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Hi Larry,
  You have said some really, truly, remarkable things in several of your posts. 

  I found the "Great Global Warming Swindle to be amazing, and did some searches and found an article talking about the accuracy of it.  Which I posted in full above to save you from having to search thru the URLs.

  I was hoping that you would comment on this critism of this show you recommend as an accurate view of this very important subject.

A number of people have taken exeception to this data of yours.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar … 3/swindled

  I found this line of particular interest:

Further information on how Exxon is funding those opposing global warming can be found here.

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/ index.php?mapid=831
// (click ‘Launch’ then click ‘skip intro’)

Perhaps you would like to comment on why Exxon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars opposing the Koyto accord?

  When the quality of your sources is so truely awful, it makes everything that you say seem doubtful at best. 

   Regards, Rick

This is from MediaLens which watchdogs mass media:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313 … da_the.php

March 13, 2007
PURE PROPAGANDA - THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE
The Scientists Are The Bad Guys

On March 8, Channel 4 screened The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary that branded as a lie the scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse gasses are primarily responsible for climate change.

The film was advertised extensively on Channel 4 and repeatedly previewed and reviewed in newspapers. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Booker declared:

    “Only very rarely can a TV documentary be seen as a pivotal moment in a major political debate, but such was Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle last Thursday. Never before has there been such a devastatingly authoritative account of how the hysteria over global warming has parted company with reality.” (Booker, ‘A turning point in climate change,’ Sunday Telegraph, March 11, 2007)

Peter Hitchens commented in the Daily Mail:

    “If you were worried about those snaps of polar bears clinging to melting ice-floes, sentenced to a slow death by global warming, you may now relax. They'll be fine. Channel 4 has paid in full for its recent misdemeanours by screening, last Thursday, the brilliant, devastating film The Great Global Warming Swindle.” (Hitchens, ‘Drugs?’, Daily Mail, March 11, 2007)

Doubtless like many who saw the film, the Financial Times’ reviewer was left bewildered:

    “Not so long ago, the venerable David Attenborough on the Beeb was telling us that human-driven global warming was real and was coming for us. So that was settled. Now Channel 4, like a dissident schoolboy, is scoffing at the old boy's hobbyhorse and I don't know what to believe.” (’Slaughterhouse three,’ Financial Times, March 10, 2007)

The film opened with scenes of wild weather and environmental disaster accompanied by dramatic captions:

    "THE ICE IS MELTING. THE SEA IS RISING. HURRICANES ARE BLOWING. AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT.

    “SCARED? DON'T BE. IT'S NOT TRUE."

This was immediately followed by a series of equally forthright talking heads:

    "We can't say that CO2 will drive climate; it certainly never did in the past."

    “We imagine that we live in an age of reason. And the global warming alarm is dressed up as science. But it’s not science; it’s propaganda.”

And:

    “We’re just being told lies; that’s what it comes down to.”

The commentary added to the sense of outrage: “You are being told lies.”

This was indeed superficially impressive - when several experts make bold statements on the same theme we naturally assume they must be onto something - but alarm bells should already have been ringing. This, after all, was ostensibly a film about science - about evidence, arguments, research and debate. Why, then, the language of polemic and smear?

The remarkable answer is provided by the film’s writer and director, Martin Durkin:

    "I think it [the film] will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era of the relationship between scientists and society. Legitimate scientists - people with qualifications - are the bad guys. It is a big story that is going to cause controversy.

    “It's very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bollocks.” ('“Global Warming Is Lies” Claims Documentary,’ Life Style Extra, March 4, 2007; www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=CZ434669 U&news_headline=global_warming_is_lies_ claims_documentary)

Compare and contrast this with the aim as described in a letter sent by the makers of the film, Wag TV, to Professor Carl Wunsch, a leading expert on ocean circulation and climate who subsequently appeared in the film:

    “The aim of the film is to examine critically the notion that recent global warming is primarily caused by industrial emissions of CO2. It explores the scientific evidence which jars with this hypothesis and explores alternative theories such as solar induced climate change. Given the seemingly inconclusive nature of the evidence, it examines the background to the apparent consensus on this issue, and highlights the dangers involved, especially to developing nations, of policies aimed at limiting industrial growth.” (http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonl … l4response)

Wunsch comments:

    "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled." (Geoffrey Lean, ‘Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4,’ The Independent, March 11, 2007; http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/ climate_change/article2347526.ece)

We will hear more from Wunsch in what follows.

