Assuming your implication is that Antarctica is gaining ice so there’s nothing to worry about… Did you read the article you posted?
I’m not implying much, just that it’s good fun to only know part of the truth all the time:
But the findings do conflict with more than a decade of research indicating that Antarctica is losing ice and that the loss has contributed to rising global sea levels.
Archie,
You are well informed. I am also very aware of the effects of consuming meat, and Cowspiracy was an eye-opener for me that made me think twice about consuming meat all too regularly, apart from health reasons. I recommend all to view it.
My wife and me live a bit like hippies. Driving electric cars, growing our own veggies and wine, drinking rainwater, pumping up household water with solar energy, heating the house with a wood stove and solar energy and having a squadron of chicken that produce very nice eggs (and if they stop doing that, we’ll have some nice meat).
All so that I can indulge in my dark side, flying airplanes 
aart wrote:
NCYankee, do you have some special insight to take such an extreme position? AFAIK, and I try to follow the debate, there is a lot of uncertainty about whether man-made CO2 emissions would be creating a problem or not. Lots of compelling data support that notion, and other data that negate it. But science also admits that our models are flawed, like the models for weather predictions! So in my simple view, we may wish to take global warming and all of its consequences (mainly for poor people) as a real possibility. Say 50-50. So what are the chances of your house catching fire? 1%? Do you have insurance?
Just to make my position clear, I believe the world has been warming since the last ice age, the carbon dioxide has been increasing, particularly since the 1970’s and that man is a contributor, that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have a warming influence if all else is kept the same, and that man has contributed to some of the warming we have seen, but the amount is tiny and the major influence is from natural causes. The alarmist view, in my opinion, is totally unsupported. The ensemble of Climate GCM models are all running way too hot and with no statistically significant warming in the last 18 years are almost disproven. It is almost to the point of it being a religious belief.
I do have insurance on my home and I would be willing for the world to buy insurance for a potential problem with global warming if the price was reasonable. If all of the targets are net by the upcoming Paris meeting, trillions and trillions of dollars will be spent and according to the scientist will only result in a temperature difference of 0..036C.
This is a political discussion and not a scientific one. Alarmist don’t want any debate, they just want to jail scientist that disagree and do everything they can to silence debate. Those that claim that there is a consensus are simply trying to stifle debate. Climate science is giving a bad name to scientific inquiry and has been completely politicized by the left. Albert Einstein, when asked for his reaction to the consensus of over a thousand scientist that did not believe his theory of relativity remarked something to the effect that it would only take one experiment to disprove the theory, why would thousands matter. I view consensus as a political formulation and it has use in the scientific method. Although I am not a scientist, I am a trained electrical engineer and have used the scientific method thru out my life.
A famous scientist by the name of Albert Einstein said, “that genius abhors consensus because when consensus is reached, thinking stops.”
Author Michael Crichton describes the situation quite accurately as follows:
“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled … Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world … The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”
Recently, a peer reviewed paper was published by Dr. Lomborg. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12295/full
Bio at http://www.lomborg.com/about
An excerpt from the website run by Dr.Curry, a contributor to the IPCC says:
Dr. Lomborg’s research reveals:
The climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is miniscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100. Even if we assume that these promises would be extended for another 70 years, there is still little impact: if every nation fulfills every promise by 2030, and continues to fulfill these promises faithfully until the end of the century, and there is no ‘CO₂ leakage’ to non-committed nations, the entirety of the Paris promises will reduce temperature rises by just 0.17°C (0.306°F) by 2100. US climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.031°C (0.057°F) by 2100. EU climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.053°C (0.096°F) by 2100. China climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100. The rest of the world’s climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.036°C (0.064°F) by 2100.
Thanks for your response NCYankee, much appreciated. Let’s keep this interesting debate going, although Peter may kick us out of here, but then we can always go PM.
