Reply to: Interesting Read iF You Belive in "Climate Change" and "Carbon Footprints"

[zeitghost]

UFOs, obvious when you think about it.

[richard-af]

What about abiotic oil? Is it a load of bunkum, or what?

[VectraMan]

Anyway, I'm off to an evening trackday at Donington. That is, driving round in circles, using a whole tank full of petrol (and making lots of CO2) all to go round in circles and get back to where I started.

[The Lone Gunman]

Yes, exactly. Many people have said this repeatedly. But then you just get stuff like, "Man has always been able to adapt, and when the time comes we will adapt again." It's true that Man is famously resourceful, like when a couple of people get lost in the jungle or on a desert island. It's a bit different when you've got 60 million people, most of whom have absolutely no idea where food actually comes from.

Yeah, just look what happens when it rains a bit!

Did any of you guys read about that guy pissing in the water bowsers?

[VectraMan]

It's a bit different when you've got 60 million people, most of whom have absolutely no idea where food actually comes from.

Absolutely true, but you'd kill them a lot faster if we all stopped using fossil fuels overnight. And if we did do that, it might well make no different to global warming.

[dang65]

The earth's climate changes, it always changes and we really should spend our energies on surviving such changes rather than standing King Canute like trying to stop it.

Yes, exactly. Many people have said this repeatedly. But then you just get stuff like, "Man has always been able to adapt, and when the time comes we will adapt again." It's true that Man is famously resourceful, like when a couple of people get lost in the jungle or on a desert island. It's a bit different when you've got 60 million people, most of whom have absolutely no idea where food actually comes from.

[The Lone Gunman]

Is in fact a political body set up by the UN. It is not unheard of that the conclusions of the scientists to have been altered or 'sexed up' to support the climate change hypothosis.

The eath's climate changes, it always changes and we really should spend our energies on surviving such changes rather than standing King Canute like trying to stop it.

I said almost exactly the same thing in a different thread on this topic.

[zathras]

IPCC (or whatever the letters are): Were they not a group of scientists brought together by Government and asked to report on climate change?
Were they not given the remit to collate all reports into one?

Is in fact a political body set up by the UN. It is not unheard of that the conclusions of the scientists to have been altered or 'sexed up' to support the climate change hypothosis.

The eath's climate changes, it always changes and we really should spend our energies on surviving such changes rather than standing King Canute like trying to stop it.

[richard-af]

So what caused it that time?

UFOs, obvious when you think about it.

[richard-af]

Fossil Fuels: Myth or Fact?

[VectraMan]

The reason I think this whole CO2 thing is exaggerated, is that CO2 as a greenhouse gas, is a tiny bit of the atmosphere 0.0003% to be exact, and cloud cover has a massive green house effect compared to CO2. Then there is the sun where all the heat actually comes from. If I were to do away with a greenhouse and flood my tomato patch with CO2, I think this wouldn't work. I think all the other possible effects on temperature dwarf CO2.

And C02 isn't the biggest greenhouse gas anyway. Water vapour is worse. One possible "solution" is hydrogen powered cars that produce "harmless" water vapour.

The biggest issue for me is that this has happened before. We know the Earth regularly warms up and cools down, so it's not a question as to whether the climate is changing, but is this time different? IIRC some of the "evidence" hinges on the data from ice cores which shows CO2 increasing at the same time as temperature (well actually afterwards, but we'll gloss over that), but that was from before we'd discovered fire, let alone 4x4s and jet air travel. So what caused it that time?

[The Lone Gunman]

The argument for me hinges on whether or not 'greenhouse gases' are likely to be the cause of the cause of current and likely future global warming.

This is the bit that gets me with the whole GW thing though. If it is man made then there must be some explanation for previous historical hot and cold periods.
Man made should mean that we should see a significant and continuous pattern since the industrial revolution. We dont.

All the models are flawed in some way and most seem to have set out with the premise of proving mankinds damage to the environment rather than what has caused X, Y or Z.

[Old Greg]

Bollocks, It can take years to debunk research that has been performed once and released into the world as true. The research can be flawed in many ways, human error, hardware/software error, etc. This doesn't have to be malicous either.

My sister in law lost a months work a year or so ago when the software for one of the machines in her lab played up and destroyed a load of her samples. It was traced to a software error and she had to start again, now if the samples had not been destroyed and just contaminated there is a good chance that she wouldn't have realised and her research would have been flawed. This would not have become apparent until somebody else tried to replicate the work in her paper and as it took her about 3 years to write the damn thing it could quite easily take another 5 for somebody to debunk it. In the meantime word of her paper could have flooded through the scientific community and the research taken at face value.

It happens quite a lot, look at MMR, how long did it take to disprove the trash that was originally released, what about the idea that listening to Mozart makes your babies clever, they have only just debunked that.

Science is a very honerable profession, however there are bad eggs and people do make mistakes and occasionally results are manipulated. Yes it is scorned upon when found out, but it often takes a very long time to find out, and it is not always clear if the results have been manipulated on purpose, or the was just a geniune error in the original research

Your argument about your sister-in-law might be correct for a single study, but it is statistically impossible for all these acciental errors to keep turning out the same way in independent studies to generate the same conclusion.

If you're talking about MMR and autism, it was instantly debunked - the scientific consensus was that there was no link. The only reason it gained such currency was because of the Daily blood Mail and its ilk.

[Old Greg]

Sorry Greg, been away for lunch.

I don't know is the answer to the question of who I believe. I am not totally convinced by either side.

I believe that we are experiencing a period of global warming, I believe that we (man) are adding to the amount of CO2 and other gasses. I am not sure if we can or should do anything about it.

I understand your argument about the yank scientists, but I have not researched their credentials (or many of the Brits for that matter), but are you sure that they are not Green evangelsist to start with? Didi they have an agenda when they started their research?

Wasnt one of the lead UK guys the same prof who 30 years ago insisted that we were heading for another ice age (within 50 years).

The IPCC derived its findings from current research and as independant as the IPCC may be there is no accounting for how independant the research they analysed was.

I have yet to be convinced that either side has no hidden agenda.

Sorry only to address part of your post (no idea about the green or otherwise credentials of various scientists), but I think the numbers of studies performed, models built is too great to be manipulated.

The argument for me hinges on whether or not 'greenhouse gases' are likely to be the cause of the cause of current and likely future global warming.

There's no point worrying about what we should do or whether we should do anything about it until that's been accepted by politicians and the public. My worry is that those who oppose the man-made global warming theory on political/economic grounds (e.g. Bush administration and oil lobby etc.) will carry on prevaricating and turn round at a future point and say that perhaps we should have doen something in the past, but now it's too late.

[Old Greg]

The whole notion that UK science is corrupt is more absurd than any of the other (wildest) white man van arguments on the board. If only DA and the likes knew how closely scrutinised research is in this country. Manipulation of results is easily identifiable, very rare, and roundly scourned upon.

Bagpuss, we appear to be in rare agreement.