The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > A sane view on the 'climate change' issue > Comments

A sane view on the 'climate change' issue : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 24/5/2013

The Oklahoma City tornado brought forth a few excited claims that this was all due to 'climate change', but even IPCC Chairman Pachauri has pooh-poohed that notion.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. Page 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. All
Poirot,

When I refer to judging your science by the response from people who do understand it, I am of course referring to your former supporters, all the nations who once signed up for Kyoto, all their scientists who once agreed with you and all the governments that once legislated for the existence of emissions caps, emissions trading markets and renewable energy industries.

So all these thousands of government scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists, investors, engineers, researchers and academics who once agreed with your science but no longer do, have abandoned you because they “choose to ignore it in favor of “short term’ imperatives, which, of course, is a typically human trait”?

So they have abandoned you because they choose to ignore your science in favor of something they believe is more important? Then you accuse your own former team of having a “typically human trait”?

They differ from you in one key aspect that you failed to mention. They have a typically “thinking” human trait.

That’s why you got left behind Poirot, you can’t think.
Posted by spindoc, Saturday, 25 May 2013 4:27:47 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
From where I sit, it seems clear that there must be some effect in adding large quantities of anything to a system that is in a pseudo-equilibrium. In other words, I can see no reason to doubt that AGW is likely to be real on some scale. I'm not sure that anyone except charlatans is able to sincerely suggest that we have enough data to make really useful predictions about what that scale might be.

The whole discussion around the subject comes down to a fairly small set of key questions that will be resolved as data is collected, overlaid by political and commercial interests and prejudices.

The three biggest empirical questions, it seems to me, are:
"what is the likely range of warming?"
"at what rate will that change occur?"
and, as this is a pseudo-equilibrium, "what is the latency (lag) in the system".

If we don't know those things with some considerable certainty, then it is inevitable that political, commercial and personal prejudices, which have no such uncertainty (right or wrong), will become the dominant factor in any discussion and it will be pointless. No minds will be changed, nothing will be gained.

It is precisely that which has allowed poor policy-making; after all, how can one form a useful policy on the science in the absence of usefully clear data about the topic? On the other hand, if there is some commercial or political advantage to be gleaned, that data can be readily gathered via the routine political/commercial methods and policies designed to suit. The science is simply not in the race, other than as a political tool.

Because of that, I'd like to see less being spent on mitigation or other efforts and more on the science. If it turns out the effect is likely to be either catastrophically large or negligibly small then we need to know that, for a start, before we do anything at all except what's easy and we've already done a great deal of that.
Posted by Antiseptic, Saturday, 25 May 2013 5:13:05 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
The usual idiots are out baying at the moon; best line so far:

"From where I sit, it seems clear that there must be some effect in adding large quantities of anything to a system that is in a pseudo-equilibrium"

"pseudo-equilibrium"?! Sitting under a toadstool no doubt.

http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/05/ten-of-the-worst-climate-research-papers-5-years-on/comment-page-1/#comment-526142

If these people were company directors they'd be rich; oh wait, they are.
Posted by cohenite, Saturday, 25 May 2013 9:49:11 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Au contraire, spindoc.

Your "thinkers" are merely protecting the status quo.

Here's Canada's version of scientific freedom...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/04/canada-investigates-silenced-muzzled-scientists

And the US Republicans are trying to cobble together their own version....

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2013/04/us-lawmaker-proposes-new-criteri-1.html

And if things start melting faster than anticipated - well that's all right as well....

http://m.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/10/national-strategy-arctic-region-announced

Big business, oil and partisan politicians - that's all it takes for the science to be muzzled and/or ignored.

You Know it - we all Know it.
Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 25 May 2013 10:16:36 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
cohenite, why didn't you just point out you had nothing to say. It would have saved everyone so much time.
Posted by Antiseptic, Saturday, 25 May 2013 10:36:39 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
[Deleted for abuse.]
Posted by cohenite, Saturday, 25 May 2013 10:51:42 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. Page 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy