Well, the sort of thing that doesn't include melting polar ice caps, for instance

Until fairly recently.
You thought it was just another ingredient for your gin and tonics?

You're being snotty again, aren't you

Well, yes but I have to go to work now.

To summarise so far, you are a short snotty person who likes pies and doesn't buy your friends birthday presents

me! I love love loves it!

it gets you pissed as and is the lowest calorie booze [good for the fat bastad ]

I know I am going to regret this, but all the Global Warming/Climate Change sceptisism - is it for real or are you all on the wind up?

Cannt be arssed to go through all the obvious examples of Climate Change, but it is held as fact by the vast majority of scientific opinion that we, ie humans, are having a dramatic effect on global climate. There is also pretty significant evidence that the rate of change of this effect is increasing at a faster and faster rate. This will effect our weather - ie rain today - and the overall climate - ie weather patterns in a specific region.

I read on here a while back that this was all scaremongering by politicos to raise taxes. WHAT?? Seriously? Those in a postion of power globally have decided to use the serious effects of our existence on the planet as a way of raising taxes? Its taken fecking years to try and get them to listen and as usaul they have kinda jumped on board late, but at least there is now a concerted effort to raise awareness and try to achieve some sense of priority.

Climate change will manifest it self in different ways, it will mean chaotic weather. So, we got butfecked with 50mph winds for most of the winter up here, after a blazing hot summer. we also had the warmest March ever up here and are now getting rain and genreal crapieness. Yorkshire is a swimming pool, Austrailia has no water and S Africa had snow this week.

These are symtons that the weather patterns are changing. This IS global warming. Not the latest scare story.

ADG - take it from here ...

This is an ADG wind up, FFS global warming is beyond debate, it is a scientific fact.

Who you gonna believe; the massed ranks of the worlds most esteemed scientists or a fat pie eating bloke in Hartlepool?

You're wasting your time Gigha. Everything's a conspiracy theory on this board. They're all out to get us I tell ya, they're all out to get us!

Aye, thats what I thought, but the level of Climate Change tosh getting thrown about i thought some one was being serious for a minute. Anyhoo, off to scrape the ice of the windscreen ...

Think thats just the point tho - there is!!!!!

Global warming may be a scientific fact but is it man made? This has only become an issue in the last 20 yrs. The planet has always had dramatic climate changes. Global weather cycles go in periods of hundreds of years. We have only been accurately recording the data for the last 150 yrs at most. We do not yet know for certain if this is man made or natural. We know that it must be having an effect on the planet, but we don't know how much exactly. I see nothing wrong with recycling more and cutting down on fossil fuels, that's common sense, but some of the scaremongering is beyond belief. We were all going to fry when the oxone layer disappeared but that's repaired itself now, which was probably (but not exclusively) due to do with getting rid of the CFC gases.
Plus the Chinese will take up any slack in emmissions all our efforts provide in no time.

And anyway if I'm wrong none of you will be here to say "I told you so!"

Let me put it this way; when you go to bed are you warmer with an quilt over you or without one?

Thats basically what excessive CO2 does, it insulates the Earth so that all the heat stays in. In isolation sounds good but then the ice caps melt which cools down the sea and causes all sorts of problems with warm and cool airflow. Seas rise, too must water evaporates which has to come down again. Basically everything gets fooked upeven dDogs and cats living together etc etc

I never miss a chance to have an emission in China. Sorry if I was responsible for flooding Sheffield. No I'm not. Fook 'em.

One misgiving I've got, is that methane causes far more damage up top than carbon dioxide does. Trees breathe carbon dioxide right?? And emit oxygen, right again?? And cows farting does not produce 60% of the worlds methane, cows belching does.

But we can can manufacture vehicles that run on methane whereas CO2 is an inert gas, right again?? So don't fuckin' tax me more, get a grip on the motor industry.

I'm not in denial, I just resent what they do about it. Collect money and do fook all.

Maybe not exclusively true, but the accepted scientific fact is it helped enourmously! So, if we do something about the feckerment now, we may be able to effect the rate of change of the mingerfeckingrooney climate. Like ...

