Global warming, is it down to our CO2 footprints or HM Government's brilliant tax con?

Question

I have studied Astronomy since I was 10 and know for fact the Sun output is variable over time and at present is putting out more energy so therefore the planet is getting warmer. Fact; CO2 is pored out in huge amounts by volcanoes and vents under the oceans. Fact; there is scientific proof that in the past 100 million years that CO2 levels have been 5 to 10 times more than to-day, so why all the doomsday bamboozle? Just 30 years ago the same scientists told us around we where heading into a new ice age due to the Suns lower output! Now we are asked to believe by the same scientists that we are how heating up and its mostly our fault as we produce too much CO2, is this the whole truth? I think they, the scientists must conclude for the sake of more grants coming their way and as their employer, the government is paying them to tell us that our CO2 emissions are largely to blame for GW. Is this a brilliant and clever plan for more taxes or are we really creating our own doomsday?

Answer 1

I’m far from convinced that us humans are contributing significantly to the current warming trend.

If you look at my sources, they are all independently funded (i.e. *not* funded by oil companies, or anything like that) and their livelihoods do *not* depend on global warming. They say that it’s nothing to worry about.

If you look at the global warming alarmist sources, they are all dependent on the global warming “industry” for their livelihoods. If global warming turns out to be a non-problem, they’d be instantly out of a job. Is it any surprise, therefore, that they claim it’s a big problem?

So, who are you going to believe?

Add to that the fact that there’s an awful lot of stuff from these global warming alarmists that makes you go “hmmm?” and you can’t help but be a sceptic.

They can’t even agree amongst themselves. Take ‘bestonnet’ & ‘Bob’, above on the subject of the Sun…

‘bestonnet’… “there is almost no variation over an 11 year solar cycle …”

‘Bob’… “Increased solar radiation is 0.12 watts per meter squared”

So, do variations in the Sun’s output effect the climate? Of course they do and we’ve known this for centuries. Two hundred years ago, the astronomer William Herschel was reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations when he noticed that quoted grain prices fell when the number of sunspots rose. Gales of laughter ensued, but he was right. At solar maxima, when the sun was at its hottest and sunspots showed, temperature was warmer, grain grew faster and prices fell. Such observations show that even small solar changes affect climate detectably.

And the UN used smoke and mirrors to come up with their 0.12 watts figure for the effects of the Sun. When you work it out correctly the figure is 1.9 watts. The entire 20th-century warming from all sources was below 2 watts. The sun could have caused just about all of it.

So, I’m firmly of the opinion that the government is exaggerating the global warming problem to allow them to raise more taxes. It has nothing to do with “saving the planet” and everything to do with getting more money.

A case in point… The new fashion of taxing “Chelsea Tractors”.

What about people who drive old, clapped-out, poorly maintained cars? They probably produce *far* more CO2 than a modern, lean-burn, catalytic-converted, well maintained Chelsea Tractor. And there are *far* more of them around, too. So why don’t we tax them?

Because they’re driven by *poor* people, and we only want to tax the rich, don’t we? They can afford it.

But hold on, I thought this was about saving the planet? Are they saying that it’s okay for poor people to wreck the planet, but not rich people? Why is that true then?

Now, doesn’t that make you go Hmmm?

Answer 2

Human CO2 emissions may be small compared to what nature emits (and yes, nature does emit a lot more than we do) but the problem is that the natural emissions of CO2 and the natural absorption of CO2 and conversion to something else happen to go at the same rate and we have increased the emissions without increasing the rate at which the CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by the same amount thereby resulting in an increase of CO2.

The variability of the suns output is much overstated by global warming denialists, there is almost no variation over an 11 year solar cycle in the radiations that matter to the lower atmosphere and very little variation over the lifetime of our industrial civilisation, over long periods of time (i.e. many millions of years) then solar output variation along with variations in the earths orbit does have an effect but it isn't the cause of our current problems. Higher CO2 levels in the past also tended to correlate with higher global mean temperatures.

The global cooling thing was a very short lived mistake that was found and corrected promptly. If global warming were wrong then it would have been debunked long ago and would not be taken seriously by any credible scientist and yet what we find is that pretty much every credible scientist accepts that global warming is happening and that we are causing it.

The taxes that will be levied are unlikely to be able to pay for all of the effects of global warming or the other externalities that fossil fuel burning causes (e.g. air quality issues) even despite them sometimes being applied to things they shouldn't be (e.g. the UK makes nuclear power pay carbon taxes despite that making no sense).

