Man-made global warming.... biggest myth of this century

The point I was trying to make was about quality of evidence - science is at its most devastatingly effective when you can observe, hypothesis, design an experiment to test, control the variables and see.

You can't design an experiment for global warming (or evolution, or gravity) - you can show that in a model of the earth that carbon leads to raised temperatures, but how do you know it accurately reflects it, and you've not missed something crucial? You'd need 2 identical worlds and a way to introduce carbon externally to 1 to prove it.

However, if carbon IS the cause, then we have a potential way of averting global warming -> the catastrophe some would have you believe.

We have to decide at what point a convincing theory can be accepted in the face of imperfect evidence - possibly not because the theory is flawed, but beause the ways of testing that theory are flawed.

Think how much labour would have to raise taxes to pay for flood defenses, and how much extra your insurance premiums would be

I'm pretty sure you can.

It's the sun's fault.

You can prove an effect exists that draws things towards the ground; I cannot prove that it is not due to the hand of god as some americans (I always assumed it was a wind-up but I've stopped making assumptions like that these days) would have you believe.

It's the same with this - you can show that temperatures are rising, you can't prove it's due to carbon.

You've got a real chip on your shoulder haven't you

I couldn't think of a better example

Re: Man-made global warming.... biggest myth of this century

Bjorn Cohen Ljomborg...

People get proper carried away by the all this global warming shite, just because we have a few freak weather disasters and a hot summer. There's points in the earths history that were the same, the worlds temperature fluctuates and it happens quite quickly, an ice age can occur over a few thousand years.

The oil/gas isn't running out either, there's so much more out there to be drilled, don't panic! Fusion will be the power of the future anyway.

we're talking years and years before owt bad could happen. If that's the way things go then so be it, maybe it's the fate of the human race. We'll die out and another species will evolve just like we did. Monkeys maybe

Re: Re: Man-made global warming.... biggest myth of this century

Lomberg even.

The UK's supplies are in decline (we are already a net importer of gas and have been for the last few years), as they are in most of continental Europe. Only Norway is increasing its production at the moment with the Ormen Lange field starting production in October this year. There is gas and oil elsewhere, but it is becoming more and more expensive to extract as we are tapping more difficult fields, and there is no guarantee that the countries that have it will share anyway. It is a finite resource, and we should be careful with it. It's all very well to say that fusion will be the power of the future, but don't put too much belief in that until we know we can actually do it.

Here's what 'they' said about nuclear power: "energy too cheap to meter".

It would be a serious error to assume we will have a plentiful clean supply of energy in our lifetimes. It would be rather like smoking with the view that it doesn't matter because there'll be a cure for lung cancer by the time you get it.

Conserving in the meantime costs little. In 50 years if they're wondering why we got so worked up about fossil fuels then fine. But if they don't have an alternate supply of energy, then they're fucked, and they'll probably wonder how on earth we justified our wastefulness and bemoan that we didn't listen to the conservationists.

And how are we going to produce the energy to power these electric cars? At the moment it would be by burning fossil fuels!

Yes, renewable energy is often more expensive, it is also often unpredictable (think wind and wave generation), takes up a lot of room (which pisses off the nimbys) etc etc. Nuclear generation is great, but there is only a limited amount of nuclear fuel too. It takes at least ten years from planning a nuclear station to it actually generating, not to mention the good old nimby issues.

With the implementation of the Large Combustion Plant Directive next year, coal fired power stations without flue gas desulphurisation equipment will only be able to run a certain amount of hours per year, we closed two Magnox power stations on 31 December last year, with more nuclear to close in future, and we aren't building enough other power stations to make up the difference at the moment, meaning in the short to medium term there will be a shortage which will cause prices to rise. Hopefully this will encourage new electricity supplies as they will make more sense economically.

So, energy efficiency is the key!

andy that graph clearly shows as fuel consumption went up the temprature dipped... from 1940-1970.

Re: Re: Man-made global warming.... biggest myth of this century

Re: Re: Re: Man-made global warming.... biggest myth of this century

Pedant.. I had the Sceptical Environmenalist next to me when I wrote that

My take on it is the ice age - inter glacial thing is all fine and well, but how do you offer a plausible explanation for the almost concurrent correlation of rising global temperatures and rising emissions since roughly the begining of the industrial revolution?

also Joe, I think I'm correct in saying that the conditions that increase temperatures have a significant lag time? so the temparture decreasing may have more to do with reduced fuel consumption / manufacturing from pre WW1 through the post war economic decline and great depression and into WW2 and so on, returning to its rational trajectory in the 50's..

that almost makes sense if you fiddle with the chronology of the chart.. that aside assumption that this chart will provide an answer to the question is a fairly erroneous assumption as we've already noted fuel consumption is far from the only binding factor...

Think of ths next time you drink soya milk or any soya product presented as being 'eco friendly' or some kind of vegan feted alternative..