Journeyman

Nice one Baff! ... I’ve added that one to my playlist! So we like graphs? How about this graph of solar activity? Looks like a good a contender as any to me! The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years  .... Linky! @ walker. Whether co2 is a contributing factor for current trends or not you cannot ignore these statistics! .... Or can you! … Well of course you can because it spoils your theories/beliefs that we are solely to blame for this current warming event! Â

From the same source as your wonderful graph: source.The fact is that the Earth heated up to at least that of today during that period through entirely natural processes. Â In your post you seem to be making me out as some kind of evil deceiver trying to sway people away from your version of events! Try to be a bit more mature about it and I might take you a bit more seriously! I'm merely challenging your take on the subject. This unprecedented warming seems to have been recorded only over the last few years (according to all the graphs I've seen so far) So either we have got a 'runaway' effect or the current readings are just showing further inaccuracies in the old record history. I am not saying either is true and like I have said in previous posts do believe we have more profound increases in temperatures in recent years too but unlike you I try to quantify things first! Have I not? Please repeat them for me I must have overlooked them I will do my best! And while we are on the subject please advise on how we should go about preventing any further temperature increases, as you seem such an expert on the subject! Oh and quote: .... is hardly cutting edge science considering the lengthy debate that we have had on this topic over the last few pages!

Now explain to us how come that most of those lines show that the 'medieval warm period' was every bit if not warmer than today? Only the black line shows a sudden rise (funny how that was added later)! I don't recall reports of record co2 levels in the 'medieval warm period'! Or am I missing something?

So are you trying to get forum votes or something? What the ‘giggledygook’ has anyone else’s opinion (whether majority or not) got to do with this debate? The media in any case influences most people’s decisions! And to top it all off you obviously haven’t read a single word of my last post (or probably any other)!  .... To quote myself... What you are saying in your incredibly well put post that climate change is real .... Isn’t that what I have said also? To go on and debate whether more or less or most or neither of it is 'man made' is a complete waste of time! You have failed to make a single contribution about what we should be doing about it! As far as I can see 'what we should or shouldn't be doing about it' is a far more important issue than the ongoing arguments as to who or what is or isn't to blame for it or in what proportions! Like Baff1 says chances are it is a whole combination of many factors both natural and man made. Who gives a shit anymore! ...Unless any of you clever 'environmentalists' have got the perfect answer to halt it your just wasting space here!

The way I see this interesting argument is that Baff1 will refer to his long personal experience of his own environment/industry/economy and maybe that of close friends/neighbours to fuel his knowledge base on the subject and pretty much refuse to believe anything published on the internet/TV etc. while Espectro relies almost entirely on published articles from said media. Small wonder we have a problem agreeing with anything! I can understand Baff1’s perspective more than most as I have also hade a lifetime experience with nature. I’ve been in landscaping/arboriculture for over 23 years and have travelled around several isolated communities around the world during my mountaineering days, I am also married to someone from a ‘third world’ country, so I also consider myself to have a fairly good personal knowledge base of the environment. I also get annoyed with being told stuff by local environment officials (read university graduates) how I should be doing certain aspects of my work! But I guess that is just part of life! Wisdom is precious but it isn’t everything! I don’t fall into Baff1’s category though of only believing what I see with my own eyes as that is shutting out too big a collective knowledge base that we all need to harness. On the other hand I treat what I read and hear with great caution, as there are often hidden motives behind any publication. If I read something on the Internet or see something on TV I don’t suddenly get all excited and start telling everyone! Instead I start sifting through as much alternative sources of that information as I can to try and see if it really does stand up or is just another load of wishy-washy hype from the media! This doesn’t make me an expert though anymore than anyone else but it just adds another point of view to this debate. As I quoted very early on in this debate I do believe (like Espectro and others) that there are big changes happening with the climate (I have seen this with my own eyes) and I am concerned for the future. For me the environment is changing and these changes could easily turn out to be catastrophic for our current ecosystem . This is why I voted: ‘this is a real problem for the future’ at the poll on top of this thread. What I don’t agree about though is all the hype about what we should be doing about it! This is where I side with Baff1 because whatever the cause of this sudden change in climate (whether human related or not) we have to be extremely careful how we tackle it. I personally don’t believe that there is much (within the realms of common sense) that we as a collective world can do about it, or at least not without seriously upsetting the economy in such a way that would be far more crippling to our societies than tackling this potential impending climate problem head on as it arrives. We have quite possibly got a looming climate problem coming our way, but let’s not put ourselves at a economical disadvantage in order to try and stop it because we will not stop it and all we will be doing is putting ourselves at a huge economical and social disadvantage in order to try and survive it! By all means be as green as you can, save energy as much as possible. But we will always just be pissing in the wind whatever we try and do! This is the way that I see it! I also see all the other business opportunities that are coming from this ‘let’s try and stop climate change’ hype as I have said previously, which is why the reporting of the problem has become so corrupt. Â

