Global Warming

[pauldominic]

Candle In The Wind by Elton John always makes me cringe.

Which Version? Crucial configuration question :-p

 

[twinkletoes]

I am writing this article knowing full well that it will be used as evidence against me -- evidence that I have been duped by a powerful cabal, a vast conspiracy to... to do what? Well, take your choice. Perhaps to convince a naive public that NASA landed men on the moon? Or to hide the fact that our president is African? Or the fact that al Qaeda didn't mastermind 9/11? Or to falsely link HIV with AIDS, or smoking with lung cancer?



Conspiracy theorists have sounded alarms about every one of these nefarious plots and more, and many conspiracy theorists embrace several imaginary plots. None of these claims has ever been proven. Proof is not conspiracy theorists' strong suit. Indeed they tend to be highly suspicious of science and its methods, which is why, whenever conspiracy theorists are confronted with facts that refute their wild ideas, they simply seize on those facts as further evidence of plotters' ingenuity.



Psychological scientists are very interested in this particular brand of irrational thinking -- especially the link between conspiratorial thinking and anti-science world views. These plots and conspiracies may seem laughable at first glance, but they are not inconsequential. At the very least, conspiracy theorists waste a lot of time and money -- think of the "birthers" -- and at worst, they pose real dangers to society. Just think of how many parents, alarmed by the bogus link between vaccines and autism, have left their children unprotected against serious disease.



Or consider global warming. More than 90 percent of climate scientists agree that the global climate is shifting, largely as a result of human activity. Scientifically, this is essentially a closed case. Yet conspiracy theorists continue to spin wild tales of government agents surreptitiously destroying thermometers and burying contradictory evidence. What are the motives of these climate deniers, who reject even overwhelming scientific consensus? Do they have a specific agenda having to do with the environment or economics, or are climate deniers the same people who fantasize about the second gunman on the grassy knoll?



Cognitive psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia has been studying climate deniers and conspiratorial thinking -- and the link between the two. He suspected that climate deniers -- as opposed to climate "skeptics," who actually use the tools of science to verify facts -- are highly prone to unrelated kinds of conspiracy thinking, and also to a conservative, pro-business ideology. He decided to test these ideas by questioning people who write and read blogs related to global warming.



He chose blogs because people with an anti-science bias have found a welcoming home on the Internet. Science denial is difficult to practice in the mainstream, peer-reviewed literature, but such contrarian views can be freely expressed in the blogosphere, where conspiracy theorists can feed one another's feelings of persecution. Lewandowsky surveyed blog denizens about their views on climate science, other scientific propositions, and their environmental leanings; their perceptions of what scientific "consensus" means; their beliefs about free-market economics; and finally, their views on a number of well-known conspiracy theories. The conspiracies covered the political spectrum, from fears of a world government (a right-wing idea) to the belief that 9/11 was an "inside job" (typically embraced on the left).



The results were unambiguous, and unsettling. First, those who hold a laissez-faire view of unfettered free markets were much more likely to strongly reject climate science. Lewandowsky believes that, because the fundamental importance of fossil fuels (and CO2 emissions) to modern economics, climate science in general (and evidence for global warming in particular) is a threat to free market advocates. Free marketers were also more likely to reject other established scientific findings, even the (undisputed) facts that smoking causes lung cancer and HIV causes AIDS.



Second, conspiracy thinking was clearly linked to climate denial -- and to the rejection of scientific propositions in general. This was true even of conspiracy theories unrelated to the environment or climate -- the belief that NASA staged the moon landing, for example, or that the CIA killed Martin Luther King. In other words, conspiracy thinking is not simply a convenient way to dismiss a particularly bothersome scientific consensus. Instead, some people seem to have a general personality trait or cognitive style, which leads them to endorse any conspiracy. This paranoid thinking in turn predisposes them to reject completely unrelated scientific facts.

