You do not seem to have read the MIT report, or perhaps you hoped I wouldn't bother to do so. Anyway, let's put some context back around the snippets you quoted.
The report is about the policy response, not the science. It has nothing whatever to do with the correctness of any of the science.
The report is specifically talking about the public discource
between science, policy-makers, politicians and the Great Merkin
Public. In America.
Let's pick one random juicy paragraph.
Hence, the largely empty debate between the small band of climate
"skeptics," who are certain that climate change is not a threat, and
most of the scientific community, receives a substantial press. The
implication is there is something of a standoff between the two, a
considerable misreading of the actual situation. Or, evidence of
ecological change and unusual weather events tends to receive much
press attention implying (or claiming) that the evidence indicates
the onset of global warming or, at times when the events reflect more
cold than heat, that they invalidate the theory. In both cases, the
conclusions are an artifact of the way the press handles the issue
rather than a true reflection of the scientific evidence and the
nature of the scientific debate. This is not surprising nor unusual,
especially when the evidence is fuzzy and most reporters are not able
to judge the subject critically.
I wouldn't disagree with any of that. However this sentence (which you quoted):
But, the evidence is not clear-cut. There are large
uncertainties in the interpretation of the evidence, first of all
about the basic conclusion of a demonstrable anthropogenic
"fingerprint" but, at least as important, about the scale and timing
of any warming that might take place.
...is just WRONG. The evidence IS clearcut, and the anthropogenic
fingerprint is firmly established. Wow, and someone at MIT got it wrong! I
wonder what his expertise in the field is?
Eugene B. Skolnikoff: Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology; 77 Massachusetts Ave., Bldg. E53-366, Cambridge MA
02139-4307, USA; email: xxxxxxxxx@mit.edu.
So you'd trust a professor of humanities over a climatologist on this
issue?
Nevermind, a paragraph later he's making much more sense:
Uncertainty gives full play to political and economic interests that
would be adversely affected by corrective measures to address the
risks, since it allows costly measures to be opposed by denigrating
the legitimacy of the forecast risks or by arguing the measures are
wasteful if the predicted risks cannot be documented. It also leaves
the door open for the crafting of alternative scientific analyses,
stimulated by those who perceive their interests to be threatened. In
effect, those with a political or ideological stake create a
constituency for scientists who wish to challenge in either direction
the predominant view, in the process exaggerating the apparent
uncertainty of the science.
Hmmm, sounds like a realistic assessment of the policy and
political environment in which the issue's discussed. As I keep
saying, I'll take the views of people publishing in Nature, Science,
et.al. over pressure groups, politicians, and uninformed zealots any
day. Of course there are uninformed zealot on 'my' side - I'm sure
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc are not averse to attempts at
emotionally loaded manipulation of public opinion - but I'm not
defending them (or any crystal-waving New Age acid freaks, either.)
All models that are capable of reproducing the last 1000 years or
so of climate fail to reproduce the recent global temperature
increase (the 'hockey stick') unless they include the effects of
human CO2 emissions.
It has been shown that all it takes to produce a graph similar to the
famous hockey-stick graph is random data because the mathematics used
in that analysis are flawed. I believe this was even mentioned on/. earlier, but here [technologyreview.com] is the article.
No. It has been asserted that random data can be massaged to
produce a hockeystick. I'm not a statistician but thesearticles
refuting McIntyre and McKitrick's lam attempts to criticise the
statistical methods used in Mann et.al. look pretty convincing to
me. Apart from anything else, neither of the authors of the crictique
are climatologists! One's an economist and the other's in mining!)
Hey, Technology Review is sponsored by Esso! And Microsoft!! Well,
who'd a-thunk it?! Way credible independent peer-reviewed forum, oh
yeah.
The so-called consensus is a political
invention. There is a great deal of debate over whether or not global
warming is caused by human activity.
This is utter nonsense. See for example here.
I've never heard of this MIT study you refer to; I'll do some digging
and post another response addressing that, otherwise this'll never get posted.
Let me just get in one last dig at the hysterical greens
That's a completely unjustified ad hominem attack on the world's
climatologists. Sounds to me like you've just decided that anyone who
doesn't get their news from Fox is a tree-hugging liberal.
The quote from Oliver Bernstein, whoever he is, does indeed sound
rather crap taken out of any context. So what? Rush Limbaugh's a
junkie and Bush was a cokehead, but I'm not claiming it therefore
follows that all Republicans are addicts. I base my understanding of
climate change on science. I don't feel the need to defend every word
anyone says on the subject, there aer plenty of ill-informed morons on
all sides of the issue. Statistically, some of the ill-informed morons
will be right (for the wrong, or bad, reasons.) So what? Some people
think soldiers torturing and murdering civilians is bad because the
magic bearded sky-pilot will send them to hell for all eternity. I
think that's simple-minded superstition, but I still think soldiers
shouldn't murder and torture. Duh.
Hey, thanks a bunch, smart-arse! I happened to be chewing a mouthful of peanuts when I read that. Now my monitor's gonna need a thorough cleaning tomorrow, after the hang-over wears off! (I didn't even need to hit the link.) Nurse! Nurse!...
Obviously an increase in global average temperatures doesn't say anything about whether a particular local area will experience moer or less pecipitation (snow is precipitation of course.) Neither does it mean local temperatures will necessarily rise. That's why climatologists talk about the global average temperature and study *global* climate.
RealClimate has these interesting Hockey Stick related articles:
Hello again, here's some bits & pieces dug up with some cursory Google searches. Search for more on the lake name (Lak Ojibway) & I'm sure you'll find more on the 8200 BCE event.
Hi - no, sorry, I haven't got the figures to hand. I believe the change in the global average temps at the end of the ice age (start of the Holecene era) were relatively small, perhaps a couple of degrees - but don't quote me on that!
Actually the glitch climatologists refer to as the '8.2K BCE event' is a good example of a non-linear response. As the temperatures rose and the ice sheets retreated, the runoff melt water accumulated in a very large lake instead of trickling gradually into the sea. Then one day (probably one literal day as opposed to one 'geological' day) the sediment levees dropped by the retreating glaciers, that had formed the barrier preventing the run-off reaching the ocean, failed catastrophically. A huge wave of fresh water scoured across the land and hit the Atlantic, causing a sudden and significant change in local salinity.
for far more detailed & accurate info on this... ah I was just going to point you at realclimate.org but my curiosity is stirred now, let's see what wikipedia has... I'll post another response below this one when I've dug some links up.
The BBC story you link to is the one this Slashdot story was based on. Climateprediction.net aren't exactly the people doing the experiments, they just package up the data & select models to distribute to the enduser PCs that do the actual number crunching. Why not sign up and contribute some CPU cycles!
Look, the one easy thing they could do to validate the model is run it
for a hundred years starting at 1750 or so. We have reasonably
accurate data for that time period, so we know what the model should
produce. As far as I know, every climate model fails this test
miserably, and it's not mentioned in this article. So what steps did
they take to ensure the validity of the model?
If you had the remotest clue about the subject you're spouting off
about, you'd know that curent models follow the observed temperature
changes (including those only known through proxy data) very well
indeed over the last millenia, and that none of the models produce the current 'hockeystick' uptick in temperatures unless they include the effects of anthropic CO2 emissions.
I leave it up to you to read any of the many other comments on this
story that relate this test to the climateprediction.net results.
Next time, try engaging your brain before hitting 'post' and
embarrassing yourself in public.
Like I said, I'll take a look at your link and see if there's new data that I'm not aware of. Thanks again!
hi Aaron* - thanks, please do - there are few enough rational posters on Slashdot, and it really cheeses me off to see misinformation getting repeated as facts over such important subjects as this. RealClimate is pretty heavy going, I'd suggest a quick skim down the front page, pick a couple of the most interesting articles and don't bother reading the comments to start with. Thanks for your commendably open-minded attitude!
*I've been reading +5 comments from you for years now, I almost feel I know you... eek,/me obviously wastes too much time on Slashdot!!:)
The biggest problem with reports like these is they give no indication
of the scientific error in the results. They just report a the high,
low and maybe the average. No mention at all that it isn't a
probability distribution of any sort.
> There are hundreds of tyrannical regime. Last I checked one of them
> actually became an ally despite having WMDs and caught profilerating
> the nuke technology *and* being a dictatorial regime, which had
> actually toppled the previous democratic government via a military
> coup.
Please provide name or said regime and a link to information on the
Nuke tech proliferation
I believe the original poster was referring to Pakistan. As I'm sure
you know, the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf (apologies if
the spelling's incorrect) became leader in a military coup
overthrowing a corrupt, but democratically elected, civilian
government. He promised to bring early elections and a handover to a
civilian government, but has repeatedly put back the date when this
will happen - most recently, last year IIRC.
