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 > How to save us from climate-change doomsayers > Comments

How to save us from climate-change doomsayers : Comments

By Crispin Hull, published 3/12/2012

The change in public opinion is evidence that the world's scientists are failing us – badly. They are being far too cautious in their evidentiary requirements.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. ...
  6. 7
  7. 8
  8. 9
  9. Page 10
  10. 11
  11. All
My concluding remarks for this thread (cont'd).

"Climate sceptics" and "Greenies" have this in common. Each in their own way makes a religion out of AGW. Both are impervious to data and reason.

AGW is first and foremost a scientific issue. If you're interested get your information from reliable scientific sources. But also be realistic. This is a complex issue. You would have to devote many hundreds of hours to mastering the literature. I'm afraid sometimes you may just have to be prepared to accept the consensus judgement of people who have devoted their lives to studying the Earth's climate. Most of them are pretty smart and most of them are honest.

Some "sceptics" claim that what we are observing is "natural variation."

This cannot be completely ruled out but it is beginning to seem increasingly unlikely. "Skeptical Science" addresses this issue very well so I'll simply post a link to the relevant page.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Could-global-warming-be-caused-by-natural-cycles.html

>>A common misunderstanding of the climate system characterizes it like a pendulum. The planet will warm up to "cancel out" a previous period of cooling, spurred by some internal equilibrium. This view of the climate is incorrect. ….

[…]

…the hypothetical natural cycle would have to explain the observed "fingerprints" of greenhouse gas-induced warming. Even if, for the sake of argument, we were to discount the direct measurements showing an increased greenhouse effect, other lines of evidence point to anthropogenic causes. For example, the troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere) is warming, but the levels above, from the stratosphere up, are cooling, as less radiation is escaping out to space. This rules out cycles related to the Sun, as solar influences would warm the entire atmosphere in a uniform fashion. The only explanation that makes sense is greenhouse gases.>>

And that's it for me.
Posted by stevenlmeyer, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 6:07:10 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
Sadly, the respected Mr Hull has constructed an apparently convincing argument (like the good journalist that he is) that is in fact quite misleading. Apart from the fact that climate science remains a highly speculative discipline, Mt Hull's reference to the outcomes of banning DDT to illustrate the courage of scientists of another era, fails to tell the whole story. In fact, as often happens when rich westerners get a bee in their bonnet, the complete banning of DDT resulted in the deaths of millions of poor people in under developed countries. Evangelism, like that which abounds in the climate change debate, seldom achieves much and almost always has unintended consequences.
Posted by richierhys, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 6:24:06 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
Thanks stevenlmeyer for updating the Economist link and for such a comprehensive post.
Posted by Candide, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 6:34:44 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
DDT ban myth bingo.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2005/12/21/ddt-ban-myth-bingo/
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 7:05:15 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
I'll type this slowly so that everyone can follow what I am saying:

There was no global ban on DDT that resulted in millions of deaths.

This is a myth, a construct that plays on peoples political prejudices against 'environmentalists' and ignorance of the actual history and attention to things like dates. In fact most of the disuse of DDT came about because of insect RESISTANCE to it. Rachel Carsons work has almost nothing to do with it other than raise attention to the problem of persistent organic pollutants that we were spraying all over the place.

Leo's post exemplifies this is spades. He reposted a link to an article that he thinks tells the "Truth". Well, it doesn't. Sri Lanka did not ban DDT in 1964, and it was never banned for public health use pretty much across the world. Rachel Carsons book was only published in Sept 1962. In fact they changed tactics because of their success and could not regain control again because of insecticide resistance in the population building up from agricultural spraying, because DDT was NOT BANNED.

In fact, the persistence and widespread previous use of DDT has ensured that resistance can build up again pretty quickly, as the genes are still out there. The age of broad scale insecticide use, as wonderful as you may be led to believe, is unsustainable and not because of greenies. It's because the list of suitable chemicals is shortening all the time as chemical after chemical becomes useless in controlling their target pests. Insects have evolved resistance to early every class of chemical that we have thrown at them and it takes too much time and money to develop new ones.

Here's an interesting story, if a few years old:
http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2005/july/ddtinsects.htm

Roll on the genomic revolution...
Posted by Bugsy, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 8:27:28 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
Bugsey,

A perfect snap shot on insecticide use, abuse and adaptation .

Ralph
Posted by Ralph Bennett, Tuesday, 4 December 2012 11:27:29 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. ...
  6. 7
  7. 8
  8. 9
  9. Page 10
  10. 11
  11. All

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