“Why is it going down the agenda?”

Simple, because it’s a fraud. Or all least the Mann-Made Warble Gloaming aspect of it is. Even the Royal Society is now having to rethink it’s one-sided view of the so-called consenus.

Is the planet warming? yes. It’s been doing it for 16000 years since the last Ice Age. The climate cycle has been running like this for nealry a billion years now.
Does mankind have any impact on this? No. What we do is insignificant compared to other factors. Computer models based on junk science are not proof of anything different.
Will paying lots of new taxes change either of these? No. How in the world did you think it would (unless you’re All Gore raking off a nice slice)?

Scam over, move along, nothing to see here.

Why – because it’s a scam intended to fleece taxpayers and enough sensible people have woken up to that fact.

@1 and 2

What exactly make syou think climate change is a myth? Where it only goverments out there saying it was true I could understand where youy were coming from but it isn’t. Independent scientists, many with nothing to gain, agree with the majority of published papers stating that it is happening and is man made:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/uk-science-statement.html

I’m not sure whether you’re being deliberately disingenuous, or merely forgetting to mention the other option; that climate change is happening but by far the vast majority of people are now no longer sure what is responsible.

And who can blame them quite frankly? The catalogue of half truths, manipulations and outright lies used to justify the “man made” position has shot to bits any chance of putting an honest case (if one exists) forward.

Climate change has been happening for about as long as the Earth has existed, always has, always will. Surely the question is, have our rather self-interested, polluting ways exacerbated this natural regulation of the planet.

Clearly it is sensible for us to take action to clean up our act and to seriously start looking for new, sustainable energy resources. Oil isn’t going to last for that much longer, and uranium supply is already heading south.

And perhaps this is what it’s all about. A world without oil, which means a world without plastic, paint, many fertilisers and synthetic fibres etc etc etc, would be a very different place. A very expensive, different place.

If I was responsible for encouraging the glutinous consumption of all our natural resources to make my many rich friends even richer, I’d be seeking to shift responsibility elsewhere. And a good wheeze would be to force the masses to start using a hell of a lot less of the black stuff – but how to do it?

Rather then having to admit our profligate past, tell them that they’re slowly choking the planet by going on holiday twice a year, running two cars and using all those carrier bags. Place the burden of responsibility on them, make them feel like they’re doing something by taxing the hell out of them, and create a new trade in carbon credits to keep my rich friends in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

Just a thought…

@4 idonotbelieveit

I agree, 60% of the average persons carbon footprint is not related to their own use of carbon but rather the business that operate in their country. The only way to properly affect climate change is much stronger regulation on the major polluters.

It’s not a fraud but there is no way to stop it. Consumption will grow because of population growth. Also countries like India and China will never accept restrictions, in a way why should they.
We should be looking at ways to adapt and ways of reducing effects.
The freakonomics guys have some interesting ideas.
It is a complex situation, which not helped by the rantings of foaming daily mail tories like John and the moniker of the woman who used to collect Roman peni or members of the green party with unworkable ideas to reduce emmisions

It’s the PR, stupid.

Quite simply: climate change is no longer part of the agenda because people have been baffled by the vast array of stats from both sides with a hostile media stirring the pot for their moneyed pals in the big oil companies. People like commentators @1 and @2 are indicative of the blinkered view of some that unfortunately seeps into the mainstream of thought, further clouding the waters.

What’s needed is a proper independant enquiry followed by a green (arf) paper setting out why climate change is happening and what the consequences may be if we don’t all do something about it (at a personal and (inter)national level). The banning of high-voltage lightbulbs was a tiny weeny small step in the right direction. The banning of the “standby” buttons on electronic equipment would be another. But more money needs to be put into researching and developing alternative fuels otherwise we’re all fucked. Well, we’re not but our grandchildren most definately are.

@ S&M

You mention independent scientists and then provide a link to the Met Office. Are you serious?

The Met Office is directly funded to push the whole Mann-Made Warble Gloaming agenda, it is not in any way an independent or balanced source of data/opinion. Their spokespersons are always “on message” and never, ever provide any balance to their reports or comments. They push the same flawed ideas even when the world itself is proving them wrong – remember the “barbeque summer” they forecast based on their wonderrful climate models? Or the “mild winter”. If you want to quote an independent body, you need to look somewhere else.

The Met Office also funds the Hadley Centre. This pet research group is closely linked to the Uni of East Anglia’s Climatic Change Research Unit and they jointly produce one of the three key data sources (HADCRUT) used by other scientists all over the world. The problem is that this joint Met Office/UEA funded group has now been exposed as only providing “corrected” stats instead of raw data to all other institutions in its HADCRUT output. It’s refused publication (totally against all scientific principles and best practise) of any information on how they’ve massaged the original data to prevent any independent check on their methods It’s even “lost” the original data so no-one now can question the way they’ve skewed it. (Checkout the temperature info for Darwin airport if you want to see how they work). So all other climate work worldwide is now built on corrupted info, not raw temperature data, and this can never be rectified/checked/analysed etc by other groups.

All of this is fully documented in the “Climategate” emails where you can read the words of one conspirator telling another to delete emails with key data; see them refuse FoI requests from other scientists; remove data from presentations to “hide the decline” etc etc. All completely against a) the law and b) best scientific practise.

The more of this distortion and lying that is exposed the more the public realise that, yes the planet is warming, but that mankind isnt the cause. We are in an Interglacial period where warming always happens, naturally, with no help from us. In fact what we do is irrelevant.

Despite what “Al” keeps saying, paying more taxes wont change the world either…but it will make him very rich ‘cos he owns several carbon credit trading firms. Follow the money – you’ll always find the truth….and it’s not Warble Gloaming.

@JohnRS

Your definition of “independant” is “someone who agrees with JohnRS’s crazy views”. Thus your opinion is taken with a pinch of salt.

(Unless you are in fact a climate scientist with years of research and peer-reviewed papers backing up your denialism, in which I case I take it back (and would like to see your work)).

PS please stop the “Mann-Made Warble Gloaming” thing, it’s not funny, just highly irritating, like a 5-year old screaming in a supermarket (reminds me of 4chan – are you a /b/tard?!?).

@Mr S PILL at 3.04pm

To be fair John RS doesn’t give a definition of what independent is, but he’s very clear on what it isn’t – and he’s not wrong!! The Met office – independent – please!!

@10

Maybe not. But the link itself wasn’t the Met Office view: it was the view of hundreds of (yes, independant) scientists. To quote at length:

We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method.

The science of climate change draws on fundamental research from an increasing number of disciplines, many of which are represented here. As professional scientists, from students to senior professors, we uphold the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes that ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal’ and that ‘Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations’.

And the link again if you missed it.

The point isn’t whether the Met is a Government arm or not. It’s what hundreds of individual scientists who have spent whole lifetimes researching this area are thinking. And they all say the same thing: global warming and climate change is due to mankind.

You can bury your head in the sand if you like. That’s fine – we accept the existence of the Flat Earth Society and 9/11 Truthers and alien-hunters (and people who think that the lost city of Atlantis is off the Cornish coast) after all. Conspiracy theories are very comforting so I have some sympathy. But don’t pretend that denialism is backed up by anything of substance.

Oh, and @JohnRS and other denialists: http://www.skepticalscience.com/ Please do some fucking research.

Independent scientists, many with nothing to gain, agree with the majority of published papers stating that it is happening and is man made

Have to say I’ve kind of lost faith in the pronouncements of independent scientists, particularly the ones that use computer models in formulating their predictions.

I write this as one of the 300,000 people fortunate enough not to have contracted CJD this year.

@13 pagar

“I write this as one of the 300,000 people fortunate enough not to have contracted CJD this year.”

Of course, the trouble with CJD is you’re the last one to notice you’ve caught it.

