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quote:

Originally posted by The17sss http://www.americanthinker.com/2009...er_nerds_1.html http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/...e-smoking-code/ -you're welcome

i'm sorry, but i don't base my understanding of climate change on al gore's graph. i base my understanding upon the fact that carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas and an industrial pollutant that mankind is dumping into the atmosphere at an exhaustive rate without even questioning the limitations of this model or accounting for the economic externalities intrinsic to this process. my concern in this regard is just an extension of my concern for mass consumption, mass wasting and exploitative commerce. i value the quality of the air i breath as well as the environment i live in. were climate change a farce, i would still oppose coal-fire power plants because they are utterly toxic to all life.

I think this is the best reply I could never give about this nonsense:

quote:

Science forgotten in climate emails fuss No one identifies any scientific flaws in Phil Jones's work, yet the 'fallen idol' narrative is too alluring for the media to resist By Myles Allen It is odd that we still don't take climate change seriously. Judging from the acres of newsprint being devoted to the subject right now, you might find that remark surprising. But look at the furore over the University of East Anglia emails: environmentalists hand-wringing as if the end of the world had suddenly been brought forward; their opponents crowing that the whole of climate science has to start again from scratch. Can you imagine this kind of response if the subject of the emails had been something we actually care about, such as health or the economy? The discovery of the HIV virus involved one of the murkiest incidents in the history of science. It's an insult to UEA's Phil Jones and his colleagues to even suggest the comparison, but it serves to make the point. Reporters on the HIV affair always scrupulously stressed that although the integrity of some of the individuals involved was called into question, the evidence that HIV causes Aids was unaffected. People might have died if the public had been misled on that point. Whereas if it's only about climate change � A colleague working in astrophysics was expressing bemusement to me yesterday about why the reputation of British science was apparently under threat, given that no evidence had actually emerged of scientific misconduct. Her specific question was: "Has anyone found evidence of an error in a published paper or dataset?" If they had, then of course the error would need to be corrected, which happens in science all the time. If it could be proved that figures had been deliberately altered to give a specific result then it would be very serious, but so far no evidence has emerged from these Climatic Research Unit (CRU) emails of any error in the HadCRUT instrumental temperature record at the centre of the row, never mind proof of deliberate intent to mislead. How often have you heard that repeated, clearly, by the mainstream press reporting on this incident? Even if they were reporting on Berlusconi's sex life they would be more careful. Berlusconi can afford better lawyers than Jones can. Take, for example, the "trick" of combining instrumental data and tree-ring evidence in a single graph to "hide the decline" in temperatures over recent decades that would be suggested by a naive interpretation of the tree-ring record. The journalists repeating this phrase as an example of "scientists accused of manipulating their data" know perfectly well that the decline in question is a spurious artefact of the tree-ring data that has been documented in the literature for years, and that "trick" does not mean "deceit". They also know their readers, listeners and viewers won't know this: so why do they keep doing it? What is particularly ironic is that a favourite graph in the climate sceptic community a few years ago entitled "Most accurate global average temperature" did precisely this. It stitched temperatures from the satellite-based temperature record from 1979 onwards together with the surface temperature record before then. At that time the satellite record showed no evidence of warming, so one might call this a handy trick to hide the recent warming in the surface temperature record. Did that make it evil? I wouldn't say so: there were concerns about the impact of incomplete coverage and something called the urban heat island effect on the surface temperature record, so combining the two data sources might have been legitimate, provided it was clear what was done and why. This particular figure has fallen out of favour since an error was discovered in the satellite data processing which, when corrected, revealed the satellites were actually showing warming after all. Perhaps the most concrete example of journalists claiming to reveal "problems" with the CRU temperature record was a report on Newsnight (widely redistributed) in which a software engineer criticised computer code contained in the leaked email package. Neither of the two pieces of code Newsnight examined were anything to do with the HadCRUT temperature record at all, which is actually maintained at the Met Office. Newsnight's response, when I challenged them on this, was: "Our expert's opinion is that this is climate change code." Presumably, then, the quality of the code I use to put together problems for our physics undergraduates shows that we should not trust results from my colleagues who work on the Large Hadron Collider on the grounds that "it is all physics code". Newsnight have declined to retract the story. One can understand the blogosphere reacting as it has done, but why has mainstream journalism collectively decided to treat the story in this way? The bottom line is that journalism deals not in facts, but in "narratives". And the narrative of the fallen idol is clearly a great way to fill the airwaves � witness the reality television industry. So the narrative journalists have collectively decided upon is that a few scientists may have manipulated their data, and either (a) it doesn't matter because the evidence for human influence on climate is so strong or (b) this shows the whole edifice is now crumbling, depending on their editor's predilections. And George Monbiot laments that the high priests of his climate change religion have let him down. All without any evidence that any number, anywhere, is actually wrong. Journalists, who always find numbers irritating, are revelling in the fact that they are back in the driving seat. By making the story about the individual scientists, rather than scientific results, they can go back to reporting on the story as they see fit without being constrained by scientific evidence. This is all particularly painful for those of us who know and have the deepest respect for Jones and his colleagues. Our instinct, of course, is to stand up and defend his integrity. But we know that if we do so, journalists weave this into their chosen narrative as "scientists circling the wagons to defend their own". The Times report accompanying the statement released yesterday by UK climate scientists was a case in point: rather than simply reporting the boring story that scientists agree there is nothing wrong with the data after all, they had to go and hunt out a "human interest" angle of some scientist who claimed that he felt pressured by the Met Office into signing the statement (ridiculously � many of us who signed spend our professional lives annoying the Met Office). Even the senior figures in the World Meteorological Organisation are letting themselves get swept along, pointing out that even if we leave out the CRU dataset the evidence for human influence on climate is still strong. While true, this misses the point. If we allow personal attacks on individual scientists or criticism of irrelevant software to be used as an excuse to discount data that people don't like, it will be open season. Presumably they will be hunting through the emails of someone involved in the Nasa temperature series next, and so it will go on. None of us can imagine what Phil Jones is going through, and all of us know that it might be our turn next. For all I know someone is already sorting through my emails on a Russian web server. But for the record, if they do decide to pick on me, I don't want people out there defending my integrity. I want people out there defending my results. Because we are scientists, and this is what we do.

[Source]

It's tragic that so many people with no training in climatology whatsoever are suddenly experts unveiling a scandal... now, more than ever, because of a few leaked e-mails that say very little, if anything.

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss You buy into utopian liberal farces, and believe massive expansions of government is for the best? Really?

So you aren't an AGW skeptic?

I'm not using connotation here, I'm asking a question. Do you or don't you believe that there is a scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic global warming?

quote:

Originally posted by Yohan so, lots of hot aussie chicks running around naked? sounds like win to me

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Blame it on the satellite * Nov 25th 2009, 15:04 by The Economist BACK in 1970, NASA launched a satellite called IRIS that measured infrared radiation emanating from the Earth. In 1996, the Japanese Space Agency launched a satellite called IMG that did more or less the same thing. In 2001, John E. Harries of the Imperial College of Science and Technology's Space and Atmospheric Physics Laboratory compared the measurements of the two satellites to see how infrared radiation from the Earth had changed in the intervening 27 years (the IMG measurements were for 1997). What he found was this: The longwave radiation emanating from Earth had dropped at the signature frequencies where infrared radiation is absorbed by greenhouse gases. It hadn't dropped at any of the other frequencies, indicating the drop was not due to any fall in solar radiation, but to the increase in greenhouse gases. Energy does not disappear. The Earth was absorbing radiation from the sun, and failing to re-radiate it back into space. Where did all that extra radiation go? We already know the answer. The Earth got hotter. This paper by scientists at NOAA, NASA, and the University of Leeds's School of Earth and Environment estimates the rise in total heat content of the Earth since 1950. The data are drawn from surface and atmospheric temperature measurements and from this paper's measurements of ocean temperatures for the top 700 metres. The figure looks like this: And this, from Skeptical Science (where I also got the above graphs), is a graph of atmospheric CO2 versus global temperature through the 20th century. Of course, the relationship between atmospheric particles and climate is much more complicated than a simple CO2-v-temperature graph can capture. So what happens when you combine the positive radiative forcings (tending to raise temperature) from C02, black carbon, cloud cover, ozone, and other greenhouse gases; the negative radiative forcings (tending to decrease temperature) from volcanic and man-made aerosols; and changes in the Earth's albedo (the reflective effect of color), and plot all of that against temperature? According to NASA data (again, graph courtesy of Skeptical Science), you get this: ...where the sharp dips correspond to increased volcanic eruptions. There is a high-temperature anomaly in the early 1940s; the anomaly disappears if you stop using sea-temperature data from American ships during the second world war, which were probably accidentally measuring their own engine heat. The basic story is that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are rising, and producing a long, steady trend towards higher temperatures, with variations and noise. And this is a graph of global CO2 levels for the past 10,000 years. What else? Ninety-seven percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that anthropogenic global warming is happening. Apparently a few climate-change scientists got so annoyed at denialists that they sent some strategising emails to each other. The latest climate-change summary statement from Britain's Met Office, NERC, and Royal Society notes that the decade 2000-2009 was the warmest decade since humans started reliably measuring temperatures 150 years ago, and that things look significantly worse now than they did at the time of the last IPCC report in 2007. And Australia is on fire again. And that, for those who are asking, is what I think a balanced post on the climate-change situation as of today should look like.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/demo...n_the_satellite

The only thing I'll add as an addendum is this, from Gallup:



You're really going to write off hundreds of scientific opinions in studies ranging from carbon analysis of Antarctic ice shelves to the carbon in oyster fossils by saying that all of science is built on a pre-conceived conclusion? You're one step away from saying that evolution is a pre-determined conclusion that some shadowy corporations are willing to shell out money to confirm.

In fact, in answer to "do you believe in evolution?":


So maybe you are. More of the general population in the US believes in AGW than evolution.

Another must-read:

quote:

I Read Through 160,000,000 Bytes of Hacked Files And All I Got Was This Lousy E-Mail by Nate Silver @ 4:45 PM Bookmark and Share Share This Content It's the global warming scandal of the century, says Michelle Malkin! The exposure of the warmist conspiracy, says Andrew Bolt! The final nail in the coffin of anthropogenic global warming, bleats James Delingpole! A stunning tour de force -- four stars, says Leonard Maltin! OK, so that last quote is made up. But the others aren't. What is it these conservatives are so excited about? Apparently, the networks of University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit were hacked into last night. Approximately 160 megabytes of files, containing hundreds or thousands of e-mails and documents were leaked as a result of the security breach, reports The Guardian. The conservatives are mainly zeroing in on one particular e-mail from the center's director, Phil Jones, dated from November 16th, 1999, which reads as follows: quote: From: Phil Jones To: ray bradley ,mann@[snipped], mhughes@ [snipped] Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 Cc: k.briffa@[snipped],t.osborn@[snipped] Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm, Once Tim�s got a diagram here we�ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I�ve just completed Mike�s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from1961 for Keith�s to hide the decline. Mike�s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray. Cheers, Phil There you have it! The smoking gun! Irrefutable proof of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Super-Duper Major-Mega International Socialist Conspiracy! If you see Al Gore parking his Ford Fusion hybrid near any major bridges, make sure to call the police! Actually, what you have is a scientist, Dr. Jones, talking candidly about sexing up a graph to make his conclusions more persuasive. This is not a good thing thing to do -- I'd go so far as to call it unethical -- and Jones deserves some of the loss of face that he will suffer. Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that happens all the time in both academia and the private sector -- have you ever looked at the graphs in the annual report of a company which had a bad year? And it seems to happen all too often on both sides of the global warming debate (I'd include some of the graphics from An Inconvenient Truth in this category, FWIW.) But let's be clear: Jones is talking to his colleagues about making a prettier picture out of his data, and not about manipulating the data itself. Again, I'm not trying to excuse what he did -- we make a lot of charts here and 538 and make every effort to ensure that they fairly and accurately reflect the underlying data (in addition to being aesthetically appealing.) I wish everybody would abide by that standard. Still: I don't know how you get from some scientist having sexed up a graph in East Anglia ten years ago to The Final Nail In The Coffin of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Anyone who comes to that connection has more screws loose than the Space Shuttle Challenger. And yet that's literally what some of these bloggers are saying! Incidentally, 2009 is shaping up to be the 5th warmist year on record, according to the conspiracists at NASA:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009...0-bytes-of.html

