The most wasteful of all fuel uses is transport

The best low carbon projects involve getting people out of the car and on to buses and trains and long distance freight onto rail.

In the medium term getting people out of aviation for short haul flights and onto High speed rail lines

Looks like the climate change industry has hit the jackpot, never mind the fact that the science is pretty dubious.

Will this 'carbon army' have access to the 'carbon bombs' referred to in the other rubbish article or are they at the disposal of our 'carbon air force'?

"And prices of fossil fuels including gas and coal, and that of petrol, should be increased to reflect their environmental costs."

Well the Nazis have got this part well in hand. Now 'climate change' is creating "another great depression on a scale not seen since the 1930s". Yup, we've got millions out of work, companies and banks crashing every day and soup kitchens are springing up on every street corner now. Next the eco-bams will be comparing the scale of this fable to the ravages of WW2 - it's only a matter of time. No wait, someone already compared it to the holocaust.

I think if you were to listen to the former USSR communist party's aspirations they would not differ too much from the list of anti-capitalist rants of the green idiots quoted above. Sorry that's an exageration, the communist philosophy was at least based on some sort of sense.

"The Green New Deal Group" sounds like a poor imitation of that group of the country's leading economists who wrote to the Times saying that the economy was headed for irrecoverable disaster, just before the country embarked on its longest ever period of sustained prosperity.
"the world has 100 months to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions before hitting a potential point of no return"
What has happened in the past 100 months? Shock horror! "Disastrously" atmospheric CO2 has risen by 5.4% and global mean temperature has.........FALLEN by 0.35°F.

The Global Warming(to hedge their bets now calling it Climate Change) Brigade are becoming increasingly vocal and more exaggerated with their "imminent disaster" claims as the evidence of cooling mounts. World temperatures are now back to 1993 levels, indeed they are unchanged since 1980.

I see we are being treated to the normal bunch of commentators (#2 to #6 above) eager to demonstrate their misunderstandings about climate change (or global warming if they prefer).

Cherry picking a few points in the monthly global temperature data and pretending they have significance is a party game for idiots and those with their heads firmly in the sand. As ever, what they say is based on misunderstanding the science.

#7 drew 33,
said,
"The Global Warming(to hedge their bets now calling it Climate Change)"

Global warming refers to the increase in the amount of heat energy accumulating in the atmosphere, oceans and near surface land as a result of increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Climate change refers to the climatic response to that increase in heat or to other natural factors (such as volcanic eruptions, changes in oceanic currents, changes in the sun). Climate change includes changes in temperature and humidity and cloud cover, rainfall distribution and wind patterns.

Thus, climate change is a response to global warming. The two terms tend to be used interchangeably in general discussions and there is no significance of the sort you are hoping to find in whichever is used.

8 Slioch,
"Cherry picking a few points in the monthly global temperature data and pretending they have significance is a party game for idiots and those with their heads firmly in the sand. As ever, what they say is based on misunderstanding the science"

Your pathetic, puerile, oft repeated claims of "cherry picking" are wearing rather thin!
I chose exactly the same period for comparison as that used by the GW Brigade. Had I been I engaged in "cherry picking" I should have made the factually correct statement that in the 10 years Feb 1998 to Feb 2008 atmospheric CO2 rose from 360PPMV to 390PPMV while global mean temperature fell by 1.6°F. A 5X greater fall in temperature than that given by the quoted comparison.

#12 11+failed

You still don't understand why choosing to compare individual months of global average temperatures is cherry picking. Cherry picking means attributing undue significance to particular points on an irregular graph.

The point is that the annual, and particular monthly, global temperature figures are extremely "noisy" (in a statistical sense). In other words, the yearly (and particularly monthly) variation in temperature is far greater than any long term trend. Hence to attribute any significance to yearly or monthly figures with respect to that long term trend is statistically illiterate (or "cherry picking", to use that phrase).

To put some figures on this to illustrate:

The long term trend in global average temperature from HADCRU from 1975 to the present is 0.019deg c per year. That is, if you plot the global average monthly temperatures from 1975 to the present and find the best-fit linear curve to that data by the method of least squares, you obtain a line with a slope of 0.019degC/year.

