Just watched Ch4 global warming thingie...
Discussion
I trust you're being sarcastic, Mr Demon Hole....?
From another thread.....
From another thread.....
I said:
....caught the comedy Marcel Theroux, 90 minutes after that.
They're really hooked on this climate change guff. Interspersed with ads for holiday travel, cars and a 4x4 trucks, while they're telling us we've got to give up same to save the planet.
Two more progs follow Sunday and Monday......not sure if I can tolerate the pain......me ol' ribs is achin', boss.........
I think that global warming is definately a relevant issue, but on a geological as opposed to human timescale. I think I would be right in suggesting that allthough we have a fair insight into the way the planet works, the actual evidence is sporadic and gives us a picture with a big error margin. Since we are coming out of an ice age still, it could be considered that warming is happening, but it doesn't give any reliability to what might happen next.
IMO,
There is too much political weight on horrible things (not veggie farts) which are going to cause us to drown when the ice caps melt.
Once again, sensationalism pulls a programme out of the bag and the boss is happy. The problem is, the climatologists produce a load of stats and that gets processed by someone with an insufficient scientific mind. But it makes good news though.
They are also negating a gigantic error in where all the offending CO2 goes.
The problem is, with popular science is that these people, with a chance of fame start thinking irrationaly and proving their own ideas with insufficient stats/thought/knowledge.
It really irritates me and I object to people trying to modify my behaviour through the assumption that I am ignorant......
Cue Turbobloke.
Edit:-Sp (I'm pissed)
>> Edited by love machine on Sunday 9th January 00:32
IMO,
There is too much political weight on horrible things (not veggie farts) which are going to cause us to drown when the ice caps melt.
Once again, sensationalism pulls a programme out of the bag and the boss is happy. The problem is, the climatologists produce a load of stats and that gets processed by someone with an insufficient scientific mind. But it makes good news though.
They are also negating a gigantic error in where all the offending CO2 goes.
The problem is, with popular science is that these people, with a chance of fame start thinking irrationaly and proving their own ideas with insufficient stats/thought/knowledge.
It really irritates me and I object to people trying to modify my behaviour through the assumption that I am ignorant......
Cue Turbobloke.
Edit:-Sp (I'm pissed)
>> Edited by love machine on Sunday 9th January 00:32
love machine said:OK got my cue...but maybe you and justthetip are a bit hung over now so I'll type quietly...
Cue Turbobloke. Edit:-Sp (I'm pissed)
Not the place here to rehash the entire global warming thread that recently took off, all the evidence and related thinking is here for anyone interested who didn't catch it first time.
Global warming has ceased to be a purely scientific issue. There is overwhelming evidence in the data that the very modest warming noted unequivocally by satellite and balloon measurements in a small part of the northern hemisphere is normal in that both the magnitude of the change and rate of change (and its origins) are well within the range found in the geological record.
ALso there is now no doubt among independent scientists that carbon dioxide emissions are a red herring as CO2 is an effect not a cause (see the last thread for references and not all from me) due to the order of events always being temperature change followed by carbon dioxide shift, not vice versa. This is key. Also any claimed feedback effect is now dismissed as insignificant for various reasons, including the fact that more often than not CO2 trends and temperature trends opppose each other. Take the last inter-glacial period before this one, where it was hotter than now but the CO2 levels were lower. The causes of climate change are clear and our inability to alter anything equally clear.
The immense political and pressure group interest is understandable. The pressure groups have found a very scary scenario that will help them to force us to change our lifestyle to theirs. The politicians have found an almost perfect excuse for high indirect taxation, and the present centre-left but still pink political animal sees it as a back door to redistrubution of wealth - between individuals and between nations - so it's doubly attractive in ideological terms.
Those who support man-made global warming do so from a quasi religious perspective based on faith not evidence. They will not be swayed by data as faith doesn't work like that. So C4 screen something about it like everyone else, and preach hellfire...except of course that natural climate change is indeed a big threat to the planet's inhabitants if not the planet. The only point that's wrong in all this sensationalism, and it's a major point, is that controlling the sun's activity, the frequency of nearby supernovae, the earth's axial tilt changes, its slowing rotation and its orbital eccentricity, plus the galactic cosmic ray flux - not to mention volcanic eruptions - cannot be achieved by taxation or lifestyle changes.
We are as helpless in the face of natural climate change as we are in the face of a tsunami. Except that in both cases there are things that can be done to minimise the devasation, like using the tax revenue and power of governments to move people away from danger sites (general term, local and geographical in scope), hopefully in time. This isn't being done, and can you see it happening? So political concern for these issues is deeply cynical and motivated by less than totally philanthropic intentions.
Certain sections of the paid-by-government- research-grant scientific community appear to have sold their integrity, and the media's love for a scare story and willingness to toe a political line has lead to one-sided coverage. It's no surprise to find that many folk with genuine concern have been taken in. As Churchill said, a lie gets half way round the world before the truth can get its pants on.
