Kiters and farmers 'as one'

I reckon Angela Tsun is awesome

Fortunately the choice is not as stark as burn lots of coal or live in shacks. If we as a species get our sh!t together fairly soon we'll be able to live quite nicely on renewable energy sources. (Clearly Mcmansions will need to become more energy-efficient as part of that.)

However the longer we delay the transition, the more volatile it will be, and the greater the chance of wars over scarce resources like food, water, and kites.

seabreeze is a greenhouse gas

its the old frog in the boiling water trick

another 30 yrs the End is Nigh wif no place to jump!
Ooh well all us oldies will be dead by then
soylent green is the answer

Bahahahumbug :)

^^^

Whether or not you agree with the climate modelling and predictions, it seems established beyond contention that:

Fossil fuels are finite,
We're just past peak oil and approaching peak coal production,
After peaking the output of these fuels will decline,
Initially a decline will mean higher prices,
Eventually there will be no more, however much you're prepared to pay.

So, even if you don't think the climate could ever possibly change as a result of burning fossil fuels, or that these fuels pollute in other ways, sooner or later we'll have to find other ways of powering everything and replacing the petrochemical-based fertilisers and materials on which we currently depend with renewable alternatives.

You don't have to be a greenie, a hippy or a nutter to get this. The need for a transition away from fossil fuels can be perceived by the most self-interested capitalist. It's only those who can't extend their frame of self-interest beyond the next few years who can possibly fail to see the wisdom of starting the transition sooner rather than later.

Richard Branson gets it, Bill Gates gets it, and plenty of other smart and innovative people get it. No amount of homophobic railing against Bob Brown will make this issue go away. It's not just a fringe green issue, we're all on this spaceship together, and no amount of sticking your head in the sand will replace the fossil fuels we currently depend on for food, transport, electricity, and kites.

Time for innovation, not bickering.

^^^^^^^^
Did you actually read his post???????????

windsurfing is way better then poledancing

^^^^

This study is bull as it doesn't take into account the 3.5 million odd undersea volcanoes.

Coal gets a bad rap from nearly everyone, but is it really justified. Without it the world would already be dead! There wouldn't be a tree left!

Just as technology and economics created the move away from burning wood, to mining coal, extracting oil and gas and building hydro and nuclear power plants, so to will technology and economics be the the only things that will eventually reduce our carbon emissions.
The carbon tax is an obvious way of speeding up these things, but no matter what spin the government put on it, it will cost all of us alot of money and may only put us at an economic disadvantage and cause a recession. Australian retailers and households are struggling enough without more bills on top!

Holy moley! I was just taking the mick after looking at a bad wind forecast for Perth this week. Although there are now predicted 18knt easterlies when it's forcast to be 3C-4C on Sunday morning. That will sort the sheep from the goats!

G'day ADS, sorry didn't want to make that sound like a personal comment in regards to reading.

I never bothered reading Gerlachs opinion piece as there are way too many "scientists" handing out opinions. I was referring again to this link
www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming-intermediate.htm
Which includes a discussion of underwater volcanoes.

It is easy to write something off as "bull" with a one line comment but harder when required to back it up with some solid science.

I'm out of here as that has tripled my entire postings in six years. Happy to continue it on emails as I reckon the general seabreeze mob ain't interested!

PS forever the optimist - China is looking 50-100years ahead so should we

I believe that we should reduce our dependence on Coal , Oil Gas for the reasons djdojo outlined etc...... but I am not convinced about this climate change and carbon crap. First it was global warming and now its climate change..... can anyone actually quote figures that show the sea levels are rising, that average temperatures are considerably higher......... recent studies have shown a) many glaciers are actually continuing to grow b) the great barrier reef has experienced no significant change over the last 10-15 years ( as per the great barrier reef institute, townsville ( govt funded study released very quietly last week ). It was only 4-5 years ago we were being told it was dying at an alarming rate due to increased sea temperatures and solar bleaching and so it goes.......

If the earth was cooling ...they would still bring out a carbon tax as they would claim that the carbon is blocking out some of the suns radiation....causing an potential ice age.

The greatest tragedy of the whole climate debate is whist govenments an populations around the world focus their energy and funds on this ...... habitats are being destroyed at alarming rates, global deforrestation is at all time highs ( thanks palm oil ), water tables continue to be polluted, population growth is rabid in third world countries and so it goes..... this earth and its inhabbitants will face far far bigger issues over the next few centuries than any climate change.... it will be food shortages, water shortages, over population and so it goes.....

This information had had me thinking :




How Well Has The Media And Government Informed The Public About CO2 Levels In The Air?

Ask yourself, your friends, family and work associates if they know the answers to the following questions about Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Be sure to write your answers before looking at the following pages.

The following questions were put to a cross section of the community ......



Question 1. What percentage of the atmosphere do you think is CO2?

Question 2. Have you ever seen the percentage given in any media?

Question 3. What percentage of the CO2 is man-made?

Question 4. What percentage of the man-made CO2 does Australia produce?

Question 5. Is CO2 is a pollutant?

Question 6. Have you ever seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?


The answers to these questions are fundamental to evaluating the global warming scare YET almost no one knows the facts. However, without this knowledge we can't make an informed decision about whether Climate Change is natural or not.




^^^^^ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS^^^^^^

Q1. What % of the air is CO2?

Respondent's Answers: nearly all were 20% - 40%, the highest was 75% while the lowest were 10%- 2%.

The Correct Answer: CO2 is less than a mere four 100ths of 1%! As a decimal it is 0.038%. As a fraction it is 1/27th of 1%. (Measurements for CO2 vary from one source to another from 0.036%- 0.039% due to the difficulty in measuring such a small quantity and due to changes in wind direction e.g. whether the air flow is from an industrialized region or a volcanic emission etc)

Nitrogen is just over 78%, Oxygen is just under 21% and Argon is almost 1%. CO2 is a minute trace gas at 0.038%. We all learnt the composition of the air in both primary and high school but because most people don't use science in their day to day living, they have forgotten this. Also, the vast bulk of the population have very little knowledge of science so they find it impossible to make judgements about even basic scientific issues let alone ones as complex as climate. This makes it easy for those with agendas to deceive us by using emotive statements rather than facts.

Q2. Have you seen a percentage for CO2 given in the media?
Respondent's answers: All said 'No'.

Q3. What % of CO2 do humans produce?
Respondent's answers ranged from as high as 100% with most estimating it to be between 75% to 25% and only four said they thought it was between 10% and 2 %.

The Correct Answer: Nature produces nearly all of it. Humans produce only 3%. As a decimal it is a miniscule 0.001% of the air. All of mankind produces only one molecule of CO2 in around every 90,000 air molecules! Yes, that's all.

Q4. What % of man-made CO2 does Australia produce?

Respondent's Answers ranged from 20% to 5%.

The Correct Answer is 1% of the 0.001% of man-made CO2. As a decimal it is an insignificant 0.00001% of the air. That's one, one-hundredth thousandth of the air. That is what all the fuss is about! That's one CO2 molecule from Australia in every 9,000,000 molecules of air. It has absolutely no affect at all.

We have been grossly misled to think there is tens of thousands of times as much CO2 as there is!

Why has such important information been withheld from the public? If the public were aware that man-made CO2 is so incredibly small there would be very little belief in a climate disaster so the media would not be able to make a bonanza from years of high sales by selling doomsday stories. Governments and Green groups would not be able to justify a carbon tax that will greatly raise the cost of everything. Major international banks and the stock market would not make massive profits out of carbon trading and many in the science community would not be getting large research grants.

Q5. Is CO2 is a pollutant?

Respondent's Answers: All thought it was a pollutant, at least to some degree.

The Correct Answer: CO2 is a harmless, trace gas. It is as necessary for life - just as oxygen and nitrogen are. It is a natural gas that is clear, tasteless and odourless. It is in no way a pollutant.

Calling CO2 a 'pollutant' leads many to wrongly think of it as black, grey or white smoke. Because the media deceitfully show white or grey 'smoke' coming out of power station cooling towers, most think this is CO2. It is not: it's just steam (water vapour) condensing in the air. CO2 is invisible: just breathe out and see. Look at it bubbling out of your soft drinks, beer or sparkling wine. No one considers that a pollutant - because it's not. CO2 in its frozen state is commonly known as dry ice. It is used in camping eskys, in medical treatments and science experiments. No one considers that a pollutant either. CO2 is emitted from all plants. This 'emission' is not considered a pollutant even though this alone is 33 times more than man produces! Huge quantities of CO2 are dissolved naturally in the ocean and released from the warm surface. This is not considered a pollutant either.

The two large cooling towers are emitting only steam. A tiny amount of CO2 is trickling out of the thin chimney at centre. It is only barely visible due to a small quantity of smoke particles, most of which is filtered out nowadays. The media doesn't like to show skinny CO2 chimneys emitting nothing visible because this is unimpressive and not the least bit emotive so it doesn't make for sensationalist journalism. So they typically choose to deceive the public by showing cooling towers.

Q6. Have you seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?

Respondent's Answers: Most did not know of any definite proof. Some said they thought the melting of the Arctic and glaciers was possibly proof.

The Correct Answer: There is no proof at all. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (the IPCC) has never produced any proof. There are, however the following proofs that it can't cause a greenhouse effect.

• It is true that CO2 can absorb heat a little faster than nitrogen and oxygen but it becomes no hotter because it cannot absorb anymore heat than there is available to the other gases. This is against the laws of thermodynamics. All gases share their heat with the other gases. Gas molecules fly around and are constantly colliding with other gas molecules so they immediately lose any excess heat to other molecules during these collisions. That's why the air is all one temperature in any limited volume.

• Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated.

The following facts show that even high levels of CO2 can make almost no impact on heating the atmosphere.

1. Glasshouses with high levels of CO2 - hundreds of times higher than in the air to make plants grow faster – heat up during the day to the same temperature as glasshouses with air in them. This is also true for bottles of pure CO2 compared to ones with air.

2. The planets Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are almost entirely CO2 (97%) yet they have no 'runaway' greenhouse heating effect. Their temperatures are stable.

3. The geological record over hundreds of millions of years has shown that CO2 has had no affect whatsoever on climate. At times, CO2 was hundreds of times higher, yet there were ice ages.

4. In recent times when Earth was considerably warmer during the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming, the higher temperatures then were totally natural because there was no industrialization back then.

• Water vapour is 4% of the air and that's 100 times as much as CO2. Water vapour absorbs 33 times as much heat as CO2 making CO2's contribution insignificant. But like CO2, water vapour also gives this heat away to air molecules by contact (conduction) and radiation, thereby making the surrounding air the same temperature.

• The Earth's atmosphere is very thin so its heat is continually being lost to the absolute coldness of outer space (-270 C). As there is no 'ceiling' to the atmosphere, surface heat cannot be retained. The Sun renews warmth every day.

Over the last few years Earth has had much colder winters due to very few magnetic storms on the Sun. These four increasingly colder winters have been particularly noticeable in the northern hemisphere where most of the land is. Because of this, the Arctic has re-frozen and glaciers that were receding are now surging due to the heavy snow falls. The Arctic showed some melting around its edges from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s due to the very high level of solar storm activity at that time. But as the Sun is now entering probably 2-4 decades of low solar activity, this is expected to cause global cooling. For more detail, see the following page.

The climate has always been naturally cyclic and variable due to numerous natural drivers of which CO2 is not one. Over millions of years the climate has shown far greater changes in the geological record than we have seen over the last 200 hundred years - and there was no industrialisation back then.

The very minor variations we have witnessed over the last 100 years have all occurred several times even in that short period. Today's changes in climate are common and completely natural. There are now over 50 books that provide numerous reasons why man-made global warming is false.

**************************************************************


So when your power bills sky rocket the cost of fuel increases along with everthing else, 100's of thousand of jobs go offshore to China India, indonesia etc..... because we have a carbon tax not only will it cripple our country it will actually compound the problem....the goods, items and power will still all be produced... just not here, but in 3rd world countries by low paid workers in appalling conditions and in even dirtier power stations and factories and then at great cost and pollution shipped here.... resulting in the West again dumping on the Third world..... but we will all sit back and think what a great job we are doing for the environment. It is just shifting the problem whilst governments claim the windfall
Thats why it is better to substantially reward companies here who make their own improvements to reduce emissions.

Who is better placed to develop and utilise an efficient clean energy a third world country ? or a country like Australia ?

Carbon Tax and then compensation ...how does that change attitudes ?

The government implements a carbon tax ....yet approves the development of new COAL fired power stations ( VIc & Qld ) and at the same time reduces the subsidies on solar power installations...WTF !!!!! talk about mixed messages no wonder the whole thing is hard to believe.

here's one for the climate change sceptics

www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-07/storm-from-hell-seen-on-saturn/2785424

note at the bottom of the article "But evidence suggests the present spot is exceptionally intense and rather premature, for it was still spring on Saturn when the storm brewed" Hmmm ?????