ozzieeagle

Like the frantic belief that humans are totally responsible for Climate Change ? A classic case of Science creating a new religion.

Personally I prefer to look at history and the constant lessons what mankind generally believes to be true in one age inevitably becomes unravelled. Especially when they put themselves at the center of something. .... Such as Climate Change.

Changing the subject slightly... My son goes to school with a kid who's father is one of the main Quantum Physicists in Australia... visits to Cern etc. They definitely have transported particles... and seemingly back in time. So another firmly held belief re time and space is about to become unravelled as well.

This bloke here...

http://qcvictoria.com/About-QCV/QCV-...drew-Greentree

PS stand by for the possibility of self producing Bacterial based computer Memory as well.... That could be coming out of CSIRO....or a Aussie invention.

Burbage

I don't think too many scientists are responsible for it. There are a lot of computer modellers, politicians, ecoloonies and demagogues responsible for the transfer of a tenuous scientific hypothesis into the BIGGEST FACT IN THE WORLD!

The fact is there there is no experimental evidence for man made global warming, there is no close correlation between human activity and climate behaviour. There has been no scientific debate on why the warming we are seeing is not completely natural (as has been the case for every climate change for 3.5 billion years). And people keep failing to point out that if we're going to grow enough food to feed 9 billion human beings we will need a warmer planet with more carbon dioxide. And, of course, the fact that fossil fuel is a finite resource is conveniently forgotten.

So to go back to the original point of the thread: There is no question that a lack of scientific thinking in the population as a whole has allowed a government to add an entirely new tax based on spurious pseudoscientific spin and get away with it.

sonlymewalter

everyone to their own mate, wouldn't do for all of us to be the same

I went whale watching

Pollyana

I keep thinking I should do that, but I'd rather do boat trips round Tassie with seals and penguins I know whales are amazing creatures but they don't really hold that magic for me! As you say, wouldn't do if we were all the same.

Wol

Cor! I leave a thread for 24 hours in Sydney and what a hornet's nest............

My point was not that everyone must know all about basic physics - any more than they should know all about the Tudors - butthere is a real and important difference between unproveable belief and science.

Swerve-o makes the point clearly:

>>This is the key difference between science and belief. Science works on the basis of evidence, and can be considered to be a constantly changing flux of evidence and theories. Belief on the other hand relies on dogmatic acceptance of what is being told, and doesn't accept any questioning of that teaching. It also conveniently obviates the need to seek any evidence for its support because you have to accept it 'on faith' or be cast out as a denier.<<

OzzieEagle shows how mistaken people can be:

>>Like the frantic belief that humans are totally responsible for Climate Change ? A classic case of Science creating a new religion.<<

No reputable climate scientist, nor the IPCC, has EVER "believed" or said that. IIRC the IPCC regards their prognostications at 95% probability. Science almost never can say that something is 100% correct - and that in fact is its strength. It is always open to more evidence coming forward to hone or even overturn our understanding of things.

(But I am not going to rise to the climate bait - I don't claim to be able to understand even a small percentage of the data or conclusions, I just look at which group of debaters I find more "believable".)

Edited: BTW, I can't really believe the YouTube video was genuine, but can't find anything in Snopes about it. Perhaps someone can?

Bernieboy

There was a few fat birds in the pub,so a bit of whale watching was done n all

lesleys

They repeated that test in the video in Australia for the Catalyst program. They got more or less the same result.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3323822.htm

Wol, I totally agree with you.

How do people choose which science to 'believe'? How does the climate change non-believer feel about the science involved in flying an aircraft? Is that real? Is medical science for real? Do they believe in GPS? (That relies on the theory of relativity being correct).

BTW, man-made carbon dioxide is distinguishable from naturally made CO2, so it is perfectly possible to know how much humans are contributing above nature.

Bix

Exactly

It will have made in China or made in USA on it.

cresta57

Interesting that you refer to it as CO2, how do you feel about paying three times the price? The tax is on carbon yet the calcs are done using CO2. In other words we're paying for twice as much oxygen as carbon.

lesleys

I'm hoping to make a profit - I plant lots of trees.

BadgeIsBack

No chance of that - as long as the physicists and engineers know what they are doing we'll be fine. And it was your generation that invented all the alternative stuff, surely? :-)

Where I agree with you: I think what has happened is that the standard of general education has gone down amongst the university population. My parent's generation (you) who saw an O level Physics or Maths paper really had to know their stuff otherwise it was CSE.

Now the same thing in GCSE is awful - there was an article in the Uk press the other day - I saw it when looking up the rugby.

You'll like this - only attractive girls get good 'A' level results and every year they get better.... I've being saying this for years! Every time they publish 'A' level results its always girls who get the photos!

http://sexyalevels.tumblr.com/

Burbage

No one is disagreeing that carbon dioxide levels have gone up. No one is disagreeing that the world is getting a bit warmer. There is also an exponential increase in the number of silicon chips over the same period. What has not been shown by anyone is a causation. You could equally say that a rapid increase in global temperatures is the result of the increase in silicon chips.

Here's an experiment. If the carbon dioxide change in the atmosphere can cause a significant difference to the greenhouse effect then the temperature on a cloudless midwinter night in the desert should be significantly warmer today than it was 50 years ago, since the only thing that has changed in that scenario is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (since the sun, the heat island effect of cities and water vapour have been eliminated). Have a look at some weather station data. There is no difference. This means that the earth is losing heat at night at the same rate, or possibly faster, as it has always done. Which means that the greenhouse effect (which is why our planet doesn't go to absolute zero when the sun goes down) is at the very least, the same, but certainly not "significantly" more heat retaining than before. And CO2 can ONLY affect the greenhouse effect. Ergo, it's not CO2 that is causing global warming.

sonlymewalter

Put it on your bucket list and do it mate

Pollyana

Done them already but still love going back and doing them again. There's a spot on Bruny Island off Tassie where you can sit in the evening and just watch the penguins coming out of the water and walking up the dunes, totally wild and peaceful....time I paid it another visit I think

Swerv-o

The problem that I have with the CO2 debate is that it doesn't seem to follow the normal form of a scientific investigation, with a suggested alternative hypothesis being investigated to attempt to disprove the status quo that man made CO2 emissions are having an effect on climate change (null hypothesis).

However, what seems to be presented here is predictive modelling data with no supporting investigation that is being presented as fact. And what further troubles me is that this is now being seen as the default position, and that the null hypothesis is now somehow required to justify its position with evidence and facts. This, IMHO, is plain wrong. In traditional scientific investigation, the null hypothesis just sits pretty until it is disproved by new discovery.

I think that there seems to be some loss of objectivity in the scientific community over this, and as Burbage says, there's no real experimental investigation, just reliance on predictive modelling and a set of disparate samples spread across a range of different sampling techniques. I am yet to see a method that accurately describes how the data that has been collected has been accurately normalised across such an array of different sets of data. How on earth do you compare CO2 data based on core samples with that taken by satellite imaging?

I am willing to be convinced that it is the case, yet I feel that the science is still too self serving at the moment, and isn't really doing a convincing job of making the case. Maybe this is more the fault of the way that science has come to be funded, and the publish or die mentality of researchers these days. It's entirely possible that the days of truly altruistic and impartial scientific investigation are over. And we will be worse for it if it is...


S