Metropol

As I said, I didn't watch the whole thing, I saw a part where I seem to recall they said "it's the sun, not carbon dioxide".

Well if you didn't watch it don't pontificate about what you assume it claimed.

I'd only countered claims echoed in this thread up to that point anyway. Now that you've clarified things I'm going to continue. Don't worry, no more graphs

More carbon dioxide is emitted when there's a warming, and the release process takes time (hundreds of years - the lag they seem to base their assumption on).

That much is true.

The data used was probably antarctic (note they say "some" data) and coming off the back of an Ice age. That means that whatever process pulls Earth out of an ice age initiates that temperature increase and then the newly released carbon dioxide serves to amplify it through the greenhouse effect, which in turn causes more carbon to be released - and so on. It's a feedback loop.

My money would be on no such correlation for emissions after the industrial revolution. Cause and effect here can also be established in theory because we know the following things:

1. How much carbon (roughly) humans pump out
2. How long carbon stays in the atmosphere
3. The warming effect of a concentration of carbon in the air.

And that process of "radiative forcing" has to occur.

What's really got my back up about this programme, especially now I've gone over the website, is that they've made no reference to where the grey areas in our understanding of the climate change system exist. There are many factors, some increasing warming, some introducing cooling, and some links between them.

One such shortcoming is in knowledge of Aerosols; their effects on cloud formation, their colour and how we can account for the fact that 50 times more organic aerosol is measured than the models predict. Aerosol effects could, according to the IPCC, just about mitigate the entire effect of Carbon dioxide (although that's the best case scenario). Instead, it clutches at straws, desperate to avoid any argument that supports a sub-theory used by research that shows what they don't want to see.

I notice from tonight's ITV News that politicians are once again suggesting using this bandwagon as an excuse to tax the public. Are they intending to use the revenue to build immense facilities to remove CO2 from the atmosphere on a global scale? Of course not.

If put into effect, these sort of policies will merely create a two-tier population: those who can afford to fly and those who can't. It won't stop the frequent business flyer, their companies will simply charge more for their services to compensate.

I agree, pricing people off transport is only going to hurt the people who can't really afford to use it already. It's a cheap (effort-wise) and easy way out.

I am soooooo pleased I found this thread. I thought it was just me, but our politicians going too far. All this save the planet stuff with lower emissions is just gone way too far, Unfortunately they al seem to be caught up in who can be the greenest, and the worst of it all is that its going to cost us taxpayers a small fortune, not least the changes to our way of life.

If it were an undisputed fact that C02 emissions were the culprit then id be 100% behind them, but the fact is that there is a growing body of evidence that is diffcult to ignore that concludes our C02 emissions are having no impact on the environemnt. Rather the rise in C02 is a natural cyclic event that has happend time and time again throughout history. Maybe you saw the recent TV documentary that highlighted the facts and somehow seems to have been ignored by the worlds governments.

it has to stop!

pete917 wrote:it has to stop!

I agree (obviously, since I started this thread) that the only thing we need to cut down on is political posturing about green issues.

Amazingly, I watched on BBC Spotlight the other night that we are about to build/open the first new coal-fired power station for 20 years. Mmmmm, methinks that might cancel out all those walks into town I had planned to reduce my "carbon footprint" (even though the bus was still running!)

I hope we get out of this tax-a-fad scenario soon. Although I doubt we will loose the taxes as quickly as the political parties shed the policies.

pete917 wrote:I am soooooo pleased I found this thread. I thought it was just me, but our politicians going too far. All this save the planet stuff with lower emissions is just gone way too far, Unfortunately they al seem to be caught up in who can be the greenest, and the worst of it all is that its going to cost us taxpayers a small fortune, not least the changes to our way of life.

If it were an undisputed fact that C02 emissions were the culprit then id be 100% behind them, but the fact is that there is a growing body of evidence that is diffcult to ignore that concludes our C02 emissions are having no impact on the environemnt. Rather the rise in C02 is a natural cyclic event that has happend time and time again throughout history. Maybe you saw the recent TV documentary that highlighted the facts and somehow seems to have been ignored by the worlds governments.

it has to stop!

This is a response posted by on of the BBC's science reporters to some of the questions raised by the programme.

Is it true that the IPCC conference is not truly representative of scientists and that some of the CV's are very dubious ?

The scientists who write the reports are among the most experienced and credible people working in this field. One of the difficulties is that the scientists are nominated by governments and there can be degrees of difference between different people from different parts of the world, but the CVs are hardly dubious. On a personal level, the IPCC authors that I have spoken to are among the most level headed, non campaigning people that I've ever come across. The majority are very cautious, self effacing types, (which makes for dull press conferences) but you'd tend to trust them.

Is it true that the greatest spell of recent warming was up to 1950 (I think) when economic activity was far lower than today ?

On the issue of warming (and cooling) since 1950. This is a real red herring which the guys who made the programme deliberately overlooked. Temperature drops since 1950 are due to an abundance of particulate matter in the atmosphere. This is the result of all the industrial activity and volcanic activity, the coal burning etc etc - it’s what made acid rain such a big problem in the sixties and seventies - But the benefit of these clouds of particulates was that they reflected sunlight away, and therefore helped keep temperatures down. Once we solved the acid rain problem there simply wasn't the same reflectivity so the temperatures continued going up.

Is it true that increase in temperature does not follow CO2 emissions but that CO2 emissions follow increase in temperature (when looking at the graphs) ?

The issue of the connection between co2 and temperature is shown very clearly in the ice core samples dating back 800,000 years, the people who have looked at this in detail are in no doubt that carbon dioxide forces temperature and not the other way around. They say that when we come out of an ice age, both carbon and temp rise together - but they say there is nowhere in the 800,000 year record where co2 went up and temperatures didn't follow.
Here's a quote from Eric Wolff at British antartic survey -

"Just to be clear: no-one is claiming that temperature cannot change naturally, clearly it does. Thus there is no surprise in the idea that the end of the ice age was kicked off by soemthing other than CO2.
however once it started, CO2 appears to be involved in keeping it going."

They say that there is always a time lag between rises in carbon concentrations and temperature rises but it is a well defined and well understood link.

Is it true that the upper atmosphere is not heating up in the way that you would expect if climate change was due to greenhouse gases but that the surface of the earth is.

As regards the atmosphere. It’s a complicated place, with four distinct levels. In the lowest, the troposhere, it's warmest at the bottom and coolest at the top - but the next layer up - the stratosphere gets hotter as you rise through it. This is an effect of ozone at this level, which captures the energy of ultraviolet light and re-radiates it as heat.Scientists are still trying to understand what is going on up there, - but here's a quote from a report from May 2006.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality issued a statement saying that the climate change program was established to reduce scientific uncertainties and "we welcome today's report because it represents success in doing so with respect to temperature trends.''
Findings of the report include:
Since the 1950s all data show the Earth's surface and the low and middle atmosphere have warmed, while the upper stratosphere has cooled. Those changes were expected from computer models of the effects of greenhouse warming.
Radiosonde readings for the midtroposphere—the nearest portion of the atmosphere—show it warming slightly faster than the surface, also an expected finding.
The most recent satellite data also show tropospheric warming, though there is some disagreement among data sets. This may be caused by uncertainties in the observations, flaws in climate models or a combination. The researchers think it is a problem with the data collection.
The observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone.

From that quite Marcus you seem undecided. It provides ammunition for arguments both ways.

StuartPlymouth wrote:From that quite Marcus you seem undecided. It provides ammunition for arguments both ways.

Is wasn't my analysis it was a science reporter.

I'm not sure 100%, although I think the likelihood of us affecting the climate of the earth is very very high.

Imagine a school globe. Relatively the thickness of the atmosphere is no more than the thickness of the varnish on the globe. It's impossible to imagine that we aren't effecting that layer with all the gasses we are pumping into it.

I also think think it is probably to late to do anything about it, and even if it isn't there simply isn't the foresight or inclination to try. People are very selfish and think just of the present, not what we are leaving for our children. As a result human life, as we know it, will change dramatically over the next few hundred years, assuming we don't destroy the planet completely in the meantime.

Marcus wrote:Imagine a school globe. Relatively the thickness of the atmosphere is no more than the thickness of the varnish on the globe. It's impossible to imagine that we aren't effecting that layer with all the gasses we are pumping into it.

I also think think it is probably to late to do anything about it, and even if it isn't there simply isn't the foresight or inclination to try. People are very selfish and think just of the present, not what we are leaving for our children. As a result human life, as we know it, will change dramatically over the next few hundred years, assuming we don't destroy the planet completely in the meantime.

Given the school analogy then imagine that globe over the 4 billion years of this planet's existence.

Even the last billion years of life have seen such varied temperatures and conditions we could not possibly imagine now. Watch "Walking With Dinsosaurs" or "Walking with Monsters" on UKTV History this week.

We have been lucky to exist in a time when this planet allowed primates and homo-sapiens to evolve, but we are a mere blink in the eye of this planet so far. We really shouldn't try to upgrade our role just yet. It's so arrogant.