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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

 Page 19 of 41. Messages 1 to 20 | 21 to 40 | 41 to 60 | 61 to 80 | 81 to 100 | 101 to 120 | 121 to 140 | 141 to 160 | 161 to 180 | 181 to 200 | 201 to 220 | 221 to 240 | 241 to 260 | 261 to 280 | 281 to 300 | 301 to 320 | 321 to 340 | 341 to 360 | 361 to 380 | 381 to 400 | 401 to 420 | 421 to 440 | 441 to 460 | 461 to 480 | 481 to 500 | 501 to 520 | 521 to 540 | 541 to 560 | 561 to 580 | 581 to 600 | 601 to 620 | 621 to 640 | 641 to 660 | 661 to 680 | 681 to 700 | 701 to 720 | 721 to 740 | 741 to 760 | 761 to 780 | 781 to 800 | 801 to 818
Author
OT: Skeptics vs Alarmist Cage Match unSpectacular!
R James
17-Jun-2009
9:55:17 AM

>If you think that these stupid questions are a decent rebuttal to the
>science produced by the IPCC, I am very glad you are not my doctor.

If you broke your right leg, and the doctor accidentally plastered your left leg, you wouldn't question him - what faith. I wish you best of health.

evanbb
17-Jun-2009
10:02:17 AM
Here's a pretty level headed summary:
http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/2008/02/global-warming-flowchart.html

Damn it! Can't post the flowchart directly. I like it.
lacto
17-Jun-2009
10:03:39 AM
I wonder if Tony or R james have just been to the doctor and diagnosed with cancer whether the would ignore the vast majority of medical opinion re their condition or they would surf the internet and come up with all the alternative offered by people with "experience" and no doubt some following and some with "scientific backing" . Convential Medicine at times have lousey outcomes whilst some quack remedies apparently work . Believe me there a millions of pages on the web backing these ideas , so what do you two do ignore advice till you access all data which you interperate and then act or follow the mainstream ???
both of you like me are getting to the age group where this is increasingly a real possibility we have survived to now so cancer is getting to be a better bet !

evanbb
17-Jun-2009
10:05:11 AM
On 17/06/2009 R James wrote:
>
>>If you think that these stupid questions are a decent rebuttal to the
>>science produced by the IPCC, I am very glad you are not my doctor.
>
>If you broke your right leg, and the doctor accidentally plastered your
>left leg, you wouldn't question him - what faith. I wish you best of health.

Ahhh, yeah, that's what I said.


Are you suggesting that you can just sort of look around you and have a complete understanding of the global climate?

allroundgoodguy
17-Jun-2009
10:13:57 AM
On 17/06/2009 R James wrote:

>That's exactly right. This is the real problem we face. An increasing
>population with a higher standard of living using more resources. This
>is the real problem of the immediate future - not climate change. How much
>money has, and will be spent on climate change based on unsubstantiated
>theory? How much money has been spent on our greatest known threat - population
>increase?

So are you suggesting a global China style one child policy or some form of population reduction through eugenics? Another option is to generate a smaller footprint, by using what we have in better ways. Reducing waste & emissions MAY lead to a more stable future environment, better able to support a growing population. You suggest that AGW does not happen, but, as others have asked, What if you’re wrong!

anthonyk
17-Jun-2009
10:44:08 AM
On 17/06/2009 evanbb wrote:
>Also heard today a fairly reasonable cause of the 'Global Cooling' since
>1998. Apparently aerosol/particulate emissions from India and China have
>been rising fast enough to mask the heat capturing effects of increased
>GHGases. This raises the problem that if they ever clean up their pollution
>(the Asian Brown Cloud) things could change pretty quickly. Some good rain
>might do some damage as well.

note that between 2001-now we have been in a period of decreasing sunspot activity and are now at solar minimum, which is also tied to reduced solar radiation. so some part of any reduced temperature in this period would have been from being on the tail end of the cycle, but its overdue to increase so there'll be an increase in solar energy over the next 5 (3?) years of the 11 year cycle.

the 11 year cycle is well known and established, you have to assume the overall trend in temperatures is higher than what we've been seeing from the cyclical reduction over the last 8 years.



R James
17-Jun-2009
10:48:43 AM
You suggest that AGW does not happen, but,
>as others have asked, What if you’re wrong!

And I responded on 12/6/09. Have a look back.

I'm suggesting that realistically there's little we can do about climate, whether AGW is real or not, while we have an exponentially growing population. Most of Australia's growth comes from immigration. We choose not to overpopulate, so the government offsets this by encouraging immigration from other countries. Sensible when capital cities struggle to supply enough drinking water.

I'm not suggesting a one child policy - we need 2 - 3 children on average for stability. However, if Australia is serious about reducing emissions, for a start reduce immigration.

We need to globally acknowledge, at government level, that population increase is not in our best interests. It will require education and culture changes - this is a huge topic and outside the scope of this thread, so I won't dwell on it.

Let's just consider that world population is expected to increase by 35% by 2050 to 9.2 billion people. Does anyone really believe we'll reduce total emissions and use of resources at the same time? Politicians are pulling vote winning unachievable figures out of a hat (eg reduce emissions by 25% by 2050).

Reducing population won't win an election. However, people feel so good about reducing emissions, that not only will it win an election, the silly sheeple will pay more taxes to support it. Meanwhile, Blind Freddie can see that the emission goals are unachievable while the bigger problem of population growth is ignored.
jono_1
17-Jun-2009
10:56:11 AM
On 17/06/2009 evanbb wrote:
>Also note in the ABC today that the White House have released a paper on
>the impacts in the US:
>http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2600335.htm
>
>Maybe RJames and Tony should call them and tell them they're mistaken?
>
>
>
>Also heard today a fairly reasonable cause of the 'Global Cooling' since
>1998. Apparently aerosol/particulate emissions from India and China have
>been rising fast enough to mask the heat capturing effects of increased
>GHGases. This raises the problem that if they ever clean up their pollution
>(the Asian Brown Cloud) things could change pretty quickly. Some good rain
>might do some damage as well.



Also 1998 was a strong El Nino year. Some work has been done to estimate the effect El Ninos have on the average global temperature. The resulting estimations brings 1998 back into the pack and leads to a more or less plateau in global temperatures over the last 10 years. So the question remains why has global temperatures not risen in line with increased CO2 over the last 10 years. Well, Evan has presented a plausible explanation. I'm pretty sure the "Asian Brown Cloud" has been detected in the USA so it is of large enough magnitude to affect global average temperature.

Anyway a 10 year trend tells us nothing when we are dealing with climate. The next 10 years we might see a rapid increase or a decrease or not much at all.

And of course 1998 is going to be used as a reference point for climate sceptics as it makes for a global cooling trend over the next 10 years.

The fact is anything to do with climate predictions/modelling is a best guess. We still don't understand all the complexities and feedbacks on this planet, and never will. There is still a lot of work to be done on Co2-water vapour relationship and ocean acidity and its effects on coral reefs and more importantly deep-sea carbon storage, from carbonate secreting ocean creatures, which store a huge amount of carbon on the ocean floor. Climate models are continually being updated and are always works in progress. Some other the climate models have done a pretty good job at predicting climate change over the last 30-40 years, excluding the last 10.

So the question is do we wait 20 years or 50 years are continue business as usual and wait and see if the models are right or wrong. Personally, I don't think so.


Guess I should go back to work.


evanbb
17-Jun-2009
10:56:56 AM
On 17/06/2009 R James wrote:
>I'm not suggesting a one child policy - we need 2 - 3 children on average
>for stability. However, if Australia is serious about reducing emissions,
>for a start reduce immigration.


Good! Another right-wing barrow being pushed into the ring.

I would argue that we would be far better off decreasing birth rates and increasing immigration. Well, compared to the awesome outcomes of the Baby Bonus.

I see no technical reason why we can't reduce emissions with a growing population, and this is something I am genuinely qualified to comment on. The cost is a separate matter all together, but the technicalities are possible.

In an interesting development, Deutsche Bank and Siemens are collaborating on a VERY BIG solar project in North Africa. I can't think of 2 organisations more qualified to put their money where their view of the future is:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a4NgHlEsYl9k
R James
17-Jun-2009
11:01:35 AM
>note that between 2001-now we have been in a period of decreasing sunspot
>activity and are now at solar minimum, which is also tied to reduced solar
>radiation. so some part of any reduced temperature in this period would
>have been from being on the tail end of the cycle, but its overdue to increase
>so there'll be an increase in solar energy over the next 5 (3?) years of
>the 11 year cycle.
>
>the 11 year cycle is well known and established, you have to assume the
>overall trend in temperatures is higher than what we've been seeing from
>the cyclical reduction over the last 8 years.

