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Here's what generally bothers me about the whole issue - why, if the global warming side of the argument is so conclusive, can't or won't that side of the argument come up with a public discourse on the issue that explains the rough outline and how they have an air-tight case? Listening to this hour and a half, Lord Christopher sounds like he nailed it out of the ballpark. Yes, a person can misuse and mislead facts but - its easy to see what he's saying as more credible when the global warming side of the argument likes to promote their outlook based on almost pure emotion. Do they think that the public is just too stupid to get it? Something's still wrong with that whole picture. I sure as hell don't want to get sunk into arguing for something that I know is the wrong side of things, realistically though like a lot of people - my tendency is to look at who has integrity, who doesn't, and believe those who have it as opposed to those who don't; particularly when they have an argument that's more structured than Armagheddon movies and 'look at the poor polar bear on the melting piece of ice'. If the anti-global warming side is tantamount to ID, I think Al Gore's probably doing about the biggest disservice to the Earth's future one person can do by making sound sense look like Michael Moore output to brainwash hip and trendy liberal arts students.

Global warming is not the issue for me.
It that we are polluting our habitat and we need to clean up our act. The EPA was created because A RIVER CAUGHT ON FIRE!! People in London & LA died from 'Toxic Fogs'. Over 85% of the Earths forest have been cut down in the last 200 years (and no we didn't replant). I could rant for hours on the toxic mess we have.

This pirate attitude business.. Rape, pillage, and leave ruin behind has destroyed much of our lands & our economy.

We are basically little dots running around on this little speck in space.. we cannot destroy the Earth, we can only destroy ourselves.

If CO2 cap & trade makes industry clean up it's act more.... I'll vote for it. Now all we need is the rest of the world to go along with it.

I live in Cleveland, the Cuyahoga river caught fire perhaps a dozen times from the turn of the century up through the late 60's? The zebra muscles likely helped some, also better pollution controls. From the technology we've been pushing and the EPA standards it seems like we're getting better with time at this point rather than worse. As you've mentioned there are many areas that need marked improvement - everyone wants that and the technology is continuously improving.


We're caught in this nasty tangle though, cap in trade would have terrible consequences for any economy that followed it - which I can assure you would be almost wholly the current first world. The one thing I have to agree with this video on for certain, as of right now the richer the country the better the pollution controls. The other problem of course is the strength of democracy and the fatigue the countries who support it would be weighed under.

What everyone hopes for is that we can improve green technology at a rapid pace but do so without committing economic suicide. One way we smash the economy hoping to have an immediate result that technically doesn't come as its only a handful of countries, the other way is that it comes along more gradually (perhaps a twenty year curve where toward the end green technology is more common than not), and it happens without needing to straightjacket everything from the way business is done now to how much meat a person can cook or how high they can turn their thermostat up. The idea of that small amount of time making the difference between a climate catastrophe of Armageddon proportions or not having it at all seems far fetched and even deceptive. On the other hand could the world economy be changed for ever in the worst ways which would even further revert to worse pollution? I think its likely.

The argument you refer to is mainly carried out by journalists and politicians, and it is fair to say that neither one side nor the other conduct themselves in a particularly convincing manner, if you view from a perspective of actually having read papers in scientific journals that discuss the many areas related to the subject. And with regard to those papers I'm not talking about a yes or no on the current warming but the myriad of papers that deal with the earth's climate both now and millions of years back in geological time, going nowhere near the anthropogenic warming discussion. Most people who've read enough to inform themselves in that manner will, I suggest, at least consider the anthropogenic warming argument a possibility.

Of course it's impossible at present to say categorically that things are happening one way or the other, even if most of the science points to it being likely. Like most things in life it's a matter of managing risk sensibly. As an example, say a new guy moves in down the road and two people you know say he's a child molestor, with two others of your acquaintance telling you that he's most definately not. If you've got kids, then what do you do? You don't know for sure one way or the other if the guy is, but the consequences of you assuming he's not, if he really is, are too terrible to contemplate. So, you act as if he is as far as keeping your kids away goes, whilst giving him the benefit of the doubt in less critical areas like by at least being polite if you meet him on the street. That's sensibly managing risk. You certainly wouldn't lynch the guy -- that would be disproportionate. With the anthropogenic warming, it would be disproportionate to go to the lengths some environmentalist suggest. However, considering the consequences if we completely ignore the warnings on warming, and they turn out to be valid, then it's wise to take steps to move away from use of fossil fuels, and to invest more in, say, nuclear and other technology.

Indeed check out http://polesapart.com/ basically this guy decided to use his own money to get to the truth of the matter. His method was to hunt down the most eminent scientists on both sides of the argument, bring them together and have the debate. In a nutshell he found that they all agreed that anthropogenic warming was a reality. The line of demarcation being the level of that warming. The sceptics reckon up to 1 degrees c
against their opposition who believe it will be at least 2 degrees and possible a lot higher. It is that 1 degree difference that is the major issue. A 2 degree increase is regarded having major consequences for life on this planet.

By the way this exercise cost him over $500k

This one's actually quite nasty both ways - ie. the possibility of global climate meltdown and reduction of human life down to less than possibly 500 million, the other being that the need for concern is a propaghandist take over bid built by people who wish to head world government out of the UN and run the whole world the way Chavez runs Venezuela.

That's why it sickens me that you can't get coherent facts out of the general discourse on the topic - this isn't exactly a debate like marijuana legalization or whether someone wants 'In God We Trust' on a coin, its quite lethal in its consequentiality.

Thanks for the link, looks like a lot of good stuff. I'd also have to give the guy who did put the investment into trying to resolve the argument a lot of credit, I wish there were more standup people out there like that (with the money of course).

It is interesting someone who knows so much about logical fallacies doesn't know strawman.

Of course he uses rhetoric and name calling, he is a politician after all. He was one of the Thatcher sleaze doctors. Look at him milk his life peerage. Soon life peers will be abolished, and the second chamber will have elected members.

But the interesting point is, he isn’t worse than the other side. He has a point, but ironically he is not that different from them.

Personally I think his divisiveness is not going to help the situation.

Climate change is going to be a problem to our survival at some point. Regardless of wether we have caused it. Pointing fingers does not help, neither does the myth of “sustainability”. Nothing in nature is sustainable. The solutions that are offered, there is no evidence that they will make any real difference. Solving a problem like climate change requires forward thinking and radical ideas, not backward thinking and primitive ideas.

There is a major point here, yes there are scientists agreeing on climate change but thereafter it gets swept up in “real politic”. The scientists are partly to blame.

That joker is not more a scientist than Gore. They deserve each other.

The funny thing, I don't mind him or Gore speaking with some amount of authority on the topic when they've both asked scientists, tried to get the most accurate 'layman's' readout of the situation, and try to put the pieces together. Watson and Crick for example, the guys who discovered the double helix for DNA, were jokers in that sense themselves - they just pilfered everyone else's individual research (mainly because everyone assumed they were such harmless amateurs that they'd never win the research race), what they did to is take the best knowledge from each camp and collate it together whereas each of the other hopefuls who wanted their names to the accurate discovery of the structure were still reproducing eachother's experiments needlessly. Scientists also, as a breed, aren't the types to go out in the public sphere and rally a cry of public awareness usually - takes a different kind of person more often the likes of what you'd find in an editorialist or radio talkshow host (may not be the highest persuasion in many people's books but still alter boys when compared to most politicians).

I'm just saying that as long as these guys know what they have or what they don't have and are careful to take the facts and work forward its fine, if they play fast and loose however that's a whole other matter.