In article ,
Dave Poole writes:
| Mike Lyle wrote:
|
| And the consensus on climate change has built to a level where, most
| unfortunately, one has to start taking into consideration the
| political or paymaster issues relevant to those relatively few who
| pop up and tell us there's nothing to worry about.
|
| Its rather difficult to accept such 'reassurances' in the light of
| what is being discovered. ..., but if they turn out to be
| the start of a trend, then I think we may be in for a rougher ride
| sooner.

I think that you may be right. There is little dissent within the
scientific community about the certainty of drastic effects, and
not all that much about their magnitude. What isn't known is what
the effects will be or the exact timescale!

This gets translated by the likes of Bush, his cronies and poodles
into a claim that scientists don't know what will happen - and that
is used to disregard their warnings.

| Core samples illustrate that the world has indeed gone through many
| natural periods (oops nearly wrote 'cycles' there Nick) of quite
| marked warming (and cooling) in the past.

Yes. Yalden contains some nice, clear graphs that show the type
of variation that we lack a word for ....

| However, at no time in the
| earth's history has there been so much additional and artificially
| introduced greenhouse gas sloshing around. ...

Yes. As I understand it, the last time there was so much was
before the great apes had split off from the monkeys.

| So is anyone going to mention the possibility of the destabilisation
| of methane hydrate deposits and the catastrophic effects that could
| have? No? Maybe doomsday scenarios are best left for elsewhere.

Well, Michael Adams did raise the prospect of the North Atlantic
conveyor reversing. As I understand it, we know that it did within
a period (and that means 'within' not 'over') of 50 years about
10-11,000 years ago. However, the models are inadequate to show
how that could have happened, whether global warming would cause
it to reverse and so on. I believe that the current hypothesis is
that it is likely to stop fairly soon, which is bad news for the UK,
but not by comparison with it reversing.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.