talkmagic.co.uk

A_n_t wrote: so do try to get at least an understanding of both sides of any given arguement.

Oh I completely agree but the point I was trying to make is that, as you've said, the experts are experts for a reason. Anything we read in the press about the subject is so reductive that it is highly unlikely to convey the complexities of either side of the argument. Reading the source material is going to be very heavy going and subject to mis-interpretation but I have tried to read some overview material like the Stern report.

As for Tomo's question, as I've mentioned, I have a belief that the majority of scientists are decent human beings with a decent sense of ethical conduct. This coupled with the stuff I've read has convinced me that we need to take action. Finally, for me there is something akin to Pascal's wager (let's not start a thread on that again) - if we assume man is having an effect on the climate, take action and we are right then we have a positive outcome, if we're wrong then what have we lost (well, other than a bit of cash).

Craig.

Ted wrote:

Grimshaw wrote:I'm saying if it were me, and I'm an alright kind of chap, i certainly wouldn't present any evidence to the contrary if it meant i would be put out of a job because of that evidence. Or rather, i'd find a way to discredit the evidence.

Thank God you are not a scientist, then. It is not a matter of being an "alright kind of chap" or protecting your career. It is about conducting science professionally.

Conducting science professionally? Like the protagonists in the climategate emails? Have you read that stuff? I have, and i don't see anything professional about it. I can email them to anyone interested. That's where i get my ideas when it comes to this, and you may say that's an isolated incident, but how do we know that? If man made global warming is something for us to be concerned about, if we need to do something soon or it all goes down the u-bend.......why the need to 'massage' the figures?
If the problem is a real one, there should be no massaging necessary. Altering figures to fit a theory is not science, its how kids cheat on their science homework.

Tomo wrote:It's been a fascinating thread. Can I ask a key question here? Regardless of what you believe about climate change, how did you arrive at that belief?

There's no punchline. It's a serious question.

I got intrigued by the evidence to the contrary and decided to do my own digging. I got peeved at some of the lies that were born in order to make the theories stick, and at the bad science that lies at the heart of it. I also find it fascinating to argue with people about this stuff, because a lot of people get very passionate about it but can't tell you why. Possibly it's media influence. It's a thorny issue, but one that isn't being discussed rationally because we keep getting fed exaggerations and hyperbole. A whole lot of 'what-ifs' which frankly don't wash with me. All i think about when people go on about global warming/climate change is Helen Lovejoy from the Simpsons standing there saying ' Wont someone please think of the children!! '

When the notion that solar activity was responsible for global warming came along, and was then 'disproved', you had people bickering over it in a very interesting manner. Some said the disproving was simply a smear campaign aimed at the scientists disproving it.

Another example of scientists behaving professionally? They're not superheroes or machines, they're human, and therefore subject to every petty emotion you and i are.

And like i said in a previous post, since this is science it should be up for debate, and it isn't. There's something not right about that, it leaves me feeling very uncomfortable. Nothing is certain, there are no facts, only interpretations. ( 10 points )

The latest bit if tweaking I heard yesterday is that Climate and Weather are not the same thing. 'Weather' is short term therefore any extremes such as heat waves and freeze-ups aren't all that relevant. 'Climate' is long term and shouldn't be confused with the short term events. On that basis and as it's confirmed that anything long term is at best an educated guess, my suspicious little brain cell smells a potential whitewash job. Never mind that you're freezing your bits off one minute then frying them the next, punitive taxes will still be enforced! If only those taxes were spent on doing something about the situation it would be less painful. Spending gazillions of taxpayers money simply can't change things, only puny humans can do that and even then Mother Nature is far stronger....

Tomo wrote:It's been a fascinating thread. Can I ask a key question here? Regardless of what you believe about climate change, how did you arrive at that belief?

My standpoint is basically sceptical, but open to persuasion if any sound evidence can be produced. This is probably based on my natural tendency to think in terms of geological and evolutionary timescales, and a conviction that humans aren't nearly as important as they like to think they are.

The Earth's climate has been changing constantly throughout the history of the planet, including extremes of heat and cold. Most of the time it's been considerably warmer than it is today, so even if there is a warming trend, it would only be moving the planet nearer to its average.

At the moment we're in an ice age (as defined by the presence of permanent icecaps at the poles). Humans evolved during the present ice age, and modern humans have been lucky enough to live during an interglacial period of the age. Ice ages are notorious for having rapid fluctuations in temperature. Even in the small span of recorded history we've seen the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Because of our evolutionary history, we tend to think of the prevailing conditions as normal, when in reality they're very unusual and destined not to last long in geological terms.

