The Science & Skepticism Thread

Ricardodaforce said:
I am happy to consider all points of views, but you did wander into conspiracy theory territory.
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I would suggest there IS a conspiracy, somewhere along the line, but that isn't the main point. Man made? global warming.

kendo1 said:
There always has to be a 'Flat-Earther'....
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A bit like throwing out the race-card if you don't like the fact that not everyone agrees.



Greenhouse gasses have not initially created warming...... they are a consequence of warming.

ALL man made CO2 is less than about 0.5% of what is produced naturally.

The earth has been much warmer over the past few thousand years.....& Polar bears survived. The Arctic ice caps survived too.

Global warming is more closely related to what The Sun does & any global warming is governed by sea temperature, the warmer the sea, the more gasses.......which takes several hundred years to take effect.
 
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OldCarlos said:
I would suggest there IS a conspiracy, somewhere along the line, but that isn't the main point. Man made? global warming.



A bit like throwing out the race-card if you don't like the fact that not everyone agrees.



Greenhouse gasses have not initially created warming...... they are a consequence of warming.

ALL man made CO2 is less than about 0.5% of what is produced naturally.

The earth has been much warmer over the past few thousand years.....& Polar bears survived. The Arctic ice caps survived too.

Global warming is more closely related to what The Sun does & any global warming is governed by sea temperature, the warmer the sea, the more gasses.......which takes several hundred years to take effect.
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I guess there's no point arguing whether "global warming" as they used to call it is man made or not. All the people who will ever be convinced have been convinced. Maybe somebody could find new evidence but the people who don't want to believe it will refute that. And so it goes (as the Vonnegut fans would say).

But I don't particularly care whether it's always happened. Or even whether we caused it. There seems to be a substantial body of evidence that it just might kill us all. It's probably worth asking some scientists to look into that, regardless of how they think we got here.
 
OldCarlos said:
I'm not saying what man is doing to our planet is right, or good, because it obviously isn't, but all this man-made global warming bull.... has been nothing but propaganda by the green lobby & `accepted` by governments to enable higher taxes & to keep the populations in their place.
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One of my good friends is a climate scientist that has worked for several agencies across the world producing climate models and he'd very much disagree with you.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
One of my good friends is a climate scientist that has worked for several agencies across the world producing climate models and he'd very much disagree with you.
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I'm sure he's very good but there are a lot of climate change professionals who couldn't find their bottom with a map and a Sherpa guide.
 
JonathanRyan said:
It scares me that astrology is even mentioned in a science quiz.
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indeed - and also that a science quiz can pose the question which of the four elements listed... then list two elements and two compounds
 
OldCarlos said:
Greenhouse gasses have not initially created warming...... they are a consequence of warming.
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Evidence please.
OldCarlos said:
ALL man made CO2 is less than about 0.5% of what is produced naturally.
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Evidence suggests that nearly the full increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by the human emissions. Only a small part might have been added by the (ocean) warming since the last ice age.
OldCarlos said:
The earth has been much warmer over the past few thousand years.....& Polar bears survived. The Arctic ice caps survived too.
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Indeed it was much warmer in the immediate aftermath of the last ice age - the Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years BP, but this was followed by a gradual cooling which coincided with the Bronze Age and lasted right up until the 18th century. Large areas of vestigial ice cap were left over from the ice age and this certainly ensured the longer term survival of the Arctic environment. So your point is?
OldCarlos said:
Global warming is more closely related to what The Sun does & any global warming is governed by sea temperature, the warmer the sea, the more gasses.......which takes several hundred years to take effect.
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Evidence please.
 
JonathanRyan said:
I guess there's no point arguing whether "global warming" as they used to call it is man made or not.
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The thing is, `global warming` was the inaccurate buzz phrase 5+ years ago and was a term used in preparation for blaming the population in readiness for curtailing choices & gaining more revenues. When taken to task by many it was dropped for the more accurate `climate change`, for which they are still trying to blame man.


The point is though, Global warming has little to do with man! It's part of a natural cycle that's been happening for eons.
It's only since 1975 (when we were in a cold era anyroad) that the temperature has started to rise again.


Raping our planet is crazy & preserving the rain forests etc should be common sense....but it isn't the same issue.

Developing countries are being told they shouldn't be using their own resources,because of global warming, when the main reason is political.

What exactly are all the extra taxes for? What is this `pay for your carbon footprint-offset` thingy about? Where is all the extra money/taxes going?
If it all goes to planting trees & cleaning local rivers etc. GREAT, but it wouldn't make a jot of difference to the temperatures.

We ara all being conned by politicians....& paying handsomely for it.
 
It was on Facebook so it must be true. :0

In all honesty though the world is changing all the time, it always has and always will do.
I believe global warning is just another phase of the earths life cycle just before the next ice age.
 
woof woof said:
I'd like to ask for conclusive proof that global warming is man made. Can you provide it please?
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have you read and understood the various IPCC reports ?
 