Do you even know what a hybrid car is? Yes it is yet another brilliant moneymaking scheme and vote winner from our famed government funded scientists and their political golf partners! A hybrid car can use 'fossil fuels' for the engine or it can use 'fossil fuels' for generating the electricity that power the electric motors! .... What a brilliant way to save the world!  .... Over and out! So you dont think that driving 50 miles per gallon versus 10 is going to make a difference? Over and out. Lots of small diesel cars get 50 - 72 MPG and they get better acceleration and are a lot less costly to produce. Then there is the environmental cost of manufacturing the batteries and also carting them around! You say versus 10 mpg? For your information I drive a 3.9 V8 Land Rover Discovery that has been converted to run on LPG. Even when I run this brut on petrol I still get more than 20mpg on a run. And yes I need a powerful 4x4 for towing heavy trailers so don’t start giving me all the SUV drivers shit!

Just like I expected  ...the same old stones!  Do you even know what a hybrid car is? Yes it is yet another brilliant moneymaking scheme and vote winner from our famed government funded scientists and their political golf partners! A hybrid car can use 'fossil fuels' for the engine or it can use 'fossil fuels' for generating the electricity that power the electric motors! .... What a brilliant way to save the world!  .... Over and out!

On the contrary! Baff1 has thrown in some pretty significant arguments against upsetting the economy as a result of taking drastic action to cut man made co2. I haven’t yet seen anyone try and counter debate his reasoning, only continue to throw the same old stones over and over!  Putting up a few wind farms is fine as is experimenting with other means of generating electricity. But don't believe for one minute that this is going to have any significant impact on overall co2 emissions! What about transportation, the steel industry etc? Will we be having solar powered aircraft or wind turbine steel furnaces?   Take a look outside your window (if you live in a city) how many cars, busses, trucks, trains, planes are travelling every minute of every hour of every day? Think about it! If you seriously want to cut our emissions to any significant level it is going to take a lot more that the initiatives of a few topographically fortunate countries in setting up wind farms to help with electricity production. Like Baff1 said if we really want to cut co2 significantly (and that is the only chance of it having any effect) we would need to take very drastic action that would not only cripple the economy but our whole transportation and production infrastructure! And even then after all that there would still be no guarantee that doing so will have had any affect whatsoever on the (ever) changing climate. So we would be both economically ruined and environmentally ‘buggered’ with no chance of us ever helping ourselves out of it!   ....So much for those columns and rows!

Absolutely agreed! Some people here need to get off their arses and do a bit of real world travelling! Sitting here surrounded by all our Western luxuries can lead us into a false sense of global well-being, but unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. I have travelled around several developing countries: Nepal, India, Philippines, Indonesia and although I have never been to the worst place for poverty and hardship that of Africa I can truly say that the words "Global Warming" don’t even register a blink of concern for these people, most of them are already living in a state of survival that many here I'm sure would consider apocalyptic! Protecting the world 'Bollocks'! Protecting our privileged Western economies more like!

An old friend of mine had that problem too! Â

An old friend of mine had that problem too! Â

Agreed! As for chopper refuelling I guess they just have big fuel tanks! I used to play around with the jet pack and the dragonfly add-ons (can't remember by who now) in OFP and had great fun hopping around the islands making sure there were sufficient gas stations around for refuelling! Â

Keep freedom of speech! If you don't like what you hear then don't hear it! Â

That is precisely why it is possible for the helicopter to turn at all! If the helicopter was to behave like a conventional 'toy' gyroscope where more than 90% of the mass is in the gyro, then I don't think that we would just be looking at a slightly different rotation point! Â For those that don't understand this 'resistance to turn' of a gyroscope have a look at THIS short clip of how it affects a bicycle wheel. Alternatively go play with one of THESE! It is perfectly acceptable to expect that even though the mass of the spinning rotors is a mere fraction of the total mass of the helicopter that the gyro effect of the spinning rotors will still imply a resistance to turn sufficiently to cause a slightly different rotation point in the fuselage of the aircraft. I don't believe however that this would be at the point of the rotors and like I said would be somewhere between the C of G and the rotor pivot. But I think that Suma said that he was correcting this. Â

This still does not take into account the gyroscopic effect of the spinning rotors. Suma is right in that most choppers rotate at a point above their C of G due to this effect. It would be somewhere between the C of G and the rotor pivot depending on the chopper/how much power/speed etc. But I agree the camera needs to come away from the rotors and placed nearer the C of G to give more realism to the view. If you have ever played around with a gyroscope you would understand this effect much better! Which reminds me I haven't seen any of those little gyroscopes for ages, I had two of them when I was a kid! Â

Taken on Tuesday in Panglao Island Bohol Philippines not by me but by my mate who is doing some building work for me, but you're not gonna want to see any of those! Hmm! Or Maybe...

We all love you Suma! Knowing this and merely mentioning the 1.08 patch just makes me wanna cry! Finally I will be able to enjoy ArmA again! Sorry too much vodka!!

I don't worry no because nothing I have read or seen (including your snippets) causes me alarm! Co2 is a natural life essential element. We are all made of co2, all life is made of co2, and without co2 we would NOT exist! It is the environmental scaremongers that have made this life essential element into something evil! Like I said very early on in this debate study has shown that there is a new period of global warming under way. To somehow think that A) we are responsible for it and most importantly B) that somehow we can halt it is just pure fantasy (Or rather a convenient story for the protagonists of this new industry! ) We would be doing far more justice to the people and our future if resources were aimed at helping those to cope with change rather than fruitlessly trying to prevent it!  If I was to base all my findings on that one graph alone I might be concerned, but when you look back at other events and compare it alongside other graphs it doesn’t stand out that much at all. And as I said earlier the science of co2 is sloppy at the best of times! It simply does not explain events in history. Looking at the WHOLE picture is the hardest part and that is what I try and do! Â

The two things that make life possible on our planet are the atmosphere and the moon. The atmosphere keeps us at a temperature that can sustain life while the moon stops us from wobbling out of orbit and loosing our 24hour day/night regularity. But sustainable does not mean that global temperatures and climate in general remain at a level constant. There will always be big ups and downs. Some things will survive while others won’t. Just take a look at history. Open your eyes or do some studying you might even learn something new! I appreciate that being told that there maybe an alternative truth to the constant propaganda that we are being fed is a hard pill to swallow and I accept it affects some folk differently to others! Â

In that case the 'CO2 buffer' has not functioned many times in our geological history either, and I quote walker: This assumption that our climate has always been stable and self-levelling is probably one of the biggest misconceptions of this whole debate! Â

Ok so let’s start to assume then that co2 is a major greenhouse gas since there are sufficient claims in both directions I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt! There were no humans around during the period that the paleoclimactic temperature changes shown in the Vostok and Antarctic Deep Core Survey was based, so any co2 generated over this period was entirely natural. Much of this co2 would have been released from the oceans, as the warmer seas would not be able to hold as much during their warmer spell. Likewise right now we have a warming period. Whether we are in agreement or not that it is solar induced the resultant increase in the ocean temperatures would (as in the paleoclimactic period) be releasing co2. So this would still represent a purely natural event. Unless of course you are going to go one step further and show me the proof I need that this ‘additional’ co2 is entirely man made instead!  And I mean ‘entirely’ because if only a percentage of this increasing co2 is man made we are still wasting resources in trying to cut it down. How much do you seriously believe we could possibly cut and continue with our present economic way of life? Even if we were able to completely cut out all of our emissions (which would be impossible) so long as you still have a natural process going on producing what almost certainly would be the lion’s share of co2, we would be simply pissing in the wind of inevitable climate change! ….And all this when there are people dying unnecessarily in Africa because the West is denying them the right to develop their resources! Â

You are right that there is no reliable data and all measurements are estimations based on what things were known to be happening at that time. The medieval period is part of our recorded history and there are sufficient clues and pointers to give us a reasonably accurate account of temperatures of the time and an approximation of how long they lasted for. Using your hypothesis there are no temperature measurements before the invention of the thermograph full stop! This isn’t how historians and geologists record temperatures prior to the invention of measuring instruments! They instead try and piece together what events took place at that time. In early geological periods it would be through fossil research but for the medieval period we have much more written and documented facts about how warm it was and what they would have been growing during that period (grape vines in Northern England for example! ) Most botanists would be able to tell you the minimum winter temperature for successfully growing grape vines! It is an estimation that is why I quoted 1.3°C to 4°C! No source is reliable either and we all get our data from suspect research whether we like it or not! Â

@Walker I did not mean to rattle your cage so hard and I certainly don’t underestimate the intellectual abilities of many forum members here either. Please excuse me if that is how it came across! I do not see this debate as a competition and am not trying to break the moral of your opinion! I just want to be convinced that what you say is correct so I can join you in your belief just like I was a few years back!   I am aware of all the other climatic influencing factors such as ElNino, LaNina, the Earths oscillation around the sun and so on, but I am trying to keep this simple as these events can easily be counted out of this debate at present. The Earths climate through the ages is indeed complex as it is at present, but we need to focus a bit on more recent events and try and see if this new sudden temperature increase has happened in the more recent geological past long before we became a contributing factor in this complex system. For the past 2 million years, the earth has been experiencing 100,000 year long cycles of glaciations followed by 10,000 year long interglacial periods. We are currently about 10,000 years into the last interglacial period (known as the Holocene). These cycles are due to changes in the earth's orbit, mainly as a function of its eccentricity. Within the last 10,000 year period, there have been periods of time that were 1.3°C to 4°C warmer than present. Cycles of warm periods followed by cooler periods seem to occur at around 1,500 year intervals. Since we have just finished the cooler period known as the "Little Ice Age", at least part of the current warming is due to cyclical variation in the earth's climate pattern the rest can clearly be linked to the recent sunspot activity. We do have a sudden increase in temperature in this century but it fits the wrong time for the same period of co2 increases as a result of our emissions (this is very clear in that graph of mine that you continually parade here! ). Temperature history reveals the existence of a number of recent climatic highs and lows, including the "Holocene Optimum 4000-6000 years ago, Medieval Warm Period with a culmination about 1000 years ago and Little Ice Age 200-500 years ago." Furthermore, the mean temperature of the Medieval Warm Period was determined to be more elevated above the mean temperature of the past century than the mean temperature of the Little Ice Age was reduced below that of the past century. There is documented real-world evidence for the reality of the Medieval Warm Period, as well as its dominance over the past century in terms of its much greater warmth, which flies in the face of claims that make current temperatures appear "un-precedent" over the past millennium! As for the co2 hockey stick graph of the 20th century I am still studying as to whether or not it has any real implications for our future temperatures as it seems that it is this most recent event that all the pro ‘man mad disaster’ forecasters are clinging on to in order to support their claims! It is all down to whether there can be a PROVEN link between a rise in co2 and that of temperature. At the moment I have not seen any! I guess we will have to wait and see! Â