I refuse to accept Dr. Lomborg and the model he uses as the final authority on this. I believe that we have no clue yet how the whole system works, so I take any model from anyone with more than a grain of salt. If we can’t even predict the height of a cloud base next week at location x, how can we pretend to predict temperatures 10 year from now? Just too many variables wihout knowing how they interact. I am not saying we should give up on science, to the contrary. But we may just be too late. You have a technological background so you know how systems can rapidly go instable, on the basis of a external (read in this case ‘man-made’) input, even if small. Yes, earth has gone through many temp cycles, but what if mankind just nudges it a bit more, right at the wrong moment?
An open question: Do you have an opinion about the other reason why we should burn less fuel, namely because it is not endless (or maybe there is enough for hundreds of years but it soon becomes economically/environmentally unfeasible to extract it from the earth)? We all know how long it takes to make the transition to renewables. We may not have that time. And recent low oil prices certainly don’t help making the shift.
aart wrote:
If we can’t even predict the height of a cloud base next week at location x, how can we pretend to predict temperatures 10 year from now?
That’s the power of averaging 
aart wrote:
Do you have an opinion about the other reason why we should burn less fuel, namely because it is not endless (or maybe there is enough for hundreds of years but it soon becomes economically/environmentally unfeasible to extract it from the earth)? We all know how long it takes to make the transition to renewables. We may not have that time.
Do you have an opinion about why ‘confronting’ this graph is rarely mentioned as part of the solution to that problem, as opposed to ‘confronting’ a non-solvable problem through energy (‘carbon’) taxes that may be several times the cost of production?
I’ll make a suggestion: extracting extremely high energy taxes from a large population generates a lot more cash.
From what I can see all the mainstream CLIMATE scientist agree that man is the root cause of climate change. There may be a long term trend, but it’s not significant. The few who seem to claim otherwise seem to have a vested interest.
Whenever this debate comes up, I’m always reminded of this cartoon:
Silvaire wrote:
I’ll make a suggestion: extracting energy taxes from a large population generates a lot more cash.
If you drive an electric car, you don’t pay any road tax and the taxes on the vehicle purchase are eliminated (except VAT). These taxes normally double the vehicle purchase price. You get up to a €5K grant against the purchase price of the vehicle.
In many countries if you produce your own electricity from solar or wind, and feed it back into the system, you get paid a multiple of the sales price of electricity.
So there are actually very generous tax breaks to be had for those who make a change.
although Peter may kick us out of here
I moved it to Hangar Talk
100hrs/yr at 15USG/hr is about 15 tonnes CO2. US per capita annual emissions is about 20 tonnes. LHR-JFK return business class is about 3 tonnes.
Interesting how close GA is to big jets, per mile. In the TB20, LHR-JFK would be some 30-40hrs at 10 USG/hr. And you could carry 4 people, though you would get to know them quite well if you actually did that
So there are actually very generous tax breaks to be had for those who make a change.
The tax breaks distort the picture, however, and create a “market” which is sometimes totally fake. AIUI, wind turbines make zero sense without tax breaks. Even if the capital got magically paid off / written off, the operating cost (especially the big offshore wind farms) still makes it very expensive.
The 5k grant towards an electric car is also a big fake, because if everybody did it, the govt would lose so much from hydrocarbon taxes they would have to do something pretty drastic. Charging a car from the mains is incredibly cheap. They would probably have to introduce wholesale road pricing, possibly via “tamperproof” boxes in vehicles which log your mileage and make you “pay as you go”. I went to a seminar not long ago by a govt policy guy and that is what he said. The 5k grant is like offering everybody arriving at Dover a voucher for an AK47. Now… if we had nuclear fusion, it would make sense. But a lot of Europe is shutting down nuclear and building coal power stations, usually along their eastern border so they can be smug about it while the acid rain eats somebody else’s forests
Just my opinion, you realise…
Disclaimer: I have a VW 2.0 diesel with the fake software. And NO, I won’t be taking it anywhere near anybody who can “fix it”
