Ah, but China never tells us what is happening there. So, it vanishes from the radar screen. This leaves the USA as the biggest polluter that we know about, ergo the biggest polluter.
Remember, it's the unknown unknowns that are the real concerns.
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Dunno about all this pollution, we seem to be living longer than when we had no cars at all.
Maybe we evolve to cope?
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The worlds largest polluter is.... Australia
The US is third after Canada.
Australia uses vast amounts of coal because they have lots of it and don't like to import fuel from other countries.
The US also has the greatest amount of renewable energy. Kyoto didn't apply to China or several other new developing countries so why should the US sign up.
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\"The worlds largest polluter is.... Australia
The US is third after Canada.\"
Where are figures from Carl?
Can\'t believe that 15m (? a rough guess) Australians pollute more than 250m Americans, or that the 25m (?) Canadians are up there in second place.
Nobody\'s mentioned the Russians either who also didn\'t sign up did they?
Surely the half the world\'s pop (?) of China and India must come out top - all that coal and wood burning plus pretty unrestricted industries, rotting vegetation (rice straw) and millions of trumpeting cows and pigs (and people)must make them the biggest greenhouse gas producers of all.
Anyway, getting rid of every single car in the world would make virtually NO difference to greenhouse gas production since a) Water vapour and methane are the most \"important\" greenhouse gasses (perhaps Gordon Brown should tax clouds and botty burps) and these are mainly natural. CO2 is not an important greenhouse gas and if it was perhaps they could tax us into breathing less.
b) Man made greenhouse gasses are insignificant and cars are an insignificant part of that.
If you want to know what causes global warming (and cooling)look up \"Milankovitch\" on Google.
Global warming is just a good excuse for taxing us, and especially our use of cars and we ought to wake up to the fact.
I await being shot down in flames!!! (Oops, there\'s some more greenhouse gas!!)
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\"The worlds largest polluter is.... Australia The US is third after Canada.\" Where are figures from Carl?
The 'Australia institute' is where I get my figures from.
Can\'t believe that 15m (? a rough guess) Australians pollute more than 250m Americans, or that the 25m (?) Canadians are up there in second place.
Thats because figures are worked out as an average per person in each country, not as the country as a whole.
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"If you want to know what causes global warming (and cooling)look up "Milankovitch" on Google"
These theories are often neglected as it can get in the way of what certain people want to have you believe. However, the problem with the Milankovitch cycles is that current global temperatures are not in line with what is predicted. We should be going in to another ice age rather than warming up. What is causing this new climatic regime is debatable but the common thaughts are that human activity (through the release of CO2 from the buring of fossil fuels in cars etc) is largly to blame.
Is the motorist entirely to blame? Of course not.
As for the largest polluters. Well, depending upon what pollutant your measuring, the U.S.A are the biggest contributors to 'greenhouse gasses' (followed by Australia and Canada)
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>>We should be going in to another ice age rather than warming up.
I gather a period of warming up is usual before big change to ice age.As for global warming. the earth has survived many an errupting volcano. throwing out a lot more gases than any amount of cars will.So tend to think the earth looks after itself. And doubt any polluters have any effect on earths atmosphere. we all worry about it but in my oppinion nature causes more damage than any car/truck will?
--
Was mech1
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>>\"the earth has survived many an erupting volcano. throwing out a lot more gases than any amount of cars will\"
That is true steve.o, but the effects of a major eruption only last 1-2 years and have no noticeable effect. You?re right really, when you say that that the earth looks after itself, as the effects of a natural \'disaster\' are often counteracted by other natural effects.
>>\"What is causing this new climatic regime is debatable but the common thoughts are that human activity (through the release of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels in cars etc) is largely to blame.\"
Well except for the 20,000 people including 18,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition stating\" etc
That is an interesting piece of information. Where did you get it from if you don?t mind me asking? As it is called the Oregon petition, does that mean that the majority of research was done by the US. If so, then it probably is not worth the paper it is written on. It has long been known that the US have underplayed
any climate change issues. This was mentioned in a report by Diane Liverman in the Guardian on the Kyoto protocol, where it said that research in to the US decision to pull out was purposefully underplayed with some research being funded by the American Petroleum Institute. If the coincidence was not enough persuade a flawed argument, then a report that followed, damned the evidence for good, leaving many of the writers do resign. Therefore I would not be surprised if many of the 18000 scientists in the Oregon petition had either been bribed or misinformed.
Some interesting points there PhilW
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Sorry, ignor that garbage at the end, dont know whats doing there.
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Sorry, ignor that garbage at the end, dont know whats doing there.
Caused by pressing the "quote original message" button after you've finished typing, rather than pressing it before you start. Anyway, I've deleted it for you now. DD.
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"That is an interesting piece of information. Where did you get it from if you don?t mind me asking? As it is called the Oregon petition, does that mean that the majority of research was done by the US. If so, then it probably is not worth the paper it is written on."
You may be right - I'm not qualified to say - I'm merely choosing to believe one side of the argument more than the other, but you could have a look at this
www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm
David Bellamy seems to think they are on the right lines also!!
I did also point out that I was being selective in my quotes!! and I note that today, Russia has signed up to the Kyoto agreement.
Interestingly, I also found a lot of stuff (from Russian/American deep ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland which suggests that CO2 levels rise in RESPONSE to rising temps and with a time lag of somewhere between 100 and 2000 (I think!) years. Perhaps todays rising CO2 levels are in response to the hotter temps in Roman times!!
Another point - why does Kyoto only concern itself with CO2 when the major greenhouse gasses are water vapour (try getting rid of that!!) and methane (because cows are trying to get rid of it!!)
As I say, I reckon our grandchildren will still be debating this but I hope that in the meantime we will not have wasted £76 trillion to no avail. Goodness knows how much you could improve the living standards in all 3rd world countries with that money and I suspect it would be a much better way of spending it than by trying to get rid of 3.5% of the greenhouse gasses. CO2 is, by the way, essential to plant (therefore crop growth, and therefore herbivore animals - cows, sheep etc) growth. Hope they don't get rid of all CO2 'cos we'll all starve to death!!
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Thanks for the link there PhilW. Good point about where to put the money, but the Gov't was thinking about cancelling a few Million pounds of debt wasn't it? Who knows.
Thanks to DD for clearing up the mess i made. ;-)
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"What is causing this new climatic regime is debatable but the common thaughts are that human activity (through the release of CO2 from the buring of fossil fuels in cars etc) is largly to blame."
Well except for the 20,000 people including 18,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition stating "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
Nor David Bellamy "the main Greenhouse gas is water vapour, 99% of which is natural"
"Remove ALL the CO" from the atmosphere and temps would drop by 0.3%"
The Kyoto agreement will cost £76 trillion to implement and I doubt it would make one jot of difference to global warming even if the US, Russia, China et al signed. Anyway, if our Mediaeval Ancestors could survive much warmer temps than projected by even the greatest "pessimists", as did the Romans and our 17-19th Century forebears could survive the "Little Ice Age" when they held Ice Fairs on a frozen Thames surely we can survive a little warming?
As for Ice Ages, we are still in one, a warm interstadial admittedly, but temps have cooled very quickly at times in the past.
I suspect that this discussion will be continued by our grandchildren who will either be under a mile of ice or basking on a subtropical beach in Scotland!! Or maybe it will be a normal, dull, damp, cool October evening!!
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PhilW that is probably the most sensible assessment of the situation I have seen in a long time (i.e. it suits my view).
However, I cannot see it being universally adopted as too many in power positions will find it does not suit their agenda.
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