Resisting The Consensus: A Climate Change Thread

[Skarjo]

So, just for absolute clarification;

You agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, capable of affecting global climate.

You agree that humans have released a volume of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Ergo, you logically accept that a proportion of any climate change driven by CO2 is the result of human emissions, and that therefore AGW is a real phenomenon.

Sorry Cal, I hadn't realised you'd moved the goalposts again.

So now it's Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming that you think is made up.

[Slartibartfast]

In Cal's defence he shifted to that view a while back. And there is a reasonable amount of uncertainty over the exact role of emissions and the rate of warming which the media and politicians are ill equipped to disseminate to the public - not to mention the reasoning behind policies introduced - which are not the scientific community's responsibility.

But that investigation is best carried out by educated climate scientists to tell us what they think is going, not the kooky articles Cal digs up.

[Slartibartfast]

I'd be a bit wary of re-ordaining Pascal's gambit for climate change, since there are other implications and ultimately I don't think we can realistically do anything to significantly alter our carbon dioxide emissions. Plus I would hope we can deal with the fall out.

What I do think will happen is a mass extinction. Our destruction of certain ecosystems has started it, our effect of rapidly changing the temperature of the planet (at least, much faster than a natural change would induce) will finish off a large amount of biodiversity.

But Cal sees environmentalism and climate change as being at odds. I really don't think they are. Sustainable development and low energy practises are good for the whole of the environment, not just the carbon dioxide aspect. Taxes and international agreements may seem a bit hollow, but governments are always looking for wheezes to get money out of us and at least in this case a good chunk of the money will be helping the environment (every 'low carbon' innovation is less oil being pulled out the ground, less risk of a tanker running aground, less acid rain events etc.etc.).

[Cal]

...you logically accept that a proportion of any climate change driven by CO2 is the result of human emissions, and that therefore AGW is a real phenomenon.

AGW is of course a real, recorded, verifiable phenomenon. We have the data on that: only a fool would deny it. What we do not have is any evidence at all that anthropogenic contributions to overall levels of CO2 are at all anything to be worried about, let alone approaching anything even remotely 'catastrophic'. This is the central complaint of climate sceptics. So far, the best the IPCC (the world's authority, apparently, on CAGW) can manage are series of expensive reports warning of 'probabilities' and 'likelihoods', but never once (and perhaps this is to their credit) have they ever claimed any certainty. This is something the media don't tell us, but it's all their in the IPCC assessment reports and has been since the very start of this nonsense.

Sorry Cal, I hadn't realised you'd moved the goalposts again. So now it's Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming that you think is made up.

As Slartibartfast has said, I've held this position for a considerable time now. You really must pay attention.

[Cal]

Cal sees environmentalism and climate change as being at odds.

For good reason. Apparently several of the green movement's original founding fathers also feel the same way. Only recently, James Lovelock, father of the 'Gaia Theory' which many consider the bedrock of the modern green movement, came out publicly to denounce the wrong-headedness of the hysteria around climate change. NGOs such as Greenpeace, friends of the Earth, WWF and Oxfam have all become political advocacy groups, each with a huge stake in promoting the fallacy of CAGW because it pays the rent (and boy does it), but more importantly because it suits their Marxist/Socialist agendas.

I refer you to Agenda 21, the UN-sponsored result of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit - a document hiding in plain sight that is nothing less than a manifesto for the redistribution of wealth from developed nations to less developed nations and a wholesale attack on democratic capitalism. All of the major green NGOs are on board for Agenda 21 (all snouts in the trough) - and for very good reason. But none of those reasons have anything much to do with climate change (that's merely the Trojan Horse) and everything to do with political change.

[Moggy]

...you logically accept that a proportion of any climate change driven by CO2 is the result of human emissions, and that therefore AGW is a real phenomenon.

AGW is of course a real, recorded, verifiable phenomenon. We have the data on that: only a fool would deny it. What we do not have is any evidence at all that anthropogenic contributions to overall levels of CO2 are at all anything to be worried about, let alone approaching anything even remotely 'catastrophic'. This is the central complaint of climate sceptics. So far, the best the IPCC (the world's authority, apparently, on CAGW) can manage are series of expensive reports warning of 'probabilities' and 'likelihoods', but never once (and perhaps this is to their credit) have they ever claimed any certainty. This is something the media don't tell us, but it's all their in the IPCC assessment reports and has been since the very start of this nonsense.

Sorry Cal, I hadn't realised you'd moved the goalposts again. So now it's Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming that you think is made up.

As Slartibartfast has said, I've held this position for a considerable time now. You really must pay attention.

My own position is firm - Anthropomorphic (man-made) climate change is a complete swindle and a political and scientific fraud. Natural climate change, on the other hand, is part of this planet's ecosystem and is a demonstrable fact - as the geology shows, time and time again.

3 years ago you were "firm" that ACC was a complete swindle.

Now you accept there is data that man made climate change is real, but you doubt that it is "catastrophic".

In 3 years time, what are your views likely to be?

[7256930752]

expensive reports warning of 'probabilities' and 'likelihoods'

I thought you understood that weather is a chaotic system that is difficult to predict at a micro level?

As you are talking about known data, would you not also agree that we know enough about the earth to understand how much heat is generated naturally and that there is evidence of an unatural source of additional heating? I'll see if I can find the new scientist article on this subject.

[7256930752]

Havent been able to find the exact article but came across this.

[andretmzt]

Does anyone really deny that increased CO2 increases temperature?

I don't know any climate sceptics who think like that. It is a scientific fact that CO2 raises overall global temperatures (although local differences have also been recorded). It is also, as the Earth's own geological record shows beyond all doubt, the case that runaway CO2 can lead to calamitous results. Again, I have never read or heard a sceptical voice that takes issue with any of that. Nobody I consider a sceptic has ever doubted that mankind's activities on this planet contribute to overall CO2 emissions. That's also an unavoidable known fact.

So the issue is never about 'climate change', as media has it. Climate change happens. It always has, always will. It's happening right now.

The issue sceptics have is the with the notion of 'Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming'. That's not the same as 'climate change', but the media insist on reporting CAGW as 'climate change' perhaps because they're lazy, or perhaps because they're deliberately misinforming. Sadly, many respected scientists and academics, eager to promote their alarmist agendas, also play this game of semantics, in the full knowledge that they will never be called-out on their falsehood.

Doubting 'climate change' is a redundant gesture. Likewise, the fact mankind contributes a very negligible amount of CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere. We know these things. What we don't know - and the IPCC would be first to admit this (and have, often) - is where the incontrovertible evidence is for 'catastrophic' man-made climate change actually is, if anywhere at all. Some think it's in the clouds, some think it's in the oceans, some think it's in the sun and some think it's in the cosmic rays. And some really don't think it's anything to worry about at all.

So far, nobody - anywhere, ever - has come up with the smoking gun on that one. But the way the CAGW bandwagon's rolling you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise. It's a common enough misconception.

Wait when did this occur? Believing that we are causing the climate to change is good enough for me. All you need to do now is stop talking rubbish about sea-ice, misusing the word 'efficiency' and stop being obsessed with what the media as opposed to the scientists say (I have never heard any scientist call it anything other than anthropogenic global warming and I've talked to quite a few of the scientists at some of the UK's leading centres for climate research)

Likewise, the fact mankind contributes a very negligible amount of CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere

Here do you mean that thinking this is wrong or that it is actually the case? I think the amount of carbon released by humans since the industrial revolution can not be really described as negligible.

Some think it's in the clouds, some think it's in the oceans, some think it's in the sun and some think it's in the cosmic rays. And some really don't think it's anything to worry about at all.

Dunno what this is about either but whatever, like I said, believing that we are having some sort of effect is good enough for me.

