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n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - focussed

I haven't seen any reporting of this in any mainstream media ( I wonder why?) so I thought I would alert the brain's trust on here to this case.

Briefly, the scientist who originally published the so - called "hockey stick" graph warning of unprecedented global warming, Michael Mann, professor of climate change at Pennsylvania State University sued another climate scientist -Tim Ball- for defamation for commenting about the purposely corrupted data Mann used thus:-

"He should be in the State Pen (penitentiary) not in Pen State ( university)"

Mann refused to disclose the maths and data behind the hockey stick graph to the court.

Supreme Court of British Columbia dismisses Dr Michael Mann’s defamation lawsuit versus Canadian skeptic climatologist, Dr Tim Ball. Full legal costs are awarded to Dr Ball, the defendant in the case.

https://principia-scientific.org/breaking-news-dr-tim-ball-defeats-michael-manns-climate-lawsuit/

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - P3t3r

There seems to be a lot of sceptics out there, even in the scientific community. While many are trying to cash-in on climate change, the evidence is becoming weaker.

Obviously, our natural resources are still limited but if climate change isn't caused by man then the problem could be a lot simpler.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Manatee

There seems to be a lot of sceptics out there, even in the scientific community. While many are trying to cash-in on climate change, the evidence is becoming weaker.

Obviously, our natural resources are still limited but if climate change isn't caused by man then the problem could be a lot simpler.

On the contrary. If it isn't caused by man, it will be even harder to to anything about it.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Metropolis.
Can’t say i’ve ever been bothered about so called climate change, if it gets warmer i’ll just turn up the aircon!
n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Vitesse6

I am reminded of Dirty Harry when people want to take a risk on climate change.

Do you feel lucky?

Planet B doesn't exist

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CHarkin

I have always been sceptical of all the claims of man made climate change and there are many questions that need answered for me to totally accept the premise. A couple of the easier or at least should be easier points to explain are, polar bears have survived at least two periods when there was no ice in the artic so whats different about the relatively small current change. The temperature in Britain was 3 deg C higher when the Romans were here, so 1800 years later the UK is cooler than it was then? The earth has just gone through, for the last 1000 years the most stable global temperatures it has ever had for many hundreds of millions of years, so the current small change is nothing exceptional. The publicly available graphs of global CO2 and temperatures show temperatures rise first and CO2 follows, not the other way round.

I will stop at that before putting everyone to sleep.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - focussed

The simplest explanation is that the climate changes, there are warm periods and there are cold periods over the centuries and that whatever we do or don't do doesn't alter what happens to a great degree.

I am angry that charlatans like Al Gore have hijacked science for their own personal gain and prestige andI sincerely hope that this case will lead on to a criminal fraud trial for the person concerned, and blow the lid off this scam once and for all.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Avant

"The simplest explanation is that the climate changes, there are warm periods and there are cold periods over the centuries and that whatever we do or don't do doesn't alter what happens to a great degree."

There's plenty of evidence on that side. In this country it was apparently warmer in the early Middle Ages than it is now; and around 1700 it was cold enough for the Thames to freeze over each winter.

But the truth of it is that we have to be careful that our activities don't contribute excessively to the change. To some extent they do at the moment, although inevitably both politicians and the media overreact.

And some pollutants have been around for longer than we think. You may remember the experiment done a few years ago in New Zealand, where it was found that a single cow could produce enough gas (from both ends) in one day to power a small truck for 25 miles.

(I wondered whether to move this thread to General discussion; but as motorists are the main whipping-boys/girls in this, I think I'll leave it here.)

Edited by Avant on 28/08/2019 at 01:02

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Bromptonaut

I'm sorry but the idea that a failed libel action against one scientist in a Canadian Provincial court undermines the whole theory of man made climate change is nonsense on stilts.

There is as near as you'll find to a scientific consensus. Burning fossil fuels which it took the earth millions of years to lay down over approx 200 years since 1800 has affected and continues to affect the earth's climate.

Whether other factors are part of the equation and what we can do about it now are supplementary questions.

There's a pretty simple cross check. If the basis were really dodgy money from big oil and industry would be all over the scientists working on proving the dodginess.

As ever; follow the money.......

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - focussed

I agree the fact that the defamation action failed is not significant but the reason that it failed, because the scientist who brought the action yet again failed to "show his workings out" as the old exam answer instructions used to state, is suspicious.

So suspicious in that he valued not disclosing his figures higher than losing what amounts to an 8 million dollar lawsuit in costs awarded against him alone. That probably won't bother him, the political backers behind him will sort that out

Another scientist who investigated the computer model used by Mann to produce the hockey stick graph prediction said "It's so corrupted that if you put the baseball scores into it it would still come up with a hockey stick graph"

It's clearly a case of "here's the result we want, now let's tweak the data to get that result"

As you say, follow the money, all the way from the people's pocket to the pockets of the governments of the world.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - catsdad
My degree, albeit 40 years ago, was in Geography and global warming was already a major area of study. This included the past variations in temperature and sea level. The academic concerns about manmade change were there at the time but didnt have the current bandwagon of sanctimonious bullies pushing the agenda.

The problem for me us that if the current concerns are right then its too late and even if we all live like vegan hermits we will only buy ourselves a few years. If they're wrong we are worrying uneccessarily.

As ever I suspect the truth lies somewhere between the scaremongering and the heads in the sand.
n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - madf

When we lived here 35 years ago, we had 1 meter high snowdrifts in our yard.

The depest in the past 15 years was: 200mm..

I observe teh evidence of my eyes, teh melting glaciers and rising selevels and it accords with teh theory.

When it does not, I will chnage my mind..

I will not live to see London flooded, but if current trends continue it will in this century..

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CHarkin

" follow the money "

For the last couple of decades it has been very difficult to get a research grant for research that was not linked to global warming so there is a large vested interest in the scientific community. How many scientists would be out of a job is there was absolute conclusive proof that human activity had no effect on global warming? The scientific community has a long history of saying one thing today and the complete opposite further down the line.

If there is one saving grace in all this its that the actions taken to prevent global warming are things we should be doing anyway, using less of the worlds resources and reducing pollution. Global warming or not these are good things to do.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

If anyone wants to find proof of the suggestion that people believe what they want to (and by implication ignore theories they find unpalatable), start with climate change and the scientific ideas attached to it.

Global temperature has been rising noticeably for many years, with a lot of noise blurring an underlying trend. A more persuasive graph shows the indisputably rising atmospheric content of CO2, which has been accurately measured for well over a century. You may then ask what is causing that rise - the most probable cause is increasing burning of fossil fuels, which took off with the industrial revolution. Proving that link is difficult, but please suggest something convincing.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - craig-pd130

There is as near as you'll find to a scientific consensus. Burning fossil fuels which it took the earth millions of years to lay down over approx 200 years since 1800 has affected and continues to affect the earth's climate.

Whether other factors are part of the equation and what we can do about it now are supplementary questions.

There's a pretty simple cross check. If the basis were really dodgy money from big oil and industry would be all over the scientists working on proving the dodginess.

As ever; follow the money.......

Exactly. Look around: how often does the UK have flooding due to unprecedented rainfall on the scale it had in recent weeks? Quite a lot over the past couple of decades, compared with the century of so preceding. And the same applies globally.

We can argue about the causes, but the fact remains, the climate IS changing. How much is man-made and how much is natural climate cycles is a point for discussion.

But of course what we do is influencing and changing our climate - whether it's container ships putting out SO2 pollution equivalent to tens of millions of cars, through to our own vehicle usage, to burning waste etc etc. Look at the Amazon deforestation. An area the size of Greater London deforested every single day. How long can that last? What's going to absorb CO2 and give out oxygen when half the Amazon rainforest is gone?

Climate change denial is delusional. We all need to curb the impact we have on the environment.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Brit_in_Germany

Can admin move this thread to the correct section please?

(Edit: See my comment above.)

Edited by Avant on 28/08/2019 at 18:42

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Falkirk Bairn

10,000 years ago there was 1 mile high Ice - it stretched all the way down to roughly North Hampshire IIRC.

A few hundred years ago the Thames froze over.

We have had warmer & colder climates for our land - you cannot make predictions about weather next month looking out your window. Equally you cannot make predictions about the weather in 30, 50 or 100 years time looking at the 150 years of weather reports & statistics.

Weather changes, the climate may get warmer for 50 years or 500 years BUT in between times it can get colder. The earth is 5 Billion years old, give or take, the geological data is around 500 million years which shows vast changes over time.

We may be in an upswing just before a down - caused by industrialisation - well for all of the history industrialisation has been around say 175 years - the earth warmed & cooled before man walked on the earth or lit his first fire.

I rest my case - long may your lum reek!

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

Indeed.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

I think that, as is often the case these days, people tend to over-hype problems to the nth degree in order to gain either noteriety, money (including grants for research as well as government money for the latest 'virtue-signalling green fad') and political power.

That being said, the underlying facts regarding man-made climate change and its effects on the planet are well established, just not as 'sexy' as the (unproven) 'hockey stick' diagram - noting that many of such predictions were worst case scenarios but presented as 'what will happen if we don't...'

That was and still is bad science, just like when Greenpeace said the the deliberate sinking of that oil rig would harm the environment more than taking it to port and (slowly) dismantling it - many of the green lobby are just ill-informed policial activists who use green issues and climate science in particular to further their loony political agendas (e.g. the idiotic 'Green New Deal' in the US advocated by the [IMHO] nut-job Marxist AOC and her fellow 'squad' members amonst others).

Sadly, much of this obscures genuine and accurate research, or tars it with the loony brush. My personal opinion is that, looking at the evidence, man-made climate change is real, although not to the degree/timescale that the most publicised reports stated. people have to realise that science is rarely black and white on issues that are still developing.

I also do think some scientists have got caught up in the politics, money and fame elements and have over-sold certain parts of their research, sometimes trying to put together research to justify their original opinions, rather than a more independent view not being biased. I still think that the issue is of such significance that it needs a good deal of the world's attention and cannot be dismissed out of hand as completely 'fake news'.