Solar cycle 24 is over 2 years late in kicking in. We haven't seen such low activity since early last century. If it continues like this, or cycle 24 is very weak (as is predicted), we could see a repeat of the Dalton minimum, or even Maunder, both of which coincided with temperature drop (little ice age). This could be a unique opportunity for modern science to further understand the effects of solar activity on climate. If we do get a repeat of these periods, we're in real trouble - much worse than a bit of warming. Do we see any preparation for this possibility?


Wendy
17-Jun-2009
11:14:19 AM
I actually agree with RJames that population is an issue, but see it slightly differently. For starters, Australia's population growth is a tiny portion of population growth in the world and immigration doesn't increase the net number of people on the planet, but redistributes population to places with better resources and increased education/opportunities are likely to lead to them choosing to have less children in the future. If you want to get serious about reducing population growth, provide education and opportunities for women in developing nations. When women have access to information, contraception, life opportunities and independence, they have less children. Not to mention that both them and their families have better quality of life.

gremlin
17-Jun-2009
11:18:28 AM
Now i've posted most of this in another thread, but it's my morning coffee break and i feel like hoicking a few web enabled hand grenades around the place... explosions are cool!

What a stupid poll and pointless 'debate', of course the climate is changing, it always is... Not to far ago in human history there were wombats as large as cows, six meter long lizards, tigers in Australia and a lot more ice as well. Throughout most of the planets history it's either a giant snowball or a firey ball of burning death.

Wow you statistics amase me! <40 years of data along with a couple of hundred years of scribblings in comparison to hundreds of thousands of years (and then some) of real climate change that humans, all the animals (past and present) and the planet have actually gone through... To me it looks a lot like all the false positives you get when you first introduce a spam filter or firewall and need to fine tune the system a bit, when all you've got is a hammer everything starts to look like a nail that needs a good bashing in the brains.

Now i'm all for the conservation of resources instead of clear felling all the trees like Joe did back in the 60's up in the western parts of central Queensland with his mates bulldozers or pumping the rivers dry to grow cotton and cow feed, however what i don't get about some of these climate change doomsayers is at what point in history do you want to preserve things? Yesterday, a few decades ago, last century, thirty thousand years ago or maybe a couple of million?

They're kinda like idiot wannabe environmental activist uni students who hang out at the tent embassy in Canberra and have fallen in love with some false misunderstanding of 'wilderness' yet seem to be oblivious to the fact that Aboriginal people were farming kangaroos, emus, goannas, burning down the bush and carving vagina's in rocks long before the Summarians even thought up the idea of building ziggurats.

What we need is a really awesome and terrifying new strain of spanish flu, instead of this pansy swine flu which can't even kill 10,000 people across the globe, kill off a couple of billion or so humans and make the price of fuel (along with all the other resources) a hell of a lot cheaper for those that are left to burn all the corpses in mass graves...

Bugger lowering immigration levels (closet right wing neo-nazi?), in my eyes most of the Australian population looks like 4th-5th gen immigrants to me anyway, but you won't see me complaining about the recent introduction of moden medical sceince, the wide array of interesting drugs or the bus loads tanned up female European tourists.

WWIII might be another good alternative, one that starts in about 10 years time so we can send all these gen Y/Z f---ers that keep sitting in my seat on the train off with their ipods and mobile phones to their gory bloodstained doom in central China somewhere... Most of em would make really good soldiers too, since they've all been training for endless hours on their xbox's for years already!

Think of the possibilites! We could bump off that annoying Kim Jong-il so he no longer keeps making up bullshit about being able to put nuclear warheads into orbit along with that crazy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad motherf---er who's getting a little bit big for his boots lately AND! not to mention (in the words of Biafra) get rid of practically everybody in our dole queues.

Levels of employment would sky rocket up to 100%, we could have people in wheelchairs making depleated uranium tipped bullets, Rupert would have an amazing wargasm fireworks show of death to fatten up his bank balance and we could even annex NZ, claim all their mountains as our own and maybe starting building a massive imperial empire in Indonesia and all the south pacific islands! War = Profits man! Think of the possibilites!

The benefits would be yet another huge leap forward in technology, all our resources would be rationed in order to support the war effort (50 years later we'd all glow fluresant green, sparing millions of lightbulbs a year and save all our xmas paper/plastic cheese in the kitchen cupboard or some shit) and we get the same effect as a really awesome flu.

Peace, rainbow colours, free kinky love and all that hippy bullshit...
R James
17-Jun-2009
11:31:24 AM

>>Also note in the ABC today that the White House have released a paper
>on
>>the impacts in the US:
>>http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/17/2600335.htm
>>
>>Maybe RJames and Tony should call them and tell them they're mistaken?
>>
Plenty of scientists more qualified that myself have already told them. The problem is that it doesn't win votes or taxes. Why would they stop when they're on a good roll?
>

evanbb
17-Jun-2009
12:26:14 PM
On 17/06/2009 R James wrote:
>The problem is that it doesn't win votes or taxes. Why would they stop
>when they're on a good roll?
>>

You don't follow politics very closely do you? Introducing this legislation in AUstralia and the US has given both leaders a beating in the polls. Suggesting that they're doing it to win votes is a grossly simplistic view of the situation.
R James
17-Jun-2009
1:12:54 PM
Introducing this legislation
>in AUstralia and the US has given both leaders a beating in the polls.

I agree it's hard for politicians to know which way to go. Public attitude to this is going through some changes. They get torn between election promises, public opinion and science.

anthonyk
17-Jun-2009
2:15:21 PM
this is OT of this OT thread, and dare I say risks muddying the waters a little, but i'm interested in what ppl have to say about this-

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-7583,00.html

interestingly this article was written more than a year ago, and there's still no sign of sun spots, a few appeared briefly but then disappeared again.

(a similar topic is at http://catsandpigeons.wordpress.com/climate/ )

evanbb
17-Jun-2009
3:22:14 PM
Here's a ridiculously long speech from Christine Milne that she's presenting today.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/06/17/milne-the-climate-nightmare-is-upon-us/

I haven't read it yet, but I think it outlines the Green's vision for the future.

evanbb
17-Jun-2009
3:53:35 PM
On 17/06/2009 R James wrote:
>Plenty of scientists more qualified that myself have already told them.

It seems you're pretty sold there's no such thing. This is a shame for you personally, I see anger and disenfranchisement in your future, as everyone else pursues what you see as a futile crusade, with your money. Have you tried reading the IPCC Synthesis report with an open mind? It's very well written, and covers a very broad range of topics, including the influence of solar cycles, and may clear some things up. You're clearly not interested in hearing it from anyone else.

Note that I've tried to play devils advocate with my own position on this, but there genuinely isn't any serious science available that challenges the IPCC position. The Heartland Institute do the whole sceptics cause a terrible dis-service with their support for some pretty terrible science, and I just can't take anything that they say seriously. I would dearly love you to refer me to some peer reviewed analysis of the alternative science, but I genuinely haven't seen any. Is there any way you're likely to change your view? If not, there really is no point continuing this discussion.
R James
17-Jun-2009
3:58:32 PM

>interestingly this article was written more than a year ago, and there's
>still no sign of sun spots, a few appeared briefly but then disappeared
>again.

Yes, there was some concern a year ago. Since then, there's still been next to no sunspot activity - just a hint in the last month (http://www.solen.info/solar/. ) I monitor this every day. As I mentioned in my last post on this, we are potentially entering a repeat of the the Dalton period. If this extends to something like the Maunder, we can expect a temperature drop of about 1 degC from where we are now (it's only up 0.6 degC now, and there's panic over warming).

It doesn't sound like much, but last time it happened, there was a lot more ice and snow. The jet stream will change to bring colder weather further from the poles. The increase temperature differential will increase storm activity. We'll have struggles with growing food. Overall, it's not nice. If we are concerned about warming, we should be all sitting on the toilet over what this would mean.

If it develops into a full ice age (which based on past history could happen any time in the next few thousand years), we're going to see about 8 degC drop (though it will take a few thousand years to get there). Life as we know it will change dramatically.

evanbb
17-Jun-2009
4:03:09 PM
On 17/06/2009 R James wrote:
>It doesn't sound like much, but last time it happened, there was a lot
>more ice and snow. The jet stream will change to bring colder weather further
>from the poles. The increase temperature differential will increase storm
>activity. We'll have struggles with growing food.

This is of very similar tone to the 'alarmists'. I like it. Pop will indeed eat itself.

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