Humans, having evolved a rudimentary sentience, tend to think of themselves as the most important things on the planet. It's flattering to believe you have the power to control the world. Apart from global warming, we've all heard hysteria about human action killing all life, destroying the planet, etc. Rubbish. Granted, humans are pretty darn verminous, and it will be a relief to the ecosystem when the species goes extinct, but we're just not that powerful.

Tomo wrote:It's been a fascinating thread. Can I ask a key question here? Regardless of what you believe about climate change, how did you arrive at that belief?

There's no punchline. It's a serious question.

Human beings aren't meant to survive forever, any more than the dinosaurs were. Things change, life forms come and go, new ones take their place. It's nature. Telling Mrs. Smith to walk down to the shops rather than take her Ford Focus won't change that.

Maybe our years are numbered, maybe not. Nobody, nobody, knows really. All I can tell you is if I look out of my window, it's January and it's bloody freezing. Things seem to be okay.

Robbie wrote:Humans, having evolved a rudimentary sentience, tend to think of themselves as the most important things on the planet.

They do, and to me this raises an interesting question; What temperature is the planet supposed to be?

The right temperature to keep us alive according to some. I think we should just be thankful for the time we've had here and the time to come. As you rightfully point out Robbie, humanity has seen many changes in climate. The Roman Warming period for example, saw vineyards growing in Britain, all the way up to Scotland. Then it went cold again.

To bring it closer to our current date, in 1933 it was noted that 18 of the previous 21 winters in Washington DC had been warmer than normal. Then we had 4 decades of colder temperatures, called ' The Little Cooling '.

Climate changes, its natural. The problem is, the environmentalists ( and you can't say that without saying mental ) have been leaning on world leaders to go green hoping it would change things. In order to look like they care, the powers that be have obeyed. Trouble is, they've set themselves unrealistsic targets and are going to leave us with an energy crisis they will be unable to fix. They need people with common sense to lean on them, rather than idealists who refuse to read any evidence contrary to their own opinions. By closing Nuclear plants and refusing to burn fossil fuels, we're going to be a nation desperate for electricity. Wind turbines are not a solution. You'd need a hell of a lot of them, and think of the size of Britain, where the hell would we put these turbines? Some think we should put them out at sea. Brilliant. The cost of doing that will reflect in your electricity bill you can count on that, so this clean renewable energy will render your wallet as clear as your conscience. Solar is workable, but we need to be gearing up for it now, or in as little as 30 or 40 years time, we'll all be reading by candlelight, and time spent on the Talk Magic forum will be precious time indeed, since our genius government had pledged to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by the year 2050. See you in the blackout.......or not as the case may be.

Interesting debate guys.

Until a recent career change (towards being a professional magician) I was a scientist working in one of the research labs at Oxford University. My own research wasn't climate related, but I have a lot of friends working in atmospheric and climate labs, and I know what science actually entails.

It is true that science is open for debate, it is in fact the very foundation of modern science. Any science paper that gets published in a journal is peer reviewed - that means that a panel of other scientists look at your research and, to be frank, tear it to pieces. If your results aren't reliable, they'll tell you. If you're showing bias in your results, they'll tell you. If you have mislabelled one of the axes on a graph in one of your figures. Seriously, it's that harsh.

The reason they do this is because funding for research is based on getting your work published. The bigger the journal, the better. Get published in Nature, or Science, and you're doing well. Seriously, there's a scoring system and each journal has a bonus score thing. It's incredibly complicated. If the scientist who is peer reviewing your paper can get it chucked back for rewriting, there is a greater chance that their paper (which will probably be submitted to the same paper, everyone wants a place in Nature) will get accepted.

Now, to balance the argument a little, I should mention that there are plenty of 'journals' out there that have far less rigorous peer reviewing systems, that often publish research that is a little shaky. There is also plenty of research funded by companies where they tell their researchers to prove a link between one thing (for example a product they can put in their food, eg. Omega 3) and another (like the fact that it's useful for living - just like a billion other chemicals in your body). Again, this research is hardly award winning, and it is important to be able to recognise papers like this.

Over the last hundred years the global temperature has risen, as has the level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere. It is true that the global temperature does fluctuate over periods of thousands of years, but the current increase in global temperature does not fit with this change - that is not to say that it isn't a factor, but it would be foolish to think that finding ONE cause is the saming as finding THE cause.