Deeply Deceptive

The film presented viewers with an apparently devastating refutation of the "theory of global warming". And these were not picky, esoteric criticisms. Durkin insisted that the world’s climate scientists are guilty of the most fundamental error imaginable: increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the cause of higher temperature, as the experts claim. Quite the reverse: increasing atmospheric CO2 is itself the result of rising temperature.

As evidence for this contention, Durkin argued that global surface temperature dropped dramatically between 1945-1975, at a time when CO2 emissions were rapidly rising as a result of the postwar economic boom. According to Durkin, if CO2 emissions were responsible for increasing temperature, then temperature should not have fallen between 1945-1975. Clearly, then, some factor other than CO2 emissions must have caused the subsequent global temperature rise.

But Real Climate, an internet site run by climate scientists, such as NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt and Dr William Connelley of the British Antarctic Survey, describes Durkin’s discussion of the 1945-75 period as “deeply deceptive”. (Real Climate, March 9, 2007; www.realclimate.org/index.php/ archives/2007/03/swindled)

In this section of the film, Durkin focused heavily on a graph depicting temperature changes. The graph, Real Climate comments, “looks rather odd and may have been carefully selected”. It appears to show a dramatic cooling between the 1940s and 1970s. But try flipping between the film’s version of the global temperature record (shown above left) and the temperature plot that normally appears in the scientific literature (shown above right) The supposed cooling looks rather less evident in this second graph.

Without knowing more details of how Durkin may have manipulated the data plotted in his graph, it is difficult to comment on the presentation. What we can say is that Durkin’s "four decades of cooling", implying a relentless temperature drop over 40 years, is not an accurate description of the trend over this period. There was some cooling for +part+ of this time but also some plateauing, with fluctuations up and down.

But why did the temperature not simply rise in line with the post-war increase in greenhouse gas emissions?

In fact, as is well-known, the absence of a global rise in temperature between 1945-75 is explained by the release of large amounts of industrial pollutants, called sulphate aerosols, into the atmosphere. These particles have a braking effect on global warming, known as “global dimming”. By shielding some of the incoming solar energy, sulphate aerosols mask the underlying warming effect generated by rising levels of CO2. By the 1980s, however, stronger warming had exceeded this masking effect and global temperature has since continued to rise. As Real Climate notes, by failing to explain the science behind this phenomenon the programme makers were guilty of “lying to us by omission.”

The Ice Cores

The film repeatedly gave the impression that mainstream science argues that CO2 is the sole driver of rising temperatures in the Earth's climate system. But this is not the case. Climate scientists are well aware that solar activity plays a role, though a minor one at present, as do long-term periodic changes in the Earth's orbit, known as Milankovitch cycles. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Milankovitch_cycles)

The point is that there is a vast body of evidence that very strongly supports the hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions, of which CO2 is the most important, are primarily responsible for recent global warming. The 4th and most recent scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes:

    "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely [.i.e. probability greater than 90%] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." ('Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis,' Summary for Policymakers, IPCC, February 2007, page 10; www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf)

We then come to one of the film's most misleading arguments. Antarctic ice cores show that rises in levels of CO2 have lagged 800 years behind temperature rises at specific times in the geological past. This, argued Durkin, +proves+ that CO2 cannot be responsible for global warming - instead global warming is responsible for increasing levels of CO2. But this was a huge howler.

What Durkin's film failed to explain was that the 800-year lag happened at the end of ice ages which occur about every 100,000 years. (See: www.realclimate.org/index.php/ archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores)

Scientists believe that the end of an ice age is likely triggered when the amount of heat reaching the Earth rises as a result of a periodic change in the Earth's orbit around the sun. Jeff Severinghaus, Professor of Geosciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, explains why the rise in CO2 initially lags behind the temperature rise:

    "The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend." (Real Climate, 'What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?’, December 3, 2005; www.realclimate.org/index.php /archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/)

The best current explanation for the lag of 800 years is that this is how long it takes for CO2, absorbed by the ocean in an earlier warm period, to be "flushed out" at the end of an ice age. Once that CO2 has been released into the atmosphere its heat-trapping properties as a greenhouse gas lead to even stronger warming: an example of positive feedback. (See Caillon et al., 'Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III,' Science, 14 March 2003: Vol. 299. no. 5613, pp. 1728 - 1731)

Professor Severinghaus summarises:

    "In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway."

Durkin’s analysis, then, was way off the mark.

The film’s claim that solar activity might account for recent warming is also without credibility. In September 2006, the Times reported the latest findings from researchers writing in the top journal, Nature:

    “Scientists have examined various proxies of solar energy output over the past 1,000 years and have found no evidence that they are correlated with today's rising temperatures. Satellite observations over the past 30 years have also turned up nothing. ‘The solar contribution to warming... is negligible,’ the researchers wrote in the journal Nature.” (Anjana Ahuja, ‘It's hot, but don't blame the Sun,’ The Times, September 25, 2006)

The film's other scientific claims can be similarly dismissed. Carl Wunsch - who, as discussed, appeared in the film - comments:

    “What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples, it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one: a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that piece of disinformation.” (http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/ papersonline/channel4response)

For further help in understanding the weakness of the film’s claims, see the following resources:

Real Climate, 'Swindled',
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar … 3/swindled

Campaign Against Climate Change, including a rebuttal to the film by Sir John Houghton, who chairs the Scientific Assessment Working Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://portal.campaigncc.org/node/1820

Royal Society: Facts and fictions about climate change:
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=4761

“I Was Duped” - Déjà Vu?

Many readers will be aware that Durkin has previous ‘form’. In 1997, Channel 4 broadcast his three-part series, Against Nature, which suggested present-day environmentalists were the true heirs of the Nazis. (See George Monbiot, ‘The Revolution Has Been Televised,’ The Guardian, December 18, 1997; www.monbiot.com/archives/1997/ 12/18/the-revolution-has-been-televised/)

Several interviewees who appeared in the film felt they had been misled about the programme-maker’s agenda. Responding to complaints, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) found that the editing of interviews with four contributors had "distorted or misrepresented their known views". (Geoffrey Lean, ‘Climate change: An inconvenient truth... for C4,’ The Independent, March 11, 2007; http://news.independent.co.uk/ environment/climate_change/article2347526.ece)

In addition, the ITC found: "The interviewees had also been misled as to the content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part." (Paul McCann, ‘Channel 4 told to apologise to Greens,’ The Independent, April 2, 1998)

Ten years on, it appears that history may have repeated itself. In his letter of complaint to the film-makers cited above, Carl Wunsch writes:

    “I have some experience in dealing with TV and print reporters and do understand something of the ways in which one can be misquoted, quoted out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted. Some of that is inevitable in the press of time or space or in discussions of complicated issues. Never before, however, have I had an experience like this one. My appearance in the ‘Global Warming Swindle’ is deeply embarrassing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be.

    “At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something to Channel 4. I will be taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal protest.” (http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/ papersonline/channel4response)

Eight of the scientists in the film - John Christy, Paul Reiter, Richard Lindzen, Paul Driessen, Roy Spencer, Patrick Michaels, Fred Singer and Tim Ball - are linked to American neo-conservative and right-wing think-tanks, many of which have received tens of millions of dollars from Exxon.

Greenpeace provides a fascinating online ’map’ detailing how Exxon funds these climate sceptics. Go to: http://www.exxonsecrets.org/ index.php?mapid=831 (click ‘Launch’ then click ‘skip intro’)

In his book, Green Backlash, environmental journalist Andrew Rowell noted that Fred Singer has also attacked scientific and environmental stances on other green issues such as ozone, acid rain, automobile emissions and even whaling. Singer has worked for companies such as Exxon, Shell, Arco, Unocal and Sun.

