SNOW

Bare Foot Kid said:

Now why would you quote me and insult me, have you nothing better to do?

Erm...

The trouble is, people who put their faith in the belief that climate change is not man-made are likely to generate serious adverse consequences for me. If they live their lives as if burning carbon is of little consequence, then matters will only get worse for me and my family and people all over the world.

I use the word faith very carefully, meaning belief in something for which there is no objective evidence. You may well argue that climate change is by the same measure a faith, but it isn't - it is a hypothesis, and it's important to stress that science always works in terms of hypotheses and never in absolutes. The scientists who work in this area are simply saying that they can reject the "it's not man-made" hypothesis with about 90-95% confidence. It isn't proven that it's man-made, absolutely not, but the simplest way of accounting for all the data is to postulate that it is down to us.

You can stick with the outside bet that it is not man-made, but to do so is to articulate a faith unless you personally have objective evidence - not cherry-picked articles from secondary sources - that supports that idea. I don't think you do have such evidence. I suspect that you, like many others, wish to discredit the scientists' carefully worked out conclusions because they are inconvenient and uncomfortable for your lifestyle.

So you can have your faith if you wish, but I don't like faith-based groups affecting my life negatively - I get quite enough of that in other walks of life. I prefer to trust in rationality. Dismissing a huge body of work with comments like "first it was called global warming, now it's called climate change, so it's all hooey" does not fall within what I mean by rationality.

I didn't wish to insult you, and apologise if that's how it came across. I did wish to show you that the suggestion that big science is winning a propaganda war against little oil is scarcely credible, and I used a perhaps rather too heavy-handed "through the looking glass" argument to make my point.

I guess I should declare my interest here - I am a professional scientist. I work on heart disease not climate, so have no special knowledge of climate change. However, I do know how science works. It isn't perfect, it does make mistakes, but they are usually honest mistakes. For most of us there's no point in doing it unless you go after the truth. To suggest that 1000 scientists working on this together (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) are somehow being untruthful, or have been bought off, is to strain credulity beyond the limit.

Gordon "couldn't run a tap" Brown says it's true and the Met "BBQ summer/mild winter" office says it's true, so that's all the evidence I need to tell it's an absolute crock.

z3r010 said:

Gordon "couldn't run a tap" Brown says it's true and the Met "BBQ summer/mild winter" office says it's true, so that's all the evidence I need to tell it's an absolute crock.

Watch out for those UFOs.

Warmists

Bare Foot Kid said:

clunkfish said:

Watch out for those UFOs.

It's always the same with you lot, if you can't compete in a debate with logic and civil discussion you resort to intimidation and insults.

That's ok mate you win, I concede you're a better world citizen than I, you keep riding your silly little scooter and saving the planet for the rest of us and I'll keep driving my big safe dry SUV and supporting "big oil".




I've had enough of this thread, I won't be back.

Look pal, you accused me of insulting you and of intimidating you. OK mods, do what you need to do if that has indeed been the case, but I don't think it has.

You, on the other hand, have called me gullible, of riding a silly little scooter, and have generally been sarcastic towards me. I laid out my argument with great care and in detail. You could argue back, but your only point so far is that because it is nowadays more usually referred to by a different name, climate change must be hooey. Another contributor says if Gordon Brown believes in it, it must be wrong. It's not me that's lowering the level around here.

Lighten up folks, this is one of those arguments that nobody wins, we are all totally entrenched in our own camps and are never going to change our views.

Tews said:

if global warming is such a problem, why is it the coldest winter on record in the Hinterlands and for the first time in 40 years it snowed in Tampa yesterday???

Climate change. Call it climate change. If you do that, the unusual weather is consistent with the idea that climate - which is the general pattern of the weather over decades, not just what's been happening in the last few weeks or months - is changing. Some places will be hotter, some colder, some drier, some wetter; extreme events will be more common.