCC consensus turns around.

Once again I predict that greenhouse warming will soon be a dead topic and I am still interested in taking bets on how soon that will happen.

Will the real IPCC please step forward.

It can't? Oh dear!

The 'IPCC's passed on?

This Greenhouse warming nonsense is no more! It has ceased to be!

'IPCC's expired and gone to meet its maker! 'IPCC's a stiff! Bereft of life,it rests in peace!

If I hadn't nailed it to the perch the IPCC'd be still pushing up scientific confusions!

'Its metabolic processes are now history!

'IPCC's off the twig!

'IPCC's kicked the bucket, 'IPCC's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!

IPCC IS AN EX-GREENHOUSE WARMING FAKERY AND THERMODYNAMICS APPROACHES ARE JUST ABOUT TO PREVAIL AS AN ALMOST IMMEDIATE SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE!!

Pity about the US Gulf Coast with the hurricane season starting June 2006 and not an EWB in sight. Houston and New orleans are also about t0 become dead parrots. OOPS, too low, too slow!

“Ecosystems & Human Well-being: Wetlands & Water Synthesis” Ramsar COP9

Tuesday, November 08, 2005 | Kampala, UGANDA

“The degradation and loss of wetlands is more rapid than that of other ecosystems. Similarly, the status of both freshwater and coastal wetland species is deteriorating faster than those of other ecosystems.”

The conference stressed the need to balance the desire to add more sites to the Ramsar List of Wetlands with ensuring their effective management (EWBs?). It called for: synergies among biodiversity-related Conventions; better environmental governance frameworks; and capacity building.

It stressed that ecosystem services are vital to human well-being, lamenting that many of these services are overused, mismanaged or degraded, and highlighted policy choices available to reduce wetland degradation while maintaining benefits (again EWBs?).

Commenting on the accelerated wetland degradation, it highlighted a reduction of human well-being, especially in developing countries, coupled with an increased demand for wetland services. She said policy decisions must address trade-offs between current and future use, and emphasized cross sectoral and ecosystem approaches. Finally, she noted that the report would help set the future agenda for Ramsar, and could be used to raise awareness on wetlands.

And the latest Millenium report:

"A landmark study released today reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the REGULATION of REGIONAL CLIMATE, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years."

What have you been smoking KAEP?

Hi KAEP, what is KAEP?

I agree therodynamics as a science is not fringe. And process is critical to the validity of findings. But I'm not clear on the links you are making in your response. I'm interested in reading your sources regarding this theory of theromodynamics in relation to explaining current climate change. Can you direct readers to links explaining this?

ALP FACTION WARS ON AGAIN

Lets examine what the fight is truly about, and lets look at rank and file members and what the average member thinks about factions, through my eyes.

A preselection in any local, state or federal seat. All local rank and file members registered to vote and are on the roll, may seek preselection from the party machine and then rank and file members. Nominations are called candidates,and normal election process begins.
The preselection ballet is held, a clear win is any candidate with 50.1% of the vote, all simple stuff.
Regards,
Michael Powell Qld.

The Central Committee of the ALP loaded with factions from left middle and right are horse trading who will be endorsed as the ALP candidates in each local, state and federal seats, even after the local rank and file members have already decided who they want.
The party rules allows for a system, where the local rank and file members vote doesn't even count, unless the ALP Central Committee endorses their selected candidate.

We need to see real reform in the political system especially the ALP.
The power over leaders, federal and state officals must be given to rank and file members.
Local State Federal leaders elected by state conferences, all party officals elected by a full vote of rank and file members.

The current crop are mainly straight from grade 12, uni or party or union offices or were policy advisors with some Minister, MLA, MP or senator,and or has political family history, this is the make up the modern labor party.
It's no wonder they can't get elected to office federally or find a leader the voters truly respect.

2/3rds of the countries work force earn $35,000 per year or less.

The party and unions needs candidates who have real life, work and business experience, not professional pollitcans, union leaders straight out of uni, or Lawyers, this the labor party, where's the tradesmen or women.
Union membership is now under 20%, wake up to yourselves before their is no coming back

Burger,

What is KAEP?

Its an anagram for Kyoto Alternative Energy Protocol. I believe this is a practical way forward to solve looming problems in global economic and social systems. The current Kyoto is an abject failure.
I will not go into KAEP details other than to say one quarter of it is to do with the use of wetlands to reform land/sea thermodynamic patterns. This is a way to use climate energy for mankind and not against it and thus amounts to an effective double energy source. It will take too long to explain the remainder and it is not pertinent here.

You agree therodynamics is not fringe but you ignore black body radiation from the poles which has a wavelength outside of greenhouse gas opacity. Is there a reason? BBR allows net transferred heat to the poles to escape the Earth and thus makes Greenhouse gas warming dirisable. This transfer of course is all part of the Prigigone dissipative structure I have referred to. Do you understand Prigigone's work in relation to Climate?

Process is critical to the validity of findings ... and more importantly to the effectiveness of related solutions to climate change problems. This is why I referred to the wetland links. They are germane to the networked EWB (Engineered Wetlands or E-Dubbyas) solution. They show that even without the mathematical analysis this solution is independently evident.

You are interested in reading my sources regarding this theory?
There are so many, and many are threaded research trails. It is not pertinent or practicable here. Further, I have to consider proprietry rights. The information I have posted here is pretty clear in itself if you read it. I will answer questions of course.

One last point. Morse theory is integral in estimating the differential topology aspects of the Australian landscape and thus the kinds of climate harmonics to be expected. Do you have an understanding of Morse theory.

What complete rot, KAEP.

Black body radiation intensity is proportional to the fourth power of absolute temperature, so radiation from the polar regions is very small compared with temperate and tropical zones.

Furthermore, polar black body radiation, such as it is, is strongly absorbed by greenhouse gases, http://eesc.ldeo.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/o_atm.html

Morse theory has nothing to do with harmonics in the Australian landscape. It is a part of differential topology, a branch of pure mathematics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_function

KAEP, are you the guy who keeps sending me those letters written in green ink, tiny writing, eight pages long?

Thought so.

I wouldn't have even bothered to respond to such drivel, except that you were rude to me on another thread.

>>What is KAEP?

Its an anagram for Kyoto Alternative Energy Protocol<<

KAEP is an anagram of PEAK. Anagrams rearrange letters to form other words.

It is an acronym for Kyoto Alternative Energy Protocol. Or might be, if it existed outside your imagination.

>>This transfer of course is all part of the Prigigone dissipative structure I have referred to. Do you understand Prigigone's work in relation to Climate?<<

And if you are going to refer to the work of Ilya Prigogine, it would be polite to get his name correct.

>>One last point. Morse theory is integral in estimating the differential topology aspects of the Australian landscape and thus the kinds of climate harmonics to be expected<<

No it is not. The topology referred to in Morse theory has absolutely nothing to do with the Australian landscape. Or any other landscape, for that matter. There is a remote connection via partial differential equations, but none that makes sense in this context.

Of course, if your posts are part of a gigantic spoof, and you are having a good laugh that someone is taking you literally, so be it. But a joke is a joke, and this one has run its course, don't you think?

Peri-cleese,

Apart from an obvious typo I did err on the 'anagram'. You are correct that should be ACRONYM. Thankx.

The rest of your complaint is arrant nonsense. You are not a scientist, that is evident both here and on other forums.

Mike,

As usual you are right on the money with the googles. Uncanny that.

However:

* Morse theory relies on mappings, but you never googled that did you. I have landscape mappings and ocean surface mappings using NOAA sat data.
* Your BBR google does not bear out what you say. It only mentions BBR from ocean surfaces.
The problem at the poles is that because ice has extremely high order it has very low entropy but this can not be used to do work as it is internal energy and not vibrational heat. This fact adds complexity to the mechanism for BBR from polar regions. As you will know, BBR is simply the electromagnetic dispersal of heat from hot bodies through the random motion of its particles. This gets quite complicated when those particles take on a crystalline structure at low temperatures(ice).
The point remains that tropical heat substantially gets transferred to the poles where it does get emitted to space at a much greater rate than has been detailed to date.

Further the data analysis is already showing Houston in the US Gulf region to be at some threat this year. Stay tuned. This thread will be ongoing till then at least. I will do my best to keep it afloat.