I think there are 2 reasons it’s falling down the agenda

1) People have just seen through the lie, and/or have realised that they have more important concerns than what might happen to the climate in a hundred years time and/or they are just fed up of being told what to do by lentil eating rich “liberals”

2) Climate change was always predominately a middle class concern and middle class concerns, as we all know, are fickle, and determined largely by what a small, and highly unrepresentative group of self-styled “opinion formers” dictate.
Research shows that the most enthustic proponents of the “green agenda” are the wives of merchant bankers. These people have got bored of self-flagellation, or simply can’t keep up the hypoctitical pretence any more e.g “of course car use is evil but we simply must have a 4×4 to take Hermione to school” or “But daddy is so important he simply must take a business trip every fornight to screw his secretary, I mean seal an important business deal”

@ 12 You sound like a stuck record. We’ve all seen the research and we don’t believe your hysterical interpretation of it. The research does not predict outcomes with anything like the degree of certainty required to justify action, you might just as well panic about what might happen if an asteriod hit the earth.
As others have said, according to the “research” of the time I should by know have died of AIDS/SARS/Bird Flu/Swine Flu/CJD/an accident caused by the millenium bug. And I’m still here. Like most people I’m more likley to die in a car accident than from anything caused by climate change. Go and enjoy your group hysteria if it makes you feel better, I don’t need it.

@ 11 Conspiracy theories are very comforting so I have some sympathy. But don’t pretend that denialism is backed up by anything of substance.

But it’s *you* that belive in a conspiracy, not the sceptics.

1) People have just seen through the lie, and/or have realised that they have more important concerns than what might happen to the climate in a hundred years time and/or they are just fed up of being told what to do by lentil eating rich “liberals”

What lie? And it won’t be a couple of hundred years, it will be much less than that. Even if it was, the fact that it would be future generations and not us who will suffer so we shuldn’t worry about it doesn’t strike me as a particularly moral position. And if people feel they are being dictated to they can consult the experts, not the lentil eaters, for reassurance that the danger is genuine.

But it’s *you* that belive in a conspiracy, not the sceptics.

What conspiracy do we believe in?

@15/16

Climate change was always predominately a middle class concern and middle class concerns

So was the campaign for votes for women. Your point?

Research shows that the most enthustic proponents of the “green agenda” are the wives of merchant bankers.

Any proof of that? Thought not.

We’ve all seen the research and we don’t believe your hysterical interpretation of it.

The only ones being hysterical around here are you and your denialist ilk.

Like most people I’m more likley to die in a car accident than from anything caused by climate change.

I don’t doubt it. But your grandkids (or your friends’ grandkids) won’t thank you for your smug “I’m alright, Jack” atttitude.

oh and I missed @17

But it’s *you* that belive in a conspiracy, not the sceptics.

We could go around in circles all day about this – the difference between global warming denialists and people who believe, um, scientific research and thousands of peer-reviewed papers is that the latter aren’t screaming about a “liberal conspiracy” ( ) apparently inventing AGW over the past 40-odd years for some nefarious purposes.

Also countries like India and China will never accept restrictions, in a way why should they.

Because they stand to lose an awful lot from climate change themselves.

climate change, total bollocks. we are on a globe that spins on an axis that tilts back and forth over time moving us closer or further from the sun, which in time itself will die, in the process swallowing the earth and burning everything on it, so why fuckin worry, the planets gonna die anyway sometime.

Mr S Pill @ various

I’m curious how you came to be such a believer, what did it for you? What made you so certain of the facts as to feel you can call people denialists? Is everyone who doesn’t agree with you an idiot – I think that’s called bigotry!!

“we are on a globe that spins on an axis that tilts back and forth over time moving us closer or further from the sun, which in time itself will die, in the process swallowing the earth and burning everything on it, so why fuckin worry, the planets gonna die anyway sometime.”

Total bollocks of course. But instead of me wasting my time explaining this to you, why not read this:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-cycles-global-warming.htm

As we have seen here, with “climategate” fading the denialists are reverting to conspiracy theory and simple denial. Global climate indicators (temperatures and artic ice) will be making headlines later this year and the denialists won’t have any credible response. The public will grow tired of their conspiracy theories.

@idonotbelieveit

Science denial exists. We have seen it in the past with tobacco, ozone depletion and acid rain. We witness it now with evolution, HIV/AIDS and AGW. Here is an interesting paper on the topic:

http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/19/1/2.pdf

They list 5 characteristic of science denial. The 5th includes logical fallacies. An example might your non sequitur “the climate changes without man, therefore man can’t cause climate change”.

Here’s a great article on denialism:

Diethelm and McKee (2009), “Denialism: What it is and how should scientists respond”, European Journal of Public Health, vol. 19, issue 2, 2-4.

Here are the tactics denialists, sorry, I mean skeptics, use:

1. Identify a “complex and secretive conspiracy”. Peer review is a tool for suppressing the opinions of dissenters! Feel free to exploit existing, reasonable concerns. Use inversion wherever necessary/possible. Scientists are dishonest! They’ll often attempt to push their agenda, which is often leftist and/or militant!

2. Use fake experts. Put your faith in the “Whitecoats”, like Philip Morris did! Ignore real experts!

3. Cherry-pick your data. Autism causes vaccines! Will nobody think of the children?

4. Create impossible expectations for scientific research. How can you know the dinosaurs existed when “scientists” weren’t even there? They weren’t even there! And neither were they! And don’t you know that 88% of all statistics are made up on the spot?

5. Misrepresent, poison the well, use logical fallacies. Warble Gloaming is a faith position! And no rational person could ever be religious! You must be irrational! Don’t you know that the Nazis invented in global warming and were also homosexuals?

Seriously, if I hear the word Climategate one more time, I’ll have a hernia.

We need to spend tens of millions of pounds examining thermometer records since the mid 19C ,re-examining proxy data and if needed, re-doing experiments.
Some of the proxy dat sets are far too small in areal extent and with regard to duration and we need far better statistical input. Palaeo climate experiments need the same statistical rigour as those in medical/pharmceutical research. The noise is far too large unless large well funded investigations are undertaken.

Even the Royal Society has now acknowledged that much of the MMGW narrative has been irresponsible and unscientific scaremongering. The fanatical warmists have been caught out – not just by Climategate, but by the judge’s ruling that Al Gore’s stupid film didn’t stand up, by the absurdly slack way the IPPC went about sourcing its statements etc.

@24 idonotbelieveit

I’m curious how you came to be such a believer, what did it for you?

Nice try. Science doesn’t work on the same level as religion, so I didn’t “come to be a believer” as you put it; merely looked at the evidence and weighed up the opinions [and thousands of evidence-based research] of pretty much everyfreakingone against some small-minded pro-oil why-can’t-I-consume-as-much-as-I-like-it’s-not-fair-it-must-be-a-marxist-conspiracy nutjobs.

What made you so certain of the facts as to feel you can call people denialists?

If it’s raining outside and someone tells me “it isn’t raining” I would happily call them a rain-denialist, which leads me to…

Is everyone who doesn’t agree with you an idiot – I think that’s called bigotry!!

…pow! The suckerpunch from idonotbelieveit, ladies and gentlemen. If in doubt when arguing with a liberal/leftie on a liberal/left website use a liberal/left bugbear (in this case “bigotry”) against someone with liberal/left views.
To take you back to my metaphor, if someone is denying the existence of the rain that I and millions of others can see then yes, they are an idiot. If they simply haven’t looked at the evidence then I’d advise them to before casting any judgement on their mental faculties, but if they’ve seen it all and still deny the existence – by, say, claiming it’s a conspiracy/scam/evul librul meeja – then they are an idiot, in the same way that people who don’t believe Saudi’s caused 9/11 are idiots, or people who believe in the Protocals of the Elders of Zion are idiots. The evidence is in, I’m afraid.

As for you, idonotbelieveit, what makes you so certain that climate change is not happening?

“Even the Royal Society has now acknowledged that much of the MMGW narrative has been irresponsible and unscientific scaremongering.”

Not true. They are reviewing some of their statements in light of complains from a small number of members. The American Physical Society went through the same thing. The outcome will probably be the same as for the APS – some qualifiers on the level of scientific understanding will be to attached to various statements, but their position won’t be substantially changed. This is really an issue of the difficulty of communicating complex scientific information to the public that takes account of uncertainties.
“but by the judge’s ruling that Al Gore’s stupid film didn’t stand up.

Al Gore didn’t discover MMCC in his 2006 film (try Arrhenius, 1897). The judge described Gore’s film as broadly accurate, but guess what source he used to identify Gore’s error – the IPCC reports.

What is it with the denialists obsession with Al Gore? Personally, I’ve never seen his film.

Sorry, mis-type – I should have said Al Gore’s errors (plural) – there were 9 identified errors, but the judge stated:

“Al Gore’s presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate.”

Even some of the “errors” were matters of emphasis rather than fact, and in a couple of cases it is questionable whether they are really errors at all. But ultimately we don’t look to judges for rulings on matters of science.

@28

I don’t see any need to re-examine the thermometer records. An awful lot of work went in to collate and process the past records and no one has produced any substantive evidence to suggest they are unreliable. And for the last thirty odd years we have satellite records to back up the thermometers.
As for paleoclimatology, this is still very much a developing science so we would expect in any case to see improvements in methodology and the level of confidence in the results as time goes on. I’m sure that the scientists concerned would not turn down additional resources but I’m not convinced it’s really neccessary.

Ms S – What “Evidence” ???

For the sake of argument the planet is warming, and mankind is causing it – what are the outcomes going to be ??

You don’t know do you, and I’ll tell you why you don’t know, because no one does, not even your beloved peer reviewed researchers, even they admit they don’t know. Your position is like believing, with absolute messianic certaintly, that you’re going to die of flu because you have a temperature, when it’s only one possible outcome “if current trends continue”.
I have a science degree and peer reviewed doesn’t mean “true” or “will never be refuted” it just means no basic methodological flaws, or obvious (ahem) falsification of data, and that another competent scientist could repeat the same experiment.
Virtually every scientific paper published since the 18th Century has been peer reviewed (because if it ain’t been reviewed it ain’t science), surely even you can see they can’t all have been right. In case you do though; Eugenics, Thalidomide, nuclear fission in a test tube, spread of AIDS, swine flu, millenium bug, all peer reviewed, all wrong in their predicted outcomes.

And if you really don’t think that using only 150 years of data from a climate system which has been running for billions of years is “cherry picking data” then you don’t understand data at all.

You are peddling a post modern version of Noahs Ark, nothing more

@Matt Munro

“Virtually every scientific paper published since the 18th Century has been peer reviewed (because if it ain’t been reviewed it ain’t science), surely even you can see they can’t all have been right. In case you do though; Eugenics, Thalidomide, nuclear fission in a test tube, spread of AIDS, swine flu, millenium bug, all peer reviewed, all wrong in their predicted outcomes.”

This is really inane. You are trying to discredit peer review by producing a short list of areas where peer reviewed (allegedly) got things wrong. I could produce a list of peer reviewed scientific studies that have stood the test of time and are widely accepted. Peer review isn’t a guarantee of quality, but it is the best quality assurance we have.

“And if you really don’t think that using only 150 years of data from a climate system which has been running for billions of years is “cherry picking data” then you don’t understand data at all.”

This is even more inane. You think that not using data that happens not to exist amounts to is “cherry picking data”?

Give me a believable answer to these questions and I promise to insulate my catflap.

Why is it that tree rings are such a reliable proxy for determining temperature up until the point (late fifties) when we began to take real measurements (since which point they have proven to be entirely unreliable)?

Why is it not possible that tree rings have always been an unreliable proxy (as would seem to be the much more logical deduction from the above facts)?

@pagar

“Why is it that tree rings are such a reliable proxy for determining temperature up until the point (late fifties) when we began to take real measurements (since which point they have proven to be entirely unreliable)?”

Firstly, real (instrument) measurements didn’t start in the 1950s. Secondly, not all tree rings demonstrate a divergence from temperature – the problem appears to be restricted to tree rings at northern latitudes but there is evidence for good correspondence between northern and southern latitude tree rings prior to 1960. Thirdly, a number of studies suggest anthropogenic sources for the divergence – indicating that the divergence problem may therefore be a recent phenomenon.

John Cook examines the issue here:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hockey-stick-divergence-problem.html

I’m not going to pretend the issue isn’t real and that there isn’t a good deal of uncertainty, but scientists are still studying this area. It is worth noting that examining tree rings is not the only method available to paleoclimatologits:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hockey-stick-without-tree-rings.html

I don’t know if that is believable to you, and nor do I care. Science isn’t about ‘beliefs’.

I love the crank amateur science the AGW denialist desperados conjur up to support their denial.

Never mind the piles of peer reviewed scientific research that has been done for them by scientists far, far more qualified than they are and with far more resources to conduct the research.

Nope, instead these super sleuths rely on “WattsUpWIthThat” and other likewise discredited junk blogs!

You couldn’t make it up!