Bang goes that consensus!

THX1138

C'mon Melanie you and Philip Stott are going to have to do a lot better than this. The Conference was organized by The Heartland Institute yet another right wing think tank with funding from Exxon and a political axe to grind & with invitation list of the usual discredited snake oil merchants that always turn up at these events in exchange for a free flight & hotel room especially if they can fit in a bit of shopping in NYC. Even your pet scientist Phillip Stott is not a climatologist or atmospheric physicist he's a geographer. I await you post that tells me that the Royal Society has decided that the threat is over until then I intend to believe the bastion of British Scientific rational thought over you Phillip Stott & the Heartland Institute and I advise all rational people to do the same.

elixelx

THX1138, So YOUR billionaires and industries, and candidates and Media which support MMGW are more reliable, more honest, less mercenary, more altruistic, more SCIENTIFIC than Melanie's? Of course they are! That's it; end of argument; let's go home!

Lee Jakeman

For me, it started in a small way. I once attended a computer programming course on which I was the only non-graduate. It became obvious to me, as the course progressed, that the graduates were no smarter than I was, and that most of them, in fact, were a lot less so. In my subsequent IT career, I found myself working on a number of large, failed projects. In each case, the project failed because the senior people on it, all graduates as far as I could ascertain, took an arrogant "I know best" attitude and were dismissive of the views of anyone lower down the chain of command. Those "lower down the chain of command", such as myself, invariably had a far better grasp of what was going on than any of those higher up did. I always knew, for example, well in advance of those higher up, whether or not a project was heading for success or failure. Now older and wiser, I now know that the scenario I've just described is practically true of management almost everywhere and that the entire world, virtually, is run by educated people who either don't know what they're talking about or don't know what they're doing. "Corporate Insanity", I believe it's called. And then people wonder why those like me have little or no confidence in our so-called leaders.

Roy

Lee Jakeman, I'll back that up.

Jim

Bugger!

Matt

Expect these people to be the first people to be put thru the "Enviromentally safe" Gas ovens. Thou shall not disagree with the Greenshirts

field

The problem with the Global Warming hypothesis is that it isn't really science in itself: it is interpretation of science. We see the same problem with diet. There are countless scientific studies but very little consensus about what constitutes a "good" diet. It is difficult to interpret the science - and a lot of the science is questionable in any case (i.e. paid for by companies or lobby groups pushing their own agenda). In the same way I think it's probably not a good idea to load your diet with additives (though it might be difficult to "prove"), I think it's probably not a good idea to load the atmosphere with pollutants. My view is we should stick to THAT principle because it's a good precautionary principle. But whether global warming is resulting from the carbon burden, is really very difficult to say.

grant watt

Doesn't surprise us in Australia where we possibly have the furthest Left wing media per capita.Pravda gives a more balanced view than the Canberra Press Gallery whose members are the major political reporters,

Rob

I wonder how many of the 500 were scientists and how many were "business leaders".

Brian O'Connor

THX1138 wrote:

The Conference was organized by The Heartland Institute yet another right wing think tank with funding from Exxon and a political axe to grind & with invitation list of the usual discredited snake oil merchants that always turn up at these events in exchange for a free flight & hotel room especially if they can fit in a bit of shopping in NYC.

Translation: Don't evaluate their case on it's merits, but on who they are. (It's almost as if THX1138 believes those championing AGW have no conflict of interest . . . that is, that they are immune to the temptations that drive mere mortals to see what they want to see, rather than what's there.)

THX1138 wrote:

I await you (sic) post that tells me that the Royal Society has decided that the threat is over

Fallacy: Appeal to authority. The Royal Society is not infallible. Or if they are infallible, perhaps they could tell us how they achieved it.

THX1138 clearly cannot conceive that scientific consensus might not be the Final Word on a matter.

But if THX1138 has an open mind and is courageous enough to risk having his faith in "scientific consensus" undermined, he might try reading Michael Crichton's article Aliens Cause Global Warming.

There, he would find examples of "scientific consensus" being dead wrong on any number of big issues, and scientists resistant (if not antagonistic) for decades, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, to what should have been glaringly correct.