I was surprised at the way my post was attacked particuarly by Kaep. I am new to this particular forum but this is the first time I have come across such unfriendlness when sharing some views on a global issues.
I am surprised people are taking it so personally.

Each person has their point of view.
I notice in later posts that many people to agree with my "suggestion" about the Arctic.
There were no comments about my "suggestion" re use of air conditioning which does happen to be a large user of fossil fuels btw.

Anyway whatever, it was interesting to read some of you posts on this issue which may or may not effect us. Thanks N

Natasha,

Your post made good sense (unlike any of KAEP's). Don't be put off by the creature.

You are absolutely right about the profligate use of energy by air conditioners.

Air conditioning is necessary in some circumstances: hospital operating theatres, integrated circuit fabrication facilities, vaccine production laboratories - where the requirement is to control not only temperature but airborne contamination.

Most of the rest of air conditioning in the Australian climate is sheer laziness and inertia by architects, engineers and builders. Consider what has been achieved at The Bond in Sydney, http://www.airah.org.au/downloads/2003-06-F01.pdf - a 5 star energy rated building with minimal air conditioning.

People lived in this continent a hundred years ago without air conditioning (in fact ten thousand years ago). What has changed?

Thank you MikeM for your post. I agree that much of the excessive use of air conditioning is due to the way buildings are built in cities like Melbourne. I should be very interested to read your link. Cheers N

Natasha,

When Arthur Tunstall had a piece of Cathy Freeman in the press, people thought it was unfriendly. The next thing Cath and Artha are sitting having a cup of Liptons and Cathy has won gold. The hand of the Lord moves in very mysterious ways and it is all we can do to play our part.

There is an immediate solution to what we call climate change. It is a mathematical certainty, not an opinion. In the meantime it would be wise to change those things you know you can change such as googling for news articles on how air conditioniong is responsible for NSW needing another coal fired power station. It would be even wiser to defer to those things you KNOW you cannot change like the rough and tumble in our parliaments and in all aspects of free speech. Whether you approve or not THAT is democracy. If you don't believe me ask PJKeating.

In the end, the only thing any of us should expect to win is TRUTH.

Let me summarise the state of play - Climate-ChangeVHumankind:

* We are migrating to coastal areas and this is accelerating.

* We are approaching the dumping of up to 90% of wastes through a variety of primary&tertiary mechanisms in coastal oceans. Ultimately greenhouse gases/aerosols amount to only about 10% effective wastes and they have significantly less heat capacity that oceanic wastes. Although a big problem, air-pollution is a poor second consideration. Mainstream science unwisely ignores this.

* Oceanic wastes do not immediately MIX. As they SLOWLY mix they change the thermodynamic-balance and thus interactions at the land/sea interface, on a REGIONAL basis. Mostly in regions where urbanisation, mining and agriculture predominate. This is climate change.

* I have outlined a dissipative-structure(Prigogine) approach to quantify climate change.
I have also indicated the optimal networked-1-to-5-acre-engineered-wetland solution for treatment of wastes on LAND to address the imbalances in land/sea interactions. This solution also makes land based heat do more work for our economies rather than melt our ice caps. It is thus an alternative energy source of significant magnitude

Natasha,

I suspect that KAEP is practising for a comedy role in the event that Monty Python makes a movie on greenhouse warming. I can just imagine him in flowing robes and waist-length wig parading around the fringes of the crowd, wearing a sandwich board inscribed:

IMPRISON COWARDLY LAND-BASED HEAT!
WHIP IT UNTIL IT DOES ITS DESTINED WORK!
ILYA PRIGOGINE IS THE LORD GOD OF GLOBAL WARMING...
AND I AM HIS ANOINTED PROPHET.
VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THOSE WHO GOOGLE 'AIR CONDITIONING'
S H A L L...R O T...I N...H E L L

I think this makes about as much sense as his posts.

MikeM,

You prove nothing except that you have run out of the substance required to critique my work. All you have done to date is google up PROOFS of my assertions without the slightest clue what you have done.
A competent librarian could do as much.

This pleases me no end and I am ROTFLMAO.

Your shameless and cowardly deference to novice Natasha rather than face up to me is indicative of your lazy thinking. The same laziness that prompts you to shill for the IPCC without ever understanding the underlying errors they introduce with their pathetic and desperate consenses to justify their very expensive existence.

Furthermore you will note that I always sledge opponents using their own weak words reflected back against them. You will never hear me make un unprovoked attack like the one where you refererrd to me in the pejorative as some 'creature'. I am aware and so should you be that this may rightly attract the attention of forum moderators.

To all other participants,

I am currently plotting data maps of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) that already show tenuous dissipative structuring directed at Houston.
The gravity of this means some of us are very concerned about the consequences of major damage to that city which is so vital for oil and space industries and the recovery effort for New Orleans.
The extra load on this city's waterways since Katrina has meant high pollution loadings and this has altered entropy distributions off the coast in that part of the GOM.

And now .... let's on to the US Gulf coast for the June start to the hurricane season and WIN the climate change debate there based on thermodynamic dissipative structures and not on some mythical greenhouse warming, shilled to the hilt insanity.

I Stopped contributing to this thread, as I thought the arrogance and total dismissal of everyone by KAEP, was just a bit to much. Also being so narrow and arrogant in his perception, showed his fear at not being right, or noticed.

But his statement,“The hand of the Lord moves in very mysterious ways and it is all we can do to play our part.”, shows we can all relax now, he's a christian. So what more can you expect, but aggression, abuse, denial and put downs. Keep it up KAEp, whatever you have to say, will be taken in the attitude that you present it, ugly.

You have things to say that are relevant, but just like your beleifs, they are but a small part of reality and just about everything that has been said in support of global warming, climate change and ecological collapse, are correct. It just depends on the percentage of their contribution. You can be 99% right, but if you fail to recognise the 1%, you can never be right. As they say, a miss is as good as a mile and that goes for all things. Sadly those that are blinded by their beleifs no matter what they are, fail to see all aspects and are always wrong in the end.

It doesn't mater what is causing this, or how you name it, its happening and thats it. Until there is massive change, nothing will alter the decline of our environment, thats contributing to our sociological collapse.

I assumed that MikeM was just trying to lighten up a thread with with a big of humor in his Sunday 12 9:30pm post. I thought it was light & witty.

Afterall the tread has become very laborous & low on spontanaous bouncing around of ideas.

A forum is a space where different ideas are put in & no one is RIGHT or WRONG - particuarly on an issue like this.

Surely we are not investing our homes in our post but submitting a "suggestion" or an idea; without attachment to it.

The Alchemist your post was very interesting & gave me food for thought.

It does seem that those who are Fundamentalist Christans seem to think along the lines of "there is only one truth & everyone else is wrong & I am duty bound to convert everyone to my truth"
This doesnt leave much room for lively discussion.

Alchemy,

You sir are a liar. You stopped posting here because you could not find any links to support the useless opinions you continually sprout. At the rate of two or three a paragraph and not any proof in sight is it any wonder you get bored? I doubt you even bothered to read any of my posts. Like to take a quiz?

Natasha,

You cannot spell. That is my opinion.You are entitled to a different one of course but you would be WRONG. That puts a big hole in your theory about opinions on this forum. Global greenhouse warming, the Kyoto protocol and the IPCC which underwrites them are all dead. I am just waiting for the burial which will come as the US hurricane season approaches. I feel sorry for the US to have to bear what is in store but it will be a real turning point in this debate that will shift it from problem to solution. And that's how it SHOULD be.

BTW there used to be opinions about horses V cars. Guess which opinion failed?

And in the opinion stakes "global warming V thermodynamic instabilities", I have already won. Not because I am clever but because THERMODYNAMICS can't be beaten.

Of course YOU ignore thermodynamics. You put your head in the sand and moan in misspelled glory. But I suggest that this puts you in a rather vulnerable position n'est ce pas?

In The Meantime.

