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The Forum > Article Comments > Appealing to science in the AGW debate is delusional > Comments

Appealing to science in the AGW debate is delusional : Comments

By John Töns, published 2/7/2009

It seems that the climate change debate highlights some basic shortcomings in the way we understand the notion of scientific objectivity.

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Let's consider the argument of the time period over which we are measuring these climate changes (in the past). Like it was mentioned in the article, 300 years of weather records is but a blip on the billions of years that the planet has existed. Even 650,000 years of climate data from the ice cores is still a blip out of billions of years. Could it be that our climate system has an element of chaos in it and we will never be able to predict climate with the type of accuracy that people would like, or that government policy makers would find useful? Now is the time to start to make the changes that we know are possible and do things better (regardless of the reasoning / motivation). Why do we need to have a reason to do something better than the way we currently do it. We all know that we can water our gardens less and therefore waste less water by planting more drought tolerant plants and breeds of grass. Why can we not extend this 'reduce' ideal to all our systems? Is there something wrong with just doing it better?
Posted by coothdrup, Thursday, 2 July 2009 4:15:38 PM
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By stating

'Understanding the history of climate change is forensic science at its most elegant. For example, analysis of Antarctic ice cores show that levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are now higher than they have been for the past 650,000 years while the rate of increase over the past 100 years is greater than at anytime over the past 20,000 years.'

the author shows clearly that he does not believe in testable science. How people can sprout this nonsense as fact is beyond belief. John needs to be a bit more objective as do the many 'scientist' who accept dogmas without any true scientific basis.
Posted by runner, Thursday, 2 July 2009 4:50:35 PM
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Science does not supply value judgements. *Nothing* follows from the climate science as a matter of policy, even if there were a consensus, which there is not.

Also there are equally great uncertainties as a matter of ecology, and economics, let alone the ethics involved in these dreams of controlling the world.

The fact is that ecologists do not have the knowledge of the conditions of the abundance and distribution of species, to enable them to conclude, from a variation in atmospheric carbon of a few parts per million, that the results would necessarily be negative over entire continents like Eurasia, North America and Australia. There is always the possibility, for example, that the greenhouse effect would promote conditions favourable to life – you know, like a green house?

Similar incoherence affects the economic arguments.

The author’s first argument is that switching to a low carbon fuel source would put certain nations at an advantage as against those that have lots of fossil fuels. The second is that continuing to use fossil fuels will become increasingly uneconomic, or impossible, so why not change now?

These arguments are based on fallacies. They always require reliance on the notional decision-maker “we”, about “our” resources. The fallacy can best be demonstrated by the author’s answer, or silence, to the question: who exactly is this “we” you are talking about? Answer please?

The second fallacy involves the same collectivist error of thinking. People are not herds of animals owned by governments. The values to all the individuals in issue cannot be accounted into huge aggregates, and divided, and subjected to mathematical operations.

The entire argument is based on assumptions that are themselves based on incoherent nonsense.

It is true that the science of climatology has provided no value judgements that would justify government action on climate change. Neither has the author.
Posted by Wing Ah Ling, Thursday, 2 July 2009 4:53:50 PM
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As no convincing scientific evidence has been found to substantiate AGW -- remember that the IPCC has been searching unsuccessfully for over 20 years -- it is just plain silly to proceed with any form of carbon taxing. Global warming, if any, is due to natural processes.

The only sensible course is to adopt a do-nothing policy and adapt to whatever global warming eventuates. To do otherwise would be an absolute waste of resources, and would cause irreparable economic damage in the process.
Posted by Raycom, Thursday, 2 July 2009 11:57:17 PM
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The title:

"The Appealing to science in the AGW debate is delusional"

misses the point. Science is doing fine and the debate between real scientific experts in the field is much narrower that in the general community.

We Laymen read articles by knowledgeable non-experts, and pronounce excerpts as if fact. And they get all muddled. Its true that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for only 3-5 years. So whats all this 50 to 100 year thing?

CO2 output, and CO2 absorption - without excessive human activity - is in equalilibrium. We add a small amout every year that the environment cannot absorb. The CO2 sinkholes (i.e, rainforests, oceans) cannot take in all the extra output. There is a little extra in the atmosphere every year. Over 100 years, thats a lot! About fourteen percent of CO2 in the atmosphere today is from man made fossil fuel consumption. And its growing every year.

The Pre-1750 tropospheric concentration in parts per million (ppm)
Carbon dioxide (CO2) ppm was 280, and today it is 383. That is an increase of 36%. Taking out the effects like the natural solar changes from from the mini ice age, the addtional human-created atmospheric CO2 is calculated at just under half of the total increase. And that would correlate with the finding that about 15% of CO2 in the atmosphere today is from man-made activity.

It is hard enough to follow, but when people say that CO2 only stays in the atmosphere only 3-5 years in the context of arguing against a longterm build up in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, it should be said that:

"Appealing to the layman in the AGW debate is most definitely delusional."
Posted by bpors, Friday, 3 July 2009 12:12:32 PM
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bpors I agree I should have made it explicit that my concern was with the way laypeople are responding to the debate. The debate is further muddied by those scientists who have taken an ideological stance on the issue. The position I am advancing is best summed up by coothdrup regardless of your stance on AGW it would seem to be obvious that there has to be a better way to manage our scarce resources. Many of our inventions rely on materials that are grouped under the heading "rare earth" the reason they have that label is because they are rare eg- mobile phone technology uses Tantalum to coat capacitors -80% of known reserves are in the Congo - mining is destroying not only the habitat but are also removing one of the 'carbon sinks'. It is not necessary to make a luddite response, rather we need to start thinking that the AGW argument is largely a distraction; we need to be thinking about ways of living sustainably.
Posted by BAYGON, Friday, 3 July 2009 4:05:31 PM
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