I hesitate to stir up the maniacal pseudo religious fervour of the greenies, but has anyone noticed there has been no significant measurable global warming since 1995? Perhaps the whole hypothesis is misplaced."

Total bullshit. You have no idea what you are talking about. Ephemeral transients in the atmosphere are not reflective the of the total energy gain caused by GHG
this is


and this is

Greenland and Antarctica 'have lost four trillion tonnes of ice' in 20 years
• Landmark study by global team of scientists published
• Finds melting polar ice has led to 11mm rise in sea level
• Greenland losing ice five times faster than early 1990s

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... tonnes-ice

The scale of that energy to melt ice due to latent heat is millions of Hiroshima level nuclear blasts per month in thermal equivalent....without the buffering the ocean and ice caps provide the planet at this point would be unliveable.

and this is accelerating as C02 is accumulating.

Tell me if you think it's not real - why would the fossil fuel companies own scientists say it was irrefutable back in 1995??
were they in on the conspiracy too??

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

By ANDREW C. REVKINPublished: April 23, 2009

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/scien ... .html?_r=2

A carbon tax does several things
Encourages reduced use of carbon emitting products, puts a price on the knock on damage caused by the emission of C02, funds new industries to lower the carbon use ( solar etc ).

Right now, fossil companies get away with using the atmosphere as a free sewer and are not held accountable for the thousands upon thousands of deaths annually the coal industry alone is responsible for.

It took legislation to clean up ground pollution and S02 emissions. Neither of those represent the threat that climate change does.
Norway and Sweden have had a $50 per barrel carbon tax since 1990 - both countries are wealthy and Sweden leads the world in transitioning to low carbon - with a goal of carbon neutral by 2050.

It is a question of pay now or far more later.
All studies have shown reducing the impact through lower carbon emissions is less costly than the consequences.
The insurance companies understand those consequences only too thoroughly..
http://www.swissre.com/rethinking/Clima ... _over.html

You are already paying for the small amount the climate has already shifted....what's coming will be far more costly and much of it at this point is entirely unavoidable due in large part to the kind of nonsense promulgated by the denier industry.

And if you think that is an over statement....I suggest you watch Climate of Doubt and maybe change your view on how much public opinion has been manipulated....and not by the climate scientists.
It was so bad that for the first time in it's history the Royal Society called on a corporation to stop it's funding of this nonsense.
The company called on was Exxon.
Take the time to watch this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GVHqlnPAc

pensioner wrote:Today this letter was published in my local press by Bloom.

Ooh, I'll bite! Note that sarcastic comments are directed against the author of the ignorant letter and not pensioner.

Idiot wrote:“THERE seems to be much confusion by the body politic, and indeed many [sic] of the electorate, as to how an economy works.

There is much confusion and this letter perpetuates more of it.

Idiot wrote:There can be no public spending without taxation of the wealth-creating sector

As we will see below, this idiot seems to think that the wealth-creating sector means the infamous "job creators" of American conservative politics. In reality, many of the people in this 'class' obtain the majority of their income from capital gains and financial investment and furthermore the capital gains are accrued not on investment income but rather from property and property-related revenue streams. In other words, they display rent-seeking behaviour that is one of the primary causes of friction and inefficiency in a capitalist system.

Idiot wrote:or borrowing

If debt is rising at a slower rate than GDP+inflation than borrowing is a fantastic idea. If the economy is in a slump then borrowing is a fantastic idea.

Idiot wrote:(leave aside counterfeiting or ‘quantitative easing’).

I love the attempted conflation between illegal money creation and a legitimate (if unorthodox) policy tool for gaining traction at the zero lower bound of interest rates.

Idiot wrote:Taxation is simply a system for government to take money from one sector of the population and apportion it arbitrarily to others.

Libertarian ideology is so tiresome, especially when it has been debunked time and again. Taxes are not arbitrary redistributions of wealth, no matter what the Libertarians would have you think. At its heart, taxation stems from a need to guarantee property rights which, unless the Libertarians want some guy to beat them up and take their shit, are essential for the function of civilized society.