Preliminary bouts for the US Gulf Coast main event:

A swarm of tornadoes killed at least 10 people across the American midwest and damaged so much of Springfield, Illinois' capital, that the mayor said he believed "every square inch" of town suffered the effects.

http://search.smh.com.au/click.ac?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsmh.com.au%2Fnews%2FWORLD%2FTornadoes-rip-across-America-10-die%2F2006%2F03%2F14%2F1142098428989.html&t=4&n=1&s=tornados

My generation cant spell without a spell check & we write in text so much well anyway whatever.
Forums are meant to be a bit of lite fun in my opinion. They are not like being at work. This thread feels like hard work & I do enuf of that on work days.
So anyway whatever. The very issue which is the title of this thread is stifled because ONE SINGLE poster is determined to make his point of view the only point of view.
There are plenty of other forums to discuss this issue anyway.
Farewell The Alchemist & Mike M. I may post to a different thread here l8ter. N

KAEP,

in the opinion stakes race in which you run, you inevitably win. At the same time you inevitably come last. Nobody except you is demented enough to run in that bizarre event.

But what would you say if the SMH report was wrong, and instead of tornadoes, it was a swarm of thermodynamically enabled killer tomatoes that trashed the American midwest and killed 10 people?

Don't give up, Natasha. KAEP's Progogine tomato theory will never stay the distance.

New cross media ownership laws, science and opinion.

Labor's communications spokesman, Stephen Conroy, attacked the newly proposed changes to media laws: "The existing media barons will have greater ownership, greater control over the diversity of opinion in this country. That's not good for DEMOCRACY and that's not good for DIVERSITY OF OPINION"

We have already seen on this forum the blind hatred of alternative ideas to greenhouse warming theory. Of course scientific opinions like the flat earth, horses are better than cars and greenhouse warming are all valid scientific opinions. No one here is denying the right to PRESENT them. Only, if evidence exists to disprove them then that evidence has a place here.

Here is the problem with extended media monopolies: and their ability to restrict and pillory opinions without any scienctific proof whatever: Media barons are prime players in the Global Economy. Greenhouse warming theory is ideal for the global economic model of usnsustainable growth of markets and slavish populations to support them.

Greenhouse warming in particular as a scientifically untenable opinion has these advantages to the global economic model:

* GW has 100 year plus long term solutions (greenhouse gas limits and alternative energy investments) that can be lost, forgotten or subverted. Nothing ever has to be done. I mean, there have been billions of dollars and millions of words supporting alternative energy in the US and yet the cupboard is bare.

* GW has a fear factor that empowers governments to more tightly regulate our lives and build populations beyond sustainability for new markets.

* GW obviates the need to clean up riverine catchments and coastal oceans. An acceptance of the Thermodynamic model of climate change would sound the death knell for the global economy. It would enable individual empowerment and foster social equality.

The message from the ruling elite is clear. Thermodynamics is a bigger threat than terrorism and come hell, high water, tornados, killer tomatoes, droughts or hurricanes it will be supressed.
The oceans and rivers of the world and their ecologies are EXPENDABLE so long as 3%-5%growth-global economic targets continue to be met.

Natasha,

You talk about fundamentalist christians and there being only one truth so just accept it. Well it's your friend The Alchemist who writes stuff like "It doesn't mater what is causing this, or how you name it, its happening and thats it." I am not an expert in this stuff, but I do notice these sort of comments come far more from green doomsayers than anyone else. You might what to think about that.

Kaep clairvoyant as well. Considering your quick to jump on those you feel have besmirched you, you display that common trait of hypocrisy. I'm not going to defend myself against an insipid religious blank, just hope your thermodynamic god has a good answer.

Chumley, what I say on this subject is from my own observations when traveling, which I do a lot and what I see where I live. I'm no expert, green or a doom sayer, just a person that looks at life and sees the changes. More CO2 may be a bonus, as it may create more rain in dry places, allowing for longer growing seasons, or it might do the opposite.

Considering we are wiping out huge numbers of living species, every day. It won't be long before our ecology won't be able to sustain itself as we know it. Whether its thermodynamics, global warming, air pollution, species extinction, or religious wars. We can't sustain this for very long, before something breaks.

So it really doesn't matter to me, I'm prepared for many events, except the collapse of our ecology. What that'll do I have no idea, but as life relies on the chain of supply and demand. Once we get to the point where we have lost those life forms that are the base of our ecology, it'll be like a fire at the bottom of a string. It will finally reach and burn those at the top, us.

I understand yours and Kaeps fears about being wrong. I know I'm wrong, so its not a problem, just a learning experience. So go for it, abuse me all you like. Just shows how inadequate you are at open rational debate. However thats typical of the religious, can only hurl threats and make unfounded accusations. Even if your religion is just denial, its no different to god freaks, just as stupid.

We can regrow trees, reverse climate trends over time, but can't resurrect extinct essential species.

A radar-equipped NASA plane is flying low over the Arctic this week to measure the snow on top of sea ice, a finding with implications for polar bears and possibly humans, an ice scientist said.

Snow atop sea ice acts like a thick quilt on top of a thin blanket, slowing the transfer of heat from the comparatively warm water (0-4 deg C) to the intensely cold atmosphere (<-50 deg C).

NASA's Aqua satellite has an instrument called an Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer meant to gauge snow depth. This week's radar flights are meant to confirm these satellite observations, Markus said. Satellites meant to track weather often have a distorted view of the polar regions.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/NASA-plane-to-measure-Arctic-snow-layer/2006/03/21/1142703321659.html

NASA has obviously become aware recently that heat dissipation from polar regions is not as simple as first thought. Otherwise they wouldn't be checking their Aqua results would they?
Black body radiation from ice caps to space is greater than current inadequate satellite measurements present. Heat loss to space at the poles is independent of greenhouse gas warming due to the macromolecular, crystalline, entropic nature of the latent heat of fusion in ice formation. This allows complex diabatic radiative mechanisms to remove heat from the polar atmosphere that would othewise contribute to so called global warming. When NASA finally discovers that loss of snow cover is only a REGIONAL problem and that heating of the polar atmosphere is not widespread, I hope there is no reason for them to hide the fact or its greater implications. These results should vindicate a REGIONAL Thrmodynamic basis for Climate Change and a dismissal of putative greenhouse gas warming theory. Let's wait and see!

The real danger? No, its not terrorism and certainly not global warming. The real danger is Ignorance of the Thermodynamic imbalances we are causing by accelerating efflux of pollutants through riverine catchments to coastal oceans and eventually to specific polar REGIONS.
And to make matters worse we KNOW how to fix this permanently is less than 5 years as opposed to KYOTOING ourselves into extinction..

Global Warmng and Terror? If Al Queda had caused $1billion damage to Nth Qld it would have meant WWIII.

Australian banana growers cause that damage by frigging around with coastal Thermodynamics and they get Federal government relief.

Something is terribly wrong in Canberra and Brisbane.

Cyclone Larry was largely a man made disaster based on unusual Thermodynamic imbalances in the East Australan Current and Coral Sea caused by banana growers.

The Thermodynamics:
The second law states that heat energy will move to cold, ordered systems to disordered ones.
In Larry's case, tropical and recently earthquake heated waters around Vanuatu moved to cooler polluted waters in the EAC (east Australian current) that have been polluted by significant runoffs from the Gulf of Papua and from burgeoning Banana spraying operations around Innisfail.

Major pollution streams from PNG and Innisfail in the EAC have caused a confluence off Innisfail directly opposite to heated waters in the Coral Sea. The rest is just the Thermodynamics in action that we call cyclone Larry, a $1 billion dollar write off from the Australian economy and God only knows what long term toxic damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

While the Federal Government is contemplating assistance for Banana growers and their toxic sprayers they must consider mandating a new coastal protection agricultural strategy. 1-2 acre engineered wetland traps (EWBs) must be installed to capture all runoffs from plantations within Nth Qld river catchments. These EWBs are essenial to minimise high Entropy (pollution) in the EAC off Nth Qld so that seasonal cyclonic disturbances are not magnified into Larry type monsters and so that the GBR is no longer ravaged by what state and federal governments OUGHT to know is a severe threat to long term GBR health and viability.

Additionally, depending on agricultural developments around the Gulf of Papua, the Federal Government may need to discuss the situation with New Guinea government with a view to establishing EWBs there.

Please click on this link and take a good look at the graphs showing global mean temperatures linked to carbon dioxide concentrations in the air we breathe.
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/paleoclimate.htm

We have overwhelming evidence of climate change as a direct result of burning fossil fuels - carbon stored over hundreds of millions of years by nature and released by humans in only two centuries. It now appears that if we were to stop burning coal, oil and gas at this moment, if every car were to stop, every power station were to shut down, it may still be too late. We must do this, however.

