Back in 1968 when Erich von Däniken wrote Chariots of the gods? claiming that extraterrestrials were responsible for the technologies that resulted in the Egyptian pyramids, the Stonehenge, the Easter Island statues and much else his theories were very plausible, attracted many adherents but little attention or criticism from the scientific community. When asked why I recall one scientist saying, “Why would an astronomer come down from his telescope and explain that the moon is not made of cheese?!�
Martin Durkin’s film The Great Global Warming Swindle has had plenty of attention from scientists. If those scientists are right (and why wouldn’t they be?) Durkin is not so much fantasizing but deliberately distorting the information he presents. To the extent, in fact, that if journalists had a procedure similar to other professions Durkin would surely be answering the ethics committee.
Paul Norton has linked to the views of some scientists, Robert Merkel before him explored how the ABC got to program such stuff. I’d like to add to those, and touch on some of the leading ideas. I’d recommend watching the preview of the film at the site the ABC has set up. It seems dramatically presented and very plausible.
Indeed Professor Nathan Bindoff had to watch it twice to pick up the deception and distortion.
On the second time, I realised time series of past temperatures were quoted out of context, were ancient science, not current science, and could well have been bogus. I am appalled. All of the climate science portrayed in the program is out of context, incorrect, or neglects other processes that are well known. The cooling from the 1940s to 1970s is an example of this deceptive discussion. It is well known that this cooling is driven mostly by aerosols (ie pollution) in the atmosphere. Nothing contradictory about this cooling when all sources of radiation changes are considered.
On the matter of cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s, this graph was shown in the film. Compare this with the accurate graph.
David Jones and his colleagues at the National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology have done an excellent critique of the film (pdf) (via Jennifer Marohasy’s blog) in which they track down many of the sources of (mis)information used by Durkin. He really went out of his way to deceive.
Bill Butler also does well in identifying the problems in the film, concluding that what we have here is FRAUD, which his dictionary defines as:
fraud - specifically: a misrepresentation or concealment with reference to some fact material to a transaction that is made with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity and with the intent to deceive another
So, you have been warned!
David Fisher did a neat summary of the issues on The Science Show on RN, which was really a précis of a piece done by Bob Ward, Director of Global Science Networks at Risk Management Solutions who fired off a complaint to industry regulator Ofcom, one of 246 by 25 April according to Wikipedia. He then penned an open letter to Durkin, signed by about three dozen scientists.
From the preview, the film asserts the role of the sun as the main driver of warming. Via Deltoid a new study by Sloan and Wolfendale (pdf) at Lancaster and Durham find that cosmic rays may have contributed about 2% of warming in the last 35 years. That’s about the same as the contribution of volcanoes, according to Ward, also asserted in the film as being greater than human influence.
Similarly the Oz tells us:
solar physicists at Britain’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the University of Southampton, along with colleague Claus Froehlich of the World Radiation Centre in Dorf, Switzerland, have found that while solar activity may have played a role in climate change in the first half of the last century, it is not driving the recent rapid warming.
That answers another question raised in the film, where did the warming to 1940 come from?
I’m expecting a bit of a free-for-all in the panel discussion to be hosted by Tony Jones after the program. One thing sure to be raised by Michael Duffy is the contention by Professor Scott Armstrong and Dr Kesten Green, experts in forecasting, that the forecasts by the climate change modelers are, well, rubbish. I haven’t seen the paper, but I’ve listened to Duffy’s interview with Green three times now. Each time I am more underwhelmed. I think some of his comments are interesting but he’d do better if he understood the subject under examination. For example he doesn’t understand the difference between climate and weather and thinks there is uncertainty over whether CO2 has any effect. He found that there were competing theories relating to solar, cosmic rays and magnetic flux.
I think Duffy’s killer blow will be that consensus actually reduces the chance of predictions being right. Neglecting, of course, that Armstrong and Green are talking about group dynamics when scientists are working closely together, not spread out all over the world.
Armstrong and Green say that simple models work best. So I’d put to him that we have three really strong trends in increasing carbon emissions, build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere and temperature rise and science that connects all three. We know from observations that the effects of all this on the climate are moving strongly in the direction predicted, only faster.
If you want to know the risks have a read of Michelle Field’s interview with Mark Lynas. Between 2 and 3C the Amazon goes up in smoke and soils start releasing carbon. In his book Six Degrees he says this pushes up the temperature another 1.5C and we lose control. And the paleo record shows that about 3 million years ago with temperatures 2-3C above today’s and CO2 much where it is now we had a sea level 25m higher.
Durkin, Duffy et al would have us do nothing about global warming. Amanda Lynch says lets have “no regrets� and do something about it. I’m with her and with Georgia at the ‘Swindle’ discussion forum:
It’s all about RISK MANAGEMENT - every business has one, why not planet earth.
If we conservatively accept the 4ºC rise as the point for a runaway climate change event, the Hadley Centre already gives a greater than 1% chance of reaching this temperature with the current levels of GHG in the atmosphere. Would you fly on a plane with a 1% chance of catastrophic failure?
Think about it: this is 1 in every 100 flights crashes.
There are about 2 one-way flights from Syd to Melbourne per day, just with Virgin airlines. This risk would be equivalent to 1 Virgin airliner crash out of Sydney, bound for Melbourne, every week. With that risk, you’d never fly Virgin out of Sydney to Melbourne, would you? Then why is this risk acceptable for crashing the planet??!
Why is it acceptable to be taking the risk?
I’m not sure of her maths there. I make it one crash every 7 weeks. But the point is well made.
Marohasy’s blog is hilarious. She seriously floated the pseudo-science of abiotic oil a while back. If you need to catch up on the latest denialist memes, don’t bother looking in the comments though, her coterie of admirers are usually 12 months behind the curve.
Are you seriously suggesting that Bolt, Blair et. al. are encouraging their poltroonish fans to watch a fraudulent documentary?
Say it ain’t so!
Virgin Blue has 18 Sydney-Melbourne flights on weekdays. There’s probably more than 100 flights a week overall.
You may notice that I didn’t call it a documentary, just a film. If you go the other track you have to add the qualifier ‘pseudo’. Too many key strokes for an old guy.
Is it possible that instead of this rather silly “its all man made/its all natural” argument that both sides can see some merit in the others position?
The only process I see currently being put in place (carbon trading/credits) appears to me to be adding up to a tax on consumers by both industry (who will price it into products) and governments (Who will set the caps and undoubtedly fine over-users).
I cant see a great downside to any current industry as upgrading equipment can be passed off as “green” and they will end up with trading credits.
I see protectionism being a major driver of this approach, particularly in the EU, US and probably Australia. By imposing a travel tax on agricultural produce into (for example) the EU it will effectively prop up an inefficient first world farmer at the expense of trade with less developed nations (most of Africa).
Energy conservation and efficiency is a great idea, but making renew-ables price competitive by taxation seems to me to be missing the the point of having cheap energy.
I cant see developing nations slamming the brakes on OR using any of the current overpriced (by their standards) alternative energy sources.
Whats the solution?
Buggered if I know, for my money there isn’t one, mankind will have to adapt, and if in the meantime a viable, cheap renewable comes on the market, we may avoid at least part of what is supposed to happen.
O/T slightly, I know a lot is said about the computer modeling by all parties in the AGW controversy. My worry is although I am expected to accept models projecting 50-100 years into the future of a massively complex system i couldn’t help but noticing the best the CSIRO could come up with about our current El Nino cycle is the it “may be weakening or even over”.
Thats a known cycle, much smaller than a global system, with limited effects. If they cant even state with confidence thats over why should anyone assign a “debate is over” label to AGW.
Hope this will generate a bit of intelligent debate, Thanks.
The thing is that the scientists who accept the reality of anthropogenic global warming don’t claim that all the observed warming is “all man made”. The IPCC science and modelling, and the main CSIRO documents on the science of global warming, all acknowledge and take into consideration the various sources of natural climate variation, but after doing so conclude that there is a significant element of recent and current warming which can’t be explained by natural variability and is almost certainly the result of human activity.
So much for the science being settled
Peter, the only way we’ll get absolute certainty is in the historical record, by which time it is too late to do anything about it. As the actual article notes if you bother to read it, the climate modellers state that their modelling of uncertainty doesn’t just rely on comparisons to 20th-century figures; there’s much more to it than that.
There is still lots of debate amongst scientists about predicting the exact effects of of climate change. But, frankly, they’re just as likely to underestimate the effects as overestimate them, and I’m not waiting around to find out thanks very much, particularly as cleaning up CO2 emissions will reduce so many other pollutants that are killing and injuring people every single day.
