Well said Allen, but just watch the neo-cons, GW deniers and the recalcitrant ostriches stick their heads out of the sand and attack your well meaning thoughts.

Not much to attack other than:

"There is now little doubt that climate change, driven by humanity's release of greenhouse gases"
There is still quiet a lot of doubt...and it seems to be growing.

"climate change is indeed the global emergency that campaigner Al Gore - the inspirational leader of Live Earth - says it is."
He is not inspirational in the slightest, he is selling snake oil.

I agree with the rest of the article's premise, which is poverty and environmental issues will only be eliminated by sustainable development of the third world. Economic development of poorer nations will also lead to population stabilsation and eventually decline.

Hey Alzo,

Right on cue? Anyway, appreciate your thoughts albeit we may, with respect, have to agree to differ on some of the issues raised about GW.

I know it is a 'cherry-pick', but Al G did inspire Live Earth as their leader. He has been pushing CC for 20 yrs or so, therefore I'm prepared to give him a little slack. Although I personally think it is/was a bad move for him to be the front man - very inconvenient, in more ways than one.

A lot of major issues can be dealt with by environmental sustainable development I agree. Another cherry though Alzo, it has to be done by everyone, NOT just the third world.

Cheers

Good to read something positive in this atmosphere of gloom.
The news media are. naturally, full of stories and images of conflict - of course that makes more colourful reading and viewing.
The UN keeps getting flak - despite its maraothon good efforts through so many of its agencies.

Let the climate change deniers go on - we have not only the accumulated knowledge from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but also the news evidence coming consistently from many parts of the world - especially in those polar areas.

Anyone who watches BBC World News Service will be especially aware of this - with excellent visual coveerage of the effects of global warming.

My hope is that the world co-operation of nany people - like all those millions who watched the Live Earth conceerts - will diminish the CLIMATE OF FEAR engendered by those who sell weapons, by the NUCLEAR lobby, and the politicians who depend for their jobs on the backing of mining corporations with their various "front" groups.
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

"it has to be done by everyone, NOT just the third world."
I agree with you on this too davsab. There is a lot of waste and inefficiency in our present society. We too should cut back these excesses. To what degree do you think we should do this? What measures would you propose if you were in a position to do so? Lets see how much we can agree on.

I too will credit Al Gore with Live Earth. I do not see anything worthwhile coming out of this event. I think it was the most tokenistic and hypocritical event ever staged. Well done Al.

I will agree to disagree with you on GW.

I'm going to sound really cynical here, and I'm not a cynic, but

"The poor you will always have with you".

*Yes*, poverty is a problem. No good solution exists: to attempt to redistribute the world's wealth fairly would precipitate bloody revolution. True egalitarians might abhor violence, but those with most to lose rarely hesitate to crush leftists when they look like succeeding. Moreover, communist regimes are not very successful at wealth creation in their own right, and are dismal when it comes to protecting such important things as personal freedom.

Or is the problem of poverty not inequality, but merely the suffering of souls? Like Mother Teresa, some prefer to provide a soft bed and a reassuring myth to the weak than first-class health care or a good price for their labour.

"Fair trade" and "microcredit" are useful modern market band-aids, helping to raise a lucky fraction of the poorest by an income bracket, but the realities of capitalist relations mean these advantages are only available to those who can sell themselves to the market, supplying what the wealthy demand. Many millions continue to be "surplus labour" and merely subsist -- or starve.

The truly urgent challenge, today, is for civilisation as a whole to leave off squandering the huge but fragile resource which is the Earth's climate and biosphere.

Any fool who still doubts that this is a problem is encouraged to go read up on the history and science of climate systems at

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html

and

http://www.realclimate.org/

Every credible objection by those who doubt that industry is responsible for a rapid increase in global temperatures, or that such an increase is going to be devastating, is thoroughly addressed therein.

