So, apparently the new "conservative" government of Australia isn't buying everything Al Gore is selling.

Michael Bastasch wrote:Aussies buck environmentalists, fight to repeal global warming taxes



Australia’s new conservative government introduced legislation that would eliminate the carbon tax and cut funding to green energy in a series of aggressive moves to scale back the country’s environmental laws.

“We have said what we mean, and will do what we say. The carbon tax goes,” Prime Minister Abbott told Australian lawmakers. “Repealing the carbon tax should be the first economic reform of this parliament.”

The Liberal-National Party swept seats in September’s election in large part due to their opposition to the left-wing Labor Party’s imposition of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. The unpopular tax was blamed for rising power bills and hurting economic growth. Abbott has touted his party’s bill to repeal the carbon tax as “our bill to reduce your bills.”

However, this is only a portion of the Abbott government’s agenda. The carbon tax repeal plan will also cut $435 million in Australian dollars funding to the country’s renewable energy bureaucracy, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

The move was met with hostility from environmental groups who believe that funding cuts will cause the country to fall behind in the global marketplace.

“The axing of $435 million from ARENA will starve research and development of clean energy in Australia, moving us to the back of the global race for clean tech,” said Tony Mohr, a campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The Abbott government also bucked the most recent round of United Nations climate negotiations in Warsaw, Poland as the Australia’s environment minister and foreign minister will not be attending the meetings. The environment minister, Greg Hunt, has said that repealing the carbon tax will consume all his efforts in the coming months.

“Minister Hunt indicated a month ago at the Sustainable Business Australia forum that he will be fully engaged in repealing the carbon tax during the first two weeks of parliament,” a spokesman for Hunt told the Guardian.

Furthermore, Australia’s conservative coalition is also reconsidering international climate funding. The fund asks developed countries to give developing nations $100 billion per year by 2020. Australia has already kicked in $500,000 last year and $600 million for a precursor to the UN’s Green Climate Fund.

“The Green Climate Fund is currently in the design phase and Australia will consider its longer term involvement in the fund once its design has been further progressed,” said a spokeswoman for the Aussie foreign minister, Julie Bishop.

While Australia’s actions to roll back the green agenda have environmentalists kicking and screaming, the country received praise from Canada’s ruling party — that country rejected a carbon tax in 2008.

“The Australian Prime Minister’s decision will be noticed around the world and sends an important message,” said Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Parliamentary Secretary Paul Calandra. “Our government knows that carbon taxes raise the price of everything, including gas, groceries, and electricity.”

“Greenhouse gas emissions are down since 2006, and we’ve created one million net new jobs since the recession and we have done this without penalizing Canadian families with a carbon tax,” Calandra added.

 Breotan wrote:
So, apparently the new "conservative" government of Australia isn't buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 =Breotan wrote:
Australia isn't buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
Al Gore

 Medium of Death wrote:

 Breotan wrote:
So, apparently the new "conservative" government of Australia isn't buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 =Breotan wrote:
Australia isn't buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
Al Gore

I'm slightly confused, although the picture did make me laugh.

In other words anthropogenic climate change is a lie, just look at all the oil industry funded studies that show this to be true......as long as you don;t look at the actual science of course.

Yes, clearly nothing is changing at all around the world, so we don't believe a word you say, because our sponsors said not to.

Japan evidently is backing off too.

 Frazzled wrote:
Japan evidently is backing off too.

They won't be able to stay below the set CO_2 limits since they had to switch to fossil fuels for most of the energy production after they shut down all of their nuclear plants after Fukushima.

Since Germany is doing the same it will be interesting to see how they fare as well.

Well the goo thing is no more glowing zombies in germany anymoe, those things put a real hamper on tourism

 Medium of Death wrote:

 Breotan wrote:
So, apparently the new "conservative" government of Australia isn't buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 =Breotan wrote:
Australia isn't buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
buying everything Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
Al Gore is selling.

 Breotan wrote:
Al Gore

Real Go

 Frazzled wrote:
Since Germany is doing the same it will be interesting to see how they fare as well.

Indeed, i wouldn't be surprised if they'll announce missing the set goals as well. The "switch" to eco-friendlier power generation is not really going along as fast and structured as i hoped and on top of that our chancellor Angela Merkel recently 'blocked' an EU plan on limiting emissions from new cars ...
.

good, it was a feel good do nothing tax, plain and simple.

all of kyoto was too, more taxes does not mean less pollution.

You must have missed the part about the tax funding green energy research.

So I'm sure Australia will be seeing a drop in energy bills after this evil tax is done away with? Did Canada?

My initial post was for the whole "Al Gore" thing. It's as if climate change is still regarded as a fringe issue. Perplexing.

You can't no-sell global warming!

Nuclear power is the way of the future man. The best source of green energy is glowing green rocks.

Random fact, they don't actually glow green. They glow blue. Really pretty actually.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Advanced_Test_Reactor.jpg

 dementedwombat wrote:
You can't no-sell global warming!

Nuclear power is the way of the future man. The best source of green energy is glowing green rocks.

Random fact, they don't actually glow green. They glow blue. Really pretty actually.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Advanced_Test_Reactor.jpg

This is the second time I've heard this today...

 dementedwombat wrote:
Random fact, they don't actually glow green. They glow blue. Really pretty actually.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Advanced_Test_Reactor.jpg

That's due to cherenkov radiation, i.e. stuff going faster than the speed of light in the current medium.

As for nuclear fission, that's just a dead end.

 Medium of Death wrote:
You must have missed the part about the tax funding green energy research.

They just slashed 1200 jobs from our main SCIENTIFIC research organisation. Science research doesn't happen under that party's rule.
They are ignorant of science and how it fits into their paradigm.

Abbot is just ignorant, though. And a wingnut.

I'm pretty ashamed that so many voted for libs in this recent election - labor is dysfunctional too don't get me wrong, but not to the extent that they deny climate change and think science is evil, and that copper is fine for the internet for the future.

Senator Ludlam, a really switched on Green has lost (vote recounts ongoing iirc, problems there too..) his seat, the most knowledgeable politician on a range of important social issues such as online censorship, what to do about Julian Assange/wikileaks/snowden/manning and heaps more. Very sad. I've basically switched off all media covering my government now, too depressing.

 Palindrome wrote:
In other words anthropogenic climate change is a lie, just look at all the oil industry funded studies that show this to be true......as long as you don;t look at the actual science of course.

Or the green movement studies that "proove" this.

Here's a thought, for all the countries that believe this, in fact for all the people that believe this, what physical steps have been taken to reduce emmissions? Now I realise a lot of rules have been passed and a lot of money has changed hands, but how much industrial output has actually been reduced in the face of this imminent threat we supposedly face?
Should recreational use of vehicles be banned as it's unnecesary use of fossil fuels plus the energies required to manufacture purpose built recreational vehicles such as RVs, 4wds, combustion engine powered boats, jetskis, private planes, trail bikes etc.
Should entertainment reliant on electricity such as online gaming, xbox, karaoke be rationed to cut down power consumption?
Should hobbies that involve waste such as target shooting, paintball be rationed or banned?

At what point do the pro-AGW crowd want to impose limits to daily life in order to stop this supposed threat instead of just talking about carbon credits, taxes etc that have no effect on emmissions because I see no one actually reducing industrial output. The industries in question pay higher taxes for producing x number of greenhouses or however it's measured, but they keep on producing.

Given the zero impact on the environement these schemes have it makes sense for governments to stop hamstringing local industries and allowing them to use that money instead to fund R&D into more efficient systems.

It is embarrassing that the current leader of this country doesn't believe in climate change among other things, and as chromedog said is really just an ignorant person.

But what more do you expect? Somehow he got elected by pointing at boat people and going "BE SCARED OF THEM" and by pointing at labour and saying "they are doing it all wrong, they need to be stopped" and never quite getting into how what he was proposing (when there even was something that he was proposing) was better than their current policies.

 Yonan wrote:
I'm pretty ashamed that so many voted for libs in this recent election

Hey my conscience is clear. I voted for Palmer and his realistic dreams of Titanic 2.0 and Jurrasic Park: The Australian Story.

cadbren wrote:

Or the green movement studies that "prove" this.

It's not the 'green movement' that proves (in the lay venacular) that anthropogenic climate change is real but actual scientific evidence. The Scientific consensus is very clear so unless there is some global conspiracy for some unknowable goal then there is little point is fabricating tree hugging bogey men, unless of course your goal is to muddy the waters and 'teach the controversy'.

Very little has been done to reduce CO 2 emissions for two main reasons. Firstly it costs money with little or no short term benefits (an anathema to politicians) and secondly it would mean moving away from fossil fuels, notably oil, the exploitation of which has become so deeply embedded in the economy as a whole that people seem to be ideologically opposed to the very notion of renewable energy.

Even if climate change is a completely natural phenomena (which is unlikely) then we still need to be pouring resources into sustainable and renewable sources of energy for the simple reason that fossil fuels are finite. They will just keep getting more and more expensive and eventually they will run out entirely. We would be wise to make a real effort to find sustainable replacements now.

It's a shame none of the major political parties in the UK have the balls to propose this. Even the tories are too busy hugging huskies to give two gaks about the average family's disposable income.

 Medium of Death wrote:

So I'm sure Australia will be seeing a drop in energy bills after this evil tax is done away with?

That's exactly what Abbott promised before the election.

Funnily enough, it wasn't until after the election that the power companies started saying Yeah... About that...'

Time to get on my tinfoil hat.

Personally, I'm happy the tax is going, but less happy that the ignorant wingnut is keeping the pork barrelling going by keeping the subsides.
I'm not happy with the slashing of science jobs, there is not enough R and D in this country.

I do take exception to (not that it has been said this thread) "the science is decided" as science is NEVER decided , is never finished, is never final, that's the best thing about science. My father is a chemist and every time he hears the phrase " the science is decided" he gets into a rage , I agree completely with the sentiment. There have been many many theories disproven over the years, and may there be many more.

My problem with the issue of climate change is this, climate is extremely complex involving many specialised disciplines , we do not know enough about the climate (just look at the short time we have been measuring the climate - 300 years is nothing) to categorically say that one thing is responsible for higher temperatures in the future. Climate has so many variables and things that affect it (a lot of it being regional), I really do not think we have a complete enough understanding of how climate operates on a basic level , let alone on an advanced level.

Climate scientist, anyone who calls themselves a climate scientist is a liar, there is no such thing as a climate scientist, as there are so many factors involved in climate that in order to become a climate scientist you would need to spend your whole career in university just to become qualified. Water currents, atmosphere, sun, wind, ,oceanography, geology, ice layers and add to that human influence of all those factors other than the sun and that's a hell of a lot of disciplines to cover.

Indeed.

I think we may be responsible for speeding it up a little, but we didn't cause it. The earth is not a fragile little flower, it is rather robust. Our industry over the past couple centuries barely compares to what volcanoes have tossed up in the past. Single eruptions have caused worldwide famine in the past because of all the particles tossed in the atmosphere.

At worst we are talking an increase in the time between warming periods. Not creating one that never would have existed without us.

I don't see the issue with energy saving initiatives...
From a purely financial point of view they make sense even if you don't think climate change is an issue that human can affect.

Of course, but there could be other issues tied to them that aren't desirable(simply speaking in general terms here)

Unnecessary restrictions on businesses for one will be a bad idea in an economic downturn. best to have good ideas stand alone apart from bad ones.

You can also make the argument that trying to slow down global warming at this point is a futile endeavor at this point and energy would be best directed at dealing with its effects. Such as looking at alternatives to glaciers for storing water to keep the rivers flowing during the summer and fall to compensate for less snow pack. Some possibilities are large dams in mountain areas that can hold the water that falls during the winter in a reservoir that can be released during the dry seasons. Something that could hold water in the mountains if its frozen or liquid.

I do agree with the premise that the earth is not a fragile flower, although we were not alive at one point the earth had a 40% carbon dioxide level now it's around 0.4%, but that really doesn't matter because during the next cooling period humanity as we know it will pretty much change. Interestingly plants flourish at 4% carbon dioxide.

Cooling periods usually signal the end of dominant civilisations and bring on a renewal/destruction of human societies. What I'm talking about are the smaller periods ( in my opinion that last 300-400 years), I'd hate to think what a new ice age would do to human society. There also seems to be a smaller period of 30-40 years , taking this into account it is interesting to note that some science magazines in the 70s were running stories like "are we headed to a new ice age". However after all this it is important to realise such small time periods have no relevance to climate or the measure of climate changing - the time periods involved are just too short.

Too often people seem to regard climate as a static thing , it isn't, it all goes in cycles.

We're adaptable enough to survive anything that isn't too drastic(only a couple years) At the speeds we're talking here we will barely notice it within our lifetimes. And really, it would need to be REALLY drastic for extinction to be even a remote possibility.

At worst we'd see the collapse of modern societies, but not extinction.

 Grey Templar wrote:
At worst we'd see the collapse of modern societies, but not extinction.

Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy!

There's some hilarious ignorance from human climate change deniers in this thread.

What I love the most is the way the goalposts keep moving for the deniers. First it was "Global warming is not happening!". When it becomes apparent that global warming is indeed happening, it becomes "Global Warming is not caused by humans!" When it becomes a bit more likely that it is caused by humans it becomes "Well it would have been part of a natural cycle anyhow, we're saving the world from a new ice age!"
I love it.

We're probably too late to stop any warming, but the denial of the importance of the ecosystem and the knock on effect of change on fragile farm ecosystems is hilarious. Equally hilarious is ignoring the fact that we need a sustainable energy solution sometime soon, and funding that research is pretty damn prudent.

Australia is like the poster child for ecological disasters, I guess this will be no different. Once all the profit has been mined out of the country by private interests whatever group are in power will pay the electoral price from a very angry australian population.

Also, no such thing as a climate scientist because the climate is so complex? Wow, how disappointing! Seriously, is that the argument now?
Bloody brilliant stuff here. Enjoy being on the wrong side of history, lads.

I love how like 97% of scientists believe humans contribute to global warming yet some jackass on the internet with no formal education in environmental sciences somehow has the arrogance to discredit these experts.


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 easysauce wrote:
good, it was a feel good do nothing tax, plain and simple.

all of kyoto was too, more taxes does not mean less pollution.

That's not entirely true Kyoto was successful with some countries.

What's that graph supposed to be showing, Cheesecat? Percentage of what is changing, exactly?

Net annual national greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, might have to to tilt your head to the left.

I don't get it, some countries promised to increase their greenhouse emissions?

I hate that graph more than anything I have ever hated since last night.

 motyak wrote:
I don't get it, some countries promised to increase their greenhouse emissions?

I would guess they promised to slow net growth (that is, if they expected growth of greenhouse gases to rise by 30%, they promise to constrain growth to 15% or something), but I'm not 100% sure.

 motyak wrote:
I don't get it, some countries promised to increase their greenhouse emissions?

I'm thinking countries put in limits of what they thought would be achievable.


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 MrDwhitey wrote:
I hate that graph more than anything I have ever hated since last night.

Why the anger?


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 motyak wrote:
I don't get it, some countries promised to increase their greenhouse emissions?

I'm assuming that the pink ones in the positives are still lower emissions than their 1990 GHG emissions.

 Da Boss wrote:
There's some hilarious ignorance from human climate change deniers in this thread.

What I love the most is the way the goalposts keep moving for the deniers. First it was "Global warming is not happening!". When it becomes apparent that global warming is indeed happening, it becomes "Global Warming is not caused by humans!" When it becomes a bit more likely that it is caused by humans it becomes "Well it would have been part of a natural cycle anyhow, we're saving the world from a new ice age!"
I love it.

You really are in your own little world aren't you. Firstly we were warned about global cooling, then when it was discovered that we weren't about to be plunged into the next ice age it was global warming. Oh my, data doesn't really prove global temperature rises leading to melting ice caps and rising sea levels, so then we get climate change. Phew, can't argue with climate change, the weather is always changing.
Climate change also means not having to address any significant global temperature rise in the last 20 years despite increased industrial activity, loss of forests and increased used of fossil fuels worldwide.

Equally hilarious is ignoring the fact that we need a sustainable energy solution sometime soon, and funding that research is pretty damn prudent.

Even more hilarious is that no one is saying this, industry by its nature is always looking for the next step in efficiency and investing in research and design. What needs to happen is that everyone abides by the rules for safe disposal of waste material.

Australia is like the poster child for ecological disasters

Nothing to do with climate change. Australia is a dry continent with most of the land area covered by desert and grasslands. Of the forested areas, much relies on bushfires as part of the natural lifecycle . The problem is that more people are now living in forest areas.
The forest fires and droughts, along with floods in some parts, are all part of the natural cycle.

Enjoy being on the wrong side of history, lads.

Nah, too easy.

I would like to know why you think the climate is getting worse and why you think this change is due to industrial output. I mean if this is obvious science then there must be specific data that shows x amount of emissions results in x amount of change. Instead we have prats who claim every natural event is now the result of global warming.


