Wednesday, September 27, 2006

David Miliband's Dodgy Figures

This morning on the Today programme, David Miliband was doing a scare-job on the audience over global warming. Unfortunately he surpassed himself. He said that "the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has nearly doubled since the industrial revolution, from 220 ppm then to 425 ppm today".

The real figures are 270 ppm 250 years ago, 381 now - in other words, an increase of 41%, not 100%. For proof see HERE and HERE. How long before we can read his Climate Change dodgy dossier?

PS For the avoidance of doubt, I am not denying global warming and climate change are vital issues we must address. But let's do it in a rational way and stick to the facts.

UPDATE: Ben Thomas from Greenpeace I suspect Milliband meant ‘CO2 equivalents’ – that’s the figure that includes methane and other much more potent greenhouse gases, which does stand at 425 ppmv.

51 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any domestic policy makes bugger all difference to the enviroment with Petrol in the US 2p per tonne , production outsourced to Asia for labour costs,and air travel politically impossible to tax .

This fact may not make climate change go away but you do wonder what they are on about all the time. I fear it is a hairy shirt to make us feel virtuous and no moe

Scipio said...

Iain, sorry to piddle on your box of fireworks, but I think Milliband was spot-on today (even if he got his figures wrong). I don't often agree with this nerdy aparachik, but he is right on this.

As he said - be alarmen, but not alarmist!

Anonymous said...

So, at the start of the industrial revolution, how exactly did they THEN measure CO2 concentrations?

If Rome thought Brittannia a particularly fine wine growing area why should we worry?

Anonymous said...

Well said Iain, Milliband shows himself to be solidly in the Blair/Cambell/Mandleson tradition of utter lies whenever it suits them.

I nearly threw up at the fawning article on him and Douglas Alexander in the Observer last weekend, what a pair of tossers. But it's OK because they can quote Fukuyama, who most serious academics now regard as a passe busted flush. Once again showing how seriously NL is behind the times, still relying on a Clintonite economic analysis (the "third way") that was out of date about 6 years ago.

Iain Dale is so spot on with these postings it makes me wonder why the NL speechwriter idiots don't read his blog for a bit - they might learn something.

Anonymous said...

I also believe in glabal warming, but do not believe it is the problem many try and portray it as, and while it is a huge problem, I think it is a natural phenomenon to a large extent.

Millibland is the new Bliar and is being feted as such, and that is a HUGE problem for him, quite apart from he is a tosser quite out of his depth as an MP if nothing else. No-one is taken in anymore by spin...not like they were, and Labours core vote has totally collapsed in England as has their membership...so it does not bode well for Millibland.

And why are you saying he has produced a dodgy dossier? You'll have Alistair Campbell threatening you. If that happens let me know, and even five six, I will dig him and kick his fucking teeth in...he and Bliar really get on my tits... ô¿ô

Anonymous said...

Is Milliband the most annoying figure in politics?

Hasn't anyone poined out to him that global temperatures have been shifting for centuries?

Environmentalism is the new religion for lefties. Marxism has been well and truly shafted so now they need other excuses to justify state control and planning.

Anoneumouse said...

The sun is hot and dying

what can we do about it?

Anonymous said...

Dodgy figures? Dodgy barnet also for Milipedia. We used to call it the Wehrmacht Helmet hairstyle at school.

Small amounts of global warming have been of immense benefit to the Sussex sparkling wine industry, which seems to have been totally overlooked by Gore and Cameron. A little bit of balance and perspective, if you please.

The Military Wing Of The BBC said...

"celebrate by buying the Telegraph"

is that the Barclay Twins sexual fantasy or Murdoch's plan to take over the earth?

Scipio said...

There is no doubt that historic damage done to the environment is now really beginning to cause havoc with the planet's fragile ecosystems, and is a major cause of poverty - and continues to threaten poverty to places like sub-sahara africa, where declining levels of rainfall threaten 300 million people with strvation and perpetual drought!

