Climate change or global warming and who did it?

[Scuba_Steve]

I'm genuinely puzzled why you (and many others to be fair) think taxing carbon technologies is simply a scam created by some Wall Street traders?

ummm cause it is.

Firstly the oil companies would scream at any rort like this.

BP & Shell have invested in this scam (not sure about exxon mobil & the others) so why would they be trying to stop something set to bring them more $$$???

Secondly it requires politicians to impose new taxes. Thats a death sentence to a politician - especially when the public don't understand it. Why would any pollie without good evidence agree to the idea? The Aussies have far more money than us - why haven't they been pushed by the money men into this yet? By contrast why have the Europeans with all their universities and left-wing contempt for finance been taxing carbon for the past 5 years?

Why are bikers being raped by ACC??? Why did GST go up??? Why is their a tax on a tax on a tax??? cause "the people let it happen".

oh & FYI Labour (the ones that were in power with the signing) are no longer our dictator, National is now. Same shit different colour.

I dunno. I think you have to give Shrub this one. The passion and emotion in global warming arguments always comes from deniers and has much in common with religious zealotry. By comparison people who think there is a problem tend to be rational and discursive, and willing to consider other points of view.

your part of the carbon religion aint you??? explains your warped view point . No side is any better or worse with they're religious views/arguments to say so is ignorant or stupid

[Winston001]

Perhaps the Earths core is cooling. Maybe it's heating. Maybe it takes a really really long time for the Earths core to heat and cool in response to the suns activity...

The Earth's inner core is solid nickel-iron at 5400 degrees C. The outer core is liquid iron at a lesser pressure. Most of the Earth's heat is contained within the mantle which is the main mass of the planet. That heat is in small part left-over from the original collapse of rock etc to form the Earth.

However 90% of the Earths internal heat is caused by radioactive decay. Potassium, uranium, and thorium. The Sun is a big deal at the surface but has a negligible effect on the temperature below our feet. Photons from the Sun penetrate a few inches at best.

[Jantar]

...The Sun is a big deal at the surface but has a negligible effect on the temperature below our feet. Photons from the Sun penetrate a few inches at best.

The sun's energy is carried further down by conduction. But ALL traces of solar energy are gone within a few meters, and at depths of more than 5 m the rock temperature is almost constant, increasing with greater depth.

[Edbear]

There's trouble ahead...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environmen...ectid=10733621

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-ch...ectid=10734068

And Man is the culprit!

[carbonhed]

There's trouble ahead...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environmen...ectid=10733621

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-ch...ectid=10734068

And Man is the culprit!

Just another Greepeace circle jerk.

[Edbear]

Just another Greepeace circle jerk.

It backs up all the available scientific research done to date, I've studied the oceans for a long time.

[Edbear]

Not in my backyard..?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environmen...ectid=10734070

[Ocean1]

There's trouble ahead...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environmen...ectid=10733621

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-ch...ectid=10734068

And Man is the culprit!

I see at least one of their number has attributed much of the trend to global warming. Be interesting to analyse their data, only they don't have any, they used "existing" sources. I'm tolerably sure they don't have the required set to be making such claims.

Thing is it's impossible to trend global ocean temperatures, they're massively affected by changes in current flow. You'd have to measure an impossibly high number of sites to even begin to acquire the nescessary breadth of data.

I don't believe you have to go past polution and overfishing to explain the damage myself. We were active early in introducing quotas, we just need to make sure they're doing the job. It'd be nice if most of what we did catch wasn't fucked off overseas, but that's another issue.

And polution. Our back yord is hardly pristine, we could be doing much more to prevent it becoming worse let alone pick up our existing discarded toys. Still, and again, we do better than most. The trick is telling the emerging giants that they can't have what we've got because it means doing bad shit.

[mashman]

It backs up all the available scientific research done to date, I've studied the oceans for a long time.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we're over fishing our waters (and politing etc...) to cater for a "demand"... and have been for decades, if not for centuries. Removing money "cures" that.

If it's a normal Earth "process" that's under way, then we really are in the shit. Fingers crossed eh

[shrub]

I'm genuinely puzzled why you (and many others to be fair) think taxing carbon technologies is simply a scam created by some Wall Street traders?

Taxing carbon pollution was going to hurt some industries, especialy if it happened rapidly, so the impetus needed to be slowed. So the message "It's all a scam to make you pay more taxes", and "the scientists are only saying that AGW is a real problem because that's how they get funding" was put out. And because nobody wants to be scammed, it took off despite being completely fallacious.

I dunno. I think you have to give Shrub this one. The passion and emotion in global warming arguments always comes from deniers and has much in common with religious zealotry. By comparison people who think there is a problem tend to be rational and discursive, and willing to consider other points of view.

