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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2010 11:21 pm Post subject: You wouldn't read about it: climate scientists right |
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You wouldn't read about it: climate scientists right
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Chances are, you have not heard much about Climategate lately, but last November it dominated the media. Three weeks before the Copenhagen summit, thousands of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia were published on a Russian website.
The research institute was a leading contributor to the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, and some of the leaked emails showed the scientists in a poor light.
The scandal was one of the pivotal moments in changing the politics of climate change. What seemed close to a bipartisan agreement on an environmental trading scheme collapsed with Tony Abbott's defeat of Malcolm Turnbull. Within months the Rudd government lost its nerve on what the former prime minister called ''the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time''.
By casting doubt on the integrity of the scientists, Climategate helped puncture public faith in the science, and probably contributed to Labor's political panic. The echo chamber of columnists reverberated with angry and accusatory claims. In Australia, Piers Akerman said: ''The tsunami of leaked emails . . . reveal a culture of fraud, manipulation, deceit and personal vindictiveness to rival anything in a John le Carre or John Grisham thriller.'' Later he wrote: ''The crowd that gathered in Copenhagen were there pushing a fraud.''
Andrew Bolt thought that ''what they reveal is perhaps the greatest scientific scandal'' of our time. ''Emails leaked on the weekend show there is indeed a conspiracy to deceive the world - and Mr Rudd has fallen for it.''
Miranda Devine wrote: ''We see clearly the rotten heart of the propaganda machine that has driven the world to the brink of insanity.''
The ramifications of Climategate were immediate. The climate unit's head, Professor Phil Jones, was forced to stand down. Three inquiries were set up to examine the scientists' conduct.
The first, a British House of Commons select committee, reported in March that the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and the CRU remained intact. The second, a science assessment panel, set up with the Royal Society and consisting of eminent British researchers, reported in April.
Its chairman, Lord Oxburgh, said his team found ''absolutely no evidence of any impropriety whatsoever'' and that ''whatever was said in the emails, the basic science seems to have been done fairly and properly''.
The third, set up by the university itself, published its 160-page report two weeks ago. On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of the CRU scientists, ''we find that the rigour and honesty [of the scientists] as scientists are not in doubt''. Importantly, it concluded: ''We did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.''
In other words, nothing in the emails undermined the research of the climate scientists. Like the other two, the inquiry found aspects of the scientists' behaviour that fell short of professional standards - ''failing to display the proper degree of openness''.
What might seem the most damning was the way Jones dealt with freedom of information requests, but context makes his behaviour more understandable. In July last year alone, the CRU received 60 FoI requests. Answering them would have been too much for even all the unit's staff time. In a matter of days, it received 40 similar FoI requests, each wanting data from five different countries - 200 requests in all. Jones concluded the unit was subject to a vexatious campaign.
While not fully excusing their behaviour, one has to appreciate the embattled position of scientists who received a steady stream of obscene and abusive emails and constant public attacks on their integrity.
After the leaks, Jones, now reinstated, received death threats and said he had contemplated suicide.
You might imagine the media would be keen to report on authoritative conclusions about allegations it had found so newsworthy in December. But coverage of each of the reports has been non-existent in many news organisations and in others brief or without prominence.
At best, the coverage of the inquiries' conclusions added up to a 20th of the coverage the original allegations received, which leaves us to ponder the curiosities of a news media that gets so over-excited by dramatic allegations and then remains so incurably uninterested in their resolution.
The newspapers that gave greatest play to the allegations tended to give less attention to the findings. The columnists who gave greatest vent to their indignation have not made any revisions or corrections, let alone apologised to the scientists whose integrity they so sweepingly impugned.
Even at the time, it was clear much of the coverage was more attuned to maximising sensation rather than to reporting with precision. The sheer number of leaked emails, for instance, was sometimes taken as proof of the scale of the scandal, as if they were all disreputable.
In fact, only from a handful could anything sinister be conjured.
It is a common criticism of the media that it prominently publishes allegations, but gives less coverage to the prosaic facts that later refute them. But rarely is the disproportion so stark. Rarely has such an edifice of sweeping accusation and extravagant invective been constructed on such a slender factual basis.
