Chris C – your dissertation on lemmings……

Yawn - who cares ? not me.

Wizofaus “Col, atmospheric CO2 has increased by 35% since the beginning of the industrial age.”

Well the “industrial revolution” commenced over 200 years ago, even if your statement is true, it still does not explain the “hockey stick”.

“They may well be right, but it hardly seems a risk worth taking.”

They might be wrong, in which case you are presuming to impose a pointless social surcharge of institutionalized extortion (socialism by stealth) to finance carbon revenues for an unproven and critically contentious theory.

I would note the expectation of a carbon surcharge/tax is simple. The consumer will be taxed more without commensurate increase in income, thus the consumer will see a marked increase in the basic cost of living which can only mean a reduction in the affordability of and thus diminution in the consumers “quality of life”.

Simply put, the artificial inclusion of a “carbon cost” into everything consumed by consumers will be paid for by the consumers. Meaning, they are being artificially forced to either consume less or subsidise their consumption from savings, whilst government plays “lady bountiful” by propping up sub-economic “non-carbon” energy resources.

It is the response of the feeble minded to not question but blindly accept, at face value, the theories of the academically opinionated.

It is the response of the wise to continually question and not be lead by the nose.

As I said before I see no virtue in the intrusion by government to impose “a carbon tax based on “imponderable probabilities”.”

Fluff4 “The perpetrator is/was 26yrs using a computer model, this alone is food for sceptics as modeling used for prediction is new science, not necessarily wrong.”

I have been building commercial computer models, of diverse complexities, professionally, since 2 years before the “perpetrator” you speak of was born.

I am experienced to question the accuracy of all such model.
“Reliability” is extremely fragile with any predictability system, especially when the available data is, itself, unreliable due to lack of frequent measurement or short history.

Col Rouge the *wise-one*? Touché for beancounters (joke Col).

It would seem prudent (and wise) if you’re going to rant against the so called “hockey stick” that you should learn something about atmospheric physics or chemistry (you clearly have not).

For starters, check out how long CO2 stays in the troposphere (compared to H2O for example). Then (if you’re wise) checkout how we know (hint: isotope analyses) this latest period of warming is mainly due to fossil fuel burning, poor land management practices and rampant and unsustainable consumerism.

The latter of which you overtly seem to proclaim as *good* - The “buy, buy, buy … I must have it and I want it now” philosophy of today’s consumer driven and pay-for-it-later credit society. The USA and Oz are prime examples.

As an accountant, you would know about *risk management* – you clearly don’t understand it insofar as global warming (AGW), political ideology (“socialism by stealth”? what a conspiracy brouhaha!) or even economics (not accountancy) is concerned.

You are right about the lemmings and you are also not feeble minded – but don’t think yourself wise, that is for others to judge.

Maybe you should stick to accountancy and professionally build commercial computer models, of diverse complexities.

Col, CO2 levels have their own "hockey stick"-like graph:

http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/co2-increase.jpg

The lag between temperature rise and CO2 rise is in the order of a several decades - mainly because the oceans absorb most of the extra trapped heat before the surface temperature begins to rise.
Even today, warming in the Southern Hemisphere is considerably delayed to the higher ocean-land ratio.

Oh, and every suggestion for a carbon tax that I have read suggests it should go in tandem with a cut in income tax.
Further, any slight drop in material standard of living will be quickly compensated for by exponentional economic growth,
which isn't going to stop anytime soon. Even if energy prices were to double, it wouldn't take long before the effect of that would be be absorbed by rising incomes and more efficient technology. I can almost guarantee that by 2030 we'll be paying comparitively less for energy than we do today, and it will be much cleaner.

Q&A, be as patronizing as you want. Ultimately we are dealing with opinion more than “science”.

Concerning “Risk management”

Risk management is about balancing the costs with the consequences,

Hence, the risk management strategy for one of the major banking groups I am been associated with is to not even bother to check the signature on any cheque less than $25,000.

Hysterical novice computer modelers and the dull-witted who, like lemmings (real of mythological), blindly scamper after the cause of supposed “global warming” are actually ignoring the basic rules of “Risk Management”

Risk Management strategy would declare that the unproven, future theoretical consequences of global warming, when offset by a world wide recession and the expropriation of individual discretionary income through government carbon taxes is, on, a risk management basis, not worth pursuing.

As for “unsustainable consumerism.”

It is an obsessively virulent ego which expects to tell other private individuals how they should divest themselves of their personal, earned resources.

If you wish to live in a humpy, denying yourself the amenities which “consumerism” might bring you, then you are entitled to do so.

However, it is plain hubris for you to presume to forcefully impose your social expectations on anyone else.

Btw I never presumed myself to be “wise”, merely wiser than those who do not recognize “socialism by stealth” when it is coming up to bite one in the nuts.

As for “Maybe you should stick to ….”

I will stick to doing what enlightened companies are happy to pay me handsomely for.

Wizofaus “it wouldn't take long before the effect of that would be be absorbed by rising incomes and more efficient technology. I can almost guarantee that by 2030 we'll be paying comparitively less for energy than we do today, and it will be much cleaner.”

It seems to me that, despite your obvious lack of understanding to what inflation is and how it impacts on real people’s lives; you are prepared to “guarantee” comparatively lower energy costs.

You reflect the same gap between "untested theory" and "real consequences" as do supposed “climate scientists”

Col,

You cared enough to respond to my first comment on lemmings. You used a common metaphor for mass suicide - the lemmings jumping off cliffs. I took the opportunity to correct the impression you gave so that other readers would be informed of the true story behind this myth because I used to believe it too. I wasn’t rude. I wasn’t abusive. It is a particular lesson about lemmings and a general lesson about not believing everything you are told. Other myths are that John Howard changed the definition of unemployment and that teacher unions control state Labor Governments – both commonly believed, both repeated without investigation, but both false.

You could have responded with the references you gave and left it at that, as it seems that you do not now hold that lemmings commit mass suicide. You could even have said that you have never held that belief and that you had not meant to imply that you did.

Instead in your first reply, you added, ‘You might get away with only seeming like a fool but your feeble attempt to miss-correct me simply confirms it for all the other posters too.’ This statement will have no effect on how others see me, so why did you add it? Was it an impulse? Is it difficult for you to accept that others may dare to contradict you? Is it a dislike of being thought wrong? Is it part of your character to show gratuitous rudeness to others – customers, employees, shop assistants, waiters, family even?

I can understand face-to-face encounters becoming heated because they are matters of the moment. I can understand a poster becoming heated in response to abuse and giving as good as he gets, though some of us can remain calm even then. However, I do not understand why those such as you need to resort to abuse on an internet site when you have to time to reflect and shape your response and your response is to someone who has done no more than give some factual information about lemmings.

William York is wrong about universities being devoted to developing new ideas. The last thing many academicians want is new ideas that may make them look bad because they don't understand the new ideas. The physical sciences are particularly bad about wanting to limit new ideas except for an occasional theoretical physicist or mathematician.

Biologists who question the teaching of the prophet Darwin are likely to be ostracized.

The claim that greenhouses are heated by trapping IR radiation was disproved nearly a century ago by physicist R. W. Wood who invented both IR and UV photography.
http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html

the concept of greenhouse gases claimed by supporters is inconsistent with physics.

http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdfp