60 Leading Scientists: Kyoto is Pointless, human impact impossible to distinguish

[Solly]

So much for the "consensus":

Canada's new Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, has been urged by more than 60 leading international climate change experts to review the global warming policies he inherited from his centre-Left predecessor.

In an open letter that includes five British scientists among the signatories, the experts praise his recent commitment to review the controversial Kyoto protocol on reducing emissions harmful to the environment.

"Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science," they wrote in the Canadian Financial Post last week.

They emphasised that the study of global climate change is, in Mr Harper's own words, an "emerging science" and added: "If, back in the mid 1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." Despite claims to the contrary, there is no consensus among climate scientists on the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, they wrote.

"'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified.

"Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise'."

The letter is the latest effort by climate change sceptics to counter claims that there is a consensus that human activity is causing global warming.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/09/wkyoto09.xml

[Cort Haus]

Someone should cc Ken Livingstone this letter.

Livingstone (mayor of London) refuses to allow desalination plants to solve the London water shortage because they use "too much energy", and energy=global warming according to eco-dogma.

Instead, Livingstone advises Londoners not to flush their toilets to save water. Nice one, Ken. Presumably we should stop washing as well.

[Proteus_MST]

Well,
you could collect the water you used for washing
and use it a seconjd time for flushing your toilets

[Japher]

OP: That's what I've been saying all along!

Peeing of the deck is good for the environment

[MikeH]

That story is obviously way too summarised to judge its worth. Who were the 60 scientists, what areas are they studying, who are they funded by, what are their findings etc. 60 scientists is a tiny number though.

Climate change definitely is an emerging science.

Whether or not you can see the results of human interaction is debatable. That doesn't mean that sometimes it's not a good idea to take precautions just in case the worst might happen.

[Japher]

don't have to shout about it

Sometimes It's Not A Good Idea To Take Precautions Just In Case The Worst Might Happen.

So how do you determine this "sometimes"? The problem with the Kyoto Treaty is that it thinks that by reducing supply that demand will stay the same and thus spur innovation. I don't think that. I think it will just shift power. The demand is already here, the innovation already being driven, why should the US, or anyone for that matter, yield to other countries demands when they give inconclusive environmental reason when all it appears to be is a ploy to get a leg up?

[Peter Triggs]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Someone should cc Ken Livingstone this letter.

Livingstone (mayor of London) refuses to allow desalination plants to solve the London water shortage because they use "too much energy", and energy=global warming according to eco-dogma.

Instead, Livingstone advises Londoners not to flush their toilets to save water. Nice one, Ken. Presumably we should stop washing as well.

Back in the Great Drought of '76, there was a campaign to conserve water. The slogan was:

Save water, have a bath with a friend.

[VetLegion]

Great slogan!

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by MikeH
Whether or not you can see the results of human interaction is debatable. That doesn't mean that sometimes it's not a good idea to take precautions just in case the worst might happen.

The precautionary principle is regressive.

If radio had been discovered today, it would probably be outlawed by the precautionary principle 'just in case the radiation affects the unborn'. Same goes for just about every other human advance over the last 200 years. Shutting down our civilisation 'just in case' doesn't seem a good idea to me.

Kyoto and similar measures are not certain to improve anything, but they are certain to make life worse for millions and to deny millions more the chance of the kind of comforts that westerners take for granted. Ultimately the green message seems to be - lets go back to mud huts and squalor.

Isn't there 'global warming' on both Mars and Venus? This strongly suggests that climate change on earth is not a function of human misbehaviour.

[Agathon]

I bet one of them was Bjorn Lomborg.

When the environmental apocalypse arrives I want that SOB left to burn in the middle of the Sahara.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Cort Haus

Isn't there 'global warming' on both Mars and Venus? This strongly suggests that climate change on earth is not a function of human misbehaviour.

On MArs no,
it is so cold there that all of the wateronly exists in form of ice.
AFAIK it could be warmer if Mars had still significant tectonic activity (and according to all we know it had been much warmer on mars in the past, warm enough for mars to have small rivers and oceans (with water in its liquid form))

Venus on the other hand, of course it has, but it also has a weather systenm which is absolutely unlike earth, with sulphuric acid (instead of water) raining from the heaven, an atmosphere which consists to 97% of carbon dioxide (and with 90 atm has a much larger pressure than earth) and no water anywhere on the whole planet (the environment is so hostile, that even probes designed to withstand the atmosphere and land there (the russian venera probes) only survived 1-2 hours on the ground.
So it is very difficult to compare the meteorological systems of venus and mars with earth.

[JellyBean]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Isn't there 'global warming' on both Mars and Venus? This strongly suggests that climate change on earth is not a function of human misbehaviour.

There is a greenhouse effect on both Mars and Venus - and, indeed, there was one on Earth before humans started having a noticeable effect on the atmosphere. Without it, the Earth would have an average surface temperature of about -18C, and probably be covered with ice clear to the equator.

The most significant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, the concentration of which has increased by 40% since we started industrialising. The causal link between human industry and CO2 concentration is pretty solid - judging by the amount of material we've burned, we'd expect CO2 levels to go up by about as much as they have. The link between CO2 levels and rising global temperatures is less well established, but we've got definite, measurable rises in both, and a plausible mechanism for one causing the other.

I'm all for technology in general, but the prospect of the extinction of our species if this trend becomes a real problem is enough to make me ponder our options. How much would it set our society back, really, if we had to convert to nuclear and solar power, and electric cars? We'll have to do it within the next century anyway, as our oil runs out. Is a decade-long depression too high a price to pay, to avoid an x% chance of a runaway greenhouse effect?

Obviously, the answer depends on the value of 'x'. That's what climatologists are supposed to be figuring out. Unfortunately, our society is plagued by oil-industry lobbyists and quasi-religious ecofreaks who produce endless reams of biased studies on both sides of the argument. If anyone is doing honest research on the topic - and I expect that some people are - they must be drowned out by the unscrupulous politically-motivated types.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Agathon
I bet one of them was Bjorn Lomborg.

When the environmental apocalypse arrives I want that SOB left to burn in the middle of the Sahara.

OMG - burn the heretic!



An interview with the devil ...

The hate campaign against Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World and professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, has been gathering momentum.

From having an Alaska pie pushed in his face at a book-signing in Oxford, to being vilified on anti-Lomborg.com, a website dedicated to trashing him, Lomborg has had the ultimate insult hurled at him - being compared to a holocaust denier, in the respected scientific journal Nature. The current issue of Scientific American has devoted a series of articles to attacking Lomborg's 'contrarian good news' views.

Every religion, it seems, has its heretics who must be stoned - and as a Sunday Telegraph article put it, Lomborg is the 'anti-Christ of the green religion'.

read on ...

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3D0.htm

[alva]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Well,
you could collect the water you used for washing
and use it a seconjd time for flushing your toilets

Actually, that is sort of what is being done (and should be done in every european counrty by 2010(?)).
By then, you would have two sets of waterpipes leading into your house, one with clean water ready for human consumption (as it is now) and one with only partially cleaned water for thing such as toilets and hosing your garden.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
The precautionary principle is regressive.

Really?

We have got global scale fiascos such as CFC and DDT, and yet people still refuse to learn from history.

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Isn't there 'global warming' on both Mars and Venus? This strongly suggests that climate change on earth is not a function of human misbehaviour.

I am not sure about you, but I reckon most people won't want the earth to turn into a Venus.