Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[Prospero]

It is interesting how those who chime in from one side of this argument ignore the science and just either hurl insults - or claim its all a conspiracy by the left, scientists and whoever else they believe can be yoked into their conspiracy theory that this is a plot to destroy American freedom and global industry and a step on the path of the creation a socialist state. I see no flow of posts by these people offering scientific refutations or evidence to challenge Trish's consistantly well informed posts. It honestly should not be a right v left issue. It should be something everyone takes seriously.

I honestly want a world in a few generations time so that Faldur and Russtafa's grand children can argue with the likes of Trish or Ben or Hippiefried me about politics, science, religion or whatever. That's what this is about.

[Stavros]

I agree with everything you say Prospero.

I think this thread has been taken as far as it can go, because people are arguing from a point of view, not about it, so there is no advance in our understanding of the science, or even the politics; the positions have been staked out, and nothing it seems will change them.

We have been in this situation before where the science of nuclear energy conflicts with the politics and the commerce, so that there is still no consensus on the use of nuclear energy as one of the alternatives to fossil fuels. More serious, as I think I might also have said before, is the casual way in which science itself is seen as merely a political tool with no inherent value, it becomes part of the science-vs-religion dispute in which the negation of scientific fact is seen as medieval and superstitious in parts of the Islamic world; and parts of the USA where anything and everything that happens is the expression of God's Will.

But I don't expect a serious debate about any of these issues in this thread, which should probably be left to rot on the highway. This is a roadkill even vultures can't digest.

[Prospero]

Well put Stavros. interesting you raise the conflict between science and religion. it is something that ainstream Christianity - even Roman Catholicism - has not had a real problem with now for a long time. Pope John Paul the II said in 1993 that really science and belief were two separate things - and should not conflict. The scientists who work for the vatican Observatory accept the big bang theory - and utilise the anthropic principle to accommodate go and modern astrophysics. The possibility of a peaceful co-existence of modern science and faith was underlined by the evolutionary scientist Stephen Jay Gould (a far brader minded fellow that our own Richard Dawkins) who described them two non-overlapping magisteria. Islam on the other hand does have serious issues with much of science because of the notion of free will and the born-again movement does seek to turn the clock back to the pre-Galileo era of belief - rejecting any science that is not supported by a very literalist interpretation of the Bible. Hence the new age creationists who still cleave to the idea that the earth was made in the time of Genesis and that the fossil record is really either a fake or put there by God to confuse us all or that dinosaurs did walk the earth at the same time as man. There is even a museum in Oklahoma - which presents this as fact. The Bible thus trumping centuries of scientific enquiry.

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[russtafa]

i wish you blokes could pay our tax and leave every one else out of it because i fucking don't want to pay it!i am more than happy if you greenie wankers pay the fucking thing

[Faldur]

i wish you blokes could pay our tax and leave every one else out of it because i fucking don't want to pay it!i am more than happy if you greenie wankers pay the fucking thing

Well Russtafa at least every working person in your country pays taxes, (all but those that earn less than $6k a year). How would you like to live here where 50% of the working people don't pay anything. And on top of it, those 50% spend most of their time bitching and moaning that the rest of us are not paying enough. They call it "shared responsibility", since when does shared mean "I pay nothing", and "you pay more"?

[russtafa]

Well Russtafa at least every working person in your country pays taxes, (all but those that earn less than $6k a year). How would you like to live here where 50% of the working people don't pay anything. And on top of it, those 50% spend most of their time bitching and moaning that the rest of us are not paying enough. They call it "shared responsibility", since when does shared mean "I pay nothing", and "you pay more"?

sounds rank .our rich pay phenomenal amounts of tax but our public housing live all their lives in the state housing system and pay very low rents and hardly any tax.our green supporters are middle class and want the working class to suffer because of their beliefs in a green environment.this means no cutting down of trees =bush fires and loss of life,no new dams =drought.and a fucking carbon tax =loss of jobs and economic stress on working families and that's why i hate the pricks as do most Australians

[trish]

Thanks for the well considered post, Stavros. There is one point you make I’d like to address.

We have been in this situation before where the science of nuclear energy conflicts with the politics and the commerce, so that there is still no consensus on the use of nuclear energy as one of the alternatives to fossil fuels.

There is a significant difference between the debate on nuclear energy and the climate debate.

The opponents of nuclear energy do believe in the science. They grant that one can extract energy from the atom and use it to power cities. There the debate is about whether it should be done; and there are disagreements concerning the more complex issue of benefits vs costs vs potential hazards. (My opinion on nuclear energy is that soon we won’t be able to avoid it’s use, and the sooner we get practical minds working on the nuclear waste disposal problem, the better).

The opponents of various climate initiatives deny the science. This to me is unbelievable. The mechanisms are simple, easy to understand. At this late date the evidence is voluminous and there is now a scientific consensus which didn’t exist a thirty years ago. The jury is in. Yet we still have people who deny the science. Surely it would be more rational and eminently more practical to start with the science and focus debate on what, if anything, can and should be done about global heat imbalance. (Personally, yes you guessed it, I subscribe to the well accepted view of my scientific colleagues that anthropogenic global warming is happening and has been since the mid to late nineteenth century. However, I am not a liberal on the issue of what to do about it, if anything. I’m not conservative either. I’m open to suggestions).