That's why I used it as an example. I do think that we are effecting (affecting?) the environment but there is little we can do about it (short of invading China). We've had our 200 yrs of polluting the world whilst developing, can we now say that others can't because we're wiser now? I think as well we've been lied to, or probably, exaggerated to all the time.
It's like the boy who cried wolf;

The 70's "Oil to run out in 30yrs"
The 80's "4 minutes from Armageddon" (I watched that Threads again the other day, still good) "Aids" will infect and kill millions of Britons"
The 90's "Millenium bug will sent us back to the dark ages" "Ozone layer vanishing" "meteor on the way"
Now "Ebola to kill millions", Bird Flu to kill millions" "Global Warming"

And various others.

Global Warming could be the one, but I'm still not convinced.

why doesnt everyone see that its all to late to do anything and with the growth of china and india we cutting our co2 output wont matter a jot, i am under no doubt that human input if accelerating the problem but the world has been doing this since the dawn of time, why do you think we have coal etc in this country because there used to be rain forests from donkeys years ago, its like everyone at the WWF (animal not wrestling) pumping loads of money to save the panda or the tiger when they are already in a extinction vortex not having enough genetic diversity to survive i am not saying that more should be done but other projects need more focus put on them, also we dont have all the facts. the un need to sort out china, india and the usa before we in our contry have either lots of wind farms or the government taxing us more on cars.

You can keep your fookin hands off China, I saw it first and I'm a one man invasion and doing alright thanks very much.

I know all these figures come through and everyone says it's an emerging economy and works on coal fired power stations etc etc etc. Can you imagine the shite the States would cause if China went Nuclear?? No you fookin' can't. They're already at each others throats because of the balance of payments so don't put the fookin' fire under everything else.

China is 9/10s of the way through the Three Gorges Project which will be the single largest hydro electric dam in the world and will provide enough power for a third of the population. They will then systematically start to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels for electricity. Does anyone report this ??? No. The headlines are 'China displaces 3million poor oppressed starving peasants in dead selfish move to line their own pockets and the poor kids and that.'

AT A STROKE China is leading the world in going clean fuel but no-one gives them credit for it.

They do ellish grub as well.

Unfortunately the Three Gorges project is very poor environmentally because of the vegetation that will rot when the reservoir area is flooded. The vegetation will yield methane when it rots which is 26 more times a potent greenhouse gas than CO2. And as for those coal fired woks they use

Do you write for the Guardian??

Global warming?

The biggest myth since Adolf told the German people that the jews were being resettled in foreign lands.

Just a big fat excuse for loads of scientists to try and justify their research budgets and save themselves from doing any proper work.

You serious? You really need to see a list of the things we, as a developed country, could do to reduce the rate of change of global warming?

Away and read a book, man!

Aye John - thats right.

Thats the only reason scientists work isn't it - to get bigger research grants so they can sit around doing feck all.

Most of the nut case tree hugging fraternity look like they already do.

Aye thats the spririt!

As opposed to a tree hugging pc leftie who wants to embrace the world and donate our tax money to lazy africans who are too busy knocking out excessive amounts of kids to grow food?

Maybe if they stopped shagging they could provide for their reasonably sized families?

Global warming? All crap. There are many many more reasons for the recent floods than claiming it is to do with how many cans of deodorant have been used in the Western World since 1960.

Good for building snowmen i suppose. Point is they havent had any for 20 odd years. example of climate change. Or, as John the Baptist would carefully argue, and example of too much shagging amongst the natives is causing the, er, the oh, er - explain that again John cos you lost me.

They haven't had snow for 20 odd years so it must be due to global warming?

Why?

Or was it due to global warming that they got snow 20 odd years ago too?

And what about the 20 odd years before that?

My old people lived in Johannesburg in the 1980's, presumably the last time they had snow was in the pictures they sent me of them sitting round their swimming pool while the contractors installing it had a snowball fight. I'm told most of the contractors then had never seen snow. My wife has never seen snow, I fooking hate snow.

But I still can't grasp why paying more tax will stop it snowing where it shouldn't and to a certain extent this scientific 'ooh it's hot....oooh it's cold and it should be hot........ooohhhh...it's raining and it should be...well...raining but not this much........' must be just cant.

