Climate change...

[Gozu]

it is an absolute scam sham bullshit

So what monetary gain to the scientists have to gain from this 'scam'.
There's no doubt in my mind that continual pollution from fossil fuels consumed by an ever increasing population must have some deleterious effect on the environment.

"Monetary gain": Research grants.

To suggest that the many thousands of respected climatologists and earth scientists who have researched and contributed to our knowledge of human-induced climate change over the past 30 years or so are involved in some sort of conspiracy to rip off research grants is, quite simply, unbelievable not to mention hugely insulting to the scientists involved.

Ignore him Fish, most sensible people understand the Big Polluters are the ones who gain by inaction. They have many shills like that Ian Plimer. All the denialists/sceptics/flat-earthers have to do is show some sort of published peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary, there isn't any. I'll go with the climate scientists, thanks.

[Media Park]

This is very self-centred I know, but I don't give the proverbial rats flying tossbag, because I will be dead, as will my child (and any subsequent children I sire), so the outcome of climate change doesn't bother me.

[fish]

I voted "strongly believe" in the poll. I am not a climate scientist but I have postgraduate qualifications in Environmental Studies and have worked in the environmental field for about fifteen years.

I have been a keen observer of the climate change debate for almost 20 years and have witnessed the phenomena undergo various name changes, from "greenhouse effect" in the early 1990's when the theory was first formulated, to "enhanced greenhouse effect" when the human-induced causes were understood and quantified, to "global warming" when the broad effects were understood and quantified, and to "climate change" now that we know that, whilst overall temperatures will increase as a result of human activities, there may be an increase in extreme hot and cold and wet and dry weather events.

Climate change has been researched and modelled extensively by thousands of climatologists and earth scientists and the unequivocal conclusions are that: (1) The earth is warming; (2) The warming is forced by human activity, primarily due to carbon dioxide and methane emissions as well as land use change; (3) The warming will have serious environmental, social and economic consequences which will become considerably worse unless greenhouse gas emissions are urgently and deeply cut.

Of course there are dissenting opinions but they are in the tiny minority and every scientific body of national or international standing supports the scientific conclusions I have detailed above.

I can see no reason why the overwhelming scientific conclusions can be ignored and to do so puts our future in peril.

[Dog_ger]

I believe it's a lot of carp.

Just something to hang another tax on.

Something to pay for our polititions rediculous salaries and superanuation funds.

Can all us workers have the same super fund please...

[spell_check]

I'm sure there's plenty more, they're just the few that came into my head right now. Anyway - my point is all of this stuff should be happening not to combat climate change as such, but out of the general obligation we all have to our town/country/environment/ecosystem/planet.

Bingo.

[Pottsy]

This is one of the most depressing things I've ever read.

I didn't realise how widespread the denial of our impact upon the planet still is.

Luckily, I'm in an unreasonably good mood with all the global warming induced sunshine we had today .

[The Dark Knight]

I'm a bit of a fence sitter on this one. I know the planet has been changing for the worst and human pollution has effected it but then history says it's happened before.

To be honest, apart from this thread I've haven't heard anything about it for ages.

[Psyber]

To suggest that the many thousands of respected climatologists and earth scientists who have researched and contributed to our knowledge of human-induced climate change over the past 30 years or so are involved in some sort of conspiracy to rip off research grants is, quite simply, unbelievable not to mention hugely insulting to the scientists involved.

I was careful to use as an example a field in my own direct experience where I have worked as an expert witness in courts on many occasions.
I aimed to point out my own profession that I know well is subtly influenced, not just those professional researchers you and Gozu favour believing are all idealistic.

Medical research is being influenced by such considerations to the extent that desirable weight and acceptable cholesterol level charts have changed in the last 10 years.
They have moved in a direction that favours the sales aims of drug companies who are putting up the grant money.
The debate about how obvious this is becoming is hotting up an the medical journals, and the source of grants is now required to be supplied to the reviewers.

It would be naive to suggest that it is not a factor in other fields of research too.
It is even more naive to take Gozu's position that only the people he sees as the baddies could possibly be bending the truth to keep their careers financed.

I am a doctor and appalled that researchers who were once highly respected in the medical profession are clearly being suborned by these financial pressures now that University funding by governments has been cut to the bone. I suspect many of the subtly suborned don't even realise it is happening to them, or are in denial, and they protest loudly when the question is raised.

Given most people who enter Medicine start out fairly idealistic, it would be really stupid to think that those needing the fund their careers in other fields are not being suborned in the same way by those putting up the grants. After all grant money is essential to their careers.

Remember, in academic life it really is "Publish or Perish" and you need ongoing grants to keep publishing so there is a pressure to get on the bandwagons attract the grants.
Political opportunists need bandwagons to beat too, and this will influence what research gets any government funded grants.

[Psyber]

Before the "greenhouse effect" sliding towards "climate change" Fish mentioned above, in the 1970s we had the "population bomb", which became a big concern, then faded out of the popular press and any recognition at all. Yet that is still a very real issue as the world population grows and nothing is being done about population sustainability - politicians are even still advocating further population growth.
And population excess is the root cause of any effect we have on the climate.

I've said before that TV programmes are hardly primary sources, but I was reminded of this issue recently by a programme I saw,
It pointed out the old estimates that the world could sustain 2.5 billion people at the average standard of living in the western world and 1.5 billion at the standards of the USA.
Were has the concern for this issue gone?
Is it that it is less scary to focus on the climate than on the total underlying effects of excess population?

[Gozu]

Before the "greenhouse effect" sliding towards "climate change" Fish mentioned above, in the 1970s we had the "population bomb", which became a big concern, then faded out of the popular press and any recognition at all. Yet that is still a very real issue as the world population grows and nothing is being done about population sustainability - politicians are even still advocating further population growth.
And population excess is the root cause of any effect we have on the climate.

Take it up with the pope.

[fish]

Psyber your anti-science dogma would have us all believing that cancer doesn't exist or that smoking isn't harmful or that UV rays do not cause sunburn!

Do you really believe in a conspiracy theory involving thousands of scientists and all the worlds peak scientific bodies?

I think not.

[Psyber]

Psyber your anti-science dogma would have us all believing that cancer doesn't exist or that smoking isn't harmful or that UV rays do not cause sunburn!
Do you really believe in a conspiracy theory involving thousands of scientists and all the worlds peak scientific bodies?
I think not.

Fish;

1. As I've said before, and you never get it, majority opinion doesn't determine truth in science - the majority have been wrong in the past and there are many examples available.
Questioning established opinion is a core part of the scientific method, and should be encouraged not stamped out.
"Peak scientific bodies" are bureaucracies, with paid administrators who have jobs to preserve, not scientists and like all bureaucracies defend their position to the death, once they have taken one.

2. I am not anti-science, I am committed to science - see my other posts supporting science.
I'm just anti blind unquestioning belief in the particular science you want to believe is absolutely true, and behave like a stickleback about.

3. No I don't believe it is a conspiracy, just a mad, blind, individualistic, race of "bandwagoners" to the funding trough that keeps publications and thus careers flowing.
[That's happened before too.]

[Barto]

This is very self-centred I know, but I don't give the proverbial rats flying tossbag, because I will be dead, as will my child (and any subsequent children I sire), so the outcome of climate change doesn't bother me.

I'm starting to think like this as well. I realise that I'm probably wasting my time on this earth by worrying, I don't have kids nor plan to, the people who should be enacting change are family people who surely must want their kids and their kids to have a decent future, but it's hard to care when they want to drive 4WDs in the city and whine about the price of petrol.

[Barto]

Is it that it is less scary to focus on the climate than on the total underlying effects of excess population?

They're interlinked. Less people = less pollution.

Heard a funny quote once "I could set fire to a tyre yard and have less of a carbon footprint that someone with three kids". It's probably over exaggerating but the family home consumes a lot of energy and resources these days. We're consuming more and population is growing.. not only that people in the developing world are demanding a decent lifestyle as well and it's hard to blame them.

