Environment problems

[Big Shed]

Guys I have had to sit through your videos pro global warming will you sit through this one?

YouTube - Climate Change - Is CO2 the cause? - Pt 1 of 4

Good find Rod, certainly food for thought there. A well presented case presented with some humour (sadly lacking in so many pro and con presentations!)

I have watched and downloaded all 4 parts and added them to my collection of info on global warming.

Particularly liked his reference to polar bears on ABC and SBS, very astute observer!

[Lignum]

Good find Rod, certainly food for thought there. A well presented case presented with some humour (sadly lacking in so many pro and con presentations!)

Loved the Polar Bears kicking back with a Penguin on the spit.

[silentC]

Column A is wrong in that the conclusions drawn cannot be different. It does not matter whether global warming is true or false.

If you spend the money and it is false, he concludes that we will have a global depression. OK that's a reasonable conclusion.

If you spend the money and it is true, he concludes that everything is rosy. How on earth can that be right if the same amount of money is spent. Sure it was well spent, but still spent. You must logically still have a global depression, but you have saved the planet so to speak.

So if we act in accordance with column A, we will have a global depression and save the planet whether it is true or false. It's the safe approach as far as the environment is concerned. With column B you are gambling.

So he asks for a hole in his argument, I think I found one.

I think this is his point. Yes you still have the cost (he did include that) but you have saved the planet. The downside of selecting column A is that you might suffer the cost for no benefit. It's a question of selecting the best risk. The risk of column A is that you waste money. The risk of column B is that the world collapses. That's the whole point of his argument.

This is a common practice in business when deciding upon an action. It makes sense to do it. It's logical. The only problem is that you have to agree there might be a problem to begin with. Seeing as we're still arguing 'rows' (whether or not the problem even exists) it makes it hard to move on to the next step - what to do about it.

Rod, I watched the video. The problem for me is that I have no way of confirming his data. I don't even know how they can tell what the temperature was 2000 years ago, let alone 10,000 or 200,000,000. I can only take his word for it, so how is that any more convincing than what his colleagues are saying, unless I already have a predisposition to believe what he is saying?

[Sebastiaan56]

I suspect that the reason it is done, is for a more positive outcome for the argument to do something. I'm obviously not against the proposition of doing something, its just that this particular argument is flawed.

For example, if we have $10 in the bank and it will cost us $20 to fix the problem, then, whether the problem is real or not (and we decide to act) ,then we will go broke regardless of whether our response is justified. If the problem is not real and we don't act then we must be financially better off. We will still have our $10 because we did nothing.

Of course there will be bias, by definition any argument must include bias. Not sure I can accept the flaw though. Nowhere did I hear the bankrupt to solve a problem proposition. He also states he is using worst case propositions. There are massive energy investments already planned, not 12 months ago we were being scared in the media by potential January/February brown outs and the need for more infrastructure. China and India must be capital raising at a frenzy. So how to invest the cash already planned? I smell business opportunity.

A brief diversion if I may, another other point here is that we dont only burn oil. Plastics are almost exclusively made from the stuff, it just makes more sense to get the highest value product from a raw material, particularly when the other use is energy. So even if global warming turns out to be a Latham, we've still wasted a particularly useful raw material. Silly really especially if we are actually running out.

Recommend reading "Critical Path" by Buckminster Fuller.

Sebastiaan

[rod@plasterbrok]

This was in yeterdays age.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...rom=public_rss

Slowly but surely some common sense is getting back into the debate. We should be pulling all stops and invest heavily in the science and focus on the results and facts before committing trillions of dollars attempting to fix a problem that does not exist.

I think you will be seeing more from this type of rational thinking getting published in the years to come as the political and economic costs start to bite.

There will be a tipping point, when the weight of scientific evidence can no longer be ignored combined with observed changes in climate not reflecting the computer models, v's the forecast economic, social and more important political cost.

[woodbe]

Professor Carter makes a good argument. He is very knowledgable, and presents his argument forcefully.

Google search brings up a lot of entries that suggest he is in conflict with a lot of the scientific community (I guess this is to be expected) There are some worrying entries on sourcewatch in his name:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Carter

Of particular interest are his comments on scientist's funding, and the information about the AEF Australian Environmental Foundation (which is a front group for the Institute of Public Affairs), of which he is a founding member.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...ent_Foundation

As a mere member of the public, I'd find it easier to accept his public speaking arguments if he had the support of places like the CSIRO:

http://www.csiro.au/news/ps38w.html

'In the face of such clear and present danger, more than ever we need good scientific practice whereby well-founded criticism and new, more robust analysis is used to revise or reject previous positions. However, misinformed and misleading debate risks deflecting the community from the vital challenge ahead, which is to mitigate and adapt to climate change.'

woodbe.

[silentC]

"Concern about unsettling climatic events is natural, but we are not the problem."

This is the bit that gets me. How can anyone be so certain of that? Aren't there just as many scientists saying either we are the problem, or we are part of it?

