Worst case climate change becoming the only scenario
Climate scenarios 'being realised'
The worst-case scenarios on climate change envisaged by the UN two years ago are already being realised, say scientists at an international meeting. In a statement in Copenhagen on their six key messages to political leaders, they say there is a increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climate shifts. Even modest temperature rises will affect millions of people, particularly in the developing world, they warn. But, they say, most tools needed to cut carbon dioxide emissions already exist. More than 2,500 researchers and economists attended this meeting designed to update the world on the state of climate research ahead of key political negotiations set for December this year. New data was presented in Copenhagen on sea level rise, which indicated that the best estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made two years ago were woefully out of date.
Scientists heard that waters could rise by over a metre across the world with huge impacts for hundreds of millions of people.
There was also new information on how the Amazon rainforest would cope with rising temperatures. A UK Meteorological Office study concluded there would be a 75% loss of tree cover if the world warmed by three degrees for a century.
The scientists hope that their conclusions will remove any excuses from the political process. Dr Katherine Richardson, who chaired the scientific steering committee that organised the conference, said the research presented added new certainty to the IPCC reports. "We've seen lots more data, we can see where we are, no new surprises, we have a problem."
While some of our political parties pretend climate change has nothing to do with the pollution we make and while some on the right have such a cultural chip on their shoulder about tree huggers being right all along they would prefer to ignore the calls for change, while that happens, we have the majority of the scientific community telling us that we are running out of time. We even have an economist of the mana of Stern talking about 5degree increases in temperature. The right wing (some of whom were funded by Exxon Mobile) would have us believe that this is all a massive hoax, that the changes are all normal parts of the weather cycle and ANY attempt to try and stop polluting the planet with the gleeful abandon we've become accustomed to would be silly. They remind me of Troy McClure from the Simpsons trying to explain away global warming - "C02, they call it pollution, we call it life". The reality is that we have poisoned the planet to the point that it will become severely compromised in being able to provide for all 9billion of us come 2050.
We need to push climate change deniers to the side in the same manner creationists have been marginalized in the evolution debate and we need to not allow Politicians like those in ACT and National to derail the level of change necessary to take a leadership role in the green economy.
posted by Bomber @ 2:52 pm
53 comments
53 Comments:
Climate change *does* have nothing to do with pollution.
Co2 is not a pollutant.
This shows your hysteria is not supported by your knowledge.
The problem seems to be with those unfortunate billions living in the developing world. Perhaps human civilisation has just been too successful and nature is rebalancing.
However they didn't point out the mountain of data pointing in the other direction in Coppenhagen
Like the magnificant freeze just experinced in the artic this winter.
That would have undermined there agenda.
Hello Gareth
at least shitty countrys like europe will be loving the warmer weather
we need to not allow Politicians like those in ACT and National to derail the level of change necessary to take a leadership role in the green economy
National and ACT? You mean the New Zealand Government?
Yeah Bomber, you stop them from derailing that level of change you are leading, you get right on it bro.
Even that socialist, tree-hugging leftie rag The Economist is reporting the story
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13277407
The left have always been about shackling capital and wealth creation. Upon the complete failure of communism, they now use environmentalism to try and achieve the same ends. Instead of trotting out Marxist historians, they trot out environmentalist scientists. Is it any wonder that so-called Green parties are stacked with former communists? These people never really cared about the plight of the working class or the planet; they just share a small-minded, envious desire to punish the Hated Rich for achieving the success they never could. It’s the same boy crying wolf. Can you blame the right for being sceptical?
"We need to push climate change deniers to the side in the same manner creationists "
Who is the 'we' in this case bomber? Oh that's right its the minority who LOST the election. How very fucking democratic of you to go against the will of the majority.
What next Bomber, make it a crime for anybody to have a different ideology from yours?
Quacks me up how all the duckspeaking libertards and ACT-o-lites on these here internets bang on about how marginal the greens are.
the internet is about the only place you come across randoids or douglas fans. Stone cold fact. Sure they must be out there, but by 'there' you have to mean 'in their parents' or daughters' basements typing drivel.'
If parliament was elected by the number of idjeets writing rhetoric on the net these clowns would be the govt, but seeing we still do it a sensble way ACT has to whore itself out to the SST wangers and the Alabama wanna be gun nuts just to get over 3 percent. The libz are an order of magnitude less popular.
There's ya fringe chuckleberry.
Get into these freaks Bomber! What a surreal line-up of fascists that bunch were; have they just finished power hour at destiny church? Face reality you lemons.
"Face reality you lemons."
Which is a National-Act govnt. I'm liking reality more and more.
Suck it up leftards and swallow.
"Funded by Exxon" eh...
Was the Heartland Institute who organsied last weeks skeptics picnic funded by Exxon - yes or no?
Who cares? All that matters is the accuracy or otherwise of the science.
And one hell of a lot of the IPCC 'science' is no more than predictions based on computer models so flawed they didn't even predict the current decade of cooling!
Furthermore, the report put out by the IPCC was compiled by bureaucrats who rejected dissenting opinions and research and who carefully selected only those "facts" which supported the predetermined outcome.
The report also ignores the almost perfect correlation between sunspot activity and climate.
It also ignores the 600+ year lag between CO2 levels and temperatures.
It ignores the fact that the world was far warmer (and colder) before the advent of industry.
And you useful idiot warmists babble on about the sources of funding while ignoring Al Gore's massive financial interest in selling carbon credits. (while he has a personal 'carbon footprint about the size of a small town!)
You also ignore the fact that his work of fiction movie has been found in a court of law to be riddled with inaccuracies and outright lies.
I seem to remember environuts getting their knickers in something of a twist years ago, with predictions that New York would be encased in ice during the coming global cooling--I think Time magazine even featured a front cover to that effect.
We llok forward to your admissions of panic and gullibillity in a few year's time. :-)
'CareforNature, there's a movement afoot for people to turn on every light and a whole lot of electrical appliances during the upcoming Earth Hour stupidity.
I'm looking forward to doing just that, as a counter to the superstitious, simplistic nonsense you're peddling.
Who cares? All that matters is the accuracy or otherwise of the science.
Yes or no KG - was the Heartland Institute who organised your skeptics picnic last week, (come on, don't pretend you didn't know it was on, it hosted all the people you desperatly quote from) - was the Heartland Institute (the same institute that trys to use 'science' to descredit any connection between cancer and smoking) did they take money from Exxon who has a very vested interest in no tax on pollution. And I think a lot of people would care if a group who has taken money from the oil companies is trying to fly in the face of the scientific majority to try and pretend climate change isn't occuring because of man made pollution.
So KG - yes or no, did they take money from Exxon?
So KG - yes or no, did they take money from Exxon?
Haha, bomber is so scared of answering KG's comment, he is focusing on one aspect, which KG has already answered.
Go re-read his post bomber, and then try and rebut the rest of his argument.
No, he hasn't answered the question at all, all he said was Who cares? All that matters is the accuracy or otherwise of the science....and I think a lot of people would care knowing that Exxon Mobile funded groups associated with a spin merchant who trys to use 'science' to dismiss any connection between cancer and smoking. As for KG's 'science' it's all bullshit and part of the dreadfully dreary 'Climate denial 101' junk science points that get thrown up by every right winger who would hate to admit the tree huggers had it right- we've had a very clear fight going on between Ian Wishart and 'response to' who has been debating these points on the 'Someone tell National that global warming is happening' thread and those points have been demolished. Keep up mate.
