Found this article. Seems that the “hockey stick” graph is not exactly true.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/james ... ssive-lie/

Any geologist could tell you that the highest average global temperature during the last interglacial was warmer than it is now.
Climate change is true (ie it's changing) but there's still that nagging doubt as to whether it's all man made or partially natural.

Thanks for that Paul. Very interesting reading. I've not "believed" in global warming for a very long time, but I'm also open to new information. One of my GCSE science teachers back in the mid-90s always stated that he didn't believe there was enough evidence to support conclusions being drawn at that time. That stuck with me, as he was a very knowledgeable and capable teacher, as well as being a nice bloke.

Do you think people buy these stories though? Or is it just filed under "conspiracy theories", alongside recession and swine flu...

Yup.

There is no consensus in the scientific community. I'd be worried if there was, that's not how science works.

The climate is changing but then in the past 5-10 years global temperatures have reduced, not increased, and even though ice the antarctic ice cap may be melting in one region it has been growing in another.

The climate changes, we're on a friggin planet.

On top of that, if recycling is of any use, other than making some people rich from being given resources en masse for free, then why the hell is it shipped from the UK to places like China and Brazil to be processed? It hardly seems the most efficient use of resources.

I've always meant to email the local recycling centre to find out just where the recycled waste goes to, and who gets it afterwards...

This was discussed, I think, in the controversial Channel 4 doco 'The Great Global Warming Swindle', which has since become something of a pariah.

Wasn't that the same documentary that showed the CO2 curve followed the temperature curve, and not the other way round?

It's also a documentary that has made a lot of scientists - including the ones shown in it - very angry for misquoting, being misleading and misrepresenting what was said.

I guess that's true from both sides. Oh, for simple access to the truth without it being spun hither and thither to suit particular ends.

Still worth a watch for a counterpoint to the accepted 'It's all your fault' party line.

I am generally suspicious of all this as the more I read, the more I find that data is suppressed or not opened up to scrutiny, scientists exploring other reasons for climate change find their funding drying up, or their preliminary research rejected by peers who are firmly in the Hockey Stick Graph camp.

Science, I believe, is about repeatable research. If I get result (a) from a chunk of data, surely my results, methods and raw data (and even methods for observation and gathering the raw data) should be all available so that others can repeat to verify or refute my conclusions? I am not a scientist by trade, but I am very well aware of this being the foundation for all scientific advancement. If the raw data is held back, then I can only conclude that there are flaws somewhere along the data trail, and that the final results are equally flawed.

Global warming is fact. The majority of scientists believe it is man made. Only a few who are supported by the oil industry are in denial. The talk of a 30 cm increase in sea levels by the end of the century was the accepted figure only this week some organisation states that it WILL be 2m and it is only a matter of how quickly. That 2m is unavoidable.

This is the problem. You may well be right, but due to the way that the scientific community is handling it as an issue, in particular with political pressures etc. there is absolutely no basis to have faith in the results produced due to the level of interference. The other issue is that so much bad science is argued on either side that it's difficult for the lay person to actually come to even a remotely considered opinion on the subject.

That's my point of view.

To me, it is irrelevant whether it is man made, partially man made or we have done little to influence it. Laying blame at this stage is silly. What needs to be done is to look at slowing it down, if possible, and finding ways to combat it or survive it...

Overpopulation and industrialisation have probably eagerated the effects, but it is doubtful that humanity is solely responsible for global warmning.

That we haven't started it or caused it, however, doesn't absolve us of responsibility to minimising our own influence on the cycle.

Globaly? Can't say, where I live, the temperatures have definitely risen. When I moved to Bavaria, the winters were cold (-20°C, 3-4 months of 1M or more of snow and ice and temps only getting above 0 for a couple of days a month), the last couple of years, we hardly had any snow, the winters were short and it hardly dipped below zero for more than a week.

The summer temperatures, conversely, climbed from mid 30s to mid 40s on the hottest days... Now in the north, we've had record temperatures this year, and we had practicaly no winter...


Yep.


That is the problem with recycling, instead of re-using. Here, we take the empty bottles and crates back to the supermarket, they are loaded onto the lorries which have just delivered the full bottles, before they drive back to the supplier and they are cleaned and refilled, glass gets re-used a lot, I think Coca Cola plastics get re-used up to about 10 times, before they are melted down and used for something else... Given the amount of alcohol, soft drinks and water people drink, that is a huge saving in raw materials.