As the graphs demonstrate, it takes years for the effects of CO2 changes to appear because of "thermal inertia". The carbon dioxide goes up and decades later the temperature follows it. We are at the cusp of catastrophe as the lines are now vertical.

The world has never seen such a momentous change in such a short time as this phase we have induced for ourselves.

The graphs reflect data from evidence in ice cores and fossils of changes in CO2 and temperatures over hundreds of millions of years.

People have argued that there may be only a 10 per cent chance of a catastrophe occurring, so why should we change our fossil-fuel-burning behaviour for such small odds. But if there was a 10 per cent chance of the plane crashing, would you board the plane?

Read more at
http://www.worldwatch.org/features/climate/questionsanswers/

We don't have any time to spare. None.

Bruce H.
If you read the whole article in the link you provided, http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/paleoclimate.htm
you will see that there is no real conclusion about anthropological global warming.

In fact, one sentence in the article reads “Whatever the explanation it can be seen that, on time scales of millions of years, there are many factors other than CO2 that exert a powerful influence on temperature.”

Your second link is to the “Worldwatch Institute” which calls itself "an independent research organization that works for an environmentally sustainable and socially just society, in which the needs of all people are met without threatening the health of the natural environment or the well-being of future generations."

The inclusion of the words “socially just” points out the political bias of this organisation- not that there is anything wrong with social justice.
Unfortunately, social justice is unlikely to be achieved by a dramatic drop in the average standard of living provoked by a sudden wholesale abandonment of fossil fuels, which is what you appear to advocate, correct me if I'm wrong.
The “fat cats” will continue to prosper.
I think social justice needs to be achieved by other means.
The original leader of this organisation, Lester Brown, is well known as a “climate change and environmental alarmist”.
Unfortunately, the issues surrounding global warming and climate change are inextricably linked to political motivations on both sides of the argument.
I tend to go along with the opinion of Bjorn Lomborg in his book “The Sceptical Environmentalist”, in that I believe that economic growth will enable us to manage and adjust to climate change, as people become wealthier, and we can afford the necessary industrial processes to take care of the environment.
As far as Kaep’s postings about thermodynamics are concerned, I’m afraid I don’t really understand this. However, I am not a scientist with expertise in thermodynamics, so he may or may not be right. I note, along with an earlier poster, that his pen-name is an anagram of “Peak”, I presume referring to “Peak Oil”.
Maybe he should come out and declare his own political motivations.

Ribbit,

KAEP is an acronym for Kyoto Alternative Energy Protocol. It has four parts: Power from space based dynamos, laser drilling for geothermal power to replace coal, nanotechnology for development of low polluting transport (non-static, aggressive fuel cells) and agricultural power(thermoelectric shadecloth) and engineered wetland climate change buffering based on Morse theory applied to harmonic distribution of land/sea thermodynamic imbalances.

I would like to see all nations contribute half% GDP to a KAEP plan over 10 years to see if we can provide a credible fossil fuel alternative as well as a regularisation of space travel and as a safety valve for 6.5 billion people (plus 150million extra each year) to get off of this planet. KAEP will create hi-tech education and jobs and benifit world economics but has the downside of evening out social injustice. Current economic models are dependent on slave clients (economic injustice) to create market share and wealth for minorities. I would like that to change. Political enough for you? I am not holding my breath but either way I believe KAEP can still work for all concerned.

You tend to go along with the opinion of Bjorn Lomborg in his book “The Sceptical Environmentalist”, but as people become wealthier, they want bigger markets and more underlings to buy their products. This is UNSUSTAINABLE even if KAEP were to occur and was a 100% success.

I do not like your unsustainable politics sir. Perhaps you have just not thought it through properly or do not have the world experience to understand what 6.5 million with 20% non replaceable usage really means. However, your assessment of effete IPCC proofs for global warming has my undying approval. A .2 degC rise in REGIONAL temperatures becoming 10 degree-global-rises over 50 years is a population control freak's wet dream.

I think its pretty clear to all readers of Froggies political bias.

KAEP, do the poem thing about that IPCC again. That's my favourite. You know the one, "Will the real IPCC please step forward.

It can't? Oh dear!

The 'IPCC's passed on?

This Greenhouse warming nonsense is no more! It has ceased to be!

'IPCC's expired and gone to meet its maker! 'IPCC's a stiff! Bereft of life,it rests in peace!

If I hadn't nailed it to the perch the IPCC'd be still pushing up scientific confusions!

'Its metabolic processes are now history!

'IPCC's off the twig"

Yeah that was great, it brings tears to my eyes.

Only I think the links others posted in response to your claims punched a few holes in your theories. Do you have anymore?

Burger,

I was wondering if you were a Big Mac or a Wimpy. Now I know.

NO One has punched holes in my theory, least of all yourself.

Global warming is a non-starter and climate changes are all about RECCEs. REGIONAL Ectopic Climate Catastrophe Events.

Put up WImPCC off.

Hallo Burger
Yes, I am also politically biased, I must admit it...
When we are talking about social justice, are we talking about equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? If it's the former, then I would agree with you.
On the other hand, I do think that certain people are able to manipulate things to get a skewed (in their favour) outcome. Unfortunately it is all too human, and has been so ever since human society existed. What would you suggest as a solution?
I find all of KAEP's posts hilarious too.
You must admit that he or she has a really DIFFERENT viewpoint about things.

Frogman,

Rudely speaking past me as if I didn't exist is a sure sign that you have NO ammunition to support your ludicrous case for growing wealth, PYRAMID style with yourself as high up in the pyramid as you can claw and scratch. Even in lemming populations that strategy works for king pin lemmings and to the overall good. That is, until the crunch point comes where population numbers are such that consumption exceeds supply and catastrophe is unleashed. This catastrophe WILL occur for human civilisation as well and when the crunch comes you cannot be sure you will be on the prevailing side. NO-ONE can, idiot!

Nice try to convince others of your deceit but you are clearly out-of-your-depth and inexperienced in world matters. With 6.5 million people, 150 million extra each year and a 20% non replaceable environmental and natural resource usage deficit each year, we are very close to crunch time.

If knowledge is power vis a vis the coming crunch, and you continue in ignorance, I personally wouldn't be betting on your chances of survival.

On the other hand, the following article may indicate that future survivors all end up learning Chinese:

http://search.smh.com.au/click.ac?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smh.com.au%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Fonechild-policy-will-remain-despite-abuses%2F2006%2F03%2F22%2F1142703443057.html&t=4&n=7&s=population

"Zhang Weiqing, National Population and Family Planning Commission director, vigorously defended the policy in an online forum, saying that without it China would have had 400 million more people to feed, house and educate."
"If we included these 400 million people, could we achieve xiaokang (a prosperous society) in general? I don't think so," Mr Zhang said. "We've taken only 30 years to almost achieve what developed countries have done with population-control targets in 100 years

KAEP
I agree it was rather rude of me not to acknowledge you directly, and for that I apologise. However, I really think you need to get a grip and lighten up a bit.
The Malthusian ideas of resource shortage and exponential population growth have already been proven wrong; as people become more prosperous, they tend to have smaller families. This is quite apart from the methods used in China to limit population growth.
The UN estimates that world population will stabilise at about 9 billion in 2050, but some commentators say that the UN is underestimating the worldwide decline in fertility.
http://www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/GLC/04-041sum.html

You said: “On the other hand, the following article may indicate that future survivors all end up learning Chinese”
I seriously doubt your logic here. What has the content of that article got to do with the “survivors” having to learn Chinese?
I may well be an “idiot”, but I don’t think I’m insane.
I well remember that as a young person, I was very idealistic and passionately “left-wing”. However, when I grew up and saw how the world really works, I changed my views.
As I said before, get a grip and lighten up.

The chances of Germans eventually having to learn Chinese are becoming increasingly remote. According to The Economist newspaper last week:

QUOTE
ALARMING as it might sound, it is hardly news that Germany is becoming the world's nursing home. No other rich country has a lower birth rate... Last year, the number of births hit a post-war low of 680,000 — half the combined number for both parts of Germany 40 years ago. The total population has now been shrinking for three years in a row...

... at least a low birth rate is good news for animals. As humans withdraw, wildlife is returning, notably near the eastern border. The lynx can be found again. The Lausitz, part of Saxony, is now home to two packs of wolves. Some even expect bears to come back one day. Their reappearance might be the ultimate sign that Germans really are a dying breed.
END QUOTE

Froggie,

While you're at it tell the people of Innisfail to lighten up. Tell US gulf state citizens to lighten up as the June-2006-hurricanes start to roll. While you're at it tell people in Darwin too, because sea-levels around the mining-towns-of-Weipa-and-Nhulumbuy are getting bumpy on my satellite-maps. That is a sign that atmospheric disturbances are in progress and that cyclonic activity could occur soon.

If you say often enough that you are worldly some people will eventually belive it, I am not fooled.

Case in point. The China article showed in 30 years China has done what the west has done in 100 years in large part due to one child policy. That means china is potentially, economically 3.3 times more sustainable and influential than western economies as we move into 21C. To make matters worse we are immigrating 140,000 of some of the world's most fractious and aggressive people under the guise of skills while Howard penalises local residents if they want to go out and learn new skills. Howard thinks this is smart budgeting but instead it is overcrowding capital cities and their hinterlands with gridlocked services, social division, resentment, and mistrust. In 10 years when the crunch comes our economy will be lucky to be in the black, let alone capable of interracting favourably with a burgeoning China.

I will lighten up. When a tax is placed on people like you who through downright shortsightedness see the dollar bill as more important than human values and community spirit. Things which may not ring your cash register but nontheless provide sustainability and national strength and unity for the times of crisis ahead.

Unfortunately for your stale paradigm of pyramid wealth schemes, history shows that dollar bills and citizenships of convenience become rather flaky when the heat is on.

As an aside I remember back in the late 80's when a telephone operator in our company was operating a pyramid scheme from our building. One day as I entered the lift, to my surprise, this individual was being FROG-marched out onto the street by our General-Manager. That-lightened-me-up!

KAEP. It may have escaped your notice, but the reason the Chinese economy is “burgeoning” is due to the fact that there are markets for their products in the West.
They are also rather dependent on imports of raw materials from Australia and other resource rich countries.
Therefore, they are as dependent on us, as we are on them.
Why do you think they fight so hard against protectionism in the West, particularly in Europe?
They need our prosperous markets for their own economy to improve.
I will ignore your insults, and straw men arguments...
Immigration policy in Australia is another matter, and I would certainly agree that immigration should be limited to a number and quality of people that can be easily absorbed by Australia, and of benefit to Australia.
There also seems to be a logical fallacy in your thinking. On the one hand, you advocate a smaller world population, but when I point out that prosperity has the side effect of causing a reduction in family size, amply illustrated by the statistics, you say that this prosperity is unsustainable.
The question of resource limits has been proven time and again not to be a constraint. Witness the famous bet between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon.
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/People/julian_simon.html

In the case of oil and other fossil fuels, it appears that these may become a problem in the future, but there are already alternatives. New technologies, such as nanotechnology, nuclear fusion and others are also showing great promise.
Certainly, the human race may face problems in the future, but the human race has been facing and overcoming problems with ingenuity and creativity since the beginning.
Atmospheric disturbances have been happening since the beginning of Earth, and I daresay will continue. While some scientists say that increased hurricane activity is a result of global warming (you would say Thermodynamics) others, including scientists who study them as a full time job, say there is no connection.
It appears to me that there are opposing opinions in scientific circles about these events.

Froggie, the equivalency argument fails to hold against scrutiny. Those who are claiming that GHG pollution does not have real impacts on climate lack the credibility of the scientists who have demonstrated evidence and modelling that shows significant interaction. Look at the sources of the publications that demonstrate links between GHG and climate change, e.g.(http://www.metoffice.com/research/hadleycentre/), then compare these with the publications that seek to deny greenhouse gas effects on climate.

Scepticism can be a useful tool. It is also understandable if an ideological position leads you to ask certain questions while failing to ask others. However, as has been repeated in this forum by others, there is evidence of a campaign to deny and mislead the public about the dangers/safety of GHGs. This is very different to honest scepticism The following is another source to add to the list http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11812

The campaign has been linked to unprecedented personal attacks on leading scientists, including attacks from leading Republican officials and abuse of political position in an attempt to influence scientific knowledge. http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/climate-change.html

I understand your concerns about the economy, John Roskam of the IPA expressed similar concerns, which you might share. Four months ago (18th of Dec 2005) He told radio national listeners (the national interest) words to the effect of, the reason the ideological right would not accept the dangers of climate change is because that would lead to a restructuring of the economy. (I think that's a sign that the ideological schema needs attention and ajustment).

None the less, economists such as Quiggin have demonstrated it will not spell economic disaster to address the GHG pollution problems. In fact the ensuing investment in infrastructure will have marked benefits for the economy. The net result will be we’d reach similar econonimc growth rates.

KAEP, if you are going to save us all, I suggest you get published and allow the scientific process to gain access to and vet your ideas. If that is too slow then let the experts consider your ideas at http://www.realclimate.org/

Overpecking the mark on greenhouse warming.

In an issue of the journal Science focusing on global warming, climate scientist Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona reported that if global trends continue, Earth could ultimately experience sea levels six meters higher than they are now.
By the end of this century, Earth would be at least 2.3C warmer than now, or about as hot as it was nearly 130,000 years ago.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/melting-warning-study/2006/03/24/1143083951520.html

Comments:

* There is NO evidence of sea level rises, otherwise low lying island groups would already have sunk.

*There is at best a .2 deg C rise in global temperature. Only a politicised scientist would project a 2.3 deg rise by 2200. Besides that, last I heard it was a 10 deg projection. Why so coy?

*Geothermal disturbances are a major factor along with Earth orbit perturbations and solar fluctuations. Overpeck refuses to look at all the likely parameters in ice melts. There is in fact evidence that over the next 100 years geothermal activity will rise slightly due to heat shrinkage of an Earth preparing for the next ICE AGE.

* The thermodynamic heat capacity of air is not a patch on that of the oceans so global air temperature rises of any description will not be driving climate changes. Climate changes are being driven by REGIONAL or ZONAL heating of well delineated coastal ocean areas of the globe and the circumpolar currents. These oceanic ZONES are heating and directly-or-indirectly causing melts. Only about 10% is due to atmospheric heat. 90% is due to human pollution of coastal seas and the resulting thermodynamc imbalances and energy shifts.

*The poles do release net heat to space by complex black body radiative transfer. NASA has had to reevaluate its AQUA satellite data because of this prospect. Overpeck would do well to wait for NASA's flyover results to be published before making his outrageous claims that make Sth Korean stem cells look positively Nobel prizeworthy.

Reado, why publish when the fallout from the next US hurricane season will get the appropriate message heard loud-and-clear.

Larry brings out meteorologist confusions over Climate Change.

Dr Debbie Abbs, of the CSIRO's division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, said "we can't attribute the strength of Larry to climate change. The scientific consensus, however, was that global warming was expected to increase cyclone intensity, on average, in future because hotter surface waters would feed more energy into the weather systems"

Associate Professor Kevin Walsh, of the University of Melbourne, said it was difficult to predict the cyclone activity for particular regions because it was also influenced by factors such as El Nino and La Nina events.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/climate-change-not-to-blame-for-larrys-force/2006/03/24/1143083999506.html

Comments:
Cyclones have three independent stages. This is why confusion exists.
Stages:
1.Inception - a strong heat source plus upper atmospheric movement
2.Tracking - hig and low entropy patches allow cyclones to virtually track down-hill
3.Landfall- always a highest entropy, polluted zone of shallower coastal water.

(1) is responsible for frequency of hurricanes, (2) for intensity and (3) for dollar damage. All 3 effects are equally independent and greatly confused by scientists.

PS Researchers in the US are developing an interactive database on which scientists can record cyclone data to help resolve the link between global warming and storm intensity.

This may provide a solution to confusion about cyclones.

Bring it on!