It should be noted that many scientific theories over the centuries (including many in the last 50 years) started off as 'herecy' in the scientific community, so we should have a degree of scepticism. Climate science, whilst not new, has still a LONG way to go - we see this on a daily basis, given how inaccurate our weather forecasts STILL are!

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

It should be noted that many scientific theories over the centuries (including many in the last 50 years) started off as 'herecy' in the scientific community, so we should have a degree of scepticism. Climate science, whilst not new, has still a LONG way to go - we see this on a daily basis, given how inaccurate our weather forecasts STILL are!

Is climate science the same as predicting the weather though?

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - corax

You could argue this forever, but if we get more unpredicable changes in weather, from excess rainfall to drought, it's going to be very hard for farmers to grow crops - they need consistency.

It'll be interesting to see what happens regarding the heatwaves we have been getting, and whether they will become more extreme over the next few years.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

It should be noted that many scientific theories over the centuries (including many in the last 50 years) started off as 'herecy' in the scientific community, so we should have a degree of scepticism. Climate science, whilst not new, has still a LONG way to go - we see this on a daily basis, given how inaccurate our weather forecasts STILL are!

Is climate science the same as predicting the weather though?

My point is that both, and which are related to one another, are evolving sciences, studying an incredibly complex system which, even with the world's best supercomputers and minds, most of their 'predictions' are not anywhere near 100% accurate, not even in the same ballpark...yet. And why, after well over 50 years more science in weather preduction, they still cannot get it right, even over a couple of days, never mind tens and hundreds of years.

Just because scientists can study past climate data and from rocks, fossils, etc does not mean they can predict exactly what is going to happen, just a reasonable estimate. That's fine by me in order to make some reasonable assumptions about what to do to avoid or lessen any effects of climate change, but we shouldn't either 100% believe them no dismiss them out-of-hand.

Like a lot of today's society, we are polarising the debate on the problem by only having a yes or no answer, rather than properly scrutinising the evidence in a bipartisan way so not to pre-judge everything based on a bias. Good science is always blind to such things. Bad science (on either side) is not.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

I'm really shocked at the sheer amount of scientific illiteracy of almost everyone here and the way you blindly accept conspiracy theories that say what you want to hear.

You can easily find answers to the superficial questions here. There were indeed warm periods in the past. But if you look at the trends in AVERAGE global temperature, it has been rising significantly since we started burning fossil fuels. CO2 is an incredibly effective greenhouse gas. As someone said earlier, we are releasing in a few hundred years CO2 that was captured over hundreds of millions of years. Remember that when coal was laid down, the atmosphere was much much hotter than today.

You need to understand that the reason why we have oxygen is because life released it into the atmosphere over billions of years. It originally had none and was toxic for us. CO2 was captured and stored underground by life. Thus the atmosphere we have now is the result of a complex interaction with life over billions of years, making it suitable for us.

Oh, and the hockey stick graph is a tiny tiny part of the whole. There are readings from countless sources (such as tree ring records stretching back thousands of years) that support the view that temperatures are rising markedly. It doesn't take much of a rise in AVERAGE temperature to melt the poles. When that happens, less heat will be reflected back into space. Sea levels will rise. East Anglia will be flooded. (Okay, so not all bad then.) Overall it will be a total disaster. Then we have melting permafrost which will release methane, which is massively more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Please read some science, rather than Wacko.com sponsored by Shell, BP etc.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - RichT54

I'm really shocked at the sheer amount of scientific illiteracy of almost everyone here and the way you blindly accept conspiracy theories that say what you want to hear.

You can easily find answers to the superficial questions here. There were indeed warm periods in the past. But if you look at the trends in AVERAGE global temperature, it has been rising significantly since we started burning fossil fuels. CO2 is an incredibly effective greenhouse gas. As someone said earlier, we are releasing in a few hundred years CO2 that was captured over hundreds of millions of years. Remember that when coal was laid down, the atmosphere was much much hotter than today.

You need to understand that the reason why we have oxygen is because life released it into the atmosphere over billions of years. It originally had none and was toxic for us. CO2 was captured and stored underground by life. Thus the atmosphere we have now is the result of a complex interaction with life over billions of years, making it suitable for us.

Oh, and the hockey stick graph is a tiny tiny part of the whole. There are readings from countless sources (such as tree ring records stretching back thousands of years) that support the view that temperatures are rising markedly. It doesn't take much of a rise in AVERAGE temperature to melt the poles. When that happens, less heat will be reflected back into space. Sea levels will rise. East Anglia will be flooded. (Okay, so not all bad then.) Overall it will be a total disaster. Then we have melting permafrost which will release methane, which is massively more effective as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Please read some science, rather than Wacko.com sponsored by Shell, BP etc.

Totally agree with this.

The organisation referenced in the OP is well known as a conspiracy and pseudoscience website that promotes anti-vaccine propaganda and frequent misinformation regarding climate change. See: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/principia-scientific-international/

Edited by RichT54 on 28/08/2019 at 15:16

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - gordonbennet

You won't see anything questioning the global warming/change/catastrophe/emergency/taxation religion in the mainstream media.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

You won't see anything questioning the global warming/change/catastrophe/emergency/taxation religion in the mainstream media.

You don’t see anything arguing that aliens are living among us in the mainstream media? Why is that? Unfortunately anti GW theories thrive because we’ve become distrustful of authority as they’ve tended to lie to us. So we believe someone who goes against the so called establishment concensus. But scientists aren’t Tony Blair clones.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

You won't see anything questioning the global warming/change/catastrophe/emergency/taxation religion in the mainstream media.

You do see questioning in the mainstream media - they won't question climate change itself as that exists.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Bromptonaut

You won't see anything questioning the global warming/change/catastrophe/emergency/taxation religion in the mainstream media.

I'm sorry to be blunt GB but that's just not true. The MSM are all to willing to put up articles by people like Lord Lawson or Viscount Christopher Monckton against climate change. Neither has even a sniff of a qualification in science. Lawson was regularly on the BBC in name of of 'balance' as it's only very recently that organisation has accepted the consensus in reputable science.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CHarkin

You are getting slightly insulting now Leif to suggest that we are all ignorant of the science involved in climate change. Most of my education was science based and all of my early career was science based and while I would by no means now call myself a scientist I have at least enough understanding to follow a reasoned scientific argument. Many seem to have adopted climate change almost like a religion while I would put myself as more of an agnostic. There are far too many contra indicators to the current theory that need to be explained before I will accept this as fact. The current climate model is flawed, they know its flawed, and nearly all the predictions made by it so far have been wrong. Just to reject every other theory or argument out of hand is not good science.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

You are getting slightly insulting now Leif to suggest that we are all ignorant of the science involved in climate change. Most of my education was science based and all of my early career was science based and while I would by no means now call myself a scientist I have at least enough understanding to follow a reasoned scientific argument. Many seem to have adopted climate change almost like a religion while I would put myself as more of an agnostic. There are far too many contra indicators to the current theory that need to be explained before I will accept this as fact. The current climate model is flawed, they know its flawed, and nearly all the predictions made by it so far have been wrong. Just to reject every other theory or argument out of hand is not good science.

Indeed - a good scientist should always doubt their results, and I agree, like with a lot of things in society, too many scientists are 'hearding' like the pollsters did at the last General Election into one side, or with many 'woke' issues, often coming up with experiments that just fit ideological positions rather than testing a variety of theories by not favouring one side or the other to start with.

As with many of those other issues, many legitimate dissenting voices are either drowned out or, more worryingly, either told to stay silent/their contrary/different results suppressed or rubbished, some people's careers being ended because they are not willing to stay silent.

It's in the Establishment's interests to silence proper debate - the daft thing is that in this case, it's both the big multinationals, governments and environmental lobbyists who are shutting down public debate on the issue, with most of it made up of ill-informed opinion pieces on either side in national newspapers, mostly used for clickbait.

I find it amazing that occasionally when old science and political TV programmes are shown again (or you see them on YouTube etc), proper reasoned debate using actual facts were the order of the day. Not any more.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - badbusdriver

Recently watched a program on TV where there was a feature about the Batagaika crater. This is an enormous sinkhole, or crater in Siberia where the ground has collapsed due to the melting of (up to 200,000 year old) permafrost. In 2017 the hole was 1km long and up to 282' deep but it is growing all the time. It initially started to collapse through excessive logging taking away the shading effect the trees had, minimising the heat from the sun getting through.

Thing is, there are estimates that there is the same amount of carbon trapped in the permafrost as there is in the atmosphere. Microbes consume the carbon as it becomes exposed, and produce methane and carbon dioxide as waste products, which are released into the atmosphere speeding up the warming, causing more of the permafrost to collapse, exposing more carbon........

www.sciencealert.com/images/1465917994453669.jpg

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - sammy1

We are all doomed to coin the phrase from Private Frazer!

Plenty of theory being bandied about re climate change but I see nothing of any consequence being done about it. I remain sceptical as do governments.

Don't panic says Corporal Jones!

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - gordonbennet

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

cue the usual responses, but world overpopulation by humans will kill the planet, unless nature kicks back, as well she might and all those clever scientists currently singing from the proscribed hymnsheet of the day will be as powerless as my spaniel to prevent it if nature reaches crisis point.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - corax

cue the usual responses, but world overpopulation by humans will kill the planet, unless nature kicks back, as well she might and all those clever scientists currently singing from the proscribed hymnsheet of the day will be as powerless as my spaniel to prevent it if nature reaches crisis point.

You could say it's natures way of dealing with a parasite.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - badbusdriver

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

cue the usual responses, but world overpopulation by humans will kill the planet, unless nature kicks back, as well she might and all those clever scientists currently singing from the proscribed hymnsheet of the day will be as powerless as my spaniel to prevent it if nature reaches crisis point.

Yes GB, absolutely, the resources there are aren't enough to cope with the population.

Read a book not too long ago by the same guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code. Can't remeber the name of it, but it centred around a scientist who, realising the human race was doomed due to overpopulation, decided to do something about it by creating a virus. This virus, once released, wouldn't 'kill' anyone, rather it would render approximately half the worlds population infertile.