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with Europe's savings reduced to just 1% from 1990 to 2008 and the developed world as a whole seeing its emissions rise by 7% in the same period.

Overall, the result is that global emissions have showed no sign of slowing down, as the chart below shows. In that sense, the Kyoto protocol has been a failure.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/nov/26/kyoto-protocol-carbon-emissions

The global cooling thing was never a big thing in the scientific community.

In fact, there was a report in 1970 that talked about potential increases in temperature due to rising CO2 levels.

The quick rundown on wikipedia is actually not too terrible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

As for why scientists keep having to change predictions, it's because the exact effect of significantly higher PPM CO2 in the atmosphere (EDIT: and oceans, I should mention oceans because the effect on them could be significant) isn't known with 100% certainty. There are a lot of factors no one can nail down with certainty, like what happens with the gulf stream and what effect that has on temperatures all over Europe.

The main thing scientists can agree on is this, pumping tons of CO2 that wasn't in the atmosphere into the atmosphere in a short period of time will likely have effects we cannot fully predict. If they will be mild or devastating is what they're trying to figure out. In addition, these changes in the atmospheric makeup are occurring at rates far quicker than they normally do under natural conditions, barring something like a Yellowstone eruption (which would be massively devastating).

As to how we fix it, well the bad news there is that we've already pumped out so much CO2 that CO2 levels won't return to pre-industrial levels no matter what we do for something like 1000 years, unless we found a way to harvest CO2 from the oceans (biologically engineered algae or something). The way to slow growth though is to invest in renewables (a more efficient solar panel would do wonders), and continue to invest in nuclear power. There's no silver bullet (until we figure out energy efficient nuclear fusion), so R&D across all possibilities is important.

That's the worst part of this action in Australia, no one likes higher energy bills, but the cuts to R&D lower the chance that a more efficient energy source will be found.

As for the Kyoto protocol working or not, the problem is mainly nations like China and India, that are growing quickly, and doing so using fossil fuels, not clean energy. While a chunk of the developed world has cut back, another chunk has picked up the slack and then some trying to keep economic growth going. That's why technological innovations are so vital, economic growth requires power, and power right now requires fossil fuels. If we had some breakthroughs on the science front, we could replace fossil fuels with other things and the emission growth would curtail significantly.

The other thing about China and India is that they were not bound by the protocol and a lot of industry was transfered from western countries to those countries resulting in job loss for western workers, more profit for the shareholders and no reduction in emissions.

Well yes, but that's what tends to happen anyway when a nation has effectively turned several hundred million people into disposable workers, and import laws are lax in allowing goods produced via those workers to enter and be sold.

It's a difficult balancing game; unfettered economic growth vs. long term climate stability, especially when there isn't one set of rules everyone plays by. That being said, the solution isn't a race to the bottom. After all, even if western nations did away with all climate control policies, companies would still flee due to wages, or 401ks, or healthcare, or 40 hour work weeks, or those pesky basic human rights, you know, things they can safely ignore if only they go knocking on the right nation's doorstep.

The solution, in terms of constraining CO2 emissions around the world, is to make fossil fuels obsolete, something that could likely be done within a generation if the technology was wholeheartedly pursued. Instead, we have silly things like this Australian situation cutting R&D money, or in the US, huge subsidies for oil companies, while research grants to universities are attacked constantly. It's a one step forward, one step back situation that is really quite unfortunate.

What's happened with the Carbon Tax is actually a pretty good example that shows how the theatre of politics is perhaps more important than the reality of the legislation.

This story begins in 2007. The conservative Liberal government is in power, and both they and the opposition Labor party have a carbon trading scheme as part of their manifesto. The only real difference is that Labor want a scheme that connects to the European schemes, while the Liberals say they will put one in place as part of a future multi-national scheme.

Labor wins the election very handily, and comes to power for the first time in more than a decade. They are in a position of strength they've not really experienced before, not in terms of the number of seats they hold, but the popular support for many of the policies they hold, including a scheme for reducing carbon emissions. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes apparent that the Prime Minister is a complete noddy, he is abusive to other party members and senior bureaucrats, and delegates nothing - decisions begin getting made on the fly from his office, with no consultation or planning. Major reforms to education, healthcare, and tax are attempted, flunder under poor management and then are abandoned in favour of something else.

The highest profile policy of all of those failed efforts was the carbon tax, which as I mentioned above was not only a written policy of both major parties, had very strong support from both Rudd and Opposition Leader Turnbull, and strong support in the public in general (though specific proposals not so much, but that's always the case). But neither handled negotiations well, and Turnbull also handled politics within his own party really badly, opening the door for Abbott to challenge and win leadership, and immediately reject dealing with Labor for a carbon scheme.

The Rudd government lurched on for a while, eventually proving its incompetence once and for all when it failed to sell the population on a tax on the billions in profits made by large mining companies. In the night of Ginger Knives Rudd was removed as leader by Gillard, and she attempted to ride the goodwill of being our first lady PM to immediately call a new election.

Gillard did not run a good campaign, and what was meant to be an easy electoral win turned in to a close run thing, and as it got closer and closer Gillard started saying a lot of things just to win votes wherever she could... and the big one was stating there would be no price on carbon. Whether she believed what she was saying at the time is unknown, what matters is that when the election results came in she was only able to form government by making deals with the Greens and multiple independants, and the Greens would only come to the party if Gillard agreed to a carbon tax. She did, and so we got a carbon tax and her earlier campaign statement became an outright lie. Her standing in opinion polls plummetted, and while her government got a fair bit done despite their weak position, they were never at all popular and it was really just a waiting game for the next election for Abbott to become PM.

And while Rudd and Gillard were both eventually casualties of the political shambles around carbon reduction, so too was the scheme itself. There is little to no coherent debate over the realities of the current carbon tax, the average family pays about $200 a year more in energy prices... which any family on less than about $70,000 gets back in reduced taxes... but despite this people carry on as though the carbon tax is sending them bankrupt. Nor has it had any impact on business - any business with serious energy consumption like aluminium are exempt.

In attempt to avoid outright annihilation at the polls, Labor dumped Gillard in favour of Rudd, and he did reduce the defeat but Abbott was always going to win. And now he's planning on dumping the carbon tax, and the move has really strong popular support. Six years to take policy from overwhelmingly popular to very unpopular, and all it takes is a lot of political incompetence.

The interesting footnote is that Abbott went in to the 2010 and 2013 elections with a carbon reduction scheme of his own, called 'direct action'. It was this very vague idea in which government would fund thinktanks and directly subsidising green technology, but no real figures were ever produced on how much would be spent on this, or who would decide which technologies are best, because it was pretty clear to everyone it was just an obvious lie that Abbott told to pretend he was still interested in environmental policy. Since he's become PM he's not mentioned the idea at all, and actually cancelled funding for the one research organisation that did look in to renewable technology. Funnily enough that isn't seen as a lie like Gillard's claim, because no-one really believed Abbott in the first place.

cadbren wrote:
Or the green movement studies that "proove" this.

Yeah, because it's just a case of two political sides, each with scientific studies that are both equal.

fething reality fething matters.

Here's a thought, for all the countries that believe this, in fact for all the people that believe this, what physical steps have been taken to reduce emmissions? Now I realise a lot of rules have been passed and a lot of money has changed hands, but how much industrial output has actually been reduced in the face of this imminent threat we supposedly face?

Should recreational use of vehicles be banned as it's unnecesary use of fossil fuels plus the energies required to manufacture purpose built recreational vehicles such as RVs, 4wds, combustion engine powered boats, jetskis, private planes, trail bikes etc.

That's about the silliest slippery slope I've ever seen. And considering we're on dakka, that's saying a lot.

Given the zero impact on the environement these schemes have it makes sense for governments to stop hamstringing local industries and allowing them to use that money instead to fund R&D into more efficient systems.

How have you lived your entire life in a capitalist country without realising that when the price goes up people use less?


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Bullockist wrote:
I do take exception to (not that it has been said this thread) "the science is decided" as science is NEVER decided , is never finished, is never final, that's the best thing about science. My father is a chemist and every time he hears the phrase " the science is decided" he gets into a rage , I agree completely with the sentiment. There have been many many theories disproven over the years, and may there be many more.

Yes, but not really. I mean, yeah, Newton's theory of gravity was overturned by Einstein's relativity, but it didn't change the basic reality that objects fall towards the Earth at 9.8m/s. It's likely that we'll change and maybe even radically revise large portions of our understanding of climate over the next couple of decades, but that doesn't change the basic reality we have now established that the current amount of carbon released in to the atmosphere by humans is having a material impact on temperature.

