Climate change - the other side of the debate

[speedymama]

Anybody who is interested in hearing the other side of the debate on climate change might be interested in reading this . It is clear that the author has an ax to grind but I found his report a welcome relief from the relentless, unemperical, propaganda from the green lobby. I want to hear both sides of the argument in order to make sound judgements but at the moment, all we ever seem to hear is the doom and gloom rhetoric.

My personal view is that we should be focussing on sustainability rather than global warming because imho, that is still unproven, just like global freezing was 30 years ago. However, we need to use nature's resources with more care and share more of it with the poorer countries in the world. What bothers me is that the poor countries are being asked to stifle their development as a consequence of our profligate consumerism and that position is unethical, unjust and untenable.

Ooh, that looks really interesting. Will read it later (working atm) - thanks for that!

Speedy - your personal views are absolutely fair. I agree that it's not a question of asking poorer people to accept less while we carry on as before - but my feeling is to look towards more radical solutions.

The 'other side of the debate', however, was a reasonable p.o.v. in the 1980s, tenable in the 1990s and now has about as much credibilty as the thoery that the earth is flat. It took a long time for scientists to prove that global warming is happening, just becasue of the amount of proof that's needed and the difficulty in sorting out trends in such a complex system. I had to write essays about this debate at uni over a decade ago when this was (still, just about) a reasonable position to take, when global warming was a very plausible theory rather than a measurable reality. There is now overwhelming, empirical evidence against it; even George W Bush has accepted that global worming is real and the guy who's written this has, as you rightly point out, political mileage to gain from saying it.

I think it's really intersting that you suggest we should focus on sustainability instead. 'Sustainablity' should take into account global warming, but I feel that it's often bandied about without it meaning much. Anyone else think that 'sustainable development' is an oxymoron?

The thing about global warming is, we're talking about the planet. Man-made global warming may be unproven, but by the time it is proven it will be too late. It just doesn't make sense to suggest that we wait until there is more evidence.

Plus I disagree with the stifling developing countries argument. Unless by poor countries you mean China? If so it is our profligate consumerism that is directly causing China's rise in emissions. We cannot continue to do that indefinately global warming or no global warming. As for really poor countries, their right to increase emissions was the sticking point at Kyoto wasn't it?

crimplene: sustainable develoment can be oxymoronic yes.

Speaking of which you should see all the perfectly good houses they're ripping down in order to build flats round here. I'm so glad I didn't grow up here - it'd make me weep (it almost does at it is)

yes but also, who cares why its happening really?

yes there is some evidence for solar flares etc causing some of it, and there is the difficulty that we don't actually HAVE temperature records from the jurassic age BUT if we can reduce the effect by reducing our own carbon emissions, then that the way to go.

its not a matter or right or wrong, or who is to blame, we (and to a greater extent, our kids) are in a sticky situation and need urgently to scrabble our way out of it.

The IEA is a free market think tank, they object to state interferance and think businesses (the main carbon emitters) should be free to make profit as they see fit. Naturally they want to promote the anti-human caused global warming argument.

The green lobby also appear to object to big business, free market economy and globalisation. The Piper Alpha fiasco clearly demonstrated how the green lobby can misrepresent information to futher their own aims (which were blinkered in this case). Both sides of the argument have their own motives and agendas.

I don't see sustainable development as an oxymoron. Technically, cars are more fuel efficient and emit less pollution than they did when they were first invented. What needs to change is our view that we have the right to drive anywhere and everywhere regardless.

The advent of modern materials and improvement in construction techniques means that modern houses are more energy efficient than older ones.

DFID have produced an interesting briefing paper on Socially Sustainable Development .

um, so what if the green lobby do object to the (unfettered) free market economy? There are good reasons for those objections.

Piper Alpha was a mistake, agreed. But it wasn't a case of cynically pushing one agenda and ignoring all others as you imply. It was a case of not researching enough. As agendas go, it was not in the same league as the stop-state-interference bsuiness lobby, you must see that?

Speedy, I think you're confusing the idea of sustainable development with the idea of things being done 'more sustainably', it's; "the process of balancing the need for expansion of human settlements against the need to protect the natural and built environment in such a way that the needs of the present generation are met without compromising the needs and aspirations of future generations" . The concept includes economic, social and environmental concerns.

My point was more about our ability to square the economic and environmental concerns within the idea of SD, especially in the present political climate and where people can get so easly hoodwinked into thinking that if 'sustainability' has been addressed - for example in the design of a new home or car, then the thing is 'sustainable'.

