David Bellamy does global warming scepticism on BBC Wear : Hi s main point is "strawberries in December, frog spawn in February – not 2007 but 1868 and no one blamed global warming then. I have asked the global warmers how to explain facts like that and they always don't give me an answer. So I am a sceptic"
David runs the now-standard sceptic line: Yes, climate change is happening, but it is all due to natural variation from the sun. Digging up fossil carbon stores and putting them into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide has nothing to do with it.
He asks for an explanation of what happened in 1868. I have put up the IPCC graph of surface temperature anomalies above. As you see, there are fairly regular variations (with a period of about 15 years) of the red line, the 5 year average, and one of these occurred around 1870. That's it, David. That's the fact. 1868 was a warm year. Just as it is a fact that we are on a downward part of a variation since 2000 - which is seized on by denialists as "proof" that the earth is cooling.
Real Atmosphere science has to take in the widest view, take in all the factors. Surface temperatures are the result of many factors, which include green house gases, El Nino, La Nina, proximity to the sun, solar irradiance (to a very small degree), and albedo. We are certainly nowhere near a conclusive picture. But we have enough evidence, and enough consensus within the scientific community, to take action in decarbonising our economy, and enhancing natural carbon sinks to rebalance the earth's greenhouse effect.
There is a concise summary of the debate here.
6 comments:
The UN IPCC is a political body spitting out reports that are designed to support a predetermined political agenda.
As for Al Gore:
Gores film An Inconvenient Truth is full of lies. Not exaggerations. Not errors.
Lies!
Al Gore air brushed out the little ice age and the medieval warming periods from his graphs in AIT. We wouldn't want people knowing that the earth was two degrees celsius warmer than it is now during the medieval warming period. Somehow man survived without the use of central cooling. Gore left off the little ice age because he wouldn't want to demonstrate that the warming trend he talks about began at the end of an ice age.
He also stated that sea lever would rise by 20 feet by the end of the century. Even the UN IPCC (harldy conservative on this issue) estimates only 4 to 36 inches.
Gore also suggested that the Aral Sea has dried up because of global warming. In actuality it has been drained for the irrigation of cotton crops.
Gore claims that for the first time ever, a significant number of polar bears had drowned. First of all, they can swim around fifty miles. Secondly, the researchers at one of America's most respected think tanks the Competitive Enterprise Institute tracked down the study Gore was quoting and found that only four polar bears had drowned during severe storm conditions.
Furthermore, he quotes a quickly debunked paper suggesting there is a 100% consenus among scientists that athropogenic global warming is real. Here are a few scientists who must have missed the memo:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/GlobalWarming.html
It is worth noting that a UK Court ruled that AIT contained many errors and should not be shown in public schools without a warning about the errors.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/09/court-identifies-eleven-inaccuracies-al-gore-s-inconvenient-truth
I find it interesting that Al Gore talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk. He jets around the world in his private plane. He rides around in gas guzzling limousines, and has a compound so wasteful of energy that it needs its own power grid. His houseboat more than likely isn't that energy efficient either.
I suppose conserving energy and fighting global warming is for the little people. Let the peasants drive the small dangerous energy efficient cars, I'll drive what I want.
Al Gore was worth about $2 Million Dollars when leaving office and is worth over $100 Million now. He's laughing all the way to the global warming bank. It's a pity some are too gullible to see it. As one of my favorite SNL characters might have said "global warming has been bery bery good to him."
By the way, the flat earthers were the ones who refused to debate. "The debates over, we have a consensus." Sound familiar? If anyone is a flat earther, it's Al Gore.
Everyone who has seen An Inconvenient Truth should view The Great Global Warming Swindle in order to get a more balanced view of the true state of the science on this issue.
You may view it by visiting:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/Videos.html
It is the first video listed.
Happy Viewing,
Dash RIPROCK III
Hi Dash
Thanks for commenting. My reply to your points is up as a main piece, Debate with a Climate Change sceptic.
I love the title of your Hootersville Gazette: Bitter small town Americans clinging to their guns and their religion.
May I ask what religion that would be?
Mr Riprock, looks like you're sat on rapidly shrinking ice. I understand that amongst others the US military are of the view that human induced climate change is a-comin'.
But what do they know, eh?
And just this week in the UK, the sober and practical Institution of Mechanical Engineers produced a report based on the fact of human induced climate change.
Without going over the CC debate again, it seems to me that most (if not all) CC sceptics come from a particular political perspective, that is one of supporting conventional free market economics.
Interventionist economics, are an anathema, therefore they pick the data and research that is supportive to their theories.
I think you're right, RedGreen Nick. It starts on an ideology based on Individualism that produces a belief in free market capitalism, the theory of which the wheels are falling off one by one in the present financial crisis.
But like a Disney character who has run off a cliff but does not yet appreciate that terra firma is no longer supporting it, the free market ideologists are still convinced that their belief is the only thing that matters.
Trouble is, they are very influential in the newspapers (e.g. Melanie Phillips) and we have to work at telling the world how tragiaclly mistaken they are.
If only they were right...
What we’ve got here is a Risk Management situation and our current generation of Free Market Risk Managers haven’t exactly covered themselves in glory recently.
Conventional “wisdom” is only fine until the bubble bursts.
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