Save the world, install an LPG tank.

[Jeremy Harris]

Years ago I shared an office with a chap that was seconded to us from the Hadley Centre.  One thing I learned from chatting to him was that climate science was hellishly complex.  We had a few chats over cups of tea about it, but it not being close to my area of expertise not much of the detail sank in.  I did end up being convinced that the evidence for anthropogenic climate change was compelling, and that if applying Occam's Razor to all the available evidence, ACC seemed to be the most likely explanation.

[Bitpipe]

I remember doing a school science project on acid rain (then the big bug bear) in 1984. Since then we've had awareness over the hole in the ozone layer, deforestation and climate change. The impact of our wide use of plastic on the environment is now the current mainstream issue.

 

Seems to be that we're increasing able to quantify our impact on the natural world but struggle to address it, outside of grass roots consumer action. I suppose the CFC ban was one positive example.

 

The average person on the street will struggle to get upset about an unseasonably warm easter weekend or sunny Feb half term but may be upset to see a dead whale that may or may not have eaten a plastic bag. 

 

I wonder what it will take before mainstream opinion shifts? 

[jack]

On 23/04/2019 at 11:04, Bitpipe said:

I remember doing a school science project on acid rain (then the big bug bear) in 1984. Since then we've had awareness over the hole in the ozone layer, deforestation and climate change. The impact of our wide use of plastic on the environment is now the current mainstream issue.

 

I remember a year sometime in (I think) the late 80s where things like recycling and energy use suddenly became a big issue. There were all sorts of one-off TV shows about it. It felt like we'd all turned a corner - everyone was an environmentalist now, and everyone wanted to do their bit.

 

It definitely feels like that idea has faded under the intensity of consumerism that's come to dominate since then. 

[epsilonGreedy]

1 hour ago, Ed Davies said:

 

For YouTube on mainstream climate science then you could do a lot worse than this video, even though it's almost a decade old:

 

 

Just watched about half of that... useful. My takeaways are that the slide at 18:00 minutes acknowledges the role of biosphere carbon fixation (co2 extraction) but unlike the videos in my OP the presenter of your video just views this bio fixed carbon as a raw material for a more powerful overriding mechanism. I think he is saying volcanoes have been the random jokers in climate stability, weathering of carboniferous rocks leading to co2 release is the regulatory correcting mechanism and long term solar cycles give us predictable glaciation cycles.

 

I wonder if the science has evolved over the past 10 years to the point where a biosphere triggered decline in co2 is now more apparent? Your video does not address whether photosynthesis based life was nearly snuffed out during the last ice age when co2 fell to a record low. What is amusing in this debate is the more strenuous the effort to debunk the OP videos about co2 decline the more man-made global warming is marginalized as alternative climatic regulatory mechanisms are introduced to explain the longterm co2 levels.

 

What is confirmed to me by reactions to my thread (apart from yourself) is that the age of enlightenment and reason is over in our western world. Belief is now based on tribal allegiance and intellectual tyranny reinforced by public spending and new laws that have criminalized free speech. We have regressed 400 years to influence via threat, think I need to incorporate a 21 century priest hole in my self build.

Edited April 23, 2019 by epsilonGreedy

[Jeremy Harris]

I don't think that the big environmental campaign groups have done as much as they could, either.  Greenpeace sort of started off with laudable intentions, but then seemed to get deflected away into acts of what seemed to many to be eco-terrorism, which, together with their strong anti-nuclear power stance didn't make them as influential as they could have been.  If they had been prepared to accept that change needs time, then they could have almost certainly achieved more by being pragmatic, and accepting that during the change process there would need to be compromises.

 

I'm not convinced that the founders of Greenpeace, Irving and Dorothy Stowe, would have taken such a hard line as the organisation ended up taking a few years after their first protest.  The association of Greenpeace with illegal action made it pretty hard for some people with a genuine interest in the environment to support them; for a time they were a prohibited organisation as far as my employer was concerned, for example, and I suspect that restriction may have also applied to people working in other organisations, too.

[epsilonGreedy]

18 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I don't think that the big environmental campaign groups have done as much as they could, either.  Greenpeace sort of started off with laudable intentions, but then seemed to get deflected away into acts of what seemed to many to be eco-terrorism, which, together with their strong anti-nuclear power stance didn't make them as influential as they could have been.  If they had been prepared to accept that change needs time, then they could have almost certainly achieved more by being pragmatic, and accepting that during the change process there would need to be compromises.

