to be sceptical about man made climate change

[Brioche201]

.. to a layperson like myself the evidence does not seem robust (record antarctic ice caps) .Even if it were true 'the climate' is such a complicated thing affected by thousands of factors.Is it likely that changing just one or 2 of the factors that are within out control would make a difference (or even that the difference would be in the right direction)
Do you still believe in man made climate change or think it is mainly rooted in politics?

This entire debate is fundamentally about political use and abuse of science ... Its about political control and nothing more by an elite making a hell of a lot of money off the back of it

Beautifully put, FreeWorker

Ego - climate change has occurred naturally over millions of years. That process clearly hasn't stopped. That's a known fact.

Mankind cant stop a natural process that has been going on for millions of years.

Who do you think I am out of interest?

'when confronted with the facts, says she joking'

I was joking about being an expert on politics. I like politics, I like to think I am an expert in it but I am not, I only know the little I know, so it is a joke.

I honestly said my position that I don't believe it because I think it is political. Ignore me and don't ask me to debate what I said I don't know i.e.science, when i said it is political. I haven't butted in and said any poster is talking nonsense, I have only answered posters who asked me what is in it for anyone to fake the whole thing.

I read this on FB this evening. I wish I was this eloquent. Sorry, it's quite long, but so relevant to this discussion.

"... here we go again. People on the Internet who think they're somehow more qualified than legions of experts with PhDs and believe they can overturn 150 years of basic physics. It's amazing how astronomy, engineering, medicine, paleontology, quantum mechanics and other fields are so respected and non-partisan – but when it comes to climate change... suddenly it becomes "liberal" science and can't be trusted in the slightest.

We've known about the heat-trapping effects of greenhouse gases since Tyndall performed his laboratory experiments in 1859. This is so well-established, even a simple test can show it:

As of today, there isn't a single national or international science body anywhere in the world that disputes that human activity contributes to global warming. Over 99% of published, peer-reviewed climate studies between 2013 and 2014 support the view. I don't know why you deniers are so obsessed with Al Gore when he's totally irrelevant and isn't even a scientist.

The laws of physics tell us that without greenhouse gases, the Earth would be 30°C (54°F) cooler than it actually is. Well here's the thing: we've increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by more than 40% in just 200 years – the blink of an eye in geological timescales:

Today, human activities release over 100 times more CO2 than all of the world's volcanoes each year. Do you honestly think that won't have any effect on anything? We can easily determine what proportion of CO2 is natural and what proportion is man-made by looking at the isotopes. Again, this is basic science and completely non-controversial.

We are clearly having an effect, and the evidence is overwhelming. Globally, the amount of heat being trapped is equivalent to four Hiroshima nuclear bombs detonating every second of every day. The Earth is now losing a trillion tons of ice each year, sea levels are increasing by 3mm every year, weather and climate-related disasters have tripled since 1980 –
Natural causes have been ruled out, as clearly shown by these NASA graphs

By all means debate the economics of how we adapt, but you simply can't deny the science anymore. That debate is over. Even the petroleum companies themselves acknowledged it back in the 1970s.

You should also note that fossil fuels receive 5 times the subsidies of renewable energy – and even without climate change, the costs of air pollution and other health impacts are massive, killing millions every year and contributing to the current ongoing mass extinction of species.

Nobody is suggesting we switch to fossil fuels overnight, but a gradual transition to clean energy is surely just common sense, and inevitable given the trends in cost/efficiency. In addition to creating new technologies and jobs, it would also reduce the dependence on imports from politically volatile regions, and provide a means of obtaining decentralised energy in combination with smart grids and batteries/storage."

No-one disputes that there has been climate change in the past. But the point is that it is happening much more quickly now than has ever been the case previously. If that isn't connected with the factors set out in freespirit's post, it would be an extraordinary coincidence - and the deniers seem unable to come up with any other credible cause.

Whatever we do, we cannot stabilise the planet. It's not something that we can control by topping up a bit here and there to get conditions nice and level.

