No more global warming?

[Furunculus]

i think it is quite appropriate for the following statements:

1. The science is settled
2. It was agreed by the 'consensus' of scientific opinion
3. It was achieved using the highest standards of peer reviewed science

[Fragony]

"Pack of lies" seems disproportionate.

Don't you know it huh.

@Beskar, not forgetting anything, they used to melt and now they don't. Polar bears aren't any less perfectly fine. As a symbol it's useless.

[Fragony]

Surprisingly secular opinion in de Volkskrant about DEATH BY ACID RAIN. The flaggalants knew that ALL the forest would be GONE in FIVE years. Leading to an ECOLOGICAL HOLOCAUST, causing MASS STARVATION and GLOBAL WAR, IF WE DO NOT ACT RIGHT NOW.

(Dutch) http://extra.volkskrant.nl/opinie/ar...bossen_niet%3F

save the earth

[Subotan]

SO2 emissions have been drastically reduced in Western Europe over the past 10-20 years. Complaining that there is now no acid rain is bizarre and strange.

[Fragony]

It's the alarmism that matters, same hysteria. When I got my indoctrination I had to be absolutely terrified of sulphur. Now industry in Russia and China is still dirty but nobody is absolutely terrified of sulphur anymore, the trees didn't die and the dead lakes were full of fish. Enter CO2.
But the polar bears aren't drowning, and temperatures aren't rising. Global Warming lost it's shine. Minister of carrots knew that we will be EXTINCT by 2050 but we are all like yeahrite

What is finally finish us all of? I say water shortages are our new DOOM.

[Beskar]

Shame the same couldn't be said about those limestone statues.

[Louis VI the Fat]

It's the alarmism that matters, same hysteria. When I got my indoctrination I had to be absolutely terrified of sulphur. Now industry in Russia and China is still dirty but nobody is absolutely terrified of sulphur anymore, the trees didn't die and the dead lakes were full of fish. Enter CO2.

But Russia and China do suffer from major pollution problems.

The famous perennial fog in London of Jack the Ripper's time was not fog, but dirty smoke. It has since been cleaned up and it turned out London is not a climatic peculiarity.
In recent years, fish have returned into the Seine, and into many other western rivers - the stories about their pollution were real after all.


Global warming strikes me as real too. However, alarmist 'we are all going to die for our sins' does the case a disservice.
I disagree that Global Warming is the great, single threat to our environment, that requires a singularly great overhaul. The entirerity of our enviromental problems need to be tackled. I'd rather money was spend on preserving ecosystems than on 'buying' emission rights.

[gaelic cowboy]

Now industry in Russia and China is still dirty but nobody is absolutely terrified of sulphur anymore

Frag does anyone even have the right to call a stop to pollution in china or russia do there government's even care??????? past experience tells us they do not give a fig for there peoples health.

No one is terrified of sulphur anymore because we took most of it out of the cycle years ago. The sulphur that is emmited in the west is now in a more acceptable range, however dont mistake acceptable range for no effect.

[Furunculus]

Global warming strikes me as real too. However, alarmist 'we are all going to die for our sins' does the case a disservice.
I disagree that Global Warming is the great, single threat to our environment, that requires a singularly great overhaul. The entirerity of our enviromental problems need to be tackled. I'd rather money was spend on preserving ecosystems than on 'buying' emission rights.

very sensible view.

[Subotan]

It's the alarmism that matters, same hysteria. When I got my indoctrination I had to be absolutely terrified of sulphur. Now industry in Russia and China is still dirty but nobody is absolutely terrified of sulphur anymore, the trees didn't die and the dead lakes were full of fish. Enter CO2

So the science doesn't matter? How convenient, seeing as it's snuggles in nicely with your opinion.

But the polar bears aren't drowning

Why do you think I care about polar bears? Also, you're wrong.

What is finally finish us all of? I say water shortages are our new DOOM.

Nah, the Netherlands will be underwater, and Muslim-free by the time that starts to become a problem

[InsaneApache]

Flipancy is one thing dear boy, sarcasm is another.

Now did you wash behind your ears and clean your teeth before bedybyes?

