PeteBrant

The difference being that naturally created carbon emissions are balanced - I.e. there is a corresponding carbon sink

Man made emsissions combined with the reduction od natural carbon sinks are not balanced, therefore that (4 % actually) remains in the atmosphere and therefore tips the balance.

PeteBrant

Don't trust wikipedia - I quote that source for ease. Look on google, read the news.

As far as the scientific community is concerned, the argument is over. Man made carbon emmisions have an impact on climate change.

As Martin said, there isn;t even a debate anymore. Pretty much every single government on the planet accepts this as being the most likely scenario and will act accordingly.

The average scoobynetter doesn't agree with the finding of the scientific community, fine, but I'm guessing this revelation is not going to sway world opinion.

Geezer

This scientific community doesn't think it's over. And there's loads more.

Also, governments are now facing being ostracised if they don;t fall in line, and it's a good oppurtunity for them to screw their own populations for taxes! That may be a cynical view I admit, but there it is.

The debate is being stifled, not there isn't any. There are perfectly valid concerns over some of the claims, just as there genuine concerns that should be investigated.

Geezer

Prasius

iTrader: (1)

Like use it as a comfortable excuse to apply "green taxes". Green taxes of which the money isn't used in order to support environmental projects, sea defences, etc.

The Government does nothing to apply pressure on countries such as Brazil to prevent illegal, and further legal, logging and clearing of rain forest. They would rather take the easy option - charge private motor vehicle users horrific amounts of tax for carrying out journeys that they, in all probability, can't avoid taking. Rather than providing tax incentives for companies that use rail for freight transport, they'd rather investigate the possibility of using even bigger HGV's to transport ISO containers. Containers that were specifically designed to be moved from Ship to Train.

Just apply a 5p tax to every plastic carrier bag that supermarkets and shops provide; make the sale of non-energy saving light bulbs illegal; provide far larger grants to those who want to install solar panels and wind turbines on their houses; make it far easier for companies to gain planning permission for wind turbines and other renewable electricity production facilities (prompted by my experience of, bluntly, a bunch of stupid old dinosaurs in my village attempting to block the construction of a local wind farm).

None of this is rocket science; all of it is entirely practical; none of which the Government have implemented. Why? Because none of them CREATE REVENUE.

The Government doesn't care about the Environment. They care about screwing over the tax payer in every way possible.

Brendan Hughes

Such an out of date viewpoint

Forest protection expected to form key part of Bali climate deal | Environment | Guardian Unlimited

OllyK

They are doing this, despite the majority of UK domestic light fittings being unsuitable for them, so they have a massively reduced life span. Add to that they are actually terrible for the environment when their life is at an end due to the use of mercury vapour. There is also an increased environmental cost from the outset in terms of the electronics required to actually make them operate. Environmentally they're a disaster.

Prasius

iTrader: (1)

Yeah - it looked like a really out of date view point given the news last night. That article is from today, about an agreement that hasn't even been made yet - so I won't hold my breath quite yet.

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

well I don't get the big deal!!! it is currently 0 deg outside now, if it was 3.7 I would be a lot happier, also at the height of summer which lasts possible a whole month the temp may reach a wopping 35deg if it was 38.7 deg who would care or even notice? it gets hotter than that in the desert and in Cyprus FFS.

I do not understand why we would all suffer drought and starve to death just cos the temperature goes up, I mean just look at it currently there is more water falling from the sky and flooding than ever before, so surely more water and more sun equals more crops and more happy people. So it may flood abit so what? it just means that you don't buy a house on a flood plain thats all.

Or am I missing the point somewhere????

OllyK

We don't ALL see the same results. In the UK we are getting more rain, do a google and see what's happening in Australia in comparison.

Because those increases in temperatures mean the crops we grow now, won't grow as well and that new bugs that would have been killed off in winter start to arrive from southern europe.

Yup, this is about "Global" change, not localised UK change. If all of the ice melts at the poles, we could be looking at a 7m sea level rise, bit of a bonus as that's London gone, but also all of east anglia which is a major agricultural area. Large chunks of Europe would go as well. I don't think there is much we can do to stop the change, regardless of the cause, so we do perhaps need to start considering other options, like moving the capital north and cancelling the 2012 olympics for a start

PeteBrant

What? The New Zealand Climate science coalition! Wow! That's some heavyweight backing there. All it needs now is the Taplow amatuer science club to come on board and The IPCC will be seriously considering thier position

PeteBrant

Yes thats right, the same ones that Man has spent the last 100 years chopping down .

boomer

Did anyone watch the World Wild(think of the penguins)life Fund propaganda on the BBC breakfast this morning?

Apparently the Antarctic ice is rapidly melting, destroying the habitats of penguins (apart from a few that are managing to adapt to survive by living on rocks). There were plenty of shots of ice melting and bergs floating away into the sea - doom and gloom all around!

What they didn't mention, is the fact that the Antarctic ice is currently at one of it's maximum levels - there is loads of it!!! So much for global warming!

Then later on the WWF admitted that they hadn't actually carried out any new research, just pulled together some existing reports (that just happened to support their biased agenda ).

...always be wary of people who coldly say things like "the debate is over", and "the vast majority of the scientific community believe in man-made climate change" - because they just pick and choose reports, observations and other material that supports their cause (i.e. gets them TV coverage and loads of (tax-payer provided) funding).

Oh, and there is no doubt whatsoever, that "It's all a clever conspiracy to raise taxes."

mb

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I disagree.

It's not a very clever conspiracy at all

Martin2005

The more I read this thread the more angry and depressed I get. I find frankly ridiculous that anyone on this site can say without hesitation that GW is not man made.
I will state first off that I open to persuasion on this issue, in other words I have an open mind (all though right now I lean strongly towards the 'it is man made' camp).
Most of the arguments put up by people on here are frankly intellectually bankrupt. People need to be more honest, especially with themselves!

1. 'It's all a conspiracy by the government to raise taxes' - this is a truly fatuous argument, nobody has bothered to explain why this might be the case, it's just an easy excuse to justify a pig headed and ill-conceived position.
People talk about this issue as if the government is stealing money a hiding it in their own off-shore accounts for christ sake. No government can afford to get public spending and the tax take out sync, if you tax too much the economy will fall on it's ****, even the most 'thieving and dishonest' politicians know this.
If it's such a conspiracy then why are governments like Germany committed to drastically reducing their Co2 emissions (by 40%), this will have a big short-term negative effect on an already shaky economy - the reason is that the longer-term consequences are far more severe.
If you think all our politicians are crooks and liars then, that probably says more about yourselves than them, also if you really believe this that strongly then you should get off your ***** and do something about it!

2. The deniers on here are somehow put themselves on the extremist hardline 'definitely not' end of this debate - guys there is no scientific constituency here. The most sceptical of institutions and scientist are not denying this problem 'might' be real, yet some people here are way ahead of the science....how can this be?

3. I find it hilarious that people keep saying that the world has gone through many temperature changes, well no **** Sherlock! You say this as if it's some sort of revelation, do you not think that the climatologist know this, and have not factored it into their models?

4. The thing that is truly disingenuous about this debate is these conspiratorial arguments are forwarded by people who don’t want to believe, and no amount of evidence will change their minds... why because it might impact on the way they want to live their lives!
Therefore blaming the government becomes and easy get out, the truth is the only conspirators are the people who wont listen to the argument, deny then blame everyone and everything apart from the one thing that might impact on them.
I would like just one person to explain to me why the majority of the public accept the problem and yet the vast majority of petrol thirsty Subaru drivers don't, we all know the answer but are not honest enough to admit it.

I will add that I truly hope that the denyers are 'right', and the 'greenies' are wrong, the problem is as much I might hope they are right, I strongly suspect they are dangerously wrong.

Prasius

iTrader: (1)

And frankly, it makes me angry and depressed that the "man made global warming" 'supporters' find it so necessary to act as if suggesting anything different is akin to denying the holocaust.

Man made global warming is not fact, it is a Theory* (which is still stretching things a bit). Until it is fact, the issue is still up for debate, and that debate should be fully encouraged.

*A comprehensive explanation of a given set of data that has been repeatedly confirmed by observation and experimentation and has gained general acceptance within the scientific community but has not yet been decisively proven.

Martin2005

I didn't say it was 'fact' or 'decisively proven' and to think I did grossly misrepresents what I wrote.
I was simply challenging the voices of self interest, who present silly conspircay theories as 'fact' and decisively proven'

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

I am surprised no one has mentioned the global cooling hysteria in the 1970's some of the top scientists of the day jumped on that bandwagon as well and doom and gloom was predicted then

jonc

Well I sincerely hope that all the green taxes will be spent on worthwhile environmental causes and not frittered away in administration costs, pointless studies and "think tanks", bolstering up underperforming public sector services, etc. Besides, the government prefer to use the term "climate change" rather than global warming, since if there is a global cooling, ie when all the ice has melted and thereby reduce the salinity of the North Atlantic and shuts down the thermalhaline circulation causing a dramatic cooling of the Northern Hemisphere (another Ice Age), we won't need to expect a rebate of all the taxes combating global warming.

Prasius

iTrader: (1)

What about the Acid rain hysteria of the 80's/early 90's..

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Green-ness is fashionable. I strongly suspect that's the sad truth behind a lot of the posturing and propaganda, not science at all. Just as it's very difficult to, say, discuss the pros and cons of immigration without being labeled a racist, it's become extremely difficult to discuss the science behind CC without being shot down in flames as a planet killer.

What annoys me the most is the totally inconsistent way in which different alleged contributors to CC are tackled. For example, I worked out a while ago here that, if every single household replaced every bulb with a low energy one, the total saving in CO2 output would be just 0.5% of the country's total.

