In message . com, Steve
J writes
Well boys and girls, what a hornets'nest last week's channel 4
programme stirred up!

As a teacher, I have to try and put both sides of an argument, and in
this debate this is difficult because all texts, even at A2 level
support the argument for AGW without ant dissent. However, TV
programmes like this, books like "State of Fear", some articles posted
on the internet and in newspapers have offered the chance to at least
attempt a balanced presentation.

Given the reports made of the content of the C4 program, it would not be
of much, if any help, in attempting a balanced presentation. If you want
a balanced presentation try the IPCC reports.

However, as the various threads on this learned NG domonstrate, there
*ARE* some entrenched views, and some of us do get "hot under the
collar at times in our exasperation at an alternative view. I hold my
hat up to Gianna for some spirited points of view however, and there
should be more room to debate natural cycles of GW.
Too many are afraid to stick their head above the parapet because of
potential abuse from the 'other side'.

Anyway, some things are undeniable IMHO;

1. Global warming is a fact.
2. Greenhouse gases heat the atmosphere and preserve life on earth.

While this is true, one should be careful not to draw the conclusion
from this that increased greenhouse gas levels are harmless.

3. Man has burnt fossil fuels almost to exhaustion, so there are more
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today.

Incorrect. Perhaps we're within sight of the exhaustion of easily
exploitable petroleum reserves, but there's enough other fossil fuels
such as orimulsion, tar sands, oil shales, coal and methane clathrates
to last us several hundred years at current consumption.

4 The climate has been warmer than this many times in the geologic
past.

While this is true, one should be careful not to draw the conclusion
from this that GW is harmless - our infrastructure is set up for the
climate of the present (or recent past), the rate of change matters is a
significant influence on economic and ecological impacts, and the
problem is not so much the warming of the recent past, but the warming
that might occur in the future.

5 Whether Man is responsible for GW or not, burning fossil fuels in
such profusion ia harmful and unsustainable.

It is unsustainable on a timescale of centuries to millennia. I'm not
sure what line of argument you make for it being harmful if you exclude
AGW. (Particulates and other pollutants, in quantity, are not necessary
concomitants of fossil fuel usage.)

6 The media have over-hyped the AGW scenarioa big time.

And the media have downplayed the AGW scenarios big time as well.

7 Governments are now driving energy policies into the 21st century
(like building more nuclear plants in the UK) to combat that overused
term 'climate change'.

That seems a tendentious phrasing. (Not to mention that singling out
floating the idea of building more nuclear plants is a misleading
presentation of governmental responses to global warming.) Energy
policies are intended to combat the physical reality, not the term used
to describe it.

8. Climate change is blamed for every "freak" natural atmospheric
hazard from flooding, to hurricanes, to heavy snowfall, to heatwaves,
to gales, to heavy rain, atcetera ad nauseam.

Only by the sensationalist and the ignorant. You can't reasonably
ascribe a single weather event, or even a single season in a single
region, to global warming.

9. Global warming has forced us to implement energy conservation
measures and planning a sustainable future.

For this to be true you either have to accept an anthropogenic cause, or
the precautionary principle, or the somewhat implausible position that
adding greenhouse gases does not warm the atmosphere, but removing them
does cool it.

10. My last one, to give others a chance, neither side can yet offer
positive proof to the other that their arguments/
eveidence is incontravertible.

Incontrovertible evidence is not something that it often - if ever -
available on matters of science. What matters is not
incontrovertibility, but support by the evidence; you should avoid
giving the impression that in the absence of incontrovertible evidence
all positions are equal.

Personally, I'm getting sick to death of GW on TV and in the press,
but as an academic debate, this still has a lot of mileage in it just
yet.

Anyone else care to add to my 10 "undeniable points"?

Or will you take issue with my 10 points?

Steve Jackson
Bablake weather Station
Coventry UK
www.bablakeweather.co.uk


--
Stewart Robert Hinsley