Leslie

It is pretty apparent now why I am not prepared to enter a discussion with Mr T.

Thanks Paul for supplying that link. I notice that he assumed before he even finished his reply to me that I was not going to do that. Why make such an assumption I wonder?

As is evident he is not going to accept anything that anyone says which does not agree with his ideas. I said he appeared to be biased and maybe thats right, but he is perfectly entitled to his own point of view of course, just as I am and it was not necessary to be unpleasant towards me in the first place. Manners makyth man as they used to say!

The point is that he cannot prove that we are undergoing global warming and the only positive evidence is that it has not increased now for such a long interval.

We are indeed undergoing climate change and initially I thought the same that it was due to excess CO2. I also accept that I have not got sufficient real evidence one way or the other, but my feelings are that it is a cyclical change and therefore we cannot do that much about it. I also feel that we should take better care of this planet as far as pollution and wasteful practices are concerned.

My present feelings on the CO2 bit is that our lying and cheating masters have leapt on this as an excuse to screw the money out of the people for their own useless purposes and that they don't really care any more about the planet than they do for the people of this country.

Les

TelBoy

Still majoring in condescension i see, Les? How you fool so many on here for so much of the time still baffles me. It's the SN con trick to end them all. And you're the one who realises least. Funny.

PeteBrant

I think we are experiencing climate change and I think that there is a possbility it is man made.

And are plenty of papers out there out support the argument.

What amazes me, is that people here are so arrogant enough, to beleive that they know better, when it comes to such an incredibly complex subject.

Regardless, even if the experts are wrong, I cannot see a downside to a less wasteful and cleaner way of living.

I simply do not buy the money making angle at all for the simple reason that green taxes are there to dissuade people from acting in a certain way - If people do not act in that way, they do not pay the tax, so how does it raise revenue?

Of course I fully expect Klaatu to come along and give us lots of stories about how he has been studying climate change for 400 years, and put "lots" of "words" in "quotes" for no "apparant" reason, but that still won't stop me from having an open mind on the subject, and close it off for no other reason than plain old cynicism.

Shark Man

I'll address pollution/resource consumption issues when the Chinese do. Until then its business as usual, barring huge tax hikes. I struggle to see what we do now can be worse than what we were doing during the industrial revolution.

coolangatta

Says the man who has fallen for the greatest con of our time

TelBoy

We shall see. Or as i've said, i hope we don't


I wish i could share your faith, i really do.

nickhasl

sorry people but i think its a load off cr*p. it's funny how the say it's all happing and then all this green tax comes out and how they make billions on it.
if we are to blame then surely the places like usa or china need to be looked out and sorted out first b4 we have to pay out off are hard earned cash (like we always do)

TelBoy

I don't have meaningless data to hand, but i'd assume the scale of pollution in the Industrial Revolution is dwarfed by what's being pumped out today. But yes, the point about China (and India) is valid. But i still don't think we have the right to stomp our feet with out hands on our hips just because they aren't playing ball. You can't expect ANY change unless you're leading by example.

TelBoy

Yes it's the "standard" reposté. But as i've asked before, what is your moral objection to seeking out more environmentally, tax-avoiding alternatives?

coolangatta

A typically poorly thought out and structured response.
Are you attempting to become a caricature of yourself?

'Plenty of papers' written by people who have struck gold on this issue and would have to find another research 'golden goose' if they changed their dubious views.

PeteBrant

With regards to China and India - We spend the best part of 200 years polluting, making a fortune out of it, and when they eventually get on the gravy train, we tell them they have to get off it?

No wonder they are dragging thier heels.

It'ts like you finding a £1000, anf then spending £500 of it. Your wife finds out about the money and decides she wants to spend some, so you give her £50 and say "sorry love, we have to limit you to £50 I'm afraind, theres not much left."

nickhasl

but if thing's are that bad which i am not to sure they are. why do we have to pay for it, look how things have change over the last 2 years. people reuse more, use the car less, turn thing off that they done use, what more can we do.

if you no off any other way off help the planet with out taking more money off people, let people no i am sure they would be willing to listen

TelBoy

Mr coolangatta, what would it take for you to change your mind about the cause of climate change? What would convince you that man was playing a part? Is there anything? Or are we SO totally irrelevant that we could burn tyres all day long from here to eternity and still have a lovely planet on which to live? You seem obsessed with the notion that money is the sole catalyst for this whole topic. I'm bemused by that.

PeteBrant

No, I'm just trying to have a sensible debate, you abusive ****ing ****

But they haven't have they, I mean forget the Al Gores, they are just figure heads, people of prominence promiting awareness of an issue. The people behind the scenes, the people working on the science, aren;t in it for the money are they?

Unless of course you are aying that studying the climate and supporting climate change makes you, by default, corrupt?

coolangatta

I'm not sure what a '****ing ****' is but maybe I aspire to be one

Of course climatologists will provide a pessimistic view. If they said everything was hunky dory their number and funding would shrivel PDQ.

