In the circles of scientists (and most of these are not climate scientists!) it is simply “not done” to disagree with the current dogma. This is a “God Send” for the environmental movements that milk the issue as much as they can.
Of course these organizations have the majority of support among people that are left of centre.
Many of the scientists also believe that we better reduce CO2 levels “just in case” (the precautionary principle, used to influence policies)
Many of these scientists have never worked inside “the economy”
Many of these people have never earned a tax dollar. Instead they are living off tax dollars.
There is nothing wrong with that. We need research, we need education, we need brilliant minds!
But it makes it so much easier for these minds to support the precautionary principle, they will get their salary anyway out of the seemingly bottomless coffers of the Ministers of Finance.
But the coffers are filled by the economy, not by the environmentalists (OK, Al Gore, Richard Branson and Ted Turner pay a lot of taxes, I give them that).
The environmentalists that always seem to have the time (while you and I work to make a living and earn the tax dollars) to fly to Bali or Kyoto or Bangkok and demonstrate during Climate Conferences, are living off donations, fund raising.
To give you an idea: The collective Green Groups in the USA have an annual budget of $ 1.9 billion.
These people need funds and Global Warming is giving them a huge opportunity to collect money from gullible and uneducated
(on the topic!) citizens. Scare them silly and they will fork over their dollars!
When I was over on Vancouver Island last July, high school kids were recruiting new members for GreenPeace on the street.
Of course, unpaid volunteers. I applaud these kids for giving up their free time and invest in a (what they have been told)
good cause!
Surely, GreenPeace did a lot of good in their early days, but it became more militant over time.
There are hardly any more whales to save or Bald Eagles to protect, we have done all that already.
Just listen to GreenPeace co-founder, Vancouver based Dr. Patrick Moore in the Swindle movie on why he left the organization in the late 1980s.
Many of the so called “skeptical” scientists that have dared to come out in the open, are retired and so have less pressure from their peers to stay within the “consensus”, a beautiful situation that sees wheelbarrows of funding coming into the world of scientific research on anything that reeks like “effected by Global Warming”
As Nigel Calder said: “If 15 years ago a scientists would apply for funding to do research of squirrels and their
nuts gathering behaviour, he or she would have very little chance to get any.
Today, just put on your application that you want to do that research in relation ship to the effect of Global Warming on the
success rate of that gathering of nuts, fat chance you will get funding!”

Cow, I am not a right wing nut. Far from it. When I was a student, I was as left wing as they come.
I had a poster on my bedroom window for the “PSP”, the Pacifists Socialist Party, in the early 1970s a political party with pretty (I realize now) scary programmes.
As Churchill once said: “if you are a socialist at 18, you show you have a good heart (like the kids recruiting for GreenPeace)
If you are still a socialist at 40, you are a fool!”
Today I am of centre left colour, I am “pro choice” I have no problem with gays and lesbians, for me they don’t need to get married, but if they must, OK, that has my blessing. I also believe that governments have a duty to be fiscally responsible,
encourage entrepreneurs and reward hard work with fair taxes. And…take care of the environment with smart legislation.
I am in favour of paying worker decent wages, provide good and affordable health care for everybody, give lots to the developing worlds. I agree with Bono that we have to go easy on the debts that African Nations have to the West.
I applaud him for pushing governments to forgive these debts wherever we can.
As I said earlier, Poverty is the biggest problem we face and therefore also the biggest enemy of the environment.
AIDS/HIV , Malaria, are a much bigger problem than Global Warming.
We can always make those dikes a tad higher, like they do in my original home country Holland all the time.
Global warming is not wiping out species by the “tens of thousands” That is the greatest bucket of bull that one reads these days.
How can that be?
You can count the number of species on two hands once in the arctic and antarctic areas.
Where do most species live and breed?
Right: travel closer to the equator from the Poles and the amount of species found increases hugely with every mile travelled.. Species do much, much better in a warmer world than in a colder one.
What is the “best” global temperature? Nobody can tell you that. There is no such a thing.
Economies and species do equally well in Scandinavia or Singapore, with an average annual temperature difference of something
like 23 degrees Celsius (Thanks to Nigel Lawson for that analysis, absolutely brilliant in all it’s simplicity)

And yet, the “consensus” keeps bombarding us with scare stories about “tipping points” (James Hansen, Al Gore,George Monbiot)
and “catastrophes” with a warming Globe.
We already know that a slightly warmer world is not going to see more storms or floods. In fact, when the ocean waters would warm up, storms would become more infrequent, as they usually are caused by the clashes of water temperature differences between arctic waters and more southern based ocean waters (as per dr.Richard Lindzen, MIT, USA)
All we have to do is adapt, not murder the world economies and throw millions out of work and into the gutters of the world’s cities.