Careful there, Moley - that’s tantamount to heresy. Apparently, questioning long-range models makes you a creationist wingnut, but accepting them without question makes you a Defender of Teh Rational Science.
Personally, when confronted with “forecasts” like these my bullshit detector screams like a banshee. But then I’m clearly a myopic ostrich with my head stuck in flat earth, blissfully unaware of imminent catastrophe. In about 100 years time. Or not.
All the graph in the previous comment shows is that it’s hard to predict into the far future how much CO2 will be emitted into the atmosphere, largely because we’ll probably choose to do something about it at some point. If we choose to act, emissions go down. If we don’t, they keep rising.
Quite agree, tfm.
You people have well and truly flipped your wigs! For god sake, were you so hysterical when Andrew Denton interviewed Al Gore? I know the Two Luvvies - Margaret and David - gave their all to bury Team America but this hysteria over one little doco is just too much.
Just breathe! He’s not the messiah, he’s just a very naughty boy!
Just saw the preview on the ABC website. I’ve seen one or two of those ‘expert’ climate change deniers in a 4 Corners doco which showed they were funded by the oil lobby for their research. There was a great grab of one of them claiming that ‘not knowing’ where his funding came from kept him free of bias.
“What a surprise! It’s Big Oil”
Extremely interesting piece by an “ABC Insider” in Crikey today:
And this one as well on the website:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media/20070711-The-iSwindleiHow-Aunty-would-sell-its-grandmother-at-the-moment-to-appease-the-right.html
That’s worth a chuckle, though I do like Jones as he is a fair-minded rottweiler.
No, Robert. “All” the graph shows is that the forecasts depend on the assumptions you make - e.g. on economic, technological and demographic change - about the future. By construction, we are lead to believe that immediate “positive” action will mitigate the looming disaster, but this is all based upon - you guessed it - the modellers’ assumptions and biases. You can drive a freight train run on diesel through that range of assumptions and outcomes. The GIGO principle applies, as always.
So you’re prepared to take the punt that the Chindia boom will collapse in a horrible economic depression and solve greenhouse emissions for us, then?
I’m not punting on anything, because I have insufficient confidence in any of the long-range forecasts, by either believers or deniers. You’re apparently certain that you know what’s going to happen, so you are willing to punt on the future. Unfortunately, your certainty is more theologic than scientific.
What John G said. It’s just a doco, for Pete’s sake. Why are you all so afraid of it?
The fact that this post is I think the fourth LP post on TGGWS in the last few days is a sad symptom, in my opinion, of the impact of the film.
It has successfully derailed positive discussion of how we can deal with climate change and put the focus back on a spurious debate as to whether or not climate change is real.
Horrible horrible waste of time and energy. This is the first and last time I will comment on it.
Come on, folks, let’s get back to the real issue - how do we achieve deep cuts fast and prevent runaway climate change?
The word “punt” reminds us that that we are talking about probabilities; probabilities of climate change on a scale and of a kind which will have adverse economic, social and, of course, environmental consequences. Neither I, Robert or the IPCC claim to know with certainty exactly what climate change will result from increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions beyond certain critical thresholds. However we believe that there is a strong balance of probabilities that it will be significant, its consequences will be adverse for the environment and for human societies, and therefore it would be prudent to take steps to avoid it. Similarly, whilst the “worst-case” scenarios (such as runaway global warming due to melting permafrost releaasing methane) may be improbable, they will not be merely trivially probable if current trends on emissions aren’t turned around, and they are a risk which our grandchildren will not thank us for running because we feared temporary economic loss.
The probability that I will have a serious accident on any one cycling journey is very low, but I still wear a helmet. And such a prudential attitude is even more warranted when the risk is not primarily to oneself, but to future generations who will be the involuntary recipients of whatever legacy our actions bequeath them.
Who’s taking the bigger punt: people who want to keep the mixture of gases in the atmosphere approximately the same as it is, or those who want to continue to change it radically?
Really? What’s the probability?
Mmh, but you don’t wear body armour? Or drive a car? Why not? Aren’t you afraid of the risk? Or is it that you’ve made a cost-benefit analysis and worked out what the most sensible solution should be? What’s “wearing a helmet” in the context of global warming? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Fyodor’s right. The ‘punt’, Robert, is equivalent to saying the prophylactic against being killed in a car accident is banning all cars.
And picking up on tim’s point - why is this film creating such a fuss at LP? Even the ever and eternally evil John Howard has signed up to AGW. So has the UN and a slew of world governments. What is it about one little documentary, which most of you are convinced is a conscious fraud, that is rattling your cage so?
Just flick it off and move on.
Of course, the real reason would require some post-modern (Foucauldian) exegesis, and we wouldn’t want to go there.
Well said, Tim.
Here’s a question, if you’ll put up with a sort of roundabout introduction to it.
I lack sufficient scientific literacy to have a real grown-up’s opinion one way or the other about the validity of evidence for global warming; my hunch is that there must be something to the claims for AGW, but considering how little I’m able to know about it, it remains a mere hunch.
But it seems that, if the problem is anywhere near as life-threatening as the claims say, then the level of political maturity and seriousness shown on all sides of the debate, all around the world, is very sadly lacking. I’m talking about implicit maturity, not correctness of viewpoint. For instance, if AGW is really as serious as claimed, and the Kyoto accords were the truly weighed and fully-considered correct solution, then to respond to US reluctance to go along with Kyoto by merely hectoring the US in a petulant tone of voice (which is pretty much what we’ve mainly seen to date) doesn’t sound like a response that accurately reflects the threat. Or conversely, if Kyoto isn’t the best solution because it can’t get everyone on board, then why aren’t all the great minds staying up even later at night trying to figure out what is?
Part of the political problem, it seems to me, is that most of the proposed solutions that I’ve heard seem to fall rather squarely, and rather conveniently, into the wish-list of the left. We’re told, on the basis of evidence most of us are not qualified to evaluate, that to avert the crisis we must submit to massive government regulation, punish wealthy industrial nations, massively reduce our economic output and standard of living, and live like good penitent eco-puritans. Now maybe that is indeed the right course; but it raises ample grounds for political skepticism. In the spirit of the Casuistry Challenge game that is often played on this blog, I’d ask you to consider the alternative scenario.
What if there was credible evidence that the best way to reverse global warming was to relinquish all the gains made by the political left in the past century? What if you were convincingly told that the best way to save the planet was to end feminism, re-establish patriarchy, roll back social welfare programs and civil-rights gains, and halt multiculturalism and immigration? What if reliable space aliens told you that the only way to survive, was to submit to the perpetual global rule of George Bush? Would you go along with it, for Earth’s sake? Or would you suddenly have a lot of picky questions about the validity of the scientific research?
I’m not trying to be gratuitously snarky here, I’m trying to point out a core problem of the politics involved. (And btw, in all seriousness, I could make you a perfectly logical case that feminism does indeed increase global warming, if anybody would like to hear it!
jpz, the feminism one I’d like to hear
Oh dear. A cat among pigeons post there, j_p_z.
There is an argument, I suppose, that the many sacrifices needed to reduce carbon output could lead to a roll back of many of the social gains of the last century, though George Bush as Eternal President, in competition with Kim Il Sung (dec 1994) the Eternal President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea seems altogether too drastic. I don’t think that even aliens would urge that course upon us, unless they were up to mischief.
jpz: For what it’s worth, I’ve argued fairly strongly and consistently on LP that a) the problem is CO2 emissions, not energy use per se, and b) telling people that the only solution is living like “good little eco-puritans”, as you put it, isn’t going to work.
One thing that all you theo-left-greenies continue to conflate is “Science” and “prediction.” There are a number of levels to thinking about and debating “climate change.”
1. The “SCIENCE.” Now, my academic training in Science (as in Physics and Chemistry) is rudimentary (basically High School). Even my own ignorance leads me to have immense ‘faith’ in the science of carbon emmissions. Carbon floats upwards, gets trapped, has many effects on absorption and reflection of heat, etc. So, no big issue from me, here.
2. Data on temperature. This also seems to chime with my own schoolboy Science. Readings taken from so many spots across the globe - polar caps, Sydney, oceans, etc.
3. Relationship between 1 and 2. Here my education is a bit more advanced. I have studied Maths and Stats at uni. But I am no Ph.D. Still, here’s what my little training says: Some fudging “could” be involved. As we all know, where you decide to start your data series can have great impact on what you find.
