A UKIP cunt wrote this in our local paper.

[Rum]

It does raise an interesting point though. I don't really 'know' the science and the evidence. I go with the general consensus and what appears to be the rational response - i.e. that global warming does exist and should be dealt with, if it isn't too late. However if someone were to ask me to point to the evidence I couldn't.

Of course that is me being honest. Many politicians who are 'deniers' appear to have vested interests.

[Pensioner]

Have a look at this Rum.

[mistermack]

I certainly would not accept the "scientific consensus" argument.
It's a completely false impression given to the public.
If you REALLY went out to establish a scientific consensus, it would be that nothing is proved, or even established beyond measurable doubt.
The IPCC only claim a percentage probability ( a biased 90% I think ). But the impression is given out that AGW IS A FACT, to the extent that to favour the 10% option gets you branded a DENIER!!
Even though the IPCC allow a 10% chance that humans are not affecting the climate.
I would personally reserve the label "DENIER" to someone who denies a fact, not a 90% chance.

[Rum]

Have a look at this Rum.

Thanks Pen, however I think you miss my point. I understand the scientific method, empiricism and so on, however I am not expert or widely read enough to know the science behind global warming in any detail. I 'believe' it is a problem because the general consensus appears to agree that it is and those who don't seem to be on the fringes.

This applies to any number of areas actually. For example I believe that matter is made up of atoms and other sub-atomic particles because a lot of clever people have discovered that this is the case. I believe it second hand as it were because I trust the consensus even though I have not done the science - I have read about it in laymen terms only. If someone came along and said everything was made of fairy dust I would not have to go back tot the science to disprove their point - but I would point to the consensus.

[mistermack]

AH, but there is a big difference between atomic physics and AGW.
People have made, and continue to make, very specific predictions based on the current consensus in physics.
Then they have run innumerable experiments, and the results match the predictions perfectly.
That simply hasn't happened with AGW. The predictions are all over the place, based on loads of different models, and no experiments have been done to confirm a prediction.

It's all purely in the heads of the people pushing the theory. That's why it's wrong to say that AGW is confirmed by the scientific method. No such thing has happened.
.

[Seth]

Ok, UKIP aren't all bad. At least he got something right.
But you can be right about the environment, and still be wrong about everything else.
.

At what point do you concede / or is it never ever ? you are clutching at sun spots mate .

When I see the models correctly predict the climate, consistently, time after time mate.
( I mean predict the future, not the past ).

Indeed. It's interesting to note that one of the biggest falsifications of the "hockey stick" warming predictions is the deliberate refusal of those who cite it to also cite the margins of error, which as little as one year out, much less five, much less a century, subsume the entire predicted warming change, making the entire exercise one of bogus science from the get-go. Pundits love to point to the centerline "mean" and claim that it's an inevitability, whereas including the margins of error show that the climate could warm significantly, stay the same, or cool off in the next 100 years, and there's absolutely no way on earth to predict which will happen.

We can't even reliably predict the weather a WEEK from now, much less sometime into the next century. The system is simply too complex and chaotic to model.

[Seth]

It does raise an interesting point though. I don't really 'know' the science and the evidence. I go with the general consensus and what appears to be the rational response - i.e. that global warming does exist and should be dealt with, if it isn't too late. However if someone were to ask me to point to the evidence I couldn't.

Of course that is me being honest. Many politicians who are 'deniers' appear to have vested interests.

Unless, of course, they are wrong and global warming is all that's keeping us out of a new ice age, which is historically overdue.

We can survive higher temperatures.

We cannot survive an ice age.

[Feck]

Or ,maybe just maybe the first time science has said you should curtail some of your rights to consume instead of making your life easier it sticks in the craw . They are so many benefits from science that you take on authority but this ...just this certain people get all fundamentalist about and not only demand PROOF but proof they can get their. heads around .