Luckily this technical problem has a technical solution; it requires neither miracle nor bloody revolution (though political muscle is undoubtedly necessary). Most urgently, we must stop the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases; this rise is almost entirely due to our legacy energy technology, whereas ample ambient energy is available on the globe for all our purposes.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Energy-Labyrinth-Environment-Catastrophe/dp/1845115384/

I wish you all clearer, therefore happier, thoughts.

For the dummies, just as it is people carrying umbrellas that cause rain so it is with human co2 emissions changing climate. It's just so obvious. lol

Blind trust ultimately relates to the worship mindset where the desire to believe is easy with easy funding and the exacto opposite to the love to find out, measure, observe and gain understanding. Trust can only be earned and when one examines the big bang religion through the likes of Einstein, Hawking, Davies, Smoot, Mather, with their belief in a nonsensical expanding universe I just see, and even from when I was a thirteen year old, a group of high priests doing their best to design their own universe. The public through a compliant media swallow this old, faked up, gravity-only, closed cosmological model that is simply impossible, is without evidence and obviously the greatest embarrassment of 20th century science.

Now we are finding a similar arrogant position concerning climate. One of the glaring oversights with these new high priests of humans causing global warming is an assumption that our largest plasma discharge formation the sun doesn't do anything. Just how terribly wrong can one really be? Whilst we get "teddy" (god) wars and big bang stooopidities it doesn't get any more anthropocentric than "dirty" human co2 emissions causing global warming.

These two nonsense beliefs simply thrive on absurdity after absurdity, all shrouded by incomplete or faked up model projections rather than on observation. Where models disgree with observation, the observation data gets fudged. As this shonky process gains momentum, science faces a diminishing role in public policy.

Perhaps the climate change cynics should grab a copy of High & Dry. This is by far the one of the most important books to come out about climate change. For a Liberal party insider to spill the beans and write a book subtitled John Howard, climate change and the selling of Australia's future tells me that the times may be changing. This is a damning read of green policy and how national interest has been sold out to a small group of our biggest polluters.
http://www.highanddry.com.au/

Excellent stuff Alan and Steven.

I have often expressed the same sort of concern on this forum. That is; all this new-found concern about climate change desperately needs to morph into action in the bigger picture, with an urgent global effort to direct humanity onto a sustainable footing.

At present I see the climate change issue as being a distraction to what really matters. It is consuming the time and energy of many thousands or perhaps millions of concerned people around the world, who should be putting that energy into broader sustainability issues.

China and India are just simply going to overwhelm any efforts that we make in Australia or in the western world to reduce CO2 emissions. Even with China’s best efforts at improving efficiencies, the sheer scale of their growth is just going overwhelm any per-capita improvements.

The cause is lost. We’ll just have to live with the consequences.

Besides, the continued rapid increase in fossil fuel usage, leading to the exhaustion of oil and later coal as economically viable energy sources sooner rather than later, may very likely be much less harmful to the global environment than a long drawn-out usage of fossil fuels.

Even the most amazingly brilliant efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are only likely to slow the rate of consumption (or more likely, they will simply slow the rate of increase in consumption), which will simply draw out the rate of high emissions into a longer timeframe.

Let it all peak and crash quickly! Just bloody well let it happen and stop farting around thinking we have any meaningful control over it.

It is time to redirect our efforts.

We CAN do a whole lot more about sustainability, before we are forced to…..can’t we?

Or is that just toooo big to handle as well?

Sharben, as an environmentalist all my life I don't see myself as "a climate change cynic". Far from it in fact and that is where we see your problem. The periods of global warming in the 20th century are hardly unique. It seems they have arrived pretty much on schedule, coming from a cooler period in earth's history. To assume now is the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that our largest plasma discharge formation the sun is somehow perfect, constant and regular, is all part of your problem and an absurdity.

Stopping climate change and making it somehow perfect, constant and regular simply serves to illustrate quite well the anthropocentric mindset where we are expected to understand that all humans exhale carbon with original sin. lol It is such a ridiculous notion when you consider that carbon creates a greening and healthy environment and where high carbon dioxide has never prevented subsequent cooling. CO2 doesn't drive climate change.

