NOT A GOOD SIGN FOR BRISBANE'S FUTURE.......

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Originally Posted by biggin

FFS Mick, who is this typical climate denier you crap on about post after post? Maybe they’re just people who don’t **** they’re pants every time some so called expert decides to give us the benefit of their vast intellect.

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Ivor (?) here is a possible explanation:

Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment | Environment | The Guardian

"The Guardian has updated its style guide to introduce terms that more accurately describe the environmental crises facing the world.
Instead of “climate change” the preferred terms are “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” and “global heating” is favoured over “global warming”, although the original terms are not banned.






“We want to ensure that we are being scientifically precise, while also communicating clearly with readers on this very important issue,” said the editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner. “The phrase ‘climate change’, for example, sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a catastrophe for humanity.”
“Increasingly, climate scientists and organisations from the UN to the Met Office are changing their terminology, and using stronger language to describe the situation we’re in,” she said.
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, talked of the “climate crisis” in September, adding: “We face a direct existential threat.” The climate scientist Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a former adviser to Angela Merkel, the EU and the pope, also uses “climate crisis”.
In December, Prof Richard Betts, who leads the Met Office’s climate research, said “global heating” was a more accurate term than “global warming” to describe the changes taking place to the world’s climate. In the political world, UK MPs recently endorsed the Labour party’s declaration of a “climate emergency”.
The scale of the climate and wildlife crises has been laid bare by two landmark reports from the world’s scientists. In October, they said carbon emissions must halve by 2030 to avoid even greater risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. In May, global scientists said human society was in jeopardy from the accelerating annihilation of wildlife and destruction of the ecosystems that support all life on Earth.
Other terms that have been updated, including the use of “wildlife” rather than “biodiversity”, “fish populations” instead of “fish stocks” and “climate science denier” rather than “climate sceptic”. In September, the BBC accepted it gets coverage of climate change “wrong too often” and told staff: “You do not need a ‘denier’ to balance the debate.”.........."

Haha, no, not Ivor.
Thanks for the link though, it says it all. They’re not in the least bit interested in balancing a debate, because they don’t believe a debate is necessary. All their assumptions, predictions and extreme language are beyond reproach.
I can see why they have so many faithful followers.
For the good of the planet.
Amen.

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Maybe they’re just people who don’t **** they’re pants every time some so called expert decides to give us the benefit of their vast intellect

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When I started Uni back in the early 80s one of the best semester-long subjects I did was meteorology. Really well taught and I considered majoring in meteorology. It was known back then that CO2 was causing global warming, because of the greenhouse effect. Meteorology was a scientific discipline, nothing more - the science was not considered political, any more than say, chemical engineering. To be very, very clear, the scientific consensus was, and is, that rising CO2 was altering global climate and therefore weather patterns. So what changed? How did the straight science become characterised as leftish drivel? How did the denial of climate change also get caught up in nativist or populist, "anti-elite" politics? Why was it originally only in English-speaking societies?

Pretty simple - a whole lot of US companies that had vested interests in fossil fuels started funding opposition to the settled science. And they hired the same publicists who had acted for the tobacco companies and who applied the same techniques to climate denial. The Koch brothers, owners of an oil company that is/was the second biggest company in the US have spent hundreds of millions funding groups arguing against the science:

Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine - Greenpeace USA

Groups like the Heritage Foundation publish talking points and the conservative commentators here simply regurgitate them. And the Murdochs have a media empire, from Fox through to the Australian, that publish the same rubbish. But in Europe this wasn't the view, even amongst conservatives. I remember seeing an interview with a young conservative European politician on the ABC (I think that she was Dutch) and she just said, how is climate science a left-wing issue?

There's another overseas based forum on which I used to be active and there was a thread there where a well-known climate denialist argued the toss with other members who were evidently across the science. There was nothing that the denialist put up, in a thread that ran for about five years, that stood up to scrutiny. The funniest one was when he started making claims about international finance, which is an area in which I have professional expertise, and it was so wrong I was actually laughing as I read it. And that came from another denialist public source which has no doubt been read and quoted widely.

The short answer to the questions above is that a group of very rich Americans with vested interests in denying climate change have spent very, very large amounts of money disseminating huge volumes of climate denial propaganda. And some of that has filtered through to people on Aulro.

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Originally Posted by biggin

Haha, no, not Ivor.
Thanks for the link though, it says it all. They’re not in the least bit interested in balancing a debate, because they don’t believe a debate is necessary. All their assumptions, predictions and extreme language are beyond reproach. I can see why they have so many faithful followers. For the good of the planet.
Amen.

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Do you regularly challenge scientists to debates on, for example, gravity?

Why would you challenge the consensus science on climate change and not every other area of science?

It's okay, they are just confirming my opinions about the futility of climate change deniers.
I am finding it harder and harder to tolerate people spouting discredited rubbish and expecting others to nod and agree.
I know it's hard for people to admit they were wrong, but it's time for people to face the facts.
Climate is different to weather. The climate science is settled and the people who actually know what they are talking about are agreed - climate change is a real emergency.
At the rate we're going average temperatures are going to rise by about 4 degrees, Millions of people will be made homeless, the Australian deserts will spread and farms will fail, while the rising oceans will start flooding up the rivers from the Gulf and flooding the inland.
This is the coming reality.
It's time to face facts, stop the waffle and get real.

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Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

Why live in Tas. then? The habitable part of this country is between Grafton and Gladstone and within 40 miles of the coast. Everywhere else is too hot in summer or too cold in winter.

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I'm at present enacting the plan to spend my future years working while chasing the sun.... hopefully not too many Tassie (or any other) winters are on my horizon...

Australia can have no direct effect on the global warming, as our emissions are less than 2% of the total. Of course, this does not mean that we should do nothing., as an example here would help convince the major emitters to take similar steps.

As far as any direct action goes, the most effective step that Australia could take would be to immediately cease mining any coal except small quantities of metallurgical coal. This would result in high unemployment in some areas, but this would not be the major consequence. The major consequence would be a budget emergency for several states, particularly NSW and Qld, and as this would reduce their ability to subsidise NT, Tas, and SA, the financial crisis would probably spread to other states. With Commonwealth Government also crippled by the unemployment costs and loss of revenue, it would be hard for them to make up the shortfall. And loss of coal export foreign exchange would see a substantial drop in the $A, which, while tit would undoubtedly help exporters, would make most things that most people buy more expensive. Overall, we would see a massive drop in average living standards, even if it was spread evenly, which I do not imagine is what would happen. (I suggest this scenario rather than any conspiracy is why governments support the coal industry!)

At the same time, the country would need to replace existing coal fired power sources with renewables - technically< I believe, quite feasible - but with the falling $A getting much more expensive. Then there is the cost of coal producers suing the government for the shutdown, plus the loss of creditworthiness that would result.

All of this adds up to a situation where Australia needs to act in accordance with international treaties - and push for tighter international agreements. And do a more convincing job of meeting existing agreements.

Does this make me a climate denier? I have no doubt at all about the climate science, including the fact that Australia makes an almost insignificant contribution to emissions. And I should also point out that I have been living off-grid with renewable power for almost 25 years.

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Originally Posted by Arapiles

Do you regularly challenge scientists to debates on, for example, gravity?

Why would you challenge the consensus science on climate change and not every other area of science?

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Too right, it's like having 99 heart surgeons tell you that you need an operation, but believing the one that says you should just have a Panadol and a lie down. For too long the media has been sucked into airing an opposing view to be "fair and balanced", or to stir the pot, when the balance is really 99 vs 1 not 50/50.

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Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

Too right, it's like having 99 heart surgeons tell you that you need an operation, but believing the one that says you should just have a Panadol and a lie down. For too long the media has been sucked into airing an opposing view to be "fair and balanced", or to stir the pot, when the balance is really 99 vs 1 not 50/50.

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Agreed, but actually, it's more like 100 surgeons telling you the same thing and a retired school-teacher telling you that they're all wrong. Almost none of the climate denialists have any qualifications in meteorology.

quote...."Australia can have no direct effect on the global warming, as our emissions are less than 2% of the total."

so 49 other countries contributing only 2% equals 100%.....errr how many countries are there in the world and how many of those countries are not contributing in some way to global warming?

Argument defeated.....next?