With his 20 years of experience studying climate science Geoff Cameron’s contribution in CCN 388 should not be dismissed out of hand.
I hope, though, that he is wrong for the sake of humanity.
He seems to mirror the perspective of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), whose model predictions up to date have not been good, even though it appeals to most politicians.
Our climate is an extremely complex system and it is fair to say it is not that well understood.
There is a misconception among many that the present climate is the way it should be.
Geologists will remind you that the climate has been changing ever since the Earth became a separate entity about 4,500 million years ago and there is no reason to believe it won’t continue to change, with, or without human intervention.
I challenge the notion that extreme weather events and the melting of glaciers is clear proof of planet-surface warming.
This data is far too qualitative and imprecise.
These phenomena were active long before we even evolved. The only real, direct clear proof of any climate warming by atmospheric CO2 is the 15 micron absorption deviation in the Earth’s outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), (a strong band of absorption for CO2) coupled with the clear knowledge that atmospheric CO2 has essentially doubled since the Industrial Revolution and has increased more rapidly in recent times.
The deviation in the OLR is clear proof of warming but it does not, in itself, given an idea of how long it might take for the Earth to reach a new thermodynamic equilibrium because of the heat capacity of the ocean and the difficulties in determining how long it will take to reach equilibrium.
Mr Cameron, it seems, has not studied about the practicalities of changing from fossil fuels to other means of electricity generation, about which I have made some contributions before in this forum.
He has not considered the technological constraints of renewables (primarily solar and wind) nor the consequences to reliability and economics involved.
To survive, humanity does have to ultimately limit or cease emitting greenhouse gases, but common sense would suggest that this requires a globally-agreed approach, which would seem unlikely given the differences in ideology, economics, resource base and population of the world’s countries.
Although we are presently wasting large amounts of taxpayers’ money in installing somewhat ineffective generating capacity and transmission we are also exporting coal and gas in large quantities which partly finances our wasteful infrastructure development and we are clearly adding to CO2 emissions rather being clean and green.
It is basic physics that CO2, wherever in the planet it is emitted, forms part of the accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere.
Just because our coal is combusted elsewhere does not excuse Australia for being suicidally hypocritical.
Email, May 5
Charles Hemmings, Woy Woy