geo wrote:There's plenty of evidence that there are way too many humans on the planet and that we are very likely way past carrying capacity,
No, the evidence only shows that our current methods of social and economic organisation are not sustainable. That does not mean there are too many humans on the planet. It is entirely possible that new technology could allow an even larger human population, with greater wealth, freedom and happiness, than we now have. In Australia, the carrying capacity before the British invasion was about three million people. Now, Australia feeds about sixty million people, including through food exports. Twenty years ago we could not imagine the transformation of the internet and mobile phones. Similarly, we cannot now imagine how new methods could transform the world.
which is why it boggles my mind that we are in the midst of a religious movement to address only one aspect of the human burden to the planet.
I agree with you that climate change is something of a religious movement. The bad sides of that are where people get carried away with myths and adopt a simplistic good-evil way of looking at things. But there is no reason why a religious movement cannot be scientifically rigorous. In fact you need religion to motivate people on a mass scale. More serious dialogue about the relation between religion and climate should be welcomed, especially the potential for Christianity to help explain the sociology of climate politics.
geo wrote: It's a bit like cleaning up after a leaking oil tanker instead of trying to fix the leak. The climate change movement is very, very stupid in that respect.
I don’t get what you mean with the oil tanker analogy. Of course preventing a leak is better than trying to repair the damage afterwards. Efforts to reverse climate change are about prevention.
geo wrote: People are jumping on various bandwagons without having a good understanding or any understanding of the complexities of climate.
Scientists do have a good understanding of the complexities of climate. The IPCC is very cautious in its assertions. But the denialist critics leap on to any small error, such as the speed of melting of glaciers, and use it politically to try to discredit scientific findings that are well understood.
geo wrote:
One of the most important aspects of science is to maintain an objective and disinterested attitude. We suspend judgment while going over the evidence. But in this current environment, if anyone questions the data, they are immediately cast as Holocaust appeasers/deniers.
That is unfair. People are very welcome to question data. But the denialist movement is not interested in objective understanding of data; it is a political movement that is just trying to prevent any action to stabilise the climate.
Business as usual in the energy sector could lead to human suffering on a far bigger scale than the second world war, so the comparison to the holocaust is fair.
geo wrote: It's precisely this attitude that gives climate changers a Nazi-like demeanor. Join us or die.
Science presents absolute findings about the risks, for example the melting of the arctic, but people prefer to maintain an attitude of uncertainty, even where the science is certain. We don’t know if the arctic will melt in five years or fifty, but it really makes no sense to bury your head in the sand and pretend that it is not happening, and that the apparent flow on damage should be ignored. Comparing people who are trying to fix our planet and make human flourishing sustainable to a pack of psychotic war mongers is hardly sensible.
geo wrote: This attitude is what has created the circus atmosphere of climate change.
Again, no, the circus is not due to scientific certainty, but to the debate about policy responses, where the level of certainty is weak. The UN circus arises from the ideological commitment to emission reduction as the only strategy, and the exclusion of sensible alternatives such as geoengineering.
My view is that a paradigm shift in world politics is needed to stabilise the climate, and we should be discussing how this can happen in ways that are politically feasible. I just don’t see that discussion happening. Instead the climate movement has adopted a position of polarisation against the main forces of the current economy, such as the oil and gas industry, where it would be far better to look at how these industries can be part of the solution by supporting research into new commercially viable technology.
geo wrote: In that respect I'm part of the "smoke screen of denial." The them in us-versus-them. I'll point out that questioning the data and looking at it from every angle is actually the scientists' job.
But this thread is not actually about “questioning the data”. It is about how denialists present data in misleading ways in order to deceive people. The plateau temperature graph does not refute global warming at all, and claiming that it does is wilful deception. That is well explained in many places, for example an excellent scientific summary of evidence with many good links at
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyR ... ain-really geo wrote:
http://www.crystaloutreach.ualberta.ca/ ... tudes.aspx
I've read a lot about the hockeystick graph, to address just one of the points you make, and it seems pretty obvious that there was a little political maneuvering on both sides of the aisle. Much of the criticism had to with suppressing data for the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.
It is clear that climate scientists have been guilty of manoeuvering. But you have to get the orders of magnitude clear with this. Their shenanigans are tiny compared to their opponents. The alleged ‘suppression of data’ to explain warming, such as in the earlier versions of the hockey stick graph, is not even in the same ballpark as the wholesale suppression of data by denialists. As we see in this thread, where a chart about air temperature is blithely presented as indicating lack of global warming, when the science is abundantly clear that air temperature is only a tiny factor compared to ocean temperature. Have a look at the link above for good discussion on the evidence.
geo wrote: Whether this data was suppressed on purpose or not, it was still a valid criticism. It also shows that our knowledge of global climate is changing on an almost daily basis. And also that there are "substantial uncertainties" with regard to our climate prior to 1600.
What do you mean by ‘substantial’? I would say that those uncertainties are only minor in the context of this debate. People before 1600 had not worked out how to tip 40 billion tonnes of CO2 into the air every year. This global dumping is the prime cause of the shift in direction from handle to blade in the hockey stick graph.
Amazing. The media I see gives equal weight to flat earth-style denialists and serious scientists. People don’t want to know about climate change. Pretend it is not happening and it will just go away is the dominant line.
geo wrote: Many scientists have a vested interest in climate change being true, as does academia.
That is not true. A vested interest is an ability to make commercial profit. There is not much money going into climate research. Scientists talk about climate because they are passionate about evidence and the future of our planet.
The real vested interests are in the energy industry, where stock prices are predicated on mining reserves of sufficient quantity to cause a runaway Venus Syndrome. But it is possible to have sensible debate with energy companies, so they can have the vision to adapt to the looming crisis and survive it profitably.
geo wrote: There's a lot of noise out there that influences the way people think about it. Doesn't mean it's not true. But me, I'm going to continue to keep an open mind. As I've said before, there are already good reasons for reducing carbon emissions and going green without resorting to hysterics.
What is keeping an ‘open mind’? As far as I can see from your comments here Geo, you give too much weight to arguments that are scientifically bogus.