Poll: Has this winter changed your view about human affect on climate change?

[Gray-Wolf]

GW, if you want to go along the terminally-ill paradigm, may I repsectfully suggest that you should say it starts with 'irrational hope' first.

I stand corrected!

P3. I don't believe you to be behind the times either!, just in some 'fast breaking news' type areas we do not have the luxury of science to fall back on and we must propose our own explainations via our own experience without the luxury of many years of research to back us up. Your position as Article hound association president is well earned

Edited January 26, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[Upgrade]

I, for one, do not find the concept (or even the prospect) of GW anything like as worrying as the over-the-top measures suggested (and possibly soon-to-be-employed) to counteract our supposed part in it.

To Jimmyay - that's an absolutely horrifying article. There's a discussion about a form of indiscriminate Eugenics in there, and then the inevitable moral discussion which concludes that, morally speaking, it is wrong to do nothing.

You said earlier "what's the point of african people having 8 kids each when there's no food to feed them, for example?" Well what's the point of a bird laying six eggs, when only four of these will ever get to hatch, and only two of the emerged chicks will survive to adulthood? It's called "Survival" - if you have 8 kids then there's a much better chance that one or two of your offspring will reach maturity. This may sound a fairly inhuman argument, but that's the way it is (and certainly no more inhuman than the suggestion of imposed sterilisation on vast swathes of the population).

Anyway, rant over!

C-Bob

EDIT - BTW, I do agree with some of what Mondy says. While it is true that some of the pro-GW crowd (not intending to be disrespectful ) do listen to counter-arguments, there are others with whom I have found myself going around in circles, reiterating the same points time and time again in the vain hope that what I'm saying will sink in. (Again, no disrespect intended to anyone on here, but the argument about whether fossil fuels are part of the Carbon Cycle or not is a case in point here - I was not even questioning whether or not we should curb our emissions, merely correcting what I perceived to be a flaw in the wider argument. I chased my own tail for a while there!)

i don't think it is a horrible article and it comes from a mainstream website about peak oil and environmental degredation.

we're going to have to do something as the world just cannot support all these people. we already give our precious food away through the WFP but that surplus will be needed to feed ourselves very soon as crops yields are starting to become more unpredictable and shortages become more likley throughout the world, not just in the third wordl. there are already over a BILLION people now living in sorry, infected slums, throughout the world with no work. i wonder how many of you have seen these places and the lives of the people live in them? The population has increased by about the same number in the last 15 years. Is this all our futures? What kind of world is this? its completely unaccpetable. i accept this is all thought provoking stuff and we have strayed far beyond the original topic , yes this winter has scared me as i think if the summer is 4 -5 degrees above normal we'll be in for a roasting - but on the broader point of what we do about climate change i think wholesale population control is the only way if people globally are to hope to maintain or increase their standard of living ( which is pretty poor for many already). Im sure i'm not alone in thinking this.

[Admiral_Bobski]

To P3 - thanks for your reply. You, at least, are one person who can always keep a level head in a debate (I'm not being ironic or sarcastic - I truly mean that). I have to dash out in a moment, so I shall be brief - I just want to clarify that I have never advocated a "do nothing" approach. I have suggested a more measured, perhaps insentive-based, approach, and I have argued against such "solutions" as Kyoto and Carbon Trading, but I have never suggested that we do nothing. Further, I have said on many occasions that we should investigate other fuel sources post haste, if for no other reason than because fossil fuels will eventually leave us high and dry. Using fossil fuels with gay abandon is only going to leave us up a certain creek with no rowing implement when we finally run out of them (whenever that may be).

Other than that, pretty much in agreement with you. This time!

C-Bob

PS - Looking forward to what they say in AR4. Will it sway me, or give me more ammunition?!

EDIT - quick reply to Jimmyay - I agree entirely with P3's response to the article, and can add nothing more to it. As he says, if the world isn't capable of supporting the population, the population will decrease of its own accord, without any need for imposed sterilisation. Just because it came from a legitimate source doesn't mean that it is morally correct, or that it has taken everything into acount.

Edited January 26, 2007 by Captain_Bobski

[Gray-Wolf]

EDIT - quick reply to Jimmyay - I agree entirely with P3's response to the article, and can add nothing more to it. As he says, if the world isn't capable of supporting the population, the population will decrease of its own accord, without any need for imposed sterilisation. Just because it came from a legitimate source doesn't mean that it is morally correct, or that it has taken everything into acount.

Just another example of what 'best intentions' can bring. If Birth control had been introduced along with innoculations/clean water etc. we may not have been in this pickle but the old 'missionary and his wife' type 'do gooding' didn't (do good).

[Upgrade]

EDIT - quick reply to Jimmyay - I agree entirely with P3's response to the article, and can add nothing more to it. As he says, if the world isn't capable of supporting the population, the population will decrease of its own accord, without any need for imposed sterilisation. Just because it came from a legitimate source doesn't mean that it is morally correct, or that it has taken everything into acount.

i'm sorry , this just isn't right, because by the time we get to that break point, the worlds environment will have been so degraded as to not to be able to support any kind of civilistaion.

in 1980 the world had 4.4 bn people in it.

in 2000 it reached 6 bn

by 2015 it will be 7bn .

this is the major challenge of our times. 10 cities the size of London each year being added to the world population - all wanting food , clothing, housing, coka cola. but, because of scarce resources, getting decreasing amounts of food, cast off western clothes to wear, slum dwellings, and the only access to fresh water to be paid for by the bottle and the only cooking fuel wood and charcol from the forests. it is totally irresponsible of us to allow this to continue or it will eventually destroy us all.

yet talk of population control gets you castigated as some sort of weird new Hitler. very sad we cant debate this properly.

Just another example of what 'best intentions' can bring. If Birth control had been introduced along with innoculations/clean water etc. we may not have been in this pickle but the old 'missionary and his wife' type 'do gooding' didn't (do good).

true

[Mondy]

very sad we cant debate this properly.

Well, the debate is becoming more off-tangent with every post, but i'm wondering if any of the GW'ers have read the links i put up on the previous page? Or is there nothing to debate there?

[The Penguin]

yet talk of population control gets you castigated as some sort of weird new Hitler.

And quite rightly.

This is a simple case of foxes and rabbits. You and G-W seem to be taking on the mantle of the farmer who isn't interested in the natural order and would wipe out both species so the field assumes your personal sense of order.

[Upgrade]

With a spare 15 mins to kill before i go pick my car up from the garage (it wasn't polluting the air, just overheading *cough*), thought i'd put some sceptic links up for people not sure. You don't have to believe pro GWers, y'know!

Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming

Scare tactics

“I don’t like the word ‘Balance’’- Says ABC News Global Warming Reporter

“Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming”

Of course, i'm fully expecting a rebuttal from these links and the source is neither good nor true ( )

well, even if GW wasn't true, nearly every measure postulated to counter its effects would leave us with a cleaner, greener environment and be good for business in the long term. here at my work ( yes i have been busy this afternoon ) we have got a new environmental policy which will frame all our business decisions so we are as green as we can be. this has to be good, it is social responsibility whatever way you look at it. What do you suggest, we just keep going as we are, just on the offchance that its all a hoax, like the Millenium Bug? The end result of that would still be a more polluted world ,GW or not.

[Mondy]

What do you suggest, we just keep going as we are, just on the offchance that its all a hoax, like the Millenium Bug? The end result of that would still be a more polluted world ,GW or not.

As mentioned before, Mother Nature will see to an end of any polluted world, Gw or not[in her own time and when most likely we're all dead - i'm talking thousands of years yet]. By then a 0.6c temp increase and decrease will have occured time and again..

Now there's a thought provoking debate. Mother Nature v Global Warming.

Edited January 26, 2007 by Mondy

[Upgrade]

And quite rightly.

This is a simple case of foxes and rabbits. You and G-W seem to be taking on the mantle of the farmer who isn't interested in the natural order and would wipe out both species so the field assumes your personal sense of order.

well i did attend an agricultural college years ago so no doubt that's where i got my crackpot ideas from.

i don't understand you point though .no one's saying kill half the world's population ; just that it's far too high and needs to be reduced. this could be done in any number of ways.

so where would you draw the line? 8 billion, 10 billion, 20 billion people, before you said we had to do something? that's going to be a seriously compromised, wretched, unhappy quality of life for 95 % of people, simple matter of scarce resources, its so basic it hardly needs pointing out. how many years before we see crowded shanty towns growing up on the edge of all the cities in europe? not as many years away as you might expect my friend.

[Gray-Wolf]

And quite rightly.

This is a simple case of foxes and rabbits. You and G-W seem to be taking on the mantle of the farmer who isn't interested in the natural order and would wipe out both species so the field assumes your personal sense of order.

I thought I was suggesting we were wrong to impose our order of change on the then 3rd world (as we saw it) in the 19th/20th century.

Before we took it upon ourselves to interfere child mortality saw to it that only a small proportion of the children grew born grew up into adults that bred.

Along we came and finding childhood mortality 'uncomfortable' we sought to remove it (and went a long way to achieving it) We didn't however consider how the countries would feed the new 'survivors' or their offspring.

I would not propose non-interference and hindsight comes with 20/20 vision but we did boob didn't we?

[Mondy]

Scare stories of yesteryear trawling through the net

- It's from this "alarming" article in Newsweek 1975.

There was the hole in the ozone layer, which crops up every now and again having grown, contracted etc..

Acid rain, devastating forests across Europe and America unless we do something about it now (1985?).

Oil running out in 10 years - been ongoing for 50 years, i believe.

Impending ice age, all of the scientists unanimously agreed (all the scientists being paid to reasearch it) that we might as well take skiing lessons. I wonder where they all went? Did they save time by emigrating to Antactica, getting a head start on everyone else? Maybe they don't know! Maybe they should meet the global warming lot, have a few beers, chill out.

I vaguely recall reading about the desert (well the Sahara anyway) was supposed to be creeping up on our shores by now, should at least be halfway through France.... Can anyone confirm?

The Jupiter Effect was going to turn our planet inside out thirty years ago, unless it did and we just haven't noticed yet!

Mad cow disease, Bird flu - the most recent-- they've just disappeared.

Whats happened to all the paid lackeys of corporations who were covering up the above? They're cleverer than we thought, evidently. I mean to cover up an iceage for 20 years is some PR departmental feat..I'd hire them.

[Gray-Wolf]

Bird flu is very much alive and well and may be visiting a city/town near you soon!

EDIT See H5N1 thread.

Edited January 26, 2007 by Gray-Wolf

[Admiral_Bobski]

To Jimmyay, you said, "i don't understand you point though .no one's saying kill half the world's population ; just that it's far too high and needs to be reduced. this could be done in any number of ways. "

Agreed that murdering two thirds of the population would be a tad controversial, so what's the alternative? Sterilisation was bandied about in that article. So who gets to decide who's not allowed to have kids? Well, nobody of course - we'll release a virus that randomly selects people. So it's like some kind of Sterilisation Lottery? Are the people who get the virus or the people who don't get the virus the winners? There's the moral argument. There's the infringement of the individuals' rights. There's the serious psychological damage done to those who become sterile. That's okay, is it? This argument is absurd!

C-Bob

PS - Nice work there Mondy! The only difference is that the GW thing has more oomph behind it which has somehow managed to keep it going for thirty-odd years. I'm not saying GW is all a hoax, or a conspiracy, or anything of the sort, but scientists have proclaimed various things in the past which were wrong, but based upon the best information they had at the time...

[Element92]

One swallow does not a summer make. One very mild winter does not prove that global warming is right. But all the mild winters (many of which are the mildest ever recorded, plus the warmest summers, and warmest global temperatures) we have had since 1987, are starting to make it look a whole lot righter.