Many people have heard of global warming - but few (worryingly) have heard of global dimming - something that is almost certainly the cause of much of the drought which Africa experiences.

What is agreed by scientists is this: With each passing year, less sunlight reaches the earth than the previous year. In fact, the current thinking is that levels of sunlight have fallen by 10% over the past 30 years. No one is sure what causes global dimming, but it is likely to be solid fuel pollution (i.e. soot from wood burning, exhaust fumes - particularly diesel - and other solid carbon based emissions such as coal) in the atmosphere, which then reflects back sunlight into outer-space.

Furthermore, it is now highly likely that global dimming was responsible for the African droughts of mid 1980s, as the falling sunlight levels altered rainfall patterns - eventually causing drought and famine.

Since efforts have been made to reduce the level of pollution in the atmosphere, rainfall patterns have begun to normalise back to pre-1980's levels.

However, what is worrying is this - if the world is getting less sunlight (and therefore less heat), why is the planet getting hotter?

The answer is simple. Due to pollution - particularly the impact of carbon dioxide and CFC's, in the upper atmosphere, which cause the ozone to thin, allowing more solar radiation to get through to the lower atmosphere. Here it shines down and onto the earth - and is warming it up - the 'Greenhouse Effect'.

However, and worryingly, if this is happening with 10% less sunlight than 30 years ago - and the lower atmosphere is beginning to get cleaner as rainfall cleans out the soot particles and cleaner technologies reduce the level of new soot pollution, then aren't scientific projections about the rate of increase in global temperature too low?

Yes - almost certainly. We can, in reality, expect that as the lower atmosphere gets cleaner, then due to the un-repairable damage in the upper atmosphere, the rate of global warming will increase much beyond what scientists have historically agreed was likely!

Therefore, the whole globe needs to take action on both global warming (by stopping greenhouse gas emissions) and by moving away from burning 'dirty fuels' such as wood and coal, and move on to cleaner fuels such as gas - and perhaps (dare I say it) even nuclear. The challenge comes in getting the billions in the third world who cannot afford to use gas to do so! Here again, the first and third world need to be working together, and not one exploiting the other for short-term profit. Cheap clean fuel technology is now essential.

There is therefore as much of an urgency to challenge the impact of the damage caused to the environment as there is to tackle poverty. Both are moral imperatives and both will not work without the other being challenged. If we stop trying to resolve the environmental issues, then there will be more shortages and more poverty as a result. This will probably result in mass poverty and famine induced migration - mostly north to rich Europe. In order to stop the third world polluting, we need to make access to clean fuel technology affordable for all - including villagers in India and Africa who currently burn coal and wood - releasing tonnes of soot and carbon into the atmosphere!

We also need to shout at George Bush, and wake up America to the consequences of heir addiction to petrol, oil and coal - and illustrate that the lomng-term consequences of oil addiction are not just the need to topple dicatators in order to secure short-term supplies, but the eventual destruction of the atmosphere.

You might find me alarmist - but better that than you in 50 years time saying 'Ooops'!

Scipio said...

Injured: Harsh - but fair!

Anonymous said...

Why should Wikipedia have more authority than Milipedia? 250 years ago George Berkeley, one of the wisest of his generation, stated there was no such thing as one thousandth of an inch. In such an intellectual climate, how did they measure parts per million of carbon dioxide?

Anonymous said...

google is skynet, gradgrind - you can measure historical CO2 levels very accurately in core samples from the poalr ice sheets.

Although, hurry hurry, whilst stocks last....

Anonymous said...

Try reading this link for an alternative view.

http://epw.senate.gov/speechitem.cfm?party=rep&id=263759

Anonymous said...

We're very lucky to be living in the interglacial period between two ice ages. 15,000 years ago, where I live now was under half a mile of ice. within another 10,000 years that ice will be back.

What's lacking is perspective. Over the past two million years there has been an ice age every 100,000 years or so: roughly 90,000 years of cold followed by 10,000 years of warmth.

The climate will change, has always been changing and there is nothing much we can do about it.

Anonymous said...

I've been indirectly involved in some of the associated science, some of which is biased, poorly conducted and highly dubious. I do though believe climate change is a serious problem.

What annoys me most is that these figures are quoted without any associated error (which is criminal conduct for a scientist) and it loses all credibility.

gunslinger said...

While on balance I believe the planet is warming and that some of that is likely to be due to Anthropogenic CO2 emissions, I remain deeply sceptical of politicians motivations.

Remember these guys are the same guys that have been telling you the roads are getting safer, and using that to justify speed camera policy - the police numbers back it up (they get cashback!), but the numbers from the hospitals for road fatalities and serious injuries don't. They have remained relatively unchanged for the past 10 years.

Bit inconvenient that, means that around 59,000 are killed or seriously injured on our roads each year, or statistically your chances of being killed or seriously injured on the roads over your the next 10 years are roughly 1%, if thing's don't change. They are not good odds, but unfortunately (for us) road safety is not sexy at the moment but climate change is.

I also remember that during the 1970s, peptic ulcers were largely thought to be caused by too much good living or stress, resulting in draconian diets for many patients. Today it's widely accepted that 75% of ulcers are caused by bacteria and they respond to antibiotics.

Sceince doesn't always get it right.

Anonymous said...

Iain,

I believe Miliband was actually correct - you are are only referring to the CO2 level but GHGs comprise more than just CO2, methane etc are far more potent and were also taken into account with his figures.

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases

Anonymous said...

No indeed, Mr Yalland, Global Dimming is a new one on me. Links to peer-reviewed scientific reports please.

Anonymous said...

Quote ID: "But let's do it in a rational way and stick to the facts."

Tell me Iain, when were you last aware of any NuLiebour minister sticking to the facts ?

Don't be so silly !

Anonymous said...

To those wondering how they know historic co2 levels they can use samples from ice cores in the north pole to see the previous levels. yes there is natural variation in co2 levels however it has now reached a point beyond that and in fact if we were to stop emitting all co2 then we would find that the global temperature wouldnt balance for a few years yet.
The point about milliband is that he got the figures wrong; it shows he doesnt really care, he political point scoring and that people like him who strech the truth stop the majority from believing the actually problem. Which DOES exist. Finally if any tory is wanting to moan the problem isnt real shut up. The party is being modifiec to include a caring environmental policy. This is GOOD. dont be deluded the world is changing and this change is making the party popular it is attracting the young people back to the party. The very people who generally deliver the leaflets knock on the doors get out the vote and actually win the elections on the ground. so when labour slip up like this write to your local papers, let it be known that they dont know what there talking about get people releasing that only the tories will protect the environment. if you dont like the party being like this keep quite there is always going to be something in a party you dont like but you def dont want to have another 5 years of this nu labour rubbish.

Anonymous said...

colin d it no that it heating up on any one day it that the average yearly temp is raising

Anonymous said...

Oh, NOW I see..

David Millipede is evidence of Global Dimming. Of course, it's so obvious when pointed out...

Anonymous said...

This debate left the land of reason some time ago, I doubt it will ever now return from the island of hysteria and crass posing. Lewisham are putting a windmill on top of their town hall. An expensive piece of pious public art.

Anonymous said...

Oh dear. Climate change again.

The first thing to be said is that the climate changes. It always has and always will, human beimgs or no human beings; that's what climates do, for heaven's sake!

The second thing to be said is that anyone who ever tells you, on any topic, that 'the science is settled', demonstrates in letters of fire a mile high that they do not know the first thing about science. The whole point about science is that it is not and can not ever be 'settled'.

All scientific 'conclusions' are provisional; everything in science that may be thought 'settled' (not a word used by serious scientists, by the way) can be overturned in an instant by new evidence or new theories.