One the other hand, annual variations in temperature vary by as much as 0.2deg C, ie. by MORE THAN TEN TIMES the average annual increment. (0.2 is more than ten times 0.019). Thus, individual points on the graph of monthly global temperatures do not provide significant information on that annual increment, and are correctly referred to as cherry picking.

However, if one is dealing with a quantity that is steadily increasing, in a smooth, non-noisy way, then it is entirely appropriate to refer to individual points on the graph. This, to a good approximation, is the case with the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. That graph has an predictable annual wriggle, but is otherwise fairly smooth, ie. its annual variation is small compared with long term annual increment. Thus it is appropriate to refer to "100 months to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions" since we know to a good approximation what the CO2 concentration will be in the atmosphere if we cont

contd.

since we know to a good approximation what the CO2 concentration will be in the atmosphere if we continue with the present trend.

The only dubious science on this issue is that paid for and propagated by the fossil fuel industry.

The retreat of the Antarctic ice shelves, the Arctic sea ice and worldwide mountain glaciers over recent decades is fact, as is the changed radiation absorption process of the atmosphere through increased production of greenhouse gases.

The suggestion that man-made global warming is some sort of conspiracy formulated by anti-capitalist 'eco-bams' is surely only believed by the truly credulous.

All this debate about climate changing, the world average temperature is the same now as it was in 1979. What does 29 years with no change in temperature tell us? There have been ups and down along the way, seems to prove that the temperature changes but hardly amounts to an incontrovertibly proven trend either up or down.
On a slightly different note I read that Canada now has per capita emission above the USA and rising, needless to say, with a great fanfare, Canada signed up to Kyto while the US did not.

16.

Is that question the best that you can come up with? Oh dear, I’m picking up a pattern in your posts.

What is worrying is the speed of change not whether such retreats have happened in the past.

15 cucumber,
"The retreat of the Antarctic ice shelves"

Perhaps you should check your facts. Seems overall antarctic ice is increasing.

#16 DfB

"What caused the last glacial retreat between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago?"

It was initiated by reduced solar insolation caused by changes in the Earth's orbit, enhanced by secondary increases in CO2.

#17 sceptic claimed,
"the world average temperature is the same now as it was in 1979"

That is not remotely true.
see:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

#19 sceptic claimed,
"overall antarctic ice is increasing."

That is not true either. Besides Cucumber was referring to ice shelves (floating on sea), not ice sheets (on land).

see:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/loss-of-antarctic-ice-has-soared-by-75-per-cent-in-just-10-years-769894.html

"Parts of the ice sheets covering Antarctica are melting faster than predicted, with the net loss of ice probably accelerating in recent years because of global warming, a study has found.

A satellite survey between 1996 and 2006 found that the net loss of ice from Antarctica rose by about 75 per cent as the movement of glaciers towards the sea speeded up.

Scientists estimate that that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet lost about 132 billion tons of ice in 2006, compared with a loss of 83 billion tons in 1996. In addition, the Antarctic peninsula lost about 60 billion tons of ice in 2006."

#21 contd.

However, it is true that ice is accumulating over much of the east Antarctic continent. That is an area which is very cold, with no foreseeable prospect of melting for a very long time. Thus any net change there is concerned with increases in snowfall.

Trying to pretend that global warming isn't happening because of such information is misguided.

#23 Dave from Barra

There is plenty of evidence. Just Google 'Milankovitch' and see where it takes you.

As for formal proof, only those who understand nothing of the methods of science would ask for such a thing, or dismiss inconvenient evidence that they do not like simply because it cannot be proved or has the status of 'theory'.

Oops, #20 Slioch should have read

"It was initiated by INCREASED solar insolation caused by changes in the Earth's orbit, enhanced by secondary increases in CO2."

Not that DfB or anyone noticed.

#25 Dave from Barra
"the preserve on the armchair scientist"

I think you mean "of" Dfb

The preserve on the armchair probably refers to my home made raspberry jam during my afternoon scones and tea.