The sky is not falling

[neoteny]

Very interesting hour-long UK Channel 4 documentary - "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (1h 14min).

Quote - "The sun is driving climate change, CO2 is irrelevant"

Disputing anthropogenic climate change isn't just for Penn & Teller anymore...

Comments

[flamingnerd]

Yeah, very interesting. This isn't my field, and generally one gets by best assuming that the brightest scientists in the area usually know what they're talking about.

I'm eager to hear what our friend A of Berkley Environmental Science has to say on this documentary. Certainly the data they show is rather moving. I don't have the background to critically analyze them without a big time investment.

A few things did jump out at me.

1. they assume the human CO2 contribution is insignificant, but where are the numbers? They just *say* it's TINY. Furthermore, just because it's small doesn't mean it's insignificant. They state truly that the atmosphere contains about 1% CO2. Yeah, that's true --but that just means that compared to the other gasses, an equivalent absolute increase is a lot MORE significant.

2. The show that CO2 enters the atmosphere from the decay of all the living matter on the planet -and that's true. It's called the carbon cycle. But what makes it different NOW as oppossed to a couple hundred years ago is the rate with which we are taking carbon out of ancient fossil fuel reserves and releasing it. If we closed that loop of the carbon cycle -as it used to be, and used biomass from chicken guts, plant cuttings or ANYTHING that was alive recently, to make oil -as is the goal in thermal depolymerization technology, then we would NOT be releasing extra CO2 into the air.

Now, I don't know if those points are significant objections to the documentary. Because if it really is the sun driving temperatures... well hell. That's interesting. I'm certainly aware of the impact of scientific ignorance on the liberal parties of the world. Did you know that the New Zealand Green Party resolved to ban DHMO?

-it doesn't mean the sky's not falling though. Alex brought up a bunch of points related to this. Just because global climate change may not be a result of rising CO2 levels doesn't mean it's going to be a day at the beach. We'll have shifting climate patterns and all that entails.

I just wish they had included a voice of dissent, preferably a leading scientist whose professional opinion is that rising CO2 levels are driving global warming. Why don't we hear them rebutting even a bit? Rather than insensitively sifting through trinkets made by the people they're "oppressing"?

Though this was certainly no Micheal Moore flick, I would have appreciated less appeal to emotion and more bare fact.

[flamingnerd]

oops I mean ~0.1% CO2

[neoteny]

> Did you know that the New Zealand Green Party resolved to ban DHMO?

Hey, don't laugh, that stuff kills...

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/16793273.htm?source=rss&channel=journalgazette_living