The history of science is full of example of this, from Copernicus taking on the 'settled' cosmology of the Roman Catholic Church to Einstein overturning Newton's 'settled' theory of gravity... at the end of the 19th century, the prevailing view was that physics was just about all 'settled'; there was nothing more to do except some tiding up of loose ends. Since then we've had Relativity and Quantum Theory, to name just two of many new things, and we are now quite clear that there is a long, long way to go yet in physics... settled? schmettled!

And so it is true in every serious science.

But then what is passed off as 'climate science' and swallowed whole by scientifically-illiterate politicians of every hue (even a certain American ex-vice-president who once claimed to have invented the internet: roll-on-floor-laughing-time there) is really barely science at all.

The whole business of dire climate predictions are based on a number of closely-related computer simulations that all assume that global warming is happening and, gosh, when you run them they then say it's happening.

This has been proved conclusively: replace all the so-called 'accurate' (there's good reason to doubt, but that's a digression) historical data used in these models with random numbers, and you get exactly the same dire forecasts. Funny, that.

Remember GIGO: 'garbage in, garbage out'?

They are really a load of tosh, but the scientific illiterate politicians swallow them whole.

It says little for their power of independent critical judgement, but I suspect it says even more for politician's craven need to believe that they have the power to do anything through politics. 'Delusions of grandure' is the term.

Well, they don't have that power. The world's climate is far too vast and powerful a mechanism of us poor mortals--even all of us acting together, if that were ever to happen--to make one iota of difference.

It's time we all grew up and concentrated our efforts on issues that we human beings can actually do something about, instead of playing at King Canute--because that's all this will come down to. Whatever the king does, the tide will still come in. Or not. Or go out.

Because we do not even have the power to know what will happen next if we do nothing, let alone wasting our resources on changing anything to supposedly stop it.

Which makes changing anything for that reason, not an insurance policy but a reckless gamble--an act of collective insanity, actually.

Scipio said...

Anonymous 10.51 - spot on. Excellent post!

Scipio said...

2boR2b: I am afraid that whilst the scientific community disagrees about the 'extent'of global warming, they agree it is happening. Also, global dimming is pretty incontravertable, as it is backed up by scientific data of pan-handle evaporation expereiments for the past 100 plus years!

Anonymous said...

Adrain Yalland I dont fin you alarmist i find you a twat!
A gullible one at that.
As you are no doubt aware at one time this land mass we ocupy was covered in ice , it then melted.
Why was that?
it certainly has sweet FA to do with range rovers and coal fires.
You and fols lke you are having your pant taken down by grant hungry scientists and tax hungry arsehole politicians.

Anonymous said...

i'll tell you why Miliband's "climate change" mantra is a load of utter tosh.

if we WERE heading towards a Venusian style climate, you would be seeing a sudden headlong rush into spending on space technology - to get as many of us off the planet as fast as possible.

remember all those space colony ideas from the 1960s/70s? where has all that gone to?

"climate change" is utter bunk - its being used by socialists like Miliband as an excuse to tax and control us even more.

it matters not a jot what we do in this country about it - thousands of windfarms will be offset by the thousands of coal fired stations in China. And yet , i see nothing being done about Chinese pollution.

Anonymous said...

I saw him on Newsnight last night - and as usual he made my wife's skin creep and she was "forced" out the room so she didn't have to look or listen to him him.

Perhaps a friend should have told him before he went into politics that he'd had a charisma bypass.

But then again that applies to all the Cabinet members (apart from Alan Johnson) these days.

Must make note to self : Keep interview with Milliband on Divo to force wife out of TV room, so can watch Gas Plasma during important footy matches.

Etzel Pangloss said...

Chicken Little has just pointed out to me, that emperor Canutes new suit looks great has he pushes back the tide of human arrogance..

Anonymous said...

Global warming? - when I did my O-Level Geology we were heading into a Global Ice Age.

Can any body tell me what measure these effects will have globally to carbon emission - and whether carbon emissions are the cause of global warming, or is it deforestation - or are these just correlated with Global warming???!!!

