Climate Change

We used to have elephants etc in England!

'The abuse of science and the dissemination of misinformation' golly, that's a bit strong!
I'm dipping out of this discussion too, for the same reasons as JessM ( my BP)
My views Jeni are merely that and not hysteria (BP even higher since I looked up hysteria in my trusty Penguin English Dictionary
I can see evidence of change, icecaps reduced, glaciers receding AND the great white egret has nested in Somerset for the first time!
I echo JessM when she writes:
.... when all measures that would be taken on 'climate change' are sensible ways of saving individuals money and securing the energy supply for this country and our grandchildren in the future.'

I admire your tenacity, Bags. You present your arguments in a balanced and informed way, and I certainly appreciate the insights you provide which I would probably never find by myself.
It's all too easy to label folk on either side of the argument as 'fanatics' or 'hysterics'.

What has made me passionate in this area is the abuse of science and the dissemination of misinformation.

Do not twist what I have said. I'm in favour of improved energy efficiency but it needs to be both effective per se (which wind power, for instance, so far, isn't) and it needs to be cost effective and not throw more and more people into fuel poverty in COLD climates!

I apologise Bags - I was not "telling you to shut up" - but wondering why you are so passionate about this, when all the measures that would be taken on "climate change" (insulation, energy efficient boilers and cars, diversifying into renewables) are sensible ways of saving individuals money and securing the energy supply for this country and our grandchildren in the future. I'm sure you agree that those are good things, help to reduce environmental degradation and are therefore not a big waste of money. So mystified as to why you are so vehement on the subject.
It does really wind me up though, which I don't enjoy, so i need to stay out of this discussion on GN.

Thanks, Bags.
Good point, too, about the UNIPCC being a political body.

bagsyou are not a lone voice. I agree with you! What more could you want?

And as if in confirmation of what I have been saying, here is an article published today on the "second thoughts" on global warming by one of Germany's first investors in alternative energy, Fritz Vahrenholt:

Second thoughts

another point of access to same article

Like me, like most of us, he believed all the IPCC hype until he began to look at the scientific evidence more closely. We are not rare nowadays, we doubters of the infallibility of the IPCC. The UNIPCC is, after all, a political body, not a scientific one. That shows in its reports.

As I said below, deal with some of the massive problems we already have and that we can deal with, and adapt to changes in climate, as animals and plants of all kinds (including us) have had to do in the past in order to survive. It is the people who think we can control the climate of something as big as our planet who are in denial – essentially they are denying that nature is more powerful than we are. We have to go with nature rather than fight it. Eskimos survived in glacial 'deserts' by changing their behaviour to suit the climate and environment that they found themselves in; Saharan people survived in that desert by adapting their behaviour and way of life to suit the climate and environment they found themselves in. The same thing repeats across the world in all kinds of different climates and environments, some more hostile and some less hostile. It is human adaptability in the face of challenges from nature that has been our great strength in the past and it will be again.

Besides, the predictions made twenty or so years ago have been proved wrong. The models are wrong. Climatology is an ology in its infancy. They don't know what the climate will do. They are guessing. So far their guesses have been wrong. They are in denial about this and refuse point blank to address perfectly reasonable scientific criticisms of their work or to enable others to replicate their experiments with the raw data (because they won't publish the raw data. If, as we are told ad nauseam, "the science is settled", they wouldn't need to hold back their data. Anyway, all that's being referred to there is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. That's settled. Its role as a climate driver is not).

Much of climatology is a disgrace to the name of science.

I may seem like a lone voice on this but I'm not. I just decided to muster up enough courage to say these things in spite of the name-calling and being told to shut up and, yes, the hysteria. Why else would scientific matter push anyone's blood pressure up? Why would anyone want to put a stop to the fact that with a slightly higher proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere it will be easier to feed the world's growing human population because CO2 is plant food? Crops and forests will benefit and, indirectly, so will we. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

A sceptic is a person who refuses to accept popularity or authority as proving the truth of opinions.

Bang

sorry jens

shoot me now

w e h a v e t o p r o t e c t t h e p l a n e t a g a i n s t g l o b al w a r m i n g.

just in case

totally now

Protecting the planet is not the same thing as global warming!

I don't understand why anyone would want to spend a huge amount of time trying to prove the point, one way or the other.

What actual behaviour do you advocate Bags?

It's not hysteria jeni.

Anyone who cares at all about our grandchildren's futures would see the need to protect the planet. Apparently there are as many 'nay' sayers as 'yay' sayers in the scientific world, on this subject. So it makes sense to be on the safe side. And to teach the young generation to do the same.

It's not difficult.

bags couldn't agree with you more! It's a type of hysteria!

I meant of course, although......

No, it's brainwashy.

Good post, Bags - although that's only my opinion, of course, which may not count in some quarters! [sink]

It isn't sciencey at all.

Psst. Bags! Go and read that other thread. Something about the plain truth.

It's science-y - I think.

PS Warmists used to honour Lovelock for his Gaia Hypothesis. Funny how they're changing their tune now that he, along with other sceptical environmentalists, has had the integrity to acknowledge that the models do not fit reality.

People keep telling me to shut-up. Politely . I guess they just don't want to know that people are asking why it was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period but CO2 levels were much lower than now. What caused that warming, I wonder?

But some people have said they are grateful for the links I put up so I'll carry on. As with all threads on gransnet, nobody need read or respond to them unless they actually want to.

Those dinosaurs were eating in Antarctica but Antarctica wasn't at the South Pole then. Makes a bit of difference you know. Scotland used to be in the southern hemisphere.

There were also times when CO2 was far far higher than it is now but there was no runaway global warming.

We are actually still in an ice age, only an interglacial. Generally it has been warmer than it is now and life on the planet did perfectly well. We evolved during warmer periods than we are in now.

Why is there so much dissenting science written by, yes real, scientists that is questioning the over-simplification of CO2 increases lead to warming scenario?

Why do some papers say that CO2 increases follow temperature rises by 800 years?

Why hasn't average global temperature risen since 1998 when we not only haven't reduced the amount of CO2 that we're pumping into the atmosphere but have added more?

To end, the reason I rabbit on about this is essentially because we are being asked to pay out trillions of dollars to apply ineffective pseudo-solutions to something we cannot control anyway. That money would be better spent dealing with actual problems (e.g. malaria, millions of people without clean water, and so on) that we can do something about.

OMG - he is mad as a fish. Fracking! How can that ever be a good idea. It is so wrong in so many ways.
There is a great big fact out there - millions of years ago the carbon was floating around in the air. The planet was hot. Dinosaurs chomped on tree ferns at the south pole.
Then the carbon got turned into oil, gas and coal. The planet cooled down - this was cause and effect. Now we are putting all that carbon back into circulation and it is going to take another few millions for the natural world to turn it back into coal etc. So we WILL warm up. How fast is the only question.
Glad you are not scared bags so why not just let the subject rest then? The lady doth, perhaps, protest too much?
My questions are rhetorical. I need to go away from this thread. Not good for my BP.