jvj

sumigo wrote:
"Why Protect Birds? Birds dont pay taxes, I do!"

or

"Fish are for fishin and eatin, not livin"

Do me a favour Mate, if you see someone walking around with a placard like that, put it to good use and hit them over the head with it. Thank you. Also thank you for your kind words to my post.

[quote="Akerbos"]"I wanna hav beer an friet chickn wings. Thinkn hurts my crotch."[quote]

I laughed my proverbial ass off at this statement. Its so true it hurts, and the verbiage/spelling etc was just awesome .

Hrimnir:

I agree, environmental science is particularly complicated, if nothing else because of the number of variables involved and the scale of the questions that are being addressed.

However, that said, I think using the term "Alarmist" isn't the most helpful way of approaching the issue. I think everyone agrees that the planet is warming, what they don't agree on is what is causing that warming- but given the matters at stake (potentially) I think it's certainly worth scrutinising the idea extremely carefully.

Furthermore, I don't believe that Western economies are in the process of decarbonisation- and if they are, it would seem to be a response to an acceptance of man-made global warming. Our energy usage grows and grows; did you know, for example, that every search on Google emits 7grams of carbon? I found that study both alarming and ridiculous. The study claimed that the electronics industry (whatever that means, it was on Radio 4, so I can't provide masses of detail) already emits more carbon than the aviation industry.
So I believe that governments should provide huge incentives for "Green" R&D. There are lots of reasons for this (for example, I like the idea of everyone being able to generate some of their own electricity at home) but more than anything else it will ensure that we move away from fossil fuel dependency. I have limited faith in the ability of the market to provide these things- markets are blind and short sighted. You only need to briefly survey the current mess we're in to see some of its fault. I am, however, generally in favour of markets- but they're far from the perfect mechanism that some make them out to be. Everyone knows about the problems associated with FF, energy security issues and so forth, and with the rise of China and India, both with enormous populations and rapidly growing economies, demand for oil and other fossil fuels is going to go through the roof. Before this recession kicked in, oil was at around $147 dollars a barrel, and once the recession is over it's only going to head upwards.
Aside from fossil fuels being, in my view, a dirty and unsophisticated technology, they are going to run out. The experts think we have already passed peak oil, and whilst we may not run out til 2030 or so, the sooner we move away from a FF economy, the better. Some would argue that there may be masses of oil and gas under the arctic ice, which is gradually disappearing. That, in my view, would be terrible. For a start, Russia has already tried to claim it. Drilling would be expensive and extremely destructive to a fragile environment. Haven't we already done enough damage?
I would also ask; what else could the money be spent on? The world has always had problems, and money is rarely a solution- political will is. Obama's "Green program" will encourage technical innovation, create masses of jobs and has the potential to reinvigorate the American economy.

As for your point about religion, well, to an extent, I agree. Some of the things that go on can be quite extreme. On the other hand, too much of humanity has for too long not given a **** about its environment. You can trace that the a Judaeo-Christian form of category thinking that divides MAN from NATURE. That's a false dichotomy. Humans are part of nature, and we have a phenomenal impact.

I am all in favour of scientific debate, and the more objective and honest studies that can be done, the better. That said, I think it is fair to say that the Majority of climate scientists etc ascribe to a theory of man-made (or at least exacerbated) global warming. I could come up with a list, but, off the top of my head Stephen Hawking is amongst them. Of course there are those that disagree, as there always are; remember the people who tried to stop the LHC being started, as they thought it might create a black hole in the middle of the earth? Who knows, they might be right in which case we're all screwed. But I think that as a species we have to take the possibility of our effect on the planet's climate seriously.

I came across something particularly pernicious recently, the so-called "Manhattan declaration". This was signed by a collection of Global warming cynics, which, in itself, is fine. However, some investigation had lead to the discovery that amongst these "experts" was a mining executive with a degree in engineering, and his entire family. Evidently, a degree in engineering entitles you to no more legitimacy on climate change than my degree in History, and if that is only one example of the list being padded out...

To your second post:

I don't understand your point about CAFE standards. Surely everyone is in favour of greater efficiency? If nothing else, it's cheaper for the consumer.

In general, in the UK, smaller cars are cheaper. Vis-a-vis the Prius, could this not be because it is perceived as a "status-car" due to celebrity endorsements and so forth? Smaller cars in the UK tend to have a higher number of MPG.

Regarding your point about humanity's impact on the planet; ultimately, to the planet, we don't matter. But I think it would take several million, rather than 10,000 years for life to recover in the event of a catastrophe of some kind.

Evidently you know all about Ice ages etc. Just because warming and cooling are natural processes, though, is not to say that we may be having an impact.

What are you referring to about Japan?

Ok, long post. I would conclude by saying that whatever the truth about man-made global warming (and I am inclined accept the theory), human civilisation still needs to re-evaluate the way it deals with nature. There are now twice as many people on the planet as there were when JFK was president of the US. Think about it! That's an incredible statistic. We can't go on endlessly expanding both our population and our quality of life without radically rethinking our western lifestyles and vastly improving our technology. I am not in favour of some kind of Green police state, a spartan existence with all the joy taken out of it. I've flown to China, to South America, to Alaska. I use energy. What I do advocate is change in the way we get our energy and an acceptance of the environmental issues we face. At the start of the industrial revolution the human population was, at most around 1 billion. In 200 years or so, we've reached around 6.6bn. We need to be careful, because whilst the planet as a whole is resilient, it's very easy for us to destroy things.

I hate to sound like a hippy, but I find nature awesome. A tree that's 400ft high? Wow. I want to see that. The vast diversity of life, the beauty of forests and coral reefs, the mountains, everything. Most of the time I can't even see the stars at night because of all the light pollution, something I hate, as it's such an easy problem to resolve with more intelligent design! And I'm afraid of losing all the world's natural glories, or having it reduced to pictures and memory, or living in zoos. It's hard for you guys in countries like the US to see what I mean, but in the UK we have a population of 60 million in a country that's less than half the area of Texas. We're a crowded little country, and it makes you realise how easily things can be lost.

EDIT: 1300 words. Bloody hell!

Not to belabour the point, but what about depletion of the Ozone layer? A prime example of human industrial processes having a significant impact on the natural environment.

edit

I would guess that the US War on Drugs is a good part of why hemp is illegal. As long as drugs are illegal we have an industry that is employing a great many people, its called Law Enforecement. This War is unwinnable and kind of silly at best. I'm not saying that we should legalize everything and let everyone go nuts, but the more illegal drugs are, the more profit the criminals make selling it here.

Interesting history lesson on the cotton gin. The US always was a good ole boys club, heh.

edit

Preface: Venture at your own risk. Post is ponderous!

Red_Phobos wrote:However, that said, I think using the term "Alarmist" isn't the most helpful way of approaching the issue. I think everyone agrees that the planet is warming, what they don't agree on is what is causing that warming- but given the matters at stake (potentially) I think it's certainly worth scrutinising the idea extremely carefully.

I understand where you're coming from, but you have to understand when i saw "alarmist", i mean the actual alarmists, the ones who makes statements like a quote from "The Inconvinient Truth":

"Today, we are hearing and seeing dire warnings of the worst potential catastrophe in the history of human civilization: a global climate crisis that is deepening and rapidly becoming more dangerous than anything we have ever faced."

Its just a load of crap to make statements like this. I wonder what the 2 million people per year who have died as a result of malaria since DDT was banned would have to say to that statement.

Furthermore, I don't believe that Western economies are in the process of decarbonisation- and if they are, it would seem to be a response to an acceptance of man-made global warming. Our energy usage grows and grows. "

I actually had a fairly large argument with my roomie about this very topic 2 nights ago. He actually brought up a good point. I need to clarify that when i say the western world is decarbonizing, i mean that the "per capita" usage of carbon emitting resources has gone down, considerably. Now, you are correct that we are still emitting more than we have ever, but my point is that per person that figure has and will continue to decrease greatly. Our CO2 outputs will eventually peak and start decreasing substantially. Overall world population growth is almost nil right now (around 1% per year by current estimates), and in many industrialized countries (where most C02 is produced) population is actually stagnant or going down. The point i was trying to make is that we are already researching technologies, and had been long before the whole global warming debate ever hit, that lower the use of carbon fuels. Once cars move to either gas/electric hybrids, or to what i feel is actually going to be the wave of the future, hydrogen, we will see massive decreases in c02 emissions.

So I believe that governments should provide huge incentives for "Green" R&D. There are lots of reasons for this (for example, I like the idea of everyone being able to generate some of their own electricity at home) but more than anything else it will ensure that we move away from fossil fuel dependency. ..... ....demand for oil and other fossil fuels is going to go through the roof. Before this recession kicked in, oil was at around $147 dollars a barrel, and once the recession is over it's only going to head upwards.

I also agre that governments should be providing incentives. What i don't like is when they try to force the issue unnecessarily, like they are with the CAFE standards the US is trying to implement.

The other thing you have to take into account is this. Who the hell are we to tell developing nations that they can't use cheap fossil fuels. Are we going to pay to build nuclear plants for them, or pay for the alternative energies? Of course not, but i'll be damned if we aren't going to sit on our pedastel of ethical superiourity and condemn them for doing so.

Aside from fossil fuels being, in my view, a dirty and unsophisticated technology, they are going to run out. The experts think we have already passed peak oil, and whilst we may not run out til 2030 or so, the sooner we move away from a FF economy, the better. Some would argue that there may be masses of oil and gas under the arctic ice, which is gradually disappearing. That, in my view, would be terrible. For a start, Russia has already tried to claim it. Drilling would be expensive and extremely destructive to a fragile environment. Haven't we already done enough damage?

All the people who are saying that we only have X number of years of oil left before we completely run out are spectacularly full of shit. What they don't tell you is that the reserves they are referring to are the ones we've already drilled into, and more specifically the extremely easy to get oil. Why do you think most of the oil in the world comes from the middle east. Its not because thats where it all is, its because thats where its the easiest to get to. You can damn near stick a straw in the ground and have oil come out of it. There are utterly massive stores of oil in numerous places around the world, the issue is it would be relatively expensive to drill to get to, and as such nobody wants to invest the capital to do so. Of course you have all the other arguments associated with that, such as the environmentalist arguments, and the "i don't want to see oil rigs from my windows" arguments, etc. But i won't go into those b/c they're not particularly relevant.

I would also ask; what else could the money be spent on? The world has always had problems, and money is rarely a solution- political will is. Obama's "Green program" will encourage technical innovation, create masses of jobs and has the potential to reinvigorate the American economy.

All kinds of things. Pharmacueticals research, cancer research, education, etc. The list is huge, i mean massively huge. As for obama reinvigorating the market, you are sorely mistaken. Social economic policy is the worst thing you can possibly do for economic gains. You need proof, look at russia.

As for your point about religion, well, to an extent, I agree. Some of the things that go on can be quite extreme. On the other hand, too much of humanity has for too long not given a **** about its environment. You can trace that the a Judaeo-Christian form of category thinking that divides MAN from NATURE. That's a false dichotomy. Humans are part of nature, and we have a phenomenal impact. [/quote]

Definitely agree that the idea of man being superior in every way to nature and the animal kingdom is definitely a product of religious dogma. I also agree that there are far too many people who could give a shit about the environment. What i want to stress is that the intelligent people who are skeptical about global warming are not those people.

Humanity has far too big of a tendency to make issues black or white. I.E. "If you're not with us, your against us" or, "If you're not for an issue, you're against in issue". It has to do with the human tendency to gravitate towards binary thought processes, and its frankly been a massive crutch on human development since at the very least the enlightenment. It stems from our tribe mentality, that still permeates to this day. That mentality worked very well for us when civilization wasn't as prevalent as it is now, but it is completely unnecessary and detrimental to human evolution now.

I am all in favour of scientific debate, and the more objective and honest studies that can be done, the better. That said, I think it is fair to say that the Majority of climate scientists etc ascribe to a theory of man-made (or at least exacerbated) global warming...

I am going to post something from a Michael Crichton essay. Please read it, i think it will be an eye opener. It is a bit of a read, but he makes the point extremely well to people who aren't well versed in the scientific method and how science actually works:

http://www.crichton-official.com/speech ... rming.html

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory. Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra. The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy…the list of consensus errors goes on and on.

Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

I came across something particularly pernicious recently, the so-called "Manhattan declaration". This was signed by a collection of Global warming cynics, which, in itself, is fine. However, some investigation had lead to the discovery that amongst these "experts" was a mining executive with a degree in engineering, and his entire family. Evidently, a degree in engineering entitles you to no more legitimacy on climate change than my degree in History, and if that is only one example of the list being padded out...

Both sides have people who support it who have no idea what the hell they're talking about. You don't think the pro global warming people have done the same thing? Global warming's biggest proponent is Al Gore, a lying sack of shit politician who doesn't know his ass from a bag of jelly beans.

To your second post:

I don't understand your point about CAFE standards. Surely everyone is in favour of greater efficiency? If nothing else, it's cheaper for the consumer.

Its not cheaper for the consumer. I don't think the general public understands how economics at its very basic levels operate (i'm not saying you, just as a generalization). Why do you think you pay $2000 for a 50" LCD TV. I can assure you that the cost of physically producing that TV is nowhere even close to the cost of the TV. You pay that because the company had to pay chemists and engineers and tons of other employees wages while they did research and development on the product. Cars are no different.

If BMW spends $250 million USD on Hydrogen car research, they're not doing it for free. They WILL pass that cost onto the consumer.

In general, in the UK, smaller cars are cheaper. Vis-a-vis the Prius, could this not be because it is perceived as a "status-car" due to celebrity endorsements and so forth? Smaller cars in the UK tend to have a higher number of MPG.

The prius is not expensive because its a status symbol, its expensive because it cost toyota millions of dollars to develop the hybrid technology they use in the car. Thats the simple fact. Those batteries alone cost $1600 to manufacture. Thats not including the R&D costs, thats literally just to physically produce them.

Regarding your point about humanity's impact on the planet; ultimately, to the planet, we don't matter. But I think it would take several million, rather than 10,000 years for life to recover in the event of a catastrophe of some kind.

It really wouldnt take that long. Honestly. I'll give you an example. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the concensus from experts was that the after effects of radiation were going to be extreme. They stated that "nothing" will grow there for 75 years. Yet the very next year people were growing melons. Thats the problem with alarmism, it exagerates everything. They do it because it elicits an emotional response. Human history has taught us that one of the best ways to control large populations of humanity is through fear. Its an effective method.

I'll give you a very good example that Crichton brought up as to why alarmism is bad, and spewing false or exagerated information is dangerous, and i mean truly dangerous (pay special attention to the part in bold):

http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-complexity.html

What I discovered stunned me. Chernobyl was a tragic event, but nothing remotely close to the global catastrophe I imagined. About 50 people had died in Chernobyl, roughly the number of Americans that die every day in traffic accidents. I don’t mean to be gruesome, but it was a setback for me. You can’t write a novel about a global disaster in which only 50 people die.

Undaunted, I began to research other kinds of disasters that might fulfill my novelistic requirements. That’s when I began to realize how big our planet really is, and how resilient its systems seem to be. Even though I wanted to create a fictional catastrophe of global proportions, I found it hard to come up with a credible example. In the end, I set the book aside, and wrote Prey instead.

But the shock that I had experienced reverberated within me for a while. Because what I had been led to believe about Chernobyl was not merely wrong—it was astonishingly wrong. Let’s review the data.

The initial reports in 1986 claimed 2,000 dead, and an unknown number of future deaths and deformities occurring in a wide swath extending from Sweden to the Black Sea. As the years passed, the size of the disaster increased; by 2000, the BBC and New York Times estimated 15,000-30,000 dead, and so on…

Now, to report that 15,000-30,000 people have died, when the actual number is 56, represents a big error. Let’s try to get some idea of how big. Suppose we line up all the victims in a row. If 56 people are each represented by one foot of space, then 56 feet is roughly the distance from me to the fourth row of the auditorium. Fifteen thousand people is three miles away. It seems difficult to make a mistake of that scale.

But, of course, you think, we’re talking about radiation: what about long-term consequences? Unfortunately here the media reports are even less accurate.

The chart shows estimates as high as 3.5 million, or 500,000 deaths, when the actual number of delayed deaths is less than 4,000. That’s the number of Americans who die of adverse drug reactions every six weeks. Again, a huge error.

But most troubling of all, according to the UN report in 2005, is that "the largest public health problem created by the accident" is the "damaging psychological impact [due] to a lack of accurate information…[manifesting] as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state."

In other words, the greatest damage to the people of Chernobyl was caused by bad information. These people weren’t blighted by radiation so much as by terrifying but false information. We ought to ponder, for a minute, exactly what that implies. We demand strict controls on radiation because it is such a health hazard. But Chernobyl suggests that false information can be a health hazard as damaging as radiation. I am not saying radiation is not a threat. I am not saying Chernobyl was not a genuinely serious event.

But thousands of Ukrainians who didn’t die were made invalids out of fear. They were told to be afraid. They were told they were going to die when they weren’t. They were told their children would be deformed when they weren’t. They were told they couldn’t have children when they could. They were authoritatively promised a future of cancer, deformities, pain and decay. It’s no wonder they responded as they did.

In fact, we need to recognize that this kind of human response is well-documented. Authoritatively telling people they are going to die can in itself be fatal.

You may know that Australian aborigines fear a curse called “pointing the bone.” A shaman shakes a bone at a person, and sings a song, and soon after, the person dies. This is a specific example of a phenomenon generally referred to as “hex death”—a person is cursed by an authority figure, and then dies. According to medical studies, the person generally dies of dehydration, implying they just give up. But the progression is very erratic, and shock symptoms may play a part, suggesting adrenal effects of fright and hopelessness.

Yet this deadly curse is nothing but information. And it can be undone with information.

A friend of mine was an intern at Bellvue Hospital in New York. A 28-year old man from Aruba said he was going to die, because he had been cursed. He was admitted for psychiatric evaluation and found to be normal, but his health steadily declined. My friend was able to rehydrate him, balance his electrolytes, and give him nutrients, but nevertheless the man worsened, insisting that he was cursed and there was nothing that could prevent his death. My friend realized that the patient would, in fact, soon die. The situation was desperate. Finally he told the patient that he, the doctor, was going to invoke his own powerful medicine to undo the curse, and his medicine was more powerful than any other. He got together with the house staff, bought some headdresses and rattles, and danced around the patient in the middle of the night, chanting what they hoped would be effective-sounding phrases. The patient showed no reaction, but next day he began to improve. The man went home a few days later. My friend literally saved his life.

This suggests that the Ukranian invalids are not unique in their response, but by the large numbers of what we might call “information casualties” they represent a particularly egregious example of what can happen from false fears.

Evidently you know all about Ice ages etc. Just because warming and cooling are natural processes, though, is not to say that we may be having an impact.

Absolutely. Again, i want to stress that nobody in the skeptic camp regarding global warming is arguing that we should have carte blanche to do whatever we want with C02 emissions. To say that humanity is not having an effect is simply naive. The point is how much of an effect, and whether thats just cause to panic.

What are you referring to about Japan?

Just that when it comes to the idea of problems, and how society reacts to them, i respect their way of thought. The japanese don't play the blame game, they look for a solution. For example in the US when you had the school shootings at Columbine highschool (which btw is in denver, co, which is about 60 miles north of the city i live in, and that also happened while i was in my senior year of HS), the first thing the parents and the faculty started doing was trying to figure out who or what was to blame for the kids doing what they did. Of course the politics came out as it was blamed on everything from german techno music to the (now) standard "video games". They weren't concerned about finding a solution, i.e. preventing it from happening again. They were concerned about who was at fault, and who was gonna "pay" for it. The western world is always quick to string someone up on a proverbial noose.

Ok, long post. I would conclude by saying that whatever the truth about man-made global warming (and I am inclined accept the theory), human civilisation still needs to re-evaluate the way it deals with nature. There are now twice as many people on the planet as there were when JFK was president of the US. Think about it! That's an incredible statistic. We can't go on endlessly expanding both our population and our quality of life without radically rethinking our western lifestyles and vastly improving our technology. I am not in favour of some kind of Green police state, a spartan existence with all the joy taken out of it. I've flown to China, to South America, to Alaska. I use energy. What I do advocate is change in the way we get our energy and an acceptance of the environmental issues we face. At the start of the industrial revolution the human population was, at most around 1 billion. In 200 years or so, we've reached around 6.6bn. We need to be careful, because whilst the planet as a whole is resilient, it's very easy for us to destroy things.

I hate to sound like a hippy, but I find nature awesome. A tree that's 400ft high? Wow. I want to see that. The vast diversity of life, the beauty of forests and coral reefs, the mountains, everything. Most of the time I can't even see the stars at night because of all the light pollution, something I hate, as it's such an easy problem to resolve with more intelligent design! And I'm afraid of losing all the world's natural glories, or having it reduced to pictures and memory, or living in zoos. It's hard for you guys in countries like the US to see what I mean, but in the UK we have a population of 60 million in a country that's less than half the area of Texas. We're a crowded little country, and it makes you realise how easily things can be lost.

EDIT: 1300 words. Bloody hell!

Agree with this part 99%. I take 1% off because you said "radically", and i can't think of anything that was every done "radically" that ended up being a good thing . But you get my point.

Sorry Hrimnir, I'd love to respond to your post properly, I simply can't be arsed right now.

Suffice to say, I agree with some things you say and not with others. Regarding your point about consensus (or Crichton's/whatever), I understand that science does indeed work that way. But environmental science is rather more complicated than a physics equation, which presumably can be tested extremely rapidly. With most experiments, the subject is so small that it can be easily isolated and studied. Unfortunately we can't do that in climate science. So, whilst the point about 'consensus' is completely valid in general, I don't think the comparison is an entirely fair one when applied to climate science.

Hrimnir wrote:The other thing you have to take into account is this. Who the hell are we to tell developing nations that they can't use cheap fossil fuels. Are we going to pay to build nuclear plants for them, or pay for the alternative energies? Of course not, but i'll be damned if we aren't going to sit on our pedastel of ethical superiourity and condemn them for doing so.

Too true, and why "emissions trading" is joke more than it is a solution.

Red_Phobos wrote:Sorry Hrimnir, I'd love to respond to your post properly, I simply can't be arsed right now.

Suffice to say, I agree with some things you say and not with others. Regarding your point about consensus (or Crichton's/whatever), I understand that science does indeed work that way. But environmental science is rather more complicated than a physics equation, which presumably can be tested extremely rapidly. With most experiments, the subject is so small that it can be easily isolated and studied. Unfortunately we can't do that in climate science. So, whilst the point about 'consensus' is completely valid in general, I don't think the comparison is an entirely fair one when applied to climate science.

I understand where you're coming from, but (and i dont say this to be insulting) you're mistaken. If anything staying true to the scientific method is even more important when you don't know all the variables. It is dangerous to make sweeping changes and decisions when you don't know the ramifications of your actions. Period.

Crichton uses examples from the medical field for two reasons. First is that he has a M.D. from Harvard, and second, its a field that mimics climate science very closely, in that it is such a complicated field with so many interconnected variables, that its impossible to predict exactly how a medicine is going to react without doing exstensive tests before hand. I definitely understand and agree with you that due to the nature of the problem you can't exactly run tests to verify as if you were doing some chemistry tests on a particular compound, etc.

The point Crichton was making, and he gives many examples of it, is that concensus "science" is just flat dangerous. If you can be arsed, at the very least just read the part where he goes into the history of concensus science and details exactly why it is dangerous, i guarantee it will be a good read and an eye opener.

http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/138189/detail/

A long, well shot, thoughtful polemic.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 682887.ece

Long article about James Lovelock's ideas. Somewhat worrying- I hope he's wrong, even if I think *some* of what he says rings true.