And the weight of some of the best physicists and astronomers are on-side. I remember listening to Dr Michio Kaku (one of the USA's top physicists, and a proponent of Super String Theory), who was asked whether he thought global warming was occurring, and if so when did he change his mind. He answered that he changed his mind when he first saw the strong positive correlation since 1740 (the real start of the industrial revolution) between a rise in our economic activity, atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.

The credit for the forecast of Global warming and the greenhouse effect should go to the late Dr Carl Sagan, a prominent NASA/JPL astronomer. In the 1970s, after studying the data sent back to earth by the NASA Mariner 2 unmanned spacecraft, it became apparent that Venus, the earth's evil twin, was not a cloud-shrouded tropical paradise, but an horrendous runaway planet. Later, Sagan used the data from the NASA Viking landers on Mars in 1976 to show what would happen if there was not enough CO2 in the atmosphere. The result was a freeze-dried world we know as Mars today. Proof indeed about the importance of unmanned space research, and the fact that by studying other worlds me may understand our own a little better.

Does a technological civilisation inevitably self-destruct because it cannot devise a method to mitigate the devastating global climatic effects of its own industrial processes on its home planet? The need is urgent, but so far no such method that would work in a short timescale has been devised, and our political leaders are paralysed and do nothing, because they realise that nothing less than a complete overhauling of the world's economy can avoid global catastrophe. The odd solar panel here/wind turbine there although commendable, are a drop in the ocean when one witnesses the industrialisation in the Far East.

[VillagePlank]

I stand corrected!

P3. I don't believe you to be behind the times either!, just in some 'fast breaking news' type areas we do not have the luxury of science to fall back on and we must propose our own explainations via our own experience without the luxury of many years of research to back us up. Your position as Article hound association president is well earned

I'm sorry that I was so blunt; there was no implication nor intent behind the shortness of statement, there, I'm afraid: I just have had first had experience . . . . and it's not all it's cracked up to be

I think we should start our own project: try to put bias aside and see what we come out with. My very first problem would be with sun distance and angle of radiation for any point of latitude. I can do the programming, I just need the ideas . . .

One last thing: don't be frightened by vast search spaces (such as annealed solutions to teleconnections) I do this stuff for a living, so I should be able to help out quite nicely.

Perhaps we can publish our own paper? edit: OK four pints of guinness is perhaps too much for me . . . but I do do strategic data mining (and write the software) for a multi-national, so I hope that helps a little with my, perhaps, arrogance

edit (again! - too much Guinness, for sure): If we held research openly to anyone and sundry, and provided a rational as to why we're asking questions, and perhaps get other people to ask questions, then perhaps it would be more useful. After all, all we want to do is get to the bottom of the whole affair regardless of the outcome. As I said, my first project would be to take away the solar part of warming - it is after all the closest part of the system. Another thing: we MUST at all costs make it open source so people can argue the equations, the programming, the very reasoning behind it all. This does not happen elsewhere - I've tried to get the source code under FOA Act and because of 'value for the publis purse' I cannot get hold of it.

An Open Source Climate Modelling Project - now that's worth it's weight in gold, that is. Really

Edited January 26, 2007 by VillagePlank

[parmenides3]

Well done, Mondy, you found Marc Morano. He's a stooge of former senator James Inhofe. I'm sure there are hundreds of places where ad homs can be found; my favourite is Rabett Run; http://rabett.blogspot.com/

As for the material: nothing new there. Coby Beck does a decent job of explaining why some of these are wrong/irrelevant on : http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/ , but there's really nothing there which counts as a scientific refutation of AGW, just a few cherry-picked misrepresentations and the odd falsehood. it is an interesting exercise to follow up the sources for the comments (Allegre, for example), to see what they actually have or haven't said. Allegre specifically did not say that Kilimanjaro was proof that AGW wasn't happening, merely that, in this case, AGW wasn't sufficient explanation for the loss of the Kilimanjaro glaciers. This has to do with precipitation. Interesting oversight by Morano, though, is the more recent work which suggest a decent possibility that the precip. changes which probably started the process could be attributable to climatic shifts. This is just one example. The rest is pretty much of the same ilk. Kilimanjaro is not a refutation of GW. The reduction of 80% of the world's glaciers, however, probably is evidence for GW.

:)P

Element92: I think you're giving Sagan undue credit. Check this out: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html Lots of good stuff on there. :)P

Edited January 26, 2007 by parmenides3

[Gray-Wolf]

I'm sorry that I was so blunt; there was no implication nor intent behind the shortness of statement, there, I'm afraid: I just have had first had experience . . . . and it's not all it's cracked up to be

I think we should start our own project: try to put bias aside and see what we come out with. My very first problem would be with sun distance and angle of radiation for any point of latitude. I can do the programming, I just need the ideas . . .

One last thing: don't be frightened by vast search spaces (such as annealed solutions to teleconnections) I do this stuff for a living, so I should be able to help out quite nicely.

Perhaps we can publish our own paper? edit: OK four pints of guinness is perhaps too much for me . . . but I do do strategic data mining (and write the software) for a multi-national, so I hope that helps a little with my, perhaps, arrogance

I had not taken your post as anything other than a correction of my original with a much better start point to explain the peculiar behaviours (as viewed from my perspective) so no offense was even considered never mind taken!

Though some GW proponents baulk at earths natural cycles I am a little intrigued by them be they of Solar distance, precession, angle of tilt, Solar activity etc. We can see we (humans) are having an effect on climate but what if there were other 'long cycles' that help compound our position? What if we are just entering a natural period of warming on top of our attemps at climate modification?

[Mondy]

Bird flu is very much alive and well and may be visiting a city/town near you soon!

EDIT See H5N1 thread.

Pahh!!!! I can't "see" the H5N1 thread. However, what about the rest noted above? What did happen/occur? As far as i know, diddly-squat..

So, isn't there a basic argument, at least, to consider that GW is just another scare issue? And like years gone by, but now with the internet so full of (mis)information, it's even easier to be coaxed?

That's what i'm getting at and that's what no-one has yet answered, especially with the above list looking so fragile in the modern world of scares.

[VillagePlank]

Yes, of course there's a basic argument. The argument is that man's activities throughout the world are making it warm unnaturally. Period. Full stop.

Whether or not you believe that is something else, and I believe, that's what the scientists are trying to ascertain to such a position where there is no doubt.

[Mondy]

No, VP. You don't get it and i don't think anyone broad-minded enough is even getting it.

The bottom line is that a 0.6C rise in temp has occured. So what?

My argument is shown on the previous page with regards scare stories - it's always been the way of the world thinking. You just have to look at the list above to see what happened..nothing. It's always been same. Watered down versions appear years later, when most people have forgotten, ie Acid rain[swap for GW currently]

Call me blinkered, but i will not be suckered into this global warming belief. You know my feelings about Mother nature and the recent history of scare tactics (dare i say it, tax hikes included in said tactics).

[parmenides3]

Your point is simple enough to understand, Mondy, as well as being understandable. What is interesting to me is that all of the examples (correct me if I'm wrong) appear to be the media's version of 'potential threats', rather than the scientific findings. The same, of course, is true for GW. When a director of a climate institute is berated by the public for not being 'alarmist' enough, you know that the message getting through is the media's and not the scientists'; this is what Mike Hulme of the Tyndall Centre was commenting on in his BBC op-ed.

I am pretty certain, though, that none of the examples you give had the weight of evidence behind them that GW has. HN51 is a possible exception, but once again, a lot of the news about it is simply overdramatic, and not representative of the science. I am sure if we read the academic papers on which the news reports were based, we'd find very little to support the kind of story we so often end up getting.

On the acid rain issue; this is another example where humans do appear to have both caused the problem and (partially) resolved it. The problem was caused by sulphate emissions ( from uncontrolled/unregulated coal burning), the solution was the various Clean Air Acts created by governments around the world. If there hadn't been concerted, large-scale, regulatory intervention, there would have been a very much more serious problem. The argument in relation to CO2 should be fairly obvious, though the effects of CO2 are less easy to see and longer in scale.

