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Global cooling??? (1 Viewer)

I know this is ad hominem but the author also famously not only continues to defend the link between MMR vaccine and autism but also does not believe in evolution. Even if you tolerate her politics (zionist and anti-gay) her ignorance of science is shocking... http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1606768,00.html

I do worry about the almost religious fervour of AGM 'believers' and I'm happy to read AGM-skepticism from scientific sources, I can't take anything this woman writes seriously.

Graham
 
bitterntwisted said:
I know this is ad hominem but the author also famously not only continues to defend the link between MMR vaccine and autism but also does not believe in evolution. Even if you tolerate her politics (zionist and anti-gay) her ignorance of science is shocking... http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1606768,00.html

I do worry about the almost religious fervour of AGM 'believers' and I'm happy to read AGM-skepticism from scientific sources, I can't take anything this woman writes seriously.

Graham
Click to expand...

I can't agree with some of the views she holds either and her stance on evolution is potty but in this article she is merely the messenger - her sources are what seem interesting, whatever your feelings about her.
 
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Tyke said:
Oh dear Graham !!!

Colin
Click to expand...

Apologies for any ambiguity in that. I do not tolerate her politics. Not for one moment. Noted them as I couldn't resist illustrating the kind of person she is but acknowledged they were not relevant to the matter in hand.

As for her being a mere messenger in this instance, I'd like to see how selective her quotes were. As before, happy to read the papers or reviews of the papers by people who actually understand science but cannot trust anything she reports as being representative of the people she quotes.

Graham
 
Is it just me, or does anybody else here find her writing...difficult? Not the words or syntax or anything. Just her sentances are way too long to follow.
 
<sigh>

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/cosmoclimatology-tired-old-arguments-in-new-clothes/

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/on-veizers-celestial-climate-driver/

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sunspot_record_041027.html

Even if cosmic rays do have an effect on the Earth's climate, they do not explain all (not even much) of the trend in temperature change. Sceptics seem to be clutching at increasingly flimsier straws in denial of what's occuring. :(

EDIT: I've just realised that a lot of this is the already-discredited research quoted in 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' google that title & you'll find more refutation than I can manage here.
 
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scampo said:
So it's shares in Damart we need then??

Make of this what you will - but it seems interesting whatever your position regarding climate change.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1563
Click to expand...

Hi Steve Im not a great believer in all this global warming palaver myself climate change has been happening since time immemorial and will continue to do so , I will agree Co2 emmisions dont help but they are only a very minute part of the cause . I am always wary when threats of doom and gloom for our children and grandchildren are bandied about , thank god the aztecs aint still in charge or there would be dead virgins and babies lying around every where .
It must just be a coincidence that at a time when the African contries are starting to emerge they will be dicouraged from building power stations or using more fossil fuels that would allow them to move into the 21st century .
Mind you it must have come as a god send to Mr Brown a fine excuse to slap another tax on us .
Ask China about global warming , they are building coal fired power stations like billy ho .
And suddenly the other great pariah Nuclear power is now back in favour , seems like only yesterday they where villified for the pollution they caused .
On a lighter note lets hope we can have some more global warming next week Im on holiday ;)
 
I heard that the world is flat, in fact I have evidence of this: there is conclusive footage of a ship sailing off the edge of the world in Pirates of the Caribbean 3. What do you think of that, all you spherical-world theorists?
 
Hmm - think you're onto something here, Nick. If the world isn't a globe, then there can't be any such thing as Global Warming, can there? I think the potty round-earthers are getting support from the equally potty Climatologists as their causes are linked.

Adrian
 
Saying about China upthread, it's not just the power stations that are the worry.
In another thread (lost somewhere in BF...) I calculated that the projected increase in the Chinese population by 2050 will completely overwhelm any reductions in CO2 that would be gained from fully implementing the Kyoto Treaty merely by all the extra people breathing, let alone their power needs...
Then someone started on me, somehow reading into that that I was suggesting all Chinese and African women should have abortions, which was a pretty big leap from the original post I made. Nutter.
 
Melanie Phillips?
stark raving loony with well-documented outlandish ideas on many subjects...

more observant readers (i.e. not those of her Daily Mail columns) will have noticed the glaring error

The version of this article published in The Daily Mail said that water vapour formed most of the atmosphere.

It is worth reading right down to the end where the on-line text carries a correction...

oh dear.

Tim
 
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The Tom said:
Hi Steve Im not a great believer in all this global warming palaver myself climate change has been happening since time immemorial and will continue to do so , I will agree Co2 emmisions dont help but they are only a very minute part of the cause . I am always wary when threats of doom and gloom for our children and grandchildren are bandied about , thank god the aztecs aint still in charge or there would be dead virgins and babies lying around every where .
It must just be a coincidence that at a time when the African contries are starting to emerge they will be dicouraged from building power stations or using more fossil fuels that would allow them to move into the 21st century .
Mind you it must have come as a god send to Mr Brown a fine excuse to slap another tax on us .
Ask China about global warming , they are building coal fired power stations like billy ho .
And suddenly the other great pariah Nuclear power is now back in favour , seems like only yesterday they where villified for the pollution they caused .
On a lighter note lets hope we can have some more global warming next week Im on holiday ;)
Click to expand...


I shouldn't respond to this but...Yes, climate change has occurred since time immemorial, but never* at the rate it is changing now. Yes, CO2 is a small percentage of the atmosphere, but the actual amount of gas does not have a linear relationship with its effect on global climate.

I like to use an analogy (which I think I've posted here before). Picture a bathtub where the amount of water coming out of the tap is balanced with the amount of water draining through the plughole or evaporating away. Now, slightly increase the flow of water (increasing CO2 levels) whilst blocking up the plughole (cutting down trees etc.) What happens to the level of bath water?

Simple really...

I challenge anyone to find any more than a handful of papers that directly challenge the global warming hypothesis (that haven't already been discredited), compare this to the thousands of papers that support it and ask yourself-why do the deniers get as much (if not more) publicity than the rest? If anything the conspiracy theory is in the hands of the governments & their advisers (paymasters) in maintaining that there is any credible debate over the issue.


*for never, read at any time in the last half a million years or so.
 
I keep reading about how China is building all these power stations making our own initiatives futile, but never hear why. How much of their energy demand is driven by production of goods for the UK, US, and Europe? And if they are now getting rich enough to drive their own excess consumption, aren't they doing so on the back of ours? When we congratulate ourselves on our own conservation triumphs and improving environment - how our clean rivers are being recolonised by otters, do we consider how much pollution we have simply outsourced to China, fuelling the extinction of the Yangtze River Dolphin etc.?
 
bitterntwisted said:
I keep reading about how China is building all these power stations making our own initiatives futile, but never hear why. How much of their energy demand is driven by production of goods for the UK, US, and Europe? And if they are now getting rich enough to drive their own excess consumption, aren't they doing so on the back of ours? When we congratulate ourselves on our own conservation triumphs and improving environment - how our clean rivers are being recolonised by otters, do we consider how much pollution we have simply outsourced to China, fuelling the extinction of the Yangtze River Dolphin etc.?
Click to expand...


This picture of the most populous country on earth which is governed by a one-party dictatorship, being somehow driven or coerced to industrialise by UK/US/EU is simply laughable. It may fit a particular politico/economic world view which energises certain people ...but it is entirely removed from reality.
The “China miracle” happened because bold economic liberalisation and institutional reforms – especially agricultural reforms in the early 1980s – created competition and nurtured private entrepreneurship. Why did they choose this path 30 years ago?....why did we?!!
To speak of their "excess" consumption is to entirely miss the point. Their per capita consumption is a FRACTION of ours-and yet they are the second largest economy in the world, and have just become the largest CO2 emitter on the planet.
They have a very long way to go yet before their average standard of living comes anywhere near yours-and there are 1.2 billion of them. Until then they will continue to use their massive labour force to outcompete the west in almost any product you care to mention-and we will buy them because they are cheap.
Will they pollute their environment-yes.
Will that be the fault of the Wicked West-no

Colin
 
Imaginos said:
climate change has occurred since time immemorial, but never* at the rate it is changing now.
Click to expand...

