People believe that flooding, and “extreme weather” generally, is more widespread and frequent because the human footprint has grown as the population has grown. Areas that 50 years ago were uninhabited and where flooding would largely go unnoticed, are now inhabited and flooding is therefore more consequential. Population pressures have even led to building on known floodplains. Hardly surprising therefore that more people are affected by floods. There is also more reporting of weather and what may have been confined to local reporting is now accessible National/International news.

How we can convince Britons about climate change? By telling them the Arctic ice cap grew by 60% in a year, party is over.

If there’s going to be more flooding, use the money saved from using cheap energy to build some flood defences. Maybe build some more reservoirs and then we’ll had additional water supplied for during the heatwave. Two problems solved in one!

@2. Collective
Suppose that your wages went down last year to a record low of 40% of what your pay was 10 years ago.
Wages 10 years ago = 100.
40% = 40/100.
Wage last year = 40.
Suppose your wages this year = last year plus 60%.
60% of 40 = 40 x 60/100 = 24.
24 plus last year = 64.
36% lower than what it was 10 years ago.

The Daily Mail relies on a large number of its readers being gullible and unable to grasp simple arithmetic.

1

IMO, it has been the population growth which has significantly contributed to the flooding, more concrete being laid and less area for water to drain. Also the drainage infrastructure is rarely renewed to address the large increase in usage.

Small rivers are now rarely dredged for silt and farmers no longer appear to create/maintain ditches. It’s not surprising that flooding is more widespread, and that’s without looking at the possibility of climate change.

4. Greta ~ Appears its you who relies on a numbers in a somewhat display of “mummy look at me!! I can do maths”

Party is over, people have had enough junk science and we are all aware that no matter how much those caps grow the fanatics will still be screaming.

@Collective #2:

How we can convince Britons about climate change? By telling them the Arctic ice cap grew by 60% in a year, party is over.

Huh? That’s not even wrong.

The extent of ice in the Arctic cycles over the course of a year – for obvious reasons. Winter extent is much greater than summer extent. The issue is the extent to which the winter ice melts during the summer.

We’ve not yet reached minimum ice extent this year – but ice extent is already lower than in any year before 2007. This is the 7th year in a row where summer minimum ice extent has been below that in any year before 2007.

Last year’s was a record summer minimum extent; this year has so far dropped to about 50% (not 60%) greater than last year – and this year’s figure is already about 20% lower than the average from 1979-2010.

The worrying thing is that the ice is much thinner even than last year; ice volume during August was only around 32% more than at the same time last year.

There is a consensus now, amongst those who do not make money out of climate change that the current flattening of temperatures is the precursor to a mini cooling period. But until we get a grip on the building on flood plains then flooding will increase.

@ 4 I think what you are saying is that it has risen from a low base, which is completely irrelevant and doesn’t alter the fact that the climate modelling on which GW is predicated did not predict and cannot explain the temperature plateau, or the increase in ice coverage. As recently as 2006 it was predicted that by now there would be no ice coverage. If the model cannot explain it, it is weakened and its conclusions loose their credibility.

How can we convince Britons about climate change? Short answer – we cannot, because a large number (including me) do not believe it. I am of an age which has seen all the weather difference since WW2. The heatwaves of 47, 59, 76, 83 etc, the winters of 46, 62, 83, etc, the flooding of 53, 87 etc the gales, the smogs the fogs. We know this is all part of natural variability we do not accept that things are changing and we resent the additional costs imposed by the green agenda.

10

There is probably some truth in your statement that natural weather variability plays some part in climate change. However, we do know that the peasouper fogs of London in the 19th century no longer occur since we have decreased carbon emissions, so too in large areas in the north where smokeless fuel zones were introduced. However, we may not know the extent of natural variability as against man-made causes, what we know is that we need to attempt to address the consequences, if not for ourselves, for our children.

@Richard Carey
“If there’s going to be more flooding, use the money saved from using cheap energy to build some flood defences.”

Building flood defences is fine, to a point. The problem is that when extremes of weather breach such defences, the impact is much greater. As a consequence it is better to address the underlying cause of the problem (i.e. reduce and ultimately eliminate the burning of fossil fuels) to keep the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events to a minimum, and therefore reduce the likelihood of defence breaches.

@Merrymaker

“we resent the additional costs”

Are you actually aware of the relative magnitudes of fossil fuel subsidies compared to green energy subsidies?

http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2013/012813.pdf

As of 2011 the global fossil fuel industry received pre-tax subsidies of ~$480 billion, compared to ~$80 billion for renewables. When you factor in tax breaks and externalities the picture becomes even more stark. The externalities associated with future climate change are only going to make those numbers worse.

@9. Derek Hattons Tailor
No. You miss the point completely. See #7 for a better criticism of Collective’s post.
True scientists are always sceptical and averse to making predictions but newspapers don’t like that as it’s dull. Funders of research are almost as bad as journalists – They are forever demanding that reports are issued for the media and the media, more often than not, sensationalises the press releases.

@ 13 Good scientists are indeed sceptics, the empirical discipline demands it. The first duty of a genuine scientist is to prove himself wrong.
Unfortunately scepticism in climate science was long ago drowned out by arguments based on emotion/grant seeking/political influence and any deviation from the alleged “scientific consensus” (the worlds’ most famous oxymoron) results in a career ending freeze out. Hence the mess climate science is now in, unable to distance itself from either the industry build around alarmist media sensationalism, or maintain the momentum needed to retain public interest.
I don’t share your interpretation of the problem though. In an effort to make the science understandable to a public educated largely by the anti-science soft left, the limitations of modelling have been ignored/brushed over and the unknowable presented as fact. Interestingly the financial crisis was largely predicated largely on an almost evangelical belief in the power of mathematical models by those who do not understand even the basic principle that however good your model, it is ultimately dependent on subjective human assumptions.

@Derek Hattons Tailor

“Unfortunately scepticism in climate science was long ago drowned out by arguments based on emotion/grant seeking/political…”

Alternatively, a consensus of scientific opinion was reached over many years by a large group of people that have dedicated their lives to the understanding of a particular topic, and concluded, based on established physics and empirical observation that average global temperatures are on an upward trend.

If you think that climate scientists’ (and more generally physicists’) understanding of the Earth’s energy balance is wrong show us where and propose an alternative.

@Derek Hattons Tailor

In addition to my previous post, you seem to keep insisting that it’s all about the models, and that climate scientists exhibit blind faith in them, yet today we have this:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/on-mismatches-between-models-and-observations/

Blind faith?

Contrary to the denial echo-chamber climate scientists do in fact concern themselves with the predictive skill of their models and look for ways to improve them.

@ 15/16. There is no such thing as a “scientific consensus”. A hypothesis remains a hypothesis until/unless falsified. Einstein could yet be proved wrong. This is the basis of science. Facts are not dependent on how many people believe them, only on their potential to be falsified, therefore science is rarely, if ever, settled. It is inconceivable that a system as complex as the global climate could be understood to the point of reliable prediction, once and for all, based on 200 years of shaky data and, at best, 60 years of scientific investigation. If that level of progress were achieved in any other field we would long ago have cracked every single disease and be generating unlimited power from test tubes full of water.

“and concluded, based on established physics and empirical observation that average global temperatures are on an upward trend”.

But they’re not……

@12

I had a quick look through the report you linked to. This makes it quite clear that only a tiny fraction of the $480bn subsidies occurs in advance economies.

When it comes to persuading British people the subsidy argument is irrelevant because there are hardly any subsidies for fossil fuels in the UK (if any).

Yes $480bn is no doubt higher than the subsidies given to renewables, but what are the subsidies as a proportion of cost? When Britons read reports that £100+ of their annual energy bill is due to the high cost of renewables of couse you are going to get many people opposed to renewable energy.

5. jojo
I don’t see how any of the following can be linked to population growth:

the Boscastle flood 2004, the 2012 Rainfall and its associated floods and landslips, the autumn 2000 rains (where the London Road in Brighton was a river for the first time in 180 years, and flowed for a much longer length than had ever been recorded, and the Lewes Road with no prior recorded or folk history of flooding was a river too), the 2009 Seathwaite deluge of 12 inches of rain in a day and no doubt many other floods and storms too.

Whilst you are right that paving over generally reduces the ability for land to absorb rainfall, you have not considered that in areas like Brighton, water extraction lowers the watertable, and reduced the risk of flooding. Flash flooding is also exacerbated by waterlogged ground, excessively hard ground, intense rainfall “puddling” the surface and so on. These are all features of more extreme weather that we can expect with climate change.

@Derek Hatton’s Tailor passim:

AGW is not based upon models. Century and a half old physics establishes that increased CO2 means slower radiation of heat from the Earth’s surface, and therefore increased heat in the climate system. We have directly observed the reduction in radiation. Where do you think the heat goes?

AGW is falsifiable; but the prolem for the denialists is that falsifying it involves falsifying the radiative physics and thermodynamics on which AGW is based; you’ll deserve several Nobel prizes for that, since both are as well-established as anything in physics.

10. Merrymaker

…you have seen all those events, which are your yard sticks. You ignore the reality that these extremes are growing in frequency (please don’t lecture me on going to school in the snow in 1947).

However, you have no stake in protecting the future, and you imagine you can keep denying it till you pass away. Admitting climate change might be caused by decades of CO2 emissions is admitting that your generation (as mine are now doing too) has stolen from the grandchildren. This discomfort is an unpallatteable truth to a lean and slipper’d pantaloon.

The politics of climate change has a generational aspect to it, and that tension will only get stronger. You may “resent the costs” of clearing up your own crap, but you are not going to resent it as much as your grandchildren will resent you.

@Fungus

When you factor in the tax subsidies and externalities I mention (at ~$2 trillion – and considered an underestimate) the advanced economy contribution hits 40%.

@Derek Hattons Tailor

“There is no such thing as a ‘scientific consensus'”

Nonsense. You’re getting the argument the wrong way around. Scientific “truth” may not be decided by vote, but consensus emerges when the evidence for a theory becomes sufficiently strong that it becomes perverse to deny it. You have to, at minimum, explain away the Earth’s energy budget, areas of quantum physics and chemistry to deny the implications of the ever increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Furthermore, Einstein might be wrong about general relativity (similar date to Arrhenius by the way), but the evidence to date suggests its a good bet. similarly, when it comes to climate I think I’ll side with the experts rather than the Daily Mail.

The rate at which the oceans are rising is unchanged since the 1930’s, and is consistent with a constant rise since the 1890’s

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level%2C_1870-2008_%28US_EPA%29.png

You can see that the splice of the satellite readings is higher than the tide gauge data, which is why the warmists truncate the tide gauge data.

http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaLevel/SL.1870-2013.gif

Derrick Hatton’s Tailor re Comment 14:

Thank you for mentioning the financial crash in this conversation.

I am a complete loss to understand why AGW advocates put so much faith in the computer modelling of distant events based on fluid levels information without also acknowledging the failure of computer modelling of financial transactions to predict what was about to happen next month.

So, why so much faith in AGW assertions based on modelling unless that’s what they want to believe?

How different is it to a belief in the afterlife or reincarnation – acts of faith that can neither be proved or disproved but nowadays feature less prominently in the public consciousness?

Part of the reason it’s hard to sell this to UK skeptic’s, like me, is that whatever historical impact we have had on Carbon emissions our future contribution will be tiny in relative terms. With China building BROWN coal power stations like there’s no tommorrow (no pun intended) and India giving China a run for its money in terms of population and industrial development, what advantage is there for us to take the lead in climate change? We can make a gesture in the hope that everyone else decides to not develop as we did and stay poor. Wont happen, why should China stay on the second table, why cant India be a super power, we had our turn they want thelrs. Building windmills in England to mitigate the inevitable development in Asia is truly pissing in the wind!

@22. Andy C
Externalised costs – Does the figure include security provided by military forces on sea, air and land?

@24. Paul peter Smith
Yeh, yeh. Point fingers at countries that supply the developed world with low priced manufactured goods.
Britain could surprise the world by doing something sensible.

@Kojak

The financial crisis is a poor analogy. Climate science actually has an underlying *physical* theory that finance lacks. Simply throwing around the word “complexity” is not an argument. Earth receives a certain amount of energy from the Sun, and the only way for the mean global temperature to remain constant is for Earth to radiate an equal amount of energy back to space. The addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere causes the energy radiated away to be reduced until the Earth is warmed sufficiently to increase the energy radiated away such that equilibrium is restored, at a new, higher temperature. The more carbon dioxide that is added to the atmosphere the higher that equilibrium temperature. Short-term fluctuations can mask the signal temporarily, but ultimately the Earth’s energy budget has to be balanced.

@ Paul Peter Smith. Can completely agree with you that trying to mitigate effects of AGW might bit pointless when other countries ignore it. But I have another viewpoint, regardless of whether AGW is true or not, regardless of whether we can stop it or not, reducing pollution and energy use and improving quality of the environment are good aims in themselves. As an egalitarian I would also argue that it is the poorest who suffer most from a damaged environment. Of course costs of energy need to be kept down, but I would argue the polluter should pay, not the environment or the poor.

@Greta

No, the externalities in this case relate to things like local pollution. I imagine quantifying the security costs would prove extremely challenging, though I’d be interested to know if anyone has attempted a serious analysis of this. I understand the IMF is also working on a report detailing these externalities on a Country-by-country basis, which should be very interesting.

@Kojak #23:

I am a complete loss to understand why AGW advocates put so much faith in the computer modelling of distant events based on fluid levels information without also acknowledging the failure of computer modelling of financial transactions to predict what was about to happen next month.

Piling on a bit, I know; but if you don’t understand the difference between a climate model and a financial “model” (that is, that pretty much the only thing they share is the word “model”), then you are at square -1 in terms of understanding the scientific debate. Climate models are workings-out of established causal relationships, where the physical mechanisms are generally known. Economic models are based on “it happend this way last time”, but cannot pretend to any knowledge of the underlying causal relationships.

For me it is fairly easy to decide that the climate change is a real phenomenon and a byproduct of human activity.

The people in the media who are concerned about climate change are clearly intelligent and often are people for whom I have a lot of respect, for example David Attenborough.

The people in the media who are saying that there is no climate change seem always to be nutcases, for example Nigel Lawson.

@Fungus
“When Britons read reports that £100+ of their annual energy bill is due to the high cost of renewables”

I’ve made a very rough attempt to quantify the hidden costs of fossil fuels to uk households. Post-tax subsidies and externalities for fossil fuels appear to amount to £7 billion per annum in the uk. Income tax, VAT, national insurance and other indirect taxes contribute about 80% of government revenues, so adjusting the figures on that basis a reasonable estimate of the cost of fossil fuels to uk households is about £240 per annum.

@22 Andy

There are some major assumptions being made on the cost of climate change!

Also the tax component shows a very large subsidy for advanced economies which I am rather sceptical off. In the UL fossil fuels are charged VAT as well as a horrendous additional tax – has this been factored in?

@ 31 Please give me your calculation for the £7bn externalities.

‘Income tax, VAT, national insurance and other indirect taxes contribute about 80% of government revenues, so adjusting the figures on that basis a reasonable estimate of the cost of fossil fuels to uk households is about £240 per annum.’

Don’t understand any of that. Why not simplu divided £7bn by the number of UK households? That gets you to a similar figure to your £240.

The £100+ figure I mentioned is off course only the extra cost of renewables to gas and electricity bills. What are the externalities related to these costs?

And the main point is many people don’t care much about externalities – they just see the amount that the subsidies to renewables cost. Subsidies that are not required for traditional methods of gas and electricity provision.

Looking forward to your breakdown of the £7bn.

@Fungus

The IMF report I cited earlier has the figure I quote (in the appendix, it’s 0.45% of GDP for the UK). The reason I didn’t just divide by households is because that would ignore the tax contribution of corporations and the like, and thus the entire cost of the subsidies is not born by households (you could argue that these costs do get passed to households, but I won’t). If you don’t make this adjustment the cost per household is about £300, so I was just trying to be as honest as possible about the impact on households. Fair point on fuel duty; what’s not clear is whether or not the IMF subsidy figures include this already. If we assume they don’t, then based on the revenue breakdown for the UK (IFS provide these) the figure drops from £240 to £210 per household.

@ 5 Jojo

“IMO, it has been the population growth which has significantly contributed to the flooding, more concrete being laid and less area for water to drain. Also the drainage infrastructure is rarely renewed to address the large increase in usage.”

“Planners” in local authorities have routinely ignored the advice of the Environmental Protection Agency in their decisions about whether to approve of a housing scheme or not.

http://m.insidehousing.co.uk/6525946.article?mobilesite=enabled
IMO the reason they ignore such advice is because of a big, thick brown paper envelope courtesy of developers, who want to maximise profits by building on the cheapest land, ie woodland, farmland and floodplains. Those ex industrial brownfield sites have to be cleared of possible contaminants crumbling existing infrastructure before been built on!

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2002/mar/13/uknews
Of course, the councillors and planners involved in this little debacle were only guilty of been caught…

As for your statement about people concreting over everything, that certainly doesn’t help. It’s people’s bizarre obsession with getting into debt and working all hours to be able to afford a tonne of steel with an internal combustion engine bolted on that’s the problem there – especially since they are just parked there rusting for 90% of the time, and semi-parked in rush hour traffic for the rest of the time!!

“Small rivers are now rarely dredged for silt and farmers no longer appear to create/maintain ditches. It’s not surprising that flooding is more widespread, and that’s without looking at the possibility of climate change.”

It is counter intuitive, but flooding is increased dramatically by dredging small streams and ditches. A silted up stream, with reed beds, water meadows, bank side woodland etc slows down the flow of water further downstream, and acts like a sponge. Resulting in more water percolating down to underground aquifers, or been released slowly over following weeks or months after a major rainstorm. The reason why cities like York are flooded so regularly is because the headwaters of the Ouse, in the Pennines and North York Moors are incapable of holding onto water because they are no longer clothed in the natural temperate rainforest ecosystem! So with every shower you get a pulse of water flowing downstream towards York.

http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/photo/temperate_rainforest.html
Although that link is for what the remnant patches up in Scotland look like, the whole of the Pennines were once like this.

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/1004-hance-forests-flooding.html
http://conservationbytes.com/2008/08/20/native-forests-reduce-the-risk-of-catastrophic-floods/
Where deforestation is currently happening, or has recently happened we do observe the link between it and flooding.

Instead we pay taxes to subsidise unproductive upland sheep farms, then more taxes on dredging streams and rivers, then yet more on flood defences on steroids downstream. Let alone increased insurance costs and repair costs in our cities…

~~~~

As for the denialists commenting yet again – yawn. Your fecklessness and parroting of old zombie memes is frankly boring. As Robin states, you’re not even wrong…

19

I did not suggest that all flooding is due to population growth, you took my reply to @1 out of context. But population growth, at least development to house the growing population, can be attributed to some of the problems. And failing to build/update drainage infrastructure

IMO,flooding and climate change are likely to be the consequence of both man-made and natural causes.

@21
I certainly have a stake in protecting the future – protecting it from Climate Change zealots like you who would have us regress towards a bleak future based upon the predictions of scientists (predictions which at present are under question), and assorted pressure groups.

@33

“Post-tax subsidies and externalities for fossil fuels appear to amount to £7 billion per annum in the uk”

Well guess what, fuel duty in 2012-13 was forecast to be £27.3bn. Therefore the externalities are more than paid for.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf

@36

“I certainly have a stake in protecting the future – protecting it from Climate Change zealots like you who would have us regress towards a bleak future based upon the predictions of scientists (predictions which at present are under question), and assorted pressure groups.”

As opposed to neoliberal zealots who really are impoverishing our future?
Or fossil fuel zealots who are trying to stop the rollout of technology that can outcompete their outmoded model in a truly free market?

@Fungus

“Therefore the externalities are more than paid for.”

No, they’re not. A rereading of the report shows that fuel duty *is* considered when computing the subsidies, so it is not valid to deduct this revenue from the externalities.

@36. Fungus
Why are you posting about revenue to the treasury?
Fuel duty on petrol and diesel hasn’t got anything to do with flooding, pollution and other environmental matters. Charging motorists at the pumps provides the government with an easily collected tax and that is all it does.

@35 ‘regress towards’?
Yeh, what have the scientists ever done for us?

35. Merrymaker
You have no stake in protecting the future from zealots like me. You only benefit in protecting your current situation from zealots like me. You may imagine that you are saving the future from some regressive future, but you are not affected by what the future holds.

There is a big generational gap between those who accept the scientific consensus of man made climate change and those who don’t. I don’t believe that difference is explained by the rational capability of different generations. But for many older people, the tactic of keeping up the denial for just a few more years is an emotionally easier tactic than a bit of honesty. The fact is you have stuffed the future for your grandchildren.

Choosing to ignore the science may be more comfortable for you. Reading through your orginal post, I think it is telling that you used the term “know” and “believe” interchangeably. I am worried about the future action for climate change. We could wait for you and your like to pass away. Unfortunately, as the Stern report shows, the need for action is now.

@ 40 “There is a big generational gap between those who accept the scientific consensus of man made climate change and those who don’t. I don’t believe that difference is explained by the rational capability of different generations. But for many older people, the tactic of keeping up the denial for just a few more years is an emotionally easier tactic than a bit of honesty. The fact is you have stuffed the future for your grandchildren.”

I think that’s a bit of a simplistic generationalistion. There is nothing new in intergenerational tensions, or in an apocalypse round the corner. Every generation has its demons and folk devils, usually attributable to previous generations.

My generation (X) grew up in the shadow of the cold war and blamed our parents for creating an environment where we could all be annihilated at any second. The generation before that grew up in bomb craters due to WW2, which their parents fought, the one before that in a world dominated by poverty, food shortages, depressions and extreme politics, and so it goes on back through history. The popular notion among millennials that they have a uniquely uncertain future due to a uniquely certain near future catastrophe, is demonstrably nonsense.

For what its worth, I think the current generation of young adults are extremely neurotic and risk averse, products of a privileged upbringing free of any real stress, and a combination which makes them unable to accept unknowns or uncontrollables, they therefore turn them into controllable certainties. For them no issue is too big, or indeed too small, that it cannot be “tackled” with a latte and a laptop.

Consider that the biggest contributors to climate science are likely to be from older generations, and that “solutions” are also being enacted by older generations. Also consider that older people are more likely to have grandchildren than the 20/30 somethings who are most vocally concerned about climate change.

Perhaps the older generations perceive bigger and more immediate threats to their offspring than the planet (maybe) getting warmer at some unknown point in the future.

41.
I think that most generations agree that the Cold War was manmade.
Generally, older people resent change. Do you remember the fuss that was kicked up about decimalisation? – ‘They should have waited until the old people had died’ is one quote that I read.

For them no issue is too big, or indeed too small, that it cannot be “tackled” with a latte and a laptop.

Piffle. Blame those teddyboys like Cliff Richard with their expresso frothy coffees and playing Lonnie Donegan as late as 10 o’clock for thinking that there was no tomorrow. Blame Raymond Baxter for Tomorrow’s World where nobody needs to work. Blame economists for writing off Thomas Mathus’ doctrine on population. Blame the young. Blame the old. Blame the rich. Blame the poor. Blame the bloke who works in the off-licence. But, whatever you blame, don’t blame science.

@ Ceiliog

Isn’t it science that the denialists blame? How dare they discover inconvenient for a quick buck consequences?

41. Derek Hattons Tailor
agreed there are simplifications in what I was saying: I recognise that there are many in GI and silent generations who have recognised the reality of climate change.

But the generality remains: older generations are where more climate change deniers are found, and they are a generation who have least to gain by dealing with it (e.g “resenting the costs”), and most face to lose by accepting it.

Convincing the unconvinced about climate change will be less about scientific debate, since the positions of deniers are not logically coherent positions.

The problem we have now, is action for climate change will not wait for 100% consensus, when much of the power in decision making and influence is amongst a generation that have a keen interest in the status quo.

David Hood re Comment 44:

“But the generality remains: older generations are where more climate change deniers are found, and they are a generation who have least to gain by dealing with it (e.g “resenting the costs”), and most face to lose by accepting it.”

You forgot to mention what is obvious to many:
Older generations (to use your words) grew up with the fear of global cooling and an imminent Ice Age which was reported at the time by the media as convincing scientific theory. So they’ve heard predictions of doom before and are harder to convince than those brought up with AGW theory as the backdrop to their lives.

You can hardly blame them for being sceptical as they watch ‘Man Made Global Warming’ morph into AGW with predictions of annual rising temperatures and weather patterns which don’t happen as forecast.

My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that belief in AGW will continue to rise despite it’s unfulfilled predictions until it is succeeded by another scientific based fear which is more appealing and attracts a new generation of followers.

Do you seriously think the media portrayal of AGW or anything else is truthful Kojak? Look again at what you read, and ask yourself that. Or do you prefer confirmation bias to inconvenient truths (because the truth is independent of ideology)

The actual science in the 70’s expressed a concern about the planet warming, which has been confirmed by empirical observations. What you are alluding to is a sexed up strapline in a dumbed down corporate propaganda outlet. Surely you are more – intelligent – than accepting at face value whatever is peddled in the corporate media?

Head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the leaked summary showed that ‘the science is clearly not settled, and is in a state of flux’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2420783/Global-warming-just-HALF-said-Worlds-climate-scientists-admit-computers-got-effects-greenhouse-gases-wrong.html

Every one bar those with vested interests and leftys who feel guilty for being alive knows its a load of crap.

@Greta

“@36. Fungus
Why are you posting about revenue to the treasury?…”

Actually, in fairness to Fungus, it is relevant for that particular discussion. Externalities are ultimately a question of the economic value assigned to costs (like local pollution) that are not reflected in the base price.

If a tax, such as fuel duty, is then applied to these base prices, you begin to cover these externalities (you can argue about the appropriateness of assigning economic values to such damage [and whether or not the Government uses the fuel duty collected to actually address the externalities], but that was the topic in this case).

When I applied the correction for the household contribution to the subsidy I was thinking in terms of the relative proportion of tax paid by households; under the assumptions made this actually would not have been the right approach, and Fungus would have had a point. As it turns out however, those corrections weren’t needed.

Ultimately, the calculations I made are very rough (as noted in the original post), so they’re indicative at best; I just thought Fungus’ original point regarding the global v UK picture was reasonable and worth trying to explore a little. Once the more detailed per-country externalities report is available (I don’t know when this will be) the situation should become a lot clearer.

Since my generation has come in for some criticism for, on the whole, being sceptical about climate change, I will make one last comment. We are accused of denying our grandchildrens’ futures by being also deniers of climate change and the apocalyptic future it presages. But we ask: where is the assessment of risk? where is the assessment of cost of mitigation now and in future? We do worry about apocalyptic futures – those where the science is very clear and the risk is evidentially real. We worry about pandemic bird flu and contrast how lttle is being spent on developing a generic vaccine as opposed to climate change research. We worry about asteroid impact and ask what is being done to detect and destroy these rocks that could destroy all life on earth. We know these dreadful events are possible, even probable, because we have historic evidence or have seen/endured past smaller less destructive occurrences. When it comes to climate change what evidence should we rely on to convince us? Are the seas rising? Is the Arctic icecap getting bigger or smaller? thicker or thinner? Has global warming stalled for the past 15 years? If the temperature rises by +3C in the next 100 years will that be apocalytic? Will technology have found ways to manage our new environment? I doubt that such a rise (if it happens) will be as devastating as the asteroid that fell on Yucatan 60 million years ago – and that we should be doing everything to prevent happening again.

47.
You read it in the Daily Mail. nuff said.

49.
I think that it is better to deal with matters that are a result of our own activity and can be changed.

50 ~ Did the head of climate science not say that? Its clear the climate change fanatics have about 5 years left if that in the spot light, people can only yawn and pay you to make them yawn for so long.

51.
How the hell should I know. What I do know is that anything published in the Daily Mail should be treated with the utmost caution or, better still, avoided.
If you want to read crap, written by the likes of Monckton’s brother-in-law and Gove’s wife, that’s your choice.

@51

” Did the head of climate science not say that? Its clear the climate change fanatics have about 5 years left if that in the spot light, people can only yawn and pay you to make them yawn for so long”.

You are James Delingpole and I claim my £5

49. Merrymaker

where is the assessment of risk?

It is here
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm

I think you will find it addresses most of the question you raise.

49. Merrymaker

“I doubt that such a rise (if it happens) will be as devastating as the asteroid that fell on Yucatan 60 million years ago”

OK so that is your baseline of bad weather that we might need to some thing about. I think there is something between a one in 50 year weather event and this situation thia we might still want to do something about.

Read the Stern report please.

How the hell should I know.
—-

So your entire case comes down to “how the hell should I know its the mail who cares” None of those models failed then? The science is 100% settled, Great kets shut down all industry and save the planet.

You are James Delingpole and I claim my £5
—

You are one for accusations that make the reader suspect mental health issues.

@ 51
“You read it in the Daily Mail. nuff said”

Actually, to be pedantic Kojak has provided links to IQ 70 articles in another publication in another OP, which is just a bog standard rightwing tabloid, and had to pay substantial damages to a charity in 2012 for telling porkies about it. Nuff said indeed.

@48
“Every one bar those with vested interests and leftys who feel guilty for being alive knows its a load of crap.”

It’s a pity biome zones have moved over 100 miles polewards, including the desert belt, which is now moving north into once fertile breadbasket zones in southern Europe, the Middle East and North America. Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have lost hundreds of gigatonnes of ice, etc. it is no longer just models extrapolating from real world physics (not simplistic curve fitting used by those glorified astrologers called economists)

btw, those climate models got the poleward shift of biome zones on the button, even the actual heat content to the earths surface, atmosphere and oceans are higher than they were 20 years ago (and if you don’t understand the difference between heat content and temperature you can’t even pass remedial GCSE physics)

Try learning from that level upwards Mr Delingpole – and if your not that pond life, your lower down the ladder for actually believing people like him.

56.
Muddled thinking, Coll.
If you want to believe science articles in a newspaper that printed scare stories about MMR so be it.

Try learning from that level upwards Mr Delingpole – and if your not that pond life, your lower down the ladder for actually believing people like him.
—-

You are scum if you’re the guy I don’t agree with and if you agree with him you’re also scum. Calm down my dear fanatic, Im not the man you speak off.

The climate has been in a CONSTANT state of change since the moment it came into existence, it was the warmists job to prove conclusively that humans are A: responsible B: with action could stop it. You have failed at both. The days of robbing pensioners to pay for pet projects are closing in.

In fact the entire landscape is changing. The populations no longer want to be dragged into wars that have nothing to do with them or down political roads at huge cost to their lives on the backs of substance-less panic.

@39 Greta
‘yeah, what have the scientists ever done for us?’
Well a few notable things might be; Nuclear weapons, leaded petrol, the machine gun, CFC’s, anything from Monsanto …. Do you see where I’m going with this? Your faith in scientists being able to distinguish right from wrong is touching, did you know your hero’s are currently weaponising Bird Flu – because its there!

61

The thing is, we need to distinguish science from how politicians and producers use the information. Generally speaking and, as far as it is possible, scientists tend to see phenomena in a neutral way, you cannot blame Einstein for Hiroshima.

61.
Didn’t you see the Life of Brian?
62.
Agreed. It’s is the misuse of science and technology that’s at fault. However, I must point out the Einstein blamed himself for Hiroshima. AE wrote to President FJR about German plans to build a nuclear bomb and AE’s letter convinced the President that the USA should proceed with atomic weapons development.
It is worth noting that Isaac Newton did not receive a knighthood for his theory of gravity. The award to Newton was for services to Royal Ordnance.

“You are scum if you’re the guy I don’t agree with and if you agree with him you’re also scum. Calm down my dear fanatic, Im not the man you speak off.”

Merely throwing back at you the kind of arguments denialists use…

“The climate has been in a CONSTANT state of change since the moment it came into existence, it was the warmists job to prove conclusively that humans are A: responsible B: with action could stop it. You have failed at both. The days of robbing pensioners to pay for pet projects are closing in.”

How does the climate constantly change then? This is not a good argument to use because it indicates climate sensitivity is high. So the response to more CO2 in the atmosphere would also be high. Thanks for demolishing the low sensitivity meme there! Or are you going to retreat to it’s not happening, or theres nothing we can do about it – oh wait, you will.

You can find literally thousands of separate evidence threads that AGW is happening, which triggers chaotic changes to the climate. Why are you choosing to ignore the mountain of evidence? Could it be that evidence would show you the fossil fuel industry’s AstroTurf propaganda war is a load of self contradictory cobblers?

Try this site,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
and follow the links to the actual science available through it. Unless you don’t have the necessary IQ, or your so hogtied to anti science memes peddled by profiteering snake oil merchants the Confederation of Imperial America is now infamous for…

Hell you can even repeat the most basic science practically with kitchen sink technology yourself…
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bX4eOg2LaSY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DbX4eOg2LaSY

As for “robbing pensioners” it is the profiteering corporations you side with that do that!

“In fact the entire landscape is changing. The populations no longer want to be dragged into wars that have nothing to do with them or down political roads at huge cost to their lives on the backs of substance-less panic.”

Precisely what the fossil fuel industry has lobbied to secure oilfields in the Middle East, or are you going to claim Saddam had WMD ready to launch in 45 minutes and other long since debunked claptrap

@63 Ceiliog
The point being that the list of things science has done for us is about the same length as the list of things science has done to us. Science isn’t good or bad, people are, and scientists are people too.

“So your entire case comes down to “how the hell should I know its the mail who cares” None of those models failed then? The science is 100% settled, Great kets shut down all industry and save the planet.”

As usual, denialists get it ass backwards!
The only industry that needs shutting down is the fossil fuel propaganda industry! As for corporations like Exxon & BP, all they need to do is reposition themselves as providers of clean energy, through various forms of solar power and biofuels generated from our methane generating waste. It will take gigabucks investment in the short term, but hey that would generate millions of jobs and shift our economy out of the doldrums. Why are you positioning yourself against that?

@ 61

The internal combustion engine did more to liberate the working classes than any politician ever has. The jet engine drove globalisation, the internet, electricity, vaccinations etc etc have driven human society forward in a way that nothing else can. Where science is abused it is not the fault of the scientist, what is done with the technology is a social/political decision.

@ 44 They (the older generation) resent it because they disproportionately bear the cost. The younger generation have less wealth, less responsibility and pay less tax and are therefore less exposed to the cost.
“Kids there will be no christmas presents or holidays this year but don’t worry all the green taxes your parents now have to pay are saving the planet for your futures” is not a statement many 25 years old will have to make. It’s very easy to argue for a perfect world when it comes to you for free.

60. Collective
Here are two examples, over this and last weekend, why the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday are crap.
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/global-cooling-another-mail-con-trick.html
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/mail-changes-climate-change-again.html
There are many more examples.

60.

Science isn’t good or bad, people are

I think that most people are a little more complex than that.
I await the ‘Green Taxes Ate My Hamper’ headlines.

Why are you positioning yourself against that?
—

Simply because its bullshit and can not happen on the scale required to make any meaningful difference to climate change what so ever. It pushes the price of everything up and starves untold numbers of people to death. Been through it with you before, seen several others go through it with you before, you are outed on the issue and its shown to be a dream every single time yet your persist, you say everyone is wrong and you persist, its not even happening in the world around you yet you persists, why? because you are a denialist!

@Derek Hattons Tailor

“The internal combustion engine did more to liberate the working classes than any politician ever has. The jet engine drove globalisation, the internet, electricity, vaccinations etc etc have driven human society forward in a way that nothing else can. Where science is abused it is not the fault of the scientist, what is done with the technology is a social/political decision.”

Agreed. One caveat. All technology becomes obsolete eventually, the internal combustion engine is no different on that score…

““Kids there will be no christmas presents or holidays this year but don’t worry all the green taxes your parents now have to pay are saving the planet for your futures” is not a statement many 25 years old will have to make. It’s very easy to argue for a perfect world when it comes to you for free.”

So those responsible for promoting fossil fuels should pay instead, correct?
The fact that people choose a fossil fuel dependent lifestyle when there are better alternatives passes you by though… After all, how many of those prezzies become expensive landfill within a couple of months? As for jetting off on holiday, c’mon is that really an inalienable human right?

“Simply because its bullshit and can not happen on the scale required to make any meaningful difference to climate change what so ever. It pushes the price of everything up and starves untold numbers of people to death.”

Really, ob? Or is it SMFS? It’s a pity it’s happening on a large scale now isn’t it? As for your claim that a transfer to clean, renewable energy will starve millions, cobblers. Try reading the science, I dare you!

“You are outed on the issue and its shown to be a dream every single time yet your persist, you say everyone is wrong and you persist, its not even happening in the world around you yet you persists, why?”

Try reading the science, I dare you!

“because you are a denialist!”

Oh dear, try reading the science, I dare you!

Really, ob? ~

Good man just formed a slight bit of respect for you there unlike the rest of these paranoid freaks who are so fast to label.

Jean Ziegler: ‘Biofuels a big cause of famine’

Let’s take the example of the largest producer in the world, the United States of America. In 2010, the USA burned 138 million tons of corn and hundreds of million tons of grain in order to manufacture ethanol and biodiesel. If you have a car that runs on biofuel, you would have to use 352 kilograms of corn in order to fill up a 50-liter tank. A child in Zambia or Mexico – where corn is a basic staple – could live on this amount for a whole year.

Its a large issue now on the small scale its in place, the natural habitat and plates emptied by this practice are unacceptable and on the scale you propose its no less than murder. The renewable & clean energy technology can in no way shape or form run this or any country, its a pipe dream, for middle class liberals who need a cause.

How many forests are you prepared to destroy, how many humans are you prepared to have starved to death, how many humans are you prepared to have freeze to death, how much of modern living are you prepared to destroy all so you can feel good about you’re self when using the energy you do?

Why should the entire world be taken on this extreme ride because you have some complex and internal conflict about life??

Im all for improving the world and that’s an on going process, you can not rush it…as evidence what would happen if oil production stopped next week? We”d be fucked, not a single thing you speak of could sustain society. End of.

71. Collective
Pathetic. On an article about climate change you come up with biodiesel as a ‘example’ of a renewable, rant about an oil crisis whatiffery and label it as ‘evidence’.

@66 DHT
The internal combustion engine is a percect example to support my argument. It mechanised warfare resulting in around 150 million deaths over the course of one century. They are the main source of air pollution that we encounter on a daily basis (CO2,CO, NOx, particulates etc). The mobility they offer us led directly to the death of the high street with knock on social/economic consequences for communities. And dont forget the on going carnage on the roads, @3000 deaths a year in UK which is low, Iran has 25000+ add them all up. But at least we can get to work without having to interact with anyone else in a meaningful way.
literacy, numeracy and political emancipation are my votes for working mans best friend, you appear to be a literate chartered accountant with strong political views, what do you think, or woild you still swap it all for a Jag?

47. Collective
I have followed up your link to the Daily Mail article very closely. The article is about an upcoming IPCC report which the Daily Mail claim will reveal forecasts “were drastically wrong”

55% of the article (by word count) is the Daily Mail’s opinions, primarily their interpretation of what they claim is in various drafts of the IPCC report. The information in these drafts has either been edited out or not yet been authorised for publication.

25% of the article reports the opinions of Mr Nic Lewis, a retired financier who has taken up amateur climatology, for reasons which are not clear. His opinion is a criticism of the Met Office

7% is given over to Professor Myles Allen, a respected Oxford scientist. His comments are restricted to a call for reform of how IPCC prepares reports.

6% to the views of Professor Judith Curry an academic climatologist and IPCC critic. Some of Prof Curry’s work is funded by the Oil industry. She hosts a blog that gives air time to Climate change skeptics. Her comments are also about IPCC methods, not about whether or not climate change is happening.

4% is given to the views of Benny Peiser a lecturer at Buckingham University with no academic expertise in climatology. He described the unpublished report a “staggering concoction of confusion”.

1% to the views of the IPCC

And

Less than 1% to the views of the Met Office

With the exception of the lecturer in Sports Sociology, there is no one disputing the suggestion that CO2 emissions from human activity are not driving global warming. The “drastically wrong” that the Daily Mail are referring to is about things like whether the threshold will be 1.5° or not, or over timescales or over where models have not accurately predicted events in the last 10 years.

The use of food as fuel is indeed a stupid move ob! That was brought in as a sop to the selfish idiots that drive around in SUV’s which have about the most eye wateringly high gas mileage imaginable. On that subject you are right. It should be stopped, and those inefficient vehicles sent to the nearest local recycling centre (fringe benefit, the obese idiots that drive them would then have to shed the odd stone or 12 walking to the local shops)

Have you ever heard of the argument that the entire western world turned the whole basis of its industrial production on a dime, because of a certain aggressive megalomaniac who got to power in Germany in 1933? If we could do that with far less capable technology back then, what makes you think we have lost that ability now? Only this time, instead of switching to the mass production of WMD’s we mass produce all the infrastructure for clean energy, from thousands of square miles of solar panels in the deserts of the world to algae based biofuel factories on the roofs of all the world’s factories and warehouses. Why not do that? If you have genuine arguments why we can’t do that, spell them out. The argument that we can’t afford it doesn’t wash, when we have squandered trillions as a civilisation on cruise missiles etc to KEEP us dependent on fossil fuels.

Far from chopping down even more of the biomes that keep us alive, I would change our cities. They spread out over far too much land as it is, because of our love affair with the car. Does a world of skyscrapers kilometres tall containing tens of thousands of people with all their food produced hydroponically in farm zones within the same building strike you as unworkable, when the alternative is precisely how you describe? Are little things like swapping jobs with joe blogs so you don’t have to commute hundreds of miles weekly to earn a living sound bad? Especially since you’d do exactly the same thing in the closer place?

As for you trying to insinuate I’m middle class, wrong. I’m working class and always will be. I’m NOT someone who looks down on the poor…

71. Collective
Pathetic. On an article about climate change you come up with biodiesel as a ‘example’ of a renewable, rant about an oil crisis whatiffery and label it as ‘evidence’.

On my phone it’s 73…

“So those responsible for promoting fossil fuels should pay instead, correct?
The fact that people choose a fossil fuel dependent lifestyle when there are better alternatives passes you by though… After all, how many of those prezzies become expensive landfill within a couple of months? As for jetting off on holiday, c’mon is that really an inalienable human right?”

And they do pay – as has been established countless times the externalities of fossil fuels are paid many times over by multiple and ever increasing consumption taxes. And what alternatives ? It might be a surprise to you but for large numbers of people there is no alternative to fossil fuel use (except unemployment/living some sort of good life eco wet dream).
Yes they all end up in landfill via charity shops, as does pretty much everything else, do you never produce any rubbish then or shall we all just stop consuming ? Who would pay the green taxes then ?
And no, I guess a holiday isn’t a “human right” but then nor is a computer and you obviously own one of them, which will one day end up being “recycled” by exploited chinese peasants.
FFS condescending, pious finger wagging from overprivileged metro liberals doesn’t even begin to describe it – and greens wonder why they have a PR issue ?

@ 73 Make it a Ferrari and I might consider it….. Obviously there are down sides to the internal combustion engine as there is to any technology. Would you prefer that we all still lived in mud huts ? Pre the 1960s many working class people never left the neighbourhoods they were born in, yes education is important but so is the mobility that the middle classes have always taken for granted.
When the upper and middle classes travel it is to broaden their minds or do good works for a fake charity on a glorified holiday called a gap year. When the working classes travel they are wrecking the planet, killing people and making themselves obese. Class hatred, much ?
As to killing the high street, many things killed it, not least the 2 working parent family, the internet and the spread of generic brands. Personally I’ve never understood this obsession with the high street anyway as I rarely have time to visit it, and when I do, its generally shut.

Dissident 8:09pm today
On my desktop it’s 72. It was 71. Some posts appear only to disappear whilst a moderator deals with a complaint. Maybe it is better to use the date and time as a marker.

David Hodd 7:54pm today
Is ‘leaked’ a synonym for ‘made-up’ at the Daily Mail?

@Ceiliog 8:48pm
Noted 🙂

79. Ceiliog 8.46pm

I’ve no idea if the Mail made it up – certainly much of the discussion is about what they say has got cut out of earlier drafts, and what is different between the most recent draft they claim to have seen and the last published assessment.

The Met Office and IPCC comments are basically “this is a work in progress”. The Mail do not acknowledge this key point.

My (rusty) undergraduate knowledge of climate science suggests there is nothing shocking or drastic in what the Mail claim to have been leaked. Judith Curry and Myles Allen’s key points are confined to criticism of the detail of scientific review. Both suggesting the IPCC review methods is creating presentational difficulties over the range of uncertainty on particular questions.

In the article, no one with any expertise in climate science are asserting that man made climate change is not a major problem facing us.

However the lecturer in sports sociology is given almost as much prominence as Professor Myles Allen (who in 2010 was awarded the Appleton Medal for “his important contributions to the detection and attribution of human influence on climate and quantifying uncertainty in climate predictions”). The sports lecturer is fired up by the Mail’s hyperbole, concluding its “a ‘staggering concoction of confusion, speculation and sheer ignorance’”. He is either lying or stupid: you cannot reasonably make such a conclusion from what the Mail report.

The mail article also shows the typical asymetric scrutiny of science research.

David Hodd 10:23pm
Tim Fenton’s ‘Zelo Street’ BlogSpot has more to say about the Mail article and a similar piece from last Sunday.

The use of food as fuel is indeed a stupid move ob!
—

Yes, and the amount required to replace oil again is nothing less than murder. Those SUVs are fine running on oil(y)

Why not do that? If you have genuine arguments why we can’t do that, spell them out.
—

Yes, seriously, ask you’re self, why has not a Single nation on earth liberated its self from oil dependence? In the face of not only its economic cost but the constant fear mongering of the warming fanatics of the recent past, governments world wide have taken no greater steps to address the issue than to tax energy and build useless windmills..

Why? Why has not a single nation in this world of ours liberated its self, global warming aside, how could not a single nation liberate its self with the technology you speak of simply for economic reasons? Reality, rather what takes place in it, speaks louder than words.

Does a world of skyscrapers kilometres tall containing tens of thousands of people with all their food produced hydroponically in farm zones within the same building strike you as unworkable.
—-

Sounds like a futuristic nightmare to me, you may be working class but global warming is overwhelmingly an issue of the middle class.

83. Collective
You sound like a Herion addict defending the use of heroin.

You sound like a Herion addict defending the use of heroin.
—

The above sums up the left so well, greed, delusion, ridiculous sense of entitlement and self righteousness. I will defend oil and the technology to the fullest on the back of their fruits, the advanced society we find our selves living in, at the same time I can fully acknowledge there negative aspects and do welcome with open arms cleaner more advanced technology’s that resolve these issues.

Where as you, life long have been sustained by these technology’s due to the inheritance of birth not personal genius, can only sit on the side lines and moan that other people are not doing enough, demand someone do something, blame someone for blocking progress.

Yet when faced with a simple question, why is it no single nation on earth has employed the technology’s your lot claim are viable to end their dependence on oil, you come out with the ridiculous accusation that the person asking the question sounds like a person defending the use of a lethal addicting drug.

How is anyone meant to take you seriously.

The energy debate is about religious thinking versus scientific thinking. Religious thinking is far less taxing which is why religious people are generally less intelligent.
However, because there are many more religious people than scientists, the Global warming debate will always naturally favour the sceptics. A compounding variable that also works in favour of the sceptics is their veiws are largely bought and paid for by the very powerful fossil fuel industry.
Most people cannot make a significant difference individually.
The upshot is that we will learn the hard way. Most will die.

Collective
Mad Mel has been replaced by Monckton’s brother-in-law so, you’re too late.
David Hodd and MoCO
The graph in the DM article that Collective is so enthusiastic about comes from a duo who are known for Evangelical sermons, Intelligent Design promotion and right-wing think tank speeches.

85. Collective
OK Heroin comparison unhelpful, but then Jeremiad comparison unhelpful too – I am sure we will each hold our comparisons might be right, but making them does not help resolve anything.

I suggest you read some Jared Diamond – Crash for example. Or even Black Swans by Nassim Taleb.

I think your argument is dependent on a belief that “we have all done really well from oil in the last 100 years, so we must be fine for the whole of the future”.

The problem is what seems to be giving us prosperity is, like in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, built on feet of clay. I don’t often do biblical quotes, but this parable is relevant (Daniel 2:31-32).

Burning oil on the scale we have is a pretty recent phenomena. The key question is, is the wealth that burning hydrocarbons has given us today at the cost of the wealth of future generations? I believe there is a strong basis to conclude that it does. I am not proposing a return to the middle ages. I do however believe the problems of a transition to a low carbon economy are political and psychological rather than technical. This whole debate about how the populations regard the problem would reinforce this idea.

The energy debate is about religious thinking versus scientific thinking.
—-

Sounds good for the self esteem if one views them selves on the right thinking side, cant blame you for it.

A compounding variable that also works in favour of the sceptics is their veiws are largely bought and paid for by the very powerful fossil fuel industry.
—-

Did the industry finance all the false models and wildly incorrect predictions of doom that are at the core of peoples doubt? Or do you just feel you can discount All of that and redirect attention towards the fossil industry.

The upshot is that we will learn the hard way. Most will die.
—

Good bit of doom to finish on.

Collective
Non science comments seem to be your favourites along with quoting someone and adding a one-liner.
What matters is your ability to produce scientific facts that back the stance taken by you and on that, you’re a total failure e.g. link in comment #49 leads to an article that is bullshit.

@90 MOCO
“Religious thinking is far less taxing which is why religious people are generally less intelligent.”
I know a couple of Rabbi’s that would literally die laughing at that comment.

@Merrymaker #49:

Since my generation has come in for some criticism for, on the whole, being sceptical about climate change, I will make one last comment.

I don’t accept “sceptical”. “Denialist” is an ugly word, buit accurate. Many of our generation (I am a child of the 50s) are the proud possessors of one-eyed scepticism; expect 100% certainty from scientists, but believe every word that drops from the mouths of such as Carter, Monckton, Singer etc with no need for any evidence.

And Kojak’s claim that our generation grew up with the fear of global cooling and an imminent Ice Age – if intended to mean that their was scientific backing for the fear – has been extracted from the southern end of a male bovine travelling North. It’s true that Nigel Calder (now a stalwart denialist) put this about in the late 60s and early 70s, but he ain’t a scientist; it never found its way into the scientific journals.

When it comes to climate change what evidence should we rely on to convince us?

The evidence that supports the science underlying thermodynamics and radiative physics. They make it certain that our reckless injection of massive amounts of fossil CO2 into the atmosphere will increase the heat energy swilling around the climate system – which, at equlibrium, will manifest itself in higher surface and atmospheric temperatures. The evidence you refer to below is just nature keeping score…

Are the seas rising?

Yes, Mr Morner’s unrelated-to-reality comments notwithstanding.

Is the Arctic icecap getting bigger or smaller?

Smaller. Since 2007, every summer Arctic ice minimum has had less ice than any pre-2007 summer.

thicker or thinner?

Thinner.

Has global warming stalled for the past 15 years?

No; it’s slowed. In those 15 years we’ve had two years that tied with 1998, a record El Nino year, we’ve not had an El Nino that approaches 1998. That’s why the denialists always choose 1998 as the start point of their calculations – two years ago, the appropriate period was 13 years; five years ago, a decade.

Since 1998, every La Nina has been warmer than every pre-1998 La Nina. Each decade has been warmer than the preceding decade. 9 of the hottest 10 years on record have occurred this century – and 1998 is the other one 9in third place, although in a statistical tie with 2005 and 2010). Admittedly, 2012 was only the 10th hottest year on record, so obviously we must now be heading for an ice age;-)

If the temperature rises by +3C in the next 100 years will that be apocalytic?

Yes. At mid-latitudes (where most of our food is grown), 3C is worth 435km, or c4 degrees of latitude. That would shift the US Grain Belt up to and over the US/Canada border – and the Canadian Grain Belt onto the Canadian Shield. China and India would have even more problems – not only do their gran belts both butt up against mountain ranges to their north, there is also the effect on the Himalayan glaciers and the monsoon…

Between them, the USA, India and China produce something like 2/3rds of the world’s grain. Grain feeds nearly half the world’s population. I would say anything that promises even disruption, let alone reduction, of that food supply would be apocalyptic.

Will technology have found ways to manage our new environment?

It doesn’t now; are you going to bet on it?

I doubt that such a rise (if it happens) will be as devastating as the asteroid that fell on Yucatan 60 million years ago – and that we should be doing everything to prevent happening again.

I agree – but that is hardly the appropriate benchmark.

Turns out Turbo Capitalism was producing not growth but cancer. Cancer on a grand scale. Tumours so massive that they threaten not just the body politic but our natural body. From the former suffocated by monopoly and financial bankruptcy we can cut out the tumours and reorganise but if it gets much deeper in to the latter as a species we are dead.

@96 Robin Levett
As usual you put forward a convincing argument that most people are unable to dispute rationally because they are not scientists. Which leaves us non scientists to make up our minds based on one of two options; believe everything we’re told because the man in the white coat knows best (see history of 20th century for rebuttal), or to make non scientific value judgements based on our perceptions of the credibility of the messenger. Neither of these options are really satisfactory and yet here we are calling each other names like ‘denier’ a word loaded to the gill’s with faith based connotations in an argument about scientific consensus. I am a sceptic not a denier in that I remain to be convinced, shouting out ‘burn the heretic’ doesn’t make the AGW crowd seem all that sciencey.

@Paul Peter Smith

“I am a sceptic not a denier in that I remain to be convinced”

Here’s my problem with what you are saying, given the context with which you surround it; to be a sceptic it has to be possible for you to be convinced by evidence. You claim Robin puts forward a “convincing argument” (“as usual” no less), yet you claim to remain unconvinced. If convincing arguments don’t convince you, how exactly are you to be convinced?

92 ~ I think your argument is dependent on a belief that “we have all done really well from oil in the last 100 years, so we must be fine for the whole of the future”.
—

My point is this is where we are, a very favorable position, I have always been of the opinion burning hydrocarbons comes at a cost to both current and future generations in terms of wealth and health, I have in no way ever thought the current state of affairs is a permanent one.

Technology and ways of doing things evolve and I welcome that, clean renewable & free energy are things coming to us in the future, what I take issue with is those stamping their feet in a rage demanding we make the transition to bio-fuels and renewable energy Now when currently the means to do so simply do not exist.

The evidence of this is not one nation on earth has made that transition, its ludicrous to suggest that no country on earth even a small nation would not have ended its dependence upon oil if the means to do so currently existed in a form that could sustain their society.

Yet you all rage on, I have never seen a science handled as unprofessionally as climate change and when ever the inconsistency’s and failings are pointing out its time to start banging on about big oil and the cartels.

If anything climate change will slow down progress towards a “carbon free” world, there’s to much taxation to be lost with the current state of hysteria. Don’t believe me?

Take a look at what has actually been Done in the world, the authority’s talk the talk and the solutions offered, Taxation & windmills…

@Robin Levett

1. If it makes you happy to call me a denialist I am happy to accept the title.

2. I cannot disagree with the basic physics of climate change, I do not have the qualifications so to do. However, when I play snooker I know that Newton’s laws of Motion come into play. On an ideal table, with ideal balls, perfect cues, and a pefect player the path of the balls after a stroke are perfectly predictable – alas for me, such perfection rarely occurs. Similarly, whatever the equations of thermodynamic theory tells us about the heating properties of atmospheric CO2, they have to come face to face with the reality of the complex geo-physical entity which is the Earth. Just a statement from men in white coats does not convince that climate change is happening despite the sureness of the underlying theoretical physics.

3. Consequently, the evidence we look for is more than than your assertions can offer – especially as, often enough, one white coat contradicts another. Is Tuvalu under water yet? No. What does El Nino or La Nina, which are ocean currents, have to do with the effects of CO2 on climate change?

4. I repeat we face potential calamity from threats we know will occur. Lets face them with more urgency.

100. Collective

“The evidence of this is not one nation on earth has made that transition”

– Check out prisoner dilemma and tragedy of the commons. One of the reasons taxation lies in the solutions to date, is that the free market inherently abuses common resources like the atmosphere.

The evidence is that some nations are making efforts to move to a carbon economy – and we are not amongst them. Osborne’s ambition for mediocrity in the low carbon transition is like choosing not to rush introducing the internet, or not worrying about introducing steam locomotives, as there are some lovely canals being developed.

I don’t share your argument that we are in a favourable position (I note your US spelling) – though as measured in terms of GDP etc it may look so. The apparent prosperity is increasingly at the cost to the environment to support our society via ecosystem services, The momentum of the economy is very big and in the wrong direction, and we are going to need to spend more and more clearing up the mess of past generations’ emissions.

P.S. would love to hear some examples of “professionally handled science” – it’s such a curious phrase.

@Merrymaker

“On an ideal table… the path of the balls after a stroke are perfectly predictable – alas for me, such perfection rarely occurs”

I play snooker too, and yet I’m somewhat more inclined to blame my failures at the snooker table on how straight I’m cueing, whether I strike the cueball exactly where I intend, and the limitations of my eyesight in targeting the object ball, rather than any errors in Newton’s laws due to deviations from ideal conditions. I suspect the same is true of your own play.

“What does El Nino or La Nina, which are ocean currents, have to do with the effects of CO2 on climate change”

CO2 forcing is long term, it’s effect in any given year is small (about 0.17 Celsius degree change per decade), hence why the global warming signal is measured as a 30 year mean. El Nino and La Nina are comparatively large short-term effects, that can easily exacerbate (El Nino) or mask (La Nina) this signal in any given year. Over longer periods of time these effects cancel out, allowing the global warming signal to be seen.

Paul Peter Smith
Eveyone should be a sceptic especially when listening or reading comments from politicians and our popular newspapers however, like Andy C, I would dearly like to know what is needed to convince you that climate change is a real problem that needs to be tackled.
The arguments in some newspapers and weeklies that attack reports from the IPCC should convince people, capable of reason, that their reporting is biased and faulty.
Just suppose you were asked in 2007 to predict the mean temperature of Earth in 2012 and you were ½ of 1° out, would you expect a couple of national dailies to produce the headline: ‘Global warming is just HALF what Paul Smith said’?

Why do denialists insist acceptance of AGW, based upon both the laws of physics and empirical evidence gathered worldwide is some sort of religion? Why do they always seem to interpret through that kind of lens? And why do they try to make out that understanding of the real world consequences of our squandering of hydrocarbons in the most feckless way means we somehow want a return to the dark ages, or want the death of countless millions? Why do they try to smear any attempt to prevent such a collapse as something that we want? Why do they go down such a route? Who benefits? From such a (self) destructive memeplex?

Check out prisoner dilemma and tragedy of the commons. One of the reasons taxation lies in the solutions to date, is that the free market inherently abuses common resources like the atmosphere.
—-

I don’t share the perception of the politician being the good guy in the middle using taxation as a force for good. They tax because they need to and they would tax the gas coming out of you’re mouth if they could. They are out for them selves and many of them want to control every aspect of our lives. This agenda is Perfect for that.

The evidence is that some nations are making efforts to move to a carbon economy – and we are not amongst them.
—-

Good, its a waste of money and can not support our energy needs in its Current state of development, when the free market has developed it to the point it can it will be implemented as it will be cheaper and more efficient.

Osborne’s ambition for mediocrity in the low carbon transition is like choosing not to rush introducing the internet, or not worrying about introducing steam locomotives, as there are some lovely canals being developed.
—-

They are nothing a like what so ever.

I don’t share your argument that we are in a favourable position (I note your US spelling) – though as measured in terms of GDP etc it may look so.
—-

Measured in GDP hahaha..how about measured in not living in a straw hut and starving to death because a crop failed? As a species we are incredibly well off in every spectrum, energy medical economic the lot and to be honest it pisses me off when people have had it so comfortable they can not even perceive this, and then demand like its their right someone else change the world to how they think it should be.

Our real prosperity is increasingly at less of a cost to the environment, comparing the industrial revolution to today’s state of affairs the restrictions we now have on the toxic chemicals and damage done to the environment are immense in comparison.

The longer a system evolves the more efficient it becomes, its going to take some time to get beyond this point yet we have no choice.

A professionally handled science, one in which mistakes are admitted, does not produced constant insane predictions that fail time and again, you aren’t called a “denialist” if you don’t agree, basically science, climate change is more like a religion.

Has there ever been something so doubted by the public..

105. Dissident ~ Lots of questions there but why don’t you answer one, why if the technology is here has not a single nation ended its dependency upon oil?

“I play snooker too, and yet I’m somewhat more inclined to blame my failures at the snooker table on how straight I’m cueing… I suspect the same is true of your own play.”

Thank you that reply has made my day! I think the climate models use Newtonian laws rather than Einstein’s more complicated ones he used to explain really big or really fast things.

Anyone who “understands” Newton’s laws will understand you can explain complex patterns using Newtonian physics – I think Lorenz’s paper on Non-Laminar flow is the key, but its maths was beyond my grasp (because I did not understand the maths, does not mean I believe it is rubbish).

Try a combination of “not invented here” conservatism and the stranglehold of big oil/coal/gas via their big, thick brown paper envelopes full of readies for their bought politicians…

Dissident,
Your Conspiracy Theory fails the usual test: it’s just not credible that total global silence could be bought.

It is one thing to assert that vested interests have delayed beneficial change; quite another to suggest that a magic solution exists but has been buried.

This sort of thing just isn’t helpful.

Exactly, if it was possible there is no way at least one nation would not have freed its self from the grip of oil, imagine how popular that government would become??

I find it funny on the one hand you admit so easily that politicians can be bought, even when it comes to the most serious of issues, yet on the other you believe every single thing they say as they tax you senseless to save the planet whilst doing Nothing to change our energy situation.

Gullible.

A professionally handled science, one in which mistakes are admitted, does not produced constant insane predictions that fail time and again

Being ½ of 1° out an ‘insane prediction’?

@99 Andy C
Thanks for making my point, are you already collecting the firewood for my pyre?
The way I framed my scepticism should have made it clear that I cant honestly make an informed decision about the science, how many pro AGW individuals really can? But the element of this that is very plain to me is that the politics of climate change are disgusting. Think through Agenda 21 and Zero Carbon philosphies and you end up with a bizarre combination of neo-feudalism and corporate Facism. Which is fine if the alternative really is death for the human race, I’d like to be sure and the thing that really holds me back isnt the science, its people like you. Important question, do you have faith in science? If the answer is yes then you’ve missed the point.

@104 Ceiliog
I take your point about predictions etc and you’ll be pleased to know I’ve never knowingly formed an opinion based on anything in the Daily Mail. I am VERY suspicious of anything which requires giving up as much sovereignty (in all senses, personal, national etc) as will be required if this all turns out to be true. I am a cynic, life does that to people, and it seems to me that AGW/Climate change is the perfect vehicle for totalitarianism. Its the war that never ends and anyone on the other side is obviously evil arent they?

Paul peter Smith.
Science is evidence based, not faith based and future predictions on complex systems such as climate variations are difficult enough without hostile media hacks.
Blame the politics on the politicians and bear in mind that some of them would tax air on the grounds of climate change if they could get away with it.

The climate zealots will never convince us denialists of an apocaplytic future unless the provide evidence that such a future beckons. They cannot. There are apocalyptic futures: I have listed them in previous submissions, they are brushed aside. In a previous post I asked if a +3C degree rise in the next 100 years would prove apocalyptic. I got one answer about the geographical distribution of grain farming. But genetically modified crops will deal with new environments for grain if they arise. We believe in other disastrous events because of the Spanish flu, or the Siberian Meteor, or Chernobyl. Lets see some real evidence of climate change and we will believe.

@Paul peter Smith

“Thanks for making my point… The way I framed my scepticism should have made it clear that I cant honestly make an informed decision about the science”

I didn’t make your point. If you are unsure of a position such that you cannot make a decision as to which view is correct, then you are not being a sceptic (if you were, you’d make the effort to educate yourself), you are choosing to remain ignorant.

There is nothing inherently wrong with ignorance, but if that’s the path you choose, then it seems to me you should remove yourself from the debate as being unqualified to express an opinion on it.

Scepticism isn’t about asking questions rhetorically, it’s about asking the questions and then making an effort to find the answers.

“the thing that really holds me back isnt the science, its people like you”

People like me? Really? I’m looking back through my postings wondering which of them could be considered “disgusting”, where I suggested I’d be “collecting the firewood for [your] pyre”. I look back through them and see some discussions of subsidies (with citations and suitable caveats, and all perfectly polite – on both sides as far as I can see), and even a very brief discussion of Earth’s energy budget.

“Important question, do you have faith in science?”

No, I trust (very different from faith, trust requires evidence of reliability) and respect the process. I read the literature and make an effort to be as informed as possible and take the rational view that where I meet the limits of my understanding my best option is to trust the assessment of the experts in the field, much as I do when I walk across a bridge, or visit a doctor.

I trust science because I see its predictions confirmed around me every day when I use my computer, my mobile phone, my microwave oven, my refrigerator, my bike, my glasses, …

@Merrymaker

“genetically modified crops will deal with new environments for grain if they arise.”

If you don’t believe climate predictions, exactly how will you determine what environmental conditions you should design your new crops to meet? If you wait for the conditions to arise, your crop rollout is likely to be a little late.

Politicians, Big Oil, and high stakes financiers are not responding to climate change in the same way as scientists. Scientists deal with the natural whereas the big players in business and government seem to follow the Nash equilibrium as does most of the media. It does not follow that it’s a huge conspiracy, it is more like the Apes and Banana Experiment.

13. Paul peter Smith
“Think through Agenda 21 and Zero Carbon philosphies and you end up with a bizarre combination of neo-feudalism and corporate Facism”.
eh? can you talk me through how Agenda 21 naturally leads to neo-feudalism, whatever that is?

@117 Andy C
I called the politics of climate change disgusting, not you. The reference to ‘people like you’ could have been clearer but is still apt. It meant people who have decided that I’m evil/stupid/paid by big oil/can be excluded from the debate – delete as applicable (I’ll bet you go for 2 & 4 at least).
Dont confuse honesty with ignorance, I’ve been educating myself all my life and the more I learn, the more I realise I dont know. You may be a climate scientist or similar, I graduated as a humble Civil Engineer (one of the oompah loompa’s of science) and dont presume to be an expert outside of my field even though I read widely and know what lots of big words mean.
Maybe the propaganda is working on me and big oil have muddied the waters enough that I cant see the wood for the trees or maybe not. The point is when you feel you can dismiss anyone from a debate about changing the Human race forever because they dont share your world view, then you are firmly in the realm of religion.

@120 David Hodd
Zero carbon strategies require a return to localism, agrarianism, authoritarian government structures, highly restricted land use/access and relative poverty. Thats closer to Feudal than I want to get.
Agenda 21 calls for, amongst other things, highly concentrated urban populations with little to no access to travel, most of the world set aside for nature (read that as nature and whoevers in charge). Trade, growth, production are to be planned as is human reproduction. Sounds a bit totalitarian dont you think?

@Paul peter smith

“Dont confuse honesty with ignorance”

I haven’t. You’ve admitted that you don’t understand the subject sufficiently to make an informed decision, that, ultimately is a position of ignorance – which you should be careful to avoid confusing with stupidity. I don’t know how to fly a plane, as a result I don’t offer opinions on the best way to go about it, accepting my own ignorance on the issue.

“It meant people who have decided that I’m evil/stupid/paid by big oil/can be excluded from the debate – delete as applicable ”

Please note that the only person assigning motives here is you. I’ve not called, nor decided you are evil, I’ve not called you stupid (again, ignorance is not equal to stupidity, unless you start thinking your opinion on said subject should carry weight), I’ve not said you, or anyone else are paid by big oil, and have not suggested it, and I’ve explained why I think you should remove yourself from the debate (you’ve openly admitted to not being convinced by arguments that you have described as convincing – do you not see a problem with that attitude?). If you have a problem with people who do call you evil, stupid, whatever, take it up with them, don’t assume it of me.

“you feel you can dismiss anyone from a debate about changing the Human race forever because they dont share your world view”

Again, no. I just think people who can’t, or won’t, be convinced by anything don’t deserve to be taken seriously in a debate (on any subject, not just climate change). Demonstrate that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, or that atmospheric CO2 will not rise with business as usual and I’ll happily change my mind on this subject.

Paul peter Smith
You seem to be confusing Agenda 21 the non-binding, voluntarily implemented action plan on sustainable development with ‘Agenda 21’ the Glenn Beck shock ‘n’ awe dystopian fantasy novel.

highly concentrated urban populations with little to no access to travel.
—

As some claim in this thread, cities take up to much space, traveling is pointless, lets contain humanity to skyscraper cages…this is exactly what they want.

A good point has been made, the warmists are always so fast to claim any skeptic does not understand the science yet the number of them who truly understand is shockingly small. They are just repeaters backed with the confidence that “science” is on their side and an internal need to be at something in life.

The coming report is going to throw water on the fire yet this will send them into a rage, when they can no longer exploit this issue thy will be onto something else with the same attitude.

@123 Andy C
You didn’t call me evil, you used a rhetorical device to infer that I should be excluded from the debate (it seemed to you that I should exclude myself). Which is very polite, thank you, I’m used to being called the other things on the list but you touched a nerve.
Stuff that persuades me about climate change generally takes the form of post like RL’s and others ‘convincing’ arguments, here and elsewhere. Stuff that disuades me include (but are not exclusive to), the underlying political motives, the direction of some major eco strategies (bio-fuel, GM crops) and the religious like zealotry of sections of the climate change lobby.

@124 Ceiliog
Dont do American talking heads or conspiracy theories. I dont fear the illuminati are poised to strike. I fear Humans can be greedy, selfish, stupid and domineering, why assume you need a secret society to accomplish what we can quite happily do to ourselves/each other. Which is why any limitations on Humanity of the scale required for a global push on climate change need to be examined very carefully. Because it will be an abdication of freedom to the state unlike any other in history and if we get it wrong they wont give the keys back. Whoever that ends up being.

Paul peter Smith
For heaven’s sake, GM crops and biodiesel are products of big business yet you refer to them as if they were launched by those on the opposite side of the fence.
If you want to see an example of spin on climate take a look at this:
“every person in the country will be paying between £4,700 and £5,300 a year towards the government’s climate change policies”. Climate Change Act. David TC Davies MP (Monmouth, Conservative) Hansard 10 September 2013
Link: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm130910/halltext/130910h0001.htm#130910h0001.htm_spnew40
The figures provided to the MP estimates the average per person for all energy costs between 2010 and 2050: “all capital, operating and fuel costs for the whole energy system including cars, trains, planes, power stations, boilers and insulation”.
Misleading or what?

@Merrymaker #101:

1. If it makes you happy to call me a denialist I am happy to accept the title.

Your next point makes the title obviously apt; it doesn’t make me happy at all. We are supposed to be tne rational generation.

2. I cannot disagree with the basic physics of climate change, I do not have the qualifications so to do. However, when I play snooker I know that Newton’s laws of Motion come into play. On an ideal table, with ideal balls, perfect cues, and a pefect player the path of the balls after a stroke are perfectly predictable – alas for me, such perfection rarely occurs. Similarly, whatever the equations of thermodynamic theory tells us about the heating properties of atmospheric CO2, they have to come face to face with the reality of the complex geo-physical entity which is the Earth. Just a statement from men in white coats does not convince that climate change is happening despite the sureness of the underlying theoretical physics.

But AGW is not complicated on the level of “more heat in means rising temperatures”. Heat leaves the earth in only one way: radiation. We can directly observe the increasing bite that CO2 takes out of the outgoing radiation; and directly observe incoming solar heat. We know (if you accept the basic physics) that greenhouse gases keepmthe Earth’s surface temperature more than 30K higher than it would be in their absence, so we know that up to that degree of warming no negative feedbacks kick in of a scale sufficient to stop warming. The idea that pumping out fossil carbon will not lead to increased surface temperatures is based ultimately on wishful thinking – the fond hope that somehow somewhere some new physical process will save us from our folly.

3. Consequently, the evidence we look for is more than than your assertions can offer – especially as, often enough, one white coat contradicts another. Is Tuvalu under water yet? No.

Show me a prediction that it would be by now.

What does El Nino or La Nina, which are ocean currents, have to do with the effects of CO2 on climate change?

See Andy C’s comment; they have a major, but short term, effect on global weather and temperature by exposing colder (La Nina) or warmer (El Nino) on the surface of a large area of the Pacific Ocean. That effect is greater than the year by year efefct of AGW. 1998 was a massive El Nino; absent AGW, it should stand alone in the record as the hottest year by far. Instead there have been two years warmer since 1998.

And: by and large, the men in white coats don’t disagree.

4. I repeat we face potential calamity from threats we know will occur. Lets face them with more urgency.

We know AGW is occurring. It has the potential to disrupt our civilisation killing many millions if not billions. Why ignore it? We are capable as a race of worrying about more than one potential disaster (and how certain, for example, is asteroid strike in the lfietime of anyone currently alive).

We know AGW is occurring.

No you do not & as usual you are just repeating what you read.

122. Paul peter Smith

I’ve known about Local Agenda 21 since it came out of the Rio summit. It is none of the things you have described.

I have checked out Neo-feudalism, a term I had never heard of before (though I had come across Neo-ruralist revival as an architectural stile).

Neo-feudalism is nothing about localism, though most of its effects will be local. Neo-feudalism is about a top down decision leading to the commodification of law enforcement (echoing Welsh Marcher Lords, or the demand for fealty). This leads to gated communities and a democratic deficit outside those communities.

Agenda 21 is about communities getting together to solve problems locally. I know it always had a really inappropriate title, but really, please don’t confuse top down decision about law and order with local communities making decisions about what they feel is right for their community.

With that sort of confusion of opposites, you really need to take more care on zebra crossings.

@ Jack C, 5.13pm September 16th

“Dissident,
Your Conspiracy Theory fails the usual test: it’s just not credible that total global silence could be bought.”

What I’m saying is misleading propaganda about AGW been a “warmist” hoax is bought, with the politicians, weathermen and fruitloops most active in peddling that smear been either in the pockets, or dupes of the fossil fuel industry – understand? Here is a classic example…
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Statement&Statement_ID=4f92dad8-2308-4c1e-aba3-b39d33486519

Just compare his rabid rants with his campaign funding…
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00005582&type=I&newmem=N

Once bought, these politicians then decide to throw a monkey wrench into any better alternative to the status quo. Look at his voting practices on Capitol Hill…

If you think that is isolated, think again. In that country you have AstroTurf “movements” funded by such billionaire bribe masters as the Koch brothers – that Senator’s biggest single paymaster (I’m talking Tea Party there) and relentlessly promoted by other billionaire bribe masters like Rupert Murdoch on faux news, which then ensnare the wilfully gullible of America into anti sense positions like:
• Tax cuts for the rich (which means worse provision of 21st century healthcare & education etc for them.)
• Deregulation of industry (so they will no longer be protected from abuse in the workplace, be given eye watering pay cuts and poisoned by a list of mutagenic, cancer causing and toxic compounds, with the wider environment they live in trashed even more with impunity)
• Destruction of any remaining social provision (resulting in them been forced to go cap in hand to said billionaires who will then tell them to work harder for less money, so said billionaires can have an even bigger slice of the pie for themselves)
• Attack the science (so when scientists discover through experimentation any unacceptable consequence of what currently makes said billionaires rich, those scientists suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of vicious smear campaigns, gagging orders and lawsuits)

America is far from the only country that happens, look at Australia, where Abbot is doing the same thing, or Britain where Camoron is, yep, you guessed it! Or how about other countries, c’mon try to do some digging yourself…

That kind of agenda means only one thing, the majority will be ground ever further into the poisoned dirt, to give a lucky few already born into rich families free reign to do what they damn well please. Doesn’t that describe the authoritarian mindset perfectly? Ironic isn’t it, the covert authoritarian agenda smear denialists accuse “greenies” of is happening anyway, courtesy of the very funders of denialist memes in the first place… Incidentally, want to know where Greens really are positioned? Try this!
http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010

Funny isn’t it?

~~~~~

@ Collective, 10.16pm September 16

“As some claim in this thread, cities take up to much space, traveling is pointless, lets contain humanity to skyscraper cages…this is exactly what they want.”

Your favourite billionaires (see above) will do this anyway, ob. Question is, do you want those billionaires controlling HOW it is done? Our suburbs and exurbs spread out from cities because of the car in the first place, and since denialists also position themselves against public transportation infrastructure and even replacing the internal combustion engine with electric motors, those sprawls of habitation are guaranteed to cease to be sustainable within a few decades anyway, resulting in their decay into poor ghettos where your grandchildren will eke out a wretched existence, perfect fodder for the billionaires to exploit and abuse!

@ Collective 10.23am September 17th

“No you do not & as usual you are just repeating what you read.”

I have 2 challenges for you, ob…

1, read the science yourself and find a way to scientifically refute it, you will be guaranteed a Nobel prize and be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams if you overturn over a century’s worth of physics ranging from quantum mechanics to the second law of thermodynamics.

2, prove you are not an AstroTurf Bot from Koch 😉

Read the science yourself and find a way to scientifically refute it, you will be guaranteed a Nobel prize and be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams ~

No, you’d be called a quack by the community and expelled from the church, there is no consensus just the forced appearance of one but the coming reports have no choice but to throw cold water on it.

Its laughable how they made so much hysteria about the ice caps as though it was one of the worst things on earth and yet when they appear 60% larger than last year its dismissed in a second..”well their still smaller”.. I think the majority of you would be sad if you found out the world was not ending but do not worry:

Policy on climate change (taxation & strangulation by regulation) is right even if science was wrong, says commissioner.

Your political lords will keep it in motion if backed with evidence or not.

@ Collective, 12.01pm September 17

“No, you’d be called a quack by the community and expelled from the church, there is no consensus just the forced appearance of one but the coming reports have no choice but to throw cold water on it.”

“Policy on climate change (taxation & strangulation by regulation) is right even if science was wrong, says commissioner.”

So tens of thousands of scientists in hundreds of organisations worldwide are conspiring to dupe you? Wow, that is something isn’t it, denialist 101! Yet you have not tried to go for that Nobel Prize have you? C’mon show us your irrefutable proof that AGW is a religiously inspired hoax, from nefarious greedy conspirators out to enslave you in their authoritarian dystopia.

Your psychological profile is getting a little threadbare, isn’t it ob? Or will you return with another pseudonym with exactly the same faux news, expressed with the same pre-high school grammar, with a notable lack of any evidence whatsoever? I have another challenge for you. Prove that you are not shining example of this…

http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/LskyetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf

“Its laughable how they made so much hysteria about the ice caps as though it was one of the worst things on earth and yet when they appear 60% larger than last year its dismissed in a second..”well their still smaller””

Epic mathematics fail from the Daily Mail… A publication infamous for telling porkies about science in favour of an actual rightwing authoritarian agenda for decades! As others have pointed out to you.

What do you do? Ah yes repeat, as if there is a total lack of memory about what you previously said. Can’t Koch invest a few dollars more to give you even the memory of a ZX Spectrum 48K microcomputer? Is he that stingy?

I have just opened up this link that appears on the right under the strapline “Denying climate change isn’t just foolish — it’s bad for business.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/magazine/mutually-insured-destruction.html?_r=1&

I think it is quite telling that insurance companies are now revising their risk calculation methods to account for climate change. It includes a quote from Myles Allen on the methods of assessing near term climate change impacts.

Presumably insurance companies are in on the left wing conspiracy / plan to take us back to straw huts? – or perhaps they have been hoodwinked by scientists playing snooker?

So tens of thousands of scientists in hundreds of organisations worldwide are conspiring to dupe you? Wow, that is something isn’t it, denialist 101!
—

Its you who believes every nation on the planet is part of a grand conspiracy to suppress clean energy in favor of the oil industry, I just note people can be wrong, just as you are on the current ability to replace our energy sources.

Yet you have not tried to go for that Nobel Prize have you? C’mon show us your irrefutable proof that AGW is a religiously inspired hoax, from nefarious greedy conspirators out to enslave you in their authoritarian dystopia.
—

Religiously inspired hoax? No words of mine, just because you’re lot choose to treat it more like a religion or cult, and we point this out, does not mean we are saying it was inspired by religion. Its hard to tell what I am laughing at most, an adult attacking someone for their gamma or the following:

Out to enslave you in their authoritarian dystopia.

You may not see you’re own desires to end humanity’s right to travel, pointless as you call it, to contain the human race to a world of skyscrapers kilometres tall with tens of thousands of people in each one, never to leave in their life times, you may not see this and the rest of the freedom & life destroying measures you seek as authoritarian and enslavement, mentally ill people cant see that they are ill, this is how you can go from describing an authoritarian freedom less hell hole as something we all need in one post, to mocking people who suspect that’s what you lunatics want in the next..

Epic mathematics fail from the Daily Mail…
—

Satellite photos of the Arctic taken by NASA in August 2012 and August 2013 show a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet ~ Ok it did not happen.

You are an unstable people hating fanatic but you have company:

Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”– Professor Maurice King

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” -Paul Watson, Co-Founder of Greenpeace

“Unless we announce disasters no one will listen.” -Sir John Houghton, first chairman of the ipcc

“We have to offer up scary scenarios… each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest” -Stephen Schneider, lead ipcc author, 1989

“I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of .. how dangerous it is.” -Al Gore

“Only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians’ — and readers’ — attention.” -Monika Kopacz, Atmospheric
Scientist

“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.” -Daniel Botkin, ex Chair of Environmental Studies, UCSB

And as for the name change, why not? I readily identify my self if asked, maybe being exposed to that much freedom makes you a little bit uncomfortable..

@Collective 12:01pm
Even the Daily Telegraph is decent enough to include the commissioner’s reasoning.
In which of the 5 denial stages are you?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial

Presumably insurance companies are in on the left wing conspiracy / plan to take us back to straw huts? – or perhaps they have been hoodwinked by scientists playing snooker?
—

Wow…insurance company’s can increase the premiums they charge based on computer models that consistently predict a reason to charge higher premiums..never seen that one coming. . . what a solid case you have. . .

97% consensus is manipulated junk. Misclassifying papers to get the result you want is the way of dirty politics.

@ Collective, 1.47pm September 17

“Religiously inspired hoax? No words of mine, just because you’re lot choose to treat it more like a religion or cult, and we point this out, does not mean we are saying it was inspired by religion.”

No you say science is religion, repeatedly. It is the science you attack in that way. Hence me describing your gobbledeygook about AGW been a”religiously inspired hoax”, which incidentally is a denialist trick that’s all too familiar. Read the link Greta gave you at 1.50pm. It describes the 5 stages of denial perfectly.

“You may not see you’re own desires to end humanity’s right to travel, pointless as you call it, to contain the human race to a world of skyscrapers kilometres tall with tens of thousands of people in each one, never to leave in their life times, you may not see this and the rest of the freedom & life destroying measures you seek as authoritarian and enslavement, mentally ill people cant see that they are ill, this is how you can go from describing an authoritarian freedom less hell hole as something we all need in one post, to mocking people who suspect that’s what you lunatics want in the next..”

No longer using the internal combustion engine or swapping your job in company A for the same job in company B as its closer an assault on your right to travel? Are you for real? Re read what I wrote without your blinkers on, because it is your delusional conflation of driving hundreds of miles a week to live hand by mouth in a dead end job with freedom that is part of the problem.

Those skyscrapers will be built anyway, irrespective of any agenda. As it is now, when those skyscrapers are built, it will be solely for the rich, by the rich. but then that is what you prefer because you side with the current crop of authoritarian, conservative billionaires. Who has the mental dysfunction?

And then, to cap it all, you throw in some quotes isolated from whatever interview they were in! Another denialist classic, which incidentally stretches all the way back to the inquisition! Can’t you provide links to those interviews, or will such links be devastating to your conspiracist ideation?

Are there any chinks of daylight getting through your tinfoil hat, or is the daylight scary?

@Collective #141:

Just a quick one for the moment:

97% consensus is manipulated junk. Misclassifying papers to get the result you want is the way of dirty politics.

And who has done that?

@ Collective, 2.36pm September 17

“97% consensus is manipulated junk. Misclassifying papers to get the result you want is the way of dirty politics.”

The stench of hypocrisy from denialists gets ever more sulphurous as our benign climate unravels. It is people/bots/shills who wilfully misrepresent science as religion/conspiracy/hoax who are indulging in dirty politics, and have been guilty of playing dirty for decades!

No you say science is religion, repeatedly. It is the science you attack in that way.
—

No I say climate change is not treated as a science by the fear mongering warmists, instead its treated as and resembles a religion. As in it operates on the same kind of belief system as religion, faith, fear, layered so thick its impenetrable to facts, can not tolerate differing views, people with them are ridiculed and banished from the group, so insecure when challenged about their beliefs they started using the word “denialist” in response. This in no way says its a religious inspired hoax, rather you call a belief system a science and are using it as a means to express your wealth and freedom hating dysfunction.

No longer using the internal combustion engine or swapping your job in company A for the same job in company B as its closer an assault on your right to travel? Are you for real?
—

“As for jetting off on holiday, c’mon is that really an inalienable human right?”

As you consistently attack vehicles from all angles and want to limit to the up most the distance people travel even to their place of work, as well question our right to travel abroad its more than obvious you want to see travel severely restricted.

Those skyscrapers will be built anyway, irrespective of any agenda. As it is now, when those skyscrapers are built, it will be solely for the rich, by the rich. but then that is what you prefer because you side with the current crop of authoritarian, conservative billionaires. Who has the mental dysfunction?
—

You, again..as its only the voices in your head informing you about my alliance with the rich. The next few hundred years are going to see radical changes in living space, both upwards and down, hell, hopefully even into space, that will be a result of necessity and natural progress it will not be the result of loons cramming the entire population of earth into buildings like sardines with restrictions upon everything that they do to save the earth from the gas they breath out, hell if the rich do it one may be able to travel, beats having everything you will ever need from the age of 0 and death within a quarter of a mile and no permission to ever travel further.

Its amusing that you are both the denialist and conspiracy theorist here, big oil remember, and oh how easily you are able to excuse your masters.

The stench of hypocrisy from denialists gets ever more sulphurous as our benign climate unravels.
—

Unravels. . . do you have an anxiety disorder? Would explain a lot, relax…

Investigative journalists at Popular Technology looked into precisely which papers were classified within Cook’s asserted 97 percent. The investigative journalists found Cook and his colleagues strikingly classified papers by such prominent, vigorous skeptics as Willie Soon, Craig Idso, Nicola Scafetta, Nir Shaviv, Nils-Axel Morner and Alan Carlin as supporting the 97-percent consensus.

Lets ask a handful of them shall we?

http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html#Update2

Is it a conspiracy:O

@Collective 3:37pm
No, it’s just a blog written by an individual who denies the science of climate change. Who’d have thought that someone could do such a thing?
You might think he’s a ‘handful’, Collective, but maybe you’ve got personal knowledge of him?

140. Collective

that’s a yes then, you believe insurance companies are in on this left wing conspiracy too.

what next?

Google?
Zionists?
Al Qaida?
MK Ultra?
Area 51?
Sirious Cybernetics Corporation?

When this discussion has died down, you really could benefit with reviewing your comments, there are inconsistencies and vague statements that most of us can’t be bothered picking up.

You claim for example that insurance companies are conniving to put prices up. That would be a criminal collusion. Go the police and report it.

You claim that scientists are behaving in an unprofessional manner. If you have evidence of professional misconduct present that evidence to the Royal Society, the association of climatologist or whoever.

Oh you can present this information because there isn’t any its all unsubstantiated innuendo on your part that you need to throw in to try and maintain a logically inconsistent position.

You mentioned straw huts as being really backward examples of living standards. Where I live the most expensive houses are made with thatched roofs, the cheap ones (like mine) cement tile. This is a good example of the sort of empty argument you put forward. “But you would have us live in straw houses” the market value for straw houses suggests these are far more desirable than the future you are espousing. That being the case, does this matter?

135. Dissident

thanks to the link on “NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science
is a Hoax” this looks really interesting and pertinent.

http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/LskyetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf

I suspect though, the science may not be settled – not all conspiracy theorists believe it was NASA who faked the moon landing. Therefore I can categorically conclude that no conspiracy theorists believe Climate science is a hoax.
😉

@ Greta, 4.33pm September 17

Maybe ‘collective’ or ‘ob’ or ‘weed killer’ or any of the other pseudonyms that blogger writes under is a literal expression of whatever is in his/her/it’s head 😉

What skeptical science actually says about the denialists that blogger mentions…

• Willie Soon
http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=+Willie+Soon&x=16&y=9

• Craig Idso
http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Craig+Idso&x=18&y=9

• Nicola Scafetta
http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Nicola+Scafetta&x=19&y=12

• Nir Shaviv
http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Nir+Shaviv&x=16&y=11

• Nils-Axel Morner
http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Nils-axel+morner&x=21&y=8

• Alan Carlin
http://www.skepticalscience.com/search.php?Search=Alan+Carlin&x=19&y=4

Interesting mix of articles to read through we have ‘Collective et al’ to thank 😉

@ David Hodd, 4.48pm September 17

“I suspect though, the science may not be settled – not all conspiracy theorists believe it was NASA who faked the moon landing. Therefore I can categorically conclude that no conspiracy theorists believe Climate science is a hoax.”

Agreed, I wonder which one of the collective’s personas would disagree with that particular conspiracy theory 🙂

No, it’s just a blog written by an individual who denies the science of climate change. Who’d have thought that someone could do such a thing? You might think he’s a ‘handful’, Collective, but maybe you’ve got personal knowledge of him?
—

What a great way to disregard information that’s uncomfortable to you.”Thats an opposition website” I neither think or wrote that the individual is a handful, there are claims that papers authored by prominent skeptics were misclassified as being in support, I linked to a site that presents a handful of these cases in which the authors of the papers confirm that’s the case.

But as far as your ability to think is concerned you can disregard it without second thought because it appears on a site opposing you’re views, the exact idiocy that plagues the climate change movement.

that’s a yes then, you believe insurance companies are in on this left wing conspiracy too.
—

Are you fucking stupid? Insurance company’s will increase their premiums using any reasoning they possibly can, hence my wow, really? A company with access to models that give reason for a never ending increase in profit and they employed it..I am so shocked..and to you that’s me claiming they are knowingly part of a conspiracy?

You claim for example that insurance companies are conniving to put prices up. That would be a criminal collusion. Go the police and report it.
—

Well there we have it, yes you are fucking stupid. Are the government going to sue them for using the results of government financed research to change their risk models??? If global warming turned out to be an absolute fabrication how are corporations far and wide plus the general public who acted on that information in good faith guilty of criminal collusion? You’re common sense is so absent its funny:

Climate scientists were previously very confident that the planet would be warmer than it is by now, and no one knows for sure why it isn’t. This isn’t a crisis for climate science. This is just the way science goes. But it is a crisis for climate-policy advocates who based their arguments on the authority of scientific consensus. Mr Cohn eventually gets around to admitting that

In the end, the so-called scientific consensus on global warming doesn’t look like much like consensus when scientists are struggling to explain the intricacies of the earth’s climate system, or uttering the word “uncertainty” with striking regularity.

The recent wave of news and magazine articles about scientists struggling to explain the warming slowdown could prolong or deepen the public’s skepticism.

But the “consensus” never extended to the intricacies of the climate system, just the core belief that additional greenhouse gas emissions would warm the planet.

If this is true, then the public has been systematically deceived. As it has been presented to the public, the scientific consensus extended precisely to that which is now seems to be in question: the sensitivity of global temperature to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Indeed, if the consensus had been only that greenhouse gases have some warming effect, there would have been no obvious policy implications at all.”

There is no consensus the models have proven wrong and all along you lunatics waste trillions on you’re pet projects, the world learned what a joke it was with climate gate, its a JOKE.

As for straw huts I have built straw bale houses, good fun good houses, as far as I am aware there are several dating back over a thousand years still standing, it was not about the house as such, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% as proposed and tell me we don’t go backwards in living standards…are you that stupid.

I suspect though, the science may not be settled – not all conspiracy theorists believe it was NASA who faked the moon landing. Therefore I can categorically conclude that no conspiracy theorists believe Climate science is a hoax.
—

Its very telling that to you there are just two options. A – Its the truth B – Anyone claiming its not the truth is a conspiracy theorist. Interesting that in you’re mind there is no possibility that the scientists are wrong, which is one of the religion like lunatic traits displayed by you’re kind often, bundled with ridicule of those who do not agree.

Sad.

Oh and do tell, how is the climate unraveling?? Point to the damage..

Oh dear, the collective is getting mighty shrill now. Must be too many voices in there to cope…

Maybe ‘collective’ or ‘ob’ or ‘weed killer’ or any of the other pseudonyms that blogger writes under is a literal expression of whatever is in his/her/it’s head
—

Ob and Collective, two names, does not take much to knock you off balance does it, is that why you are scared of the weather changing…miss your mood stabilizers today? You silly little man.

Im done with you self styled student activists and so is society, watch your “cause” disappear over the next five years exposed and treated for the bullshit it is.

Collective

Climate scientists were previously very confident that the planet would be warmer than it is by now

Out by one half of one degree if the graph featured in the Mail on Sunday is correct. Don’t look without getting the o.k. from nurse.

155. Dissident – Cant point to the damage done by “climate change” never mind explain how the climate is “unraveling” can you, you fool. Havent you got a bank to be camping outside of smelling like piss? How about some “anti car” ranting? Weird what a life of poverty can bring out in people.

http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/pr-wars-ipcc-fights-for-relevance-halves-warming-claims-to-be-95-certain-of-something-vaguer/

Well done for being part of a movement that directed trillions into thin air for zero return while countless starve to death hahaha.

As a special prezzie for the Collective. Here’s a little taster, enjoy 🙂

http://www.snre.umich.edu/~dallan/nre220/outline21.htm

What’s of note to me is with the average projections of our climate changing, the various biome zones will have to move poleward by somewhere between 500 and 1,000 miles north. They’ve already done over 100, yet here’s the rub for all of you, Collective. The biome zones contain species that are incapable of moving that far in just a few decades. What if the species left behind are keystone species? It won’t be just them left behind to die, it’ll be the whole web they support. Not only that, but there are also inconvenient barriers like oceans, mountain ranges and vast areas given over to farms and cities, where many species simply cannot survive.

How’s your blood pressure? Have any of your personas permanently gone dulally?

@ the Collective,

“Im done with you self styled student activists and so is society, watch your “cause” disappear over the next five years exposed and treated for the bullshit it is.”

Oh dear, is that a vein about to pop?

“Havent you got a bank to be camping outside of smelling like piss? How about some “anti car” ranting? Weird what a life of poverty can bring out in people.”

Yep, that vein is clearly teetering on the edge. Didn’t you earlier claim I was pretentiously middle class?

@158collective thats clever of you providing a link that parrots the mail on sunday link in your comment49 well done

As a special prezzie for the Collective. Here’s a little taster, enjoy
—

That”s it? And it all boils down to a “may”? Blood pressures fine thanks chap Im not one to have a panic attack every time I see an suv.

Also I said climate change is an issue of the middle class, with buckets of time to put hand on heart and become outraged along with such issues as pink and blue toy sections in their local shop?

Of the astronomical amount of funding that”s flown down the climate change drain, what kind of amounts have gone into reforesting, changing the attitudes and giving support to locals in areas prone to deforested, cleaning and restocking the oceans with life, etc etc

161. Because its true. Your substance less response only reflects that.

@ the Collective, 8.01pm September 17

Here’s another few prezzies for you, showing the vulnerability of biomes worldwide to climate change. Note how the majority of places marked green for low vulnerability are in existing holes in the biosphere like the Sahara and the Greenland Ice Cap.
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/06/04/climate/
And from an independent source (which you no doubt hate as one of this bloated government departments conspiring to tax you to death, ie NASA)
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate20111214.html
Here’s what to expect over the next century…
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0326-climate.html
http://ccr.aos.wisc.edu/research/CCRresearch/veg-climate/impact-of-future-greenhouse.php
In a few centuries, when the climate stabilises, this is what we might expect of the distribution of the natural biomes of the earth. Yet as I have stated, those biomes will have to jump over both natural and man made barriers to make it. It’s interesting to note forest biomes been more dominant, especially in the far north, where forests will be able to flourish on what is currently tundra and ice.
http://thewrittenblit.com/2012/11/30/the-pliocenes-climate/

“Of the astronomical amount of funding that”s flown down the climate change drain, what kind of amounts have gone into reforesting, changing the attitudes and giving support to locals in areas prone to deforested, cleaning and restocking the oceans with life, etc etc”

I challenge you to enlighten us, so far all you’ve achieved is bluster, innuendo, and 2 references from the echo chamber… Aren’t you allowed to go beyond your authorised list of links, to be used (very) sparingly? 😉

Collective
8:03pm
Didn’t anyone tell you that self-referencing is not proof. Even though self-ref is a tactic used religions for thousands of years, it is not acceptable in science and logic.
8:01pm
Your what-about-point-over-there is lame even in the under-achiever league.

153. Collective
“Are you fucking stupid?”…”yes you are fucking stupid”

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt.

Abuse is normally regarded as a sign of someone who has nothing better to contribute.

Let me know when you have calmed down, and we can resume the debate – an apology will be start.

Rather like Judith Curry, I believe there is a need for both sides of the climate change debate to engage, since without that engagement, there will be no resolution.

But rule 1, don’t engage with someone who is spitting at you.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt.
—

It was a question not a name, if I called you a wanker or something I could see you’re point however I asked if you are stupid, you’re thinking on the subject:

Look here is some evidence!! Insurance company’s are charging more on the back of government approved models, it has to be correct, are you trying to say they are “in on the conspiracy” to!”

Points to you being stupid or extremely naive, its actually pathetic.

Didn’t anyone tell you that self-referencing is not proof. Even though self-ref is a tactic used religions for thousands of years, it is not acceptable in science and logic.
—

Prove its not true

Your what-about-point-over-there is lame even in the under-achiever league.
—

Me asking how much of the trillions spent went to make a tangible difference is lame? Lefitsts…its a mental disorder.

What is commonly called the “mainstream” view of climate science is contained in the spread of results from computer models. What is commonly dismissed as the “skeptical” or “denier” view coincides with the real-world observations. – So true. Party’s over.

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/09/16/ipcc-models-getting-mushy/

167.
Trillions of what? This is a trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
Prove that you’re not immortal.
Prove that you’re not insane.

@ the Collective, 9.32pm September 17

Impressive link there – straight to a member of the Fraser Institute, who have been revealed as the recipients of $700,000 from the Koch brothers AstroTurf campaign…

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/2012/04/26/fraser-institute-co-founder-confirms-years-and-years-us-oil-billionaires-funding

Instead of going to science, once more you go to smears. Well done.

