When presented with a story like this, it’s always informative to peruse John Brignell’s list of things that are going to be caused by global warming.

That list is quite handy actually, for researchers, thanks Bishop! After all, just because some of those on the list have been simplified that does not make the issue any less troubling. But then…. you are the blogosphere’s known sceptic
I expect DK will be along any minute or rant on his own blog.

You’re welcome. You make it sound like like I’m the blogosphere’s only sceptic though!

Possibly Bishop- but the issue is the papers that you see above- which are afterall peer reviewed. Just because some things are ludicrously proposed doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that would be caused by more global warming.

Did you know that more people die of COLD in this country NOW, than from any forecast effects of “climate change”. Obviously if the climate changes significantly then the disease profile will change too – fewer people will die of cold, but more may die of malaria for example. And assuming you mean bubonic plague, it is carried by rat fleas, and is magnified in poor housing, with poor hygenie and poor healthcare. It largely disappeared from the UK post the fire of London, which destroyed poor housing stock, and with the invention of sewers which reduced human exposure to the rat population. I’m struggling to see any causation with climate change.

>I’m struggling to see any causation with climate change. [surely that should read "climate change"]

You’re clearly not stupid, Matt, so I assume you’re just being obtuse. You’ve said yourself. in the same paragraph, that disease profiles are likely to change as climate changes. To say that ‘plague’ may be part of that changing profile seems rather uncontroversial to me. Especially in the majority of poor countries where ‘poor housing stock’ hasn’t been destroyed (lucky us!). And especially peer reviewed articles by proper scientists have said so. Unless you have something to add in ref. to the results and methodologies of those studies, I’m not sure where you’re coming from. Or why.

>it is carried by rat fleas

Most modern research has concluded that the most dangerous forms of ‘plague’ aren’t in fact bubonic plague (carried by *black* rats). The ‘Black Death’ in the 1340s and Great Plague of London in the 1660s were more likely viral.

>Did you know that more people die of COLD in this country NOW, than from any forecast effects of “climate change”

So, compared to an antibiotic resistant viral epidemic, how tricky on a scale of 1 to 10 would it be to make sure a large proportion of those dying of COLD, NOW, in fact didn’t?

DonaldS, people sceptical of Climate Change aren’t sceptical about what is happening, they all accept the world is warming up currently. They just don’t accept that it is anything more than natural fluctuations.

No, people sceptical about climate change (specifically those who aren’t themselves qualified to comment on the peer-reviewed science, I mean) are just the secular anti-science equivalent of creationists.

No offence intended to the creationists out there, obviously. The Bible’s a cracking book, and all that.

They’re not anti-science, they just question how empirical and objective the data they’re working on can be given such limited records compared to the entire length of existence of the planet with it’s current atmosphere. They don’t question that based on the data being used the scientists are right, just that the data itself isn’t the fullest picture.

For once I agree with Lee.
From my perspective there is nothing scientific about the popular notion of climate change – it is based on some fabled “scientific concensus” (despite consensus being an anathema to the empirical method).
The “scientific” approach to climate change seems to be look at a carefully selected profile of past trends (going back a max of 150 years, an evolutionary eye blink) and then performing a crude straight line extrapolation and predicting the apocalypse at some unknown point in the future.
Even using this dodgy methodology there are flaws, for example why was 1924 the hottest year on record ? Why was the “scientific consesus” in the 1970s for a coming ice age ? Whatever happened to the hole in the ozone layer ? And what about the evidence that increases in CO2 are a consequence of rising temperatures, not a cause of them ?
I’m not saying that all climate change research is flawed, or that all predictions are wrong, what I refute is the implicit finality of it all and the simplstic way its presented – Climate change is “bad” and we must stop it at all costs. I’m saying even if there are irreversible changes to the global climate, so what ? Populations will migrate, new sources of food and energy will be found, as they always have been, yes some people will probably die, as they do now of wars, famines, disease and the rest. My point is it will not be the end of the world.
To go back to disease my point was even if a plague returns due to warmer weather, deaths from other environmental factors will probably decrease (with the energy saved on heating maybe we could all afford private medical insurance too !) and a new equilibrium will be reached.
To me the whole climate change thing is a post modern “the end of the world is night” doom mongering, it’s a secular, biblical apocalypse.

“So, compared to an antibiotic resistant viral epidemic, how tricky on a scale of 1 to 10 would it be to make sure a large proportion of those dying of COLD, NOW, in fact didn’t?”

Good point. In theory it should be easy, in practice it would appear not to be, as it’s not a new problem and is still happening, now in the 21stC.

global warming is mainly caused by sun spots. green taxes have two purposes.
1) to pay for such unfunded liabilities as public sector pensions £700 billion and
2} to act as american style trade tarrifs against china and india.
there, you learn something new every day eh?

They’re not anti-science, they just question how empirical and objective the data they’re working on can be given such limited records

Except, a lot of them are. They’ll hide in the language of not believing the science and will play up the sceptics but have you wondered why most of the sceptics are on the right? Its because they believe environmentalism itself is one vast left-wing conspiracy.

Of course, the fact that orgs like Greenpeace have been talking about such issues for decades, and not just the last few years like Cameron has, really annoys them too. Or, they think its a conspiracy to impinge on their own liberties/ pay more money.

The issue isn’t about the science – it is because they usually hate the politics of the people behind the science and instinctively want to rail against any suc agenda.

Re: #12 – that ’sun spots’ theory has been discredited.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2123448,00.html

A spokesman for the Royal Society, the UK’s leading scientific academy, said: “This is an important contribution to the scientific debate on climate change. At present there is a small minority which is seeking to deliberately confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day. We have reached a point where a failure to take action to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions would be irresponsible and dangerous.”

Channel 4 and Martin Durkin, producer of The Great Global Warming Swindle, declined to comment.

The Royal Society is regrettably now a subsidiary of the government. IIRC 60% of its funding comes from Whitehall. Not independent. Just saying what they were told to say.

(And yes this is the genetic fallacy. It’s the direct equivalent of the “linked to big oil” argument put forward with such monotonous regularity by the greens. Sauce for the goose and all…)

Actually I’m not very impressed with the solar argument, although I don’t think anyone has firmly established either the case for or against. We don’t know yet.

Much like global warming itself, really.

>From my perspective there is nothing scientific about the popular notion of climate change – it is based on some fabled “scientific concensus” (despite consensus being an anathema to the empirical method).

This is precisely my point. It is *perfectly scientific* for the vast majority of us who aren’t climate scientists (including me and AFAIK everyone else here) to be quite content to swallow a consensus as strong as it is on climate change. Rules of thumb and other people’s knowledge are how human beings construct the world about them – or one of these days I’d pour a kettle full of boiling water down my throat to check if it really does take the lining off my oesophagus, or whether that particular theory is just a vast right-wing copnspiracy to stop me enjoying myself. In the absence of expertise or revelation, the consensus is the rational / scientific / correct answer for most people.

http://www.donaldstrachan.com/archive/?p=4

As Sunny says, the ‘deniers’ are not the slightest bit interested in the science, merely in picking bits from it to push an agenda which just so happens to coincide with what they were pushing already. (And, yes, t’other side are the same, but alas this time they have the science on their side.) In this sense, they;re just like the ID creationists, who look equally silly.

Now, if you want to move the debate from ‘what’s happening’ (which to me seems open and shut) to ‘what can we reasonably do about what’s happening’ then there’s a discussion to be had. But this denialism just makes parts (mostly Internet parts, it has to be said) of the right look silly. Which is fine by me.

>why was 1924 the hottest year on record ?

My great-granddad smoked 150 woodbines a day and lived til he was 224. Same answer.

Yet the one issue that I’ve not seen countered is this of the “evolutionary blink” that Matt says. I know that some scientists reckon if they can drill some of the moon they can get another 450 years of data on solar cycles and the like to help truly pin down that we are indeed in an unusual situation. If you have credible links to people that have proved you only need about 150 years of data to make judgements on something like global climate change patterns that we know from other studies take lengths of time a number of times greater than the data available to us, then I would love to finally have it to use.