Lewandowsky's study will be published in a future issue of 'Psychological Science,' a peer-reviewed scientific journal, providing further evidence of a vast and ingenious plot to elevate enlightenment thinking and marginalize the unenlightened.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/climate-change-denial-_b_1686437.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herb ... 86437.html</a>

 

[Deleted member 14625]

Somebody just said something to me about the thoughts of the "man in the street" regarding global warming and I'd like a quick survey.

Yes or no, as far as you are concerned is global warming happening and is it a man made problem?

Of course, all the fossil fuels we're burning and all the heat we're generating and all the trees we're cutting down will be affecting the planet in some sort of way. But at the same time we are at the very end of the most current ice age, the ice caps have been melting for 6000 years.

Humans have this huge over-important opinion of ourselves. We think we are 'it'. We think what we do will effect the planet forevermore. But one day we'll all be gone - and even if that is down to us using up too many of the Earth's resources making it impossible to live on - within just a few thousand years you'd never know we ever existed as the planet evolves and flourishes without us. We will not ruin this planet. The Earth will quite easily replenish itself of it's resources over time. Rainforests take just 200 years to re-evolve and we will at some point re-enter another ice age.

We shouldn't have to worry about turning the landing light off or using the car too much. We just happen to live in a time we are born, we shouldn't have to do anything to "save the planet" because the planet doesn't need saving.

The problem we have is that there are too many people living in the world now and people are worried we'll run out of resources. People think war and disease are bad but they are essential for not allowing our numbers to spiral out of control. We shouldn't be trying to stop wars or trying to cure diseases. Some people might think that's a strupid thing to say, but i guarantee you'd see an unbelievable level of war and destruction if it weren't for the small scale wars and diseases that are killing the percentages they are killing now as populations would be ridiculously high.

Back to the point. Yes, we are contrubuting to the "Global Warming" of this planet but the planet is warming as it is. The only thing we in Britain need to be immediately worried about is that if the ice caps melt to a point where they cool down the Gulf Stream and cooling our part of the planet down, we may have to find somewhere else to live or drastacally change our culture to cope with it. Within a few generations nobody will blink an eye about where they are now living or how they are living if it's still in a Scandanavian style Britain.

We will not kill this planet!

-- Fri Jul 27, 2012 11:45 am --

Dont mind me i just completly mind fucked myself

Stephen Hawking in particular has addressed a connection between time and the Big Bang. In A Brief History of Time and elsewhere, Hawking says that even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there were another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame. Upon occasion, Hawking has stated that time actually began with the Big Bang, and that questions about what happened before the Big Bang are meaningless. This less-nuanced, but commonly repeated formulation has received criticisms from philosophers such as Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler.

Scientists have come to some agreement on descriptions of events that happened 10−35 seconds after the Big Bang, but generally agree that descriptions about what happened before one Planck time (5 × 10−44 seconds) after the Big Bang are likely to remain pure speculation.

It really isn't that hard to grasp. How does anyone measure time when they have nothing to measure?

Thank God one of the Popes intervened and gave us the Gregorian Calendar.

and fucked it up by having everything in the wrong place

Indeed! New year should be the Vernal Equinox; there is no such thing as a week; Oct means eight, Nov means nine, Dec means ten but they are the 10th, 11th and 12th months of the year; Jesus died in September not December 25th and the Northern European winter festival was celebrated on the Winter Solstice not December 25th so having Christmas/Yule on December 25th is factually incorect.....

 

[Damocles]

Of course, all the fossil fuels we're burning and all the heat we're generating and all the trees we're cutting down will be affecting the planet in some sort of way. But at the same time we are at the very end of the most current ice age, the ice caps have been melting for 6000 years.

This is an often used trope that nobody bothers to look up. I bothered to look it up.

Temperature rose from the end of the last glacial period, 12,000 years ago, up to what is called the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which was 8,000 years ago. Temperatures have been (very slowly) going down since then, up to the current man-made warming trend, which has reversed the trend and pushed global temperatures back to HCO levels in just a few decades.

Humans have this huge over-important opinion of ourselves. We think we are 'it'.

