The right term would be “affect”. Of course, if you use it, your phrase is quite useless. Because I suppose you are not saying that the human being does not affect the natural world, are you?

Just the same, I am sure there are little scientists claiming they understand “everything” about anything. So claiming they do is, again, a rethoric trick. Not very scientific, in my opinion.

This 0.2% of life on the planet which is not carbon-based would probably disagree with you!

Sorry - I didn’t mean to sound so rude in the previous post; I’ll try to respond more carefully this time!

Let me start by saying I’m not a raging lefty environmentalist. I really just see this as a scientific issue. You say “there is little real evidence of man made emmissions making any significant contribution”, but this view is in contradiction to most published peer-reviewed research.

Let me assume for a moment (and do correct if I’m wrong) that you are not a research scientist actively investigating world climate, then I have to ask, from where do you derive your opinion on climate change, and how do you assess the reliability of that source? (I am not asking rhetorically - I really would like to know!)

For your information, I’ll answer my own question: I am a research scientist, although in an area totally unrelated to climate science. My opinion is based on IPCC reports - i.e. the mainstream view among climate scientists.

ljw

“There is an incredible depth of frustration at the way that zealots are forcing their opinions on

“Forget the science. Evidence of past thriving settlements high on Dartmoor and in Orkneys as well as Greenland leave no room to doubt that it has been warmer with less CO2. Never mind grapes in England they were abundant in Scandinavia!”

No room for doubt? None at all. Then, enlighten us, just how warm was it? Forgetting the science of course. Use only a bunch of old stones, some anecdotal reports of vinyards and your in depth knowledge of how people hundred of years ago used temperature to decide where to live.

Well, it is clearly not ‘undisputed’ any longer, and we are not even sure it is a ‘fact’. On top of which, you may have cause and effect reversed. It is more likely that the water cycle is the primary driver of climate on the planet, how often do you see falling C02 in either its liquid or solid form? And there is not a single ocean of liquid CO2 anywhere on the planet.

Even the devious greenies realise it might be too difficult to persuade folk to ban water. H2O in its gaseous form is several times more plentiful than C02, yet you choose the least common of the two compounds to hang your theory on.

Furthermore, CO2 is not a polutant. It is the oxidised form of Carbon, (C) which is the building block of 99.8% of life on the planet.

The atmosphere is made up of; Carbon Dioxide 0.038%, Water vapour 1% - 4%, Free Oxygen 20.9%, Nitrogen most of the rest.

It is also undisputed that higher in the atmosphere it cools it. Convection as well as radiative transfer also takes place. Because of its latent heat water plays the major role. It is also undisputed that a small change in clouds is more significant than a major change in CO2. It is also undisputed that low level cloud has declined as temperatures have increased. No practising scientist claims we know all the answers (at least when they publish their work). There is no evidence, as opposed to hypothesis that CO2 is significant in the climate. Models incidentally are just expensively programmed hypotheses

The fact is that those convinced that CO2 is the culprit want to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Solar variation is claimed to be too small both now and in the Milankovitch cycle yet is assumed to be enough to end an ice age. The ice cores show an 800-year lag between temperature and CO2 as we change from glacial to interglacial, yet they now claim the same feedback process can cause a similar change in less than 100 years. The climate is a chaotic coupled system and everything we have seen in the last 40 years could be (not is) entirely natural.

Forget the science. Evidence of past thriving settlements high on Dartmoor and in Orkneys as well as Greenland leave no room to doubt that it has been warmer with less CO2. Never mind grapes in England they were abundant in Scandinavia!

If we are to base our judgements on science let it be open where anyone can see all the data and all the computer code and none of it is concealed as was the case for the now discredited ‘hockey stick’ or the still secret and unaudited CRU surface temperature record or the many highly tuned climate models for which we the taxpayers pick up the bills but has no access.

I am willing to be proved wrong by the data but not by what well paid zealots say the data say. Show us the data and the computer programmes and let’s see if it adds up! Don’t say it is all published, because it is not.