[Fragony]

So the science doesn't matter? How convenient

For eco-apocalyptoloco's science indeed doesn't matter. It's a religion that filled up a gap. Like in the more hardcore versions of Christianity we are born sinners and must prepare for the end-days, the ecologicall holocaust. Nothing ever really changes men feels unworthy, in times of prosperity there will always be people who feel we are messing with the holy balance.

@Louis if you care about enviroment stop strangling the economy with useless eco-taxes. As society grows richer clean nature becomes a commodity, people like a clean enviroment. Less money, other priorities.

[Furunculus]

Nah, the Netherlands will be underwater, and Muslim-free by the time that starts to become a problem

unnecessary trolling.

[Fragony]

Not sure it might just be a real argument to him, linking global warming to ethnic cleansing isn't really that uncommon.

[InsaneApache]

Seems that the Royal Society is getting it's knickers in a twist....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The UK's Royal Society is reviewing its public statements on climate change after 43 Fellows complained that it had oversimplified its messages.

They said the communications did not properly distinguish between what was widely agreed on climate science and what is not fully understood.

The society's ruling council has responded by setting up a panel to produce a consensus document.

The panel should report in July and the report is to be published in September.

It is chaired by physicist John Pethica, vice-president of the Royal Society.

Its deliberations are reviewed by two critical sub-groups, each believed to comprise seven members.

Each of these groups contains a number of society Fellows who are doubtful in some way about the received view of the risks of rising CO2 levels.
Continue reading the main story

It's not clear to me how we are going to get precise agreement on the wording
Review member

One panel member told me: "The timetable is very tough - one draft has already been rejected as completely inadequate."

The review member said it might not be possible for the document to be agreed at all. "This is a very serious challenge to the way the society operates," I was told. "In the past we have been able to give advice to governments as a society without having to seek consensus of all the members.

"There is very clear evidence that governments are right to be very worried about climate change. But in any society like this there will inevitably be people who disagree about anything - and my fear is that the society may become paralysed on this issue."

Another review member told me: "The sceptics have been very strident and well-organised. It's not clear to me how we are going to get precise agreement on the wording - we are scientists and we're being asked to do a job of public communication that is more like journalism."

But both members said they agreed that some of the previous communications of the organisation in the past were poorly judged.
Question everything

A Royal Society pamphlet Climate Change Controversies is the main focus of the criticism. A version of it is on the organisation's website. It was written in response to attacks on mainstream science which the Royal Society considered scurrilous.

It reads: "This is not intended to provide exhaustive answers to every contentious argument that has been put forward by those who seek to distort and undermine the science of climate change…"

One Fellow who said he was not absolutely convinced of the dangers of CO2 told me: "This appears to suggest that anyone who questions climate science is malicious. But in science everything is there to be questioned - that should be the very essence of the Royal Society. Some of us were very upset about that.

"I can understand why this has happened - there is so much politically and economically riding on climate science that the society would find it very hard to say 'well, we are still fairly sure that greenhouse gases are changing the climate' but the politicians simply wouldn't accept that level of honest doubt."

Another society protester said he wanted to be called a climate agnostic rather than a sceptic. He said he wanted the society's website to "do more to question the accuracy of the science on climate feedbacks" (in which a warming world is believed to make itself warmer still through natural processes).

"We sent an e-mail round our friends, mainly in physical sciences," he said.

"Then when we had got 43 names we approached the council in January asking for the website entry on climate to be re-written. I don't think they were very pleased. I don't think this sort of thing has been done before in the history of the society.

"But we won the day, and the work is underway to re-write it. I am very hopeful that we will find a form of words on which we can agree.

"I know it looks like a tiny fraction of the total membership (1,314) but remember we only emailed our friends - we didn't raise a general petition."
Precautionary principle

He said the agnostics were also demanding a "more even-handed" bibliography.

The first "climate agnostic" also said he was angry at previous comments from the previous president Lord May who declared: "The debate on climate change is over."

Lord May was once quoted as saying: "'On one hand, you have the entire scientific community and on the other you have a handful of people, half of them crackpots."

One source strongly criticised the remarks.

Lord May's comments were made at a time when world scientists were reaching a consensus (not unanimity) that CO2 had warmed the planet and would probably warm it more - maybe dangerously so.

Lobbyists funded by the fossil fuel industry were fighting to undermine that consensus and science academies were concerned that public doubt might deter governments from taking precautionary action to reduce emissions of CO2.

Climate change doubters among the society's Fellows say that in their anxiety to support government action, the academies failed to distinguish between "hired guns" and genuine scientific agnostics wanting to explore other potential causes of climate change.

The remit of the society panel is to produce a new public-facing document on what scientists know, what they think they know and which aspects they do not fully understand. The task is to make the document strong and robust.

It should answer the complaint that previous communications have failed to properly explain uncertainties in climate science.
Language of risk

At the Heartland Institute climate sceptics conference in Chicago, Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), criticised the current society president Lord Rees for what he described as exaggerating the certainty in a joint public letter with Ralph Cicerone, president of the US National Academy of Sciences.

The letter, published by the Financial Times newspaper, states: "Something unprecedented is now happening. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising and climate change is occurring, both due to human actions…. Uncertainties in the future rate of (temperature) rise, stemming largely from the 'feedback' effects on water vapour and clouds, are topics of current research."

Professor Lindzen says the "unprecedented" statement is misleading because neither the current warming nor the CO2 level are unprecedented. He complains that the statement on uncertainties is also misleading because it does not reveal that uncertainties about future climate projections are, in his view, immense.

A spokesman for the society defended the letter, saying that the rise in man-made CO2 was indeed unprecedented. But Professor Lindzen told me: "This is part of an inflation of a scientific position which has sadly become rather routine for spokesmen for scientific bodies."

The forthcoming Royal Society publication - if it can be agreed by the review panel - will be scrutinised closely because the society carries huge weight in global science. Under Lord May it was prime mover of a joint letter of international academies stating that climate change was a major concern.

The comments from the current president Lord Rees in his first Reith lecture next week are rather carefully measured and couched in the language of risk rather than certainty - but even in this speech, critics are likely to say that in some particulars he does not sufficiently distinguish between what is certain and what is very widely believed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_a...t/10178124.stm

[Furunculus]

about time they got their act together, that the home of modern science has become so banal and partisan is a serious embarrassment in recent times.

[Fragony]

Climate-agnost, why didn't think that, perfectly illustrates where serious science and absolute faih collide.

[Subotan]

For eco-apocalyptoloco's science indeed doesn't matter. It's a religion that filled up a gap. Like in the more hardcore versions of Christianity we are born sinners and must prepare for the end-days, the ecologicall holocaust. Nothing ever really changes men feels unworthy, in times of prosperity there will always be people who feel we are messing with the holy balance..

So I was right.

unnecessary trolling.

No, a valid point.

Not sure it might just be a real argument to him, linking global warming to ethnic cleansing isn't really that uncommon.

[Citation Needed]

[Fragony]

So I was right.

Only if I suddenly turned into a believer. Which I didn't. Read IA article if you can see it, speaks volumes of why climate change is needed, the scientific climate that is.

a valid point only in the bizar logic of der linkschmensch by the way. I am used to it but it remains fascinating.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

The famous perennial fog in London of Jack the Ripper's time was not fog, but dirty smoke. It has since been cleaned up and it turned out London is not a climatic peculiarity.
In recent years, fish have returned into the Seine, and into many other western rivers - the stories about their pollution were real after all.

Global warming strikes me as real too. However, alarmist 'we are all going to die for our sins' does the case a disservice.
I disagree that Global Warming is the great, single threat to our environment, that requires a singularly great overhaul. The entirerity of our enviromental problems need to be tackled. I'd rather money was spend on preserving ecosystems than on 'buying' emission rights.

I very much agree. Pollution is clearly a problem, but it's also clear that we in the West have already done a lot to combat it. "Climate Change" may be less of an issue, and the whole edifice would be irrelevant if we just lowered pollution.

For eco-apocalyptoloco's science indeed doesn't matter. It's a religion that filled up a gap. Like in the more hardcore versions of Christianity we are born sinners and must prepare for the end-days, the ecologicall holocaust. Nothing ever really changes men feels unworthy, in times of prosperity there will always be people who feel we are messing with the holy balance.

