Loaded terms of debate

Slim Jim

This perversion of language is a widely-used tool to assist with stifling or steering debate. For example, if one refers to 'bloodsports' rather than 'fieldsports', then you get an indication which side one supports. It can only speed up the polarisation process. It's hard to engage in good, honest debate these days.

Eddie

No doubt there is man-made affect on climate - but even without Man there is and always will be 'climate change' because the climate is always changing. Ditto with global warming - the world has mostly been warming up since the middle ages.

Yes, the language these activists use is spurious. Also, they ignore the central most important cause of all pollution (and 'climate change' if they think it's all man-made): overpopulation.

But then, this is just the same as in the workplace where 'positive action' means racist and sexist discrimination against white men.

Or how all political parties argue for fairness (whatever that is) because no-on can snesibly argue against fairness!

Smelly words, all these abstract nouns: they can mean anything you want and are slippery as eels.

Ian Walker

Sadly it stopped being science a long time ago and became politics.

Real scientists don't think in terms of being 'for or against' a particular theory. It's possible to have favourites of course, and we wouldn't be human if we didn't. But the signature of a true scientist is the ability to drop a treasured theory at the first sign of a repeatable counterexample.

Regarding the human impact on the Earth's temperature, it's indisputable that the planet is getting warmer, and that atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing. There's strong evidence for a link between the two via the greehouse effect, although there are other factors such as sunspot cycles.

Other than that, there's not a lot of science to be done, since we've only got one Earth to experiment on. It's not immediately obvious that a warmer planet is a bad thing; we might kill a lot of humans, but then the system is self-regulating - fewer humans produce less emissions.

Barry

Would the climate scientists who oppose the dominant paradigm (I think there were about 5 at the last count) please let us all know which politically correct term you would like to be known as. None of us want to be called climate raaaaaaaaaaaaaaacists.

Please also let us know how much evidence confirming it is required before the science is settled. (The current volumes are measured in gross tonnage, so please pick a number)

fergus pickering

Climte Science. I'd never heard that one. It's just geography, isn't it? What all the thickoes used to do at university. Of course there is so much MORE that Thickoes can do at university now. But climate science has a nice ring. I expect one could do it in an afternoon.

fergus pickering

Climte Science. I'd never heard that one. It's just geography, isn't it? What all the thickoes used to do at university. Of course there is so much MORE that Thickoes can do at university now. But climate science has a nice ring. I expect one could do it in an afternoon.

Jez

Heretic.

(it feels good, doesn't it?!)

Frank P

Melanie adds another "gate" to the debate. The bastards will never give up. When will they all be strung up on their own windfarms, I ask, one on each blade.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/fakegate-the-new-nadir-of-the-climate-change-swindle

Noa.

Climate science? Just hot air.

Graham Cresswell

This shouldn't be surprising if you accept that global warming, aka climate change, is now the stick with which the left beats free-market capitalism. Since the spectacular and ineluctable failures of socialism and communism, a new, politically correct stick had to be found. What better way to undermine free-market capitalism than to destroy the wealth that it has (at least in better times) generated. Enter the windmills, electric cars, carbon taxes and all the other trillion-dollar, Disneyland schemes that don't work. If they are lucky, the resulting impoverishment of the ordinary man-in-the-street will lead to so much social unrest that the left, or perhaps the far right, will be able to take over unopposed.

Rhoda Klapp

Rhoda was at the mother of parliaments this very afternoon, listening to a lecture form the Professor of climate at MIT, who is of the opinion that CO2 may warm the planet somewhat, but the chances of any sort of catastrophe resulting therefrom is remote, because of negative feedbacks. Bear in mind that I can't sum up a two-hour talk in a couple of lines, but suffice to say there is still a debate going on.

DougS

I have a new research paper coming out that settles the climate change debate once and for all.

Entitled “CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL, IT’S HAPPENING NOW AND IT’S ALL MAN’S FAULT” - it will be published in ‘Exchange and Mart' next month but no doubt the IPCC will take it on board and make it the keystone of AR5.

In my ‘SUMMARY FOR POLICY MAKERS’ I make it clear that the entire world will have to return to a bronze-age existence in order to save the planet from the catastrophic effects of anthropogenic global warming – you know it makes sense!

The paper has been
‘peer’-reviewed by Lord Oxburgh of Whitewash, so everyone can be confident that the science has been rigorously tested. In summary: the data are irrefutable, the science is settled, the debate is over, there is a consensus, get used to it!

Anyone who disagrees with my conclusions is probably an 'opponent of climate science' and should be locked up for crimes against the planet.

In true climate science tradition, my data will remain secret because they’re copyright, commercially sensitive and exempt from FOI legislation. It doesn’t matter anyway, because they were eaten by ‘Albert’ my pet Labrador, yesterday.

And don’t even think about asking for my computer codes and methodology. I’d rather set them on fire than let the sceptics have a look.

Although offered, I have decided not to accept a Nobel Prize for my (undoubtedly brilliant) work.

Old Slaughter

Good piece well put.

The 'Patriot Act' is still the most blatant example.

For me, anybody that chooses to try to con me with their use of terms is somebody whose veracity I dismiss. I take it as an insult and choose to engage with others.

Don Birnam

Climate scientists? (formerly aka global warmongers)

"The unspeakable in pursuit of the unheatable"

Jeremy

Climte? One of my favourite artists...

salieri

May I suggest an even more basic abuse of language? It's the simple but deadly words, "the science". The arrogation of the definite article assumes a rock-solid, definitive, unanimous and self-evidently irrefutable corpus of knowledge which, by the mere fact of questioning, the hapless questioner shows he lacks. It pre-empts all debate: "the science" needs no debating. Its lofty superiority brooks no explanation, no doubt, no humility, no possibility of error. It supplants theory because "the science" is fact. It is contemptuous; it is contemptible.

Simon Stephenson.

Rod

These evangelistic, fundamentalist monkeys are, in reality, supremely unconcerned about the wellbeing of the future inhabitants of the world. Their ire is raised only by a detestation of the behaviour of simple folks - folks who are concerned more with living their own lives to the full than with voluntarily subordinating themselves to a greater power.

If, as an alternative to consumerism, the hoi polloi decided to fill their lives with Morris dancing or stargazing, the alarmists who populate the climate change lobby would soon find arguments that would enable them to assert the world-threatening consequences of these particular forms of mass activity.

Simon Stephenson.

Graham Cresswell ; 6.57pm

Just about spot on, I'd say.

Amanda

My other fan letter seems to gone AWOL, so I'll say it again in a completely different way:

Rod, I knew you were sound, but now I think you're wonderful. Well all right then, I knew you were wonderful, now I think you're top-flight. Right up there with the God-Emperor, in fact.

Austin Barry

You’re right.

We deniers of climate change theology are characterised as the toothless trailer park trash buggering the Imans of righteous orthodox climatology homilies to cries of, “Squeal you isobarometric idiots, we are the daddy.”

Cue banjos.

Biggestaspidistra

The BBC and ITN are experts at this. Today (and everyday) the BBC referred to the Occupy movement as 'anti-capitalist' when perhaps they are merely anti-bankers or anti-crooked-capitalists or even sensible-capitalists. And yesterday ITN managed to get through a whole section about an organised sex ring in Rochdale without saying "Asian' or English Defense League, who were referred to as 'others'. This is a first since prior to this I've only heard the EDL described as 'far-right' or 'fascist'. So false identities or removed identities. Oh and nice to see you in the Sun today Rod,

Biggestaspidistra

oh, and 'statistics show', another lie waiting to be told.

Verity

Fergus Pickering ... "Climte Science. I'd never heard that one. It's just geography, isn't it? What all the thickoes used to do at university."

You mean the ones not specialising in Media Studies?

Verity

Don Birnam 9:26 pm - Brilliant!

Amanda

Cresswell: I'm posting your comment on Delingpole's Telegraph blog -- sharing the sense: most of us regulars have heard it before and said it before in different ways, but no harm in playing it Sam in yet another key. Cheers.

Eddie

I don't think 'opponents of climate science' will catch on though Rod. Except amonst yelling screeching women on those awful American infantile political debate shows where the only phrase most seem to use is 'you've got to be kidding!'.

But this is a quite common 'mobbing' technique,m put best of all by Geargey W: 'you're either with us or against us.'

Thus do all pressure groups promote the lie that either you support them in their 'positive action', or 'celebrating diversity,' or 'equality' campaigns, or else you're bigoted, intolerant, racist, sexist pig who should be shunned, sacked and sent to Diversity Gulag somewhere (probably Dagenham or Bradford).

Simple, vile, human tribalism.

Smelly words just like 'mis-spoke', 'collatoral damage', 'rationalisation', 'celebrating diversity' etc etc etc.

Baron

world climate, its components like temperature, rainfall and stuff, has totally, absolutely, comprehensively, wholly…….. nothing to do with the discharge of the CO2, and only a climate scientist could argue that the hike of the gas density in the atmosphere from 0.028% to 0.038% has a killing effect on the planet, nuffsaid.

Matthew Wilson

"With each passing year it becomes clearer that the cure for global warming is worse than the disease."

This, the opening sentence of Matt Ridley review in this week's Spectator of James Delingpole's book on the great climate conspiracy, puts it perfectly.

Eddie

Overpopulation is the cause of all environmental problems, from overfishing and extinction of animals, to pollution of all types, to human conflicts over resources. And yest it never gets a mention. Why? Oh yeah, most people have kids and no-one wants to limit the size of their or anyone's family. Because of this, life in a century will literally be hell on earth - with a 20 billion population, half animals extinct, overcrowding causing disease and conflicts everywhere. I'll be glad to be dead, ma!

Hexhamgeezer

It's as well to remember that the bulk of those signed up to the 'science is settled' dogma are those who had the rug pulled from under them when the Soviet Union collapsed and then required a new angle of attack.

The rest are just the 'knit your own muesli' brigade burning with inchoate rage against the beastliness of capitalism.

Paul Worthington

Volcano deniers, ice age deniers, weather deniers, deniers that measuring the height of a heaving tidal ocean with milimetre accuracy is a little bit difficult. And those who deny that computer-game academics find what they get funded to find. You cannot deny that there are rather a lot of them.

fergus pickering

There was no such thing as Media Studies when I was at University. Geography was the thing that thickoes did then. Oh, and Law, since most of that is just mugging stuff up from nutshell guides.

Walker

Eddie is so right to point out that the gravest pollutional threat to this plannet is overpopulation. Particularly as it involves people who have no hope of being other than non contributory consumers of resources. That is of course a situation that the naive overpraised geek BillGates would seek to exacerbate.

Simon Stephenson.

Walker : 1.51pm

I suspect that you are wrong in the same way that Malthus was. You assume that the difficulties of over-population are only counterable by known methods - that humanity is so bovine that there will be no development of method in response to emerging problems.

This is the same type of argument that lies behind the warmists assumptions that in 100 years time we'll still have to deal with rising sea levels using 2012 technology and methods.

Noa

"..that humanity is so bovine that there will be no development of method in response to emerging problems."

But that is precisely the problem with the government of the United Kingdom.

If the problem is overpopulation the solution(s) assuredly do not comprise the contradictions of mass immigration in tandem with a policy of sponsored abortion, wind power and the banning of GM crops.

Tiberius

On a related scientific topic, I am pleased to hear that my denial that "Einstein was wrong" was shown to be correct. There is a lot to be said for gut feeling.

Fancy expending all that time, money, effort, and credibility, only to be shown up by a loose screw (sorry, wire).

John.

In FOUR DAYS a volcano can emit more CO2 than the entire human race does in a year. Millions of years ago there were 16 times as much of CO2 in the atmosphere as there is now and the Earth was an ice ball! There is a vanishingly small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and it has increased by a minuscule amount since say 200 years ago. There is no "greenhouse effect" in the sense of there being something like a sphere of transparent glass around the planet. Any increase in the tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere should be welcomed by all plants, which thrive on it. The main factors that influence the climate are changes in the behaviour of the sun and changes in the amount of cosmic rays, (from outside the solar system), hitting the surface of the oceans. How the fanatics hope to control those factors is a conundrum hard to solve. The climate has always changed and will always change. It would be surprising if it didn't.

Lungfish

@ Simon- Building a bloody great wall you mean?

Amanda

Simon at 2:47: Bingo!

John Paul Jones

Rod why do insist on believing that man has contributed to warming? The AGW people are frauds. Just accept it. This is the home of anti - capitalism now that Marxism has failed. This is the home of the anti - globalisation freaks who kept black people poor. They are all c..ts.

John Paul Jones

Rod why do insist on believing that man has contributed to warming? The AGW people are frauds. Just accept it. This is the home of anti - capitalism now that Marxism has failed. This is the home of the anti - globalisation freaks who kept black people poor. They are all pricks.

Hayden Eastwood

Simon Stephenson. So is your argument that we should carry on ruining the planet because someone might come up with a miracle to prevent it from really mattering at some undisclosed time in the future? We should bank on that? One tiny floor in your argument is that technology often makes the problem worse rather than better. 80 years ago, for example, people didn't have the technology to overfish the ocean. During the last 20 years the technology for depleting the oceans has increased vastly such that the number of fish being removed from the ocean is vastly unsustainable in many fishing areas.

The same problems exist in the sphere of deforestation and pesticide damage to soils. For every technology that is environmentally safer or less damaging, there is at least one other that is less safe and more damaging.

The idea that we should close our eyes and hope for the best is therefore exceedingly unconvincing.

Hayden Eastwood

John, 5.28pm. "In FOUR DAYS a volcano can emit more CO2 than the entire human race does in a year. "

I've seen assertions like this before. Where did you get this figure from? Because I've read around the topic of volcanism a lot, and EVERY reference in science journals that have reported actual measurements state that volcanic activity in a given year amounts to about 1% of anthropogenic emissions:

1. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research (2002) Volume: 115, Issue: 3-4, Pages: 511-528
2. Alan Robock et al.VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS AND CLIMATE, Reviews of Geophysics, 38, 2. 2000
3. Stanley N Williams, Global carbon dioxide emission to the atmosphere by volcanoes. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta Volume 56, Issue 4, April 1992, Pages 1765-1770
4. Haraldur Sigurdsson, Evidence of volcanic loading of the atmosphere and climate response. Global and Planetary Change Volume 3, Issue 3, December 1990, Pages 277-289

Those are my references, where are yours?

walker

Yes,Simon Stephenson,and pigs might fly and we will all live happily in our liberal ego massaging la la land.And ,by the way ,what happens to the hapless billion or so in the interim while they await their scientific deliverance.

John.

Hayden Eastwood: I am no expert on vulcanology, however I was so struck by reading that in 4 days a volcano can produce as much CO2 as humans do in a year that it stuck in my mind. I think it may have been in reference to the Icelandic volcano that created such havoc last year. However even if the normal volcano produces very much less the fact remains that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is so negligeably tiny that it couldn't possibly be a contributory factor to climate change. Compared to the effect on our climate of changes in the sun's behaviour etc., its significance is laughably unimportant. Nobody in their right mind wants to see the seas depleted of fish, the land poisoned and so on, but all that is another matter altogether. The elephant in the room so far as those threats are concerned is massive and ever increasing over-population, as many others here have pointed out.

