Global warming and "convenience"

moonrakerz

Several dozen posts ago I said I "wasn't going to get involved in an argument" - well I still am not, but I feel I must make one more comment having read some of the drivel and untruths posted since my last missive.

The reason I gave was that I thought it was impossible to hold a reasoned discussion with the "Man Made Global Warming Zealots".
I made the point that some 30-40 years ago we were all being warned of an impending ice age. Several people on this thread have since said that this is/was not so - this is absolutely typical of the tactics used to prove their very shaky argument.
Many people warned about this impending menace and for present day Zealots to say that this was not so - I am afraid is not just ignorance (in the true sense) but perhaps worse, is just blatant lying to support their theories.
If it supported their theories to say that the sun rose in the West - then the sun will rise in the West, say it often enough and some people will believe it !

Have a nice weekend !
.

magyar

moonrakerz wrote: »

I made the point that some 30-40 years ago we were all being warned of an impending ice age. Several people on this thread have since said that this is/was not so - this is absolutely typical of the tactics used to prove their very shaky argument.

No, it's typical of someone who is telling the truth.

Here's the post I've had to make on many, many occasions proving this point.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=7549001&postcount=39

moonrakerz

magyar wrote: »

No, it's typical of someone who is telling the truth.

Here's the post I've had to make on many, many occasions proving this point.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=7549001&postcount=39

Quote from one of the sites you link to:

"It is true that there were some predictions of an "imminent ice age" in the 1970s,"

I am not saying that these predictions were correct any more than I am saying that today's predictions are correct.
I am just saying that they were being made - for you (and others) to flatly deny this fact - then post a link to a "green" site confirming my statement hardly gives your cause much credibility !

cepheus

geordie_joe wrote: »

Read the quote again, it says any global temperature data more than 150 years old is an estimate, a reconstruction based on second-hand evidence. It then says "The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair amount of guesswork.".

But then goes on to present temperature figures for 55 billion years ago as fact.

Not only that, but it also makes claims about sea levels millions and billions of years ago. How can it claim those figures as fact. If we can only guess at the temperature we can only guess at the sea level.

I can remember reading that fossils of fish found up mountains were thought to be proof of the flood. Then someone figured out that it wasn't the sea that was so high the fish died and ended up on top of mountains, it was that the mountains started life under the sea then grew.

If the land is continually being pushed up how can we know what the sea level was millions of years ago. Did the sea go down, or did the land go up?

Unfortunately science unlike business marketing has to be honest. Nearly everything in science isn't 100% certain, but some things are as nearly certain as makes little difference.

Temperature estimates back to around 2000 years ago, use about 7 different methods, whilst any one of these isn't particularly accurate, if these approximately support one another it means that we can generate a greater degree of certainty than can be justified from any one. As a consequence rather than specify exact temperatures we can generate confidence limits or spreads that increase the further back we go. These are the grey bands at either side of the predicted temperature. As you can see, we are reasonably certain what the temperature was back to 1600 but far less so back 1000 years, however the temperature now is still above the limits 1000 years ago. That means that there must be something quite extraordinary happening now (by this I mean the last 100 years and in particular the last 20) that hasn't been present over this time period. Now using a bit of common sense ask yourselves this question: what is the chance that the Sun or any other natural phenomena has just suddenly changed at the same time as we have been chucking out GHGs and expanding population and industry like there is no tomorrow? Not much. However, to that we must add that theory predicts that is exactly will happen, warming is a natural consequence of GHGs in the atmosphere, if temperature wasn't increasing due to GHGs then all the theory would be wrong as well. It all adds up to a virtual certainty that human generated GHGs are largely responsible for the latest dramatic shift in temperatures. That temperatures have changed more than this 10 000 years or a million years ago is irrelevant, scientists do not claim this isn't the case. The point is that this is the start of the general melting of the northern polar cap along with at least 7 metres sea rise, if you are happy with that and all the related meteorological changes, particularily for the undeveloped world, fair enough carry on pumping it out.

The problem is that being dragged into a debate on 'if' rather than 'how much' one falls into the trap that the business barons such as Lawson are trying to generate. Consumers only need the slightest speculative doubt to find an excuse for business as usual, and it is easy to generate such doubt amongst people who cannot understand how to analyse and interpret data. Perhaps Lawson is clever and he knows this, he just doesn't care!

magyar

moonrakerz wrote: »

Quote from one of the sites you link to:

"It is true that there were some predictions of an "imminent ice age" in the 1970s,"

I am not saying that these predictions were correct any more than I am saying that today's predictions are correct.
I am just saying that they were being made - for you (and others) to flatly deny this fact - then post a link to a "green" site confirming my statement hardly gives your cause much credibility !

Indeed, and I have never said that 'no predictions were made'. What I have denied is that 'we were told that there would be an Ice Age', i.e. in the same way as we are currently being told about climate change, i.e. via scientific concensus.

People saying 'global warming should be taken with a pinch of salt because it's just a prediction' miss the point. It's a scientific concensus, i.e. the majority of scientists agree that this is the case. That was not in any way the case about the Ice Age predictions. Those were

(a) far from a concensus, there were very few people who agreed with the science behind it, and
(b) misrepresented by the media (much like today).

Oh and of course, they are green sites I linked to, would you expect a 'non-green' site to collate evidence about this?

moonrakerz

magyar wrote: »

Indeed, and I have never said that 'no predictions were made'.

"Moonrakerz, you're wrong. There was no 'prediction of ice ages in the 1970s'."

YOUR POST - # 42 !

As well as telling other people they are wrong you are now telling yourself that you are wrong - nice one !

magyar

moonrakerz wrote: »

"Moonrakerz, you're wrong. There was no 'prediction of ice ages in the 1970s'."

YOUR POST - # 42 !

As well as telling other people they are wrong you are now telling yourself that you are wrong - nice one !

OK pedantry prize goes to you.

Fine, then. There were predictions of ice ages, Martian invasions, the Second Coming and a Preston North End revival in the 1970s. None of these reflected the views of the scientific community at the time.

This is not the case with climate change, which is the concensus view of the scientific community.

thescouselander

magyar wrote: »

OK pedantry prize goes to you.

Fine, then. There were predictions of ice ages, Martian invasions, the Second Coming and a Preston North End revival in the 1970s. None of these reflected the views of the scientific community at the time.

This is not the case with climate change, which is the concensus view of the scientific community.

Er, I have to disagree here - the so called "consensus" Re climate change the the view if scientists involved in IPCC studies, not the scientific community as a whole.

There are plenty of scientists who dispute the IPCC's conclusions - I personally know quite a few.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2053842/Scientists-sign-petition-denying-man-made-global-warming.html

moonrakerz

magyar wrote: »

OK pedantry prize goes to you.

.

Not pedantry; accuracy, or just the truth !

Moggles_2

Originally Posted by moonrakerz
Several dozen posts ago ... I made the point that some 30-40 years ago we were all being warned of an impending ice age.

What you actually wrote (please see #30 above) was:

30 years ago the (what is now the Green Lobby) "experts" were warning of another ice age!

The Green lobby has never subscribed to this view and it's hardly surprising that your post provoked the reactions it got.

You see we've been hearing this same old argument involving glacial periods for nearly three decades now. Back in the seventies, it was natural for those familiar with former ice age predictions to question a global warming theory which seemed to be predicting the exact opposite, but that was thirty years ago. This is 2008, for goodness sake. We have scientific techniques now, not even dreamed of in the sixties, to back up the earlier research.

I've no doubt you could find someone, somewhere who is still predicting a looming ice age (some still believe the Earth is flat), but the idea that this somehow invalidates a welter of research using cutting edge technology, just won't wash.