CNN is talking about something called ‘Blog Action Day‘, which describes itself as follows:
Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web.
Yet would anyone care to bet that when they say ‘social’ change (such as deciding to do something yourself, such as recycling your plastic bottles) a great many of the contributors are actually talking about ‘political’ change (using the collective means of coercion to force people under threat of violence to be more ‘green’).
Of course such folks are just following the well establish and rather Orwellian conflation of opposites used exemplified by socialism, which I have often argued is the most ironic use of human language ever – a system by which all social interactions are forcibly replaced by intermediating politically derived formulae.
Well I would like to dedicate a previous samizdata blog post to “change.org” and the Blog Action Day jamboree, called My carbon footprint is bigger than your carbon footprint by the indispensable Michael Jennings, that one man global warming machine that we are privileged to have as a writer for our splendid blog.
You did your bit Perry. Don’t you feel all warm and fuzzy now?
Climate change has nothing to do with politics. Well, it does, but it shouldn’t. Science has no ideology. It is appropriate for people with different ideologies to disagree about *how* to solve the problem, but no one on either side should be denying it anymore than they would deny the earth is round.
Please read more here on my Blog Action Day post:
http://selfdestructivebastards.blogspot.com/2009/10/wake-up-humanity.html
There are many people who doubt the science of climate change. You don’t have to agree, but if you do not understand that a lot of people do not share your axiomatic acceptance, you need to get out more.
And still others think climate change is happening and will not be such a bad thing overall, so no ‘solutions’ are needed.
And many others doubt human actions have anything to do with it and so trying to ‘solve’ a solar problem is a waste of time.
The vast majority of discussions about climate change are entirely to do with politics: it is a very useful hook upon which to hang a wide variety of force based rent seeking political aspirations.
Oh and quoting so heavily debunked a source as “An Inconvenient Truth” is a bit like making an argument about archaeology and quoting Eric von Daniken.
An annual event? Funny, I don’t recall it happening last year…
But the science is conclusive. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
“Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion”
Unless you believe there is a conspiracy by journals like Science and Nature to cover up the truth, there’s no way for a rational person (on the left, right or centre) to deny it. You do realize that outsize of the US, the idea that global warming is an ideological battleground is a joke, right? Conservatives around the world don’t share this strange US point of view.
Speaking of An Inconvenient Truth, what if a Republican had made it?
http://selfdestructivebastards.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-if-republican-had-made.html
Maybe then all the Democrats would be denying global warming??
Sorry, just realized you may not be from the US, my apologies. Still, the argument stands.
There are many people who doubt the science of climate change.
The climate is clearly changing. There is nothing unusual about this. The climate is always changing. I’m happy to concede that the trend in recent decades has been to hotter temperatures. Again, nothing unprecedented about that. The world has hot periods and cold periods. The trend seems to have slowed or reversed over the last few years. This is not a short enough period of time to prove anything, but it does make you wonder how strong the trend is. Some of the data analysis that purports to show the trend has been presented in ways that deliberately or otherwise state the data in such ways that appear to indicate the trend is stronger than it is, and/or choose starting points and data series lengths that appear to show the trend as more abnormal than it is, in my opionion.
Again, with the impact of human activity, I am happy to concede an impact exists. There is a lot of human activity – it must have some impact on the climate. Whether it is a significant impact is another question.
Having those two thoughts, you look for a correlation, and find one between CO2 in the atmosphere and average temperature. One can be found, although it is not clear whether it is a causal relationship (CO2 levels vary historically before significant human activity existed, and a lot of the time CO2 increases seem to trail temperature changes rather than the other way round).
So how much are higher temperatures caused by higher CO2 levels, and how much of the increased CO2 level caused by human activity? The answer to the last question is clearly “quite a lot”, but that is not an answer to the question “How much?” Is it “70%? 90%? 100%? 120%? To be able to come up with a meaningful model, we have to have a good numerical answer, and we don’t remotely.