Pakistan revealed that it had nuclear weapons in 2002 (IIRC) during a
period of tension with their neighbour (India) over the disputed
territory of Kashmir. India also revealed that it had nuclear weapons.
Isn't there a theory that global warming will melt loads of ice which decreases the saltiness of the ocean around the artic and this will disturbe the gulf stream leading to cooling of varies parts of the world, IIRC Europe and the east coast of the US.
Yes - google for 'thermo-haline circulation', 'north atlantic drift saline gyre' and such and you'll get a lot of info on it. (Or 'global warming FAQ'.) There's firm evidence that this happened once quite recently 8,200 years ago, the melting of the glaciers over northern America eventually lead to a huge lake of fresh (non salty) meltwater suddenly discharging into the Atlantic; this caused a brief, but not permanent, disruption to the North Atlantic Drift (part of the Gulf Stream.) This 11 degree rise prediction isn't based on any one thing, but the massively complex interaction of all manner of different factors which all interplay and affect each other.
There's a lot of debate whether the current temperature increase is
actually due to humans. Although most people believe it's due to
humans, there is evidence on both sides.
Sorry, you're mistaken. All models that are capable of reproducing the
last 1000 years or so of climate fail to reproduce the recent global
temperature increase (the 'hockey stick') unless they include the
effects of human CO2 emissions. That the recent uptick is due to human
CO2 is no longer an area of dispute (amongst those researchers with
some grasp on reality, who actually know something about the subject,
and are capable getting published in respectable peer-reviewed
juornals, anyway. Supermarket tabloids and AM radio shows may not
agree...)
My personal belief is that, in the current climate of mud-slinging and political pressure, there is no reasonable way to determine the real answer,..
Well, no, I can't agree with that. We're (mostly) intelligent and rational people here. Generally speaking we accept that the scientific method is the best means we have for understanding the world about us. Genuine, respected climatologists do acknowledge that there are areas of genuine debate in the field; however, the basic question you're asking (the extent to current warming trend is anthropic) has ben firmly answered for some time now. Once again I recommend RealClimate.org as an excellent source for information for the intelligent, educated lay-person. (It's mostly built by actual climate scientists but the intention is to communicate with non-specialists,- a grounding in basic science is probably a prerequisite but it's pretty comprehensible with a bit of effort.)
The conditions for 50 years ago are nothing like the conditions that the Chicken Littles are claiming we'll see in another 50 years. A model which accurately predicts 2005 from 1955 could fail utterly to predict 2055 from 2005.
Why, are the laws of physics expected to change in the near future?
I model for a living, and it's practically an impossibility to get a
model to reproduce complex data that already exists, much less predict
the future.
I look forward to reading your letter to Nature demonstrating
that because you can't model 'complex data that already
exists', neither can anyone else.
Climate prediction model is worthless...if it can't
account for past data. For instance, from historical records we know
that temperatures around 1300 A.D. were warmer than they are now, and
that around 1500-1700 it was considerably colder, warming up again
afterwards up to today.
Until a model can take past data and
accurately come up with conditions we have today, it's worthless
other than as an interesting exercise in "what if?".
You're dead right. Fortunately, the modellers have already thought of
that - amazing huh? And guess what? The models DO predict the
pattern of temperature change over the past millennia. See for
instance this
chart showing various models plotted against direct observational
and proxy data. Context story here.
Actually, they did have WMD. Sarin gas for starters.
Just how much of a zealot do you have to be to still be parrotting
this garbage when even the Bush government's own inspection
team have finally reported -after over a year of increasingly desperatew searching for some shred of evidence to legitimise the trashing of international law - that actually there's NO EVIDENCE
WHATSOEVER that Iraq either had WMDs, had any WMD programmes or
even that they had any intentions of starting a WMD programme?
Don't insult me by asking for links, google 'WMD inspector final
report' and I'm sure you'll find zillions.
The phrase mad as toast springs to mind. And you've been
moderated up to +5... sometimes Slashdlot really makes me despair for
America. (Cos whoever gave you those mods certainly wasn't from
anywhere else in the world.)
Here's some relevant bits of info I dug up whilst researching my own rejected submission on this story....
These results were collated from approx. 60,000 separate climate model runs. Here's a link to the actual paper published in Nature (PDF). ClimatePrediction.net passed the 50,000 run mark only a month ago, so it looks like participation is on the up. Kudos to everyone running it! Personally I've switched from SETI@Home to this project. (Of course, you may feel that cancer research into protein folding is more important. One of the nice things about the BOINC framework is that you can contribute to multiple projects at the same time.)
The 'eleven degrees rise over the next century' is of course the worst-case scenario. Of course, climate disruptions of that magnitude really would be catastrophic to human civilisation - for one thing, massive loss of agricultural production, the loss of large areas of expensive real-estate (many of the world's great cities would certainly be under water. I don't know precisely what magnitude of sea level rise 11 degrees would produce but consider that the Greenland ice sheet, which is already showing signs of increased melting, would produce approx. 7m rise - that's goodbye to London and New York and Amsterdam for starters.)
Here's a chart from the IPCC's 2001 report showing the various scenarios they based their predictions on. As you can see, the worst-case they foresaw was about 5 or 6 degrees C. The significant thing about these results is that the upper bound of the range of possible temperature rises is shown to be about twice as severe as previously thought. Not only is more and more solid evidence being produced to back the fundamental prediction that human CO2 emissions are causing significant changes in our climate, but the magnitude of those predicted changes is getting greater and greater as time goes on. Note as well that the charts don't suddenly flatline at the year 2100...
Finally I'm looking forward to a discussion on RealClimate.org on this. I've found it to be utterly addictive to see discussions amongst actual researchers in the field, not only showing the areas of legitimate disagreement, debate and uncertainty, but also the solidity of the scientific consensus, as well as busting various common myths - the Crichton garbage, the hockey-stick stuff etc etc. Strongly recommended.
As it happens, a recent Reaclimate post discusses precisely this issue (peer review as a filter rather than guarantee of accuracy.) I agree completely. However accuracy is an accumulative phenomena. One study showing climate change might get through due to poor reviewing, log-rolling or whatever other failings in the system; however there are now thousands upon thousands of related papers which tend to be broadly consistent.
Secondly, I refute the assertion that science must be predictive. What about archaeology? cosmology? observational astronomy? and so on, and on.
Thirdly, computer models DO make testable predictions to some extent. (a) they can be run over the past few hundred/thousand/tens of thousands of years, and examined to see how closely they correlate with observations (very well indeed, these days.) (b) predictions made 20 years ago by the comparitively crude, data-poor models are now turning up in the actual observed climate. (See artic warming acceleration, European heatwaves, possible NAD peturbations, melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-caps, and the accumlating series of off-trend extreme weather events (hurricanes / cyclones, El Nino events, droughts etc.) Of course one extreme event doesn't mean a thing; however, eight of the ten warmest years on record in since 1856 happening to fall in the last decade is stretched co-incidence.
I'm not trolling because I'm not posting deliberately provocative or misleading stuff in an attempt to stir up knee-jerk responses!
I have grown tired of reading the same old misapprehensions and nonsense trotted out time and time again in the climate change debate. I am happy to debate the issues with well-informed critics; I even accept that there,ab>are legitimate areas for debate. It's just a shame that so many people regurgitate crap along the lines I mentioned (solar output not being taken into account - untrue; volcanoes emitting more CO2 than humans - untrue; we can't predict the weather so how can we predict climate? - fundamental misapprehension of the most basic facts of the debate. And so on, and on.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm going to rank papers in Nature above a supermarket tabloid in the 'credibility' stakes.
weather is not climate. I don't know what the temperature will be around here next week (weather) but I know very precisely what it will average over the year (climate).
State of Fear is comprehensively demolished by actual, working scientists on RealClimate.org.
Fair enough... personally the main reason I'll vote LibDem is for proportional representation - it should then be easier to vote for a party reflecting one's actual opinions more precisely without worrying about letting in a labour/tory by mistake (not sure which of these two evils are the greater, these days... though I doubt I'll ever be able to bring myself to vote Tory.)
Will someone PLEASE tell me why we never consider the fact that 6+ billion people are generating far more in the way of air pollution and extraneous heat sources than the oil companies, vehicle manufacturers, and the US mil-ind complex? [...]
How much of global warming is contributed by the poorer societies as they struggle to better themselves? How much leeway should they be given?
We're talking about CO2, which overwhelmingly comes from gas, oil and coal-fired power stations and various forms of internal combustion engine (cars, ships,..). people, per se, don't generate significant amounts of CO2.
Re: the question of developing country emissions: yes, it's a good question. How much CO2 do you think China, India, Indonesia, Brazil... for example... emit, compared to the USA? What targets do each country have for future limits? What steps are each country taking to limit emissions? Are they, for instance, signed up to Kyoto?
Google for answers to such questions, you may find them intesting and illuminating.
Fair point! My perception is based on the two excellent analyses posted on Real Climate - still on the front page I think, scroll down a bit. I'm not personally in a position to debate the accuracy of specific statements, but I can easily believe TV programme makers can misunderstand or distort complex phenomena in the interest of ratings.
Slashdot Mirror
- The report is about the policy response, not the science. It has nothing whatever to do with the correctness of any of the science.
- The report is specifically talking about the public discource
between science, policy-makers, politicians and the Great Merkin
Public. In America.
Let's pick one random juicy paragraph. I wouldn't disagree with any of that. However this sentence (which you quoted):Finally this article's called What if the hockey-stick was wrong?; you might find it informative.
This is utter nonsense. See for example here. I've never heard of this MIT study you refer to; I'll do some digging and post another response addressing that, otherwise this'll never get posted. That's a completely unjustified ad hominem attack on the world's climatologists. Sounds to me like you've just decided that anyone who doesn't get their news from Fox is a tree-hugging liberal.The quote from Oliver Bernstein, whoever he is, does indeed sound rather crap taken out of any context. So what? Rush Limbaugh's a junkie and Bush was a cokehead, but I'm not claiming it therefore follows that all Republicans are addicts. I base my understanding of climate change on science. I don't feel the need to defend every word anyone says on the subject, there aer plenty of ill-informed morons on all sides of the issue. Statistically, some of the ill-informed morons will be right (for the wrong, or bad, reasons.) So what? Some people think soldiers torturing and murdering civilians is bad because the magic bearded sky-pilot will send them to hell for all eternity. I think that's simple-minded superstition, but I still think soldiers shouldn't murder and torture. Duh.
Hey, thanks a bunch , smart-arse! I happened to be chewing a mouthful of peanuts when I read that. Now my monitor's gonna need a thorough cleaning tomorrow, after the hang-over wears off! (I didn't even need to hit the link.) Nurse! Nurse! ...
- Obviously an increase in global average temperatures doesn't say anything about whether a particular local area will experience moer or less pecipitation (snow is precipitation of course.) Neither does it mean local temperatures will necessarily rise. That's why climatologists talk about the global average temperature and study *global* climate.
- RealClimate has these interesting Hockey Stick related articles:
- this article and
- this article refute various attempts to criticise the studies that show the hockey-stick;
- this article is entitled 'what if the hockeystick were wrong?'.
I'm going to read the articles yuo linked to, please do look at the ones I've linked tothanks!
- RealClimate piece mentioning the event.
-
Google search that finds lots of info
- Abstract of a paper discussing the event
- looks like a map of the lake (PDF)
Hope this helps! Enjoy...Actually the glitch climatologists refer to as the '8.2K BCE event' is a good example of a non-linear response. As the temperatures rose and the ice sheets retreated, the runoff melt water accumulated in a very large lake instead of trickling gradually into the sea. Then one day (probably one literal day as opposed to one 'geological' day) the sediment levees dropped by the retreating glaciers, that had formed the barrier preventing the run-off reaching the ocean, failed catastrophically. A huge wave of fresh water scoured across the land and hit the Atlantic, causing a sudden and significant change in local salinity.
for far more detailed & accurate info on this... ah I was just going to point you at realclimate.org but my curiosity is stirred now, let's see what wikipedia has... I'll post another response below this one when I've dug some links up.
The BBC story you link to is the one this Slashdot story was based on. Climateprediction.net aren't exactly the people doing the experiments, they just package up the data & select models to distribute to the enduser PCs that do the actual number crunching. Why not sign up and contribute some CPU cycles!
I leave it up to you to read any of the many other comments on this story that relate this test to the climateprediction.net results.
Next time, try engaging your brain before hitting 'post' and embarrassing yourself in public.
*I've been reading +5 comments from you for years now, I almost feel I know you... eek, /me obviously wastes too much time on Slashdot!! :)
So why not go read the actual paper that Nature published instead of spouting off uninformed crap on subjects you obviously know nothing about?
Last year it emerged that the senior Pakistani nuclear engineer (their Dr Oppenheimer) admitted supplying designs, test data and (IIRC) components to a number of third party countries; in particular, (IIRC) Libya and North Korea. (that's a random link pulled from Google; search your preferred news source for more on this chap.)
I'm guessing this isn't as well known in the US as it is here in Europe.
HTH...
These results were collated from approx. 60,000 separate climate model runs. Here's a link to the actual paper published in Nature (PDF). ClimatePrediction.net passed the 50,000 run mark only a month ago, so it looks like participation is on the up. Kudos to everyone running it! Personally I've switched from SETI@Home to this project. (Of course, you may feel that cancer research into protein folding is more important. One of the nice things about the BOINC framework is that you can contribute to multiple projects at the same time.)
The 'eleven degrees rise over the next century' is of course the worst-case scenario. Of course, climate disruptions of that magnitude really would be catastrophic to human civilisation - for one thing, massive loss of agricultural production, the loss of large areas of expensive real-estate (many of the world's great cities would certainly be under water. I don't know precisely what magnitude of sea level rise 11 degrees would produce but consider that the Greenland ice sheet, which is already showing signs of increased melting, would produce approx. 7m rise - that's goodbye to London and New York and Amsterdam for starters.) Here's a chart from the IPCC's 2001 report showing the various scenarios they based their predictions on. As you can see, the worst-case they foresaw was about 5 or 6 degrees C. The significant thing about these results is that the upper bound of the range of possible temperature rises is shown to be about twice as severe as previously thought. Not only is more and more solid evidence being produced to back the fundamental prediction that human CO2 emissions are causing significant changes in our climate, but the magnitude of those predicted changes is getting greater and greater as time goes on. Note as well that the charts don't suddenly flatline at the year 2100...
Finally I'm looking forward to a discussion on RealClimate.org on this. I've found it to be utterly addictive to see discussions amongst actual researchers in the field, not only showing the areas of legitimate disagreement, debate and uncertainty, but also the solidity of the scientific consensus, as well as busting various common myths - the Crichton garbage, the hockey-stick stuff etc etc. Strongly recommended.
As it happens, a recent Reaclimate post discusses precisely this issue (peer review as a filter rather than guarantee of accuracy.) I agree completely. However accuracy is an accumulative phenomena. One study showing climate change might get through due to poor reviewing, log-rolling or whatever other failings in the system; however there are now thousands upon thousands of related papers which tend to be broadly consistent.
Secondly, I refute the assertion that science must be predictive. What about archaeology? cosmology? observational astronomy? and so on, and on.
Thirdly, computer models DO make testable predictions to some extent. (a) they can be run over the past few hundred/thousand/tens of thousands of years, and examined to see how closely they correlate with observations (very well indeed, these days.) (b) predictions made 20 years ago by the comparitively crude, data-poor models are now turning up in the actual observed climate. (See artic warming acceleration, European heatwaves, possible NAD peturbations, melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice-caps, and the accumlating series of off-trend extreme weather events (hurricanes / cyclones, El Nino events, droughts etc.) Of course one extreme event doesn't mean a thing; however, eight of the ten warmest years on record in since 1856 happening to fall in the last decade is stretched co-incidence.
Thanks for an actually informed, reason response!
I have grown tired of reading the same old misapprehensions and nonsense trotted out time and time again in the climate change debate. I am happy to debate the issues with well-informed critics; I even accept that there ,ab>are legitimate areas for debate. It's just a shame that so many people regurgitate crap along the lines I mentioned (solar output not being taken into account - untrue; volcanoes emitting more CO2 than humans - untrue; we can't predict the weather so how can we predict climate? - fundamental misapprehension of the most basic facts of the debate. And so on, and on.
Have a nice day!
Fair enough... personally the main reason I'll vote LibDem is for proportional representation - it should then be easier to vote for a party reflecting one's actual opinions more precisely without worrying about letting in a labour/tory by mistake (not sure which of these two evils are the greater, these days... though I doubt I'll ever be able to bring myself to vote Tory.)
Re: the question of developing country emissions: yes, it's a good question. How much CO2 do you think China, India, Indonesia, Brazil... for example... emit, compared to the USA? What targets do each country have for future limits? What steps are each country taking to limit emissions? Are they, for instance, signed up to Kyoto?
Google for answers to such questions, you may find them intesting and illuminating.
Fair point! My perception is based on the two excellent analyses posted on Real Climate - still on the front page I think, scroll down a bit. I'm not personally in a position to debate the accuracy of specific statements, but I can easily believe TV programme makers can misunderstand or distort complex phenomena in the interest of ratings.
*cough* some of us here in the southern rump of the UK are still properly radical... we'll be voting Liberal Democrat!