Doesn't seem such a bad idea in the face of the alternative?

And it is very relevant to the topic, as the main reason for all these forests being cut, or burned down, is to provide more land for grazing animals or growing crops, which in turn, is making the problems worse.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - corax
And it is very relevant to the topic, as the main reason for all these forests being cut, or burned down, is to provide more land for grazing animals or growing crops, which in turn, is making the problems worse.

But don't forget we're not averse to a bit of deforestation ourselves. There is 2% of ancient woodland left in the UK, and the trees removed are not being replaced in the same quantity to compensate. What is happening in the Amazon is bad, but maybe it's a bit hypocritical to tell them to stop deforestation so their trees can absorb our pollution while we drive our cars merrily through the fields in the UK that have already been cleared over the centuries. A case of pot, kettle, black.

Edited by corax on 28/08/2019 at 19:03

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - gordonbennet

singing from the proscribed hymnsheet of the day

fool i am, speeling makes all the difference, try prescribed instead

Edited by gordonbennet on 28/08/2019 at 21:16

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

cue the usual responses, but world overpopulation by humans will kill the planet, unless nature kicks back, as well she might and all those clever scientists currently singing from the proscribed hymnsheet of the day will be as powerless as my spaniel to prevent it if nature reaches crisis point.

One of many issues - we will be unable to prevent it if it reaches a tipping point as we can't control nature...but we can and should do what we can now to prevent it getting that far.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

Quite so, GB, but don't forget that 'the west' managed its population in the 19th and early 20th centuiries by sending the overspill across the ocean. Can't do that any more, as all the habitable places are fairly well stocked now.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

Quite so, GB, but don't forget that 'the west' managed its population in the 19th and early 20th centuiries by sending the overspill across the ocean. Can't do that any more, as all the habitable places are fairly well stocked now.

Wars helped and poorer health as well

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

Quite so, GB, but don't forget that 'the west' managed its population in the 19th and early 20th centuiries by sending the overspill across the ocean. Can't do that any more, as all the habitable places are fairly well stocked now.

Wars helped and poorer health as well

The difference is that its hardly responsible to say that wars 'cull' populations (or that X or Y are deserving or not), and besides, given the WMD at the world's disposal, the next war could wipe everyone and everything off the surface of the planet.

Everyone has to bear some responsibility for climate change and other major environmental issues, but very few will make the necessary changes to their lives (including making a large effort or sacrificing [even if temporarily] some wealth) in return for keeping the Earth healthy and clean.

Too many people are ingrossed in their own little bubbles of their lives to care about the concequences of their lifestyle or what happens to their neighbours or elsewhere in the world as a result. Climate change is just one major issue, microplastic in the environment, river and air pollution and the effects on human health and wildlife/the food chain are some more.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

Quite so, GB, but don't forget that 'the west' managed its population in the 19th and early 20th centuiries by sending the overspill across the ocean. Can't do that any more, as all the habitable places are fairly well stocked now.

Wars helped and poorer health as well

The difference is that its hardly responsible to say that wars 'cull' populations (or that X or Y are deserving or not), and besides, given the WMD at the world's disposal, the next war could wipe everyone and everything off the surface of the planet.

I was showing that the west hasn't been managing it's population - when you take out wars the population has continually been increasing.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

The biggest threat we face is the elephant in the room, rapidly increasing overbreeding, mainly from the third world, but is already and will continue to affect the rest of the world at a rapidly accelerating rate, especially the west, who until recently in the main managed their own population growth quite well.

Quite so, GB, but don't forget that 'the west' managed its population in the 19th and early 20th centuiries by sending the overspill across the ocean. Can't do that any more, as all the habitable places are fairly well stocked now.

Wars helped and poorer health as well

The difference is that its hardly responsible to say that wars 'cull' populations (or that X or Y are deserving or not), and besides, given the WMD at the world's disposal, the next war could wipe everyone and everything off the surface of the planet.

I was showing that the west hasn't been managing it's population - when you take out wars the population has continually been increasing.

Although that increase is 100% down to immigration from 3rd World nations and the higher birth rates from them when they move to Western nations that have more relaxed immigration rules. Those that don't, e.g. Japan, have decreasing population due to the lower-tha-replacement replacement birthrate.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - gordonbennet

Although that increase is 100% down to immigration from 3rd World nations and the higher birth rates from them when they move to Western nations that have more relaxed immigration rules.

And that is the other elephant in the room.

Most western nations the natives had children they could afford to raise decently by the results of their own graft, and not expect others, taxpayers that is, to pay for all.

Timely reminder that the govt has no money of its own, it belong to the taxpayers and citizens of that country.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

You are getting slightly insulting now Leif to suggest that we are all ignorant of the science involved in climate change. Most of my education was science based and all of my early career was science based and while I would by no means now call myself a scientist I have at least enough understanding to follow a reasoned scientific argument. Many seem to have adopted climate change almost like a religion while I would put myself as more of an agnostic. There are far too many contra indicators to the current theory that need to be explained before I will accept this as fact. The current climate model is flawed, they know its flawed, and nearly all the predictions made by it so far have been wrong. Just to reject every other theory or argument out of hand is not good science.

The last phrases make it clear that my original statements were well founded. What you said is not correct.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Metropolis.
Socialism has over three decades rebranded itself into environmentalism, seeking to interfere in every aspect of our lives and tax us to fund their ideologue big government schemes. The earth’s temperatures have risen and fallen to the extent that lush green forests have become submerged by the sea and later resurfaced, we’ve had ice ages, all sorts. The earth’s temperature has always been in a fluctuating cycle, that’s not a conspiracy, that’s a fact. Again, if temps are on the rise, just turn up the air con. As for the GW believers, well, each time there’s a hot summer’s day and i’m driving past in my v8 getting 12mpg I think to myself (applying their beliefs) you’re very welcome!’.
n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - badbusdriver
Socialism has over three decades rebranded itself into environmentalism, seeking to interfere in every aspect of our lives and tax us to fund their ideologue big government schemes. The earth’s temperatures have risen and fallen to the extent that lush green forests have become submerged by the sea and later resurfaced, we’ve had ice ages, all sorts. The earth’s temperature has always been in a fluctuating cycle, that’s not a conspiracy, that’s a fact. Again, if temps are on the rise, just turn up the air con. As for the GW believers, well, each time there’s a hot summer’s day and i’m driving past in my v8 getting 12mpg I think to myself (applying their beliefs) you’re very welcome!’.

My point regarding the Batagaika crater is that, for those unconcerned with climate change due to it having done so many times over the previous tens of thousands of years, why is it only now that two hundred thousand year old permafrost is melting?.

Must be something different happening now, i.e., human interference!

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Bolt

Must be something different happening now, i.e., human interference!

Or something else is happening like the earths axis is moving causing a shift in the mantle and other things to occur, including influence by the solar system (unless you think were the only planet around the sun?) we don't have to be doing anything to cause global warming, the earth is shifting all the time, always has done- always will do

you could check out Nasa web site as its better explained on there. and although its really not been proven as yet(may never be) unless we become gods, I don't think we can really do any damage to earth without nuking it

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

Or something else is happening like the earths axis is moving causing a shift in the mantle and other things to occur, including influence by the solar system (unless you think were the only planet around the sun?) we don't have to be doing anything to cause global warming, the earth is shifting all the time, always has done- always will do

This sounds like a desperate search for alternative places for blame. Perhaps a reminder of Ockham's razor might be in order?

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Bolt

This sounds like a desperate search for alternative places for blame

Possibly, though not enough is known about how the earth works so anyone can place the blame on whatever they want, personally I am happy for EVs and alternative fuels to be invented and clean the air up a bit (if it happens)

people will need educating to keep the place clean and tidy instead of making the place look like a tip, which is a regular occurrence in London, which doesn't help pollution one bit

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Terry W

The science community believe that by running ever more complex climate models that people will be increasingly convinced of its accuracy. I'm not sure this is true although it is a good way of securing funding and jobs.

However at a far more simplistic level, fossil fuels were laid down over hundreds of millions of years. We are burning them in a few centuries - a million times faster than they were laid down. A simple practical experiment will show the impact of changing the composition of gases in the atmosphere.

The climate is also affected by a number of other cycles (eg: Milankovich) which is fairly predictable and cause warm periods and ice ages. The earth does not have an unchanging circular orbit around the sun, but is impacted by gravity and orbits of other planets.

Very simple observation shows what a mess homo sapiens are making of the planet - a major part of the solution is a much lower population. Malthus (published 1798) identified two solutions - population and birth management (relatively painless) or famine, war disease (unpleasant but it may be too kate to do the former)

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - madf

The science community believe that by running ever more complex climate models that people will be increasingly convinced of its accuracy. I'm not sure this is true although it is a good way of securing funding and jobs.

However at a far more simplistic level, fossil fuels were laid down over hundreds of millions of years. We are burning them in a few centuries - a million times faster than they were laid down. A simple practical experiment will show the impact of changing the composition of gases in the atmosphere.

The climate is also affected by a number of other cycles (eg: Milankovich) which is fairly predictable and cause warm periods and ice ages. The earth does not have an unchanging circular orbit around the sun, but is impacted by gravity and orbits of other planets.

Very simple observation shows what a mess homo sapiens are making of the planet - a major part of the solution is a much lower population. Malthus (published 1798) identified two solutions - population and birth management (relatively painless) or famine, war disease (unpleasant but it may be too late to do the former)

Anyone familiar with" the scientific method" which has been the basis of almsot all major discoveries in the past 100 years will know that it works like thsi~:

you develop a theory of how something works.

You test it agianst observations

If it does not work, you change the theory

Anyone who critcises climate change theiory becuas eits models keep changing is cklealry and demonstrably ignorant that is the way science works.

And it has been very successful. It may take 80 or so years before Einstein's theories about gravity bending light was proven.. but it eventually was when we could measure the bending of light.