Human beings could never survive an ice age ...oh no never happen and honestly You state that humans cannot yet understand our impact on the environment ..... but yet you propose that human influence could stop the next ice-age .... fucking funny I'd like to see the science behind that stupid statement because the logic is laughable and proves that you actually do really believe Human actions esp burning fossil fuels can have a global and significant effect on the whole long term temperature of the planet .

[Seth]

Or ,maybe just maybe the first time science has said you should curtail some of your rights to consume instead of making your life easier it sticks in the craw .

If it were credible, perhaps I'd agree. Problem is that the science of AGW has been subsumed by the political propaganda about AGW, which is being used by globalists and Progressives to drive the world towards a one-world socialist/progressive government.

They are so many benefits from science that you take on authority but this ...just this certain people get all fundamentalist about and not only demand PROOF but proof they can get their. heads around .

Well, when AGW proponents stop lying about the nature of the threat and stop trying to use it as an excuse to impose tyrannical global government control of everything and a return to wattle-and-daub huts and grubbing in the ground with sticks, perhaps I'll be more amenable to the discussion.

But presuming that AGW is going to melt every scrap of ice on the planet in the next hundred years, my response is still "adapt or die," and my suggestion is that everyone get on with adapting...like by moving vulnerable populations out of low-lying coastal regions that will be flooded by a rise in the sea level, and building polders and sea walls where that's not possible. We've got a hundred years to do it, so get the fuck on with it.

Get those nuke plants built to replace the coal-fired plants.

Proceed with research into cleaner internal combustion engines and let the markets drive their entry into the economy without bankrupting everyone.

Do almost anything but what's being done, which is NOTHING by way of actually reducing or controlling putative AGW and everything to do with increasing the wealth, power and control of government and the globalists.

Human beings could never survive an ice age ...oh no never happen

I might. But you, you're fucked. The notion of a sheet of ice a mile thick covering North America down to the Midwest, and the attendant disruption of everything, including crop production, will kill perhaps six billion people or more very quickly once the snow starts. Sure, some humans will survive, but billions will die during an ice age, whereas adapting to global warming may be expensive, but it's eminently doable in both the short and long terms. It just means moving a few miles inland, abandoning low-lying coastal areas, and shifting crop production to the newly-available far north.

and honestly You state that humans cannot yet understand our impact on the environment ..... but yet you propose that human influence could stop the next ice-age .... fucking funny

Dunno if they can or can't, but I'm hardly the only person to posit that it's possible.

I'd like to see the science behind that stupid statement because the logic is laughable and proves that you actually do really believe Human actions esp burning fossil fuels can have a global and significant effect on the whole long term temperature of the planet .

I didn't say human actions cannot have global significance, I said that it is not proven as yet that human action is THE CAUSE of global warming. There are other mechanisms that may be responsible, or may be contributing to the observed phenomena, that are entirely natural. After all, no amount of warming anywhere on the planet has yet exceeded the know variations in earth's temperature in the past. Earth has been much warmer, and much colder, and nothing we've seen has fallen outside those parameters. So, most of the effect could simply be a natural cycle in temperature that we don't understand. Nor has anyone reliably predicted what effect all the petty, insignificant regulations and demands of the global warming alarmists will actually do. Last I heard, the CO2 in the atmosphere is here to stay, for something like a century, no matter what we do or don't do. So panicking over it serves only the cause of bigger, more intrusive government.

The pundits have tipped their hand by running around and crying "global warming wolf!" too often. I've been listening to those dire predictions since 1969 and not ONE of them has ever come to pass, so I've no reason to believe them this time, particularly since their agenda of one-world global government as the "solution" is now very clear and obvious.

[mistermack]

While I agree that an ice-age is due, I suspect that it would be easier for humans to do something about it than warming.
There is some evidence that some of the melting of Greenland and the North Pole sea ice could actually be down to soot particles that dim the reflectiveness of the ice.
So more of the energy of the sun is absorbed by the ice, and less is bounced straight back into space.

I can imagine a scenario where vast ice sheets could be sprayed with a colourant to stave off the spread of the ice.