Johnny Ball was rabbiting on the radio about a month back that the UK produces 2% of worlds carbon and that some UK target or other will reduce our carbon output by 2%. I missed a bit in the middle but he ended up saying these targets will effect 2% of 2% of 2% of the worlds carbon output.

On the other hand my mate was in China and told me that in lots of the cities the air was thick with coal smog. They build a coal fired power station every week. Maybe halting the industrialisation of China would help more than cutting our own emissions.

The Hitch said...

if we are making so much carbon then couldnt we solve the problem by turning the whole country in a giant pencil factory and exporting them all to china?

neil craig said...

There is an amusing Maudie Littlehampton cartoon from set during the debate on legalising homosexuality on how the amazing thing was that every MP had been able to give the impression that he personally had never met a homosexual.

I was reminded of this by Iain's need to put in a discalimer that he personally had no doubts about global warming (or as it is more safely now being called climate change).

Since the IPCC report the global temperature has not increased, in fact there has been a tiny statisticaly unimportant decrease.

The evidence is that such warming as there is is caused largely or entiraly by variations in the Sun's output (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060926_solar_activity.html) & is well within historic variability.

That we are at least equally likely to be heading into a long term natural ice age.

That a small degree of warming would actually be quite comfortable.

That Antactic ice (90% of the world's store) is actually increasing.

That there is no evidence (computer models are theories not evidence) for catastrophic anthropogenic warming.

That well before the end of this century, unless we are complete idiots (a possibility I do not discount) we will have a good enough space industry to provide enough mirrors or shields for Earth to do anything we want with the weather (in zero-G you can build square miles of structure thinner than tin foil).

Anonymous said...

Adrain Yalland, while the scientific community does agree that it's a little bit warmer than 100 years ago, it's a very small amount warmer and there's no agreement among serious scientists about why.

That it might be due to CO2 seems highly improbable. CO2 is only responsible for about 2% of all the atmospheric greenhouse effect; something like 95% is caused by water vapour. Short of roofing over the oceans, how would you control that?


It's also clear it was much warmer about 1,000 years ago (glaciers in Iceland and Greenland are only now starting to retreat enough to uncover the remains of the Viking farmhouses that once thrived there) and as already noted, almost 2,000 years ago, Yorkshire wine was considered rather good in the Roman Empire. Was this due to Roman 4x4s, or was it natural?

As for global cooling: the only evidence for this is that when all aircraft were forced to land right after 9/11, the contrails dissapeared and the US temperature rose 1 degree. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not. But if not, this makes a strong case, not for taxing airlines but subsidising them: with enough aircraft up there, all this nasty global warming would stop...

... like I said, changing anything (like taxing flying, for example) to supposedly stop global warming is not an insurance policy but a reckless gamble--an act of collective insanity.

By-the-way facts to bear in mind:

(1) Earth's global temperatures has actually fallen every year since 1998.

(2) There's global warming going on on Mars. It's now been measured over the last seven (earth) years or so. Martian 4x4s, I suppose?

Anonymous said...

I think there are some poignant questions that politicians should answer before we go too far down this route.

1) Several studies have shown that the cost-benefit ratio of tackling climate change is lower than many other worthy causes for humanity. Would it not be more sensible to tackle those with our hard-earned money?

2) During the late 1940s and the 1950s global temperatures flattened out -- this despite the rapid growth of the Japanese, Russian and American economies as well as the development of jets. Should we wonder whether anthropological influences on the climate's undeniable change are less significant than we think?

3) If politicians on the left seek to control individualism by using environMENTALISM there's a risk that people will start treating it like a new socialism. We, on the right, must make it clear that avoiding damage to the environment is not a left-wing issue and that the left-wing solutions to climate change are dangerous and, often, counter productive (see the pressure on cars vs. the pressure on aeroplanes).

Johnny Norfolk said...

It proves again that you cannot believe anything this government tells you. Yet we still have people here defending them.

Anonymous said...

There is no such thing as global warming - just the latest excuse for the left to attack business.

