Candide,

for authoritative sources on GW or any scientific matter see only reputable sources - government, scientific, educational. Their subscription magazines are often hard to find but many have accessible websites. As to what you decide once you've read it - well, it's a bit like Fox News. "We report - you decide". Where 99% of scientific research concurs, go with it.

A lot of people are scientifically illiterate. That's OK as long as they don't encourage ignorance among others. Regards trolls, there are some articles on this thread that illustrate quite nicely the point the author is trying to make. Can you pick them?

david f,

no offence intended. Wasnt trying to misrepresent. l made an assumption, my bad.

Ok, how about abstract proofs like mathematics. They are self referential circular proofs that are, so far established, without transience.

1+1=2. This bounded conceptualisation (an object) and that other one can be seen as a new concept (a total).

That equation is both a self referentially established proof and also establishes a proof for a conceptual process of consciousness.

ps. these notions being advanced are done under a free-flowing, open ended conceptual process as advanced by Bohms Dialogue. As flawed as the attempt may be. Which is a good way of redressing things like "You may define terms any way you like, but your definition of 'proof' is not related to any definition I understand as proof." lm not trying to define proof, nor dictate what the word points to, lm trying to understand it. Anyway, l dont wanna argue nor ridicule conceptual frameworks here. And l most certainly dont wanna have to submit to the perceptual dictates and processes of the competitively self appointed high priests of consciousness, whatever their flavour.

David f, it is interesting to note these important themes, the Big-Bang, AGW and evolution appearing in this thread. Whilst i disagree with the Big Bang nonsense i also disagree with your comment that "it will make little difference in our lives". Isn't this actually the question pertaining to all questions and the problem that really prepossesses all others? We need to know where we came from, what are the limits, what are our goals, to what do we tend to, to what do we have control over, to what are the possibilities, to what is determinable and to how much we desire the indeterminable. These three themes are linked and provide the building blocks for so many other scientific disciplines. The persistence of the BB nonsense hypothesis simply seems to add to the inertia against change where any new approach will require a reassessment in most if not all scientific disciplines.

I must say when i first heard of the BB hypothesis as a thirteen year old some fifty years ago, i felt it to be fictional because even if there was a state of nothingness (which is illogical anyway) prior to the BB fireworks the question remains ..... how can you get something from nothing? Also if it is expanding then what is it expanding into ..... itself?

Also it is interesting to note, all without reference to any Big Bang cosmology, the following ... In 1896, Charles Edouard Guillaume predicted a temperature of 5.6K from heating by starlight. Arthur Eddington refined the calculations in 1926 and predicted a temperature of 3K. Eric Regener predicted 2.8 in 1933.

Keiran wrote:

"David f, it is interesting to note these important themes, the Big-Bang, AGW and evolution appearing in this thread. Whilst i disagree with the Big Bang nonsense i also disagree with your comment that "it will make little difference in our lives". Isn't this actually the question pertaining to all questions and the problem that really prepossesses all others?"

I sense in you a thirst for knowledge which is an admirable quality. You don't accept the Big Bang. If you did accept it what difference would it make in your life?

Our cosmic origins are the beginning of all that exists. I disagree that it makes the key question. It still remains one of many questions. Apparently most if not all human societies have considered it and have their own creation myths. The bible contains the creation myth of the Hebrew tribes. There is no more reason to accept that than to accept any other creation myth.

I neither accept nor reject Big-Bang since I have not evaluated the evidence on which it is based. Having taught physics at a graduate level I am qualified to weigh the evidence, but I don't want to spend the time. Other matters seem to me more important.

David f, just continuing on with this thread about honest science.

Take Gamow's predictions with reference to the Big Bang, ranged from 50K to 6 K. Other big bangers had very high predictions too but when the COBE satellite measured it to be only 2.7K, astonishingly all the Big Bang proponents claimed victory. This is astonishing because the Big Bang proponents had NO reasonable degree of accuracy. Plus 2.7K was what was always understood as normal without reference to any Big Bang cosmology.

However, in 2006 the Nobel Prize in Physics, was shared between Smoot and Mather. Mather who is at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center writes big bang lies like .........
"The cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectrum is that of a nearly perfect blackbody with a temperature of 2.725 +/- 0.001K. This observation matches the predictions of the hot Big Bang theory extraordinarily well, and indicates that nearly all of the radiant energy of the Universe was released within the first year after the Big Bang."

ALSO. Dr James E Hansen is director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies and he in fact wrote his doctoral thesis on the climate of Venus highlighting CO2 as a problem that caused a runaway Greenhouse effect which is all bogus. But with AGW we see Hansen's incorrect assumption in all its glory expressed as the deductive method chasing and distorting data to make it fit.

You say how does it all effect my life ...... well perhaps we wouldn't be having this discussion on AGW and pseudo-science for starters.