So what if Exxon funded it? Exxon has a motivation to protect its business. Why wont you debate what they say? Because the science isnt on your side bomber, your are being Political.
from http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/the_clear_and_cohesive_message.html
The very next day Gallup announced the results of a new poll finding that a record-high 41% of Americans now believe the seriousness of global warming is being exaggerated by “mainstream reporting.”
That’s up 11% in just three years -- despite our sometimes involute and ever media-mocked message.
Which lends undeniable assurance to Professor Lindzen’s keynote prediction that “we will eventually win against anthropogenic global warming alarm simply because we are right and they are wrong.”
Dr 'Truth' - weren't you the one raving about how great Rodger Douglas was for NZ? I think that helps paint a picture of you, so you don't deny that Exxon are funding the Heartland Institute who put together the skeptics conferance last week, the same Heartland Institute who uses 'science' to insist nop clear link between cancer and smoking?
The science ha been debated very clearly on the exact thread I gave you in my last post Dr 'Truth', go read it, it's betwen Ian Wishart and 'response to' - it's very good and Ian doesn't come out of it well.
All your gallop poll shows is how well the spin machine to muddy the waters has become, the exact tactic that the spin doctors suggested when the industry met a couple of years ago to discuss how they would shut down the global warming issue, so it's hardly surprising that is the result. Didn't a Gallop poll also show the majority of Americans once supported invading Iraq because they thought Iraq was responsible for Sept 11?
He he he HA HA HA. This is a joke isnt it?
"Dr 'Truth' - weren't you the one raving about how great Rodger Douglas was for NZ? I think that helps paint a picture of you,"
Didn't you support Hamas? A fundamentalist Islamic group hell bent on repressing womens rights, murdering homosexuals and sending jews to the gas chamber. I think that paints a picture of you bomber.
You haven't answered a single substantive point, preferring instead to drag red herrings across the trail and recycle leftard talking points--and those not very well either.
And the fact that you regard scientific accuracy as subservient to or inferior to ideology says everything we need to know about both your intellect and your principles.
Thanks for the elegant demonstration. :-)
Didn't you support Hamas? A fundamentalist Islamic group hell bent on repressing womens rights, murdering homosexuals and sending jews to the gas chamber. I think that paints a picture of you bomber.
I supported Hamas resisting occupation, that's hardly supporting gas chambers is it? Dr 'Truth' on a previous thread clearly supported Rodger Douglas, he is now claiming from a fairly right wing perspective that Exxon has a motivation to protect its business no matter what the cost to the rest of us - that is pathological capitalism at it's worst - it's relevant to this debate.
You haven't answered a single substantive point, preferring instead to drag red herrings across the trail and recycle leftard talking points--and those not very well either.
Why can't you answer a simple question about Exxon funding the conveners of the skeptics conference?
And the fact that you regard scientific accuracy as subservient to or inferior to ideology says everything we need to know about both your intellect and your principles.
That's a barefaced lie, where have I said that? I put science well above ideology, nothing you've put up proves that man made global warming isn't changing the climate.
Thanks for the elegant demonstration. :-)
I thought you had a point, turns out you didn't.
Furthermore, the report put out by the IPCC was compiled by bureaucrats who rejected dissenting opinions and research and who carefully selected only those "facts" which supported the predetermined outcome.
Rubbish. Betrays a complete ignorance of the way the IPCC actually works.
The report also ignores the almost perfect correlation between sunspot activity and climate.
There is none.
It also ignores the 600+ year lag between CO2 levels and temperatures.
No, the IPCC reports do not ignore it, and there's a perfectly good explanation for the "lag".
It ignores the fact that the world was far warmer (and colder) before the advent of industry.
Logical fallacy.
And you useful idiot warmists babble on about the sources of funding while ignoring Al Gore's massive financial interest in selling carbon credits. (while he has a personal 'carbon footprint about the size of a small town!)
The ritual swipe at Gore.
You also ignore the fact that his work of fiction movie has been found in a court of law to be riddled with inaccuracies and outright lies.
Actually, the judge explicitly cleared the film to be shown in UK schools, but asked for some clarifications in the accompanying teacher's notes.
I seem to remember environuts getting their knickers in something of a twist years ago, with predictions that New York would be encased in ice during the coming global cooling--I think Time magazine even featured a front cover to that effect.
Not true. There was no "global cooling" scare.
We llok forward to your admissions of panic and gullibillity in a few year's time. :-)
We won't hold our breath waiting for yours.
I will say it. Roger Douglas was the greatest finance minister this country has ever seen. The GMFI, if implemented, would have raised the standard of living for the poorest NZers more than any Labour policy of the last nine years.
What was Douglas wrong about?
Campbell: Sir Roger Douglas, And His Orewa Speech
Quaint. 25 years after Roger Douglas first won the power to affect this country, he has returned to Orewa, the elephant’s graveyard of politicians ( Don Brash, Winston Peters) still intent on stirring the embers of ancient grievances.
Starting with this failure of perspective :
New Zealand has been in a recession - getting poorer - since the first quarter of 2008. We were in a recession before the fallout from the global financial crisis arrived on our shores; we were in a bad economic situation, and the financial crisis has simply made that situation worse.
Yes, but the fact New Zealand was in recession before the international crisis hit does not mean the domestic recession was more fundamental - or that a global crisis has come along and “simply” made the fundamentals worse. I hate to be the one to tell Douglas the bad news, but this crisis is of a quite different scale. It is even worse than the stockmarket crash of 1987 that his policies were instrumental in fuelling last time around.
The current financial crisis is not your garden variety business cycle. Still, the starting point could have been far worse. The last nine years had seen this country’s longest sustained period of growth since the Second World War, with unemployment at twenty year lows. Belatedly, the gap between rich and poor had finally began to reduce, a trend that began even before the Working For Families properly kicked in.
We saw a serious erosion in that position during early 2008 - and on the way down, New Zealand has been hit by a crisis larger than any that the global financial system has faced since the early 1970s, at least. Most economists around the world are blaming this meltdown on the kind of unregulated free market excesses that Sir Roger has been championing for the past 25 years.
The only reason we aren’t worse off – as even Bill English has conceded – is because New Zealand entered the dual recession/crisis with exceptionally low levels of public debt. Mainly because for most of this decade, Michael Cullen paid off debt - and until last year - did not enact the sort of financially and socially irresponsible tax cuts that Sir Roger and his ilk had been clamouring for. The package of stimulatory tax cuts that began last year have now been claimed as an ingredient in the Key government’s own stimulatory package.
But back to more of Sir Roger’s verdict on the Clark administration :
In the private sector, our current account deficit has ballooned to its largest since the last major recession in 1975. This large increase in the current account deficit - now equal to 8.5 percent of GDP - occurred despite the most advantageous terms of trade since the early 1980s.