All I read from most - not all - critics of global warming is the profound ignorance of many of those who criticise....based on reading other critics - most of whom have axes to grind - usually headed with $$$$signs..By all means criticise if forecasts and facts disagree.. but when forecats of rising global temperatures and melting glaciers are real, then the critics should either come up with a separate and convincing scientific explanation..

As few of them do, I treat them as liars or people who are easily led .

.

.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - focussed

Here is a scientific paper detailing how the models used to compute global temperature are flawed.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf

Their conclusion.

We have proven that the GCM-models used in IPCC report AR5 cannot compute correctly the natural component included in the observed global temperature. The reason is that the models fail to derive the influences of low cloud cover fraction on the global temperature. A too small natural component results in a too large portion for the contribution of the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

Low loud cover affecting global temperature makes sense- insulating blanket etc.

Edited by focussed on 29/08/2019 at 10:48

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Terry W

A lot of this thread simply demonstrates that even a lot of reasonably intelligent people are in denial.

That some elements of climate models are imperfect is not justification to ignore all the evidence - the challenge is to develop a new theory which better fits observed data.

Climate has varied in the past and there is some understanding of the reasons. But there is no good reason to believe that somehow a pre-industrialisation climate (1800 - 1850) is some sort of optimum that should never change.

Assuming expectations of climate models come to pass - higher temperatures, sea level rise, ice caps melting - we need to understand what actions need to be taken to either:

  • minimise any of the impacts - eg: reducing greenhouse gases (which will impact petrol heads) and population
  • adapt - ~50% live in low lying or coastal areas, agriculture needs to adapt to higher temperatures and possible water shortages, desertification of equatorial areas, etc
n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - sammy1

lot of this thread simply demonstrates that even a lot of reasonably intelligent people are in denial.

There are 8 bitllion humans on the planet and rising. A large proportion of these will aspire to the achieve the living standards of the rest of us. Who will deny them the right to do this and at what "cost" to the so called spike in CO2.

Onwards and upwards is the goal of all countries and just a dip in growth sends panic through the system and the word recession is like kryptonite to superman.

Climate change is the current excuse to expand into new technology and keep the worlds economy expanding.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

Climate change is the current excuse to expand into new technology and keep the worlds economy expanding.

Sorry, I don't buy that one. The simple fact is that the only system which has clearly improved the lot of most human individuals is capitalism, but that only works when economies continue to grow. That is why we keep hearing the mantra word GROWTH so often. Just now most effort is into inventing daft devices which no-one really needs, such as vehicles which drive themselves. Vanity projects which employ quite a few who see it as a challenge. Also HS2, but that's another story.

What is needed is for someone to design a zero-growth economy, a bit of flat-lining should not really do us much harm. The problem will be persuading all the others.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

Climate has varied in the past and there is some understanding of the reasons. But there is no good reason to believe that somehow a pre-industrialisation climate (1800 - 1850) is some sort of optimum that should never change.

There is plenty of evidence to show large fluctuations in global temperature on a geological timescale. But the current rise in temperature is happening much faster, which is the main reason for believing it is probably caused by a fast-growing population adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. You can include cows too I suppose.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - IRC

"Anyone familiar with" the scientific method" which has been the basis of almsot all major discoveries in the past 100 years will know that it works like thsi~:

you develop a theory of how something works.

You test it agianst observations

If it does not work, you change the theory"

How does that fit then with the oft repeated claim that the science is settled?

Settled acience seems at odds with the many predictions that have turned out to be wrong.

Random example - according to acientists the artic should have been ice free years ago. It isn't.

Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

"Anyone familiar with" the scientific method" which has been the basis of almsot all major discoveries in the past 100 years will know that it works like thsi~:

you develop a theory of how something works.

You test it agianst observations

If it does not work, you change the theory"

How does that fit then with the oft repeated claim that the science is settled?

Settled acience seems at odds with the many predictions that have turned out to be wrong.

Random example - according to acientists the artic should have been ice free years ago. It isn't.

Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm

One scientist and one theory does not make a scientific consensus.

The consensus is that climate change is happening due to humans.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CHarkin

One scientist and one theory does not make a scientific consensus.

The consensus is that climate change is happening due to humans.

Consensus does not make it a fact, many established consensus have been torn to shreds at a later date. For many years there was a scientific consensus that the earth was flat and anyone who said differently was ridiculed. Im not saying we should ignore the advice being given, far from it, I fully support the reduction of our dependance on carbon fuels and stopping the release of pollutants in the atmosphere, thats all good stuff to do.

Climate change is happening, the measurements taken make it a fact but then the earth has never had a period when the climate was not changing and for many of these sometimes dramatic changes we have no idea why they happened.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

One scientist and one theory does not make a scientific consensus.

The consensus is that climate change is happening due to humans.

Consensus does not make it a fact, many established consensus have been torn to shreds at a later date. For many years there was a scientific consensus that the earth was flat and anyone who said differently was ridiculed. Im not saying we should ignore the advice being given, far from it, I fully support the reduction of our dependance on carbon fuels and stopping the release of pollutants in the atmosphere, thats all good stuff to do.

Climate change is happening, the measurements taken make it a fact but then the earth has never had a period when the climate was not changing and for many of these sometimes dramatic changes we have no idea why they happened.

Even back in history the Earth was not generally thought to be flat - that's a myth - there will be people that thought that as they do now but it was not generally accepted.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - madf

"Anyone familiar with" the scientific method" which has been the basis of almsot all major discoveries in the past 100 years will know that it works like thsi~:

you develop a theory of how something works.

You test it agianst observations

If it does not work, you change the theory"

How does that fit then with the oft repeated claim that the science is settled?

Settled acience seems at odds with the many predictions that have turned out to be wrong.

Random example - according to acientists the artic should have been ice free years ago. It isn't.

Arctic summers ice-free 'by 2013'

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm

Anyone who thinks modelling climate is easy and the wearly modles are going to be correct just demonstartes their total ignorance of teh complexity of teh issue..

To make daily weather forecats accurate for teh nest day requires LOTS of models, and radings ans super computers..

Now change days to years.. and imagine foreasting weather (note wetaher not climate).. siix months out ...

I can produce a paper forecatsing anything but unless it is peer reviewed it is meaingless.

So anyone linking to non peer reviewed papers is wasting their time (and ours) as all it demonstartes is trheir ignorance of how science works..

I am a beekeeper and there are LOTS of scientific papers on beekeeping.. Unless peer reviewed they are bull excrement...

Rather like the anti vaccine campaigns... And David Icke - and of a simialr quality.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

<< I can produce a paper forecasting anything but unless it is peer-reviewed it is meaningless. So anyone linking to non peer-reviewed papers is wasting their time (and ours) as all it demonstrates is their ignorance of how science works.. >>

That's a ridiculous statement for a scientist to make: peer-reviewing is not a guarantee of credibility. Any paper may contain good sense. The peer review adds a lot of validity of course, but the absence of it simply means we should keep more open minds.

Yes, I have co-authored one or two papers in the very distant past.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

Climate has varied in the past and there is some understanding of the reasons. But there is no good reason to believe that somehow a pre-industrialisation climate (1800 - 1850) is some sort of optimum that should never change.

There is plenty of evidence to show large fluctuations in global temperature on a geological timescale. But the current rise in temperature is happening much faster, which is the main reason for believing it is probably caused by a fast-growing population adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. You can include cows too I suppose.

Cows produce significant amounts of methane when they break wind (the word I wanted to use will be blocked, no doubt). Unfortunately it is a far more effective greenhouse gas than CO2. So, we fell forest to create fields and then fill them with cows. Not a good idea.

As you know the issue is the unprecedented increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is not in dispute, it is a scientific fact not a theory. What is in dispute is the exact process of GW. There are too many factors. We might see permafrost melt, releasing massive amounts of methane, we might see ocean currents stop or change direction, we will see sea ice melt, and changes in cloud cover changing the amount of sunlight reflected back into space. All of these things will significantly change the speed of GW. That GW is taking place is not in doubt, determining when we will be screwed is not so easy.

Edited by Leif on 29/08/2019 at 14:29

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - focussed

"the challenge is to develop a new theory which better fits observed data"

That's been the problem all along !

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

Here is a scientific paper detailing how the models used to compute global temperature are flawed.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf

Their conclusion.

We have proven that the GCM-models used in IPCC report AR5 cannot compute correctly the natural component included in the observed global temperature. The reason is that the models fail to derive the influences of low cloud cover fraction on the global temperature. A too small natural component results in a too large portion for the contribution of the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

Low loud cover affecting global temperature makes sense- insulating blanket etc.

That paper isn't even peer reviewed which means that it is completely worthless. They can claim anything and get away with it. It does have serious flaws that make it worthless, you can easily discover that for yourself.

Respected journals have a mechanism called peer review, whereby several respected scientists review the paper, to find any glaring flaws or omissions. It can only be published when the reviewers agree that it is of a sufficient standard. I have had papers reviewed, and I have been asked to review papers though I declined as they were not in my area of knowledge.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - focussed

Just because nobody looked at it and gave it a round of applause, doesn't devalue it in the slightest - it's still a report of valid research.

Remember when you wrote reports of lab tests, any tests?

Just because nobody thought they were great didn't alter or devalue what you reported did it?

You are conflating social approval of work with validity of said work.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - groaver

Just because nobody looked at it and gave it a round of applause, doesn't devalue it in the slightest - it's still a report of valid research.

Remember when you wrote reports of lab tests, any tests?

Just because nobody thought they were great didn't alter or devalue what you reported did it?

You are conflating social approval of work with validity of said work.

No he isn't.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

Just because nobody looked at it and gave it a round of applause, doesn't devalue it in the slightest - it's still a report of valid research.

Remember when you wrote reports of lab tests, any tests?

Just because nobody thought they were great didn't alter or devalue what you reported did it?

You are conflating social approval of work with validity of said work.

Nonsense. Peer review is a process of scientific validation. It does not prove the work is correct, but it does allow experts in the field to check that assumptions and conclusions are reasonable. Science is a communal process, generally it requires multiple groups to replicate work before it is accepted as valid, as mistakes can and do happen.

