Global changes in temperature...

A couple of years ago, I was definitely the odd one out when it came to the whole story of "climate change" and "global warming". However, the worm seems to have turned and while there is still an overwhelming weight of opinion on the side of climate change in the media, that consensus has definitely gone and much more questioning is now happening.

If you think about global warming and carbon dioxide and emissions trading schemes there are two very basic distinctions to make.

Firstly; do you believe in global warming or not?

No - don't worry about carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes, they're not relevant.
Yes - continue...

Secondly; do you believe that global warming is anthroprogrenic (man made) or part of the earth's natural cycles?

Natural - don't worry about carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes, they're not relevant.
Man made - continue...

Thirdly; if humans are warming the globe, are our emissions causing lots of warming, or just a little bit?

Little bit - don't worry about carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes, they're not relevant.
Lots - continue...

Forthly; If we are warming the globe by a lot what are the ramifications? Will we have increased food production and more trees or droughts and flooding rains?

I think that's the one that's a little bit hard to answer.


I want to once again put myself out there as a sceptic. While belief seems to be a strong word, I do accept that there has been some warming of the globe happening over the past couple of centuries. However, I do have a few small queries about the consensus view pushed forward by the media. Some of my doubts are:

This global warming seems to have happened over a period of a couple of hundred years, not just in the last 50, which isn't really in keeping with the whole anthroprogenic theory.

There hasn't been any increase for a few years now, the actual peak temperature was when, 1998?

There's been no accounting for the impact of sun spots on the earth's temperature cycle, something we're going to know a lot more about in the next few years as the current sunspot cycle finishes, with an accompanying reduction in solar radiation.

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but increases in atmospheric CO2 don't result in equivalent direct increases to global temperature. Double the CO2 you don't double the temperature, you only get an increase of 1 to 2 degrees.

Previous examples of extreme global warming (in the record of things such as ice cores) seems to indicate that previous spikes in CO2 have FOLLOWED spikes in temperature

Previous examples of warming that we have records for (such as the Medieval Warm Period) were obviously not caused by burning of coal and oil and indeed saw periods of unprecedented prosperity in Europe. It would seem likely that increased temperatures combined with increases in CO2 would see the potential for greatly increased food, fibre and timber production.

Many of the sites that are used to measure temperature (around the world) have over the last 40 or 50 years been increasingly developed, to the point where they are now surrounded by concrete, air conditioner outlets and other items which could all influence the temperature reading and certainly bring into question data from the individual sites.

So, basically, what I'm saying is that I personally can accept that there is some global warming and that it might even be man made, but that there probably doesn't really need to be that much done about it.

I can see lots of other reasons why you might want to limit CO2 emissions, from national security to improvements to our environment, especially in built up areas, but I DON'T believe that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to somehow save the planet.

That being said, if you do want to reduce emissions, I believe that a carbon tax is the best way to do that. It's simple and effective and means that there is a massive incentive to actually find alternatives. An ETS I can't conceive as being effective, simply because it becomes too complicated. This makes it expensive and it makes it easy to rort.

Far too many people take a quasi-religious view of this whole situation, wanting to "cut emissions" without thinking about the whole picture. And often while driving a nice car, living in a nice house and having overseas holidays. ????