Climate Change & Global Warming

[McFly]

^ I take your point Seaflech, and I fully agree.

 

The response has to be a coordinated, global one.

[nautim]

Just be greatful we don't have the problem with carbon dioxide they have here -

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos

 

The lake is supersaturated with carbon dioxide due to a layer of magma under the surface. In the 1980's something caused a lot of gas to bubble out of the lake, causing an 'avalanche' of smothering gas which killed 1800 people...

 

I caught a programme about it on Radio 4 last night on my way home.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/pip/lz64i/

 

I'd never heard about anything like this before.

[humptygrumpty]

we'll all be getting a seperate carbon footprint tax next.

[Guest Anonymous]

we already pay carbon footprint tax , the more fuel you burn etc, the more tax you pay. I am suspicious of oil companies just now for reducing the price of oil again at the moment as I feel they do this to keeep us all burning and slow down the development of clean energy?

Also I get the feeling that even thoughit is in the news everyday , there is still a general state of apathy towards global warming.

I think there has to be more incentives to make people change , and also the government would need to get tough on this issue and bring in some new rules I suppose?

Ban 4x4's from cities ?

put tight restrictions on the amount of food packaging used ?

double the price of car fuel for private use?

Of course the trouble is anything like this wont be popular and people would start shouting about freedoms and human rights etc..?

[Njugle]

Apologies for the image quality, a quick snap at a friends house.

From "The Sport" , daily or otherwise.

"Minty the polar bear swam 4000 miles across the atlantic out of starvation before dying seconds after his arrival on the the shetland islands" or something like that

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e363/njugle/polarbear.jpg

[Sudden Stop]

Na, it's just one of the older members of Jarl squad the morning after the big day. Wandered down to the sands of sound fae the hall perhaps...

[Egbert-Mcwhirter]

Did anyone see the documentary on channel 4 the other night called the "Global Warming Swindle".

I thought it was very informative, well researched and thought provoking stuff I think it's changing my opinion on the whole issue. It's not that I want to see the envirnoment ruined and solely use this as an excuse for continuing to pollute the world I have always been a lover of nature and wildlife, but having watched this I do believe politicans are jumping on the band wagon and using the flawed man made global warming theories for there own political ends and as a result will use the whole issue to impose draconian measures on the general public such as increased taxation.

 

What is everyone else's opinions on this documentary and the theory behind it?

[Freyr]

The global warming topic is seeing the same tactics as the smoking issue did. Tobacco companies funded researchers who knew that their funding depended on their results. Projects who found that smoking did cause cancer were cancelled. In public spokespeople, lobbyists and politicians who were funded by the industry stalled for time. "There is no credible evidence for a connection between cancer and smoking. These people died of other causes. People who don't smoke also get cancer. We have top scientists working on this issue. More research is needed. "

 

Try to find out who was behind that documentary and what research it was based on. Go see the Al Gore movie. It is very persuaisive of the fact that humans are the cause of the climate changes we are experiencing. The UN believes it is so and I trust them more than any TV documentary. After the UN announced the most conclusive scientific evidence to date that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal and accelerating. The UN is working hard to brake this development.

 

I think it is way past the point were we can seroiusly endulge those who don't believe in global warming or those who believe it is entirely out of our hands. It is happening and we have to change.

 

http://unfccc.int/2860.php

 

By the way: If you wan to do something heres a nice electric car made in Norway

http://www.think.no/company/english_summary

[islandhopper]

Yeah, a nice little car ... and the electric power to ride a range of 170 km (106 miles) at a top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph) you get from the socket in your garage ... no gas, no micro dust, just plug n play ... nice and so clean such little machines ...

[Freyr]

And it costs about 20 NOKroner (1,5£) to tank up (in Norway at least).

 

By the way: Britain today became the first country where the government has proposed a law for reducing CO2-emissions. 26 to 32 % by 2020 and 60 % 2050.

[Carlos]

Did anyone see the documentary on channel 4 the other night called the "Global Warming Swindle".

What is everyone else's opinions on this documentary and the theory behind it?

 

I saw some parts of it, and while it is always good to hear the other side, this did not do much to try and find the truth of things, just present a limited number of arguements over and over.

 

 

Some biggies...

 

The "shock horror" drop in temperatures from 1940-1970 that is supposed to disprove the link between CO2 and temperature rise....... is already fairly accurately covered in climate models and comes from the cooling effects of sulphur aerosols (polution from industry.... acid rain etc etc) in the atmosphere.

 

The documentary showed how CO2 levels have always lagged temperature changes, and said this shows CO2 is not a worry.....

Another way of interpreting that is that as temperatures rise a feedback mechanism results in more CO2 in the atmosphere which increases temperatures more..... that is kind a different thing.... While CO2 rises in the PAST might not have been the actual trigger for temperature rises, they are a known greenhouse gas and do seem to have amplified temperature changes.....

 

 

On the plus side I think the programme did show that the issue is being grabbed by all sides and some of the actions being taken in the name of reducing climate change are a waste of time and money, which is a pity when there is so much that could be done....

[Sudden Stop]

I watched it last last on More4 and now I don't know what to think. Should I drive or walk to work? I don't know, the more I think about it the more my head hurts...

[Bluestone]

Hello all, I'm new to Shetlink so this is my first post. Nice to meet everyone.

 

I've been doing a lot of reading about global warming lately, and would like to hear folks' opinions on a suggested framework for reducing emissions.

 

"Contraction and Convergence" is a framework put forward by a chap named Aubrey Meyer, of the Global Commons Institute of London. His idea is that a global agreement is first reached on the maximum level of greenhouse gases we can reasonably permit in the atmosphere (from what I've read and heard on the news, this is likely to be at most 450ppm CO2 equivalent). On the global level, greenhouse gas emissions are then reduced in line with this target (the "contraction" bit).

 

"Convergence", as the name implies, means there is an agreed year (say 2030) by which the per capita emissions of everyone in the world will be the same. Countries can trade emissions entitlements if they are unable to meet their targets.

 

What is appealing about the framework is that countries such as China and India would actually be able to increase their emissions over an interim period. Given that China has pretty much said "forget it" to reducing emissions if it means halting its economic growth, this seems like an equitable solution.

 

On the domestic level, this could be achieved by a system of carbon rationing (Malachy Tallach mentioned this idea in the editorial of this month's Shetland Life). The idea is that only fuel, electricity and (possibly) use of public transport would be rationed. It does sound harsh, and I have some reservations about the implementation of such a scheme. However, a mandatory cap on personal emissions seems a lot better than a voluntary one. Moreover, if the reductions were gradual, I think it could work. For one thing, there would be a lot more stimulus to improve our flagging public transport system. This is absolutely necessary in my opinion: green taxes won't stop people having to commute to work, and everything I hear about biofuels suggests they're just a pipedream.

 

Anyway, that's me. What do people think? Contraction and Convergence with Carbon rationing? The three C's. As opposed to the three B's (for those of you who've seen Bad Santa).

 

[DamnSaxon]

Hi, Bluestone, nice to meet you.

 

Yes, this is a helluva problem. The TV programme has already come in for some serious criticism (George Monbiot, predictably, in the Guardian yesterday, another article in the Independent today) for using fiddled or unscientific figures, but I think they did raise some valid points.

 

For instance, the point that climate change has by now become a vested interest. If my research funding depended on finding it, I'd expect to find it - very much like those tobacco researchers. But I think the most important point they made was that the sun is far and away the largest influence on the climate as a whole. We know that the sun's energy output varies over its 11-year sunspot cycle, and that it has varied more than that over thousands of years to give us our ice ages and interglacial periods, long before we humans appeared to start fouling things up.

 

On the other hand, there are the findings from ice core analysis that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been pretty much constant at 250 - 270 ppm for many millennia, but over the last few years have been increasing at a frightening rate - about 380 ppm at the moment, and rising at about 10 per decade (increasing). The increase doesn't sound like much, but if it helps tip the balance and cause either runaway warming or precipitate another ice age, it isn't going to be good news for us. I heard James Lovelock on the radio last year, pointing out that the earth would undoubtedly survive, but not necessarily humanity. Not a reassuring thought!

 

I think that a great chunk of this problem is the number of us living on the planet. Only a century or so ago, the UK had about 10 million people, now we have 60 million. Likewise everywhere else. We are turning into an infestation, as we plunder the earth's resources without a thought for tomorrow - and then turn stuff into pollution (the poisonous heavy metals in the groundwater just as much as the CO2 in the atmosphere) - we are making our planet uninhabitable at an ever-increasing rate.

 

I'm not an end-of-the-worlder, but the ancient Maya calendar comes to an end on Dec 23rd, 2012. (Google on 2012 to find some of the nut sites.) And, around 2011, we shall be at the next sunspot peak, which sun experts reckon is going to be a very big peak - even more solar energy pumping into our ecosystem. And a number of scientific researchers are finding that when the earth's climate changes it does NOT do it gradually, a couple of degrees over a century. It's a 'chaotic' system, which could snap us into an ice age or an oven age (for want of a better term) in a matter of two or three decades. It could very easily be that our pollution, plus a large solar peak, will trigger a massive change which we won't be able to prepare for.

 

This stuff scares me stiff when I think about it. I use low-energy light bulbs throughout, but somehow I doubt it's going to make much difference. I think our children and grandchildren are going to curse us ... not that there will be many of them left. Maybe the Maya were right.

[trout]

Indeed, the Mayans understood seasons not to just be of worldly origin, but that there were galactic seasons influencing us as we rotate around our galaxy. For what literature is out there about them they really were an amazing race of people!

 

Then you have our relatively recent "Western" civilisation built on 2000 odd years of dogma and Monotheism rhetoric!

 

If the world does go moomin's up I fear it'll slide into another "Dark Age" along with whatever climatic cataclysm goes with that! Back to ye olde days of fervent religious diatribe ...