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The Forum > Article Comments > Sceptics will have their day > Comments

Sceptics will have their day : Comments

By Mark S. Lawson, published 17/4/2008

The argument is if human activity has added to the current, natural warming cycle: and if it hasn't then why spend up big on carbon trading?

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mark lawson: scientist extraordinaire.
Posted by bushbasher, Sunday, 20 April 2008 2:50:07 AM
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"The argument is if human activity has added to the current, natural warming cycle: and if it hasn't then why spend up big on carbon trading?"

um...because they might be right?
Posted by bennie, Sunday, 20 April 2008 2:52:18 PM
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The current astronomical rise in prices for oil and coal are a mere indicator that the carbon producing industry is close to an end.

The economic 'smarties' are making as much hay while the sun shines ... hotter ... apparently.

If you people were to stop reading the guesswork guff from all scientists and start reading of the solid developments being provided by engineers you'd soon come to see science is always in the past and engineering is always the future. Engineering developments in battery longevity and solar power will see the end of the current major producers of CO2 within a couple of years.

Economics and carbon trading schemes will just hurry the process along as consumers and economic smarties react to higher and unsustainable costs... (If you think the current crisis in food shortage is greatly accentuated by anything other than an increase in transport costs, you live in fantasyland.) Then if temperatures still vary either up or down over say 50 years the evidence will be overwhelming for a natural cycle. If not and they just plummet then we'll all know humans caused global warming (Science with it's backward looking emphasis will confirm either theory) and our kids and grandkids will ... well ... just find some other way to destroy the environment.

Thank god I'm going sailing, for you are all too bloody narrowly focused and don't read widely enough to truely understand human endeavour.

But I'll have to exchange my diesel sail for something else maybe a battery run model solar power regenerated type and my Admiralty charts well if global warming raises sea levels I'll be up s..t creek when close to land but there are positives I'll able to moor in my backyard and I won't have to buy diesel or pay marina fees.
Posted by keith, Sunday, 20 April 2008 4:01:39 PM
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I note that T.Sett has referred me to the skepticalscience page for some concise science debunking "an oldie but a goodie" ... i.e. In response to my statement "Our production of CO2 is puny in the scheme of things with a minuscule effect on temperature". Cannot say that this skepticalscience article changes anything I have said ... i.e. our CO2 emissions are puny and have minuscule effect on temps.

However, I presume that for the insecure, frozen-in, fixed-in-place mindset, human CO2 emissions upsets what they understand as the natural balance. This is the crux of the debate on climate where by definition, a change is bad, always bad and even worse than bad where there is this premise that nature has been designed as if it were a printed circuit board forcing electrons to follow a certain path, and the human influence is like unsoldering and replacing a component. It is a ridiculous, disconnected, maladaptive notion.

Perhaps people need to know that a stable physical system always responds to the external changes in the direction that reduces their effect. If you add additional CO2, those who consume carbon or those who take it away will inevitably thrive a little bit more than before while those who produce CO2 automatically thrive a little bit less. Nature self-regulates in this fashion.

Whilst it is not uncommon for most people to at times become disgruntled with modern life in general, may I suggest that it is the mind that is playing tricks and that some observational diligence may just help things. Rather than mind over matter it needs to be mind out of matter. i.e. We adapt.
Posted by Keiran, Sunday, 20 April 2008 8:23:16 PM
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Keith "(If you think the current crisis in food shortage is greatly accentuated by anything other than an increase in transport costs, you live in fantasyland.)"

I am afraid that you may be the one in fantasyland. The food shortages in China are caused by an alarming shortage of water from various causes including , but not restricted to drought and movement of population to cities.

I suggest you read
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1621
and
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update1.htm

Keiren
The combined current yearly emissions world wide of something approximating 30 billion tonnes of CO2 is something which should concern us all.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Sunday, 20 April 2008 9:58:06 PM
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Keiran,

Put a puny amount of arsenic in your morning tea. Would you drink it?
Humans put a puny amount of CFCs in the atmosphere, where did that ozone hole come from?

I will have to agree with you on one point. The climate has changed in the past. I am yet to come across any peer review articles claiming that the climate does not change by its own accord from time to time. Could you cite your source please? Unless it was your mind playing tricks on you?
What I find concerning is the current RATE of change; the lack of the usual natural culprits for climate change; the rapidly approaching CO2 saturation point of the oceans; the prevalence of isotopically identifiable fossil fuel produced CO2 in the atmosphere.
We (humans) may well adapt, but the rest of the ecosystem will need time to do so as well.
Observational diligence is serving current climatologists quite well. The empirical evidence collected to date convinces me more and more that we need to reduce Anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
Posted by T.Sett, Monday, 21 April 2008 8:05:55 AM
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