All seems a bit hard....maybe I'll wait and see if its really within our control first.

Anybody who thinks that total world global warming emissions can be reduced without doing anything about the burgeoning population in the third world is urinating into the breeze.

The issue of population growth is revisited, but I worry that it is mentioned or considered on the assumption by some that population growth is a necessary first step.

One of the first futures modeling efforts, the Club of Rome's "Limits to Growth", made clear 35 years ago that at least five major variables are interlinked in global ecological problems.

Changing their pattern of interaction must be part of the solution to global warming.

The Wikipedia entry on The Club of Rome names the five variables as "world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion." The Club of Rome has continued its modeling work and has addressed many of the shortcomings which were noted after "Limits to Growth" gained widespread publicity.

World population is the most loosely linked of the five variables. It has already been radically addressed by the Chinese. That will not stop the Chinese from increasing their outputs of CO2 and other industrial pollutants, if they continue their present pattern of industrial growth.

And as with the Chinese, so it is with the rest of us. Zero population growth does not assure zero greenhouse gas increase.

Well, wasn't that a lot of hot air. A few suggestions as to some solutions might have been appropriate, I would have thought. Why is it that the people who respond to these writings are the one who generally propose the solutions to the problems?

Don't knock the ZPG proposition, although I would have to go further than that. It is about time we got rid of the current Federal Treasurer who still wants population growth. I have just flown over about five hundred kilometres of virtually bare dirt across half of Victoria and New South Wales and it looks like we will be struggling to feed the current population if the present rainfall pattern continues.

When you save water, the water utilities up the price... same will happen with greenhouse emmissions.....

Mary, I want to see hydrogen cars racing at Bathurst, I'd love to save money by putting a wind turbine and solar panels on my roof. But how can I afford these unless government or business show me how to make them (yeah right) assist.

What we don't need are 5 billion separate efforts. What's needed is leadership and coordination, and not corporate profiteering.

Forgive me, but I'm a bit more concerned about the human beings suffering from malnutrition (I don't think there's any controversy over whether or not this is real) than some vague impact I can have on the environment.

Re: lower populations, if we could just bring health and education to the third world, it would drastically change things. Families tend to have less children as women get better educated.

Here's what we should be doing: preparing for the coming resource crisis/war.

We need to ultimately aim for sustainability at the individual, community and national level first, like so:

1. Rein in debt except that which is used as a direct creator of sustainable wealth and infrastructure.

2. Related to that is weaning ourselves off cheap imported goods as the long term effects of our addiction to such things are not good at several levels. We're currently weakening our own social, industrial and economic networks, whilst strengthening those of our eventual enemies, all for short term gain. ie. China is selling us the TV cables with which to hang ourselves.

3. Expand scientific research, especially into ways of improving our self-sufficiency efficiency.

4. Redesign (or at least implement in all new areas) housing, infrastructure, and distribution networks to be much more efficient (ie. as local webs rather than fragile, drawn out systems).

5. Be part of a stronger political/military alliance that will at least protect us from those who covet what we have, if not to allow us to covet what others have.

This needs to happen both bottom up and top down, but I don't think we will do any of this. Basically, I think we're going to be stuffed. At best, we might end up as the vassal of a much more powerful nation simply because we will have lived entirely for the present and made no provision for the future.

Mary; I agree entirely, we must all, as individuals and as citizens, try to reduce greenhouse gasses. Our government certainly should do more, much more, but governments are moved by voters. If our government sees that the voters are not committed enough to combating climate change to alter our own life styles, they will have little incentive to do anything on a nation-wide level. We need to apply pressure to our government and look to our own back yards.

Sir Vivor; well said.

The 'overwhelming scientific evidence of human-driven climate change' is a complete and utter lie. Such a pathetic comment should not be written by an objective and intelligent person.

There can be NO SUCH THING as overwhelming scientific evidence in this field. All data comes from computer models, which cannot account for all the different variables involved, and historical investigation. As the climate system is a incredibly highly complex system all such models are badly flawed. No experiments can be run to verify the man made climate change hypothesis.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

Check out a list of many thousands of scientists who disagree with the man made climate change hypothesis
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm

The overwhelming scientific evidence line is so obviously false that Mary should be embarrassed to have ever said it. Shame.

Grey sees red?

"The overwhelming evidence is so obviously false ..."

Perhaps to Grey. Then Grey must have a theory explaining its increasing scientific and political acceptance, in spite of all the glaring flaws which probably can't be addressed in 300 words or less.

But the difficulty with Grey's (assumed) theory is the difficulty as with greenhouse gas behaviour modeling: scientific evidence gathered concerning an aspect of a theory will not prove or disprove the theory, it will only fuel an argument from a particular point of view.

Mary has put a number of positive suggestions concerning action. I have been acting on some of them for years, well before the IPCC became a force to reckon with. My long-term interest in the Club of Rome, in the ecological modeling system of HT Odum, and in biological systems, stems from my awareness that we live on a finite planet, with finite resources and finite space for people and pollutants. That is sufficient for me to invoke the "Precautionary Principle" and do what I can to ensure the future of my children.

If there were no greenhouse gas increase, or by some mechanism, a decrease, our pattern of global industrial development would be no less limited. An organism or society cannot grow beyond its means, in terms of energy and resource requirements.

That being said, I discount Grey's argument and especially support the idea of ethical investment as a growing means of providing benefits to shareholders and influencing economic activity toward more sustainable patterns of living.

It's obvious from Grey's comments that some people don't understand what’s been going on behind the scenes - leading to a lot of controversy, confusion and uncertainty.

The IPCC doesn’t gather scads of data just for kicks – it issues very comprehensive reports at regular intervals for very specific purposes. Why is this so important? Because the IPCC reports are the top of the food chain, the standard of standards, the Big Kahuna of rational and logical reasoning. The IPCC reports are the most ambitious, comprehensive, heavily reviewed, authoritative knowledge-gathering enterprises ever undertaken. It’s got its flaws, but nonetheless, it is as close as humanity is ever likely to get to the understanding of climate change.

Today, 174 countries have ratified, accepted, approved or acceded to the Kyoto Protocol, except most notably the US and Australia.

We have the UN for a reason; it is not good enough for a major UN signatory to take the ball home if they don’t like how the other players play the game. It happened with the war in Iraq, it is happening again with the war on climate change.

People must be able to rely on experts and leaders to guide us. In the context of Global Warming, we have the experts, are we sure about the leaders?

The issue of what we can do is primarily a function of our attitude and behaviour on how we deal with energy use. No matter what we do, Global Warming is going to cost us in some way, but those costs can be met – if targets are agreed, guidance is given and we all just get on with it.

We need to think globally, act locally – we can act in an environmentally sustainable way at the grass roots level, but we need our business and political leaders to act in an environmentally sustainable way at the highest levels of society – as individuals, we need to drive this.

Global Warming is not about political ideology - it’s about giving the planet an environmentally sustainable life – all else follows.

There will always be a few ostriches with their heads in the sand. Best thing is to ignore them now. I trust thousands of scientists and researchers around the world collecting and analyzing ice cores and climate data. Some people seem to think scientists simply "make stuff up" and reveal their obscene ignorance in the process. These people have listened to their [sarcasm]trusted, oh so very trustworthy[/sarcasm] politicians and media sources whose sole concern these days is to sensationalise reality, resulting in serious distortion....and the few skeptics who get unwarranted attention, far more than their more numerous, more substantiated counterparts, by both of the former groups of well renowned spinners/liars (the politicians and media sources).

Sir Vivor, steel and others. I posted links documenting thousands of scientists in appropriate fields who disagree with the hypothesis of anthropomorphic global warming. Your hand-waving and ignorance of this is startling.

If we are to "trust thousands of scientists and researchers around the world", why not trust those who disagree?

I find it incredibly amusing that Steel derides politicians and media as spinners and liars, and so untrustworthy, and yet davsab appeals to the acceptance of politicians by signing kyoto as support for the thesis.

Sir Vivor, a greenie from wayback according to his comments, has made his mind up already and the thousands of scientists and large amounts of evidence that disagree with his close-mindedness is obviously ignored in pursuit of envirowingnut goals which have tried to use climate change as a fearmongering pr gag for the last 150 years.

All the appeals by people to scientists who don't simply 'make stuff up' (even though it has been proven that many do http://alangrey.blogspot.com/2005/06/science-frauds-and-falsehoods.html
http://alangrey.blogspot.com/2005/08/science-50-percent-of-papers-are-wrong.html)
are irrelevant when you look at the vast scientific opposition to man centric global warming. I don't need an alternative theory to point this out.

To me, it is utterly clear that adaptation to challenging conditions rather than changing a natural way things are going is the most.

Therefore, socio-political change rather then willingness to dramatically decrease consumptions might be a right step in a right direction.

Grey, I can't see why you are so hostile to the concept of environmentalism. You call environmentalists wingnuts while ignoring that the most hostile political party toward the environment has suggested the authoritarian, anti-market solution of eliminating all incandescent light bulbs in Australia and promoting the non-destruction of forests overseas. Why aren't you livid at the suggestions? The amount of rage and scorn that would have come forth if it was the Green Party to suggest such measures and proposals, the media frenzy and the allegations of communism/anti-capitalism (baseless, but that doesn't stop the bigots) would be immense. But when the Liberal Party says something like that? Not much furore. Maybe some day you will come to realise the environment is truly priceless. Most Australians are being forced by their own ignorance to face up to this fact, when they could have opted to vote for sustainability and foresight a decade or two ago.

I have just looked at Grey's blogspot, in particular his blog on "is global warming real". What is interesting, there is one post there that tries (and I think succeeds, although it can be hard reading due in large part to the way Grey styled his blog site) to explain some of the science of global warming to Grey - it appears he did not have the decency to respond to the post, he will probably even delete it now.

Sure there are some scientists that argue the toss about why or how, but they ALL agree the planet is warming. It is just that most of the deniers just happen to be funded by vested interest groups for the the anti-global warming lobby - you know, oil and intensive energy using companies, etc, or are grumpy old farts that have passed their use-by date.

Some climate change deniers even try to push their own bandwagon (too much to lose now? or, have their papers undergone such a review process as the IPCC?). I hope they're right and one day they might get a Nobel, but the overwhelming science tells us otherwise.

The 2 IPCC reports published recently are summary reports for policy makers (there is another one due out May 4 on mitigation of climate change), the full scientific reports for each SPM cover about 1600 pages each. The science is there, has been extensively researched and comprehensively reviewed by peers.

It seems all governments (of all political pursuasions) are now taking climate change seriously - what planet is Grey living on? What is wrong with just doing the right thing by nature, for us and our neighbour for once.

I for one would rather fight the war on climate change than fight the war in Iraq on weapons of mass destruction - a war that has cost billions and billions and billions of $US - dollars that could have been spent on much better things.

BTW, just because a scientist is a geologist, it does necessarily mean they no anything about climatology, oceanography or biogeochemistry, etc.

Following on from Grey's comments I came accross 2 sites well worth a look - putting climate change into perspective.

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2053520,00.html

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/01/05/weeks-knobloch/index.html

In summary:

"Global warming scientists are under intense pressure to water down findings, and are then accused of silencing their critics ...

... If you want to know what real censorship looks like, let me show you what has been happening on the other side of the fence. Scientists whose research demonstrates that climate change is taking place have been repeatedly threatened and silenced and their findings edited or suppressed ...

... The Union of Concerned Scientists (including 48 Nobel Laureates)... reported 435 incidents of political interference over the past five years.

... the White House gutted the climate-change section of a report by the Environmental Protection Agency. It deleted references to studies showing that global warming is caused by manmade emissions. It added a reference to a study, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, that suggested that temperatures are not rising.

... Last year Nasa's top climate scientist, James Hansen, reported that his bosses were trying to censor his lectures, papers and web postings. He was told by Nasa's PR officials that there would be 'dire consequences' if he continued to call for rapid reductions in greenhouse gases.

... Last month, US scientists were told that anyone travelling to the Arctic must understand 'the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues'.

... At hearings in the US Congress three weeks ago ... a former White House aide who had previously worked at the American Petroleum Institute, admitted he had made hundreds of changes to government reports about climate change on behalf of the Bush administration. Though not a scientist, he had struck out evidence that glaciers were retreating and inserted phrases suggesting that there was serious scientific doubt about global warming."

