General > General Discussion
Contoversial Topic #1 - Global Warming & Carbon Emissions Trading
tiga:
Well as it is the "Off Season" I thought I would start off some controversial discussion topics to keep things interesting. I'm sure we will have polarising opinions on this first one, Global Warming and Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme.
Here is my opinion to start us off...
Does Global Warming exist?? Sure it does..Always has, but so has Global cooling and both will continue to happen until the world stops turning. Everyone needs a cause, and if there is money to be made from it...even better! Global warming and Carbon emissions schemes are driven by Politicians, political activists and economists, not scienctists. Ask some of the worlds leading climatologists about global warming and they will tell you that there is no evidence to prove that global warming is on an exponential curve, rather its more like a wave. All the findings on global warming are being based on 20 years of temperature records. How can this be accurate considering the planet is over 4.5 billion years old. The professor (Ross Garnaut) who is advising Kevin Rudd on global warming and Carbon emissions trading is not a Professor of science, but a professor of Economics. Doesn't that say something??
Carbon emissions trading is being married to the Global warming cause because it will be a way that the Govenment can tax us and we can feel good about paying it because we believe we are doing something good for the world's climate. In reality it will drive up prices on everything we know and the economic damage this scheme will cause to businesses throughout out country will be severe. Anything that generates carbon will be taxed and as carbon is the primary soruce of life on this planet, nothing will be exempt from it. Billions of dollars will leave this country destined to other countries throughout the world and all we will receive is a thank you for your cooperation and we look forward to your next cheque!!! F-THAT!!
Here is a very interesting talk on the topic given by Lord Monckton. Very thought provoking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stij8sUybx0
Look forward to hearing opinions from anyone interested. BTW, lets keep discussions on topic and no personal insults. :thumbsup
Penelope:
You just have to laugh at anyone who says that climate change doesn't exist, but some people do make that statement. As tiga says, the earths climate is constantly changing. It is believed that the earth started as a frozen mass, since then the poles have been tropical rainforests and we have been through ice ages. (It's like people that say they don't believe in UFOs - people who say that don't know or don't think about what a UFO actually is.)
The real questions are, has the activities of man hastened the change in climate and can we actually make any difference by changing these activities?
Does the science actually stand up to the claims being made by either side of the debate? To be honest, I haven't looked into it deeply enough, but what I do know is the debate is being hijacked by people who have a barrow to push and the bottom line is always the mighty dollar. One of my favorite quotes is from the recently departed Michael Chrichton,
"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
This may seem cynical, but he is right, science is not a democracy, it is the search for truth. It is important to make an informed decision based on the available data rather than just 'every one says so, so it must be true'.
When certain entities have a vested interest and enough money, they can influence science through sheer weight of numbers convincing the masses of something, that will ultimately lead to the filling of the coffers of these entities.
It has already happened with modern dietary advice, pushed by large food manufacturing companies and pharmaceutical companies creating illnesses where there are none, just sell their products. The end result is a population becoming sicker and more dependent on drugs.
Sorry, taking this elsewhere, just trying to make a point.
Personally, when an specific interest group, say the coal industry, or on the other hand the nuclear power industry, makes claims about climate change I basically ignore them because they have so much at stake in making their claims. I know it doesn't mean they are wrong, but to me they loose a bit of credence because of possible conflict of interest.
Then we get governments, hijacking science to promote their own agendas. Of particular relevance is the claims made today by a CSIRO scientist that he has been censored from publishing a paper that contradicts the government policy on climate change.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2730523.htm
Also today we the hear the british goverment doing the same thing, albeit a different subject.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2730523.htm (wrong link)
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2730179.htm
This is a prime example of the government trying to control the science to fit their policy, rather than forming policy based on the science.
But, back to climate change itself. I have heard people quote figures saying that the temperatures have not actually changed that much in the last 50 years or so. I have even heard one person claim temperatures, world wide, have actually dropped. (makes me think of the claims a few years ago that global warming would lead to an ice age)
This same person claimed that polar ice caps ( he may have specifically mentioned Northern) have increased in the last few years. Yet we have some pacific atolls where they claim that rising sea levels are destroying their food cultivation areas.
And of course we then have the vast majority saying (or just most influential) that temperatures are rising and will continue to do so, but remember science is not a democracy.
While I wont say you are wrong tiga, but by using the economic damage reasoning, you are clouding the issue at hand. Yes it is scary to have a professor of science advising the government on climate change, but to try to counter the government's policy with economic reasoning is no better. You need to counter their science with solid science yourself, or highlight the fact that their science is not solid. Once we make our decisions solely based on economics, then we are well and truly stuffed, whatever the decision is.
Sadly, i don't think any one really knows for sure the answers to the questions, are we speeding up climate change and can we actually slow it down?
With all the time, money and resources each side is putting into the debate we would be all much better off if it was put into working out how we can adapt to a changing climate, because the climate is changing, always has changed and most probably always will. Sadly this will not happen, because the driving force behind most of humans decision making is money.
Just as a footnote, besides the economical argument, would it be such a bad thing if the world was to reduce the amount of pollutants we spew into the atmosphere? I'm sure that someone, somewhere could create an economic model saying the saving in health costs or something similar would outweigh the economic damage . Actually I think there may be claims about how the changing weather and more frequent and intense storms, floods, droughts, pestilence etc etc will be devastating to economies. So round and round it goes.
Just my take on things :)
mightytiges:
I think it's wrong to claim that climate change is being driven by purely by economists and politicians and not by scientists. Scientists do the actual work.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/upsDownsGlobalWarming.html
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html
Just as an aside, this GW quote made me laugh btw ...
In 2001, the United States rejected the Kyoto Protocol. President George W. Bush said "that the agreement could harm the U.S. economy. "
:wallywink
I don't like linking to wikipedia as it's not always sourced and accurate but here goes anyway as a starting background on the topic ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading
Politicians are usually the last ones to take up new issues and only do so if there's votes in it including those who are in denial that there's been any global warming at all and think it's all one big left-wing conspiracy. I still remember Andrew Bolt a few years ago using a single 15 degree day in Warrnambool in mid-February as evidence global temperatures weren't rising :stupid. No different to loopy lefties saying we should all be building an ark lol. The political "debate" is a hinderance rather than a help to the issue (see Barnaby Joyce). Listening to our pollies argue about this is a cure for insomnia :sleep.
As for emissions trading I agree price of fossil fuel dependent products will rise but that's the point as far as I'm aware. Coal and gas is cheap especially in Australia. Rightly or wrongly an ETS is an attempt to make non-fossil fuel energy sources financially competitive over time via market forces (making fossil fuels more expensive). Hoping businesses and consumers more and more switch at least in part to these alternative energy sources over time (you still need a base load = fossil fuel or nuclear power plant). Whether an ETS is the most realistic and effective way to reduce greenhouse emissions long-term to a sustainable level is something I can't answer. All I know is even without an ETS, utility bills go up now whether I use more or less thanks to those ever increasing service charges. Now that's a rip off :scream.
Penelope:
--- Quote ---I think it's wrong to claim that climate change is being driven by purely by economists and politicians and not by scientists. Scientists do the actual work
--- End quote ---
.
Mt I gather you mean the climate change debate here, not climate change itself?
In any scientific debate it always the scientists who do the work, but you need to know who pays the scientists to do the work and how much they influence what work is done. Due to a large amount of research i have done on another subject I have become very cynical about the impartiality of much of the scientific community, particulary those that work in a filed that can generate lots of money, such as health. perhaps I am too cynical. There will be a percentage who can give a truly unbiased view, but the problem is working out who they are.
Those nasa links are interesting, one pointing out the fall in global temperatures which is probably what the bloke i mentioned was alluding to. Considering most of NASAs work on this would have been conducted under the Bush administration, who is a confirmed global warming sceptic (wouldnt have anything to do with his family wealth being heavily from oil??) I would have to admit that there probably has not being too much political influence, from the presidency at least.
The first link though starts off with "According to the vast majority of climate scientists, the planet is heating up", because of Michael Chichton I worry about these statements :).
I do think that it is very hard for any one to definitely say whether the climate change is or is not man induced, or man influenced. Most of the assumptions are made on an association between an increase in man made emissions and rise in global temperatures. It is only an association. It is near on impossible to prove, or disprove a causal relationship. The only way to prove either way would be to reduce emissions over the next 50-100 years and see if the rate of warming decreases, or even stabilises. Even then it would not be definitive, because climate change has been occurring at various rates on this planet before humans infested it and the time frame we are talking about is miniscule in terms of the larger picture of the changing climate on the planet.
You are right about politicians and votes, but politicians can also be heavily influenced by lobby groups. The most powerful lobby groups are not the vocal great unwashed we see on TV, but those with money, power and influence who work behind closed doors.
The Anderw Bolte you mention, is he the ultra conservative lunatic that writes, or used to, for the herald scum? :blah :chuck
Yeah, for sure, the political (and economical) debate is a hindrance, as is those that want to hijack it for their own means. Seen the adds on TV by some vege fruitcake mob telling us we can save the world by eating less meat? They must think it great that the massive herds of bison have been all but eradicated from the american plains, as well as the vast reduction of herbavores from the african plains :whistle.
Its a debate clouded in misinformation and put forward in such a way that the most of us have really no hope of getting a grasp of the truth. That, I am sure, is deliberate.
mightytiges:
The problem in modern science though is the complexity of problems needed to be solved means the accepted theory comes well before it is proved experimentally (observed in nature). Take the Large Hadron Collider and the search for the Higgs ("God") particle that's been in the papers recently. The theory behind it has been accepted (a concensus?) for decades yet this "God" particle has never been observed in experiments. The theory is accepted because it explains most (but not all) other phenomena we observe in the subatomic world. If scientists waited for absolute experimental proof on every theory then hardly anything would get done. The theory often now drives what experiment is done next rather than classical science where scientists such as Newton came up with theories to describe want they had already observed in nature. Even Einstein's theory of relativity was just that a theory before experiments (some decades later) supported it. Constant scientific peer review is what decides if a theory has creedance or not and yes not everyone comes to a consensus. Go to any science conference and the discussion can get quite heated at times when bulls with contradictory and competing opinions butt heads.
Also often these theories contain equations that when dealing with real-world problems are non-linear and very difficult if not nigh on impossible to solve analytically (exactly). You need to resort to numerical stochastic (random statistical sampling) methods to extract answers. Even then these methods may need some assumptions or external parameters to help pull out a meaningful result. It's all very well for those from non-scientific backgrounds to point the finger and say these stochastic methods/models aren't foolproof especially when making predictions and so we should dismiss what results they produce, but these methods are used in many fields both scientific and non-scientific (eg: finance) and we as a society rely on them more than the general public realise.
I know that there are scientists that are funded by organisations with a agenda to push and self-interests to protect and I have no problem with people being skeptical but don't label all scientists in the same boat. I would say most of the debate that is "clouded in misinformation and put forward in such a way that the most of us have really no hope of getting a grasp of the truth" is coming from the politicians and their partisan supporters who have no scientific education or qualifications.
ps. yes Bolt still writes for the Herald-Sun. The old trick of trying to be deliberately controversial to attract attention to him and the newspaper from political nuts on both the left and right.
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