Humanity is the most successful species that has ever lived on this planet and possibly in the entire Universe. We have colonised the entire planet and even left it to step foot on another celestial body. We are "it".

We think what we do will effect the planet forevermore. But one day we'll all be gone - and even if that is down to us using up too many of the Earth's resources making it impossible to live on - within just a few thousand years you'd never know we ever existed as the planet evolves and flourishes without us. We will not ruin this planet. The Earth will quite easily replenish itself of it's resources over time. Rainforests take just 200 years to re-evolve and we will at some point re-enter another ice age.

Yes, mass extinction where billions of people die is the thing that is concerning people. Nobody actually is stupid enough to believe that the actual physical planet will xdisappear. Outside of being hit by another planet or a collapse of the Sun, there's no possible way to create enough energy to disprese the planet.

We shouldn't have to worry about turning the landing light off or using the car too much. We just happen to live in a time we are born, we shouldn't have to do anything to "save the planet" because the planet doesn't need saving.

The state of the planet which we and much of the life on this planet evolved under is the thing that needs saving. As I said, nobody is literally thinking that the planet will explode, we're thinking that the Greenland ice melting which would raise sea levels by 200 feet globally might put a bit of a downer in our day.

The problem we have is that there are too many people living in the world now and people are worried we'll run out of resources. People think war and disease are bad but they are essential for not allowing our numbers to spiral out of control. We shouldn't be trying to stop wars or trying to cure diseases. Some people might think that's a strupid thing to say, but i guarantee you'd see an unbelievable level of war and destruction if it weren't for the small scale wars and diseases that are killing the percentages they are killing now as populations would be ridiculously high.

Nonsense. Under what qualification are you making the statement that there are "too many people". What sums have you done to work this out? The Earth can quite easily support every living person on it and billions more by the amount of farmland that we currently have.

Back to the point. Yes, we are contrubuting to the "Global Warming" of this planet but the planet is warming as it is. The only thing we in Britain need to be immediately worried about is that if the ice caps melt to a point where they cool down the Gulf Stream and cooling our part of the planet down, we may have to find somewhere else to live or drastacally change our culture to cope with it. Within a few generations nobody will blink an eye about where they are now living or how they are living if it's still in a Scandanavian style Britain.

Have you ever looked at a map? Have you even thought this through for a second?

Go to your map and have a look how of the land mass and population is above a straight line drawn in Northern France across the world. Now think about how much farm land is there. Now thinking about what a 200 foot rise in sea levels will do to places like India, China and Bangledesh. Now think about how exactly we're going to feed and house the two billion refugees that have just been displaced without growing any food above that line you've just drawn. There's a very good reason why Antarctica and the Arctic are not thriving countries.

We will not kill this planet!

We're not bothered about killing the planet, it's killing ourselves that people are worried about.

 

[Matty]

Global Warming is happening, although that doesn't mean everywhere is getting warm as such, it mearly means the weather is changing. Our summers will actually get wetter as part of global warming due to our latitudinal position as well as the topography of the UK and the nature of the surrounding oceans and landmasses.

Man is affecting the Earth and is increasing the speed of climate change, however climate change would happen anyway, just at a greatly reduced rate. The Earth has a history of freeze/thaw with Ice Ages followed by warmer periods which then lead into another ice age. Like a boom/bust economy the cyclical nature of this is an inevitability.

 

[BoyBlue_1985]

I am writing this article knowing full well that it will be used as evidence against me -- evidence that I have been duped by a powerful cabal, a vast conspiracy to... to do what? Well, take your choice. Perhaps to convince a naive public that NASA landed men on the moon? Or to hide the fact that our president is African? Or the fact that al Qaeda didn't mastermind 9/11? Or to falsely link HIV with AIDS, or smoking with lung cancer?



Conspiracy theorists have sounded alarms about every one of these nefarious plots and more, and many conspiracy theorists embrace several imaginary plots. None of these claims has ever been proven. Proof is not conspiracy theorists' strong suit. Indeed they tend to be highly suspicious of science and its methods, which is why, whenever conspiracy theorists are confronted with facts that refute their wild ideas, they simply seize on those facts as further evidence of plotters' ingenuity.