My problem with the issue of climate change is this, climate is extremely complex involving many specialised disciplines , we do not know enough about the climate (just look at the short time we have been measuring the climate - 300 years is nothing) to categorically say that one thing is responsible for higher temperatures in the future.

Climate scientists disagree.

Climate scientist, anyone who calls themselves a climate scientist is a liar, there is no such thing as a climate scientist, as there are so many factors involved in climate that in order to become a climate scientist you would need to spend your whole career in university just to become qualified. Water currents, atmosphere, sun, wind, ,oceanography, geology, ice layers and add to that human influence of all those factors other than the sun and that's a hell of a lot of disciplines to cover.

Uh no. There's actually a really wide number of scientific fields that look at broad effects at the macro level. Population health, for instance.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Indeed.

I think we may be responsible for speeding it up a little, but we didn't cause it. The earth is not a fragile little flower, it is rather robust.

The Earth is not a pretty little flower, but we are, and our economies certainly are. The Earth will respond to an increase in carbon in its atmosphere and chug along just fine with a few minor changes here or there. But for us people, clining to the surface of the Earth and trying to run massive civilisations through trade and industry... well those minor changes can screw things up for us big time. Change a weather pattern and well maybe you'll get just as much rain as you used to, but now it's 10' further south... meaning we have to relocate millions of acres of farmland, and all the roads and supporting infrastructure.

That's the basic reality of carbon emmission. It costs a lot less to reduce it than it does to adapt.


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cadbren wrote:
Firstly we were warned about global cooling, then when it was discovered that we weren't about to be plunged into the next ice age it was global warming.

A cover story on a Newsweek issue isn't science.

Climate change also means not having to address any significant global temperature rise in the last 20 years despite increased industrial activity, loss of forests and increased used of fossil fuels worldwide.

That's like arguing that falling from a plane doesn't have any negative impacts, because we haven't gone splat yet.

Anyhow, there was debate about climate modelling in the early 90s. That was a debate with lots of intelligent, honest people, with a wide variety of views. But ultimately the models that showed predictive power were the ones that included human carbon emissions leading to a spike in temperatures. Since then the debate has been between people who have adapted and improved those early models, and lying charlatans who invent stupid reasons for rejecting science with established predictive power (like the nonsense that Newsweek ran a silly story in the 1970s, therefore the whole field is bunk).

I would like to know why you think the climate is getting worse and why you think this change is due to industrial output.

Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

 sebster wrote:
Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

Has the scientific consensus indeed become that climate change occurs because of industrial output?

 Seaward wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

Has the scientific consensus indeed become that climate change occurs because of industrial output?

It may not be the only thing that causes climate change but there's tons of studies out there showing the effects that industrial output has on climate.

Including long-term trends?

 Seaward wrote:
Including long-term trends?

What do you mean by long-term? Like decades, hundreds of years, etc?

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
Including long-term trends?

What do you mean by long-term? Like decades, hundreds of years, etc?

Either, I suppose. I don't follow the climate change stuff. I don't much see the sense in worrying about gak that isn't going to be significant even after my great-grandchildren are dead, so I'm genuinely curious if science proved industrial output is responsible for long-term changes in what was already a non-static climate.

Ice cores, which trap air in tiny pockets and as such enable us to look back several hundred thousand years show that while the makeup of the atmosphere has changed in composition over the years, those changes tend to take tens of thousands of years. The changes we've seen in the past century due to fossil fuels and industrial output are basically doing in 100 years what scientific data suggests takes thousands to occur on its own.

So yes, unless we missed a huge volcano that's been erupting since the early 1900s, science is reasonably certain that it is industrial output causing a change in the makeup of our atmosphere and oceans.

 sebster wrote:

Should recreational use of vehicles be banned as it's unnecesary use of fossil fuels plus the energies required to manufacture purpose built recreational vehicles such as RVs, 4wds, combustion engine powered boats, jetskis, private planes, trail bikes etc.

That's about the silliest slippery slope I've ever seen.

You think it's silly to actually reduce the usage of non-essential fuel consumming devices given this 'global catastrophe' we're facing? I think you're arguing in favour of the green movement for the hell of it and that you haven't given any serious thought to the issue.

How have you lived your entire life in a capitalist country without realising that when the price goes up people use less?

What, like cars, electricity, insurance?
But are you really saying that you want to reduce industrial output and therefore reduce the amount of money availble to invest in future systems? If the prices go up too far then those industries shift to a country where it's cheaper to manufacture resulting in lost jobs locally, which is what I said.

Climate scientists disagree.

Yes they do.

Change a weather pattern and well maybe you'll get just as much rain as you used to, but now it's 10' further south... meaning we have to relocate millions of acres of farmland, and all the roads and supporting infrastructure.

This is what is at issue, they're trying to prevent the natural cycle for commercial reasons. It's doomed to failure

A cover story on a Newsweek issue isn't science.

No it isn't, what's your point?

Climate change also means not having to address any significant global temperature rise in the last 20 years despite increased industrial activity, loss of forests and increased used of fossil fuels worldwide.

That's like arguing that falling from a plane doesn't have any negative impacts, because we haven't gone splat yet.

No, that's called panic mongering, there is no evidence that our civilisation is going to go "splat" due to climate change. Again, what are the figures of this decline, where is the proof, it's a theory, a rather vague one at that.

Since then the debate has been between people who have adapted and improved those early models, and lying charlatans who invent stupid reasons for rejecting science with established predictive power.

I assume this is what qualifies as reasoned arguement from where you come from but all it is is derisory hyperbole. If the "predictive power" of this science is so great then how about some actual predictions that can be followed, verified. I was taught the dangers of global warming when I was in school, the rising temperatures, the rising sea levels, it hasn't happened and they've been claiming this stuff for decades, there should be obvious figures by now, there aren't, so they've stopped calling if warming and gone with change.

I would like to know why you think the climate is getting worse and why you think this change is due to industrial output.

Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

There is no consensus so why are you supporting this so aggressively?

You also ignored my question about industrial output.

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

Has the scientific consensus indeed become that climate change occurs because of industrial output?

It may not be the only thing that causes climate change but there's tons of studies out there showing the effects that industrial output has on climate.

That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

 Cheesecat wrote:


That's not entirely true Kyoto was successful with some countries.

Kronk is sometimes smart, but sometimes Kronk needs a hand.

Is a negative number good? If your green number is more negative than your red number, is that good?

Kronk is confused.

 djones520 wrote:

That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

Deniers want the consensus to be a joke, but it is neither that nor bs.

So here you go:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

And here's a pretty good and more readable overview of the studies: http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/928.asp

 djones520 wrote:
That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

He won't be able to. The oft-cited 97% number has been debunked a number of times.

 DogofWar1 wrote:
Deniers want the consensus to be a joke, but it is neither that nor bs.

And alarmists want to conjure images of holocaust deniers whenever they use that word.


Climate change exists. It always has. It always will. The only real question is how much we contribute to it (our carbon dioxide output is dwarfed by the natural sources of this gas), and whether such change is actually a bad thing (especially when you consider some hotter climates bring about greater crop yields). And I can tell you that Australia contributes next to nothing, making any sort of Carbon Tax a complete waste of time. We need rid of it. Fast.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 djones520 wrote:
That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

He won't be able to. The oft-cited 97% number has been debunked a number of times.

 DogofWar1 wrote:
Deniers want the consensus to be a joke, but it is neither that nor bs.

And alarmists what to conjure images of holocaust deniers whenever they use that word.

Considering how often folks like me have been likened to "Nazi's", I'd say your dead on with the denier part.

 djones520 wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

Has the scientific consensus indeed become that climate change occurs because of industrial output?

It may not be the only thing that causes climate change but there's tons of studies out there showing the effects that industrial output has on climate.

That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

I quite enjoy the fact that his argument is several paragraphs, and your's is you cursing at him.

Are...are you serious right now!?

Are you guys seriously trying to derail the conversation by saying you're victims of being called Nazis for your stance on climate change?

How about instead, responding to the studies I posted? You asked for information concerning the views of scientists on the issue of climate change, and there it is.

It's especially funny, H.M.B.C., how you managed to, in a single post, say that information concerning a consensus wouldn't be forthcoming, and then respond to the one part of my post that doesn't include information concerning said consensus. Nice job.

Climate change exists. It always has. It always will. The only real question is how much we contribute to it (our carbon dioxide output is dwarfed by the natural sources of this gas), and whether such change is actually a bad thing (especially when you consider some hotter climates bring about greater crop yields). And I can tell you that Australia contributes next to nothing, making any sort of Carbon Tax a complete waste of time. We need rid of it. Fast.

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere#Past_variation

At no point in the past 400,000 years has CO2 ppm gone substantially beyond 300 ppm, if it even got to that level at all. Today, we're rapidly approaching 400 ppm. Ice cores taken from just before the industrial revolution show PPM at around 280 ppm. A 120 ppm increase in less than 200 years is unprecedented, and doubly so when you consider that it hasn't cracked 300 ppm in the past 400,000 years.

What's different?

Us.

As for if climate change could be beneficial: http://www.wunderground.com/climate/facts/negative_impacts.asp?MR=1

Flip over to "Intermediate" to see side by side comparisons of positive outcomes and negative outcomes, with links to studies. There are some possible positive effects, but many more possible negative effects.

 Seaward wrote:
Has the scientific consensus indeed become that climate change occurs because of industrial output?

There is scientific consensus that carbon emissions from human industry are driving a constant increase in global temperature that underlies other cyclical climate patterns, yes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Seaward wrote:
Either, I suppose. I don't follow the climate change stuff. I don't much see the sense in worrying about gak that isn't going to be significant even after my great-grandchildren are dead, so I'm genuinely curious if science proved industrial output is responsible for long-term changes in what was already a non-static climate.

There will be a considerable increase in average temperatures by 2050, which is within the lifetimes of most people who post on dakka.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

cadbren wrote:
You think it's silly to actually reduce the usage of non-essential fuel consumming devices given this 'global catastrophe' we're facing?

I think it's silly to talk wildly about extreme, unecessary steps when there's countless minor, cheap and non-intrusive steps that people are refusing to consider.

I think you're arguing in favour of the green movement for the hell of it and that you haven't given any serious thought to the issue.

I'm actually quite contemptuous of much of the green movement, who frequently rely too heavily on emotive arguments and impractical 'solutions'.

I am, however, a big fan of the collection of human knowledge gained through empirical research that we call 'science', and believe that when a field of human study comes to a clear conclusion, we should respect that conclusion.

What, like cars, electricity, insurance? But are you really saying that you want to reduce industrial output and therefore reduce the amount of money availble to invest in future systems?

Yes, goods and services would become slightly more expensive. That's happening already, with the rising price of fuels - and we all deal with it.

If the prices go up too far then those industries shift to a country where it's cheaper to manufacture resulting in lost jobs locally, which is what I said.

The price effect of carbon neutral industry is not cheap, but nor is it that expensive. The estimated cost to GDP of worldwide carbon neutrality is 3 to 5%. Now that will have an impact on marginal industries, but the claims of total collapse are just scaremongering. Right now Australia is dealing with a dollar that's inflated about parity by close to 50%... and that causes trouble for marginal industries, but it hasn't killed it, and it certainly hasn't led Australia to consider abandoning the free floating dollar.

And yet any talk about a price on carbon is talked about in apocalyptic terms. Madness.

This is what is at issue, they're trying to prevent the natural cycle for commercial reasons. It's doomed to failure

It's not a natural cycle. It's a change in cycle due to human activity.

No it isn't, what's your point?

That the people who pretend global warming isn't a thing do so in large part through silly non-arguments, such as pretending that a few popular news stories spun out of theories proposed by climate science 40 years ago in the absolute infancy of the field are somehow equal in scientific rigour to the theories produced now by thousands of researchers working with established models with proven predictive power.

No, that's called panic mongering, there is no evidence that our civilisation is going to go "splat" due to climate change.

You don't understand how analogies work. The human falling out of the plane goes splat, the planet slowly heating merely has a consequence not yet suffered, which by no means has to be as extreme as the splat. And given I had laid out the case for climate change as an on-going economic cost and not an apocalypse, this should have been an obvious thing for you to realise.

Again, what are the figures of this decline, where is the proof, it's a theory, a rather vague one at that.

It is not vague, and you don't understand what a theory is. You don't get to reject science when you don't understand how it works.

I assume this is what qualifies as reasoned arguement from where you come from but all it is is derisory hyperbole. If the "predictive power" of this science is so great then how about some actual predictions that can be followed, verified. I was taught the dangers of global warming when I was in school, the rising temperatures, the rising sea levels, it hasn't happened and they've been claiming this stuff for decades, there should be obvious figures by now, there aren't, so they've stopped calling if warming and gone with change.

You're confusing 'what you were taught in high school' with 'climate science as understood by climate scientists'.

There is no consensus so why are you supporting this so aggressively?

There is, you don't know what you're talking about.

You also ignored my question about industrial output.

I thought I answered the whole lot, please refresh my memory.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:
That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

So are we just ignoring NASA now?

"Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources."

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus#ft1

NASA is infallible? Hardly.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1400/20130416/nasa-duping-washington-regards-global-warming.htm

The UN has been shown to be wrong.

http://junkscience.com/2013/09/19/ipccs-own-graph-shows-climate-models-embarrassingly-wrong/

Hell, people admitting they were wrong just seems to be the vogue thing nowadays.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10310712/Top-climate-scientists-admit-global-warming-forecasts-were-wrong.html


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

Has the scientific consensus indeed become that climate change occurs because of industrial output?

It may not be the only thing that causes climate change but there's tons of studies out there showing the effects that industrial output has on climate.

That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

I quite enjoy the fact that his argument is several paragraphs, and your's is you cursing at him.

Sometimes saying less is better.

Linking Australia's natural disasters to climate change is intellectually dishonest. As climate change has (apparently) gripped the very fabric of our planet neither the frequency nor intensity of natural disasters (from flooding to fires to cyclones) has increased or even decreased in any significant fashion. Every time there's a big disaster the alarmists latch onto it as if it were some metaphorical smoking gun. They did it with the drought (no rain because of climate change), they did it with the floods (too much rain because of climate change), they did it with the completely normal cyclical fire season (it was so intense because of climate change... no... it was worse because the God-damned Green party blocked back burning efforts) and you can guaran-fething-tee that yesterday’s mini-cyclone that tore the roof off a shopping centre a block away from where I live will be blamed on climate change as well (if it hasn’t already).

Even the recent distaster in the Philippines has had people going "See! See! We were right!" and claiming it the most damaging storm of all time (ever!)... even though it isn't, becuase the Philippines (like Australia's bushfires, floods and so on) has had worse storms in the past, and will have worse storms again in the future.

 sebster wrote:
There is scientific consensus that carbon emissions from human industry are driving a constant increase in global temperature that underlies other cyclical climate patterns, yes.

You mean that 'constant' increase that hasn't been all that 'constant' for nearly 2 decades? That one?

Ok.

 djones520 wrote:
NASA is infallible? Hardly.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1400/20130416/nasa-duping-washington-regards-global-warming.htm

"the team acknowledges in their report that "climate science is not one of our data technical specialties," but that, nonetheless, given their experience in their separate fields of physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology and others, they felt the need to speak out"

So we've got a bunch of people who don't work in the field saying they don't believe it. Shockingly enough, if you look in to their claims you'll find they're based largely around the problems with an outdated model. Which is the kind of mistakes that people who don't work in the field make... which is why we don't care what they think. If you want an opinion on physics you ask a guy who's active in physics research. If you want an opinion on climate science, you ask a guy who's active in climate science research, unless you want someone to give you some nonsense that questions it, in which case you go find some engineers and geologists.

The UN has been shown to be wrong.

http://junkscience.com/2013/09/19/ipccs-own-graph-shows-climate-models-embarrassingly-wrong/

The claim is made by the guy who signed up to this;
"Earth and its ecosystems – created by God's intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence – are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting"

Oh, and he isn't even a scientist, he's in econometrics. Which has a place in climate science - estimating the scale of climate impacts on the economy, but in terms of qualifications for questioning the climate change predictions, the guy effectively has no qualifications at all.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10310712/Top-climate-scientists-admit-global-warming-forecasts-were-wrong.html

Did you read the story, or just the headline? Think carefully and read this paragraph from the story before replying;

"The “summary for policymakers” of the report, seen by the Mail on Sunday, states that the world is warming at a rate of 0.12C per decade since 1951, compared to a prediction of 0.13C per decade in their last assessment published in 2007."

So what's your answer? You didn't actually read the story, or you think that an adjustment of 0.13C to 0.12C is so massive that the whole scientific field can be rejected?

 djones520 wrote:
NASA is infallible? Hardly.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1400/20130416/nasa-duping-washington-regards-global-warming.htm

Comprised largely of ex-NASA engineers and scientists, the team acknowledges in their report that "climate science is not one of our data technical specialties," but that, nonetheless, given their experience in their separate fields of physics, chemistry, geology, meteorology and others, they felt the need to speak out.

