The arguments made by climate change sceptics

BBC News 6 December, 2009

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8376286.stm

The arguments made by climate change sceptics

"At the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, 192 governments are aiming
for a new global agreement to constrain greenhouse gas emissions and
curb human-induced climate change.
But some commentators are unconvinced that rising greenhouse gas emissions
are the cause of modern-day warming. Or they say the world is not actually getting warmer - or that a new treaty would hurt economic growth and well-being.
So what are their arguments, and how are they countered by scientists who assert that
greenhouse gases, produced by human activity, are the cause of modern-day climate change?""

I suggest that this is a very clear and useful summary (contained on the website) of just what the climate skeptics are claiming. It is by no means exhaustive but interesting anyway. It seems to me that the skeptical position is demanding certainty from a planet that we are gradually understanding to be a self-regulating organism and not a machine. Most people accept that science cannot accurately predict human behaviour. There is so much that science does not understand and that is unpredictable concerning human healing and medicine. We don't refuse to go to the physician because he/she is not certain of just what medicine will cure us or even whether the medicine prescribed will cure us.

One of the saddest things about the global warming debate is the sketchy and outrageous media articles which are designed to sell newspapers rather than reveal the truth. The media focuses on CO2, but fail to emphasize that methane, nitrous oxide, CFCs and ozone are also rising and much of this rise is due to human activities. It is the interaction and combination of all these factors plus water vapour that must be considered. Because the factors and their relationships are not simple and not well understood, the media come out with something simple to gain headlines.

Another sad occurrence is how the media confuses climate with weather. The climate is affected by an overall increase in the earth's temperature of around .8C since in the last 150 years or so. There is no precise effect that this has had on climate. We must understand general proclivities and probabilities when it comes to predicting weather and climate.

Also, the media is focusing on the wrong question. We should be asking about the factors which drove temperature off it's peak the last few warm periods in the 150 thousand year cycles we observe from ice cores. If that is examined, we would find that the important causes of cooling have been destroyed by human activity. Primarily, the vast forests and savannah. The forests have been chopped and the grasslands have been ploughed and saturated with nitrogen from artificial fertilizer to feed a population which is out of control and caught up in an economic philosophy of growth.