I was going to post this in the off topic area but the evidence speaks for itself in this video from the "CBC" Canada`s national broadcasting company back last year 2008. It is what it is ?
http://freedom.akweb.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=567

John

I'm not really sure I want to watch that... Do they cite any scientific articles?

Just watched it...despite what the time counter says when it starts, it's about 30 minutes long.
Well worth watching...just make sure you've got time to see it all.

I'm sending the link to my email list.
Thanks for the link, John.

Barb

Paul I think if you watch the video you will see all of what they are talking about is backed up by science and scientists, climatologists.Barb when I watched the video it automatically went to the next part. Great to see your passing this along.

John

Paul I think if you watch the video you will see all of what they are talking about is backed up by science and scientists, climatologists.Barb when I watched the video it automatically went to the next part. Great to see your passing this along.

John

First of all, the site that is hosting that video is pretty crazy... The video itself is fairly well made, and tries to portray the CC issue as more of a debate than it really is. It is difficult to find climatologists to support the hard-line position that the climate is not warming. The people presented here certainly are using data to back up their claims (not the guy talking about the Maldives), but you need to be careful how you interpret their responses. They never ask these people straight out what they think we should do about CO2 emissions (or maybe they did but didn't like the answer) and whether they have an effect on the planets temperature. The fellow talking about the Eastern Antarctic ice-sheet was right on, but he doesn't talk about Greenland nor about other Antarctic ice-sheets... I did a brief literature search on tropospheric temperature, I have not had success in finding articles that indicate that the tropospheric temperatures are stedy or falling... Be a skeptical as you like, my position is that we should probably be careful about continuing to dump millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. There is little doubt that higher CO2 correlates to increased temperature, historically speaking...

Not my field, but fascinating nonetheless. A better documentary than the website would indicate, and probably not one that people suscribing to such a site would be keen on if they took the time to think about it! 😀

I think that whether you believe one view or the other the point really should be....That we cannot go on polluting the atmosphere.
If eventually people find the truth and stop concentrating on B.S. redirection and subterfuge maybe they will ask more important questions instead of letting themselves be told what to think.
You can find data to prove ANYTHING you want.
Find me one study that says YEA! pollution is a good thing.
It is a waste of time focusing on whats not true instead of what is and these guys are supposed to be smart?
The other thing that's sad is that I may be wasting my time trying to warm up my area by leaving my car running all the time! 😳

My whole idea for posting this is to show another side to the debate. I dislike pollution as much as everyone else so I`m not advocating burning more fossil fuels. What I don`t like is the head scientists involved in collecting the temperature data saying the earth is getting warmer.It is in fact been getting colder for the last nine years and fudging the temperature readings higher in collusion together. Climategate?

John

I wasn't going to post more on this topic...there will always be two very strong sides to the issue, with nobody in the middle.

For what it's worth (and for some people, it won't be much), have a look at the following article.
For Canadians in particular, I think you'll feel strongly about the Canadian who apparently forced the s**t into the fan (who's now living in China..good place for him!) 😈

ARTICLE FROM:
December 2009 issue of Okanagan Business Examiner
By Mischa Popoff

Mischa Popoff is a freelance political writer with a bachelor’s degree in history.

one more point on the topic from ME
I am the proud owner of a Wollemia nobilis--the famed Wollemi pine--discovered in a deep and virtually inaccesible canyon in the the Blue Mountains of southeast Australia back in 1994. Like the gingko and many others, the Wollemi pine goes back to the time of the dinosaurs. Dr. Susan B. Murch of UBC Okanagan has a theory that these Wollemia grew "at a time when there was much more carbon dioxide in the air than now". Thanks to tissue culture, I have my specimen, and I look forward to Dr. Murch's published results. It's obvious that IF these Wollemia proliferated during the dinosaur age AND HIGHER PPM CONCENTRATIONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE EXISTED, it's only because of lower ppm CO2 (and urbanization, farming, diversity loss) that these Wollemia now occupy ONLY one small now-protected by law region in Australia's Blue Mountains.

Here's my Wollemia nobilis:

If only it could speak!

Barb

PS--anyway, We Canadians oughta be especially ashamed that Strong came from our ranks. And that Chretien ratified Kyoto in his office without so much as consulting his Environment Minister (who--by the way--is the longest serving environment minister in our history).

I have no problem beliving that the earth could be warming, but why do people think they can fix it? Even the best scenario models out there show that at best we can only slow the warming, never stop it. Don't forget, we have been on a warming trend sence the last ice age.

I like how people want to help the enviroment by forcing laws on thier neighbors. Why do people want to give more control to the gov. For every law created a freedom is lost. If people want a cleaner planted, then maybe they should look at themselves and start at home. If people want a cleaner burning car all they have to do is buy one.

If you take all the roofs in the USA and make them a reflective color you will do more cooling to the world then if you take all the cars off the roads in the whole world for the next 20 years. Now think what you could do if you made all the parking lots a light color and all the roads etc.....

Methane is a worse greenhouse gas then carbon, don't think they wont tax you for eating a burger because it is a cause of CC? And if they put a tax on green-house gasses, just think about it, everything people have or use other than water and power more or less releases green-house gasses. People still have to use things made from carbon, so how will anything change. Other than loss of freedom and loss of pay.

There is many places where people live where the gov controls everything, maybe people should see how well they take care of the eviroment.
This post is not directed at anyone, it is just something to think about. 😐

Good points Aaron.

Governments will jump in with both feet when they realize they can tax us every time we fart.
Barb

Barb and everyone- I'm about as lefty liberal as can be (I'm young, Canadian, and educated so you can't blame me... ) and I try to stay away from the CC topics because I'm not as informed as can I could be (and people generally feel pretty passionate about it). I made my point known earlier. I do beleive that when the majority of a scientific field thinks something is happening, it's prudent to listen. Science has been wrong before, I doubt that it's wrong this time. It's only by the sensible measurment, modelling, and histrocial analyses that they have an idea about what is happening. No one doubts that CO2 levels are rising at a rate faster than they have before. And when you add to that the fact that CO2 has been known as a greenhouse gas since the 19th century, it's not suprising that atmospheric chemists have been ringing alarm bells for decades...

I will say this, I am more informed than Mischa Popoff on this issue. Where is the background information (a history major, eh)? Where the fair and balanced reporting? The fields of atmospheric chemistry, climatology, mathmatics, physics, etc. are dismissed by the statement "it’s not science."

Here is a link to David Suzuki (One of the greatest Canadians of all time), The part in Bold at the end exlains my position very well (and for the record, I do beleive that the majority of the science is well supported:

"Who are the climate change skeptics?

Despite the international scientific community’s consensus on climate change, a very small band of critics continues to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it. Widely known as climate change “skeptics” or "deniers", these individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists directly – for example, by publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals or participating in international conferences on climate science. Instead, they focus their attention on the media, the general public, and policy makers with the goal of delaying action on climate change.

Not surprisingly, the skeptics have received significant funding from coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil. They also have well-documented connections with public relations firms that have set up industry-funded lobby groups to - in the words of one leaked memo - "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

Over the years, the skeptics have employed a wide range of arguments against taking action on climate change - some of which actually contradict each other. For example, they have claimed that:

Climate change is not occurring
The global climate is actually getting colder
The global climate is getting warmer, but not because of human activities
The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but this will create greater benefits than costs
The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but the impacts are not sufficient to require any policy response

After 15 years of increasingly definitive scientific studies attesting to the reality and significance of global climate change, there has been a noticeable shift in the skeptics' tactics. Many skeptics no longer deny that climate change is happening, but instead argue that the cost of taking action is too high - or even worse, that it is too late to take action. All of these arguments are false and are rejected by the scientific community at large.

To gain an understanding of the level of scientific consensus on climate change, a recent study examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening or is human-induced.

These findings contrast dramatically with the popular media's reporting on climate change. One recent study analyzed coverage of climate change in four influential American newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, and Wall Street Journal) over a 14-year period. It found that more than half of the articles discussing climate change gave equal weight to the scientifically discredited views of the skeptics.

This discrepancy is largely due to the media’s drive for balance in reporting. Journalists are trained to identify one position on any issue, and then seek out a conflicting position, providing both sides with roughly equal attention. Unfortunately, the “balance” of the different views within the media does not always correspond with the actual prevalence of each view within society, and can result in unintended bias. This has been the case with reporting on climate change, and as a result, many people believe that climate change is still being debated by scientists when in fact it is not.

