Greenhouse effect

[Peter Ward]

Regardless of where you might sit on the climate change debate, it irks me no end, when I get emailed utter drivel that spruiks:

"The greenhouse effect is a proven myth" and

"Venus, because it is now in eqilibrium has not suffererd from runaway greenhouse"

Haggling about the degree of an effect is one thing, but telling bald faced lies about established science for a political end (I take no sides here) is really offensive IMHO.

[CraigS]

I'm not sure if anyone can do much with your post, Peter. Do you have any references or link to discuss ?

The greenhouse effect is real.

Venus has one.

Cheers

[Rob_K]

I think you should re-read Peter's post Craig. He's saying he gets emails that include those quotes. There are no references or links.

It's the emails that need references or links! ;) I'd hate to think that lies are told for political ends (insert three wise monkeys smilie here). :lol:

Cheers -

[Barrykgerdes]

Off course we have a "green house" Without it we would not be here. It is mainly supported by water vapour but all the atmospheric gasses help and the variations in temperature keep the atmosphere moving.

It keeps us from frying in the sun and freezing at night. Our orbit around the sun keeps the average temperatures within a range of two or three degrees. We can get hot periods and cold periods depending on many things but mostly due to activity in our own solar furnace.

All the rest is politics and personal opinions of people wanting to make names for themselves. You can believe what you like it won't change the overall mechanics of our ecosystem.

Thems thar fighting words for ya!

Barry

[xelasnave]

Hi Peter ...unfortunately there is little that can be done ...folk believe what they believe such that evidence is often only selected to support the position taken.

It would seem that greenhouse effect is a given however that may not be the case, however the position is more likely to be one of degree as you point out. I do think when someone is emphatic it sounds alarm bells for me... of course I think a good argument never needs an ending;)

The point is dont let it upset you ... and pride youself in the knowledge that they have not pulled any wool over your eyes:thumbsup:

alex:):):)

[CraigS]

No … this is the Science forum … presentation of some from of scientific dimensionality to a thread, is expected. [EDIT: Please note this thread was originally raised in the Science Forum and has now been moved to General Chat].

All I see is a rant about some bogus emails !

Geez .. I get them all the time !

Cheers

[Rob_K]

Sincere apologies Craig, I hadn't reckoned on your moderator status. Keep up the good work. ;)

Cheers -

[sjastro]

This is Peter's latest round of trying to stir the pot.

Steven

[Peter Ward]

Steven... this was not my intention.

Just to clarify my position, I had received an email from a climate change naysayer who used bogus "proofs"
(e.g. greenhouse...period... was a myth) to support his position.

The fact that very established science that says otherwise, made it clear to me that science (teaching/awareness) must be at a new low if these people can sucker a significant population into believing a patent falsehood.

....begging the question, how does one lift the national science IQ ?

[KenGee]

Peter,
I don't think it's going to happen, take a look at this site the level of scientific illiteracy is quite astounding at times. On top of the widely held mistrust of science (yes even on this site) by the far left and the right in general then there is little hope..

[Peter Ward]

Perhaps, but when the elephant in the room is Venus with a surface temp of around 900F degrees, thanks to greenhouse , I am mystified as to how fundamental physics can be distorted by some to the extent of "your head will be in an oven, and feet in a deep freeze, but, on average, you'll feel OK" is still accepted as realistic by, apparently, many.

[allan gould]

Peter
You are in a no win situation because the general population believe in astrology, iridology, homeopathy, etc etc.
Its too hard for the general population to devote any time to really understand the basic tenants of science, it's operation or how it comes to testable conclusions or ideas.
Forget it, really all they want to do it's be entertained by their TVs and talking heads.
Just my 2c.

[casstony]

....... by avoiding science elitism and making the average person feel included. There have been too few people involved in popularising science, such as Julius Sumner Miller and his modern day equivalent Dr Karl.

As a child I enjoyed watching the eccentric Sumner Miller pose questions to a panel of school kids and walk them (and I) through scientific discoveries. The enthusiasm of the presenter is key to getting kids interested. See how exciting the Bernoulli principle can be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCcZyW-6-5o

[mithrandir]

One answer is to make it pay at least as well as being a bean counter, doctor or lawyer. Whose parents permit their children take up a career which pays peanuts when with fewer years of education you can earn lots more?

Andrew

[casstony]

Insurance companies offer us a clue as to where climate is heading in the near to medium term. They make financial decisions based on correlation long before scientists can offer proof.

For many years they've been charging higher premiums for drivers under 25 based on the correlation between age and likelyhood of an accident. More recently scientists have found that the brain does not properly mature until age 25; risk taking is greater and judgement not so good until 25.

[Paul Haese]

The green house effect is a certainty. It is the recent causation claims that I have some trouble accepting. Three or four drying out periods and glaciation in the last million or so years and no human influence during that time. Now it is a political football for politicians to use as a means to being elected.

I don't get the emails but would just put them in the junk mail anyway. There is so much mis-information getting around that most people think the climate is changing rapidly when if you take a good look back over the records you will see that not much has changed on a 1000 year scale or even in the last 10,000 years. Funny how you can make things look bad by only using the last 100 years on a graph.

Just put those emails in the junk mail Peter.

[casstony]

I don't know whether we're causing the planet to warm or not - the graphs, claims and counterclaims get confusing.

I did a quick search for Dr Karls views and he seems to think we are contributing to warming - he seems like a trustworthy guy?

Does it hurt to reduce our use of fossil fuels and stop tearing down forest, just to play it safe?

[Paul Haese]

I don't have a problem with reducing our polluting in general, but let's face it. If this was as huge a problem as they say it is going to be; solar, wind and hot rocks power would be a lot cheaper and coal fired power stations would be getting shut down in this country right now. I presently see a lot of lip service and no real action. The technologies exist and economy of scale is upon these technologies. I don't want to see this issue being used as a taxation base and nothing being done about the supposed issue. Even David Suzuki says, "We think humans are increasing the rate of climate change". He did not say, "We are sure".

I don't want to feel like the bad person all the time because we are using power. We don't supply it, we simply use it. We are so miserly with our power now and yet on the power bill it says you have used X tonne of carbon. It implies we are at fault. How can the end user be at fault when we don't supply? It's not like we have a choice where our power comes from really. Now we the end user will pay the tax and not the supplier. How screwed up is that?

Sorry for the digression.

[casstony]

Like you Paul, I don't support the carbon tax - I see it as unnecessary complication and something the government is sure to abuse. They'll probably build us some great big new shiny thing with the taxes.

[Barrykgerdes]

We live in an environment that is surrounded by an atmosphere consisting of water vapour, Nitrogen, oxygen and minor gasses of which CO2 is one. CO2 makes up only .04% of these gases

These gases stabilise the environment and make it habitable for Humans (and all animal life for that matter). Many of us refer to it as a green house.

Animals breath in oxygen to convert fuel, mainly carbon compounds, into energy and give out CO2. We have a solar furnace 300000000 KM away (nice safe distance for nuclear energy) that allows vegetable life to extract the carbon from the CO2 and return the oxygen to the atmosphere with the help of a catalyst called chlorophyl. Other forms of energy producers also convert carbon and oxygen into CO2 to produce energy but vegetable life is very greedy. As a result it uses all the CO2 it can get to produce its "body". That is why CO2 does not rise to a level that would give any problems.

As for the so called green house being greatly inflenced by a gas that only constitutes .04% of its volume I have yet to see anyone actually provide proof that so little can do so much.

Of course there are two sides of the story both sides based on statistics. The believers say global warming is caused by CO2 and the other side says CO2 increases as the planet warms. Statisics support both views but statiscs is not science only a tool to aid in research.

There now take sides and we can battle it out.

Barry

[multiweb]

Funny you've mentioned that. Have a look here (http://windfarms.wordpress.com/denmark/). Wind is well, ... a lot of wind ;) It has been very cleverly marketed over the past 10 yrs though. It's all down to basic primary school maths though, like adding money :P . Like the 1L of E10 that takes 3L of crude oil to produce, or the very energy intensive and polluting process of manufacturing solar panels. That reminds me of the story of the bloke who keeps his fridge door open trying to cool down the room. :)

[Trixie]

Those email irk me as well. I never get them but my in-laws often get sent them, along with the "Jewish people are taking over the world" ones.

They are so dangerous because a lot of people believe them without even bothering to check facts or even just using their common sense.

Yesterday I was shown the 0.04% one and it was so badly written I couldnt believe anyone would actually believe it, let alone forward it on.

Im fine with people chosing not to believe in climate change, just so long as they are well informed and not just believing these silly emails going around.

[TrevorW]

As an example of the ignorance of the general population, on the radio station the other day, they had an astrologer on a feedback phone call discussing how the full moon affects people. They went on about how well known he was.

I rang the station and said you need to get an "astronomer" or someone with scientific knowledge on the radio, the girl answering the switch for the station, said we've got an "astrologer" on now, I hung up in disgust.

[Paul Haese]

I actually thought it was about 0.03% per volume. I don't suppose that matters too much. Still pretty insignificant per volume and not a convincing percentage increase.



Yeah that sort of illustrates my point really. I have to say we have lots of them here. There are wind farms every where on the coast line and some a little further inland. I like the idea of them but the environmental damage they cause just to make them is well counter productive to the whole use of them. I actually thought California had more wind farms than anywhere else on the planet but I stand corrected.

One thing is for certain though, if climate change is being accelerated by us and the dire warnings are as bad as they say will occur; then we best get on with building nuclear plants because 3 accidents is going to be nothing compared to world wide devastation.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Paul

When I went to school it was stated as .03% (1952) by volume. There has been a 30% increse in the CO2 in the last 60 years making it closer to .04%. Still a very insignificant figure when all else is considered.

I personally subscribe to the theory that the rise in sea temperature of 1 degree has released an amount of CO2 which by some strange co-incedence is the exact quantity of CO2 that would be required to raise the amount in the air by 30%.

Barry

[Barrykgerdes]

This thread was originally in the science section but was objected too. Its topic is green house effect.

If we widen it to encompass climate change we will get more controversy. Of course the climate is changing as it has done through thousands of years. The biggest changes occured before humans took over the planet.

Are we responsible for it? probably about .04%. Can we do anything about it? Well we can't alter the change but we can learn to live with it. The one thing I know for certain is that taxing carbon dioxide to stop climate change shows about the same intelligence as building a wire fence to stop a flood.

There that should stir the pot some more.

Barry

[Kal]

One thing for certain is that the climate on this planet is not stable, and the fluctuations that have been experienced in the past extend way out beyond what we have experienced in the last few thousand years.

We are still technically in an ice age, is it our political destiny to try and lock that in?

[Peter Ward]

It can, and indeed does. Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius applied black body radiation theory and adapted the Stephan Boltzman law to CO2 and greenhouse.

The formula is ΔF = α ln(C/C0) and while not quite as famous as E=MC squared, after 100+ years of scrutiny is still very much accepted today.

[Barrykgerdes]

That's a theory. Not a proof.
Barry

[Peter Ward]

OK, let me put it this way, the behaviour of the electrical circuits that power your house is well decribed by AC circuit theory.

"Theory" in main stream science does not equate to "unproven fantasy"
as to hold up it needs to be testable, repeatable and make predictions.

You could ignore the theory by grabbing the live and earth wires but I wouldn't recommend it.

[Barrykgerdes]

That's OK peter

This is the controversy that will end up having the thread closed
You have your opinion I have mine lets leave it at that.

Barry

[Peter Ward]

So what parts of Stephan Boltzman's laws on thermodynamics do you think are false? My point being that having an opinion on climate change is one thing, and sure, can be debated due to the complex nature of the earth's climate. This was not however my original point.

Creating a fantasy about fundamental physics because it doesn't fit with a personal world view, (and I am not accusing you of this) I think is just plain weird.

A bit like someone ignoring gravitional theory and proving the point by jumping off a 80 floor building, as they go past the 20th floor they'd still argue "see...nothing bad has happened!" :)

[Barrykgerdes]

Sorry Peter

As I said before. I am not going to get invloved in the arguments about bogus emails and green houses.

Mine has more Cream and brown that green although it has a nice green roof (with solar panels) :lol::lol::lol:

Barry

[strongmanmike]

Forget the smoke screen initial post, I'll cut straight to the chase

Regardless of our "opinions" once people start to discredit organisations (often with great vitriol) like the UN, CSIRO, BOM, NASA and ultimately the IPCC, when the findings and reports from these bodies disagree with less rigorous sources that they have been missleadingly exposed to, I am afraid we are in some strife.

As far as I am concerned it is these very sorts of national and international bodies and the data they are producing and the reports they are releasing that governments need to and must listen too and subsequently act on in the best way they can, they have no choice and they need to ignore the elements in the public and government oppositions who would yell and spit vitriol for their own agenda because they have.

I shake my head

Mike

[Peter Ward]

No smokescreen intended Mike. I still am miffed by those who should know better distorting or simply ignoring scientific fact because it doesn't suit their world view/agenda (Astrology would be another example)

As we've seen here "Oh...that's just a theory" is another typical response....making me wonder what part of electrocution or going splat don't they get.:shrug:

Another gem you hear is a species (humans) can't possibly change the atmosphere of the earth...seems they are unaware plants beat us to it about 2.4 billion years ago :)

[strongmanmike]

Wasn't having a go at you Peter (this time :lol:).

The other doozy is "CO2 is not a harmful gas, heck! plants breath it"

[AstralTraveller]

Let's try to understand that. What they are saying is: "Because CO2 at 400ppm is non-toxic it also cannot be a problem in any other way." It's sort of like say: "Because water won't burn you, you also can't drown in it."

BTW Has anyone ever tried to breath pure CO2? I have and it hurts. You get a very sharp burning sensation in the nostrils, presumably from the CO2 combining with H2O to produce carbonic acid H2CO3.

[tlgerdes]

The difference here is that AC Circuit Theory is readily testable and the tests are repeatable with consistant outcomes when comparing to theory.

[AstralTraveller]

Related to greenhouse, but somewhat off the original topic (sorry Peter but the thread has pretty much stopped anyway) I recieved the following flyer today. On one hand it shows that scientists don't just pull their hypothesies out of their ... ah ... ear, but also that we still need to learn alot.
___________________________________ ____________________

Dear colleagues,
Please consider submitting an abstract to the session 12 a "Links between CO2 and Climate: Carbon Cycle Feedbacks over Time" within the “Climate change” theme at the 2011 Goldschmidt Conference in Prague, Czech Republic (August 14-19, 2011).
Session description
The accumulation of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is modified by processes of the global carbon cycle, that are in turn affected by the changing climate. The session will focus on variations in climate feedbacks associated with the carbon cycle in both past and present; from CO2 uptake by terrestrial vegetation and dissolution in the oceans at the short time scale, to continental weathering at the long time scale. The session will further discuss the use of paleo-CO2 to estimate climate sensitivity as a tool for predicting future climate.

[Barrykgerdes]

Whoever penned that obviously has been brought up in the public service where words are more important than intelligence.

Barry

[KenGee]

Can you please tell us all why you think.
human introduced Carbon Dioxide 110 ppm = no effect.
Ozone @ 0.7 ppm = big and very important effect.

Can you please explain why you anti-science people can down play carbons effects yet without a far less common gass we wouldn't be here?

[Peter Ward]

As is radiative forcing. Your point?

[Peter Ward]

Ozone depletion was indeed a major problem.

Due their agressive depletion of Ozone CFC's were banned in the USA
(1978?) and subsequently globally elsewhere.

The peer reviewed measurments since (NASA, NOAA, CSIRO ...yep all the usual suspects :) ) indicate by 2050-ish Ozone levels should be back to pre-CFC levels.

[tlgerdes]

Sorry Peter, you made the original AC Theory analogy, what was your point of it!

[Peter Ward]

AC theory is repatable, testable and predictive. So is (the lesser known) radiative forcing, Boyle's Law, Newton's Laws which were refined with Special and general relativity....(to name just a handful)

The scientific method quickly tosses out fantasy, hence I'm not sure where you want to go with this.

[marki]

This doesn't have anything to do with the carbon tax does it:P:D
http://videosift.com/video/Explosive-Cow-Farts-Take-Out-Forest-0-30s

[KenGee]

So why do you think people think a much more common gass has no effect. Or more importantly why are the people using the small percentage of CO2 gass in our atmosphere but fail to mention this very important gass? Would you say they are diliberatley not mentioning it, or are they just ignorant and parroting right wing shock jocks?

[Peter Ward]

So many questions! :)

My original point was to do with testable science, not opinoin polls.

I for one would not want a show of hands (in the cabin) of where to steer an airliner, or (in the waiting room) of where to make a surgical incision.

Some things are best left to experts.

On scientific principle, you make a hypothesis, then test it. If found false, toss it.

Shock jocks don't do that. Their sweeping statements that sound plausible
are often easily falseified...but that crucial bit often never makes it to air.

Greenhouse as such is a predictive, testable and measurable effect.

As to the notion of whether the industry of 7 billion humans are adding to the effect for about 2 centuries is a reasonable hypothesis, I'll leave it to you to decide.

[strongmanmike]

It is staggering isn't it :rolleyes:...I just can't understand the dogged and determined blinkered ignorance and from otherwise rather (seemingly) cluey people :screwy:

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Peter
This may be off topic but that is an interesting point and most professionals cannot stand being given advice by lay people.

I once had this view but now when a problem arises I like to get the opinions of all particularly the lay people who often put a totally different but often logical solution.

I once had an experience when working on some electrical equipment in the engine room of a ship. The deisel mechanic and his apprentice were trying to start a new engine for the first time. The poor apprentice pumped up the air start about a dozen times but the engine failed thto start. I am not a complete novice when it comes to IC engines and
I was close enough to see that the fuel pump was connected backwards. I could not tell the mechanic for the reasons you have stated so it took me nearly half an hour of general talk to get him to look at it and make the changes.

The point is no one is infalable and problems are often best solved by a team effort.

Barry

[strongmanmike]

Ah Barry if it was only that simple.... :)

...would you blame the Captain for acting on his engineers advice?

Mike

[space oddity]

My big bugbear on all the climate debate is how certain pieces of information are totally ignored(very UN scientific) and the positives of global warming are never mentioned.
Fluctuations in solar radiation of just 1 % will alter the earth's climate. We are not at present able to measure this .At this stage, there is nothing we can do about this.
The climate doomsayers say Venus is an example of runaway greenhouse. hello, Venus has a particularly thick atmosphere and is much closer to the sun, hence considerably higher solar radiation input over billions of years.
What is the major greenhouse gas?............................... ..........yes, it is water vapour.CO2 is a very minor contributor.
Our planet has had much higher CO2 levels in the past, and no runaway greenhouse.In fact it was a very verdant place, the carboniferous era. Perhaps us humans are on this planet to recycle that carbon buried under the ground as coal to get the CO2 back for the plants.
Many plants use MOST of their water in the transpiration process to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. CO2 is a limiting factor in plant growth. This means higher yields in more arid conditions. Is the general public ever allowed to hear this?
Fossil records, ice core analysis etc show the planet goes through its ups and downs in temperature- before humans were on this planet. How arrogant are we as a species that think we have such control of the climate.More harm is done by our population spread induced habitat destruction than the CO2 release.Perhaps we need to cull the human species, perhaps by 90% to be CO2 neutral?
In the distant past, fossil history has shown many instances of climatic change. A species must adapt or become extinct. As a species, we must adapt or become extinct in a sea of our own foolishness.
The whole climate debate is stewing in its own rhetoric and almost religous fervor.

As for astronomy, more clouds = less photonic input.

[strongmanmike]

:lol:...and that was a fine example of such rhetoric :thumbsup:

[Barrykgerdes]

Ah yes and the one person I will not take any advice on physical fitness from is Strongman Mike. I am sure he would be out to get me.:thumbsup::lol::lol:

Barry

[Peter Ward]

This is nonsense.

The temperature on the surface of Venus is hotter than that at Mercury, which has 4x more solar flux. Greenhouse is alive and well on Venus. To say otherwise is completely ignores well established fact.

[marki]

10,,,,,9,,,,,,8,,,,,7,,,,,6,,,,,,5, ,,,,4,,,,,,3,,,,,2,,,,,,,1,,,,,,

[sjastro]

Peter.

What makes it even more compelling is that the Venus has a much higher albedo than Earth. Eighty percent of the solar flux hitting Venus is reflected back into space.
Taking this into account the effective temperature on Venus using the Stefan_Boltzmann Law should be less than Earth's.:)

Regards

Steven

[strongmanmike]

I would be gentle on you :P

You make a good point, think of me as the IPCC, CSIRO, NASA et al and you as a government - I (or the gym I ran) has and continues to diseminated all the available fitness research and data and give you advice based on it, which you take - pretty simple :shrug: :thumbsup:

Mike

[Peter Ward]

Another nonsense.

Solar flux has been measured for many decades, and the measured variation has been less than .001%

I'd suggest if you find a natural mechanism that correlates perfectly with the build up of CO2 (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/), other than human industry,
write it up, have it peer reviewed and if it passes muster, book your flight to Stockholm. :)

[mswhin63]

I don't profess to support this site, but I have tried looking all over the place for some graphical representations of global warming figures and this is the only place that seems to have those figures quite readily available.

http://junksciencearchive.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Proxies.html

The only advantage of this site is that it seems to have reputable references. I would still call this a pseudoscience place parts it may have a point in some instances especially when it does refer to government reported data.

Unfortunately it is a lot of reading, and I found that the reading is a very important and not just looking at the graphs.

[tlgerdes]

Where did you get that figure from Peter?

I have this figure "At solar maximum, the sun is about 0.1% brighter than it is at solar minimum"

[tlgerdes]

Now dont we wish that climate science was as absolute as those.

[Peter Ward]

Wiki has a reasonable graph here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation) of data from 1975 to the present, though there is more variation in historic data

Modern data indicates a variation of 1 in 1366 watts/sq metre due the solar cycle.... or 0.00732 %

I am unaware of any study showing and significant correlation between the 11 year solar cycle and global temperature.... but would welcome a link.

Currently old sol has gone through a prolonged minimum (very quiet until very recently as any H-Alpha observer will verify) which doesn't correllate at all with NASA global temperature data.

[Peter Ward]

Greehouse, radiative forcing etc. are very well understood and formulated...which was the point of my original post.

There is no error in the physics there, and claiming these provable effects as false does not help those questioning climate change science.

That said, I have no doubt conclusions on climate change will continue to alter as the current changes in global climate are not fully inderstood.

[tlgerdes]

The data you supplied, plus that currently available at NASA, doesnt say 0.007%, but 0.1% variation.

[AstralTraveller]

Peter,

Not what you asked for but it may be of interest.

http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=0&article=1163&context=theses&type=additional&sei-redir=1#search="daniel+palamara"

Sorry, that link may not work. If you go to http://ro.uow.edu.au/ and search for Daniel Palamara his thesis should be at the bottom of the first page of hits.

[Peter Ward]

The current solar cycle shows a 1:1366 variation.

OK my arithmetic is wrong (1366 x .000732 = 1) hence as a *percentage* its .073.... still way smaller than 1% ;)

[Peter Ward]

Thanks. Worked out the link. To quote the abstract

"Long-term changes in land temperature are not well correlated to geomagnetic activity"

i.e. no link.

Though his work does say influence on the stratosphere and coupling to lower layers seems likely.... as I said the global system is not fully understood. :)

[tlgerdes]

This is the point from which "denialists" come from, that the science has yet to be proven fallible or infallible. Scientists are their own worst enemy here, as they keep proclaiming and counter claiming, wildly differing values of what is or isn't occuring.

If everyone sang from the same hymm book, maybe people would listen.

But who should I believe? The person who says the earths temperature is going to rise by 1 deg, the one who says it is going to rise by 3degs or the one who says it is going to rise by 6 degs over the next 50 years, each has used the same statistical data and maths, yet come up with 3 different answers. The difference between them seems to be the one who gets the front page headline and research dollars that follows.