It's just a pity David Camerfool doesn't understand that.

Anonymous said...

If we turned milliband off think of the hot air not produced.
anyway if UK plc shut down 2% difference in emmisions wow load of lefty tosh to justify more taxes to hose there pet projects with.

Anonymous said...

He stated that teperatures had increased by 1 deg in the last 30 years. However, 30 years ago temperatures were going down and we were being warned about the impending ice age! Good job it warmed up a bit, then! Shame to see Iain feels that he has to publicly confirm his adherence to the doctrine at the end of his post. Won't be too long before the crime of 'climate change denial' is on the statute books.

Anonymous said...

(Apologies if you've already edited this rant out, Iain, not sure it got through the first time)


2br02b and the climate change sceptics:

Yes, science is never settled. Science is a process, the results of which define our best

understanding of the world at the present time. Very little can be proven to be absolutely true,

although theories can be proven to be absolutely not true if observations do not match their

predictions.

However, this does not mean that everything science describes can be taken as mere opinion and ignored

if it does not fit with your views. Gravity may not fit well with Quantum Mechanics and our

understanding of it may be wrong, but it predicts extremely accurately how your apple falls to the

floor.


We do know some things from taking measurements:

a) There is more CO2 in the atmosphere than for the last 800000 years. The climate has always

changed, yes, but the levels of CO2 have always been below 300ppm but are now 380ppm and rising. This

is measured directly from ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica.

b) The extra CO2 was our doing. The isotope ratio of carbon (Carbon-12 to Carbon-13) in plant matter

is slightly different to the general atmosphere, so when we burn old plant matter, we change this

ratio.

c) Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas - it reflects certain infra red frequencies which are radiated

from the ground but lets in most of the frequencies emitted from the sun.

d) Global temperatures in the past (measured from ice cores and also from vegetation records)

correlate extremely well with CO2 levels in the atmosphere.


Now you may argue that climate scientists take these measurements and our knowledge of the atmosphere

and run away with them to draw unlikely conclusions about the amount of warming that will happen in

the future or whether it will happen at all.

This is similar to arguing that how your apple falls to the ground is irrelevant to how a spacecraft

will behave on the way to Mars, before you've actually sent one. You'd be wrong, but there is no way

to prove that without actually sending the spacecraft.

The only way to prove what will happen when CO2 levels reach 500ppm or 600ppm is to run the

experiment. But do you really want to run this experiment with the only planet you've got?


Fair enough, Millibland knows nothing about the science, he's just spouting what he thinks will get

him elected. But just because we don't like him doesn't mean we should ignore the problem.

I'm afraid that Tony actually has it right for once, Nuclear Power is our only answer at present. We

just aren't prepared to stop living the way we do now, so we have to find sufficient energy from a

non-carbon source. There are many political reasons that this is a good idea for the UK, anyway.

Saying that we can only have a 2% effect is not relevant. Someone else's bad behaviour is not an

excuse for yours. Besides, gaining a technology lead in clean energy would be a big advantage - there

might even be money in it.



And no, I'm not a climate scientist, or a nuclear engineer (are there any left in the UK?), but I did

a quite a bit of digging into the issue back in 1989...


PS The 1970's ice age business - I don't think this was a serious theory backed up by direct evidence

- other than "we're overdue for another one". The scientific literature did not support it at the

time and it is really just an urban myth. If your geography teacher taught you it then they were just

going along with the tabloids - but no change there.

Anonymous said...

"That well before the end of this century, unless we are complete idiots (a possibility I do not discount) we will have a good enough space industry to provide enough mirrors or shields for Earth to do anything we want with the weather (in zero-G you can build square miles of structure thinner than tin foil)."

thats exactly what i'm on about - where is the Miliband initiative to bring back the British space program to investigate this technology , as an insurance policy so to speak? where are the proposals to have solar energy power stations in orbit, transmitting energy back to earth via microwave?

i see nothing of those big picture ideas - just "nuclear power" and idiotic recycling schemes.

compare and contrast with the cold war, where the talk was *seriously* about stuff like terraforming Mars in case we had a nuclear war. Big stuff - that was seriously discussed. I see nothing of that nowadays. that tells me that its not a big issue - its just a religion, jumped on by the likes of Miliband, the BBC drones and numerous other busybodies who are using it as a vehicle to control our lives.

