Re: Receding glaciers

What are your qualifications in this subject? How long have you studied and
at which institutions to reach the opinions that you have? Where are your
peer reviewed papers and in which journals are they published? What are your
professional specialisms in the field of atmospheric processes?

I must admit to having become a tiny bit more sceptical about GW, yet alone whether GW is MM. In part it is just this sort of hectoring, holier-than-thou attitude that now bombards us all in most aspects of daily life that's pushed my bloody mindedness to the limit. I haven't got a peer-reviewed journal article so I should just jolly well shut up, not have any opinions or doubts of my own, and pay my taxes to fund more research.

Of course we should listen to the scientists who research in the area, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily right, or even not motivated by self-interested. I've published in enough peer-reviewed journals myself, and been active in scientific research long enough (not I hasten to add on GW) to know that people can still be very biased, dismissive, and obviously motivated by where the next research grant is going to come from. The scientific literature is also famously littered with examples of the prevailing paradigm being just wrong. Any attempt to stifle dissent is scientific fascism.

It's the certainty of the anti-denialists that annoys me, and the way in which they are so keen to change my behaviour and make my decisions for me. There is an undeniably political element in it. I'm not pointing to the scientists here, so much as the politicians, greenies, and activists who have picked up on it, and for any other cause would have been labelled loonies. Where are their papers? What are their specialisms? Where is any sense of humility or admittance that they could be wrong, that the issue is complex, and that my turning my TV off rather than onto standby is meaningless given what is happeningin China and India? I'm also fed up with every quirk of the weather or natural world being adduced as evidence for global warming, whether it's a hot summer, cold summer, wet autumn, dry autumn, heavy shower, without any insight by the people promulgating these views that what they say is sometimes just a bit ridiculous.

On the subject of scepticism, and sorry if this has been mentioned before, but has anyone read Christopher Booker's "Scared to death"? I think he argues that global temperatures have been falling for the last few years. (I have no idea whether or not this is true, but when I mentioned it to a friend, who is also very active in green issues, she said that was just as predicted by the MMGW hypothesis. I rest my case.)

End of rant.

Trevor


.

Loading