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THE CLIMATE CHANGE MYTH that Julia wants us all to pay for

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By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:20
Climate Myth...

Antarctica is gaining ice

"[Ice] is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap." (Greg Roberts, The Australian)


......................................................................


What the science says...





Skeptic arguments that Antarctica is gaining ice frequently hinge on an error of omission, namely

ignoring the difference between land ice and sea ice.


In glaciology and particularly with respect to Antarctic ice, not all things are created equal. Let us consider the following differences. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass itself through snowfall. This land ice therefore is actually stored ocean water that once fell as precipitation. Sea ice in Antarctica is quite different as it is ice which forms in salt water primarily during the winter months. When land ice melts and flows into the oceans global sea levels rise on average; when sea ice melts sea levels do not change measurably.

In Antarctica, sea ice grows quite extensively during winter but nearly completely melts away during the summer (Figure 1). That is where the important difference between Antarctic and Arctic sea ice exists as much of the Arctic's sea ice lasts all the year round. During the winter months it increases and before decreasing during the summer months, but an ice cover does in fact remain in the North which includes quite a bit of ice from previous years (Figure 1). Essentially Arctic sea ice is more important for the earth's energy balance because when it increasingly melts, more sunlight is absorbed by the oceans whereas Antarctic sea ice normally melts each summer leaving the earth's energy balance largely unchanged.

Figure 1: Coverage of sea ice in both the Arctic (Top) and Antarctica (Bottom) for both summer minimums and winter maximums
Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center

One must also be careful how you interpret trends in Antarctic sea ice. Currently this ice is increasing overall and has been for years but is this the smoking gun against climate change? Not quite. Antarctic sea ice is gaining because of many different reasons but the most accepted recent explanations are listed below:

i) Ozone levels over Antarctica have dropped causing stratospheric cooling and increasing winds which lead to more areas of open water that can be frozen (Gillet 2003, Thompson 2002, Turner 2009).

and

ii) The Southern Ocean is freshening because of increased rain and snowfall as well as an increase in meltwater coming from the edges of Antarctica's land ice (Zhang 2007, Bintanga et al. 2013). Together, these change the composition of the different layers in the ocean there causing less mixing between warm and cold layers and thus less melted sea and coastal land ice.

All the sea ice talk aside, it is quite clear that really when it comes to Antarctic ice and sea levels, sea ice is not the most important thing to measure. In Antarctica, the largest and most important ice mass is the land ice of the West Antarctic and East Antarctic ice sheets.

Therefore, how is Antarctic land ice doing?

Shepherd et al. 2012
Figure 2: Estimates of total Antarctic land ice changes and approximate sea level contributions using a combination of different measurement techniques (Shepherd, 2012). Shaded areas represent the estimate uncertainty (1-sigma).

Estimates of recent changes in Antarctic land ice (Figure 2, bottom panel) show an increasing contribution to sea level with time, although not as fast a rate or acceleration as Greenland. Between 1992 and 2011, the Antarctic Ice Sheets overall lost 1350 giga-tonnes (Gt) or 1,350,000,000,000 tonnes into the oceans, at an average rate of 70 Gt per year (Gt/yr). Because a reduction in mass of 360 Gt/year represents an annual global-average sea level rise of 1 mm, these estimates equate to an increase in global-average sea levels by 0.19 mm/yr.

There is variation between regions within Antarctica (Figure 2, top panel), with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet losing ice mass, and with an increasing rate. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing slightly over this period but not enough to offset the other losses.  There are of course uncertainties in the estimation methods but independent data from multiple measurement techniques (explained here) all show the same thing, Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly.

Last updated on 10 July 2013 by mattking. View Archives
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:23
in your own words

you know how ...

you see something .. you think about ... you formulate a personal opinion .. you discuss it

so we're finally getting somewhere i reckon AFL


cause if just under half according to your own post is due to humans
(ie half of the 0.5c warming since the 50's as stated by NASA)

meaning less than one quarter of one degree celsius about 0.25c according to your report is due to humans

in 65 years

whad'ya reckon ... be alarmed .. or more importantly .... tax it or trade it ?
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:26
Climate Myth...

Antarctica is gaining ice
"[Ice] is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap." (Greg Roberts, The Australian)

Skeptic arguments that Antarctica is gaining ice frequently hinge on an error of omission, namely ignoring the difference between land ice and sea ice.

In glaciology and particularly with respect to Antarctic ice, not all things are created equal. Let us consider the following differences. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass itself through snowfall. This land ice therefore is actually stored ocean water that once fell as precipitation. Sea ice in Antarctica is quite different as it is ice which forms in salt water primarily during the winter months. When land ice melts and flows into the oceans global sea levels rise on average; when sea ice melts sea levels do not change measurably.

In Antarctica, sea ice grows quite extensively during winter but nearly completely melts away during the summer (Figure 1). That is where the important difference between Antarctic and Arctic sea ice exists as much of the Arctic's sea ice lasts all the year round. During the winter months it increases and before decreasing during the summer months, but an ice cover does in fact remain in the North which includes quite a bit of ice from previous years (Figure 1). Essentially Arctic sea ice is more important for the earth's energy balance because when it increasingly melts, more sunlight is absorbed by the oceans whereas Antarctic sea ice normally melts each summer leaving the earth's energy balance largely unchanged.

Figure 1: Coverage of sea ice in both the Arctic (Top) and Antarctica (Bottom) for both summer minimums and winter maximums
Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center

One must also be careful how you interpret trends in Antarctic sea ice. Currently this ice is increasing overall and has been for years but is this the smoking gun against climate change? Not quite. Antarctic sea ice is gaining because of many different reasons but the most accepted recent explanations are listed below:

i) Ozone levels over Antarctica have dropped causing stratospheric cooling and increasing winds which lead to more areas of open water that can be frozen (Gillet 2003, Thompson 2002, Turner 2009).

and

ii) The Southern Ocean is freshening because of increased rain and snowfall as well as an increase in meltwater coming from the edges of Antarctica's land ice (Zhang 2007, Bintanga et al. 2013). Together, these change the composition of the different layers in the ocean there causing less mixing between warm and cold layers and thus less melted sea and coastal land ice.

All the sea ice talk aside, it is quite clear that really when it comes to Antarctic ice and sea levels, sea ice is not the most important thing to measure. In Antarctica, the largest and most important ice mass is the land ice of the West Antarctic and East Antarctic ice sheets.

Therefore, how is Antarctic land ice doing?

Shepherd et al. 2012
Figure 2: Estimates of total Antarctic land ice changes and approximate sea level contributions using a combination of different measurement techniques (Shepherd, 2012). Shaded areas represent the estimate uncertainty (1-sigma).

Estimates of recent changes in Antarctic land ice (Figure 2, bottom panel) show an increasing contribution to sea level with time, although not as fast a rate or acceleration as Greenland. Between 1992 and 2011, the Antarctic Ice Sheets overall lost 1350 giga-tonnes (Gt) or 1,350,000,000,000 tonnes into the oceans, at an average rate of 70 Gt per year (Gt/yr). Because a reduction in mass of 360 Gt/year represents an annual global-average sea level rise of 1 mm, these estimates equate to an increase in global-average sea levels by 0.19 mm/yr.

There is variation between regions within Antarctica (Figure 2, top panel), with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Peninsula Ice Sheet losing ice mass, and with an increasing rate. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing slightly over this period but not enough to offset the other losses.  There are of course uncertainties in the estimation methods but independent data from multiple measurement techniques (explained here) all show the same thing, Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly.

Last updated on 10 July 2013 by mattking
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:29
and the methane emmissions in the USA

in your own words

whad'ya reckon

30 times more potent as a climate changing gas

emitted in excess than what the UK put out annually in coal, oil & gas

ie the equivalent of 30 United Knigdom's around the globe of emmissions of methane

whad'ya reckon .. tax it or trade it ?
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:29
Climate Myth...

Temp record is unreliable

"We found [U.S. weather] stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source." (Watts 2009)

..................................................................................

What the science says..

Surveys of weather stations in the USA have indicated that some of them are not sited as well as they could be. This calls into question the quality of their readings.

However, when processing their data, the organisations which collect the readings take into account any local heating or cooling effects, such as might be caused by a weather station being located near buildings or large areas of tarmac. This is done, for instance, by weighting (adjusting) readings after comparing them against those from more rural weather stations nearby.

More importantly, for the purpose of establishing a temperature trend, the relative level of single readings is less important than whether the pattern of all readings from all stations taken together is increasing, decreasing or staying the same from year to year. Furthermore, since this question was first raised, research has established that any error that can be attributed to poor siting of weather stations is not enough to produce a significant variation in the overall warming trend being observed.

It's also vital to realise that warnings of a warming trend -- and hence Climate Change -- are not based simply on ground level temperature records. Other completely independent temperature data compiled from weather balloons, satellite measurements, and from sea and ocean temperature records, also tell a remarkably similar warming story.

For example, a study by Anderson et al. (2012) created a new global surface temperature record reconstruction using 173 records with some type of physical or biological link to global surface temperatures (corals, ice cores, speleothems, lake and ocean sediments, and historical documents).  The study compared their reconstruction to the instrumental temperature record and found a strong correlation between the two:

Fig 1

Temperature reconstruction based on natural physical and biological measurements (Paleo, solid) and the instrumental temperature record (MLOST, dashed) relative to 1901-2000. The range of the paleo trends index values is coincidentally nearly the same as the GST although the quantities are different (index values versus temperature anomalies °C).

Confidence in climate science depends on the correlation of many sets of these data from many different sources in order to produce conclusive evidence of a global trend.

Last updated on 13 January 2013 by dana1981. View Archives
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:32
whad'ya reckon

your report says humans are responsible for the equivalent of less than one quarter of one percent of global warming

in 65 years

tax it .. or trade it ?

in your own words

whad'ya reckon about it
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:32
Climate Myth...