[trish]

On the subject of religion:
The parallel between climate science and biological evolution is somewhat tighter. The consensus in biology is much older and the principles of selection and evolution are not only explanatory of anatomic and genetic comparisons between species but also organize and illuminate the whole of natural history. Evolution is therefore fundamentally integrated into our modern biological understanding. The theory of evolution is as epistemologically well established as any biological theory can be. Yet American “religious sensibilities” are so threatened by this one hundred and fifty year old discovery that the science again has to be denied. One might understand this vehement rejection of the truth on the part of fundamental religionists were the theory pointing ahead to some potential hazard or disaster that would require big tax payer dollars to avoid. But this is not the case. As threats to governmental budgets go, evolution is a piker. The only issue relevant to public policy is that high school biologists simply want to teach biology and not a ancient controversy that died in the 1890’s.

To save their children from “heresy” we find fundamentalists employing all the same strategies climate deniers employ; e.g. cardboard institutes, shady journals, cherry picking the data, ad hoc refusal to accept carbon dating etc. Some believe there was no evolution, some believe there’s evidence of the sky-god’s intervention in a process that's something like evolution. The ordinary fundamentalist in the street doesn’t really care which version of anti-evolution is right, as long as the Christian god is in there somewhere. There is no real interest among the fundamentalists in biology nor in natural history (it's just God's garden...what more do you need to know?); their only interest is in passing on a bogus religious ideology through the generations.

[Stavros]

Some pertinent posts to respond to:

1) Prospero -it will sound patronising of me, but I believe your evidence suggests there are people who find more comfort in 'God's Plan' as they understand it than in science, and don't really have an intellectual response to any issue; we just have to accept that their positions will not change and just hope policy contiunes to be made on the basis of science, but the policies have to be effective to be worth supporting.

2) Faldur and Russtafa -as usual, it is taxes that are the issue for you, not the science, which makes it pointless to claim the science is wrong when you advance not a shred of evidence that has been tested or examined through established scientific methods to prove your point.

Yes, discuss the tax regimes we all have, how people at the bottom get tax relief, how people at the top employ accountants and lawyers to successfully avoid paying taxes leaving the rest of society in the middle to carry the main burden -but that is not part of the debate on climate change as a scientific fact. It has already been proven that reducing carbon emissions can be achieved though technological change -to motor vehicles, to industrial plant, and many industries have done it without central or local government raising taxes. Tackling the industry that is denuding the world of forests and all the plant life in it -the most precious rain forest we have on earth- is a political-economic, not a tax issue. Changing the way we use the land to grow crops and at the same time avoid soil erosion and the waste of water, again, political and economic not a tax issue, and they all feed into the natural processes of earth's biology that keep the planet going. I think these are more practicable issue we can deal with that don't have a tax profile, rather than carbon trading and taxes. Its a question of priorities. That is where the tax debate should be.

3) Trish, on the nuclear issue I agree with your point of view. THe nuclear option is part of the debate on the changing fuel mix of the future as part of the wider debate about what that alternative to fossil fuel the mix should be, so I see it as a response to the long-term anxiety about the impact of climate change, and although I understand your generally positive view of it, Germany has moved against the nuclear alternative, and the continuing problems of Fukushima continue to make this a problematic issue. But I agree that the science in the nuclear option is not the issue. It is about costs, and safety.

On religion, all I can say is that as Prospero also pointed out, there is no necessary cleavage between science and religion, and there are a lot of Christians outside the USA as well as inside it, who don't recognise the strident opposition of the fundamentalists you refer to as being part of their own discourse. As I said at the beginning, I don't know if there is anything that can be done to change minds which, intellectually, are not really working at that level. I might be wrong, but it seems to be that religion is more central to the political debate in the USA than it is in other liberal democracies, and it does seem to have had some impact on policies, such as abortion, but I don't know how much more it actually informs policy making. Americans, it seems, need to hear their politicians, as it says in the song, Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.

[Ben]

It is interesting how those who chime in from one side of this argument ignore the science and just either hurl insults - or claim its all a conspiracy by the left, scientists and whoever else they believe can be yoked into their conspiracy theory that this is a plot to destroy American freedom and global industry and a step on the path of the creation a socialist state. I see no flow of posts by these people offering scientific refutations or evidence to challenge Trish's consistantly well informed posts. It honestly should not be a right v left issue. It should be something everyone takes seriously.

I honestly want a world in a few generations time so that Faldur and Russtafa's grand children can argue with the likes of Trish or Ben or Hippiefried me about politics, science, religion or whatever. That's what this is about.

And, too, well, we can engage in a so-called debate about a so-called climate change hoax or whatever.
But the fact is there is no debate about climate change. It ended awhile ago. Climate change is real and it poses serious challenges and threats.
You've 98 percent of climate SCIENTISTS agreeing that global warming is real and dangerous and we need to do something about it.
And the other 2 percent or so are not scientists. They simply serve the powerful oil sector. Which is understandable.
Because the oil industry have a lot on the line. Like trillions of dollars in future profits. They will not go down without a massive fight. They have a lot at stake in the oil game....
Cigarette companies did the same in the 1960s. A massive propaganda campaign to deny ANY LINK between cigarette smoking and cancer. Why? Well, money, big money.
The oil sector is doing the same today. Again, it's understandable when all you're concerned about is maximizing profit. Ya know, nothing else matters. Future generations aren't considered. And they can't be.
Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon, wouldn't be doing his job if he was concerned about climate change.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...nd-output-rise