Climate change. Ever change sides in the debate?
We're following up our coverage this week with an item on iPM. You can read more, and hear an extended interview here. Feel free to add your thoughts, on the iPM page.
Here is another Gratuitous Al Gore Photograph
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Mr Gore here's an inconvenient truth: pies are not good for you.
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Dear Friends of the Earth,
Are you worried by your carbon footprint? A bucket of Flash will sort that out.
Yours etc., Mrs Trellis.
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Jonnie, have you been down the gym lately? ;o)
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In the '70's, magazines such as New Scientist would run articles suggesting we were headed to a new Ice Age. Assuming that said magazine is a reflection of main view science (but it does run contraversial, against the main stream items), then even science have some change of view. That is part of the scientific process, i.e. hypothesis, test the hypothesis/take data, observe, modify hypothesis...
Today's climate change might still have an ice age as the ultimate result.
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Deep,
...test again, observe again, modify again...Or, as I have often paraphrased for non-technical audiences, "Look, guess, test, look again, guess again, ....", but technical/academic folk get paid by the syllable, so "Observation, Hypothesis, Experiment, Modification of Hypothesis Informed by Observed Experimental Data....."
;-)
ed
Worth a reprise?Stephen Schneider
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You put your hypothesis in,
Destroy your hypothesis out,
in out in out shakey all about
You do the hokey pokey,
And you spin around,
That's where it all goes wrong,
Oh blimey global warming,
Oh blimey global warning,
Oh ho why are you frowning,
Stick you head between
your knees and kiss
your arts goodbye.
Da didly da da,
Boom Boom
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Ed I (5),
Maybe science students should do a module of "media appreciation". Maybe then scientists will be able to define things rather than be placed in the boxes. A good point, Ed.
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Of course I won't change sides. I won't be around long enough to be proved wrong.
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"...and she told me it was *this* big..."
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In truth, nice to see Glorea doing his,
"I'm not the messiah. Right who put that aura behind be? Own up. Who was it?"
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The problem is the media and the public don't understand science.
They want clearly boxed, black or white views. For example, when faced with a new "Wonder" drug, a true scientist will never answer "It works" or "It doesn't work" (or in the case of a bad side-effect on a patient, "It's safe" or "It's not safe"). They're more likely to say something along the lines of "Based on the available experimental and observational data, a statistically significant proportion of patients' conditions improve"
In other words, "95% of the patients we tested..."
However, study science at university and you'll realise there are three confidence levels:
* - 5% level (95% sure there is an effect / not happening by chance)
** - 1% level (99% sure)
*** - 0.1% level (99.9% sure)
The 'standard' significance level is 5%, however the stricter tests are used in some circumstances.
Two other terms you might encounter in conjunction with statistics:
The Null Hypothesis - essentially states that nothing is happening, any effect is purely chance.
The Alternative Hypothesis - essentially the opposite of the Null Hypothesis.
The umbrella aim of any scientific experiment is to assume the Null Hypothesis is the case, and attempt to disprove it (thereby proving the Alternative Hypothesis).
Anyone still reading?
On another science-related subject, I have a slightly different argument against GM to the majority.
Although we can create custom genes, the methods of incorporating it into the DNA of the host plant are still, to say the least, random.
Two of the most popular methods are to either (a) modify a plant virus and use that to insert your designer DNA into the plant cells, or (b) use a "Gene Gun" (coat tiny tungsten / gold pellets with the gene, then literally fire it into the plant).
There is no control over where in the plant's existing DNA the gene goes, so there's no control over how the gene gets expressed (i.e. how much of the protein encoded by the gene is made). Then there's also the tricky problem of 'marker genes'. It's also quite common to include an additional gene that can easily be tracked, so you know which plants have your designer gene and which don't. In bacteria, the marker gene often confers antibiotic resistance or bioluminescence, so in plants the equivalent would probably be herbicide resistance.
(I knew my Biology degree would come in useful one day...)
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Ever changeD sides in the debate?
Yes, when I was away for many years (no real media access or broadband access) I was convinced by my own observations of the world that something was changing.
