David Seymour wrote:

“What is the trade off, what will be the cost of reducing emmissions [sic] in terms of economic growth and therefore our ability to deal with other problems like poverty?”

1) You assume that reducing emissions stymies economic growth.
2) You imply that economic growth is the solution to poverty.
3) I am astonished that the ACT Party (a) recognises that poverty exists and (b) recognises the need to deal with it.

During the most recent occasion at which Richard Prebble spoke to students at the Auckland Uni Quad, when asked by a student what ACT intends to do about child poverty, his reply was as follows:

“There’s no such thing as child poverty, only fat kids whose parents make bad decisions and poor choices.”

How very illuminating…

The solution? Tax cuts? Give me a break (just not the ‘tax’ sort).

Ouch.. comes of being in a hurry. I know a few people who are sort of blobby shapes that might pass for a CO2 molecule writ large, but you are dead right and I misused the wrong word

respectfully
BJ

I do not have time to waste.

respectfully
BJ

Anthropomorphic CO2 IS an established fact. Or did you think that all the CO2 from all the dead dinosoars of a million years of planetary development went “somewhere else”?

Mugwump… I know you didn’t read carefully cause you missed the point that the site I cited is written by climate scientists, specialists in the field, who are using it to provide answers.

You may note that they answered the hurricane issue by saying that there is not good science to support that hypothesis… and that they discuss many other concerns you might have… but they aren’t “just another blog”. Since I worked with “climate scientists” and “rocket scientists” back at JPL I know one or two of the contributors and I know the character of the people who are working on this. Suggestions that they are supporting this because it is somehow in their interest are simply INSULTS. You’d be amazed at how personally these are felt. Scientific inquiry is their life.

So lets have a look at some specific articles…

How much of the CO2 is “ours”:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=160
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87

What modelling actually predicts how much heat there is:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=148

What we are talking about when we say “forcing”:
“To my mind, the ‘first-order’ forcings would be the ones without which you can’t really do without in assessing global climate change. I would therefore argue that for the global mean the well-mixed GHGs and the counterbalancing reflecitve aerosol effects are ‘first-order’ - without GHGs there is no appreciable warming signal, and without the aerosols, the warming from GHGs is excessive and important changes in the diurnal cycle and cloudiness are not captured.”

Where did the heat go:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=124
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=666

Ocean Acidification:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=169
This is more important than you seem to think, as anyone who has kept fish is well aware. If the pH changes rapidly by 0.5, all life on earth is in trouble… and that is within the range of possibilities that are suggested by the current data.

Now the point to all this is lost if you don’t connect the dots.

There are many climate models out there.

The only models that match the data CURRENTLY observed are the ones that use significant CO2 forcing. No other explanation can provide a decent explanation of what we see now AND what was the case in the last 4 interglacial periods.

There IS no competing theory that covers the facts. You come up with one and you’ll be published, there’s no “conspiracy” to suppress data.

That’s as close to “established fact” as science gets. You need an alternative theory to explain the existing warming and existing CO2 and existing acid…. etc… as well as a similar theory to explain the way it was connected a hundred thousand years ago.

Note please - I am not saying that Humans cause ALL the warming… just that we are causing warming on top of what would be expected from a “normal” interglacial cycle.

I hope this one goes in. I have had to rewrite it once now already.. and I am way too busy to try it a third time.

respectfully
BJ

Great link! http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/09/20/a-world-turned-upside-down/

George Monbiot writes about three innovative technologies which …
“… alone could cut millions of tonnes of emissions without causing any decline in our quality of life …” And the government won’t act because to do so would be “an unwarranted intervention in the marketâ€?.

Once again we see “money” and “the market” (originally human tools) regarded as entities in their own right which (in this case) take precedent over methods of reducing global warming and thus helping to save life on this planet …

Good content for some great futuristic “after the flood/collapse of society”sci fi novels …

“Humans are rational beings” … any takers?

eredwen

I’m glad you liked http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=2535

It looks like a site worth return visits to read other articles and keep up to date. (The occasional picture IS “worth a thousand words”!)

kia ora!
eredwen

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/09/20/a-world-turned-upside-down/