As our current account deficit grew larger, we told ourselves that a significant drop in the dollar would help eliminate it. Unfortunately for us, the drop in the dollar has been accompanied by a significant reduction in commodity prices. What does this mean? It means that, unless we make major changes to our policy settings to increase our international competitiveness, then the current account deficit is here to stay. And this deficit will require ongoing financing. But such financing is increasingly scarce because of the global credit crunch…
Frankly, being admonished by Roger Douglas about our chronic current account deficit is a bit like being lectured about road safety by a hit and run driver. Large and enduring current account deficits are one of Douglas’ enduring legacies to the nation. What, structural imbalance perchance, does it reflect ?
Could it possibly be because Douglas and Richard Prebble sold the family silver – the state assets, the banks, the telecommunications system etc for peanuts - thus fostering structural imbalances in our economic relations with the wider world that we are still suffering from today. Let us not forget the failure of nerve to enact a capital gains tax that would have curbed housing speculation, and channeled investment into the productive sector.
Douglas, in other words, helped to build the pipeline of outflows that have kept our current account deficit primed and pumped – and judging by his Orewa speech, Douglas wishes to enact more of the same, as if such policies bear no responsibility whatsoever for the current crisis in financial markets. Well, back in the real world, John Maynard Keynes ( and not Milton Friedman) offers the solutions to which major economies are now turning - and luckily for this country, Douglas has been on the sidelines for the last decade or more. Did I mention that tax cuts during this past decade’s boom times would have been wildly inflationary – and would have fuelled spending on imports and blown out the current account deficit even further than it is now ?
Back to the Douglas prescription at Orewa.
There is only one way to increase wages: increase productivity…. Despite this reality, we have unions - like the Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union - publicly announcing that it will continue seeking real wage increases. Any increase that workers receive beyond productivity increases will merely exacerbate unemployment.
Righto Yet only a few lines later in the Orewa speech, we find this claim : ‘Despite slow wage growth, we have continued to live beyond our means..’ So which one it it ? Have big union driven wage hikes been out of whack with productivity, or has slow wage growth still seen us spending up large, regardless ?
Tellingly, for all his talk about our poor productivity levels, Douglas makes no criticism of the private sector for its failure to invest in the new technology crucial to productivity growth. Nor does he slam the private sector for itsfree-loading on government spending on research and development. Who failed to invest productively ? Who lavishly paid out profits in dividends during the recent boom, rather than invest in research and development? All Douglas can do on this score is rail against the Clark government for trying to offer r&d tax credits, a carrot that even his former acolytes at Treasury said in their briefs to Bill English was a good idea, and one that should not be scrapped.
In similar vein, it is ordinary citizens who cop the blame from Douglas for succumbing to household debt and easy mortgages : “With credit cheap, we mortgaged our houses to buy consumer products.’ Again, not a word of criticism about the role of banks in borrowing overseas and selling mortgages that neither the country or the would-be homeowners can sustain, while feeding the current account deficit in the process. To Douglas, only wage rises should to be tied to productivity. No such calls for restraint by CEOs, or by shareholders.
True, criticizing Douglas in 2009 is like shooting fish in a barrel. Yet the pathology of the worldview on display is fascinating. If you can believe him, the late 1990s were a virtual nirvana, rudely snatched from us by Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. To make that case, Douglas paints a rosy picture of life under Jenny Shipley that no one who actually lived through the Shipley era would recognize. Back then, he rhapsodises, tax settings were simple and good, inflation was beaten, and years of sustained growth were stretching before us. ‘Privatisation,’ Douglas exults, ‘ had created efficient businesses targeted at meeting consumer demand.’ This is sheer fantasy, and it takes only one word to dispel it : Telecom !
Talking of which, Douglas slams the Clark government for its long overdue moves to regulate and break up Telecom, and that perspective is entirely consistent with the neo-Victorian morality that runs through the entire speech. Programmes to relieve poverty you know, are only ‘incentive destroying.” On Telecom, Douglas’ views hark back to the era that pre-dates the birth of anti -trust law in 1910 – which was when even the Americans saw the need for government to intervene and regulate, and break up the market dominance held by John D. Rockefeller, and his Standard Oil company.
Looking ahead, Douglas appears to resist the very notion of a stimulus package, if it will entail deficit spending by a government during this recession:
When international credit is particularly tight, the Government has announced plans to borrow and spend on infrastructure projects. We have now been put on notice that our credit rating may be downgraded. Investors see our debt as risky - they fear we may default.
John Key and Bill English have of course, been talking for months about the tightrope that New Zealand now has to walk. We have to negotiate out way between stimulative deficit spending on one hand, and the risk that further borrowing and public indebtedness could torpedo our credit rating. And that, when seen in inconjunction with that huge current account deficit, could well trigger panic and flight among foreign investors. We have painted ourselves into a very tight corner.
Serves us right, in one respect. The tax cuts may have been a justifiable response to the domestic recession last year, but going forwards, they eave us with much less headroom now to cope with the global financial crisis. We fired some crucial ammunition against the lesser threat. While tax cuts may be a sugar fix that creates a degree of retail spending, they are a poorly directed way of fostering sustainable growth. .
Douglas is no help. His vision of further privatizations of ACC and beyond, and of having no personal income tax whatsoever (yes, that’s also in the speech) are trumpet calls from a bygone era. Later today, Key will unveil the infrastructure projects central to the government’s initial stimulus package. As they unfold, one can only hope that Douglas will continue to be ignored.
It's all bullshit keep driving your v8's.
Wow, you are using retired hack Gordon Campbell as your argument against Roger Douglas?
Laaaaaaaaaaame
Perhaps Bomber or his anonymous sycophants can tell us about all of Roger Douglas' "terrible failed policies" any of the governments since his time have repealed.
There must be quite a few of his economic policies that the subsequent National and Labour governments have changed seeing as they were so indisputably shitty right? Right? Go an, name them for us.
Wow, you are using retired hack Gordon Campbell as your argument against Roger Douglas?
Wow you are playing the man and not the ball?
^^ Riiiiight, we are talking about GW and you have to resort to trying to shut the debate down by bring roger douglas into it. Then when you get called on your bullshit, and can't even name ONE SINGLE economic policy that douglas introduced that has since been repealed - you cry about playing the man and not the ball.
Laughably sad.
For the above blogger who can't seem to read...
Campbell: Sir Roger Douglas, And His Orewa Speech
Quaint. 25 years after Roger Douglas first won the power to affect this country, he has returned to Orewa, the elephant’s graveyard of politicians ( Don Brash, Winston Peters) still intent on stirring the embers of ancient grievances.
Starting with this failure of perspective :
New Zealand has been in a recession - getting poorer - since the first quarter of 2008. We were in a recession before the fallout from the global financial crisis arrived on our shores; we were in a bad economic situation, and the financial crisis has simply made that situation worse.
Yes, but the fact New Zealand was in recession before the international crisis hit does not mean the domestic recession was more fundamental - or that a global crisis has come along and “simply” made the fundamentals worse. I hate to be the one to tell Douglas the bad news, but this crisis is of a quite different scale. It is even worse than the stockmarket crash of 1987 that his policies were instrumental in fuelling last time around.
The current financial crisis is not your garden variety business cycle. Still, the starting point could have been far worse. The last nine years had seen this country’s longest sustained period of growth since the Second World War, with unemployment at twenty year lows. Belatedly, the gap between rich and poor had finally began to reduce, a trend that began even before the Working For Families properly kicked in.