[Cal]

As Slartibartfast has said, I've held this position for a considerable time now. You really must pay attention.

My own position is firm - Anthropomorphic (man-made) climate change is a complete swindle and a political and scientific fraud. Natural climate change, on the other hand, is part of this planet's ecosystem and is a demonstrable fact - as the geology shows, time and time again.

3 years ago you were "firm" that ACC was a complete swindle.

Now you accept there is data that man made climate change is real, but you doubt that it is "catastrophic".

In 3 years time, what are your views likely to be?

I think it's clear that I've maintained a pretty consistent position in all this time. The quote of mine you highlight only serves to underline that. I have been against the hysteria surrounding so-called 'anthropogenic' (god knows why I called it 'Anthropomorphic' ) climate change since the start. I stand by my claim that it is both a political and scientific fraud in the sense that whatever mankind's undoubted contribution to the warming is (and most reliable data suggests it's very negligible at best) its effect is nowhere near the 'catastrophic' proportions being promoted by doom-mongers and opportunists.

This is why I now go to great lengths to refer always to CAGW as the culprit and the central issue I'm at odds with. Climate change is not - and indeed as my earlier comments show, never was - a problem for me. 'Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming' is.

[7256930752]

I'm sure we've probably covered this before but even if the man made climate change thing turns out to be untrue, can you not get behind the good things that are coming out of trying to be more efficient with how do things and reducing the amount of horrible stuff we chuck into the atmosphere?

[Lime]

This is why I now go to great lengths to refer always to CAGW as the culprit and the central issue I'm at odds with. Climate change is not - and indeed as my earlier comments show, never was - a problem for me. 'Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming' is.

This is interesting - because this slow incremental change (if extrapolated) could theoretically lead to eventual catastrophe ('death of 1000 cuts') by gradually making environments uninhabitable - if nature cannot adapt to the new conditions at at least the same pace.

I know I've used the words 'could' and 'theoretically', I'm just trying to clarify what's being said.

So is it literally the 'headline grabbing' catastrophic timeline that is this issue? I'd say that as humans we're actually pretty good at procrastinating if we don't feel immediately threatened, so it might be the only mechanism for getting the less exciting 'slow car crash' that might happen over the next several hundred years (or even thousands - won't someone think of our children's children?) to seem any way relevant to our well-oiled lifestyles.

[Cal]

I'd say that as humans we're actually pretty good at procrastinating if we don't feel immediately threatened, so it might be the only mechanism for getting the less exciting 'slow car crash' that might happen over the next several hundred years (or even thousands - won't someone think of our children's children?) to seem any way relevant to our well-oiled lifestyles.

The central difficulty for the CAGW propagandists is that the actual 'catastrophe' being promised (often in no uncertain terms) by it's most vociferous champions remains as elusive to pin down as ever it was. The IPCC has stepped away in it's more recent assessment reports from predictions of doom, realising that any notion of an impending 'catastrophe' might be premature, to say the least. This leaves us with the 'vested interests' most likely to lose out if the public are not kept in a constant state of anxiety over an imagined eco-geddon: NGOs and self-promoters.

As others have suggested, most sensible climate scientists these days retreat from making ludicrously over-the-top predictions about 'twenty foot rises in sea level' or the imminent extinction of Polar Bears; but Greenpeace, WWF and Friends of the Earth can't afford such good sense: it might actually cost them serious money if the public were to get wind that this has all been an elaborate (if costly) politically-motivated ruse. Of course, having the mainstream (leftwing, signed-up, on-message) media on board helps immensely in promoting the myth of catastrophe. The BBC now has a policy of all-but refusing climate sceptics serious air-time, as it has publicly stated it considers the 'scientific consensus settled' in favour of CAGW. This has nothing to do, of course, with the BBC's own Marxist political leanings and the fact that as a publicly-funded organisation (£4.5billion pa) it is an unapologetic supporter of the socialist aspirations of Agenda 21.