You can't stop us; we will achieve global warming. You don't realize it yet, but you have already lost the war.

quote:

Originally posted by Arbiter You can't stop us; we will achieve global warming. You don't realize it yet, but you have already lost the war.

Still, we can avoid making it worse. Or better, depending on your point of view

For every litre in a Prius some liberal hipster saves, I'm burning ten!

Can I just say we are awesome!

quote:

Originally posted by ToF Can I just say we are awesome!

No

quote:

Originally posted by Al No

I think he can.

I think I can too

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov So you aren't an AGW skeptic? I'm not using connotation here, I'm asking a question. Do you or don't you believe that there is a scientific consensus supporting anthropogenic global warming?

Oh. Yes, I believe it's bullshit. First of all, when the cooling trend that started over the last 10 years was decidedly irrefutable, notice the change in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change". It was just 30 years ago that Time Magazine and the NYT were running articles talking about the "global cooling terror" that was about to send us into another ice age, with "settled" scientific data to prove as much. The so called "consensus" you speak of has scientists bailing by the boatload... 1700+ so far have jumped ship, many of them claiming they were pressured to tow the line and are now demanding an investigation. But ooops! The scientists at UEA accidently lost the raw data a month ago (sure). If the majority opinion of scientists was always assumed to be correct, then most major scientific advances would not have occurred.

The newest "sweep it under the rug" lie is "ahhh, it's crazy- they're basing it all on 1 email from 10 years ago." LIE. From October of this year in the leaked emails:

quote:

The fact is that we can�t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can�t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

Emails from University of East Anglia also show that Phil Jones, Michael Mann, et. al. purposely attempted to discredit scientists who published competing studies in peer reviewed journals, and those journals, so that anyone who disagreed with his data would look like a hack. From March of 2003 Michael Mann, attempting to blackball legitimate scientific journals that publish articles disagreeing with their findings:

quote:

Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.

... in other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

There is an email from last freaking month from the AP science reporter Seth Borenstein, asking for guidance from Jones and company on how to deal with a legitimate scientific journal that says his findings are garbage. And from only 3 months ago, this:

quote:

This September, Mr. Mann told a New York Times reporter in one of the leaked emails that: "Those such as Stephen McIntyre who operate almost entirely outside of this system are not to be trusted." Mr. McIntyre is a retired Canadian businessman who checks the findings of climate scientists and often publishes the mistakes he finds on his Web site, Climateaudit.org. He holds the rare distinction of having forced Mr. Mann to publish a correction to one of his more famous papers.

One man, Phil Jones (and his henchman Michael Mann), the ringleader of it all, the sole basis for the IPCC, has secured for himself $22 million in grants in the last few years. Step back and look at the big picture, and ask yourself, "Who really benefits?" Al Gore wants to save the world and help humanity... so what if he makes a couple billion along the way trading carbon credits right? So what if the UN will need hundreds of billions of US dollars to fund shit around the world? So what if the UN will have soverignty over some US tax law? It's all about saving the world!

So did you not read the two articles I linked to about the UEA's source code to their computer climate modeling being uncovered, and found their data to be fraudulant? People can lie all they want, but the source code does not. Computer guru Marc Sheppard, who did the media's job, says "irrefutable evidence that alarmists have indeed been cooking the data for at least a decade may just be the most important strike in human history."

Per your NASA article, from last week... NASA also found to be hiding climate data: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...g-climate-data/

And, link to several other of the significant fraudulant email quotes here... quite the eye opener---> http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2009/...e-verdades.html

Another must read by MIT Meteorologist explaining why the science isn't "settled"---> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...3917025400.html

quote:

Originally posted by Domesticated I wouldn't say I'm a denialist, but I'm not fully convinced either. History has shown that the Earth was capable of reasonably rapid temperature shifts before man ever jumped out of the trees. Though it's sensible to assume that we might be causing the current shift, I don't think the evidence is as conclusive as the media makes out.

concur really...

it's fucked up what's happening and it is partially our fault, no question but there's so many problems with the way the media interprets this scientific 'phenomenon'...

i think the 'global warming' thing is just oversimplified cause..
1: it's a few years before what we do now has effect on the environment, so it's hard to gauge
2: it's got to be one of the most complicated fields of research in science since there's no micro-study possible, and macro studies always have a bazillion variables which are hard to escape...

also, as mentioned there have historically always been shifts in climate, not necessarily related to industry... obviously industry isn't helping, but it could just be a natural thing..

i think this comes down to one of the basic flaws of humanity..

we think we're above nature when we're a part of it...

and: we think we can solve any problem, despite our really inconsequential place in the world... we are just a part of the world, not controllers of it, in that: 1: we don't control everything good and bad that happens to the world, and 2: the good and bad things happen irrespective of us: they don't happen to punish or please us...

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss First of all, when the cooling trend that started over the last 10 years was decidedly irrefutable, notice the change in terminology from "global warming" to "climate change". It was just 30 years ago that Time Magazine and the NYT were running articles talking about the "global cooling terror" that was about to send us into another ice age, with "settled" scientific data to prove as much.

[Citation needed]

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss The so called "consensus" you speak of has scientists bailing by the boatload... 1700+ so far have jumped ship, many of them claiming they were pressured to tow the line and are now demanding an investigation. But ooops! The scientists at UEA accidently lost the raw data a month ago (sure).

[Citation needed]

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss If the majority opinion of scientists was always assumed to be correct, then most major scientific advances would not have occurred.

Not at all true - most scientists think their paradigm is right until the day it breaks down (such as when Einstein introduced the Relativity Theory) and/or when a more promising paradigm arises (when everybody jumped off the behaviourist boat in the middle of the 20th century). And, even then, the paradigm shift happens mainly because the old proponents die off, not because anyone sees the light.

Oh, and by the way, there's no such thing as the scientific method (you mentioned it a few posts back).

God, I hate humans.

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss We've already seen the evidence recently leaked showing the higher ups discussing how to manipulate the raw data to obtain the desired results... and how they've thrown away all the official raw data because they were "moving to a new building and needed the extra space."

quote:

Originally posted by Lira [Citation needed]

Gladly. Man made global cooling was all the rage in the 70's.

http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Ti..._June241974.pdf

http://newsbusters.org/node/6546

http://images.google.com/images?cli...ved=0CCIQsAQwAw

quote:

[Citation needed]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...icle6936328.ece

quote:

Not at all true - most scientists think their paradigm is right until the day it breaks down (such as when Einstein introduced the Relativity Theory) and/or when a more promising paradigm arises (when everybody jumped off the behaviourist boat in the middle of the 20th century). And, even then, the paradigm shift happens mainly because the old proponents die off, not because anyone sees the light. Oh, and by the way, there's no such thing as the scientific method (you mentioned it a few posts back).

