Global Warming

I prefer the term climate change rather than global warming. It's actually the temperature swings that bother me.

Damn, I had a decent joke on unreliability, involving the Weather and Ian Bell, dang.

Shoeshine wrote:If you're ever unfortunate enough to get into a debate with the climate-change fanatics, ask them what the hottest year on record is. The answer stuns them.

It's also a bit stunning that anyone thinks the hottest year on record is a relevant statistic when measuring a trend.

ten years after wrote:

Shoeshine wrote:If you're ever unfortunate enough to get into a debate with the climate-change fanatics, ask them what the hottest year on record is. The answer stuns them.

It's also a bit stunning that anyone thinks the hottest year on record is a relevant statistic when measuring a trend.

ker-farkin-ching . . .

ten years after wrote:

Shoeshine wrote:If you're ever unfortunate enough to get into a debate with the climate-change fanatics, ask them what the hottest year on record is. The answer stuns them.

It's also a bit stunning that anyone thinks the hottest year on record is a relevant statistic when measuring a trend.

Quite so - yet they're fairly keen on using a 25 year period as evidence when it's nothing of the sort, and then complaining when someone does the same back to them (i.e. looking at the last 10 years).

Anyway, the hottest year on record is 1934, not exactly part of the current ever upwards* graph.

*According to Hansen anyway, but the famous hockey stick graph apparently showing temperatures rocketing in recent years has been effectively debunked, not least when someone pointed out you could put the numbers from a telephone directory into the database and it would produce exactly the same graph.

The delightful thing about the scaremongering is how easily they're caught out on stuff. The IPCC just isn't "6,000 of the world's leading scientists" as you so often hear, it's several thousand civil servants and some scientists, many of whom are livid at the stuff that goes out in their name and end up resigning. Also ask the climate nutters what they think the heat island factor is and should be. When you get the blank look, you can explain how urbanisation has skewed temperature data (because urban areas are hotter than rural ones) and in all climate models they have to take a "view" on what the correction factor should be.

Since when did CO2, without which we can't survive, become a pollutant anyway? It's insanity!

Sea levels are not rising either, the data simply doesn't back the claim.

Even if temperatures were rising (and who knows, they might be long term), at every time in history a warmer climate has benefitted life, not harmed it. A higher global temperature would actually on balance be a good thing not a bad one - after all, we've seen it before - Greenland was so named for a damn good reason.

And finally, always ask them what impact clouds have on the data. They won't know for the simple reason that almost all models don't include clouds because we don't understand them. You'd have thought it would have a fairly important part to play.

Shoeshine wrote:
Since when did CO2, without which we can't survive, become a pollutant anyway? It's insanity!

No, it's a question of dynamic balance between ppm of atmnospheric gases.

Sea levels are not rising either, the data simply doesn't back the claim.

I wonder where the water from the melting glaciers is going, then?

Dear God in Heaven. I have just sat through a near on 4 hour River Management Committee meeting which spent half the time arguing over the wording of a letter to the State Government demanding that the rules for setting maximum probably flood contours be drastically revised to take into account global warming.

FFS. It was a massive struggle to sit there and bite my tongue while these halfwits with a small modicum of scientific data and a sh!tload of hysteria harangue the poor bugger from Maritime Services. He looked like he wanted to punch the lot of the qunts in the room. I had a beer with him afterwards and gave him my sympathies.

Rob I wrote:

Shoeshine wrote:
Since when did CO2, without which we can't survive, become a pollutant anyway? It's insanity!

No, it's a question of dynamic balance between ppm of atmnospheric gases.

Sea levels are not rising either, the data simply doesn't back the claim.

I wonder where the water from the melting glaciers is going, then?

Atmospheric gases have shifted around throughout the life of the earth. But CO2 is not a driver of climate change and never has been. There is a clear lag in CO2 levels when climate changes (as it always has), in other words CO2 is a symptom of higher temperatures, not a cause. It's not as clear cut as that, but it's a damn sight closer to it than the facile view that we're all going to die because CO2 levels are a touch higher.

Glaciers have always melted, that's what they do. But that's a perfect example of the hysterical media and lobbyists, showing you a melting glacier and calling that a global problem. 90% of the world's ice is held in Antarctica, and despite one oft-shown area melting (duh, ice melts!) and falling into the sea the total amount of ice is showing an INCREASE at the moment, bucking a 6,000 year trend. But hey, why worry about people not being able to tell the difference between weather and climate.

Now, you remember the disappearing ice on Kilimanjaro? Definitely is disappearing, but that's not because of climate change. It's because the idiots have chopped down all the trees at the base of the mountain that used to act as a windbreak against the warmer airs no scooting up the side of the mountain. But will you hear about this from the fanatics? Nope.

Our State Environment Protection Agency (for years known as the EPA) has recently changed its name to the Department of Environment and Climate Change. No doubt the new Director General is a Rad Lez Fem PETA member.

That's because if you attach climate change to your name, you have a better chance of getting funding. Same with scientific research. Amazing really that people are hostile to corporate sponsored research yet don't see this fundamental point.

skully wrote:Our State Environment Protection Agency (for years known as the EPA) has recently changed its name to the Department of Environment and Climate Change. No doubt the new Director General is a Rad Lez Fem PETA member.

Now hang on. I haven't got a clue about all this shit but you'd have to think that the last two hundred years of pumping stuff into the atmosphere that we hadn't done previously must have some effect.

What we do about it I don't know. As a rep of one of the big polluters said to me;

"qmy. When you stop drinking beer from a can I'll stop mining bauxite".

Generally I'm just enjoying the Libs tear themselves apart.

What sh!ts me qmy, is that if that qunt Krudd gets his ETS through, we'll all be paying $1,200 more per family a year in green taxes that will actually achieve fark all.

But, by geez, it'll make Krudd and his strap-it-on butch Environment Minsiter Penny Wong look like the love children of Gandhi.

And you would prefer.....?

I actually don't have a clue. No-one's been able, or even tried, to explain it to me apart from some ditzy bitch crat. Said it was going to cost me a fortune if I didn't do what Dad had apparently been doing for fifty years.

Penny Wong's hot isn't she?

Sober and rational analysis would be helpful rather than cherry picking facts to suit a dogmatic viewpoint. For instance CO2 is a dangerous pollutant when it is at too high a concentration. Just what that level is open to debate but at some point it will make the planet uninhabitable.

Yes, CO2 increases have previously followed temperature increases. Now, for the first time we have CO2 levels increasing which have not been caused by a temperature increase. To the prudent person that might ring an alarm bell.

If 10% of the atmosphere was CO2 would that still be OK?, 5%, 0.1%? Do you know what the safe point is? Of course you don't and nor do the "climate nutters" but eventually that level will arrive, whatever it is - maybe in 100,000 years, maybe in 100. Life existed on land 100 million years ago with more than 5 times the current levels but then again the level probably didn't double in 300 years as it might do now. Until the science can come up with a figure the only way we can make sure we don't hit it is to reduce our output of CO2. If we discover that 1% is fine then lets start pumping it out again.

It's pretty much the same reason you insure your house. You don't know that something nasty will happen but spending a few % of your income is a really good idea in case it does. Taking a risk just because you don't like Greenies is not very sensible.

"Penny Wong's hot isn't she?"

Does she melt your glacier?