About 1/3 of the total lifetime energy consumption of a car is in making it the first place, so more fuel-efficient cars aren't the whole answer and all of the world having and using cars, even with some moderation, is not 'sustainable' in the sense that the UN means it..

There are further pressures created by free-market economics; we shouldn't need to build houses in this country - the population is stable, but we all want more space, more cars, more luxuries...so how can a free market economy combat greed? or is it, in fact, seeking to promote greed in order to fuel itself?

I sincerely hope you're right that there are technological fixes to these problems. But when Sir Nicholas Stern is putting a £3 trillion price tag on climate change, he's clearly not optimistic about a technological fix and even the free-market economists are taking the issue seriously. In the light of that, I don't think it's so easy to argue that the 'green lobby' and the economists are in opposite corners of the ring anymore.

PLEASE be wary of this 'other side of the debate'
THERE IS NONE really, only one or two people former scientists funded by oil companies and politicians, I'm serious. The other one doing the rounds at the moment is Bob Carter.

He doesn't think the greenghouse effect exists.

We are not moving forward because of oil companies and greedy ecconomies and countries, not wanting to think of the future.

GLOBAL WARMING is proven.

Uki, I'm wary of both sides of the argument. Global Freezing was supposedly proven 30 years ago too.

Has anybody noticed that oil companies have now rebranded themselves as Energy companies, e.g BP now equates to Beyond Petroleum.

Global freezing was a theory that came out of the greater understanding of the history of the earth's climate that scientists started to put together in the 1970s. They observed that the previous few decades had shown a cooling trend and theorised that this could have something to do with the amount of smoke people had been putting into the atmosphere at the time (the idea being that the smoke would reflect back the sun's rays and so the earth would not get warmed up so much).

The effect that they were talking about (changes in the earth's reflectivity or albedo) is real and is a part of the modern models that are used to test out different climate scenarios - but it turned out to be a smaller effect than those driving the warming processes. It was only ever a theory, and actually a sound one, although the effect was a less than they had thought initially, the scientists who suggested it certainly NEVER claimed to have proven it.

In the 1980s, when a bit more about the other processes working in the global climate system was understood, and the actual effects of global warming were starting to become measurable, those who disagreed with the idea of global warming for ideological reasons such as big businesses and oil companies, used the old global cooling theory in the way that you have here and suddenly everyone had heard of it, because it's easy to shout about and make catchy headlines with.

No scientist, even those who, in the early days of the theory felt that global warming was unlikely, used this argument as the logic within it is that; if one scientist comes up with a theory that's wrong, all science must be wrong. Hmmm.

Btw the reason it's taken so long to prove global warming is that the global climate is very stochastic - one year can be much cooler or warmer than another year without it meaning anything - so you need a very long series of good data (which is what the scientista have been busy getting) to give a difinitive answer. As they've gained more data, global warming has moved from being a theory, to a liklihood to the horrible, grim certianty that it is today as the level of proof has steadily increased.

Crimplene, actually I am a scientisit (PhD level) and work with other scientists and engineers. The group I work in often discuss this, we read articles, we ponder the evidence, we are use to working with emperically proven information that use meaningful data. A few years ago I actually worked on projects carrying out research into developing alternative sources of energy and DH is involved in such work now.

I, like many of my colleagues, are neither totally convinced or unconvinced with regard to global warming but we certainly recognise that sustaining a growing world population with limited natural resources like oil and water is the key issue for next several decades.
For example, in the UK, the average person uses 104 litres of water but in Ethiopia, they use 5 litres and in Nigeria 30 litres.

Since 1950, the world population has doubled whilst water consumption has increased sixfold (no guesses to who is responsible for most of that extra consumption).

To put this into context, in developing countries it takes 340 litres of water to grow a bowl of rice, 110000 litres to make a pair of jeans and 400,000 litres to produce a car and across the globe, a child will die every 15 seconds from water related diseases.

These are some of the issues that I personally believe that govts should be addressing, particularly reducing our over-consumption.

Speedy, Do you work for an oil company?

Nope!

Neither does DH and the companies we work for have nothing to do with energy.

Well Speedy, you've floored me. Everyone else that I've ever heard in the last couple of years suggesting thay global warming is unproven has had a financial reason for saying so, in a similar way to those who maintain that there is no proven link between lung cancer and tobacco.

I guess it could have something to do with the levels of scientific proof available in laboratory chemistry as opposed to the messy and confusing world of environmental science? But what kind of levels of confidence do you need for doing something about it to be the best course of action? There probably is a real argument for not doing anything about it as it's too late already, or that the solutions proposed so far are unworkable, or that they impact disproportionately on the poor and we'll just have to cope with the consequences. But the idea that we're not sure if it's real and we need to wait for more proof first?

Whilst I admire anyone who can get the the end of a PhD (I dropped out of mine) it feels to me like you're asserting the fact that you have a PhD as a reason why you know better, rather than engaging with the discussion.

I would tend to agree with you, that peak oil is another major issue, as are global inequalities - but I spent 8 years of my career working in water resource management and even I can't agree that water consumption is as big and serious an issue as global warming (although wretched for the people on the receiving end of its problems).

To go back to your original point, I agree that poor countries should not be asked to stifle their development so that we can go on living profligate lifestyles. But where, I think, we'll have to agree to differ, is that I think we need to choose simpler less 'developed' lifestyles and that free market economics, big business and globalisation are nasty, brutish, self-fulfilling prophesies in which there can only ever be a few winners; you feel that free market economics have been good to you so you find it easier to try to deny global warming (despite your scientific training) than to revise your political views. Most people just use double-think to cope with all of this though. Have you noticed how quiet is is round here?

I personally feel that nothing will be done. I do my bit as best I can but feel that as a nation/world, an awful lot of us are simply used to living the way we want to. I think it will be too late before anyone actually stands up and says out loud that something needs to change. No politician will do it now as they feel it is too unpopular a view.

My FIL words say it all "Why should I care?"

I think we will burn ourselves out. Humans will become extinct, the planet will evolve and new life will take over where we once were, as we did once.

That was your daily helping of doom and gloom, brought to you by LazyLine, ever the miserable.

Crimplene, "it feels to me like you're asserting the fact that you have a PhD as a reason why you know better, rather than engaging with the discussion". I only bought my PhD up to highlight that I have a scientific background because earlier you had said "if one scientist comes up with a theory that's wrong, all science must be wrong" which is something I certainly do not subscribe to. If you feel ill at ease by me mentioning my PhD, that's your problem, not mine.

As for me not engaging with the discussion, seeing as I started the thread, I don't understand your point.

Why do you find it difficult to believe that some of us can can have an independent opinion without having a hidden agenda like working for an oil company? In fact, I would say that scientists in oil companies are probably doing more to find ways to help combat our over-reliance on carbon base fuels than many of those who criticise such companies. It is very easy to harp on the side lines but much harder to become involved and find real, practical solutions.

I have an open mind when it comes to both sides of the debate and certainly don't believe that those who question the validity of global warming are misguided, out of touch or uninformed. In fact, I would say it is the global warming proponents who have a problem with engaging with the other side of the debate.

Yeh, but speedy, that's because there IS no other side of the debate, and it's taken 110 years for most of the world to admit that. (first theory of human caused, CO2 related global warming advanced in 1897) We know pretty well irrefutably that human-caused CO2 emissions cause global warming. Saying the green lot have vested interests is not the same as accusing big business of having them. The green lot are not in the business of making money.

Whilst I agree with the principle of interrogation, there are some things, like "Nazism is wrong" and "global warming is caused by man-made CO2 emissions" that it is not helpful to question because to question is to take energy away from trying to combat them.

zizou - i agree.

I spent too much time - both personally and all sorts of global issues - trying to answer 'why is this happening' questions and not enough time working on 'how can i make different choices now'.

I'm making the choices now(e.g. we now have one car instead of two and recycle as much as we can) and at the same time I'm questionning both sides of the argument. I don't see why questionning and doing have to be mutually exclusive.

They don't per se, but it's been characteristic of the global warming debate that interrogation and obfuscation of the facts have come from the oil companies and big business-supporting think tanks in the US, and fictional academies. There is no respected peer reviewed scientific basis for doubting man made global warming. It's a flat-earthist position, as someone else said earlier in the thread.

i agree that clean water and clean food sources has to be priority.

anything else to reduce waste should be done.

the thing about science is that politians get involved and they like to think themselves a business partners, rather as custodians of our way of life.

i can think of a few things that could help the enviroments with major (good) consequences:

1. no retailer can offer plastic bags for free. plastic bags that can be bought should have 70% tax on them (as is petrol).

1. black bin waste removal once a fortnight, recyclables and compostable material on the other week.

1. all white (fridges) and black goods (TV etc), need to be effiecient and reliable for 10 years minimum. any failing this needs to be able to be recycled. (my mum used to buy a vacumn cleaner every three years becuase they went bust!).