PJD wrote:It is hard for the layman to sort the wood from the trees (ho hum!) and there are masses of sweeping generalisations, inaccuracies and exaggerations on both sides of the debate, not to mention plenty of venom and bile.
For example -preacher_man wrote:PS. Why are climate deniers also the ones who also refuse to make any personal sacrifice? Why do they only agree on policy that would directly affect themselves? And why are climate deniers big experts on climate change, but nothing else?
What's that all about? Read the link I posted above - 1,200 limos and 140 private planes in Copenhagen this week. Seems like the climate deniers (as you put it) aren't the only ones refusing to make any personal sacrifice.
The truth is the AGW lobby believe there can be no other explanation for the current warming trend than man made CO2 emissions and the skeptical lobby believe that there can be another explanation (whatever it may be). How can this be proven one way or the other?
Man made CO2 emissions can never be cut to zero. What if we cut emissions in half and the planet still warms? "We need to cut further"? What if we don't cut emissions and the planet cools "It's just a temporary blip caused by something else"? (Eg 1945 -1970)
The debate, like the debate on the Iraq war, is too entrenched on either side to be able to make any headway. One thing is for sure, the climate has and will always change, often with catastrophic effects.
In the meantime, while caviar and champagne is being quaffed in Copenhagen, 2.5 million people die of malaria each year, 3 million die from AIDS, I've heard it estimated that nearly 9 million die from malnutrition.
Limos and planes - Most of these cars will be armour-plated, others hired out by firms in Copenhagen - don't see the issue at all. Planes - alternatives? Presidential yacht perhaps? Or a scheduled airline? Security issues abound. Again, not an issue if you accept that the elected representatives need some kind of personal transport to get around (security, convenience etc).
As to the statement that both sides are entrenched - possibly, in the same way the some people believed in a flat earth and were equally entrenched, but now we know better.
How much evidence needs to be collected before the weight of probability swings it for certain individuals is up to them really. Not that I wish to cast aspertions on the scientific background or awareness of particular UTS members, but on this very thread we have some kind of argument that seems to conclude that the ice-caps are not reducing at all but remaining reasonably constant. They have then used total ice area as the data set for this conclusion. I mean, really!
I guess it's possible in almost every scientific analysis to come up with confounding data if you look hard enough, but it didn't take a Masters degree in Environmental assessment (Newcastle 1997) for me to accept that it's the weight of mutually supporting evidence that really swings it. There is simply so much.
Needless to say certain die-hards will dredge up the data they have found on a suspicious website (probably indirectly funded by the 'Oil is great' foundation) that points to the fact that in Nowheresville, USA, the temperature has dropped by 0.7 degrees over the last 20 years, thus blowing a gaping hole in the entire warming hypothesis. Better not mention that continental weather systems can result in extremes of hot and cold, or that modelling predicts localised changes in both directions.
Still, I really don't need to convince anyone as I'm pretty close to the conclusion that's being discussed in Copenhagen, being verified by multiple agencies in numerous countries and the one that is being confirmed by current weather and temperature changes. You'll still be baling out the flood waters in 30 years, no matter how convincing your current arguments (not that they are).
Good luck!