Idiot wrote:Subsidising Siemens in Hull or holes in the ground for CO2 capture in Doncaster involves taking money from the genuine wealth creators.

One need only peruse the recent OECD report to see the massive subsidies and tax breaks received by the oil/gas/coal industry as opposed to renewable. Check it out, it's billions for coal in Great Britain alone.

But wait, there are no subsidies after all! See, that's because a subsidy has to involve some direct transfer of cash while a massive reduction in the VAT somehow doesn't count because, instead of the government handing over the proverbial brown paper bag, the industry just gets to keep more of its hard-earned money.

There is also substantial evidence that, without the subsidies and tax breaks given to fossil fuel energy providers, that renewable would be economically viable.

From the link wrote:◦The International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook for 2011 states that worldwide subsidies to fossil fuels in 2010 totalled $409 billion. By comparison, renewable energy systems received just $66 billion. See also Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies 'could provide half of global carbon target' (The Guardian, 2012-01-19).

Idiot wrote:There is no economic merit in taking heavy tax from the caravan, growing, steel or aircraft industries to give to other companies whose projects are unsustainable without subsidy.

How about we just remove all of the benefits given to the fossil fuel industry and let economics sort it out?

Idiot wrote:If there is money to spare, which there is not, reduce the tax burden on those in the private sector. Much better for our manufacturers to go back to a five-day week, have cheaper energy and less employment tax than support failed technology like wind and solar power.

It's "starve-the-beast" coupled with "false dichotomy" added to the "Big Lie".

Wind and solar haven't failed, the amount of money required to kickstart renewable energy is a very small fraction of GDP and, reducing tax revenues during a recession is economic suicide (as known for 80 years or so since the Great Depression).

Idiot wrote:I hesitate to stir up the maniacal pseudo religious fervour of the greenies, but has anyone noticed there has been no significant measurable global warming since 1995? Perhaps the whole hypothesis is misplaced."

This retarded point has already been debunked in this thread.

Fortunately people find articles like this and save them...the good professors page has been deleted by his university...for some reason...after all, a truly inconvenient truth is that some people just can't stand alternative views and would like to silence them for good...

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/prof-richard-parncutt-death-penalty-for-global-warming-deniers/

Nice bloke...

Now...I wonder how many people agree with his sentiments...?

There ARE no alternative views beyond blind denial of the obvious.

You may be content getting paid by an industry that contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths per year......you could at least show the intelligence of understanding what you do and the consequences.

Instead you try and blame some "conspiracy".

There is a conspiracy John - it's called fossil fuel companies and their minions trying dodge responsibility.

big tobacco dodged for a while ( some of the same bunch of clowns doing PR for fossil ) - then the price came due tho at least that heavy price was on the individuals.
The price of coal use goes far beyond individuals and even humans but impacts the entire biome.

Any sane person with an ounce of understanding knows you are wrong about climate change.
It's the denial of the problem that grates John.

Are YOU willing to take the consequences.....all the good professor is saying is that if you willingly, knowingly contribute to deaths - there needs to be consequences just as there are with any activity.

Just as inciting to war crimes deserves a penalty so too does preserving a death dealing program.
They stopped asbestos John....

What makes you think coal is not next.

Macdoc wrote:
They stopped asbestos John....

What makes you think coal is not next.

Sadly, I can think of no circumstances where humans will stop burning coal before such time as it become economically not worth their while to do so. And it's not just the John's of this world. They are guilty of denial, and it should be considered a serious crime, but at the end of the day, even if there were no deniers left, we would still continue burning fossil fuels until it is no longer worth our while to do so.

Until recently, I would have said that I can only see one possible situation where greenhouse emissions fall fast enough to avoid a 5 degree rise and more, and that's if somebody releases some sort of superbug deliberately designed to take out as many humans as possible. It has since been pointed out to me that this would mean the removal from the atmosphere of various short-lived pollutants which are currently acting as coolants. In other words, the collapse of industrial civilisation might actually speed up the warming even more.

We're f*****d. I am so glad I do not have children.

I agree with UE.

I try not to think about it too much, because frankly it depresses the shit out of me, but human's have shown an utter inability to think in any way other than the short term. Economically it makes sense to burn fossil fuels right now, and we'll continue to do so for as long as that's the case.

johnbrandt wrote:Fortunately people find articles like this and save them...the good professors page has been deleted by his university...for some reason...after all, a truly inconvenient truth is that some people just can't stand alternative views and would like to silence them for good...

http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/prof-richard-parncutt-death-penalty-for-global-warming-deniers/

Nice bloke...

Now...I wonder how many people agree with his sentiments...?

Take the number of people who agree with this guy. Times it by 500 and you will probably equal the number of insane conservative nutjobs who think climate scientists should be jailed or sentenced to life/death for fraud.

If you seriously think taking a look at the views of the biggest lunatics on the planet is going to make your position look good, you are living in a fantasy land. Think about it for a second, you agree 100% with Alex Jones on this. Really, think about that.

Anyway, about the article. I actually find it extremely hard to argue with him that influential climate science deniers and anti-science promoters will be partly to blame for lots of horrible circumstances that will be inflicted upon the human race. In the same sense that people who fight for a mothers right not to vaccinate their kids are partly to blame for kids dying of curable disease.

However, I think it is too much of a jump to say they should all be killed. I don't think (1) killing would put a stop to this viewpoint, (2) that even if this particular viewpoint was gone that we would be able to prevent the full extent of the issues at hand, and (3) that it even sets a good precedent, surely we have moved past the days of changing people's minds by threatening them with violence. Surely education is the root of the problem.

So yea, the article isn't actually as bad as you might make out and you have offered no clear objection to his idea. It is definitely silly on a closer look (and embarrassing to read an educated person conclude with this), but I wouldn't reject the basis of his claims out of hand that is for sure.

Ihavenofingerprints wrote:..surely we have moved past the days of changing people's minds by threatening them with violence. Surely education is the root of the problem.

No, and (sadly) no.

Switch on the news and you will see evidence from every corner of the world that we have not moved past the days of changing people's minds by threatening them with violence.

Is education the root of the problem? It might look that way, and it is undoubtedly true that if the general public were better educated scientifically that this could only be a good thing (surely...) BUT...I believe the "root" of the problem is harder to solve than that. The root is human nature and the natural relationship between humans and the rest of the Earth's ecosystem, combined with existence of civilisation (perhaps just industrialised civilisation, but I suspect the problem goes back even further than that, to when we invented agriculture.) No amount of education can fix it, because at the end of the day we are already well into overshoot and there is going to be a huge fight for survival as resources/consumption/population equation really starts to bite. People are not going to make sacrifices that compromise their own future either to save the planet or to help out humans in other parts of the world. Instead, there is going to be a lot of violence. That's what humans do. We are not a peaceful species. We are aggressive, especially when our own survival is threatened.

What is perhaps even more disturbing from a RatSkep POV is that if we ask ourselves how we might go about solving this sort of problem - how we might "re-program" humans in order to overcome the problems caused by our evolved psychological heritage - then the answer is all too clear. There is only one force capable of such "re-programming" and that force is religion. In other words, if you really want to change people's behaviour, and education is not going to be enough, then you could always try brainwashing them instead. History says it works rather well.

I've just had a very quiet Christmas Day with my Mother and Stepfather. Somebody had given them a book they thought I might be interested in. It was called "Watermelons" by one James Delingpole. I had not heard of it, or him, but having spent a couple of minutes glancing through it, suddenly I figured out where John is getting some of his ideas from. What a pile of drivel. My mother suggested she take it to the charity shop. Since that would mean somebody else might read it, I decided it was safer to rip it into about eight pieces and throw it in the recycling box.

yup - even better use as compost to sequester the carbon.
Delingpole is war criminal.

