Global warming

[Biker Biggles]

As I get older I have less and less faith in "experts" and "science".
These people tend to be self perpetuating groups whose interests are served by self glorification.I switch off as soon as I hear a politician say "The science tells us"as I recall the complete screw ups of recent years,all justified at the time by experts who turned out to be liabilities.I mean the experts said it was OK to feed dead animals to cattle,and that two cot deaths couldnt happen in the same family,and hundreds of other idiocies.
Now they may be right about climate forecasts and who is to blame,but somehow I suspect most of it is political spin based on a few known facts.

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

People raise the "earth's climate has constantly changed over millenia" and somehow assume that climate scientists hadn't actually thought of that. It's not a trump card, it's already been taken into account.

How has it been taken into account? unless you know all the reasons for climate change and temperature variation you can't account for their effects...

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

As to the accuracy of measurements I'll be honest I don't know. Again, I've enough faith in the scientific process to assume that professional scientists won't suddenly go "doh! he's got us there! oops, sorry everyone!".

you would think wouldn't you, except in the 70s we had doomsayers forecasting another ice age with equal evangelism as some of the proponents of warming today. as someone who trained as a scientist i find the acceptance of various statistics pretty extraordinary

important point highlighted for emphasis, why don't you go look it up, i'm not taking the mick, relying on anyone else's opinion is a mistake in my book

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

And why does it matter? Well apart from famine, war, disease, pestilence and death on a scale so large that the phrase "biblical" does no justice, I guess the danger is that we add "man made" temperature rises to "natural" temperature rises and cross a balance point beyond which the process becomes a runaway train and we end up with an atmosphere like Venus.

biblical pestilence?, atmosphere like venus? nee nah nee nah, that's the hyperbole police coming for you

But scientists (climate scientists at that) also said there was a feckin huge problem with the ozone layer and we need to act quick or the end of the world is nigh. A lot of people pointed out seasonal variations and how ozone levels have naturally peaked and troughed over the years and how this couldn't be anything to do with human activities. Remarkably similar arguments.

I have to ask, if you don't put your faith in experts and science then what do you put your faith in? I'd always encourage rigorous examination of evidence and to treat everything put to you with a great deal of skeptism - whether the source be scientists, politicians or the media. But personally I just tend to go with the idea that I can't be an expert on everything, and if push comes to shove, whilst I'll examine the evidence as best as I'm able to understand it, I'll ultimately take the doctor's advice on medical matters, the lawyer's advice on legal matters and the climate scientist's advice on climate change. Especially when that advice is not just coming from one individual but the vast majority of an international array of thousands.

Ultimately I guess I accept some of the hype that is put on the global warming bandwagon because the basic message boils down to "use less fossil fuels". And we need to do that anyway, with considerable urgency, regardless of any effect on the climate.

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

I have to ask, if you don't put your faith in experts and science then what do you put your faith in?

there's a large difference between getting your opinions from a "scientist" and using the scientific method to come to your own conclusions

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

Ultimately I guess I accept some of the hype that is put on the global warming bandwagon because the basic message boils down to "use less fossil fuels". And we need to do that anyway, with considerable urgency, regardless of any effect on the climate.

that's another argument...

Quote:
Originally Posted by MiniMatt
People raise the "earth's climate has constantly changed over millenia" and somehow assume that climate scientists hadn't actually thought of that. It's not a trump card, it's already been taken into account.

How has it been taken into account? unless you know all the reasons for climate change and temperature variation you can't account for their effects...

Put it another way, are you suggesting it hasn't been taken into account? I could go trawl wikipedia and come back to you with "volcanoes" and you could go trawl and say "that's countered by X" - in order to give you an exact answer I'd need to study for the next ten years or so to get a doctorate, then spend another ten years or so on research. And then I'd just be one voice amongst many. When there are thousands of people worldwide who have already done their doctorate, and their research, and when they're all speaking with one voice (okay, the vast majority of them are) then I'm hard pressed to believe that this combined knowledge and experience has failed to spot something that me or you could come up with over an afternoon on wikipedia.


Quote:
Originally Posted by MiniMatt
As to the accuracy of measurements I'll be honest I don't know. Again, I've enough faith in the scientific process to assume that professional scientists won't suddenly go "doh! he's got us there! oops, sorry everyone!".

you would think wouldn't you, except in the 70s we had doomsayers forecasting another ice age with equal evangelism as some of the proponents of warming today. as someone who trained as a scientist i find the acceptance of various statistics pretty extraordinary

important point highlighted for emphasis, why don't you go look it up, i'm not taking the mick, relying on anyone else's opinion is a mistake in my book

I agree that accepting blindly any single person's opinion is a HUGE mistake. I agree that accepting blindly even the evidence of thousands of is a HUGE mistake, but like I said above, I can't just "look it up" - in order to fully understand the issue I'd need to train to become a climate scientist. As such, the only thing I can do is look at the conclusions of a vast body of research. I'm certainly not blindly accepting, but as I said, I can't be an expert on everything - ultimately we all just have to put our faith in the expert opinion of others. Sure, definitely examine the evidence but at some point we do need to accept that we can't be an expert on everything.

70s doomsayers (actually 50s doomsayers too) also said we were destroying our ozone layer. A lot of people pointed to seasonal variations and peaks and troughs through millenia occuring naturally.

Quote:
Originally Posted by MiniMatt
And why does it matter? Well apart from famine, war, disease, pestilence and death on a scale so large that the phrase "biblical" does no justice, I guess the danger is that we add "man made" temperature rises to "natural" temperature rises and cross a balance point beyond which the process becomes a runaway train and we end up with an atmosphere like Venus.

biblical pestilence?, atmosphere like venus? nee nah nee nah, that's the hyperbole police coming for you

Well you'll allow me a little drama won't you? I suspect I might just live long enough to see the beginnings of massive wars fought over oil (some might say this has already begun), add to that significant displacement of populations thanks to changing land masses and I suspect things'll get pretty hairy.

[Biker Biggles]

Perhaps we should pay more attention to the old fashioned concept of common sense and "gut reaction".I used the example of feeding offal to cattle because common sense would have said that was wrong whatever the "science".
As for climate change I dont know,but common sense does support the use less fossil fuels arguement very strongly.Animals (like us) will always fight over scarce resources,so preparing our ground with that in mind is very sensible.

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

there's a large difference between getting your opinions from a "scientist" and using the scientific method to come to your own conclusions

Oh I agree, but to use the scientific method to come up with my own conclusions I'm going to need some help gathering the data if you'd oblige?

First off I'm going to need details of volcanic activity over the last 4.5 billion years.
And tectonic data too.
Next I'm going to need atmospheric content analysis over the same period.
And if you could fetch earth orbit variations and solar activity estimates over that period that'd be great too.
If you could also teach me the interactions of various ranges of the light spectrum with differing atmospheric contents, and a brush up on the physics of refraction too.

That'd be a start, althought I've probably missed a LOT. Now, I can understand all these concepts, but lets be honest, in order to understand the maths involved I'm going to have to some studying. Several years of studying.

So like I say, to truly understand it takes more than an afternoon on wikipedia, it takes a life's work. Which several thousand people have already done.

What I can do, as a reasonably intelligent bloke, is examine the conclusions drawn, note that the examples above have been taken into account, and probably go "oooh" as I read about things they've taken into account that I hadn't thought of. I can also do a cursory check for basic maths blunders on individual reports. I can also look for contradictory evidence and when that evidence is found I have to weigh up which one is correct. And herein lies the problem. To the layman (ie. me, but quite possibly yourself as well) both conforming and contradicting evidence looks reasonable. We can't necessarily follow the in depth maths as we haven't spent the last decade working on this, but the hypothesis and conclusions look valid on both. So we're kinda left with numbers - the vast majority of learned individuals are saying one thing, a tiny minority of learned individuals are saying another. Stuck on the sidelines and with all arguments looking reasonable, we kinda have to go with the majority.

[Biker Biggles]

One of Mankinds great strengths-----and weaknesses-----The herd instinct.

I agree with everything said above.

Twice. despite not reading it.

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

I'm not a climate scientist and as such I'm going to need some pretty strong evidence to start contradicting their professional area of expertise.

Scientists, especially notable ones, can be incredibly arrogant. Their area of research is the most important, we're doomed if we don't listen to them, blah blah blah. Not least because their job rests on there being a problem that needs investigating.

The only kind of science I pay any attention to is the kind that can ideally be shown by repeatable experiment, or at least sound theory without massive contradictory evidence.