Graphite

JPJ at 8.02 & 8.05

Good to see some equal-opportunity cussing.

Hayden Eastwood

Rod, the words you complain about are a problem of media reporting, and not an attempt at "goal post moving". The macroclimate is warming but some microclimates may cool. Therefore, in certain in microclimates it confuses jo public to talk about warming when they in fact observe cooling.

There was (and is) no deliberate conspiracy to reword "global warming" as "climate change" in response to changing evidence (at least not by scientists). The body of evidence has consistently shown that the Earth is warming, such that debate no longer focuses on that. The only dispute now concerns whether or not man is the chief cause of it.

fergus pickering

Let us suppose that man-made glbal warming is a fact and let us further suppose that we here in England do absolutely nothing about it. Would one of you climate change scientists like to tell us what will be the result in fifty years, compared with the result if we do everything that you recommend. I am sure that you know. Come share your knowledge with the rest of us.

Hayden Eastwood

Walker: So right regarding population control. The current world population is expanding by 80 million people per year, which is aggravated by the fact that we have economic growth (meaning that each year the new 80 million produce more of an impact than the previous year).

Anyone who argues we'll overcome our environmental issues by becoming vegetarians and changing to hybrid cars is willfully blind.

The difference between greenies and lefties in my observation rests on this point. Genuine greenies agree that we must have fewer children to combat environmental problems (David Attenborough being exhibit A).

Fake greenies (falling into a sub-species of leftie) are only interested in environmental issues that happen to oppose capitalism. And their need to be seen as morally virtuous often usurps all else - It's more important, for example, to support Africans in their quest to desertify their homelands through overpopulation, than it is to be called a raaaaacist (to quote Rod), for saying, "hang on a moment".

Richard of Moscow

Walker
February 23rd, 2012 1:51pm

Walker: "Eddie is so right to point out that the gravest pollutional threat to this plannet is overpopulation."

No he isn't, because it isn't. Just another bunch of religious weirdos desperate for an end-of-the-world-as-we-know belief.
They used to ponce around in city centres, clad in sandwich boards, but now they get a "degree" from one of our idiot factory universities and mouth off in the Guardian.

The world is not even close to being over-populated, and mankind is not warming the flippin' climate.

Everybody, Chill aaaaaaht!

Hayden Eastwood

John, I'm afraid you'll have to be more convincing than to say, I read it somewhere and it stuck in my mind.

Next point: Your statement about CO2 needs correction. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is not negligible. Perhaps you think this because CO2 is a small proportion of the Earth's atmosphere. Consider, however, that the warming contribution of a gas is determined both by its concentration AND by its thermal properties (ie not by its concentration alone, as you suggest).

Nitrogen, for example, makes up 80% of the atmosphere but because it absorbs radiation in the wrong spectrum, it does not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect.

Other gases, such as methane, have a warming potential 24 times higher than CO2, but because their concentration is so much lower, they are given less weighting in the league table of warming potential.

Hayden Eastwood

John: last point - Every day we burn 80 million barrels of oil (annually pumping some 12 billion tonnes of CO2 into the air and increasing the atmospheric CO2 concentration by about 0.4%). Given the manmade rate of CO2 release and the thermal properties of CO2, the challenge for skeptics is to show how the current practice is NOT produce an appreciable warming effect.

The models and data support this physical intuition that warming has a human contribution, which is why anthropogenic global warming theory is currently the most widely accepted explanation for the observation.

Where I will agree with you: No environmental problems will be solved until we talk seriously about overpopulation. And I share all frustrations with the "greenies" who merely yell "raaaacist" in response to logical fact based arguments on the matter.

Lungfish

As the piano player from D-ream was saying last night on BBC4 more money needs to go into fusion R&D. This technology is no longer pie in the sky. If some of the the cash being wasted on these barking mad windmills were re-directed to this effort fusion could be a reality within a couple of decades. This would be worth the money just to shut Moonbat and his doggy on a string army up.