According to the Environmental Research Foundation, a non-governmental organisation:

    “For years, Singer was a professor at the University of Virginia where he was funded by energy companies to pump out glossy pamphlets pooh-poohing climate change.” (Quoted, Sharon Beder, Global Spin, Green Books, 1997, p.94)

Rowell wrote that a quarter of Patrick Michaels’ research funding was reportedly received from companies such as Edison Electric Institute, the largest utility trade association in America. Michaels’ magazine, World Climate Review, was funded by the Western Fuel Association and a video produced by him was funded by coal companies and distributed by the Denver Coal Club. (Rowell, Green Backlash, Routledge, 1996, p.143)

Both Singer and Michaels represented the fossil fuel lobby’s Global Climate Coalition and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leader in global warming scepticism.

Journalist Ross Gelbspan noted that in May 1995, Richard Lindzen and Patrick Michaels were hired as expert witnesses to testify on behalf of Western Fuels Association, a $400 million consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities. Gelbspan said of Lindzen:

    “I don't know very many supporters of Mr Lindzen who are not in the pay of the fossil fuel lobby. Dr Lindzen himself, his research is publicly funded, but Dr Lindzen makes, as he told me, $2,500 a day consulting with fossil fuel interests, and that includes his consulting with OPEC, his consulting with the Australian coal industry, his consulting with the US coal industry and so forth. That's not to say Dr Lindzen doesn't believe what he says, but it is to say that he stands in very sharp distinction to really just about virtually all of the climate scientists around the world.” (Tony Jones, ‘Journalist puts global warming sceptics under the spotlight,’ Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 7, 2005; www.abc.net.au/lateline/ content/2005/s1318067.htm)

Journalist George Monbiot wrote of Philip Stott:

    “Professor Stott is a retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the ‘lies’ of ecofundamentalists.” (Monbiot, ‘Beware the fossil fools,’ The Guardian, April 27, 2004; http://environment.guardian.co.uk/ climatechange/story/0,,1829315,00.html)

Paul Driessen is a fellow at two right-wing think tanks in the US, which are part of the Wise Use movement. One of the think tanks is headed by Ron Arnold, who has spent the last twenty years attacking the environmental movement. His fellow director is a fundraiser for America's gun lobby. The list goes on...

By contrast, Greenpeace spokeswoman Mhairi Dunlop said her organisation had been interviewed by Durkin but none of the material had been included in the film:

    "They interviewed us but I guess what we said didn't fit in with the [story] they were peddling." (McCandless, op. cit)

Following the film’s broadcast, Professor Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society - the government-sponsored academy of sciences for the United Kingdom - has said that many factors contribute to global warming but it is clear that emissions of "greenhouse gases," particularly CO2, are to blame for most of the current temperature rise. Rees added:

    "Those who promote fringe scientific views but ignore the weight of evidence are playing a dangerous game. They run the risk of diverting attention from what we can do to ensure the world's population has the best possible future." (Ibid)

On March 11 the Observer published a letter from a group of climate scientists responding to Durkin’s film:

    “This programme misrepresented the state of scientific knowledge on global warming, claiming climate scientists are presenting lies. This is an outrageous statement...

    “We defend the right of people to be sceptical, but for C4 to imply that the thousands of scientists and published peer-reviewed papers, summarised in the recent international science assessment, are misguided or lying lacks scientific credibility and simply beggars belief.” (Alan Thorpe, Natural Environment Research Council, Brian Hoskins, University of Reading, Jo Haigh, Imperial College London, Myles Allen, University of Oxford, Peter Cox, University of Exeter, Colin Prentice, QUEST Programme, letter to the Observer, Sunday March 11, 2007;
    http://observer.guardian.co.uk/ letters/story/0,,2031117,00.html)

Viewed from one perspective, Channel 4 has done a huge public disservice in spreading absurd and mendacious arguments guaranteed to generate confusion. This at a time when a fragile momentum is building on the need to take urgent action on the very real threat of catastrophic climate change.

