fuh2 wrote: 
as far as I was aware this is not rocket science- many countries operate a system whereby you can sell power back to the grid.

My concern about this thread is how everyone talks about the science not being proven and tries to bring their own scientific theories to play.  There's nothing wrong with exploring and understanding the evidence of course but there seems to be a constant theme of "I won't believe the science until I personally have done my own independent research".

Now, of course some of the climate scientists are tainted by the UEA email scandal but why do we seem to need an amatuer scientist to prove every point now?  This strikes me as a little like some of the comments about the swine flu vaccination.  The science is there and it's good science- you can opt out if you personally wish but let the rest of the world and especially the governments get on with tackling this problem and stop putting up road blocks.

 miamizsun wrote: 
More Right wing Corporate fear mongering from the Carbon Industry. I get all my electricity from wind farms and I pay only 10% more for it. In Germany they offer Solar Power panels for customers subsidized by the govermnment and the EXCESS YOU CAN SELL BACK to the utility.   

 miamizsun wrote: 

There is justified cynicism, and then also woefully misplaced cynicism.

 dionysius wrote: 
M, how can you say that this obvious corruption means nothing? I must respectfully disagree.

There is more here.

You do realize how much money this carbon tax will generate right?

In Japan estimates are running $1400 & $8600 per household annually.

I don't deny that there is a major problem with pollution and climate change, I'm just questioning the legitimacy of the data, how much is due to man, and why they're going to tax the pants off of us.

Listen, any time corrupt government(s) get involved and wants to help us take care of an issue by taxing us, I get worried. Their track record speaks for itself.

If climate change is such a big deal, why don't they stop the wars, stop the bailouts for their "too big" to fail buddies and focus on taking care of a real issue?

Isn't it obvious government's priority is taxing, borrowing and spending?

I'm just asking....

I have a feeling we're about to take it in the a$$, and somehow the government/corporatists are about to ca$h in again.

Peace

 jadewahoo wrote: 

When I was young and stupid. Now that I am old and stupid, I recognize their fatuity.

 dionysius wrote: 
Is that chariots of the gods bloke? Jeez I haven't thought about him since I read that book when I was 15. 

 miamizsun wrote:
What do you prefer, a carbon tax that could be used to create millions of green industry jobs (like putting solar on every roof in America), or runaway global warming?   Now THAT is when we will be truly royally f'ed. 

————————————————————————————- 

Runaway Global Warming-
A Climate Catastrophe in the Making

What is runaway global warming, or "runaway heating"?

Runaway global warming is the accelerating (and soon to be unstoppable) chain reaction caused by release of the Arctic's vast stores of the very potent greenhouse gas (GHG), methane. The Arctic methane is released as the result of global warming heating the Arctic. That is called a positive carbon feedback.

This is as close as we've come to a literal End of the World Doomsday scenario. It is the single most catastrophically dangerous effect of global warming to all life on Earth.

The Arctic is already warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Regions in Siberia (where most of the carbon is) are warming even faster.

 

 dionysius wrote: 
Whoa. You say those names like you have actually read them.
?

 miamizsun wrote: 

Sorry, I don't know Portuguese.

And the email "scandal"—proves nothing. Zilch. Does nothing to invalidate science being done all over the world, not just in one small organization. There is no smoking gun, not one than can clean up all the smoking chimneys. This is a venial sin next to the mortal one of climate change denial. Look past this well-intentioned error to the much bigger error beyond it.

The hard choices do have to be made. That's why there is a denial movement, to delay (because it cannot be prevented, ultimately) the hard political and economic decisions. Denial is in the short-term interests of a few who are heavily invested in the present carbon economy. The carbon tax and cap-and-trade will benefit us all, in the long run. We have to see that short-term inconvenience is necessary for long-term welfare and, well, survival. For the natural world as well as us.

 dionysius wrote: 
M, I was referring to the hapless screw ups/CRU you speak of, here is a list with some of their emails with some parts bolded. I just can't look past this type of thing, especially when there is so much riding on it.(a worldwide tax of mythic proportion)

I'm very concerned they're going to use something like this (obviously manipulated data/evidence) to ram this "carbon tax" through and "f" us royally.

Regards

 fuh2 wrote: 

You don't have to respond to every crazy pet conspiracy theory out there. You're already right. You don't have to give Immanuel Velikovsky, Madame Blavatsky and Erich von Däniken the time of day. Let crank scholarship eat itself.