Simon Stephenson.

Hayden Eastwood : 8.53pm

You spout a piece of irrational and emotional greenery, and then rhetorically suggest that this is my argument. This isn't discussion.

If we run out of fish we'll find a way of farming them. If we run out of coal and oil we'll find another source of energy - after all there is more stored energy on earth than mankind could consume in a million years. If the atmosphere warms up we'll deal with the consequences.

You and your fellow greenies may be so confident of the future comfort of your own lives that you are happy to condemn millions to the abject poverty that your policies entail. There are others of us who have more humanity than that.

Eddie

Walker, indeed, because if every woman has lots of children then the population will rocket in a rabbitesque way if we do not allow disease to do its natural culling. Now that may sound cruel, but then, the best solution would be stopping so many babies being born in the first place; by force, if necessary, for the sake of the world. In emergency situations ordinary human rights can be suspended.

But what's happening now in Asia and Africa? Massive overpopulation encouraged by charities and churches (esp the catholic church who know the easy meat of the gullibly devout and uneducated when it sees it) - and so tigers will soon be extinct, and then rhinos, lions, maybe even elephants in the wild. And now that China is recolonising Africa, we can expect most large species to be extinct in the wild by 2050.

RifRaf

Well put, Rod.

And have you noticed that it is typically the BBC who are leading these revisions?

It's part of the BBC's broader social engineering Programme that also labels Muslim terrorists as Islamic fundamentalists?!

It

rod liddle

Walker and Hayden: over-population is by far the greatest danger faced by the planet. And I make you right on "false greenies" too.

Hayden Eastwood

Simon Stephenson. Surely you can actually come up with reason and logic to support your views rather than blind assumption?

"You and your fellow greenies may be so confident of the future comfort of your own lives that you are happy to condemn millions to the abject poverty that your policies entail. There are others of us who have more humanity than that."

I live in Zimbabwe. I see the results of massive deforestation and polluted water on a weekly basis. Are you telling me that sensible tree preservation strategies that will prevent soil erosion (and preserve water tables) will some how impoverish my fellow countrymen? When I go and walk in rural areas, the first thing I am struck by is the poverty etched into the faces of people in areas where there has been NO conservation. This idea that poor people will become poorer unless they trash their environment is not supported by any evidence. In fact, the available evidence indicates the opposite.

It seems you are lumping all environmental conservation ideas into some conspiracy to topple capitalism. How about looking at each point concerning the environment on its merits and making your mind up on the basis of evidence and logic, rather than a primitive emotional response to the notion of green anti-capitalist bogeymen.

Colin Rosenthal

"I continue to suspect that we have contributed to the warming of the planet"

Yes, and I continue to suspect that HIV causes AIDS, humans evolved from apes, and vaccinations save lives.

Tom

I think the sun has a lot more to do with global warming than man could ever have. We omly live in 5 percent at most of the earths surface. They expect us to believe that the 5 percent can harm the other 95 percent. Doesn't add up. The sun is a star and stars expand over time. That could cause the 1 degree in 100 years of global warming that all the loosers are worried about.

ann c

Over population, over population, over population ...... What does it take to get that message threw? Maybe if the water shortages in the ever more over populated SE of England actually started to hit the BEEB chatterers, reality might hit even the BBC. Richard of Moscow - look around you and grow up. Fergus Pickering - spot on!

John.

Hayden Eastwood: I repeat: Millions of years ago when there were 16 times more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now, the Earth was an ice ball. So much for the supposed warming effect of CO2.

ann c

oops! "Threw"! I posted; sorry, meant "through", of course.

Hayden Eastwood

John: You can repeat nonsense as much as you like, but it is still nonsense.

"Millions of years ago when there were 16 times more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now, the Earth was an ice ball."

Do you mean 2 million years ago, or 580 million years ago? The Earth has been both an ice ball and a hot-house at various times, so you'll have to specify the time frame you mean. If you're referring to the Cambrian age, the CO2 concentration was at about 7000 ppm (23 times what it is now) and the Earth was 15 degrees hotter. At no stage when the Earth's CO2 was at that level, did it exist as an ice ball.

[American Journal of Science, Vol. 301, February, 2001, P. 182–204]

Eddie

Richard of Moscow. The world is massively overpopulated, as most scientists agree - the optimum population of the world without causing damage is 1.5bn which it was in the 1920s; by the 60s it was 3.5 bn, now it's 7bn, in 20/30 years it'll be 12bn. Where would you stop then? When all the animals are extinct, the seas are empty, and you've concreted over everything? I have heard the extreme belief you espouse before from varioius right-wing free-market obsessed nutters who want more consumers to sell stuff too. It's a dumb selfish silly and false argument, not backed up by the facts.

Religious weirdos tend to want more and more babies to be born to follow their own particular brand of sky-pixie worship and give them more power and cash (Catholics, Muslims, all the same to me). I can't think of a single religion that encourages fewer babies to be born actually!

Simon Stephenson.

Eddie : 7.26am

How do you define "damage", as used in your assertion "the optimum population of the world without causing damage is 1.5bn"?

Eddie

I think the scientists who came up with that 1 - 1.5 billion optimum figure would include such things as pollution, animal depletion, ability to feed the population in a sustainable way - not making animals extinct, not destorying the environment, that kind of thing I should think. The world population 2000 years ago is estimated at 150 million - therefore the Romans and Greeks could take what they wanted from the natural world and there'd always be more. The Chinese behave like that now as they rob the seas of all large fish - 90% of sharks and turtles killes in the last decade or so.

Simon Stephenson

Eddie ; 1.44pm

Sorry, Eddie, but I'm not prepared to accept that because "scientists" have come up with this figure, that it's accuracy and veracity is therefore unquestionable. Scientists are human beings, and human beings have a lamentable history of arriving at conclusions through cognitive biases rather than through pure reason. Why, it's even been said that some humans only consider evidence which supports their existing prejudices - in other words, that they're minds are already made up and that they're no longer taking part in evidence-based discovery.

If I wish to reach a conclusion which is based upon unprejudiced thought, I need to be sceptical of all opinions broadcast to me by human beings, don't I, and particularly those which are put out as certainties rather than likelihoods?

Baron

1.5bn then, is it?

when the good curate Malthus penned his Principles of Population Growth a large chunk of the world population of what, 500mn (?) would have been permanently starving, death at birth was more probable than survival, and the average age hovered below 40; today, some 7bn of us run around the world, mostly well fed, some to the point of gross obesity (they would be even in Africa if the sickeningly corrupt governments spend the money on sustenance not arms or in Harrods), the survival at birth is a rule, and the average age well above 60 except of course in East Glasgow and certain parts of Russia where men refuse to drink anything but vodka.

Go figure, Eddie

Baron

Hayden Eastwood, sir, if you’re younger than Baron you’ll live to see it confirmed the CO2 has nothing to do with climate change, it may be a marginal contributor to one of climate’s component parts (temperature), but has FA to do with rainfall, the wind flows, ocean currents and stuff, twice in the past millennium the planet had experienced warmth and cold above current levels with CO2 density in the air staying roughly unchanged, but more to the point, anyone who argues that the increase in the density of any substance from 0.028% to 0.038% in any compound produces devastating effect on the environment ain’t worth listening to except for an urgent help, an an asylum.

Eddie

Simon - so what evidence do you have that the earth can compfortably sustain 10 or 20 or 30 billion people then? Look around you man! Man is destroying the world and causing a great extinction. That's all the evidence I need to say we have too many people and need to take urgent action to reduce the world population - or nature and human conflict will do it for us. Better surely for fewer babies to be born? Or would you have no limits to the world population? That is short-sighted, irresponsible and, sadly, the way all politicians are ruining our world. Most people have children so ignore the elephant in the room - the one that will cruch us all to death: overpopulation.

Simon Stephenson

My 3.35pm post.

Not very well checked, I'm afraid. Sorry. "it's accuracy" should read "its accuracy" and "they're minds" should read "their minds".

Simon Stephenson

Eddie : 6.15pm

I don't have any evidence about sustainable human population numbers, and neither do you. What I do have, however, is a deep dread of people who think that "we have too many people and need to take urgent action to reduce the world population". You, and people like you, have no right to seek to force your ideology on the rest of the world, no matter how strongly you may believe it to be true, and no matter how strongly you think you have the right to save mankind from itself.

Eddie

Simon. I do in fact have a right to express my opinion that the planet is overpopulated - something strongly suggested by the mass extinction of species going on right now, the human conflicts breaking out over resources, and the massive overcroding evident in cities. People like you - ie deniers that there is a problem - are irrational and obsessed with extreme right wing ideology which says we can always support the human population. Usually such people are religious, and often American. Are you? Personally I have no ideology - just observation, common sense and I know an elephant in the room when I see one: every single problem in the world is made worse by over-population.

Simon Stephenson

Eddie

Nice piece of disingenuity - typically leftist, though. You can hold whatever opinion you like - where have I suggested you can't? What you have no right to do, however, is seek to impose your ideology on people who have no desire for this to happen. This is just a bit too Stalinist for most of us, no matter that you may claim this is only being done in our best interests.

Hayden Eastwood

Simon Stephenston. You repeatedly make assertions for which you can provide no evidence, and no logic. It really is tiresome.

With regards to your inaleable "rights" to have as many children as you want. What about my right not to have to subsidise the twenty children you might choose to have? What about my right to have my tax money spent on MY roads, rather than having to subsidise your children to have clean water, hospitals, schools, housing, sewage treatment, roads, and pension funds.

DougS

Can any AGW alarmists offer any evidence at all that CO2 is causing catastrophic global warming.

No '97% of scientists believe' crap
No straw men arguments
No appeals to authority
No ad homs
No Arguments from ignorance
No head counts

Just evidence - I haven't seen any!

Eddie

Simon - not leftist or Stalinist. Just realistic and rational. In emergency situations then human rights can be suspended - as during the War. Of course, most people have kids so the p[oliticians give breeders benefits galore and do nothing to force third world breeders to stop thyeir rabbit-like bahaviour.

So tell us: what would you see as the maximum world population? 50 billion? 100? And the UK's? 200 million? Do tell us, Simon.

John.

I have had my comment instantly deleted, before anyone could possibly have had time to read it, 16 times so far and know not how I am ever to poat it to you

John.

I have just written my comment for the 17th time on the normal space - apparently open to everyone except me - and,as usual, expect this "post a comment" button to fail to work however many times I press it. What am I supposed to do?

John.

This message is always deleted instantly when I press "post your comment", so what's the point of wasting more time trying to send you a comment to this space? I will be directed to write the message all over again in the "log-in" space and then it will prove impossible to send it however many times I press "post your comment" there. This system just doesn't work. Surely I'm not the only one now completely prevented from communicationg with you because of this mad "log-in" system that just doesn't work? I've now tried to send the same comment 18 times!

DougS

John.
March 4th, 2012 1:38am

I had a similar problem on another thread.

It wouldn't accept my post until I got rid of the URL link.

Did your comment include a link perhaps?

Eddie

John - if you have signed in to the Speccie for another forum (eg coffee house) then sign out of that before posting here. Then write your post - short posts are more likely to get through. If it then takes you to the page where it asks you to post the message again, then do not bother - they never get through. Just go back and shorten the message you originally wrote. Or even close the page and open the Spec homepage again. And if all that fails, give up and try later.

ian ogden

I might be tempted to believe there is a slight chance the warmists could be on the right track if just one of them would explain what mankind did to bring about the end of the ice age.