modernidealist .. so what?

Are you saying that all the change in climate, (which no one denies the climate changes yes it does), are caused soley by CO2 rises.

Sorry that just sounds a little too convenient, when we have no idea what causes even clouds or weather, you're trying to convince us that CO2 is the sole agent now of the climate changing more than it should?

So if you take away your supposed human influence, how much would it have changed? If you don't know, then how can you measure any influence at all?

Back in the Victorian era, the accepted, indeed consensual, methodology for dealing with human ills was bleeding them. All the scientist and medical experts of the day agreed, to disagree was to be called an idiot, and of course, a sceptic.

So it is now, some people have decided that out of the huge complex system that is the planet's climate, you can disgregard everything else except CO2 .. if you look at it holistically, instead of just nit picking little bits of it - you can see that yes, it is convenient to blame CO2, but it is unlikely, as is proving to be the case, to be the culprit.

Sceientists have done themselves immeasurable damage over the years wuth various scares and hysteria which turned out to be incorrect - so do not be surprised when people do not instandtly subscribe to everything they say now - why even today, they disagree.

It is unlikely they are correct, the ones who claim CO2 is causing additional climate changes that is, in all likelihood they are wrong again, time will tell and in the meantime their egos drive them to dig in and not see the forests for all the trees, and to attack anyone who questions their fallible logic.

Scepticism is healthy.

Raredog,

You say "between about 200ppm and 800ppm it contributes less than one degree." From which scientific paper did you glean this information?

Just because you state this as a fact does not make it one, nor does it make it a possibility even let alone a probability. Sounds like another concoction/lie to me.

Hi modernidealist, I assume you are responding to my earlier post so thanks for the polite reply. I am aware of the CO2 arguments, as you have presented them. A query that arose in my mind is that as air is trapped in the ice some of it is squeezed out of the bubbles and is mixed within the ice itself. I forget the name of the paper that discusses this (sorry, just too busy to locate at the moment) but if correct it would raise the ancient CO2 trapped in the ice core (the bubbles and ice itself) by about 50ppm. This would raise the glacial levels to 250ppm and, by default, the interglacial levels to 330ppm. This later figure approximates closely to what was the international standard of 314ppm of atmospheric CO2, derived from chemical means prior to 1950.

Furthermore, the ice core samples are indicative of long time scales and the finer details of variations of CO2 levels on a decadal or century basis are not apparent so at best, while we can make assumptions about CO2 levels never having been so high, we cannot state that with certainty. Given that higher individual CO2 measurements dating back to the mid-19th century have been documented and given that the Keeling curve you mentioned is a smoothed trend that also hides wide fluctuations (up to 600ppm have been recorded at Mauna Loa, the Hawaii recording location that forms the basis of the Keeling curves), and that we only have 60 years of direct continuous measurement, we cannot really say anything more than that atmospheric CO2 is increasing and that a part of it is anthropogenically derived. This is still a long way from saying that CO2 is driving our climate and will lead to runaway climate change with all the dire projections that are assumed.

Q&A (Thursday, 4 June 2009 12:01:28 AM), you mention checking my arithmetic against my assertions, presumably in connection with climate sensitivity. You are no doubt aware that there are a number of peer-reviewed papers suggesting that the effect of anthropogenic CO2 forcing on climate sensitivity is exaggerated by an order of magnitude. Also, you say you are a scientist yet you are very dismissive of the analysis of weather records from long-sited Grade 1 weather stations in remote areas unaffected by deforestation and urbanisation ( . . noise, you called it). As a scientist I would have thought you would welcome alternative views and studies. Therefore, as you are presumably speaking as an advocate then surely it would be an idea to at least have some knowledge of what an ETS might do, especially its impact on individuals. Googling up carbon credits/global currency will give you a start. Be careful what you wish for; the solution may be a whole lot worse than the disease.

You treat me as a denialist but I am only sceptical of the model-produced projections that anthropogenic-derived CO2 may lead to runaway or catastrophic climate change. We have numerous environmental problems that are impacting the world’s climates, notably deforestation, altered albedos and particulate pollution. A globally-applied regulatory ETS to reduce anthropogenic CO2 output will make little difference to these real-world problems.

All you people who want to argue the toss about the science and what is valid or not, all miss the essential message that any common sensical person would look at first,and that is the cost benefit.

Why would any sanely managed country sell out its workers and its economy to achieve a contribution by us of only 0.000043C to what may,and there is no certainty about that either,be a global problem.

But then we are dealing with environmental extremists and political opportunists, as well as basically a corrupt scientific elite who are more interested in the guarantee of further funding, than rational outcomes that are in the public interest.

Wake up Australia we are being conned.

Yes Raredog, I am aware of some of the papers you have only alluded to – one being by Dick Lindzen (whom I admire, but with whom I have had strident professional disagreement). They are championed by the likes of the inimitable Lord Monckton of Brenchley (fronting for the Science and Public Policy Institute) and cheered on by the likes of the Heartland Institute, most recently this last week. Indeed, these few papers are quite often promulgated in the so called ‘denialosphere’ as another “nail in the coffin of AGW”. Nevertheless, there is fierce research into climate sensitivity and attribution studies, as there should.

Raredog, I am a sceptic ... in the true scientific sense (I welcome “alternative views and studies”). The main reason I'm here on OLO is because I can't stand to see scepticism brandished by close-minded propagandists, who don’t even read primary source material. They have adopted an opinion based on what they want to believe and sourced from their own favourite media shock jock or ‘sceptical’ blog site. These people 'believe' AGW is a hoax, is a lie, or is a big conspiracy. But not one of these so called ‘sceptics’ questions their own assertions, as a real sceptic is required to do. Having said that, it does go both ways – the world isn’t going to end anytime soon. The caveat of course is that a 2 degrees rise or an 80 cm sea-level rise within a 100 yrs (say) is bad enough.

Please don’t presume anything about me Raredog, you don’t know me. I have not aligned myself to either an ETS, a carbon tax, whatever. What I do understand is that the price of energy must rise, and that we (humanity) must find a better way to ‘grow and develop’.

I am also sceptical of the “model-produced projections”, but probably for different reasons to what you are. They are based on various scenarios (SRES) with major component input from economists ... so I have my doubts. Nevertheless, the projections are tracking eerily high. And who said the planet’s time stops at 2100?

Cont’d