Not at all true? At all? lol. There's a difference between a paradigm and a theory btw. Haha you know what I meant about the scientific method though; I understand there are different models in which to come to a conclusion.

I'm not going to debate the issue as a whole anymore though; even in the face of factual data on computer source codes proving the manipulation, the emails exposing the motives, and evidence of lies by those in power, most people still won't budge. The believers have it drilled into their heads that disaster is looming, and only politicans can save us (in 1988 Gore said we had 16 years left). But this is how it's always worked for centuries with politicians: drum up some sort of populous furor that crisis is imminent, and decree that only by enlisting the help of our distinguished selfless political class can we be saved (via our tax dollars)... for they are the champions of all that is good for the masses.

The climate change debate ended with climate change scientists 20 years ago. Yes that's right, the people who actually specialise in this decided long ago that something was happening.
What's happening now is we've got engineers, biologists, doctors, lawyers, politicians, nurses, and fucking everyone else trying to be a specialist.
Stop listening to anyone that's just a scientist. Guess what? I'm a qualified scientist too but that doesn't make me an expert on climate change.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you wouldn't go see a gynaecologist or endocrinologist if you had a heart problem, you would go see a cardiologist

There's no denying that the earth has it's own patterns of change, but you have to look at the timescale of it all. Plus R!CH made a good point anyway that we should be looking to reduce pollution regardless of the effect on what we currently refer to as climate change. It's common sense.

And what the hell does Australia have to do with Copenhagen? Copenhagen is a useless and utterly shit waste of time because everyone had already made up their mind as to what they would do. China isn't coming to the party, so we're all fucked because they want us to pay for their pollution. America still wants to just dick around and play world police without actually making any proper changes. India too, isn't exactly jumping on the bandwagon.
It's ok though, I really don't mind that 32 thousand delegates are sitting in their nice air-conditioned meeting rooms, being ferried around by private cars and a countless number of aeroplanes

quote:

Originally posted by adi_hanson When is this global warming gonna kick in? In northern england at 5 this mornin it wasnt present. Or was Global warmings cousin Global fuckin freezing babysitting?. As you can tell by the sarcasm , I think Global warming was an idea that has turned into an economy and is a load of pretentious bullshit.

It will never be warmer in the UK. In fact, it will get colder. Hence why half educated people stopped calling it global warming and started referring to it as climate change.
Virtually your entire climate in the UK and the western coast of Europe depends on the atlantic current which begins between India and Africa, runs around the tip of Africa and then snakes up towards Siberia. As the water temperature around the equator increases, it negatively impacts the Atlantic current and results in less warm currents working their way up north. Therefore you get a colder climate.

EDIT - Ok, it doesn't originate close to India but more so west/south-west of Africa. Same thing though, point still stands.

The guy that made the video above has a good series on climate science which I think is relatively objective. I'd strongly recommend watching the other 5 videos in the series, they put into context a lot of the claims that people on both sides make about climate change, such as the "former scientific global cooling consensus" claims published in the 70s etc which you always hear about in the media without the full context. Do give these a watch regardless of what side of the debate you're on:

Part 1 - Science behind theory of anthropogenic climate change:


Part 2 - Scientific objections to the theory:


Part 3 - Climate change myths:


Part 4 - Exaggerations and fallacies perpetuated by Gore & Durkin:


Part 5 - More climate change myths:

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss Gladly. Man made global cooling was all the rage in the 70's. http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Ti..._June241974.pdf http://newsbusters.org/node/6546 http://images.google.com/images?cli...ved=0CCIQsAQwAw http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/ne...icle6936328.ece

This is info without context. Global cooling was certainly not "all the rage" in the 70s, there wasn't any strong degree of consensus at the time on the issue. Go back and find the material to which the articles allude. DOn't expect journalists of wither persuasion to get the research right for you.

quote:

I'm not going to debate the issue as a whole anymore though; even in the face of factual data on computer source codes proving the manipulation, the emails exposing the motives, and evidence of lies by those in power, most people still won't budge. The believers have it drilled into their heads that disaster is looming, and only politicans can save us (in 1988 Gore said we had 16 years left). But this is how it's always worked for centuries with politicians: drum up some sort of populous furor that crisis is imminent, and decree that only by enlisting the help of our distinguished selfless political class can we be saved (via our tax dollars)... for they are the champions of all that is good for the masses.