They aren't climate scientists, and their report pretty much is "we shouldn't trust the climate scientists." Sounds like a very credible report.

 djones520 wrote:

The UN has been shown to be wrong.

http://junkscience.com/2013/09/19/ipccs-own-graph-shows-climate-models-embarrassingly-wrong/

I'm not sure where the 0.1 degrees C thing is coming from. Data seems to suggest it's more than that and in line with IPCC predictions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record#Warmest_decades
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

 djones520 wrote:

Hell, people admitting they were wrong just seems to be the vogue thing nowadays.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10310712/Top-climate-scientists-admit-global-warming-forecasts-were-wrong.html

Wait, wait, wait. You mean the IPCC predicted 0.13 degree C increase, and only 0.12 degree increase happened? LE GASP! Such a huge difference must CLEARLY mean that climate change isn't happening. We'll just sweep that 0.12 degree C change under the rug and call it 0.00 degree change, eh?

I'm only extremely sarcastic right now.

Also, to address the "pause" in warming. From wikipedia (which has done a lovely job citing to sources in its footnotes, btw): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record#Internal_climate_variability_and_global_warming

One of the issues that has been raised in the media is the view that global warming "stopped in 1998".[30][31] This view ignores the presence of internal climate variability.[32][31] Internal climate variability is a result of complex interactions between components of the climate system, such as the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean.[33] An example of internal climate variability is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).[31][32] The El Niño in 1998 was particularly strong, possibly one of the strongest of the 20th century.[31]

Cooling between 2006 and 2008, for instance, has likely been driven by La Niña, the opposite of El Niño conditions.[34] The area of cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures that defines La Niña conditions can push global temperatures downward, if the phenomenon is strong enough.[34] Even accounting for the presence of internal climate variability, recent years rank among the warmest on record.[35] For example, every year of the 2000s was warmer than the 1990 average.[36]

EDIT: Sebster, coming in spicy!

Geez guys...

When Mt Pinatubo erupted... at that time, it surpassed the amount of greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere than the history of mankind.

o.O

That's the scale what we're dealing with.

Don't feth with Mother Nature.

Even if AGW is true, its clear that all our current solutions are woefully inadequate.

Most renewable sources of energy are unreliable, or lack the support and political will to make good use of them.

Wind energy is gak, horribly expensive and inefficient. To get any useful amounts of energy from it, we'd have to build wind farms all over the country, ruining the countryside and (ironically) causing damage to ecosystems and habitats. The [British] Government subsidies are wasted on these, but because British MPs gambled on Wind Energy and lost, we're so heavily invested that our leaders aren't going to admit their mistakes anytime soon.

Solar energy technology is advancing rapidly, but lack the government subsidies that our government wasted on Wind farms and our leaders don't want to lose face, so we won't be mass producing solar energy anytime soon.

Nuclear energy is very productive, but comes with serious and extremely unpopular risks, and so lack the subsidies required to encourage investment in expensive and difficult to build nuclear power plants.

Due to our dependence on fossil fuels, severely restricting our energy usage and CO2 emissions will cripple economies, and will be unworkable in the long term anyway due to rapidly expanding populations (7 billion now) and.the industrialisation of the Third World.


At this point, I think its going to take a miracle to reverse things. We need to find fuels that can replace fossil fuels altogether, so we need to be investing in and researching new technologies...Hydrogen fuel, Cold Fusion etc.

But even if we do solve our energy problems, we'll be victims of our own success, and will be faced with severe overpopulation. I agree with Stephen Hawkings, the future of the human race is not on Earth but in space. If we havn't started colonising our solar system by 2100, we're ****ed.

Nah... we need more nukes.

We can roll out a gak ton of nukes via different fuel types that could practically replace our entire fuel source for our power grids.

But, noooooooooooo... the greenies don't like nukies.

Which is oddly ironic... as it's the cleanest/efficient/profitable power source we can have on this planet. RIGHT NOW!

 whembly wrote:
Geez guys...

When Mt Pinatubo erupted... at that time, it surpassed the amount of greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere than the history of mankind.

o.O

You've got that a bit confused. While large amounts of carbon and other greenhouse gases gets released in to the atmosphere, the dominant impact from volcanic explosions like Pinatubo is that lots of sulphur dioxide gets converted in to sulphuric acid, which mean an overall net cooling effect, shown by the image below;



This has actually led to one suggestion for human geo-engineering, that we could offset the global warming by releasing cooling agents in to the upper atmosphere. The general consensus is that it's a pretty bad idea, though, as the impact of Pinatubo was far from uniform, with some areas in the northern hemisphere experiencing a warming, particular through winter. Given the incredible complexity of the climate, efforts to offset warming may well introduce more climate pattern changes than they prevent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Most renewable sources of energy are unreliable, or lack the support and political will to make good use of them.

Wind energy is gak, horribly expensive and inefficient. To get any useful amounts of energy from it, we'd have to build wind farms all over the country, ruining the countryside and (ironically) causing damage to ecosystems and habitats. The [British] Government subsidies are wasted on these, but because British MPs gambled on Wind Energy and lost, we're so heavily invested that our leaders aren't going to admit their mistakes anytime soon.

Solar energy technology is advancing rapidly, but lack the government subsidies that our government wasted on Wind farms and our leaders don't want to lose face, so we won't be mass producing solar energy anytime soon.

Nuclear energy is very productive, but comes with serious and extremely unpopular risks, and so lack the subsidies required to encourage investment in expensive and difficult to build nuclear power plants.

The trick is to realise that no single solution is complete in and of itself. A combination of technologies, perhaps combined with some carbon capture will provide a solution.

Due to our dependence on fossil fuels, severely restricting our energy usage and CO2 emissions will cripple economies, and will be unworkable in the long term anyway due to rapidly expanding populations (7 billion now) and.the industrialisation of the Third World.

World population is set to peak around 2050, as the impacts of growing material wealth have their effect on the populations of Asia. The issue is providing the enery requirements for the newly middle class people in those countries, and there's some really fascinating work going in to that. The trick is in realising that what think of as middle class is far from what middle class in this future Asia will mean, and their energy consumption will likely be much lower than our big suburban homes. Look in to stuff like the solar leaf for an idea of how their new power needs can be met.

Honestly, I'm all for kidnapping the best physicists in the world, shoving them into a state of the art facility, and throwing money at them until they develop an energy efficient nuclear fusion reactor.

I haven't checked up on projects recently, but I remember things were mildly promising a few years back, at least from a theoretical perspective.

 DogofWar1 wrote:
Honestly, I'm all for kidnapping the best physicists in the world, shoving them into a state of the art facility, and throwing money at them until they develop an energy efficient nuclear fusion reactor.

I haven't checked up on projects recently, but I remember things were mildly promising a few years back, at least from a theoretical perspective.

That's why we should be using thorium, it provides more energy per unit than uranium (although at higher cost), is more abundant, has much safer waste products, it cannot be weaponised, and arguably the most important, the very physics which lets the reactor work means that human error cannot cause a core meltdown so no Chernoybl 2.0.

But people are making money of nuclear weapons using plutonium and uranium fuel cycles so...

I dunno. The wiki on liquid fluoride thorium reactors has a pretty significant list of difficulties.

Well yeah, but in the long term they are cheaper and easier to overcome than the build up of waste from plutonium and uranium reactors.

But I think taking human error out of the equation completely is the most appealing aspect.

 sebster wrote:
There will be a considerable increase in average temperatures by 2050, which is within the lifetimes of most people who post on dakka.

What's considerable? Twenty degrees? Ten?

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Geez guys...

When Mt Pinatubo erupted... at that time, it surpassed the amount of greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere than the history of mankind.

o.O

You've got that a bit confused. While large amounts of carbon and other greenhouse gases gets released in to the atmosphere, the dominant impact from volcanic explosions like Pinatubo is that lots of sulphur dioxide gets converted in to sulphuric acid, which mean an overall net cooling effect, shown by the image below;

Right...

I'm confused... that graph actually supported my statement.

We can only hope to have as much affect to our climate from that one eruption. That was my point.

Just don't believe that Hockey Stick Graph.

So, to cool off the Earth and reverse global warming...

We should nuke some volcanoes?

 kronk wrote:
So, to cool off the Earth and reverse global warming...

We should nuke some volcanoes?

Nah... we're already cooling... check this out:


Another nice graphs:


Sorry kronk... I'm no fun.

The money shot:

For the first time, researchers have now been able to use the data derived from tree-rings to precisely calculate a much longer-term cooling trend that has been playing out over the past 2,000 years.

Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.”This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant,” says Esper. “However, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C. Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia.”

