wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi. I'm in the United States and interested to know what some of you
British weather enthusuasts have to say about your own perception of
global climate change. Perhaps a non-American perspective might prove
enlightening to me. Here, in contrast to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient
Truth', there seems to be a strong anti-opinion held by a sizeaable
minority that global warming is either hype and/or a conspiracy put on
by the left, allegorized in Michael Crichton's novel 'State of Fear'.

My own opinion is that there is strong evidence, both direct and
inferred, that the Earth as a whole is warmiing, particularly in the
Northern Hemisphere. That there are climatic fluctuations should not be
surprising since it would be naive to think that the Earth is a static
organism. What I would like to know is exactly how much are humans
contributing to climate change and if so, how - even if I'm skeptical
that much would be done about it even if it was shown beyond a shadow
of a doubt that people's activities were the primary cause of global
warming . After all, we've been warned about and shown the dire
consequences of pollution and deforestation but for the sake of
supposed progress nothing really changes and in fact, environmental
degradation seems to be accelerating.

Well global warming is virtually a fact, and AGW although not proven beyond
all doubt, is a pretty well established theory.

However, I don't think that even if all countries in the world signed up to
Kyoto it would make much difference, due to the underpinning of the world
economy on growth. And they certainly won't sign up to it or anything like
it.

As a species we will just have to adapt to the changes that will become
increasingly apparent over the next 50 years. That's going to be extremely
hard. Massive refugee movements are certain.

Possibly increasing scarcity of fossil fuels will result in such high energy
prices that saving energy will be important in its own right, and the push
for alternative technologies will at last become a major priority. I would
see that as being a far more likely way of cutting growth in CO2 emissions
than any treaty that could be agreed.

I see a lot of the environmentalists hand-wringing as a waste of time, only
resulting in politicians paying lip-service to reducing carbon emissions. As
the OP said, it doesn't really matter how much people are told they are
ruining the planet and must live greener lifestyles, in practice they simply
won't.

- MJP