ooo controversial
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 13:57, 12 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Warm or cool
I think pumping less shit into the atmosphere is a good idea regardless.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 14:15, Reply)

yeah I agree
I wish people would stop being so insistent about things when they clearly are far from certain.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 14:16, Reply)

me too
The jury is still out as far as I can see.

cf. GM food
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 14:19, Reply)

It doesn't help that
people that don't agree with the global warming concensus are treated as if they're denying the holocaust.

The sun is exhibiting extremely low sunspot activity at the moment. This means the heliosphere isn't it large or intense as usual and so there's a marked increase in interstellar cosmic rays reaching the Earth which tend to increase cloud cover.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 14:35, Reply)

Also the models are a bit biased
remember that model that was run a couple of years ago, and it showed a graph showing the rise in temperature became steadily steeper. But then someone extrapolated the graph backwards and found that using that model, the previous decades were not as warm as the model would predict.

It's getting a bit fanatical. If you don't agree, then you're practically committing heresy.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 14:40, Reply)

I take your point about committing heresy...
...but I think it's a little unfair. Yes, it's true that everyone gets upset when the view is challenged. However, it depends an awful lot on how the view is challenged.

If you want to present a reasonable selection of scientific evidence to suggest that the current predicted trend is wrong, please write it up or present it appropriately, and then expect to defend yourself against questions from various learned climate boffins. (Similarly, you'll get a barrage of questions if you present a paper strengthening the case for global warming).

If, however, this paper gets leaked to the press, they'll jump on it like a bunch of starved flies onto a freshly-laid turd. Unfortunately they only seem to enjoy reporting the "odd-ones-out." For every theory presented, there will be someone who has a strong case for disagreeing with it. And for every theory presented, there will be someone who will flatly deny it could ever happen. Therefore if the counterargument is:
1. Flatly denying that global temperature fluctuations are an issue
2. Denying that global temperatures have been rising
3. Claiming that all other global circulation models used in these predictions are just talking shit
4. Presented by Jeremy Clarkson
then it will be laughed out of court.

Problem with this particular report? It comes as little surprise that 1998 was warmer, on the whole, than 2007/8. If you take a look at the global temperature 'curve,' ironically enough, it's not a smooth curve. It fluctuates up and down like nobody's business. There are fluctuations of a few degrees, with periods of a few years, so you'll get "cold decades" and "warm decades" along the way - very roughly speaking, obviously - but, unfortunately, the overall trend of the temperature on the graph is still up.
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 14:59, Reply)

Did you see that programme on Channel 4 a couple of years back
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TqqWJugXzs&feature=related (Part 1 of 9)

it caused an uproar, scientists complained to Channel 4 that it was showing a biased view etc etc.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 15:06, Reply)

Are you surprised?
"Mr Durkin [the producer] admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. 'There was a fluff there,' he said. If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the NASA website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940—although that would have undermined his argument. 'The original NASA data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find,' Mr Durkin said."

That wasn't even a scientist - it was a column in the Independent. Later, Ofcom ruled that at least two scientists - who broadly supported the idea of global warming as an issue - were misrepresented in the way their interviews were used and edited
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 16:29, Reply)

it's the reporting of it that I take issue with
trends may be up, but not all that long ago trends were down. These things happen in cycles and unquestionably there are a lot of different things that are having an impact on global temperatures, a number of which are mentioned in that article, which is quite refreshing. Generally though it is put across as "Carbon dioxide is destroying the planet!"

I don't know anywhere near enough about it to take sides.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 15:34, Reply)

Sadly I think most of the reporting done by your average journalist on climate change
can be put under the 'bad science' tag, as defined by Ben Goldacre. They have bad habits of

1.only making a major headline out of anything which is controversial or sensational - I only had to Google 'bad science' and found this on the front page of this guy's blog.
2. oversimplifying everything -
The biggest problem with reporting climate change, admittedly, is the sheer complexity of the problem. You can't, in your average newspaper article, go into detail about how elevated levels of CO₂ will reduce the amount of longwave radiation escaping to space, with the knock-on effect of increasing evaporation of water vapour, which in turn traps more radiation, and will go on to affect the salinity of the oceans and god-knows-what responses their vast, slow overturning cycles will have to that, with surplus heat having funny effects on your Hadley cells, NAOs, QBOs, etc, etc, etc.

However, to say "Carbon dioxide is destroying the planet" is an unbelievable oversimplification, as well as being incredibly misleading.

Similarly, to then grab one lone paper such as the one linked above and say "Oh, we're alright then, it was just one big sham" is just as much of an oversimplification, as if all the climate scientists would take a read of that publication, mop their brows and say, "Phew! That was a close one. Oh, well, looks like we can go home early. Pub, anyone?"
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 12 Oct 2009, 16:41, Reply)

I'll just fix this shall I?

( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Mon 12 Oct 2009, 17:26, Reply)

George Bush was right!
He may be a mong, but he was right about the kyoto protocol. It makes no sense for the US (even more so for the UK) to sign up, when the major polluters haven't.

As a tiny, tiny island the amount of Co2 we pump into the atmosphere is largely moot. I realise that you 'must start somewhere' but to penalise people for doing something that is unproven is a daft idea.

There's considerable debate about wether or not Co2 actually has any harmful effect at all. If our Co2 emmissions have risen 15% in 10 years (according to one BBC article), then how come the global temp. has actually slightly fallen? Admittedly, this is not a good argument, but it has changed the views of many prominent scientists - notably the chap who used to head the EU climate change group. He is now convinced that even at 20% Co2 in our air, it would make no difference to the temperature and he also claimed that governments from all sides were pressuring him to lie and claim that temperatures had risen.

He left, blew the whistle and is now discredited and laughed at as a fool. A fool he is not. If he were a fool, he would never have risen to that position in the first place.
(dchurch bah, Tue 13 Oct 2009, 18:52, Reply)