are there still any climate sceptics out there??? It's only 5mins...

[mockney piers]

In all fairness the next ice age is coming

[silverfox]

Just catching up with all this, but may I preface my remarks below by saying Casper, it's good to read a post where someone has actually stopped to think before posting.

As a sceptic I'm prepared to accept that the upward trend is global warming. Many clever scientists say this is so and I've no reason to disbelieve them. I'm also prepared to accept our (humanity's) actions/lifestyle are contributing to this global warming. To what extent, what we can do about it, is open to debate.

However I remain sceptical for many reasons. Not least - if I ask a meteorologist what the weather will be like next April when I take my holiday in Devon, for example, besides looking at me as if I'm mad, the best 'forecast' I could hope for would be some aggregate of the normal temperatures, seasonal weather you would normally experience in Devon in April. Fair enough, its an unfair question to ask. However, I read articles telling me in 2050 our climate will resemble (tick one of the following) a) similar to the time of the dinosaurs b) the seas will rise 65 metres c) we'll be growing bananas in Scotland. Such climatic prophesy is astounding!

1. It may have been the media, but whoever coined the phrase 'saving the planet' has done this whole issue a disservice. Climate change has got nothing to do with saving the planet - rather it's about humans' future on this planet. The planet does not need our help thanks very much and will cope quite nicely with carbon dioxide/monoxide/methane atmospheres etc for the next billion years or so. As far as the earth is concerned it will deal with what is, as it has done with no help from us for four or five billion years.

2. I am mystified by how many people are prepared to put their complete and utter trust in the scientists on this debate. I suppose in our secular age the scientists are the new Gods. Their 'expert' advice, opinions cannot be questioned. To question the prevailing orthodoxy is heretical. In fact the term 'flat-earther' is now being bandied about as an insult even on this forum. Ironically, those using this insult miss the point. Belief in a flat earth WAS the orthodoxy of the day. The educated classes of the time all believed this was so and to question it meant being burnt at the stake. BUT IT WASN'T CORRECT. The global warming debate is a bit like that. Scientists for all their purported objectivity are as susceptible to being caught up in their own belief systems as a group of nuns in a convent synchronising their menstrual cycles.

3. I am shocked at the wave of eco-authoritarianism that surrounds the whole debate. People who you'd think butter wouldn't melt in their mouth become absolute despots and dictators. Give up meat to save the world! Ration air flights! Cycle to work! etc etc. As EDOldie rightly pointed out, to question any of the half-truths and myths is traitorous.

[Huguenot]

There's a difference between 'weather' and 'climate', and you need to address this before looking at the issue.

Largely a decade long snapshot of some of the hottest years are insufficient to illustrate any change. Thus '1998 was the hottest year ever' (or especially 'it's been cooling since then') are non arguments for climate change. Also to a degree, recent reductions in arctic ice are more likely down to natural variation rather than climate change. If it did it every year that would be a concern.

The best illustration is the 0.8 degree rise over the last 100 years - 0.6 degree change over the last forty.

The arguments of teachers in the 70s were subject to the knowledge of the time. There is no doubt that Earth should be undergoing a cooling phase. It is in the right shape in its orbital cycle, and it is in the right place in terms of solar activity.

In that sense it is all the more shocking that it is not, and that studies of every possible permutation of climate-based event records have demonstrated we're undergoing a major swerve away from the normal global cycle.

Only a fool would argue the Earth didn't undergo changes according to natural cycles, but it takes extraordinary stupidity to argue that we are not now moving outside these cycles and that the only additional factors are man-made influences.

This is EXACTLY what climate change is all about.

The extreme nature of some possible climate change consequences (rather than prophesies, this is not religion) are based on possible outcomes of a number of factors. The results throw up a standard bell curve in which extreme change is at one end, and no change at the other.

That some outcomes denote 'no change' is not grounds for justifying no action, as it's all about likelihoods. That's what stats are - most likely is the 'middling' outcome. In this case stated as 2 to 6 degree warming.

Where some scientists raise extreme concern involves secondary outcomes of warming - particularly the release of methane hydrates. This is sixty times more warming than CO2, and in some estimates would entail the end of human civilization as we know it. It blows the stats out of the water, and suggests a state of the planet where sea levels are 65m higher (that has been experienced in the past).

The 'fright factor' is that there is evidence from the fossil record that such tipping points can create massive change in very few years.

