Give me the reasons why you are a climate sceptic?

[malificent7]

I'm not by the way...but neither am i overly anxious about it.
Some of my friends are and are also very against Greta Thunberg etc. So is it possiblook e to be worried about climate change but anti Greta and/ or do you think climate change is baloney?

Given the recent bush fires in Australia i think we should all be aware that we are all at the mercy of our climate, even if we don't think change is man made.

Its called being a climate denier btw, not a climate sceptic. Just like with the holocaust...

Being a sanctimonious arse is just going to make people determined not to engage

EXACTLY

To those saying "I am not going to engage because Greta Thunberg is a) too young b) too sanctimonious c) not an expert d) should be at school", can I just ask:

Did you not notice that middle-aged highly qualified experts who had finished school long ago were already saying this based on their own research long before Greta got going? Did you listen to them? Or are you saying you switched off then because you anticipated that eventually there would come a teenager who would annoy you and therefore you didn't have to listen to the middle-aged experts?

The reason there are teenagers out there making a lot of noise (and Greta isn't the only one, though she gets more attention being Western) is because people wouldn't listen to the middle-aged experts trying the honeyed approach.

If you are saying you don't give a shit, then you don't give a shit that more and more people will be killed by unstable weather and that others will starve to death and that the world will be filling with refugees to an extent that we can't even imagine at the moment.

Just my take on this.

The climate is changing- it always has. Way before the Industrial Age. It was climate change that wiped out dinosaurs. I don’t think that humans can control this, I really don’t. Our planet is an evolving one.

We get warm winters and cool summers and the other way around. I am in Australia, which, obviously, recently had horrendous bushfires. Not to downplay the tragedies people endured, but the reason many of these fires started was arson.About 180 incidents of it if memory serves. This, combined with high fuel load was the issue. Australia has, in fact, suffered many more bushfire casualties in past years. Not that this matters if you have lost a loved one any year.

As for Greta Thunberg. I actually feel concerned for this girl. She evidently has fragile mental health, and it seems a huge burden to place on her to be such a figurehead. It has to come crashing down on her one day.

I do think that we should be always seeking ways to nurture the environment. Not, though, because we are changing the climate, but because we want to preserve the health of our planet, the only home we have.

The Earth has changed and evolved over billions of years, before we even got here.
There used to be glaciers in the Lake District!
I don't think some of it happened cos the dinosaurs were driving round in diesel cars or the Neanderthals weren't doing their recycling!
It's just nature.
Yes we may contribute to it, but a tiny part.
Things change.

I used to be worried about the climate, but actually the more I started listening to a genuine diversity of thinking about this topic the more sceptical I’ve become. It was looking into the “97% of climate scientists agree” statistic that started to make me think that things weren’t necessarily as they are being presented, and wonder why that was.

The vast majority of climate scientists and scientific organisations believe that climate change is happening and human activity is contributing to it

• but this is essentially a meaningless phrase. Climate change has always happened, and climate scientists do NOT agree on the extent to which human activity is contributing to it - or even whether or not this is necessarily a bad thing. And there is often a story behind the “environmental catastrophe” headline that is less well-reported: the failure to back-burn in Australia contributed to the fires; the mismanagement of rivers contributing to flooding here.

Governments cannot control the climate. We live in very strange times: we are being told both that humans are terrible evil creatures - nothing more than mini carbon footprints who are “destroying” the planet simply by existing on it; and yet with enough willpower we have the power to change the weather. Neither of these perspectives is true or helpful. Let’s focus on the problems we can do something about - plastics in the ocean, for example, or making cars that don’t pollute. (By the way, government action can often lead us all in entirely the wrong direction - the diesel cars recommendation, for example - which is why I’m always amazed that people want the government to take all the responsibility for this kind of thing).

I think Greta is very misled, not through any fault of her own I should add - and a damaging influence, both to herself and to the young people she is influencing. She is a kind of patron saint of the current cult of anti-humanism. I wish people could also remember that it is humans ingenuity and determination that has tamed the environment and given us astonishingly luxurious lives the like of which the vast majority of people throughout history couldn’t even have imagined. And it is human ingenuity and human activity that is lifting many millions out of poverty all across the world. Death rates from extreme climate is something like 99% lower than it was 100 years ago. Isn’t that something to celebrate?

This is an incredible time to be alive - the best time ever in historical terms - so what is going on that we are allowing ourselves - or more specifically our young people - to be so frightened and depressed? I think it might have something to do with a lack of meaning, or religion, or maybe even genuine struggle in peoples’ lives, but whatever way you look at it, it is extremely odd.

Things change. Yes.

Rapid change leads to extinctions....think of the dinasours killed by rapid climate change that resulted probably from asteroid strike.

Large Volcano eruptions also cause extinction events through rapid climate change. Didn't 1/4 of all people die sometime in the Middle Ages in a couple of years around a volcano eruption ? They died because they could not grow enough food

People are causing rapid climate change, not the normal gentle climate change that animals and plants can adapt around.

And just because something is normal doesn't mean it's good for you either! Oh it's normal that some people die every year does not Make it ok to kill more people. Which is what you are doing if you don't combat climate change

but the reason many of these fires started was arson.About 180 incidents of it if memory serves

You might want to look this up rather than trust to memory: my understanding is that most of this has been debunked.

And even if some fires had been started by arson, how they spread is also relevant.

midge, but you are suggesting humans are above the next life form that will emerge or an existing one. Whilst I don't want people or animals or insects to suffer, I don't see why we have some special right to be here over and above any other life or non life form.

There's so little detail that it basically becomes "somebody should do something"

People who get that message will be inclined to vote in politicians who want to do something. If she does nothing but cause lots of people to think that, who wouldn't otherwise, she might turn out to be the most significant politician involved in solving the problem.

There used to be glaciers in the Lake District!
I don't think some of it happened cos the dinosaurs were driving round in diesel cars or the Neanderthals weren't doing their recycling!
It's just nature.
Dinosaurs lived for millions of years before going extinct. Humans have existed for about 100,000 years. We will be lucky to make it to a million years on the planet. We will eventually obviously go extinct and the Earth does evolve, but it is doing it at a far faster rate than it has previously. Even if you dont care about climate change, what is wrong with trying not to live on rubbish dumps because we're burying all our waste instead of reducing it, or having cleaner air in cities? For the length ofvtimecwe have on Earth, what's wrong with trying to make it as pleasant and liveable as possible for as long as possible?
And the Neanderthals died out because they didnt adapt to their environment. We will die out if we stick our heads in the sand and do not adapt to our environment.

Midge it is not true that humans are causing “rapid climate change”
Correlation of human CO2 does not mean causation of global warming. We’ve been warmer with less CO2 before. But the IPCC excludes geologists from its climate panel because it’s models are dependent on using a snap shot of the past 400yrs to create the impression of a link.

According to geologists, for about 75% of the last 550 million years, CO2 was 2 to 15 times higher than now. Evolution flourished, CO2 enabling plant photosynthesis, the basis of all life. Extinction events due to overheating by CO2 are unknown. They have never happened to any species ever in the history of the planet.

The last interglacial period about 100,000 years ago was warmer than our Holocene interglacial. Humans and polar bears survived.

Between 8000 and 2000BC, Earth was periodically warmer than today for hundreds if not thousands of years, as shown by tree rings, shrunken glaciers, etc.. Then unsteady cooling from 3000BC into the Little Ice Age paralleled unsteady solar decline following the Holocene’s ‘super-Grand’ Maximum near 3000BC.

In addition, modern warming reached a peak in February 2016. Since then, Earth has cooled for 3 years (as of 2019). It’s too early to see if this is continuing into 2020 or not.

However, China's carbon footprint per person is a few tons per capita larger than the UK's when looking at production
Yes. And how did their economy grow? Because of the Wests insatiable desire for cheap, throwaway plastic crap and a new iPhone every 6 months. Why do the Gulf States have so much money? Because of the Wests obsession with fossil fuel. They feed off our consumption.

On the contrary - it is critical that we review past climate events since the Eocene Warm Period 55 million years ago was a significant extinction event - the main cause of this was the CO2 and tectonic activity when the North Atlantic opened up.

It is pretty terrifying when you consider that humans can contribute more CO2 per annum than volcanoes!

PS I'm sure all of you saying Greta is a petulant teen were quiet compliant teens who never made a fuss. That is not a compliment BTW. Only those who make a fuss can change the world.

Noodlenose
Humans have existed for about 100,000 years. We will be lucky to make it to a million years on the planet

Humans are over 3 million years old (between 2 and 6million based on radio carbon dating of earliest Homo genus). Look up Lucy.

Surely its more likely that the few climate change denying scientists have been paid off by oil companies (or have dodgy research), as opposed to the majority who agree climate change is occuring?

The Eocene extinction event took 10 million years to happen and mostly affected marine/aquatic life. Astmospheric CO2 had nothing to do with the extinctions.

The climate is cyclical, and there is plenty of evidence to support that (tree and ice samples, local records dating back to pre-Roman times, fossils and carbon marking etc).

Whilst we undoubtedly need to preserve our resources, look after our planet and seek more sustainable forms of energy, "man made climate change" is a load of political-fuelled nonsense.

Read Robert Felix's website 'Ice Age Now', an interesting website (and series of books) linking sun spots, geomagnetic reversal and subsequent ice ages to being the main causes and outcomes of a cyclical climate.

I think it’s quite the opposite. Being a AGW believer scientist gets you access to research funds from bottomless government accounts.

Geologists know climate change unrelated to atmospheric CO2 occurred throughout Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. Yet the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has no geologists among the hundreds of appointed authors of its Fifth Assessment Report of 2014 and its Sixth Report due in 2022. Thus IPCC incredibly lacks both geological input and long-term perspective.

IPCC’s very existence relies on public belief in manmade or ‘anthropogenic’ global warming (AGW) by CO2 emissions. Moreover its appointed authors, mostly government and university researchers, are nearly all biased by strong vested interests in AGW, i.e. reputations (publications, lectures) & continuance of salaries & research grants. Similarly, major universities have abandoned their scientific impartiality & integrity by hosting research institutes mandated to confirm & act on AGW, e.g. Grantham Institute (Imperial College), Tyndall Centre.

The often-repeated ‘97% consensus among scientists that global warming is man’s fault’ (CO2 emissions) is untrue It refers in fact to surveys of just a relatively small group of climate scientists not the wider climate scientific community.

I agree mother of kitties.
I’ve been an environmentalist for close to 40yrs. I feel this demonising of CO2 and the global warming “crisis” is a diversion from what we really should be doing which is stopping consumerism, landfills, ocean pollution, and other forms of pollution to include our pharmaceuticals, PCBs, micro plastics, etc. Manage urban sprawl to protect biodiversity, wildlife corridors, etc etc.
The real green things we need to do.

MotherofKitties & PlanDeRaccordement & Others on this page
Excellent contributions!

@KidLorneRoll - have you any coherent non-abusive response to make to the informed posts on this last page?

It seems pretty futile to be furiously washing out our yoghurt pots while China are building 15 airports a year.

I hadn't heard of this geologist angle so I did some googling. The first thing I found is that the above post is pure plagiarism, copied word for word from this site:

electroverse.net/25-simple-bullet-points-proving-co2-does-not-cause-global-warming-by-a-geologist-for-a-change-dr-roger-higgs/

This is how disinformation works, people copy and pasting well- circulated arguments and passing them off as their own independent thinking.

The second thing I found was this statement from the Geological Society of America:

Position Statement
Decades of scientific research have shown that climate can change from both natural and anthropogenic causes. The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2011), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013) and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (Melillo et al., 2014) that global climate has warmed in response to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. The concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for many thousands of years. Human activities (mainly greenhouse-gas emissions) are the dominant cause of the rapid warming since the middle 1900s (IPCC, 2013). If the upward trend in greenhouse-gas concentrations continues, the projected global climate change by the end of the twenty-first century will result in significant impacts on humans and other species. The tangible effects of climate change are already occurring. Addressing the challenges posed by climate change will require a combination of adaptation to the changes that are likely to occur and global reductions of CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources.

www.geosociety.org/gsa/positions/position10.aspx

I’m hugely concerned about plastic and litter. Not concerned about climate change. It’s a bandwagon for virtue signallers who haven’t done independent research

Likewise I think the panic over CC is overshadowing other concerns like habitat preservation. I don’t want giant wind turbines blighting the countryside mauling birds and bats. Why not go with natural gas and nuclear power, more bang for the buck, so to speak.

Also making solar panels is a dirty business and there’s no good way to recycle them after twenty years when they need to be replaced. Ah, but they are made in China so who cares about the toxic byproducts of the industry?!