The most sensible and practical arguments now revolve around issues of 'climate mitigation'. Rather than wasting absolute fortunes battling against a catastrophic rise in CO2 which may or (more likely) may not happen at some vague point in the future (nobody knows when - but it isn't happening now), would it not be far better to use such funds in the here and now to concentrate on real-world problems around poverty (which annually kills far more children than climate change ever has or most probably ever will), environmental hazards (flooding, extreme weather events, etc), environmental protection (rainforests, habitats, over-fishing, etc) and practical issues around food and energy supply?

The greens don't want to face up to this question. I guess there just aren't any fat EU grants in looking after rare South American frogs.

[Hexx]

The BBC now has a policy of all-but refusing climate sceptics serious air-time, as it has publicly stated it considers the 'scientific consensus settled' in favour of CAGW

Find this statement. With the exact quote given.

[Hexx]

Still at least you've learnt from last time and just are not tiredly repeating the same old fanatsy and fanatic dogma, hoping that this time someone might listen to "the message" this time...

Oh...

viewtopic.php?p=2267310#p2267310

Where's Albear when you need him

[Tineash]

I'd also like some evidence that the BBC is institutionally Marxist.

[Hexx]

I'd also like some evidence that the BBC is institutionally Marxist.

Sod that.

I'm open minded, but I'm sceptical that it's Marxist and would therefore like to see it proven beyond all contention that it's Marxist - otherwise we can only assume it certainly isn't Marxist.

That's sceptisim, right?

[Cal]

The BBC now has a policy of all-but refusing climate sceptics serious air-time, as it has publicly stated it considers the 'scientific consensus settled' in favour of CAGW

Find this statement. With the exact quote given.

Climate change sceptics will get less of a hearing on the BBC because they are at odds with the majority view among scientists, a report reveals.

The corporation’s governing body is set to change the way the BBC covers the issue by urging it to focus less on those who disagree with the majority ‘consensus’. The BBC Trust report, out today, is in part based on an independent review of the broadcaster’s coverage by Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London. He is understood to find no evidence of bias in the corporation’s output, but suggests that on issues where there is a ‘scientific consensus’ – also including the MMR jab and genetically modified crops – there should be no need for the BBC to find opponents of the mainstream view. Critics of the BBC fear it may use the report as cover to ‘promote a green agenda’. In the past, the BBC has been accused of acting like a cheerleader for the theory that climate change is a man-made phenomenon.

Link

That Jones was invited to report on the BBC's traditional policy of impartiality was relevant. The corporation has decided it isn't bound by the requirement, which is part of its charter, for environmental stories - a peace-time first. Jones views on the climate "debate" are unambiguous: there isn't one, he says, despite "a drizzle" of activity from a handful of outside journalists who, he says, "have taken it upon themselves to keep disbelief alive". Because the BBC is annoying everyone, it must be doing something right, he reasons. Jones then dons a shrink's hat, and attempts to seek the psychology of the BBC's critics with some generalisations. He compares climate critics to 9/11 conspiracy theorists and pro-smoking campaigners who all "practise denialism", he says. "Purity of belief makes it easy for denialists to attract the attention of news organisations, but hard for them to balance their ideas against those of the majority. This can lead to undue publicity for views supported by no factual information at all. There have been many computer models of what may happen in future," Jones says, adding, "almost every climatologist predicts a period of rising temperature. Truth is not defined by opinion polls," writes Jones, quoting six opinion poll surveys, "... but it is difficult to deny the consensus," he suggests.

Link

[Hexx]

The BBC now has a policy of all-but refusing climate sceptics serious air-time, as it has publicly stated it considers the 'scientific consensus settled' in favour of CAGW

Find this statement. With the exact quote given.

Climate change sceptics will get less of a hearing on the BBC because they are at odds with the majority view among scientists, a report reveals.

