Late night lethargy leaves a little legacy in my last post.
It was of course Judge Higgins who supposedly influenced the contempt charge against editor Nicholls. Judge Higgins best legacy though may be his 1908 Harvester Judgement which led to the inception of the Australian basic wage. Perhaps it is not surprising that the HRNS might want to smear his memory given that society's union bashing history. All of us tend to allow preconceptions to bias our opinions. Sceptical probing of our work can allow these flaws to be identified and eliminated.
Any anthropogenic component of climate change merges with natural, random fluctuations and cyclical natural variability. As a consequence, identifying anthropogenic influence is always likely to be uncertain. However this isn't an excuse to ignore the consequences of our polluting the atmosphere. To me, there is an unambiguous link between rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and human inspired production. We burn the coal, the oil and the natural gas. The combustion products pour into the air and the composition of the air changes. It's about chemistry. Every atom of carbon we burn makes a molecule of either carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. It goes into the atmosphere and some of it is staying there.
The extra carbon dioxide has a warming influence that adds to the natural warming. This means more energy to drive our weather patterns. We can expect more extreme events and to my mind that's what we are seeing now. Climate change deniers cite extremes of cold as evidence against the warming trend but I see more violent snowstorms being driven by a more energetic atmosphere.
A warming climate may reach "tipping points" where natural mechanisms begin adding to the effect. Tundra warms and dissolved methane reserves are released. The methane adds additional greenhouse gas which adds to the warming. Warming melts ice. The underlying water/land absorbs more sunlight and adds more warming. Warming produces a drying of climate. Plants struggle and die. Fires are more likely; more carbon dioxide, more warming.
I'm not a fan of "tipping points" in the larger picture. Our climate maintained itself for millions of years and has recovered from massive climate trauma in the past. This implies the existence of robust negative feedback loops exerting a stabilising influence on our climate. Earth history is littered with dozens of catastrophes with massive tsunamis from mountainous meteorites devastating the planet every 10 million years or so and supervolcanoes blasting the climate at similar intervals. However this does not excuse us from initiating a cataclysmic event of our own.