THX1138

THX1138, So YOUR billionaires and industries, and candidates and Media which support MMGW are more reliable, more honest, less mercenary, more altruistic, more SCIENTIFIC than Melanie's?--Yes

David M.

Eco-mentalists: The unspeakable in pursuit of the unheatable?

Gary

Do they really expect scientific sense to put a damper on a cult faith. The high priests of the climate change apocalyse reckon an increase of 0.008% of CO2 in the atmosphere over a century has increased the world's temperature by 0.7deg about 6 or 8 deg. The error margin is an order of magnitude greater than the value, and could be either colder or warmer. It's ridiculous.

Alcuin

As those who have followed recent posts on this issue (AGW) will know, I am not sympatheric to the climate skeptics, and believe AGW is real and deadly. However, the damage is done, and there is little we can now do to stop it's consequences, so I am not too concerned by storms in teacups like this conference. I do sympathise with Melanie's view that the skeptics are not being reported, though they did get a major platform with Channel 4's Great Global Warming Swindle. The public, thanks to our education system, are not skilled in evaluating direct evidence themselves, so are left to choose between experts, that in the facile intersts of "balance" are presented in the MSM merely as competing views. Most just throw up their hands in confusion and ignore the problem - a perfectly rational position.

Mr Jakeman - amen to that. I did scientific programming for a long time, but was mercifully largely in charge of what I wrote and how I wrote it. I would, however, point out that scientific programming is quite a different discipline from other areas of IT, in that is has to be done by scientific people. This is primarily because while you can train a scientist to programme on the job in a few months, you cannot train a programmer to do science or engineering. Technical problems are often not amenable to the dictum "customer specifies, programmers code", because coding of technical problems involves significant discovery and understanding. Such are the Global Circulation Models on which AGW theory largely stands or falls.

Mr Field. False analogy. There are good quantitative models for climate, none for diet.

James Lovelock has simplified GCM sufficiently to argue cogently that there is strong evidence of positive feedbacks at work in the Earth system, and that a gear-change similar to that of the Eocene is in progress.

Michael Taylor

THX1138 is keen to play the man not the ball. Doing a little light checking, the latest interesting financial data for the Heartland Institute was for 2005, when it attracted total funding of US$4.52m, of which US$109,000 came from Exxon, ie, roughly 2.4%. Some gravy train! Perhaps THX1138 would like to go into the finances of, oh, I dunno, let's say Greenpeace to discover what proportion of its income comes from government, public sector or EU sources?

THX1138

Guys- We can trade insults & dodgy stats until the ice caps melt. My main point is that if we don't trust specialist scientists to inform on major scientific issues who do we trust? Corporation's, pressure groups, newspaper columnists, science fiction writers or politicians? Take your pick You can all spin it anyway you like but the brutal fact remains that with real experts in this field their really is a huge consensus and to discard all that expertise on the basis of your own prejudices and political stance would be the height of irrational foolishness. We live in an age where science are scientists are distrusted because most of us don' understand the basics of scientific thought and yet we rely on it for everything we do but rather than embracing a golden age of reason we do everything we can to undermine it & this blog is yet another example of this phenomenon. I will still turn to the home of our great scientists Newton, Davy, Kelvin, Rutherford & Dawkins- The Royal Society for my scientific opinion you lot are welcome to your quacks.

Dave

Mel's as right about this issue as she was about MMR Oh, wait. Hang on...

Hereford

So THX any view that is contrary must, of necessity be biased. On the other hand, any view that is supportive, must, of necessity be based on altruistic and noble intent. And where any contrary opinion is expressed, don't attack the science, attack the motivation. Predictable.

Ian C

Who can we trust THX etc? That is at the heart of the matter. We cannot trust the UN. We have never been able to trust the UN [or any other international institution because they get hijacked by special interests rarely commercial ones] so why should we on climate change? Scientists across the globe are massively funded by state/quasi state bodies & institutions. If you work for one, especially onthe latest hobby horse or fad, you pick up fantastic money with no commercial tests and it becomes a meal ticket for academics who would not survive in the real world. They only get a pay check if they have a problem to research. And these are the people we should trust? - when there is a very large and body of opinion worth at least listening to with a countervailing view that the 'warmists' are denying even exist, and if they do their opinion is not valid. Open your mind to the possibility that [yet another] claimed consensus has got it wrong again. Form your own informed opinion you cannot rely on others and should not be trying to.

