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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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 Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:01 pm Post subject: How much is Mankind responsible for Earth's Climate Change? |
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The Grand Debate
I am fascinated by this right now.
Until very recently I was completely convinced that global warming is a very serious problem which mankind itself is directly responsible for and which threatens the future of humanity.
I'm still largely convinced that the statement above is in fact the case. But I'm not quite as certain as I was.
I note with interest that those offering counter-arguments refuse to lie down or go away, even it seems when they have everything to lose and nothing to gain by adopting such a position.
I think the Is global warming man-made? debate, far from being over, is more active now than it has been for most of the last two decades.
Is this a last-ditch attempt by the naysayers to deny a truth they can't bear to contemplate? Or are hasty scientific conclusions, long accepted as orthodoxy, being unmasked?
Here's some food for thought...
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Alan Lansdowne
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 10:22 pm Post subject: |
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Trailer for An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore:
http://www.climatecrisis.net/trailer/
Duration: 3 mins
Not sure why the film itself - which is less "Hollywood" than this rather over-produced trailer - isn't online. (Perhaps they want to sell more DVDs?)
Anyway, if you haven't seen it yet the complete film is well worth watching.
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Alan Lansdowne
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
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Location: London, UK
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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mark
Joined: 27 Mar 2008
Posts: 2
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:57 am Post subject: |
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Thanks, mark, that was terrific - really thought-provoking.
Here is the link to Bob Carter's article in The Telegraph which he mentions during the presentation:
There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
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Alan Lansdowne
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attitudetravel
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mark
Joined: 27 Mar 2008
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks Alan. As you previously mentioned, this is a rather fascinating topic.
Whilst it may be because of the side of the fence on which I currently sit, I have yet to find David Karoly's counter argument quite as compelling.
If you haven't already done so, the comments and opinion page of Bob Carters site maybe worth a visit:
Comment & Information On Climate Change
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_1.htm
Link to Home Page |
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:31 am Post subject: |
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I thought Karoly to be more impressive than Carter in the ABC panel debate - though I must admit, the interviewer on that programme appeared to me to be taking a position betwen the two sides which was anything but neutral... even to the point of ignoring questions from the audience which were deemed too off-message.
In the two presentations referenced above - the one by Carter which you posted and the one where Karoly responded - it's difficult not to argue that Carter comes out much better.
I would like to see a presentation from some maverick non-IPCC scientist which demonstrates just as robustly that anthropogenic global warming is a reality. Then I could proceed with plastering
Think again / Think Green / Take the bus / Take the train / Embrace slow travel
messages all over the low cost airline guides on the attitude Travel website with a clear conscience.
I would have done this already, were I not slightly concerned that by doing so, I may be doing precious little more than marvelling at what spectacularly fine threads the Emperor is now sporting. I don't wish to be guilty of unquestioningly accepting dogma any more than I wish to be complicit in assisting people to engage in activities which contribute to anthropogenic global warming.
Yes, yes, I have read all about Pascal's Wager but since I saw The Great Global Warming Swindle raise the argument about the anti-CO2 movement potentially arresting the technological development of sub-Saharan Africa for nothing, the wager, with its attendant fallacies, hasn't been enough to convince me to drop everything I'm doing with updating the European Low Cost Airline Guides and get started instead on the Low Cost Bus and Coach Guides (which nevertheless will get published this year, probably just as soon as I get my MA Thesis finished).
Enough of my rambling...
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Alan Lansdowne
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:41 am Post subject: |
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Here's Greg Craven, a High School Science Teacher from Oregon, who claims that none of us (especially the non-scientists amongst us, presumably) need to know which school of scientific thought is closer to the truth: all we need is a bit of rational philosophy:
How It All Ends: Risk Management - Pt 1 of 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwuDDZ5HM_U
Duration: 9 mins 14 secs
N.B. If you ever studied statistics past the age of 14, you might find this one a bit elementary.
How It All Ends: Risk Management - Pt 2 of 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLoO6qyoV08
Duration: 9 mins 51 secs
Greg starts getting into his argument in this one. (By the way, was Greg in Fargo ?)
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Alan Lansdowne
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twilight_world
Joined: 03 Jan 2008
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | I would like to see a presentation from some maverick non-IPCC scientist which demonstrates just as robustly that anthropogenic global warming is a reality. Then I could proceed with plastering
Think again / Think Green / Take the bus / Take the train / Embrace slow travel
messages all over the low cost airline guides on the attitude Travel website with a clear conscience. |
I can’t help with the topic of climate change in general, I’m afraid, but I may be able to shed some light on how much damage flying does to the climate. This topic has received a lot of attention in the media, usually with the conclusion being that aviation is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. Personally, I’m a theoretical physicist who has been working as a scientist for a number of years (though not on the topic of climate change) and I have learned never to trust the media on anything related to science. Since my main hobby is to see as much of the world as possible, which sometimes involves flying, I have tried to examine this topic to see if it is really true that us travellers create so much damage.
The IPCC has actually studied the topic of aviation and climate change and their whole report is available on the web:
http://www.grida.no/Climate/ipcc/aviation/
For those interested in chemistry there is a lot of interesting reading here. For those who are only interested in the conclusion, I suggest going to the following page:
http://www.grida.no/Climate/ipcc/aviation/086.htm
Here Figure 6.17 shows the estimated increased temperature between the starting year of 1990 and up to 2050. The dotted line represents a scenario in which there is absolutely no flying at all, while the solid line represents the IPCC’s most likely aviation scenario, with growth in the aviation sector. According to the IPCC:
Of total global warming of 0.9 K anticipated in 2050, about 0.05 K would be attributable to aviation.
So, if all planes were grounded in 1990, with not a single aircraft allowed to fly ever again, we would be rewarded in 2050 with a climate that on average is 0.05 degrees cooler than it would otherwise have been.
Having looked at this subject in some detail, I would however argue that 0.05 degrees is an overestimate and in many ways misleading. The reason is that in addition to the effects of CO2, the IPCC also accounts for other climate gases like NOx that are released during flights. In principle, this sounds like a good idea, but the problem is that unlike CO2, which stays in the atmosphere for a long time, these gases have a relatively short lifetime. This means that they do not build up in the atmosphere like CO2.
Consider the following analogy: Imagine me using two taps to simultaneously fill two buckets with water, one of the buckets being solid while the other having a hole so that the water quickly runs out. After two minutes, one of the buckets is full while the other one is only half full because some of the water has run out. If I stop filling and wait a few minutes, I will have one full bucket of water and one empty bucket. In this situation, I would argue that it would not make sense to claim that in assessing the total water available to me, the second bucket must be considered full. The analogy is simplified, but it is more or less what the IPCC does when it includes the effects of shortlived climate gases. Now if there are some flights in the sky all the time, this would be somewhat similar to continously filling the bucket that leaks, so there will be some contribution from these gases. This contribution will be local (i.e not global), though, since unlike CO2, these gases do not have time to spread all over the atmosphere before they disappear. Consequently, if we should suddenly find that their contribution to global warming is unacceptable, we could in principle stop all flights permanently, and there would be no lasting damage (except for the contribution from CO2, since this gas stays in the atmosphere).
For more details, take a look at these references:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/117902580/PDFSTART
http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~earpmf/papers/Forsteretal2006.pdf
The last one is a scientific article, but it should not be too difficult to read for those that are interested.
The IPCC includes the effects of shortlived gases by multiplying the CO2 warming contribution (actually the radiation forcing from increased CO2) by a time-dependent factor between 2 and 3. If we want to find the permanent warming induced only by CO2 from flights, a good estimate is given by dividing 0.05 degrees by 2.5. This means that (according to the IPCC estimate) the total permanent global warming from all flights taken between 1990 and 2050 is around 0.02 degrees. So, if we ban all flights from tomorrow, we should be rewarded by a world that is somewhat less than 0.02 degrees cooler in 2050 than it would otherwise have been.
In total, this suggests to me that the impact of aviation on climate is negligible and that we can all travel around the world with the best of conscience. The attention which the link between flying and climate change has received in the media is ridiculously disproportionate to the actual damage that is caused. Note that this is not fringe science funded by the aviation industry, but the estimates of the IPCC itself.
I hope this information may have been useful to some of you. |
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 1:59 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for that thought-provoking contribution, twilight_world.
| Quote: | | In total, this suggests to me that the impact of aviation on climate is negligible and that we can all travel around the world with the best of conscience. |
The part of me which derives huge enjoyment from travelling abroad and learning about different cultures sincerely hopes you are right, but despite all these data I'm still not convinced that high-carbon travel has a "negligible" impact on the environment. I remain to be persuaded that that we don't all have to start thinking responsibly about how often and how we travel. I'm not going to take down the Low Cost Airline Guides any time soon, because they serve a useful informational purpose, but I certainly don't want to persist in providing information about cheap flights as a preferred short-haul option, when taking needless short-haul flights can be demonstrated as irresponsible and environmentally-damaging behaviour.
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Alan Lansdowne
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attitudetravel
Joined: 15 Nov 2007
Posts: 242
Location: London, UK
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| Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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Moving on...
Next up is an interview where Peter Taylor, a spokesman for environmental think-tank Ethos UK, discusses his views with regard to climate change:
Interview with Peter Taylor - Pt 1 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdTfgz_WGtI
Duration: 4 mins 51 secs
Interview with Peter Taylor - Pt 2 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLR95w0qBD0
Duration: 4 mins 58 secs
Interview with Peter Taylor - Pt 3 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUUYcfsaSnw
Duration: 6 mins 17 secs
Interview with Peter Taylor - Pt 4 of 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvO6oLYWAQI
Duration: 5 mins 15 secs
I've never heard of Taylor before (admittedly, I'd never heard of Karoly or Carter either) but assuming Taylor is who he claims to be and has had a long history as an environmental policy analyst, having worked at various times as an advisor to the UN, European Commission, UK government agencies and NGOs, he ought to know what he's talking about.
If there is any substance behind what Taylor is saying, his is another voice which casts doubt on the IPCC conclusions.
I am finding all this very frustrating because I started this thread in order to kick off the debate between those who claim that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a reality and the AGW doubters. I wanted to create an easily-accessible reference with a balanced collection of links out to all the arguments and evidence for and against AGW which (ultimately) would demonstrate very clearly that the arguments for AGW were a whole lot more comprehensively thought out, robust, and could withstand any counter-argument from those who used questionable pseudo-science to dispute the IPCC verdict.
Rather unexpectedly I have found more credible arguments coming from those who stick their necks out and question the IPCC conclusions that the climate-change we are witnessing is primarily caused by humans. This is not at all what I anticipated. If anyone can point to a really robust defence of the theory of anthropogenic global warming which demolishes the non-AGW theories, please can they post up links to the data? Many thanks.
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Alan Lansdowne
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