“I am so pleased to find a politician who questions the reasons for global warming in the face of such a strong but misguided argument pushing manmade CO2 emmissions as the cause”

I’d like to understand the evidence for it being a “strong but misguided argument”?

Gerry S says:

“I am tired of reminding people that 200 years ago the Thames froze over with such regularity every winter that fairs were held on it, but 2,000 years ago the Romans grew grapes as far north as Yorkshire and 20,000 years ago the North Yorks Moors were covered with 40 feet of ice.”

Yes, we all know that the earth has undergone climate change in the past but I’m not sure what the relevance is to this arguement. If it can be proven that I did not commit crime A, does it also follow that I did not commit crime B? (not my analolgy but I like it!)

The undisputed fact, even by staunch sceptics I believe, is that atmosperic CO2 is increasing due to human activity. This has been measured unlike some of the long past indicators of climate change you mention that are inferred by proxy measurements of ice cores, tree rings etc plus less scientific ones such as the proliferation of vineyards (BTW, the Domesday book has about 40 or so vineyards listed across Southern England - today there are estimated to be about 400…)

The undisputed fact is that increasing CO2 will lead to increased global temperatures.

By how much will temperature increase? Now that is the question.

“it is a mystery why so many scientists seem to have forgotten basic physics.”

They haven’t.

Tim says

“This one simple fact, to my mind, should lead sensible people to conclude that man made CO2 is most unlikely to be responsible for recent or future global warming.”

Simple? You seem to have missed the obvious possibility that increased CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming , *and* that warming causes increases in CO2 in the atmosphere!

ljw

I wonder whether John faced with an asteroid with potential to hit the planet would put his hands up and say “It wasn’t caused by us” and take no action.

There is a scientific debate concerning the causes of global warming but this is no excuse for inaction on how to limit the effect!

As to the nationalistic part of the argument that warming benefits us: Who believes that rapid climate change will improve the prospects of the poorest (or any) nations on this earth. Well us being nationalists we don’t really care; but consider the immigration possibilities, the water wars in the equatorial nations, even the lack of snow in the alps (skiing anyone?). Does anyone believe we are truly an economic island (John Donne saw the writing on the wall a long time ago)

I certainly believe in the questioning of scientific theories (falsification) but I must say following this article I would seriously consider whether voting for John Redwood is a good idea (saying that, I believe David Cameron is proposing a lot of good things so one must consider the balance…)

Hugh

that’s a good idea. why don’t we set up a big, international panel of scientists to assess all the evidence and report back to you and all of the other politicians in the world. oh wait, they already did. http://www.ipcc.ch

Sheesh, and I always thought you were one of the brighter MPs

Yep. not as a solution to Global warming, but as an insurance policy to natural disasters. There is evidence in the earths crust of volcanic erruptions that impacted entire continents. Yellowstone park in North America is on top of a massive volcanic caldera. The Deccan traps are such in India. Resilience in population can only be obtained if humans are not exclusively reliant on the Earth.

Liam P: “If we ever do colonise space, you can guarantee that it will be only the richest who can afford to do it.”

Well, that was how air travel started out, the prevelidge of the few. Now you can travel across the European continent for less that

The Ch4 swindle

Excellent blog! Keep up the good work.

But we should keep it in perspective. Recently I saw some figures on mankind’s emissions and the total amounts of CO2 that nature is constantly cycling through the atmosphere. Believe me, the human contribution is a drop in the ocean, almost literally. Remember also that CO2 constitutes a very small fraction of one percent of the atmosphere, and that of the several greenhouse gases in the atmosphere CO2 is the weakest (water vapour is the strongest, I believe).

It is completely bizarre that CO2 is portrayed as some kind of pollutant. In fact it is the life blood of the global eco-system. The food production capacity of the world is at least 30 percent higher due to the extra CO2 (some food crops are up to 70 percent more productive). Huge areas (e.g. Siberia) may well become available for food production in a warmer climate. And, of course, far more people are killed by cold weather than by hot weather. I don’t like the cold. I don’t like heat waves, either, but I regard the milder winters that we enjoy as a huge benefit (though I do miss the snow!)