But from another perspective it may well be that this film does for climate scepticism what Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossiers” did for the pro-war movement ahead of the invasion of Iraq. Wildly distorted propaganda often does have a powerful initial impact. But stretched beyond a certain point of unreality, it also has a tendency to turn on, and bite, the propagandists.

Durkin’s grandiose prediction that his film “will go down in history” will surely prove correct, although perhaps not for the reasons he imagined.

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Simply amazing.
Warm regards, Rick.

The man in hot water, Phil Cooney, was appointed as Chief of Staff at the Council on Environmental Quality.  This is the ministry charged with protecting the environment in the USA.  Interestingly enough, Phil Cooney was a former lobbyist for the Oil Industry.  He has no background in ecology, toxicology, meteorology (or any science background at all).

In the report that is linked to above there is evidence of threats made to scientists who wished to speak an inconvenient truth.  (Reprimands and budget cuts to their work and their colleagues work.) Sad reading really.

It is no wonder with this sort of lying going on by appointed public officials that people seem to think that there is not a scientific consensus on Climate Change.

Also of vital interest as it contradicts Tom's assurances:

Dr. Hansen also questions the constitutional legality of the actions of the Executive Branch on this issue as the research is publicly funded by the congress (not funded by the executive branch) and therefore the public has the right to the uncensored information.

Warm regards, Rick.

Hi Clclops,
  Thank you very much for quoting the data!!!  It makes a nice change and I really appreciate it.

  The report is very careful to explain what it is measuring.  The Sea level rises include the warming water (which takes up more space so it expands), Increased run off from Glaciers and the Greenland Ice Cap & increased run off from the Antarctic Ice sheet. (From Table SPM-1 on page 7.)

  However, Table SPM-3 on page 13 which you mentioned has the following heading which you did not quote:  Sea level rise (m at 2090 to 2099 relative to 1980 - 1999) : Model based range excluding future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow.

  Most of the news reports I've seen that speak of sea levels rising 3 to 5 meters also talk about the break up of the Greenland or Antarctic ice caps.  The model that says that the oceans will rise from 0.26 to 0.59 meters are explicitly excluding this possibility.  The ice cap on Greenland (or Antarctica) breaking up is a "future rapid dynamical change to the ice flow."

  Why are they excluding this chance?  I am guessing here, but I think it is because it is very hard to say when it will happen.  They don't know if it will happen in 30 years, 60 years or 150 years.  With out knowing, they predict the trends that can be estimated with some precision and do not go into sudden, hard to predict shifts to the world status.  I think this is good science.

  From what I have seen, I think that there is a good chance that the Greenland ice cap is less stable than you might wish.  I saw a discovery channel TV show on Global Warming and it showed this video of a small river of fresh water on the surface of Greenland flowing over the ice and then diving vertical into this well that goes straight to the bottom of the ice cap.   As more fresh water squeezes under that ice cap, the whole thing becomes much less stable.  There were also graphs showing the amount of fresh water under the cap and the fresh water steadily expanded over the decades that the scientists have been studying this.

  The Antarctic ice sheet are likely to remain stable for some time.  It is showing none of these dangerous indicators.

  Now you may say, "Some times the media says, we will get this huge rising of sea level because of Global Warming" but they don't say that "...this includes melting Greenland and or the West Shelf of Antarctica".  True. Very True.

  It would be much better for the media to say: "Sea levels will rise 20 to 50 cm, unless Greenland melts in which case it will be 4 or 5 meters, and if part of Antarctica melts too then it will be another 4 or 5 meters."

  However, I don't see that happening soon. 

  But I saw two editorials in my local papers in the last week that say that scientists are divided on if Global Warming is even happening.  As the AAAS quote says above, this is not the case.  Of the all the papers written by people in the field, (excluding ones by the oil industry et all), 100 percent said that we were experiencing global warming and that humans were very likely to be contributing to this.  (Some expressed no opinion and are excluded from this percentage.)  But no reports, NONE, said that they thought that we were not experiencing warming and that humans were not partially responsible for this.  Do you know how rare it is to get hundreds of scientific studies and not to get some data or people who go against the grain?