All we can hope to do is not screw things up too much that we all die soon, but we'll all be wiped out with the planet one day anyway when the sun implodes and becomes a glittery disco pulsar; that or another asteroid impact.

I remember hearing some science guy years ago on telly comparing the universe to when you break off in snooker; basically absolute chaos and how it's lucky we've managed to go this long without colliding with something. I think I read somewhere it has something to do with Jupiter sucking everything up into it's orbit due to it's huge gravitational fields.

I was joking about being an expert on politics. I like politics, I like to think I am an expert in it but I am not, I only know the little I know, so it is a joke.
I honestly said my position that I don't believe it because I think it is political

Finally some intellectual honesty.
You don't know the science, you hardly know the politics.
You don't "know" it's political (as you have repeatedly claimed on this very thread, or that you "know" it's a scam), you simply think it is.

Human made climate change is not the only "free for all" science. The effects of smoke took a long time to demonstrate because of the tobacco lobbies. We are still trying to limit the effects of the MMR conspiracy theorists and a certain well known leading skeptic scientist who, it turns out, was the actual one being paid and not being honest. Do you see a pattern there, claig?
Not to mention evolution vs creationism (definitely another one where people can get away with just "knowing" something and then twisting the facts to change it).

If we are going to quote people, I'd rather be quoting Obama (well, paraphrasing): we shouldn't be discussing now if we are causing rapid climate change, we should be discussing what we can do about it.

Climate science is rather complicated (chaotic systems). For the most part we don't know for sure how climate is going to be affected by small rises or reductions in CO2, or other green house gases. Much more research needs to be done, including on cheaper and more accessible green technologies and using renewable energy sources.
More needs to be done about forestation and green cover. And so on...

And, as we all know, and I pointed out earlier, we will run out of fossil fuels anyway. Our dependency on fossil fuels leads to conflict to control their sources. They cause pollution and damage our health.

The call to use renewable sources of energy is supported for different reasons, human made global warming being just one of them. So, even if it is not true, we should still be pushing for a greener energy use.

In fact, use of greener energy can only push development in regions that lack fossil fuels and are thus depended on oil/gas/coal prices.
Increase education and research on low income countries and you are more likely to see technologies developing there, and people producing more. You can't say that development is dependent on fossil fuels. Education and health are key. I wonder how little claig knows about low income countries...

I was asked to give examples of expensive, visually polluting technologies:

Wind: noisy, ugly, destroys avian habitat.
Tidal: disrupts natural beauty spots, destroys marine life,

As to cost, the total cost of these is generally 3-4 times the cost of fossil fuel power. Mostly they are pushed as tax efficient investments to the wealthy and cost the old and poor winter warmth. It is amazing how 'socialists' ignore the costs of reducing climate change.

If we really care about climate change, there is only one reasonable alternative: nuclear. And that means some of you having a large nuclear power station near where you live.

Not enough resources and time have yet gone into building better forms of using renewable energy sources.
Look at the first mobiles and computers and look at them now.

In any case, larry, what do you propose for when we run out of fossil fuels?

We are nowhere near running out of fossil fuel.

Natural gas is everywhere on the planet It is the ultimate renewable resource, made from rotting vegetation.

Combined cycle gas turbine efficiency rates have gone form 35% up to 50% in a space of 25 years. The are our best hope of educing CO2 emissions quickly by replacing coal fired power stations. Requiring no subsidy their lifetime levellised cost of production is only 25 - 35% of the cost of renewables and nuclear electric sources.

It is insane to build expensive renewable/nuclear electric generating capacity when natural gas electric generation produces only 35% of the CO2 that a coal fired power station produces. They only take 3 years to build and have a very small physical footprint compared to a 10 year build of a nuclear power station or enormous physical footprint of a renewable power station.

If we biodigested our sewage and household waste the methane produced would be useable in a gas fired power station. That is where the research money should be going.

If natural gas is everywhere and it's renewable, then, by definition, it's not fossil. Only what is in the ground.

Not anywhere near means how long? We are already pushing oil extraction to fracking.
Even one generation away it's not very long if we need to develop cheap and sustainable energy alternatives available to all.