Unreviewed research could be complete d*****. So as far as non specialists are concerned it is worse than useless as you and I have absolutely no way to know if it is valid. In fact they have made huge mistakes, as you can verify easily enough.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

Here is a scientific paper detailing how the models used to compute global temperature are flawed.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf

Their conclusion.

We have proven that the GCM-models used in IPCC report AR5 cannot compute correctly the natural component included in the observed global temperature. The reason is that the models fail to derive the influences of low cloud cover fraction on the global temperature. A too small natural component results in a too large portion for the contribution of the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

Low loud cover affecting global temperature makes sense- insulating blanket etc.

That paper isn't even peer reviewed which means that it is completely worthless. They can claim anything and get away with it. It does have serious flaws that make it worthless, you can easily discover that for yourself.

Respected journals have a mechanism called peer review, whereby several respected scientists review the paper, to find any glaring flaws or omissions. It can only be published when the reviewers agree that it is of a sufficient standard. I have had papers reviewed, and I have been asked to review papers though I declined as they were not in my area of knowledge.

It's all well and good for people to talk about 'peer-reviewed science', but the problem is that climate science is still very new and undeveloped, rather like many aspects of science were 150-200 years ago.

Yes, we may have supercomputers and better standard of general scientific knowledge, but there are many areas of science that have also been studied for some time now, with access to the same expertise and equipment and yet they don't claim to know everything about their field, many knowing very little.

All I'm saying is that we should be VERY wary of this current trend of scientific 'hearding' towards 'concensus' because its easier to be in agreement with others in your field than be the outsider.

Personally, I think there's a long way to go, perhaps well over 50 years, maybe a lot more, until we have this science cracked as much as we do other aspects. The problem is that it may be too late then to do something about the (irreversible) problems we may well have and still are causing by our way of life.

I don't think we should listen to those who are using this new science to try and bring back discredited political ideologies, but we do need to make some hard choices about how we as a species consume the resources of this planet and to what end. That does mean that we should NOT listen to the idiots who are often driving the so-called debate at both ends of the spectrum, often for political purposes or for personal/national wealth and/or power. 'Activists' are the last people we should listen to - most of them already made up their minds before seeing any information.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Terry W

There are some clear parallels with the Brexit (can I mention this word?) debate here.

We have what are generally regarded as world class experts in their field:

  • for climate science this includes people with doctorate level qualifications in physics, mathematics, computer modelling, simulations, chemistry, biology, atmospheric processes etc etc
  • for Brexit impacts we have (again) doctarate level experts in economics, banking, foreign exchange markets, law, international trade etc etc

Both groups have what are colloquially called "brains the size of planets".

What binds the two groups is the willingness of some to prefer the product of generally ill-informed non experts (or their own imagination) over those who actually have proven credibility and knowledge.

This is not to suggest experts are always right, or that consensus is proof of a theory. But failing to give their views appropriate weight is like betting on a horse based on the colour of the tail and not bothering with the form book.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Vitesse6

Let's just suppose for a minute that climate change is a real danger to life on earth and we choose to ignore the warnings.

Who amongst us here is going to want to look their grandchildren in the eye in 25 years time and say "sorry kids, the planet is f****d because we we thought it more important to maintain our high carbon lifestyle rather than thinking about your future"

As I said earlier, "do you feel lucky? well do you?"

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - gordonbennet

Who among the experts so eloquently described above is going to take the real initiative to save the planet and tell the truth, that overpopulation caused by overbreeding, particularly in the third world where they haven't been able to feed themselves properly for generations, is the biggest danger to the west who generally, wars apart, tried its best to manage and has done pretty well, face.

Our grandchildren in 25 years time are going to live in a completely different west, and global climate panic isn't going to be the main reason for the changes, it will be demographs changing their countries into places entirely different...which is fine if that's what you wanted, and many do, just be aware that the people responsible for what is coming (current inner city issues a mere taster of what we about to receive) arn't going to live with the long term consequences because they have the means to escape and are the protected elite anyway.

Don't any of the climate warriors, (no better represented as by legion of celeb/royalish virtue signallers jetting around the globe in private planes and living in multiple remote gated guarded estates) try and lecture me on their idea of my blame for what might happen to the climate, when the increasing exponentially population explosion and resulting soaking up of the worlds resources, coupled with deforestation to feed the increasing numbers of mouths, takes its obvious and irreversible toll.

If i'm around in 25 years, doubtful cos i've been fool enough to graft hard for the past 50, i shall explain to my (gt) grandchildren (to try and counter the increasing stages of indoctrination they suffer from ever lower ages of being removed from the parents to be educated by paid strangers, themsleves all reading from the hymnsheet of the day) that this wonderful country, England, that i grew up in free and safe was sold out from under our feet, and a willing populace of fools welcomed its concreting over and it's doubling of population, as it surely will be double what it was in 1955, in my lifetime.

Don't get me wrong, if i lived in a city and could see what was happening, i too would be happy to get out and buy a new identihouse built on the former ''Meadows''.

What are areas like Brazil, almost quadrupling its population since the 60's and climbing, and Africa, i don't how much more human explosion that continent can stand...whilst it systematically kills off the means of producing its own food, Zimbabwe the perfect example and SA going down the same path to self destruction, whilst bands of the most corrupt people in the world fill their overseas bank accounts with wagonloads of loot, anyone told them that there are no pockets in shrouds?

Edited by gordonbennet on 30/08/2019 at 09:28

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

I rather share your pessimism, GB, but lack the eloquence to express it :-)

As standards of living have improved in the West, people have become more 'self-sufficient' (for want of a better word) which has gradually led to the 'me-me' rights-of-the-individual attitudes of today, and loss of responsibility towards 'society' on which those individuals less immediately depend. A significant part of that is every woman's right to as many children as she wants (rather than the number she is made to produce). As always, 'one more won't make any difference' - at least until scaled-up a millionfold.

TV has shown us an English family which has become minor celebrities by accumulating 20 children. They are admired because they manage to support themselves rather than needing benefits, but I wonder how they envisage those children's futures - if they even consider it.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CHarkin

Said with conviction GB. I have a similar view but for some reason it is seen as un PC to express it. Shortage of space, food and other resources are what wars and revolutions are made of.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

There are some clear parallels with the Brexit (can I mention this word?) debate here.

We have what are generally regarded as world class experts in their field:

  • for climate science this includes people with doctorate level qualifications in physics, mathematics, computer modelling, simulations, chemistry, biology, atmospheric processes etc etc
  • for Brexit impacts we have (again) doctarate level experts in economics, banking, foreign exchange markets, law, international trade etc etc

Both groups have what are colloquially called "brains the size of planets".

What binds the two groups is the willingness of some to prefer the product of generally ill-informed non experts (or their own imagination) over those who actually have proven credibility and knowledge.

This is not to suggest experts are always right, or that consensus is proof of a theory. But failing to give their views appropriate weight is like betting on a horse based on the colour of the tail and not bothering with the form book.

No, Sir, the two issues cannot be equated in the way you say. They can be, by saying that people with agendas are using their standing in certain circles to promote that agenda, incluing manipulating factual information to suit or making up stuff and presenting it as factual, as opposed much of it, which is OPINION and estimates, often the worst case but presented as the 'norm' (see the 'Operation Yellowhammer story, or the OBS 'expert preidtcions' of a huge recession and 750k more unemployed 'just for voting for Brexit' for an example of that).

Note that an academically intelligent person can have either no common sense or be naive and be blinded by certain ideology. I've seen enough of these people in person to know that is true, including for many so-called 'experts'.

Please leave Brexit out of this debate. All you are doing is just flaming to shut any meaningful debate down.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

There are some clear parallels with the Brexit (can I mention this word?) debate here.

We have what are generally regarded as world class experts in their field:

  • for climate science this includes people with doctorate level qualifications in physics, mathematics, computer modelling, simulations, chemistry, biology, atmospheric processes etc etc
  • for Brexit impacts we have (again) doctarate level experts in economics, banking, foreign exchange markets, law, international trade etc etc

Both groups have what are colloquially called "brains the size of planets".

What binds the two groups is the willingness of some to prefer the product of generally ill-informed non experts (or their own imagination) over those who actually have proven credibility and knowledge.

This is not to suggest experts are always right, or that consensus is proof of a theory. But failing to give their views appropriate weight is like betting on a horse based on the colour of the tail and not bothering with the form book.

Regarding Brexit, economics is known as the 'dismal science' for good reason. Very few so-called experts predicted the 2008 crash. Even Gordon Brown was talking about an 'end to boom and bust' and he had Treasury experts at his beck and call. But he subsequently had to eat a very large portion of humble pie. And the crash is still being felt throughout Europe especially in the UK due to our dependence on banking and financial services. When Eastern European countries entered the EU, and freedom of movement was allowed, most senior figures did not predict the massive movement of people that has occurred, and which has had a very large impact on many countries. Note that I'm not making a value judgement here, just commenting that it was and is a significant factor in predicting the economics of EU countries.

So, had we made big decisions on the basis of predictions by the consensus opinion of economic 'exerts' in the years before the crash, we would have been up a certain well known creek without a means of propulsion.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

Regarding Brexit, economics is known as the 'dismal science' for good reason. Very few so-called experts predicted the 2008 crash. Even Gordon Brown was talking about an 'end to boom and bust' and he had Treasury experts at his beck and call. But he subsequently had to eat a very large portion of humble pie. And the crash is still being felt throughout Europe especially in the UK due to our dependence on banking and financial services. When Eastern European countries entered the EU, and freedom of movement was allowed, most senior figures did not predict the massive movement of people that has occurred, and which has had a very large impact on many countries. Note that I'm not making a value judgement here, just commenting that it was and is a significant factor in predicting the economics of EU countries.

So, had we made big decisions on the basis of predictions by the consensus opinion of economic 'exerts' in the years before the crash, we would have been up a certain well known creek without a means of propulsion.

Precisely. Its like the so-called experts in newspapers telling us plebs what shares to buy - why would anyone want to disseminate that knowledge when they could keep it to themselves, buy shares at lower prices and make a fortune? Reason - they aren't really experts. And besides, very few parts of our lives these days are black and white 'good or bad' - more like very complex systems with shades of grey.

And if we believed all these 'experts' in economics, we'd be up to eyeballs in sharing the EU's debts because we'd be in the Euro. When things get heavily politicised, as science has become in the last 20 years (especially in the last 5), reasoned debate and discovery goes down the pan, because we can't easily differentiate the genuine from the embellished and made-up.

It's affecting my line of work in engineering, thought not as bad or at the same rate, and why I left it a couple of years ago,a dn, to be honest, why I haven't found an alternative as yet - they are currently even worse.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - nick62
And if we believed all these 'experts' in economics, we'd be up to eyeballs in sharing the EU's debts because we'd be in the Euro.

Andy, can you please explain how we have benefited from being out of the Euro, when out Pound has lost 36% of its value against said currency in the last 19 years since it's peak of approx 1.73 in May 2000? If the Euro is a basket case, what does that make GBP?

I'm not advocating the Euro to be good, bad (or indifferent)! This is an honest question I've asked may people previously and never had answered, (I'm an engineer not an economist).

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - madf
And if we believed all these 'experts' in economics, we'd be up to eyeballs in sharing the EU's debts because we'd be in the Euro.

Andy, can you please explain how we have benefited from being out of the Euro, when out Pound has lost 36% of its value against said currency in the last 19 years since it's peak of approx 1.73 in May 2000? If the Euro is a basket case, what does that make GBP?

I'm not advocating the Euro to be good, bad (or indifferent)! This is an honest question I've asked may people previously and never had answered, (I'm an engineer not an economist).

The UK economy is the worst basket case in Europe.

It has perpetual - since 1997 - trade deficits .. ie every year since then we have imported more than we have exported.

We have funded that by selling assets.. (electricity companies, gas companies, houses, companies etc.. ).. When teh music stops, expect a BIG drop in sterling, and a big surge in inflation as food and oil and cars and... computers,TVs etc all become much more expensive..

Strangely enough experts know this but it is politiclaly unacceptable..

At teh same time we are importing people which increases our imports to feed, clother and emply them..

Madness.

Edited by madf on 30/08/2019 at 16:54

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

<< It has perpetual - since 1997 - trade deficits .. ie every year since then we have imported more than we have exported. >>

That is partly a consequence of our kick-starting the Industrial Revolution. Since the mid-18th century we have dug up most of our natural resources, exporting much of them and burning or processing the rest. That allowed our population to grow into large industrial 'powerhouses', steadily reducing our better agricultural areas. We were then able to pay for much imported exotic food - starting with oranges and bananas - which we all now expect to find in every supermarket.

We have to try to pay for them somehow with a shrinking technical industry and a (fortunately) fairly profitable finance sector. If that decides to base itself in the EU instead we shall have to think of something quickly.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - nick62
We have to try to pay for them somehow with a shrinking technical industry and a (fortunately) fairly profitable finance sector. If that decides to base itself in the EU instead we shall have to think of something quickly.

Involuntary euthanasia, (starting in Westminster) ;)

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy
And if we believed all these 'experts' in economics, we'd be up to eyeballs in sharing the EU's debts because we'd be in the Euro.

Andy, can you please explain how we have benefited from being out of the Euro, when out Pound has lost 36% of its value against said currency in the last 19 years since it's peak of approx 1.73 in May 2000? If the Euro is a basket case, what does that make GBP?

I'm not advocating the Euro to be good, bad (or indifferent)! This is an honest question I've asked may people previously and never had answered, (I'm an engineer not an economist).

The UK economy is the worst basket case in Europe.

It has perpetual - since 1997 - trade deficits .. ie every year since then we have imported more than we have exported.

We have funded that by selling assets.. (electricity companies, gas companies, houses, companies etc.. ).. When teh music stops, expect a BIG drop in sterling, and a big surge in inflation as food and oil and cars and... computers,TVs etc all become much more expensive..

Strangely enough experts know this but it is politiclaly unacceptable..

At teh same time we are importing people which increases our imports to feed, clother and emply them..

Madness.

You obviously have read nothing about Italy, Greece, etc. We may have many serious problems, but they have adbsoluetly zippo to do with our being in or out of the EU or the Euro, but the qaultiy of our political class and business 'leaders' (mainly the big multinationals) and management style more generally. Not helped by the people generally borrowing just to buy frivolous 'stuff' and not personally l;iving within their means and thinking they deserve lots of free stuff from the government, which WE PAY FOR.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy
And if we believed all these 'experts' in economics, we'd be up to eyeballs in sharing the EU's debts because we'd be in the Euro.

Andy, can you please explain how we have benefited from being out of the Euro, when out Pound has lost 36% of its value against said currency in the last 19 years since it's peak of approx 1.73 in May 2000? If the Euro is a basket case, what does that make GBP?

I'm not advocating the Euro to be good, bad (or indifferent)! This is an honest question I've asked may people previously and never had answered, (I'm an engineer not an economist).

Its a bad idea to have a common currency amongst nations that are very different economically and polticially, especially when their economic fortunes are different at any given time. Its the reason why we dropped out of the ERM (forerunner to the Euro) in 1992, where our currency was fixed in relation to a basket of ther EU (EC) currenciews and not able to float up as well as down to account for changes in economic fortunes.

The only way to have a true Euro is to make the EU the European United States with one government, one set of laws, tax rates etc. And even if that was wanted, it would only have a chance in success when the economies all converged, which they have no chance in doing for a LONG time, especially the huge differences between North and Southern European economies and government debt levels.

Its why the Euro isn't working.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - nick62

Thank you.

Doesn't say much for GBP then to lose 36% in 20 years against a currency that's "not working"!

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

Precisely. Its like the so-called experts in newspapers telling us plebs what shares to buy - why would anyone want to disseminate that knowledge when they could keep it to themselves, buy shares at lower prices and make a fortune? Reason - they aren't really experts. And besides, very few parts of our lives these days are black and white 'good or bad' - more like very complex systems with shades of grey.

And if we believed all these 'experts' in economics, we'd be up to eyeballs in sharing the EU's debts because we'd be in the Euro. When things get heavily politicised, as science has become in the last 20 years (especially in the last 5), reasoned debate and discovery goes down the pan, because we can't easily differentiate the genuine from the embellished and made-up.

It's affecting my line of work in engineering, thought not as bad or at the same rate, and why I left it a couple of years ago,a dn, to be honest, why I haven't found an alternative as yet - they are currently even worse.

Science has not become politicised. There are problems with funding in many areas. For example much food science is done by the food industry, who suppress unwanted results. Anti GW research is funded by oil companies... You could publish anti GW reasearch but you’d need damned good evidence in a decent journal.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

Here is a scientific paper detailing how the models used to compute global temperature are flawed.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf

Their conclusion.

We have proven that the GCM-models used in IPCC report AR5 cannot compute correctly the natural component included in the observed global temperature. The reason is that the models fail to derive the influences of low cloud cover fraction on the global temperature. A too small natural component results in a too large portion for the contribution of the greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

Low loud cover affecting global temperature makes sense- insulating blanket etc.

That paper isn't even peer reviewed which means that it is completely worthless. They can claim anything and get away with it. It does have serious flaws that make it worthless, you can easily discover that for yourself.

Respected journals have a mechanism called peer review, whereby several respected scientists review the paper, to find any glaring flaws or omissions. It can only be published when the reviewers agree that it is of a sufficient standard. I have had papers reviewed, and I have been asked to review papers though I declined as they were not in my area of knowledge.

It's all well and good for people to talk about 'peer-reviewed science', but the problem is that climate science is still very new and undeveloped, rather like many aspects of science were 150-200 years ago.

Nope. For one thing 200 years ago science was largely the preserve of gentlemen scientists and industrialists. Today there are many thousands of scientists working in this field alone. And scientists do have an awareness of their own knowledge. That is why there are bounds on the estimates for the temperature rises.

Yes, we may have supercomputers and better standard of general scientific knowledge, but there are many areas of science that have also been studied for some time now, with access to the same expertise and equipment and yet they don't claim to know everything about their field, many knowing very little.

All I'm saying is that we should be VERY wary of this current trend of scientific 'hearding' towards 'concensus' because its easier to be in agreement with others in your field than be the outsider.

Personally, I think there's a long way to go, perhaps well over 50 years, maybe a lot more, until we have this science cracked as much as we do other aspects.

The key points behind climate change are well understood. The ability of CO2 to act as a greenhouse gas is very old and well established science. What is harder to model is the exact processes. Thus we don't know for sure how the jetstream will change, and how ocean currents will change.

The problem is that it may be too late then to do something about the (irreversible) problems we may well have and still are causing by our way of life.

I don't think we should listen to those who are using this new science to try and bring back discredited political ideologies, but we do need to make some hard choices about how we as a species consume the resources of this planet and to what end. That does mean that we should NOT listen to the idiots who are often driving the so-called debate at both ends of the spectrum, often for political purposes or for personal/national wealth and/or power. 'Activists' are the last people we should listen to - most of them already made up their minds before seeing any information.

Well said.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - sammy1

With the RED ARROWS touring the world why should I worry about buying an electric car or climate change? Where do you start in an attempt to save on CO2 pumping into the atmosphere?

It now appears like antibiotic resistance will see us off before climate change!

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

With the RED ARROWS touring the world why should I worry about buying an electric car or climate change? Where do you start in an attempt to save on CO2 pumping into the atmosphere?

It now appears like antibiotic resistance will see us off before climate change!

If someone does something that pollutes you then think you should not consider what you can do? Seems a stupid thing to think.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Bromptonaut

With the RED ARROWS touring the world why should I worry about buying an electric car or climate change? Where do you start in an attempt to save on CO2 pumping into the atmosphere?

You don't start by the sort of 'whataboutery' that compares metaphorical Bananas with Blue Whales.

We need our military pilots to be trained to a peak; the Arrows are a visible manifestation of that training.

The Reds have ten BAe Hawks; single engine advanced trainers. They display a few times a month during the Northern Hemisphere summer and occasionally elsewhere. Doing so they use N tonnes of fossil fuel (Jet A/Avtur) per annum.

Convert those tonnes to petrol/diesel and I doubt they'd run more than a few streets worth of cars for a year.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - barney100

I'm not convinced about us causing climate change. The climate has fluctuated since the earth was here. Ice ages, eruptions...alla the Middle Ages summer of darkness. Violent flooding a couple of hundred years ago killed many in the west. Air pollution must have horrendous in cities in the industrial revolution, smog in London etc etc.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - galileo

I'm not convinced about us causing climate change. The climate has fluctuated since the earth was here. Ice ages, eruptions...alla the Middle Ages summer of darkness. Violent flooding a couple of hundred years ago killed many in the west. Air pollution must have horrendous in cities in the industrial revolution, smog in London etc etc.

Living in Sheffield in the early 1960s, household coal fires and the many steelworks emissions used to cause yellow-green or grey fogs that were so dense I have seen bus conductors walking in front to guide the driver so he didn't hit the (invisible to him) kerb.

Today's whingers about air pollution have no idea of how much better it is than it used to be.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

I'm not convinced about us causing climate change. The climate has fluctuated since the earth was here. Ice ages, eruptions...alla the Middle Ages summer of darkness. Violent flooding a couple of hundred years ago killed many in the west. Air pollution must have horrendous in cities in the industrial revolution, smog in London etc etc.

Living in Sheffield in the early 1960s, household coal fires and the many steelworks emissions used to cause yellow-green or grey fogs that were so dense I have seen bus conductors walking in front to guide the driver so he didn't hit the (invisible to him) kerb.

Today's whingers about air pollution have no idea of how much better it is than it used to be.

As bad as pollution was before the original Clean Air Act in 1956 (and subseuqnet ones to update it mutliple times thereafter), pollution today in the UK, paritcualrly in major towns and cities, is still bad in comparison to the countryside, but its 'invisible' just because its of a different type, but still cause a lot of respiratory problems, for myself included.

My asthma clears up when I go on holiday to the West Country and comes back when I go home, and I live in a relatively small town - its just that there's more traffic and an industrial plant reasonably nearby.

To be honest things could be a lot better if people walked, cycled or took public transport more, especially for short trips such as to the shops, taking their kids to school, going to work.

I got berated by my line manager once for walking home (I worked in my home town, 10 minutes away) to pick up my car to go to a site visit, even though I left in good time and wasn't late. A colleague lived even closer and still drove to work every day, despite only needing to go out in his car about twice a week (and was already known which days).

My Dad used to drive to his 'retirement job' (he was still very much capable of walking there and back - again, only 10 minutes or so away) when it rained because he didn't want to use his umbrella. Many children could be walked to school, especially if they and other local parents formed a 'club' to rotate who it was to walk them.

Boilers can be run more efficiently if their programmer is used better, car-shared when possible, building insulation upgraded/fitted, etc. All new industrial units could be mandated to have fitted photovoltaic panels all over their roofs to generate a LOT of electricity, in addition to new houses; shared building heating networks and/or ones that can re-use waste energy from industrial plants or other processes that need heat.

Plenty of scope to reduce pollution further and reduce CO2 etc by various means, plus it will increase our energy security by reduce the burden on existing generation, reduce the need for new power stations and our reliance on oil and gas which increasingly comes from overseas, especially from nations that are either unstable or politically rather nasty.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

<< car-shared when possible, >>

When I started with ICI in 1967 several buses came on site at start and end of day, and of course a fair number of people cycled to work. Gradually car-sharing began and after a while the buses stopped. By the 1990s the car-sharing was dwindling as people lived further away and it became inconvenient.

The whole thing is too cheap for most to put up with the inconvenience - tho they will put up with much inconvenience caused by all those single-passenger cars causing the congestion and pollution, while grumbling about it all. Many have reached the mindset the Americans reached decades ago, where going anywhere meant getting in the car.

Limey to Yank: What are your feet for?

Yank to Limey: I guess one's for the brake and one's for the gas ....

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

<< car-shared when possible, >>

When I started with ICI in 1967 several buses came on site at start and end of day, and of course a fair number of people cycled to work. Gradually car-sharing began and after a while the buses stopped. By the 1990s the car-sharing was dwindling as people lived further away and it became inconvenient.

The whole thing is too cheap for most to put up with the inconvenience - tho they will put up with much inconvenience caused by all those single-passenger cars causing the congestion and pollution, while grumbling about it all. Many have reached the mindset the Americans reached decades ago, where going anywhere meant getting in the car.

Limey to Yank: What are your feet for?

Yank to Limey: I guess one's for the brake and one's for the gas ....

In my last company we had a production line and many staff lived nearby and walked to work. These days we are more educated, and job security is low, so most of us commute further. Public transport just isn’t practical. My job is 25 miles away.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CommonSenseGuy

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' on big salaries looking forward to gold-plated pensions paid for by the long-suffering taxpayer. Climate Change is yet another facet of Project Fear. The Earth's climate is always in a state of change. In the past the British Isles have experienced ice ages and tropical conditions.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Engineer Andy

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' on big salaries looking forward to gold-plated pensions paid for by the long-suffering taxpayer. Climate Change is yet another facet of Project Fear. The Earth's climate is always in a state of change. In the past the British Isles have experienced ice ages and tropical conditions.

The difference was that those changes took tens ot thousands and even many, many millions of years to happen, often associated with movement of the tectonic plates etc, to create and break up mega continents etc.

What has been happening as regards the levels of greenhouse gases (a good number many magnitdes higher than the potency of just CO2), pollutants in in the air, water, soil that get into the food chain (and thus ourselves) are happening over a FAR shorter timescale (at most, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and much of it in the last century and getting still getting worse) but WE are putting them there.

IMHO, we are helping things change (for the worse) far faster and to a much greater degree than if we lived far more in harmony with our planet and yes, its natural changes occuring over far longer periods. Combine this with overpopulation and both social and political upheavals/serious problems, this doesn't bode well for us, does it?

As I've said earlier, I think that some of the claims from some parts of scientific community are overblown, often to keep within the crowd of opinion (they'd prefer not to be a dissenter, as they get more funding that way), as well as for blatant ideological and political puroses, but there is, in my view, despite this, more than enough evidence of the general direction of travel as regards the problems we humans are causing. It's still bad, just not quite to the extent that some of the more 'extreme' activists say.

I'm slightly sceptical, but not a full-on sceptic: I don't trusts every report, like many, I dig deeper into the evidence and the validly of the research and scientists, and then make my own judgement. Most I believe, some I definitely do not.

That does include a good proportion of the so-called Green Lobby, many of whom have wither little scientific backgrounds and/or who bring pre-existing ideologies that shape what they say, because it's all part of a bigger End Game (e.g. politicians or some environmental pressure groups, such as AOC in the US).

I am also sceptical about the claims from many a firm in the 'Green' industry, mainly because I've dealt with a good few myself as a Building Services Engineer over my 20 years working in the Cosntruction Industry.

Many of their products claims are, in my view, significantly over-inflated as regards their reducing the overall environmental impact (especially over the longer term) and are sometimes not much more than slick sales pitches for snake oil products and to attract lucrative public funding for large scale projects and product development to make their fortunes, which we all pay for white elephants and such.

Quite often, those products that actually work often have a very limited marketplace and thus don't deserve the grants because they don't have much of an impact. Products and designs that do are often classed as less attractive PR to politicians (e.g. properly insulating [not like Grenfell] as much of the UK's buildings as possible, expanding nuclear energy, or fitting PV panels on as many roofs as possible, especially commercial buildings such as factories and offices to provide a huge boost to our electricity supply and reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels).

Energy saving ones (which are often easy wins financially) can have a huge and sustained impact on the pollutants we produce over the long term, and if rolled out worldwide could do so on a planetary scale. It just takes people in power to have the will and common sense, as well as to not worry endlessly about garnering good headlines in the media each day. Some good ideas are indeed quite mundane and boring, but very worthwhile.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Bromptonaut

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' on big salaries looking forward to gold-plated pensions paid for by the long-suffering taxpayer. Climate Change is yet another facet of Project Fear.

Meanwhile, in other news, there are faeries at the bottom of my garden and the moon is all green cheese.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - madf

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' on big salaries looking forward to gold-plated pensions paid for by the long-suffering taxpayer. Climate Change is yet another facet of Project Fear. The Earth's climate is always in a state of change. In the past the British Isles have experienced ice ages and tropical conditions.

Obviously written by an expert on climate change who manages to conflate several issues : "Socialist EU", "state sector experts" "gold plated pensions" and" taxpayers". Oh and "Project Fear."

Great conspiracy theory.. a gold medal awaits :-)

Meanwhile in the real world....

Edited by madf on 07/09/2019 at 16:57

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Vitesse6

It isn't a full moon tonight is it?

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' ..

Where did you think up your pseudonym, while posting this extremist conspiracy-theory piffle ?

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Zippy123

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' ..

Where did you think up your pseudonym, while posting this extremist conspiracy-theory piffle ?

Goodness knows, but he's admitted that his grandfather was a likely war - criminal and he seems to admire that - so it paints quite a picture of the person.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CommonSenseGuy

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' ..

Where did you think up your pseudonym, while posting this extremist conspiracy-theory piffle ?

Goodness knows, but he's admitted that his grandfather was a likely war - criminal and he seems to admire that - so it paints quite a picture of the person.

Its thanks to the sacrifices of my grandfather and father in WWI and WWII that 'snowflakes' like you are writing in English and not German. War is a messy business on all sides but if you were any student of history you would know that British indiscretions were dwarfed by those of the Germans. You are able to live freely thanks to our forefathers' actions. Unfortunately we are living in an era where brave British soldiers, now old men, who served and followed orders in Northern Ireland in the late 60's and 70's are being prosecuted by their own government.