Answer 3

I would like to see some evidence of that proof concerning 100 million years ago CO2 levels, considering the farthest back even the best testing can go is around a half of million years, and that is by coring very deeply into Antarctica. I have never heard that but I have seen the evidence showing the exact opposite, that the current CO2 levels are greater than 5 times where they have ever been.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
We are still headed into an Ice Age if trends continue and scientists are right. First the Earth warms, then too much ice melts, the oceans salinity decreases stopping or slowing the ocean's currents. With no currents to distribute the water it sits, cold at the north and south and warm at the equator. The cold water cools the climate and it graduates until N. America, Europe, and northern Asia are so cold they are covered with ice. It's all a cycle and follows very basic laws, namely, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction." Right now the sun is warming the earth and it is getting extremely hot, so what is the opposite of warm....Did you know that a large reason for people leaving Europe in the first place, in the 15th century or so, was because it was experiencing a mild Ice Age. It was shortly after the industrial revolution that it started to recede, until it is now known as the permafrost in Russia. Which even that term is being rethought because they now have evidence that it is receding even further, the permafrost (permanent frost) is thawing. Clearly evident when you see a house built on it 30 years ago has now sunk into it.

Answer 4

I agree with some of what you say, but not all. But there is another fact to be considered. CO2 levels have gone up to a level not seen in at least 400,000 years. The big increase is very recent and the rate of increase is increasing. This rise started about 1800 and correlates with the rise of industry that started at that time and is continuing and accelerating today. There is no doubt that the rise of CO2 is due to human activity and not natural causes. The source shows the natural variation of the last 400,000 years and a spike far higher than any of those natural peaks at the very end of the graph, which is the present.

Answer 5

It's the political version of smoke and mirrors. Divide and conquer. While people are arguing about carbon footprints who knows what the governments are getting away with. Increased solar output (cyclical) causes global warming which increases the level of CO2. The current percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is approx 0.54% - fact. Hardly excessive is it?
CO2 levels were far higher in the 1600s (pre industrialisation) than now.

Answer 6

That is good but no one is looking at what is taking care of the CO2. The earth has recycled our air for millions of years u can prove that by the amount of fossil fuel we have . It is part of the same recycling as our air. The amount of plants is a large variable , the more CO2 the more plants. It accelerates plant growth.

Answer 7

How about a plain and simple ... answer - God said in the bible that He would melt the earth with a fervent heat.
It is all documented in the bible go and have a read .

It all has to do with the level of evil that it present in our society the more evil the more heat. Unless we change our ways then we are all going to feel it !!

The Government seeks to use every opportunity to exploit it citizens... here is an excellent opportunity ... why not use it to extort money from an already taxed out nation !!

Answer 8

There was a recent programme in the UK that went into detail as to CO2 footprints etc. and it was concluded that only 0.001% was due to human input, the rest was due to natural production due to the world's natural heating, sun's output etc. etc. ..... This is without going into Milanchovich (apologies for spelling) cycles etc. etc.

So ... I am led to believe that the Government is raking in the cash on the back of something that cannot be changed by human intervention ... but time will tell if that is actually the case.

Answer 9

You can't make decisions about global warming by intuition or politics. You have to look at the scientific data. And the data says it's real and it's us.

Actual data shows it's not the suns radiation that's the major cause of global warming on Earth, it's us. Solar radiation is carefully measured. Climatologists include it in their analysis.

The results are in the report below. Page 4. Increased solar radiation is 0.12 watts per meter squared. Man's warming is 1.6 watts per meter squared, more than ten times as much.

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

What scientists think. Not from the "liberal" media.

"While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258342,00.html

The sun may be responsible for warming on the other planets, but it's not the main cause of global warming on Earth.

There are a great many natural sources and sinks for carbon dioxide. But the present global warming is (mostly) the result of man made CO2 from burning fossil fuels.

There is a natural "carbon cycle" that recycles CO2. But it's a delicate balance and we're messing it up.

Look at this graph.

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_record/mlo_record.html

The little squiggles are nature doing its' thing. CO2 falls a bit during summer when plants are active, and rises during the winter. The huge increase is us, burning fossil fuels (in addition to the shape of the graph, the increase numerically matches the increase in fossil fuel use; an unlikely coincidence). The natural carbon cycle buried carbon in fossil fuels over a very long time, little bit by little bit. We dig them up and burn them, real fast. That's a problem.

Man is upsetting the balance of nature. We need to fix that.

Here's a very short version of what's going on, based on the data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

The report above tells the story in much more detail, with much more data.

This is science. You can't go by your gut, you need to actually look at the data. It says this is real, and a problem.

By the way, the idea that the present vast majority of scientists was concerned with cooling in the 70s is a myth.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

That's an excellent website, loaded with data. Because it's "climate science from climate scientists".

Answer 10

The scientists..being funded by the government..come up with the answers the government wants to hear.
At this particular time , the government is desperate for more of our hard earned cash to waste on their pet projects.

The only time I will start believing in global warming is when the government brings in measures which DO NOT involve increased taxes.