If it were simply a matter of a scare story, as a qualified media analyst, I would have been well up the list to bring it down; this is part of my stock-in-trade, showing people how they are being manipulated by the mouthpieces of the establishment. In this case, whilst it is still true that the media are hyping the story and looking for 'the day after tomorrow' with every opportunity, the actual scientific basis to conclude that we have effected the climate and will continue to do so is very strong.

In truth, media hype gets in the way of the truth about GW, which is not about horror stories and disasters, but about the slow but inexorable transition from one phase state of the climate to a new, warmer one. The real debate really shouldn't be about when the apocalypse is due, but about how much more warmth is likely to be good for most of us, and how much is likely to be bad news. Sadly, it looks like, unless things in government change fairly quickly, the answer is that there is probably going to end up being more warmth than we are currently able to cope with. Therefore, we have to adapt to cope with the change. So, what do we do? And, if we are contributing to the problem by doing nothing now, should we not make an effort to reduce the risk of future unpleasantness?

:)P

[Stratos Ferric]

Yes, SF, I agree, but it is misnomic to claim that the only way oil, gas, or coal gets burnt is if humans light it. I am almost completely certain that when one takes into account the proportional difference then it is clear that we do infinitely more burning than nature; but on an argument of this nature it is better to be right than to claim axioms where they just don't exist.

edit: and yes, this is a pedantic point, and, for all I know, an assumption like this could be skewing all sorts of conclusions if, say, the proportions were 10% natural, 90% man.

I didn't say it would never re-enter the cycle; I said, it would not ordinarily do so. And I chose the phrase "catastrophically" quite deliberately as well. I don't think I was claiming any axioms if you read my words precisely. As I keep saying on here, they are chosen with exquisite care. I think we're agreeing.

[Stratos Ferric]

With a spare 15 mins to kill before i go pick my car up from the garage (it wasn't polluting the air, just overheading *cough*), thought i'd put some sceptic links up for people not sure. You don't have to believe pro GWers, y'know!

Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming

Scare tactics

“I don’t like the word ‘Balance’’- Says ABC News Global Warming Reporter

“Hot & Cold Media Spin: A Challenge To Journalists Who Cover Global Warming”

Of course, i'm fully expecting a rebuttal from these links and the source is neither good nor true ( :lol: )

http://www.counterpunch.org/jackson05122004.html

Mondy, you got your rebuttal mate. Looks like the commitee chairman is no the most stable substance on the shelf.

So far as I can see you haven't answered the question I posed earlier. What, if anything, would convince you that AGW is a factor in our warming clmate? Or are you simply didactically opposed to any such notion come what may?

So far as I can see al the AGW "lobby" ever manage to surface are naysaying quotes, usually from the US, cherry picked (and often factually incorrect) and isolated data from Ice Age Now, and qulaitative assertions like "nature is bigger than man". In terms of robustness of argument it's a soggy house of cards.

I say every year, as I have been saying since the dawn of SlowWatch on BBC (and back then I was a very lone voice), the climate is warming, and it is warming abnormally. Most certainly not all the warming is man made, there is even a chance that none of it is man made, and that what we have is a blip.

But I have an image of a man jumping out of a plane, watching him hurtle to earth: he's going to open his parachute, he is going to open his parachute; he is, he is...at what point do we realise that it simply isn't going to happen, that that man, for whatever reason, is now past the point at which death in inevitible? Apparently there are still mothers of boys killed in countless wars around the world who believe that their cons will one day walk back through the door.

I know one or two didn't like G-W's use of the grieving curve earlier, but I use it as a basic tool of my trade: it is, in fact, a curve that shows emotional response to change: grief just happens to be the most extreme form of it.

You only have to read the lighter threads over in the current weather partition to know that there are still several of our members out there who still hang on to the notion that next month, or next year, or sometime thereafter, another 1963 will come along.

