What IS the agenda for climate change "enthusiasts"?

[teamsaint]

One aspect of this debate that I think is very important, and indicative of how policy really gets made is the question of emissions trading.
We are being prepared for a world where we are going to pay for emissions , one way or another. When there is a price on emissions, we can be certain that the already wealthy and powerful will benefit....it will be a kind of artificial shortage.
To me, this helps to explain the snails pace moves towards renewables....no money to be made there from carbon trading.(or of course oil sales etc).

[Serial_Apologist]

One aspect of this debate that I think is very important, and indicative of how policy really gets made is the question of emissions trading.
We are being prepared for a world where we are going to pay for emissions , one way or another. When there is a price on emissions, we can be certain that the already wealthy and powerful will benefit....it will be a kind of artificial shortage.
To me, this helps to explain the snails pace moves towards renewables....no money to be made there from carbon trading.(or of course oil sales etc).

Carbon trading is a diabolical fraud.

I sell you (poor, unbeknighted underdeveloped country) the right to use the emissions I'm not supposed to emit. Zero sum total.

[teamsaint]

quite.

Also, ever notice how according to the media it is "cheap" air travel that is the problem?Its never the expensive kind.(you know , to the Bahamas for a well deserved rest from banking or being PM.)

[ahinton]

Carbon trading is a diabolical fraud.

I sell you (poor, unbeknighted underdeveloped country) the right to use the emissions I'm not supposed to emit. Zero sum total.

Absolutely right; it's not only a scam but a most cynical one.

[Dave2002]

Are there different forms of carbon trading, some more scammy than others?
Is this the same as carbon offsetting?

In the meantime, see this, and note the comment about whether Apple's "green" power strategies will lead to any reduction in coal burnt! http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/07/...-icloud-epeat/

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

look out

[Pegleg]

look out

That article seems rather typical of much reporting on the issue of climate change. An alarmist headline which is not exactly supported by the facts.

He said that, because this Greenland-wide melting has happened before - in 1889 - scientists are not yet able to determine whether this is a natural but rare event, or if it has been sparked by man-made climate change.

"Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," said Lora Koenig, a glaciologist from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and a member of the research team analysing the satellite data.

"But if we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."

Scientists said they believed that much of Greenland's ice was already freezing again.

How can the event be rare if ice core data shows it's has happened repeatedly approx very 150 years? Although we are not told in the article over what time scale these repeated events have been measured nor what statistical methods have been used to deduce this, nor how reliable ice core analysis is in determining temp fluctuations with melting and refreezing etc.

"This event, combined with other natural but uncommon phenomena, such as the large calving event last week on Petermann Glacier, are part of a complex story," said Nasa's Tom Wagner.

Complexity, I can believe.

Where does leave the layman? Perhaps a little scepticism is understandable. I think anyone who reads the history and utterings of the IGPCC would be hard pressed to say this is not a highly politicised issue. You'll have to do an awful lot of digging to answer Dave's “What is going on?” question, and I'm not even sure where to start.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

you believe what you want pegleg i don't mind at all ... i will follow the evidence i think

look here

[Pegleg]

you believe what you want pegleg i don't mind at all ... i will follow the evidence i think

look here

I'd be interested to know what it is you think I believe based on what I said, particularly as I'm not sure what I believe myself.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'd be interested to know what it is you think I believe based on what I said, particularly as I'm not sure what I believe myself.

What was that marvellous little book of schematized interpersonal misunderstandings RD Laing wrote in the early 70s? Ah yes: "Knots".

[amateur51]

What was that marvellous little book of schematized interpersonal misunderstandings RD Laing wrote in the early 70s? Ah yes: "Knots".

Wherein can be found Rumsfeld's famous 'known knowns, known unknowns' speech, whether he knew it or not

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

I'd be interested to know what it is you think I believe based on what I said, particularly as I'm not sure what I believe myself.

what i thought you were attempting was to lay the blame for politicising the issue on the science case .... please read the Stern Report and then the catch up reports from the IPCC

whatever any one else is asserting the science case is remarkably and dismally [for us] strong ... [i know nought of the IGPCC]

from where i see things the politicising comes from the world of corporate energy and finance ... and the lying and manipulating of scientists sometimes childish behaviour in eg East Anglia ...

see here


it is disappointing that the very title of the thread suggests a social movement with 'enthusiasts' for catastrophe, as if those of us who follow the science with interest and find it convincing were dastardly schemers trying to end civilised life as we know it .... on the contrary the sceptics are financed by the oil majors etc ... and so are the PR Consultancies the agents provocateur ... the 'enthusiasts' .... how could any one be enthusiastic about the science of climate change? ... it is frightening and depressing ...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...further

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.

The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.

Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the “Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.
nytimes

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Go to a climate change conference these days, he says, and as well as all the traditional attendees there will usually be a small detachment of the forward-looking military.

Royal Court Theatre 'Population' reviewed in the graun today

[Dave2002]

Royal Court Theatre 'Population' reviewed in the graun today

There were tickets available today - for the Monday £10 offers. I managed to get 2. There might just be some left - it was OK at 9am for online booking. Otherwise completely sold out.