Since I realised that contributors to this forum do best if they have a BOBFFAE (a Bigoted and Obsessive Belief that Flies in the Face of All Evidence) and have gotten one myself (that Basque ETA, Nepalese Marxist and Irish Republican terrorists are really Muslims) I have been less subject to attack by other contributors.

Weird?

But I have become interested in analysing others' BOBFFAEs. KAEP's has gone feral, and seems to have eaten his brain.

No other contributors to this discussion seem to realise that KAEP's belief that "90% [of global temperature rises] is due to human pollution of coastal seas and the resulting thermodynamic imbalances..." is simply rubbish.

Not much has changed, at least in Australia, since C P Snow observed in his 1959 lecture, "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution":

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?"

No matter.

The country prospers from digging up the countryside and shipping it to China, and formerly, from bribing Middle East dictators to pay us for overpriced wheat.

Mike,

A GWOBFFAE is a Global Warming, Obsessive Belief that Flies in the Face of All Evidence)

And Mike, you are a FIGJAM poster-- A F%%k I'm Good Just Ask Me poster!

However your delusions of grandeur are understandable.
Forget GW and CHG theories, everyone-on-this-planet-needs-to-consider:

* 6.5 billion people have an average wastewater footprint of 1000 litres per day when power stations, agriculture (plants and animals), industry and sundry infrastructure are accounted for.
That is 6.5x10e12 litres per day that flows into coastal oceans and despite our magical wishing that it dissipates to zero, hangs around in patches and plumes for long half times.

* The probability (entropy) that this human-specific-pollution will occur normally is very-very low. So the Entropy is very high. Irregardless of any physical, biologocal, chemical or electromagnetic analyses of which mets only ever examine a small part of the physical domain, this high entropy will attract heat from proximal sources. This is not action at a distance. Diffusion processes across all energy domains leads heat to the high entropy sinks. Atmospheric processes become entangled as the diffusion of pollutants takes place, reactions occur and kinetic energy is released to atmospheric layers.

*When you consider 1-2 week residency times for pollution boluses, a continual supply of pollutant carrying wastewaters, eddy effects which can segregate and maintain pollutant concentrations and
diurnal heating and geologic heating effect segregations, it is not hard to see a coastal ocean entropy map emerging. This consists of adjacent isolated areas of high and low entropy year-round. Maps of the US Gulf already show strike lines toward Houston even without the actual cyclonic activity present. In times of peak heating, upper air currents can easily twist atmospheric systems above these segregated zones and initiate cyclonic activity. What then guides it is the adjacency of high/low-entropy zones that effectively form a downhill line. This was apparent in US hurricane 2006 season and in cyclone Larry. It is ominously present NE of Darwin at present.

*As coastal metropolises/civilisations accelerate so too will the volume of and toxicity of coastal plumes. This-is-around-90%-of-human-wastes when you consider landfill-seepage,atmospheric-gaseous-dissolution-and-direct-runoffs.

Speaking of disbelief.

The latest differential SST map of the GOM (Gulf of Mexico) is showing 10% more heat advancement than the disasterous last year hurricane season. It is probably due to the jet stream dragging heat from the GOM to recent tornado sites, thus drawing more heat from the south. That is quite unbelievable in and of itself. BUT ITS TRUE!

To make matters worse, sea height differences show a direct chain of collapsing wave segments of alternating entropy moving towards Houston from the main heat entry point to the GOM at the Yucatan straits.

There are two lines of sea height anomolies running into the Yucatan area:
* 45W10N running up to the Yucatan
* 55W25N a weaker line running past the tip of Florida

Both ENTROPY gradient paths lead on to Houston.

Last year the first hurricane Arlene is stated as beginning at 83W17N
but probably arose from the 45W10N pathway as most hurricanes entering the GOM have a Nth African origin.

So moving to lat17N the existing Yucatan path probably yields the start point of 75W17N for the first 2006 hurricane in the GOM. Since last year's first event was 8 June this year's first hurricane could be around 1 June or even earlier.

Look out Houston! Shut down those sewers NOW.

After this, entropy zones rearranged by anticlockwise movement of the first hurricane will cause some cyclonic activity in Mexico.
Early July will probably see a second attack on Houston or perhaps New orleans.

If current wastewater disposal modalities persist further predictions can be made for the 2006 season. At any rate satellite data analysis similar to the above will determine this more accurately at the appropriate times.

So everyone is on the same page.

The following are standard conditions for cyclonic formation. None are mutually exclusive of thermodynamic considerations as already presented.

1.Sea surface temperatures above 26.5 °C (79.7 °F) to at least a depth of 50 m (164 ft). The moisture in the air above the warm water is the energy source for tropical cyclones.

2.Upper-atmosphere conditions conducive to thunderstorm formation. Temperature in the atmosphere must decrease quickly with height, and the mid-troposphere must be relatively moist.

3.A pre-existing weather disturbance. This is most frequently provided by tropical waves—non-rotating areas of thunderstorms that move through tropical oceans.

4.A distance of approximately 10 degrees or more from the equator, so that the Coriolis effect is strong enough to initiate the cyclone's rotation. (2004's Hurricane Ivan was the strongest storm to form closer than 10 degrees from the equator; it started forming at 9.7 degrees north.)

5.Low vertical wind shear (change in wind speed or direction over height). High wind shear can break apart the vertical structure of a tropical cyclone.

Only specific weather disturbances can result in tropical cyclones. These include:

1.Tropical waves, or easterly waves, which, as mentioned above, are westward moving areas of convergent winds. This often assists in the development of thunderstorms, which can develop into tropical cyclones. Most tropical cyclones form from these. A similar phenomenon to tropical waves are West African disturbance lines, which are squally lines of convection that form over Africa and move into the Atlantic.

2.Tropical upper tropospheric troughs, which are cold-core upper level lows. A warm-core tropical cyclone may result when one of these (on occasion) works down to the lower levels and produces deep convection.

3.Decaying frontal boundaries may occasionally stall over warm waters and produce lines of active convection. If a low level circulation forms under this convection, it may develop into a tropical cyclone.

From Wikipedia.

Publishing ideas provides credibility in the eyes of readers. For instance, published actual measurements from NOAA show we are currently experiencing a measurable rise in average global temperature. (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2005/ann/global-blended-temp-pg.gif)

The rate of global averaged sea-level rise is estimated to be in the order of 2mm a year, which is an order of magnitude larger than the average rate over the previous several millennia. (http://www.marine.csiro.au/LeafletsFolder/45slevel/45.html). This is in agreement with findings form National Oceanographic Data Center,(NOAA) and with data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level review.

In regards to disappearing pacific islands:

the Carterets' people became the first to be officially evacuated because of climate change…The Carterets will join many other Pacific islands that are on the point of being swallowed by the sea. Much of Kiribati, the Marshalls and other low-lying island groups might only be visible through a glass-bottomed boat in decades to come….Two uninhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999, according to the South Pacific regional environment programme. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1650406,00.html)

As sea level has risen, Tuvalu has experienced lowland flooding. Saltwater intrusion is adversely affecting its drinking water and food production. Coastal erosion is eating away at the nine islands that make up the country.’ (http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update2.htm)

"The constant erosion of our beaches and frequent events of storm surges threatens not only our homes but the land we grow our crops on. In one village, Naikeleyaga, the beach has eroded 10 metres back [so] that it now threatens the school for the children.

"If we are constantly forced back inland by the sea, in time it is unlikely for us to relocate as all four villages are surrounded by high limestone cliffs. The only option then would be to abandon our island, but I hope that day never comes." …"Communities all over the Pacific are alarmed at coastal erosion and the advancing sea levels. We are already seeing signs of whole villages having to relocate - as in Vanuatu - or important cultural sites such as burial grounds in Fiji being eroded,"
(http://www.wwf.org.au/articles/climate-refugees-in-a-drowning-pacific/)

Realo,

Ha Ha Ha Ha!

There is no evidence for rising sea levels. Sea swells have increased due to Thermodynamic inducements to climate change and this alone can cause TEMPORARY lowland flooding and island evax.

As for temperature reises. Forget it. A dubious .2 degC global rise doth not a 10 deg rise make over the next 10, 50 or 100 years.

You have to learn to think for yourself.

It can be enlightening!

My god! Rationality again!

Thanks Realo for injecting another dose into this discussion.

There are really three separate issues.

There are people like KAEP, George Bush and, apparently until recently, John Howard, who thought that global warming and rising sea levels were all a beat-up, or who simply have no concept of what science is about.

Then there are the people presenting evidence that we need to stop injecting CO2 into the atmosphere if we are to avoid an ultimate crisis. This is the consensus position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Finally, and perhaps more urgently, is the argument that people like Bjørn Lomborg have presented: that whether anthropogenic causes are responsible or not, we need to deal with the effects of increasing climate temperature and higher sea levels.

I happen to accept both the second and third of these, but argument over the second is no reason to ignore what is necessary to deal with the third.

Four years ago the low-lying nation of Tuvalu sought agreement for its population to progressively immigrate to Australia and New Zealand. The Australian Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock, deeply worried that Australia's 20 million inhabitants would be swamped and overrun by Tuvalu's 12,000 people, declined. http://www.tuvaluislands.com/news/archived/2002/2002-09-10.htm

After all, WE decide who comes here, AND THE CONDITIONS ON WHICH THEY COME.

Risk of drowning in rising seas is not classed as being victim of state persecution. It is no justification for asylum.

Perhaps someone should start an appeal to acquire 12,000 swimmers' snorkels.

KAEP, Do you not see the circular logic in your argument? You state that “There is NO evidence of sea level rises, otherwise low lying island groups would already have sunk.”
Then when presented with people’s experience of inundation on low lying Pacific islands and that two Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999, you switched logic systems to claim that, “Sea swells have increased due to Thermodynamic inducements to climate change this alone can cause TEMPORARY lowland flooding and island evax.”

It seems to me that you are claiming that average global sea level isn’t rising because this would result in submerged islands. But if islands are being submerged it’s not because of sea level rise.

I am more convinced about global average sea level rise by the findings from monitoring stations around the world. And by people's lived experience of inundation.

I am similarly more convinced by the actually measurement of temperature rise then your claim of a 0.2 degree rise. The NOAA data shows that the five year average to 2005 is in the range of 0.6 degrees warmer then the 20 year average to 1900, & in the range of 0.5 degrees warmer than the 100 year average to 1980. The NOAA data is supported by UK assessments. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=368

Mike M, In my opinion your contributions have been valuable. Facts, evidence and source checking are vital in this debate. I suppose you get less of a response from the likes of me because of the outrageous carry-on that I instead chose to attend to. Though I think that you have made an important contribution in exposing that carry-on for what it is.

MikeM:This is the consensus-position of the-Intergovernmental-Panel-on-Climate-Change.

Would that be the same IPCC panel that has fallen off-the-twig, passed-away, expired?

The IPCC's 'consensual' problem is that they do not know nearly enough about the Biosphere to make their ambitious-sea-level, CO2 and global-warming-predictions.
A full understanding of the Biosphere is likely to be out of human reach for many centuries to come. It is certanly beyond the IPCC. There are many ASSUMPTIONS they make in their predictions. So to be impartial, they must wait the 10 years I have specified to see if a divergence appears between Greenhouse warming and Human-Wastewater-Induced-Regionally-Ectopic-Thermodynamic-Imbalances(HWIRETI) as the cause of Climate-Change.

The signs are good from recent US hurricane seasons, accelerating coastal development and increasing wastewater expulsion efficiencies that this divergence will be sufficiently discernable in the climate-change-laboratory-of-the-Caribbean/GOM to exclude global greenhouse-warming, a much slower developing and non-regional theory.
What we will find over the next 10 years is that specific population/agriculture/mining growth regions will attract more than a fair share of climate changes and at an accelerated-rate that defies GW-theory.
These regions include circumpolar REGIONS. As circumpolar regions are thermally connected to all regions across the globe they integrate climatic happenings across the planet. This does not in any way make them a global indicator as they too are just other REGIONs of the planet like the Caribbean or Oceania or any other region.

Now GWOBFFAEs want to whinge that enough time has passed and that nations need to reduce greenhouse emissions now to stop a warming crisis. But they must be able to put their hand on their heart and say YES WE HAVE LEARNED ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT EARTH'S BIOSPHERE.

Everyone knows they cannot do this and so a 10-year-wait-see is their onus.

And Mike, look at a sea-height-map for Oceania and see how +/-30cm sea-height(SHA) variations make any real measure of rising sea-levels-at-island-chains meaningless. http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dataphod1/work/HHP/NEW/2006084spsha.png
The variability in SHAs is caused by REGIONAL-heating due to the impact of wastewaters. It has little to do with greenhouse-warming. For starters pollutants cause increased sea-surface-heating and sea-swell. Other wastewater-based-mechansms do too.

KAEP shares another of his delusions with us: "Would that be the same IPCC panel that has fallen off-the-twig, passed-away, expired?"

Which IPCC panel might that be, KAEP?

The only one I am aware of has working groups currently preparing its Fourth Assessment Report, with meetings scheduled so far through to May 2007, http://www.ipcc.ch/calendar.htm

Realo,

Thanks.

MikeM isnt it about time you did some proper homework and analysis, before going off half cocked as you usually do. Here you are having a go about Tuvalu.

"Four years ago the low-lying nation of Tuvalu sought agreement for its population to progressively immigrate to Australia and New Zealand. The Australian Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock, deeply worried that Australia's 20 million inhabitants would be swamped and overrun by Tuvalu's 12,000 people, declined. http://www.tuvaluislands.com/news/archived/2002/2002-09-10.htm

After all, WE decide who comes here, AND THE CONDITIONS ON WHICH THEY COME.

Risk of drowning in rising seas is not classed as being victim of state persecution. It is no justification for asylum."

The facts from the National Tidal Centre as are as under.

Read the Executive Summary and look at Figure 7 on Page 16
http://www.bom.gov.au/fwo/IDO60102/IDO60102.2005_2.pdf

The only thing about Tuvalu is that it isnt being swamped by rising tides but is more likely going to subside because of the way they have treated it. AGW has nothing to do with it.

Now, what was that about beat ups

The IPCC is finished.

Channel 9 last night presented an ABC newspiece-special on global warming and species extinction to the strains of Mike Munro saying global-warming-is-now-fact. The newspiece faded out to pictures of crowds-surging-onto-trains and the message of 'how-many-species-we-save-is-up-to-us'.IE WE have the power to decide because we-are-the-global-economy.

Media lackeys are clearly supporting the endless global economy GRAVY-TRAIN and are merely inuring us to species extincions as they announce their intention to continue raping this planet by encouraging massive population based market expansions.

It is clear from this that the IPCC exists on the coat-tails of this gravy-train solely to misfeed information on biospheric dynamics to the public. It is their intent to similarly inure us to the intractability of a warming planet so we can say "blow-it-all" and get on with our slavish support of global-economic-agendas. Agendas which continue to divert the majority-of-world-wealth to a handful of do-nothing polititians, CEOs and investors. These people appear to be intent on farming large human-populations for profit. As in all good farming practice, there will be inevitable culs by some hi-tech means (probably a highly specific synthetic virus) when they see fit to save THEIR environment.

What the ABC report is really inuring us to is an acceptance of the power of the global economic gravy train and a populational acceptance not so much of species extinctions, but for many human beings, their own.

Unfortunately for the IPCC, the ruse has been up for some time. The fact that humans have an innate INABILITY to understand the-laws-of-thermodynamics when dealing with complex-problems has given the
IPCC their credibility but this is now severely challenged: There are going to be some big changes in awareness after the world's premier thermodynamics learning laboratory (the US Gulf Coast) goes-ballistic-this-coming-June.

My heart goes out to the people of that REGION but they WILL want answers in the aftremath of this looming tragedy. The IPCC will not have those answers. A better understanding of simple-thermodynamics-causes-and-effects will. This will see the beginning-of-the-end of using the world's oceans as toilet bowls and thus put a sensible-limitation-on-unsustainable-global-economic-aspirations.

Half cocked, bigmal?

Have you been smoking what KAEP's been smoking? I didn't say anything about State persecution, although the Tuvaluans are beginniing to see it that way.

Quoting from the document you linked to at the National Tidal Centre...

From the Executive Summary, "... sealevel records... are in line with global trends estimated from satellite-based altimeters..."

