I thought this was interesting article to read.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html

"So let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole and temperature readings in the troposphere. The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion."

I find it articulate, to the point, and accurate...

although, as this is merely an editorial in a newspaper (even if it is the Journal) it is no more valid and holds no more water than the arguments of its opposite number.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0819-03.htm

anyone can have an opinion.

Min

Yes, anyone can, and everyone does.

You cite a three year old article, which doesn't take into account that the politically correct meanderings of our current (and, in one case, now defunct) Presidential candidates back then don't reflect the fact that since then, the trend of global warming has been completely reversed, and real science has indicated that the man-made hype is essentially bereft.

The validity of this article is in it's logic, and it's basis in an understanding of human folly...

Global warming has existed for millenia. The idea of man-made global warmning is a religion...born of nothing but opportunity to control.

he's a more recent one then.. doesn't take much effort to find some information to support anything one wants to...
http://www.desmogblog.com/wall-street-jour...souled-religion

..and the trend of global warming has not been reversed since 2005, far from it. Apparently this is the first year in human history that Arctic ice is to melt completely ....
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/viewnews.php?id=129213

the belief that global warming is not a man-made problem is born of nothing more than the desire to avoid the responsibilities of ones actions.

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

The warming really hasn't risen since 2001... There's been a few heat spikes, but overall temperatures have dropped since then slightly. As for the Arctic losing all of it's ice, you can't really use that in an argument until it's actually happened, which until I see satellite photo's of an arctic without any white stuff I won't believe.

That, and only 3 years since 1998 even make into the top 10 hottest years since 1900.

http://digg.com/environment/Error_Found_in..._Year_on_Record

As you said above, it doesn't take much effort to get information to support anything. AGW isn't any different.

thankyou for proving my point....

conspiracy theorists beware the Government is out to deceive you !!!!

Since it hasn't...and isn't close to doing so, I think the point is fairly moot...





A classic example of the religion of man-made global warming...


(It's dead...it died with Live Earth. Al Gore is now ineffectual, and the data (not of course approved by the U.N. scientists...but recognized by all the real climatologists in the world) is clear).

How exactly did I prove your point? By contradicting what you originally said? It's pretty sad you label me a conspiracy theorist because I disagree with you on AGW <=[. Just like how alarmists liken skeptics like me to flat Earthers....

Funny... I see disbelief in global warming as a religion fostered by big business in its effort to maintain control. It comes as no surprise that an editorial of this sort should appear in the newspaper of Dow Jones & Company, recently bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (owner of Fox News). The managing editor of the WSJ, Marcus Walker Brauchli was pressured to resign less than 1 year after Murdochs purchase (Brauchli will be the executive editor of The Washington Post starting in September 2008).

This editorial sounds very much like the editorials which followed the news that cigarette smoking causes cancer. "Mass hysteria. No scientific basis..."

MID, more than 90% of the world's climatologists, biologists, and physicists "believe in" global warming.


In other words, let's stop fussing with quantitative data.

exactly.... anything to sell copy and anything to create a bit of debate. news media the world over are renowned for promoting conspiracy. have always done in the past and always will.... the newest being the growth of the belief in "no such thing as Golbal Warming" it's perhaps going to be the biggest of them all because it will affect everyone in the world whether they like it or not.

and who stands to gain most if everyone is fooled by this new conspiracy ?

who is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide in the world today yet refuses to act on Kyoto ?

Min x

I think you make the mistake of using the word belief. Those of us who realize that the empirical evidence for man-made global warming is tenuous, and completely inconclusive don't believe anything. We either know or not. Those who inflate such evidence into a crisis believe. They believe too much, and they cannot possibly know.

Everything about the recent irrational hysteria fits precisely into the pattern of religion. It is about power, and control. Of course it has nothing to do with big business. It has to do with a certain political mindset which seeks to expand governmental control over people's lives.

I think it's amazing that such rationality should appear on any modern news outlet, given the obvious bias of the mass media at large. That it would be Fox makes sense, however. It's also somewhat amazing that when rationality is put forth, in opposition to the common paradigm, it is viewed as some sort of conspiracy.




I should think that 100% of scientists who pay attention to anything climatological wouldn't believe any such thing; they'd know an observed phenomenon when they saw one. Global warming is a fact of nature, and has been for millenia, but that's not what we're talking about here...

You know half of the nobel prize winners that gave speeches about climate change don't believe in AGW.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/07/lindau-h...inners-are.html

And where did this 90% come from? I think you forgot about the tens of thousands of scientists who openly dispute the hypothesis(that's right, technically it isn't even a theory yet) and other thousand upon thousands who can't disagree with it out of fear of losing their jobs.

Now I'm no mathematician so I can't check this guy's work, but it is peer reviewed and supposedly proven. He has found the following errors in the IPCC's findings;

"* The IPCC’s 2007 climate summary overstated CO2’s impact on temperature by 500-2000%;
* CO2 enrichment will add little more than 1 °F (0.6 °C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100;
* Not one of the three key variables whose product is climate sensitivity can be measured directly;
* The IPCC’s values for these key variables are taken from only four published papers, not 2,500;
* The IPCC’s values for each of the three variables, and hence for climate sensitivity, are overstated;
* “Global warming” halted ten years ago, and surface temperature has been falling for seven years;
* Not one of the computer models relied upon by the IPCC predicted so long and rapid a cooling;
* The IPCC inserted a table into the scientists’ draft, overstating the effect of ice-melt by 1000%;
* It was proved 50 years ago that predicting climate more than two weeks ahead is impossible;
* Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth warmed;
* In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years."

I read a quote the other day which pretty much summarized the entire AGW hysteria in one simple sentence.

"There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition."
- Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology, MIT

oh please, we've all heard these useless spoutings from so called scientists for years, and they are no more valid now than they were the years ago that they came out...
do i need to point out that the IPCC took the nobel prize jointly with AL Gore, who has been soundly trashed by some posters on here ? u can't have it both ways ...... LOL

of course it is impossible for u to quote any facts or figures that do not originate from a USA based source, for obvious reasons....... however, there are countless residents of Europe who are daily counting the cost of Global Warming in lives and possessions..
those of us who realise that the puppets of the USA are attempting to diffuse the current crisis into the state of fantasy, know that they are only fooling themselves.

everything about the new irrational theory that there is no global warming fits precisely into the pattern of the conspiracy theorist....for example, if it had nothing to do with big business, then the Big Businesses would fold the problem into their arms as they do with the current reduction in available oil reserves... and buy the government into invading another country.
lets's hope that it's not proven that YOUR country is a massive emitter of greenhouse gasses....YOU COULD BE NEXT !!!!!

Min xx

So let me get this straight. You call the data I've provided a load of BS without any kind of attempt to prove the said data wrong outside of your own opinion? That's a very alarmist approach "Shut up, you're wrong and I don't even need to bother proving why." No offense.

As for only USA based sources, it doesn't really matter what country the data comes from unless the said scientist is under the direct influence of the government. Unless you can prove that ever scientist and article I've linked to is in a government contract for that specific piece, then what does it matter? If you really want a European source then there's Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic. He has written a book titled "Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?" that explains why he believes the AGW movement is the modern day communist movement from his childhood and a dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity around the world.

If you want a quote here it is;



You can go ahead and call me a conspiracy theorist and consider me some crazy person who doesn't think the world is going to end if we don't stop using carbon dioxide(it's the stuff every single living animal on earth exhales and what volcanoes spew out 24/7). If you want to be that ignorant be my guest.

Wickian,

You make a seriously pertinent comment above...one which I've attemtpted to point out to posters repeatedly, but virtually to no avail:




Precisely: it is an hypothesis. A weak one at best, yet, still an hypothesis.

I don't seriously think that too many people actually understand what that really means...


Nor do most people realize that many who disagree actually fear for their lively hoods!


...The Weather Channel, which has become a joke, has openly declared that anyone in their employ who doesn't support Man-made global warming will be chastised if they express contrary opinions on-air...




My point precisely.



And as to this (Showgirl...)




No, you don't need to point that out...it was expected, and typical of the Nobel committee in recent years.
The peace prize is irrelevant to a scientific topic. That particular prize confers social presitige, and nothing more...it is, in a word irrelevent, and has been controversial since it's inception.


Being that the peace prize's stipulations, by the Nobel Committee's own definition is awarded to the person "who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses"...



It is nonsensical for Al Gore or the IPCC to have won it, since what they've done has absolutely nothing to do with the stipulations of the awarding of this so-called honor.

It was, in a word, a joke...They awarded a peace prize, nonsensically, to people who had nothing to do with fraternity between nations, nor a reduction in standing armies, nor anything to do with peace at all.

They awarded a peace prize to a political clown, and a fringe minority organization, who were both in conflict with the vast majoruty of climatological scientists and researchers, and who advanced a weak hypothesis to the level of scientific law by completely circumventing the scientific method.

It was, and is a joke award...

nope, i'm not going to dig up data, u can do that...
....the difference between us is that i'm not trying to change ur mind. and as i stated previously, anyone can dig up data and information and present it in any way that they please to prove any point that they so care to...


maybe u boys should get ur heads together before u go trying to rely on the same "data" to prove opposing points.... i do believe the Nobel committee may take offence at ur implying they are incapable of doing their job...did u expect that one ?

this is, of course, complete claptrap.. it's no less an implication of conspiracy to say that a scientist is under the influence of a government when trying to prove global warming than to not prove it, unless u use an alternate deciding body (such as IPCC) to digest and present findings.


my, my.... it's always easy to tell when someone is on the backfoot, because the insults start flying instead of just the sarcasm and patronism. and at any rate, i don't think the world is "going to end" as u put it.... people will not die out, the seas will not dry up and America will still pump massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere until it runs out of fossil fuels itself...no, we're talking about climate change here, and what countries should be doing to reduce messing it up instead of just saying "well China's not going to play, so neither am I...."
the main upshot of global warming will be the complete mix-and-mess-up of world climates and established weather patterns that comes from the man-made abuse of the world climate... oh my... we've got that already, havn't we ?

if u believe that all the governments of the world (except America) have banded together to promote the idea of global warming, and it's not true. does that not make it a conspiracy ?
"There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition."
- Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology, MIT
this quote certainly sounds like he's saying there's a conspiracy..

Min xx

Well weather Global warming is man made or not. There needs top be a sincere effort to stop pollution and to live in a sustainable way that is more in harmony with nature .

To achieve this will need sincere efforts from governments all over the world to initiate projects that will help to reduce emissions. Nuclear power plants can help a lot while we're searching for fusion alternatives.

This describes, in my opinion, a different, yet viable opinion.

For those of us of a more scientific approach, and thus those who understand the hypothetical nature of the man-made warming hypothesis--acknowledge global warming as a natural flux.

Further, while we also understand that the odds of man having any pronounced influence on this repeating pattern of flux is likely nil, and clearly seeing the weakness of the man-made hypothesis, we still very likely to the man or woman, consider pollution to be a problem.

Not because it's contributory to some warming of the planet, but because it is concentrated primarily in small pockets of the planet's surface, tends to continually stay in those areas, and poses severe health and well-being threats over time. It's not a planetary issue--it is a human health issue, and a local environmental issue. It just so happens to affect the tens of millions of people who live among it every day, all day (see Dallas, Texas, New York, New York, Los Angeles, CA, etc...).

Correcting that situation is no small task, and reducing emmissions from automobiles is a major step in that direction (the major step). However, with a concentration of automobiles such as is seen in major metropolitan areas, some real technological advancement in automotive technology and energy sources are required.

Eliminating coal fired power generation, where it may exist in and around major metro areas, will be minimalistic at best, since for one, such generation isn't anywhere close to the pollution source that aurtomoibiles are, and two; coal fired plants are simply pretty efficient and don't pollute anywhere near as much as they used to.

Creating the energy technologies required to reduce inner-city pollution, and to provide for future sources of power for the nation goes back to the seemingly counterintutive mechanics I've described before, which will allow the people qualified and capable of doing these things to do these things:

Allow the oil companies to drill here now.

That, as odd as it seems, is the beginning of the solution to the problems we face, not only in urban gunk, but in alternative energy sources for the future.

And of course, nuclear generation is a great idea--but the same people who don't allow refinieries to be built, and who disallow the only logical thing to be done vis-a-vis foreign dependence---drilling where the oil is--are the same ones who prohibit the construction of nuclear power plants...

You know I've never actually done this before, but I'm just going to have to stop talking to you. You have so little common sense that I'm afraid if I keep this up I'm just going to do nothing but what you've been doing, insulting me and calling me and idiot conspiracy theorist without making any attempt to make a valid argument... So with that, goodbye and I hope your IQ raises above 50 some day....

well, at least ur consistent right to the last...one only has to look back at the previous posts to see ur the one thowing the insults around... something that i pointed out in my last post and something which u obviously feel the need to run away from rather than apologise for. strange, but not unexpected as that kind of behaviour is something that is at the heart of this discussion in that it is my argument that those who believe there is no such effect as AGW on the world climate are also running away from their responsibilities to clear up the mess by denying it exists.
also, it is you who repeatedly calls urself the derogatory term "idiot" , i merely pointed out that u were a conspiracy theorist, which is yet to be disproved if u believe that AGW as promoted by most of the worlds governments and independant bodies like the IPCC is a fallacy....and also stand by Lindzen's statement.

as far as facts, figures and data go... as i already said, anyone can pick out any data and use them to argue their own cause... take this statement for example.... if it were as true across the whole world as it were in America and as valid a statement across the whole world, there would not be completely snowless / iceless winters in parts of Europe now, like there have been for years.

i suppose the hole in the ozone layer is not there either ??

Min

Have you looked lately?

The hole in the ozone layer has repeatedly increased and decreased....It's irrelevant to the argument...

What is their job?

To provide awards?


Please....


p.s....

It's your question to ask over on the space and astromonomy thread...the quiz...

yes yes, i know i can't look.... and smack me legs for being a hypocrite, but it felt appropriate to be flippant a little !!

btw, quiz question posted... a friend of a friend gave me it to put up.... i hope the answer he gave me is right !!!