I think that the common sense has always been there. This debate has obviously been going on for some time before the media got a hold of it. I have read just as rational and reasoned arguments in favour of AGW. It wasn't a newspaper editor or a politician or a radical greenie who came up with that idea, it MUST be based on science, else it would have been discarded a long time ago. Whether its right or not remains to be seen - but you can't dismiss it just because there are dissenting voices, no matter how humorous or common sense. Charles Darwin, for example, was accused of heresy and caricatured as an ape, it didn't mean he was wrong.

[Big Shed]

Charles Darwin, for example, was accused of heresy and caricatured as an ape, it didn't mean he was wrong.

You are treading on dangerous ground there Silentc, don't forget that Charles Darwin was very much in the minority and absolutely ridiculed by the majority of scientists of the time.

Indeed he was found to be right, although some people to this day do not believe in evolution.

[woodbe]

Not to mention Galileo



woodbe.

[silentC]

Yes but my point is that he was presenting an opposing view that required people to change their preconceptions. He might just as easily have been wrong, and would likely have been the first to admit it, but just because the best science of the day disagreed with him and he was widely ridiculed, did not make what he was saying any less worth considering. Of course this argument is just as valid for anti-AGW proponents. It's a good thing I'm just as happy to listen to them and accept what they say.

My argument is that, given there are no absolutes in science, and given that a significant portion of the scientific community has come out and said that global warming is taking place and that it is at least partially man-made, we cannot dismiss those claims just because there are opposing views in the same community. It's not enough to point to the various arguments and say "see, this bloke says that it's all a myth" because we are in the test tube and we have to get it right. If one scientist can be wrong, so can any other. So it's a self-cancelling argument. You have to assume that people have good reason to believe the things they are saying. The best we can do as a civilisation is to assign a probability to the possible outcomes and act accordingly. It's a gamble, that's why risk management is a good philosophy to adopt.

[Big Shed]

Yes but my point is that he was presenting an opposing view that required people to change their preconceptions. He might just as easily have been wrong, and would likely have been the first to admit it, but just because the best science of the day disagreed with him and he was widely ridiculed, did not make what he was saying any less worth considering.

I'm sure Professor Carter will value your approval

[silentC]

Well I did say the argument applies equally to both sides. As does the one that scientists can be wrong.

[boban]

To make it clear guys, I am all for doing what can reasonably be done. The depression result is the author's prediction, not mine. It may well turn out to be money very well spent as suggested by Sebastian. That however, has nothing to do with the argument presented.

As was made clear by someone else, the same table can be used to persuade you to believe in God. Somehow I don't think Silent will swallow that one.

My problem is with the different conclusions drawn, not the debate as to whether it is real or not. Like I said, if you spend the same amount, the conclusion has to be the same as far as the financial situation is concerned. The argument presented by the author is very simplistic, but flawed. Like I intimated, its all about advocacy.

I don't care whether its real or not. I will do my part because its sensible and possible.

[silentC]

My point of view is really quite straight forward: unless you have done your own research, and I don't mean reading the opinions of others, I mean making your own observations and testing your theories against them, I don't see how you can possibly accept some arguments and refute others. The only way you can do that is by using your own preconceptions of the truth to find the arguments that you agree with.

To me, that negates all public debate on whether or not we have a real problem on our hands. I can't see how we can have a meaningful debate about it unless we are involved in that field of science. It's like debating the pros and cons of golf balls if you have never played. You can read about them and get a feel for the various professional opinions on them, but until you've actually played the game, it's meaningless and in a sense irrelevant which one you favour.

What we CAN have a debate about is whether the government should take action, based on the expert advice they receive. You HAVE to have faith in that advice because it's all you have to work on. It might be wrong, as it has been many times in the past, but the risk lies in ignoring it when it might also be true. That's the nature of risk - it's not a certainty, it's a possibility. So is the possibility significant enough to take precautions.

If all of the people arguing the case for man-made global warming turn out to be charlatans, I'll be pleased, as will everyone involved in the debate I'm sure. But you have to give them some credit because it is their field of expertise. Surely that gives it some weight and requires us to consider it as a possibility?

[silentC]

As was made clear by someone else, the same table can be used to persuade you to believe in God. Somehow I don't think Silent will swallow that one.

Yes I was waiting for that to come up. You can use that table to assess any risk. The risk of there really being a God and the consequence of not believing being that you go to hell instead of heaven. There are a couple of problems with that: you have to accept there is an afterlife, which is where the proposed risk is to take place; You have to accept that the religion that wants me to believe in a single God and go to church and follow the bible is the correct religion. It's it patently not falsifiable, so not even worth debating.

Climate change is falsifiable though. If someone can come up with conclusive and convincing evidence that climate change is not caused by man, then the whole argument evaporates. Likewise if someone can come up with conclusive and convincing evidence that it is caused by man. Both positions are falsifiable and therefore worth debating. There's also the possibility that the outcome may have an impact in this life, which is the only one we really know exists.