Throughout history religion and science have often been at odds because science is based on reason and proof whereas religion is based on accepting concepts without challenging them or requiring any proof at all. It has amused me that the deniers display all the characteristics of religious accolytes yet use that accusation to denigrate the scientific community, and it has also amused me that many of the most fervent of the deniers come from fundamentalist christian groups.

[oldrider]

Interesting stuff on solar activity (not the blog or blogger imdying please note) you might like to look at!

http://blog.imva.info/world-affairs/solar-weather

We humans are really small players in this huge space thing we live in!

It will do what it wants regardless of any silly bloody carbon tax!

[slowpoke]

Throughout history religion and science have often been at odds because science is based on reason and proof whereas religion is based on accepting concepts without challenging them or requiring any proof at all. It has amused me that the deniers display all the characteristics of religious accolytes yet use that accusation to denigrate the scientific community, and it has also amused me that many of the most fervent of the deniers come from fundamentalist christian groups.

Haha, I'd actually say it was the other way around. To even mention that there is some contradictory evidence or huge variance in global warming "estimates" is to be hung drawn and quartered publically and politically. That "scientists" have stifled such debate is a blight on academia and science as a whole. Climate science and global warming is a growth industry, much as was Y2k, and a hell of a lot of people and projects rest on keeping it so. Fear is a powerful motivator and makes for guaranteed headlines. It's as shame the truth and reasoned debate gets lost along the way.

[Jantar]

........ It has amused me that the deniers display all the characteristics of religious accolytes yet use that accusation to denigrate the scientific community, and it has also amused me that many of the most fervent of the deniers come from fundamentalist christian groups.

You have evidence of that? Most skeptics I know are agnostic. There are some who are religious, but I don't know of any who belong to any fundamentalist group.

Or maybe it is only the deniers who are religious. But the only deniers are those who refuse to look at the science, and the are more of those on the warmist side than the skeptic side. shrub, you and I have been here before, but I'll ask you again.

"What would you consider to be sufficient evidence to falsify the AGW theory?"

In other words, what exactly is this warming hypothesis and what is the counter factual?

[Winston001]

"What would you consider to be sufficient evidence to falsify the AGW theory?"

In other words, what exactly is this warming hypothesis and what is the counter factual?

I'll give it a quick go: the warming hypothesis is that human activity since the industrial age (1840ish) has released billions of tons of stored carbon into the environment. Carbon taken out of the environment over a period of 400 million years. Released in 150 years.

Normal geologic and biologic activity puts carbon out every year. At the same time it is reabsorbed. The extra 4% humans add sounds like very little except compounded over 150 years, it adds up and is changing the Earth's biosphere.

The counter argument: 4% year on year is insignificant and it might be only 1%. The natural carbon balance may be changing because of geological pressures and/or variations in the Sun's intensity. For example perma-frost decay (melting) contributes tons of carbon to the ocean. That could be the result of warming in the Earth's crust or the sunlight.

[Jantar]

I'll give it a quick go: the warming hypothesis is that human activity since the industrial age (1840ish) has released billions of tons of stored carbon into the environment. Carbon taken out of the environment over a period of 400 million years. Released in 150 years.

Normal geologic and biologic activity puts carbon out every year. At the same time it is reabsorbed. The extra 4% humans add sounds like very little except compounded over 150 years, it adds up and is changing the Earth's biosphere.

The counter argument: 4% year on year is insignificant and it might be only 1%. The natural carbon balance may be changing because of geological pressures and/or variations in the Sun's intensity. For example perma-frost decay (melting) contributes tons of carbon to the ocean. That could be the result of warming in the Earth's crust or the sunlight.

Thanks Winston. There is no argument against the fact that man is putting more CO2 into the atmosphere. That has never been disputed. There is uncertainty as to how long that extra CO2 stays in the atmosphere with various peer reviewed papers giving a range of only 2 years up to thousands of years, so there is uncertainty there.

However surely that isn't the whole theory of AGW? There is no mention of temperature or even heat content in that. There is certainly no relationship to climate with respect to CO2 concentration.

What I suspect is that the claimed AGW theory is that as CO2 concentration increases there will be an increase in atmospheric temperature. All scientists that I know accept this basic premise. The real difference in opinion comes with how much that temperature will change with CO2 concentrations, and that amount depends on feedbacks. Just what value the coefficient of the feedback should be is in great dispute. The IPCC assume a large positive feedback, various climate models use a value between 0 (no feedback) to 3.7. It is partly these various feedback coefficients that give a range of temperature increases for a doubling of CO2.

Most skeptics believe that the coefficient is less than 1 and many even claim that the major feedbacks are negative.

That is why I ask, what is the hypothesis, and how can it be falsified?