Open Letter from Rory Young in today's Oban Times

[MonaLott]

that's why so many question and doubt the whole theory of climate change. The existing data simply cannot be construed as proof. All the while we are being led down the garden path, at unimaginable cost, by people who can't substantiate their claims

No that's why it's a matter for scientific appraisal not for personal opinion.

[longshanks]

My view is based on the observations and conclusions of this planet's expert group of climate specialists

And that's a very sensible stand Mona.

Those who recall the last time we had a "discussion" about Man Made Global Warming on this forum a few years back my stance was, initially, that of a sceptic but by the time the thread had descended into a shambles I was prepared to admit that I had shifted to "believer" largely thanks to Spiderman's and your's, Mona, well argued points.

In the time which has since elapsed, however, I have started to lean back into the sceptical camp.

A number of telling reasons.

1. Our previous discussion focused for a time on local evidence of MMGW in terms of rising sea levels and the killer argument was the increasing number of times Balvicar shop corner flooded at high tide. Trouble is it has flooded only once over the last two or three years now.

2. I have seen the temperature data for the last decade or so and it now appears that temperatures have not risen at all, totally contradicting the models and predictions of the IPCC. No climate scientist has given a carefully researched and peer reviewed reason for this contradiction of MMGW.

3. Similarly since climate scientists, Al Gore and the IPCC started issuing its dire warnings many decades ago temperatures have only risen by a fraction of what they predicted and most of the effects they predicted have simply not happened. Only yesterday I read that their prediction for the treeline moving north was out by a factor of 100, and, perversly for the theory, in many places it is actually moving south.

4. Leading climate scientists have become embroiled in a number of scientific scandals which imply they are covering up something about MMGW. In America a top climate scientist has admited stealing documents and forging documents from a right wing think tank. In England a whistleblower leaked emails from the UK's top climate scientists which imply they were manipulating temperature data and trying to cover up a decline in temperatures. Subsequent inquiries cleared them of bad behaviour but did not clear them of the manipulation and cover up charges; in fact the enquiries did not investigate these. It makes me wonder what the world's leading climate scientists are now worried about if MMGW is so correct.

So am I sceptical again? Agnostic probably, but heading that way.

Am I ignoring what all these climate scientists and organisations are saying? No. But I do realise there is a huge amount of politics involved which may be influencing their declarations.

Shanks ( by choice)

[Peter Connelly]

Ostensible balance in the media is also part of the problem. Despite huge scientific consensus to the existence of AGW, the media, like this site, aims to air ‘both sides of the argument’. Thereby it can appear as if the pros and contras are split 50/50 on the science. Scientifically it isn’t, because there has been a movement of discourse away from science towards political/economic, even aesthetic (‘turbines look ghastly’), interests.

Tabloid X, for example, has an underlying fatalistic worldview in which criminals are, in essence, evil; poverty is the lifestyle lived by those who are, in essence, lazy, etc. In a world where things just ARE, then of course anthropogenic global warming just doesn’t happen, because that would mean that there is human choice available to do something about it (thus AGW would be a proposition that runs counter to Tabloid X’s underlying fatalistic worldview). Therefore Tabloid X calls the scientific evidence into doubt, or ascribes evidence of global warming to non-human causes, e.g. ‘these fluctuations have been happening for thousands/millions of years and there is nothing we can do about it’. And so ‘GW is just a government con’, therefore shifting the discourse from science to politics/economics.

Also, because the discourse of science is a different discourse from that of Tabloid X, there are often difficulties in ‘translation’ between the two. Try getting a mathematician to explain Fermat’s Last Theorem to a journalist from Tabloid X, and then having the journalist do his piece about it for a six o’clock deadline; it’s much easier for the journalist to spend time describing that the ‘eccentric’ mathematician (51) was wearing a ‘crumpled suit’ . Thus we get a shift in discourse from that of mathematics to that of tabloid populism.

Of course, it’s not just the tabloids that do this:

http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/do ... 04-gec.pdf
This link also considers a number of other issues brought up in this thread.

BTW, PP, it’s Connelly, not Connolly.

