So this is what passes for news these days? Global warming content

UnclePsychosis

Ahh, yes, ye olde "decades of peer reviewed science is wrong because: priests" line.

Well that's me convinced.

Chalky

@UnclePsychosis - I would never be so arrogant as to try to convince you of anything - you keep your religious belief in your scientific priests

Maybe these words from a scientist, Robert Winston, might help understand the conflict of science and society:

Scientists are no better than anybody else at forecasting the future. In fact, their predictions are usually widely inaccurate.

It is understandable and proper that we scientists are immensely proud of what we discover, but it is easy to forget that this special knowledge can sometimes breed a culture of assumed omnipotence and arrogant assertion....arrogance is likely to damage the reputation of science by increasing public distrust.

Mere assertion that something is fact will not persuade many people of the rightness of what we say.

hugbot

That was why I pointed out that science by nature involves various parties working to disprove an established claim. Even if you believe that scientists are by nature "arrogant" then there are still many "arrogant" scientists working on the other side of the argument to disprove that global warming is real - and failing.

Also the Robert Winston quote is from a book about inventions specifically the unintended them, about how things people thought would end war end up being used for killing people and so on. You cant take one line quoted out of context from a popular science book and use that to demonstrate that science cannot accurately predict anything at all.

"[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." - Isaac Asimov

scrumhalf

We can all quote selectively from people whose views accord with our own, especially as google will take the leg-work out of it.

The earth's climate has always changed. There have been significant temperature shifts over the centuries and they happened in times when, as far as we know (important bit, that) there wasn't the same amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere. So, if our climate is changing it's not a given that the presence of large amounts of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere is the main cause, reduction of which will reverse the change in climate.

Chalky

@hugbot - But the quotes are from Chapter 12 of that book, entitled Scientists and Citizens, which is specifically about the relationship of science and society, and certainly not limited to inventions. In fact he refers to it as a manifesto.

Chalky

Aw @scrumhalf, I was expecting one of the others to come back with your first line, the old "you aren't quoting the right priests" argument

And you and @hugbot provide a good example of what real influential scientists are like. They pick who to agree with and who to oppose. I have no problem with that as all are human and influential scientists are as given to politics as anyone else with a modicum of influence over those around them. They will play politics as much as the next man.

Garthy

Indeed, but do you not feel that it is futile and slightly dishonest that while people are dropping dead in China and India we are made to feel like planet slayers for choosing a car that punts out X g/km of CO2? Every little helps indeed but it isn't like 'they' are going to paper over the hole in the Ozone with my £50 notes while the BRICs pump out millions of cubic meters of shit every day into the atmosphere.

menamestom said:

Thing is, even if it was a hoax, the other side of the issue is that air quality is so poor in some cities it is killing people, so there's still a good reason to move away from polluting fuels.  The problem with doing so is because the energy companies/suppliers etc have so much power it's not really in their interests (or the governments they are in bed with) to use cleaner energy which could be generated outside their control.

Energy in any format equals power, the more you have the richer and more powerful you are.  The issue is nobody want to make decisions that would relinquish this power, it's like nuclear disarming. 

Chalky

By all means clean up cities that have smog - just as with London decades ago. By all means improve the lives of those in India and China and make them safer. But I suspect many resulting policies that are claimed to be "absolutely necessary to save the planet" will put more misery on those least able to take it.

TheMarlin

This is just a willy waving excercise, of who thinks they're better researched.

The truth is, very few commenting here have actually done any science on the subject, you've all arrived at your very strong opinions (for and against) because someone has influenced you, or because you read it from a source you trust.

Science can be bent to shape any will, my grandfather was told by a doctor that smoking was good for his health, and up to the 80's, scientists were still refuting the link between smoking and cancer.

He who has the biggest cheque book gets the best science.

I do agree that getting away from fossil fuels is a good thing, but not for electric cars that polute more during manufacture than any fosil fuled car. Similarly, the devastating damage done to the environment due to Fulishima also suggest that relying on nuclear energy is a huge red herring.

In summary, all science is someone else's agenda. Get your tape measures, theodolites, and thermometers out, and check for yourself, but check ALL variables before reaching a conclusion.

Marlin.

hugbot

Chalky said: @hugbot - But the quotes are from Chapter 12 of that book, entitled Scientists and Citizens, which is specifically about the relationship of science and society, and certainly not limited to inventions. In fact he refers to it as a manifesto.
Exactly, its specifically related to how science impacts society. You're talking about an out of context assertion made about a specific thing and from that trying to claim "this scientist just proved that all scientific predictions are false"

stickyfiddle

Garthy said: Indeed, but do you not feel that it is futile and slightly dishonest that while people are dropping dead in China and India we are made to feel like planet slayers for choosing a car that punts out X g/km of CO2? Every little helps indeed but it isn't like 'they' are going to paper over the hole in the Ozone with my £50 notes while the BRICs pump out millions of cubic meters of shit every day into the atmosphere.
menamestom said:
Thing is, even if it was a hoax, the other side of the issue is that air quality is so poor in some cities it is killing people, so there's still a good reason to move away from polluting fuels.  The problem with doing so is because the energy companies/suppliers etc have so much power it's not really in their interests (or the governments they are in bed with) to use cleaner energy which could be generated outside their control.
Energy in any format equals power, the more you have the richer and more powerful you are.  The issue is nobody want to make decisions that would relinquish this power, it's like nuclear disarming. 
-----

Absolutely agree on the India/China thing. We can't just tell India and China to stop using cars because The West says so, and buying a bloody Prius doesn't help either.

What needs to happen is clean energy and properly clean cars (not just in a way that the car's energy comes from a power station via a battery rather than an internal combustion engine), and get it good enough and cheap enough that it's the obvious thing to have across India and China. Then we'll all want that and they'll all want that and all the problems will go away. 

This is from wikipedia, but it's a good graph. We're not there yet but it's going the right way. Just add wind (where weather conditions are suitable) and hydro (where there's moving water).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Price_history_of_silicon_PV_cells_since_1977.svg/729px-Price_history_of_silicon_PV_cells_since_1977.svg.png

UnclePsychosis

Frankly I'm absolutely astounded that science has got as far as it has, given that apparently all science is bollocks because "scientists have been wrong before". After all, if 97% of climate change research can be thrown out because "arrogance, hurr, hurr, al gore, hurr hurr" then 97% of all science can be rejected for exactly the same reason. Its all just blind luck that we ever cure disease or invent new technology. 

Fucking arrogant scientists. They don't know shit. Next time someone is doing a study into the best ways of curing bowel cancer we should just ask the general public what to do, if you asked anyone with any qualifications they'd probably just tell you an arrogant lie.

Chalky

Who said all science is bollocks? Who said its blind luck that we cure diseases?

UnclePsychosis

Chalky said:

Who said all science is bollocks? Who said its blind luck that we cure diseases?

You did. 

You clearly think climate change science is bollocks, and the only reason to hold that view is if you don't believe in the modern scientific method. Which is the foundation of all science. You don't get to pick and choose the bits that you believe in. 

hugbot

Which would you say is likely to be closest to the truth?

1) The planet is not warming

2) The planet is warming, but humans have little or nothing to do with it

3) The planet is warming, humans have something to do with it, but it will probably be fine

4) Its "arrogant" to even speculate or hypothesize one way or another.

UnclePsychosis

hugbot;895154" said:

Which would you say is likely to be closest to the truth?

1) The planet is not warming

2) The planet is warming, but humans have little or nothing to do with it

3) The planet is warming, humans have something to do with it, but it will probably be fine

4) Its "arrogant" to even speculate or hypothesize one way or another.

5. Arrogance!!!!!! 6. Al Gore!!!!!! 7. Global conspiracy to oppress those poor, downtrodden petrochemical conglomerates!!!!! 8. But it still snows!!!!!!

stickyfiddle

MANBEARPIG!!!!

ICBM

WezV said:

Population growth will kill our ways of life more.

It links into climate change because we could probably afford to be dirty polluting bastards if there were less of us.

We have an exponential growth of people all wanting the same basic resources to live.

It's no longer exponential at all.

Watch this…

It's an hour long but it's really worth it.

The more we industrialise, the more we're likely to be able to cope - high-tech civilisation is a lot more efficient than low-tech. The problem is getting to the high-tech for everyone without them passing through the same carbon-dependent industrial revolution that the West has.

The good news is that it's beginning to look like this is possible - because nuclear and renewable energy are actually more efficient, and efficiency means lower cost and hence there is an incentive to go down that route. The reason the steam age is long gone in the West is nothing to do with climate science - global warming was not even identified as a possibility back then - but purely because it was inefficient and expensive. We need to encourage and help China, India and the other big developing economies to get to our level as fast as possible, for our benefit as well as theirs.

It is inevitable that there will be a short-term increase in carbon emissions before they do get there though, and we will have to accept that and hope it doesn't cause too much damage. For world leaders to pretend otherwise is at best naive, and at worst just a publicity stunt.

Chalky

"You clearly think climate change science is bollocks, and the only reason to hold that view is if you don't believe in the modern scientific method." Bad science there, @UnclePsychosis - no way you can draw that conclusion from that premise.

Talk to real scientists. Years ago I was in a pub with a Biologist and Physicist. It was interesting to hear their views on, for example, the rigours of medical science (the biologist was conducting neural reasearch on mice) versus those in areas of study like 'social sciences' (and others). Both are called sciences, done by people called scientists, but the levels of rigour are rather different.

I know a chap who competes in the world gliding championships. Their flights are many hours long and cover hundreds of miles. Reading the weather is absolutely key to tactics and success. So do they plan their two weeks of competition tactics based on incremental 5 day weather forecasts? No, they don't trust much beyond 24 hours and only really trust sub-12 hour forecasts. As he says, if medical science was like meteorological science you'd never go near a hospital!

All science is not the same.

Sibelius

TheMarlin said:

Science can be bent to shape any will, my grandfather was told by a doctor that smoking was good for his health, and up to the 80's, scientists that worked for the tobacco industries were still refuting the link between smoking and cancer.

Corrected for accuracy..