If Global Warming was not such a serious issue, one could laugh at the rantings and ravings of people such as Grey, or any of his other misguided diatribes.

So, what is all this plain English softly novel-style long writings about?

No climate changes occurred in the past? All these evidences testify to a natural planetary process only.

Grey is a global warming sceptic, who just wants to promote his anti-science blog. Essentially, the blog describes scientists as dishonest fraudsters.

The role of a climate sceptics seems to be to create nonsense, invent facts or twist information. It takes a little bit of research to find out the truth and find out that, yes, indeed, it is nonsense. That has been the pattern for every global warming sceptic who has posted onto this forum. People like Grey will hyperlink to blogs which occasionally trick people by clever-wordplay. They'll never link to any reliable material. Ultimately, they just waste people’s valuable time. When all this fails (it always has) rather than admit the deception, they'll attack scientists or the scientific community in a ridiculous fashion.

My advice to davsab and others is to completely ignore a blog which does nothing but slander honest people and deceive the public. If Grey wants to say something here, he's got 350 words to make his point like everyone else, within the forum rules which prohibit defamation and hate-speak.

Mary Leyser has identified issues in her original thread that is worth thinking about.

I’m new to forums such as this and I am beginning to understand that a few people that venture into them on the subject of Global Warming don’t really understand the science behind it, but are quite willing to ridicule the vast majority of experts that do.

MichaelK
You have not been specific in your 1st question.

However, I will assume (rightly or wrongly) you are referring to a 5th April post in Grey’s blog-site titled “Global Warming is Real”;

http://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10999245&postID=7820165900633275745

The post is obviously written by a scientist (that has expertise in the subject of global warming) and is trying to inform a layperson (Grey) of the science behind so called human induced climate change. It makes sense to me, have you really read it? Or is it too long to explain a difficult scientific concept to a layperson?

It seems scientists are accused of confounding people with science (another language for some) and then confounding them again when they try and explain complex science in simple English (albeit long-winded) – a no win situation if you ask me.

Methinks the scientist who posted to Grey was really peed off with Grey’s assertions (“It is quite reasonable for the general public to ask how we know this – however, it is very disingenuous for certain individuals to answer their questions or espouse on topics that one is not expert in – it is too important an issue”).

Your 2nd question: Of course climate changes have occurred in the past. What is different about this current one is that it is human (societal) induced – read the referenced post again.
Evidence testifies to anthropogenic global warming.

David Latimer

Point taken.
However, GW sceptics can not be ignored – they must be confronted with the truth as Mary Leyser suggests – they might even learn something. I can understand why scientists don’t really want to get involved with forums like this (regardless of the 350 word limit) – they have a life.

I will leave Grey to strain at gnats and swallow camels.

Straining at gnats? such as stereotyping me, as "a greenie from way back" - a description based on my own comment and near-total ignorance of anything else about me.

Swallowing camels? Such as citing, as valid evidence for his argument, an 8 year old petition intended to sway US parliamentarians' response to The Kyoto Protocol

See the Wikipedia article on The Oregon Petition for more details, beyond:

"The Oregon Petition is the name commonly given to a petition opposed to the Kyoto protocol, organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) between 1999 and 2001, shortly before the United States was expected to ratify the protocol. Professor Frederick Seitz, the past President of the National Academy of Sciences, wrote a cover letter endorsing the petition."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

Professor (Emeritus) Seitz, a far bigger gnat than I (some might suggest a blowfly), has also taken a bit of stick for his views.
I wonder if Grey has Googled Seitz?

Meanwhile, remember that the article to which we are responding invited us to "join the Eco-Res Forum", a global discussion on responses to global warming.
(see again http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5712)

Perhaps Grey would be able to contribute usefully to that discussion.

An afterthought. I think this item below reflects poorly on Professor Seitz. You be the judge.

I wonder why anyone would bother citing Seitz's 9 year old petition as authoritative evidence in a current argument against global warming.