While some level of debate is of course useful when looking at major social problems, eventually society needs to move on and actually address the issue. To do nothing about the problem of climate change is akin to letting a fire burn down a building because the precise temperature of the flames is unknown, or to not address the problem of smoking because one or two doctors still claim that it does not cause lung cancer. As the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) acknowledges, a lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an immediate response that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent dangerous consequences in the climate system. "

Thank you for the time you put into your essay, Paul.
I'm a biologist, not a climatologist. I think I can add another analogy to your last paragraph: AIDS. In the 1980s, scientists proposed that AIDS was caused by a virus, HIV. Skeptics said that was a conspiracy put out by the pharmaceutical industry to get money from Africa when what Africa needed was money for development. These skeptics said that AIDS was not caused by a pathogen but by poverty and that calls for increased monogamy and condom use were patronizing (search, "AIDS denialism"). These skeptics succeeded in prolonging the debate over the causes of AIDS by urging, "more research."
I see the CC debate as similar. I am happy to keep doing research, but we need to start doing something based on what we do know. Just my $0.02.

Hi Paul,
I also thank you for the effort you put into your response. My point is akin to someone from the outside looking in...for every scientist convinced of a position, there's another, equally educated, on the flip side. My high school education places me on the fence...I'm open to listening, and dearly hope somebody somewhere has the answers.

I've shrugged off enough naivete to know that economics is a driving force -- whether for corporations or myself.

I took the giant leap this spring by installing a 10kW horizontal axis wind turbine on my 15 acre property. Why? It wasn't because I happened to have 50 grand languishing in my pocket. Last October, B.C. Hydro instituted a two-step billing process for electricity. The first approx. 1300 kW hours (two month basis) were charged at something like $.059 per kW hour...anything over that kicked into Step 2 (their "conservation rate"--more aptly a "penalty") and was billed at $.08167. I run a business on the property, and am frequently into step 2 by an astounding 10,000 kW hours every two months.

Economic issues affected my decision to install the turbine: (1) hydro costs aren't going down; (2) wind energy assuages my innate desire to free myself of control by others, chiefly the B.C. Utilities Commission, yet another arm of government, whose hands are always in my pocket.

So what's my point?
I agree climate is changing, but unless the government--that barely leaves me enough in my pocket to go on an annual vacation--makes good decisions, I will forever question their "initiatives" because I'm old enough to have seen so many failures in the past, regardless of political stripe. The political left in Canada--indeed British Columbia--lacks business experience; the political right lacks understanding and empathy on critical issues. The damned pendulum never stops in the middle.

While Mischa Popoff (I've never met her, and before her article in that magazine, had never heard her name) may not be a scientist, I was stunned to read that former Prime Minister Chretien, who was in the dying days of his tenure, ratified Kyoto in his office without even having mentioned it to his Environment Minister. No discussion among our elected reps in Parliament. And to think that a Canadian--Mr. Strong--living in China, advocated the downfall of western industrialized civilization, left me aghast. I could hear the pendulum clanging left.
My personal knee-jerk reaction sent the pendulum to the right.

At retirement age, I no longer place in government(s) to do the right thing...or for that matter do things right. North American industry isn't up to the task, but neither is academia.

Meanwhile developing nations cry "Foul" (and understandably so) when our nations demand they jettison themselves into the 21st Century--missing the trial-and-error, dirty and cheap, industrial stages--that created our cherished living standard. The poor want to collect two hundred dollars to "Pass Go".
We don't want to pay them, yet somehow we know we should.

I have no faith that governments--or scientists--can solve this.
I really don't see a ray of hope...even from my new LED lights.

But as a palm nut...the only benefit would have been to grow my palms outdoors year round.
Looking outside, I see that once again, reality sucks...to use a phrase from the younger set.

Barb.
Oh...and my wind turbine? Oughta be paid for in about 100 years. 😆 😆

Barb and Terdal- Thanks for the replies, I enjoyed reading both of them!

I won't spend any more time on this issue (in this thread). I don't like to sound negative, but I really can't see things changing anytime soon...

Paul, what do you think should be done to fix the problem?