The corporation’s governing body is set to change the way the BBC covers the issue by urging it to focus less on those who disagree with the majority ‘consensus’. The BBC Trust report, out today, is in part based on an independent review of the broadcaster’s coverage by Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London. He is understood to find no evidence of bias in the corporation’s output, but suggests that on issues where there is a ‘scientific consensus’ – also including the MMR jab and genetically modified crops – there should be no need for the BBC to find opponents of the mainstream view. Critics of the BBC fear it may use the report as cover to ‘promote a green agenda’. In the past, the BBC has been accused of acting like a cheerleader for the theory that climate change is a man-made phenomenon.

Link

That Jones was invited to report on the BBC's traditional policy of impartiality was relevant. The corporation has decided it isn't bound by the requirement, which is part of its charter, for environmental stories - a peace-time first. Jones views on the climate "debate" are unambiguous: there isn't one, he says, despite "a drizzle" of activity from a handful of outside journalists who, he says, "have taken it upon themselves to keep disbelief alive". Because the BBC is annoying everyone, it must be doing something right, he reasons. Jones then dons a shrink's hat, and attempts to seek the psychology of the BBC's critics with some generalisations. He compares climate critics to 9/11 conspiracy theorists and pro-smoking campaigners who all "practise denialism", he says. "Purity of belief makes it easy for denialists to attract the attention of news organisations, but hard for them to balance their ideas against those of the majority. This can lead to undue publicity for views supported by no factual information at all. There have been many computer models of what may happen in future," Jones says, adding, "almost every climatologist predicts a period of rising temperature. Truth is not defined by opinion polls," writes Jones, quoting six opinion poll surveys, "... but it is difficult to deny the consensus," he suggests.

Link

Yes, I'm sure you've read them but neither of those links actually prove your point in any way at all.

I, for one, was terribly surprised. Especially since it's pretty much exactly what you did last time when you completely missreprensented the BBC Trusts concerns to advance your message


viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7258&p=2112408&hilit=+BBC+Trust+#p2112408

and the time before that

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7258&p=2111953&hilit=+BBC+Trust+#p2111953

and the time before that

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7258&p=1076282&hilit=+BBC+Trust+#p1076282

and then time...then I got bored of looking.

Perhaps you could just go and read old posts in the thread rather than continually reposting the same tired, debunked, rebuked and discredited bullshit?

Remeber:

Do not POST in a manner designed to wear down a USER passive-aggressively ("STEALTH-TROLLING").

[Hexx]

Do not POST in a manner designed to wear down a USER passive-aggressively ("STEALTH-TROLLING").

That definition could cover you too, Hexx. In fact, in terms of forum rules I'd say you were more in the wrong than Cal.

Cal can put whatever he likes in this thread, and if nobody responds it will be closed - but you keep having a go at him, bringing up reasons his thread should be closed, reporting him, quoting things he should be giving a warning on... why don't you just PM a moderator and ignore the thread?

I'm not the only one. I'm just the one at the desk at the moment. I'm only guessing at others motivation though.

Because reverence for ignorance should always be actively opposed?

This type of fanatical and willful delusion should not be allowed a platform or facilitated or the validation an unopposed message presents? No one replies for long periods, and Cal bumps it like his own personal blog of stupidity to try and get 'the message' across. Admittidly it might get shut down in that case, but it's unlikely.

Plus personally the stench of the consistent and rampent hypocrisy really grinds my gears.

It's not like it's a challenge to dissassemble the ramblings for anyone.

Additionally we're not just reposting the same incorrect statements repeatidly and cherry picking facts and ignoring anything that doesn't fit a pre-conceived world view, there's always an argument behind it (which is normally ignored).

Just look at the last page - Andretmzt, Hime and Lime quite politely ask questions (you could include Tinesh in that maybe), and ignored in favour of yet another ill-formed (or downright incorrect) pontification peice of bile based hate spin and preaching.

That's the 'debate' in this thread. Pesonally I find that rude and contemptable, and don't mind reacting strongly to it.