We saw a serious erosion in that position during early 2008 - and on the way down, New Zealand has been hit by a crisis larger than any that the global financial system has faced since the early 1970s, at least. Most economists around the world are blaming this meltdown on the kind of unregulated free market excesses that Sir Roger has been championing for the past 25 years.
The only reason we aren’t worse off – as even Bill English has conceded – is because New Zealand entered the dual recession/crisis with exceptionally low levels of public debt. Mainly because for most of this decade, Michael Cullen paid off debt - and until last year - did not enact the sort of financially and socially irresponsible tax cuts that Sir Roger and his ilk had been clamouring for. The package of stimulatory tax cuts that began last year have now been claimed as an ingredient in the Key government’s own stimulatory package.
But back to more of Sir Roger’s verdict on the Clark administration :
In the private sector, our current account deficit has ballooned to its largest since the last major recession in 1975. This large increase in the current account deficit - now equal to 8.5 percent of GDP - occurred despite the most advantageous terms of trade since the early 1980s.
As our current account deficit grew larger, we told ourselves that a significant drop in the dollar would help eliminate it. Unfortunately for us, the drop in the dollar has been accompanied by a significant reduction in commodity prices. What does this mean? It means that, unless we make major changes to our policy settings to increase our international competitiveness, then the current account deficit is here to stay. And this deficit will require ongoing financing. But such financing is increasingly scarce because of the global credit crunch…
Frankly, being admonished by Roger Douglas about our chronic current account deficit is a bit like being lectured about road safety by a hit and run driver. Large and enduring current account deficits are one of Douglas’ enduring legacies to the nation. What, structural imbalance perchance, does it reflect ?
Could it possibly be because Douglas and Richard Prebble sold the family silver – the state assets, the banks, the telecommunications system etc for peanuts - thus fostering structural imbalances in our economic relations with the wider world that we are still suffering from today. Let us not forget the failure of nerve to enact a capital gains tax that would have curbed housing speculation, and channeled investment into the productive sector.
Douglas, in other words, helped to build the pipeline of outflows that have kept our current account deficit primed and pumped – and judging by his Orewa speech, Douglas wishes to enact more of the same, as if such policies bear no responsibility whatsoever for the current crisis in financial markets. Well, back in the real world, John Maynard Keynes ( and not Milton Friedman) offers the solutions to which major economies are now turning - and luckily for this country, Douglas has been on the sidelines for the last decade or more. Did I mention that tax cuts during this past decade’s boom times would have been wildly inflationary – and would have fuelled spending on imports and blown out the current account deficit even further than it is now ?
Back to the Douglas prescription at Orewa.
There is only one way to increase wages: increase productivity…. Despite this reality, we have unions - like the Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union - publicly announcing that it will continue seeking real wage increases. Any increase that workers receive beyond productivity increases will merely exacerbate unemployment.
Righto Yet only a few lines later in the Orewa speech, we find this claim : ‘Despite slow wage growth, we have continued to live beyond our means..’ So which one it it ? Have big union driven wage hikes been out of whack with productivity, or has slow wage growth still seen us spending up large, regardless ?
Tellingly, for all his talk about our poor productivity levels, Douglas makes no criticism of the private sector for its failure to invest in the new technology crucial to productivity growth. Nor does he slam the private sector for itsfree-loading on government spending on research and development. Who failed to invest productively ? Who lavishly paid out profits in dividends during the recent boom, rather than invest in research and development? All Douglas can do on this score is rail against the Clark government for trying to offer r&d tax credits, a carrot that even his former acolytes at Treasury said in their briefs to Bill English was a good idea, and one that should not be scrapped.
In similar vein, it is ordinary citizens who cop the blame from Douglas for succumbing to household debt and easy mortgages : “With credit cheap, we mortgaged our houses to buy consumer products.’ Again, not a word of criticism about the role of banks in borrowing overseas and selling mortgages that neither the country or the would-be homeowners can sustain, while feeding the current account deficit in the process. To Douglas, only wage rises should to be tied to productivity. No such calls for restraint by CEOs, or by shareholders.
True, criticizing Douglas in 2009 is like shooting fish in a barrel. Yet the pathology of the worldview on display is fascinating. If you can believe him, the late 1990s were a virtual nirvana, rudely snatched from us by Helen Clark and Michael Cullen. To make that case, Douglas paints a rosy picture of life under Jenny Shipley that no one who actually lived through the Shipley era would recognize. Back then, he rhapsodises, tax settings were simple and good, inflation was beaten, and years of sustained growth were stretching before us. ‘Privatisation,’ Douglas exults, ‘ had created efficient businesses targeted at meeting consumer demand.’ This is sheer fantasy, and it takes only one word to dispel it : Telecom !
Talking of which, Douglas slams the Clark government for its long overdue moves to regulate and break up Telecom, and that perspective is entirely consistent with the neo-Victorian morality that runs through the entire speech. Programmes to relieve poverty you know, are only ‘incentive destroying.” On Telecom, Douglas’ views hark back to the era that pre-dates the birth of anti -trust law in 1910 – which was when even the Americans saw the need for government to intervene and regulate, and break up the market dominance held by John D. Rockefeller, and his Standard Oil company.
Looking ahead, Douglas appears to resist the very notion of a stimulus package, if it will entail deficit spending by a government during this recession:
When international credit is particularly tight, the Government has announced plans to borrow and spend on infrastructure projects. We have now been put on notice that our credit rating may be downgraded. Investors see our debt as risky - they fear we may default.
John Key and Bill English have of course, been talking for months about the tightrope that New Zealand now has to walk. We have to negotiate out way between stimulative deficit spending on one hand, and the risk that further borrowing and public indebtedness could torpedo our credit rating. And that, when seen in inconjunction with that huge current account deficit, could well trigger panic and flight among foreign investors. We have painted ourselves into a very tight corner.
Serves us right, in one respect. The tax cuts may have been a justifiable response to the domestic recession last year, but going forwards, they eave us with much less headroom now to cope with the global financial crisis. We fired some crucial ammunition against the lesser threat. While tax cuts may be a sugar fix that creates a degree of retail spending, they are a poorly directed way of fostering sustainable growth. .
Douglas is no help. His vision of further privatizations of ACC and beyond, and of having no personal income tax whatsoever (yes, that’s also in the speech) are trumpet calls from a bygone era. Later today, Key will unveil the infrastructure projects central to the government’s initial stimulus package. As they unfold, one can only hope that Douglas will continue to be ignored.
Why don't you just keep posting that seeing as you don't seem to be able to comment on the GW issue or come up with a policy of douglas' that has been repealed.
"Funded by Exxon" seems to be the main argument here. Is this as opposed to the initial GW research funding coming from the Margaret Thatcher government with the express purpose of helping her argument for the move to nuclear power? There was money on the table for scientists who were able to prove the link between fossil fuels and GW.
Yes Exxon obviously has an agenda. Why wouldn't they? What sort of company would you expect to fund this sort of thing?
Both sides of the debate are not entirely impartial. I say look into the findings that both sides have made and draw your own conclusions. Some of the science is quite technical though so most people have to rely on the interpretations that come from one side or the other. In this case it comes down to which side can manipulate the general public's opinion the easiest.