[Husker Doo]

So we have concluded in this discussion that that Global Warming is a fabrication,tourism is already in decline on Seil and that little money comes to the island residents from it anyway,the bird population is not put at risk from turbines but actually that the domestic cat is the real problem,oh yes dubois health risks from subsonic noise and if you look at the blades when they're turning in sunlight??? well anyway

You have to ask whats the problem?

[Husker Doo]

Are you from the scots connellys /connollys or the irish connellys/connollys Peter?

[NickB]

.

A RESPONSE TO A CLIMATE 'AGNOSTIC'
(with thanks to Longshanks for playing Devil's Advocate)

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No recent local flooding

Flooding at the shop happens when there is a coincidence of strong SW winds, low pressure and a very high Spring tide.

Drawing conclusions from a tiny area over a short period is less than scientific. The following is perhaps more significant if we are talking about sea levels:

FEARING climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual back-up plan: moving the populace to Fiji.

Has a whole nation gone mad?



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Temperature data for the last ten years


I refer you to this excellent digaram, 'going down the up escalator', which shows how climate change deniers manipulate the data over unfeasibly short timescales:





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The Climategate 'scandal' concerning the stolen emails (from Wikipedia):

Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations. However, the reports criticised climate scientists for their disorganised methods, bunker mentality and lack of transparency. Climate scientists and organisations pledged to restore public confidence in the research process by improving data management and opening up access to data.

Sadly mud sticks and some people are all too ready to point to that stuck mud over and over again. Even the 'whistleblower leaked the emails' statement is mendacious and manipulative. In fact the UEA server was hacked, and East Anglia police still have a criminal investigation under way.


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That arctic tree study

Yes, predictions of tre advance into a warming Arctic have turned out to be inaccurate. However, this does not indicate that the Arctic is not warming and the scientists conducting the study do not claim for a minute that it does. It shows that we don;t know as much about tree response to climate as we though, nothing more. You can read about the study for yourself HERE and see if it says the Arctic is not warming.

(The fact that several small yachts including a 27ft Albin Vega like ours have managed to transit the North West passage uneventfully in recent years speaks volumes about Arctic warming)


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By playing Devils' Advocate (thanks L, good job ) Longshanks has clearly demonstrated how those with a political or financial agenda who find global warming inconvenient can use little snippets of half-fact cherry picked and dropped into an article with no explanation to chip away at public confidence in science and scientists. This is a relentless and insidious process that has been going on for decades now.

To find out more about this long-term and ongoing subversion of science I cannot recommend this book too highly - it will make the hairs on your hairs stand on end:

[Pentlandpirate]

With all this doom and doubt, what's the point of doing anything about climate change? It's not as if any of us are going to get out of this place alive, is it?

Longshanks has clearly demonstrated how those with a political or financial agenda who find global warming inconvenient

. You're saying the deniers have a political or financial agenda????? You really don't think climate change scaremongering couldn't be perpetuated by those with a political or financial agenda?????

[longshanks]

A RESPONSE TO A CLIMATE 'AGNOSTIC'
(with thanks to Longshanks for playing Devil's Advocate)
Even the 'whistleblower leaked the emails' statement is mendacious and manipulative.

Why can't you carry on a discussion without personal attacks in reference to what another poster has written? Those are my words you have quoted and I am neither mendacious nor manipulative.

Longshanks has clearly demonstrated how those with a political or financial agenda who find global warming inconvenient can use little snippets of half-fact cherry picked and dropped into an article with no explanation to chip away at public confidence in science and scientists. This is a relentless and insidious process that has been going on for decades now.

No. I have not demonstrated anything of the sort. I posted my own thoughts. I have absolutely no political or financial agenda. How on Earth can you imply I have?

I felt I posted a well thought, personal and truthful position piece. I did not need a paragraph by paragraph attack.

When oh when can we have a reasonable, civilised debate on here? Peter C is obviously trying, and so is PP but the likes of NickB and Herby Dice (and a small minority of others) continually drag it down.

Shankers

[NickB]

With all this doom and doubt, what's the point of doing anything about climate change?

I've got grandchildren.

[NickB]

I felt I posted a well thought, personal and truthful position piece. I did not need a paragraph by paragraph attack.

Sorry Longshanks, I didn't think you really meant that stuff you posted - I assumed you were playing devils' advocate and inviting a reasoned riposte.

Surely you weren't serious?

[Minimum]

An excellent article in today's Scotland on Sunday: "Fuelling an inconvenient delusion that spells ruin for Scotland" by Gerald Warner makes an infmorative read. Also, a letter in the same paper "Powerful case against offshore wind policy" by Professor Andthony Trewavas.

[MonaLott]

Personally, I thought Nick's reply to you was excellent, as was your own initial comment, LS. Don't you go all hurt and girly on us now! This has been a good exchange by this site's standards, boring for many I'm sure but still illuminating in hearing different sides of the climate change story. At the end of the day, ACC or not, let's hope the folly of an expensive, ugly and useless windfarm leaves us untroubled and at peace!

[Pentlandpirate]

Nick, if you've got grandchildren and you believe in climate change you better start panicking. Because the Chinese and most of the world aren't going to do anything about it. Perhaps the Chinese know something our scientists don't. After all instead of a couple of thousand scientists to rely on, they probably have tens of millions. Better to use all this money being spent on green technologies to make anti-climate change suits. All you have to do is modify those NBC suits you no doubt have tucked away somewhere now that nuclear armageddon doesn't seem to be quite as certain as it once did.

[NickB]

An excellent article in today's Scotland on Sunday: "Fuelling an inconvenient delusion that spells ruin for Scotland" by Gerald Warner makes an infmorative read. Also, a letter in the same paper "Powerful case against offshore wind policy" by Professor Andthony Trewavas.

Ignoring for now Warner's statements on the usefullness or otherwise of wind power, today's article reiterates Warner's position as a long-standing climate change denier. The whole drift of this thread has really been to point out the danger for anti-wind protestors of falling into the trap of climate change denial. Warner hates the whole concept of climate change because the social responsibility implied is anathema to his right-wing libertarian philosophy. I suspect that Warner primarily hates wind turbines because they are a 'by-product' - so to speak - of global warming.

In the case of anti-wind protestors who fall into the climate change denial trap the reverse is true - they embrace the dogma of climate change denial because they feel it strengthens their case. As some of us have pointed out on this thread, it does not. I believe it is vitally important if anti-wind protestors are to retain any credibility that they do not fall into the trap of climate change denial.

To briefly return to the original topic, have the Community Council lodged a statement yet, or are they still digesting the questionnaires?

[NickB]

Nick, if you've got grandchildren and you believe in climate change you better start panicking.

The Chinese are taking climate change very seriously and spending a large fortune on green technologies.

It is when I read some of the denialist guff on threads like this that the first twinges of panic start to creep in.

[Pentlandpirate]

No, I think the message from China is they might do something about it, when it suits them, but probably a long way in the future, even if it does agree to do something http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook ... ate-change

PS; Why is everyone else's opinion, "guff?"

[MonaLott]

China has the biggest programme of nuclear reactor construction in the world and in history. Very sensible on several fronts.

[brodie]

According to the A&B planning wevsite, Kilninver And Kilmelford Community Council have submitted a representation for this planning application but to date Seil And Easdale Community Council have not made a submission.

[Pentlandpirate]

I'm pleasantly surprised by the response from KK Community Council. They object strongly with a massive majority against the windfarm. For; 5. Against; 68

http://publicaccess.argyll-bute.gov.uk/ ... C1ZCH0A900 Go to 'Documents' then 'View associated documents'. Find and click on "20593390",the "Consultee Response" currently towards bottom of page 2.

[Herby Dice]

I would like to clear up a couple of points here. Firstly, PP, I did not call you an idiot, as such - but I did say that if you believed that climate change was not in fact happening you woud be one, a subtle distinction which in the face of it makes little difference. The word idiot was too strong, and unnecessary, and I apologise for using it.
I would like to say that your contributions are always welcome, diverting, entertaining and a crucial contribution to the vibrancy of this forum, and urge you to keep it up whether you ultimately choose to join us here or not.

I would like to reassure you on one point though. I am not NickB, neither am I Peter Connelly, Connolly, or indeed anyone other than Herby Dice. I have been away a few days so have not responded before, and will be away now for a few more, so please be nice to each other while I am gone.