Durkin down under

sever = server – sigh

It’d be nice if some of the arguments on the other side got more mainstream scrutiny and tough questioning similar to what John describes here.

They did – and they survived it. That’s how ideas become part of the scientific consensus.

plainly there’s substantial public interest in seeing whether there is scientific controversy

plainly? The pressure came from the ABC board, a bunch of conservative pundits appointed by an increasingly unpopular prime minister, in a country where pretty much everyone accepts the truth of global warming. I`m not sure that there was “plainly” any interest in this documentary outside the rarified atmosphere of the stupid right.

Oh yes, don’t worry your pretty little heads—the scientists will work it all out and tell you what to do. And their inherent nobility will ensure they reach the best conclusions possible.

poll after poll in australia has shown the public have already made up their mind: they accept the truth of human-induced climate change. the thing they’re worrying their “pretty little heads” about is why our government won’t do more about it.

anyway, i just don’t see the compelling public interest in having the national broadcaster air this silly documentary. just because an issue is of major public interest does not mean it’s the duty of a broadcaster to air some random yahoo’s uninformed, objectively incorrect views about it.

IIRC, when it was shown here in the UK, much the same happened. However, one specific part of the film that discussed the timing of past global warming events vis a vis the timing of carbon dioxide increases (where the climate warmed up to 800 years before carbon release began) got about two days of coverage in the media (at about the level of gee, that’s curious) and then disappeared without being resolved. Nobody denied that the timing was curious. Nobody explained it in terms of climate change. Nobody refuted it. Or perhaps all this happened in media that I don’t get exposed to–can someone enlighten me?

The ABC Q&A session was highly entertaining. You know that the sceptics have nothing left once they start attracting Larouche types. And what was all that bit about eugenics?

You forgot to mention the piquant bit of news that Tony Jones held no postmortem following Gore’s polemic. One must ask ‘why not’.

Can you please stop labeling your opponents “deniers”? It is extremely distasteful and arrogant, and leads me to think that you completely lack any sort of open mind and that you have a fanatical agenda of some sort. Painting sceptics of your claims as denialist lunatics just means I should be very wary of listening to anything you have to say.

That’s true John. However, Howard and Rudd haven’t made any movies which were screened on the ABC but that doesn’t stop Tony from asking ex-politicians to sit in judgement on certain political issues. Why doesn’t big Tony form a panel of experts and seek their opinions on Gore’s polemic? It’s been in the market place long enough for opinions to be formed.

vavatch — I beg to differ. Having debated these “sceptics” countless times in blog threads, one thing I’ve learned is that many of them steadfastly don’t listen to reason, even while protesting that sound science is their only guide. Most tellingly, their credulity in linking to the same denialist sites (ClimateAudit, junkscience.com, TCS, AEI, etc.) and the ease with they tar leading scientists such as James Hansen with having ulterior motives, is the textbook example of denial.

Go to denialism blog, my friends!

Can you please stop labeling your opponents “deniers”? It is extremely distasteful and arrogant, and leads me to think that you completely lack any sort of open mind and that you have a fanatical agenda of some sort. Painting sceptics of your claims as denialist lunatics just means I should be very wary of listening to anything you have to say.

Denialists and sceptics both exist within the global warming debate – sceptics will at least be given respect in general (at least on the better sites where discussion takes place), denialists shouldn’t be, as they are normally talking nonscience, or at best things that have been repeatedly debunked or disproved and easy explanations are available all over the web (and in scientific, replicable, studies).

Basically it is the difference between people who doubt the cost/benefits of the manned space programmes (sceptics) and people that think the moon landings were faked (denialists). Do you think that NASA should show respect to those claiming the moon landings were faked when their only evidence is just evidence of their own lack of knowledge of physics?

The scientific argument on climate change is basically over, and it is now simply a matter of degree. I am no longer willing to be respectful of denialists because they have the same scientific status as creationists. The people for whom this label is appropriate repeat discredited arguments, lie, and mislead. I respect scientific debates – I’m a scientist, after all – but when people inject deliberate distortions and falsehoods into the mix they are no longer worth engaging.