MacIver wrote:
I try not to think about it too much, because frankly it depresses the shit out of me, but human's have shown an utter inability to think in any way other than the short term. Economically it makes sense to burn fossil fuels right now, and we'll continue to do so for as long as that's the case.

I don't agree with the bit in bold. It is obvious that our democratically elected politicians have serious problems making decisions based on the long term, because their number one priority is to get re-elected. It is also obvious that many humans have a lot of trouble making the correct long-term decisions regarding their own lives, which is partly why so many people are so deeply in debt. But that's partly cultural too.

Put humans in their natural environment and let them live in their natural, tribal state, and they will not show the same inability to think in the long term. On the contrary, they are very likely to understand that their tribal landbase must not be degraded. The reason modern humans can't cope with the sort of decisions we're talking about is that we are not supposed to live in an industrialised civilisation, almost entirely divorced from the natural world and entirely divorced from the landbase which supports us. We cannot make the psychological/cultural leap required to identify the whole of humanity as our tribe and the whole planet as the tribe's landbase. And I am not even saying that we should try to make this leap, but that this is the only way I can imagine a large civilisation of Homo sapiens sapiens not ending up in the sort of mess we're in now.

UndercoverElephant wrote:It is also obvious that many humans have a lot of trouble making the correct long-term decisions regarding their own lives...
...Put humans in their natural environment and let them live in their natural, tribal state, and they will not show the same inability to think in the long term. On the contrary, they are very likely to understand that their tribal landbase must not be degraded. The reason modern humans can't cope with the sort of decisions we're talking about is that we are not supposed to live in an industrialised civilisation, almost entirely divorced from the natural world and entirely divorced from the landbase which supports us. We cannot make the psychological/cultural leap required to identify the whole of humanity as our tribe and the whole planet as the tribe's landbase. And I am not even saying that we should try to make this leap, but that this is the only way I can imagine a large civilisation of Homo sapiens sapiens not ending up in the sort of mess we're in now.

Who or what determines whether or not Homo sapiens are supposed to live in industrialized civilizations? What is, is. If it proves to be unsustainable, than it won't be sustained. Period. Just like dinosaurs.

The ability to think long term has absolutely nothing to do with evolution, human or otherwise. It is our attempts at long-term thinking that are precisely anti-evolutionary. You seem to be attempting to portray humankind as having somehow transcended our own evolution, now burdened with the task of aiming it in a particular direction. That is ideology, not science.

For billions of years, trial and error has formed every variation of life we're privileged to observe and many many more variations that we were never around to observe. Certainly more variations are forthcoming. From a heaving mass of molten rock life emerged. Life has been nearly wiped out multiple times by volcanic super eruptions and meteor strikes. We have no real choice but to let this industrialized civilization thing play out. It's just one more thing nature has produced that may or may not last. If it turns out to be yet another extinction level event, I suppose we can take heart in the very reasonable expectation that life will self-correct in a few hundred thousand years or several million.

One thing I have very little confidence in is a relatively small alliance of "foreword-thinking" intellectuals and smooth-tongued politicians attempting to assume control of the world's energy supplies--all in the name of engineering a more sustainable society along the lines of tribalistic cultures. Do you really suppose that might work? It seems far more likely to me that humans and most other life will simply adapt to higher temperatures just as they always have between glacial cycles. Whether the final peek temperature of this particular cycle has a distinctly human fingerprint on it seems a bit beside the point. A human could as easily feel a sense of pride in that as a sense of shame. The cycles of planet earth will continue.

Ummm so much wrong with that hard to know where to start.

Humans have occupied niches because they plan and think long term.
Even hunter gatherers had to store game over the winter in the form of jerky or pemmican.
The Dutch are on a LEAST a 100 year program to deal with the rising sealevels and have a done an admirable job over the 400 years they been doing battle with the North Sea.....

We are moving well outside the interglacial temperatures Holocene Optimum -we are almost there but there is no stopping a 4c rise worldwide and for many plants and societies that will be a very difficult adaption.
The billions of years crap is just that.
We've had an industrial civilization for 300 years and have managed to alter the climate to the point where the next ice age cycle is cancelled and the C02 levels are higher than in the last 12 million years. This is a serious threat to the biome as it's happening in a blink of a eye in change terms from the past.
We are pouring in C02 at a faster rate than the Siberian traps and that did not end so well.....with 90% of the life on the planet - ocean and land wiped out.

To play down the risk is monumentally short sighted.
For instance the wheat growing band for the major breadbaskets will be out of the continental US ( a bit in Alaska ) and out of the Indian sub-continent.


Evolution has endowed us with the ability to plan and forward think which is why we can occupy niches even out to space.
Exercising that in preserving a sustainable civilization....which is possible.....is a CHOICE. Humans got to where they are by managing resources ( at times badly ) over time - just ask any farmer.

Your distain of forward thinking means you likely live in a flood plain near an earthquake zone with an active volcano over your shoulder and jelly fish in the sea water. Darwin at play.

••••

UE - determining the "correct" long term solutions is no easy - there is not "one" best approach but rather a myriad of local solutions for adaption and reducing carbon emissions.
Some nation states will get there before others ( Sweden is dedicated to mid century ).....some may fail ( Bangladesh ) with climate induced issues too large to counter.
Politicos aren't much at decision making these days in too many places but dedicated individuals, corporations and some cities and states are moving to a sustainable civilization in fits and starts.

Macdoc,

UE - determining the "correct" long term solutions is no easy - there is not "one" best approach but rather a myriad of local solutions for adaption and reducing carbon emissions.

When I said "humans are supposed to [live as tribal hunter gatherers]" all I meant was that is the ecological niche we evolved to fill. More technically put, I'd say that it was the niche we filled at about the time human physical evolution began to be eclipsed by cultural evolution, a process which had been completed by the 20th century, and which is now about to be thrown into reverse (dieoff means physical evolution is likely to take over again, assuming some humans survive.)

As for "correct solutions", what I'm trying to say is that there aren't any. There is no response which is both rationally justifiable, and morally/politically acceptable from a human-centric point of view. I agree that there are parts of our civilisation which are "heading in the right direction", but ultimately what they are doing is futile. For example, it is not much use burning coal more slowly if we are still going to end up burning it eventually, or if somebody else is going to burn it instead of us. There's no net gain to me giving up meat if the person next door has three kids who grow up as non-vegetarians. In fact, there's no use in whole countries turning vegetarian if they aren't going to also introduce population control. This is all just slowing down the process a bit, and doing nothing to actually stop or reverse it.

At the end of the day, I can't avoid being in general agreement with Derrick Jensen: [paraphrase] "not only is it impossible to save industrialised civilisation, but it's not worth saving anyway."

"Not worth saving" is a bit too self-loathing for me. The human species is playing the cards natural selection has dealt it. We may enter a period of decline or we may still surprise ourselves. I tend to expect the latter.

Planning and executing any solution to a perceived problem is always a house of cards--increasingly so as scope and timeframe increases. There are just too many unknowable variables and independent decision-makers that inevitably come into play. I have no disdain for forward thinking (and I don't live in a flood plain). I just recognize that humans are naturally resistant to being ridden by well-meaning planners. That independence may well be our downfall, but to some of us it's also our greatest charm. It's a trait I hope survives somehow.

Unsustainable industrial civilization cannot be saved but a sustainable version is and Ill take Sweden's path as a model and a reasonable goal.

Humans are tribal by nature and used to being led by alpha's.
This democratic stuff is late coming and not all that effective ( see China ).
Resistance to authority is relatively new as well - out of the 60s as a response to the rigors of wartime society and it's very conservative bland consistency.

If you did not conform sufficiently you were tossed and died as without the tribal resources you just didn't get through the winter.