IIRC, the latest building regulations require new properties to be fitted at least some light fittings that can only accept these bulbs. Yet it's still perfectly legal to install electric cooking and heating appliances, despite the fact that in a power station, only about 40% of the energy from burning the fuel ends up as useful electricity that can be converted back to heat.

Burn the fuel - gas, in this case - directly where it's needed, and you get 100% of the heat. So cooking your dinner with electricity requires two and a half times as much gas to be burned as if you cooked with gas in the first place.

As if that disparity weren't great enough, look at fuel tax. The tax on domestic gas supplies is just a reduced rate of VAT - 5%. But on petrol it's 50p a litre in duty, plus VAT on the total price of the fuel including that duty. With today's price of £1.10 a litre at the pump, 43.3p is the actual cost of the fuel, and 66.7p is tax - an effective rate of 154%, which is more than 30 times higher.

WTF?! Does 1kg of CO2 from my car do 30 times as much environmental damage as 1kg of CO2 from my boiler? Erm... no.

With disparities in the system that big, I don't think it's any wonder that people are fed up with being told not just to be greener, but also how to be greener. Sod the energy saving bulbs, most of the energy used in the home is for heating - so turn the central heating off, stop heating rooms you're not actually in, and light a gas fire in the lounge instead. Yes, the rest of the house will be chilly, but that's a very small price to pay compared to not being able to get to work because of some green tax on petrol.

Bear in mind also that energy 'used' by your light bulbs, your TV, all those shameful appliances left on standby, is converted into heat - heat which, if you have a thermostatically controlled system, your boiler doesn't have to provide. All the electricity you ever use is ultimately used for heating - what's shameful is using it only for heating.

I'd have a lot more faith in the Govt's agenda if it were clearly based on good science. It's based on attacking a few fashionable targets, like the humble light bulb and the motorist. By doing so it misses the mark by a mile.

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

All the coal mines have shut now, no need to wheel that one out again

NotoriousREV

The huge flaw in the argument is that "scientists" are concluding a whole lot of stuff from extremly small samples of data.

Worldwide, our CO2 emissions were far higher than they are now back in the 60's, yet it's only in the last 10 years that the data supports global warming (source: documentary the other night about glaciers). So CO2 output goes down and the temp goes up?

It's utter bollocks to build long term models on short term data (and yes, 100 years IS short-term data).

Scientists are wrong more often than they're right. The earth ain't flat, the sun doesn't revolve around us, we can travel at more than 20 mph without suffocating, I still get a stinking cold for which there is no cure at least once a year and man's impact on climate change is negligable. FACT. <-- You can't argue once I've added that to a post, it's the law.

Martin2005

You make my point for me, better than I ever could!

Just to add, I think you'll find that the key data used by the scientific community is 'Ice core' data, which goes back a very very long way

NotoriousREV

I suppose that's true given that your point is as exactly as specious as mine, except mine was deliberate.

Martin2005

I would really appreciate an explanation of how my point of view is 'specious'

kingofturds

iTrader: (1)

The problem is this is already being taught as gospel in our schools! my nephew was shown the inconvenient truth and had to write about how mans impact would affect the earth over the next 50 years

As I stated earlier, I was shown a similar propoganda video about acid rain when I was the same age. And I see no evidence of sulpheric acid burning our skin off

Martin2005

I definitely agree with you here, I dont think that this should be taught as fact in school, because it isn't a fact, not yet anyway!

Acid rain was real, and is still a very real issue in developing economies where lots of coal is burnt. We in the west did something about it a reduced the impact, so that's a pretty bad example to use I think.

NotoriousREV

It's specious because it fits the current fashionable thinking but simply doesn't stand up to debate nor does it fit ALL available evidence. Let's be honest, there is as much evidence against CO2 being the driving factor behind climate change as there is for.

Using less energy, not dumping nasty chemicals around the place, using renewable energy and considering the impact of all our activities on the environment is definately the right thing to do, but I absolutely refuse to be lied to by people who are motivated by their personal financial interests i.e. scientists on the scrounge for funding, industry leaders on the lookout for a quick buck and governments looking for new taxation angles.

If CO2 emmissions are so damaging, bring back the 3 day week and ration petrol. And if you truly believe that man is responsible for climate change and that bothers you, don't buy a bloody Type 25. At the very least, it shouts hypocrasy.

Martin2005

But I didn't say any of these things!

I'm only lobbying for people to have an open-minded approach, what's wrong with that? It may make you feel better to put words in my mouth, but it doesn't change anything.

I have never ONCE said anything is FACT or certain, I was simply trying to say that simply throwing conspiracy theories into the debate to muddy the proper debate is not helping. Incidentally the only people on this thread using the words fact and definite are people denying the issue, which is why (in frustration) I wrote what I wrote.

As for my car, well at least I'm honest with myself, I could at this point launch into a long list of other more Co2 freindly things I do as well - but this really wasn't the point I was trying to make.