Anyone else follow climate change news obsessively?

[Chickychickyparmparm]

It's like a car crash - I can't look away.

I am reading more and more in the build-up to the Paris talks at the end of the year. China has surprised everyone with a bigger pledge than expected. But will it be enough? What about the US? They ignored the Kyoto Protocol. Obama is in the news today talking about melting ice in Alaska - yet gave Shell the go-ahead to drill in the Arctic.

I am genuinely terrified of what will happen if the world does not act fast.

'I am genuinely terrified of what will happen if the world does not act fast.'

I genuinely thought that the OP had been conned and frightened half to death by the great and the good, just like the great and the good scared people over the dodgy dossier and the 45 minute launches and weapons of mass destruction used to convince our MPs to vote for war with Iraq.

I didn't realise that the OP was a signed up believer in it against any counter arguments. I won't waste my time explaining why it is a con, if you want to believe their story and their plans, so be it. But for those of an inquiring mind who smell a rat just as they did with the dodgy dossier, here is Obama's science czar.

"John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet

Book he authored in 1977 advocates for extreme totalitarian measures to control the population

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A "Planetary Regime" with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?"

zombietime.com/john_holdren/

Let's all hope Trump makes it. That will change the plans.

'epeating the same bad science over and over'

It has got nothing to do with science, it is politics and elitist politics at that. These political people are puppets, they work for the elite and the plans are the elite's plans not those of the puppets who implement them.

'you're pushing your misguided agenda'

I have got no agenda but to stop you being frightened by their sophisticated adverts and lies. They have the agenda of terrifying you with their exaggerated adverts. The truth is not an agennda, lies is.

Claig, what are these record low global temperatures Trump is so concerned about? Only peer-reviewed links, please.

Does anyone remember when they were full of "hottest summer ever" - leading to the infamous "BBQ summer" prediction that they then denied (I heard them say it on the radio, as did the presenter !). Then they got all huffy and stopped longer-range forecasts because the public (us) weren't interpreting them right.

Lurking, I think there's a wee but if confusion here between 'weather' and 'climate'. (Not saying the MO didn't bollocks up their communications around that one, they were reporting probabilistic weather forecasts with x% likelihood as more certain predictions. Daft.)

Jassy don't even bother reading claig's posts, let alone engage. It's not worth it.

I have got no agenda but to stop you being frightened by their sophisticated adverts and lies.

When was the last time there was a publicly-funded advert on climate change, sophisticated or otherwise, in this country?

I tend to think 'lies' is a little strong when you are talking about something that is agreed by scientists and policy makers from countries who can literally agree on nothing else. Including the ones with fucktons of oil and coal.

If they're wrong - well, we became energy independent and weaned ourselves off polluting fossil fuels that wreck health and increasingly leave most of the world at the mercy of a few foreign powers. And those fuels will eventually run out.

I mean, shit. That's just terrible.

I know, Chicky. I just can't help myself sometimes. It's fish in a barrel stuff though...

Chicky - all Claig has done is give an alternative perspective. You seem to have a closed mind, or are in denial. Did you look at anmy of the links I posted? Do you still stand by your ridiculous claim that the recent temperature rise is the most rapid in something like 600,000 years?

Jassy, the Climate Change Act is costing the UK alone over £15 billion per year. That's alot of hospitals and schools. And we are commited to spend that for another 25 years. At the end of that period all these efforts will have reduced the average global temperature by something like 0.005C. All we are doing is exporting jobs to Asia, and making energy cost more, which disproportionately affects the elderly and poor. There is no realistic replacement for fossil fuels at present - renewables are a joke in terms of reliable energy production and also high cost in terms of subsidies etc. Better to do as Lomberg suggests, i.e. invest in R&D until better alternatives come along, e.g thorium reactors or maybe fusion if the real scientists can crack that one (and the Americans are much closer than the Europeans on this). Speaking of Lomberg, his recent quote says it all:

"We live in a world where one in six deaths are caused by easily curable infectious diseases; one in eight deaths stem from air pollution, mostly from cooking indoors with dung and twigs; and billions of people live in abject poverty, with no electricity and little food. We ought never to have entertained the notion that the world’s greatest challenge could be to reduce temperature rises in our generation by a fraction of a degree."

Source: www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-says-that-the-un-climate-panel-s-latest-report-tells-a-story-that-politicians-would-prefer-to-ignore

I used to believe that we were having an effect on our climate, then I started reading some climate history, and looking at the actual data. All we had was a run of mild winters in the late 90s and early 2000s. Since then we have reverted to cold winters, and poor summers. You get warm months, warm years, warm decades and warm centuries. And cold likewise. The CO2 climate scientists and IPCC have ignored this and play down the significance of natural variation and longer term ocean and solar magnetic cycles. As Claig says, anthropogenic climate change is a scam. It maybe a well intentioned scam, but it is certainly ill-judged and will end very badly for science. Enjoy the Holocene while it lasts:

Hope you recover from your needless fears, and can enjoy the rest of the Holocene while it lasts:

jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000-new.png

No one is listening claig.

