Jonno wrote:
Imagine 1 kilometre of atmosphere and we want to get rid of the
carbon pollution in it created by human activity. Let's go for a
walk along it. The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres are Oxygen.
That's 980 metres of the 1 kilometre. 20 metres to go.
The next 10 metres are water vapour. 10 metres left.
9 metres are argon. Just 1 more metre.
A few gases make up the first part of that last metre.
The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre - that's carbon
dioxide. A bit over one foot.
97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It's natural.
Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12
millimetres left. Just over a centimetre - about half an inch.
That's the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity
puts into the atmosphere.
And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in .18 of a
millimetre. Less than the thickness of a hair - out of a
kilometre. As a hair is to a kilometre - so is Australia's
contribution to what Mr. Rudd calls "Carbon Pollution".
Imagine Brisbane's new Gateway Bridge, ready to be opened by Mr.
Rudd. It's been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of
workers till its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean. Except
that Mr. Rudd says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted
- there's a human hair on the roadway. We'd laugh ourselves silly.
There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. It's
hard to imagine that Australia's contribution to carbon dioxide in
the world's atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And it's
also hard to believe that a new tax on everything is the only way
to blow that pesky hair away. ETS is now being debated in Federal
Parliament - is it too late for reality to prevail?.

This takes the prize for the most clumsy climate change denial
******** I have ever seen. That particular lobby of vested
interests has been responsible for some rank bovine ordure over the
last few years but this is outstanding.

If you really want to keep our lack-lustre pollies on the ball
understand the issues and force them to make better choices. This
tract contributes nothing towards that aim.

Try:

- not passing on little parables and arguments by analogy, they are
fuzzy and meaningless except when they are just plain wrong;
- thinking for yourself instead of copying other people's rubbish;
- learning some science or at least enough to understand a
scientist so you won't be taken in by this sort of crap and
- giving up on conspiracy theories, they are just an easy way out
of hard problems and really don't explain anything or provide any
useful course of action.

It puts some things into perspective perhaps.
I am into science, and computers, and mechanical equipment, and
weather patterns. One thing is for sure,
these scientists are either getting it wrong on purpose, or are a
branch of the weather department, who cant get it right from day to
day.

You don't seem to understand the difference between climate and
weather and the fact that predicting each is a quite separate
problem so your interest in science has not been time well spent.

They grandstand a likely scenario, and say its a fifty fifty chance
of less rain....Its truly unbelievable
The fact that the solar sunspot cycle is out of its normal pattern
is what I think is causing the extra heating the planet is
experiencing.

This has been tested and debunked. You could have found this out
yourself if you had done some research.

Instead of blaming it on planetary pollution, (which there is too
much of) lets look at the real cause of global warming as the Sun.

No it isn't. This has also been debunked.

Extreme taxing by governments seems to be revenue raising.

This is an assumption and/or an emotional reaction. Show me the
evidence.

Kevin himself mentioned the thousand or so who control out economy
overseas. Dare I mention America? I believe they're running on empty
there. So where is all this climate change guff coming from?
America.

The scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is man
made is international. Try reading the reports from the UK, the
IPCC and our own climatologists if you don't like America.

Its no conspiracy theory, its factual that the countries most likely
to benefit from all of this are the ones who say the sky is falling.

Saying it's not a conspiracy theory changes nothing. Until you show
me the evidence you are just making wild claims. Lay out your case.

Personal attack aside, what's your theory and solution?

I said the quoted parable was ******** and gave some reasons why it
isn't useful and you shouldn't have passed it on. This is a
personal attack?

My view is to accept the overwhelming evidence of the experts who
have spent their lives working on the problem and for the world to
reverse the trend by reducing human generated emissions of
greenhouse gases. We need to get over burning fossil fuel and the
sooner the better. No I don't have any quick and easy method for
doing that, it is going to be a long hard slog with many hard
lessons to learn.

My aim is to start a little bit of thought on this subject.

You achieved the aim of being provocative but you have not
contributed much thought.

Whether this is a hare brained attempt, on my part, I don't know,
but thanks for your input....


You initially gave no reasons or evidence just a lame parable
containing a number of assumptions and errors. I am interested to
know its origin, where did you get it? How much time did you put
into verifying its content before you passed it on? I am betting on
none: you liked the message so you copied it for our benefit.

You have now added some disproved fallacies and some conspiracies.
This isn't any improvement.

David

PS please keep material in the order that it was typed or who said
what and when is going to get very confused, ie don't top post.

D

An item by Mclean show us this is not crap but a believable natural
event http://tinyurl.com/twisted-story

The Mclean article is hardly convincing. He is a climate-change contrarian
who is criticising a paper (Vecchi et al) that says an aspect of the changes
to ENSO events is man made. Mclean says it's natural. I am no
climatologist but I cannot see in Mclean's paper where he provides any
evidence about the cause of the event. I cannot see where he shows that it
has a natural cause.

However before we get into technicalities of climatology (which I am not
qualified to dissect in detail, I don't know about you) and taking up
cudgels on behalf of one academic or the other, is it that important if
Vecchi or Mclean are right on this point? Does the whole structure of
climate change stand or fall on this point? Has Mclean demolished the whole
thing in one stroke? I don't think so.

The evidence for climate change comes from many sources and from many
studies by many scientists. Not all the sources and scientists are in
complete agreement over the details but the broad consensus (aside from the
contrarians) is that climate change is happening and is man made.

The parable that you posted to start all this doesn't address the issue
either. A quick read reveals two major flaws (there are probably others)
where major assumptions are made and not supported.

1) The analogy about the thickness of atmosphere assumes that a tiny amount
of CO2 _cannot_ be significant. It does this without dealing at all with
how significance might be measured or whether or not it has been measured
and what the result is. I could produce a similar parable that illustrated
what a tiny proportion of the human body a strike of brown snake venom is.
Unless you know the lethal dose you are completely wasting your time showing
that it is a tiny fraction of the body, it might still kill you. Going back
to the climate parable the author nowhere mentions what level of CO2 is (
the lethal dose) is harmful.

2) The parable claims without attribution that 97% of airborne CO2 is not
man made. As far as I can see this is a claim from the wild blue yonder, I
certainly cannot find support for it. We would need to know where it comes
from and what the relevant professionals say about it. I suspect it is a
fabrication. If you can find any source for this please tell me.

When quoting such things it is handy to know the author, you can then find
out the source of the material and check it out to see if there is anything
in it. As it is, it is just unattributed propaganda.

David