h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Someone said at the start of the thread that a healthy scepticism is good. And you need to exercise your healthiest scepticism when dealing the media. You have to be on your toes then more than you would be when dealing with scientists.

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Why do you use the word "despite"??? Surely the result means the Montreal Protocol was entirely successful?!

Incidentally, CFCs are also greenhouse gasses. They reckon that Montreal may already have contributed as much to combat global warming as Kyoto will.

I used despite because scientists are now saying that the banning of CFCs has only, maybe contributed 50% to healing the holes.

The thrust of my argument is that I detect the language of global warming gradually changing from the Scandivaian scientist who was rounded on comprehensively when he challenged the perceived view about 3 years ago to today when we are hearing more qualified views.

You can't win can you?

Science highlights a risk (that's a *risk* - i.e., a high probability something bad might happen) and the media freaks out. From this sometimes-useful media hype, corrective measures are introduced and the probability of disaster is severely lessened.

10% of the UK is not HIV positive because we did something. We will have an ozone layer because we did something. Y2K - was dealt with. Avian flu is a huge risk - nothing may come of it because the risk has been highlighted and measures put in place (is turkey expensive in the UK right now?).

THEN people have the gall to complain that "science said we'd all be dead and it didn't happen", seemingly ruining their trust in science! Unbelievable! Would you prefer them to be proved right, and their predictions borne out? I find it staggering that people would simply remember "they were wrong" in these cases and use it as an argument against listening to scientific consensus.

*** Science highlighted these risks so they would be dealt with - the same process is happening with global warming ***



Ste

Not intended as my main thrust i.e proving a negative outcome like sending tanks to Heathrow, see no terrorist attack so it must have worked.

Scientists are increasingly ramping up their reasearch in the media probably for funding, possibly for self aggrandisement. But it's happening on such a large scale that credibilty is waining.

Considering timescales it's probably safe to predict the demise of the planet due to burning fossil fuels but when you announce another miracle cure for a cancer, in pursuit of funds, sufferers and their family are very upset when they learn the possible cure is possibly at the end of a ten year research and devlopment project.

Wandering, why do you continue to ignore the Big Oil angle?

Your point about foot & mouth seems incorrect. The choice to destroy livestock rather than instituting a mass immunization program was economic, based on not upsetting the beef export market which doesn't like vaccinated cattle.

Arnie, accusing anyone who thinks that global warming isn't entirely a product of the human race of being in agreement with/duped by 'Big Oil' is neither big nor clever. In fact it's annoying. Really annoying.

That's probably why WA is ignoring it. I know it's why I did.

<<...when you announce another miracle cure for a cancer, in pursuit of funds, ...>>

How often do scientists actually make such announcements? Very rarely I would guess. It would virtually guarantee that every other expert in the field would go balls-out to disprove the assertion, the scientists in question would severely damage their reputation, possibly to the point of becoming a laughing stock, and very probably destroy their career. (Andrew Wakefield springs to mind here).

Research funding is not proportional to sensationalist headlines. Paper sales are, however. So, again, why on earth do we attribute the blame for the misinformation to science when the media, by definition, needs to sensationalise to make money? Science, almost by definition, needs to report only the bare facts if it is to avoid being discredited by its peers.

By choosing to believe popular media reports as accurate, transparent reflections of real events, you are directing the blame for these misunderstandings at entirely the wrong group of people.

Consider this very current and directly relevant example: A team in London has just started a human gene therapy trial designed to target a specific genetic abnormality that causes degeneration of the retina:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11765-first-trial-of-gene-therapy-to-restore-human-sight.html

Radio 1 news reported this last night as - and I quote - "cure for blindness".

Well, dreadful, that's because you've grossly oversimplified the case.

Where is the accusation I've made? There is none. You owe me an apology.

Wandering has made the case that scientists have a vested interest in saying globabl warming is man made. I'm pointing out that there is a large, wealthy and influential group that has the opposite vested interest. I'm wondering why Wandering is completly ignoring that point.

So, I.R. dreadful, are you being deliberately ignorant or just rude?

Anybody who thinks that science, politics and big business swim in seperate ponds and don't have an effect on each other is is simply deluded IMO.

The IPCC have been at least partially discredited by claiming to consist of the top 2000 climatologists in the world. Except it isn't. A lot of them are research assistants and journalists. When they publish a report, it is not peer-reviewed by all of those 2000 - some of them never see the data and some of them are never asked their opinion. Yet their names are still linked to the report. Some have strenuously fought to have their names removed from the IPCC lists. I wouldn't have thought taking the IPCC utterances as Gospel was particularly bright.

Scientific reports get played up or hidden at the whim of politicians. For example, the WHO investigation into cannabis use didn't come up with the expected results that it is bad for you, so it got quietly binned. The science "Community" tried for decades to prove a definitive link between passive smoking and cancer, but couldn't. So the politicians just lied and said they did anyway because it suited a political goal.

Business sticks it's oar in too, as Arnie is very fond of going on about. Stomach ulcers are not caused by stress, they're caused by a bacteria that is easily treatable with antibiotics available for fifty years. But the pharmaceutical industry makes far too much out of indigestion tablets and ulcer palliatives, so you can forget about ulcers being a thing of the past.

And to claim that funding for research isn't linked to the political flavour of the day is daft too. Want to do a three year-study into the mating habits of Mongolian Tree Frogs, you're gonna have a fight. However, put forward a proposal to study how climate change is affecting the mating habits of Mongolian Tree Frogs and you're onto a winner.

We rely on politicians to act upon the best advice available. In this case, the gathering and self-sustaining momentum of GW has made Governments act in a strange way IMO. Warned of unstoppable and unpreventable effects like rising sea levels, AFAIK, not one government has spent money building sea defences. Quite the opposite in fact, building on low-lying land continues apace. In the Gulf, they're building islands out of sand only inches above sea level. In the US, they're talking about re-building a city below *current* sea levels. The actions of government directly contradict what comes out of their mouths.

Forget the talk, nobody is doing anything to combat the predicted effects of GW. No scientist as far as I am aware, has said that GW can be stopped. The argument is if it can be slowed. And nobody knows a definitive answer to that one either.

The real effect of the GW furore has seen Government's given the green light to impose swingeing taxes on everything from Steel Plants to Mrs Smith putting out her rubbish.

There is a beneficiary of GW.

Government, who have always shown a rapacious appetite for raising taxes and spending money. The Green Lobby has acquired immense political power very, very quickly.

Having said all that, reducing waste is always a laudable goal and if a result of all this is to be cleaner industries, less pollution and more efficiency then fine. Just don't expect us to believe the sky is falling.

We all agree that global warming needs attention and that we can't just blame one or another factor as the most important one .Nevertheless we have the right to discuss the theme even to learn new facts.Let's discuss and argue.
The simplest things are the dearest.

Considering the way we live is unsustainable anyway, you could look at it from a different perspective. We should be reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, reducing our waste and generally taking better care of the planet because otherwise we'll compromise the ability of future generations to live well. And, as an added bonus, we could slow the potentially dangerous warming of our planet!

Look,I really admire scientists but they cannot and don't claim their research or a theory is reliable a hundred percent.That is why it is called 'theory'.Although we are laymen ,there is no problem discussing the issue. Have you heard of the debate about the connection,rather difference, between intelligence and knowledge?

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Big business in this case is a shark, trying to eat the climatologists. Industries emitting CO2 form a good part of the world economy, and underlie most of the rest. The worth of all these industries is $trillions. Makes you think it's a wonder the IPCC get a report out at all.

And do you really think there won't be research students working in research teams? Do you think journalists are doing the statistical analysis, or getting reports from (say) the Inuit, who see the effects of the warming before their very eyes? Misdirection on your behalf, perchance?

"IPCC reports are written by teams of authors, which are nominated by governments and international organizations and selected for specific tas according to their expertise. They come from universities, research centers, business and environmental associations and other organizations from more than 100 countries. Several hundred experts from all over the world are normally involved in drafting IPCC reports. The preparation of all reports follows clear procedures agreed by the Panel"

from their website http://www.ipcc.ch/about/faq/IPCC%20Introduction.pdf

This is a consensus report, dealing with *huge* amounts of data, then the report is sent to governments to give it the rubber stamp. As such, it's not going to be 100% accurate (especially after governments have got their hands into it). But it *will* be a fair reflection of the current best guess. Given the cannabis and ulcer examples, which were altered/binned at the suggestion of big business (so you say, and I'll accept it for now), don't you feel slightly worried that the 'business friendly' version still predicts such a rise in temperatures, with all the negative consequences therein?

An example http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6615025.stm
"Campaigners say the IPCC's economics report has based its recommendations on the safe limit of atmospheric CO2 being 550 parts per million (ppm).

But more recent scientific studies now put that figure at 450ppm, they argue.

Attempts by the report's authors to amend the findings to reflect the new data have been resisted by the Chinese."

Politics are obviously a part of anything this big, but citing a few examples of where it's gone tits up don't mean that the IPCC is a waste of time.

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The Green lobby will have stopped CO2 emissions rising then? Bullshit. If they had any power, the first thing they'd do is get aviation emissions included in the UK target. The fact that they haven't shows that your assertion is simply wrong, part of a big speech to confuse the issue with half-truths and misinformation.

And sustainability is *not* the same thing as as global warming. *Do* pay attention.

Funny you should mention the ppm changes Pedro. That was the best bet from the climatologists until recently. Now, it's too high. How can you make policy when the goalposts keep shifting? One year X causes Y, next year A causes B, then X causes B in relation to A. It's not science, it's join the dots. Hockey sticks anyone?

And the IPCC is government funded Have you ever known a politician to ask a question where he doesn't already know the answer? How many government-funded studies bite the hand that feeds them? Just as oil, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and soft drink manufacturers commission reports that benefit themselves, so do governments.

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The ice-age prediction that was mentioned was the first 'modern' paper on climate change. Its author (as mentioned a few weeks ago in the New Scientist) had published his first paper. Yet he became an expert just because nobody had done this type of research. Now, there have been a multitude of papers, each one becoming (presumably) more accurate and including more detail. The Hockey Stick graph was pilloried (by you, I seem to remember), when it didn't match another graph, also published by the IPCC. Of course one was a graph of European temperatures, and the other was of global temperatures.

Each report will be different from the last, as more information is processed and amalgamated into the (better) new models. Saying that their being different is something to snigger at is, again, disingenuous.

As for the IPCC being govt funded, the UN is at least one step away from the Hutton report, say. Big businesses lie in their own favour, but in whose favour is denting the current world economy? Certainly not 'oil, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and soft drink manufacturers'. I'd love to be persuaded by one, just one, of your arguments mate, but this isn't the one.

Try the underlying one Pedro.

Every report indicates sea level rises, most to a catastrophic extent.

No government spends a single penny on sea defences to meet the increased threat.

In fact, governments encourage sea level and sub-sea level building.

Why?

Correction, "AFAIK, No government spends a single penny on sea defences to meet the increased threat."

Happy to be proved wrong.