As to what impact increased CO2 levels have on average temperatures, there is much greater uncertainty. Basically you have to enter a fudge factor into your model, see how well it models the past, and hope you can then model the future successfully. A few people have created models that can just about model the past, but that doesn’t mean you have the mechanism right – it just means you have found a mathematical function that fits the points on your curve.
As it is, we have a few extremely crude mathematical / computer models that suppose mechanisms that go from human activity to CO2 release to global warming. They don’t agree with one another, and they are incredibly crude. (The Earth’s atmosphere is an extremely complex system. These models only have a tiny fraction of its complexity). They have a poor record of predicting the future.
The science of global warming ultimately boils down to saying that “The level of warming is unprecedented”. “Human releases of CO2 into the atmosphere are unprecedented”. “Therefore, the second causes the first”. This isn’t an inherently ridiculous thing to say. If climate change really is unprecedented then we would look for other unprecedented things as likely causes and human activity would be the likely one. We could then look for mechanisms and solutions, but we would largely be doing so with our eyes closed.
I will listen to somebody who more or less says this and that the risks of global warming are so great that we must do something about them, but somebody who simply states that the science is settled and beyond discussion is frankly not even worth arguing with.
Michael Jennings, if you believe the consensus of the scientific community is wrong, then it should be easy enough to fix it. Please publish a paper in Nature or Science and have it peer-reviewed. Or anyone else with evidence can do this as well. If the claims are well supported and withstand scrutinity, scientific opinion will have to change. Hell, such a dramatic result may be worthy of a Nobel Prize.
This was your “eco” blog post that had me smirking for hours, Perry.
Yeah, I always leave my computer on 24/7 too. Take that, Gaia.
And sorry mate, but poll after poll in the UK show people are more concerned with important things like terrorism and the economy, and even trivial things like graffiti, more than “the environment”, so wide spread scepticism towards what you think is the central issue of our time is hardly confined to crazed US neo-cons.
Albion, 40 percent of people in the US believe the Earth was create 6000 years ago and a similar number believe in UFOs. Not sure what the numbers are in the UK, but I think it’s pretty clear that public opinion has little to do with science or facts.
Canada Guy
Please feel free to put forward arguments and links. Please, however, refrain from “you should believe this because otherwise you must be stupid” arguments.
It’s nothing to do with “conservatives”; I couldn’t care less if my own Mum had made “An Inconvenient Truth”.
For anyone with half an education, you don’t have to do a lot of reading on this topic to see that there are plenty of areas of dispute and uncertainty in the science and climate models.
The fact that anyone who questions it is shouted down and dismissed as an imbecile isn’t, in my view, a reason to stop asking. And bracketing such people (including calling them “deniers”) with idiot hoax conspiracists (as Gore does) is just irritating.
So do please carry on, but you are quite wrong to assume that we post here because we’re ignorant Americans.
Global warming is a scam, they are all lie to us! read this: http://www.70news.com/2009/10/12/global-warming-is-scam-they-are-all-lie-to-us/
Yes, and we all think Nobel Prizes are very prestigious and important, right? After all, they could not possibly be awarded for ticking all the correct political boxes, heaven forbid.
If you think the science is beyond dispute, I can only assume you must be using some browser that inexplicably does not support any search engines.
And I take it all climatologists in Canada agree with you, eh?
m2p, I wasn’t calling anyone stupid. The point is that extraordinary evidence requires extraordinary proof. You can making a claim contrary to the entire scientific community, which has studied this intently for 20 years. That doesn’t mean you *must* be wrong, of course, the scientific community isn’t always right. But the burden of proof is on your end, or on others taking this position.
As I said, if your position is more supportable by the facts that the consensus, you should have no trouble getting your arguments and evidence published in a reputable scientific journal. Or are you suggesting there is a conspiracy among thousands of scientists to suppress the truth?
