Here's something possibly irrelevant to this conversation but I'm going to tell you anyway.

The Al Gore lecture is doing the rounds over here at the moment, and my husband and two sons went along on Monday night to listen to it and watch the pictures.

When question time came up, my 10yr old stood up and asked this question.

"If global warming is caused by holes in the ozone layer [in part] then why can't the warmth get back out of the holes?"

Your reasoning reminds me of this scene in Fight Club:

...except that X, the consequential cost, is probably a lot higher than the cost of fixing the problem.

Invest in high ground.

There are fixes and then there are pretend fixes. Kyoto was a pretend fix akin to changing the oil in that rear differential. A public relations stunt saying, "We care!" Fully implemented, it would have very slightly delayed our reaching whatever number we're saying is too warm. (I say this assuming that CO2 doesn't follow warming but is causing it.)

I want us off fossil fuels for political and environmental reasons. I do, however, come back to the motives of the fear-mongerers. Conveniently enough, the biggest supporters of the Global Warming theory also support command economies a proven threat to humanity.

Inhofe finds 13 climatologists who have recently changed from global warming advocates to skeptics

I don't find Inhofe personally compelling but this list is interesting.

Lot of Canadians on the list, are you sure they aren't trying to fool us so Canada will thaw out?
I wonder if Bluesdave knows Dr David Evans?

The only clear way to get off of fossil fuels is to use less - a lot less. For the forseeable future (a vague term that), there is no alternative fuel that can displace more than a small percentage of our current oil consumption. Nothing. Not ethanol nor biodiesel nor DME nor hydrogen nor electrons. We can achieve more through efficiency and conservation than we can through all the ethanol that we could produce from corn. This is briefly discussed in the 20 in 10 thread.

[Homer] Orrrrr, we could use more, to use it up quickly, then there wouldn't be any to fight over. [Homer]

I know of him, but do not know him. He is a very smart guy, but not trained in climate research. You have to be careful when people with PhDs speak outside of their training. We have a tendency to think that because we have achieved a doctorate, that means we know everything. We don't.

David is quite correct when he says that the whole climate change debate has been hijacked by politicians. Several of us in my old project eventually came to the conclusion that we would never win the battle to convince the public. I always pushed the argument that it was better to sell the public on the benefits of cleaning up the environment, rather than throwing figures and graphs around, that were only going to confuse people. My point was that regardless whether man really is having an effect on the rate of climate change, it can only help the planet, and hence us, if we reduce pollution.

I am really worried about what is happening in China and India. It will be interesting to see how the Olympics go in 2008. The images of Beijing that I have seen, send chills down my spine. :greenface

Being hijacked not only by politicians, but charlatans and hucksters that prey on people who don't understand anything passed the headlines. Sure, people are subject to being scammed because they haven't delved into the story behind the headlines, but that doesn't excuse the scammers.

In fairness to the general public, we've dug into it pretty deeply here, in several threads, and still haven't been able to find definitive answers. There is a lot of opposing, subjective, conclusions, and conflicting data.

It's pretty well agreed that the Earth is warming up. I see no debate there, but why, how far it will warm, what the consequences will be and what we can do about it, are being debated.

Your position of, cleaning up can't hurt, is probably true. But I feel an organized effort, encompassing cost/benefit considerations, is the best way to attack the pollution problem. Unfortunately that requires government intervention, which scares most people because of the government's history of being inept and squandering resources.... not to mention full scale charges in the wrong direction.

China/India are indeed scary, just because of the scale and speed they are fouling the water, air and land. The long running, runaway, underground coal seam fires in northern China, probably spew out more pollution than most countries.

I have participated a few times in some of those threads, Bruce, if you remember. I tried to point out that it is impossible to design an experiment that will prove man's contribution to climate change. As you point out, there are conflicting "experts", and inconsistent data. I can only speak from my experience and the data we have collected. It becomes a pointless exercise repeating the same message over and over again, to the same audience. That is why I have not participated in every thread on the subject.

Climate change is like a religion. People believe what they want to believe, and others manipulate it for their own profit, or power.

Dave, I know I've asked you this before, but what Uni are you affiliated with?

I'm convinced you believe what you say to be the truth, to the best of your knowledge. And you are a genuine scientist, with no apparent axe to grind.
You've contributed a great deal of light, in threads with an abundance of speculation, guessing, hearsay and heat. You even asked your boss to shed some light.

But like you said yourself, there's a lot of conflicting stories and people giving answers that have no clue, or worse, an ulterior motive. I've got questions, as you well know. Nothing tricky, just plain old questions most everyone has. Unfortunately, questions are much easier to form than answers.

The other night on the TV news they were talking about a new computer model predicting a 10 degree increase in temperature and the very next day I hear another story. If the people that know the most don't don't agree, what are we mere mortals to think.... or believe?

Although I'm sure it's frustrating for you, please don't take my skepticism personally. I'm pretty frustrated too.


Oh, and bluesdave... don't let my skepticism dissuade you from preaching to the lurkers, you've got board creds.

And that is why we should never sign Kyoto.

Yep.

When someone else decides to murder 32 people, I always think to myself that that's why I should do it too...cause someone else did.