  So despite an almost unprecedented amount of agreement from scientists editorials and opionion makers are saying that scientists don't agree after all.

  So I have some bones to pick with the media as well.  I would call them the strangly inaccurate, complacent media.

  Finally, to Terraform Mars is a process I see taking hundreds of years.  I want human culture on Earth to be vibrant, in an healthy ecology, 100, 200 and even 300 years from now.  Mars might well need Earth that long.

  So I am disturbed when I see people say, "Oh, nothing much will happen for 50 years.  That's longer than I will be around.  Screw the future." 

  Admittedly it is rare for someone to take the long view like I do, but as people interested in Terraforming, I think WE should take the long view.

  And my long view is that humans are killing so many species we are in the middle of a major extinction event.  Climate Change & desertification will likely increase the number of species lost.  It takes millions of years to get back this biodiversity, this is 'bio-capital' we are throwing away.

  Here is another quote:

In my home province of BC we have the pine bore beetle.  It looks to cost us a couple billion dollars over the next few years because we have not had a winter cold enough to kill these bugs in over 2 decades.  BC and Washington state are losing a huge amount of money from economically valuable species because we are not getting the cold winters we need.

If things are noticeable in the 20th century and are very likely worse in the 21st century what are things going to be like in the 22nd century?  As I say, I take the long view.

And my long view is that we better get to Mars in a hell of a hurry and get it terraformed.  Because in 200 years Earth is going to have a lot of hungry, battered people fighting for a lot smaller area of food production.  The American bread basket will be a desert because the USA seems to be unable to regulate how fast they are pumping out their aquifers.  200 years from now (and the years leading up to it) look scary to me.

After 200 years, it is hard to say where we will be.  But if we decide to burn all our coal, then in 300 years we will have CO2 levels higher than some of the extinction events thought to be caused by Hydrogen Sulfide eruptions.

I don't know about you but I don't want the human race to be gone in a half a millennium.  I think that is where we are heading with this global warming.

There is a very good book called, "Collapse" by Jered Diamond which looks at a whole bunch of cultures that have over extended themselves beyond what their environment can take.  Things fall apart very quickly: war, famine, plague and death.

Let us say that my 500 year prediction is alarmist.  In 20 years we get fusion (even tho funding for it has been dropping) and it does not go the way of MHD (now Magnetoplasmadynamics) power-plants and fission power-plants.  And let us further assume that China and India DON'T build tonnes of coal burning plants.  Well in those cases we don't need to worry. 

But I don't see any of those things happening.  I am dismayed by the slow progress of fusion and I know damn well that fossil fuels are a VERY HIGH DENSITY ENERGY SOURCE.  I have never seen any society anywhere, anytime in history, wean itself off a high density energy source.

And there are trillions of dollars to be made by the oil, gas and coal industries if they can delay the adoption of fission and fusion by just 50 years, 100 years, 200 years.  There will be organized resistance to change.

The vast resistance I see to even the simple proposition that most scientists think that humans are warming the planet is an example.  Currently in the poll I set up at the start of this thread, we have 1 person (me) who is very worried about Climate Change, 1 person who says "Ya, it's a problem but not for me. I'll let my grand kids deal with it."  (What a sweety.)  And the other 3 people say that they don't think there is scientific consensus, think it is a myth that there is even any EVIDENCE for global warming or are content to wait until scientists come around to their point of view!

Well folks, my claim is this.  I think that historically the wealth & ability to go to Mars is pretty damn rare.  I think if our current Western civilization collapses it will be a lot harder for these events to ever happen again simply because we have used up so many of the easily accessible oil deposits.  (Which are a concentrated energy source par-excellence & you NEED easily accessible concentrated energy sources to develop a high tech-society.)  The rate that species are dying off now is equal to during a major extinction event and that will increase for various reasons well into the 21st century.  As eco-systems get simpler they get less stable.  (This includes economically valuable species and food species which we are mono-culturing which makes them doubly vulnerable.)  I think we could easily have a collapse of our civilization in 300 years.  I think we could easily see the human species go extinct in 500 to 1000 years, IF we keep pumping CO2 into the air for another 200 years.

Now I am well aware that most people are not worried about these things.  But you will understand why I am not much moved by people who say, "Oh, won't be a problem for another 50 years or 100 years.  I just won't worry about it, 'cause I've got gasoline to burn."

Warm regards, Rick.

Hi Everyone,
  This report took a lot of hunting down to find but I have a got a web readable summary of the  IPCC Third Assessment Report: Climate Change 2001.  (They are currently working on the 4th report which is due out in 2007.  My understanding is that the 4th report is now done and is now undergoing peer review to check facts.)

  The IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was founded by the World Meteorological Organization in order to:
"...to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the best available scientific, technical & socio-economic information on climate change from around the world.  The assessments are based on information contained in peer-reviewed literature and, where appropriately documented, in industry literature and traditional practices.  They draw on the work of hundreds of experts from all regions of the world."

Anyway, the 34 page summary is at:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/un/syreng/spm.pdf

Some quotes of interest to this thread:

The IPCC is saying this as well.  All the major meterological groups are saying this.  Scientific debates are dull if they ALL say the same thing...

Note that there are no weasle words here.  No "might have increased" or "strong possibility that...".  Just "have increased".

or

or below is the title of a particularily frightening looking graph on page 17.  It shows sea level rise & CO2 levels goes on increasing & world temperature continues to rise LONG after CO2 emissions are brought under control.  So even if we magically get "Back to the Future's" 'Mr Fusion' tomorrow, things will get worse for a long time to come.

Here is something I'm worried about but which does not get the press that 5 meter rises in sea levels does...

I could quote more (or much longer examples than these headings) but I think this fairly describes the main thrust of the document.

Terraforming Mars is climate change, global warming and adding greenhouse gases in a big way so people might logically expect those of us posting on this forum to know something on the subject.  the IPCC has published two books of particular interstest to us:

"Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report"  and
"Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis"

You can track down copies from here:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/reports.htm

Or you can get printed documentation from IPCC Secretariat - World Meteorological Organizations Building
PO Box 2300 CH-1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland
Phone 41 22 730 8284 / 8208

Warm regards, Rick.

Hi Everyone,
  Sticking with our American government agencies theme the National Research Council has written a 244 page book called:

"Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises"

which I think is actually a pretty cool title.  It costs only $44.96 as of this writing and can be ordered from this link:

http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10136#toc

However, there is a 4 page summary of the book that can be read for free from this URL:

http://www.nap.edu/html/climatechange-b … -brief.pdf

Or for those executives out there, they have a 24 page executive summary (also for free) here:

http://books.nap.edu/execsumm_pdf/10136.pdf

Some people don't believe things happen in the future unless they are in science fiction first. Fear not, for I refer you to:

"Heavy Weather"  by Bruce Stirling.  This novel set in the next century.  They have a new phrase 'heavy weather' to describe the larger storms caused by global warming.  (Weather is a heat engine and with more heat you get more power in the engine.)  The story follows a group of tornado chasers thru the desert that the American Midwest has become.  (This desert is caused only partly by global warming but also because of unregulated pumping of the aquifer that is going on now.  Remember: The Biggest Pump Wins.)

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bookse … 2926&itm=5

"Mother of Storms" by John Barnes.  In this novel a minor disaster lets loose a whole lot of methane from the thawing artic.  Methane breaks up in ~9 years in our atmosphere so there is a year or three significant increase in temperature.  This adds on to the already warmer world of the furture. 
  Now hurricanes grow when the sea water is 29.5 degrees C or warmer and shrink when the water is colder (or if they are over land).  Currently the hurricane breeding zones are small triangular patches of oceans inside the 29.5 C isotherms.  But now these patches of oceans get a lot bigger...
  This is a highly recommended book for those interested in heavy weather and big storms.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/used/p … 533453&z=y

Warm regards, Rick

Hi all,
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is perhaps the premier body for American Scientists.  What do they say on Climate Change?  I quote:

So the AAAS says that scientists a) working in the field and b) not working for oil companies, are pretty much unanimously agreeing, that the Earth is heating up and human actions are almost certainly driving climate changes.   But they are just the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  We will dig deeper.

The origional document is here in case you wish to check out their links and other science news.  (China today has started spending a huge amount on science infrastructure with little fanfare.  Good for them!)

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f … /5702/1686

Warm regards, Rick.

Hi Tom,
  I am busy researching a long post which speaks to some of the points you make so I won't go into them here.  I would be less concerned about global warming if political leaders were pushing the development of non-fossil fuel technologies, but they are not.  Also, do you have any numbers on how long it takes for Earth to remove (say) 100 ppm of CO2 out of the air?  These would be very important numbers.  I have them if you don't. (Wait for my next post for more details.)

The Little Ice Age is certainly not news to me. 

In a government poll last year the top concern of a huge number of Canadians was climate change.  This so shocked the government it went from totally saying that climate change was nonsense to saying climate change is their 'top priority' (but still doing very little about it).  So lots of Canadians will be smacking their heads if all the melting glaciers reverse themselves and giant ice sheets start forming over our melting permafrost.

In any case we are still in an ice age (there is perminant ice at both poles).  The point is that our world is used to the status quo.  The people are where there is rainfall and soil and any change is going to cause huge disrubtions and misery; it will cause wars and famines.  Those are awfully high stakes to dismiss with an "Oh, magical fusion will solve things."

If you think that the chances of fusion appearing are inevitable, then think about how well fission power has done.  Or an even better example: think of how the clean and awesomely efficient magnetohydrodynamics (now magnetoplasmadynamics) power plants have done in the world energy market.

Anyway this is just a quick post to say that I am working on a long reply to your earlier post but it likely will be a few days tracking down the references to support my arguments.

Warm regards, Rick.

Hi Clclops,
  Nice to hear from you.

  Alternately you could think of it as: "Why not experiment on Mars first where it can't do any harm, rather than trying to regulate climate on Earth first."  (And we likely will need to within 200 to 350 years the way we are going.)

  Warm regards, Rick.

Hi John,
I would welcome references to how many tonnes of carbon dioxide, sufides, nitrates, heavy metals, fly ash, bottom ash, radioactivity and slag a "clean coal" plant produces each year.

If you give references to what you say, people will take you more seriously.  "Clean coal" to me is an oxymoron.  It sounds like a slogan invented by the publicity department of some coal burning power company.

Also your argument is logically flawed.  If China and India are going to start burning coal that does not mean that we should.  "If all your friends / aquaintences / enemies jumped off a cliff, should you?"   They are trying to rapidly industrialize and are using very fast & dirty ways to do it.  We live in a wealthy society and have more choices. 

What is more, ethically we are not in a very good position to call foul on them.  We used plenty of coal and other dirty power to get our industrial revolution off the ground.  Power density equals wealth.  Do we say to them, "you can't industrialize, so sorry, you have to stay poor?"

Warm regards, Rick

Hi everyone,
Fluorine atoms are extreamly powerful oxidizers.  In fact they are better oxiders than oxygen is.  (If you start out with an atmosphere of fluorine and silicon - oxygen rocks you would end up with an oxygen atmosphere and silicon - fluorine rocks.)

  The point of the chlorofluorocarbons and the perfluorocarbons is that the fluorine binds so tightly to the other atoms that very few chemical reactions at standard temperatures and pressures are capable of breaking them away.  This makes the compounds extremely non-reactive.

  You could break up these molecules with a lot of heat energy.  Or if you have exactly the right frequency of high energy ultraviolet light that can do it.

  These compounds are very safe for humans.  In fact, they inflate eye balls with them for some operations and let the blood stream pull the gas out as the eye refills with jelly.  The gas is exhaled from the lungs into the atmosphere.  See this post by RobertDyck:

PFC Are Non-Toxic

  In any case, the point is perfluorocarbons are amoung the least toxic of any substances on the planet.  Having them in parts per million concentration would have no effect on people, except to make the planet warmer of course.

Warm regards, Rick

Hi all,
  The above post is off topic so I have created a new thread called "Is Global Warming Real" to discuss this.

Warm regards, Rick