Psychological scientists are very interested in this particular brand of irrational thinking -- especially the link between conspiratorial thinking and anti-science world views. These plots and conspiracies may seem laughable at first glance, but they are not inconsequential. At the very least, conspiracy theorists waste a lot of time and money -- think of the "birthers" -- and at worst, they pose real dangers to society. Just think of how many parents, alarmed by the bogus link between vaccines and autism, have left their children unprotected against serious disease.



Or consider global warming. More than 90 percent of climate scientists agree that the global climate is shifting, largely as a result of human activity. Scientifically, this is essentially a closed case. Yet conspiracy theorists continue to spin wild tales of government agents surreptitiously destroying thermometers and burying contradictory evidence. What are the motives of these climate deniers, who reject even overwhelming scientific consensus? Do they have a specific agenda having to do with the environment or economics, or are climate deniers the same people who fantasize about the second gunman on the grassy knoll?



Cognitive psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia has been studying climate deniers and conspiratorial thinking -- and the link between the two. He suspected that climate deniers -- as opposed to climate "skeptics," who actually use the tools of science to verify facts -- are highly prone to unrelated kinds of conspiracy thinking, and also to a conservative, pro-business ideology. He decided to test these ideas by questioning people who write and read blogs related to global warming.



He chose blogs because people with an anti-science bias have found a welcoming home on the Internet. Science denial is difficult to practice in the mainstream, peer-reviewed literature, but such contrarian views can be freely expressed in the blogosphere, where conspiracy theorists can feed one another's feelings of persecution. Lewandowsky surveyed blog denizens about their views on climate science, other scientific propositions, and their environmental leanings; their perceptions of what scientific "consensus" means; their beliefs about free-market economics; and finally, their views on a number of well-known conspiracy theories. The conspiracies covered the political spectrum, from fears of a world government (a right-wing idea) to the belief that 9/11 was an "inside job" (typically embraced on the left).



The results were unambiguous, and unsettling. First, those who hold a laissez-faire view of unfettered free markets were much more likely to strongly reject climate science. Lewandowsky believes that, because the fundamental importance of fossil fuels (and CO2 emissions) to modern economics, climate science in general (and evidence for global warming in particular) is a threat to free market advocates. Free marketers were also more likely to reject other established scientific findings, even the (undisputed) facts that smoking causes lung cancer and HIV causes AIDS.



Second, conspiracy thinking was clearly linked to climate denial -- and to the rejection of scientific propositions in general. This was true even of conspiracy theories unrelated to the environment or climate -- the belief that NASA staged the moon landing, for example, or that the CIA killed Martin Luther King. In other words, conspiracy thinking is not simply a convenient way to dismiss a particularly bothersome scientific consensus. Instead, some people seem to have a general personality trait or cognitive style, which leads them to endorse any conspiracy. This paranoid thinking in turn predisposes them to reject completely unrelated scientific facts.

Lewandowsky's study will be published in a future issue of 'Psychological Science,' a peer-reviewed scientific journal, providing further evidence of a vast and ingenious plot to elevate enlightenment thinking and marginalize the unenlightened.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/climate-change-denial-_b_1686437.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herb ... 86437.html</a>

Even for conspiracy theorist that is complete crap

 

[twinkletoes]

Thanks for your inciteful comment.

 

[BoyBlue_1985]

Thanks for your inciteful comment.

Or to hide the fact that our president is African?

Its quite hard to take someone seriously after that

 

[twinkletoes]

Thanks for your inciteful comment.

Or to hide the fact that our president is African?

Its quite hard to take someone seriously after that

That is an example of a conspiracy theory so how can that discredit the article?

 

[BoyBlue_1985]

Thanks for your inciteful comment.

Or to hide the fact that our president is African?

Its quite hard to take someone seriously after that

That is an example of a consiparicy theory so how can that discredit the article?

You know what I fully admit I read that wrong first time around
*TWAT*