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Land based measurements are generally more accurate than remote sensors, yet you dismiss them - it must be your old friend coincidence that makes 10th Aug 2003 the hottest day ever recorded!





You said above that temperatures are NOT rising, yet now you say that there will be drop in sea levels because of it. Make up your mind! I was Mission Operation Engineer on this mission, which can remotely sense glacier progress and ice sheet progress. Many of the findings conflict with yours.



Does this have any relevance whatsoever to the modern era? Do you think we care about what happened a million years ago or what will happen a million years hence. We are in a epoch that is stable enough to sustain us and our children NOW, and we want to keep that epoch around for the duration! An condition stable enough for slugs and worms might be fine for you, but not me!

<PS I do not impute that you are a slug or worm, although I realise now that you could read that into the sentence above !>



Temperatures have changed more over the past 30 years than at any other time, corresponding with the increase in industrial pollution. Increased freshwater runoff and Northern river ice breaking up earlier is threatening the gulf stream conveyor. Winters have warmed, and summers have been the hottest ever recorded. Permafrost in Alaska has melted and houses have sunk into the ground, glaciers are shrinking, the sea ice is melting. The ice caps are thinning.



I guess I’ll have to trust you on that.

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If a truly independent expert in the field makes good research and gives a cogent argument, we'll listen. But with all due respect, when a “car guy” does the same thing, I’m sorry but the independence factor is shot down in flames, basically. Surely you can see that car-ism can be an influence?

But of course - lots of chemicals that occur in pollution can be natural ones. Fish in small pools pollute their own water with their waste products. Think of the human race as a hell of a lot of fish, and the world as a very small pool. That's the length of it. So we need less fish, more pool or less waste products, or we're all knackered.

And it’s no good telling us that CO2 is colorless, non-toxic blah blah blah. We know that it’s OK in pop. It’s when it comes in the giga-tonne loads that it gets scary!

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Ahem. I've just had a little PM exchange with Pete on this.
I think it boils down to the simple fact that we believe what we want to believe. I don't mean this personally against Pete himself; it's just human nature unfortuantely, I'm sure I'm as guilty as the next man when I want to believe something.
I've just thought of an example - Liverpool v Chelsea - the ball was definately over the line

Wholeheartedly agree - though I'm a little concerned that people hold steadfast to the idea that private motor cars will be a viable mode of mass transit in fifty years' time... I'm sure we must have been able to invent something better by then.

to Peter : Prosperity is only useful if we're able to enjoy the fruits of it. *If* the global warming/dimming/peak oil hypothesis is correct, then no matter how properous we are, our children will *not* be able to enjoy the fruits of it. Regardless of how conclusive the evidence is either way, and I read it as pretty damn likely that it *is* going on - I believe it would be wrong of us to gamble on that chance.

I'll happily state right now that I'm one of the 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' posse, but even the most conservative estimates of Peak Oil suggest that the most able are going to become pretty damn needy themselves soon.



I was in the pub that night having delicious cheap pizza with my mates - there was a whole chorus of Arsenal supporters happy to agree with you.

Tc.

That would be all very well for football. But for global warming, the outcome might be very serious indeed, and remaining silent while big business rapes the planet is dishonourable, straight and simple.

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“Do you think we care about what happened a million years ago”

Erm well yes, I do. Surly the best way to understand what is happening to the planet and what will happen is by looking at what has happened in the past.

Im all for saving the planet but Im not going to just accept we should act on highly disputed educational guesses.
I myself am critical about the seriousness of global warming to what they attempt to spoon-feed me on the telly. The simple fact that weve had minimal debate on this and that I was just suddenly told one day that the earth was suddenly facing impending doom because of higher temperatures made me critical. The fact that all the most popular media outlets seem to not show any credible counter claims to Global Warming again just makes me even more highly critical.

The recently passed Kyoto Protocol would only delay what is happening to the planet by about a year and the fact that it leaves out the worlds largest consumers (China and India) makes the Kyoto Protocol rather mute.

Like it or not I firmly believe there is only one factor in control of this planet , GAIA.
Im rather inclined to allow GAIA to sort itself out, it seems to have managed OK over the last 4.5 billion years so what we do in the next fifty years seems rather pale in comparison.

Unfortunately there is a distractor. Man wasn't pumping the byproducts from the burning of fossil fuel into the atmosphere a million years ago. Thus we have few historical references against which to measure the effects of what is happening today. Those that do exist are dismissed as being attributable to natural cycles, i.e. the theory detractors don't belive them.
Ultimately, it won't really matter what we believe or are in favour of, although the issue won't be resolved on internet forums, nonetheless one side of the argument will be proven correct one way or the other. It's up to governments to proceed the way they see fit, and hope history doesn't damn them for it.

The US consumes resources at a rate unparallelled if you're looking at consumption per head of population. A child born in the US will consume roughly 25 times that of a child born in India. Us Europeans are somewhere inbetween on the scale.



Gaia's never had to deal with 6.5 billion plus organisms wreaking this much havoc on the balance before. Expecting the planet to simply cope is almost as unpracticable as the Rapture theory.

Tc.

The only reason I care about what happened a million years ago (apart from the amusement value) is the information it gives me about the way things will play out.





If an educational guess is all you have to go on, perhaps it’s better than nothing when the alternative is extinction.



I quite admire your long-term ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ complacency! But my children won’t thank you.

