If I were a scientist specialising in climate change, I would be rather depressed about my work. It seems that hardly a week goes by when some journalist gets air time on a serious news programme to dismiss anthropogenic climate change as nonsense. This happened on Thursday when Melanie Phillips spoke on the BBC’s Question Time. She is entitled to her views and entitled to express them, but it must be rather depressing that someone who studied English literature at Oxford (of course) is able to form such views and give them such public prominence and in a single line dismiss the conclusions of people who have specifically studied climate change and its causes.
Climate change and its causes is probably the most complex of any scientific study. The climate and its future is not rocket science or brain surgery, but far more complex than that, and how depressing it must be for someone who has spent decades weighing the evidence, testing theories, examining data from hundreds of thousands of sources using highly complex tools to find the quietus of his work made with a bare bodkin by a buffoon who “knows” that matters of scientific complexity are, in simple truth, lies.
Filed under: climate change Tagged: | anthropogenic climate change, climate change, climate science, journalism, Melanie Phillips, scientific complexity
Am I banned now Robert?
Certainly not! You argue well and that debate is important.
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Robert the more complex something is the more likely that even those who devote them self to its study are going to be wrong in the way that they understand and interpret it. Sadly for the true believers like yourself so much of climate science is not based upon the tenets of the scientific method (look it up) rather they are based upon climate models that are predicated upon dodgy assumptions. AGW needs much more than that to be validated, and when we do not have consistently accurate data about the climate in the past how can we believe the predictions that are made about the future?
Your whole belief seems to be based upon appealing to the authority of “climate scientists” when you really should be going to the first principles science which even a member of the laity can understand.
Iain
I do understand the scientific method, as do thousands of climatologists. That is why I condemn people who say that anthropogenic climate change is nonsense. My view is that we cannot prove the hypothesis (unless you can find another planet earth upon which we may experiment) of anthropogenic climate change, but there are many hypotheses that we cannot prove but we still accept as true or likely to be true. It took from 1637 to 1995 to prove Fermat’s last theorem. Does that mean that for 300 odd years the theorem was false? Rapid anthropogenic climate change is not something in respect of which I hold a “belief” but something that I hold a view that it is much much more likely than not. My article was criticising someone who dismisses the possibility, however remote, of fast anthropogenic climate change. Climatologists do not dismiss the possibility that they are wrong, and they have even calculated a possibility that they are wrong at around 8%. They could be wrong about that percentage/ Do you admit any possibility that rapid anthropogenic climate change is wrong? let’s assume that you admit a possibility, also at 8%. Would you then act on the assumption that being 92% right you are 100% right and hang the consequences in case the 8% possibility is true? Would you let a child cross the road by itself on a possibility of 8% that it would get knocked over by a car?
Robert
Robert
Hmm Those climate scientists may understand the scientific method but it is far from evident in their pronouncements on climate, for the record I personally don’t think that AGW is “nonsense” but I do think that it is far less certain that the true believers claim it to be.
While I have no trouble accepting that humanity has some effect on the climate its hard to accept that our influence is as significant as the doom-Sayers claim for all sorts of reasons, including the paucity of Paleo climate data.
Really? ” a view” is just another name for belief in my understanding of our common tongue.
Well I think that you are wrong to characterise even the most strident critics of the AGW theory as “dismissing the possibility” because most of them that I know will , as I do, acknowledge that the theory could have some validity but the chances are in deed rather remote that this is the case.
Such claims are really in the “how many angels can dance upon the head of a pin” territory and totally unprovable
I suspect that you want to know if I am willing to admit the possibility that AGW is right rather than the “wrong” in your sentence above. Of course I think that its possible, but I also think that its possible that I will win the lottery even though I don’t ever buy a ticket. Its just unlikely
I lost my younger brother when he was hit by a car crossing a road so I am well aware of the risks of just drawing breath but lets be realistic here even if the AGW profits of doom are right there is nothing that can be done about it, all of the talks about “mitigation” just can’t happen for political reasons so the real game has to be adaptation and all of the futile schemes emission trading schemes carbon taxes and other well meaning nonsense are a waste of effort.
We are not far apart in our views. But
1.a belief is not a view. One holds a belief as a feeling as in holding a belief in God. A view is an opinion which is there is some evidence for but not an absolute proof of it.
2. Have no doubt. Ms Phillips did dismiss the possibility.
3. The claims about percentages are in the same territory as angels on pins. Do you have a view about the percentage possibility of you being wrong? If so then that is where you judge the risk of inaction.
4. Certainly something can be done to mitigate rapid AGW but we do not have the will to sacrifice something now for future generations which is sad considering the sacrifices made by our ancestors. Sorry about your brother.
5 I agree with our comments about ETS and many of the nonsense schemes which do no more than divert money from real measures into favoured pockets.
Robert
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