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Now I've shut up about this for long enough but now they've gone too far.
The Austrian government has just announced that it will levy 3 cent per litre on unleaded and 5 cent on diesel to create a "climate fund", the Germans are pressured by the EU to introduce a speed limit to "combat CO2 emmissions" and that fat wannabe president Gore gets more air time than the hottest pop star. And what for? A lot of bull!
I still haven’t heard a single convincing argument that global warming is happening, what I see however is the building up of a climate of fear, continuous misinformation which is being used as a vehicle to introduce more taxes and introduce silly schemes which will benefit the net worth of some bureacrats. Even conceding that this is all really happening and that humans are to blame (how calvinistic!) what will meeting the Kyoto Criteria achieve? Absolutely NOTHING.
Nobody would have dreamed of starting this topic last year, when the whole of Europe was covered under metres of snow. I’m amazed about the short term memory of those people who now proclaim that the end is nye, or wait, could it be that they are meteorologists looking for a bigger research budget?
Jimmy Inhofe for president!
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As usual, you just don't know where to turn on this one.
The arguments are so vociferous on both sides that it is just impossible to decide what to think. If this issue gets raised at home I run. My missus is absolutely in the doom and gloom camp and with Oz being a standout on Kyoto, she really gets going.
Example: Water is a problem in the South East of Australia and seems to have been that way for around 5 years. The warmers say that this drought is proof of the warming thing. Sounds good, we never had water restrictions when I was a kid, but we've had them for a long time now. On the other hand, the gainsayers point out that there is no drought. We had below average rainfall in three of the last five years, but that is perfectly consistent with El Ninjo. Go figure.
Meanwhile the sun spotters are saying that it's all part of the grand sun spot plan and we are just more noticing it now.
At the end of the day, if all the hoo-ha results in a reduction in emmissions globally (QED), then how bad can it be?
One thing that may not seem related comes to mind. The Kiwis threw away their mutual defence relationship with the USA some years ago because the yanks wouldn't disclose whether visiting warships were nuclear powered, or armed. At the time, we thought "well bully for them. They have a principle, and are prepared to stand by it." Now that nuclear power generation is the darling child of the greens and warmers, the Kiwis just look silly. So let's say we all get on the warming band wagon and then find out that oh, oh, sun spots are bringing on a new ice age, we're gonna look silly agin. Well, in fact you lot are. We're gonna run the world when the North becomes an Icy Pole!
Well, one may be exagerating and taxing people in an exagerated way may not be quite a good idea , but I agree with education because we have a lot of wasted resources which could be used in a better way. eg: do not leave unused electricity on....
Most of the BS is from lobbyists on both sides of the argument -- those who don't want to change anything because they fear it will bite into industry's profits, and those believe mankind's pollution of his environment has gone too far and to change this requires real concern, even if some are alarmed at the scenarios being faced.
I am involved in the design and approval of projects which frankly are of a scale which need to be questioned. That I do! As a result I have a lot of facts to hand.
I know of the wrongheaded fears of the industry lobbyists. So long as change is regulated, industry need not fear. In fact as prices go up, so do profits! A friend today described environmentalists as neanderthals. Frankly I think that is a very wrong generalisation. Most professional environmentalists I know are very concerned about a thing called quality of life, not only for ourselves but also for our children and their children.
Forzaminardi, my friend, the facts are clear. There is warming occurring part of which is due to massive pollution by our current lifestyles. We might accept that the natural swings which are part of that warming will reverse one day, but the effects of the pollution will not! We are adding to that pollution every year that we fail to respond. Kyoto might not be perfect, no globally accepted plan ever will be, but it is a better thing than what the Bush's US is doing.
There are lots of opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but while the whole nations refuse to commit to global solutions, we will go further into warming and its very costly consequences.
I would rather act now for the sake of my children and grandchildren even if someone later proves that looking after our air and environment might somehow have been unnecessary. Then at least this generation will enjoy some quality of life including the feeling that comes from acting responsibly.
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thumbs up
One of her girlfriends lives in the "country" about 4 hours inland from Melbourne.
It was a warm but overcast day.
All the kids were playing in the backyard when it started to rain.
All the kids ran under cover where the adults were (drinking alcohol responsibly). Except a little girl. A 4 year old, the daughter of the friend who lives in the country.
I was looking at the girl and wondering why is she just standing there looking up to the sky getting soaked.
I looked to her mum and she said, don't worry, it's the first time that she has ever seen rain. She doesn't know what it is.
Yes folks water is scarce in OZ at the moment.
Whom to believe? I'm not sure but it really can't be a bad idea to cut down emissions that deplete the ozone, that pollute the water supply, that deplete natural resources that 100's of generations from now may find a more valuable use.
Interesting that Kyota has lead to higher pollution in the EU. I've been reading a bit about the Peak Oil theory and listened to both sides... that's even more confusing.
So what to we do in my family? We recycle, we try to use organic stuff, we try to stay informed and make rationale decisions....and most important we try to teach our son as much about geology and the planet as we can for the future.
You've been very quiet on this since opening the thread.
Are you hiding under a rock, hopefully a cool one?
From today's BBC Viewpoint:
"Truth to tell, climate science has not been controversial anywhere except Washington DC for years.
The changes in Congress will, however, make a difference.
Oklahoma's Republican Senator James Inhofe's removal as chair of that body's environment committee means that his quixotic struggle against reality will no longer be at the centre of public debate.
His replacement by Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, means that serious discussion of the issue will at least get an airing in the Senate. "
and finally:
"At its best, the US can be enormously influential, and the most important thing we can do is lead by example.
We have much in common with many other large emitters, most notably coal-dependent China, which is famously erecting a new large power plant every week. Adopting technologies such as renewable energy or coal gasification for carbon capture and storage in our own country will do more to help China do the same than a hundred Asia-Pacific Partnerships. "
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MANKIND is naive to think it can influence climate change, according to a prize-winning Australian geologist.
Solar activity is a greater driver of climate change than man-made carbon dioxide, argues Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and winner of several notable science prizes.
“When meteorologists can change the weather then we can start to think about humans changing climate,” Prof Plimer said.
“I think we really are a little bit naive to think we can change astronomical and solar processes.”
Speaking last night after presenting his theory for the first time, to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in Sydney, Prof Plimer said he had researched the history of the sun, solar and supernovae activity and had been able to correlate global climates with solar activity.
“But correlations don't mean anything, you really need a causation,” Prof Plimer said.
So he then examined how cosmic radiation builds up clouds.
A very active sun blows away the cosmic radiation, while a less active sun allows radiation to build up, he said.
“So you can very much tie in temperature, cloud formation, cosmic radiation and the sun,” he said.
The next part of Prof Plimer's research was to examine the sources of carbon dioxide.
He said he found that about 0.1 per cent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide was due to human activity and much of the rest due to little-understood geological phenomena.
Prof Plimer also argued El Nino and La Nina were caused by major processes of earthquake activity and volcanic activity in the mid-ocean ridges, rather than any increase in greenhouse gases.
Nor does the melting of polar ice have anything to do with man-made carbon dioxide, he said.
“Great icebergs come off, not due to temperature change but due to the physics of ice and the flow of ice,” Prof Plimer said.
“There's a lag, so that if temperature rises, carbon dioxide rises 800 years later.
“If ice falls into the ocean in icebergs that's due to processes thousands of years ago.”
On the same basis, changes to sea level and temperature are also unrelated to anything happening today, he said.
“It is extraordinarily difficult to argue that human-induced carbon dioxide has any effect at all,” he said.
Prof Plimer added that as the planet was already at the maximum absorbance of energy of carbon dioxide, any more would have no greater effect.
There had even been periods in history with hundreds of times more atmospheric carbon dioxide than now with “no problem”, he said.
The professor, a member of the Australian Skeptics, an organisation devoted to debunking pseudo-scientific claims, denied his was a minority view.
“You'd be very hard pushed to find a geologist that would differ from my view,” he said.
He said bad news was more fashionable now than good and that people had an innate tendency to want to be a little frightened.
But Prof Plimer conceded the politics of greenhouse gas emissions meant that attention was being given to energy efficiency, which he supported.
The professor, who is writing a book on the subject, said he only used validated scientific data, published in reputable peer-reviewed refereed journals, as the basis of his theories.
I am also sure there is something in his arguments.
Over the years I have also found agreement with the Australian skeptics society on several matters.
However, I don't think his great relationship with the mining and metallurgy industries necesarily adds to his credibility as an objective assessor of matters outside of geology.
He's welcome to his comments on people wanting to read the bad news and be a bit frightened. But we're getting a little wary of people in high places assuring us tbat everything will be alright.
He would know, but didn't say, that the issue of climate change isn't only about CO2. That's just the measure of greenhouse gas effect. Greenhouse Gas emissions are measured in thousand of trillions of tonnes CO2 equivalent annually.
Although CO2 is the largest component of GHGs, climate change concerns are also about methane, 19 times worse than CO2 (kg/kg) in the GHG Index and other gases and polluting substances which the mining and metallurgy industries release freely in their pursuit of profits.
Sure cows contribute methane, but not as much as landfills. So eat more beef and waste less!
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[Edited on 14-5-07 by steamdrivenhammer]
If its the former, we're doing alright guys.
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