Why are most climate change deniers right wingers?
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Land. Always valuable whether used for growing or housing. We live on a finite island. We shouldn't abandon large swathes to the sea.0
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global warming or not..I can't stand the amount of exhaust and noise pollution caused by motorized traffic..... presumably its all irreversible in this country as my economist mate tells me the motor industry is all linked with jobs and political power bla bla.
Shoulda kep trains and trams going 50 years ago, I reckon0 -
fast as fupp wrote:its just an excuse for m&s to charge 5p for a carrier bag
the robbing bassads! :evil:
No, thats because there are not enough holes in the ground to put them in once people have used them the once and then thrown them away.09 - Santa Cruz Heckler
03 - Trek 8500
95 - P7 (Dead, but I loved it)
Year dot - Alpine Stars CR300 - Still going strong...0 -
I read an interesting fact the other day.
The latest 100 investigation/reports on global warming from the scientific press were pulled together. 100% of these scientific reports agreed that humans were attributing to global warming.
The same was done for the popular press (The Sun, Mirror etc). 60% of the latest 100 articles attributed humans to global worming……. Nuff said…..
09 - Santa Cruz Heckler
03 - Trek 8500
95 - P7 (Dead, but I loved it)
Year dot - Alpine Stars CR300 - Still going strong...0 -
We don't need reports to show Humans are contributing to global warming, but the earth has being much hotter a long time ago, the sea level was much higher, I think the sea level could ride over 300ft, but they've found fossils of sea creatures on the moors and that's like 800ft up.0
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shifting glaciers0
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OK I've got one thing to say on this subject:
George Bush
Do you really think you are right if you are on his side?0 -
Cressers wrote:"OK, so let's assume that humans aren't responsible for climate change - why are the vast majority of climate scientists fooled"
They arn't but there is a political AGW bandwagon that is very lucrative to jump on, as well as the naysayers being villified.
As I said above, it is far more lucrative to get funding from an oil company than from the government. I would also say that there are far more people who treat the naysayers as heroes than villains. There is a gigantic climate change denial industry out there.Cressers wrote:"With the vast amounts of money at the disposal of oil and car companies, how come the theory hasn't been refuted?"
How do you prove a negative?
Of course, this is not something that you can prove either way - how can you prove that evolution exists? You can't, you just go along with the evidence, and the if evidence on one side massively outweighs the other, you say that's the more likely version.
I wish that the naysayers were right, and that humans weren't responsible for climate change, or even better that it won't be as bad as many are predicting. However, as I have said, I cannot bring myself to believe that the vast majority of scientists, from different fields and all nations are either a) wrong or b) taking part in a massive conspiracy that goes against so many powerful, vested interests.0 -
ellieb wrote:OK I've got one thing to say on this subject:
George Bush
Do you really think you are right if you are on his side?
Ye gods, he's been out of office a year and this is still the catch all argument for left wingers AND BBC panel shows?"In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
a: I'm not even remotely left wing
b: I've never been on a BBC panel show
c: He may be gone, but that doesn't hide the fact that he was one of the world's most significant climate change deniers - & not for the intellectual rigour he brought to the party. So what if he is out of office? Climate change (if it is true ) is the same now as it was when he was President. Judge people by the company they keep. If that makes you uncomfortable, stop to think why.
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That makes Tony Benn heartless and headless!justresting wrote:I think most of the denyers tend to be a little older, and they do say if you're young and not left wing you havn't got a heart, if you're mature and not right wing you havn't got a head.0 -
I was only so off hand (for which I apologise) as I really dislike the argument that if a certain person thinks something it MUST be wrong."In many ways, my story was that of a raging, Christ-like figure who hauled himself off the cross, looked up at the Romans with blood in his eyes and said 'My turn, sock cookers'"
@gietvangent0 -
johnfinch wrote:Cressers wrote:"OK, so let's assume that humans aren't responsible for climate change - why are the vast majority of climate scientists fooled"
I wish that the naysayers were right, and that humans weren't responsible for climate change, or even better that it won't be as bad as many are predicting. However, as I have said, I cannot bring myself to believe that the vast majority of scientists, from different fields and all nations are either a) wrong or b) taking part in a massive conspiracy that goes against so many powerful, vested interests.