When the total concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is just 0.054% it represents a significantly minuscule amount but when humans contribute much less than 1 % of that very significantly minuscule amount, then to consider that humans are causing global warming is a monumental error and an absurdity.

Just wish people who are concerned about the environment could somehow separate a few issues that relate more to power, politics and making money by selling alarmist story books.

Yes I agree completely with you. We have to find solutions now or it will be too late
http://saveourbushland.blogspot.com/

I agree completely with you. If we don't find a solution now it will be too late.
http://saveourbushland.blogspot.com/

For anyone hoping that "global warming" is caused by human activity (and therefore, comfortingly, within our power to "fix"), there is an easily understood refutation. You will not need to wade through serious science with all it's equations etc; nor understand the inherent difficulties of "climate modelling".It is this....
According to NASA observations ALL the planets in our solar system are "warming". The polar ice on Mars, for example, has been melting at an "alarming" rate these past few years, indicating/implying that some single source is acting on all 9 (is it 9 or 10 now?) planets.
What could this be? Any suggestions? Could there be 9 (or 10) independant causes occurring simultaneously, one of which is human-induced warming ON EARTH ONLY. Should you prefer this latter explanation, I'm anticipating at least some token attempt at explaining the other 8 (or 9) causes.
This is a simple question, not meant to intimidate, frighten nor belittle those who would like to believe humans can control the weather (ie "climate" is long-term weather). Will someone offer their own hypothesis, bearing in mind that AGW is not a "theory" but (barely) an hypothesis.
BTW, should any "believers" have the inclination to read something more scientific and subsequently understand why the term "greenhouse effect" is silly in itself AND why blaming CO2 (whether human-produced or not) for temperature change, even sillier, you could read the article at www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/.
PS. Even though human-caused climate change does not exist, this is not to say that clean air, fresh water, beatiful forests etc are not to be strived for. It's all about facing reality and chasing results through an honest approach. For example I also believe that good dental hygiene is a must for my kids,and yet I have no intention of pursueing this aim by telling them a werewolf will jump through the window, tear them limb from limb, rip out their guts and suck their little brains from their heads if they don't clean their teeth!! Or. AGW believers, IS this the way to go? Cheers.

Alan/Steven’s thread has the potential to define where humanity goes from here.

Alzo says “There is a lot of waste and inefficiency in our present society. We too should cut back these excesses.”

He then poses the questions, “To what degree do you think we should do this? What measures would you propose if you were in a position to do so?”

What do you reckon Alzo; let’s open it up for everyone? And let’s see how much we ALL can agree on?

To start it off, my contention is that the real problem is/has been too ideological. We have the ‘far right’ and the ‘far left’ and politicians/vested interest groups being what they are … well, you get the ‘drift’…

We (humanity) need to converge to a common ground to solve global problems.

Ludwig, I agree with much of what you say. However, Global Warming is perceived by many countries, groups and individuals to be a global threat. So, why not use it as a catalyst to work in a constructive way for environmental, social and economic sustainability?

Some (like punter57) don’t see GW as a threat, and that is ok – BUT, that is no excuse for groups/individuals or indeed society, not to grow and develop in a more environmentally sustainable way – regardless of political ideology or belief in tooth fairies/monsters.

Whether you have faith in the IPCC or not, whether you believe in ‘climate change’ or not – the policy makers have been given a message, it is up to them to respond. We as individuals can drive that response.

Somewhat off topic but very relevant to probable upcoming discussion on OLO; the ABC’s Great Global Warming Swindle will be shown tomorrow night. The link points to an Aussie paper and is a good read to set the scene for the documentary.

http://www.amos.org.au/BAMOS_GGWS_SUBMISSION_final.htm

Ok davsab I see you have not answered either question. So bit hard to agree or disagree on anything.

"We (humanity) need to converge to a common ground to solve global problems. "
I cannot see this happening. Humanity is very good at being divergent. I would be against any sort of World Government as would most people. So not sure how this can be achieved.

"[Global Warming]So, why not use it as a catalyst to work in a constructive way for environmental, social and economic sustainability?"
Here is where we go our separate ways. Only developed countries see GW as a problem. Most third world countries are more concerned with where their next meal is coming from to give a frig about GW.
Also using a false tenet as a harbinger of change will only breed mistrust. This can already be seen with the China and India who regard the West with suspicion when being sold this GW tripe. Rightly so too.

As far as "tooth fairies/monsters", GW is sold as the biggest scariest monster of them all.

Looking forward to watching the ABC’s Great Global Warming Swindle again. The debate afterwards should be interesting too. I see they have Bob Carter on the panel, should be worth a look. Here is a link to what the documentary is actually about and their arguments.

http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/

“There is now little doubt that climate change, driven by humanity's release of greenhouse gases, is indeed the global emergency that campaigner Al Gore - the inspirational leader of Live Earth - says it is.”

This is still contentious and unproven. That Al Gore champions it does not add any credibility either.

One thing is sure, all environmental degradation, regardless of its manifestation is ultimately due to population pressures.

The dumb-assed socialist international notions that we are all the same and should all share the burden is a fundamental lie.

We are all different, we are all “individuals” and some “contribute” as well as “consume” more and less than others.

When people acknowledge individuality, then we will cease the downward spiral into uniform socialist mediocrity. We will acknowledge that some folk are more deserving than others by virtue of their individual effort and that a lot of folk, do not deserve to continue to over-populate and deplete the resources they presently have available to them.

If it could be legislated for, the ideal would be that only the meritorious should be allowed to successfully procreate. As it is, the one thing which leads to over-population is the ability for the dumbest as well as the best to breed. Fix that problem and all the other issues, environmental, resource depletion and degradation are immediately resolved.

So who should stop breeding first ? – Al Gore and the tree hugging greenies and socialists, will you please stand up.

Alzo, I must agree with your, rightly, sceptical view of all the bunkum and am too, looking forward to watching the ABC’s Great Global Warming Swindle.

“Ludwig, I agree with much of what you say. However, Global Warming is perceived by many countries, groups and individuals to be a global threat. So, why not use it as a catalyst to work in a constructive way for environmental, social and economic sustainability?”

Why not indeed davsab. I desperately hope that it will be a catalyst for action on total sustainability. But at the moment I perceive it very much as a distraction.

Col Rouge is right. Population pressures are central to sustainability. And we haven’t come anywhere near giving this issue due attention.

So can concern over climate change morph into concern over chronic overpopulation and the huge imbalance between the demand for all sorts of resources exerted by that population and the ability for the planet to provide it an ongoing manner?

Mmm. I’m not optimistic.

While its always a good move to reduce pollution & waste.
It’s hard to see the concert as anything but a fashionable ‘happening’.
The major stars are hardly examples of moderation.
And I reckon long-term –it will have about as much impact on climate change as a prey meeting would.

It is also telling how few of the concerts were held in fast developing non-western economies and how small the audience in China was .

Nor do I find the article much better- it is big on rhetoric
“it is just one of a number of global emergencies… all of them
inter-connected. To succeed in averting any one of
these emergencies, all of them must - and indeed
can - be addressed in a more integrated manner.”
-Does anyone seriously believe that if we solved the climate change issue tomorrow- conflict would end(?)

I was lucky enough to catch the ABC Science Show last weekend:
It interviewed two climate change proponents Prof Amanda Fisher & Journalist/author Mark Lynas & sceptic Prof Ian Plimer

[ contary to the PR releases – you don’t hear a lot of anti-climate change argument in the popular media]

There was a distinctively less sympathetic tone shown by the interviewer in his approach to Plimer than the other two.

I tend to agree with Pilmer that climate change debate has become too much like a religious moment .

Perhaps before we can seriously approach the problems listed in the article, we need to establish an environment where people can present unorthodox or minority views & be fairly heard.