talkmagic.co.uk

...my *rse.

a good point well made.

why do you think that they switched the name to Climate Change?

my old environmental studies teacher used to think that the ice caps melting would cause the gulf stream to shut off and trigger an ice age within 20 years. That was about 10 years ago now so probabaly time to get stocking up on nice warm coats.

Global Warming/Climate Change is very probably a fact to worry about but, certainly in the UK, it's just another excuse to screw more taxes out of us. The levy on fuel bills was supposed to be used for action on climate change but, so far, there seems to be no news of what that money is being spent on. Except propping up failing banks and paying obscene bonuses to those at the top who don't deserve them, fighting wars overseas, granting foreign aid etc....

The recent climate change meeting of supremos (yeah, right!) reached virtually no solid agreement yet must have cost taxpayers a great deal in air fares, security, food, drink and accommodation not to mention the enormous carbon footprint (whatever that is) and they're planning on doing it all again in a few month's time. If they're serious about reducing such impact, why not use the phone or conference facilities via the Internet instead?

There's obviously a huge amount of hypocrisy with the Climate Change summit. Summit or nuffink really wasnt it?

There's no doubt that the current icey snap is down to the planet getting hotter. Its an odd thing but true nonetheless. The sad truth is mankind isn't the one to blame, though we keep getting told we are.

One volcano emits more CO2 per year than every factory, car and person combined. Perhaps some giant plug funding is in order. Couple this with the oceans and decaying plants and animals and you'll find Mother Nature is spewing enough CO2 by herself thank you.

The real pain in my side is the debate about what drives what. The Global Warming activists ( thats those students on tv with nothing better to do than believe everything they hear ) will tell you that CO2 drives temperature (thank you Al Gore). Ice core data proves its the other way around (thank you science). You can't tell them that though, they get very upset about it.

I like a good argument, so i like to annoy as many of them as possible. There is an awful lot of bad science involved, and an awful lot of people who won't hear anything against the idea that man is destroying the planet. Personally, i like CO2. Because plants like it. And we need plants to live. In the 70's they said we were about to have an ice age. Those same scientists that came out with that are now on the warming band wagon because its how they get funded. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? Yeah its still there but no-one cares about that anymore do they.

This whole ' Drive 5 miles less a week ' campaign i see they've launched? With the price of petrol, i'd bloody love to drive 5 miles less a week my government friends. Now tell me how the hell i do it and i'll be glad to help. We are experiencing climate change, but we always have. Just dont lose any sleep over it, its not your fault, and there's not much you can do.

Grimshaw wrote:There's obviously a huge amount of hypocrisy with the Climate Change summit. Summit or nuffink really wasnt it?

There's no doubt that the current icey snap is down to the planet getting hotter. Its an odd thing but true nonetheless. The sad truth is mankind isn't the one to blame, though we keep getting told we are.

One volcano emits more CO2 per year than every factory, car and person combined. Perhaps some giant plug funding is in order. Couple this with the oceans and decaying plants and animals and you'll find Mother Nature is spewing enough CO2 by herself thank you.

The real pain in my side is the debate about what drives what. The Global Warming activists ( thats those students on tv with nothing better to do than believe everything they hear ) will tell you that CO2 drives temperature (thank you Al Gore). Ice core data proves its the other way around (thank you science). You can't tell them that though, they get very upset about it.

I like a good argument, so i like to annoy as many of them as possible. There is an awful lot of bad science involved, and an awful lot of people who won't hear anything against the idea that man is destroying the planet. Personally, i like CO2. Because plants like it. And we need plants to live. In the 70's they said we were about to have an ice age. Those same scientists that came out with that are now on the warming band wagon because its how they get funded. Remember the hole in the ozone layer? Yeah its still there but no-one cares about that anymore do they.

This whole ' Drive 5 miles less a week ' campaign i see they've launched? With the price of petrol, i'd bloody love to drive 5 miles less a week my government friends. Now tell me how the hell i do it and i'll be glad to help. We are experiencing climate change, but we always have. Just dont lose any sleep over it, its not your fault, and there's not much you can do.

I thoroughly wish to shake your hand. I was going to quote one bit but then read another and another and another so just thought I would quote the whole thing, saves me typing my opinion!