Eric Mc said:
Turbobloke - if you ever stand for election ANYWHERE, you will have my vote.
Cheers Eric. There doesn't seem to be a single political party over here that hasn't taken on board the attractive fiscal consequences of believing and preaching man-made global warming terror, the sustained personal vilification and character assassination that goes with the opposite viewpoint is a serious barrier to political adoption of the truth and a genuinely helpful set of policies. As you may remember from previous threads, I've already had first-hand experience of this intimidation, it effectively closed down one of my (legal, reputable etc) business interests. A few personal attacks on a PH thread is nothing in comparison. What's the antidote?
Edited to add, with UK sympathies extending to those flooded and cut off in the north, let's see how long it takes for the usual suspects Porritt, Fiends of the Earth, Greenpeas, T2000 and so on, to claim - yet again as they did in 2000 - that this is global warming in action. Little do they know that extreme weather is more associated with global cooling, and that's what the majority of the planet's surface is experiencing now. In most cases of UK flooding we've had a combination of causes linked to ocean-atmosphere coupling and the resulting slow moving deep depression dumping a lot of rainfall over one region.
Lack of water course and river dredging, due to green pressure groups urging the avoidance of disturbing habitats, as well as cost-cutting, and an unwillingness to update victorian large-scale plumbing also due to cost means that this surface water cannot drain away effectively and Hey Prescott, flood conditions are more common.
Do not cave in and drive your cars less. Any carbon dioxide emitted will promote growth of trees and crops.
>> Edited by turbobloke on Sunday 9th January 10:46
turbobloke said:
A load of really sensible, well reasoned and obviously researched stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I am worried about Global Warming, I suspect the dinosaurs would have been sh1ting bricks about it if they had been able to unbderstand what was going on.
Who else remembers sitting in History and Geography classes at school hearing about the ice fairs they used to hold on the frozen Thames during the mid 1800's? Climate change is not new and it's going to happen, within reason, whatever we do. If we are hasting our doom then surely it's only be a micron of time in geological terms.
On min we are told not to drive our nasty motor cars as they are changing the planet and the next we are told about the millions to be spent on new sea walls, etc to stop costal erosion. All sounds a little two faced to me...
I am all for recycling where possible - we can't keep putting all our waste in the ground - but there is a point at which we have to just get on with it.
We have to adapt to our changing world - we got to the top of the food chain by doing that before and all of the company directors, managers, etc who visit this site know that once you get to the top you still have to push like hell to stay there. Let alone expand.
Perhaps a bit closser to the original thread has anyone else thought about the vested interest of the press in all this? This is a topic we are told we all have to know about and so like to good citizens (subjects if you are British)we are we watch all the programmes we can about it - que good ratings. How many ghost based programes were there on TV in 2003? 2004 loads of people are all interested in Most Haunted next thing you know you can move for all the ghost based stuff on TV.
rude-boy said:You're spot on with these sentiments. And no sweat rude-boy, the frost fairs were mostly held in the mini-ice-age which hit between 1645 and 1715, caused by a well documented plummeting of solar activity at the time...virtually no sunspots were visible throughout this entire period.
Don't get me wrong, I am worried about Global Warming, I suspect the dinosaurs would have been sh1ting bricks about it if they had been able to unbderstand what was going on. Who else remembers sitting in History and Geography classes at school hearing about the ice fairs they used to hold on the frozen Thames during the mid 1800's? Climate change is not new and it's going to happen, within reason, whatever we do.
The River Thames has frozen over at other times, I mention this merely to illustrate a recent episode of climate change with visible repercussions that was before industrialisation and the internal conbustion engine. This was a minor example though, there are episodes in the geological record where temperature has shifted up by several degrees in a decade or so when there were no taxable carbon dioxide emissions
I just think, despite having alot of people for a small country, the uk is so small and insignificant that it isn't worth a jot us worrying or doing anything about it.
I mean, if China becomes motorised, what the heck difference are we going to make, when 300 million people or whatever start drivng cars?
I mean, if China becomes motorised, what the heck difference are we going to make, when 300 million people or whatever start drivng cars?
heebeegeetee said:They've already started and you're quite right. The Kyoto Protocol and emissions trading are a waste of time, but I reckon most intelligent politicians know that.
I mean, if China becomes motorised, what the heck difference are we going to make, when 300 million people or whatever start drivng cars?
Talk of school a few posts back got me thinking about Shakespeare plays and his mkentions of an illness called the 'ague'. This was their word for malaria and reflects the fact that such mosquitoes were common in England at that time, as were vineyards. Cars and factories however were curiously absent, Romeo and Juliet never indulged in parking iirc...
john_p said:There's hope - after the impact of Bjorn Lomborg's book, Crichton should be pushing on a half open door
I'm just reading that book actually, about quarter of the way through. Thought it might have been an ecofanatic bible to start with but it's moving in a more sensible direction
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