Lucy

Dave, perhaps you never read Private Eye, which has ruthlessly revealed the efforts made to suppress MMR sceptics. It is a debate that is far from over but has been successfully stifled by making sure no more studies recieve Whitehall funding to investigate any shortcomings in the vaccine. She's 'Mad Mel', isn't she? The woman who madly banged on about synthetic phonics for years while no-one listened, only now that's being recommended to schools now.

Chrome

The 'Manhattan Declaration' is here http://www.heartland.org/pdf/ManhattanDeclarationForm.pdf Normally with these things a list of heavyweight signatories is appended, but for some reason there are as yet, no names attached to this one. The list of speakers and there 'Bios' is available on the same site. I counted 20 scientists with relevant qualifications outnumbered by a schmooze of policy advisors, freemarket economists, PR people, the odd Evangelical. None of the scientists is exactly First Division. Check out, for example one Tim Ball .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ball#Dispute_over_qualifications_to_comment_on_global_warming The IPCC WG1 Report had over 600 contibutors, every last one a practicing climate scientist.

Tim M

Ah, Mr (or is it Mrs?) THX1138 again. You say: 'My main point is that if we don't trust specialist scientists to inform on major scientific issues who do we trust?' Why not try identifying scientists who gain financially by adopting the MMGW theory, and then discount their views. See how many you are left with. Ahem, less than 10? Not much of a consensus, huh? Check out the 500 Melanie mentions in her article, how many of them are risking their careers by daring to question the orthodoxy? There are your brave scientists with nothing to gain: listen to them. Your stock response to any evidence against MMGW appears to be either 'what about the Royal Society?' or 'it's all funded by Exxon' etc. What's your point, chief? Virtually every member of the RS is paid for by government(s), (i.e. taxpayers). The RS has endowments and reserves of nearly £200million. There's further funding and riches due to it precisely because of the unscientific stance it has taken. The RS don't even attempt scientific debate on MMGW anymore, they just count their sheckles. No self respecting scientist would hold up the RS on the climate change issue, they'd be laughed out of the lab. Address the issues THX (you don't mind me shortening your name?). The climate models were demonstrably wrong, we have got cooler and not hotter. CO2 is not a pollutant, but a colourless, odourless gas essential to life. Water vapour is a far more effective and abundant 'greenhouse' gas than CO2. But hey, you love Al Gore's crockumentary, and tut tutting about capitalism and globalism makes the eco brethren feel morally self righteous, (I guess)? Unfortunately, the rest of us aren't willing to give up our freedoms and commit economic suicide to keep the green (red?) religionists happy. Oh, I'm a (real!) scientist. And I sometimes buy my petrol at Esso. Does that make me an oil funded denier? Say it ain't so, THX. Oh, David M's post,'ecomentalists: The unspeakable in pursuit of the unheatable?'. Beautiful. Alcuin, good to see you back. I'm relieved that you're 'not sympatheric (sic) to the climate skeptics'. Heaven forbid....

EyeSee

THX -I believe the dodgy stats are your area of operation. CO2 causes a greenhouse effect, unless you study the data. In which case it doesn't. Only the Believers distort reality (delete the Medieval Warming -it messes up the stats!) to make it fit their version! And as for the Royal Society! It's current head has declared that no-one should be allowed to oppose MMGW. How in-search-of-the-truth is that?!! Newton must be spinning.

Dave

Lucy, I do indeed. Perhaps you might find this article interesting. http://www.scientificblogging.com/adaptive_complexity/bad_science_journalism_and_the_myth_of_the_oppressed_underdog

THX1138

Guys especially Tim M- Look I'm sorry if you don't agree with me that's fine but why attack with such vitriol I have made no personal attacks against any of you I just wanted to have a debate. If that can't civilized well you ran me off I hope you all feel better. You are all guilty in spades of having the closed mind you have excused me of. If you shout & scream loud enough maybe the dissenters will go away & we will just be left with us and "Nurse Ratchet" in our only little bubble of self delusion . I'm not some Eco nut & I have read widely on this matter In fact I just finished Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg who in case any of you are interested does believe AGW is happening but think we would be better spending resources in other directions to help more people. Tim M one quick point when there is too much water vapour in the atmosphere it falls as rain & CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 100s of years. & Eye See of course C02 causes the greenhouse along with other greenhouse gasses otherwise the Earth would be freezing cold the argument is whether the additional amount humans have added is causing the Earth to warm to a greater extent. What's the point See ya I'm off back to THe Coffee house with the adults

alan stoddart

Stott only a geographer? He works at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, Bracknell, Berkshire, United Kingdom.

And what was the great Mr Stern of the Stern Review?

er...He was an economist...so he knows what he's talking about.

David M.

Medicine cabinet: "What's wrong?" THX 1138: "Nothing. Nothing really. I just feel that I need something stronger." Nothing personal, just a nice quote from the film. Better make it a mocha THX !

RICHARD MILNE

In fact there has been no warming since 1998 (per UK Hadley Climate Research Chart dated Jan 2008). So let's stop wasting money on useless "Climate Change" intiatives.

RICHARD MILNE

THX 1138! Do you not agree that there has been no warming since 1998? So is it not time to ditch "Climate Change" hysteria?

THX1138

Richard Milne -Wow a debate not abuse.. I agree as far as I can their has been no rise in atmospheric temps since 1998 however before we all get carried away sea temps & perma frost temps have risen which many Scientists think are more accurate as their is less general day to day weather noise. Another point is that 10 years is a very short time in the history of the climate we need much longer. Have a read of Cool It you might fight that it sheds a bit more light than this blog. Alan Stoddart you wrong he doesn't work for the Hadley Centre. David M did you google me I'm touched and I laughed thanks.

RICHARD MILNE

THX1138! Particulars, please. "sea temps & perma frost temps have risen"

Ian C

If You THX 1138 want a debate then open your mind and it would be possible to discourse with you. A quick galnce at the speakers revealed within the first page or two some serious players - but you have dismissed them as second string.Another glance at the programme would have told you that these people have put in alot of work to come up with it. Another look at the co-sponsors will tell you that the interest is global. You, along with the alarmists (and we really can't tell if you are one of them) would have it that such people don't exist, that the debate is done and dusted. And you say you want to debate? Answer me this: If I said to you "invest in my business and I may be able to pay you a return in a 100 yeras time but we cannot be sure as the model on which we're working is a bit uncertain", would you invest? Of course not. But this is what the IPCC and the the warmist movement is TELLING (not even asking us) us we MUST do - and are closing out the debate about whether it is a good idea. With this in mind you might just be able to open yours. It matters not one jot whether MMCC is real. What matters is whether we can or should do anything about it - and to decide that we need all the well argued opinions out there. That is what this blog is about. That is very different from the condescending tone of your arguments.

THX1138

Richard- I have a school thing to go to will post later OK.

Nick Kaplan

THX1138; I don’t know if you are incapable of reading but as I have told you before, being a geographer does not disqualify you from making informed scientific judgements about MMGW or the lack thereof. Geography is a science and the records used by geographers can give a far more accurate view of the climate in the past, before the existence of humans, then the study of climate records from the last 200-300 years on which most models are based. Thus if geographical evidence can show that climate change similar to that which we are now experiencing has occurred before humans were even around then this points to a major flaw in the assumptions of the apparent “consensus.” In fact ice core records (which are geographical records!) show that the relation between Co2 and warming is the opposite to that which we are commonly told, i.e. warming in the past has always led to co2 increases, not the other way round, and such changes have almost always coincided with solar fluctuations. What’s more I am not sure why it is that you take, as if it were the word of God, the view given by “consensus” scientists to be the truth whilst rejecting out of hand any evidence given by the other side. This should be particularly worrying for an atheist such as you, especially if the majority of consensus scientists are anything like the zealot that is Sir David King whose method of shouting down any dissenting scientific evidence is a disgrace to good scientific practice.

david

Global warming..more like global brainwashing. It will all mean more big government, more taxes and micromanagement of our lives.

alan stoddart

Your attempt to discredit Peter Stott and therefore the legitimacy of his comments rested on you calling him a geoographer...at least until late 2007 he worked as a climate chnage specialist at the Hadley Centre...so either you are unaware of this or you are being disengenuous...which was the whole point of Mel.P's article about climate change alarmists...and as for your well chosen name...it represents all that we are talking about...the suppression of truth and people by faceless authority. THX1138 would only be chosen by a juvenile trying to be clever...presumably this 'school thing' is because you are still at school.

alan stoddart

Apologies to THX...wrong Stott, however point still stands as Phillip Stott, rather than Peter, is a Bio geographer who has done extensive work on the environment and eco systems.

Alcuin

Just two points. First, as I have pointed out before, debate will not resolve this issue, only evidence will, so diatribes are rather a waste of energy.

Second, the spectrum of opinion is not from the IPCC to the skeptics who believe there is no problem. The IPCC reports are heavily moderated by governments, and required to present only data that can be quantified. Subjective concerns, no matter how well founded, are not represented. The consensus among scientists actually ranges from somewhat to the left of the IPCC position to one a long way to the right of it. Lovelock, for example, beieves that a change like that of the Eocene is happening. Once the clathrates start boiling, the effect will be doubled and way past recoverable.

Bobby

At least the UK has 1 source writing about this... I can't find a single mention in any major US news source! Nonpatisan my @ss!

virgil xenophon

Reading the comments of those kool-aid drinkers who hove to the idea of man-made only climate change I am reminded of a statement of George Orwell's when, as an MP and a "man of the right" he once, upon forced to endure an interminable harrang by far-left labour MP's espousing upon the merits of even crazier leftist French intellectuals, stood up in exasperation and stated: "Only an INTELLECTUAL could possibly believe in such things, no ORDINARY person could ever BE such a fool!"

Bobby

THX1138: Corporation's - GE pressure groups - Greenpeace newspaper columnists - take your pick, I'll go with the editorial staff at the NYT science fiction writers - see newspaper columnists politicians - ummm, let me think... Al Gore!

THX1138

Richard - As promised a couple of links on permafrost temps rising http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/trends-in-permafrost-temperatures-during-the-last-23-to-28-years-in-northern-alaska http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_romanovsky.html The main guy on this is Vladimir E. Romanovsky from the University of Alska in Fairbanks. In Fairbanks they now have whole areas that are blighted for house sales as the permafrost is melting so fast houses collapse into the holes & no one will buy in these areas. A good book to read on this is Field Notes From a Catastrophe A Frontline Report on Climate Change By Elizabeth Kolbert from The New Yorker. I know what you all going to say but despite the title it is actually a sober account of the current changes happening to our planet we can argue I they are Anthropogenic or not but they are happening The best link I had on Ocean Temp rises comes from realclimate & I thought you lot would excuse me of being in the pay of George Soros but if you google you will find plenty

THX1138

Nick & Alan - Alan you did get the wrong Stott I read Phillip Stots blog most days he is the one "Nurse Ratchet" always quotes. THX 1138 was escaping from a faceless totalitarian authority not causing it. Nick Welcome back I know you and I have clashed about Phillip Stott before & his paleo Georgraphy before but as far I can tell (I wait to be corrected) apart from his blog which doesn't count and doesn't except comments he has never had any peer reviewed scientific papers published on ancient climate or climate change in general so he is like the rest of us an interested amateur with too much time on his hands. I know a bit about Ice cores and my reading doesn't concur with yours . I do agree with you on Sir David King if the comments are true this the very opposite of true scientific behaviour. I always remember a anecdote from my hero Richard Dawkins, as an undergraduate at Oxford he attend a lecture by a visiting American Professor who demolished the well established theory of a well known professor who taught Dawkins. The Oxford professor didn't storm off in a huff he dashed over and clasped the visiting professor by the hand and thanked him for showing him that he was wrong and everyone cheered because this was how rational scientists were supposed to behave. Can you imagine a newspaper columnist, priest or a politician doing the same thing? Science is the opposite of dogma. Scientists love having their work challenged & challenging others & it is hugely competitive . The Nobel prize awaits the climatologist that can prove AGW is wrong.

Peter

THX
"urrent changes happening to our planet we can argue I they are Anthropogenic or not but they are happening"

A vast amount of money rests on the argument of whether,"global warming" it is anthropogenic or not.Befor we start to build the modern equivalent of Pyramids to the Sun and sacrifice millions of people,this all needs discussing rationally.
BTW Much data says the Earth is cooling,perhaps another argument we should sort out before we run helter skelter into doing the wrong thing.

THX1138

Ian C My mind is open I have read everything I can get my hands on including most of the Sceptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg which I tell you is hard read for a interested amateur like me Cool it is much easier. I have read the IPCC & Stern for policy makers & all the main books by the proponents of AGW Heat, Six degrees of warming The weather Makers but weirdly I have never watched an Inconvenient Truth. Trust me It's hard to find a book by climate sceptics that has a credible scientific author I have tried, most of them are just a rant or laughable bad, I know that some of the others books aren't by scientists either but are based on analysis of the literature. All my reading has strengthened my belief that we AGW is happening but what we do about I'm not so sure. Please read Cool It Bjorn Lomborg is the man to read. The scientists attending this event were second rate. Please tell me which one's would survive a few mins googling. But I will happily be corrected. Can I turn you 100 year premise around if all the recognised experts in their particular field lets say structural engineering came and told you that because of the way your house was built & because of what you had done to it, it was likely to fall down they couldn't tell you exactly when but their was a 95% chance it would happen would you stay or move? I agree with Alcuin we are getting nowhere with these arguments and we do need more evidence unfortunately I don't think it will be clear cut just a slow gradual change. Soon however we will see a new generation of super computers which will model the climate with far greater detail & accuracy. I know you don't believe or don't want to believe the models. Good night

Davyd Bowen

Yes, by all means, follow up on Prof. Tim Ball, but not merely the Junior Highschool character assasinations provided by Chrome, but elements of his research. One element involved years of analysis of the Hudson Bay Company records that comprised 400 continuous years of climate data recorded daily by the Factors (managers) of the posts dotted along Hudson's Bay. Decades ago one tidbit of his advice to me in my final year was "illigitimi non carborundum" I'd put a hundred of yours against one of him. Focused character assasination in argument only shows the weakness of your own.

Davyd Bowen

Ooopsie. Its 1am where I am. 300 years.

THX1138

Davyd Bowen- I will look him up but a quick point we are talking about global climate change on this blog not Hudson Bay climate change. Peter- I think you will struggle to find reliable data to show that world is cooling be really careful which sites you read on this one. Nearly all sceptics agree that the world is warming they just believe that humans aren't the cause of the warming.

Tim M

THX1138 Sorry if I offended you. I meant to gently tease and not to offend. However, although guilty of a degree of flippancy, I was very serious in dealing with your arguments. You have to recognise that our governments (apart from the honourable exception of the president of the Czech Republic) uniformly take the 'debate is over' stance, along with most mainstream media and in particular the BBC who report MMGW as fact (though they have been censured by the BBC trustees for this). The sceptical argument is shouted down in almost all forums and policy is being enacted which will be catastrophic if we sceptics are right. Melanie is one of the few brave journalists to go against the political grain on this issue, and her arguments are incredibly persuasive. Despite the political correctness clouding this issue it is heartening to me to see so many posters here taking the rational scientific view rather than what they're fed by the IPCC shysters. THX, your point about water vapour falling as rain is moot. Water vapour in the atmosphere has a far greater greenhouse effect than CO2, which I assume you accept. Alcuin: You say: 'The consensus among scientists actually ranges from somewhat to the left of the IPCC position to one a long way to the right of it'. Two points: First, if there is a range of opinion across the spectrum as you say, then this by definition means there is no consensus. Secondly, science is not, and should not be political. The fact that you ascribe 'left' and 'right' wings to the scientific debate says it all and proves my point that this is a political and not an evidence based scientific debate. If the IPCC models forecast rapid warming, and the measured temperatures in fact show slight cooling, then this simply scientifically undermines the MMGW theory. It's no good alarmists saying after the event 'ah, yes, we actually meant MMGW would cause cooling!' (which is now the unfortunate and unprincipled position of so many global warming players). One things for sure, on the key issue the goracle has got it badly wrong, the debate is definitely NOT over.