@ David Hodd, 9.02pm September 17

You can engage in debate with someone who spits at you, all you need to do is use a spittoon to catch the ineffective dribbles, calmly walk over and pour…

!!!!Breaking news, this is just in!!!!

http://m.phys.org/news/2013-09-satellite-global-humans.html

Typo alert, my comment @ 9.51pm instead of $700,000 it’s only a cool half million!

168. Ceiliog
It’s a curious approach for someone to abuse so many people, in the way we have seen tonight. Whether scientists, insurers, roofing thatchers or any other sort of neo-feudalist zealot, all are dissed for having a very unprofessional approach to their work.

The reason for the anger, is that “trillions” of is being spent on the climate change conspiracy. This estimate being the first big number to come into their head.

With global GDP being $85T, according to their estimate, over 2% of the output of the entire globe is being spent on this conspiracy.

Does that observation make me a “stupid f*****g w****r?”

Trillions of what? This is a trillion: 1,000,000,000,000
Prove that you’re not immortal.
Prove that you’re not insane
—

Another idiot.

Instead of going to science, once more you go to smears. Well done.
—

Cant refute a single thing said so you bring out the “big oil conspiracy” sad.

You can engage in debate with someone who spits at you, all you need to do is use a spittoon to catch the ineffective dribbles, calmly walk over and pour…
—-

Someone asks a lefitst if they are stupid and it draws a tear to their eye, how could I possibly continue! Reminds you of all the beatings you got in school, the rest of us just grew a thick skin.

It’s a curious approach for someone to abuse so many people, in the way we have seen tonight. Whether scientists, insurers, roofing thatchers or any other sort of neo-feudalist zealot, all are dissed for having a very unprofessional approach to their work.
—

Now you have totally gone off the deep end :LOL: You just literally make it up as you go along to suit your argument.

Almost £50 trillion must be spent on green technology over the coming decades if the world is to avert a “major planetary catastrophe”, the United Nations has claimed.

Governments must invest three per cent of world GDP – about £1.2 trillion in 2010.

Find out how much has been spent already I assure you the entire amount directed towards researching -“combating” and “green” energies exceeds a trillion, then go fuck you’re selves you useless idiots.

David Hodd
Are there details of what is labelled ‘conspiracy’ spending?

What do you get for $2 trillion? The International Energy Agency says almost nothing.

That is the amount invested over the past 20 years in renewable-energy projects such as wind and solar power. In that time carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy consumed have fallen by less than 1%.

A less than 1% fall, for $2 trillion invested.

Oh so sweet, we need way more Ferraris and private jets in the world for you lot to envy as you see fly by..

Collective
“Reminds you of all the beatings you got in school”

no, it is reminding you of all the beatings you got in school.

I don’t know whether to keep encouraging this abuse from, as a form of catharsis for you, the problem is it makes you look more and more like someone with nothing to contribute other than bile.

So am I wrong about the spending which you were just mocking me for you fucking idiots? No.. So what do you do? Ignore it, put your hands on your chest and say im not sure I can continue with this…

Idiots.

So if the models are wrong you ignore it.
If someone points out the vast amount of money spent on the back of your theory’s you call them a conspiracy theorist and say it did not happen.

I bet you love your European commisioner for climate action then, having neither technical experience or education, with just a major in history she can tell us even if they have it all wrong on global warming they are doing the right thing because you’re energy costs more, and that’s the right thing to do…. she really does seem to be on your level of integrity, these positions are treated so seriously by the government eh? Hahahaha, poor bastards.

David Hodd
Ah, your post of 1:28am was wrongly addressed to me. Don’t bother responding to my comment of 8:43am.

@ the Collective, various spits overnight…

I think this is what you lot are having your collective internal tizzy over, the fact that markets worldwide have decided to invest in renewables, which kinda leaves billionaires like the Koch brothers in a bit of a quandary. How dare the markets see the profit potential of renewables eh? That money might have been squandered instead on JDAMs and cruise missiles launched at Venezuela, to get rid of commies like Chavez (and punish Venezuelans for voting in a leftie) while securing all that oil solely for the profit of that billionaire bribe master 😉

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_commercialization
Of course the markets are merely responding to the knowledge that green technology is profitable, now it’s getting to the point where you can start shutting down all that obsolete, dirty, polluting fossil fuel industry…
http://ecowatch.com/2013/renewables-push-fossil-fuel-plants-to-close/

Oh and if you want a rebuttal of the mathematically and scientific illiterate puff piece from Charles Koch’s Fraser Institute, try this…

http://www.skepticalscience.com/clarifying-continuation-global-warming.html
The thermal energy trapped by all that CO2 is heating up the huge heat sink covering 72% of the Earth’s surface. We call it the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern and Arctic Ocean it’s a simple rebuttal really, even you might get your various personas around it.

How’s your echo chamber (oops I meant to say head) eh Collective, ob, weed killer etc? I do hope you haven’t had a stroke yet, one of your personas might need some TLC…

http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/97pct/

Dave Burton (burtonsys) Koch and Knut
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/the-agenda-behind-the-sea-level-rise-bill-from-the-carolina-coast-to-the-kochs/Content?oid=3084685

@ the Collective, 11.31am September 18

http://www.burtonsys.com/
I didn’t know this obscure little software salesman was a pre-eminent Nobel Laureate with a whole new branch of science that falsifies well over a century’s worth of basic physics ranging from the second law of thermodynamics to quantum mechanics. Thank you for that, no wait…

Here are his sources:

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/01/03/lawrence-solomon-97-cooked-stats/
http://climatequotes.com/2011/02/10/study-claiming-97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-flawed/
http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.3684
http://sppiblog.org/news/the-97-consensus-is-only-75-self-selected-climatologists
http://sppiblog.org/news/climate-%E2%80%9Cconsensus%E2%80%9D-opiate-the-97-solution
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/17/that-scientific-global-warming-consensus-not
http://www.examiner.com/article/global-warming-s-stephen-schneider-the-light-that-failed
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/expert-embarrassment-in-climate-change/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/04/weather-channel-and-weather-com-the-survey-says…/ (or here)
http://www.energytribune.com/9995/ninety-seven-percent-is-not-what-you-think
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/about-that-overwhelming-98-number-of-scientists-consensus
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/new-black-list.html
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/anderegg-et-al-revisited/
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/comments-on-the-pnas-article-expert-credibility-in-climate-change-by-anderegg-et-al-2010/
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2012/05/04/climate-change-weekly-new-york-times-misrepresents-global-warming-surve

All either prattling tinfoil hatters, or shills of Charles Koch. Well at least we know beyond any shadow of a doubt why you are so…obnoxiously obtrusive now. I’ve logged all your wonderful conspiracy sites for future reference 😉

@ Nothing Could Be Finer, 12.14pm September 18

Nice link. Charles Koch has made quite a tangled web…
And obviously prefers his own personal profit to the future of the people living on North Carolina’s coastline.

So you note hes not a Nobel and quote his sources, I missed the part in which you showed the claim as false but I have no doubt you’re judgment that they are “conspiracy theorists” is all you need to keep you’re beliefs and ban every car on earth..

Good reasoning..uh..

http://heartland.org/press-releases/global-warming-and-sea-level-another-false-alarm

Dissident 12:43pm
A coastline is nothing compared with Alberta tar sands.
The brothers Koch offer some proof that the saying ‘Money can’t buy you happiness’ is right.

I thought that everyone knew about the Koch, Exxon Mobil links with Heartland.

@ Nothing Could Be Finer, 1.40 & 2.03pm September 18

It does seem strange that the Collective is ignorant of such an obvious link 😉

As for turning Asphalt into fuel, agreed it is a dodgy move. It’s as if Charles Loch has to scrape the bottom of the barrel, both for his business and in terms of his cheerleaders 😉

*koch

Passed House Bill 819, which restricts the ability of state agencies to accurately forecast and prepare for sea level rise. As a result, developers can continue to profit from building in vulnerable, low-lying coastal areas free of additional regulations that would apply if the state accounted for higher seas.
—

Sounds sensible to stop bureaucrats and warmists making wild predictions of which there is no consensus and impacting the real world we live in.

As for the tar sands they suck yet you are as responsible for it as any other human on earth, no matter how much you want to blame one man.

MIT Professor: Global Warming is a ‘Religion’

http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/29/mit-professor-global-warming-is-a-religion/

Ouch..

Here we see the problem that people like ‘Leo’ and the other environmental campaigners have trying to ‘convince’ the Right wing scum about Climate Change. There is a fundamental flaw in their strategy. They start of with the mistaken belief that these people are essentially decent, but misguided individuals. This debate has nothing to do with the science, because these fuckswits do not care about the science, they are only interested in the implications of the science. It was the same for the theory of the centre of our solar system being the sun, half a millennia ago and Darwin just over a Centaury ago as well. No-one in the church ever had evidence of the Sun going round the Earth, but they did understand the power of the idea; it was the truth they wanted to suppress, they didn’t want the actual sun to go around the actual Earth, they just wanted people to keep believing the Sun went round the Earth so the church could hold the power.

Reiterating the science will be as effective as it was in Darwin’s time because these cunts (as their religious fanatic forefathers did before them) just make up their own ‘facts’ to counterbalance peer reviewed, observed science. We can talk about any aspect of the science from the structure of carbon dioxide molecules right up to the wavelengths of light and everything in-between and these cunts would still reject it. In fact if we could stop the whole universe, create some kind of Star Trek craft, fill any number of Tories, Americans and other half wits, shrink it to the size of an electron and show them each and every CO2 molecule released by human activity and the surplus energy radiated from it, you could take them fast forward in time and show them the devastation caused and the vast majority of the Tory cunts would still reject it.

Look at the anti science posters on this board, who turn up at every turn. These people are more than capable of reading and understanding the ‘science’. Well meaning people here post up links with extracts for the usual Right Wingers to read, but the Right Wingers are just as capable of finding these links. Does anyone here think that people like Pagar, CJ and the rest of the Tories/Libertarians that pollute this board are incapable of using Google? No these people know and understand the science at least as well as we do, but the they happen to hate the poor more than the rest of us.

That is the problem, there are not interested in the science, because the science goes against their ideology and they will sacrifice every street, village and every city to preserve both their power, wealth and ideology that goes with it. These people are scum. Well spoken, well dressed and polite to a fault, but every inch as much scum as your average track suited, staffie owning selfish little scumbag on a council estate. The difference being that chav is destroying his housing estate/town through ignorance, but the Tory is intent on ruining the whole planet in the belief he will be all right.

@ Jim, 5.12pm September 18

Agreed. Feckless, amoral, mindlessly authoritarian right wingers who are ideologically (ie religiously) hogtied to the current crop of billionaire bribe masters are a dangerous problem worldwide. Their comments above are symptoms of their perversity. Throughout history they have attacked knowledge and especially science, unless it is turned into a WMD to keep feeding their addiction to power over the rest of us, hence nukes…

The lefist see any criticism or doubt of their religion as a case of ideology, very telling. The more the falsehood falls to bits the more aggressive you become.

More on the North Carolina, Koch and Dave seascape.
Number of recorded storms affecting North Carolina
pre-1700 9
18th-century 22
1800–1809 4
1810s 3
1820s 8
1830s 10
1840s 7
1850s 12
1860s 8
1870s 12
1880s 23
1890s 21
1900–1909 14
1910s 17
1920s 12
1930s 15
1940s 17
1950s 24
1960s 23
1970s 32
1980s 32
1990s 36
2000–2008 39

Advisor to NC-20 (the group who were instrumental in House Bill 819*) is John Droz Jr., a former real estate developer, who masterminded a confidential nationwide strategy to undermine public support for wind power. See: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2012/may/09/wind-power-memo
* Restricting state and local governments to using only select historical data to predict sea level rise when considering planning applications for land use.
A bit like putting a groundsman for a golf club in charge of interstate natural disaster co-ordination.

How we can convince Britons about climate change? By telling them the Arctic ice cap grew by 60% in a year, party is over.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/18/arctic-sea-ice-shrinks-record-low

“and ban every car on earth…”

– I missed that contention, who mentioned *anything* about banning every car on earth?

There was in post @77 some scathing observation of some of the social costs to cars, and you did later trail some anti-car rants which did not happend. No one proposed banning any number of cars, let alone all of them.

I just need to clear up something on the straw huts front, since you did cite them as a example of mediaeval and backward life. Would you like thatched roofs to be banned globally?

Sea ice recovers from record low of 2012 but long-term trend continues towards an ice-free Arctic during the summer months.
–

The long term trends continues because they decided so, instead of waiting to see? Ah…

This suggests the Arctic will be entirely ice-free..suggests, well that’s a definite thing…

There are scientists who are truly interested in the climate and do research in good faith, then there are drifters like jim and dissident who latch on to climate change as a vehicle to express their freedom & wealth hate, it comes through in most of their postings, the hall mark of the left control, restriction, spending other peoples money and causing poverty.

Backed by politicians designing policy on these issues whilst being educated in no more than history and so fanatical about the issue they declare what they are doing is right even if the science false (not about the science, is it now)they have done well with taking mankind for a mug.

Its going to be an experience watching you come apart as increasingly your computer models in no way reflect the world around us and people don’t let it slide anymore because you’re fussy hearted liberals who are at least trying to do a good thing.

An interactive Arctic Sea Ice Graph from 1979 onwards. Click on year to show line.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Mind you, it’s all data and NASA satellites and scientists so, you can’t trust them

About greenhouse gases and cows:

“When cows digest food, fermentation results in a large amount of methane; cattle produce 250 to 500 litres (and by some accounts, up to 1,000 litres) of the gas per day.”
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-cows

There are an estimated 2 million dairy cows in Britain – which means a awful lot of methane is being produced. If we are really serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions to stop global warming, the cows have to go. It’s a low dairy products diet for the future.

@Bob B #205:

About greenhouse gases and cows:

“When cows digest food, fermentation results in a large amount of methane; cattle produce 250 to 500 litres (and by some accounts, up to 1,000 litres) of the gas per day.”
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-cows

There are an estimated 2 million dairy cows in Britain – which means a awful lot of methane is being produced. If we are really serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions to stop global warming, the cows have to go. It’s a low dairy products diet for the future.

There are approximately 25% fewer cows in the UK than in the mid-90s; so the cows are going. Do you know what the residence time in the atmosphere is of CH4?

@ the Collective, 5.39 & 8.36pm September 18

“The lefist see any criticism or doubt of their religion as a case of ideology, very telling. The more the falsehood falls to bits the more aggressive you become.”

Delightful display of your lack of self awareness, read your comments throughout this thread and others you have made elsewhere, then ask yourself who precisely is the one tripping out on such cognitive dissonance 😀

“There are scientists who are truly interested in the climate and do research in good faith, then there are drifters like jim and dissident who latch on to climate change as a vehicle to express their freedom & wealth hate, it comes through in most of their postings, the hall mark of the left control, restriction, spending other peoples money and causing poverty.”

You mean the very scientists you attack the most, and then you tack on an absurdly puerile attempt at attacking others when they point out to you what is discovered by such scientists in the real world. Then you display convincing evidence of your brainwashing courtesy of the brothers Koch, faux News, their network of bought shills and (no doubt) rabid shock jocks like Limbaugh 😀

Sorry everyone else, the troll is so entertaining I cannot resist feeding it…

@Ceiliog #204:

An interactive Arctic Sea Ice Graph from 1979 onwards. Click on year to show line.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Mind you, it’s all data and NASA satellites and scientists so, you can’t trust them

But that just proves it (for Collective); this year’s summer ice minimum (which we may now have reached) isn’t a new record; it’s only the sixth lowest on record (albeit lower than any year before 2007), so it must be getting warmer…

Meteorologist Hans von Storch: ‘If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models,’ Storch told Der Spiegel. ‘A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.’

Its rather telling if you put past data into you’re models they don’t accurately produce the weather that’s actually taken place…you have data from 1979 onwards, putting the fact aside that I have not denied they have decreased in size over that period its laughable you put aside how small that sample of time is. They increase 60% on last year and could increase 400% next year and you will still call a person pointing it out a conspiracy theorist instead of being optimistic about the future.

You’re models & predictions are wrong deal with it, perhaps if you had produced accurate models, respected society’s intelligence instead of trying to fear monger them into you’re cause, and produced solutions as opposed to using it as a means for control and taxation, you would have had a chance of pulling this off on the back of natural variations.

Lets take a look at the state of affairs this time next year shall we.

@ the Collective, 9.23am September 19

http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-906721.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer=https://www.google.co.uk/

Did you read it at all? Or use an app to scan it until it found something that sort of fits your Koch manufactured conspiracist ideation? All he really says is there is a gap in the modelling based upon an underestimate of how much heat is going into the worlds oceans. (At the moment it is the equivalent of an additional 4 Hiroshima’s worth of heat every second, which is quite a lot) While at the same time acknowledging the reality that AGW is happening, just unsure as to how much. He even talks about the necessity of building dikes to protect coastal cities and the damage extra CO2 in the worlds oceans will cause to oceanic food chains.

You however conflate that minor modelling upgrade and a query about exactly how much AGW we will face into AGW is a scam. Once more you show exactly how brainwashed you are…

You call acknowledging that the models and data an entire science, endless global policy’s and trillions of dollars have been spent on are fundamentally wrong and changing them a minor modelling upgrade?? You are a Lunatic:D thank you!!!

Did you read it at all? Or use an app to scan it until it found something that sort of fits your Koch manufactured conspiracist ideation?
—

This crap is getting boring by the way, if you cant face the facts then that’s fine, however he said it, you can not undo that.

SPIEGEL: Just since the turn of the millennium, humanity has emitted another 400 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet temperatures haven’t risen in nearly 15 years. What can explain this?

Storch: So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.

@ the Collective, 10.56am September 19

The extra heat is warming the oceans and melting ice. Simples. He even telly us so in the interview. Did Koch and Murdoch tell you to wear a blindfold before they hogtied you ideologically? Oh and which one used you first?

@Collective #209:

Can I ask your view of a couple of other comments by von Storch in the interview to which you refer?

We still have compelling evidence of a man-made greenhouse effect. There is very little doubt about it.

Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you.

206: “Do you know what the residence time in the atmosphere is of CH4?”

No, but I’m impressed by this analysis:

Methane, a byproduct of natural gas drilling and of rice cultivation, is 20 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This means that bang-for-the-buck in methane regulation is much better than in carbon regulation. This recent lecture by James Hansen of NASA, the leading academic on the left of the global warming debate, notes methane regulation has more short-term potential to slow climate change than does carbon regulation.
http://blogs.reuters.com/gregg-easterbrook/2011/05/19/why-we-should-focus-on-methane-not-carbon-dioxide/

It still looks like it’s curtains for cows.

@Collective #211:

Try a read of this:

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044035/article

Abstract reads:

We analyse global temperature and sea-level data for the past few decades and compare them to projections published in the third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The results show that global temperature continues to increase in good agreement with the best estimates of the IPCC, especially if we account for the effects of short-term variability due to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation, volcanic activity and solar variability. The rate of sea-level rise of the past few decades, on the other hand, is greater than projected by the IPCC models. This suggests that IPCC sea-level projections for the future may also be biased low.

@Bob B #214:

Do you appreciate the relevance of the atmospheric residence time for CH4 as opposed to CO2?

216: “Do you appreciate the relevance of the atmospheric residence time for CH4 as opposed to CO2?”

Of course not, I’m relying on the expert environmental opinions I read on the internet saying that CH4 (Methane) is more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 (Carbon Dioxide). Is that assessment incorrect? If so . . . ?

The extra heat is warming the oceans and melting ice. Simples
—

This is ridiculous, when faced with an inconvenient truth you go from you’re science talk to “its happening anyway, simples”

Cause and effect does not take a break, you either got the cause and effect wrong or there is another cause and effect influencing the outcome which you are not aware of. In science when the models and predictions created from them do not reflect real world results we acknowledge that the conclusions we created using them are false, in the church of climate science you say “reality is taking a break”

So here we have it, no scientist has been able to provide a compelling answer to why warming has stopped even though CO2 emissions have risen more than the amount they suspected and used for their research to make those predictions in the first place.

There are three conceivable explanations one of which “science” refuses to even acknowledge:

> They are completely wrong.

> Greenhouse gases have less of an effect than they thought.

> They have underestimated how much the climate fluctuates due to natural causes, which could be the entire cause of all temperature changes end of. And in the face of this he tells us we are still going to experience significant warming because that’s what his INSTINCT tells him, since he does not know exactly how emission levels will develop, yet he cant explain why today’s emission levels are not causing the result they should for man made global warming to be true in the first place.

I have already said climate change is treated in a very unprofessional way, and you were dull enough to ask why?? I am done with this circus, no matter how inconsistent, wrong or unrealistic the “facts” and explanations given are, as long as a scientists says its true, even if its just on “instinct” at the end of the article, you are still prepared to believe 100%. That’s because its an ideology for you rather like religion.

When it does come out that it was no more than natural causes im sure there will be no consequence for any of those who pushed it but at least we can leave the green madness behind and focus on technology’s that work and make the world a better place.

‘Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph’
The animated ‘escalator’ graphs showing how skeptics and how realists view the data are interesting.
The skeptics (and proof comes from what they publish or post in the media) take data in 5 year bits and work out the mean average. That way, the temperature always looks level.
—–
—–
—–
Of course, to the skeptics, last year’s low Arctic ice cover was weather.
This year’s increased ice cover from last year, to the skeptics, is climate.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/09/climate-change-arctic-sea-ice-delusions

@Bob B #217:

“Do you appreciate the relevance of the atmospheric residence time for CH4 as opposed to CO2?”

Of course not, I’m relying on the expert environmental opinions I read on the internet saying that CH4 (Methane) is more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 (Carbon Dioxide). Is that assessment incorrect? If so . . . ?

I’m not sure why you say “of course…”; I’m not a scientist, but understand the point.

CH4 is indeed a very potent GHG, more so molecule for molecule than CO2 – although its overall effect is a fraction of that of CO2, because there’s so much less of it in the atmosphere (c1.8ppm as against 400ppm).

You must distinguish between production – how much of a gas we are putting into the atmosphere annually – and concentration – how much gas is present in the atmospeher at the given time.

CH4’s residence time in the atmosphere is 8-10 years. This means that the CH4 produced in the last century has gone – degraded into CO2 (but since CH4 concentration is so low, this isn’t a significant source of CO2) or absorbed into soil.

The effect of this is that to increase CH4 concentrations we have to keep increasing CH4 production. If production stays static, very quickly CH4 concentration 9and hence its greenhouse effect) reaches steady state. That’s why reducing CH4 is effective short-term – because if you stop producing it you have an almost immediate cooling effect.

On the other hand the residence time for CO2 is measured in centuries. This means that Victorian CO2 is still around. To reduce CO2 concentrations significantly over a short timescale, therefore, we need actively to start removing it from the atmosphere. It also means that as time goes on and CO2 concentrations increase, CH4 becomes relatively less significant – and even total removal of CH4 from the atmosphere will be counteracted in a relatively short timescale.

@Collective #218:

<blockquote.So here we have it, no scientist has been able to provide a compelling answer to why warming has stopped

You haven’t read the article I cited, then? In a word – ENSO.

(Oh – and warming hasn’t stopped, it’s slowed).

Erratum to #221:

“Oh – and the increase in global average surface air temperature hasn’t stopped, it’s slowed).”

@ the Collective

“II have already said climate change is treated in a very unprofessional way, and you were dull enough to ask why?? I am done with this circus, ”

Yes, we know – all of you in the Collective are indeed been unprofessional. Misrepresenting, misinforming, mistaking the echo chamber of denial for reality. Frankly, I am wondering whether you lot are the circus clowns…

“When it does come out that it was no more than natural causes im sure there will be no consequence for any of those who pushed it but at least we can leave the green madness behind and focus on technology’s that work and make the world a better place.”

I have given you a few challenges already, now for the latest one. Provide us with the links to scientific papers proving its entirely natural causes. Is it the milankovich cycle? Is the sun warming up? Are there more or less cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere? Are volcanoes burping astronomically large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere?

Or are these natural variations something so subtle that we haven’t discovered them at all, even though we can discover particles like neutrinos, which interact with matter so weakly that they can pass largely unimpeded through a wall of lead billions of light years thick. Oh and by the way, if those natural variations are that subtle you are really painting yourself into the corner, because if effects so subtle they’re undiscovered can cause big changes to the earth’s climate, kindly explain how our civilisation wouldn’t.

Denial for reality. Unprofessional.
—

Humanity has emitted another 400 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet temperatures haven’t risen in nearly 15 years.

So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why ~ Yes, we are certainly going to see an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or more — and by the end of this century, mind you. That’s what my instinct tells me.

I Could go into you’re other accusations but its clear they were said to reinforce you’re state of mind and the above is more than enough. If you however fail to see both unprofessionalism and denial of reality when its claimed with certainty temperatures will rise based on models that moments before were admitted as flawed faulty and incorrect then that’s you’re call.

Provide us with the links to scientific papers proving its entirely natural causes.
—

Not my job or my concern, all I need do is point out increased CO2 emissions have not increased temperatures even though the level of emissions have been greater than that used to model the failed predictions. I expect from any science worthy of the name a clear admission they have been wrong followed by an investigation as to why, what I do not expect is to hear reality has taken a break and my gut tells me I am right anyway Especially upon issues that shape the world so much in terms of government policy and have an impact on every one us.

This amounts to you saying yea the core truth of the science has been proven wrong but you can not prove its due to natural variation either LOL maybe you need a bit of education about the weather for the last several billion years and its causes, some think god made the earth in 7 days, others think the weather is entirely of mankind and started in 1980.

“The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that, if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it, we wouldn’t have noticed it at all”

So, there you have it. NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4 are wrong and denialist instinct is right. Google them and laugh at the real data and graphs.

So, there you have it. NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4 are wrong and denialist instinct is right. Google them and laugh at the real data and graphs.
—-

Finally lost it?>

Humanity has emitted another 400 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet temperatures haven’t risen in nearly 15 years.

SO FAR NO ONE HAS BEEN ABLE TO PROVIDE A COMPELLING ANSWER TO WHY.

Does the above mean the CO2 theory and its predictions are perfectly in check? Is he a denialist to? Fuck it argue with you’re self hahaha.

For those who don’t understand surface temperature anomaly graphs and think that a dip in the line indicates a lower reading.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php

@ the Collective, 4.36pm September 19

“SO FAR NO ONE HAS BEEN ABLE TO PROVIDE A COMPELLING ANSWER TO WHY.”

First reaction, you’ve forgotten I asked you when you’d start using block capitals. It looks like you are shouting text wise…

Second reaction, do you also remember me mentioning “heat sink” in terms of the worlds oceans, where the overwhelming majority (over 90%) of extra heat trapped by CO2 is going? Here is another link to it. Do keep up.

http://www.icsusa.org/pages/articles/2012-icsusa-articles/april-2012—earthrsquos-oceans-a-heat-sink-for-energy.php#.UjsjIaa9LCQ
As I have already told you, it adds up to about 4 Hiroshima’s worth of extra heat energy been absorbed by the worlds oceans.

At least try to read it, I know it’s not on The Approved List of sources of information courtesy of Koch & Murdock, but surely you can at least have a sneaky peek. Who knows, you may even find the courage then to take off that tinfoil hat emblazoned with the Exxon & faux News logos….

Btw, do you need to know what a heat sink is at all? I know it’s a sciency/technical thing, so maybe you are scared of it.

Collective.

ENSO. Google it – hell, even read the paper I’ve referred you to.

Oh, and Collective – learn the difference between “heat” and “temperature”.

Robin Levett and Dissident
The circle-jerk collective are apologists for a convicted criminal and his mate so, don’t expect sense.

@ Greta, 6.07pm September 19

Sense is the last thing I expect from the Collective. As I’ve already stated, trollbaiting is fun. The fact that other readers learn more along the way is a more positive outcome… Btw I wonder which other persona in the Collective would get a turn at -ahem- dribbling on this site?

LOL its not enough to provide evidence to counter my points, you have to accuse me of being an apologists for a convicted criminal and constantly tag up on me like a cult hahaha.

If your evidence was factual it would do the talking and you would be secure enough in your position not to have to, instead you act like you’re in a playground…

Lets see..a load of none scientist ranging from minimal life experience young activists to those who like to feel superior on the side have the answers, even when the science organizations they treat like god are scratching their chins..give them a call, you may get a prize!!

5 years chaps, I know you wont be secure enough to wait and you must keep arguing the point but..ah well.

Top climate scientists will blame mankind more clearly than ever for global warming next week but may struggle to drive home the message in a report that uses the term “uncertainty” 42 times.

Good luck.

In 2012 renewable energy producers “cashed in an estimated €20 billion for electricity worth a mere €3 billion.

If, as seems likely, the European Commission strikes down Germany’s subsidized electricity rates, German businesses will be hit hard. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has acknowledged that subsidies will have to be cut. Sharply higher electricity costs could accelerate the de?industrialization of Germany, knocking Europe’s strongest economy into a depression.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimpowell/2013/09/19/how-europes-economy-is-being-devastated-by-global-warming-orthodoxy/

Ah, an author who is not a scientist. An author from the Hayek and Friedman School of Economic Bullshit, Chicago.

@ Greta, 10.54 September 19

“Ah, an author who is not a scientist. An author from the Hayek and Friedman School of Economic Bullshit, Chicago.”

Is that the ‘school’ responsible for neoliberalist zealots who really are causing mass starvation and impoverishment worldwide? Or is it part of a network favoured by billionaire bribe masters for that purpose?

So even common facts about the price of electric due to you’re renewable energy bullshit are to much for you to take on board now without trying to link the author to a global mass starvation conspiracy?

In 2012 renewable energy producers “cashed in an estimated €20 billion for electricity worth a mere €3 billion.

Well done lads! Progress!

Circle Jerk
€20 billion ‘cashed in’? Construction, investment and research is not cashing in.
That’s the way it goes with new plants. A new electricity generator does not pay for itself in one year.
The same goes for research into better and cheaper ways of producing energy. See:http://www.nature.com/news/renewable-power-germany-s-energy-gamble-1.12755

So far, Circle Jerk, you have widened readers’ knowledge by linking even more astroturf organisations funded by Koch – Keep it up. Not sure about your links the spiv’s magazines though.

@ Greta, 10.12am September 20

Agreed. Lets do some remedial maths for the Collective aka ob.

Initial capital investment: €20bn
Value of electricity generated per anum: €3bn
Designed lifetime of wind turbines: 20 years
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1137944/taking-turbines-beyond-design-lives

Total value of electricity generated: €3bn x 20 = €60bn
Take out the initial capital investment, you are left with a cool €40bn

Obviously it is more complex than that, interest payments and electricity price are the variables. To say nothing of the fact that 20 years is, as the above article implies, the minimum design lifetime. Yet it hardly looks like the Collective’s obtuse misrepresentation does it?

240. Dissident & 239. Greta

Well done for staying in there on the debate. But, I query whether persuading Collective / ob is necessary to get sufficient action on climate change.

The fact is insurers are now building climate change into their business models, that we now have some of Cameron’s biggest donors openly criticising Osborne for his foolish handling of energy policy.

I suppose there is a need to show other readers the idiocy and inconsistency of persistent denier thinking. I think that is really apparent now.

@ David Hodd, 8.49pm September 20

Agreed. It’s fun though, denialists – especially obtuse ones like the Collective are easy to debunk 😉

@ Collective, you posted on another OP about politicisation of climate change…

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrickson/2013/09/20/the-palpable-politicization-of-science-by-global-warming-alarmists/

Ironic, as it is the fossil fuel industry via conservative freemarketeering think tanks that politicised it in the first place! Here are links to the first two that disseminated doubt about the science itself. They have been guilty of peddling doubt about other things like the hole in the ozone layer, DDT, acid rain, second hand smoke from cigarettes, and other things.

http://www.marshall.org/
This one was initially set up during the Cold War to promote Ronald Reagan’s dubious Star Wars concept, and after the Cold War ended found itself effectively out of a job. So it touted itself to various corporations (for example Exxon) as a PR smokescreen that wouldn’t be directly linked to them.

And a link to a now defunct think tank that did the same…
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/The_Advancement_of_Sound_Science_Coalition

“As one tobacco company memo noted: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the “body of fact” that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” As the 1990s progressed … TASSC began receiving donations from Exxon (among other oil companies) and its “junk science” website began to carry material attacking climate change science.”
—Clive Hamilton, Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change

http://www.UKpollingreport.co.uk have just reported the following views on climate change in a YouGov / Sunday Times poll:

56% of people think that the world’s climate is changing as a result of human activity, 23% think that the climate is changing, but not because of human activity, 7% think it is not changing at all. This is a marginally higher level of public believe in man-made climate change than the last couple of times we’ve asked, but realistically it isn’t something that changes massively from month to month. 39% think that the risk of climate change has been exaggerated, 47% think it is every bit as real as scientists have said.

http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/4ua4utkfr8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-200913.pdf