@ Walker I appreciate your input but you are unnecessarily complicating the whole debate with the finer sciences of climatologic (maybe in an attempt to drown out the conspiracy theory! ) and basing too much assumptions on this co2/temperature relationships while at the same time losing everyone in unnecessary mathematical equations! It seems you are deliberately avoiding the relationship that the sun has with the system focusing only on the 28 year TSI fluctuations, and not addressing the large scale variability in the Sun's UV flux and in ejections of magnetized solar plasma, both of which can have a dramatic effect on the Earth's climate.  We all get facts wrong I’m no exception but the overall picture is what I am aiming for rather than digging deep into one area and ignoring the other issues! Have a look at THESE graphs they tell the same story about how recent solar activity fits more the pattern of recent temperature changes over any other scenario! Are you seriously telling us that our politicians are telling us the truth and that there is absolutely no temptation whatsoever for them to distort facts in order to protect an industry and their own skin over this highly controversial issue? I appreciate your input but I have still yet to learn anything new that convinces me away from a totally natural climatic variation.  BTW I would really like to believe you guys that this IS really a man made impending disaster! Just like everyone else I love a disaster story, and (like I said earlier) truly believed it myself for many years too! I just wish someone could now show me something truly convincing that will sway me back the other way! Alas to date I have seen nothing, only more to the contrary!   So please all you pro 'imminent man made disaster' theorists show me something truly convincing that will blow away all that I have learned over the past few years and persuade me back into the green camp! It might surprise some of you to learn that I was very active in Friends of the Earth in my early twenties and campaigned about lots of environmental issues in the eighties. One thing that I've learned more than anything else from that time though has ben to make sure you get your facts right first. Like I said a while back "a little knowledge can be dangerous!" Â

@ Walker that last graph of yours shows nothing but increases in co2 and as has already been said the science linking co2 with temperature variations is completely flawed. 14 million years ago the co2 levels were something like 5 times what they are today and there was no evidence of any massive temperature hikes in that period. So just because we have the highest co2 for several hundred thousand years does not mean we are all about to be fried! Co2 represents less than 0.067 % of the total atmospheric gasses and only a very small fraction of that is man made! Take a look at that video kindly linked by Kode I think you will find several interesting graphs in there and a lot more revelations too! As for your middle graph well that just shows what I’ve been saying: temperature goes up then co2 follows, that is what ice core research has found! Just like Al Gore you are misinterpreting the connection between co2 and variations in temperature. As for my graph take a closer look. The main period of warming took place from the early 1900s up to 1940 a period when the industrial revolution had hardly got going so only very small amounts of man made co2 was being produced and this would have been negligible for the first half of this period and yet we see dramatic warming in this period. The co2 levels are wholly out of sync with the temperature right up until 1960 but fits nicely into the sunspot activity graph. Then in the period from 1940 to just after 1950 the temperature plummets just when the post war economic boom was under way and man made co2 emissions would have been rocketing! This would not make sense if you were to blame the industrial revolution for the current global warming period, the graph should be steadily increasing and accelerating just like your co2 graph. As for the period from 1960 onwards we see another continued rise in temperature, co2 is rising fast here also but we already know these things often go hand in hand so it does not really say that much about how they are (if at all) interacting with each other. If you notice there is a 10 year delay between sun spot peaks and temperature peaks which would make sense given the inertia of land and sea to respond to these changes. Research has shown that increased solar activity also has an effect on the amount of cloud cover due to cosmic winds so a decreased level of cloud would easily explain an ongoing increase during a lull in sunspots as is shown from 1990 until about 1999 when it goes up again! No graph is definitive proof of anything and I do not base my entire research on them. But most graphs that I have seen in connection with this phenomenon convince me that this is a solar-based event and nothing whatsoever to do with man made co2 emissions. BTW thanks for bringing that Vid up Kode, it was reassuring to watch it again, I’d already forgot some of those finer details! Â