Global warming.

[DavidS]

I wonder if others get fed up with being told every time we have a warmer than average day it proves global warming, and that this means the end of civilisation as we know it. Yet if we have an unusually cold day, like today, no comment is made about the global warming theory being crap.

[Deuce Bigolo]

Daily temperatures are a waste of time

Its the average temperature for the entire year that counts

On that basis its getting hotter but only by a miniscule amount
but even this amount has led to the polar caps melting at a faster rate

The one that constantly gets the blame down Under is the El Ninio effect

One things for certain IMO.....humans don't understand weather no matter how hard they try with their modelling and technology

cheers
B....OZ

[diplodocus]

a day in the life of the earth is nothing, in order to understand warming trends you have to look over thousands of years.
The history of the earth in warming/cooling terms is like a sine wave (up and down). We are now in a warming phase after a cold phase (ie the last ice age).
The real question is that are we humans to blame for accelerating this warming?
The answer at the moment is that we simply don't know enough to say yes or no, there are a lot of theories on both sides (i've got a coupla degrees in the subject and have worked in the pollution control industry for the last ten years and so have read a lot of the stuff)
My feeling at this time is that we have the ability to change the way we interact with the environment. We may be trying to change something we can't but with the consequences of the worst scenario can we afford to take the risk as a globe?

[DavidS]

I think what you are both saying is the same as I am. Of course these things cannot be decided on the evidence of a single day and I am sure no genuine expert would suggest it can. My 'dig' was at certain sections of the British media which seem to suggest every day when the temperature is higher than average is evidence of global warming, yet do not do not argue the opposite when temperatures are below average. The exceptionally cold winter of 2002/3 in North-East Europe was largely ignored. I think the problem might be that many people do not understand what the word average means. Too many think if something is not average it is abnormal.

[Deuce Bigolo]

The media will always take the quickest and easiest route which sells more papers

The facts are that Global Warming is the one problem which has had major coverage for year after year mainly due to the depleting Ozone layer

All the facts are already out there and avilable for free
Easily regurgitated to feed on the publics fear

Then theres always the possibility that all these extreme winters
might be down to global warming anyway...yin and yang?..who knows

cheers
B....OZ

[alec]

The media is mainly populated by English Literature graduates who can barely add up let alone understand science.

Some years ago Robert Robinson, in his Stop the Week programme on Radio 4, uncritically read out a letter from someone claiming to debunk global warming and its effect on sea level by describing how someone at a party had demonstartated its untruth by putting an ice cube in a glass, then filling the glass to the brim with water and then watching the glass fail to overflow as the ice melted. The following week he had to grovellingly read out another letter pointing out that since most of the ice caps are on land, this was a false analogy. If he had filled the glass with water and then dropped an ice cube into it, the glass would have overflowed - a more correct analogy of what happens as the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melt and blocks of ice drop into the sea.

[diplodocus]

I remember Jonny Ball (kids TV, think of a number et al) being interviewed on radio 5 trying to dismiss global warming as impossible as
'carbon dioxide is heavier than air'
i nearly crashed the car for laughing

[The Last Word]

Nice story, Alec, although the media was fast filling up with media graduates who barely understand Eng. Lit. last time I looked. Science? no 'endgame' with the focus groups I imagine. Phew, what a scorcher.....let's leave it at that.

[jj]

The last time this discussion appeared here, I pointed out that we are in fact well overdue for another Ice Age.
Whether its 'non-appearance' is linked to Global Warming is, of course, anyone's guess.
The crux of the debate is that, with the long research-time needed to prove the case either way, the decades required for any action taken to bear fruit, and revolving-door, short-termist government, it will probably be too late by the time we make our minds up.

I'm OK- I've got a time-share on the Moon.