Fuzz

This could be interesting.

carl

Which cosmologist?

KiwiGTI

Russell Grant I think.

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

Missed it was it any good?

Last time they got someone to counter the climate change cliam they dragged out Nigel fecking Lawson

Longjing

Nobody seriously counters the climate change claim... the debate is about what the causes are, not whether the planet is getting warmer.

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

Yes I know that - climate change is "real" Of course it is, its been happenning way before us humans impacted the planet. What claims I am referring to is the extent to which we have contributed to it, and the little effect (IMO) all these proposals will have.

Longjing

Fair enough - just clarifying. I'm not a climate scientist, so I tend to follow the majority views of those that are.

TopBanana

He isn't qualified and didn't try to counter the fact that there's climate change. He was talking about the economic impacts as predicted in the Stern Review.

carl

BBC website indicates it might have been Henrik Svensmark. Don't know him.

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

I know and he didn't even get a chance to speak, probably a good thing since his record as an economic expert is rather tainted!

David Lock

Not a very impressive interview. Most of discussion revolved around this stuff:

=================

The The Chilling Stars by science writer Nigel Calder and climate physicist Henrik Svensmark outlines a controversial new theory on the origins of global warming.

The book sets out to prove that a combination of clouds, the Sun and cosmic rays - sub-atomic particles from exploding stars - have altered our climate far more than human carbon emissions.

Svensmark's research at the Danish National Space Center suggests cosmic rays play a role in making clouds in our atmosphere. A reduction in cosmic rays in the last 100 years - due to the activity of our Sun - has meant fewer clouds and a warmer Earth.

fabiavrs

To be fair we have all be told that there was an "iceage", whats to say that what is happening is just the planets cycle which we have just speeded up slightly.

I think the human race has had a good run for it's money!

cottonfoo

He's a Dane, probably knows Lomborg (another skeptic) quite well.

Spelling Steven

TopBanana

We're still in an ice age.

Billions of years of evolution and we still don't understand apostrophes. We're doomed I tell ye.

stilover

When the Dinosaurs were roaming around, the whole planet was tropical. No North or South Pole.

Why can't the Greenpeace loonies just accept that what ever humans do to the Planet will make no difference to what Mother Nature is capable of.

Our Planet is going back to what is was before a rather big stone hit the Earth.

The Sun goes through cycles of being hotter and cooler, but the sun itself is always getting hotter and larger. There is nothing we, or extra "Green Tax" can do about it.

I watched part of Newsnight last night but got annoyed and switched it off. Everything Svensmark said that woman condemned as rubbish with no proof. A new theory she said. Yet her argument was correct, even though we have no proof.

The biggest crime however is for our Government to use "Green" issues as a convenient way of raising Taxes. Nothing can be done to stop the Sun, and therefore our planet from heating up even more.

Air Tax was raised to combat Carbon emissions. How are they using that money to fight Carbon emissions exactly? There not. It's going straight into Gordon Browns coffers to spend on the Olympic games, and every other money wasting scheme the Government can come up with.

30 Million air passenger fly out of Britain each year (as quoted by BA). Average tax gain per person flying, say £10

£10 x 30,000,000 + A **** load of extra Tax.

Paul3446

Quote by stilover:
"what ever humans do to the Planet will make no difference to what Mother Nature is capable of."


This sounds like b*ll**** to me, could you tell us how you are qualified to make this statement?

CharlesW

I think that, what he is saying is that Mother Nature will carry on, whether we are here or not. This is undoubtedly true. We may succeed in destroying the human race, but we will not destroy life in some form or other.

I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing. I do object to the global warming lobby claiming that we will destroy all life on earth. That is complete b*ll*cks.

carl

Have you read Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis recently?

CharlesW

No. I have not read Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis recently. I am aware of it, but not in detail. I read geology at university and have since been involved in the oil industry in various guises for the past 30 years.

A background in geology means i tend to take a long term view of these matters. By long term I mean millions of years. Everything about geology is fascinating. The oxygen content of the atmosphere is entirely due to the existence of life. Before life appeared on earth (some 3 billion years ago in its most primitive form) the atmosphere consisted of nitrogen and carbon dioxide and tiny percentage of rare gases. Life consumed the carbon dioxide producing limestones and produced oxygen.

I'll try and look out some graphs of the atmospheric composition and temperature over time.

CharlesW

Here's a brief summary of the evolution of the atmosphere.

Evolution of the Atmosphere

CharlesW

Carbon dioxide levels and temperature over geological time.

Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time

As you can see the average global temperature at the moment is abnormally low, 12°C as opposed to the more normal 22°C. So even with CO2 levels 10x higher than now the global average temperature never rises above 22°C.

CrisPDuk

Global warming is a load of bollox:mad

When this ******* youngster lets go all the w*nkers currently bleating on about global warming will be telling us the next Ice Age is on it's way

Krakatoa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At the rate it's growing a major eruption isn't that far off and guess what, the last little incident was preceded by undersea earthquakes and tremors, just like that part of the world is experiencing now

At least I'll have a grandstand view

cottonfoo

Interesting, I've been thinking of doing some Earth science OU degree, geology is one thing that interests me. Any recommendations on intro books to see if it's something I'd really like?

Steve.

David Lock

What does Global Temperature actually mean please and how do they know what was happening in the atmosphere millions of years ago? TIA. dl

Prasius

iTrader: (1)

..The thing that always has me scratching my head are things like "Global Warming! Hottest January since 1874!!!"..

So.. what? Global warming has had a 120 year break between then and now or something??? Or was that just a freaky hot winter and now we're not having another freaky hot winter - its THE END OF THE WORLD!!

Yeah, the worlds getting hotter - big deal. Think we should be more worried with vegan hippies having the Amazon cut down to feed them soya produce (upping global CO2 AND making thousands of species extinct) than me using my car to pop to the shops and leaving my TV on standby occassionally.

CharlesW

It's an average temperature. Carbon dioxide levels are inferred from carbon isotope ratios in carbonate rocks.

I'll try and find some explanations tomorrow.

David Lock

Thanks. It's just that I have often wondered what the actual definition of global temperature was? Something like average of near surface temperatures at dawn in 1000 different places over the earth including water mass? Google wasn't much help. dl

Sprint Chief

You could do worse than look here:

"Global Warming" at a glance

The website itself is very anti-AGW hypothesis, and is written from a right-wing US perspective, but the page I link to above is nevertheless one of the most rational, factual explanation of how the numbers are calculated and what the numbers are.

Basically, there are huge numbers of measurements; surface temps, near-surface temps, lower troposphere, mid troposphere, upper troposphere etc, then you have thermometer measurements, satellite radiometry measurement, radiosonde balloon measurements, proxy measurements....

What does it all mean? Mainly that you can pick the data set that tells the story you want to tell, irrespective of what is actually happening.

Note also proxy measurements older than around 600 years before present are considered to be sufficiently unreliable that it is impossible to put error bars / uncertainty measurements to them (basically, the uncertainty is greater than the range the measurements are made over). Even modern day measurements are little better - different calculations of the same metric often arrive at different answers.

Unfortunately, often the scientists involved refuse to tell anyone where they got their data from or how it was calculated; they just present the metric as a fait accompli (e.g. Phil Jones, producer of the UK based CRU global temperature calc, who refuses to provide any info on how it is computed)

Fuzz

Agree, it was a crap interview/ debate and didn't last more than 10 mins at the most.
Shame it wasn't Svensmark actually being interviewed, the wheeled out some old duffer with two chins, who didn't really go into any detail at all.

Andy