The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Climate change: enough science, now for the politics > Comments

Climate change: enough science, now for the politics : Comments

By Mike Hulme, published 11/9/2009

Science can prove global climate change is happening, but it won't tell us what to do about it.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All
I don't think anyone disagrees that the climate changes or is changing now - we don't actually need that proved do we.

What is often questioned is whether there is a contribution from mankind, how much that might be, whether it can be limited or removed - (mind you some people want it reversed, but that's a bigger delusion than can be handled in this forum.)

I do agree with the author though that what will come out of Copenhagen will not relate to science but to self interest. So all the hysterical types I expect will get their wish that nothing will happen and their careers of activism will not be diminished.

Let's face it, if all the world's countries agreed to cut emissions and went home and turned off all the electricity that caused CO2 and stopped flying around the world, using cars etc - would the activists be happy. I'm guessing no, because well, there goes the entire reason for finger wagging existence.
Posted by rpg, Friday, 11 September 2009 10:27:23 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"As we enter another round of negotiations in Copenhagen it is vital that we understand the many valid reasons for disagreeing about climate change. We must recognise that they are rooted in different political, national, organisational, religious and intellectual cultures - in different ways of 'seeing the world'."

Some of them are also based on facts and measurements which fail to support the prevailing AGW hypothesis. It's a little condescending to claim that those of us who are sceptical about AGW are just culturally misaligned. What's next -- do we need 're-education'?
Posted by Jon J, Friday, 11 September 2009 12:47:26 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
no jj you don't need re-education, if you can't see the writing on the wall by now you are never gonna see it. re-education for the likes of you would be a waste of time and money. we'll get on with it, you may continue your whinges of course, and we will politely ignore you and save your great grandchildrens' lives for you. and no...don't worry, it's ok, we don't expect thanx.
Posted by E.Sykes, Friday, 11 September 2009 1:06:38 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Mike, I suppose it's OK for such exalted persons ar a climate change professor to tell bare faced lies. Important to get the message through, no matter how, is it?

The truth is that nobody has ever demonstrated, or elaborated any evidence that CO2 has any real effect on climate.

The only thing promoting this fiction is computer models, & the predictions based on these models are getting further, & further from the actual climate we are experiencing.

Even IPCC authors are now forcasting a couple of decades of cooling, following almost a decade of just that. If you can show any IPCC scenario which forcast such an event, you just may save some integrity, but I'm afraid you will have trouble finding any.

This last gasp of the AGW gravey train is most unbecoming to the scientific community.
Posted by Hasbeen, Friday, 11 September 2009 7:19:02 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The question was I believe, what to do about it? Well the politicians do seem to know, charge everyone more for everything, More taxes, more taxes....

The IPPC are changing their view by the way and so called man-made global warming is starting to be questioned.So people stay tuned before you start agreeing to exorbitant taxes in the name of turning off global warming. By the way, it can't be done. The world will turn and climate will change and nature has a way of overcoming.

Why do we have the audacity to think we can change nature or the world, the sun and the stars. We are no more than microbes in the scheme of things. Species will live and die and humans are no more than a species. So look at the big picture if you have the capacity.
Posted by RaeBee, Friday, 11 September 2009 7:41:30 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Like other articles by many similar academics, the “assumption close” is used to open the gambit. The assumption is that AGW does exist. Taking this as an undisputed given, the article then stealthily leads us to the socio/political domain because the scientists have concluded their deliberations and it is now time for some other domain to take over.

This approach by such as Mike Hulme is a direct admission that the scientists have not, and cannot conclude anything; they can no longer be trusted so let’s just trash them and move to a domain where we can influence an outcome without scientific conclusions, i.e. Politics.

Mike Hulme was founding director of the UK based Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. This organization is one of the institutions that endorsed David Mackay’s research on achievable renewables for the UK, a maximum contribution from all renewable sources of 9.5%. A figure that cannot keep pace with demand growth, even with that maximum capacity now!

Australia continues with dreamlike targets of 20%, or if the Greens have their way 30%.

We continue to dream that “clean coal” technology will emerge as one of the saviors of the planet, whilst failing to recognize that “if” we ever achieve this technology, we will have to increase the thermal efficiency by 20% to achieve 10% carbon capture. That of course means burning 20% more coal or inventing 20% more efficient coal combustors.

The same sections of our community who insist on unrealistic renewable contributions and non-existent clean coal technology, are that same communities that have, for some 50 years, infected governments with the political “poison pill” that has stunted nuclear energy development.

That brings us nicely back to the thrust of this article by Mike Hulme. By moving the debate into the socio/political arena it can be influenced by ideology rather than reality.

Future generations will have every right to vilify us, they will do so because we allowed ourselves to be diverted by unrealistic, unachievable, unproven, feel good and ideologically driven concepts, whilst sitting on proven technology that could have significantly reduced our carbon footprint.
Posted by spindoc, Saturday, 12 September 2009 11:54:39 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Isn't it great thought that climate change has proved so profitable, especially for the big banks who are about to get a slice of the $2+ trillion a year carbon trading business?

It is kind of a shame on us all however that while they are enriching themselves we are actually ignoring the majority of man's environmental destruction like: over-fishing, top soil erosion, oceanic plastic, deforestation (that is increasing), water resource depletion, the disappearing bees, GM crops, Oil spills (like the massive and largely unreported one happening right now off Australia's coast), agricultural pollutant run off killing corals, invasive species introduction, mercury from discarded low energy light bulbs, smog, Asian haze....I could go on

http://www.openyoureyesnews.com/?tag=climate-change
Posted by James Fairbairn, Saturday, 12 September 2009 5:39:31 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Spindoc I totally agree and my next post was going to be the derision in which nuclear energy is held by the general public due to scare mongering - usually by the greens but politicos in general. Since school age and that is a long time ago, I have wondered why this country has not taken advantage of an energy source, a clean one at that, to provide power. Politicos seem scared to death of making the move. They must know it is efficient and almost risk free now. We have an energy resource we are selling overseas that could make all our lives and those of our children and grandchildren more enriched and living in a debt free country with clean energy....what is wrong with these people? Do they have no insight or can't they think outside of the square of political expediency?
Posted by RaeBee, Saturday, 12 September 2009 8:24:33 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
RaeBee .. we've been "Caldicotted" .. that is, had our politicians and children scared by bogeymen and catastrophics.

If people like Caldicott had not had the effect they did with their hysterical scaremongering, we might be 30 years ahead in Nuclear Energy power station development.

See how far something like a motor car has come in 30 years ..

Now we're seeing this effect again with the current hysteria, except we're having hobby renewables foist on us..

James, I agree, we could all clean up our act, but the big game now is Climate Control - call it what it is, these folks want to control the weather. So everything else gets pushed aside so much that your average person, will just give up on the little things I fear.
Posted by rpg, Saturday, 12 September 2009 10:07:28 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
rpg, I love your expression “Caldicotted”. Her recent publication was one of the best examples of ignorance, misinformation and malevolent trash I’ve seen on yonks. Its sad that such people get air time, it’s even sadder that so many of us are too lazy to get the facts for ourselves and as a result we have become vulnerable to such opinions.

Public ignorance leaves space for politicians to create votes, were it not for this situation I doubt there would be a Green Party in Australia. This movement would have us believe that we can get rid of coal, use renewable energy and avoid nuclear power generation. The one thing politicians have not told us is how? Because it is simply unachievable, political, feel good rubbish.

Mike Hulme wants political “solutions” because if the utter futility of so called “green” solutions were made public the voter backlash would change the political landscape.

ReaBee, a colleague of mine in the UK is an engineer and has worked in the nuclear industry for 35 years; he now has his own consulting business. Most of his work now is trying to undo the “Caldicott Syndrome”. He runs workshops that present facts rather than opinion. He tells me that he gets two distinct reactions from clients. One is anger and frustration that they have been misled by so much rubbish. The other reaction is what he describes as “religious ferocity” from those who refuse to allow their ideological opposition to be disturbed by reality.

Kevin Rudd has announced this week, a federal investment of $135,000 to test any shift in public opinion in relation to nuclear energy as a possible option.

It will be interesting to observe just who and what crawls out of the woodwork.
Posted by spindoc, Sunday, 13 September 2009 8:22:22 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Yes indeed Spindoc it will be interesting. I believe the Federal Government would love to turn back time and act on creating clean nuclear energy but they have been backed into a corner. Still, if they get the slightest inkling that there might just be a swing toward people accepting nuclear energy they might take the plunge. Personally I think it is a vote winner if people are properly informed. The "not near my home" syndrome would have to be overcome but that is the same for any beneficial change.
Posted by RaeBee, Sunday, 13 September 2009 4:29:19 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It is not that modern nuclear energy power plants are the problem it is the waste that no one seems to know what to do with.

All countries have a mammoth increasing stocks waiting for a solution.

So I expect that any questions the government will ask will not include anything about waste disposal.
Posted by PeterA, Sunday, 13 September 2009 6:14:08 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
PeterA, Just the sort of misinformation we are speaking of. << All countries have a mammoth increasing stocks waiting for a solution. >> Nonsense, there is enough high degree waste after 60 years to fill a football pitch, that’s all. Don’t get this mixed up with low level medical waste.

The Gen. IV reactors are being designed to use the worlds stock of high level waste as fuel, good job we didn’t bury it.
Posted by spindoc, Monday, 14 September 2009 6:12:08 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy