(continued)

2. Scientific Consensus.

Science has always progressed by the minority or individual contradicting the accepted view, and it follows that the number of people believing something has nothing to do with its truth.

Tthe credibility of those who argue on such a basis ought to be treated with suspicion.


3. Is Global Warming a bad thing?

Everyone is jumping up and down based on the assumption that global warming is bad thing. There is plenty of material identifying dramatic negative consequences, but precious little addressing the upsides.

For example, the press likes to report all the extra deaths and damage which will be caused by the increased tropical storms suspected as being caused by global warming, but no one ever bothers to mention the reduced deaths from cold and greater crop yields in cooler climes which are just as attributable to global warming as the storms.

Observe that life, both plant and animal, is generally more diverse and plentiful in warmer climates. This is a valuable clue as to the likely longer term impact of global warming.

Only when the pros and cons are weighed against each other can any useful assessment be made as to whether global warming will be a net good or bad thing.

Reading suggestion:

Lomborg's "the skeptical environmentalist" - an expose on alarmist conclusions.

“Lomborg's "the skeptical environmentalist" - an expose on alarmist conclusions.”

Not quite an expose Kalin1. Should global warming cease (or escalate) and business as usual prevails, and since you alluded to physics and chemistry as the “hard” sciences, what do you advise we do about the ecological desecration caused from the emissions of fossil fuel chemicals, a proven from chemical analyses of air, rivers, soil, oceans, food animals, marine life and humans?

Do we continue to burn fossil fuels or draw “alarmist conclusions” from the evidence that’s been provided for decades?

Western governments will advise you that pollutant industries are heavily regulated. This statement is fraudulent at best since accredited laboratories' analyses of chemicals in Australia’s rivers and coastlines continue to reveal that they are heavily contaminated by self-regulated industries – these results cannot be easily manipulated though one Australian NATA accredited laboratory (currently employed by Xstrata) is under investigation.

Similar chemical analyses around the globe on the planet's ecosystems draw the same conclusion. Any remediation (if any) costs are rarely provided by the culprits. The taxpayer foots the bill and much of the contamination is now irreversible.

Further elaboration on specific chemicals of concern can be provided at your request.

Dare I say Kalin1 that you have overlooked the sleeper emerging in a crisis between the interplay of hazardous fossil fuel emissions (associated and other industrial pollutants), water, food and all life on the planet?

Q&A, as promised, something on Entity Relationship Analysis (ERA) as it applies to complex issues such as the AGW debate. Mostly used today for computer applications and database design however, long before this, circa 1980, it became a backbone for business analysis to support Change Management and Business Process Re-engineering. The principle being that complex analysis from the bottom up is futile. Like an inversion the pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the top level deals only with the lowest common denominators, say 8-10 entities. Level two describes these further into say 30-50 entities, next to say 100-500 and so on down the layers of the pyramid into the content layers of tens of thousands or millions of entities. Imagine trying to understand the structure of a company with $100 billion in sales, 135,000 employees operating in 35 countries? That’s the level of complexity we can deal with.

AGW and ERA:

Level 1.
Key, raw scientific measurements, 8-10 uncontested research/measurement indicators.
EXCLUSIVE TO SCIENCE

Level 2.
Interpretation of raw data, 30-50 contested but scientific “interpretations”.
EXCLUSIVE TO SCIENCE

Level 3.
Scientific Predictions/projections of the “interpretations”. The 30-50 interpretations are modeled on computers, using algorithms to “assume “the value of variables/unknowns. Now dealing with 100-500 entities.
EXLUSIVE TO SCIENCE

Level 4.
Media, current affairs, news, non peer reviewed publications, books, lobby groups, opinion makers, politics, religion, industry groups, conservationists etc., etc.
Now into tens of thousands of entities.
NON-SCIENTIFIC PUBLIC DOMAIN. (a “futile” layer)

Level 5.
Public debate, now into millions of entities, each expressing their “adopted” opinions.
(The public cannot function in scientific domains; we “listen” to science from both sides but must still “adopt” a position because science is inconclusive. We are then left with the most complex (futile), yet non-scientific layers relying on the “opinion” generated by others in the public domain. The lower the level, the lower the analytical value of the entity.
NON-SCIENTIFIC PUBLIC DOMAIN (a “futile” layer)

This analysis supports my assertion that the public has been thrown into a sea of “content” from where we can only grasp at driftwood.

"This analysis supports my assertion that the public has been thrown into a sea of “content” from where we can only grasp at driftwood."

How condescending and what an insult to the public - particularly to those trained in environmental toxicology.

Go to bed spindoc!

proto-gore-as..you make claims that are uninformed..or worse designed to confuse

as spindoc clearly pointed out re his point 5...we have not had an informed debate..[i see only name calling in response to valid points]

your response is as pathetic as your put down<<..How condescending and what an insult to the public..particularly to those trained in environmental toxicology>>>..now let us get this straight..[your saying the public includes those trained in toxicology..[or consists solely of toxicologists]

either way mate you conmment barely rates any informed reply..[why you golabal tax lovers persist in your futile denyal to debait our rebuttal..is revealing your not intrested as much in the facts as ridiculing any who oppose your lemming like rush to create this new burdon/cash-tax-cow..upon the people with minimal egsamination of the facts

so mate how do you gain from this new tax?...who pays for the unused credits?..who markets them..[who collects the generouse commisions on re selling these credits..[how does this tax fix the envioronment]

the questions get rather extensive..[its interesting to note the last two spokes-persons on the topic..on lateline are an econimist and an industriualist...mainly saying they want certainty..

[certainty..they can take to the bank and create into green/credit..from our tax debit..funding yet more polution to rebuild green...

mate we poluted /poisend the earth to get here..went broke getting here...now big buisness wants our tax..to do it all over again

trying to turn..the fast failing/indusrial economy into the boom/bubble green economy..this globalist tax is a tax,..that dosnt go to govt..but to big buisness carbon/tax securities traders/speculators..bankers and industrialists..to regear up their credit to do more polution

you bloggers are trying to silence thinking..by beating up delusional fears..playing the man..not rebutting the mans facts..hoping to quickly move from planing into yet more industrialisation,

hoping..to be skipping the debate..before the computer fantisy models become revealed as lies..made by sellouts..paid to decieve the people into a NEW global tax..green subsidy for big businnes..[how come the big poluters get credits..yet the slave/wage/poor just get a new tax?]

Kalin1, I think that to a (greater or lesser) degree, some of the "soft" sciences like biology have been, for several decades, in the thrall of a generation of scientists who came of age in the atmosphere of the 1960s ecology movement.

Not to put too fine a point on it: a generation of hippies, who early on became conditioned to embrace an eschatological worldview that sees western, industrialised society as fundamentally and implacably at war with "mother nature". This is perhaps most overtly seen in James Lovelock's "Gaia" theory.

This generation, perhaps as a result of growing up in what Jeff Nuttall identified as a "bomb culture" atmosphere of cold wars and giant bug-style "nature's revenge" movies, seems to be profoundly imbued with an almost Wagnerian doom-obsession. Every problem is seen, not as a problem to be overcome with patience and forward planning, but as an imminent cataclysm that will brook no delay.

Perhaps it is also a problem inherent in a "soft" science, but biology and its related disciplines also seem to be fields disproportionately at the mercy of practitioners like Norman Myers who, to be blunt, seem quite apt to pull the most alarming figures out of their proverbial (witness the infamous, conventional wisdom of "40 000 species a year" extinction rates).

Perhaps a generation of scientists just needs to have a cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie-down.