A few decades ago those same climate scientists were warning us of an impending ice age. I think global warming is far preferable!

Chris

@apl (March 9th 2007 @ 6.22pm) Are you serious?! Do you really think we should be looking at colonising space as a solution?! If we ever do colonise space, you can guarantee that it will be only the richest who can afford to do it. For the forseeable future, we have one planet and that’s it.

Here are my comments on climate change:
Since earths existence, the climate has changed. A wonderful perspective on this has been written up in the Gaia Hypothesis by James Lovelock and I have no doubt that the development of man is contributing to this natural phenomenon - every complex system interacts with its environment.
I don’t want to go too deep into the science of climate change. Although I studied Environmental Engineering I am not qualified enough to comment on the system complexity of climate change and its contributing factors.

Many non-qualified “preachers” of climate change are not so shy to share their belief systems with others and, I suppose,that everyone is entitled to his/her opinon.
We are getting to the point now: This is about politics where everyone is entitled to speak out and form a majority. At the moment, by majority perception, there is a phenomenon of man-made climate change. Where does this perception come from though? Here is my explanation:
People must fear. During the cold war we feared the Warshaw Pact states and after the iron curtain came down there was nothing to fear about. Because of our need to fear, the environmentalist camp had the right agenda at hand: “We are all going to die from climate change and, ironically, it is again the human enemy who is creating it”.
Climate change brings people together; we have all these nice climate change meeting around the world, people get together and have something common to talk about (let’s talk about the wheather, Lads!). The first time, the world is united and stands firm against evil. The New World Order has manifested itself in the form of a brotherhood of man standing against the peril of its own demise. And when everything is just so beautiful and the world is united at its height of international solidarity in fear for its survival, the heretics come and spoil the show with a bit of scientific doubt. The most shocking is the hostility these critics and climate change sceptics have to face. There is no tolerance if one is to ask for scientific hypothesis testing of all these climate change models. The dictatorship of majority opinion does not allow for doubt. Even if climate change is a political issue based on majority belief systems, what happened to the principles of John Stuart Mills and the protection of individual rights? Are we facing an era of eco-faschism?

So how do our political systems benefit from all this? Well, it brings stability and control because of the fear factor. There is also a more subtle argument behind targetting CO2 as a policy. We, the industrial nations, currently maintain a heavy dependency of oil producing countries. Targeting CO2 means reducing our exposure to oil and gas producing countries and we are replicating the fuel efficiency drive we experienced during the oil crisis in the 1970s. It also helps to reduce relative demand and therefore helps to slow down price inflation for oil and gas. there are many other factors, of course; E.g. giving giving Mr. Stern and Mr. P. Brown a job to continue writing reports and articles)

One a more funny side: Why are we so obsessed with CO2 if water vapour is a much bigger contributor to climate change? Should we not prohibit people from boiling the kettle twice (to ensure the water actually boiled) before making a cup of tea? Or, perhaps we should prevent people from having hot showers as well?

I hope there is an era of eco-enlightenment arising where arguments are based on reason rather than dogma.

Yours sincerely!

When I watched Al Gore’s film, I thought something wasn’t quite right about his graph illustrating the changes in global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration with time. Now I know from the Swindle documentary what it was. Rises in CO2 concentration follow and do not precede rises in global temperature. This one simple fact, to my mind, should lead sensible people to conclude that man made CO2 is most unlikely to be responsible for recent or future global warming.

It’s a shame that, from his recent suggestions to tax “frequent” flyers, David Cameron doesn’t appear to be amongst the sensible, but perhaps you can have a quiet word with him. When you do, you may care to remind him that most frequent flyers don’t do it for fun. We do it for sound business reasons and would not take kindly to a Conservative manifesto that, for no good reason, proposes measures that would push our costs up relative to those of our overseas competitors.