Sunday 25 October 2009

Climate change?

One of the topics I think I need to understand more is the reality or otherwise of human impact on climate change. My knowledge of that to date has been limited to the overwhelming media bias towards our culpability in that regard, and our consequent responsibility to decrease CO2 emissions.

South African Lewis Pugh astonished me by demonstrating that you can swim at the North Pole — which implies that the ice has melted to such an extent that you can no longer walk there (at least at some times of the year)!

On the other hand, I have recently stumbled on two works by climate-change skeptics:
  • Prof Ian Plimer on ABC National's Ockham's Razor. (I have very little respect for Plimer having seen his abusive and disrespectful style in a live debate twenty years ago. He spoke against the Creationist Duane Gish, failed to bother about the topic of the debate but spent most of the time baiting, besmirching and belittling. As a climax, he donned gloves, connected two wires to a power point, claimed that Gish knew nothing of science and challenged him, if he was serious about experimental evidence, to come and grab hold of the wires! You can see it on YouTube, at about the 6 minute mark. Very dramatic, but not at all befitting what was supposed to be an academic debate. I was so outraged that a representative of my own University could behave so badly that I wrote a letter to him! Nevertheless, that doesn't discount what he has to say about CO2.)
  • Some notes by Leon Ashby, showing, among other things, that only 3.4% of atmospheric CO2 is caused by human activities.
I'll need to find some balanced review of the science on this topic.

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