Climate Change

[nevada smith]

yomper, may i paraphrase...
(correct me if i’m wrong)
“...while it seems to me that all these issues are important and worthy of debate, none of them have much to do with whether global warming is a result of mankind’s activity...”
as i stated in the opening paragraph of my position -
global warming is a non-issue for me -
polarized arguments over “it is” or “it isn’t” are never resolved -
(it gets everyone arguing ‘off the subject’)

“...4 billion dollars a year could be better spent working on the problems you enumerate...”
my interest lies not in speculation but in
“doing something” about something that i know is a problem -
for example, 12 issues compiled from a mountain of books
over a mountain of time - issues not debatable for me...

[yomper]

global warming is a non-issue for me -
polarized arguments over “it is” or “it isn’t” are never resolved -
(it gets everyone arguing ‘off the subject’)

Nonetheless it is the subject of the thread. I would hope that the information rather than the argument would inform the opinion of the open minded.

my interest lies not in speculation but in
“doing something” about something that i know is a problem -
for example, 12 issues compiled from a mountain of books
over a mountain of time - issues not debatable for me...

Not debatable in what sense? If they are not up for discussion why raise them? In a thread about climate change?

In any case my aim in this thread has been to "do something". Which is to present some demonstrable scientific evidence which runs counter to the prevailing propoganda concerning the culpability of plant food gas in the minor temperature anomaly we are currently experiencing.

[nevada smith]

no yompers,

global warming was not the issue of this thread
grouser made an observation under the title ‘climate change’,
he made a comment...
subsequent comments took ‘either / or’ positions
i took a third...

if you want it to be a debate about ‘either / or’ so it is -
if i want to discuss another facet so i may
(i said ‘in context’ that these issues are not debatable for me -
i.e. they are what i ‘do’... ) anything i say is up for discussion
or debate... or questioning

you and johnp made some statements
i chose to question them... you both chose not to answer
it doesn’t give much credence to what you say
or what you google...

[yomper]

it doesn’t give much credence to what you say
or what you google...

Ah so it's just an ad hominem attack then. OK.

It's a common tactic of debate from people who have no answer to the science; attempt to rubbish the reputation of the opposition.

I'll have a go at replying in kind then.

If you really are of the opinion that a single line on a side issue in one of my posts not being expanded on or replied to in a manner satisfactory to you destroys the credibility of everything I have put forward in relation to the main thrust of the debate in this thread then I think your capacity for critical appraisal is suspect. However I think it's more likely you are just being disingenuous.

The subtext would appear to be that you believe that because we have the 12 issues you enumerate, that justifies a draconian anti progressive policy backed by an unscientific unproven theory being foisted on the public as a means of throttling the activities of a too large human population without further debate in te name of the Precautionary Principle.

As Patrick Moore, the co-founder and ex director of Greenpeace said on the channel 4 program, the "religion" of Man Made Global Warming is "anti human".

Religion's fervent supporters don't like debate or having the tenets of their faith debated or subjected to critical analysis. Neither it would appear do you. You should climb on top of your mountain of books, acquaint yourelf with the available scientific facts and get a wider perspective IMO.

anything i say is up for discussion
or debate... or questioning

Prove what I've said in my reprisal ad hominem attack above wrong and tell me what the 12 issues have to do with climate change then.

[nevada smith]

evidently, you simply can't read.

[yomper]

Whatever.

Edit to add. OK I've re-read some of the thread I weasn't around for and found the post where you confirm that your 12 issues don't relate to the climate change debate. Is the thrust of your view that we shouldn't waste time debating the causes of climate chage because the govt will simply do whatever they like anyway? I don't want to get into a ruck with anyone here, so please take the trouble to explain your views in a less elliptical and ambiguous way.

[costapacket]

Forgive me if this site has already been mentioned. (I haven't read through the whole thread) I did mention it to my brother who is an environmental scientist. He suggested that you might find the following website interesting.

www.ipcc.com
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been established by WMO and UNEP to assess scientific, technical and socio- economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. It is currently finalizing its Fourth Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007". The reports by the three Working Groups provide a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the current state of knowledge on climate change. The Synthesis Report integrates the information around six topic areas.

[yomper]

Thanks costapacket, the IPCC (Internanational Peddlars of Carbon Cockamaney) rely heavily on computer models for their climate predictions and have come in for some criticism for their conviction that rising CO2 levels are a major cause of global warming rather than an effect, as the ice core studies show.

[nevada smith]

yomper wrote:
It’s a common tactic of debate from people who have no answer to the science; attempt to rubbish the reputation of the opposition.
costapack wrote:
...The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)...
and yomper wrote:
Thanks costapacket, the IPCC (Internantional (sic) Peddlars (sic) of Carbon Cockamaney (sic))...

just a passing observation...

[yomper]

Sorry Nevadas, evidently you simply don't understand irony or humour. The stakes have just got higher and I'm not interested in sparring with your jibes anymore.

More from Melanie Phillips:

The ‘post-normal’ science of climate change

Posted By Melanie On March 14, 2007 @ 1:01 pm In Diary

From the horse’s mouth — climate change theory has nothing to do with the truth. In a remarkable column in today’s Guardian Mike Hulme, professor in the school of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia and the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research — a key figure in the promulgation of climate change theory but who a short while ago warned that exaggerated forecasts of global apocalypse were in danger of destroying the case altogether — writes that scientific truth is the wrong tool to establish the, er, truth of global warming. Instead, we need a perspective of what he calls ‘post-normal’ science:

Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken. It has been labelled ‘post-normal’ science…The danger of a ‘normal’ reading of science is that it assumes science can first find truth, then speak truth to power, and that truth-based policy will then follow.

Indeed! Facts first, conclusions afterwards is the very basis of scientific inquiry. But not any more, it seems, where the religion of global warming is concerned. Here the facts have to fit the theory. Hulme goes on:

Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.

What an admission! Let’s read that one again. Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking. Of course not. The facts don’t support it. It’s not true. So, says Hulme, let’s abolish the need to establish the facts and the truth and impose the theory on the basis of — what’s that again — ‘values and beliefs’. In other words, climate change science has got to be anti-science. It’s got to be anti-truth. It’s got to be nothing more than an ideology.

Post-modernism long ago deconstructed truth. Now in similar vein, ‘post-normal’ science deconstructs scientific empiricism and rationalism and detaches science from truth. In other words, where science fails to support an ideology, the absolute and overriding imperative of putting that ideology into practice means that science has to suspend its very essence as a truth-seeking activity and instead perpetrate lies. That is the inescapable implication of Hulme’s position. To support the bogus claim that we face the imminent collapse of civilisation from global warming, science itself has to be reconceptualised as an instrument of propaganda and justified by mendacious and obfuscatory post-modernist jargon. Hulme concludes:

Climate change is too important to be left to scientists - least of all the normal ones.

So the true battleground has now been illuminated for us. The real fight is between scientists who believe in empirical observation and the truth, and ‘post-normal’ scientists who believe in ideology and lies. It’s a battle between Enlightenment values of rationality and those who wish to return us to a pre-rational era where thought was controlled and truth was a heresy. The stakes could not have been delineated more clearly.

[Valencia_Paul]

With respect Yomper, you are acting like a blind man who has stumbled into the wrong shop. This is Andalucia.com - there must be another forum that is more appropriate to the subject matter where you could debate global warming theories and conspiracies etc.

You haven't convinced me either way - I don't know what to believe but nothing you can say or quote here will change that.

[yomper]

Hi Paul,
Try re-reading page 1 of the thread. Several people asked me for my input. Here it is. When they ask me to stop as you have, I will.

I came to the site when I was about to put a deposit on a house in Andalucia. Things have changed, though only in timescale. This thread is about climate change and the evidence for it's causes, I believe I'm still on topic. I don't try to convince people by force of argument, but by presenting facts and information which may help resolve uncertainty. It would be great if someone on the other side of the debate would too. Rather than sniping at the messenger.

[Valencia_Paul]

Fair comments Yomper - I'm not asking you to stop.

[nevada smith]

yomper wrote:
“This thread is about climate change and the evidence for it’s causes... “
no, yomper, your part of the thread may be about that, but
there are also parts that don’t agree, don’t know, don’t care and
those that present a totally different point of view -
there is no debate here, no discussion, at best, it is just a ball of thread
unwinding in a string of words...
it’s very simple, yomper, you made a statement, i questioned it and
since you couldn’t google up a chart or a journalist’s quote -
you couldn’t answer it...
snipe at the messenger?
you the messenger?

[yomper]

I have noticed that the grapes grown on a pergola in our garden in the UK have developed a higher sugar content as the years pass. They were originally inedible but are now quite passable.
A programme last night had an interview with a farmer in Devon who, in anticipation of climate change, has planted Olives and Almonds. His olive trees are already producing ripe black olives three years ahead of the expected time. Apparently Olives need a long growing period and a cold spell to thrive. This will presumably mean that Olives in Andalusia will have to move further and further up the mountains till they disappear off the top, the avocados chasing them and coconut palms flourishing on the bits of the coast that are still left above sea level.
Blackpool will of course become the Costa del Sol.

Well grouser, I'd say that the Devon farmer should grow olives while the sun shines, he's got about 10 years to enjoy them ripening if the people who say that climate change is nearly all down to the Sun and the cyclic variations of the earths motion round it are correct. The indications are that the 'solar conveyor' which excites more irradiance and erruptivity which has been very active in the latter part of the C20th is due to slow right down after 2012 and a deep minimum centred around 2030 is going to produce a number of very cold winters. They're basis for this forecast rests on a well understood and mathatically rigourous understanding of changes in the Suns angular momentum and spin due to the gravitational effects of the three gas giant planets Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune, unlike the dubious parameter assumptions made by the computer modellers who postulate runaway feedback loops in the natural carbon cycle caused by mankinds increased contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide, which amounts to approximateley 13 parts per million of the atmosphere.

During the mediaeval warm period when the Vikings called 'Greenland' 'Vineland', life was good in Britain and Vines were ripening grapes as far north as Newcastle on Hadrians wall.

Happy times compared to the 'little ice age' in the late 1600's when people held ice fairs on the Thames and tiny Tim suffered bronchitis and hypothermia in his poor parents home. Predicitions based on analysis of solar orbital rotary force indicate the forthcoming minimum in activity could be as deep as the 'Maunder minimum' of the late 1600's.

[yomper]

http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf