Climate change: Met Office shoots self in foot!

[j4bberw0ck]

More climate change rhubarb, this time from the Met Office, who set themselves a bet at 3 million to 1 on, and LOST (http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/01/update-false-se.html).

Not surprising they got it wrong though. I rather like the correlation between solar activity and other observable climate change effects here - and of course the lack or correlation with CO2 and energy generation:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/Slides/Presentation/Slide13.png

I'm sure Rheghead will have the all purpose excuses and get-outs close at hand. "Thousands of climate change scientists interested in prolonging their job funding forecast disaster"!

[oldchemist]

Carefully selected sub-sets of data can be made to show almost any trend. There is clearly very good correlation between coal/oil/gas consumption and global temperture in your set of curves. That is why the vast majority of climate scientists are alarmed. Even the politicians are beginning to take global warming seriously.

[the second coming]

As in the words of the great Homer (Simpson), statistics are meaningless, they can be used to prove anything.

Well there may be some truth in that statement and there may be a lot of varying data, beliefs, trends and spokespersons arguing this and that for or against the validity of global warming.

I have my own beliefs, and they are not reliant on any facts or figures, just a few decades of experience on this planet and the weather, tidal temperatures and what I understand from the history books. I believe the weather patterns are cyclic, but also human interference and in particular man's use and reliance on carbon based fuels has exagerated these cycles and acutely increased these changes. Changes which can only be affected by a drastic change in not only energy practice but waste management, recycling, packaging, materials production, farming. In short, the lot. Everyone is a bit of a hypocrite but it doesnt mean I/we/they can try and minimise their impacts and emissions. The earth will heal itself, but will the human race still be here to see it!:confused

I think to ignore or deny weather pattern changes is to well and truly stick ones head right in the sand. Well with rising water levels, hopefully the Darwin effect will remove these people from the gene pool![evil]

[j4bberw0ck]

Carefully selected sub-sets of data can be made to show almost any trend.


As in the words of the great Homer (Simpson), statistics are meaningless, they can be used to prove anything.

As indeed they are, all the time. Do you know what the mystery is for me? That carefully selected data are presented by the pro-anthropogenic- warming mob, and they're OK, because they "prove" that climate change is man-made and so lots more money has to be invested in research. Even when statisticians prove that errors have been made in both measurememt and treatment of input data. Ka-ching!

They also give governments reasons to raise taxes and take more control over economies and populations. Governments can't resist controls..... especially the one we've got.

Any data presented in support of an opposing view is decried as "climate change denial", or "carefully selected data sets". Quite automatically. This is the nub of my objection - there IS NO DEBATE. Just an assumption that it's anthropogenic and that all data to the contrary are wrong or "selected".



Even the politicians are beginning to take global warming seriously.

Heaven help us all. The politicians were first aboard the bandwagon - for the reasons given - with the exception of the USA, where politicians realised that "treaties" were worthless and unworkable and refused to join in the game. Experience has shown that the treaties were indeed worthless. Every signatory to Kyoto is in breach of its obligations.

[the second coming]

Its all a conspiracy then?

[Green_not_greed]

As in the words of the great Homer (Simpson), statistics are meaningless, they can be used to prove anything.

Did you know that 87.2% of statistics are made up on the spot?

[Torvaig]

Did you know that 87.2% of statistics are made up on the spot?

No, that's definitely not right; it is 75.8%!

[oldchemist]

You have to include the uncertainty - it is 87.2% +/- 20.2%.

[j4bberw0ck]

Its all a conspiracy then?

You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

I would suggest that politicians have regrettably short-term aims (i.e. a time horizon limited to the next election and what they need to do, or seen to be doing, or thought to be doing) to ensure their own re-election.

Climate change is a fantastic opportunity for them because they can make new laws, take charge of bits of the economy they'd not taken control of before, and increase their personal power dramatically whilst increasing their tax revenues. There's another wonderful characteristic of climate change that suits politicians down to the ground; they don't need to produce any tangible results. Nobody would expect the UK government, for instance, to be able to make any impact at all on climate change, but it's been fed to the population as "oh my god that just means we must sacrifice more! Try harder!" - and much of the population duly just accepts it and allows the government to push through changes in the name of climate change.

The worst thing that anyone can do in the name of climate change is to reduce the economy's ability to generate wealth. Having politicians dictate the workings of an economy is the worst of all worlds - think the USSR and central planning / supply-side management.

And purely as another example of central planning and supply-side management, think National Health Service. That clearly doesn't work properly, either.