[Psyber]

Is it that it is less scary to focus on the climate than on the total underlying effects of excess population?

They're interlinked. Less people = less pollution.

Heard a funny quote once "I could set fire to a tyre yard and have less of a carbon footprint that someone with three kids". It's probably over exaggerating but the family home consumes a lot of energy and resources these days. We're consuming more and population is growing.. not only that people in the developing world are demanding a decent lifestyle as well and it's hard to blame them.

Yes clearly. We seem to be entertaining the fantasy that we can reduce the pollution without reducing the population.
The only way to do that is to lower our standard of living to that of the third world, which we obviously won't do.
The third world is trying to reach our standard of living and as you say we can't blame them.
But we can't supply the energy for that cleanly unless we embrace clean forms of fission [like Thorium] or solve the fusion problem.
The other option was to get off the planet and find room for our population and economy to keep expanding, but we appear to have missed that boat.

[fish]

Meanwhile, as human induced climate change proceeds largely unabated, two independant studies published in the scientific journal Nature have linked extreme weather to climate change.

Two independent studies suggest greenhouse gas emissions are linked to more frequent heavy rainfall. The studies, which appear today in the journal Nature, highlight the impact humans are having on extreme weather events, and come less than a month after a set of major flooding events around the world.

Full details, including links to the Nature website, can be found here.

[auto]

I voted "strongly believe" in the poll. I am not a climate scientist but I have postgraduate qualifications in Environmental Studies and have worked in the environmental field for about fifteen years.

I have been a keen observer of the climate change debate for almost 20 years and have witnessed the phenomena undergo various name changes, from "greenhouse effect" in the early 1990's when the theory was first formulated, to "enhanced greenhouse effect" when the human-induced causes were understood and quantified, to "global warming" when the broad effects were understood and quantified, and to "climate change" now that we know that, whilst overall temperatures will increase as a result of human activities, there may be an increase in extreme hot and cold and wet and dry weather events.

Climate change has been researched and modelled extensively by thousands of climatologists and earth scientists and the unequivocal conclusions are that: (1) The earth is warming; (2) The warming is forced by human activity, primarily due to carbon dioxide and methane emissions as well as land use change; (3) The warming will have serious environmental, social and economic consequences which will become considerably worse unless greenhouse gas emissions are urgently and deeply cut.

Of course there are dissenting opinions but they are in the tiny minority and every scientific body of national or international standing supports the scientific conclusions I have detailed above.

I can see no reason why the overwhelming scientific conclusions can be ignored and to do so puts our future in peril.

Gday fish, im currently doing a science degree and can either go geoscience or environmental options, but not sure which way to jump yet and im interested to know what someone in the environmental field does on a daily basis.

[Psyber]

The article fish provided the link to states the researchers have demonstrated a correlation between the increased rainfall and climate change, and the journalist adds:

Prior to this time there had not been a study that had formally identified this human effect in extreme rainfall events.

However, the study co-author Dr Francis Zwiers is quoted as only saying:

"So that suggests that humans influence the intensity of precipitation extremes,"

If he thought their work had actually proved and "formally identified this human effect" I expect he would have said so.

The journalist seems to have extrapolated a notch too far.
I went to the Nature web site, but couldn't find the full article, so I couldn't check what the authors actually said, or look at whether their methodology was sound.

[redandblack]

You're using a favourite ploy of sceptics, Psyber, that of latching on to one word to try to discredit the findings.

No scientist is going to use the word 'proves' on a subject as wide-ranging as this.

The word 'suggests' is academically strong in this case, I'd suggest

[Interceptor]

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/02/flood-disasters-and-human-caused.html

In short, the new studies are interesting and add to our knowledge. But they do not change the state of knowledge related to trends in global disasters and how they might be related to greenhouse gases. But even so, I expect that many will still want to connect the dots between greenhouse gas emissions and recent floods. Connecting the dots is fun, but it is not science.