The end of civilization is not because humans can't adapt, but because they have a nasty habit of going to war over limited resources - and things are likely to get really limited.

To argue that 'flat earth' was the orthodoxy of the day, and Galileo was an isolated maverick has no bearing on the climate change debate.

Flat earthers were characterised by a refusal to engage science and experimentation as it challenged faith-based assumptions about the place of humans at the centre of the universe. Galileo conversely trusted science and experimentation and proved his point.

Climate deniers reject science and experimentation in favour of faith-based assumptions. They have nothing in common with Galileo. Most climate deniers argue philosophical hypotheticals - or even politics - or just nitpick for this reason. They have no case of their own.

Climate denial is about avoiding a small 1% cost in living standards now, in favour of dumping a 70% cost on the future. It's exactly the same principle as the Credit Crunch. This is why it's also driven mainly by ageing, greedy conservative males. They couldn't care less about future suffering.

[Huguenot]

And if ever I wanted proof that climate denial was political rather than scientific...

(From the Express)

"The report, by the respected European Foundation, also argues that a higher level of carbon dioxide (CO2) ? the main greenhouse gas ? is not a problem because it helps to boost crop yields.

Political analyst Jim McConalogue, who wrote the report, said: ?This demonstrates how..." etc. etc.

Edited to add...

I should add that Jim McConalogue has no background in science - only in political philosophy and poetry. He is a 28 year old who writes on conservative blogs that the biggest failure of the Conservatives is their willingness to engage with Europe, and his Facebook photo is a Union Jack.

The really really pathetic things, is that a national newspaper would publish his ballshit as an exposition on climate science, and leave deluded old men to think it demonstrates a lack of scientific consensus. WTF. You believe this idiot?

[mockney piers]

Regards 'saving the planet' there's always time for this gem from the mash.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/i'll-be-just-fine,-says-planet-20080306774/

[mockney piers]

Silverfox, I don't think your flat earth analogy holds water.

Flat earth was an orthodoxy imposed on people from the point of view of faith.

It was science that undermined that. Indeed eratosthenes had made a pretty good crack at the circumference of the earth a good seventeen centuries before Columbus.

It was the study of ancient thought and science that undermined catholic orthodoxy in many areas, theological, philosophical and scientific, including the one mentioned.

Climate change is not faith based, it is based in solid science.

Most of the arguments against are based from economic, political even sociological, but the science remains solid.

As I've said untold times now, there are debates still raging on individual and wider points, but no climate scientists debate that there is a man made effect going on irrespective of the usual global and regional fluctuations.

I think the biggest damage done is by the press because by their very nature they want big dramatic stories that sell papers and they're not scientists.

It's the same reason noone has a clue as to whether tea will kill you stone dead or make you live an extra hundred years.

See Ben Goldacres columns passim for the effect this has had on the medical scientists and times it by a hundred.

So to quite an extent I don't blame people for just carrying on drinking tea, and frankly boiling their full kettles to do so.

[Brendan]

Marmora Man Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The age of the argument doesn't,

> necessarily, give it credibility.

Yeah but that?s not the point I was making. What I was trying to get at is that I don?t understand why I keep on encountering people who think that it is a concept dreamed up in the last ten years. Surely they must have come across it before some right wing idiot on an oil company?s payroll started telling them it was an issue of ?belief? or some hippies invaded their village green.

Or maybe I?m just underestimating the general populace?s outstanding capacity for utter ignorance once more.

[HAL9000]

Brendan Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I still can?t see what motivation scientist would

> have to just make this shit up. What cause are

> they forwarding?

The only motivation I can think of is Peak Oil. If people can be persuaded to fear a catastrophe caused by man-made climate change then that might encourage them to adopt the lower living standards that Peak Oil will force upon us in the near future?

It would be the mother of all conspiracy theories, though!

[JohnL]

I'm non commital on AGW - but something is wrong and I have a feeling I'm being lied too - whether malicously or because governments want to do 'the right thing'

Why is East Anglia refusing to give the original source data out ?

I hear rumours that if you take out some seemingly insignificant figures - the hockey stick graph changes completely.

We need a proper debate - whilst also limiting pollution, production and perhaps population.

[Huguenot]

I'm not sure that 'original source data' is any better than seeing your medical records, or interpreting every sniffle as a symptom of disease.

A white tongue (for example) can present in conditions ranging from nothing to poorly cleaned teeth, thrush, alcoholic heptatitis, AIDS, necrotic fasciitis or ebola.

It's only through a combination of factors - that are extremely difficult to understand without a decade of careful study and experience (which is what doctors do) that you can draw a reasonable conclusion as to the real cause.

What we've got here is the climatic equivalent of alcoholic liver disease. We're killing our planet's ability to cleanse itself through over-indulgence.

In climate deniers you've got a range of players:

Firstly those who won't go to the doctor (or do the science) because either they insist alcohol is their right, or death is natural, or that they're quite fine for the moment - just the odd hangover.

Secondly those who keep getting second opinions from doctors until they find one who is corrupt enough, under educated enough or simply not in the right discipline to assure them that the symptoms all mean nothing.

Then they believe only what they want to hear.

Either way three things will happen:

* Interpreting their own records won't tell them anything

* They'll still die painfully of alcoholic hepatitis

* They'll wish they'd listened to a real doctor and done the right things earlier

Frankly JohnL, that's where you are. Not only are people trying to help you, but the desperate situation is that you're taking everyone with you - you'll kill them all painfully with your attitudes - your children, your grandchildren. Shame on you, because you will regret it.

[fractionater]

Climategate scandal

[Brendan]

Science and Public Policy Institute

[Brendan]

If I'm going to get sucked into the circus.

[SeanMacGabhann]

This has become a bit like arguing with people who think 911 was an inside job and have watched some internet documentaries to prove it....

[Brendan]

But seriously, sweet christ on bike. It has been know for decades that greenhouse gasses in an environment increase temperature. The idea that we may be producing enough of them to have a global effect is hardly a massive leap of faith.

But you know, who am I to question all the sceptics who no doubt all have PHDs and professorships in climatology to be able to so confidently rebuke the scientific community?

Really it?s a privilege to be privy to the self-important assertions of such intellectual heavy weights.

[mockney piers]

Loving the analogy Huguenot, man has become the proverbial bitter late middle aged man sucking on a cigarette, wheezing "what do doctors know? If it was up to doctors we wouldn't have any fun"

[Brendan]

I still know some, otherwise intelligent, people who insist that smoking isn?t bad for them despite how foul they feel every morning because of it.

[mockney piers]

Just read fractionater's document.

Wow, simply wow.

Agree with sean that it really has become like talking to 9/11 truthers. The only thing it didn't mention was the black un helicopters though it came close once or twice.

"lying even to children". Its comic genius is so good I'll forgive it the bad grammar.

[SeanMacGabhann]

I had to sit at the Bloomsbury Theatre this week and watch Johnny Ball (Johnny f***ing Ball!!) lost the plot and rant (not argue or outline) but rant at how C02 emmissions were as nothing compared to beetle farts (or some such) FFS

Between that and this thread I'm just not going to bother arguing anymore - it's absolutely pointless.

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

I think you'll find that's the eight pints and six chasers that produces that effect, Brendan, not the harmless cigarettes.

[DaveR]

I think the doctor analogy is a good one, but shouldn't obscure the fact that (i) treatment of complex conditions will not always lead to agreement (or even concensus) amongst professionals and (ii) when you're deciding on treatment, cost is a factor. Insisting on at least some kind of cost-benefit analysis for proposed measure to address climate change does not make you a denier or a loon (and that includes wider environmental costs/benefits). As I observed earlier, building lots of nuclear power stations is one way of reducing our CO2 emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels, but it's not a universally popular option, to say the least.

[bignumber5]

the medical analogy only goes so far, daveR:

Certainly, some doctors will recommend certain types of chemotherapy for lung cancer, others will not. None of them are denying that lung cancer exists, can be fatal and has a single behaviour that can be predominantly linked to it's causality.

I think the point I'm making there is self explanitory.

I actually don't give a monkey's if people deny that climate change is man-made (however mental that makes them) as long as they conceed that the solution needs to be man-made. Don't get me started on the plebs that don't believe in it at all - I too had to listen to the insane ramblings of Johnny Ball earlier this week...

[edit for typos]

[SteveT]

Last month was the warmest November I can remember, there certainly is a change in the winters compared with what I put up with in my youth.

I rather like global warming as I don't have to wade through as much snow as I once did.

[charliecharlie]

you may be speaking too soon....

[mockney piers]

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