CO2 and climate change

pete_79, I was fortunate enough to see his talk at Brisbane 2 weeks ago. I can honestly say it was actually quite moving. When you look at the qualifications (academic and non-academic) of the guy you realise that what he is saying deserves our attention and thought.

Nuclear is one of those things that if you could provide a 100% guarantee that nothing would go wrong, then it would be a great option and you'd get my vote. The reality is that something may go wrong, not necessarily here in Australia but somewhere overseas, which would have an impact on all forms of life. For instance, one of the researchers at uni found traces of the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster in the peatlands of North Straddie! That means the fallout from a disaster could have global ramifications.

As far as geological storage goes I'm no expert, and at this point neither are the experts! :P What I mean is that not everything is yet known about the best geological parameters in which to store nuclear waste. And this is the biggest issue with nuclear contamination, and excuse the language, but once there is a fuck up, there is no going back. We do not currently have the technology to fix such things. Yes, lots of R&D is being done, but it's like sending a man into space and hoping that you'll have the landing figured out by the time it's needed.

As far as I'm aware, if a wind tower falls over, then a wind tower falls over. Ok, towers located in the ocean may not be as simplistic as this but you get the idea ;)

Sorry smokeweazel but I won't bother reading Jo Nova's site because she's not a scientist, yet she is trying to tell the scientists they're wrong. Like I tried to explain to you, I'm interested in first hand sources, not second and third hand ones. It's got nothing to do with courtesy, it's the quality of a source that I choose to impose on myself. A site like Skeptical Science summarises the science and is consistent with what the scientists themselves have said so I'm happy to use that as a source for explanation. But if Jo Nova holds a secret proving climate change is not happening because of us, she should publish it in a journal (where all scientists do). If she's right, she'll probably be hailed a hero like any other scientist who revolutionised science. These are people like Netwon, Galileo, Einstein and the like.

"why is it that those who believe in climate change are called climate scientists"

They aren't. Only climate scientists are called climate scientists. Tim Flannery is not a climate scientist. Al Gore is not a climate scientist. They act as journalists. As soon as a sceptical person works in the area of climate science they too will be referred to as a climate scientist. Writing blogs isn't working as a scientist. Doing experiments, modelling and testing hypotheses with data is working as a scientist. But remember it's not just a coincidence that basically all the scientists in the field agree on the fact that us adding CO2 to the atmosphere is highly likely to be causing climate change.

Al Gore heads up one of the largest carbon trading companies on the planet.
The proposed carbon tax is going to end up nothing but an additional tax on the sheeple.
Politicians lie their faces off and the sheeple accept this and do nothing.
The best advice on this entire length of dribble (pete 79)is to do the following: Turn off the TV. Give up on the media. Stop reading newspapers. In addition, love your family and friends. Have fun. Buck the system. Make your own rules and give up debt, it is the currency of slaves. Consume less, surf more.
Wait ... I hear the cries of indignation already, think them, say them but this is still my opinion.

smokeweazel, you're totally right that a big part of the problem is on the consumption side. Yes, solar and wind and the like will not be able to satisfy us if we keep on consuming more and more energy. That is the whole point. The problem of anthropogenic climate change (and many other environmental issues!) is not just supply but also demand. We are demanding more and more energy and other resources everyday. This will only increase with the quickly expanding middle-class in China and India.

A smart government (of which niether of the two major parties are) would not only implement more sustainable energy sources, in a staged process (such as a step-change over to LNG combined with a steady increase in renewable systems), but also enact and enforce new laws regarding the energy efficiency of ALL products, designed, built, and imported in Australia. The key to achieving success with renewables is decreasing demand so that the supply target isn't so frighteningly unneccessary.

As for Joanna Nova's blog. I just had a look at some of her recent posts and a bit of a browse around. She doesn't appear to offer many (if any at all) links to any peer-reviewed papers that dispute the overwhelming evidence that . She does however point at those who criticise government policies and make fun of the science in an attempt to undermine a logic based argument. In other words, essentially (from what I've read) she is saying "these people over here are critical/make fun of the argument that human's are causing this round of global warming, therefore it must be a load of bollocks!"....this is not science. It's mis-direction and not worth reading. I mean, if u can show some posts of her's that link to some science papers then I'd definitely take a squiz at those!

"there was once a time when all conventional scientists believed the earth was flat..........."

Well yes, that was kind of my point smokeweazel. It was a long time ago too, before anything like the scientific method had been developed. But do you know who showed us that it's not flat? A conventional scientist (known then as a natural philosopher) by the name of Aristotle. This was later clearly enunciated by Pythagorus. Another scientist. They came to these conclusions by scientific observation and calculations. And I use the word "scientific" to mean the method of enquiry. That is the key here.

Jo Nova, or anyone else, needs to evaluate the data scientifically and then write up their results, publish them (via peer review) and see how they stand up to methodological scrutiny. It's what scientists do. It's a method we cling to pretty tightly to maintain the integrity of the profession and the quality of the research findings.

As a thought experiment, imagine if a newspaper journalist started writing blogs telling everyone that the thruster fin design is crap and they know that the 1 fin design that they've "invented" works much better. What would we all think? They've never surfed a day in their life, never shaped a surfboard, but they've read something someone wrote and reckon they know better than just about every surfer and shaper on the planet. Firstly we'd laugh at em because they're assuming we haven't already considered that, then we'd get pissed off if they didn't accept that we had and had moved on because it didn't work. Then if they really wouldn't shut up we'd tell em to prove their design properly (by getting it surfed in a range of waves) or stop wasting our time. Same story in every sense.

"this is not proof, merely a hypothesis."

sigh. No it's actually a conclusion. The hypothesis is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere may alter the climate. After a shedload of observation, lab experiments and the development of mathematical and statistical models by oceanographers, physicists, meteorologists, chemists, mathematicians, statisticians and a range of other scientists from a range of other disciplines, they have arrived at the conclusion that it is highly likely that the hypothesis is true. That is very different.

Wow there are some pretty intelligent people kicking around in here! Long gone are the days of "dopey surfer drop-outs" that my father reckons we all are.

Science is only ever based on 'best fit' hypothesis: nothing is ever 'proven' ireffutably in science, its just the most likely hypothesis using all information, data and evaluation techniques available at the time.

I've travelled to countries like India, Indonesia and China, and after seeing pollution on that kind of scale, I think that regardless of this climate change debate, if we can change our reliance (90%+) on carbon based energy to something greener and better for the planet, then it can only be a good thing. I for one would be more than willing to pay an extra couple of bucks on my average consumption to move away this ungodly carbon reliance and into something greener.

Well you've hit the nail right on the head my_opinion. The lack of action regarding global warming comes largely down to the economic concept of willingness to pay. Most of the developed world knows something needs to be done, slightly less want it done, however the problem is that far too few of these are actually willing to pay for anything to be done. By pay I mean either paying with money or by paying with a reduction in the luxuries** they've become accustomed to.

**(I say luxuries as opposed to 'standard of living' because you can have just as high a standard of living, if not higher, if you remove all the pointless consumerist crap in our lives)

Science is only ever based on 'best fit' hypothesis: nothing is ever 'proven' ireffutably in science, its just the most likely hypothesis using all information, data and evaluation techniques available at the time.

By: "my_opinion"

How about this hypothesis;
'Wind blowing across an open ocean will make swell, when the swell hits the coast line were the ocean floor has the right contours it will break in the shape of a barrel'

Sounds pretty good to me... Hopefully someone can ireffutably prove this one day, I would like to see one of these 'barrels'.... ;)

I don't know who is correct (although I have my doubts about such long range forcasts when they seem to have so much difficulty just getting short range weather predictions right) But I do know that government will not be the answer.

vlad, there's two things to remember, many of the global climate trends (more accurately, changes to trends) predicted in the last IPCC report have indeed already began to occur and indeed, much of those have actually been at the more severe end of predictions.

The second thing is that its actually a lot easier to predict 'climate', which is just long term weather patterns, than it is to predict the 'weather' which is the short term stuff (generally a max of 7 days I think). The short term stuff is harder to predict because there is so much variability which occurs on a smaller scale so it's harder to know what is happening everywhere at ever second in order to come up with a prediction for tonight about what its going to be like tomorrow. The only way around this would be to have weather predictions given in real time and the only way to do that would be to constantly (as in every minute of every day) measure all of the variables (air pressure, temp, humidity, even vegetation cover) and then have a computer work out what the outcome is going to be based on how these variables interact....the problem is you'd probably need a super computer to do this and you'd need one for pretty much every region in Australia :S

In a surfing analogy, its pretty much like swell predictions, the day to day stuff is harder to nail but everybody knows that (at least in QLD) you get mostly sloppy SE tradewind swell in summer and solid offshore groundswells in winter.

i think u will find the calaner is slowly but shorly moving out of time with the seasons

This is a victory for the function of a web based forum. Benski & SmokeWeasel, hats off gents.
A cohesive collective, woohoo!

Yeah cheers mate, we tried to keep it civil. Smokeweazel did get grumpy with me by the end cos I wouldn't read the blog site he was talking about but he didn't lose it which is cool.