Certainly alpha's are creative and aggressive but they don't survive without a group to lead.

I don't think monolithic governments work very well on a macro scale other than perhaps for national defense.

Having a variety of community structures ( Swiss cantons ) can offer a diversity of approaches - be it Amish preservation of land and way of life to Singapore's city state which is both forward looking but authoritarian to a high degree.

As climate challenges arise more frequently then rapid effective decision making will sort out the winners from individuals, to families to communities to state and national leadership ( hurricane Katrina and Sandy ).

We are not physically evolving much but certainly as communal animals we are moving forward rather at a break neck pace with enabling technologies.

A nation CAN be progressive and forward thinking but also can be crippled by ignorance and religion as the US is being just now.
A shame that the same peoples that can produce PBS and NASA and the Hubble have Westboro Baptist and the NRA et al as sea anchors.

RealityQuest wrote:"Not worth saving" is a bit too self-loathing for me. The human species is playing the cards natural selection has dealt it. We may enter a period of decline or we may still surprise ourselves. I tend to expect the latter.

Planning and executing any solution to a perceived problem is always a house of cards--increasingly so as scope and timeframe increases. There are just too many unknowable variables and independent decision-makers that inevitably come into play. I have no disdain for forward thinking (and I don't live in a flood plain). I just recognize that humans are naturally resistant to being ridden by well-meaning planners. That independence may well be our downfall, but to some of us it's also our greatest charm. It's a trait I hope survives somehow.

It may well be the downfall of the United States. I'm afraid that from my perspective, you sound like a lunatic US "libertarian" of precisely the sort that believes that "well-meaning planners" would be threatening important individual freedoms if they ban ordinary people from owning guns. What you see as freedom looks like madness to outsiders. I think you should replace "humans" with "Americans" in your post.

Coal train drivers a lost art by 2050 in Australia



http://bravenewclimate.com/

they are already gone in Ontario.

UndercoverElephant wrote:
It may well be the downfall of the United States. I'm afraid that from my perspective, you sound like a lunatic US "libertarian" of precisely the sort that believes that "well-meaning planners" would be threatening important individual freedoms if they ban ordinary people from owning guns. What you see as freedom looks like madness to outsiders. I think you should replace "humans" with "Americans" in your post.

Again with the assumptions and stereotypes! I don't own a gun. And I don't live in a floodplain.

Your thread here is about deniers. The average person just doesn't have the background to logically verify all the arguments. It ultimately comes down to who's expertise people trust--and people who are freedom-oriented (sane or otherwise) will find it hard to trust people who feel duty-bound to limit the options to which they've grown accustomed.

Referring to an entire class of people as lunatics is not a good way to build trust.

anyone in denial of AGW at this point in time definitely belongs with the anti-evolution and anti-vax lunatic fringe.
You either accept the science which is rigorous or you deny without evidence as there simply is no scientific basis of denial.
Trust is your problem - not that of the climate community. They've been proven accurate if somewhat conservative for decades.

••••

Just a little - pre-empt

some of the usual crap from Forbes - and this is the kind of blatant mis-information typical of the climate change denial industry which is heavily funded by the likes of Koch and Exxon and others. This is just a lie.

ice is accumulating over the larger area of East Antarctica and that the continent as a whole is gaining snow and ice mass."

That is a flat out lie. Typical of the right wing dink heads. They conflate total mass with sea ice and confuse snowfall gains in the east Antarctic ( which is a consequence of AGW increasing moisture content ) with the overall mass loss when the Western Antarctic is included.

This is the relevant all continental mass chart



from this article

Weighing change in Antarctica

which expanded on this article.

RealClimate: Weighing change in Antarctica

The articles are written by the author of the paper

Our recently published Nature paper (King et al, 2012), used GRACE gravity data to infer the ice mass trends as in previous work, but with an updated estimate of the GIA correction.

just in case anyone was listening to the prattling of the loony denier fringe.

Yes Virginia it's getting warmer
and we're responsible.