I'm sure some people will disagree with me, and you are welcome to, but think about this - if a newbie came to our forums and decided to tell us all that after reading Derren Brown's Trick of the Mind and watching a lot of Criss Angel he was an authority on mentalism and bizarre magic, he'd be (politely) laughed off the forums. The science behind climate change is very popular at the minute, and the media are good at reducing it to facts and figures and black and white. In reality, it's really, really complicated.

Serendipity wrote:Interesting debate guys.

.....

I'm sure some people will disagree with me, and you are welcome to, but think about this - if a newbie came to our forums and decided to tell us all that after reading Derren Brown's Trick of the Mind and watching a lot of Criss Angel he was an authority on mentalism and bizarre magic, he'd be (politely) laughed off the forums. The science behind climate change is very popular at the minute, and the media are good at reducing it to facts and figures and black and white. In reality, it's really, really complicated.

This is probably an important point; most of what we hear is brought to us by people who are not, and have never been, scientists. They come from a world where the truth is decided by debate. This often means that whoever shouts loudly enough or has a more confident presentation wins. Science is based on Facts so any debate is entirely irrelevant and only serves to alter what people believe, not the way the world is.

It matters not who wins the climate change debate, only what the sum of the research says.

nickj wrote:It matters not who wins the climate change debate, only what the sum of the research says.

I would agree with this, because i'd love to. But look at how deep the governments of the world have gotten into this whole thing. This is why they constantly say it isn't up for debate.

Imagine if more and more evidence to the contrary came out about man made CO2 being the cause of global warming. All the time, effort and stacks and stacks of cash ploughed into this thing.....can you honestly imagine Barack Obama (whose presidential campaign made a HUGE deal about global warming) standing in front of his fellow Americans and saying 'Thing is.......we were wrong'.

Most politicians are arrogant, and with arrogance comes an inflated ego. They are never wrong (the refusal of some of them to repay expenses is a good case in point), and after the Kyotol Agreement and the Copenhagen Conference....and the next one to come.....i can't see them backing down over their Carbon Footprint and Man Made CO2 ideals. The pieces will fit, they'll make them fit.

not sure about that, cos ultimately - governments want to please big corporations - they are the ones who donate the money, all they'd need is one or two fall guys to say "we were wrong" and fall on their swords...i think governments would love to be wrong on all this, as it'll give big businesses carte blanche to churn out as many evil plumes as they wished without fear of finger pointing...

IAIN wrote:not sure about that, cos ultimately - governments want to please big corporations - they are the ones who donate the money, all they'd need is one or two fall guys to say "we were wrong" and fall on their swords...i think governments would love to be wrong on all this, as it'll give big businesses carte blanche to churn out as many evil plumes as they wished without fear of finger pointing...

Would you not agree it's the same kind of thing as smoking?

There's plenty of government money thrown into helping people quit smoking. The smoking ban even came in, which helped to shut down plenty of pubs nationwide. Really though, the tax on cigarettes nets the government an absolute fortune, so i see it more as them trying to look like they're doing the right thing, but really they love it if you carry on doing the wrong thing. Same with booze, ' Bring an end to binge drinking!!!! ........by the way, tax has gone up on booze '.

Besides, green energy is going to take a load more money from you than fossil fuel energy, and green taxes are simply taking money from you in case something happens. A bit like religion.

i think I'm willing to listen to anything that doesnt support my own point of view...

Grimshaw wrote:Besides, green energy is going to take a load more money from you than fossil fuel energy, and green taxes are simply taking money from you in case something happens. A bit like religion.

In case something happens? So the raise in global temperature, decrease in size of the polar ice caps and the coldest winter England has seen in 40 years doesn't count as something happening?

What would you consider evidence enough for global warming?

Serendipity wrote:
What would you consider evidence enough for global warming?

Warmer weather.

Serendipity wrote:What would you consider evidence enough for global warming?

What's happening is evidence of climate change. This is natural. It happens. You have to live with it.

The current change in the climate is that it's getting hotter. That will change. Next year. Next decade. Tomorrow. Who knows.

My beef isn't that the climate is or isnt changing, it is doing because that's what it's always done. It's that humans are both arrogant and dumb enough to think they're responsible for it. Let history be your guide (and i dont mean just average temperatures in your life, i mean look back into history even before this Jesus chap came along), and hopefully common sense can help dictate the future.