.
For waverers, unbelievers and those who think we have plenty of time to do something I recommend this book. It looks at a wide range of climate modelling studies and graphically describes high CO2 eras from the Earth's geological past while considering how similar conditions today would impact on human civilisation. While current CO2 concentrations are still much lower than (eg ) in the Cretaceous or Permian ages, the current rate of rise is faster than in any previous era and the time we have to avoid future catastrophe is shorter than you may have thought.
Ignore the sensationalist cover pic and click the link below to buy the book from Amazon.
Is this some kind of wind-up or merely an Amazon link-click money making exercise?
We've been here before and fairly exhausted this increasingly irrelevant but sensationalist topic.
"the time we have to avoid future catastrophe is shorter than you may have thought." claims NickMcB
Perleeeeze!
The more wierdie-beardies and their sad ilk bang on about global warming the more sensible people just switch off.
Some people obviously delude themselves about their own self importance by sensationalising all sorts of end of world secenarios. These self same doom-mongers have brought us such crap as the Millenium Bug, SARS, BSE, Bird Flu, comet impact, and now global financial meltdown. These saddoes should get back to their collection of X-Files vids and sad computer games and stop bugging the sensible majority with their half-baked scare stories.
Long Fanks (Cockney by choice)
ps Global average temperatures have fallen every year since 1999. IPPC acknowledges this but says they'll start rising again sometime around 2012. What a bunch of self-seeking tossers!
Rather than explain the phenomenon of climate change denial myself I will quote at some length from the book:
. . . Our evolutionary psychology preconditions us not to respond to threats which can be postponed until later. We are good at mobilising for immediate battles, less good at heading off challenges which still lie far into the future. Hence the most appropriate term to describe both individual and societal responses so far is probably 'denial'. This is the same mental faculty that smokers use to pretend to themselves that they won't die early, or that mountain climbers scaling Everest use to imagine themselves invulnerable even a they pass the frozen bodies of previous mountaineers who have died on the very same path.
This denial is complex, involving a variety of defensive response from the familiar 'climate change is a myth' to the more under standable (but ultimately no more useful) 'but I need my car for my job'. It is of course no coincidence that the same people who are deeply wedded to high fossil fuel use . . . are the ones most likely to deny the reality of climate change . . . there is nothing so difficult as trying to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. This is classic denial: no one wants to hold a mental image of themselves as bad or evil, so immoral acts are necessarily dressed up in a cloak of intellectual self justification.
. . . why is denial easier for people than being more honest and changing their behaviour? Part of the problem is societal: we are confronted with daily social pressure to conform to a high-fossil fuel consuming lifestyle, so personal behavioural change in reality takes a lot of courage. Those who make the effort are frequently dismissed as 'tree-huggers' or 'sandal-wearers' by the mainstream. A high-energy lifestyle is often seen as a badge of social success.
Given that resolving dissonance is difficult, and that denying it is dishonest, many people choose another way out of the dilemma: displacement. In short, they blame someone else. For an ordinary person this might mean singling out someone whose behaviour is worse - the Mini driver pointing to the Hummer driver, for example. For policymakers, this might mean blaming entire countries: the Byrd-Hagel resolution in the US Senate refused to countenance any change to American lifestyles unless developing countries also cut back their emissions. (In effect, it was the US blaming China.)
Climate change is a classic 'tragedy of the commons' problem, where behaviour which makes sense at an individual level ultimately proves disastrous to society when repeated by everyone. The concept's originator, Garrett Hardin, gives the example of cattle herders using a shared pasture to illustrate the problem. Each herder stands to gain individually by adding another cow to the common - he gets more milk and beef. But if all herders act the same way, the result is overgrazing and the destruction of the shared resource. Psychological denial is integral to the process, Hardin writes: 'The individual benefits as an individual from his ability to deny the truth, even though society as a whole, of which he is a part, suffers'.
(A Swiss) study reports on a variety of other ways that denial occurs. There is the 'metaphor of displaced commitment' ('I protect the environment in other ways, like recycling'); denial of responsibility ('I am not the main cause of this problem'); condemning the accuser ('You have no right to challenge me'); rejection of blame ('I've done nothing wrong'); ignorance ('I don't know the consequences of my actions'); powerlessness ('Nothing I do makes much difference'); comfort ('It is too difficult for me to change my behaviour'); and 'fabricated constraints' ('There are too many Impediments'). It is quite a list - and probably a familiar one to anyone who has discussed climate change with other people
In a wider sense, one could argue that the whole economic system of modern Western society is founded on denial - in particular the denial of resource limitations. Schoolchildren are taught - and Nobel-winning economics professors apparently still believe - that Earth-provided resources, from iron ore to fisheries, come into the category of 'free goods', appearing as if by magic at the start of the economic process. These 'free goods', which include all the ecosystem services which support the human species, are considered financially valueless and missed out from conventional economic accounting.
The standard 'gross domestic product' (GDP) measuring stick of national economic success tots up the value of production and consumption without considering the sustainability of the process. In a master stroke of creative accounting, conventional economic theory therefore counts the depletion of resources as an accumulation of wealth. This is analogous to an individual spending all of the money in their current account and counting it as 'income' - an absurdity, but one which underpins our entire economy.
Bearing this societal dysfunction in mind, it is perhaps rather unfair to blame individuals for not facing up to climate change when the whole weight of economy and society works effectively in preventing them from doing so.
Did the book mention the sixth extinction, by any chance???
It doesn't use that term, but it does point out that a major extinction of species is currently under way and is likely to accelerate under virtually all climatic and social models currently available.
No wonder normal people switch off when global warming rears it head.
What do we get from NickMcB (Scot by choice):
"I will quote at some length from the book"
Yawn....................we're bored of all this psychobabble written by people with low self esteem trying to feel important.
Seeing as sandle-wearer NickMcB (Scot by choice) seems intent on continually pushing this warming rubbish perhaps he could address the following:
(i) How many miilions to the saddoes who write these sort of scare-monger books make for their efforts? Do they spend the cash they make only on things which have zero carbon footprints?
(ii) Why do you still drive into Oban if you beleive this rubbish? We have a perfectly good bus service.
(iii) Why have you not made it clear that if members of this forum click on the link you posted then you make money through your Amazon account at www..amazon.co.uk/nicksmicropages
(iv) Why have you taken me out from under your "ignore button".
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(i) How many miilions to the saddoes who write these sort of scare-monger books make for their efforts? Do they spend the cash they make only on things which have zero carbon footprints? They make 537 euros a week on average and spend 97.4% of it on compost and aubergines.
(ii) Why do you still drive into Oban if you beleive this rubbish? We have a perfectly good bus service. I have a perfectly good car coupled with the ability to see the wood for the trees
(iii) Why have you not made it clear that if members of this forum click on the link you posted then you make money through your Amazon account Why should I? The book costs the same, and it is my forum so I can do what I want. I am sure I will make nearly 40p from this bold initiative. Your bill for wasting my bandwidth is in the post.
(iv) Why have you taken me out from under your "ignore button". I didn't put you on ignore - it was all a big fib.
Well, I suppose if it's in the book it must be right, after all, don't all books only ever tell the truth?
Whatever, that rather lengthy extract should certainly give us all an idea of whether we want to buy it or not - and contribute to Nick's pocket money.
There is one thing that puzzles me tho' - if CO2 has been significantly higher before, and the planet survived, what's the big problem? Do we know what caused higher CO2 concentrations in the past?
There is one thing that puzzles me tho' - if CO2 has been significantly higher before, and the planet survived, what's the big problem? Do we know what caused higher CO2 concentrations in the past?
Various things caused it - and concentrations have been much higher than they are now. They have never increased as rapidly though. The planet survived - but at the end of the Permian something like 95% of all species became extinct.
It is not about if the planet will survive - it is about us a) as a civilisation and b) (in extremis) as a species. Things are moving on a human timescale this time, not a geological one. Climate change seems likely to dramatically affect the world our children - and definitely our grandchildren - live in. They are likely to have more to worry about than the potholes in the road.
Has manmade pollution in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases caused a runaway Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming?
Before joining the mantra, consider the following:
FUN FACTS about CARBON DIOXIDE
* Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
* At 368 parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth's atmosphere-- less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth's current atmosphere is CO2- impoverished.
* CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life-- plants and animals alike-- benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.
* CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there but is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth's oceans-- the great retirement home for most terrestrial carbon dioxide.
The idea that man-made pollution is responsible for global warming is not supported by historical fact. The period known as the Holocene Maximum is a good example-- so-named because it was the hottest period in human history. The interesting thing is this period occurred approximately 7500 to 4000 years B.P. (before present)-- long before humans invented industrial pollution.
The case for a "greenhouse problem" is made by environmentalists, news anchormen , and special interests who make inaccurate and misleading statements about global warming and climate change. Even though people may be skeptical of such rhetoric initially, after awhile people start believing it must be true because we hear it so often.
----------------------------------------------------------- "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
(in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)
"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are..."former Vice President Al Gore
(now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management--
a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
(in interview with Grist Magazine May 9, 2006, concerning his book, An Inconvenient Truth)
"In the long run, the replacement of the precise and disciplined language of science by the misleading language of litigation and advocacy may be one of the more important sources of damage to society incurred in the current debate over global warming."
Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
(leading climate and atmospheric science expert- MIT)
"Researchers pound the global-warming drum because they know there is politics and, therefore, money behind it. . . I've been critical of global warming and am persona non grata."
Dr. William Gray
(Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado and leading expert of hurricane prediction )
(in an interview for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, November 28, 1999)
"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are."Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland's glaciers are melting.
(Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)
"Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing -- in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."Tim Wirth , while U.S. Senator, Colorado.
After a short stint as United Nations Under-Secretary for Global Affairs
he now serves as President, U.N. Foundation, created by Ted Turner and his $1 billion "gift"
"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."
Christine Stewart, Minister of the Environment of Canada
recent quote from the Calgary Herald
Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
This frequently quoted factette (Google it to see some of the references to it) may or may not be accurate. Using it to 'disprove' or play down the seriousness of MMGW is however facile and fundamentally flawed. Think about it. Of course a shedload of CO2 enters the atmosphere naturally - it's called the Carbon Cycle. If atmospheric CO2 concentrations are stable with 180 billion tons of CO2 entering the atmosphere annually, then why on earth should we not expect them to rise when a further 6 billion tons is added? To use an oversimplified analogy, if a container of water is full it will overflow no matter how small the extra amount of water added.
Some of of Longshanks' other quotes are quite clever if accurately reported, but again misleading as not one of them denies the reality of MMGW Most of them come from scientists and others active in the field of climate research who appear to be saying that they have 'sexed up' their reports to try to scare people into action. Note that none of them say that there is not a problem, neither do they say whether or by how much it has been exaggerated. They have merely been caught confessing to having dramatised the problem to increase public awareness and stimulate action. This has been done in the same way that the publishers of 6 Degrees have shown Big Ben being swept away by a Tsunami. It is called marketing. If you want people to buy someting you must sell it to them. If we want the public to take MMGW seriously then we must scare and titillate them. Of course this is an indictment of our society and our media, but nonetheless it is a fact of life. It doesn't mean that there isn't a probem, which is what Longshanks would have us believe.
Of course, a couple of the quotes are from died-in-the-wool climate change sceptics - but before you take their hastily quoted words as gospel have a look at what other members of the scientific community have to say about BILL GRAY and consider this quote regarding the career of Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, impartial scientist:
Dr. Lindzen is one of the highest prolife climate skeptic scientists, arguably because he has been a member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and contributed to the Second Assessment Report. He regularly takes issue with the general conclusions drawn from the IPCC's reports and has been at the forefront of the consistent attacks on the IPCC since the early 1990's. His prolific writings assert that climate change science is inconclusive. His opinions are cited throughout the ExxonMobil funded groups and he regularly appears at events organised by them.
Ross Gelbspan reported in 1995 that Lindzen "charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC." ("The Heat is On: The warming of the world's climate sparks a blaze of denial," Harper's magazine, December 1995.) Lindzen signed the 1995 Leipzig Declaration.
Curiously enough, as Longshanks runs out of things to say he is reduced to quoting two sources who point out that even in the (very unlikely) event of climate change being a bogeyman the steps we need to take to prevent it carry other quite obvious social, economic and environmental benefits. Sounds like a strange argument for doing nothing to me.
- NickB
Last edited by NickB on Sat Aug 02, 2008 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"If you Google the rest of Longshanks' miscellaneous dredgings you will see that most of the sources he quotes are discredited, funded by right wing think tanks "
NickMcB (Scot by choice)
Like most warmists you have to resort to lies!!
If you are not lieing then you must be able to give the sources of these dredgings. Go on; name the right wing, discredited think tanks which you say I am quoting or did you just make up the above slur as, as a died in the wool Jeremiah, you don't like it when doubt is poured on your pet scare.
You misunderstand the purpose of my last two quotes. They show that some, knowing that manmade warming is a fallacy, are happy to continue peddling the lie as it helps with another agenda.
Warm Shanks (but only since that bastard species mankind started the Industrial Revolution)
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You have been caught out by the editing facility Shankers me old mucker, as the quote above no longer appears in my post. I have an (annoying) habit of drafting in-situ so to speak and then editing it within the editing time allowed. Post in haste, repent at leisure and all that - but there is a brief editing window. You may wish to edit your post now so it makes more sense.
In fact - as you will see if you re-read my post above - I have conceded that you have been quite clever in your choice of 'quotations' and in fact you have only included one right-winger in the pay of the oil industry in your pantheon.
I didn't misunderstand your last two quotes - I just didn't find it a very compelling argument - surely you can do better than that?
NickMcB (Scot by choice) was busily editing out his reference to right wing think tanks...and adding a deal to his original post....whilst I was thoughtfully and eruditely composing my reply. So, you can no longer see his original (somewhat amusing) post.
That's by the by, but what he has added includes the following:
"If you want people to buy someting you must sell it to them. If we want the public to take MMGW seriously then we must scare and titillate them."
Nick McB (Scot by choice)
What arrogance!
He treats the intellectual capacity of all people other than himself with contempt!
Oh, and as an aside NickMcB (Scot by choice), people buy things they need, you have to sell them things they don't. That's the difference between buying and selling. I wouldn't start a business if I were you.
He treats the intellectual capacity of all people other than himself with contempt!
Au contraire, I would suggest it is you who are treating the readers of this forum with contempt by assuming that they will fall for your facile and naive arguments or be amused by your personal attacks.
Now for goodness' sake get out there in the sunshine and do something, it's lovely and warm this afternoon - NickB
"it's lovely and warm this afternoon "
Nick McB (Scot by choice)
Well, that proves it then !
To be frank my concern is not with the idea of global warming. Its with those who lie and exagerate, expecting us to fall for it.
I'd be quite happy if civilisation collapsed because of global warming (or because of the economic cost of combating it). It'd be back to survival of the fittest (which made Britain great in the first place) so; no more annoying little nerds, geeks or hippies. I'll quite enjoy employing the skills I learned when serving Queen and country expropriating their stockpiles of meusli, lentils and mung beans.
As for getting out into today's (rare) sunshine. Some of us work Saturdays.
Isn't it true that people living in the remoter parts of the world such as the Arctic, rain forests and deserts, where they are less exposed to media reports and global warming hype, but are living 'closer to nature', are very aware that something is changing quite dramatically?
These are people who record life by passing things down word of mouth from generation to generation. They are in a good position to notice what is changing, what is new, what has never been experienced before.
So if these people are stating that there is a new problem that is threatening their survival wouldn't it be plain ignorant to assume nothing of significance is happening?
Longshanks.... so you have to work on Saturday too? It must be hard work. What sort of work allows you to play on the internet?
"Isn't it true that people living in the remoter parts of the world such as the Arctic, rain forests and deserts, where they are less exposed to media reports and global warming hype, but are living 'closer to nature', are very aware that something is changing quite dramatically?""
