On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 19:31:20 +0100, "Lawrence Jenkins"
wrote:


"JPG" wrote in message
roups.com...

wrote:
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'.

For the American Christian right, science in general produces a number
of inconvenient truths, not least Darwin's Theory of Evolution by
Natural Selection. Of course this is "inconvenient" because it is
contrary to a literal reading of Genesis to which, according to recent
statistics, more than half the population of the US subscribe.

Karen Armstrong in the Guardian wrote a very good piece on the
anti-science attitude of Bush and his neocon cronies yesterday. The
article is he

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...833794,00.html

What I found particularly scary from her article was this passage,
particularly the last sentence:

"The fundamentalists' rejection of science is deeply linked to their
apocalyptic vision. Even the relatively sober ID theorists segue easily
into Rapture-speak. "Great shakings and darkness are descending on
Planet Earth," says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, "but they will be
overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God's power and light.
Ever the long-term strategist, YHVH is raising up a mighty army of
cutting-edge Jewish End-time warriors." They all condemn the attempt to
reform social ills. When applied socially, evolutionary theory "leads
straight to all the woes of modern life", says the leading ID ideologue
Philip Johnson: homosexuality, state-backed healthcare, divorce,
single-parenthood, socialism and abortion. All this, of course, is
highly agreeable to the Bush administration, which is itself
selectively leery of science. It has, for example, persistently ignored
scientists' warnings about global warming. Why bother to implement the
Kyoto treaty if the world is about to end? Indeed, some fundamentalists
see environmental damage as a positive development, because it will
hasten the apocalypse."

Of course, Karen Armstrong is putting her own, left-biased slant on it,
but I would think most people can see many, very scary truths in it.

If most Americans can deny a scientific theory (TOE) that is 150 years
old and has been accepted by nearly all scientists, most churches and
all other western nations, and it is backed up by evidence in the form
of fossils, common descent and genetics amongst others, then they will
have little problem denying a theory (AGW) that has considerably less
evidence and provenance - particularly as they see it threatening their
standard of living and individual wealth.

Martin


Oh and you think India , China, Pakistan, the Middle east and so on are
going to be fantastic green stewards of mother earth? Grow up.


What have India, China etc got to do with what I was relaying and
commenting on, which was a possible explanation for the behaviour of
the American government regarding AGW? And why did you feel you had
to personally insult me?

Lawrence Jenkins wrote:
the start of AGW!! Well please excuse our ancestors for trying to survive
and put the world in the fantastic position it is today. There has always
been war, famine, plague and pestilence. More people now live longer and
better than at any other time in history. What we all seemingly take for
granted today could not have happened any other way.



What "fantastic position" is that then? OK, it's great for a few
privileged million, but sadly one in six humans still live in abject
poverty, 800 million go hungry each day, and most of the advances that
have given us that "fantastic position" were bought at great personal
cost to the third world. Just look he

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5071172.stm

to find out where the copper inside your computer comes from for example.

The most wealthy half of the world population (us included) have created
the problem. Now all we seem to want to do is wring our hands and say it
isn't so. Pretty typical really...

"JPG" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 19:31:20 +0100, "Lawrence Jenkins"
wrote:


"JPG" wrote in message
groups.com...

wrote:
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'.

For the American Christian right, science in general produces a number
of inconvenient truths, not least Darwin's Theory of Evolution by
Natural Selection. Of course this is "inconvenient" because it is
contrary to a literal reading of Genesis to which, according to recent
statistics, more than half the population of the US subscribe.

Karen Armstrong in the Guardian wrote a very good piece on the
anti-science attitude of Bush and his neocon cronies yesterday. The
article is he

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...833794,00.html

What I found particularly scary from her article was this passage,
particularly the last sentence:

"The fundamentalists' rejection of science is deeply linked to their
apocalyptic vision. Even the relatively sober ID theorists segue easily
into Rapture-speak. "Great shakings and darkness are descending on
Planet Earth," says the ID philosopher Paul Nelson, "but they will be
overshadowed by even more amazing displays of God's power and light.
Ever the long-term strategist, YHVH is raising up a mighty army of
cutting-edge Jewish End-time warriors." They all condemn the attempt to
reform social ills. When applied socially, evolutionary theory "leads
straight to all the woes of modern life", says the leading ID ideologue
Philip Johnson: homosexuality, state-backed healthcare, divorce,
single-parenthood, socialism and abortion. All this, of course, is
highly agreeable to the Bush administration, which is itself
selectively leery of science. It has, for example, persistently ignored
scientists' warnings about global warming. Why bother to implement the
Kyoto treaty if the world is about to end? Indeed, some fundamentalists
see environmental damage as a positive development, because it will
hasten the apocalypse."

Of course, Karen Armstrong is putting her own, left-biased slant on it,
but I would think most people can see many, very scary truths in it.