Then lastly: Have faith in Humanity.
Think about what we had in technology just 100 years ago.
The horse carriages were still the rulers of the roads!
Then think another 100 years ahead and wonder where we will be with technology in the year 2108.
We have 6.5 billion people on the planet today, That is twice as many minds as 100 years ago.
In another 50 or 60 years from now, we will have about 9.5 billion. Then it will start to taper off.
Economic development (if we allow it to happen!!) will take care of that.
Provide the third world with a better standard of living and people will have less need to have 6 to 10 children.
In poor situations, the children are basically the life insurance for the parents. They all have a chance to become providers,
small most probably, but providers nonetheless.
Italy, Germany, Japan are all seeing their populations shrink. It is no surprise that these are among the richest nations on earth.
Now that is another problem, unrelated to Global Warming.
But who in these countries will provide the tax dollars in 20, 30 years from now? That is a worry for them.

Sorry, there were a couple of specifics I wanted to focus on before I posted that last message:

You said: “If temperatures were rising, the atlantic gulf stream would be affected.”

This is contested here: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_SJGPVST

Secondly, you mention the Stern Report. Remember that Stern is an economist, not a scientist. The Report, whilst accepted at face value by much of the mainstream media, has been widely panned. A good critique can be found here:

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/WE-STERN.pdf

Good luck!

I am pleased that you welcome the posts.

Today I came across an article which I found to match my own views rather well.

It comes from Peter Taylor, a former adviser on pollution and energy policy issues to various national governments, the EU and the UN as well as a lead advocate for Greenpeace:

Extract:

“You may be forgiven for thinking there was consensus on climate change – but that is not so.

The past year marks a turning point in the scientific controversy.”
….

….
“Does it matter who is right? Isn’t it a good thing to curtail carbon emissions anyway?

Unfortunately, it is not that easy. If it is the sun driving the change, then money spent on carbon emissions will have no discernible effect.

If the globe cools, we face severe and immediate problems with food supplies, made much worse by consuming crops for biofuel.

Ultimately we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels but first we need to invest in systems that are resilient to immediate climate change, especially food. We need to consume less and share more with vulnerable people and then begin the weaning process in such a way that supports community, decentralisation and ecological as well as economic stability.

Given the current world food situation and the high cost and environmental impact of carbon interventions, we should pause, take an independent look at the science and get the policy right.”

See the full article here:

http://www.theargus.co.uk/display.var.2180302.0.0.php

Cheers!

I certainly hope the readers of this site will look at a broad range of writings and research, including yours, before coming to their own verdict on climate change.

Cheers!
Cow

here is a link that will explain a few things about CO2 better than I can…

http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

You do not need to agree with this scientist, it just shows you how the “consensus” is just not there.

thanls,
Fred

First of all, for anyone to say or think that there is “scientific consensus” is nonsense.
That is the stuff that all the alarmists use to underscore their point and to avoid having to commit themselves to a healthy debate.
Top class scientists with the greatest of qualifications are in complete disagreement with NASA’s Jim Hansen (who started it all in 1988) and Al Gore (who picked it up and ran with it).

The alarmists say that “CO2 has a significant positive radiative forcing” is indeed what they say. They say this because their
terribly flawed computer models have been fed data that calls for increased water vapour at higher CO2 levels. As I said earlier, water vapour is the main green house gas. They assumed the water vapour content would increase in a warmer world as warmer weather would cause more evaporation at oceans and would increase precipitation and would leave a “wetter” atmosphere.
So, if you feed a computer program a certain data set based on assumptions, because the so called consensus tells the programmers that it is “very likely” that this would happen, then yes, the outcome would be that the globe warms up more.
That is head line news.
If it does not show a result as advertised, then it does not make any head lines. And yes, the CO2 effect is non-linear, no question. And chaotic too. Nothing is predictable about it.

There is a problem:
None of these programs have been shown to be reliable. None of the programs had predicted the results of the last 10 years correctly. None of them predicted any cooling. Yet it happened. Ouch….
The programs were not even capable to demonstrate that they work well by reproducing the climate results of the past 150 years. What does that tell you?

The planet simply refuses to do what the modelers are expecting it to do. That is highly embarrassing for the people that support all that. The Chairman of the UN’s IPCC had to scratch his head last week and said in public that we need to
get back to the data and find out why it all does not seem to add up. Gore on the other hand just continues his preaching as if the Globe is still on fire….

The US governments spent an average $ 150 million on climate studies before 1990.
That amount has meanwhile ballooned to more than $ 2 billion per year.
So far the collective governments of the world have spent close to $ 60 billion to find evidence that CO2 is the main driver of climate. So far there is absolutely ZERO evidence. There is none. All we have is assumptions and flawed computer models.
And so, all the tens of thousands that have found jobs in this “industry” of climate change research are not going to rock the
boat and suddenly reverse the “consensus”. Many of them would be out of a job in a big hurry.
It is fun to know also that a US website called “JunkScience” (a site that audits all sorts of scientific claims)
had called on the science community of the world to demonstrate to them that CO2 is without a shred of a doubt the climate driver as we all have been told. Junkscience had a $ 100,000 prize waiting for the winning entry.
When not a single paper was received after 3 months, they upped the prize money to $ 150,000
The contest is closed now and I am happy to report that not a single paper was received. None. Zero.
One would think that there are scientists out there that could use an extra $ 150,000
Of course this does not prove anything, but it just tells you how much faith there is in the “consensus”
The latest news that came out recently was another blow to the “consensus”.
3000 ocean based robots (small but clever submarines) that worked on various depts in the world’s oceans have been sending
temperature data to satellites orbiting the planet.
The robots had reported a cooling (not much, but a cooling nonetheless) of the world’s ocean waters over the past 5 years since the programme had begun.
That was another huge head scratcher for the scientists within the “consensus”
It was brushed off as something “insignificant” as was reported with red faces, but you can believe the headlines it would have made had there been only a slight increase in water temperature over the past 5 years. Armageddon!!
It would have been breathlessly paraded on the 8 o’clock news and in your daily paper.
Now, there was hardly a peep. Only determined people like me that dig for information find out about these things.
Journalists are the ones that get most of my blame. They have a duty to report what is happening. Yet, they don’t.
The BBC as an example, has made Man Made Global Warming Theory their own crusade. The once impartial broadcaster has moved in a direction that makes it a propagandist outlet. I once relied on them for trustworthy information. Not anymore.
The American broadcasters are not any better. CNN, CBS, ABC or NBC are all on the Al Gore bandwagon. They like to rub shoulders with this modern day Prophet (or is it Profit in his case? He made a cool $ 100 million off this scare since 2000)
The New York Times was the Mother of all Global Warming advocates. They however are starting to make a bit of a U-Turn lately. They realize that the science does not add up.

The Sun, our live giving Sun, is mostly left out of the equations. Why? You tell me, I have no idea.
Here is a body 300,000 larger than the mass of planet Earth, a body that has more mass than all the other bodies in our solar system combined, a body that produces enough energy per second to power all of North America for 9 million years.
And yet, it has been given hardly any attention in this whole story. CO2 is the story.
There are many people out there that find that humans and all that they do are a pest to planet Earth.
We need to “Save the Planet” is a popular vote getting phrase.
The planet in my view is in a better shape than at any given moment during the past 400 years. There. I said it….
The old European cities were dreadful places to be in the days of wood and coal burning. English cities were notoriously dirty
and unhealthy. The infamous London Fog happened the last time in 1962.
We cleaned up in a big way. Our lakes and rivers and the air that we breath in the Western World are cleaner than at any other time in the last 400 years. We treat sewage; technology (human inventions!) took care of a lot of problems.
Of course, a lot needs to be done still in the Third World.
The environment’s biggest enemy is Poverty. Poor people have no concept of treating their environment well.
They have other priorities, such as 3 meals a day, clothes on their backs and a roof over their head.
Then comes sanitation, a job, healthcare and education.
All this can only be done by creating an economy. By giving them the use of cheap energy. That means fossil fuels. There is no alternative. One can not power a steel mill with solar energy. It is simply technically impossible at today’s level of what we know and can do. Windpower is great, but unreliable. The problem with electricity is that you can not store it in days of high winds and save if for days with no wind activity. These windmill parks only work today due to massive amounts of government subsidies. Without it, not a chance, the price per Kwh is much, much higher than anything that comes from fossil fuels.

We are doing some incredibly stupid things. The Environmentalists (I am one too believe me, please, but I am one that thinks it all over) are so focused on the departure from fossil fuels that now the world is going crazy in thinking that Bio Fuels are the answer. Ethanol!
The result is that huge amounts of food are being turned into Ethanol and that in turn jacks up the food prices world wide.
We have already seen riots in Pakistan, Egypt and Indonesia. More are to follow!
Rice jumped 30% in price on world markets just this last Thursday. Rice is staple food for at least half of the world’s population.

All this because we are chasing a phantom problem, one without a shred of evidence.
Wisdom is a rare commodity these days. Very rare indeed!

I am not a scientist. But neither is Al Gore.
I am a semi retired business man, who lived and worked in Korea, Taiwan and China for 16 years.
I have seen with my own eyes what development means to a population. It brings them a better standard of living.
Think what you want about China, but fact is that 500 million people have risen out of sheer poverty during the last 15 years.
They could not have done that without fossil fuels. They want to continue to lift the remaining 700 million out of poverty too.
I amk very proud that my personal efforts in doing business in these countries (though small on a a scale) have helped thousands of people to have a job, have food and could start a decent and dignified live.
We have no right to tell them that they can’t. The same is true for India and all poor countries in Africa, South America and parts of Asia.

Unfortunately my detailed knowledge of CO2 itself isn’t that detailed to be able to comment on your points. However, as far as I understand the scientific consensus is that CO2 has a significant positive radiative forcing and that an increase in CO2 means the Earth is gaining energy in the form of heat. Perhaps as you mention it might be a non-linear effect; I simply don’t know. But I’d be interested in seeing some peer-reviewed scientific literature on the topic.

I simply don’t understand the part about how more CO2 is beneficial though. This makes no sense; through Darwinian natural selection, the animals and plants of today were “designed” for our current level of CO2. It makes no sense that they would perform better unless they adapted for higher CO2 levels.

Several of the scientists I have worked alongside have been studying long term climate changes. After “The Great Global Warming Swindle” was shown, they sent a letter to national newspapers regarding the film and the errors that they believed it contained. Contary to biases you describe, the newspapers were very reluctant to publish the letters and then didn’t publish it in it’s entirety.

Unless a huge number of scientists are experiencing groupthink (unlikely given the peer-review process), I find it really hard to believe that scientists would be exaggering or inventing climate change.

I’d like to take some of the points presented above in turn:

“However, there is absolutely NO evidence to connect the event with anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Furthermore, there is NO empirical evidence to suggest that freak weather events are more likely to occur as a result of AGW.”

That is correct, the people who said that this event was not caused by global warming have now been vindicated. However I’m not sure about your second point. If temperatures did rise, it seems pretty straightforward that there will be increased ice melt, that the plant ecosystems will change: some species will benefit and some will suffer. If temperatures were rising, the atlantic gulf stream would be affected. Perhaps the point of contention is actually whether temperatures are indeed rising and how much they would need to rise by to have a significant difference.

Without the “global warming” alarm of Al Gore et al, we would not be witnessing the wanton destruction of rainforests and other habitat…

Regarding your last paragraph, I wholeheartedly agree with you that fears about climate change are being exploited. I mentioned food miles and how this lead to “green protectionism”. I’ve studied this topic in quite a bit of detail in my economics courses and I know that this kind of protectionism both worsens our standard of living as well as those of our trading partners.

The biofuels leading to worldwide food prices going up. Leading to further poverty. Very correct; I blame a lot of this on the irrational policies of the US, EU and others. In fact, crop-based fuels probably end up producing more CO2 after you’ve taken fertilisers into account. Once again, I agree wholeheartedly that this is not the solution.

But notice that none of these arguments refute climate change itself – only some of the solutions proposed. The evidence strongly indicates that climate change is a real possibility and that the benefits of tackling it now will outweigh the costs of not doing so (Stern Report, etc.) There are of course other solutions to cutting atmospheric CO2 – carbon sequestration, carbon capture technologies, geoengineering and just simple things like turning off the light and the Xbox when you leave the room.

In the context of presenting this project to secondary school students, I did encourage all of the students to do their own research on climate change and to make up their own mind. But I hope you’ll agree with the view that human-caused climate change is a strong possibility with many dangers. And that it was fair to encourage students to cut their energy consumption at home and to walk/cycle/take the bus to school for green reasons!