Going back to the subject of Climate Change I find it encouraging that more and more people are questioning the environmentalist propaganda being spewed out by the MainStream Media and especially the left-leaning BBC. Donald Trump is rightly sceptical and I think once we have a good shake-out in the Conservative Party and all the liberal EU-sock-puppets have departed then we'll have a post-Brexit government willing to take a more pragmatic view on the environment. Brexit seems to be the stimulus that has been required to wake the population from their slumber and open their eyes to the propaganda that the Liberal Elite have be propagating for the last few decades.

A huge amount of Climate Change 'research' is funded via EU grants (i.e. British taxpayers' money collected by the EU and then handed back less a 'handling charge'). Researchers know that if they don't present results in line with the EU's expectations then there will be no more funding. Academic researchers have been completely corrupted by the EU.

Edited by CommonSenseGuy on 09/09/2019 at 12:12

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' ..

Where did you think up your pseudonym, while posting this extremist conspiracy-theory piffle ?

Goodness knows, but he's admitted that his grandfather was a likely war - criminal and he seems to admire that - so it paints quite a picture of the person.

Its thanks to the sacrifices of my grandfather and father in WWI and WWII that 'snowflakes' like you are writing in English and not German. War is a messy business on all sides but if you were any student of history you would know that British indiscretions were dwarfed by those of the Germans. You are able to live freely thanks to our forefathers' actions. Unfortunately we are living in an era where brave British soldiers, now old men, who served and followed orders in Northern Ireland in the late 60's and 70's are being prosecuted by their own government.

Going back to the subject of Climate Change I find it encouraging that more and more people are questioning the environmentalist propaganda being spewed out by the MainStream Media and especially the left-leaning BBC. Donald Trump is rightly sceptical and I think once we have a good shake-out in the Conservative Party and all the liberal EU-sock-puppets have departed then we'll have a post-Brexit government willing to take a more pragmatic view on the environment. Brexit seems to be the stimulus that has been required to wake the population from their slumber and open their eyes to the propaganda that the Liberal Elite have be propagating for the last few decades.

A huge amount of Climate Change 'research' is funded via EU grants (i.e. British taxpayers' money collected by the EU and then handed back less a 'handling charge'). Researchers know that if they don't present results in line with the EU's expectations then there will be no more funding. Academic researchers have been completely corrupted by the EU.

What complete poppycock. Time to close the thread methinks.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - CommonSenseGuy

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' ..

Where did you think up your pseudonym, while posting this extremist conspiracy-theory piffle ?

Goodness knows, but he's admitted that his grandfather was a likely war - criminal and he seems to admire that - so it paints quite a picture of the person.

Its thanks to the sacrifices of my grandfather and father in WWI and WWII that 'snowflakes' like you are writing in English and not German. War is a messy business on all sides but if you were any student of history you would know that British indiscretions were dwarfed by those of the Germans. You are able to live freely thanks to our forefathers' actions. Unfortunately we are living in an era where brave British soldiers, now old men, who served and followed orders in Northern Ireland in the late 60's and 70's are being prosecuted by their own government.

Going back to the subject of Climate Change I find it encouraging that more and more people are questioning the environmentalist propaganda being spewed out by the MainStream Media and especially the left-leaning BBC. Donald Trump is rightly sceptical and I think once we have a good shake-out in the Conservative Party and all the liberal EU-sock-puppets have departed then we'll have a post-Brexit government willing to take a more pragmatic view on the environment. Brexit seems to be the stimulus that has been required to wake the population from their slumber and open their eyes to the propaganda that the Liberal Elite have be propagating for the last few decades.

A huge amount of Climate Change 'research' is funded via EU grants (i.e. British taxpayers' money collected by the EU and then handed back less a 'handling charge'). Researchers know that if they don't present results in line with the EU's expectations then there will be no more funding. Academic researchers have been completely corrupted by the EU.

What complete poppycock. Time to close the thread methinks.

That's right. Shut down the debate when it doesn't fit the approved narrative.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

<< Shut down the debate when it doesn't fit the approved narrative. >>

'debate'. It hasn't resembled a debate for a while. You have related your ancestors' behaviour in two World Wars, which seems to have coloured (even biased) your own thinking ever since. The British (and many other nations) were given a hard time by the Germans, but most of us have moved on in the 70 years since, recognising that hatchets, in the long term, are best buried, for all concerned.

In the 1930s my father developed an interest in collecting early postage stamps from pre-confederation German states, and learnt some German as a consequence. About 1955 we spent a family holiday at a farm in the Westerwald near Coblenz. I remember how beaten-up the country roads still were (motoring connection!) and how the young children at the farm had asked whether we would be bringing bombs with us. A cameo of how it was seen on the other side.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

The whole Climate Change industry is a huge con. Perpetrated by the Socialist EU and state-sector 'experts' ..

Where did you think up your pseudonym, while posting this extremist conspiracy-theory piffle ?

Goodness knows, but he's admitted that his grandfather was a likely war - criminal and he seems to admire that - so it paints quite a picture of the person.

Its thanks to the sacrifices of my grandfather and father in WWI and WWII that 'snowflakes' like you are writing in English and not German. War is a messy business on all sides but if you were any student of history you would know that British indiscretions were dwarfed by those of the Germans. You are able to live freely thanks to our forefathers' actions. Unfortunately we are living in an era where brave British soldiers, now old men, who served and followed orders in Northern Ireland in the late 60's and 70's are being prosecuted by their own government.

Going back to the subject of Climate Change I find it encouraging that more and more people are questioning the environmentalist propaganda being spewed out by the MainStream Media and especially the left-leaning BBC. Donald Trump is rightly sceptical and I think once we have a good shake-out in the Conservative Party and all the liberal EU-sock-puppets have departed then we'll have a post-Brexit government willing to take a more pragmatic view on the environment. Brexit seems to be the stimulus that has been required to wake the population from their slumber and open their eyes to the propaganda that the Liberal Elite have be propagating for the last few decades.

A huge amount of Climate Change 'research' is funded via EU grants (i.e. British taxpayers' money collected by the EU and then handed back less a 'handling charge'). Researchers know that if they don't present results in line with the EU's expectations then there will be no more funding. Academic researchers have been completely corrupted by the EU.

What complete poppycock. Time to close the thread methinks.

That's right. Shut down the debate when it doesn't fit the approved narrative.

When almost all scientists are in agreement that climate change is real, due to massive amounts of evidence from multiple sources, only lunatics and the irrational can make remarks such as yours.I guess it stems from a lack of trust in authority that is sadly all too commonplace today. The debate over climate change is when we will be in trouble, not if.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - groaver

Donald Trump is rightly sceptical

Ha! I can stop you right there.

The man isn't even sane!

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

Donald Trump is rightly sceptical

Ha! I can stop you right there.

The man isn't even sane!

He is sane, though somewhat erratic and with a short attention span. The problem is that he is influential. As Germaine Greer pointed out, an awful lot of Americans have been disenfranchised, with many higher paid jobs going overseas, and the collapse of many American industries. The nice Liberals don’t seem to care about them, so naturally they turn to demagogues who talk their language. The anti climate change brigade are not dissimilar.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - groaver

Donald Trump is rightly sceptical

Ha! I can stop you right there.

The man isn't even sane!

He is sane, though somewhat erratic and with a short attention span. The problem is that he is influential. As Germaine Greer pointed out, an awful lot of Americans have been disenfranchised, with many higher paid jobs going overseas, and the collapse of many American industries. The nice Liberals don’t seem to care about them, so naturally they turn to demagogues who talk their language. The anti climate change brigade are not dissimilar.

No he isn't.

Have you saw his ridiculous observations and lies concerning the storm that battered the Bahamas?

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif

Donald Trump is rightly sceptical

Ha! I can stop you right there.

The man isn't even sane!

He is sane, though somewhat erratic and with a short attention span. The problem is that he is influential. As Germaine Greer pointed out, an awful lot of Americans have been disenfranchised, with many higher paid jobs going overseas, and the collapse of many American industries. The nice Liberals don’t seem to care about them, so naturally they turn to demagogues who talk their language. The anti climate change brigade are not dissimilar.

No he isn't.

Have you saw his ridiculous observations and lies concerning the storm that battered the Bahamas?

I think you are confusing sanity and rationality. He is in his own way quite shrewd, even if to most of us Brits he comes across as a nut job. He isn’t trying to appeal to the likes of thee and me.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Andrew-T

<< I think you are confusing sanity and rationality. He is in his own way quite shrewd, >>

Trump seems to imagine that running a big influential country is just like running a large company (which he inherited) - hire and fire on a whim, offend anyone for any reason. He will never make a real politician - or at least there's no sign of it so far.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Lounge Lizard

Climate Change - The new secular religion of the post materialist middle classes.
n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Leif
Climate Change - The new secular religion of the post materialist middle classes.

Complete horse poo.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - gordonbennet
Climate Change - The new secular religion of the post materialist middle classes.

in their easy virtual post truth world

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - Avant

It seems that this thread has run its course. I'll give it another 24 hours (till Monday evening) in case anyone has anything further to say that's constructive.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - gordonbennet

Agreed Avant, it's no different to any social media discussion about climate/brexit/trump, there are those with open minds and those convinced they are right, sadly for some these subjects have become a religion and anyone not reading and repeating from the hymnsheet the disciples have digested is to be viewed with horror as some sort of heretic.

We've gone back several hundreds years in attitudes, there would be no shortage of applicants for witchfinder general plus assorted torturers and executioners for non believers.

n/a - Climate change basis is looking dodgy. - alan1302

Agreed Avant, it's no different to any social media discussion about climate/brexit/trump, there are those with open minds and those convinced they are right, sadly for some these subjects have become a religion and anyone not reading and repeating from the hymnsheet the disciples have digested is to be viewed with horror as some sort of heretic.

We've gone back several hundreds years in attitudes, there would be no shortage of applicants for witchfinder general plus assorted torturers and executioners for non believers.

The attitudes have always been like this - you just see it more with social media/forums like this.