Here is a good example: the role of the Sun in climate change. We know that changes in the Sun could induce changes in climate, and we know that changes in the orbit of the Earth are responsible for things like ice ages. We’ve been monitoring the Sun for 30 years now, and it hasn’t done anything interesting over the past three decades. Other phenomena – changes in UV flux, cosmic rays, etc. – are in decline during the same period where the Earth is getting warmer. And yet we will see denialists claiming that the Sun is responsible for any temperature changes because Mars/Triton/Pluto/whatever is getting warmer. Mentioning the latter without acknowledging the former is a mark of either ignorance or dishonesty. (The ‘planet warming’ evidence is a mixture of thin evidence and other causes, if you’re interested). We see people making false claims about the climate record; false accusations of fraud against scientists whose only crime is a result that they don’t like; and the list goes on and on and on.

After enough time, you can fairly conclude that you’re dealing with people who really are in the business of denial rather than in the business of being a skeptic.

Bah, no one even realizes how fast technology is moving to allow us to make a profit controlling global warming, because they’re caught up debating if the Earth will swallow NYC (as Al Gore would have us believe), or it is all a conspiracy by the US-haters liberals as most on the right would have us believe. Wind power is already cheaper than natural gas fired power plants. Coupled with sodium-sulfur batteries, wind power can completely replace natural gas plants for just slightly over a gas plant’s cost. Does anyone believe that in 10 more years, these costs won’t continue to plummet as they already have (1981 $.31KwH 2007 $.06Kwh) making them cost effective enough that greedy corporations will be all over them?

So in 50 years, it is a pretty safe bet that coal plants won’t be cost effective and on their 10-20 year life-cycles will just be phased out. And since coal is the only major contributor of CO2 worth crying about, we can continue to burn all the petroleum in our giant silly tonca toys that we want. Or at least global warming won’t be a reason for controlling oil use.

Nu-cu-ler is also a pretty good option where the wind doesn’t blow.

It may be fair (though I think counterproductive) to label people who outright deny the existence of global warming with a label derived from the Holocaust; extending that label to people who are unconvinced, or who dispute specific sub-claims related to global warming, is disingenuous and needlessly insulting, and shows the name-caller’s close-mindedness.

People that are unconvinced of what? That seems like an entirely spurious addition to your argument. Are you trying to include people that don’t know even the basics of the subject and then try to discuss it online, then I have no more interest in avoiding insulting them either, as its not like the internet is an information desert on this subject.

The part about people who dispute specific sub-claims is exactly what I meant by sceptics, there are plenty of areas that need further research and modelling. It depends on the claim of course, when people start talking about Mars as some sort of barometer for whether the Sun is heating up or putting out more cosmic rays, then personally I feel free to insult them. If you want to discuss the modelling of the effects of cloud cover and how that might influence the temperature in 50 years time by +-0.2 degree or so, or the future estimated melt rates of Greenland/WAIS and therefore the estimated sea levels in a couple of decades time then fair enough, as those areas need work and will likely inform policy at a later date. The uncertainties are small enough not to know that we are warming the world, by a noticeable amount, sea levels are going to rise, and people are going to be effected.

There is no doubt given current knowledge that we should at least be funding CO2 reductions – anything that is long term economically beneficial on its own terms for now, but also non-CO2 increasing energy source research should be being funded by all the industrialised nations far more.

For example the US subsidies what is a risky industry given this science (Oil) for in the region of $20-55 billion (ignoring any possibility that the Iraq war might count as a subsidy to the industry) and Coal was granted a $9 billion subsidy in 2005 in excess of the others it gets. These are mature industries that should be funding themselves, especially given the possible climate change externalities that they aren’t paying for yet. All forms of renewable energy get less than a billion, or maybe 2-3% of the funding just the oil part of the CO2 producing energy companies get. Not smart government spending given the likely challenges we have ahead. The EU isn’t much better btw, but it has been improving in recent years at least, the US has been getting worse as the evidence gets more compelling.