 

 

A sentiment you share with Patrick Moore as he explained his departure from Greenpeace but apparently according to this thread he is a controversial scalawag who cannot be trusted. 

Edited April 23, 2019 by epsilonGreedy

[jack]

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

A sentiment you share with Patrick Moore as he explained his departure from Greenpeace 

 

Perhaps, but that's far from being all Patrick Moore has said and done. 

 

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

... he is a controversial scalawag who cannot be trusted. 

 

By any reasonable definition of the word, he is controversial. As for trusting him, he's as biased as any climate researcher, if by "biased" you mean funded by those with an agenda. 

[epsilonGreedy]

15 minutes ago, jack said:

By any reasonable definition of the word, he is controversial. As for trusting him, he's as biased as any climate researcher, if by "biased" you mean funded by those with an agenda.

 

 

Science should not be biased though unfortunately the climate change band-wagon/gravy-train has strayed from pure science. The pushback from the right is driven by a general distrust of "corporate media (CNN/BBC/New York Times)" that talks with one voice on a range of subjects and also by a distaste of liberal power exercised through supra national organizations.

 

The rise of populist politics expressed through the ballot box in recent years will likely react against the climate change lobby based on a similar mechanism. When the same condescending voices on CNN berate a large segment of the population as homophobic, misogynist, racist bigots and then continue with a lecture on climate change in the next sentence the message gets lost.

 

Climate change is far too important to become just another prop through which the global elite to demonstrate their Prius driving moral wonderfulness.

[jack]

34 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Science should not be biased though unfortunately the climate change band-wagon/gravy-train has strayed from pure science.

 

I take what you're saying, but I don't think "pure science" has ever existed. Science has always been driven by politics, religion, bias, genius, madness and just about every other human concept. I don't think today is that different, although I do think that the sheer volume of, and access to, media has made it very easy for all sides to muddy the waters further.

[Ed Davies]

3 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

What is amusing in this debate is the more strenuous the effort to debunk the OP videos about co2 decline the more man-made global warming is marginalized as alternative climatic regulatory mechanisms are introduced to explain the longterm co2 levels.

 

It seems like you're still not getting the timescales, here. Weathering-type feedbacks work over millions of years. We're currently mostly worried about effects happening over decades to small numbers of thousands of years.

 

I've long been nearly as frustrated with Greenpeace and the like for ignoring the science as with the climate change deniers. The current Extinction Rebellion, while very much a good thing, similarly often goes too far in their claims. This blog post popped up in my feed list this morning and seems to summarise my understanding of the science and perception of the views of the bulk of climate scientists very well:

 

https://simpleclimate.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/why-we-should-be-wary-of-12-years-to-climate-breakdown-rhetoric/

[Jeremy Harris]

That link illustrates one of the major frustrations that many scientists have with the way conclusions are publicised.  There are always caveats and bounds around any prediction, yet the majority of media reports will ignore those caveats completely, and without them the reported numbers are often meaningless.  Science often deals with the probability of any outcome, from many possibles, becoming a reality.  Often the most likely outcome will change if one or more of the assumptions change.

 

One of the worst examples I've seen, and one I was peripherally linked with, was the infamous paper outlining the probability of Iraq possessing deployable and effective weapons of mass destruction.  There was no doubt that the regime had been in possession of a limited quantity of crude chemical weapons, but there was little evidence that they had ever been able to truly weaponise them (as in make them deployable and effectively deliverable) and no evidence that they had the capability to produce large quantities of agent.  That finding was presented to government, who then chose to cherry pick the words they felt would support their desire to go to war, whilst ignoring pretty much all the hard evidence.

[Ed Davies]

4 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

I wonder if the science has evolved over the past 10 years to the point where a biosphere triggered decline in co2 is now more apparent?

 

Why do you wonder that? It not something I've come across in all my reading on the subject. If anything, the airborne fraction (proportion of CO₂ emissions which remain in the atmosphere rather than be absorbed by the oceans and the land biota) is expected to increase rather than the reverse.

 

4 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Your video does not address whether photosynthesis based life was nearly snuffed out during the last ice age when co2 fell to a record low.

 

Indeed it doesn't. But why would it? Even assuming it's true (I've no idea as I've not come across that idea either) it's not terribly relevant to the points he's making and not an issue for us for at least a few thousand years.

[jack]

I'm interested in nutrition science and these issues arise again and again (they even link into the ACC/AGW debate - cow-generated methane, the impact of monocrops, factory farming, carbon sequestration in grasslands, etc). The latest one was just last week where I repeatedly heard on the news that eating any red meat results in a 20% increase in bowel cancer risk. The number of uncorrected-for (and likely uncorrectable-for) confounding factors in the actual study were mind-boggling, but still the media reported it as if this was something extremely serious that we should all be taking into account.

 

The actual risks, even taking the report at face value and ignoring its shortcomings? 0.5% risk rises to 0.6% risk if you eat meat. Utterly swamped by the error bars, or just going for a ten minute walk every day, but still reported as a scientific fact about which we should all be terrified.

[newhome]

5 hours ago, jack said:

The actual risks, even taking the report at face value and ignoring its shortcomings? 0.5% risk rises to 0.6% risk if you eat meat. Utterly swamped by the error bars, or just going for a ten minute walk every day, but still reported as a scientific fact about which we should all be terrified.

 

That's often the case with health info though isn't it? Take any sort of health related issue that you have a relatively low chance of being affected by, and dramatically state that eating something or doing something increases the risk by what looks to be a large percentage, that in reality means pretty much nothing in terms of numbers. The greatest single risk factor for cancer is age and there is feck all any of us can do about that unless someone invents a time machine. 

 

 

[jack]

28 minutes ago, newhome said:

That's often the case with health info though isn't it? 

 

Yes, nearly always. It's really frustrating.

[epsilonGreedy]

6 hours ago, Ed Davies said:

Why do you wonder that? It not something I've come across in all my reading on the subject.

 

 

This is to be expected because the climate change lobby owns the co2 news agenda, any notion that in some circumstances more co2 is desirable is a heretical fact. You have to dig into non mainstream media sources to discover that:

1. For most of the period of life on earth co2 has been higher than today.
2. The greenhouse effect of additional co2 is not a linear risk, the negative effect of more co2 tails off.

I share your concerns about climate change and think we need to act promptly, I just feel cheated by the media control of the subject that feeds me a distorted incomplete picture.

 

[Playing of humans rather than the ball deleted]

Edited April 23, 2019 by jack
It's getting tiring now. Please stop attacking people

[epsilonGreedy]

7 hours ago, jack said:

 

I take what you're saying, but I don't think "pure science" has ever existed. Science has always been driven by politics, religion, bias, genius, madness and just about every other human concept. I don't think today is that different, although I do think that the sheer volume of, and access to, media has made it very easy for all sides to muddy the waters further.

 

In the long term historical context today is not that different, Galileo and John Harrison had problems with innovative ideas clashing with the establishment.

Today is very different when compared with the last 150 years. In the past 5 years academics have been ousted with increasing frequency for simply not complying with a new establishment belief system that often originates from the Social Sciences. Today is different because alternative views are not tolerated, fear and tribal cult allegiance has replaced reason.

 

Take this poor chap [edited - unnecessary comment about someone's appearance]. His career was terminated because he dared to question the established climate change party line, sit through the video and tell me academic culture in western countries is not derailing. This is why there is no effective review of climate change science.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgLjKFzYvIM

 

 

 

 

Edited April 23, 2019 by jack
Removed reference to member's appearance in response to another member's formal report

[Jeremy Harris]

30 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

This is to be expected because the climate change lobby owns the co2 news agenda, any notion that in some circumstances more co2 is desirable is a heretical fact. You have to dig into non mainstream media sources to discover that:

1. For most of the period of life on earth co2 has been higher than today.
2. The greenhouse effect of additional co2 is not a linear risk, the negative effect of more co2 tails off.

I share your concerns about climate change and think we need to act promptly, I just feel cheated by the media control of the subject that feeds me a distorted incomplete picture.

 

[Playing of humans rather than the ball deleted]

 

 

You seem to be far, far better aware and educated than the climate scientist I worked with back around 2006.  He'd spent a fair part of his career working in the Hadley Centre, climate science had been his PhD subject, and yet, when he tried to explain the complexity of the issues it was fairly clear to me that, even if I spent several years reading up on the subject I wouldn't be in a position to be able to be confident in linking cause and effect.  The mathematical models alone dwarfed anything that I had ever used back when I routinely used CFD to try and better understand complex airflow. 

 

One thing that was clear was that there are few, if any, hard scientific facts with regard to historical climate.  There is a large amount of evidence that provides clues as to what the past climate may have been, such that there is a fair degree of confidence that the estimates (not facts) are reasonably accurate, but it's important to remember that this is all based on modelling, and that always has a degree of uncertainty.  Climate science is all about probabilities, rather than certainties, and as I mentioned earlier in this thread, the best we can do is review the models and apply Occam's Razor as to how likely any particular outcome may be to a future reality.

[jack]

Mod hat on again: there have been repeated warnings on this thread about playing the person rather than the ball. The last post has been hidden for again failing to do this.

 

This thread will be locked if people can't communicate civilly.

[Bitpipe]

Regarding media presentation and public interpretation of surveys and studies - it's long been unacceptable to be illiterate. We make every effort to ensure children and adults can read and write at a functional level and there is generally adult shame if these key skills are inadequate. 

 

Furthermore, being 'well read' is seen as a sign of intellectual superiority  - especially if you can quote freely from 'the classics'

 

However being mathematically and scientifically illiterate is perfectly acceptable  - witness the media giggle over being 'no good at maths' and roll their eyes at 'geeks and nerds'.

 

So sadly, many of those whose job it is to report such findings are incapable of even the most basic critique and we end up firmly in 7/10 cats territory*.

 

* Not to be confused with 7/10 Cats Do Countdown which is without doubt, the pinnacle of UK TV.

[dpmiller]

regardless of anyone's politico/scientific beliefs, why can't people just tread gently on the planet?

[joe90]

36 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

regardless of anyone's politico/scientific beliefs, why can't people just tread gently on the planet?

 

And we as self (green) builders are doing a little bit to help. My father always told me “there is no such thing as right and wrong, there is only opinion!”. Watching the news last night I saw that school girl who has addressed politicians about climate change and told them their future is being taken away, good on her.

[scottishjohn]

when government get serious about climate change  first thing to do is bring back a  decent FIT  for PV and solar thermal and add it to electric prices 

getting the pay back period down to 5 years will make people think it worth doing  --and then do same for battery storage so grid can use it for wind storage 

then get real about pollution in cities and give grants to turn all buses + taxis  to CNC or LPG -they have loads of space for tanks and know how far they will go in a day 

you would get rid of most of the diesel particulates ,the really harmful things  .

hitting people in pocket is only way you will make them change 

It has to be "carrot+stick "

 all this tech is already here and easy to do .waiting for batteries to get better is the wrong way --

they been running cat d9   dozers in south african gold +diamond mines for close to 50 years  on gas ,as it is only way they can run those underground 

we need to start now 

we used to fit lpg systems to volvos 25 years ago --much easier now with electronic engine management than it was then 

apart from very little emissions the other obvious thing was the engine oil never went black  --which is carbon

--so oil change periods could be doubled --at least 

now that may not be very techie view --but its what happened in the real world 

Edited April 24, 2019 by scottishjohn

[Jeremy Harris]

37 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

we used to fit lpg systems to volvos 25 years ago --much easier now with electronic engine manage,ment than it was then 

apart from veyr little emissions the other obvious thing was the engine oi never went black  --which is carbon --so oil change periods could be doubled --at least 

now that may not be very techie view --but its what happened in the real world 

 

My mother ran a dual fuel Volvo 245 many years ago.  The main problem with it was getting hold of LPG, as not many filling stations had LPG pumps.  The local dairy ran their vans on LPG, so she'd fill up from there a lot of the time.  From what I can remember the car did run very cleanly on LPG, too.

[scottishjohn]

33 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

My mother ran a dual fuel Volvo 245 many years ago.  The main problem with it was getting hold of LPG, as not many filling stations had LPG pumps.  The local dairy ran their vans on LPG, so she'd fill up from there a lot of the time.  From what I can remember the car did run very cleanly on LPG, too.

4 car makers started to produce lpg cars from factory --but then governement changed the tax on it -so it died 

and  so few cars using it --no filling station is going to fit tanks --as they never got any grants for it

got ot thailand --every truck has bottles of gas--as in lpg bottles --but think its CNC ,behind cab --why cos its cheaper than diesel 

so its not hard to do and give the incentive and people will do it