'No one is listening claig.'

I think you know they are, just as they listened and learned when it became clear that the dodgy dossier was not true.

'What climate change? Fewer people than EVER believe the world is really warming up

CLIMATE change scepticism is rapidly increasing in the UK with a FIFTH of people now unconvinced the world's temperature is changing.'

www.express.co.uk/news/uk/430649/What-climate-change-Fewer-people-than-EVER-believe-the-world-is-really-warming-up

Lots of people instinctively believe they are lying but they don't have a clue why they are doing it, they don't have a clue about the real extent of what lies behind it, but one day they will even find that out.

'If they're wrong - well, we became energy independent and weaned ourselves off polluting fossil fuels that wreck health and increasingly leave most of the world at the mercy of a few foreign powers. And those fuels will eventually run out.'

That is not what it is about. It is about what Obama's science czar wrote about in his ecology book, it is about deindustrialising and slowing growth, just as the Rockefeller funded elite think tank The Club of Rome 'Limits to Growth' report advocated way back in the 1970s when it was instrumental in kicking off the worldwide green movement. That is why businessman Trump will stop it in its tracks, because he believes in growth and prsoperity for people.

Goodness, it's getting barrel-scrapey, quoting the Express! And Trump! Snort. We'll just ignore, shall we? Not fan the flames?

I think there is some cause for optimism this year. People are taking more notice, there are way more articles about climate change appearing and much more investment in alternative energy sources than ever before (that great government conspiracy of wind and solar power! Big oil is the innocent victim here. LOL).

Even half of emissions caused by humans should be enough to make changes. And like the poster above pointed out, if everyone's wrong what's the harm - we'll have made the move to renewable energy and our lives will be cleaner. That's China's thinking anyway.

It depresses me - so I tend to avoid it. I know a lot of people who work in the field and it is not a scam. The models reflect their best attempt to model the very complex systems involved, albeit with incomplete understanding in some places, lack of driving data in others, and computers that are not quite up to the job.

But year on year the models improve and results don't change - and the climate system gets more chaotic as the energy in the system increases (mistakenly coined as global warming many decades ago).

People with a vested interest in short term profit should loudly about it being bad science, and many of the general public don't understand it and want it to be wrong so they tend to believe that.

As is said to start with - depressing. And the knock on social problems together with increasing global population is even more depressing. Humankind will get through it - but not without a lot of casualties along the way. Much of which could have been avoided if the powers that be wanted to (problem is governments are driven by short term concerns rather than longer term - when is the next election....).

Firefire "Even half of emissions caused by humans should be enough to make changes."

Why? Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 only contribute 3% of total CO2 emissions - termites produce more CO2 than we do. In addition, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, making up for only about 5-7% of the greenhouse effect. It is water vapour which intercepts and bounces back 80% of the outward bound LW IR. CO2's radiative properties are also logarithmic, so it takes a doubling of CO2 to have the same effect as the atmospheric concentration increases. The latest research suggests climate sensitivity is about 1.5C at the most, which is nothing to worry about. Infact a warming of up to 2C is generally accepted as having net benefits globally. Two datasets are showing the planet has greened in the last 20 years, most likely because of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere (CO2 is essential for plant growth and more CO2 means better drought tolerance). The IPCC projections of 4-6C rise by 2100 are worse case scenarios, and political scaremongering. Global sea ice extent is much the sameas it was 30 years ago, and nothing to worry about:

<a class="break-all" href="http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg</a>

It averages at about 20 million square km, so there is no shortage of ice at the poles. Glaciers have been receding in recent years, but this is just a continuation of the long slopw thaw from the Little Ice Age which ended in the late 1700s - e.g. look at how much the Alaskan glaciers retreated long before we invented cars and coal power stations:

soundwaves.usgs.gov/2001/07/fieldwork2.html

Throckenholt - I agree that the computers are not up to the job. But the whole ethos of modelling is based on assumptions and is not empirical science. Here's what the IPCC said about modelling in 2001:

"The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible."

Despite more powerful computers the models have not improved much since 2001 either:

www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/

Why do you think that sceptics are only being sceptical for reasons of short term financial gain? Do you include eminent physicists like Dick Lindzen and Freeman Dyson?

And please don't lose any sleep over world population, it is very likely to stabilise at 11 billion: watch this brilliant documentary broadcast by the BBC a few years ago by Prof Hans Rosling -

If you don't have the time just watch is Ted talk, it is only 9 minutes and also brilliant: www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine

The world is becoming a better place, there is still much to do but climate change is not a problem we should be wasting time and money on.

throckenholt: " I know a lot of people who work in the field and it is not a scam. The models reflect their best attempt to model the very complex systems involved, albeit with incomplete understanding in some places, lack of driving data in others, and computers that are not quite up to the job."

Well, they work in the field so they're bound to be biased, right? It's quite obvious that being knowledgeable about a subject should debar you from commenting on it. Luckily we have people like claig speaking from a position of profound ignorance to enlighten us.

Ah, common sense. A drop in the ocean, but a start.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/solarpower/11829471/Ministers-signal-the-end-of-Britains-solar-revolution.html

The world is becoming a better place

(sigh). Do you know, I'd love to be wrong to "believe in Climate change." Seriously will be delighted and overjoyed to trumpet my misguidedness to the world if it turns out I'm some part of a great Group conspiracy & delusion. That would be the best news ever.

We are literally mining the planet. The only place in the whole universe where we can live. Have already exceeded for 2015 all the resources that the earth will create in 2015.

YeOldeTrout - I also firmly believe in climate change; the planet's climate has been changing for the last 4.5 billion years. But I don't believe that humankind has had any measureable effect on the global climate in the last few decades, for the reasons I outlined above. If we affected the climate, the the IPCC would have produced the evidence, but all they come up with is computer models. As for resource depletion, there may be 7 billion of us but the planet is much bigger than we like to think. Do you realise that everyone on the planet can fit on Australia and have half an acre each - that still leaves the other 5 continents competely empty. Chill out and read or watch a presentation by Matt Ridley or Prof. Hans Rosling. e.g. www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex?language=en and www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine

We should remain wary about what the climate can do to us, and it is sensible to keep an eye on climate variation. But a good many highly qualified people have argued that one thing we need not be alarmed about is the impact of our CO2 emissions on the climate. For those with the time to spare, check out the NIPCC reports (www.nipccreport.org/). For those wanting a snappier view, try the posts, pages, and links here: climatelessons.blogspot.co.uk/

There has been far too much fear and alarm deliberately generated about climate, not least in children. It is good to see so many very sensible comments in this thread,

Do you realise that everyone on the planet can fit on Australia and have half an acre each - that still leaves the other 5 continents competely empty.

Out of interest, do you want your half-acre in the Great Sandy Desert or the Great Stony Desert? Or maybe on the Nullarbor?

I was having a shit day, this comment has cheered me up no end.

Brilliant. That is the most useless fact yet!

LurkingHusband I saw that news article. Fortunately the UK isn't representative of the rest of the world where huge leaps are being made in solar power and other renewables. Eg China has just announced the world's largest solar plant. And where I'm from you can get a solar panel installed for peanuts, and many people are.

What's the carbon footprint in making a solar panel ?

Of course if you really wanted to harness the energy of the sun, you'd install the most efficient solar collectors in the world.

So, since we aren't, I'm taking it that we don't.

Ignoring a lot of the weirdness on this thread.

Yes OP, it's something that does bother me, and the fact that the world is so short-termist politically and commercially gives me no faith at all that it will be taken seriously.

But what worries me even more is what will happen when the oil runs out. Or at least becomes sufficiently scarce to only be available to the few.

Jassy, the point is not about the quality of the land in Australia, but about the vast area of empty land which would be available on the other continents.

Looks like Claig has hit upon a solution - everyone to Australia!

Sleepless I think we're already making the move towards a post-oil society. Spending on fossil fuels is going down and will continue to do so. I doubt substitutes to every oil-based product have been found but we have a good few years to find them. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Lurking - care to elaborate? I don't really understand what you mean with your second point.

hackmum Well, they work in the field so they're bound to be biased, right? It's quite obvious that being knowledgeable about a subject should debar you from commenting on it. Luckily we have people like claig speaking from a position of profound ignorance to enlighten us.

Is there a rule somewhere on MN that you can only comment if you have no knowledge ?!

Um - did you ever consider that they are scientists ? The whole basis of science is evidence not belief. They are not biased because they are paid to peddle a story - most of them are totally depressed about it because so many people are wilfully ignoring the evidence. They are skilled people who could be working on something else - they aren't unemployable in any other field and don't have a compulsion to safeguard their income by scare mongering.

As someone said upthread -what have we got to lose by "dealing" with "supposed" climate change ? If it were even only a 10% chance of the science being correct, then it would be a good choice to do something about it. If there was a 10% chance of your house burning down - would you ignore it or try and do something to mitigate ?

It is threads like this that really depress me :(