What do you believe has been adequately demonstrated in climate change science?

[Wezil]

Best comment I've heard on the conference:

"If the threat of global warming were so imminent and real, these pompous fools could have had a teleconference. "

[BeBMan]

I'm confused by this threadi.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Taxes are not an effective way of changing behaviour

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

[DanS]

I was defending CerberusIV, but don't think I can anymore.

[Lul Thyme]

Ice age climate conditions fluctuate. Essentially there has been an ice age for the last couple of million years with cold periods interspersed with warmer interglacial periods. It is not clear whether the warmer climate of the last few thousand years represents the end of an ice age or just an interglacial period before it freezes again.

Evidence from ice cores and lake and ocean sediments also suggests that the switch from cooling to warming (glacial and interglacial) and vice-versa can kick in over a timescale of only a few decades.

Paleo-geography suggests that the position of the Earth's landmasses (which affects ocean circulation) is a significant factor, although not the only one, in determining whether there is an ice age (of which there have been several in the last 2-3 billion years) or not.

I tried to find a link that explains this in simple terms

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html

This is not even relevant to my observation.
Even if position of landmasses is a significant factor (which I'm willing to believe), this does not explain any changes that happened within the last few thousand years, since these positions have not changed significantly since then.

[ricketyclik]

What I'm not convinced of:

a) This will cause enormous death and destruction

While the earth has been at hotter temperatures and successfully supported a large amount of life during those periods, each large shift in temperature that took place over a very short space of time was accompanied by a collapse in biomass. Ecosystems need time to adapt. There is already evidence of ecological links breaking down due to this warming event.

b) The cost of a solution will be significantly lower than the damage caused by global warming

A collapse in biomass is likely to be rather expensive. Global insurance premiums have already risen substantially in response to already existing higher rates of catastrophic weather events. Global food production is likely to plummet, leading to substantially increased costs of food. Costs to economies from health issues related to higher temperatures are likely to be high. Costs associated with mitigating rising sea levels (extra infrastructure maintenance/replacement due to subterranean salt intrusion, let alone inundation) will be high. Over the last couple of years Australian electricity prices have risen by 20% with more to come as extra infrastructure is added to bear the extra load of extra air conditioning.

To successfully contain emissions below that which would lead to 2 degrees C in warming has been estimated to cost about 1% of world GDP.

c) Rainfall patterns will be significantly negatively affected

Already the north and south sub-tropical ridges have intensified, leading to falls in rainfall in temperate zones. I live in such a zone, and our average river flows since 1994 are less than half of those prior (1871 - 1993), and on a declining trend. Our city of 350,000 has just invested AU$0.6 billion in improving water harvesting infrastructure in response (modelling without climate change assumptions leads to a do nothing solution). This in turn will lead to an increase of AU$200 per annum per household, quite apart from the hundreds per house spent on increasing water efficiency.

[Solomwi]

Sigh.

If you tax fuel and call it a carbon tax and claim it benefits the environment then there has to be some sort of environmental benefit. No?

Taxing petrol and heating oil doesn't cause people to use less of the product - because they generally can't. OK they might get a slightly more fuel efficient car when they replace their existing model but usually can't stop driving to work or heating their homes. Taxes are not an effective way of changing behaviour, their real purpose is to raise money (if taxes did change behaviour then no-one in the UK or Ireland would smoke because of the high cost - largely due to high taxes on the product).

To get a significant environmental benefit from this sort of tax the proceeds need to be reinvested in developing and promoting low carbon alternatives. In the case I am referring to that isn't going to happen to any meaningful extent.

The point I am trying to make is that carbon taxes are a godsend to politicians as they can raise more money whilst, usually falsely, claiming to act for the "good" of their electorates.

It has happened where I live already - it's almost certainly going to happen to you too.

There, is that simple enough for you to grasp?

Think at the margins. If the U.S. imposed a $1,000 per gallon tax on gasoline, how many people would find a way not to drive to work? I think we can all agree there would be some change in behavior in that case. Now, consider a much smaller tax increase, and the number of people who change their behavior is smaller, but is still positive. Or, to look at it another way, even if there is perfect inelasticity when it comes to driving to work, people will take fewer personal trips if gasoline costs twice as much.

Taxes are a very effective measure for changing behavior, because they increase the cost of the taxed behavior without increasing the benefits. That some still smoke in the UK and Ireland despite heavy taxes on cigarettes isn't evidence otherwise, by itself. In fact, given the various demand elasticities for different products, the best that evidence could hope to show is that taxation of cigarettes doesn't change smokers' behavior. Of course, even then, it's far from a proven assertion. How many fewer people smoke than would without the taxes? That's the true measure of the behavioral changes brought on by that particular tax.

[Maniac]

Not too long ago, in the grand scheme of things.

It took millions of years for biodiversity to restore itself after one of the big five extinction events. That's longer than humans have been around.

[MOBIUS]

I think the big problem about Copenhagen is that virtually all the governments in the world are run by baby boomers. They're all basically going to be dead when the **** really begins hitting the fan. They've ****ed the planet all their lives, why not simply carry on...

Thankfully, I'm also old enough that I'll have also had my fun with this planet by the time peak oil and climate change really start kicking in.

I say get out there and enjoy it while you can - but don't start a family cos they're the ones who'll be dealing with all our ****...

I'm adding a nice fat flight to Africa next month to my tab.

[ricketyclik]

Yes CO2 is a greenhouse gas - but what they don't tell you is that CO2 already traps 99 point something percent of the radiated heat at the wavelengths for which it acts as a greenhouse gas. So you can increase CO2 substantially and it isn't going to trap much more heat. That's physics ie scientifically provable against rigorous standards rather than based on computer models people have been "improving" for more than a decade to produce the "right" result.

"...but what they don't tell you is that CO2 already traps 99 point something percent of the radiated heat at the wavelengths for which it acts as a greenhouse gas" is only true in the lower part of the atmospheric column, not the upper. It is a mistake to think of the atmosphere as an homogeneous mass, rather than as layers.

human civilisation exists because the climate has been relatively benign for the last 15,000 years - it's called an interglacial because ice ages are largely driven by the position of landmasses isolating the ice at the poles so it builds up, the planet cools and North America and Europe go into the freezer and that's likely to happen again within the next few hundred to few thousand years if not sooner (OK solar cycles and other things also have an effect but this is the major driver). If the rest of the planet frying, flooding and otherwise suffering is the price of the developed world not freezing, well I can live with that.

[ricketyclik]

The other beneficial aspect of a carbon tax not explicitly stated in rebuttals against Cerberus is that it makes non-carbon energy alternatives more competitive, and thus more likely to receive the investment they need in order to supplant the carbon ones.

I don't see the tax/cap and trade as a stick, but a carrot.

[HalfLotus]

Pro-AGW propagandist infiltrates Wikipedia, rewrites 5.5k articles over the course of 6 years, then gets canned.

All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.

[DaShi]

So there isn't a conspiracy?

[BlackCat]

Why are you saying that his statement was silly, then agreeing with him?

Would you please stop commenting on me when I'm posting someting being drunk and tired ?

Sorry Lul Thyme, I read it the wrong way.

[Elok]

Pro-AGW propagandist infiltrates Wikipedia, rewrites 5.5k articles over the course of 6 years, then gets canned.

Devoting ridiculous amounts of time to editing Wikipedia? Well, I'm just shocked, shocked, I tell you. Wikipedia should set higher standards of behavior. They would, of course, except they'd lose 95% of their current members assuming they could even enforce it.