If most Americans can deny a scientific theory (TOE) that is 150 years
old and has been accepted by nearly all scientists, most churches and
all other western nations, and it is backed up by evidence in the form
of fossils, common descent and genetics amongst others, then they will
have little problem denying a theory (AGW) that has considerably less
evidence and provenance - particularly as they see it threatening their
standard of living and individual wealth.

Martin


Oh and you think India , China, Pakistan, the Middle east and so on are
going to be fantastic green stewards of mother earth? Grow up.


What have India, China etc got to do with what I was relaying and
commenting on, which was a possible explanation for the behaviour of
the American government regarding AGW? And why did you feel you had
to personally insult me?





Yep you are right. I was a tad over the top, please accept my apologies.

wrote:

Ian wrote:

I find it hard to discuss climate change with a country who will not conform
to the Kyoto treaty.

Well that's all right then, because you were being invited to discuss the
question by a single individual, you see, not a country.

A bollock brain wouldn't understand the concept of a discussion group
anyway.

Oh, you'll get the hang of it in no time, I've no doubt!
The problem with glowball warming is that the participants in any
arguments on the subject soon get overheated. It's best left alone.
you got that right anyway: It quickly gets round to politics and religion
and as soon as politics or religion enter a
usenet discussion, rational thought flies out of the window.

--
Ian

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 20:29:37 +0100, "Lawrence Jenkins"
wrote:

Well Rob I think the issue that's never mentioned but is core to the
problem of energy usage is capitalism. That's the way it works it relies on
constant growth and greater output -whether we need it or not.

Please point us to a copy of Pravda where the Russian communist regime
were pleased to announce a reduction in output of the state tractor
and combine harvester factories.


--
Regards, Paul Herber, Sandrila Ltd. http://www.pherber.com/
http://www.sandrila.co.uk/

Hello again. This is the original poster. I'm mildly surprised at the
enthusiasm towards my post, thanks for the replies. I was begining to
think that not as many people were reading this newsgroup these days.
On occasion, I have refered to this newsgroup because I'm a big weather
buff (perhaps I should have been a meteorologist or a climatologist)
and I like to get an idea on what the weather is doing around the
World.
I hesitated to mention that I was American at first, in order to
solicit a more neutral response, but felt it pertinent to mention my
nationality so that the reader might get an idea of what media I am
used to being exposed to.
I would like to make just a few comments on what has been addressed so
far:

1. My real intention was not stir up a political debate, although I
guess in regards to something like global warming the connection is
hard to avoid and I did allude to media references. I was a little bit
disappointed nonetheless that some folks avoided my central question of
' how much is Man, whether it be collectively or a special group,
contributing to GW.'
2. To post 2, alan. I will check out the books you mentioned. Thanks.
Some of you might want to see reader's comments on 'State of Fear' at
amazon.com
3. Excellent reply from Graham. And I didn't know that about Margaret
Thatcher.

I have a colleague who is quite versed but seems to be biased towards
the far right. He was surprised to find out that NOAA conforms to the
findings of the IPCC and it openly admits that "Human activity has been
increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
(mostly carbon dioxide from combustion of coal, oil, and gas; plus a
few other trace gases). There is no scientific debate on this point."
I praise NOAA for such official commentary because it strikes two
blows: One, to those, like my colleague, who like to think that
man-induced climate change is still speculative; and two, to those that
seem to have an exaggerated idea of the suppression of climate studies'
findings by the U.S. - not to say that either point is deniable.

Perhaps I'm naive in thinking that most scientists have their own
opinions, are not conspiring to upset social order and are not
infallible.

4.I can understand the concern raised by Chris Smith, my country is
wealthy but wasteful and I wish we were better environmentalists and
setting a better example for the World. Consider though that China now
consumes more coal than the US, the EU and Japan combined. Pollution
for the sake of economic progress is not a peculiarly American trait.

5. Thanks, Martin, for the Guardian link (an issue of which I am
already well aware) and I see I share similar views with Michael
(tentative post 28).

In regards to Britain, I've been there a few times and on occasion
invited discussion by some of the older residents. I have yet to meet
one that did not see, at least in their memory, a very noticeable
difference between the weather there now and and how it was some
decades ago. A common reference was made to increasingly snow-free
winters, for example.

My community was directly affected by Katrina last year so the
potential effects of global warming mean something to us too.

Ian wrote:

A bollock brain wouldn't understand the concept of a discussion group
anyway.

Oh, you'll get the hang of it in no time, I've no doubt!

My spur was jabbing at the poster to whom you repled. A google search
on him turned up the fact he was using that name for the first time.

As it happens there is no such thing as global warming, so my part in
such discussions is merley to point out the obvious -in that such
condition have previously occurred in times when there was no
industrial pollution on the global scale we now have.

Conditions that affect the planet all come down to the way that humans
treat each other. And that is all about religion. And since the planet
at the moment is in the hands of monkeys it is no doubt the reason why
god seems to have abandonned it to them.

Consider the biggest monkey. Allegedly he talks to god. If god ever
says anything back it must be on the lines of "stop lying you bloody
monkey".

But to get away rom the religious aspect, the OP pointed out that
industrial processes produce the greenhouse gasses. These are chemical
reactions that will reverse themselves one day one way or another.

In the meantime most of the rhetoric ignores the fact that it is the
type and height of cloud that seems to control the blanketing or
insulation values. But these things are at best a daily or at worst a
weekly blip. The heat eventually escapes and will continue to do so as
long as hot air rises.

What seems to be happening this year is that ocean currents have slowed
to a crawl and that is not cause by men releasing clouds of
carbonaceous gasses.

It may well be that there is a cycle based on celestial mechanics
involved and there may be a layer of ecological disaster involved in
there too. You can't harvest the oceans day in day out 24/7 without
upsetting the sea's natural balance.

We know what happens when fields are overgrazed and forests razed. Why
shouldn't the same effect hold true beneath the waves?

Can it be put right? Not by putting solar panels on houses it can't.
And how much wind power would it have fialed to supply had there been a
massive investment in windmills to power the fans we were all using
during this last hot weather?

If there had been a breeze there would have been no need for the fans.
As proof of the fact the world is in the hands of monkeys, we will now
see a greater investment in the useless and a continuance in entirely
missing out on putting the right things in order.

Bollock brain or not, I can see that much happening once the sock
puppet we have in charge of losing the peace, is replaced.

Lawrence Jenkins wrote:
"JPG" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 19:31:20 +0100, "Lawrence Jenkins"
wrote:


"JPG" wrote in message
groups.com...

wrote:





Yep you are right. I was a tad over the top, please accept my apologies.

Of course - no problem.

Martin

wrote:
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.

Outside of America there is a global scientific consensus that global
warming is real, measurable and likely to be a very serious problem in
the future. And even inside the US there is a scientific consensus but
the current US adminstration gags its scientists.

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/env...dministra.html

One of Bushes lying cronies was fired as a result
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten...y/311/5763/917

In the UK the issue was first brought to the attention of the
Conservative (right wing) Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and so there
are no significant differences here across the main political parties
(unlike in the US where it is heavily politicised).

I simplify slightly because the raving nutters of the extreme left and
right are typically anti-GW (the former because they reckon it did away
with their core vote of coal miners and the latter because it stops
them from unfettered market freedom and environmental destruction).

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'.

Crichtons novel is a work of pure fiction to reassure a stupid
population that it will all be OK. From the ROW point of view we need
nature to deal more obvious warming events onto major US population
centres - collapse of the power grid in New York under the current heat
wave would go a long way towards focussing minds. But I expect it will
take regular Cat 5 hurricane hits on Orlando, Houston and New Orleans
for at least a decade before you can get the current US administration
to admit there might just be a problem.

Our own supine Prime Minister Blair could not stop licking GWB's boots
for long enough to join Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in
criticising the Bush administrations myopic approach to the problem. UK
oil companies like BP have a lot of sensible stuff to say about GW and
improving energy efficiency (US ones flatly deny there is a problem).
eg

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?...ntId=702 0302

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

It has been measured and roughly half the change in the past century
can be accounted for by changes in solar flux but the other half (which
occurred mostly in the past 3 decades) can only be accounted for by
greenhouse gas forcing (satellite data rules out changes in solar
input). Baliunas & Soon (both GW skeptics) have published scientific
papers that roughly agree with these figures.

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.

Fuel efficeincy is not taken seriously in the US. Cars still do only
20mpg if you are lucky (same as in 1920) and a fair proportion of SUVs
do much less. In Europe and Japan the average petrol saloon does more
than twice that and some a lot higher.

I see US greens as a part of the problem because they have allowed
themselves to be painted into a corner as proposing hair shirts, back
to the stone age living in benders. There is a substantial middle
ground that avoids profligate over consumption.

The longer we put off making no regrets energy efficiency measures by
pretending there is no problem the worse it will be when we finally
have to slam on the brakes (there is a heck of a lot of inertia in the
climate system - it will get hotter for a long time after we stop
increasing the CO2 concentration).

Regards,
Martin Brown

Graham P Davis wrote in
:

A Globescan poll of 30 countries gave 90% agreeing that global
warming was a serious threat. In the USA this dropped to 76% with
21% saying it was not serious.
(http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.a...4&ContTypeID=5
2)

I haven't found a poll or the UK as a whole although I think one a
few months ago was in agreement with the Globescan poll.
snip

It might have been this poll, published in April:

http://www.globescan.com/news_archiv...atechange.html

That gave the figures for Great Britain and the USA (equivalent 2003
figures in brackets) as:

Very serious: GBR 70% (50%); USA 49% (31%)
Somewhat serious: GBR 21% (35%); USA 27% (40%)
Not very serious: GBR 6% (9%); USA 12% (13%)
Not at all serious: GBR 2% (3%); USA 9% (11%)

The USA's 49% "very serious" figure was the lowest of all developed
"first world" countries.

--
Bewdley, Worcs. ~90m asl.