I think this is very perceptive; see, this is what happens when you rubbish your traditional religion. The young just choose between different flavours of madness.

[InsaneApache]

‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

Animal Farm. George Orwell.

[Fragony]

Smart man. Goebels once said that if you make lie big enough people will believe it. I disagree it's not supposed to convince anyone, the purpose is to make people part of the lie, the more outragious the better.

[Louis VI the Fat]

'Goebbels' - now that's taking it all too far. It's conspiracy thinking. As useless as saying that 4.5 billion people will die by 2012.


It is commonly accepted science that atmospheric make-up is a factor in climate. Greenhouse gasses do exist, and it's in little dispute they are a factor in earth's and Venus' climate.

[Shaka_Khan]

Let's wait and see how warm this summer gets.

[Subotan]

Smart man. Goebels once said that if you make lie big enough people will believe it. I disagree it's not supposed to convince anyone, the purpose is to make people part of the lie, the more outragious the better.

So now I'm a Nazi SOB!

And apparently, I'm the troll for a sly reference to another one of Fragony' nutty beliefs.

But let's get down to business. You (I.e. Fragony, IA et al) say that climate change is fanciful, the work of some conspiracy by "them" and obviously a plot by "eco-apocalyptolocos ". I have provided absolutely LOADS of examples of peer reviewed papers, statistics about peer review papers etc. to show that there is a scientific consensus that man's actions are having an effect on the climate on the planet. I do not mean evidence as in one nutty, non-scientists "opinion" on some crackpot blog (Delingpole et al), or written in some crackpot newspaper (Daily Torygraph, cough). I do not mean evidence as in comparisons betwen the failure of the catastrophic disasters predicted of acid rain, should we fail to act on acid rain, which did not happen because action was taken on acid rain, and climate change.

However, you appear to have provided as evidence all the things which I have shown to be "bad" evidence. You have not provided any peer reviewed scientific studies from within the past twenty years or so showing that the Earth is in fact cooling. You have not provided any evidence of who these "eco-nutters" might be, and what form of conspiracy they are forming, or how they will gain from it. The onus is on you now. Prove that the Earth is cooling. Prove that CO2 has no impact on the capture of radiation from the Sun reflecting from the Earth. Prove that there is a conspiracy.

Or are you just wrong?

[InsaneApache]

So now I'm a Nazi SOB!

And apparently, I'm the troll for a sly reference to another one of Fragony' nutty beliefs.

But let's get down to business. You (I.e. Fragony, IA et al) say that climate change is fanciful, the work of some conspiracy by "them" and obviously a plot by "eco-apocalyptolocos ". I have provided absolutely LOADS of examples of peer reviewed papers, statistics about peer review papers etc. to show that there is a scientific consensus that man's actions are having an effect on the climate on the planet. I do not mean evidence as in one nutty, non-scientists "opinion" on some crackpot blog (Delingpole et al), or written in some crackpot newspaper (Daily Torygraph, cough). I do not mean evidence as in comparisons betwen the failure of the catastrophic disasters predicted of acid rain, should we fail to act on acid rain, which did not happen because action was taken on acid rain, and climate change.

However, you appear to have provided as evidence all the things which I have shown to be "bad" evidence. You have not provided any peer reviewed scientific studies from within the past twenty years or so showing that the Earth is in fact cooling. You have not provided any evidence of who these "eco-nutters" might be, and what form of conspiracy they are forming, or how they will gain from it. The onus is on you now. Prove that the Earth is cooling. Prove that CO2 has no impact on the capture of radiation from the Sun reflecting from the Earth. Prove that there is a conspiracy.

Or are you just wrong?

First off science is not about concensus. Your confusing science with politics.

Secondly it's not up to us to prove anything. You're the ones running around saying "We're all doomed" so in fact it's up to you lot to prove it conclusively.

Thirdly any science that 'sexes up' any data is not science, it's bunkem.

That is all.

[Louis VI the Fat]

So now I'm a Nazi SOB!

And apparently, I'm the troll for a sly reference to another one of Fragony' nutty beliefs.

No, Frags describes AGW as scaremongering propaganda by using an insight about how propaganda functions that he derived from propaganda master Goebbels.

The point of debate is not to provide arguments for one's own case, then curse and swear on your opponent until he admits he's wrong, and a nutter to boot.

[Subotan]

I think this is very perceptive; see, this is what happens when you rubbish your traditional religion. The young just choose between different flavours of madness.

So religion is incompatible with science? I guess that explains why I'm an athiest

First off science is not about concensus. Your confusing science with politics.

It is about the search for truth, and the generally accepted truth amongst climatologists is that man's actions are causing climate change. Policy decisions by governments and economic agents have to be taken within the scientific consensus, otherwise you end up with incidents like tribesmen in Nigeria refusing the Polio vaccine, as vaccines are obviously a Western Neo-Colonialist conspiracy.

Secondly it's not up to us to prove anything. You're the ones running around saying "We're all doomed" so in fact it's up to you lot to prove it conclusively.
.

I have provided numerous serious examples of evidence detailing that, contrary to what Fragony says, there is a consensus (http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf 97.5% of climatologists agree that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?), that the Earth is in fact warming (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml + http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/abs/nature07080.html + http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Total-Heat-Content.gif) and that climate change will be extremely damaging to the environment and human civilisation.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20....full.pdf+html

http://oem.bmj.com/content/64/12/827.short These findings suggest that increases in heat-related mortality due to global warming are unlikely to be compensated for by decreases in cold-related mortality and that population acclimatisation to heat is still incomplete.

http://www.iser.uaa.alaska.edu/Publi...JuneICICLE.pdf
Our preliminary estimate using these models is that the public infrastructure at risk, or vulnerable, after accounting for likely adaptations, is in the range of $3.6 to $6.1 billion for the period 2006 to 2030 and from $5.6 to $6.7 billion, for the longer planning horizon to 2080. Without adaptations, the long-run costs could be billions of dollars higher. - And that's just Alaska(!)

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/49/19214.full Other direct impacts of global warming, such as sea level rising, spread of tropical diseases, increase of extreme weather events and glacial retreat, would also add costs on the current economy that is supported by cheap energy. In severe cases, the economic burden would cause conflict for resources and intensify social contradictions and unrest as we have seen in the past. However, we believe that the greater threat from global warming comes from the uncertainty of the ecosystem change, because the current high global average temperature (which has never been experienced in the last two millennia) is continuing to rise at an accelerated speed. Perhaps we are reaching the point at which it might break the balance of a human ecosystem that has been long established at a lower temperature, and in addition, many secondary and tertiary effects of global warming cannot be predicted based on current knowledge.

http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166322&entityID=000016406_2007020916143 0 Sea level rise (SLR) due to climate change is a serious global threat. The scientific evidence is now overwhelming. Continued growth of greenhouse gas emissions and associated global warming could well promote SLR of 1m-3m in this century, and unexpectedly rapid breakup of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets might produce a 5m SLR.

And once again, contrary to what Fragony says, polar bears will suffer a decline in population of over 2/3rds over the coming 50 years.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special...ast_lowres.pdf

Your turn.

Thirdly any science that 'sexes up' any data is not science, it's bunkem.

So, one, maybe two mistakes, in one research paper, created by hundreds of climatologists instantly discredits the entire hypothesis? Maybe if this sort of standard was applied to climate change deniers, then we would all have agreed that man-made climate change was reality by now!

No, Frags describes AGW as scaremongering propaganda by using an insight about how propaganda functions that he derived from propaganda master Goebbels.

So, he called me and all the scientists a Nazi. So much for debate without "cursing and swearing on your opponent"

The point of debate is not to provide arguments for one's own case, then curse and swear on your opponent until he admits he's wrong, and a nutter to boot.

Is this directed towards me or Frags? I honestly can't tell.

[InsaneApache]

The problem the alarmists have is credibility. More than once or twice the warmists have been found, well quite frankly, making things up.

Little lads and wolves spring to mind.

[Fragony]

Subotan my curiosity wins over, the type of curiosity that makes people slow down when they see an accident. Please keep posting.