Michael Taylor

Surely the key question for the climate change lobby, so keen on the "scientific consensus" (and as Michael Crichton pointed out, appealling to a "consensus" in science merely advertises the inadequacy of the science on which the argument rests - no-one ever talks about a "scientific consensus" on the effects of gravity) is the Popperian one: So, THX, my question is: "What would you accept as definitive evidence that the man-made global warming theory is wrong?"

Tim M

Michael Taylor: Your well framed question "What would you accept as definitive evidence that the man-made global warming theory is wrong?" is one that I have repeatedly asked climate alarmists. As you probably note with sadness whenever we have any extreme weather of any kind, extreme cold, flooding, heat wave, etc. it's only a matter of time before the beeb, C4 and others mention 'climate change' in their reportage. Someone confident of their theory would answer 'if the world doesn't get warmer as the IPCC models predicted, then I'll accept that the theory is probably wrong'. That would be the evidence based scientific response, and is the conclusion of the panel of scientists that Melanie has written about. However, warming religionists won't give a straight answer to this simple question, since they wish to use any evidence, no matter what, to fit retrospectively their theory. Junk science, political agendas, conflicts of interest, unlimited tax funds, moral self righteousness, progressive anti capitalist politics. There's simply too much at stake (survival of the earth not being one of them) for climate alarmists to give a straight answer to your simple question. I'd love for one of the pro MMGW posters here to prove me wrong.

Ian C

THX - you're arguments are a very long way from valid, especially as you have not addresed the main point. This is repeated and made well by Tim M - that the debate is political and closed down: the inference being that you have bought into that situation and find it acceptable. There is plenty of very credible material onthe web. I have found it and so can you if your mind is really open. On the "engineers" example you take, you are comparing apples with oranges. An engineer's calculations are well known. A climate scientist's are not and are based on "known knowns" only up to a point because there are simply too many "unknown unknowns" and many such scientists admit as much. It is the politically motivated and hijacked (such as Gore and the IPCC) who claim the unknown unknowns are irrelevant. Understand the very real danger of spending the sort of money they are talking about and then we find it is not necessary. There is absolutely no urgent public policy implication that is credible IF you read the IPCC claims with a skeptical eye. It is our duty to be skeptical. 500 hundred people don't put an enormaous effort into such a conference and then fly half way round the world to commit career suicide. Give them some credit. Finally - the huffy tone you adopt is quite unnecessary. Noone has attacked you with vitriol. You display a pretence to debate and then invoke claims of personal attacks that aren't there. This is a limited medium that makes it difficult to make an argument without shortening it. Your attitude in this is far more debate preventing than the others above. Go and have a re-read of it all and then say it is not so.

RICHARD MILNE

THX1138! I looked up your reference but it appears to be out of date. To sum up my appreciation of the "global warming" debate. 1. There has been no warming for 10 years. 2. In the past 10,000 years there have been several warming trends Why? 3. Thes trends were apparently beneficial, as compared with the "little ice age". 4. The recent trend was not unprecedented or unusual. 5. There is no proof that anthropogenic CO2 was the cause. 6. The enormous expense of mitigating CO2 emissions is a total wase of resources. 7. If the warming were to resume for whatever reason,and if it brought negative effects to some locations, then as Ljomborg suggests we should devote resources to helping these places.

pas

Awesome!! Let's go out there to pollute and consume as much as we can guys,free for all,the air will be fine,all the extra rubbish we will produce we'll send it to Mars,etc.etc.and when the resources will be finished we will eat each other! Our children are safe!! thank you Exxon Mobile

Nobby Clark

Not much global warming in evidence in the UK this week - it's flipping freezing!

jOSHY

THIS WHOLE STATEMENT SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT

Cap'n Jack

Dear All, lots of comments on here stating that Global Warming ended in 1998. If I may add to this discussion the fact that 1998 was an exceptionally warm year because of the strong El Nino event. Variability from year to year is expected, and picking a specific warm year to start an analysis is "cherry-picking"; if you picked 1997 or 1999 you would see a sharper rise. Even so, the linear trends since 1998 are still positive.

Bob

chicken