Equally, we have other scientists that use the same data and maths, and come up with temperature decreases or temps that stay the same, and because they dont create a front page headline, they dont get airplay.

How would this sell papers or ad space?

TEMPERATURE WILL STAY THE SAME
Scientific study says we are not going to fry

We will never see it, whether it is wrong or right, as there are too many dollars invested in the current future.

[gregbradley]

It is a confusing subject. I can state with complete confidence apart from any talks or reports that NSW is definitely a hotter place on average than it was when I was a kid. It has definitely gotten hotter, wilder weather both hot and cold, hotter days earlier in the year and hotter highest temp days.

I was driving down Cumberland Highway last year in Feb and the car thermometer said 45C. Wow. At what point does the temp become too high to be habitable?

What is causing it is up for debate. Is part of cause for the heated discussion the lack of responsibility we all play for trashing the environment?

Global population is approaching 7 billion. China now has a large middle class. Think of how much more pollution must be occurring each year from the growth of global middle class alone. How much that pollution affects the environment is matter of degree only. The fact it must be doing something should be fairly clear. To argue it is doing nothing, to me, is irresponsible and probably done by those polluting the most.

Other cycles are present like Sun precession which also correlates beautifully with previous climate warmings. But c'mon - does anyone really believe you can burn hydrocarbons to the degree of trillions of gallons and not expect some sort of adverse effect?

We are way overdue for some smart guy to invent a clean energy source rather than a Facebook.

Hydrogen fuel cells look promising but have a ways to go. In Melbourne there is a company that makes a Mini Blue Gen fuel call that runs off natural gas and virtually no pollution. It makes 2kva of power. Awesome.

Greg.

[mswhin63]

It would only be after spending billions of dollars that the media would make a lot of money out of this headline.

[tlgerdes]

Sydney, definately. NSW, doubt it. There are only a couple of places in NSW that have a consistent data plot for temp and rainfall for the last 150 odd years, most other places have been moved within the last 50 years so you cannot get a true indication, but Sydney (Observatory Hill) and Dubbo (main st) are two such sites.

Sydney shows a consistent temperature rise for last 100 years, coinciding with its growth. Dubbo on the other hand has not, if anything Dubbo is now slightly cooler in summer and slightly warmer in winter and slightly wetter than the last 150 year average.

[miki63au]

I like to comment.
I like to share my life experience,
I like to give what I have learned (standing on big shoulders!).

No, I can't do...

Mike, please don't lock this!

All the best to all,
Mick.

[KenGee]

This took about 2 minutes to find notice the source! http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/244.htm

[avandonk]

Water vapour is a greenhouse gas. The amount of water in the atmosphere depends on temperature. The warmer it gets the more water vapour. Unfortunately water freezes at 0 C. If all the CO2 in the atmosphere was removed the temperature would drop by up to 30C. As the average temperature of the Earth is 14C we would very soon have snowball Earth and the resultant albedo of the lovely reflecting ice would really cool the planet. You would then need huge amounts of CO2 to unfreeze it. Earth without its atmosphere of greenhouse gases would be very cold indeed.

The concentration of CO2 is the main driver of climate change with a constant Sun. There are many feedbacks but they are understood by climate scientists.

I could go into the complexities of all the tipping points but in my humble opinion we are heating our Spaceship Earth by dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. The projected estimates of temperature rises have a better than 90% probabilty. It may be far worse as very soon the oceans and dwindling forest cover will not absorb as much as they have in the past.



Bert

[strongmanmike]

The climate, oceanographic, meterological etc communities are simply not arguing about all this, there is overall general agreement about the effects we are having on our global climate through our production of CO2, it is only the illinformed and lay persons that are arguing these points and having the debate - it's positively ridiculous....

Mike

[Peter Ward]

Maybe, but not my viewpoint.

I do think on curent evidence that pumping significant amounts of C02 is having, and will have, an significant effect on the global climate...it's just the magnitude of this I have a problem with...hence my cautious comments there.

That said, there is overwhelming evidence that a species can and does cause change to its environment (suggestion: read some of James Lovelock's work here).

To think 7 billion humans cannot have an effect on a globe just 12,700km wide beggars belief.