Re: Solar effect on global warming and ch4 "swindle" programme

On Mar 15, 11:52 pm, Stephen Tonkin <news06footfrommo...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On the off chance that the "sci" in the name of this NG still stands for
"science":

Consensus may have some place in politics, but it has no place in
science. At best it is a red herring.

OTOH naively accepting the bogus claims of cranks and mavericks with
huge political axes to grind is not good science either. And there is
a strong correlation between half baked conspiracy theorists with very
extreme political views on the right *and* the left with AGW denial.

There are some good and truly sceptical scientists making important
contributions to the scientific debate. Until the recent C4 programme
I had thought that Lindzen was one of them - I may now have to revise
that opinion. He may have been a victim of clever editting but he
spoke with forked tongue in that programme.

A single piece of contrary evidence is sufficient to falsify a
scientific hypothesis. Of course, nothing can falsify a pseudoscientific
hypothesis.

It has to be *real* evidence that actually stands up to scientific
scrutiny. Pretend evidence will not do - otherwise we would still be
celebrating the "discovery" of N-ray in 1903 by Professor R Blondot.

Science doesn't always get it right first time, but the scientific
method is self correcting.

And there are three clearly separate issues here:

1. Physical scientific evidence and its interpretation.
2. Climate models and the potential errors in their future
predictions.
3. What do we do about the problem.

The first two are testable against the emirical evidence and are
amenable to rational debate.

The final one is political and is colouring the science (and both
sides are guilty of this). The rabid greens wanting us all back in
caves are almost as bad as the demented right wingers who want
gratuitous and profligate waste of energy to maximise Exxon profits.
The correct coure of action is somewhere between these two
(unsurprisingly).

As a scientist I see the evidence as now almost overwhelming that AGW
is a significant component of the past few decades warming. The sun
very gradually getting brighter also played a part over the past
century. However, we are adding CO2 at an ever increasing rate so we
can expect AGW to dominate the solar influence from here on in.

And it is a very slow long term influence so the damage we are doing
now will take a long time to show its full effect. I think there is no
excuse for failing to take all no-regrets measures to save energy and
improve efficiency. But as things stand a far better political effort
was made to "Save It" during the 1970's OPEC fuel crisis.

On the specific issue of the rampant dissing of the (admittedly
seriously flawed) C4 offering, isn't it interesting that we don't see
the same people dissing Gore's oscar-winning glitzy travesty, which is
even more flawed (hypothetical)? If I was an AGW clone, I'd try to get
every copy of _An Inconvenient Truth_ burned, it is so riddled with
misrepresentation, error, and blatant deception that could so easily
backfire on the AGW lobby. Oops. Hang on. Belay that. It must be OK: it
came to the proper preconceived conclusion.

I agree. And I would refer you to my earlier posting on uk.sci.weather

MSGID: <1173947327.036349.11830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

(Still Swimming amongst the Crocodiles)

Whereabouts? Any decent dark skies there?

Regards,
Martin Brown

.

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