Scientists used to think the Sun went round the Earth.
Scientists used to think the Earth was flat.
Scientists used to think bees couldn't fly. No-one told the bees
Scientists are fallable. So am I :shock:
Worrying about it won't fix it though. That is a fact.None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.0 -
I propose that, as GWB almost certainly wipes his bum every time he goes to the toilet, we should all stop doing it at once.ellieb wrote:a: I'm not even remotely left wing
b: I've never been on a BBC panel show
c: He may be gone, but that doesn't hide the fact that he was one of the world's most significant climate change deniers - & not for the intellectual rigour he brought to the party. So what if he is out of office? Climate change (if it is true ) is the same now as it was when he was President. Judge people by the company they keep. If that makes you uncomfortable, stop to think why.0 -
daviesee wrote:Why are humans the only ones to blame? Surely a bloody great big volcano must have some effect? I think you will find that the ice age is a bit of a precedent for climate change
The New Scientist was climate sceptic in the 90s, but seems to accept the evidence now.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-co2-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.htmlNew Scientist wrote:]Volcanic misunderstanding
Finally, claims that volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities are simply not true. In the very distant past, there have been volcanic eruptions so massive that they covered vast areas in lava more than a kilometre thick and appear to have released enough CO2 to warm the planet after the initial cooling caused by the dust (see Wipeout). But even with such gigantic eruptions, most of subsequent warming may have been due to methane released when lava heated coal deposits, rather than from CO2 from the volcanoes (see also Did the North Atlantic's 'birth' warm the world?).
Measurements of CO2 levels over the past 50 years do not show any significant rises after eruptions. Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3 Gt of CO2 each year - about a hundredth of human emissions (pdf document).
While volcanic emissions are negligible in the short term, over tens of millions of years they do release massive quantities of CO2. But they are balanced by the loss of carbon in ocean sediments subducted under continents through tectonic plate movements. Ultimately, this carbon will be returned to the atmosphere by volcanoes.0 -
daviesee wrote:Just what was the CO2 level 3000, 3,000,000 or 30,000,000 years ago? On a planet scale human history is only a tiny part. What was the planet's temperature at those times?New Scientist wrote:Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm (see Greenhouse gases hit new high)
So what's going on? It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".
The consumption of terrestrial vegetation by animals and by microbes (rotting, in other words) emits about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 every year, while respiration by vegetation emits another 220 Gt. These huge amounts are balanced by the 440 Gt of carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere each year as land plants photosynthesise.
Similarly, parts of the oceans release about 330 Gt of CO2 per year, depending on temperature and rates of photosynthesis by phytoplankton, but other parts usually soak up just as much - and are now soaking up slightly more.
How can we be sure that human emissions are responsible for the rising CO2 in the atmosphere? There are several lines of evidence. Fossil fuels were formed millions of years ago. They therefore contain virtually no carbon-14, because this unstable carbon isotope, formed when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, has a half-life of around 6000 years. So a dropping concentration of carbon-14 can be explained by the burning of fossil fuels. Studies of tree rings have shown that the proportion of carbon-14 in the atmosphere dropped by about 2% between 1850 and 1954. After this time, atmospheric nuclear bomb tests wrecked this method by releasing large amounts of carbon-14.
Fossil fuels also contain less carbon-13 than carbon-12, compared with the atmosphere, because the fuels derive from plants, which preferentially take up the more common carbon-12. The ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in the atmosphere and ocean surface waters is steadily falling, showing that more carbon-12 is entering the atmosphere.0 -
johnfinch wrote:OK, so let's assume that humans aren't responsible for climate change - why are the vast majority of climate scientists fooled? With the vast amounts of money at the disposal of oil and car companies, how come the theory hasn't been refuted? After all, the scientists who deny that humans are mainly responsible for climate change have access to far larger grants than those funded by government bodies or environmental groups, so any researcher doing things purely for the money would side with Esso, not Greenpeace.
And how come scientists that do not participate in climate change research - let's say Stephen Hawking, for example - are willing to risk their reputation on a non-issue such as this?
Do people think that researchers into the subject haven't actually looked into the history of the Earth's climate? That they've missed some blindingly obvious point that the posters on this forum have all realised?
As I pointed out earlier in the thread, this issue diverts money and resources away from other very important, pressing environmental problems, and those responsible for allocating public research money would be pouring money into something of very little importance while other branches of science are screaming out for funding.
For all of those people to have got it so badly wrong after so much work has gone into it would be very, very unlikely.
absolutely right.New Scientist wrote:As for the idea that scientists change their tune to keep their paymasters happy, under the current US administration many scientists claim they have been pressurised to tone down findings relating to climate change (see US fudging of climate science details revealed).
Indeed, those campaigning for action to prevent further warming have had to battle against huge vested interests, including the fossil-fuel industry and its many political allies. Many of the individuals and organisations challenging the idea of global warming have received funding from companies such as ExxonMobil.
That in itself does not necessarily mean that the sceptics are wrong, of course. Nor does the fact that most scientists believe in climate change necessarily make it true. What counts is the evidence. And the evidence - that the world is getting warmer, that the warming is largely due to human emissions, and that the downsides of further warming will outweigh the positive effects - is very strong and getting stronger.
Finally, perhaps the most bizarre conspiracy-related claim is that the journalists covering science have an interest in promoting global warming.
Journalists do have an interest in promoting themselves (and their books), while their employers want to boost their audience and sell advertising. Publicity helps with all these aims, but you get far more publicity by challenging the mainstream view than by promoting it. Which helps explain why so many sections of the media continue to publish or broadcast the claims of deniers, regardless of their merit.
btw - on the subject of left or right - I used to be left-wing but threw out all that dated nonsense in the 90s - left wing or right wing means business as usual as far as the environment is concerned.
When I turned green in 1991found that lefties were as resistant to green politics as the right wingers, maybe even more so.0 -
daviesee wrote:Scientists used to think the Sun went round the Earth.
Scientists used to think the Earth was flat.
Scientists used to think bees couldn't fly. No-one told the bees
Indeed they did - but they were the first to realise that these theories were wrong....... And they too suffered from a non scientific population that at times was happy to burn them for their heretical thoughts. (I don't think any scientist ever believed a bee couldn't fly - if there is one thing scientists are good at it is knowing the difference between fact and theory).
It is worth remembering that it makes overwhelming political sense to deny climate change - what politician cares about what will happen in 70 years time? What polititician will want to impact on the wealth of todays voter for the benefit of future voters? Where's their gain in that?
That's the ultimate problem with climate change - there is nothing in it for us. It is all for the benefit of future generations which is why, even on a forum with an inherent green slant, there will be a lot of people happy to disbelieve the current consensus whilst at the same time happily believing any conspiracy theory the paper chuck at them.
We should also remember that just because governments, the green movement, anti greens etc all use idiotic arguments to support their theories, damn those of others and justify stupid taxations and idiot ideas like the scrappage scheme, it doesn't mean that man made climate change isn't happening.
Have to say though, I've done the forum climate change argument on car forums and, unsurprisingly, the debate is a lot more reasoned here Faster than a tent.......0 -
Rolf F wrote:daviesee wrote:Scientists used to think the Sun went round the Earth.
Scientists used to think the Earth was flat.
Scientists used to think bees couldn't fly. No-one told the bees
Indeed they did - but they were the first to realise that these theories were wrong....... And they too suffered from a non scientific population that at times was happy to burn them for their heretical thoughts. (I don't think any scientist ever believed a bee couldn't fly - if there is one thing scientists are good at it is knowing the difference between fact and theory).
I'm not sure there were scientists in the days society believed the Sun went round the earth - as scientific method was developed it quickly became obvious that the Christian belief thatt the earth was the centre of the universe was not true.
I'm not sure anyone believed the earth was flat since the ancient greeks who even then knew that the earth was round - i'd be interested if you can dig up evidence that they did.
you're right about the bees though - it just took a while before the theory caught up with the observations. good argument for scientists actually - as all the observations at the moment points towards human caused climate change - the theory is lagging behind.0 -
A fundamental difference between right and left wing is that to be right wing is to be more focussed directly on yourself and left wing on the collective. It would be harder for a right wing person to comprehend that their behaviour could have an impact on a global scale, they are one of only 6 billion after all. I think left wing people are able to understand the part they play in things as a global community better. Right wingers also don’t like being told as much what to do, so telling someone flying to America is bad is going to have more of an impact on someone of a left wing persuasion than a right wing one.
Also right wing media, read by right wing people, is more sceptical of climate change. It is not in the free market capitalist regime, of which most media is part of, to entertain such thoughts that industry and economic growth should be slowed down, it always full steam ahead.
Of course these are all generalisations.Mañana0 -
Of course the Greeks were helped with their understanding of the Earth being spherical (or near enough spherical) by their religion. For them, spheres were closely linked with divinity. Dunno why.
There were Greek astronomers who couldn't speak on some of the heavenly bodies (it escapes me which one(s)) not moving in perfect circles, because they would have faced the same sort of religious persecution as was experienced in Middle Ages Christian societies.0 -
The flat earth and centre of the universe came about during the dark ages when most of what had been learned was conveniently "lost" by those in power to perpetuate their power over the lower classes. I will admit that scientists would have disagreed with them but probably kept quiet. I don't want to go off on a tangent on this point.
Back to today, never before have I been so often quoted.
I believe my work here is done None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.0 -
barriecusvein wrote:verylonglegs wrote:Another point is you can't even get an accurate 5 day forecast yet they try and tell us what the weather will be in 30 years time.
This argument is brought up a lot, but it makes no sense. If you add milk to your coffee, I have no hope of telling you the temperature of a given point in your coffee in the next few seconds. However, after 45 seconds or so when the milk is evenly distributed I can tell you the temperature with very high accuracy at any point.
Generating a 5 day forecast is a totally different calculation to finding general weather conditions in 30 years. You can't compare apples and oranges and exclaim when you discover they are different.
Not really comparable though as your choice of words illustrates, you can tell the temperature of coffee with very high accuracy but you then say general weather conditions for the long term estimates. I've heard a weather expert use a similiar argument to my point about forecasts saying we are confusing weather with climate. I'm not arguing the timescale though, more pointing out that both short term and long term weather predictions contain a large amount of variables and both rely on computer modelling so are dependent on the data fed in.
You can measure the temperature of a cup of coffee very easily and accurately in a lab but as far as I'm aware no-one has a scaled down version of earth, its amoshpere and the solar system in a lab anywhere to perform the equivalent experiments.0 -
verylonglegs wrote:barriecusvein wrote:verylonglegs wrote:Another point is you can't even get an accurate 5 day forecast yet they try and tell us what the weather will be in 30 years time.
This argument is brought up a lot, but it makes no sense. If you add milk to your coffee, I have no hope of telling you the temperature of a given point in your coffee in the next few seconds. However, after 45 seconds or so when the milk is evenly distributed I can tell you the temperature with very high accuracy at any point.
Generating a 5 day forecast is a totally different calculation to finding general weather conditions in 30 years. You can't compare apples and oranges and exclaim when you discover they are different.
Not really comparable though as your choice of words illustrates, you can tell the temperature of coffee with very high accuracy but you then say general weather conditions for the long term estimates. I've heard a weather expert use a similiar argument to my point about forecasts saying we are confusing weather with climate. I'm not arguing the timescale though, more pointing out that both short term and long term weather predictions contain a large amount of variables and both rely on computer modelling so are dependent on the data fed in.