Of course global warming is an ideological battleground. Global warming is really about the adoption of an emissions trading system which turns CO2 into a multi trillion dollar tradeable commodity.
It has nothing to do with “saving the planet”, that’s a red herring, it is all about the left battleing the right over this new industry. If conservatives around the world did not understand this, then why did they adopt Cap&Trade? Of course they understood this, it meant billions in new revenue for their coffers. And some countries are not adopting Cap&Trade, like Australia for example. And hopefully, the US Senate has the backbone to delete or expunge the Cap&Trade componnant of the Waxman bill.
The other part of this strange behaviour is the constant referal the lefties make to figures of authority to try to convice people that CO2 drives the climate. Referring to that “Truth” movie and Al Gore’s opionions, or referring to Nature or Science journals. As if simply referring to their opinion makes AGW correct.
Referring to the journal Nature does not prove that CO2 is responsible for changing the climate. Neither are pictures of calving glaciers; these are evidence that the climate changes, they are not evidence that CO2 is the cause.
Yes, and we all think Nobel Prizes are very prestigious and important, right?
Well, the Nobel Prizes in the sciences genuinely are – prestigious at least, because they have been consistently given over time for the right achievements, although there is constant bitching about whether they have been given to the right people. As to whether they are important, well, that’s another question. They are very important I suspect to the winners’ egos, wives, almae matres, and employers, but I suspect most of the work would have been done anyway. It would be a bit of a stretch to award one for climate science. I suppose you could give the physics prize if you really wanted to stretch it, but the physics prize is not by tradition stretched. The chemistry and medicine prizes are often stretched in a particular way (to give prizes to biologists of various stripe), but not that way.
Perry, yes, I think I would agree with you regarding the Nobel, at least in terms of the Obama award, that was ridiculous. My point was just that achieving the result of swaying the consensus would be worthy of great international respect and admiration. In other words, if you have evidence on your side, there’s a lot of incentive for you to go ahead and try to publish.
And Timothy Ball is an embassment to Canada which has been widely discredited (just search google.) He hasn’t published anything on global warming in 14 years. He is linked to the oil industry and spent most of his career teaching geography. Not a very impressive reference.
There are loads of scientists who take the “heretical” position, and it does not require a “conspiracy” (just about all conspiracy theories are delusional) for large numbers of patronage and grant seeking people to latch onto a view that serves their narrow interests. All it takes requires a confluence of interests.
If you take the view that statistical models “prove” your case conclusively, all I can say to you is “hockey stick” and the serious multi-disciplinary controversy that surrounds that. Things are not quite as incontrovertible and beyond rational doubt as you seem to think. Moreover enough clearly wilful misrepresentation has occurred for me to no longer assume the purest of motives. Having been a consultant myself, I am all too aware that people tend to find the results and write the reports whoever is paying them wants to see.
Perry, if you are correct, how do you explain the inability of any scientist to publish a dissenting article in any major journal? The major journals don’t have a single editor making decisions, they have entire panels of experts reviewing submissions and examining the evidence.
Sure, people have their biases, but people in this position aren’t going to ignore hard data, or they never would have been successful scientists in the first place. I assume you understand the scientific method. The only explanation would seem to be that it is a “conspiracy” of thousands of scientists to “censor” the “truth”.
What other explanation do you have?
The burden of proof is on those making the assertion that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing catastrophic global warming. Ei qui affirmat, non qui negat…
Consensus is not proof, and does not remove that burden. Consensus should follow proof, not lead it, and that is what strikes so many of us as fishy about the anthropogenic theory: the consensus was achieved before any definitive proof.
Whether it is actually true or whether we are causing it may be up for debate. There is a lot of evidence that supports it. I think that it is our best interest to error on the side of caution and treat it as though it is a real threat.
If you were given a gun, one person said it has a bullet, the other said it was not loaded…. would you still hold it up to your head and pull the trigger?