Well I'm glad you added the caveat-but it doesn't really help.
Rapid climate change is not a recent phenomenon.

The history of the last 2.5 million years indicates that very significant changes in temperature-and sea levels occured over centuries and even decades.

Climate change & sea level change respond to triggers which cause quite rapid "flips".

"Even without anthropogenic climate modification there is always an axe hanging over our head, in the form of random very large-scale changes in the natural climate system; By starting to disturb the system, humans may simply be increasing the likelihood of sudden events which could always occur anyway."

"Ice Age climate change has been rapid, pervasive and frequent. For instance, during the last 2.6 million years, the duration of the current Ice Age, there have been 104 major fluctuations between global cold and global warmth. Each of the major fluctuations was itself complex, encompassing ‘minor’ changes of up to 5 degrees centigrade in average annual temperature. As temperature rose and fell, so did global sea level, by up to 130 metres. These changes did not lead to catastrophic global extinctions of the earth’s biota. The extensive animal and plant communities of the past, undisrupted by human development, could adapt to the changes by migrating, or by shrinking or expanding populations."

( quotes from sources given below)

Our civilisation has arisen during the last 10,000 years-a period of relative stability in climatic terms-a period during which man has systematically destroyed huge tracts of the natural environment, altered water courses and systems etc....and increased his population to 6 billions.
When the next climate "flip" comes man will be totally unequiped to cope with the effects-and we will have made it more difficult for the other species to adapt .


http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/adamsetal99.pdf

http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/features/2000-2009/2004/12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c


http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm

Colin
 
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Tyke said:
This picture of the most populous country on earth which is governed by a one-party dictatorship, being somehow driven or coerced to industrialise by UK/US/EU is simply laughable. It may fit a particular politico/economic world view which energises certain people ...but it is entirely removed from reality.
The “China miracle” happened because bold economic liberalisation and institutional reforms – especially agricultural reforms in the early 1980s – created competition and nurtured private entrepreneurship. Why did they choose this path 30 years ago?....why did we?!!
To speak of their "excess" consumption is to entirely miss the point. Their per capita consumption is a FRACTION of ours-and yet they are the second largest economy in the world, and have just become the largest CO2 emitter on the planet.
They have a very long way to go yet before their average standard of living comes anywhere near yours-and there are 1.2 billion of them. Until then they will continue to use their massive labour force to outcompete the west in almost any product you care to mention-and we will buy them because they are cheap.
Will they pollute their environment-yes.
Will that be the fault of the Wicked West-no

Colin
Click to expand...

Sorry, Colin, I wasn't suggesting that Chinese industrialisation and the consequent pollution and increasing carbon emmissions were solely the fault of the 'wicked west'. I well appreciate that the situation is a great deal more complex than that. But do you not accept that consumer demand in the west has played a significant role in enabling China's rapid growth? Is our demand for more and cheaper goods not at least partly responsible for the scale of the pollution and carbon emissions? Would China's economic miracle have occurred at the rate and on the scale it has done if it were not able to exploit wage differentials to manufacture and export consumer goods? Is it not partially, or even significantly reliant on the outsourcing of manufacture to China by western firms evading increasingly punitive environmental legislation? I'm certainly not offering this as the reason - that would be a facile reading of a very complex issue - but do you not accept that it is a factor?

Put it another way, could we have acheived the economic growth we have in the UK in tandem with reduced pollution and improved air and river quality without outsourcing our manufacturing and exploiting lower wages and environmental standards in China?

And don't we agree on the long term solution, whether acheivable or not - fewer (rich) people buying less crap?

Graham
 
Graham,
There are a lot of rich birders who belong to this forum who fly all over the world enjoying their pastime. I think they should be exempt from your "long term" solution. Don't you?

Cordially,
Bob
 
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