That graph has a lot of noise.

 djones520 wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 djones520 wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Because most of us aren't stupid or arrogant enough to reject the scientific consensus.

Has the scientific consensus indeed become that climate change occurs because of industrial output?

It may not be the only thing that causes climate change but there's tons of studies out there showing the effects that industrial output has on climate.

That "consensus" is a fething joke, and I want citation for your bs 97% claim.

I quite enjoy the fact that his argument is several paragraphs, and your's is you cursing at him.

Sometimes saying less is better.

I was talking about the fact that he gave information and facts, and you gave curses. I am all in favor of believing you if you provide facts, figures, and scientific evidence to support your claim, but you didn't. The more facts you put on either side can change my point of view, but mud-slinging makes me less inclined to believe you.


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 DogofWar1 wrote:
Honestly, I'm all for kidnapping the best physicists in the world, shoving them into a state of the art facility, and throwing money at them until they develop an energy efficient nuclear fusion reactor.

I haven't checked up on projects recently, but I remember things were mildly promising a few years back, at least from a theoretical perspective.

Cold fusion FTW!

A decrease of -0.3 degrees C per millennium is very easily offset when you have a per decade increase in temperature of .12 degrees C. In less than 30 years, we would have undone a millennium of cooling.

In addition, the volcano eruption thing is not exactly something we want to emulate, especially when we consider that the warming we cause will not dissipate in a couple years, but rather stick around for a millennium, as CO2 is trapped in the oceans and then slowly released over long periods of time.

 DogofWar1 wrote:
A decrease of -0.3 degrees C per millennium is very easily offset when you have a per decade increase in temperature of .12 degrees C. In less than 30 years, we would have undone a millennium of cooling.

Yeah... I doubt that very much.

The biggest issue with all this hopoola is that we still don't know, what we don't know.

In addition, the volcano eruption thing is not exactly something we want to emulate, especially when we consider that the warming we cause will not dissipate in a couple years, but rather stick around for a millennium, as CO2 is trapped in the oceans and then slowly released over long periods of time.

Agreed... don't aggravate the Gods of the Volcanos! Pele and Vulcan needs to rest!

We might not know everything, but studies have done a better and better job of nailing down variables and predicting what will happen and explaining what we've seen.

Heck, much of what we didn't know up until recently actually made things worse, as it dealt with the effect the oceans had/have on warming. The big thing is that we were so busy testing air temperature that people didn't realize the oceans were basically gathering CO2 and storing it, heating up.

One of the most important revelations of "recent" climate science (I don't know exactly when it came about, but based on when I started reading reports about it, it seems to have been in the past decade or less), is that climate change isn't simply a switch we can turn on and off, that is, for a long time people thought if we stopped emitting CO2, the climate would fix itself. That simply isn't the case, and in fact even if we cut emissions massively, all we'd see if a flattening of temperature at a newer, slightly higher than before baseline, as opposed to reverting to pre-industrial temperatures.

 whembly wrote:

 kronk wrote:
So, to cool off the Earth and reverse global warming...

We should nuke some volcanoes?

Nah... we're already cooling... check this out:
Sorry kronk... I'm no fun.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You mean that 'constant' increase that hasn't been all that 'constant' for nearly 2 decades? That one?

Ok.

Read the sentence again. Notice this bit "a constant increase in global temperature that underlies other cyclical climate patterns".

There are seven cyclical climate patterns, the most famous of which is el nino. These patterns range in duration from a few years up to a couple of decades. Underlying this is a base level temperature, which is steadily increasing thanks to the increasing number of greenhouse gases put in to the atmosphere.

As such, the claim 'look global temperature goes down as well as up' is basically the same thing as arguing that it doesn't really get hotter in Summer, because we keep having these periods when it gets cooler called 'night time'.

Ok.

 sebster wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You mean that 'constant' increase that hasn't been all that 'constant' for nearly 2 decades? That one?

Ok.

Read the sentence again. Notice this bit "a constant increase in global temperature that underlies other cyclical climate patterns".

There are seven cyclical climate patterns, the most famous of which is el nino. These patterns range in duration from a few years up to a couple of decades. Underlying this is a base level temperature, which is steadily increasing thanks to the increasing number of greenhouse gases put in to the atmosphere.

As such, the claim 'look global temperature goes down as well as up' is basically the same thing as arguing that it doesn't really get hotter in Summer, because we keep having these periods when it gets cooler called 'night time'.

Ok.

Winter is coming.

 Seaward wrote:
What's considerable? Twenty degrees? Ten?

A lot less than that, I believe it's modelled to be about 3'. But that won't be a uniform increase, and will produce considerable changes in weather patterns.

The financial impact of that 3' will be something close to 10% of GDP in lost economic activity and new infrastructure requirements.


EDIT - And I just realised you would have been asking in fahrenheit, not celsius . In fahrenheit it would be about 5'.


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 whembly wrote:
Right...

I'm confused... that graph actually supported my statement.

We can only hope to have as much affect to our climate from that one eruption. That was my point.

That eruption, which was a one-off release of particles that both increased and decreased temperature, produced an overall movement in temperature downwards by half a degree. The idea that that somehow proves that our release of entirely warming particles in to the atmosphere isn't having an effect is really dubious.

Just don't believe that Hockey Stick Graph.

Science doesn't care if you believe in it


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 whembly wrote:
The biggest issue with all this hopoola is that we still don't know, what we don't know.

There is a lot we don't know, but the field has come a long way in 30 years and there's certainly a solid foundation of knowledge that isn't seriously questioned. We now have models that have demonstrated strong predictive power, and these all include a calculation of human carbon emissions, and they demonstrate an increase in temperature that gets faster year on year.

Now, what we might not know is every single, very subtle warming and cooling trend (such as one moving temperatures 0.3' every 1,000 years), and exactly how the increasing temperature will play out - the impact on weather patterns, on rates and severity of bushfires, on the spread of malaria etc... But those unknowns are a powerful reason to act even more strongly on this issue - risk adversity and all that.

 kronk wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:


That's not entirely true Kyoto was successful with some countries.

Kronk is sometimes smart, but sometimes Kronk needs a hand.

Is a negative number good? If your green number is more negative than your red number, is that good?

Kronk is confused.

Yeah you want your green to be going to down if you're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

It's so nice to see the former Soviet states taking greenhouse emissions reduction seriously. Or perhaps they really don't care and this is just the result of modernizing their trash Soviet era energy infrastructure and equipment?

 Breotan wrote:
It's so nice to see the former Soviet states taking greenhouse emissions reduction seriously. Or perhaps they really don't care and this is just the result of modernizing their trash Soviet era energy infrastructure and equipment?

Yeah, things aren't looking too good for them.

 Breotan wrote:
It's so nice to see the former Soviet states taking greenhouse emissions reduction seriously. Or perhaps they really don't care and this is just the result of modernizing their trash Soviet era energy infrastructure and equipment?

That's exactly what it is. It's easy to reduce emissions when your current infrastructure is dirty. New Zealand can do little to reduce ours as we have next to no heavy industry. Much of our emissions are due to agriculture, they actually count the methane produced by cows for instance as a GHG. Similarly when we signed up for the carbon credit scam it was deemed that we would make money because we're a "green" country heavily underpinned by a rural economy. Problem was, all those forestry blocks contributed towards our carbon sink so anytime they were felled the government was required to pay out.
None of this nonsense has done anything to reduce pollution or deforestation. Even recently Norway is looking at cancelling the remaining money pledged to Guyana to prevent deforestation as deforestation increased to make way for mining. Meanwhile lots of money has changed hands.

I personally think a long term solution would be to require or incentivise all buildings to have solar power and/or water heating where structurally feasible.

It reduces peak stress on the grid, saves money on everybody's bills once the panels are paid for and makes our current energy reserves last longer, its a win, win, win, once you get the money together for them anyway.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And I can tell you that Australia contributes next to nothing, making any sort of Carbon Tax a complete waste of time. We need rid of it. Fast.

While our overall emissions aren't that large a piece of the world's total emissions, our emissions per capita are very high - one of the highest in the world.

 Krellnus wrote:
I personally think a long term solution would be to require or incentivise all buildings to have solar power and/or water heating where structurally feasible.

It reduces peak stress on the grid, saves money on everybody's bills once the panels are paid for and makes our current energy reserves last longer, its a win, win, win, once you get the money together for them anyway.

I think, for residential buildings, solar panels can free people from the grip of the power companies. It would also free up the infrastructure to focus on industry which requires high intensity usage. Solar panels should be mandatory in new homes.

cadbren wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
I personally think a long term solution would be to require or incentivise all buildings to have solar power and/or water heating where structurally feasible.

It reduces peak stress on the grid, saves money on everybody's bills once the panels are paid for and makes our current energy reserves last longer, its a win, win, win, once you get the money together for them anyway.

I think, for residential buildings, solar panels can free people from the grip of the power companies. It would also free up the infrastructure to focus on industry which requires high intensity usage. Solar panels should be mandatory in new homes.

This is new, a post where I 100% agree with cadbren. Must be due to global warming.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

cadbren wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
I personally think a long term solution would be to require or incentivise all buildings to have solar power and/or water heating where structurally feasible.

It reduces peak stress on the grid, saves money on everybody's bills once the panels are paid for and makes our current energy reserves last longer, its a win, win, win, once you get the money together for them anyway.

I think, for residential buildings, solar panels can free people from the grip of the power companies. It would also free up the infrastructure to focus on industry which requires high intensity usage. Solar panels should be mandatory in new homes.

This is new, a post where I 100% agree with cadbren. Must be due to global warming.

Solar panels for electricity just isn't cost effective/efficient yet... we have a long way to go before it can be massed produced commercially.

Now, solar heating for wather/residential heating? That gak works... we ought to start with that.

 whembly wrote:
Solar panels for electricity just isn't cost effective/efficient yet... we have a long way to go before it can be massed produced commercially.

Now, solar heating for wather/residential heating? That gak works... we ought to start with that.

Surprisingly, Ohio is on top of this... though they're starting with the folks that dislike technology.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10506342

Teaser wrote:The Amish, widely known for adhering to low-tech traditions, are fueling a local boom in solar power in a community in Ohio. Solar panels are popping up as many decide to embrace a new, safer technology than their traditional natural gas and kerosene.

 whembly wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

cadbren wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
I personally think a long term solution would be to require or incentivise all buildings to have solar power and/or water heating where structurally feasible.

It reduces peak stress on the grid, saves money on everybody's bills once the panels are paid for and makes our current energy reserves last longer, its a win, win, win, once you get the money together for them anyway.

I think, for residential buildings, solar panels can free people from the grip of the power companies. It would also free up the infrastructure to focus on industry which requires high intensity usage. Solar panels should be mandatory in new homes.

This is new, a post where I 100% agree with cadbren. Must be due to global warming.

Solar panels for electricity just isn't cost effective/efficient yet... we have a long way to go before it can be massed produced commercially.

Now, solar heating for wather/residential heating? That gak works... we ought to start with that.

Yeah the efficiency of solar cells, is somewhat left wanting, its because no-one uses them, so there is not much point in improving the technology, create the interest, the improvements will come along.

@cadbren, I agree 100% for new homes, the cost of the panels is not much extra in comparison to the cost of the house and land, not only that, but its part of your mortgage, that pays itself off, which is worth it for the novelty of it myself.

Does anyone know what solar panels do to insurance costs? I imagine not a lot of good.

Nothing to my knowledge.

 Krellnus wrote:
Yeah the efficiency of solar cells, is somewhat left wanting, its because no-one uses them, so there is not much point in improving the technology, create the interest, the improvements will come along.

Improvements to solar technology are not retroactive. Forcing people to buy and install an inferior product now to fund development of a superior product later is stupid.

Meanwhile, the new Abbott Government has had a string of fark-ups in the two months it's been in power, and would now lose to Labor if the election were held today, making theirs one of the shortest honeymoon periods ever. Well done Tony.

I guess this shows the problem with riding to victory on the back of the protest vote. Hopefully Labor will stop having leadership issues (which were really soap-opera like over the last few years), and make the next election one where you actually vote FOR someone.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-25/labor-leads-government-in-first-nielsen-poll-since-election/5113798

Ah, an election where you have a choice to vote for someone you want - as opposed to voting against someone you don't want.

Luxury.

This "luxury" does not exist. I always numb er from who I don't want and go upwards , except in local elections, I don't vote in them at all.

 whembly wrote:
Solar panels for electricity just isn't cost effective/efficient yet... we have a long way to go before it can be massed produced commercially.

Solar panels have dropped in price so much in the last few years they are now cost effective for power used right then and there. The issue now is developing decent power storage, so power captured in the middle of the day can be stored and used that night when people are home, instead of being returned to the grid and mostly lost.

Now, solar heating for wather/residential heating? That gak works... we ought to start with that.

Solar hot water has been standard over here for a few decades, but is now in decline. It's okay, but ultimately you want hot water in winter, when the sun is giving you least heating.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Solar panels for electricity just isn't cost effective/efficient yet... we have a long way to go before it can be massed produced commercially.

Solar panels have dropped in price so much in the last few years they are now cost effective for power used right then and there. The issue now is developing decent power storage, so power captured in the middle of the day can be stored and used that night when people are home, instead of being returned to the grid and mostly lost.

It's still not quite there as most folks don't have enough space for all the panels needed (or, it may be against code). They need to be more efficient on a smaller panel as you can't fill up your back yard with 'em in some places

Funny thing about the storage, the technology is there... the demand just needs to reach critical mass in order for it to be cheaper.

Now, solar heating for wather/residential heating? That gak works... we ought to start with that.

Solar hot water has been standard over here for a few decades, but is now in decline. It's okay, but ultimately you want hot water in winter, when the sun is giving you least heating.

Huh...

I guess it matters where you live and how much you use on a daily basis.

My folks live on a mountain in Colorado (on the dry side of the peak)... in the winter, it's fething cold and windy as a mother f'er. When I stayed with them, there was enough hot water for daily use and the residual amount was used as "radiant heating" through out the night. The electric heater barely kicked in while I was there...

*shrugs*

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:
Yeah the efficiency of solar cells, is somewhat left wanting, its because no-one uses them, so there is not much point in improving the technology, create the interest, the improvements will come along.

Improvements to solar technology are not retroactive. Forcing people to buy and install an inferior product now to fund development of a superior product later is stupid.

True, but its the only way we can get development dollars and given the price drops seen in photovoltaic cells, the only challenge to really overcome is power storage, which likely would be retroactive, perhaps some type of capacitor would be our best bet, since it can hold charge more or less indefinitley.

 whembly wrote:
It's still not quite there as most folks don't have enough space for all the panels needed (or, it may be against code). They need to be more efficient on a smaller panel as you can't fill up your back yard with 'em in some places

I've often wondered why solar panels seem to be fixed to certain sizes, that no-one just covers a whole roof in panels. Might be a limitation of the technology, or maybe the weight placed on the roof.

That said, the big thing with solar panels is recognising that they aren't ever going to provide all your energy needs. It isn't about having enough panels to cover all your costs, but about having panels cut your energy consumption by a certain percentage, and that saving in energy costs justify the expense of the panels.

Funny thing about the storage, the technology is there... the demand just needs to reach critical mass in order for it to be cheaper.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
It's still not quite there as most folks don't have enough space for all the panels needed (or, it may be against code). They need to be more efficient on a smaller panel as you can't fill up your back yard with 'em in some places

I've often wondered why solar panels seem to be fixed to certain sizes, that no-one just covers a whole roof in panels. Might be a limitation of the technology, or maybe the weight placed on the roof.

That said, the big thing with solar panels is recognising that they aren't ever going to provide all your energy needs. It isn't about having enough panels to cover all your costs, but about having panels cut your energy consumption by a certain percentage, and that saving in energy costs justify the expense of the panels.

Funny thing about the storage, the technology is there... the demand just needs to reach critical mass in order for it to be cheaper.

I think people recognise the demand is there at this point (I mean there's been such an explosion in houses with solar panels, everyone must recognise the scope for having energy storage in the home). And business is quite good at recognising and costing according to a future market. I think it's more about refining the engineering so the cost is brought down to commercial levels. The tech is there, as you say, but it's still pretty new.

Huh...

I guess it matters where you live and how much you use on a daily basis.

My folks live on a mountain in Colorado (on the dry side of the peak)... in the winter, it's fething cold and windy as a mother f'er. When I stayed with them, there was enough hot water for daily use and the residual amount was used as "radiant heating" through out the night. The electric heater barely kicked in while I was there...

*shrugs*

Interesting. Over here solar is declining, during the 80s it seemed like every new house had solar hot water installed. Maybe the tanks installed were too small, but the shortfall in hot water covered by electrical heating was significant. Enough so that the electricity bill typically ended up higher than if you used gas for your water heating.

There are now solar hot water systems boosted by gas (my house has one) so that's not as much of an issue, but for the cost of the solar unit and their lifespan, I'm not sure it's that cost effective. That said, here in Western Australia we do have stupidly cheap natural gas, so that probably skews the market.