Rarely does it do such damage.
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 12:10 am Post subject: |
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| In other words, nothing in the emails undermined the research of the climate scientists. |
I think this was obvious to anyone rationally and objectively examining the situation.
Unfortunately however, sensation sells papers and the popular media has too much power over the masses. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 12:13 am Post subject: |
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I posted this on the Climategate thread awhile back. Denialists dismissed the reports as political in nature.
I wouldn't say the climate scientists were right. They stalled on FoI requests and hid their data from the public. Its just that they didn't manipulate any data.
I also doubt Labour can blame their defeat on these emails. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Jul 26, 2010 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| I also doubt Labour can blame their defeat on these emails. |
I've not heard it said that the Australian? British? Labour party is blaming their defeat on these emails. Where have you read that?
| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| I wouldn't say the climate scientists were right. They stalled on FoI requests and hid their data from the public. |
This is addressed in the above article:
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| What might seem the most damning was the way Jones dealt with freedom of information requests, but context makes his behaviour more understandable. In July last year alone, the CRU received 60 FoI requests. Answering them would have been too much for even all the unit's staff time. In a matter of days, it received 40 similar FoI requests, each wanting data from five different countries - 200 requests in all. Jones concluded the unit was subject to a vexatious campaign. |
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thecount
Joined: 10 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 9:16 am Post subject: |
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Breaking news:
"The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review," commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html
Why don't you guys let up on the Gaza issue? After all, Israel investigated itself and found that it had done nothing wrong. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change
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Our world is starting to sizzle as rising levels of greenhouse gases trap more and more of the sun's heat in the lower atmosphere � a point that was confirmed on Wednesday when the Met Office reported that sensors from around the world were showing that 2010 would be the hottest, or just possibly the second hottest year on record.
Either way, the news surprised many people, despite those tales emanating from New York and Moscow. A freezing UK winter and the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks � along with the damaging leak of "climategate" emails from the University of East Anglia � had persuaded many that global warming was a dead issue. If only.
In fact, that record rise in global temperatures, far from appearing unexpectedly had been predicted. Last January, the Met Office announced that it believed this year would, indeed, be a record scorcher. Given that Britain was then coated in thick snow, the prediction was brave.
It was accurate nevertheless. Western Europe and eastern America may then have been going through a grim, cold winter but other areas � including Asia and western America � were experiencing unexpectedly hot weather. The overall trend was a warming one. Few took notice, however, and the Little Englander's myopic view of the world � that only local events matter � continued to dominate newspaper columns and blogs. Global warming was nonsense, they insisted.
Thus the deniers got it wrong while climate scientists got it spectacularly right. Indeed, we should note just how prescient the latter have been. In 1999, the Met Office's head of climate modelling Peter Stott � working with Oxford University's Myles Allen and other meteorologists � published a paper in Nature on the likely impact of greenhouse gas emissions. Using temperature data from 1946 to 1996, the paper estimated future global temperatures and included a graph of a range of predicted outcomes for 2000 to 2040 with a dotted line indicating the most likely path. Crucially, for the year 2010, that dotted line showed there would be a rise of 0.8C since the Second World War� which is exactly what we are experiencing today.
So scientists not only predicted how hot this year was likely to be six months ago, they forecast a decade ago just how much the world would heat up 10 years later. Bear this in mind when deniers tell you climate science is a conspiracy or the work of charlatans. They are talking rubbish.
Such precision is encouraging for it indicates climate scientists know what they are talking about, though at a deeper level, the news is disturbing � for it is clear that few people are actually listening to this message. Why? What lies behind scientists' failure to get their warning over? Most answers have concentrated on the difficulty of explaining science � riddled as it is with uncertainties and qualifications. And to some extent, these explanations are correct. Atmospheric physics and meteorology are complex. However, there is a second, more sinister explanation, one that forms the focus of Merchants of Doubt, by US academics Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, which is to be published this month by Bloomsbury. This analysis of right-wing politics and its impact on science shows how a handful of individuals have managed to obscure the truth on issues that range from the dangers of smoking to global warming. These right-wing libertarians include such scientists as Fred Seitz and Fred Singer � who both worked on the Cold War projects such as the US hydrogen bomb project and who helped set up institutions like the US's Heritage Foundation and Marshall Institute.
Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these outfits exist to fight any form of state intervention or regulation of US citizens. Thus they fought, and delayed, smoking curbs in the '70s even though medical science had made it clear the habit was a major cancer risk. And they have been battling ever since, blocking or holding back laws aimed at curbing acid rain, ozone-layer depletion, and � mostly recently � global warming.
In each case the tactics are identical: discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt. As the authors state: "Small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power."
In Britain, links between deniers and big business are less obvious. Yet it is clear lessons have been learned and tactics copied. Consider these examples: the leaking of the "climategate" emails and the wild over-reaction to the mistaken insertion of a paragraph in the IPCC's last climate assessment, that suggested wrongly that Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly. Both created a furore with the former revealing "a massive fraud" that represented "the final nail in the coffin" for the theory of global warming, deniers argued.
This claim was later shown to be nonsense, though it took three inquiries to establish the point. The overall effect, however, was the spread of confusion among the public and an increase in doubt about climate change. And given that the email leak involved a specific act of computer hacking, one must conclude this was the specific goal of that electronic "break-in".
In this way, scientists' warnings � that without action the world will get at least two degrees hotter this century � have been obscured by a small group of ideologues who believe individual liberties are more important than any other cause. Our planet may burn, millions may die, and cities such as Moscow and New York may smoulder, but at least we will be free of petty regulation and bureaucracy. It seems a stiff price to pay.
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Mosley
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 6:09 am Post subject: |
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| You wouldn't read about it: climate scientists right |
LOL, correct, I didn't read ANY of it!  |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Our world is starting to sizzle as rising levels of greenhouse gases trap more and more of the sun's heat in the lower atmosphere � a point that was confirmed on Wednesday when the Met Office reported that sensors from around the world were showing that 2010 would be the hottest, or just possibly the second hottest year on record. |
The Met Office's website makes no mention of a cause, and the report "doesn't try to make the link" between climate change and what might be causing it, said Tom Karl, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration involved in the new assessment"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748703940904575395510151474860.html
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| Either way, the news surprised many people, despite those tales emanating from New York and Moscow. A freezing UK winter and the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks � along with the damaging leak of "climategate" emails from the University of East Anglia � had persuaded many that global warming was a dead issue. If only. |
Yes, very sincere. We can all see how desperately you wish global warming was a dead issue by the triumphalist article claiming it isn't a dead issue!
Global warming being proven false would be the left's worst nightmare - total humiliation - and not in any way a relief.
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| In fact, that record rise in global temperatures, far from appearing unexpectedly had been predicted. Last January, the Met Office announced that it believed this year would, indeed, be a record scorcher. Given that Britain was then coated in thick snow, the prediction was brave. |
Correctly making a prediction about this summer being one of the hottest on record doesn't establish (or support) human activity affecting the climate.
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| Western Europe and eastern America may then have been going through a grim, cold winter but other areas � including Asia and western America � were experiencing unexpectedly hot weather |
None of which is of any consequence if local conditions don't matter.
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| The overall trend was a warming one. Few took notice, however, and the Little Englander's myopic view of the world � that only local events matter � continued to dominate newspaper columns and blogs. Global warming was nonsense, they insisted. |
Er, not really.
The Met Office predicted a 20% chance of a colder than average winter for the UK (but it was the coldest winter for 30 years). And this followed the Met Office predicting a heatwave for the summer prior (but it barely stopped pissing down all summer long).
And before you tell me I don't understand the difference between climate and weather...
climate . . . typically characterized in terms of suitable averages of the climate system over periods of a month or more
http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?id=climate1
Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these same elements and their variations over periods up to two weeks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate
Why then, if the Met Office cannot correctly predict the UK climate in the short term, should people worry about climate predictions about the whole world in the long term? I think that was the point for a lot of people, rather than just the cold and the snow. Nevertheless, certainly, when it's -17C in Cheshire, many people, ignorant as they may be, will inevitably think global warming is bollocks.
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| Thus the deniers got it wrong while climate scientists got it spectacularly right |
This doesn't support what it intends. The deniers, according to the writer, used a cold winter as evidence that "global warming was nonsense". But it was the record-hot summer that the Met Office got "spectacularly right" - not that global warming isn't nonsense. Correct predictions don't vindicate the view that man influences the climate, any more than incorrect predictions vindicate the deniers.
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Indeed, we should note just how prescient the latter have been. In 1999, the Met Office's head of climate modelling Peter Stott � working with Oxford University's Myles Allen and other meteorologists � published a paper in Nature on the likely impact of greenhouse gas emissions. Using temperature data from 1946 to 1996, the paper estimated future global temperatures and included a graph of a range of predicted outcomes for 2000 to 2040 with a dotted line indicating the most likely path. Crucially, for the year 2010, that dotted line showed there would be a rise of 0.8C since the Second World War� which is exactly what we are experiencing today.
So scientists not only predicted how hot this year was likely to be six months ago, they forecast a decade ago just how much the world would heat up 10 years later. Bear this in mind when deniers tell you climate science is a conspiracy or the work of charlatans. They are talking rubbish. |
Fair enough, congratulations, but correctly predicting the temperature doesn't establish or support human activity being the cause of any warming.
It's possible to be absolutely wrong about the cause of warming and yet correctly predict the climate, just as it's possible to be absolutely right about the cause of warming yet incorrectly predict the climate.
There's no relationship at all between right or wrong predictions and the truth or falsity of man influencing the climate
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| Such precision is encouraging for it indicates climate scientists know what they are talking about |
If you want to celebrate successful predictions as proof of manmade climate change, while ignoring unsuccessful ones, be my guest, but that's not science.
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| Most answers have concentrated on the difficulty of explaining science � riddled as it is with uncertainties and qualifications. And to some extent, these explanations are correct. Atmospheric physics and meteorology are complex |
Well, why not briefly discuss some of those complexities and uncertainties (and how climate scientists overcome them) instead of the silliness above? That would make for a very good article
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| However, there is a second, more sinister explanation, one that forms the focus of Merchants of Doubt, by US academics Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, which is to be published this month by Bloomsbury. This analysis of right-wing politics and its impact on science shows how a handful of individuals have managed to obscure the truth on issues that range from the dangers of smoking to global warming. |
That's as maybe, but there are many others who have nothing to do with this particular handful of individuals
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| These right-wing libertarians include such scientists as Fred Seitz and Fred Singer � who both worked on the Cold War projects such as the US hydrogen bomb project and who helped set up institutions like the US's Heritage Foundation and Marshall Institute. |
What relevance does this have?
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| Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these outfits exist to fight any form of state intervention or regulation of US citizens. Thus they fought, and delayed, smoking curbs in the '70s even though medical science had made it clear the habit was a major cancer risk. And they have been battling ever since, blocking or holding back laws aimed at curbing acid rain, ozone-layer depletion, and � mostly recently � global warming. |
It would be preferable to respond to their claims about climate science rather than making allegations about the people themselves.
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| In each case the tactics are identical: discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt |
Elaboration helpful
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| As the authors state: "Small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power." |
The irony
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| In Britain, links between deniers and big business are less obvious |
They are also not relevant.
The vested interests a party has when making a claim have no bearing on the truth of the claim.
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| Yet it is clear lessons have been learned and tactics copied. Consider these examples: the leaking of the "climategate" emails and the wild over-reaction to the mistaken insertion of a paragraph in the IPCC's last climate assessment, that suggested wrongly that Himalayan glaciers are melting rapidly. Both created a furore with the former revealing "a massive fraud" that represented "the final nail in the coffin" for the theory of global warming, deniers argued. This claim was later shown to be nonsense, though it took three inquiries to establish the point. The overall effect, however, was the spread of confusion among the public and an increase in doubt about climate change. |
They were nevertheless immensely damaging. Many people will never take claims about global warming seriously ever again. These people might just be ignorant Daily Mail-reading scum, in Guardian-readers' opinion, but they are numerous and they vote
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| And given that the email leak involved a specific act of computer hacking, one must conclude this was the specific goal of that electronic "break-in". |
And what is that supposed to establish, exactly?