TelBoy

Phew, glad we got a financial angle into that reply too!!

Shark Man

That's the thing though, isn't it? Are we going to lead by example, or just be ignored? I strongly feel it will be the latter - as develolping worlds get a smell of the mass capitalism that the west have benefitted from for so long - The greed will cloud any environmental morals. Just like here. I often note its the end consumer being victimised and urged to take action. But we merely buy what is provided for us. Goverenments daren't not clamp down on industry too heavily, for they are the ones that earn us our bread; The economic constraints and risks of them moving elsewhere are always present.

Granted its a chicken and egg scienario: industry provides what the consumer wants; but likewise the consumer can only buy what industry provides. I believe the latter is the way it should be handled, but not by penalising the consumer by cashing in on it.

And its the cashing in is what infuriate me in this debate - both from government and industry. I would love to have my roof lined with PV cells and be self-suficient. But I'm not paying £30K+ for what is just a load of silicone. And likewise, I doubt energy companies would like every household to have roofs lined with PV cells either - it does them out of a business.

And talking about alternate energy; with petrol prices as they are; Did the ***** not invent synthetic petrol? Running a car off recycled plastic bottles has to be worth looking at with respect to what crude is costing. Even if it probably is of no benefit in CO2 reduction.

PeteBrant

Right so, surely the same argument can be applied to those scientists privately funded by corporations as opposed to governments.

I mean, a climatologists carrying out reasearch for, say, Shell, has a vested interest in saying that "no no, everything is fine in climate land", surely.

I mean it works both ways, you can't accuse one group of scientists of being drvien by money, and not accept the same applies to the other side of the fence.

TelBoy

All salient points, Shark Man. The defining difference though, i guess, is that i don't feel i'm being personally "victimised" when an environmental tax is applied. But it's clear that many, many people around the world do. Different perspectives.

PeteBrant

Thats why getting the West to sign up en masse is so important. It almost forces india and china to comply.

TO give an example, the RoHS/WEEE directives take the lead out of solder (as you probably know, lead is a fantastically harmful substance, that never, ever leaves the atmoshere or your body).
In order for any supplied product to be RoHS compliant, absolute no components can contain any lead; what that means is tha tnot only must you follow a lead free process, but so must the suppliers of all your components.

So the chain drives companies. FOr exmaple, almost all of the big Japanese home electronics compoanies are now RoHS compliant - Sony, Panasonic, Nintendo et al.

What that means is that any company that suplies those companies must also be RoHS compliant. And they will comply because it such a huge loss if they don;t.

The same applies to CO2 emissions. Once you start getting legislation in that in order to be abeel to call yourself "Carbon low" or whatever, you process and suppliers have to meet certain standards, then everyone in the chain has to comply. So that effedct Chinese and indian companies to a great extent.

The West has to lead it because the the west buy the goods and control the markets.

Klaatu

Clearly Mr T hasn't studied anything other than that reported by the IPCC and Al Gore.

Look at the data, ALL the data, and you will see AGW is a con. Mr T, how much Co2 are humans responsible for in the last 150 years? What caused the cooling between 1941 and 1975 along with dramatic Co2 emissions?

Klaatu

Peter, you clearly don not understand the Chinese do you? Whatever you call it, it will be a tax on the west, effectively a tax cut for those in India and China.

We in the west will subsidise those to do not "comply".

PeteBrant

I've been to China 6 times in the last year. I'm pretty clued up on thier manufacturing process and the pressure being applied on Chinese manufacturers to play ball.

Klaatu

So no idea about the Chinese culture then? Thought so.

TelBoy

You're missing the point entirely. To put it into the language of my profession, forget the technical analysis, look at the fundamentals. We're probably just as bad as each other in focusing almost solely on one or the other, but in my opinion you can't just keep throwing numbers at this and keep preaching that things aren't changing. Well you can, you're proving it, but my point being that by the time the technicals have changed sufficiently for you to be convinced, we'll be so far down the river that your bar charts won't be worth the paper they're written on.

Klaatu

Ah yes, pressure! Did I forget to mention Tibet and Tiananman Sq?

Klaatu

You are early to this debate however, I have never claimed climate doesn't change. But to blame this current, interglacial warming, solely on human activity, in particular Co2, is a falacy.

PeteBrant

What's that got to do with Chinese businesses being put under pressure to modify thier manufacturing processes, so that western companies that buy from them can comply with legislation in their own countries, because if they don't, they will buy from somwhere else?

THis has already happened - With the example I gave of RoHS/WEEE. China as a whole has had to shift to a lead-free process to satisfy western legislation.

TelBoy

Ok, to be clear i'm focusing on what i percieve as the dramatic alteration of climate patterns in the last 50 years. Some of it is natural no doubt, but i cannot and will not buy into the theory that what we're seeing is merely a tiny part of the Earth's natural cycle.

Klaatu

50 years? That would be represented as a very narrow timeline on a graph...and a very steep upward trend, certainly not long enough of a timeframe to get a decent sample. I, personally, have studied this subject for not much less than that.