Referring to table 2 on page 25, the trend according to SEAFRAME measurements to date ranges from 0.8 mm/year rise at the Cook Islands to 6.9 mm/year at PNG (neglecting two outlier values which may be anomalous). The trend at Tuvalu is 5.5 mm/year.

The graph you highlighted is too noisy to see the trend, suggesting that you are not a statistician.

As the report also points out, the biggest danger to low-lying land is not from rise in mean sea level, but from storm surges. There is evidence that global warming is causing cyclones to become more intense; although one cannot directly link cause and effect, Australia is at risk of being hit by cyclone Glenda, the second category 5 in a month.

From the Met Office current cyclone advisory issued this morning:

A CYCLONE WARNING is now current for a CATEGORY 5 CYCLONE for coastal areas between De Grey and Onslow and extending to adjacent inland parts...

Residents of the central and west Pilbara coast are warned of the risk of very destructive winds with gusts exceeding 250 kilometres per hour during Thursday as this very dangerous cyclone nears the coast...

When was the last time we had two category fives within a month?

Global warming will destroy the existing civilisation. Nothing is destroyed but conversion of energy takes place.The point is human civilisation does not want to be destroyed in itself.We hope and try not to be ruined and thinking for survival is a continuous process.Many empires in history have been ruined but civilisation never perished totally but grew up with new ideas.So,we must talk of global warming and conduct research for our protection;simulteneously not to be frustrated thinking negatively to get ourselves be prepared to see our destruction.
It is fact new scientific discovery compel us to change our management system.

Thermodynamics, cause and effect,

Record mining activity and pollution spills in WA between Broome and Dampier coincide with record cyclone activity in the exact same area.

Meanwhile all global warming can come up with is a .2,.5 or .6 degC warmer planet - at the finite (phoney) number of test locations available that is!

People with heads stuck in the sand? Ah Target practice!

Now before whingeing more about real scientists who have no time for a bought and sold IPCC I suggest certain posters have a little think about how just 3 hours after my last posting on sensible-limitaions-on-global-economic-aspirations, Australian fuel prices shot up 11.5%.

Unless they want to choke on sand, I suggest certain posters show a little respect for what is becoming a new and poignant debate on climate change. A debate which I expect will create serious questions on how to solve climate change after the coming June-August hurricane onslaugt on Houston Tx.
Cause and effect? More glabial warming? Nah, its just all the extra population and industrial load placed on Houston post hurricane Katrina. A load which is showing up on certain satellite maps as intractable entropy anomolies in hurricane alley between Houston and the Yucatan straits.

KAEP, states that ‘+/-30cm sea-height(SHA) variations make any real measure of rising sea-levels-at-island-chains meaningless’.

This observation discredits KAEP’s prior claim that, “There is NO evidence of sea level rises, otherwise low lying island groups would already have sunk.”

Secondly KAEP fails to address the issue presented, that 'global' sea level is rising. The tactic is unconvincing when KAEP selectively ignores the evidence that global 'averaged' sea-level rise is in the order of 2 mm a year, which is an order of magnitude larger than the average rate over the previous several millennia. (http://www.marine.csiro.au/LeafletsFolder/45slevel/45.html).

The crude misrepresentation of the hard evidence of global average temperature rise is equally unconvincing.

As for KAEP’s final bit of playful logic, are we to be convinced that there is a connection between KAEP’s posting to this forum and our petrol prices? If so KAEP, oughtn’t you restrict yourself for that sake of Froggie’s vision of unencumbered growth?

More on GOM Entropy mapping.

Since I presented my last OLO post on the NewYorkTimes on 31-3-06 three Morse mapping changes have occurred.

1. There has been a marked decrease in GulfOfMexico coastal temperature fluctuations.
see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dataphod1/work/HHP/ [...] Just change the 90 to 91 for april 1 and so on.

2. There has been a marked advancement of hot water entering the GOM via the Yucatan straits. The level of intrusion is significantly MORE than 2005.

3. There are fewer discrete sea height changes (proportional to entropy) around the Galveston/Houston coastline.
see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dataphod1/work/HHP/NEW/2006090atssh.png Again, just change the 90 to 91 for april 1 and so on.

These sudden transformations are unique relative to 2005-06 data sets.
It is too early to tell which of several factors are causing these transformations.

One cannot rule out the possibility that authorities around Gulf ports, particularly Galveston/Houston have begun to take wastewater management more seriously.

At any rate, an evening out of entropy fluctuations means that natuaral cyclonic formations entering the GOM will not have sea surface entropy differences to fall down and amplify their strength. This bodes well for the coming season.

The fact that more warm water than usual is entering the GOM at this time is irrelevant because without sea surface entropy fluctuations a warmer than usual GOM will create low pressure atmospheric systems that by the 2LT will impede low entropy cyclonic intrusions.

The bottom line is, what happens in the US hurricane season is largely determined NOW. Further, relatively small modifications to wastewater management practices.

Methane gas liberation of domestic animals enhance global warming.Such animals destroy forests if there were no fodders for them.They are responsible this way for increasing CO2 gas also.But man can tackle the problem by green fodders cultivation in planned manner.In this way green house gas is reduced and man gains economically by their productivity.

Greenhouse gases (GGs) are not exactly irrelevant. At about 10% of the climate change problem we should not be concerned about them if we are serious about dealing with rampant Climate Change phenomena.

Points to note in clearing up GG myths:

*GGs are removed from the atmosphere by many mechanisms. 40%, according to NOAA figures end up precipitated into oceans.

*The small global (<1deC) warming that perceived-increases in GG emissions are causing gets emitted to space over polar regions where complex ice crystallisation processes act as black body radiators with frequencies well below GG absorption spectra.

*Climate change is not caused by GG warming. It is initiated by siltation blown across and wastewater pollutants run off into oceans(cyclonic-activity). This allows huge, rapid increases in Sea surface temperatures that will not and cannot correlate well with much slower changes predicted by GG theory. The additional oceanic surface heat must find its way rapidly to polar regions by coriolis forces and the 2LT(second-law-of-thermodynamics). Resultant thermodynamic imbalances redistribute chaotically across the planet.

*Removal of vegetative ground covers and bore-water-lowering of water-tables creates additional heat loads and thermodynamic imbalances(drought) in temperate/desert areas. This heat adds additional thermodynamic imbalances to global-energy-circuitry.

*All this extra heat ends up in circumpolar air and ocean currents where we percieve a phantom melting of polar ice caps. This melting is part of a chain of processes that sees the additional heat raditaed to space over the poles. No NET melting of the ice caps can or will occur due to these man made interferences with global energy circuitry. Humankind is ultimately insignificant-in-regards-to-total-global-energy-equations.

*The simple way to maintain current-economic-agendas and reduce interference with global energy circuits is to increase water basins (EWBs) over land areas. If done properly, in a strategic manner this implicitly prevents erosion and oceanic siltation plus it will prevent polluted wastewater runoffs as EWBs are fundamentally BIOREACTORS that can purify wastewaters to a level compatible with minimal downstream-catchment and oceanic-thermodynamic-disturbances.

*The worst thing that can happen is to continue focusing oh GG warming while oceanic pollution increases exponentially with modern trends to coastal urbanisation-agriculture-and-mining.

The pseudo science that asserts that global warming is a real threat is of very poor quality indeed.

1. The scientific consensus rates water vapour as at least as important a greenhouse gas as CO2. Dr Vincent Gray (an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]) has calculated that water vapour accounts for as much as 92% of the greenhouse effect.

2. Many of the main assumptions underlying the IPCC mathematical models are simply invalid. Carbon dioxide has been growing at nothing like the one per cent per annum postulated by the IPCC, and methane is actually reducing. Some models assume that Rwanda and Mali will be more prosperous than the USA and that coal production will increase eleven fold by the year 2100. Both of those assumptions are truly wild.

3. The IPCC predictions have not been amended in the light of actual data and those models have not yet been successfully run backwards.

4. The summaries of IPCC reports are politically inspired, and are not supported by the main body of the reports.

5. The quality of the raw micro level data used by climate alarmists is often abysmal. Missing data are inserted arbitrarily. Data that do not conform to the prejudices of the gatherer are frequently jettisoned. Overall, those data are little more than worthless. See Michael Crichton's testimony to the USA Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works 28 September 2005.

LK