You can measure the temperature of a cup of coffee very easily and accurately in a lab but as far as I'm aware no-one has a scaled down version of earth, its amoshpere and the solar system in a lab anywhere to perform the equivalent experiments.
It's not about measuring, it's about predicting, and no you cannot predicit accurately the temperature at any point in the coffee in the immediate perios after pouring - but once the system settles down it becomes predictable - and you can make broad general predictions, but nothing specific. Weather's the same. Long term weather isn't the same as climate - one is in weeks or even months while the other is in centuries or milleniaNew Scientist wrote:Even though the climate is chaotic to some extent, it can be predicted long in advance.
Climate is average weather, and it can vary unpredictably only within the limits set by major influences like the Sun and levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We might not be able to say whether it will rain at noon in a week's time, but we can be confident that the summers will be hotter than winters for as long as the Earth's axis remains tilted.
The validity of models can be tested against climate history. If they can predict the past (which the best models are pretty good at) they are probably on the right track for predicting the future - and indeed have successfully done so.
Clouded judgement
Climate modellers may occasionally be seduced by the beauty of their constructions and put too much faith in them. Where the critics of the models are both wrong and illogical, however, is in assuming that the models must be biased towards alarmism - that is, greater climate change. It is just as likely that these models err on the side of caution.
Most modellers accept that despite constant improvements over more than half a century, there are problems. They acknowledge, for instance, that one of the largest uncertainties in their models is how clouds will respond to climate change. Their predictions, which they prefer to call scenarios, usually come with generous error bars. In an effort to be more rigorous, the most recent report of the IPCC has quantified degrees of doubt, defining terms like "likely" and "very likely" in terms of percentage probability.
Indeed, one recent study suggests that the feedbacks in climate systems means climate models will never be able to tell us exactly how much warming to expect. However, there is no doubt that there will be warming.
Given the complexity of our climate system, most scientists agree that models are the best way of making sense of that complexity. For all their failings, models are the best guide to the future that we have.
Finally, the claim is sometimes made that if computer models were any good, people would be using them to predict the stock market. Well, they are!
A lot of trading in the financial markets is already carried out by computers. Many base their decisions on fairly simple algorithms designed to exploit tiny profit margins, but others rely on more sophisticated long-term models.
Major financial institutions are investing huge amounts in automated trading systems, the proportion of trading carried out by computers is growing rapidly and a few individuals have made a fortune from them. The smart money is being bet on computer models.
Of course, in some ways financial markets are much trickier to model than the climate, depending as they do on human behaviour. What's more, trading based on computer models alters the nature of the very thing you're trying to predict.0 -
I don't think this is a matter of left and right so much as those who accept scientific consensus and those who don't. The science on climate change is not controversial. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dio ... atmosphere . There are lots of other issues where this same phenomenon arises, such as evolution. As other posters have noted, we have seen this conflict throughout human history, usually with the added spice of religion. I don't mind folks having their own point of view, but it needs to be fact-based I think.0
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Nah it'll be the right wing capitalists that change things, look how Texans are now really into wind farms and oil engineering companies into supplying services for offshore wind and CCS. Its got sod all to do with collective responsibility and everything to do with creating an environment whereby being green makes money.
As for the left wing been more green, huh? Thats a joke right maybe the Guardian readers pretend to be, but the true left working classes like the worlds steel and car workers?
Still ultimatly humans won't be around as long as the earth, so why stress. 8)0 -
verylonglegs wrote:
Another point is you can't even get an accurate 5 day forecast yet they try and tell us what the weather will be in 30 years time. I remember reading the often reprinted story that we'll be able to grow grapes in the south of England soon...as far back as the early nineties I think it first appeared and since then the summers have become wetter, more upredictable and even less suited to producing these fantastic grape harvests.
Weather forecasts are much more accurate elsewhere in Europe than in the UK - remember, island next to a big ocean on one side, big continent on the other, the weather is bound to be very changeable and unpredictable here, and in other parts of Western Europe.
And you can grow grapes in the south of England. There are a few vineyards near where I live. Don't know if they're any good or not.0