No, but what we are being ‘asked’ to do is not to check the chamber, we are being ‘asked’ to give our gun to people we do not trust because ‘they know better’ and it is highly unlikely they will just give it back if we change our minds.
There are large numbers of people with excellent sceintific credentials who dissent from mainstream academic views (and therefore the people who control mainstream publications) and yet we are just told to ignore them and trust The Establishment. No thanks.
Much as I hate to reference wikipedia, here’s their list of scientists who do not go along with the IPCC’s assessment of climate change:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
There are also plenty of qualified opinion that counteracts the apparent consensus:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
That site has a handy quiz too:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html
My experience has been that the further you dig, the closer you get to the idea that people feel that “something” has to be done, and that we may as well back the best possible horse. But that’s a long way from even a reliable consensus on whether man-made climate change is a reality, and what is causing it. And at what cost? What if we’re backing the wrong horse?
You may have seen the recent discussion of the climate change models. They are forced to change because their models (the ones on which kyoto are based) did *not predict the current period of cooling*. Meh.
I am not sure if we have any effect on global warming but I think we still need to be energy efficient and help the environment.
“Man-made global warming” was altered to “global warming”. Then “man made climate change”. And now it’s just “climate change”. This affectation has been through more costume changes than Danny La Rue.
What these controlling, fascist, One-Worlders don’t want you to know is, the climate on Mars cools and warms in tandem with the earth, and not an SUV or a power station in site.
This is a political agenda and I note that it is governments and Lefties who are the most enthusiastic supporters of this rubbish, because there is nothing governments and Lefties love more than control.
Concensus among experts is vastly overrated. A few centuries ago, it was ‘settled’ that the Earth was flat and that the sun orbited the earth. Accourding to Canada Guy, there’s considerable concensus among Americans that the earth was created 6000 years ago (an assertion that I dispute, btw). Let’s have no more of this ‘concensus’ and ‘settled science’ nonsense.
Returning to an earlier post by Brain M, let’s posit for the moment that there is some point to modifying the atmosphere as a conscious decision. After all, why is ‘man-made CO2’ bad, but ‘natural’ CO2 caused by raging forest fires, volcanic outgassing and marine biota isn’t? Let’s just work on the assumption that regardless of the cause, we want to have control over the concentartion of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Rather than reducing CO2 concentration by reducing or changing industrial activity, why don’t we hear of scientific research to counteract the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere? Isn’t CO2 just ‘plant food’? It would seem to me that increased plant growth which could be realized by increased temperatures would be an excellent way to sequester all that nasty carbon.
Where’s the research (and activist support) for pumping inert reflective aerosols into the atmosphere to reduce the earth’s albedo? Or increased efforts to refine an existing technology such as Nuclear power (I mean, even James Lovelock thinks it’s a good idea. How can *HE* be wrong?) so that we can switch over to providing 150% of our current energy requirements via nuclear. How about devices that are effectively reverse-geothermal heat-pumps? The earth’s mantle is a huge potential heat-sink – and it’s already pretty hot. Another few degrees down there probably wouldn’t hurt.
The true measure of a culture’s advancement is the ubiquity of energy per capita. With sufficient energy available, mankind can overcome many otherwise insurmountable technological problems.
Fact is, the accusation that the eco-movement *is* highly politicised and devoted to neo-luddism has substantial justification. The symbiotic, nay incestuous, relationship between government and academia explains the politicization of science, and the proles are catching on.
Science is not Facebook. Galileo was right, end every single theologian in Rome in 1619 was wrong. I knew the AGW crowd were in trouble when they had to resort to lobbying their governments with petitions. When authorities make appeals to authority from their own peer group, it looks awfully lame.
So, if the scientific community has any expectation of ‘getting its way’, it needs to be able to demonstrate some level of observational competence, and come up with a variety of responses to the crisis.
Overcoming public skepticism would seem to be a good start. Deliver a coherent explanation for the Hockey Stick, and why its existance doesn’t derail your argument. Talk openly abouyt the source, reliability, and limitations of the ‘original’ data that we now find has been ‘lost’ (a bit like the Angel Moroni, but more of that later). Account for the discrepancies in currently accepted models. Explain why current CO2 atmospheric concentrations are ‘bad’ when there’s reasonable palaeoclimate evidence that the CO2 levels were an order of magnitude higher until the Carboniferous; a period that enjoyed considerable biodiversity. Demonstrate to us that the scientific community now understands the oceanic carbon solubility pump, and can predict with reasonable accuracy, subsequent behavior (which would be easier to do over the course of a few years, than modelling the whole Earth’s climate). Advocates could also help their cause by not lying about polar ice accumulation and the *overall* quantity of ice laid down. Smart people would realize that if they’re caught in a lie once, everything they say in the future will be suspect. Oh, and they can stop treating skeptics as morlocks and holocaust-deniers.
Finally, come up with a range of solutions.
If ‘AGW Specialists’ want to be instrumental in saving the world, they have to realize that the untermenschen are not utterly stupid, and must be led, not driven.
Alternatively, you could simply appeal directly to our fears by officially redefining the movement as a religion, which would be a slam-dunk that wouldn’t amaze anyone.
Intermediating, politcally-derived formulae.
There can be only one.
Like Southern California;but, with more fortifications?
Yes, if discounting the moats of fire.
I am a carbon-based life-form. I will not be made into a
silicon-based form. Not even by gaseous emmissions.
Nor, by exagerated claims in career mind-dead resumes
of those with such intentions.
i gotta ask canada guy…
if Co2 is causing the gradual heating we have witnessed the past however many years, why has the heating stopped the last 10 years? the accumulation of co2 in the atmosphere certainly has not abated. seems like a pretty big hole in the theory, no? is there something i am missing?
http://another-green-world.blogspot.com/2009/10/they-lied-to-you-about-climate-change.html
The real problem is that global framework is based on emissions trading….fine except it doesn’t work!
Canada Guy,
The main problem with your argument is that it is an example of Argument from Authority – you’re not arguing on the basis of the content of a theory or the evidence for or against, but on who is saying it. That’s a logical fallacy that we can all spot straight away, and which is a dead give away that wherever you got this from, it wasn’t a scientific source. Science is adamantly opposed to all form of Argument from Authority. As the Royal Society used to say, Nullius in Verba.
Regarding the consensus you report, virtually none of those statements by scientific bodies are made by their members, or based on an examination of the evidence. They’re made by committees of bureaucrats for essentially political reasons, or because they’ve taken some other scientist’s word for it. Surveys have shown that roughly 20-30% of climatologists are sceptical of the IPCC position (e.g. Von Storch), which while not a majority, is not an insignificant number either. Peer review is no guard against error. And there have been plenty of papers published casting doubt on AGW theory. (And yes, in peer-reviewed journals, for whatever that is worth.) When the operating definition of a “reputable” journal is “one that won’t publish sceptical papers”, something is wrong with your definition. When you even consider the journal, rather than the content of the argument or evidence itself, it’s not science.
I don’t have time right now to go through the actual scientific evidence against AGW, but I will tomorrow, if you’re still around. But I recommend you should start by learning to recognise Argument from Authority, and automatically rejecting any source that relies upon it. We’ll talk through the science tomorrow.
If people really believed that C02 emissions were a danger they would campaign for getting rid of the regulations that cripple the nuclear industry (by the way, these regulations do NOT help “health and safety”).
Some environmentalists (whether correct or not) are at least honest and do campaign for getting rid of these regulations – James “the Gaia man” Lovelock is an example.
But most “environmentalists” are just posers – striking a radical pose for street cred (and for lots of nice government grants). Windmills and so on will not make bit of difference – and “scientists” who say they will (whether UN scientists or not) are lying.
As for CNN – this grabbing at the “Green” issue is like a drowning man grabbing at a straw. It will not support his weight – and he is going to drown anyway.
CNN is not long for this world.
Indeed I will stick my neck out and say it will be bankrupt within a year.
As will Newsweek and Time – indeed I believe that Newsweek will be gone within six months.
If only the wretched “Economist” with its “we must have Cap and Trade and we must pay the Chinese to take part” position would join Newsweek and Time in the dustbin (British for trashcan) of history.
As for conservation – this seems to amount to various very expensive propaganda campaigns (lots of leaflets and flying off to various conferences) and an effort to poison people with mercury containing lighbulbs.
“They are not poison”.
They why is Kettering Council (like every other council in Britian) having to spend a fortune on clearly up tiny amounts of mercury – when the amounts of mercury involved are a tiny fraction of the amount that the govenrment demands everyone shove into their homes in the new lightbulbs.
Once the mystery of “climate change” has been solved
And “What’s green and causes CC?” is no longer a popular riddle,
The legacy of the era most likely will be:
“Never in recorded history, has so much been made by so many over so little”.
(With apologies to the late, great Winston Churchill).
And the “anti-spam . . .Turing code:” is most readable.
(But apparently it wasn’t entered correctly the first time,
nonetheless).
Actually, yes; although saying it’s a conspiracy is a bit overwrought. Many scientists make their living from grant money. It is to their advantage to “sex up” their research to keep their budgets high. This happened with Artificial Intelligence research back in the 1970s and 1980s, as a matter of fact. That’s not to say that their topics of research are necessarily invalid. A.I. and climate research are both perfectly legitimate subjects for. But in both cases, the potential consequences were hyped to increase the likelihood of keeping grant money flowing.
Furthermore, those who feel that free market economics, industry, and modern technology cause more harm than good are eager to latch on to whatever trend they see as promoting their cause. It is just this fact that has led to science becoming propaganda.
One of the biggest differences between the AGW and skeptics camps seems to be professional background. Government paid scientists are heavily in the AGW camp, while engineers appear to be heavily represented among the skeptics.
It seems to me that the biggest complaint by engineers is about quality. Compared to modern engineering Best Practices, peer review is simply not a “Quality Process”.
Where’s the traceability? Archiving? Specifications? Revision history? Verification and Validation? Review history? Did anyone check any of the supporting data?
All “Peer Review” means is a couple people looked at it, found it interesting, and didn’t see any glaring flaws.
Canada Guy: While everyone else is piling on you for your stance on AGW (which I have to side with them, you know, because they’re right), I’d like to nitpick on your choice of words earlier.
Earth is NOT round. It is, in fact, roughly speaking, spherical. More precisely, it is an oblate spheroid. Even more precisely, it is a geoid.
Which is to say, the Earth is Earth-shaped. And more precise than that you cannot get.
Before you can say, ‘No such thing’, what is happening to the ice at the North Pole? Photos in The Australian seem to prove that the ice cover is shrinking, and people are predicting that within 20 years it will be open sea.
Is this true?
Or could the warming phase have stopped, with some of the effects still working their way through the system?
Canada guy, here in Australia, we are sceptical of many alarmist claims, because we’ve had different scares over the years. The Barrier Reef has been threatened with complete destruction on many occasions, if you believe the sensationalist media, but it is still in place! Things like that breed incredulity.
Those concensus scientists- have they ever explained what caused the Mediaeval Warming?
Albion – Brits aren’t worried about “Climate Change” because Great Britain doesn’t have Climate, it has Weather …
Over the past few years, i have found 2 fairly simple questions to separate out the Scientists versus the Cultists in Global Warming, now Climate Change …
1) If the Arctic Ice Cap melted suddenly (instantaneously), how much would sea level rise around the planet ? The Cultists tend to answer in the 20 feet to 200 feet range (the Islands are being inundated crowd) … the Scientists/Engineers answer that, since the Arctic Ice Cap is floating ice, sea level would not change markedly …
2) If CO2 is such a problem, then should the industrialised world not be building more Nuclear Power Stations to replace the fossil-fuel-burning power stations ? Cultists tend to be rabidly anti-nuclear-power … Scientists/Engineers tend to support more nuclear power … (after all, if *France* can get 80%+ of its electricity generation from nuclear, and still export electricity to neighbouring countries, then surely the US can ramp up to where more than 50% of its electricity is from nuclear) …
An interesting topic to Google — President Eisenhower warned about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell speech. Every good Leftist remembers those words.