I've been reading a book called "Skiner's Box" recently, revisiting ten classic experiments in psychology. One I've mentioned before on here seeks to examine the behaviour of people whose belief persists despite all evidence to the contrary; a famous "sect" predicting the end of the world back in the eighties (I think) is cited. Even when said end of world hadn't occurred the members of the sect still rationalised even this failure, suggesting that by their actions thaey had drawn attention sufficient to avert the catastrophe. With that sort of logic there can be no argument. The normal rules of reason have been suspended.

At the end of the day all that threads like this really prove is human nature. When I go to the supermarket tomorrow there will be people without children parked in parent bays; there will be the usual miracles occuring to people parking in disabled bays; there will be people like me who tut but say nothing; there will be a precious few who might occasionally challenge.

If a new product is launched there will be some who buy it just to have it; there will be some who wait, knowing that price will come down and quality improve over the next year or so; and there will be luddites and technophobes like my father for whom all is a bridge too far.

When Germany was arming in the 1930s, even after germany invaded Czechoslovakia, diod not Neville Chamberlain return from a meeting with Hitler proclaiming "peace in our time"?

There will also be people who grab an idea quickly, perhaps too quickly. There will be those who consider circumspectly; there will be those who simply refuse to believe, ever - like the deniers of the holocaust, or the flat earth society. If history teaches us anything, it is that we seldom learn from history.

[Stratos Ferric]

Your point is simple enough to understand, Mondy, as well as being understandable. What is interesting to me is that all of the examples (correct me if I'm wrong) appear to be the media's version of 'potential threats', rather than the scientific findings. ...

In truth, media hype gets in the way of the truth about GW, which is not about horror stories and disasters, but about the slow but inexorable transition from one phase state of the climate to a new, warmer one. The real debate really shouldn't be about when the apocalypse is due, but about how much more warmth is likely to be good for most of us, and how much is likely to be bad news. Sadly, it looks like, unless things in government change fairly quickly, the answer is that there is probably going to end up being more warmth than we are currently able to cope with. Therefore, we have to adapt to cope with the change. So, what do we do? And, if we are contributing to the problem by doing nothing now, should we not make an effort to reduce the risk of future unpleasantness?

:)P

Much that is very sensible in there.

One thing I will say, categorically. The media - certainly the print media - very very rarely back a loser. Yes, they may be over hyping, but be very aware all you doubters of the direction in which they are pointing.

There will be a god few on here not old enough to know, or even be aware of, thalidomide. My mother still blesses the day she had the strength of conviction not to listen to her doctor when she was pregnant with me. There were several years of denial regarding that drug before the mountain of data and deformed births proved simply too damning.

I don't mind anyone choosing NOT to accept AGW; I just wish somebody could furnish me with a robust argument as to why I should join them. I don't want rhetoric from madmen with axes to grind; I don't want single point data presented without consideration as to whether that single point is in any way, shape or form representative, or whether, in fact, it in any case corroborates the hypothesis being put forward.

If the best that some of our number (not on this thread) can do is say things like "where are the GW lobby now" during the height of last week's cool spell then, to be honest, we probably don't deserve to be spared our fate - whatever that may be.

No, VP. You don't get it and i don't think anyone broad-minded enough is even getting it.

The bottom line is that a 0.6C rise in temp has occured. So what?

My argument is shown on the previous page with regards scare stories - it's always been the way of the world thinking. You just have to look at the list above to see what happened..nothing. It's always been same. Watered down versions appear years later, when most people have forgotten, ie Acid rain[swap for GW currently]

Call me blinkered, but i will not be suckered into this global warming belief. You know my feelings about Mother nature and the recent history of scare tactics (dare i say it, tax hikes included in said tactics).

Mondy: acid rain was an undeniable fact and was very well studied. The fact that all our coal power stations now have (or had) scrubbers attached is testimony to that fact, and it was a factor in the death of the coal mining industry in this country; scrubers are not cheap and in a commoditised environment, at a time when home sourced gas was plentiful and Thatcher wanted sensible security of supply, generators moved away from coal.