Timothy Murphy wrote:
The Medway Handyman wrote:

BTW. I do believe in climate change, its been going on for
thousands of years. I don't believe its man made.

Do you mean that you don't believe human activity has increased
the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Not necessarily no.

There is overwhelming evidence that CO2 levels have been increasing
over the last 100 years
(see eg http://www.carbonify.com/carbon-dioxide-levels.htm)
The level has been increasing steadily at a little over 2ppm for 50
years from February 2004 to February 2009 it increased from 376 to
386ppm: http://climateprogress.org/2009/02/13/
noaa-global-carbon-dioxide-co2-levels-2008/.

In my view there is no plausible explanation for this except human
activity. If the activity were periodic then the period must be much
shorter
than any other plausible terrestrial or solar-system cause.

You don't seem to me to have responded to this.

I rather thought I had, but you appear to have ignored it.

Do you or do you not agree that the proportion of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere has increased greatly during the last 100 years?

First of all, 100 years is far too short a period for a serious study. A
bit like those cosmetic adverts which claim that "79% of woman agreed",
which seems fine until the small print reveals the study was on 129 woman.

We simply don't have enough data. 100 years is a millisecond compared to
the existance of planet earth. Ice core samples fail to impress me.

Typicically you have ignored the black swan argument. Inconvenient I know,
but entirely relevant.

You don't seem to have responded to the data showing that violent climate
change is a natural occurance.

If you do agree, do you think that this increase is due to human activity?

Not at all. As I have already pointed out, the climate change in the past
could not have been caused by human activity simply because there were not
enough humans about.

Climate change is nothing new at all and occurs regardless of the
size of the human population.

Does anyone argue that the climate was not changing before 1850?
You have to analyse changes, if you can, into components
with different periods.

Climate is always changing, precisely my point. Now however we have 'new
puritans' claiming that we are all doomed because of our evil capitalist
ways. We have an ecofud industry who have a vested interest in promoting
doom & gloom.

We now have every university dependant on its funding into ecobollox, every
govmint quango having an environmental advisor, every local council having
an environmental team, every newspaper or media outlet having an
environmental correspondent. We have politicians eager to grasp political
advantage on environmental issues, dispite their zero knowledge of the basic
science.

Vested interests should be examined here.


--
Dave - The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk