Don’t believe the spin of the climate change deniers

Friday 23rd April 2010, 3:00PM BST.

From Nick Palmer, spokesman, Jersey Climate Action Network.
YOUR correspondent Julius Olsen (JEP, 21 April) wonders how the emissions of the Icelandic volcano compare with greenhouse emissions ‘from the world’s motor vehicles and other sources such as flatulent cattle’.

The simple answer, with no need for debate, is that humanity’s daily emissions far outstrip those from this particular volcano, during this active eruption, by over 300 times.

The volcano is only creating a tiny amount – less than a third of one percentage point – of our emissions. Indeed, according to the US Geological Survey, all the volcanoes in the world generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, while our fossil-fuelled activities cause some 24 billion tons of excess CO2 emissions every year worldwide.

What we do completely dwarfs the global emissions from all the volcanoes in the world, including the undersea ones, by over 100 times.

Among more than 100 crafted myths, spread by the global warming denialist industry, is that just one volcano emits more greenhouse gases than the whole of mankind’s activities and maybe Mr Olsen has been misled by this propaganda. This disinformation is so far from the truth that correcting it is very easy.

Unfortunately, some of the rest of the anti-global warming science spin requires specialist knowledge to see through. Assessing the scientific credibility and consistency of the source of information is critical to avoid being deceived.

Internationally, in the climate science blogosphere, there is now a movement calling for authoritative statements from world leaders to be made, hammering home the scientific message, and the consequences of inaction, to counter the relentless onslaught of deceptive fog created by the denialist industry’s misleading and manufactured controversies, which are deliberately spread through the ordinary media where they can fool the most people.

1
rudolph hooker

April 23, 2010 at 3:30 pm

Surely it would be just as easy to say Don’t Believe the spin of Jersey Climate Action Network.
Or why are you right?

Report abuse
2
Alf Whitt

April 23, 2010 at 5:29 pm

The following website provides responses to over 100 claims made by skeptics of climate change:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

Report abuse
3
Sanity

April 23, 2010 at 7:10 pm

Nick – How politically correct you are in pointing out the dangers of carbon emissions. But how about a bit of un-politically correct honesty. Whilst you are jumping up and down on your politically correct soap box the global population continues to increase unabated because it’s our human right to reproduce. We are destroying our forests and ecosystems to feed these extra souls as is their human right. We encourage the third world to follow our example and become modern and industrialised because it is the politically correct thing to do. And all these extra soul are producing Carbon but because the “carbon lobby” are so fixated with motors cars and 4x4s these real issues that if faced could save our planet are conveniently ignored. You are as much part of the problem as the jet plane or the jeep in that you seek to block any rational debate.

The only people who have and will ever benefit from Carbon are Governments through carbon taxation and the carbon traders who thanks to people like you have taken the world for suckers and creamed off hundreds of billions of dollars.

Report abuse
4
R B Bougourd

April 23, 2010 at 8:25 pm

“The only people who have and will ever benefit from Carbon are Governments through carbon taxation and the carbon traders who thanks to people like you have taken the world for suckers and creamed off hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Spot on, Sanity, we will have to pay money to people who are already rich and don’t like doing real work and have decided to become carbon traders simply because they can and we can’t.

That will be good for all of us, especially the carbon traders and of course the Island (which normally means the fortunate few) if the States are smart enough to muscle in on the trading.

Let’s not be climate change deniers. Let’s become climate change taxation objectors.

I’ve got no children that I know about, so I am well up the moral high ground on the population issue. Will the carbon traders be paying me. No chance.

Report abuse
5
FUBAR

April 25, 2010 at 11:10 am

Sir David Attenborough said yesterday that the growth in global population was frightening, as he became a patron of an organisation that campaigns to limit the number of people in the world.

The television presenter and naturalist said that the increase in population was having devastating effects on ecology, pollution and food production.

“There are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programmes only a mere 56 years ago,” he said, after becoming a patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) think-tank.

Jersey needs a census.

Report abuse
6
joker

April 26, 2010 at 2:02 pm

Population growth is definitely a bigger issue. Alternatives and relatively mild lifestyle changes can help offset a world without fossil fuels but there’s no substitute for food or water.

Ironically, any major damage caused by global warming is likely to assist nature’s defence mechanisms in culling the world’s population. So aggressive burning of fossil fuels may have it’s positives yet.

Report abuse
7
Leah Holmes

April 28, 2010 at 12:05 am

#5 Fubar, take a look at the population graph on the OPT website, it’s quite scary.

Thankfully Save the Children have finally come out admitting that the biggest problem is overpopulation, hopefully that will encourage those who think it is ‘their right’ to procreate to think twice.

It amuses me that people who claim to love children will choose to bring them into a world where they will have fewer resources, higher tax and far more social problems than we encounter today. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

#6 “So aggressive burning of fossil fuels may have it’s positives yet. ” Unfortunately, no doubt it will be those of us that have done our bit that get culled and those that haven’t done anything that will survive.

Report abuse