Sorry, still haven't time for detailed replies!
Sarah wrote:
The real problem is that much of the hype - such as Al Gore's diatribes - is based on faulty assumptions. The hockey stick graph for a start. Stephen McIntyre debunked that. Not to mention the fact that the scales of the graphs used were such that they gave a misleading message. It is quite possible to change the sense of a graph if you change the starting point!
This is wrong but has been widely propagandised by the deniers/delayers/inactivists playing on people's lack of in-depth knowledge to make what appears to be a sledgehammer blow at the foundations which in actuality is irrelevant. There were problems with the statistical analysis of the ORIGINAL graph in 1998 which were spotted by Mcintyre but many other versions of proxy measurements for increasing temperatures have been made since then without the statistical quirks and the results and shape of the graph are still the same
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png This below comes from the American EPA
http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/ResourceCenterPublicationsSLRCost_of_Holding.htmlIt shows that awareness of the problem goes back a LOOONG way and that, generally speaking as time goes on, the forecasts are getting more dangerous. Dangerous professional idiots like Lomborg, Singer, Christie and Spencer are speaking as if they are scientists but are, in fact, speaking as professional lobbyists. Some of them MAY HAVE BEEN scientists, but what they are saying mostly is without current scientific credibility. Lomborg, who used to be a denier then mutated into a delayer and is now currently an inactivist (as the science has got tighter and tighter) himself now says that the world is warming and that we are mostly responsible but he disputes the size of the forecast rise in average temperature and claims that we would be better off spending our money on "adapting" to the changes rather than preventing them. Unless you are really close to this subject, you won't realise that many of those who argue against climate change have been constantly changing their stories and arguments since the early 90's whereas climate science has just been getting stronger and stronger and the outlook has generally been getting more and more bleak.
People like Lomborg are like the punk in Dirty Harry faced with the Magnum who risked that Callaghan had fired all of his bullets - did he feel lucky? yes, he did but he still got shot. Lomborg and the rest of the inactivists are like that punk - reckless idiots except that instead of just putting themselves in danger, they are are inviting people to gamble on everybody's future. They are, mad, bad and dangerous to know. Their flawed reasoning should be viewed as almost criminally irresponsible.
Quote from the US EPA
"At the turn of the century, scientific opinion regarding the practical implications of the greenhouse effect was sharply divided. Since the 1860s, people had known that by absorbing outgoing infrared radiation, atmospheric CO2 keeps the earth warmer than it would otherwise be (Tyndall, 1863). Svante Arrhenius (1896), who coined the term "greenhouse effect," pointed out that the combustion of fossil fuels might increase the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and thereby warm the earth several degrees. Because the 19th century had experienced a cooling trend, however, others speculated that the oceans and plant life might gradually reduce CO2 levels and cause an ice age (Barrel et al., 1919).
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, scientists generally recognized the significance of the greenhouse effect, but most thought that humanity was unlikely to substantially alter its impact on climate. The oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere, and physical laws governing the relationship between the concentrations of CO2 in the oceans and in the atmosphere seemed to suggest that this ratio would remain fixed, implying that only 2 percent of the CO2 released by human
activities would remain in the atmosphere. This complacency, however, was shattered in 1957 when Revelle and Seuss (1957) demonstrated that the oceans could not absorb CO2 as rapidly as humanity was releasing it: "Human beings are now carrying out a large-scale geophysical experiment." Only then were monitoring stations set up to measure worldwide trends in atmospheric concentrations. By the mid 1960s, it was clear that Revelle and Seuss had been correct (President's Science Advisory Committee, 1965).
In the last decade, climatologists have reached a consensus that a doubling of CO2 would warm the earth 1.5-4.5°C (3-8°F), which could leave our planet warmer than it has ever been during the last two million years (National Academy of Sciences, 1979). Moreover, humanity is increasing the concentrations of other gases whose combined greenhouse effect could be as great as that due to CO2 alone, including methane, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, and sulfur dioxide (Ramanathan et al., 1985). Even with the recent agreement to curtail the use of CFCs, global temperatures could rise as much as 5°C (9°F) in the next century (Smith and Tirpak, 1988). Global warming would alter precipitation patterns, change the frequency of droughts and severe storms, and raise the level of the oceans."
