Is global warming/climate change a crock?

I don't think you're going to MAKE China do anything it doesn't want to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fiero 5.7

It kind of reminds me of the Islamic thing. You have a bunch of little suicide zealots running around honestly believing, because of what and how they've been taught or told, that they will find themselves with Allah in paradise and the world's supply of virgins. The people above them suspect the whole thing is a crock and they are in it for the money (see the late Mr. Arafat) and the personal power. You really think Bin Laden is going to strap on a bomb and lead from the front?

---

Taking the religion thing a step further, a friend of mine once explained it to me in this way.

There are four options regarding God or religion.

1 - you believe in God, there is a God. You're safe

2 - you believe in God, there is no God. Didn't lose anything there

3 - you don't believe in God, there is no God. Again, didn't lose anything

4 - you don't believe in God, there is a God. You're f@£$ed.

Of course that assumes God is a vengeful God but thats another discussion altogether.

However the comparison with global warming is there, we don't actually lose that much beyond having a lighter wallet if we choose to act to reduce emissions regardless of whether that causes climate change. However we stand to lose a whole lot more if we don't adjust our behaviour and the link turns out to be real.

Thats a Ricky Gervais gag :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dylan H

Errrrr. What can I say to that post?

Thalidomide and Wakefield are both examples of what happens when people decide to shortcut or circumvent standard protocols for introducing a drug or for publishing a research paper.

Thalidomide was released because it wasn't tested on animals sufficiently, had it been tested for teratogenic effects on rabbits as it was after its side effects were found it wouldn't have been released.

Wakefield wrote a paper with no scientific merit whatsoever. Sadly the Lancet saw merit in it and the press and public didn't understand how flimsy the science behind it was. In his case the mainstream scientific and medical community shunned him.

Unfortunately in the case of global warming the mainstream scientific community are all for it. You're quite right in that science is inexact, it is quite possible that in the future something is found that discredits global warming and mankinds effect on it but right now with the evidence we have, there does appear to be a link between CO2 and climate change.

In a sense the science doesn't really matter, just like with Wakefields paper. What does matter is what the public believe, and how that shifts behaviour. Companies and organisations don't have to sign up to climate change and change their products and behaviour but the market will shift away from them. What amuses me is watching the car industry fight legislation against limiting pollution when past history shows that such legislation always gets introduced in the end. The companies that fight it and don't do the relevant research end up having to buy the technology from the companies that just did research into cleaner technologies. Eventually the Americans, Australians and Chinese/Indians are going to have to fork out a lot of money paying licence fees for green tech to European and especially Japanese companies.

---

I wasn't saying that thalidomide was causing global warming. I'm simply pointing out that scientists can make mistakes. Perhaps it was a bad example but I'm simply saying science whether it be one scientist or 99% of them is not infallible :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fiero 5.7

I don't think you're going to MAKE China do anything it doesn't want to.

---

Its possible, if large markets were to introduce tariffs that somehow relate to emissions during production and transport or there was a rating system whereby consumers could be made aware of them thus affecting sales the Chinese would face a stark choice, reduce emissions or lose market share.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Andrewmcm

But science is just that, a sciecne. It is neither exact nor always completely correct. For instance, in my field of academic research there are several seminal papers that were published in the 1970s, all in the leading journal in the field (Journal of Fluid Mechanics). These papers, authored by some of the best fluid dynamicists around, discovered something new and interesting and went into great detail about the specifics of the dynamisc of this new discovery. Zip forward 30 years and some of my research has shown that these researchers didn't fully appreciate the subleties of their discovery, and hence some of their assertions were ill-founded. The problem I have is that as these old ideas are so ingrained in the minds of the wider scientific community, it is extremely difficult to convince them otherwise.

I'm not saying that I'm brilliant either, I'll happily admit that since the publication of my thesis, I have found some of it to be slightly wayward and have had to re-perform my simulations to produce better results. Any journal paper, report, or news article is a marker in the sand of the knowledge of the scientist at that time - further research can solidify, contradict, or outright disprove what has gone before.

Producing results from scientific examination is easy - interpreting their results (particularly those from computer simulations) is where the problems begin.....

---

cool. :cool:

thanks

:s mokin:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Daniel

I wasn't saying that thalidomide was causing global warming. I'm simply pointing out that scientists can make mistakes. Perhaps it was a bad example but I'm simply saying science whether it be one scientist or 99% of them is not infallible :)

---

I didn't suggest you were making a link between thalidomide and global warming, I explained that both thalidomide and Wakefield are examples of cases whereby standard protocols (scientific ones as it were) were bypassed.

The bulk of the research behind global warming conforms to those protocols, published in peer reviewed journals with agreement between many different observers.

Yes its easy for one scientist to make a mistake. You're being charitable there, its also easy for one or a few scientists to be 'bought' too, but its very rare for 99% of the scientists to be wrong or 'bought'. Are you willing to risk so much on the basis that they're wrong?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BDunnell

One of the problems is that it's no good if everybody who doubts it comes round to it in 50 years.

---

Which is why I advocate developing renewable energy sources and not ignoring what is possibly a huge problem ;)

It's also why I dislike twonks like this....
http://www.saveourscenery.com/
....publishing pictures which give misleading impressions on the impact of a windfarm which could be a big part of averting a major worldwide catastrophy.

I guess that's my version of not believing in God but still going to church and having that insurance policy in case he does exist and is a mean turd :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dylan H

Wakefield wrote a paper with no scientific merit whatsoever. Sadly the Lancet saw merit in it and the press and public didn't understand how flimsy the science behind it was. In his case the mainstream scientific and medical community shunned him.

...

In a sense the science doesn't really matter, just like with Wakefields paper. What does matter is what the public believe, and how that shifts behaviour.

---

These two things are directly linked in this case, because some of the national newspapers decided to run with it and, as so often, lots of people just believed what they had read in the press. All that happened was that a lot of people got scared of something there was no need to be scared about, a perfectly good vaccine was tarnished and a perfectly decent form of preventative medicine not given to lots of children.

The same thing can be seen with global warming. Right-wing columnists like Richard Littlejohn and Jeremy Clarkson write stuff saying that it doesn't exist on the basis that they choose to believe one argument and ignore the other, and people believe them because they read the paper in question and nothing else.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brown, Jon Brow

Thats a Ricky Gervais gag :p

---

Is it? I heard it a long time before Gervais became famous, from when I was at school, and that was a very long time ago.