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| In this way, scientists' warnings � that without action the world will get at least two degrees hotter this century � have been obscured by a small group of ideologues who believe individual liberties are more important than any other cause. |
The "action" we take may have absolutely no effect on the climate and may also stifle innovation, and in the meantime deny the world's poorest people cheap and efficient electricity - all because of Western leftists, most of whom coming from privileged backgrounds, and their little climate creed. If that isn't a "dark ideology", I don't know what is!
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| Our planet may burn, millions may die, and cities such as Moscow and New York may smoulder |
We've been burning fossil fuels for a few hundred years and it's had very little impact on the temperature. However, millions already do die (because of coal pollution and its effects on the lungs, including lung cancer). See the book Coal: A Human Study. Sadly, since the main culprit of coal pollution is China, and not the United States, and because millions of people die mundane deaths in hospital beds in the here and now (rather than spectacularly due to melting ice caps and rising seas in a future dystopia), this goes largely unnoticed. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 3:29 am Post subject: |
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So 97% of climate scientists are left-wing ideologues, with little interest in real science, and only interested in pushing some socialist agenda.
And what branch of science do all the right-wing ones practice?
You write:
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| We've been burning fossil fuels for a few hundred years and it's had very little impact on the temperature. |
You are being awfully simpistic. Have you ever studied any maths or quantitative subjects or any science whatsoever?
Firstly, any critical thinker with a basic modicum of science or maths under their belt would straight away see problems with that reasoning. 4 things struck me immediately as I read it.
1) When we first started burning fossil fuels all those 'few hundred years ago' we were fewer in number. Not so many of us on the planet. For example, in 1500 there were approximately 1/2 billion of us. By 2000 there were about 6 billion of us.
2) Also, how many people around the planet made use of fossil fuela few hundred years ago? I don't know. But I would wager that a far smaller minority of the world's population used it then, than now. The vast majority of us now make use of fossil fuels in some ways. Even just one hundred years ago, a far lower percentage of the (far smaller) population were using it than now.
3) Almost all those individuals and companies who did use fossil fuel say 100 years ago would have used far smaller amounts than is used by individuals/ companies today.
4) It has had an impact on the temperature. You say 'very little impact.' What do you quantify as 'very little?' Just a couple of degrees, right? A change of a couple of degrees of global warming will have huge impact on the planet. The enviroment and ecosystems (of which we are part) are very sensitive to (what seems to you) a small change in temperature - even 0.5 of a degree can have very significant consequences for an ecosystems.
| Quote: |
| However, millions already do die (because of coal pollution and its effects on the lungs, including lung cancer). See the book Coal: A Human Study. Sadly, since the main culprit of coal pollution is China, and not the United States, and because millions of people die mundane deaths in hospital beds in the here and now (rather than spectacularly due to melting ice caps and rising seas in a future dystopia), this goes largely unnoticed. |
Global warming is happening now. It's having effects on your world now. And it's only just geting started. It's not just something for your great grandkids to worry about. And it will be the poor people (that you claim to care so much about) that will suffer disproportionately.
Jesus. I just can't believe how many arts graduates are now scientific experts. Sheer bloody folly. Thank God these arts graduates haven't yet tried their hand a medical science!
You do us all a great disservice when you muddy the conclusions of years of careful painstaken and widely replicated scientific research with the designs of some sort of political movement.
Trying to avert a worse crisis does not have to stifle innovative progress. Why aren't we encouraging innovative solutions to this problem. Bloody Hell. It doesn't have to herald the end of capitalism. Only in a rightwing nutter's mind!
Stop reading the Daily Mail (and its daft crusades on single muvvers and evil climate change scientists) and you might actually read something that educates you! I can't believe that someone of your intelligence would use the DM for anything other than toilet paper. Really.
