Good for them. Now Dishface, how about we do the same? Kyoto was always a complete crock of shit in my opinion. I mean what use is a treaty that the biggest CO2 emitters (China and the USA) don't agree to and that actively hampers actually finding a solution. All Kyoto was was a bunch of eco nutters and white liberals wringing their hands about mummy planet and feeling guilty that we had shit and poor people in Shitholestan didn't and the General Mwombawomba's of places like Shitholestan holding out their hands asking for more money to
Now regulars will know I'm not a "climate change denier" but I can see that fucking up your economy and lifestyle by impossible to obtain carbon reduction targets isn't going to work. Our climate has always changed, that's what it does with or without our input and it's no use at all trying to keep it the same like some museum exhibit. We need to do what we've always done in the face of changing climate and that is adapt and mitigate. We are at a stage in human evolution where we don't just have to migrate in the face of changing crop growth and sea levels, we can do things about it. By all means cut waste and pollution as much as you can but we need to harness the power of industry, science and technology to give us solutions. Better flood defenses, crops that can tolerate drier (or wetter) conditions better, more advanced power generation systems, tank-grown meat made from stem cells, tiny pet unicorns that can live for a week on a lettuce leaf*.
Sure the planet gets a little warmer (or is it cooler, I keep getting mixed messages) and maybe the cutesy polar bears might have to be fitted with water wings and some species may even die off but they will be replaced by other species. That's what happens in a biosphere, they are not static, they adapt and change.
Taking billions out of a first world economy and shoving it to some third world bottomless money pit will not and could not save a single bloody life, human or animal.
And as I see that the Durban conference (bet all the delegates flew there rather than paddled down in canoes made from recycled tofu) seems to be realizing this and has kicked the can down the road a few years much to the howling and gnashing of teeth of the usual suspects. Maybe the message is getting through that we need an new approach.
Not holding my breath, mind you.
* top of my list, that one.
9 comments:
Perhaps you might be able to enlighten me... How can the increase of a gas from 0.03% to 0.05% (or thereabouts) of the total atmosphere have such a drastic effect upon the climate?
All gasses are "greenhouse" gasses (see NASA), though CO2 may be better at it. However, if I were to have a greenhouse with 100 sq.m of glass, I am sure that, no matter how effective it may be, increasing a square of super-greenhouse glass from 3.5 inches square to 4.5 inches square will not make much difference to my tomatoes.
BTW I would rather have a mini-elephant. So much more useful around the house than a cat or a dog (or even a mini unicorn).
ROB
I can enlighten you... it won't.
The alarmists are relying on a small change being a tipping point for larger changes and feedback mechanisms. For example small increase in temperature -> some polar ice melts -> less energy reflected back into space off the ice -> temperature goes up some more -> more ice melts -> etc. etc.
Same sort of thing with methane locked in the sea bed and a host of other things that "might" happen.
Thing is these are models and compared to the real world these models are very crude and fail to take into effect poorly understood regulatory mechanisms in the climate which keep things on an even keel.
So will increasing CO2 to 0.05% have an effect. Yes. Will it cause 50m sea level rises, mass starvation, droughts, floods and a new series of Bruce Forsyth's "Play Your Cards Right"... most likely not.
Thank you for taking the time to answer, Dracunculus, very few in the "consensus" camp seem to want to. That was more or less my opinion, too; however...
Next question - is there any positive proof that: (a) the climate is getting dangerously warmer; (b) that it is all the fault of the increase in CO2, and; (c) that the increase in CO2 is all the fault of humans?
RSP
BTW, I have posted that last question on another site, and have received a few interesting responses, though none actually answer the question effectively.
RSP
Hmmm. This blog summarised seems to be: the climate change issue is a big challenge that frightens me so much, I am too paralysed to think of how it could be addressed. Instead, I'll trot out some pseudo-macho rhetoric along nothing-we-can-do-about-it lines, throwing in a bit of casual racism, to give the impression that I'm cool and unworried. "Nuttin' you can do folks, so don't bother doin' anything." Pitiful. It's a wonder you bothered to lift your fingers to the keyboard...
And your more constructive comments would be...?
Not sure you are reading the same blog that I am. My reading is that the climate change issue is not that big a thing, most of it is actually way out of our control, so why are we making such a fuss about it? If the Greenland ice-cap melts, we can have farms on Greenland, after a break of a thousand years. It will help to feed the world. Oh, yes – there is a lot of money to be made posturing around the international field – let’s save the planet from our pollution by using the most polluting form of transport to move thousands of us who are so concerned about the climate around the planet to talk about limiting others’ ability to move about the planet.
The only casual racism I could see was the reference to white liberals – you know, those people who are so concerned about the non-whites because, well, let’s face it, the poor mites can’t help not being white, can they? So we (that is all whites; the white liberals inhabit a special world where only their opinion matters, and they also decide who has to pay for it, which just happens to be everyone who is white – except them, as they are superior to us all) have to look after them.
It might be an idea for people like that to get their heads out of their backsides, and have a look at the world around them. Wake up, boyo, we might be having some effect upon the world, but there are still too many unknown variables in climate for us to fully understand it, so there is actually nothing we can do about it - unless, of course, you want us to return to the stone ages.
RSP
Dear AC in comment #5. Did you actually read the post or just go "Oh look another 'denyer'" before launching into your ad-hominem rant?
You see I can't actually work out how you get the idea that there's "Nothing we can do" - the whole point of the post was that there are things we can and should probably be doing but stopping me transporting myself around and all the other low carbon gimmics isn't going to fix anything.
However I don't want you to feel cheated so please do collect a full refund.
@RSP
>is there any positive proof that:
>(a) the climate is getting dangerously warmer;
Warmer, yes, the data does appear to show, over a long timescale, a warming trend; "Dangerously Warmer" - we can't tell as nobody will actually articulate what "dangerously" is; just a lot of "may", "possibly" and "might".
>(b) that it is all the fault of the increase in CO2
Unknown, although CO2 would cause such a rise as would methane (CH4) but there are probably other factors at work and also human caused factors which would lower termerature, for example pushing increased amounts of particulates into the atmosphere in the form of smokes and dusts.
c) that the increase in CO2 is all the fault of humans?
Not all, no, CO2 naturally occurs - all animals breathe it out of course. Plus volcanic activity pushes CO2 into the atmosphere, decay of biomass releases CO2 and methane. But that said the majority of the rise is likely to be down to the burning of fossil fuels.
Thank you Dracunculus. It is so good to get a reply that is not patronising, and/or riddled with subtle (and not-so-subtle) insults. (The other Anon. is a good example of what I have met.)
Is now the time to start running around, waving our arms in the air, and screaming, "We're all doomed! Doomed!..."?
Here are two sites I have since found with interesting points of view:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm
RSP
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