Even more surprising
was to find on the newspaper yesterday that the hole in the ozone layer has stopped the Antartic from melting, and that once it's fully recovered, the temperature in the pole will increase by 3oC.

I don't know what to believe anymore. I'm all for recycling and not wasting, but that's just common sense, I think. Now, making us feel guilty for something that's not our fault so someone has an excuse to take our money in the name of science and protection of the environment...

What'll be next.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Wed 2 Dec 2009, 7:47, 2 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

I found it in English
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/janetdaley/100018432/newsflash-hole-in-ozone-layer-a-good-thing/
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Wed 2 Dec 2009, 7:49, Reply)

Just read her biography at the top of the page
then read the title of that article. Now think.

It's hardly a balanced piece is it.

The title alone makes it a fairly worthless piece of journalism, as does the sloppy writing in the first paragraph (i didn't read any more of it) regardless of the effect of the shrinking of the hole in the ozone layer, it's presence in the first place (the cause of which was vigorously denied by people with a vested interest in CFC production) clearly wasn't very good in general as it does lead to more UV radiation getting through which has lead to more skin cancer. Any journalist who reduces the effects of anything to "good" and "bad" or in the daily mails case to "causes cancer" and "saves you from cancer" is shit journalism.

Don't get your scientific opinions from newspapers, in may cases they are totally incapable of reporting science in a way which is even factually correct.

Read scientific papers if you want to form an opinion based on facts, Ben Goldacres Bad Science website is very good in terms of providing links to good sources of info, be aware that he is a bit of a lefty so again, there isn't a totally balanced viewpoint, but at least he backs up any opinions with actual evidence.
(Bazongaloid, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:08, Reply)

Oh, well
As I said, that's what I found in English. If you want, I can post the scientific version I read in Spanish yesterday. Will that make you happy?

I still think they only play with our fears, same as they do with the terrorism, to make us think and act. And I don't like it.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:13, Reply)

Calm down dear
The changes in world climate are probably caused by a combination of human activity with natural cycles and freak events. It is not certain which ingredient is having the greater effect.

There is no guarentee that if the whole of mankind reduced its input to zero (we all fucked of on holiday to Mars for 50 years) that this would be enough to stop the planet changing too much. But we don't know also, that by reducing the human input quite a bit, this may be enough to stop the planet changing too much.

Simply put we do not know what is absolutley correct, but doing something may help.

I am absolutley certain about this, and will never change my mind.

On the other hand.....
( Bartleby A dead man on vacation, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:02, Reply)

But I agree with you
I only think the way it's sold to us is rubbish. I can't go through the "Stop wasting, save the planet" thing. I'll stop wasting because I think wasting is silly. But I'm clever enough to know that they have no way to prove that me not wasting will save the planet. On the same manner, they have no way to prove that me wasting will drive us to hell.

I think I do more than most people (recycle, reuse and don't have a car is quite a lot this days, I could go further) but nobody blackmails me!
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:06, Reply)

You have to realise
that most people can't be bothered, or simply don't understand, the science behind this massive global system. As such the only way to explain to these people is by simplification, sadly they then think the simplified version is true, rather than being a way to understand something more complicated.

The way this ought to be communicated is by balanced journalism, but it doesn't happen because the journalists are as stupid and as lazy as the people they are supposed to be educating and you end up with contradictory stories all over the place and so the man (or woman) on the street doesn't know what to believe and dismisses it all as "It's bollocks innit"
(Bazongaloid, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:23, Reply)

So you agree with me
The way they sell it is rubbish.

Maybe, if the so clever scientits and politics started to think about us like people, intelligent people, and explain things to us properly, it would work better.
(Aberracion Life's getting very complicated, but a lot of fun., Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:25, Reply)

The problem is
that there aren't that many 'clever' people among newspaper readership. So if you presented the facts in a scientific manner, hardly anyone would understand it properly, and there would be complaints that scientists were using fancy language to hide the truth.

I'm a scientist myself, but climate science is not my field, and I'd struggle to understand all of the science behind global warming. It's a hellishly complex problem. One problem is that scientists can only work with the data they have, but they haven't got enough accurate temperature data over a long enough period to do proper extrapolation. Therefore the errors in the models are large (although becoming smaller) and so at either side of the mean there's going to be a big deviation.

Climate changer deniers will immediately latch onto a stray result which says the earth is going to cool by 2°C in the next 100 years, because in some circumstances a model will output such a result due to the errors in prediction.

Remember it's a statistical prediction. And statistics are bollocks if read incorrectly. Concorde was for many years the safest aircraft type in the sky. Then one day, one of them crashed. And immediately it became the most dangerous aircraft type.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:33, Reply)

And similarly, when the Telegraph reported
a "50% rise in the risk of heart conditions if you used ibuprofen," what they actually meant was that one year, 4 people in 100-or-so had suffered heart complications, and it was 6 people the following year. Twats.
(LongJohnBaldry, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 10:52, Reply)

You have it there
Try not to feel guilty. You do what you can, and will do more if you can.
( Bartleby A dead man on vacation, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 8:23, Reply)

We do what we must because we can
for the good of all of us except the ones who are dead.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 9:10, Reply)

But there's no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
(bill, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 10:36, Reply)