On the subject on global warming, it would be the height of irony if we did drive this planet to hell in a handcart whilst crying about money and government taxes.
 
OldCarlos said:
We ara all being conned by politicians....& paying handsomely for it.
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while i disagree with you about the reality of global warming/climate change I have to say i do partyly agree with you on the tax angle - if we want to reduce CO2 emmisions the answer is to burn less fossil fuel, not burn the same ammount but pay more for it ... and the carbon offset schemes are often a joke in that quite often the trees that they alledgedly plan may not even exist, and if they do exist they arent managed prroperly and many will die , or be removed during thinning opperations.

not to mention that carbon capture by trees is temporary anyway as when the tree is harvested , or blows over much of its timber will be burned or mulched anyway (this is esspecially true of the short life cycle connifer that a lot of carbon offsetting scheme money goes into)

end of the day whether we believe in global warming or not a point that is often missed is that fossil fuels (especially oil) are a finite resource , and are too valuable industrially to burn - so regarless of the position on climate change we ought to be developing a viable alternative.
 
Mountkeen said:
Evidence please.
Evidence suggests that nearly the full increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by the human emissions. Only a small part might have been added by the (ocean) warming since the last ice age.
Indeed it was much warmer in the immediate aftermath of the last ice age - the Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years BP, but this was followed by a gradual cooling which coincided with the Bronze Age and lasted right up until the 18th century. Large areas of vestigial ice cap were left over from the ice age and this certainly ensured the longer term survival of the Arctic environment. So your point is?
Evidence please.
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Yeah, I'm going to stick by the comment I made about this thread getting canned before page 4.
 
Global warming/climate change is just another political bandwagon:

Climate is chaos! It's driven by an extremely complex system . volcanoes, the oceans, winds, clouds, a wobbly earth, the pulsating sun.............
Dealing with 1 small factor like human emissions of CO2 is fine, but pointless in the grand scheme of things (other than being a cash cow) & shouldn't be blamed on humans.
The climate has always changed. It has been hotter, colder, drier & wetter for 4 - 5 billion years.
 
big soft moose said:
have you read and understood the various IPCC reports ?
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Well, we can all Google and yet people ask for evidence so I thought I'd be a lazy bottom too and ask a proponent of the man made hypothesis to provide evidence in this thread but instead I got a question, what a surprise...

I'd like to describe myself as a Fortean and as such some of the more interesting aspects of the man made v natural process debate are the arguments amongst the protagonists. They make ISIS look like a love in amongst Buddhist monks.
 
big soft moose said:
while i disagree with you about the reality of global warming/climate change
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Pete, don't get me wrong, I'm not a total denier re climate change, just the so called impact humans have on it & the financial costs we have to pay towards it.

big soft moose said:
... and the carbon offset schemes are often a joke...
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It wasn't too many years ago that there were proposals that every single person/households, would have a personal limit.

We've all been brainwashed & suckered in & paying handsomely for it. Thing is, they haven't stopped yet & more taxes will have to be paid under the guise of saving the planet.
 
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I'm curious to know, do man-made climate change deniers think all our pollution is generally harmless and safe to ignore?
 
ZoneV said:
I'm curious to know, do man-made climate change deniers think all our pollution is generally harmless and safe to ignore?
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I think that the question are rather more complex.

Rather than ask do mans activities affect the climate we should perhaps ask if so which of mans activities do so and to what degree and what should be done about it all?

For example if we decide that fossil fuels are the problem and stop using them and instead cut down all the trees and wrap ourselves in bark will the climate be better? We also need to decide what is better. If the world cools we in the UK may freeze. Is that a good thing? Maybe we need to ensure that the world doesn't cool and the alleged overdue ice age doesn't happen.

As importantly we should maybe somehow try to ensure that no one involved is all this misleads us for whatever reason by manipulating or excluding data to suit their own agenda.
 
ZoneV said:
I'm curious to know, do man-made climate change deniers think all our pollution is generally harmless and safe to ignore?
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See previous posts. & #26


big soft moose said:
and the carbon offset schemes
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I remember reading some time ago about The Carbon Trust which was set up to help organisations reduce their carbon emissions & the Government to meet its carbon reduction targets.
Despite calling itself a private company, virtually all the Carbon Trust's funding came from the Government! at a cost in excess of £100 million per year... £12m of which, is for marketing alone!
 
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woof woof said:
Well, we can all Google and yet people ask for evidence so I thought I'd be a lazy bottom too and ask a proponent of the man made hypothesis to provide evidence in this thread but instead I got a question, what a surprise...
s.
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a question which I note you didnt answer

If you have read and understood the IPCC reports but still think that anthropogenic influence on climate change is a myth then theres not a lot that can be said to convince you otherwise

If you either havent read, or didnt understand the reports on the other hand , then it may be worth the time to link you to them , and explain the salient points ( I didnt need to google them btw I have both the 2000 and 2013 editions sat on my bookcase at work)
 
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big soft moose said:
a question which I note you didnt answer

If you have read and understood the IPCC reports but still think that anthropogenic influence on climate change is a myth then theres not a lot that can be said to convince you otherwise

If you either havent read, or didnt understand the reports on the other hand , then it may be worth the time to link you to them , and explain the salient points ( I didnt need to google them btw I have both the 2000 and 2013 editions sat on my bookcase at work)
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If you'll forgive me for persisting with this you are IMO clearly demonstrating one of the problems.