It's cosmic rays
"When the Sun is active, its magnetic field is better at shielding us against the cosmic rays coming from outer space, before they reach our planet. By regulating the Earth’s cloud cover, the Sun can turn the temperature up and down. ... As the Sun’s magnetism doubled in strength during the 20th century, this natural mechanism may be responsible for a large part of global warming seen then."  (Henrik Svensmark)

The galactic cosmic ray (GCR) warming hypothesis is based on the premise that GCRs can "seed" clouds, and clouds reflect sunilight.  So if there are fewer GCRs reaching Earth (because a strong solar magnetic field is deflecting them away), the hypothesis says there will be fewer clouds, more sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, and thus more global warming.

So more solar activity means a stronger solar magnetic field, which means fewer GCRs reaching Earth, which hypothetically means fewer clouds and more warming.

The body of scientific research has determined that GCRs are actually not very effective at seeding clouds.  However, the hypothesis is also disproven just by examining the data.  Over the past five decades, the number of GCRs reaching Earth has increased, and in recent years reached record high numbers.  This means that if the GCR-warming hypothesis is correct, this increase in GCRs should actually be causing global cooling over the past five decades, and particularly cold temperatures in recent years.

On the contrary, while GCRs are up, global temperatures are also way up, and temperatures in recent years reached record highs.

GCR vs. Temp

Annual average GCR counts per minute (blue - note that numbers decrease going up the left vertical axis, because lower GCRs should mean higher temperatures) from the Neutron Monitor Database vs. annual average global surface temperature (red, right vertical axis) from NOAA NCDC, both with second order polynomial fits.

Last updated on 6 January 2013 by dana1981. View Archives
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:34
Climate Myth...

It's Urban Heat Island effect
A paper by Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph, and Patrick Michaels, an environmental studies professor at the University of Virginia, concludes that half of the global warming trend from 1980 to 2002 is caused by Urban Heat Island. (McKitrick & Michaels)

............................................................



The Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) is a phenomenon whereby the concentration of structures and waste heat from human activity (most notably air conditioners and internal combustion engines) results in a slightly warmer envelope of air over urbanised areas when compared to surrounding rural areas. It has been suggested that UHI has significantly influenced temperature records over the 20th century with rapid growth of urban environments.

Scientists have been very careful to ensure that UHI is not influencing the temperature trends. To address this concern, they have compared the data from remote stations (sites that are nowhere near human activity) to more urban sites. Likewise, investigators have also looked at sites across rural and urban China, which has experienced rapid growth in urbanisation over the past 30 years and is therefore very likely to show UHI. The difference between ideal rural sites compared to urban sites in temperature trends has been very small:


Figure 1. Annual average temperature anomalies. Jones et al (dotted green and brown) is a dataset of 42 rural and 42 urban sites. Li et al (solid green and brown) is an adjusted dataset of 42 rural and 40 urban sites. Li (blue) is a non-adjusted set of 728 stations, urban and rural. CRUTEM3v (red) is a land-only data set (Brohan et al., 2006). This plot uses the 1954–83 base period.

Another way to explore the UHI would be to look at where the majority of warming has occurred across the globe. The UHI should match where most people live. However, if you look at the 2006 global temperature anomaly (figure 2.), you find that the greatest difference in temperatures for the long term averages where across Russia, Alaska, far north Canada and Greenland and not where major urbanisation has occurred.


Figure 2. Using source data from NASA/GISS, this illustration shows the amount of change in global surface temperatures in 2006 from 1885.

The Urban Heat Effect has no significant influence on the record of global temperature trends.

Last updated on 5 September 2011 by mothincarnate.
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:34
in your own words .. whad'ya reckon AFL

about ... a n y t h i n g  Wink


(but you know the real question .. tax it .. or trade it  ?  Laugh )
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:35
What's Abbott and the Liberal Party doing to combat Climate Change ?
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:39
now we're getting somewhere

but look .. last time i checked ... what you have stated is a question

so in your own words

the global temps over the past 65 years have been increased by one quarter of one degree celsius (your own report)

what has caused the other one quarter of one degree celsius increase

if it is not humnan caused (your own report) .. what might have caused it

for example .. was it the .. ummm ... moon .. or was it something else naturally occuring .. or .. well you get the point

whad'ya reckon caused it

(and should we tax or trade whatever it was once we find it)
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:41
2 idiots on a gambling blog purport to know more about Climate Science than the actual people who spend their

lives studying the subject.


Says it all really.
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:43
and one genius who doesn't understand the difference between a statement (answer) and a question

for example in relation to your obtuse deflectionary question i could answer

the current govt as far as i understand it has EXACTLY the same plan as ... the previously departed govt

a 5% reduction in the emmissions of co2


but all that is ... is political posturing ...

let's get down to facts

whad'ya reckon is causing the other half of global warming ?

and when we track it down should we .. tax it or trade it ?
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:44
2 idiots on a gambling blog purport to know more about Climate Science than the actual people who spend their

lives studying the subject.


Says it all really.
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:47
well at least your current c+p is in your own words i guess  Laugh

and for that i thank you

but when you curl up tonight in the warmth of your bed .. and you have those last little thoughts before slipping off into dreamland ... pls think about an answer to this

what caused the other half of the less than one quarter of one degree celsius warming over the past 65 year period on earth

.. and happy dreams pal Grin
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 11:49
1 idiot...... and 1 bigger idiot on a gambling blog purport to know more about Climate Science than the actual

people who spend their lives studying the subject.


Says it all really. Wink
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 11:58
it certainly says something about the poster of the comment Laugh

but while the genius prepares for slumber could the genius consider this

methane has been spotted by satellite randomly emitting in the USA the equivalent of the UK's co2 output from coal and oil

nasa have found this greenhouse gas hotspot

http://phys.org/news/2014-10-space-based-methane-largest-southwest.html

but we don;t know about the rest of the world .. and won't

why ?  ... because the link states that

They used a satellite instrument—the European Space Agency's SCIAMACHY—to get regional methane measurements over the entire United States.

BUT ...

SCIAMACHY is no longer operating, so there aren't equivalent satellites to provide this information for other parts of the world.



---

hang on .. we've found massive amounts of randomly leaking methane in the USA .. but we disable the satelitte that found it .. and we aren't looking anywhere else on the planet to see if the sdame thing is happening elsewhere and to what extent.

crikey .. you'd think they had just settled on co2 as the culprit and will solve that problem first Laugh

what should we do though .. tax it or trade it

the ETS is the BIGGEST RORT EVER

you don't need to be a genius to work that one out  Laugh
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 12:00
1 idiot...... and 1 bigger idiot on a gambling blog purport to know more about Climate Science than the actual

people who spend their lives studying the subject.


Says it all really.
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 12:02
no answer

or

no idea
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 12:11
Take it up with a Climate Scientist.
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 12:19
can i ask you a question AFL

is methane a greenhouse gas ?

i will assume you know this or check this and find out it ... is a greenhouse gas

and like co2 you would understand that any greenhouse gas has the potential to raise the global temperature

do you then find it interesting that ... just this month .. nasa have released a report stating huge amounts of previously undocumented (climatically that is) methane have been found ?

---

"There's so much coalbed methane in the Four Corners area, it doesn't need to be that crazy of a leak rate to produce the emissions that we see. A lot of the infrastructure is likely contributing," said Eric Kort, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering.

Kort, first author of a paper on the findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, says the controversial natural gas extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing is not the main culprit.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-space-based-methane-largest-southwest.html#jCp


----

as a greenhouse gas (similar to co2) should there be a discussion at a high level such as the IPCC about this

should more climate scientists like in the report asked to comment on this phenomena

and

if we find this methane an extra burden on the planet in relation to the greenhouse effect should we

tax it trade it ?
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 12:43
1 idiot...... and 1 bigger idiot on a gambling blog purport to know more about Climate Science than the actual

people who spend their lives studying the subject.


Says it all really.
By:
AFL
When: 15 Oct 14 13:26
slatedotcom

Future Tense

The Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific

How Australia became the dirtiest polluter in the developed world.

By Ariel Bogle and Will Oremus

Water vapor and unseen oxides of carbon and other elements rise from a coal-fired power station, contributing to air pollution and greenhouse gases in Tarong, Queensland, Australia.

Photo by Auscape/UIG via Getty Images


Australians like to think of themselves as green. Their island country boasts some 3 million square miles of breathtaking landscape. They were an early global leader in solar power. They’ve had environmental regulations on the books since colonial times. And in 2007 they elected a party and a prime minister running on a “pro-climate” platform, with promises to sign the Kyoto Protocol and pass sweeping environmental reforms. All of which makes sense for a country that is already suffering the early effects of global warming.

And yet, seven years later, Australia has thrown its environmentalism out the window—and into the landfill.


The climate-conscious Labor Party is out, felled by infighting and a bloodthirsty, Rupert Murdoch–dominated press that sows conspiracy theories about climate science. In its place, Australians elected the conservative Liberal Party, led by a prime minister who once declared that “the climate argument is absolute crap.”

In the year since they took office, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Liberal-led coalition have already dismantled the country’s key environmental policies. Now they’ve begun systematically ransacking its natural resources. In the process, they’ve transformed Australia from an international innovator on environmental issues into quite possibly the dirtiest country in the developed world. And in a masterful whirl of the spin machine, they’ve managed to upend public debate by painting climate science as superstition and superstition as climate science. (We should note here that one of us grew up in Australia.)

The country’s landmark carbon tax has been repealed. The position of science minister has been eliminated. A man who warns of “global cooling” is now the country’s top business adviser. In November, Australia will host the G-20 economic summit; it plans to use its power as host to keep climate change off the official agenda.

If the environment has become Australia’s enemy, fossil fuels are its best friend once again. Two months after it struck down the carbon tax, the government forged a deal with a fringe party led by a mining tycoon to repeal a tax on mining profits. It appointed a noted climate-change skeptic—yes, another one—to review its renewable energy targets. Surprise: He’s expected to slash them. Independent modeling in a study commissioned by the Climate Institute, Australian Conservation Foundation, and WWF-Australia finds that the cuts to renewable energy won’t reduce Australians’ energy bills. They will, however, gift the country’s coal and gas industry another $8.8 billion U.S.

At a time when solar power is booming worldwide, sunny Australia is rolling back its state-level subsidies (despite domestic success) and canceling major solar projects. Meanwhile, the government has given the go-ahead to build the nation’s largest coal mine, with an eye toward boosting coal exports to India.   

Did we mention that Australians’ per-capita carbon emissions are the highest of any major developed country in the world? Welcome to the Saudi Arabia of the South Pacific. No, Australia isn’t a theocracy, and oil isn’t the source of its fossil-fuel riches. But it is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal and third-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and minerals and fuels account for nearly 50 percent of its export revenues. Its per-capita carbon emissions actually exceed those of Saudi Arabia. And its behavior of late is beginning to bear an ugly resemblance to those petro-states whose governments seem to exist chiefly to guarantee the spectacular profits of the fossil-fuel industry.

The skies aren’t the only realm that Australia is rapidly polluting. After all, the waste that the country is dredging up in new mines and coal port expansions has to go somewhere. Why not dump it on the Great Barrier Reef? (This month, facing a PR disaster, the mining consortium in charge of that particular project reversed its decision and will likely request permission to dump the dredge inland instead.)

The carbon tax became Australia’s equivalent of Obamacare.

“Let’s see,” Australian leaders must wake up wondering every morning:

“What natural wonder could we trash today?” At the top of that list is the pristine Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, nearly two-thirds of which the new government pledged to open to commercial logging. Environmentalists argued the logging would harm threatened species such as the swift parrot, the wedge-tailed eagle, and the iconic Tasmanian devil. Those concerns were waved aside by the state government, which, like the federal government, is controlled by the Liberals. Fortunately, their plans were thwarted when UNESCO rebuffed their attempt to repeal the forest’s World Heritage protections.

How the Liberals and their coalition partners have undone so many environmental policies in such a short time is a study in the power of biased media and irrational thinking.

From the moment the pro-climate Labor Party took power in 2007, opposition leaders and pundits made its environmental policies the focal point of their political attacks. Even environmental policies established under previous Liberal regimes became politically polarized as conservatives recast environmental policies as “job-destroyers.” The carbon tax turned into Australia’s equivalent of Obamacare as the opposition sought a wedge with which to pry apart the Labor Party’s coalition with the environmentally focused political party, the Greens. In some ways, environmental policies are even more vulnerable to being cast as job-killers than health care policies are, because the benefits are less tangible to the individual.


But Abbott and his allies haven’t just turned the public against environmental regulations with threats of economic doom. They’ve also worked hard to shake the public’s trust in climate science. And they’ve done it in a way that would surprise most Americans: by comparing environmentalists to religious kooks.

Green politicians, climate change activists, and even scientists have been painted as modern incarnations of a hated early-20th-century Australian archetype: the holier-than-thou, anti-gambling, anti-alcohol religious wowser. Someone who, according to professor Ken Inglis, “prayed on his knees on Sunday and preyed on his neighbours the rest of the week.”

This line of attack began as early as 2010, when Abbott was in the parliamentary opposition. In a television interview, he said of then–Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s climate change policies, “I am not as evangelical about this as Prime Minister Rudd is. I am not theological about this the way Prime Minister Rudd is.”

In a 2012 op-ed titled “Losing their religion as evidence cools off,” in Rupert Murdoch’s national newspaper, the Australian, Abbott’s top business adviser wrote: “When Mother Nature decided in 1980 to change gears from cooler to warmer, a new global warming religion was born, replete with its own church (the UN), a papacy, (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and a global warming priesthood masquerading as climate scientists.”

Embracing the analogy, the former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard gave a speech at a U.K. fracking conference in 2013 titled “One religion is enough,” in which he called action on climate change “a substitute religion.” Interestingly, while the global-warming-as-religion line probably wouldn’t play as well stateside, it seems that the U.S.-based think tank the Heartland Institute has played a key role in funding Australia’s denial movement.

Also instrumental in sowing doubt and apathy has been Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which owns about two-thirds of Australia’s metropolitan press and the dominant dailies in most state capitals. According to a study by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, coverage of the former Labor government’s climate-change policies by News Corp. papers was 82 percent negative.

Even so, belief in climate change remains relatively high among Australian voters. According to a 2014 Lowy Institute poll, 45 percent of Australians now see global warming as a “serious and pressing problem,” up 5 points since 2013. (Forty percent of Americans believe it to be a major threat, a 2013 Pew Research poll found.) But belief is not the same as action.

The conservatives’ cultivated agnosticism about climate issues is abetted by the nation’s general indifference about what happens in the “Outback.” Australians have long turned a blind eye toward the 70 percent of the country that is arid bushland and the small number of people who live there. Global mining companies like Rio Tinto run desert fiefdoms in the Northern Territory that are larger than Washington, D.C. The miners themselves—largely fly-in, fly-out workers—barely live in the remote, often indigenous, communities of Western Australia, the Northern Territory, or Queensland whose land they’re gutting and whose small towns they’re destroying. Many commute from Sydney and Melbourne, or even New Zealand and Bali.

Historically, this apathy extends beyond mining. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the government allowed the British to conduct nuclear tests and blast Western Australia’s Monte Bello Islands and parts of South Australia. And just this August, the conservative minister for defense told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that the American military was “welcome to use the ‘open spaces’ of the Northern Territory” for their bases and military exercises. (There’s been a U.S. Marine base in Darwin for years.) Imagine the United States gifting Alaska to the Canadian army for war games.

There are some who would like to estrange this swath of the country even further from Australia’s coastal population centers. Mining magnate Gina Rinehart, one of the richest women in the world, has lobbied for the continent’s northern third to be declared a “special economic zone” with reduced taxes, a lower minimum wage, and scant regulation.

If Australians have grown apathetic toward the use of their country, it is fair to point out that it seems equally apathetic toward them. Beautiful as it is, it’s a harsh land in which to make a home. It’s often on fire, usually in drought, and when the streams aren’t bone dry, they’re flooding—all natural disasters that are already being exacerbated by global warming.

Let’s hope that the rapacious policies of the current government represent only a temporary bout of insanity. If the Australian people cannot recover some of their earlier regard for their environment, they may find in time that their great land is no longer merely apathetic toward their residence there, but openly hostile.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog and the Future Tense home page. You can also follow us on Twitter.
By:
Thebas
When: 15 Oct 14 13:48
but whad'ya reckon AFL

in your own words

methane .. do we treat it the same way as co2 ... as much as the UK emits in co2 from coal & oil .. out of one little pocket in the USA

you know .. do we keep it coming .. keep it burnin .. next 50 to 75 years

and tax or trade it ?
By:
wombleoz
When: 15 Oct 14 22:33
we've just had the hottest year on record and now we got snow in Lithgow and the Blue Mountains in October - i.e. extremes

we either sit back and ignore it - say it's just part of the cycle and do nothing

OR

we do our bit and reduce emissions and see if we can impact the changes BUT get a cleaner planet as a result even if we can't

it's a no brainer for me, why risk doing nothing???
By:
secong coming.
When: 15 Oct 14 22:41
AFL is incapable of answering questions....just wants to push the same old barrow and shows how immature he is in reposting the same avoidance instead of reasoned debate...YOU ARE CLEARLY OUTCLASSED HERE AFL ie: maiden in a GROUP 1
By:
secong coming.
When: 15 Oct 14 22:42
but what about the snow in Lithgow that was pointed out by thebas 1880-1925 womble? then NOTHING until now ,doesn't that tell you something...hello
By:
secong coming.
When: 15 Oct 14 22:44
and trading co2 will help the climate womble?
By:
wombleoz
When: 15 Oct 14 22:57
1180-1925 weren't the hottest years on record as well

trading co2 will reduce the amount being emitted and potentially correct the balance in the environment taking some pressure off the climate
By:
secong coming.
When: 15 Oct 14 23:03
have to run now Womble at least you can answer a question with your own words and we can agree to disagree

have a good one CoolCool
By:
wombleoz
When: 15 Oct 14 23:05
u 2  enjoy
By:
Thebas
When: 16 Oct 14 05:26
wombleoz
trading co2 will reduce the amount being emitted and potentially correct the balance in the environment taking some pressure off the climate


that in essence is the hope mate ... however the scheme has had 10-12 years of operation in europe .. and was a failure

the amount of free credits offered initially to the biggest polluters didn't change a thing

no one was buying NEW credits ... and the greedy investment bankers who saw a goldmine plumped in billios and bought up ALL the auctions ... hoping you would imagine to seel them for the mandatory 10% profit (thus raking in 100's of millions of profit for NO change to the atmosphere)

however .. the worst thing imaginable happened to the greedy global co2 offset buying bankers ... as

OTHER greedy global bankers fk'd things properly in the US creating the GFC by selling and hedging against worthless sub-prime loans that they were only able to sell to other sucker investment bankers (and govt insurance/superannuation companies) ... which sent the price of co2 offset credits in europe from 20 euro or something down to 4 euro or something

now the greedy global bankers didn't then sell their useless co2 paper credits off at a whopping loss

they hung onto them ... creating amongst other bankers a confusion as to who had what "real" money and who was 'hiding' toxic debt

so the euro fk'd bankers need to inflate the price again of the worthless co2 credits

they can ONLY  do this by bringing new players into the ponzi deal

new ETS players ... and australia was RIPE FOR THE PICKING thanks to the dill gillard and he zombie environmnent minister greg combet

thank goodness australians saw through the ruse which her party recognised pre-election so the DUMPED HER ... classic move

and here we sit waiting to know what to about global climate warming & other changes

and the ONLY answer the intelligecia can come up with is

back to the ETS

which WILL happen ... and then bye-bye to sovereign wealth by any govt pressured or hoodwinked into playing the fake-for-the-environment co2 tax/trade rort

---

we now know there is an extra aand huge player in the greenhouse game ... the methane that is 'leaking' from the earth into the atmosphere in the USA

it is leaking (continually) the same amount of msthane that the UK emit in coal,oil, and natural gas

but methane is sorund 30 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than co2

methane doesn't stay in the atmosphere for a hundred years like co2 at all ... but if it continually leaking/emitting then it is a greenhouse issue and must be addressed by such orgs as the IPCC else if they just stick to the co2 $$$ now then you know it is only the ETS money they want and not the protection of the planet

---

once this is absorbed ... then maybe the world can move forward hopefully towards a real solution and not just money movements

the next subject i'll offer will be the ozone ... and like methane it will be a NASA offer ... NASA have already documented on their website that the ozone is intimately related (both forward & backwards with gases) to the ... climate of our planet

but all for another day
By:
Thebas
When: 16 Oct 14 06:11
Laugh lol secong

the c+p guru is only doing it lol to fill up space so as not to engage in dialogue ... imo secong   Cry

trouble is sometimes the c+p gurus don't read their own c+p's

the one i refer to is the latest 5 new studies on climate change re australia (womble posted the original some days back)


the expanded one from AFL last night had a fascinating part in it (maybe he read it maybe he didn't as i couldn't elicit an answer from him)

the line from the study was


One study, led by scientists at the US Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, looked at Australia’s record-breaking temperature “anomaly” in 2013 for average temperatures – that’s 1.72C.

Then they ran a series of computer models.

They then sliced up the 1.72C into chunks and found that just under half of the temperature increase (0.81C) was down to human emissions.


So the question remains unanswered ... if just under half the temp rise was due to humans what caused the other half of the temp rise ?

And then in relation to the global scenario ... we know that NASA have documented the planet has warmed 0.5 c since the 1950’s … some 65 years ago

So if just under half the warming … according to AFL’s own info … is due to humans

Then it is mathematically sound that humans themselves have caused the planet to increase its temp just … one quarter of a degree …  in 65 years  (half of the 0.5c)

And if co2 is only a component of the [i]other HALF
which must include other human activities such as deforestation, massive increases in petrol usage over the 65 years and massive increases in the use of air-conditioning in homes, malls etc, and massive increases in the use of AvGas in airplanes … then maybe the co2 component specifically itself is responsible for … some 60% of the other human half

Or in real terms co2 may have increased the temp of the planet some 0.15 of a degree Celsius

0.15 c   …  bears thinking about I reckon ... 0.15c in 65 years

And what percentage of the 0.15 degree Celsius globally is actually attributable to Australia ... when you consider the amount of co2 emmissions from China, India, the USA & Russia

But hey ...
By:
secong coming.
When: 16 Oct 14 06:26
my guess is 97% of scientists wouldn't even consider what you have brought up here - gotta keep the job secure...at least TA sees that 97% of them are no longer needed because of the selectiveness of them in protecting the finances

I have a lazy monkey here prepared to say the next post from our resident genius will not acknowledge not make comment (what was I thinking?) and go straight to a c+p?? any takers???

BIGGEST RORT EVER (AFL) AND SO IS THE ETS WinkWink
By:
secong coming.
When: 16 Oct 14 06:29
OMG 0.15c THATS SHOCKING
of course extrapolated the Oz share is 0.0021 of a degree Celsius over 65 years....better throw the billions at the problem lol
By:
AFL
When: 16 Oct 14 09:28
What the science says...       

97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming.

Climate Myth...

There is no consensus


The Petition Project features over 31,000 scientists signing the petition stating "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere ...". (Petition Project)

.................................................................................



Science achieves a consensus when scientists stop arguing.  When a question is first asked – like ‘what would happen if we put a load more CO2 in the atmosphere?’ – there may be many hypotheses about cause and effect. Over a period of time, each idea is tested and retested – the processes of the scientific method – because all scientists know that reputation and kudos go to those who find the right answer (and everyone else becomes an irrelevant footnote in the history of science).  Nearly all hypotheses will fall by the wayside during this testing period, because only one is going to answer the question properly, without leaving all kinds of odd dangling bits that don’t quite add up. Bad theories are usually rather untidy.

But the testing period must come to an end. Gradually, the focus of investigation narrows down to those avenues that continue to make sense, that still add up, and quite often a good theory will reveal additional answers, or make powerful predictions, that add substance to the theory.