Science 24 April 1998:
Vol. 280. no. 5363, p. 509
DOI: 10.1126/science.280.5363.509b
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

ScienceScope

"The governing council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) this week took the unusual step of disassociating itself from a recent mass mailing urging scientists to lobby against the Kyoto treaty to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

"The mailing, which had a cover letter from former NAS President Frederick Seitz, included an eight-page attack on climate change research offered in a format that many scientists have mistaken for a reprint from the academy's journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Science, 10 April, p. 195).

"NAS President Bruce Alberts says that congressional panels involved in R&D issues also have asked if the academy is involved in the petition drive, which has collected more than 15,000 signatures.

- "It's important that Congress and the Administration not be confused about where we stand," says Alberts. "We're not taking a stand on the treaty, but we want everybody to know that we're not connected to the petition, that it would not have passed our peer-review system, and that in fact it takes a position that is the reverse of what the academy has said on the topic."

"As an example of such efforts, the council's statement cites a 1992 academy report that concluded "greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses." The date of that reference led one council member, mathematician Edward David, to abstain from voting on the resolution. "A lot has changed in 6 years, and I think our position should be based on the latest data," he says. A new academy report on the status of global climate change research is due out later this spring."

David Latimer, thank you for URL-a blog provides a factual data grounding my already strong convictions having initiated a question “No climate changes occurred in the past? All these evidences [on so-called “human-triggered climate change”] testify to a natural planetary process only.”

As in similar topics you were acquainted with my to the date expressed vision of a problem, in this discussion I would like for less fortunate (that is participants who had joint deliberating an issue just recently) to point at a usual mishmash created probably intentionally worldwide by mixing a natural process, which is the aging of the Earth, with a component human activities surely add while not INITIATING the naturally occurring alterations.

For those who not believe in Climate Change go and listen to the song 'In the Year 2525'. The artist for saw the coming of IVF, using the phrase 'Born at the bottom of a Long Black Tube'. Mind you it has help many couples. We had the Ice Age which occured over time. Gobal Warming maybe just a natural occurence like the Ice Age, but modern man has accelerated the process. Unless we reduce the pace and learn to live with it, we too may go the way of the Dinosaurs. A PLANET WITH NO LIFE. Alarmist, have a look at the world weather patterns over the last five years and tell me we should do nothing and hope there will be a place for our children's children's children to live. With a rising ocean that will claim all the land.

The "nomenclatura" have us at it again. That that is labeled "global warming" is but an effect of the crisis, not the root cause. Whilst we have a name for this event(s) that is but a sign of the actuality, we are doomed to failure.

The actuality is over-breeding.

Like any parasite, our greedy presence is destroying the host. Simply put, if we are to survive, we must skip a generation or three - or go the way of the dinosaur.

Sapper,

Not quite right, but I understand where you are coming from.

The kafuffle is about "Anthropogenic Global Warming" (AGW) - not global warming per se. Your issue then becomes one of cause and effect.

Global Warming (or climate change) has been happening for eons. The difference – and hence root cause of our present dilemma – is that it is anthropogenic in origin i.e. human induced climate change – it is not about natural variability.

The effect is increased Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.

“Over-breeding” has not caused the problem. China and India’s population did not cause the problem – it was the industrialised (and educated?) “West”. Aside: there is a lag effect to temperature increases and GHG concentrations – hence we really can blame the West.

Is it not a truism that educated “breed” (or have fewer off-spring) less than the uneducated? Some would say the problem then becomes one of the uneducated becoming educated – I don’t agree with this notion and I suspect you in your previous life would not either – people or institutions with power may disagree and see it as a problem.

In the process however, “they” too are becoming more like us and expect the same standard of living and thus are driving more GHG emissions.

It is also a truism that we greedy west are driving countries like China and India to produce more for us, with increased GHG emissions as a consequence.

I agree, our greedy presence is destroying the host.
In the end, population numbers will equilibrate to a stable optimum, how it does that will be determinant on what our species does to adapt and mitigate against AGW.
Simply put, if we are to survive, we have to really understand the concept and put into practice, environmental sustainability.

Someone has to pay for my social welfare payment, can’t do that if we skip a generation or three.

davsab, no worries, your dole will be paid regardless a level of so-called “industrialisation in Australia".

The question is not changing unchangeable but adaptation to natural changes