Global warming: fact or fiction?

[miker]

This made me chuckle.


and this applicable anecdote on observation:

An engineer is out walking in the park and sees a wild-eyed man hitting a strangely painted block of wood with a stick. The engineer's curiosity gets the better of him, so he asks the wild-eyed man, "Why are you hitting that block?"
The wild-eyed man replies with a bit of a crazed smile, "The sound keeps the elephants away."
The engineer, now fully intrigued, digs deeper, "But why? There are no elephants here."
As the wild-eyed man continues to make his noise with renewed vigor, he says, "See! It's working."

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Humour aside, this website makes some valid points about the "science" of climate change:
http://xtronics.com/reference/globalwarming.htm

A politically popular opinion doesn't make it correct. No poll of scientists has anything to do with science.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Don't get me wrong. I'm not denying we see a trend. I just fail to see the scientific proof - all anyone is talking about is correlation. Pollution is bad, yes. Are we causing the Earth to warm up? Show me the scientific proof and methodology and I might be convinced. In the mean-time, pollution is bad. That includes nuclear waste, okay kids?

[miker]

That's if the imminent asteroid hit doesn't kill us all first. Or the imminent pandemic. Or the imminent Yellowstone eruption. Or the imminent terrorist attack. Or the imminent war with the middle east. Or the imminent dirty bomb. Or the imminent (45 minutes was it?) biological attack. Or a gun attack. Or a knife attack. Or an overdose. Or alchohol poisoning. Or falling down the stairs. Or choking on a fish bone.

I'm fed up with be shepherded with fear. It's enough to drive somebody to a Hollywood ending.

[Chance1234]

or steve jobs presses that magic button on his desk and every human with a ipod is turned into a human killing machine

[emjen]

its nice that we're all talking about this immense issue. But what we r?ally should be doing is making movies about the importance of nature. Making people aware.

Lets.

[Chance1234]

that ever so green activity of making films;

[miker]

Perhaps someone could do a mash-up of Derek Jarman's "Blue" and change the colour and call it "Green".

Somebody should make a guerilla film of some toffs out keying Land Rovers and changing the signs around in petrol stations. For added authenticity they should be ginger outcasts.

[emjen]

Ill have my film that will make people aware of global warming in this very topic in just a matter of a couple of weeks. Just you wait. And it will be a genre breaking convention twisting film.

[Chance1234]

but will it be carbon free ?

[jb_617]

It makes me laugh that people constantly claim to want "the facts laid out" and claim they are "rational human beings" that can "make their own decisions" and are tired of "being made to fear". Then someone comes along and lays out the facts without trying to scare anyone and they still don't believe it.

I'm no fan of Gore. But I follow this subject closely and can say that nothing he said in that film was wrong. He was very clear in delineating his arguments. He stated what IS and HAS happened as fact and this is correct. When it came to predictions he stated that's all they were. Predictions based on the best available evidence and our understanding of weather patterns. This may change as new data is obseved.

However, the observed facts are unchanged by political or economic considerations. Stop listening to politicians, economists and the guy in the pub.

Remember, no peer reviewed scientific paper written by a credible scientist and expert on climate has ever said that the disruption to weather and global warming was not caused by human factors.

If you're "not convinced" it doesn't really matter because you don't really matter. Carry on driving your car, consuming like crazy and chasing the latest fad electronics. People aren't going to change their lifestyles to help themselves. This is because no matter how much they are presented with the facts they still want to live their ignorant, greedy, consumer driven lives and deny that anyone "knows anything so what does it matter?"

It's not "advertising", "the media" or "politicians" that drive this process, it's simple human greed.


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Isn't it amazing that "advertising" and "the media" are a corrupt, evil, manipulative force unless they're selling me iPODs.

[miker]

I don't remember any "facts" being presented by Al Gore, only a narrow sample of ice geology statistics and speculative correlation.

I do not deny that data points to a trend in climate change. I've switched off unused electrical appliances and lightbulbs since the 1980s. I drive an economical diesel and have an agreement with my employer to work from home 3 days a week thus saving me 3x120 mile trips in my car. I use a low kWH laptop. I recycle. I am involved in virtualisation of physical server hardware which allows more services to run from less hardware meaning less power consumption from both servers and air conditioning. I fail to see how I personally am being particularly "greedy", but for sure we are all labrats which respond to rewards.

Do not fear change. Change fear.