"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
That is assuming that CO2 actually is the cause of the latest
warming since the 1700s (really - it started back then with the
end of the mini ice age) and that humans are contributing to
this CO2 increase by more than a couple of percent.

This is one of the confusing points. The "Little Ice Age" (which was not
universal) ended roughly at the time industrialization began. Cause and
effect are not clear. However...

I'll keep saying this until someone listens. It doesn't matter whether or
not the rise in CO2 is the cause of warming. We need sources of renewable
energy that are either carbon-neutral, or emit zero carbon. If we focus on
this, the warming problem will probably take care of itself.


That point is not really in dispute for most serious-thinking people. The
problem is that this whole thing has taken on an almost religious life of
its own, and anyone not swept along with it all, is denounced as a
'denier' - the equivalent of a heretic in real terms. There is a well
respected and long-running TV programme here called "Horizon". It examines
all manner of scientific issues in readily understandable terms, and is
highly watchable from an entertainment point of view, even though it is a
properly 'serious' show. A couple of weeks back, the incoming president of
the Royal Society (the oldest and most revered seat of science in the world)
presented the programme, and it was entitled 'Science Under Threat' I think.
He was basically looking into why the tide of public opinion seems to have
started to turn against the scientists, particularly on the global warming
issue, and more and more people feel that they are being lied to. This anti
GW movement gained a lot of momentum with the very bad publicity that
surrounded the 'Climategate' affair, where the head honcho at the the
University of East Anglia Climate Research Faculty, which advises
governments world wide on climate change, was found, through leaked emails,
to have been apparently 'massaging' and even suppressing data, to fit the
wanted conclusions about man being responsible for GW. The conclusion that
the guy came to was that scientists were being too insular, and not talking
to the general public, and explaining themselves enough. This, he decided,
was making the public unjustly suspicious of everything that was being said,
fuelled by revelations like Climategate.

But I think that he was missing the point completely. He failed to
understand that it has become a religion, with its own mantras, and its high
priests are in fact very vocal at every opportunity, appearing on TV, radio
and in newspapers just about every day. They have this attitude of 'we're
right so you must be wrong', which is forced down the public's throat
continuously, through the media, and all this legislation which is depriving
us of 'comfort' items like incandescent light bulbs, and stopping our waste
bins from being emptied every week, and stopping the local tips from taking
any rubbish that they don't consider to be recyclable and so on. I think
what we are actually starting to see is a backlash from the public at having
their lives interfered with continuously, and they see this as a result of
the preachings of the scientists.

Alternative power is fine, as long as it is worth the effort and energy
budget used to produce it. The figures for wind power - at least in this
part of the world - don't bear out the claims which are made for it. Wind
turbines take a lot of manufacturing, shipping, installing and maintenance,
all of which uses very substantial amounts of energy, and the returns from
them are very small at best. Make no mistake, the erection of windfarms is
about corporate business, as is an awful lot of green technology. Problem is
that it's gone so far now, that even if it was all proved to be wrong
tomorrow, we wouldn't be able to stop without causing a world-wide financial
meltdown in the multi-billion dollar industry sector that has grown up
around this dubious 'science' ...

Arfa