Editted for clarity, and the most shocking errors of spelling and grammar.
Last edited by Big_Bird on Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:20 am; edited 4 times in total |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 3:51 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
So 97% of climate scientists are left-wing ideologues, with little interest in real science, and only interested in pushing some socialist agenda.
And what branch of science do all the right-wing ones practice? |
Economics |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 6:18 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| So 97% of climate scientists are left-wing ideologues, with little interest in real science, and only interested in pushing some socialist agenda. |
I didn't say that. I did however criticize Western leftists who couldn't really give a hoot about the environment and use climate science as an excuse to impose their silly cult on others.
| Big Bird wrote: |
| You are being awfully simpistic. Have you ever studied any maths or quantitative subjects or any science whatsoever? |
Now now, Temper temper 
| Big Bird wrote: |
| Firstly, any critical thinker with a basic modicum of science or maths under their belt would straight away see a problem with that sentence. |
Any critical thinker with a modicum of intelligence wouldn't have posted that dreadful article.
| Big Bird wrote: |
4 things struck me immediately as I read this.
1) When we first started burning fossil fuels a those 'few hundred years ago' we were fewer in number. Not so many of us on the planet. For example, in 1500 there were approximately 1/2 billion of us. By 2000 there were about 6 billion of us. |
Looking at population in terms of snapshots like that gives a falsely limited picture of the total number of people that have lived. The 6.8bn people alive today are a fraction of the total number of people that have lived during the relevant period.
http://www.prb.org/articles/2002/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth.aspx
Even just the carbon emitters in the industrialized world in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries are still probably somewhere in the billions.
| Big Bird wrote: |
2) Also, how many people around the planet made use of fossil fuel? I don't know. But I would wager that a far smaller minority of the world's population used it then, than now. The vast majority of us know make use of fossil fuels in some ways.
3) Almost all those individuals and companies who did use fossil fuel say 100 years ago would have used far smaller amounts than is used now by individuals/ companies. |
You obviously know absolutely nothing about carbon dioxide. The relationship between co2 and temperature isn't exponential. You presuppose that emiting more co2 than 100 years ago has a weightier impact, but it's simply not true. When a long distance runner is in a race, more energy is required to keep up the desirable pace as time goes on than at the beginning. Same with co2 and warming - the more profound effects on warming occur at the beginning of the process and, as time goes on, greater amounts of co2 emitted mean smaller gains in warming. The 21st century will very likely be the same as the 20th - negligible heating.
| Big Bird wrote: |
| 4) It has had an impact on the temperature. You say 'very little impact.' What do you quantify as 'very little?' Just a couple of degrees, right? A change of a couple of degrees of global warming will have huge impact on the planet. The enviroment and ecosystems (of which we are part) are very sensitive to (what seems to you) a small change in temperature - even 0.5 of a degree can have very significant consequences for an ecosystems. |
The effects aren't worth worrying about, certainly not enough to not allow developing countries a cheap carbon economy in the absence of an alternative. Besides, any effects on ecosystems are highly unlikely to be just negative. Losses, if any, are generally offset by gains elsewhere in nature, for example. . .
| Big Bird wrote: |
| Global warming is happening now. It's not something for your great grandkids to worry about. And it will be the poor people (that you claim to care so much about) that will suffer disproportionately. |
In other words, the poor in the here and now should be expected to sacrifice their economic prosperity for future generations in the face of the mere possibility, according to even worst case scenarios, of climate change.
| Big Bird wrote: |
| Jesus. just can't believe how many arts graduates are now scientific experts. Sheer bloody folly. Thank God these arts graduates haven't yet tried their hand a medical science! |
Grow up |
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Sergio Stefanuto
Joined: 14 May 2009
Location: UK
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| Posted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 8:09 am Post subject: |
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Big Bird's edit:
| Big Bird wrote: |
| Stop reading the Daily Mail |
Has somebody who posted an article that I rebutted point by point just told me to read a different paper? |
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Mosley
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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