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'The Great Global Warming Swindle': Is Climate Change A Myth?

Stormkhan said:
I think the main objection to nuclear power is one of perspective.
I mean, it's radiation innit?
We hear about all the accidents and contamination (quite rightly), but we never get to hear about the fail safes.
Oh, and waste disposal is a major concern too.

The biggest issue I have is the drive to make reactors, and energy generation stations, cheaper. Cost-cutting seems to be one of the largest factors in many incidents.
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I remember being told by an engineer in the UK nuclear industry that Chernobyl couldn't have happened here even if a similar sequence of errors occurred. There was a failsafe that was built into UK reactors (I don't know if it was ALL of them!) that would automatically dump inert material on the reactor core if it ran out of control. It would render the reactor permanently useless. I assume it couldn't be turned off by a lazy operative...

I should make it clear that my position is that climate change is occurring, but that man-made CO2 is not the cause. And that we meddle with the climate (as Bill Gates is proposing) at our great peril.
 
Cochise said:
I remember being told by an engineer in the UK nuclear industry that Chernobyl couldn't have happened here even if a similar sequence of errors occurred. There was a failsafe that was built into UK reactors (I don't know if it was ALL of them!) that would automatically dump inert material on the reactor core if it ran out of control. It would render the reactor permanently useless. I assume it couldn't be turned off by a lazy operative...
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Shutting down the West's reactors because of Chernobyl was like having your 2023 Ferrari ordered off the roads because your next door neighbour's Ford Model T caught fire.

maximus otter
 
Our first reactors had chimneys for god sake but no doubt in time people will wonder how we thought what we are doing now was a good idea, though someone must have thought it a good idea at the time
 
Trevp666 said:
'reported'.
Anyhoo, out of sync with what? And which farmers?
I'm sure a lot of UK farmers would be more than happy for our climate here to be a touch warmer, and wetter, as it would increase the area of productivity into more northern parts. Remember that when the Romans were in charge here they were growing grapes to quite northern parts, and that was only comparatively recently.
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I do believe that the world's climate is changing, and has been quickened by human machinations.

Farmers who have worked with crops for generations can tell you that things have changed.

Not only farmers, the Inuit can also tell you the visible changes they are having in the far north. They too have depended on the land and its animals for survival. Permafrost layer is thawing, making travel and hunting for both people and animals more difficult.
 
brownmane said:
I do believe that the world's climate is changing, and has been quickened by human machinations.
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I sort of agree, I just don't believe CO2 emissions are the cause.

The enormous amount of deforestation we have been responsible for over the years strikes me as a much more likely culprit, especially the (now almost complete) destruction of the rainforests which was at it's maximum speed over the last hundred years or so, ever accelerating.

You could call the rainforests either the planets lungs or nature's air scrubbers. No amount of artifically planted forests of conifers will make up for them.
 
Cochise said:
I sort of agree, I just don't believe CO2 emissions are the cause.

The enormous amount of deforestation we have been responsible for over the years strikes me as a much more likely culprit, especially the (now almost complete) destruction of the rainforests which was at it's maximum speed over the last hundred years or so, ever accelerating.

You could call the rainforests either the planets lungs or nature's air scrubbers. No amount of artifically planted forests of conifers will make up for them.
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That is why I just said "machinations". There are many things humans have changed in our environment. Pesticides, for example have been causing songbird deaths for years.

Definitely deforestation is a major factor to climate change. In Canada we have old growth forests that are being destroyed.
 
Cochise said:
You could call the rainforests either the planets lungs or nature's air scrubbers. No amount of artifically planted forests of conifers will make up for them.
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The real lungs of the planet belong to the vegetation in the seas, particularly algae.
I've heard it said that the atmosphere would still function if all the trees in South America were cut down - but I wouldn't want to test that statement for real. I'm with you, we should all be planting trees, not chopping them down. The ones we should plant should be deciduous trees, especially fruit-bearing ones.
 
So ... save the trees? As the slogan had it back in the 70's(?)
So, we've gone from save trees and use plastic to stop plastic pollution and use paper.
I know it's more nuanced than that, but recycling could help both; reduce plastic pollution thus allowing the use of plastic where paper isn't an option and recycle paper/cardboard to minimise the need for tree destruction.
 
Stormkhan said:
So ... save the trees? As the slogan had it back in the 70's(?)
So, we've gone from save trees and use plastic to stop plastic pollution and use paper.
I know it's more nuanced than that, but recycling could help both; reduce plastic pollution thus allowing the use of plastic where paper isn't an option and recycle paper/cardboard to minimise the need for tree destruction.
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Well, I haven't :) I've been concerned about deforestation since the 70's, while accepting Myth's point about algae. The modern concern about polluting the oceans in various ways I am right behind.

No harm in recycling plastic as long as it doesn't use more energy than making new plastic.

To an old cynic like me the whole change in emphasis looks like a classic switch'n'bait to distract us from what is really going on.
 
There's no doubt we're speeding up climate change, but historically if you look at millenia rather than "since records began" (200 years at the most!) our planet has had cycles of extreme cold and heat. I wonder if we're maybe trying to just delay the inevitable by removing all forms of pollution?
 
Sprite666 said:
There's no doubt we're speeding up climate change, but historically if you look at millenia rather than "since records began" (200 years at the most!) our planet has had cycles of extreme cold and heat. I wonder if we're maybe trying to just delay the inevitable by removing all forms of pollution?
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I think 200 years is not enough of a dataset to be useful for predicting climate change reliably.
OK, I'm not a statistician, so what do I know?
 
These days the weather people talk about “ weak “ steering currents caused by the earth overheating ?
 
Human penises are shrinking due to pollution, bloody hell ban all cars and air travel immediately, shut down all heating, I’m off to the local farm with a big bag of cow bungs, were doomed, doomed I tell you.
 
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Nothing at all I remember when we had pollution so bad you could walk into a lamppost and not see it and falling into a river would mean a stomach pump, I don’t want to go back. But I do object to rationing by price we’re the poor have to go without and the rich can afford to carry on as normal,
 
RaM said:
Nothing at all I remember when we had pollution so bad you could walk into a lamppost and not see it and falling into a river would mean a stomach pump, I don’t want to go back. But I do object to rationing by price we’re the poor have to go without and the rich can afford to carry on as normal,
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I agree with you about the price, we are told we are in a climate emergency but the alternatives are so much more expensive, in most cases beyond the reach of the majority, so we end up with a small minority of quite wealthy people who can afford to use alternatives preaching to those that can’t
 
Stormkhan said:
So ... save the trees? As the slogan had it back in the 70's(?)
So, we've gone from save trees and use plastic to stop plastic pollution and use paper.
I know it's more nuanced than that, but recycling could help both; reduce plastic pollution thus allowing the use of plastic where paper isn't an option and recycle paper/cardboard to minimise the need for tree destruction.
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Trees and wood products are a renewable resource but on a long time scale. The 70s campaign was to stop mature trees being felled without replacement of the same or similar species. If we collectively plant many more than we use we are on to a good thing. Edited to add: we (as a species) need to be thinking about usage and planning replanting on a scale of decades or centuries to let forest ecosystems form and mature.

The earliest plastics were based on cellulose - a component of wood pulp fibres. I have predicted that at some point the future will be wood-based as opposed to fossil fuel based - for fuels, for plastics, for buildings. Going back to a polished wooden dashboard rather than one made of plastic is something we may yet see!

Using woods for fuel is almost carbon-neutral depending on the distance it is transported/resources used to 'farm' them, as trees (and all photosynthesising plants) won't emit any more CO2 than they have converted to O2 during their lifetime.
 
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Here's an interesting take on conspiracy theories.
Please note - while the You Tube channel might be a political commentator, this particular video has no political bias.

TLDR: no matter how bizarre or counter-intuitive a conspiracy theory is, they can still be harmful to all of us.
 
Stormkhan said:
TLDR: no matter how bizarre or counter-intuitive a conspiracy theory is, they can still be harmful to all of us.
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Only if they're actually wrong.
 
Stormkhan said:
I take your point. But the last thing he points out is to ask theorists "What if you are wrong?"
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Which is a question everyone should ask themselves. Even hard science (chemistry, physics) evolves as new discoveries are made. Soft science (that not provable by experiment) is in essence no different to religion, or at least the way some religions were once regarded as infallible fact.
 
The fact that carbon dioxide retains heat is hard science, not soft science. The question is, how significant is this effect?

One answer to this is that it adds ten to a hundred times more heat to the atmosphere than all the waste heat of our civilisation. On the other hand, even this added heat is small compared to the effects of the orbital oscillations which give rise to our glacial cycle. If we were fated to enter another ice age in the next thousand years or so, then even anthropogenic global warming wouldn't stop it. But according to current thinking the next ice age is tens of thousands of years away, so we can't rely on global cooling to offset AGW.
 
eburacum said:
The fact that carbon dioxide retains heat is hard science, not soft science. The question is, how significant is this effect?

One answer to this is that it adds ten to a hundred times more heat to the atmosphere than all the waste heat of our civilisation. On the other hand, even this added heat is small compared to the effects of the orbital oscillations which give rise to our glacial cycle. If we were fated to enter another ice age in the next thousand years or so, then even anthropogenic global warming wouldn't stop it. But according to current thinking the next ice age is tens of thousands of years away, so we can't rely on global cooling to offset AGW.
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But the normal temperature between ice ages is warmer than we are currently experiencing - geological evidence supports this. Similarly CO2 levels in the atmosphere are at low levels for an interglacial period.

So how can we discount that we are simply warming up to normal after finally emerging from the last ice age? If indeed we have.
 
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