Why don't you just keep posting that seeing as you don't seem to be able to comment on the GW issue or come up with a policy of douglas' that has been repealed.
Oh for crying out loud, Labour didn't repeal the welfare cuts when they got elected either, and I sure as hell don't agree with that. As for Rodger Douglas and your desperate need to reinvent him as some sort of saviour - look Muldoon had screwed the country economically, no question, did some type of reform need to take place - of course - but only the most pure right wing accolyte would argue that the massive society wide destruction his hard right, rammed through under urgency economic policy as social polciy wrecked upon the lives of countless NZers. Pretending that didn't happen to rejoice in his glow is just ridiculous.
As for GW - here is a great column from everyones favourite George Monbiot about how bad it will get...
If we behave as if it's too late, then our prophecy is bound to come true
However unlikely success might be, we can't afford to abandon efforts to cut emissions - we just don't have any better option
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday 17 March 2009
Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it's over. The years in which more than 2C of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we'll be lucky to get away with 4C. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.
This, at any rate, was the repeated whisper at the climate change conference in Copenhagen last week. It's more or less what Bob Watson, the environment department's chief scientific adviser, has been telling the British government. It is the obvious if unspoken conclusion of scores of scientific papers. Recent work by scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, for instance, suggests that even global cuts of 3% a year, starting in 2020, could leave us with 4C of warming by the end of the century. At the moment, emissions are heading in the opposite direction at roughly the same rate. If this continues, what does it mean? Six? Eight? Ten degrees? Who knows?
Faced with such figures, I can't blame anyone for throwing up their hands. But before you succumb to this fatalism, let me talk you through the options.
Yes, it is true that mitigation has so far failed. Sabotaged by Clinton, abandoned by Bush, attended halfheartedly by the other rich nations, the global climate talks have so far been a total failure. The targets they have set bear no relation to the science and are negated anyway by loopholes and false accounting. Nations like the UK, which is meeting its obligations under the Kyoto protocol, have succeeded only by outsourcing their pollution to other countries. And nations like Canada, which is flouting its obligations, face no meaningful sanctions.
Lord Stern made it too easy: he appears to have underestimated the costs of mitigation. As the professor of energy policy Dieter Helm has shown, Stern's assumption that our consumption can continue to grow while our emissions fall is implausible. To have any hope of making substantial cuts we have both to reduce our consumption and transfer resources to countries like China to pay for the switch to low carbon technologies. As Helm notes, "there is not much in the study of human nature - and indeed human biology - to give support to the optimist".
But we cannot abandon mitigation unless we have a better option. We don't. If you think our attempts to prevent emissions are futile, take a look at our efforts to adapt.
Where Stern appears to be correct is in proposing that the costs of stopping climate breakdown, great as they would be, are far lower than the costs of living with it. Germany is spending €600m just on a new sea wall for Hamburg - and this money was committed before the news came through that sea-level rises this century could be two or three times as great as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted. The Netherlands will spend €2.2bn on dykes between now and 2015; again they are likely to be inadequate. The UN suggests that rich countries should be transferring $50 to $75bn a year to poor ones now to help them cope with climate change, with a massive increase later on. But nothing like this is happening.
A Guardian investigation reveals that the rich nations have promised $18bn to help the poor nations adapt to climate change over the last seven years, but they have disbursed only 5% of that money. Much of it has been transferred from foreign aid budgets anyway: a net gain for the poor of nothing. Oxfam has made a compelling case for how adaptation should be funded: nations should pay according to the amount of carbon they produce per capita, coupled with their position on the human development index. On this basis, the US should supply more than 40% of the money and the European Union over 30%, with Japan, Canada, Australia and Korea making up the balance. But what are the chances of getting them to cough up?
There's a limit to what this money could buy anyway. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that "global mean temperature changes greater than 4C above 1990-2000 levels" would "exceed ... the adaptive capacity of many systems". At this point there's nothing you can do, for instance, to prevent the loss of ecosystems, the melting of glaciers and the disintegration of major ice sheets. Elsewhere it spells out the consequences more starkly: global food production, it says, is "very likely to decrease above about 3C". Buy your way out of that.
And it doesn't stop there. The IPCC also finds that, above 3C of warming, the world's vegetation will become "a net source of carbon". This is just one of the climate feedbacks triggered by a high level of warming. Four degrees might take us inexorably to 5C or 6C: the end - for humans - of just about everything.
Until recently, scientists spoke of carbon concentrations - and temperatures - peaking and then falling back. But a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that "climate change ... is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop". Even if we were to cut carbon emissions to zero today, by the year 3000 our contribution to atmospheric concentrations would decline by just 40%. High temperatures would remain more or less constant until then. If we produce it, we're stuck with it.
In the rich nations we will muddle through, for a few generations, and spend nearly everything we have on coping. But where the money is needed most there will be nothing. The ecological debt the rich world owes to the poor will never be discharged, just as it has never accepted that it should offer reparations for the slave trade and for the pillage of gold, silver, rubber, sugar and all the other commodities taken without due payment from its colonies. Finding the political will for crash cuts in carbon production is improbable. But finding the political will - when the disasters have already begun - to spend adaptation money on poor nations rather than on ourselves will be impossible.
The world won't adapt and can't adapt: the only adaptive response to a global shortage of food is starvation. Of the two strategies it is mitigation, not adaptation, which turns out to be the most feasible option, even if this stretches the concept of feasibility to the limits. As Dieter Helm points out, the action required today is unlikely but "not impossible. It is a matter ultimately of human wellbeing and ethics".
Yes, it might already be too late - even if we reduced emissions to zero tomorrow - to prevent more than 2C of warming; but we cannot behave as if it is, for in doing so we make the prediction come true. Tough as this fight may be, improbable as success might seem, we cannot afford to surrender.
"Why can't you answer a simple question about Exxon funding the conveners of the skeptics conference?"
I did--saying who cares, it's the accuracy or otherwise of the science that matters.
"Rubbish. Betrays a complete ignorance of the way the IPCC actually works."
Actually, no, it doesn't do any such thing. It demonstrates knowledge of EXACTLY the way the IPCC works, and that according to scientists who were part of the process. How the IPCC is supposed to work is another thing entirely.
In response to the report ignoring the correllation between sunspot activity and climate, your response
was "There is none".
Really? so the massive amounts of Danish and Russian research alone on that subject don't exist, according to you? At what point did you stop reading the research, before or after the paper's titles?
CO2/climate lag: "No, the IPCC reports do not ignore it, and there's a perfectly good explanation for the "lag".
Heh...indeed. Which is why they had to rejig their precious computer models after the first report was released to "account" for it!
"Logical fallacy"
Really? And fuckwits claiming that yesterday's hot day in London (insert city of choice here) is due to Aunt Mabel's heat pump isn't? Never mind the heat island effect of all those so-called temperature monitoring stations either...
You're a joke. Fer chrissakes go away and get some kind of minimal technical education. You may not learn much but it would at least teach you what the scientific method means.
A hint--it's not mindlessly recycling green propaganda and it's got nothing to do with popularity contests aka 'consensus')
In further response to 18/3/09 10:23 AM
Rubbish. Betrays a complete ignorance of the way the IPCC actually works.
False. Many scientists who's findings denied that GW was caused by man asked for their name to be withdrawn from the author list but the IPCC needed to make up the numbers. Most of the 2500 so called experts aren't even scientists. You obviously don't have an understanding as to how the IPCC works or the reason for it being created in the first place.
The ritual swipe at Gore.
Doesn't make it not true. If he really believed this stuff and didn't just want to make money off of it he would practice what he preached.
Not true. There was no "global cooling" scare.
False. This shows the lack of research you've done on the subject and how happy you are to just lap up what ever you see on the six o'clock news as truth. KG was correct in the front cover article in Time magazine, 24 June 1974. Here's the link if you still don't believe: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
We won't hold our breath waiting for yours.
k kewl
Hold on, wasn't a lot of that thought 1974 thinking before the rest of the data that came in since then? How does this prove global warming from man made pollution isn't happening? If anything it shows the type of mindset that didn't believe we could really effect the planets climate. We also once believed that comets didn'y smash into planets either. One article from Time doesn't make a global cooling scare.
Bomber, if you think you are being caned now, April 27 will deliver an absolute hiding.
Human caused global warming is a myth, based on the peer reviewed science I've seen...The entire argument of "response to" in the other thread hinged on accepting the premise that CO2 is the forcer, not a feedback.
The melt that ended the Little Ice Age was solar forced, and as you should know, melting ice and tundra release??? Warming oceans release???
The warming began in pre-industrial times. The science claiming CO2 is the forcer is far from settled, especially given the data from prehistoric earth where CO2 levels hit 4,500 ppm/v while temperatures dropped to 12C on average.
Care to explain that anomaly in terms of GCM forecasts?
I thought not.
Air Con...read it and weep as it makes the masses wake up and realise they've been played for suckers by global warming believers.
True, it doesn't prove GW from man made pollution isn't happening. I think the point that was trying to be made was that there have been noticeable changes in the earths climate not only in the last 1000+ years, but in the last century (the global cooling "scare" was due to a period of cooling from about 1940s to 1970s).
This doesn't prove man isn't contributing to GW, it just suggests that it's not unreasonable to think climate can change fairly rapidly with little to no contribution from man.
If one was to attempt to prove CO2 emissions contributed little to GW, he would say something like "the world underwent a massive industrial, technological and economic boom post WW2 which would have seen a dramatic rise in CO2 emissions. Interestingly the world cooled for approximately 30 years until about the period of the mid 70s economic crash." Of course such an argument is open to debate because it is not entirely scientific.
Rubbish. Betrays a complete ignorance of the way the IPCC actually works.
False. Many scientists who's findings denied that GW was caused by man asked for their name to be withdrawn from the author list but the IPCC needed to make up the numbers. Most of the 2500 so called experts aren't even scientists. You obviously don't have an understanding as to how the IPCC works or the reason for it being created in the first place.
Only one or two scientists have ever asked for their names to be removed from the author list. If you really want to know where the IPCC came from, you need to read The Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart (Google it, it's 250,000 words, a wonderful resource and completely free).
The ritual swipe at Gore.
Doesn't make it not true. If he really believed this stuff and didn't just want to make money off of it he would practice what he preached.
Gore really believes this stuff, and may make money from it. So will lots of people -- wind turbine manufacturers, electric car makers, solar panel makers, clean tech entrepreneurs. What's bad about that?
Not true. There was no "global cooling" scare.
False. This shows the lack of research you've done on the subject and how happy you are to just lap up what ever you see on the six o'clock news as truth. KG was correct in the front cover article in Time magazine, 24 June 1974. Here's the link if you still don't believe:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
One Time cover does not a scare make: see The myth of the 1970s global cooling consensus, Peterson, Connolley & Fleck, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol 89, Issue 9 (September 2008) http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008BAMS2370.1&ct=1
GRIN - Ian, I have read this thread with a lot of interest because I really wanted to know what you had, and I have been utterly underwhelmed, far from feeling 'caned' all I pick up is the same breathless "I have the truth" stuff you embarrassingly displayed when you were trying to convince people you had found proof of intelligent design, wasn't it a suggestion of aliens making life happen on Earth?
I think you may wish to re-think your book Ian, I can't see how it will lift your academic credibility at all.
Aliens making life appear on Earth? I think you'll find it was DNA co-discovered Francis Crick who argued that was the only possibility, and from memory Dawkins and others invoke it when it suits them as well...ignoring the problem: how did alien life arise? (just shifts causation problem one step back).
Anyway, I'm not disclosing the totality of a 300 page book four weeks ahead of release, in the comments thread of a blog...You will need to address the scientific data in the book in context, when it comes out.
The "caning" to which I referred is that far from being "settled", the science is hotly debated among scientists...and that there are a string of peer reviewed reports which cast significant doubt on the causes of warming put forward by the IPCC, and the scale of warming as claimed by alarmists like yourself.
Many of the key AGW claims have been well-debunked.
Y-e-a-h, but you were trying to tie it into Intelligent design though eh Ian?
Look as for your book, mate like I said I was very interested to read what you had to say and the counter points to them, and it looks very much based on this thread you haven't proven a damned thing. If this is all you've got in your book I think you are well off the mark. You've taken very selective information and have bent it to fit the view that man made pollution isn't causing climate change, and I don't honestly think you've even gotten close to proving that in this thread - look you may be saving your powder till the book is released but based on what you've written here and the counters to your points, mate you aren't even close validating your point.
I STILL state that the science has been settled on global warming in the same way evolution has been settled, and you are the creationist in an evolution debate Ian.
Human caused global warming is a myth, based on the peer reviewed science I've seen...The entire argument of "response to" in the other thread hinged on accepting the premise that CO2 is the forcer, not a feedback.
No, my whole argument is that the basic physics of CO2 means that it has an impact on the radiation of heat into and out of the atmosphere. More CO2, more warming at the surface. To deny that, you have to rewrite physics down to the quantum level. Are you up to that, Ian? Thought not.
CO2 can be both feedback and forcing. It is now a forcing - in the past it's been a feedback.
The melt that ended the Little Ice Age was solar forced, and as you should know, melting ice and tundra release??? Warming oceans release???
So where has the current 40% increase in CO2 come from?
The warming began in pre-industrial times. The science claiming CO2 is the forcer is far from settled, especially given the data from prehistoric earth where CO2 levels hit 4,500 ppm/v while temperatures dropped to 12C on average.
Care to explain that anomaly in terms of GCM forecasts?
There are very good reasons to believe that man's activities had an impact on global climate much earlier than the industrial revolution. See Plows, Plagues and Petroleum by William Ruddiman. His hypothesis is still controversial, but more likely to be right than you are, Ian.
Comparing the climate of 100s of millions of years ago with today's is meaningless. The radiative impact of CO2 remains the same.
The "caning" to which I referred is that far from being "settled", the science is hotly debated among scientists...and that there are a string of peer reviewed reports which cast significant doubt on the causes of warming put forward by the IPCC, and the scale of warming as claimed by alarmists like yourself.
The basic science is not hotly debated, the details are. There have been no credible peer-reviewed papers casting significant doubt on the role of greenhouse gases in the current warming.
Working scientists who are sceptical about the severity of future warming -- Roy Spencer for instance -- accept the basic role of GHGs in warming.
Many of the key AGW claims have been well-debunked.
Oh yes, like what?
"CO2 can be both feedback and forcing. It is now a forcing - in the past it's been a feedback."
Unambiguous evidence for this magical change? The climate data from the past doesn't support the idea that CO2 was a forcing...and this is the central problem.
"So where has the current 40% increase in CO2 come from?"
Let's step back a little. We are agreed, I think, that temperature records from various proxies show wide ranging climate swings over past 600,000 years, but arguably not wild swings in CO2 levels.
Why not? Probably because the earth had found equilibrium in the carbon cycle.
We know, for example, that solar forcing and oscillation forcing melts ice and tundra, which releases far more CO2 than all the human emissions combined.
Therefore, past warm cycles including MWP must have released vast amounts of CO2 at the time. But why didn't it show up?
Evidently because it was soaked up by the planet's great forests and other mechanisms. CO2 being a great plant food, extra CO2 stimulates growth and therefore improves the ability of the forest to soak up extra CO2.
Thus, the average CO2 levels maintained a rough equilibrium because the carbon sinks adjusted rapidly.
However, since exploration opened up Asia, Africa and elsewhere, humans have cut down most of the great forests to make way for pasture and towns.
The warming that following the LIA generated huge amounts of extra CO2 because of melt, as it always has, but suddenly there was not as much lung capacity to soak it up again over the past 100 years.
Human contributions have piled on top of that imbalance.
That doesn't, of itself, make CO2 the forcing, when the clear evidence points to solar influence.
Nor does it necessarily mean that the correlation with greater human emissions is the cause of the warming over the past century, especially when the more blindingly obvious candidate using Occam's Razor is the sun, which was busier in the last century than it has been for a long time.
I don't disagree that the higher CO2 levels will be having a feedback effect, but I do disagree that the feedback is anywhere near catastrophic or even capable of reaching catastrophic. The laws of physics applied to CO2 400 million years ago the same way they do today, and you keep evading giving an explanation of the clear dissonance between current models and ancient realities.
The weakness of your argument is extremely clear to people capable of realising that despite skyrocketing GHG emissions over the past decade, the planet's temperature is dropping not rising.
The GCMs were unable to predict that, because they didn't beleive that solar and oscillative factors were as significant as GHGs.
Clearly, they're wrong.
You can keep clinging to the modern equivalent of Flat Earth belief as long as you wish, and scampering onto the blog every couple of days warning that the sky is falling...
Vast swathes of former believers are seeing the light, however, as disbelief in AGW hits its highest levels.
BOMBER: You clearly haven't read The Divinity Code because you're attributing things to me I didn't say. DAwkins, Crick and others support the idea of alien intelligent design. As I explained, that doesn't get them off the hook: who designed the aliens? They may as well have invoked fairies as the cause of life developing on earth.
Just realised I failed to address this howler from yourself, responding to my challenge (in italics):
The warming began in pre-industrial times. The science claiming CO2 is the forcer is far from settled, especially given the data from prehistoric earth where CO2 levels hit 4,500 ppm/v while temperatures dropped to 12C on average.
Care to explain that anomaly in terms of GCM forecasts?
"There are very good reasons to believe that man's activities had an impact on global climate much earlier than the industrial revolution. See Plows, Plagues and Petroleum by William Ruddiman. His hypothesis is still controversial, but more likely to be right than you are, Ian."
I'm not sure how you think man was having an "impact" on the climate 400 million years ago, despite Ruddiman's book.
"I STILL state that the science has been settled on global warming in the same way evolution has been settled, and you are the creationist in an evolution debate Ian"
Umm Bomber you are aware that every theory of science has been repudiated and replaced by another theory which means by inference that so too will evolution. That is what science makes science, that it is prepared to issue another thoery when faced with the evidence.
You are arguing (ironically) from the point a religion, that there is one truth which is permanent and using the word 'science' as a cover.
Gore really believes this stuff, and may make money from it. So will lots of people -- wind turbine manufacturers, electric car makers, solar panel makers, clean tech entrepreneurs. What's bad about that?
If he believes it why does he maintain his mammoth carbon foot print and not make the type of effort that Bomber makes?
One Time cover does not a scare make
The Time cover was just an example, not used by me. There were also television and newspaper articles about the possible global cooling (sorry no links).
CO2 can be both feedback and forcing. It is now a forcing - in the past it's been a feedback.
So where has the current 40% increase in CO2 come from?
40% since when? The increase in atmospheric CO2 for the last 30+ years has been less than 0.5% per year. Of this CO2 that enters the atmosphere, humans produce less than 5%. Even volcanoes produce more CO2 each year than all the man made sources of CO2 put together. Even more comes from animals and even more from dieing vegetation etc etc. Mr Gore can keep enjoying his luxury V8 because I don't think it's doing much in the big picture. Yes the climate is heating up. Would you not expect to see an increase in CO2 when the earth heats up? It is a feedback after all..
Comparing the climate of 100s of millions of years ago with today's is meaningless. The radiative impact of CO2 remains the same.
I hardly see how it is meaningless. We all agree that in the past before humans were producing CO2 the climate was still able to drastically change. Why panic that it's still changing as it has been since the dawn of time?
"CO2 can be both feedback and forcing. It is now a forcing - in the past it's been a feedback."
Unambiguous evidence for this magical change? The climate data from the past doesn't support the idea that CO2 was a forcing...and this is the central problem.
The problem, it appears, is that you are unable to grasp a simple concept. Whether CO2 is a feedback or forcing isn't a magical change in the properties of CO2, but a difference in the external processes that control its atmospheric abundance. As I've already explained in an earlier comment, coming out of an ice age, orbital variations kick start warming, CO2 is released from the oceans, and we warm up. CO2 is a feedback in that circumstance - a response to external changes. The current increase in CO2 is not a feedback - it's a direct result of our emissions, and so is forcing the warming we observe.
"So where has the current 40% increase in CO2 come from?"
Let's step back a little. We are agreed, I think, that temperature records from various proxies show wide ranging climate swings over past 600,000 years, but arguably not wild swings in CO2 levels.
Eh? During the depths of an ice age, CO2 is usually about 180 ppm. Interglacial, 280-300 ppm - over 50% more!
Therefore, past warm cycles including MWP must have released vast amounts of CO2 at the time. But why didn't it show up?
The MWP wasn't especially warm, and may not have been global. It was certainly not warm enough to release "vast amounts" of carbon.
The warming that following the LIA generated huge amounts of extra CO2 because of melt, as it always has, but suddenly there was not as much lung capacity to soak it up again over the past 100 years.
You're correct that our interference in the carbon cycle has made matters worse, but not about the source of the carbon in the atmosphere.
Carbon isotope ratios conclusively demonstrate that the increase in C02 over the last 150 years has come from burning fossil fuel. Roughly half our emissions have been absorbed by the planet's carbon sinks -- they've been doing us a massive favour. In other words the things you think have been releasing carbon have been absorbing huge quantities of the stuff!
...the clear evidence points to solar influence. [...] which was busier in the last century than it has been for a long time.
This is something that's often asserted, but is not supported by direct measurements (no increase in TSI for the last 50 years) or by current work with proxies (Svalgard etc) which indicate that the sun has been remarkably stable in output for hundreds of years at least.
The laws of physics applied to CO2 400 million years ago the same way they do today, and you keep evading giving an explanation of the clear dissonance between current models and ancient realities.
The ancient reality is that the world then was different. The continents were in different positions, for starters, and the oceans were shifting heat around in different patterns. You also have to factor in huge changes in the planets ecosystems. 400 million years ago, for instance, plants had only recently begun to move on to land. The carbon cycle would have been totally different! You simply can't compare the climate then to the climate now and draw any meaningful conclusion.
The weakness of your argument is extremely clear to people capable of realising that despite skyrocketing GHG emissions over the past decade, the planet's temperature is dropping not rising.
Since the planet continues to warm, your argument fails.
The GCMs were unable to predict that, because they didn't beleive that solar and oscillative factors were as significant as GHGs.
Models don't "believe" anything. They are a numerical representation of the processes we find in the climate system - from the physics of radiatively active gases to fluid dynamics in the ocean and atmosphere, and many other things besides. They're not perfect, but they're useful.
Clearly, they're wrong.
Here we can agree. The current generation of GCMs are pretty good at getting global temperature responses to increased GHGs, but have underestimated the cryosphere response (for instance). They may also be too "stable", in that it's difficult to get the models to reproduce some of the most rapid swings we see in paleoclimate records. That is not good news...
You can keep clinging to the modern equivalent of Flat Earth belief as long as you wish, and scampering onto the blog every couple of days warning that the sky is falling...
Breathtaking! For chutzpah, you get the first prize. The "flat earth" brigade in this debate are those who wish to deny some or all of the following - the existence of a problem, the size of the problem, humanity's role in creating the problem, the need to reduce carbon emissions, etc etc.
Vast swathes of former believers are seeing the light, however, as disbelief in AGW hits its highest levels.
It's amusing how sceptics/deniers/cranks love to assert that they're "winning", that huge numbers of new converts are rushing to their flag, when out in the real world people are just getting on with trying to sort out a huge problem.
Your book is going to be a hoot. Can't wait to give it a very public dissection...
Breezing through your post it's apparent you have not read enough of the scientific papers and consequently your assurances are out of date with the latest knowledge.
No point battling by paper here, I do it in the book anyway.
A couple of points in your post above however.
"As I've already explained in an earlier comment, coming out of an ice age, orbital variations kick start warming, CO2 is released from the oceans, and we warm up. CO2 is a feedback in that circumstance - a response to external changes. The current increase in CO2 is not a feedback - it's a direct result of our emissions, and so is forcing the warming we observe."
There is an assumption built into this - the actual heating effect in the real atomsphere (not a lab experiment) of CO2. You presume it to be significant. Your entire argument is predicated on it being significant. But scientists are actually still trying to work that out.
And you missed my point. The Earth in balance is like a game of musical chairs where everyone finds a seat. Over the past 200 years we chopped up a lot of the seats for firewood, and thus the extra emissions had nowhere to go.
It is highly likely based on what we now know that CO2 emission volumes at various times in history have hit levels that might appear in modern terms to be as high as 700ppm, but with the ability of forests to rapidly soak it up it didn't linger in the air long enough to register in the ways that we measure the proxies.
The ppm/v essentially measures the excess of what has not been re-absorbed into the oceans, ice soil and forests...it is not a measure of total CO2 volumes per se.
The ice ages were not forced by lower CO2 levels, lower CO2 resulted simply from being locked into the ice, and overall emissons dropping because vegetation and animals didn't survive the cold as well, therefore less CO2 was generated.
Correspondingly, the warming periods were not driven by rising CO2, but by orbital variations, sunspot activity and climate oscillations on earth which set off melting.
The rising CO2 is an indicator of warning, in the same way that the presence of smoke indicates a fire, but no one argues that smoke causes fires.
Your argument is based on an unproven assumption. We know what CO2 does in an enclosed lab experiment. Its influence in a much larger open system like Earth is harder to pin down. It will create some warming, but all the latest scientific data indicates it stimulates rapid plant growth (a planetary regulatory mechanism) and that there is little chance of runaway warming based on CO2.
There's also the problem that C02's ability to contribute to warming lessens as you get more of it - a saturation point is reached.
And you can't dismiss the 400mya data with a wave of the hand. Physics is physics, unless you have some new undiscovered law at your disposal. The Earth's atmosphere contained CO2 at levels of up to 7000 ppm/v for an average planet temperature of 22C and there were still icecaps in Antarctica. The temperatures rose and fell without regard to CO2 "forcing".
Please explain this without waffling...
Breezing through your post it's apparent you have not read enough of the scientific papers and consequently your assurances are out of date with the latest knowledge.
Ahem. It appears that you have such a poor grasp of basic scientific concepts that you have misunderstood the papers you have read...
There is an assumption built into this - the actual heating effect in the real atomsphere (not a lab experiment) of CO2. You presume it to be significant. Your entire argument is predicated on it being significant. But scientists are actually still trying to work that out.
In reality, the radiative properties of atmospheric gases are very well understood indeed - and have been since the 1950s. If we had the radiative behaviour of CO2 in the atmosphere wrong, heat-seeking missiles wouldn't work. They do.
We also know how radiation moves through the atmosphere (both in and out), and have very good models to calculate its effects. For instance, we would not be able to measure atmospheric temperature from satellites without that understanding (nb: if you have argued in your tome that the satellite record is the most accurate, and that climate models can't be trusted, then bear in mind that satellite temp measures are derived from the same radiation transfer code used in climate models).
Correspondingly, the warming periods were not driven by rising CO2, but by orbital variations, sunspot activity and climate oscillations on earth which set off melting.
The rising CO2 is an indicator of warning, in the same way that the presence of smoke indicates a fire, but no one argues that smoke causes fires.
Oh dear. The depth of ignorance apparent from your comments on the carbon cycle doesn't bode well for your book. To criticise something you first have to understand it. You haven't even bothered to try. Did you even bother to talk to a real scientist, or read any standard texts?
And you can't dismiss the 400mya data with a wave of the hand. Physics is physics, unless you have some new undiscovered law at your disposal. The Earth's atmosphere contained CO2 at levels of up to 7000 ppm/v for an average planet temperature of 22C and there were still icecaps in Antarctica. The temperatures rose and fell without regard to CO2 "forcing".
You ignore the substance of my comment. It's worth noting that our knowledge of the climates and atmospheres of the deep geologic past is still pretty rudimentary -- another good reason for not rushing to any conclusions.
Please explain this without waffling...
Look Ian, it's quite clear from your comments that you don't understand the science you're trying to argue about. Accusing me of waffling is a pretty clear indication that you haven't bothered to do the basic hard yards in learning about climate. Your arguments look as though they're cut and pasted together from various crank theories - a sort of patchwork house of cards that might look impressive to the ill-informed, but which will blow down in the slightest breeze.
I look forward to supplying that gentle zephyr...
Bomber, you can huff and puff all you like, but the foundations of this new book are brick, so good luck.
Preview here:
http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/04/free-preview-of-ian-wisharts-new-book-air-con.html
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