I can take the temperature and come to a load of conclusions and they'd be bollocks as well.

GLOBAL WARMING.... ..bossy new world religion based on the masochistic, self flagellating theory that unless we regress and seriously inconvenience ourselves big time by giving up or paying enormous taxes for the privillege of enjoying all the 21st century comforts, from air travel to central heating, we will all be responsible for the destruction of the planet.... ...also..... when the Ice Age started, where there loads of cavemen type scientists saying it's because there aren't enough cars and factories to keep us warm , so we'll have to start inventing them to save the planet...?

Since time began, there have always been and always will be, useless people, incapable of productive work, who will want to tell you how to live your life while they pontificate on abstract theories of no relevance to mankind ...I beleive they're called academics...based on the thery that if the toilet cleaner fails to turn up for work we have a problem and disease and death will follow .... if hoewever the academic fails to turn up, life goes on and another one is appointed.

That's quite interesting....how many professionals/employees would we actually miss if everyone got the sack to-morrow? Footballers, obviously, and I'd include actors and other performers, farmers and makers of McVities chocolate digestive biscuits. Most other things I could probably do myself

How much of the worlds resources are wasted producing things we are supposed to 'need' ... the present lunatic obsession with changing mobile phones to incorporate some useless fuction is a good example. CONSUMERISM is the world religion, the amassing of useless objects for the sake of it.

Couldnt agree more - unchecked development = consumerism = more fecking things to buy, to be built to buy with a finite level of resources. Things to do to stop climate change:

a) Absolutely nothing if you think its all tosh bandied about by scientists with nothing else better to do or apparantly now academics who are pointless as well not needed
b) By less, consume less, dont rush out and buy the next model/upgrade or whatever.

And before you start chelping on - no that wont immediately refreeze the Ice caps or stop it raining/snowing/being too hot but at least you are not participating in the constant clamour for more and the pointless waste of valuable resources. And you dont even have to live in a cave, eat bark and take cold showers - wasnt actually aware that caves had showers, but there you are. Oh thought of a third.

c) tax the living hell out of all those pesky Africans for their indiscriminate shagging

I am off to hug a Grauniad coated tree!!

Gigha, you must learn to discrimnate between serving a purpose and not... my definition of an academic is someone whose whole being is to be 'academic'...of no real point to life at all, just a theoriser dealing with the ethereal as opposed to a scientist working on something of use to society. For example... someone lecturing in say 'meeja' studies is useless , whereas someone pushing the boundaries in medicine is by definition good ...it's just sorting them out ...

"The waters of Hartlepool Bay seem an unlikely place for a forest today, but thousands of years ago this whole area was covered with trees and peat bog. In Mesolithic times, roughly 8000BC, there was still a land bridge between Britain and the rest of Europe and we know that much of what is now the North Sea was low lying fenland."

So was it Global Warming that caused the Forest to be submerged????

Yes it was....it's happened before and it'll happen again!!!!

i.e., the distinction between me and a mate who's a medical physicist

What was the question?

Something to do with pissing in the street?

Tricky. I wouldn't say that what they're doing at the boundaries of medicine at the moment is good at all. All this genetic engineering is very very dodgy. Even many established medical practices have no foundation in science, despite the claim to be 'evidence-based'.
On the other hand, as the Greeks suggested 1000s of years ago, the best placed people to become rulers are philosophers (ie pure academics) because only they are in the position of being able to look at a situation logically and rationally without being interested in personal gain.
Agree about meeja studies tho

I'm beginning to think that the real evidence for global warming is the state of your brain

A letter on Teletext....

"Isn't it amazing how Global Warming became Climate Change when this Summer didn't fit the pattern"!!!!

Tim, Newquay.

Oh how very true!!!!

From the eduction section in yesterday's big G:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/ ... 22,00.html

The ethics of journalism don't work for science


The media and science often clash over published research, says Jonathan Wolff

Tuesday July 3, 2007
The Guardian

At a certain point at every dinner party these days, someone - usually male, usually emptying his wine glass a bit faster than everyone else - starts to spout on about global warming. Of course, he'll say, the planet is warming up, but that's what it does, except when it's cooling down, which it also does. I know this person well: it used to be me. I would spice up my compelling analysis with memories of reading reviews of Fred Hoyle's 1981 book How the Next Ice Age Will Come and How We Can Prevent It. Hoyle thought that the world was on the verge of a tipping point into rapid cooling. He proposed a strategy of warming up the oceans by pumping cold water from the depths to the surface.

I learned to shut my mouth on the topic after hearing a lecture from a San Diego philosopher of science, Naomi Oreskes, who reported the results of a review of the scientific literature on global warming. Not one peer-reviewed scientific article, of the hundreds she surveyed, denied that the earth was warming or that human action was at least partially responsible. The sceptics, she argued, were largely members of independent thinktanks, often sponsored by companies with vested interests, publishing their own reports without external review.

A little later, Oreskes published her findings in the leading journal Science, and was immediately shot down by bloggers, journalists and thinktankers, who mixed insults about her honesty with more plausible-sounding complaints about her methodology. Oreskes replied, with great restraint, that she would wait for the peer-reviewed criticisms.

But if Oreskes is right, why do so many people think there is an active scientific debate? One reason is that few people appreciate the difference between peer-reviewed journals and thinktank reports. But even worse, she argued, is the influence of the media: you knew that was coming, didn't you?

In fact, she makes an excellent point. Journalistic ethics require balance. In reporting political arguments, each claim must be countered so that a lively debate can take place and readers come to their own views (well, that's the theory). Oreskes suggests that journalists have mistakenly applied the same ethical code to scientific reporting. Whenever a story on climate change is produced, a maverick nay-sayer is rolled out for the sake of balance. But this misleads the public into thinking that a few lone voices have equal weight to the scientific orthodoxy.

The same thing happened when a scientific consensus was forming around the theory that HIV causes Aids. A small number of scientists questioned the hypothesis and received a disproportionate share of attention. The false appearance of wide scientific disagreement gave policy-makers in some countries an excuse to delay the introduction of prevention and treatment programmes, with tragic results.

How well equipped are we non-scientists to understand scientific discussions? We all study science for a few years, but learn - or at least remember - very little about methodology. Science is presented as a body of known truths. As adults, though, we need to know not the atomic number of chlorine, but how to assess evidence for or against a theory.

As a start, we need to understand the difference between proving a theory and finding evidence for it. Outside of logic and mathematics, virtually nothing can be proven in any strict sense: every philosophy student knows this. But there can still be very good evidence to believe theories, and it can be - must be - rational to act on some theories even in the absence of proof, and in the presence of some doubt.

In practice, what matters is not proof but good reason for action, based on the assessment of all available evidence. For my part, I really hope the sceptics about global warming are right and, like the millennium bug, it will all turn out to be a silly old fuss about nothing. But at the moment, the evidence doesn't point that way, and the only sensible course of action is to try to reduce global warming. Not such a conversational tour de force at a dinner party, but instead I now pontificate about damaging journalistic ethical codes and the fetishism of balance.

· Professor Jonathan Wolff is head of philosophy at University College London. His column appears monthly

Excellent article Mr. Marx.

Well written by the scientist with the vested interest furthering her own viewpoint by attempting to discredit alternative views.

Er, he's head of philosophy at UCL. That's philosophy. Since when did that become a science?

He's actually working on treatments for cancer. Far more useful than I!

But I never said that taxation was the answer.

You know the answer to this; Governments don't have the balls to make tough decisions. Loud mouthed voters (who can I be thinking of? ) make this a difficult thing to do!

Sticking a git fo-ok off windmill on your head!

That Professor Wolff feller sure takes a lot of words to say 'you don't know what you're on about so shut up and listen to us clever fellers.'

The whole debate would be more widely appreciated if Gordon the Greedy bounder hadn't emerged from his ivory tower and slapped 20 quid on a flight. Now maybe it's a good idea to discourage flying for the sake of flying. But you know and I know that 20 quid isn't enough to discourage it. It's just enough for the grumblers to duly pay it and therefore it's another billion he can pour down the gaping maw of the NHS computer system to follow the other 12 billion already poured to no avail.

It's not the theory that's shite, it's the practice.