In the next paragraph, he went on to warn about the dangers of the government becoming the main sponsor of scientific research, and how this would inevitably lead to the politicization of science. No one remembers that part of his speech.
Remember that Eisenhower had been head of a major university before running for US president. The whole embarassing episode of alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming certainly proves that the old general was right.
Of course, after the overblown heterosexual AIDS epidemic scare of the late 80s & 90s (promulgated by the usual suspects & by a concensus of grant-seeking “scientists”), you would think that the act would be wearing rather thin by now. Which it is. Except with confirmed Leftists.
Canada Guy-
I just have to join in the piling on. You say that the entire scientific community is behind this global warming alarmism. I dispute that, as I personally know 3 scientists (a biologist, an electrical engineer, and an aerospace engineer) who would guffaw in your face, had you made such a ridiculous claim to them. That pedantically rules out the ‘entire’ community, but also I think I can say with confidence that there are many other scientists who think the scare over global warming is complete bunk. There isnt anything close to consensus on the issue.
Frankly, I am getting too old to be a willing conscript to yet another ‘Save This’ campaign. I am actively opposing people who demand that I be environmentally conscious, a good citizen, or even well-mannered.
Alasdair, your engineers and scientists would be wrong, because the warmer waters would speed up the melting of the ice on Greenland, and that would add to the rise in the ocean-level, by an unknown amount.
Canada Guy.
Do please explain how, if climate change is caused by modern technology, Greenland between about 980 and 1350 was very successfully farmed for wheat as well as many other crops, whereas now, you are lucky to get in a single crop of radishes (growing season 28 days) a year.
Global climate change, been happening for 4.5 BILLION years. Get used to it>
Yes, there is. It’s maybe not a conspiracy, but they are both managed by the members of the same cult. They accept only warming papers and reject skeptical ones. And there is no peer review – just the same group of cult members approving each other’s papers without any review.
A series of blatantly non-scientific papers, full of errors, is being published time and again. (The hockey-stick papers).
Young scientists are afraid to speak up, because once you are branded “denier”, your academic career is over, and journals won’t publish you. Only old, retired, scientist have the courage to “deny” – to tell the truth – they have nothing to lose.
Stalinism and political-correctness rule at the universities.
The “scientific” (climate) community has descended into a deep pit.
The whole world is crazy. They have adopted (in the US and EU) the notion that we can burn our food (ethanol), and this is a “sustainable solution”. This madness is now written into law.
I have just noticed that Cameron has made a “green” speech. We should be more green, he is reported as saying, for that would mean cheaper living and more jobs. It will also cost untold billions of pounds we haven’t got. So can someone explain how we are going to spend untold billions, we haven’t got, is going to save us money?
I only ask?????
I think that climate science is far too complex to be modelled accurately enough for any projection, they must have made huge assumptions with little, if any, justification.
That’s what the climate science models predict. How dare you question them ? Are you a flat-earther ?
How is the weather in America. I heard a report that winter had arrived early, with snow! Is this true? And did a climate scientist predict it?
Chinese Translater- you should be more sceptical! The news media like reporting sensationalist items, with minimal checking of truth. Those storms might have been caused by global warming, or they might just have been random storms, with the weather averaging out the same each year. After all, if the oceans were rising, the Maldives would now bw underwater!
“Oh Canada Guy”, whose stats are surely bent……49% of American’s believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago? I think not my child, you must get your news from DailyKos….