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I agree. I was just trying to unpersonalise what appears to be a personal attack on Pete - it isn't.

That's if there is anyone left alive to write the history up!

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I knew you could read that post in two ways, that’s why I put in a payload of ‘with due respects’ and ‘sorry buts’ in it, and the PS note near where I talk about slugs and worms etc. The point is that car manufactures have employed the most expensive advertising executives in the world and ‘paid experts’ to convince us of the wonder of their products.

But I realise that there are cons to car culture as well as pros. It’s a bit of a shock to the system when car-ists are bombarded with the cons as well.

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"Gaia's never had to deal with 6.5 billion plus organisms wreaking this much havoc on the balance before. Expecting the planet to simply cope is almost as unpracticable".

GAIAs managed to deal with mass tectonic movement, mass volcanic activity realsing toxic gases, mass extermination, meteorite impacts, multiple Ice ages etc. I think Gaia is more than prepared.
Besides if GAIA has never had to deal with 6.5 million plus organism's before how do you know it cannot handle it?

I personally think its rather pompous of us to think that we can somewhat stem or counter what is happening to the earth. All we can do is what all other life has done previous, which is to ride it out or are we somewhat an exception to the cycle of life now?

If "observer" implies "independent" then "independent observer" is tautologous (which it clearly isn't) so your question is not well made.

Anyway - what do you mean by "independent". If you mean "objective", then yes - I do see myself as having an objective outlook.

I don't see myself as being sufficiently technically knowledgeable to feel confident in drawing firm conclusions on the global warming debate. I am suspicious of the claims of the GW theorists because they are highly selective in their use of observations/evidence and fail to address counter-arguments such as those made by Pete317 above. At the same time, it must make sense to seek to reduce the impact we have on the environment. However, using GW as a stick to beat motorists is not rational and the only purpose I can see (as is the case with speed cameras) is to allow politicians to proclaim their 'green' [edit]or (as the case may be) 'road safety'[/edit] credentials.

It would be more helpful, imo, for governments worldwide to introduce long-term encouragement/incentives for alternative energy research and in the short-term, introduce real incentives to lower energy consumption.

Are you objective, Basingwerk or do you allow your thoughts to be muddled by prejudice? You appear to have the intellectual ability for critical analysis but your usual method of dealing with arguments that don't fit your predispositions is to obfuscate. If you have the mental horsepower, use it.

[Edited as above for clarification and to pre-empt smart-asses]

You have to decide what you mean. Your first post said:
Now you say:

There's a big difference between "compelling" and "plausible". I'm sure that the 'flat earth' theory was "plausible" when no-one knew any better but that doesn't make it any less wrong.

You ask why I found the programme one-sided. Actually, it was worse than just unbalanced (i.e. offered no alternative perspective). It was downright scaremongering sensationalism. For example:







That's not responsible journalism and it is has nothing to do with good science.

Hmph!



Call me daft if you like, but I’m suspicious of claims by people who have a history of car-ist tendencies – this thread was started about some News Week nonsense about cooling in the 70’s, and claims were made that it was somehow mainstream scientific belief! No-one has given that any “mental horsepower” yet, but me! I said it once, and I’ll say it again – that article in no way shape or form represents mainstream scientific belief in the 70’s – the facts have been screwed up by the car guys! I’m objective enough to know that there are disadvantages to cars, as well as benefits. Not many of us around here, though.

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I'm still a bit too young to comment on mainstream scientific belief in the 70s.

Of course cars carry disadvantages (in fact, so do all forms of road transport - why pick on cars?). But against those you have to balance the huge economic and social benefits that flow directly and indirectly from the use of road transport in general and personal road transport in particular.

I'm all for reducing the disadvantages to the greatest extent reasonably achievable but we have to be careful not to cut off the advantages at the same time. Of course, one of the biggest (the biggest?) advantages offered by cars is personal mobility; restricting that carries political risks which politicians will be reluctant to take. But I'm sure there's still plenty of room for improvement from the environmental and road safety angles. What's needed (and what our politicians and bureaucrats seem to be incapable of) is clear thinking about to achieve the desired objectives.

You refer to 'big business' in almost invariably pejorative terms, but it is 'big business', properly motivated, that has the resources to bring about such improvements.

That's the trouble. I can tell you (and you can ask other grey beards if you like) that there was hardly anything on the radar about this global cooling malarkey that has been raised up as if it were a big deal. A scrap of a story in News Week - is that 'intellectual horsepower'?

There were other things - nuclear winter was a big concern in the cold war, CND was making a lot of noise, the greens were starting out, and so on. But global cooling, which is routinely brought into play to discredit global warming theory, was not mainstream - that is the point.



Business exists to serve people, not the other way round! We will never be able to sort this out until we have a global environmental police force working for the common people and putting the mockers on government and big business exploitation.

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Yes, but it never does motivate itself properly - purely for the behest of it's already stupidly wealthy board and shareholders, not caring who they scrw over on the ground in the process.

I remember an article in an american journal once that bemoaned the bizarre situation over there whereby corporations are endowed with the same rights as people. Obviously corporations are immortal and exist primarily to enrich the owners, and hopefully provide a half-arsed service when willing. The article pointed out that corporate behaviour, if compared with it's human counterpart, could only be considered dnagerously psychotic.

Tc.

Basingwerk wrote


Business doesn't exist to do anything. It just exists.

A bit like the earth which doesn't exist to do anything either. I'm referring to common sense's Giai.