It's climate change not simply global warming.

Besides, we're on the cusp of a roughly 15 year cycle of cold winters: 1947, 1963, 1975, 1991, 2009

Interesting to compare forums!

The QI forum is just winding down a rather impassioned thread in which pretty much everyone fully supports/believes in man-made global warming. Voice a less than convinced opinion there and you might as well be confessing to poisoning the wells and clubbing baby pandas to death.

This forum, judging by the replies so far, seems to be mainly sceptical about the whole thing.

It can't be a question of general intelligence, and I don't think either forum is particularly politically biased. It must have something to do with general outlook on life.

There seems to be evidence that human activities in terms of manufacturing, travel, pollution etc have hastened the inevitable climate change, sadly the mass hysteria of meetings, summits etc have done diddly squat to actually address or effectively deal with the situation - other than threats of taxes and more taxes. The idea that it's a global problem which needs to be dealt with globally is a cop out, never in the reign of pig's pudding will all countries on this planet unanimously agree to anything, or actually stick to such agreements if they ever do, so the logical next best is for each to do what they can and that starts with individuals such as thee and me. Again, the problem is that as soon as we start to reduce our usage of energy, the greedy s*ds put the prices up so we pay just about the same as before and receive less. Solution? There isn't one but if the big boys would stop playing party politics and screwing the last cent out of everyone it might give some reassurance that our puny efforts won't be penalised by increases in outgoing payments. OK, I'll put the sopabox away for a while.....

I just think climate change is an example of the human necessity to be able to control everything.

The climate is changing therefore we must be the cause. Let's just forget for a second the huge scientific evidence to the contrary. Arguably we may be helping to move it along slightly quicker but we are far from the root cause in my opinion.

We're not even out of the ice age yet so we can hardly start complaining about the world warming. I'm more concerned about the magnetic shift of the poles which if I remember rightly is about due as it happens every 500,000 years or so... let's see them hold a summit and levy taxes on that one!

A_n_t wrote:I just think climate change is an example of the human necessity to be able to control everything.

Now tis my turn to shake your mitt sir.

I see 'man made global warming' as nothing short of arrogance. If we were around at the last ice age no doubt it would have been our fault in some way. Worshpping the wrong God or some such rubbish.

I find it interesting what Robbie said. You can say whatever you like about whoever you like these days and pretty much get away with it....unless you're a Danish cartoonist.......but say that climate change is nature and there's not much we can do about it and they'll have your head on a stick. I once pointed out to some tree hugging friend of mine that air travel makes up very little of man made CO2 emissions, which in turn makes up very little of the overall CO2 output every year. Without bothering to check out what i said, i had my ear bent over it to the point where total strangers were backing her up. Not one of them had looked into it, they just put 2 and 2 together and come out with a big, fat 5 that they were prepared to defend to the death. Such ignorance through hyperbole.

If you ask me, and no-one is doing but i dont care, this is simply because we're facing an energy shortage. One way to make people turn their tv's off standby or stop leaving lights on is by saying that in doing so we're heading for disaster. If they just said ' Turn your lights off because we cant provide enough energy.....we didnt see this coming ' few are likely to do it or worse yet, question the integrity of those in charge. Couldn't have that.

There's something very weird about the way politicians, especially in America, are saying ' The debate is over '. The debate is definitely not over, they just really really want it to be. If anything, the debate is just hotting up (hur hur).

Grimshaw wrote:One volcano emits more CO2 per year than every factory, car and person combined.

Do you have a source for that?

(Don't take it the wrong way, I am genuinely interested)

The best thing you can do it google it. This will give you the glorious example of scientific group saying one thing, and another saying the exact opposite.

You can then look into it and decide what to believe yourself.

Which is what i did

Grimshaw wrote:One volcano emits more CO2 per year than every factory, car and person combined.

I'd heard that. However:

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2007/07_02_15.html wrote:Gas studies at volcanoes worldwide have helped volcanologists tally up a global volcanic CO2 budget in the same way that nations around the globe have cooperated to determine how much CO2 is released by human activity through the burning of fossil fuels. Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually.

This seems like a huge amount of CO2, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO2 tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO2 is large, the global fossil fuel CO2 emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO2 not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value.