It's not up to me to answer any question or indeed to enter into any debate, it's up to those taking a position and proposing a view to prove it.
 
woof woof said:
If you'll forgive me for persisting with this you are IMO clearly demonstrating one of the problems.

It's not up to me to answer any question or indeed to enter into any debate, it's up to those taking a position and proposing a view to prove it.
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You asked for proof - I am merely trying to ascertain what you consider the threashold of proof to be

a simpler answer to your question of can we present proof of AiCC is yes we can - here is the most recent IPPC report http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf (that is the synthesis report summary as i doubt you want to read the whole thing) - however if you've already read that and don't believe its conclusions it is up to you to lay out

a) why you doubt its conclusions and on what evidence , and
b) what you consider the threshold of undeniable proof to be

thats how a debate works
 
Mountkeen said:
Evidence suggests that nearly the full increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is caused by the human emissions. Only a small part might have been added by the (ocean) warming since the last ice age.
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Carbon Dioxide is a harmless gas. We could all stop our emissions tomorrow and it would make no difference.

Worrying about Carbon Dioxides role in the greenhouse effect is just sidetracking.

Any gas in the atmosphere has specific properties relating to how it behaves with incoming radiation from the sun, or outgoing radiation from earth.
Carbon Dioxide is one of many "greenhouse gases" which reflect outgoing radiation back to earth. The others may not be as abundant at Carbon Dioxide but have a much stronger effect.

The most abundant green house gas is water (vapour),
 
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OldCarlos said:
.
. The others may not be as abundant at Carbon Dioxide but have a much stronger effect.
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this is true the effect of methane (CH4) is some 20x more than that of CO2 , which is why the effect CC is having on the permafrost is so dangerous - if the permafrost melts we will see a vast release of CH4 and potentially a runaway cycle of wariming we will not be able to stop

OldCarlos said:
The most abundant green house gas is water (vapour),
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thats sort of true- but the ammount of water in the atomosphere is pretty much fixed (warming will lead to it slightly increasing due to evaporation , but this will be countered by a more energetic atmosphere leading to increased rainfall) so while it may be the most abundant in absolute terms it is pretty irrelevant to the discussion as it hasnt varied much in the years since 1850
 
Bringing science to a debate with climate change deniers is a waste of your effort. If their opinion could be swayed by evidence, you wouldn't need to be having the debate in the first place.

To paraphrase Matt Ridley, you cannot convince someone by rational argument out of a belief they hold irrationally.
 
I gave a link to the relevant NASA page. Looks like the deniers chose not to read it as it is contrary to their beliefs.

So, as stated before, 97% of Climate Scientists are wrong because the deniers don't believe them.
 
kendo1 said:
I gave a link to the relevant NASA page. Looks like the deniers chose not to read it as it is contrary to their beliefs.

So, as stated before, 97% of Climate Scientists are wrong because the deniers don't believe them.
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Thats what I was getting at in #65 and #67 - the data in the IPCC report is pretty conclusive - but of course deniers won't accept it as proof as it doesnt fit with their beliefs
 
But suppose they are right? A problem with accepting data after analysis is that years later someone will come along with better data showing the contrary is true. Think of how, for so many years, we've been told that eating fat makes you ill and therefore quietly accepted all the sugar that's been fed to us.

Back to what I said.
 
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Llamaman said:
Bringing science to a debate with climate change deniers is a waste of your effort.
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Why don't you actually read what I posted?
I'm not particularly talking about climate change ........... just the BS (that yourself seems to have swallowed hook, line & sinker) that we have caused it.

If you're happy to go along with the hype & lies and to carry on paying extra because we're being conned, that's fine, but don't try making out that myself/others POV is less worthy than yours.

Why is it that folk believe that all the ice on the planet is going to melt?
Sea levels aren't much difference than they were years ago.

Only this past couple of weeks, the doomsayers revised their figures on how much warmer the ave temp was likely to be at the end of the Century. (think they roughly halved it?)
 
tom24 said:
I find it amusing that every generation of scientists or theorists state such and such is now proven .
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Wrong - no theory of science is ever proven as correct - this is a common misconception among non scientists ( and not surprising really). All theories in science must be testable or make predictions that can subsequently tested. All tests ( beyond secondary school level) are set up so they can disprove a theory. If each test fails to prove the theory is wrong then the probability of the theory being correct rises. No theory can have a probability of absolutely correct as that would take infinite amount of testing. Science ( in particular physics) is about setting up an idea or theory so it can be tested in such a way as proved wrong. Failure to prove it wrong just rises the confidence in the theory. Hopes this is clear without being too technical
James
 
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