From what I have read, I am reasonably happy (though not as much as I was in 1 and 2) that the time series have been sliced and diced a hell of a lot, and things really are steaming up.
4. But is the relationship between carbon and high temperatures casaul versus coincidental? What is the R squared? What else causes climatic changes like this?
5. How much of that carbon is anthropogencic (OR, to be honest, ’caused by Capitalism?’). Here, we need to ask some ‘but for’ questions. Consider three scenarios:
a). If mankind had not progressed beyond second century Rome, would the climatic readings be similar? If not, by how much would they differ? Is it possible to model?
b). Repeat a). for development of late 19th century Europe.
c). If mankind had been wiped out in 300 BCE.
6. This is where the skeptic in me comes in. And he is dressed in the clothes of a mathematiscian, rather than a ‘Scientist.’ How robust are the scenarios painted of the next 10, 50, 100, 150 years? This is where I start turning up my nose when boffins (a la Sir Nicholas Stern) and Luvvies (a la Al Gore) are wheeled out.
7. And, now the mega-cynic rocks up. How robust are airy notions of “reduce anthropogenic carbon emmissions between now and 2050 will significantly reduce the woolly doomsday scenarios above?”
My hunch? The Climate Change theists have totally inappropriately assumed a mechanical model when devising policy.
Me thinks the issue is more about Complexity than Mechancis.
If you look up NASA at this site,
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
you will notice that the graph presented in the documentary is not so inaccurate at all. It’s just that they have chosen a particular graph amongst several (up to date) available graphs on the site. Check out the title of the graphs - each measures a different set of temperatures.
In any case, their presentation of the graph is not good science.
Quiggin:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2007/07/11/the-right-swindles-itself-on-global-warming/#more-3603
Can’t speak for anyone else but I just don’t like the idea of public money being used to finance a publicity exercise for a very marginal point of view.
What if there was credible evidence that the best way to reverse global warming was to relinquish all the gains made by the political left in the past century? What if you were convincingly told that the best way to save the planet was to end feminism, re-establish patriarchy, roll back social welfare programs and civil-rights gains, and halt multiculturalism and immigration? What if reliable space aliens told you that the only way to survive, was to submit to the perpetual global rule of George Bush? Would you go along with it, for Earth’s sake? Or would you suddenly have a lot of picky questions about the validity of the scientific research?
Having a bit of a dreamy fantasy there?
j_p_z — great comment.
Like John G, I’m not qualified to judge the science. Quite reasonable-sounding scientists have spoken up on both sides of the debate, but I don’t know if they are as ‘reasonable’ as they sound. Eugenics sounded ‘reasonable’ once, too.
It’s the atmospherics that get my antennae twitching. When advocates of one side spend most of their time stridently insisting that there can be no dissent, no disagreement, that you just have to believe and accept on pain of eternal damnation (more or less) — you know that’s what at issue is not science any more, but power, legitimacy and money. As dear old Foucault argued, this is how power discourses self-legitimise and defend themselves.
Or more simply, it’s a belief system striking back at blasphemers.
Way off base, Rob. Do you dissent from the laws of physics? There’s a big epistemological gap between this and some sort of theological proposition.
Obviously, there are political issues arising because there are wide ranging impacts which require a change of course. But the way that most of the money and power has gone to influence the discourse has been from big biz and those who’ve done very nicely, thank you very much, out of denying the science for so long.
Its not really a comparison of like with like. None of the proposals for addressing climate change with serious support involve relinquishing all the gains made by the political right in the past century. Things like carbon trading and carbon taxes are about modifying capitalism to make it take account of a negative externality, not destroying it.
The problem the right has with climate change is not about what is being proposed, it is about who is proposing it. The right have got it into their heads that all environmentalists are out to get capitalism (and to be fair some groups do lean that way) and so simply assume that anything advocated by environmentalists must be some sort of communist-inspired feindishness.
Anyway, I think tim is right. The way this thread has gone has illustrated that the rhetorical and political effects of this film being shown are to throw us back in time to a “debate” with the usual suspects (who rarely apply their much vaunted ideas of balance and reason to their own prejudices and preconceptions, but that’s another story). I couldn’t be bothered arguing the toss. We need to stay on track and move forward.
As John Quiggin said, what’s interesting about this is not the crap propaganda and fraudulent distortions of the film, but what its broadcast and reception says about the Australian right and their intellectual dishonesty and belief that repeating something loudly enough makes it true. Or their withdrawal into silence when reality strikes back:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2007/07/11/the-right-swindles-itself-on-global-warming/#more-3603
Al Gore, cat’s-paw of … SCIENCE
“My hunch?”
How about sitting up straight and paying attention.
I disagree, Kim. When even Howard signs up to AGW, and supermarkets are busy pushing the ’save the planet NOW’ line, I think you can see where the power and money are being invested.
Me I’m an agnostic, but constitutionally on the side of the blasphemers.
In any event, I don’t think the sound and fury from the believers will amount to anything. We can’t stop war, fire, pestilence, misery, tyranny or poverty. All are relatively trivial compared with AGW (as advertised). Best to wait to see what happens, and then deal with it. That’s one thing the human race has proved itself pretty good at.
By the time “what happens” has happened, we’re all buggered.
Here’s a thought for the believers:
This is the first sentence in Malleus Malificarum [The Hammer of Witches], published in 1489.
The Dominican Inquisitors who wrote the book answered the question in the affirmative.
So, I suspect (mutatis mutandis), would the warmenists. [I think we have Tim B to thank for that term.] And they are attracted to similar penalties to those available to the Inquisition.
Or to put it another way, the current existential problem of “the left” is that it thinks, on the basis of its history and mythology, that it is heterodox, but in fact , on the basis of its power base and patronage, it is actually orthodox.
“The left” cannot resolve this paradox.
Just a fleeting thought prompted by j_p_z’s excellent offering.
It is better to have something and not needing it, than to need something and not having it. Simple as that. It is better to curb emissions and have a healthy climate in 50 years, even if the world climate wouldn’t have been different without the curbing - than it is to have a busted up climate in 50 years and wishing we’d have curbed our emissions. When we are talking about such important factors as sea levels, survival of animal species, etc, then it best to be on the safe side.
I don’t understand the whole argument. I mean pollution is no good. Full stop. Even if the skeptics are right, and man made pollution and emissions do not contribute to climate change, they sure as hell still stink and form some sort of health risk. So why the debate? Reducing emissions is of benefit either way. Maybe more, maybe less, but a benefit it is.
Good grief, there’s plenty of times when that hasn’t worked. See Pompeii for an example.
I think it was also Neville Chamberlain’s big idea! Not to mention Hoover and the recession.
It’s actually not a conservative prescription at all, but perhaps, as tim says these debates are a waste of time. We’re not going to convince Rob because he doesn’t intend to take any notice of or interest in the science. He’s just coming out with some sort of absurdly stretched relativism, and adopting the default position that his ideology inclines him towards. Who’s being theological?
Public reason should be about just that. There’s little point in engaging with those whose critiques won’t even acknowledge the fact that there is a difference between scientific consensus and political argument.
I’m with tim. I have no intention of watching the film.
Interesting example. How could the Romans have prevented the eruption, and did their culture not survive the catastrophe?
Kim
If you say so. But I wouldn’t try that line with George Pell. You’d come out quite battered and bruised. But how is this relevant?
Why not Mark?
If you did you would either be enlightened by it or informed by its falsities and better equipped to refute it and those who believe in what it says.
There is nothing admirable in having a closed mind, particularly in an academic.
That’s not quite right. I don’t understand the science, but probably the best argument for the science, from a RWDB pov, is that Howard has signed up to it. IOW, if he’s convinced….. redoubtable culture warrior as he is and all.
Im happy to think of myself as orthodox on many questions Rob, although I am interested to hear how you came to the conclusion that a comparison between a proposal to “relinquish all the gains made by the political left in the past century” and a proposal to modify the market system, which is supported by many of those making the proposal in question (the ALP for example).
is an excellent one.
Good concluding question JG - how is the outcome of some hypothetical stoush between Kim and George Pell relevant to this discussion?
No need to answer - that question was purely hypothetical.
Wrong - but an effective way to introduce your own confusions into the argument and confuse others. What the self-styled skeptics are confused about is the difference between perfectly valid scientific prediction, based on observed data and tedious mathematical calculation and oracular prediction, based on mystical insight.
If you want to remain confused, and conflate the two, that’s your business as long as you don’t expect others to be taken in when you declare that the scientific case can be dismissed as so much Delphic bullshit of a kind well known to history. Speaking as someone who also has a bit of training in the sciences (I coulda been an immunologist) I’d say all that you demonstrated in the rest of your comment there was that your scientific argument didn’t take.
