A debate on global warming/climate change is something I can get my

Comment on General Election 2010 Poll Results by David.

A debate on global warming/climate change is something I can get my teeth stuck into :-)

Studied science at University (molecular genetics) and I had a healthy mistrust of the concept of global warming when I was younger (much less so now as more evidence has accumulated), not that it couldn’t happen, but that what we are doing would be enough to have a dramatic and long term effect on the Earth as a whole. I still have my doubts, the oceans alone can absorb so much CO2 and more importantly we’ve had much, much higher levels of CO2 in the past.

Not looked into it in great detail, but considering more CO2 in the atmosphere means plants grow better (look at how big plants from the fossil record used to be), there could be ‘beneficial’ effects from higher levels of CO2 (higher yields from farming). Not suggesting we should take a risk though especially considering if climate change is occurring we are looking at more extremes in weather!

“For example many adverts preach that the earth is heating up; and yet from 2007 onwards the earth has actually cooled down by over 1 degree which is quite a lot in terms of global cooling.”

You are seriously going to decide if global warming is real based on a couple of years data, seriously? Making a statement like the above and some of the other things you said shows you do not even understand the concept of climate change.

This is a planet we are talking about here, not a 3 bedroom house with a dodgy thermostat! We have to look at temperatures over a long period of time, it will fluctuate, in a perfect world we’d take hundreds of years to be 100% certain if what we are seeing is completely natural (and of course it could be), but if we did wait a long period of time before acting and the worst case scenarios are true, well oops.

What is very clear from the data and any reputable global warming scientist will tell you (even those who say it’s not man made) is temperature has risen over all recently and we should be concerned. If it’s mostly natural do you really think it’s a good idea to pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?

No matter what you believe (unless you believe in a coming ice age?) we should be reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Only reckless fools would argue otherwise, so for me it doesn’t really matter that much if it’s man made or natural (future historians will decide), what matters is we don’t make it any worse.

“I find it incredibly ironic that on the same year there is the climate summit it snows in Winter”

If you knew what you were talking about you’d know climate change models predict a change in weather patterns, so it’s not only going to be just warming, we’ll see more dramatic weather patterns, that could be colder periods during winter and hotter periods over summer, over all trend warmer.

That’s how climate change works, more extreme weather patterns and I think what you are missing is temperature changes are going to be relatively small, it’s not going to be a case of average 45 degree summers in Britain, it’s a few degrees increase in the future, you aren’t going to notice the difference between an average UK temperature of 3 degrees over winter and 4 degrees 10 years later say (hypothetical numbers BTW), but to our planet, if it’s all man made it’s a big change for such a short period of time (decades) and could (in the very worst case scenarios) cascade to even higher temperatures.

I think we’ll cope with a few degrees, it will make some places harder to live, but as a species we’ll adapt, but to be safe we should act now just in case. Also makes a lot of sense not to waste our limited resources, I can see future generations looking back at us burning fossil fuels for warmth and wondering what the hell were we wasting it when it’s a valuable limited resource.

David