And another thing - ever heard about rainforest depletion recently? remember when that was a "big thing" about 10 years ago, with Sting buying up acres of land in Brazil. Oh , thats dissapeared - its no longer the "trendy" thing. Well, the rainforests are still being cut down, while Miliband, Cameron and co. bleat on about "carbon emissions". its utter crap.

Anonymous said...

"Besides, gaining a technology lead in clean energy would be a big advantage - there
might even be money in it."

climate change or no climate change , i would 100 per cent support that. why are we dependent on oil supplied by Arab dictators, Iranian nutters , Venuzelean Chavez crazies and Russian bureacrats?

clean energy will allow us in the free west to be free of all of that. From a national security point of view, it just makes a lot of sense.
Right now, a proportion of that money you filled up your car with goes to the Saudi government. Which then goes onto funding Madrassas in Pakistan. Which then indoctrinate terrorists.

that is just an utterly crazy situation. and if hydrogen, nuke fusion or wind turbines or solar energy or whatever get us away from that, then i'm all for it.

Anonymous said...

PS The 1970's ice age business - I don't think this was a serious theory backed up by direct evidence...

Yup. Just like the present fashion for global warming isn't a serious theory backed up by direct evidence.

If the greenies were really serious believers in global warming they would have long ago been pushing hard for nuclear power, at it's the only realistic way to change the situation.

But they're not. In their hearts, not even they really believe this man-made global warming nonsense.

When Friends of the Earth start pushing for nuclear power plants, I'll start to take this business more seriously.

Anonymous said...

2bor02b -

You say that you won't take it seriously until the Greens start supporting Nuclear Power. How about the "father" of the green movement, James Lovelock, who is of course a real scientist? He says he'll have the waste in his back garden (because radiation isn't anywhere near as dangerous as everyone has been led to believe).

I agree with you about some of the so called green groups, such as Greenpeace (and FOE to a lesser extent), they have so many interests in trying to scare people its not funny, but again, just because you don't like some of the people involved doesn't mean you can ignore this issue. This isn't their invention, climate scientists have been talking about it for 30 years.

I can't find a single paper from 1970 that says that there will be an ice age (only that _some_ of our pollution is cooling the earth, which may or may not be counteracted by CO2 levels - yes they discussed that then), whereas I don't think it would be hard to find an independent scientist today that would support the likelihood of anthropomorphic climate change.

Anyway, if you need to see the experiment before you believe it, its likely you'll get your way...

Scipio said...

Peter Bonkers Hitchens: Nice man aren't you! I always find people resort to silly insults when they haven't got anything more intelligent tosay! You are sadly not the acception to this rule, but rather prove the point. And I suppose you believe the earth is flat too!

Anonymous 9.41 - I will get back to you - can you email me your contact details please (click on the icon to go to my blog/pages etc).

As for the rest of your 'flat earters' out there, if you do not understand that global warming/climate change is happening (whether it is a natural phenominon or not), then you are bonkers. It is happening, and we (i.e. humanity) are at best exacerbating the problem, and at worst, causing the problem.

The reason why Yorkshire wine was considered so good by the Romans was because of the kind of vine they were growing (there are plenty of red grapes which thrive in cooler coditions - such ast the Cabernet Frank for example, which grows in Alpine regions of Austria and Slovenia), and not because the weather was balmy! Also, lots of white wine (Gewurztraminer for example) can be grown in regions where half the year is spent under ice! In fact, some of the nicest desert wines I have drunk are 'ice wines', where the grapes are left to freeze on the vine, then dried, then pressed in the spring! That sounds just like Yorkshire to me!

The reasons why scientists predicted that the UK would be under ice was because the gulf stream could stop due to climate change - and it is the gulf stream which keeps the UK average temperature higher than other countries which are on our lattitude. This is why Scotland can grow sub-tropical plants. If the gulf stream stops, it's game over for the UK. we will be Iceland (but at least that will stop the immigration problem - no one will want to live here anymore - not even the Brits)!

For God's sake, get your head out of the collective sand pit and stop being so prejudiced because of your addiction to your own rhetoric! Just take an impartial look at the science and the facts.

Science and scientists disagree about the 'extent', but not the reality.

Also, Iain, having done some more research into Milliband's comments, I think actually that he was correct in his figures. It see,ms he was talking about all 'greenhouse gasses', and not just Carbon Dioxide. If you add all the greenhouse gasses together, his figure is correct - worryingly!

I dislike him, but that doesn;t mean he is not capable of being correct!

Anonymous said...

Dr Random, you're quite right about James Lovelock on nuclear power. Mind you, it's worth remembering that Lovelock was a rabid ice age panic-merchant back in the '70s...

... and I have in front of me a book called 'ICE: A chilling scientific forecast of a new ice age', published in 1981, written by Sir Fred Hoyle, FRS, Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University.

Here he sets out it intrictae detail, with numerous references to various papers backing up his thesis, why we face an imminent ice age.

So if you "...can't find a single paper from 1970 that says that there will be an ice age..." you've not been looking very hard.

Sir Fred Hoyle, unlike the so-called 'climate scientists' of today was a real scientist, not a player with computer models that have the answer they want built in.

It turns out he was probably wrong, but I promise you, these boy-'scientists' are ten times wronger.

The plain truth is that the world's climate system is a vastly complex system with (probably) trillions of variable, and anyone who tells you they know what's going to happen to it (let alone change it) is, consciously or not, deliberately or not, lying--probaly to themselves as well.

We humans are just not smart enough, or powerful enough!

neil craig said...

Dr random that was a well thought out post & I am going to make a slightly cheap point:

"although theories can be proven to be absolutely not true if observations do not match their
predictions"

GW theory predicts that upper atmosphere temperatures will rise more than the ground & sea (air being where the CO2 is). In fact observations show atmosphere is rising less (which is what you would expect if it is because of a brighter sun). This is a cheap point because ALL these measurements are very fine statistical measures at the limit of our measuring ability & so could be wrong. But so could those the GW fans like.

It is worth remembering that when we talk of CO2 being 80ppm above records that is parts per million. It is quite possible that the effect of this not enough to provide even the smallest catastophe.

Battle of Vienna I entirely agree with your agreement with me, though we are going to need nuclear to get through most of this century. The human race has far more capacity to build & grow, to do the big picture & really achieve things than ever in our past & it is now that at least the western political class is telling us to hide under the bed from a long line of non-existent eco-threats.

neil craig said...

Iain regarding the update that says Milibands figure of 425 ppm against 381 is right if you include methane etc. This means, assuming cow flatulence hasn't been that bad, that the intial figure should also be increased from 270 to 311ppm greenhouse gases. In which case far from the doubling he claims or even the 40% you accepted the real greenhouse gas increase has been only 36%. My thanks to Greenpeace for that helpful interjection.

Anonymous said...

For more information on the myth that the Gulf Stream keeps us from freezing over see here:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/51963?fulltext=true&print=yes

For a 1974 report in Time magazine on the coming ice age see here

http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Time_AnotherIceAge_June241974.pdf#search=%22time%20magazine%20ice%20age%22

If you take the time to have an impartial look at the science and the 'facts', you'll see that the 'science' behind anthropogenic global warming is 9/10ths wishful thinking.

Anonymous said...

Milly is spot on and you as usual are taking the retentive approach to the greatest challenge to the planet we have faced - probably because you are afraid to give up your 4x4 for those dangerous trips between Essex and Chelsea.