As a couldabeen immunologist, I’m much more likely to take the word of a physicist or a meteorologist on climate change than I am that of someone whose only arguments are based on the premise that this is all mass hysteria and we’ve seen plenty of that in human history. History also provides plenty of examples of societies that destroyed themselves by trying to continue with life as normal when life as normal was no longer tenable.
Got some examples, Gummo?
I think Martin Durkin should go into showbusiness.
He has turned his doco into the most talked about television and virtually unmissable viewing, even if only to tear great big holes in it.
Anything with ‘great’ and ’swindle’ in the title works for me!
Umm, science is prediction. That is the whole pay off in science, that you can extrapolate from current knowledge and make informed rational-empirical predictions about the future that have a higher probablity of being right than random guesses (or willfully ignorant ideologically driven ramblings).
It is also how science is done, by making testable predictions about future events.
No prediction. No science.
Your failure to understand that, and your attempt to smear your opponents by reducing their arguments to a naive, simplistic, self-serving, ‘theo-political’ epistemological status, says it all.
Let me make a prediction of my own: The nay-sayers are going to look very foolish and arrogant and extraordinarily irresponsible when the history of this issue is fully written.
Seen any first world countries involved in major conflagrations lately? Of course wars are still around, but now outsourced to the third world. Fire? Well of course they still break out but try calling the fire brigade or being alerted by a smoke detector even a few generations ago. Pestilence? The biggest natural killer of people in the western world are degenerative and chronic diseases now, not those old staples like bubonic plague (which reduced the population of Europe by nearly 50%), smallpox, polio etc. Caught TB or leprosy lately have you?
Misery, tyranny and poverty? Still around but lot less of it, both per capita and relatively than even a few generations ago.
To use the kind of bad faith thinking and logical elisions you’re so fond of Rob (”I’m dubious about climate change ‘cos I don’t like the tone of some of its advocates”), one could say you have no faith in the combination of capitalism/self interest and social democracy/we’re all in it together driving technological and social organisation solutions to big problems. Which they have done rather a lot over the past few hundred years.
I’ve never commented on the central issue of climate change threads before but I agree with Juan Moment that regardless of the science, it makes economic, environmental and geopolitical sense anway to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. I mean they’re not making fossils on that scale anymore…yet.
“But it will cost a lot” some cry. Yeah well, one person’s expenditure is another person’s market opportunity. Rejigging our energy systems to become more sustainable is not a zero-sum game.
As for the merits of whether to pay attention to the latest Durkin agitprop project or not, well if thoses on other side of an issue you favour said nothing then you’d have nothing to attack, dissect and ridicule - the very meat and drink of the blogosphere.
And speaking of ridicule, how’s your FGM petition coming along Rob? Don’t tell me it was just another unbaked point scoring exercise and that the whole issue you were so apparently passionate about then has just dropped off your radar now you’re looking for new targets.
Because I’m meeting a friend who I haven’t seen for a while for a convivial drink, Greg.
I do try not to have a closed mind, but I’m satisfied that this production is a confection of distortions and untruths because people who are reputable and knowledgeable about it have put a lot of work into convincingly demonstrating that.
I can’t help noticing that some people laughed at my question, and others dismissed it or took it apart, but nobody actually answered it. Yea or nay?
To reverse carbon emissions on such a vast scale and in such a short time-frame, in the absence of appropriate technological innovations which we apparently have not the time to develop, will inevitably involve major sacrifices from *some*body; and the left’s preferred platform seems to involve a lot of sacrifices of things that are not of core value to the left. This doesn’t inspire trust among the non-believers. To satisfy the skeptics and build alliances with them (a very politically practical thing to do!), and to lead by example, it seems to me appropriate to ask what the left would be willing to sacrifice, that it deems of major value, in order to prove that it really believes the facts of the case as presented.
Hilker: “Let me make a prediction of my own: The nay-sayers are going to look very foolish and arrogant and extraordinarily irresponsible when the history of this issue is fully written.”
Fair enough. So let me use an actual, real analogy example from recent history, about the relationship between truth-claims and sacrifice.