I don't really give a crap about the politicians or the media. When a cover up is "exposed" or emails purportedly claim to say something, go back and read the entire email and the research it refers to rather than trusting the journalists interpretations of mined-quotes deliberately taken out of context. This is an issue for left and right leaning media sources. Always go back to the original information with an objective mind and decide for yourself.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz It will never be warmer in the UK. In fact, it will get colder.

That's not true. One of the strongest pieces of information that has kept me fence sitting about global warming is one which I have no source for or can even recall the exact details of.

However, it was something along the lines of "fig trees were grown as far north as current day Manchester during the time of the Roman Empire."

It may not be figs, it may not be Manchester (was definitely England though), and may not be the Roman Empire. It was at least two or three years ago that I read this, and though now it seems a flaky, I remember thinking at the time: "the climate was a lot different back then, maybe global warming isn't so real after all." It's likely that was in one of these two books:



or



The second one contains fictional characters and dialogue but is full of meticulously researched history.

However, The Weather Makers also contains some convincing arguments, both for and against.

Yea but what was the time frame of that climatic change? No one is denying that the climate changes, that's evident with the ice ages. What we're rightly worried about is how fast the current climate is changing. Then you have to beg the question, if the climate is changing quicker than it ever has before, what is the one key difference that sticks out like a sore thumb? Human impact after the industrial revolution.

quote:

Originally posted by Fledz I've said it before and I'll say it again, you wouldn't go see a gynaecologist or endocrinologist if you had a heart problem, you would go see a cardiologist

You might see an endocrinologist, actually.

quote:

Originally posted by The17sss The believers have it drilled into their heads that disaster is looming, and only politicans can save us (in 1988 Gore said we had 16 years left). But this is how it's always worked for centuries with politicians: drum up some sort of populous furor that crisis is imminent, and decree that only by enlisting the help of our distinguished selfless political class can we be saved (via our tax dollars)... for they are the champions of all that is good for the masses.

sounds to me like you're the biggest believer of all. everything you've said to this point is a political talking point recited from the conservative media blogosphere (an amalgamation of heavy industry, oil and coal mining interests). you're right about one thing though: you can't trust a political dialogue, not like you can a scientific one. i suggest you heed those words if you truly consider yourself to have a curious and independent mind. search for the actual science rather than the conclusions of the fingerpointers. the fingerpointers don't know what the hell they're talking about. they know how to identify a chink in the armor and build a universe of drama and suspicion around it. it's how *they* make money. they make you think in petty, myopic blame gaming terms. you seem to have bought into it all too. "al gore was discredited, phil jones was discredited, ha! that means the whole system is a lie!".

i couldn't care less about how these people try to sell the idea to the stupid masses. it's common knowledge that the stupid masses need certain ideas packaged for them in a certain way to hop on board. hard science is just too nebulous for a alcoholic trailer hick to absorb. because a couple of popular torchbearers chose to cross an ethical line doesn't mean the entire movement they stand behind is every bit as questionable. you and i know the oil and coal industries have carried out similar if not worse deceptions. so if all you trust is the pundits and fingerpointers, where does that leave you on the issue? cynical. ultimately clueless and cynical of the whole dialogue.

so for your own sake stop latching on to the paranoid belief that every movement with a political backing (even those that started as a scientific one) is a conspiracy to take your money and your freedom. your old paradigms and cynical attitude do nothing to help you or the world you live in. stop using them to impede any chance of progress towards a cleaner, better future. one day it'll occur to you you were fighting the wrong battle. even if it didn't matter that you were, why be that guy?

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