Beaker wrote:
Sure it is. Try archiving an ice core for twenty years.


Sure, but be prepared to be right back where we started. Being a sloppy codesmith or a belligerent partisan or even a dishonest scientist doesn't make your conclusions wrong.

 Beaker wrote: 

From what I understand, in 1998 there was an unusual global temperature spike that has not been matched until 2007.
The Carbon Industry PR machine has used that spike to try to show temperatures are now declining. The last 14 years are the hottest on record and the Himalaya glaciers are now 300-400 vertical feet lower than they were in 1920's.

The world pumps 28 BILLION TONS of CO2 into the air every year which is why atmospheric CO2  is increasing 2% a year.  CO2 is a proven greenhouse gas.

Before the industrial revolution began the atmosphere was at 275 Parts Per Million CO2. It is now 390 PPM and many climatologists agree that we have to get it back down to 350 PPM to keep climate change from spiralling out of control.

 Beaker wrote:
The original, raw data were thrown out to save room in a move to new quarters in the eighties, long before global warming was such a charged issue.  It's also before the current director of the CRU was in charge. Says so right in the linked article.  

The raw data may be lost, but the methods of processing it must be known, and the people who did it may well still be around, so I doubt that the trail to the original data is completely obscured. 

And when it's re-done and shows the same thing, then there will be some other noisy denunciation of it, because of...anything.  There's never going to be perfection in research. 

Open sourcing will have to be applied equally to the opponents of AWG as well as proponents.  If one side's confidential correspondence is revealed, then so should the other's.  That will be interesting.  The sword cuts both ways.

 miamizsun wrote: 
How "obviously"? If you have "evidence of collusion" (with whom?), then give us a link to it, or something. Who is the more credible and acknowledged source?

(edit:) Anyone seriously interested can go to: http://www.ipcc-data.org/ There are many, many folks working on this besides the hapless screwups in East Anglia.

 dionysius wrote: 
I'm curious about the IPCCs credibility, I don't doubt that there is good data and good science involved, but obviously there is some evidence of collusion.

 miamizsun wrote: 
Hi Jeff!

No, not all all difficult to say. No one doubts that cycles in solar radiation occur, and that they have affected terrestrial climate in the past. But it takes many thousands of years for such variations in solar radiation or orbital attitude to achieve significant change. The relative speed of the warming points towards human causality. It's happening too quickly to be natural.

Read the Scientific American article, and its debunking of the solar radiation hypothesis:

"Astronomical phenomena are obvious natural factors to consider when trying to understand climate, particularly the brightness of the sun and details of the earth's orbit, because those seem to have been major drivers of the ice ages and other climate changes before the rise of industrial civilization. Climatologists, therefore, do take them into account in their models. But in defiance of the naysayers who want to chalk the recent warming up to natural cycles, there is insufficient evidence that enough extra solar energy is reaching our planet to account for the observed rise in global temperatures.

"The IPCC notes that between 1750 and 2005, the radiative forcing from the sun increased by 0.12 watts/square-meter-less than a tenth of the net forcings from human activities (1.6 W/m2). The largest uncertainty in that comparison comes from the estimated effects of aerosols in the atmosphere, which can variously shade the earth or warm it. Even granting the maximum uncertainties to these estimates, however, the increase in human influence on climate exceeds that of any solar variation."

First, I'd like to see this "de-politicized", most politicians are people we pay to lie to us. Politicians(both parties) should be out of this altogether. Opposing something because of another party's take on it makes zero sense.

I like others here want to see the evidence, all of it, and put it through the rigors. I'm also more concerned with pollution than climate change, we can deal with water better/easier than poison.

I'm wondering what caused the planet to go through its cycles before we were here(short of a cataclysmic event). We see glacial striations all over the place, glaciers receding and forming thousands of years ago, yet we weren't using fossil fuels to any extent then.

I tend to think that it is mostly caused by the sun(in all of its flux) and man plays a minor part, much less than hyped. Lots of articles like this which suggest warming coinciding between mars and earth for example, are solar induced phenomena.(this is an older article, but I think that this type of data may gaining traction)

"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

It is difficult to say.

Regards

I thought this was good.

Climate Change - the Scientific Debate

Interesting!