So a consensus in science is different from a political one. There is no vote. Scientists just give up arguing because the sheer weight of consistent evidence is too compelling, the tide too strong to swim against any longer. Scientists change their minds on the basis of the evidence, and a consensus emerges over time. Not only do scientists stop arguing, they also start relying on each other's work. All science depends on that which precedes it, and when one scientist builds on the work of another, he acknowledges the work of others through citations. The work that forms the foundation of climate change science is cited with great frequency by many other scientists, demonstrating that the theory is widely accepted - and relied upon.

In the scientific field of climate studies – which is informed by many different disciplines – the consensus is demonstrated by the number of scientists who have stopped arguing about what is causing climate change – and that’s nearly all of them.  A survey of 928 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject 'global climate change' published between 1993 and 2003 shows that not a single paper rejected the consensus position that global warming is man caused (Oreskes 2004).

A follow-up study by the Skeptical Science team of over 12,000 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subjects of 'global warming' and 'global climate change' published between 1991 and 2011 found that of the papers taking a position on the cause of global warming, over 97% agreed that humans are causing it (Cook 2013).  The scientific authors of the papers were also contacted and asked to rate their own papers, and again over 97% whose papers took a position on the cause said humans are causing global warming.


Several studies have confirmed that “...the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes”. (Doran 2009). In other words, more than 97% of scientists working in the disciplines contributing to studies of our climate, accept that climate change is almost certainly being caused by human activities.

We should also consider official scientific bodies and what they think about climate change. There are no national or major scientific institutions anywhere in the world that dispute the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Not one.

In the field of climate science, the consensus is unequivocal: human activities are causing climate change.



Basic rebuttal written by GPWayne
By:
AFL
When: 16 Oct 14 09:42
97% of Climate Scientists are corrupt and wrong.


But two idiots on a gambling blog  know better than the people who study in the field.


Ha Ha Ha   this is the biggest joke of a thread on here
By:
Thebas
When: 16 Oct 14 11:55
In the field of climate science, the consensus is unequivocal: human activities are causing climate change.


yet the solution is to tax or trade co2 ... mainly from coal ... and give the money that is left (after the global bankers take their cut) to the UN to redistribute

do you not understand the madness of that AFL in the face of what you say is unequivocal

if there is a solution then knowing the problem intimately is the best starting point

and scientists would never say the 'science is settled'  ... in fact that statement was made by one person .. a person so entwined in getting a global ETS happening that he fractured the Kyoto Climate Summit by demanding an ETS ... that person was Al Gore

and here is why scientists would never say the science is settled ... becuase that is anti-science

http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/01/a-methane-mystery-scientists-probe-unanswered-questions-about-methane-and-climate-change/

Climate scientists have a puzzle to solve.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and humanity produces lots of it - mainly from burning wood, mining fossil fuels and decaying waste in landfill.

But the amount we're emitting doesn't match up with how much scientists can detect in the atmosphere.

More perplexingly, scientists don't know why atmospheric methane is on the rise again, after a decade of the amount in the atmosphere staying the same.



---

i can have as much fun with you as i like ... and vice versa

but the sooner people understand that trying to tax or trade coal out of existence in the hope of reducing co2 levels is fruitless the world will be much better served

methane .. after its ultimate breakdown .. converts to co2 ... thus increasing the levels of cos that are no longer coal based

we have massive releases of methane from natural gas from the largest gas producer on the planet .. Russia

and just last month peer reviewed sciene documented a leak/emission of methane in the USA that is the equivalent of the total coal, oil & gas emissions of co2 from the whole of the United Kingdom

forget the tax/trade rubbish con and rort

there is something that needs to be done .. and it ain't just coal ffs
By:
Thebas
When: 16 Oct 14 11:59
some further reading ... and i hope those in the 'game' are fully exposed and the fake-for-the-environment tax/trade rort of coal based co2 is seen for what it is  ... pointless

=
We’ve known for a long time that methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned.

But the IPCC’s latest report, released Monday (big PDF here), reports that methane is 34 times stronger a heat-trapping gas than CO2 over a 100-year time scale, so its global-warming potential (GWP) is 34.

That is a nearly 40% increase from the IPCC’s previous estimate of 25.

Amazingly, the EPA has been using a GWP of 21 for its estimate of how methane compares to carbon dioxide — a figure that is nearly twenty years out of date. That means methane is a whopping 60% stronger than EPA calculates in its GHG inventory. Back in April, EPA finally said it was thinking about raising the GWP — to 25!

EnergyWire (subs. req’d) reports:

“The IPCC presents the scientific consensus, so its conclusions are inherently conservative,” said Hugh MacMillan, senior researcher with Food and Water Watch. “It’s bizarre that the EPA is just now moving to adopt the GWPs from 2005. Is the agency going to wait until 2025 to use these new GWPs?”

If a new GWP of 34 were adopted, the contribution of methane to U.S. emissions would significantly increase.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/02/2708911/fracking-ipcc-methane/
=

stop the rort (ETS) ... start the rescue
By:
AFL
When: 16 Oct 14 12:01
Plenty of methane steaming of the c r a p you post on this subject. Wink
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