But, FreeWorker1, certainly more useful to know what can be done.

Maybe we could also start fixing the carbon we use as solid matter instead of releasing it to the atmosphere. Some diamonds would be nice.

Wow, so much ignorance on this thread about both science and politics.

Dipank there have been very abrupt climate changes in the recent geologic past (for instance, a 7 to 10 degree rise over a period of 50 years) - it's just that humans haven't been around to deal with the consequences.

Leweji - the prediction that we will run out of oil has been around since the 1970s. It is true that the current reserves currently in production will 'run out' but the probable and possible oil reserves of the world have gone up since the 1970s. Better seismic technology, sideways drilling, bigger deep ocean oil rigs all contribute to increasing the amount of exploitable reserves even as existing resources are exploited.

We have only just scratched the surface in natural gas. Indeed natural gas used to be regarded as a waste product in oil production that was just flared off. Its only in the last decade that a significant global fleet of gas carrying tanker ships has been built.

Cargoes of seaborne natural gas in the Atlantic basin are now traded like oil but 10 years ago it was almost never traded. The market barely existed.

A greater focus on natural gas replacing coal is a first step. The focus on renewables has been a gigantic waste of public money, made our energy supply less secure and cost consumers far more for energy than if we had exploited natural gas more quickly.

This is why 'picking winners' by subsiding renewable technology is so wrong. Combined cycle gas turbines are a technology that has had little or no R&D subsidy and yet economically they dominate electric production and emit far less CO2 than coal. Politicians barely acknowledge the massive contribution that switching to gas away from coal could make.

subsiding = subsidising

Ego - surely the whole point of the exercise is to reduce emissions by the cheapest and quickest means. Not to build expensive renewable technologies that need permanent subsidies.

The renewables lobby has done a fine job in diverting public spending - but really contributed very little to actual CO2 emission reductions. A concerted policy effort to get rid of all coal fired electric production could have been completed by now. In fact introducing wind turbines has slowed the elimination of coal fired technology because the existing coal fired power stations were necessary as back up. Wind turbines subsidised heavily to compete with gas fired technology has also slowed the building of new gas fired power stations.

For some reason socialists seem obsessed with subsidy and picking winners. Allowing the market to work as Margaret Thatcher did in privatising electricity brought forward a massive wave of combined cycle gas turbine investment and the UK emissions of CO2 and oxides of nitrogen and sulphur (acid rain) reduced dramatically as a result of that simple free market step.

Margaret Thatcher did far more for the environment than the Labour Govt that followed. Indeed, the first act of the Blair Govt was to ban building of new gas turbine power stations - pandering to the old Labour totem of the mineworkers lobby! It was so much more politically easy to subsidise wind turbines so that they didnt have to talk about eliminating coal or shutting down steel works.

The rapid progress made in reduction of CO2 emissions under Thatcher/Major stalled completely when Blair came to power despite the new Labour climate change rhetoric.

Combined cycle gas turbines with a useful life of 25 years can take us forward while we use that time to find even better cheaper technologies that we don't yet know about or only in their infancy now.

larry - re "Wind: noisy, ugly, destroys avian habitat."

Noisy: Nobody will live or visit near enough a wind turbine to be disturbed by its "noise".

Ugly: No electric generator is pretty. You can say the same for hydroelectric power plants, coal plants, or nuclear power plants.

Destroys avian life: This is just wrong. By definition, wind turbines are built in areas with high winds and no trees. Those are typically not where birds make their habitats.

We are investors in win energy and I can assure you that they are built on top of a very windy and bare hill where there are no houses, no trees, and certainly no bird habitat. They have paid for themselves in the first 10 years and now are nearly pure profit.

The point still stands that fossil fuels will run out or become too expensive. Exploring new reserves only delays it, rather than being a solution.
I live in a country where most energy comes from dams, rather than coal or oil burning. Where wind turbines in high uninhabited places are now a feature. They are fine and there are no complaints.

And as pointed out, we are still releasing too much carbon (here to mean any carbon containing gas).
The consequences have been made clear.