From the 1940s through the 1980s, the US was absolutely convinced that the greatest evil abroad on earth, and the greatest threat to humanity, was the global spread of communism. Others, and especially European intellectuals and political leaders, were not quite as convinced of the truth of this claim; many were practical-minded accommodationists; others were in fact communists themselves.
The US proceeded to act on its belief, though: it spent hundreds of billions of its own money, and sacrificed the blood and sweat of its young men, to challenge and confront communism, and unilaterally build the security umbrella it thought was needed. The Europeans often had to be dragged along; so the US often obliged this reality by spending its own political capital (and even more money) to cajole, coddle, arm-twist and out-right bribe the Europeans into cooperating.
The effort and the sacrifice involved for the US to act on its belief was titanic; the sacrifices were very real; our cities were a mess for decades, and we don’t have a shiny expensive national health care system (to state only two things), in part because that money was spent acting against the problem we “believed” was threatening humanity. And now the threat is over, and all things being equal, we look to have been more right than wrong about the matter.
So: now Europe and Australia feel that they clearly perceive the next great threat to humanity, and they think the US is curiously blind about the matter. So let’s assume the Euros and the Aussies are right on this one. Where’s the great leadership, then? Where’s the rising to the occasion, making the sacrifices, leading by example, playing the politics, doing what it takes despite American foot-dragging? Why aren’t you coddling and bribing us on a massive scale, to establish for the importance of your visionary belief? To impress us with your logic, and to get us to go along with your plan, why don’t you start, say, by paying for our national health program? What are you willing to really do, to show the world that you really, really think you’ve got the right plan?
Once the Euros and Australians make great strides in leadership, and establish their bona fides through large-scale personal sacrifice, maybe the validity of their convictions will seem clearer and clearer to those who can’t or won’t commit at present, whether out of real skepticism or plain self-interest.
So come on then. Shine on, you crazy diamonds. Eh?
Well, it’s a nonsense question, j_p_z, and therefore has no answer.
And the parallel doesn’t hold, either. Communism was perceived as a political, strategic and ideological threat. Global warming is not analogous, for reasons that probably don’t need to be spelled out - but for a start it’s neither a state, nor a bloc of states, nor a political movement.
And I don’t know how you reconcile that with the fact that the chief opposition to Truman’s health care proposals was couched in the rhetoric of “it’s a threat to private enterprise” and by more enterprising Republican orators and self-interested doctors’ unions as communistic. But I risk falling into your digression, so I’ll shut up. There’s a remote chance people might want to discuss climate change.
“Seen any first world countries involved in major conflagrations lately? ”
Umm…..which powers invaded in Iraq and Afghanistan, Nabakov?
My FGM petition was a failure and I followed Kim’s good advice to donate some dosh to a worthy charity instead.
Sorry to have missed all the fun. I’ve been outside working and tonight, amongst other things, was watching Dateline to see the Indonesians destroying the forest to plant palm oil.
Today I heard ABC science writer/broadcaster, Bernie Hobbs on local radio. She said there were two problems with the Durkin film. First it was wrong, wrong, wrong. Secondly he’s a magnificent story teller in the film medium and the program is very seductive. She said that even though she has been following the debate for years and reporting on it, on first viewing she felt herself being taken in.
She’s done a critique of the science in the program which will be posted on the ABC’s ‘Swindle’ site tomorrow afternoon. Why not now?
Yesterday I heard James Lovelock on Late Night Live from the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. Did you know that 6.5 billion humans breathing out put four times as much carbon into the atmosphere as all the aeroplanes in the world? j-p-z, we clearly need to ration our breaths, lets say by 50%?
Lovelock’s broader point is that the biological sphere and the physical world interact with each other. He thinks the climate models are deficient because the are created by geophysicists who are not qualified to understand the interface between the biosphere and the inorganic sphere.
An excellent reason, Mark. And if I don’t watch it it will be because on the night I’ve got something better to do. But if the ABC or some other channel replays it when you don’t have a prior engagement would you watch it then? I would, not because I expect that I would agree with it but because it would provide me with further information, even if that was about the misuse of science by its authors, which would help me to develop my knowledge and opinions.
I think that what you say is probably true but I haven’t seen it yet. I’d rather see it then ask people who are reputable and knowledgeable about the issues that it raises, after I have seen it, so that I could satisfy myself on diligent enquiry about such an important issue rather than just take anything, whatever it says or they say, on trust.