But What If?

[poliphilo]

But what if we're wrong about Global Warming?

OK, I know nothing- I failed my science 'O' levels- but there was this programme on Channel 4 the other night, packed full of real scientists- one of whom looked remarkably like W.H. Auden- all protesting that they weren't in the pay of the oil companies and Al Gore has got it completely, catastrophically wrong.

The case is very simple.

A. Global Warming isn't caused by CO2
B. And even if it was, the amount of CO2 emitted by our machines is miniscule compared to the amount being churned out by volcanoes, farting sheep, rotting leaves and the slowly festering sea.

To be honest, I've always been a mite sceptical. As someone who takes more of an interest in history and prehistory than the average politician, I've noticed that it's quite normal for Earth's climate to veer about from extreme to extreme. For instance, we enjoyed a lovely warm spell in the late Middle Ages- when vinyards flourished in the north of England- followed by a long cold snap- when the Thames froze over and we held frost fairs on the ice. None of this weird weather had anything to do with us and none of it brought about The End Of Civilisation As We Know It. Human beings are very adaptable. If we weren't we wouldn't have managed to colonise our planet from Alaska to Papua New Guinea. We rise to challenges and make the best of them. 

 Yay, Chateau Huddersfield! Yay, Frost Fairs!

So what if Global Warming is just a media-driven, government-sponsored, old-mill-burning, millennarian panic?

Well- apart from it being another entry in the catalogue of human idiocy- there'll be consequences, bad consequences. The Third World needs to industrialise and the First World (nobly planting trees to off-set all those holiday air-miles) is going to be doing its preachy best  to stop it-  thus perpetuating the age-old cycle of poverty, disease and preventable death. 

Not funny at all. 

But Global warming is really happening?  Yes.

What's causing it ?  Well, I can't believe you haven't noticed, but there's this big, hot, yellow thing up there in the sky and its behaviour is extremely erratic...

Comments

[shullie.livejournal.com]

I watched most of it.. fell asleep .... opppsss

but I did see the part when they say that it has more to do with the sun and it's activity than CO2.

I am of an age when we were taught that there was a new ice age on it's way... and we all needed to elarn how to survice in the snow!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember the new Ice Age too. They had us really scared, didn't they?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I believe the conjecture is...from Mr. Gore, anyway - that the CO2 intesifies the other effects. Yes, it's true, the earth has suffered from Ice Ages (which carved out our own Great Lakes and Finger Lakes). I don't know about 'hot' periods.

But the changes were much more gradual. The fact that EVERYTHING has begun to happen so quickly since the spewing of garbage into the air is proof that we are doing SOMETHING wrong.

I live near Onondaga Lake - one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world. It became polluted because people thought they could throw their garbage into it, empty the sewers of the city into it, and Syracuse China could pump their industrial waste into it. And eventually, the fish died and it became unfit for swimming and boating and CERTAINLY for drinking.

I think this is what the population of the earth is doing to the atmosphere.

Of course, I have no scientific proof.

And if the protective atmosphere between the earth and the sun disappears, then YES, the sun is going to fry the earth.

One way to decrease the population, I suppose.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Global Warming "heretics" say temperatures started rising a long while before industrial pollution really became an issue.

Interestingly, the period immediately after WWII- which saw a big rise in industrial output- also saw a temporary drop in temperature.

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Al Gore's movie? It's pretty good. He's done a lot of scientific work too. At least it seems he has. Sure he could just be making it all up.

Then I suppose it comes down to who you believe.

Johnny Ball was on the Geoof show some time last year and he was saying the whole thing was phooey as well.

But even if it's wrong and we just happen to be in a warm snap at the moment- there's nobody going to argue that pollution is a good thing- are they? I mean, I trust my lungs, and my lungs tell me smoky air is not good for me.

Etc for acid rain, smog, 'pea-soupers', increased UV, and all that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well- yes- pollution is foul. I remember London before they introduced the clean air act (or whatever it was that made the difference)- smogs so thick you couldn't see more than two or three feet ahead.

But pollution is only ever local and it's not going to destroy the planet.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the programme in question, but it's ever so complicated. G is currently writing up his PhD which is looking at certain aspects of climate change and flooding.

As far as I have grasped it:

- the earth is warming up
- partly this is still natural warming up after the last ice age
- partly it could be greater solar activity
- whatever it is, increased CO₂ levels are intensifying the effects
- we humans are producing more CO₂ than ever before
- cutting down trees is therefore contributing to the rise in CO₂
- replacing trees is good in other ways too, eg mitigating the effects of flooding

It's not just that we'll get hotter summers. The problem is, the whole weather system has far more energy in it. Events, such as storms or floods, that occured once every 300 years might now occur every 20 years, with corresponding loss of life and damage to property.

I think there are now enough humans on the planet to genuinely affect climate, and whilst some of the warming might be perfectly natural, it makes sense not to make it worse and to do everything we can to reverse or slow down the process.

The Third World will come off far worse if the planet heats up than if we stop them industrialising. Though there should be no need for that. They ought to be able to learn from our mistakes and industrialise using green sources of energy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Our increased production of CO2 is neither here nor there- because there's no link between CO2 levels and global warming.

Human activities are too insignificant to affect climate in any way. A rise in global temperature may well have unfortunate effects, but we're not causing it and there's nothing we can do about it except adapt.

At least that's the case they were putting the other night and all I can say is I found the arguments compelling

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

But as I said, the whole question is so complex that all the evidence just can't be presented properly in a TV programme. Like most science, it's not clear cut, though politicians and media people like to try to make it so.

But even if we can't make any difference to climate change, there are other reasons for changing to renewable energy sources. Fossil fuels are finite and many of the sources of oil and gas are in the hands of other countries, many of them non too stable.

Being independent in power generation seems to me to be plain common sense.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. I think we should be working very hard at developing alternatives ahead of the time- which can't be that far off- when the fossil fuels run out.

[silveredmane.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that anything that's introduced into a closed ecosystem affects everything else in the ecosystem in some way. While I think that part of the cyclic change we're experiencing is predictably traceable to the cycle itself, we've substantially speeded it up with our contribution of emissions and effluents and garbage and our extraction of oxygen producing organisms.

Robert Romanyshyn encapsulates this as "Technology is the earth's way of ridding itself of human vermin."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, it's an argument that's been going on ever since the industrial revolution kicked off. Will our technology destroy us? All I can say is it hasn't done so yet.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that they are trying to get people to watch tv. They are going to get people whose opinions differ to get people to watch, that's the media. It's a story, I do not know a single person who does science who doubts that climate change is happening.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I have a natural leaning towards heretics and underdogs.

And I thought they made a very good case.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Fair enough but I do consider the media to be actively dangerous in things like this.

Also what were their academic disciplines?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think they had qualifications in relevant fields, but I couldn't swear to it.