So for me I thought MMGW was the explanation. However, when back in the UK, and I was introduced to MMGW as the political tool with its terrible leaps of faith, pseudo science and appalling "solutions".
So my stand is that humans are destroying the planet, but the CO2 connection is irrelevant. They do it directly by the diverting of the rivers and irrigation, pollution, over farming/fishing, and concrete etc.
The problem is you can not directly experiment with the climate. However, opportunities exist. There has been 2 known events that should have been investigated properly. The US shutdown at the time of 9/11 and the huge evaporation of water from the low lying lands after the Tsunami. I was there at both events and the climate did change over large areas.
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Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard,
To get her poor doggy a bone,
But when she got there, the cupboard was bare,
So she fed it her mobile phone.
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It surprising that so many posts here suggest that the potential effects of climate change are a matter for humour. There is uncertainty, yes, but not much prospect of humour - it's rather serious. The head of the IPCC stated recently that we have seven years to start taking serious action to reduce carbon emissions in order to avert dangerous climate change. Many working climatologists are alarmed by the science, unlike those in the pockets of the fossil-fuel industry.
For readers, or writers of earlier posts:
a) New Scientist is a popular magazine about science, it is not 'science'.
b) There never was a scientific consensus about an Ice Age in the 1970s, there were articles in the press. For further analysis see: http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
c) Perhaps it would be better for those with an interest to read what the IPCC actually say before posting; [warning - there's a lot of it]: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
Hint: start with the 'Frequently Asked Questions' and then look at the 'Summary for Policy Makers'. Then those who want more detail can refer to the individual reports. All is fully referenced to peer-reviewed science.
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Certainly I will change sides if my opponents do. After all, the fact that they espouse the position they do is the strongest and most incontrovertible evidence that that position is not only misguided, but can only ever be adopted by the dishonest and, frankly, mentally deficient. As soon as the party opposite adopt our own position, therefore, we will abandon it instantly, and deny we ever held it, while claiming at the same time that they stole all their ideas from us...
***
Um, er, hello, I was having the strangest dream there - I was a politician. Sorry 'bout that.
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jollyrationalist (14),
Since your first two points are clearly aimed at me:
I think I made it clear New Scientist is a magazine, not a pier reviewed scientific journal, and my suggested that it was a mirror to the general scientific thinking of the time surely is valid. In the '70's I was still at school, still learning the very basics of science. NS certainly did run "new ice age" articles, and would have been one of my main sources - unless you want to count Tomorrow's World. I probably have a relivent issue in a loft somewhere.
Mind you, when NS covers a topic where I am an expert, it makes a real hash of it (sometimes I suspect more by sub-editing than the work of the original contributor), and I have appeared in their letters pages correcting some of the larger howlers. So I am under no illusion as to the validity of anything written in that magazine.
Dr Deepthought (physical, but not climate science)
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Deepthought 16
There was NO scientific consensus in the 1970s regarding an ice age, but there were some articles in the popular press, but that isn't science. If you read the paper previously linked to, it will explain much.
This sort of trash has been dredged-up by the paid denialists from North America and is being repeated over here. As always most people only read the headlines and almost never read the references. Which is why most denialists have taken to referencing vast amounts of science that is actually at odds with the case they are trying to make.
To learn more see www.realclimate.org
climate science from working climatologists.
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JR,
Not a very jolly rationalist are you? You seem to be wanting to take issue where there is none. Deep never said there was a consensus on ice ages.
Humour, by the way, is a common response to ward off despair.
Salaam, etc. ed
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Now look, I invented the internet all by myself here but on this one I need your help. C'mon folks, I'm talking about icebergs becoming extinct. Glaciers gone forever except in a museum or a zoo. We just can't let that happen. Maybe you live on low land. Think of what it will mean if sea level rises 3 feet. Hell, I have lots of big houses, I can always find one that's still dry but what about the poor folks with only one house on the beach in Malibu? Now if we all turn out the lights each night at 7:30 we can sing along together. C'mon folks, join in, Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya, Kumbaya my lord, Kumbaya... See, you don't need TV or a computer to be happy.
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