# AVFour Loon Conference 26-28 March



## Paul Marsh (Mar 9, 2010)

Some of you will have seen this advertised, indeed I even considered wondering down for a bit of debate and jesting:

http://avfour.co.uk/index.php

What staggered me is the pricing - there really is gold in them thar hills:

http://avfour.co.uk/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=1

I have written a small critique of AVFour here, and am going to try and smoke some its organisers out on the Icke forum to see how their justify prices. 

I shall report back in due course!


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## Ungrateful (Mar 9, 2010)

It is depressing to see my childhood hero Johnny Ball joining forces with the cranks and the paranoiacs. 

The shock of seeing that, well, a present day analogy for you kids would be like discovering that Cat Deeley was Holocaust denier.


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## fogbat (Mar 9, 2010)

She is


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## butchersapron (Mar 9, 2010)

Paul Marsh said:


> What staggered me is the pricing - there really is gold in them thar hills:
> 
> http://avfour.co.uk/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=1
> 
> ...



Bloody hell, they top those ones at bristol you asked if i could go to! £169 for the 2-days. £20 for Johnny Ball's climate-change denial lecture _alone_


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## Louis MacNeice (Mar 9, 2010)

butchersapron said:


> Bloody hell, they top those ones at bristol you asked if i could go to! £169 for the 2-days. £20 for Johnny Ball's climate-change denial lecture _alone_




Worth it for Gareth Icke alone I'd have thought. Does he bring on a special guest for his encore?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice


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## TitanSound (Mar 9, 2010)

.


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## Sgt Howie (Mar 9, 2010)

Ungrateful said:


> It is depressing to see my childhood hero Johnny Ball joining forces with the cranks and the paranoiacs.
> 
> The shock of seeing that, well, a present day analogy for you kids would be like discovering that Cat Deeley was Holocaust denier.



I once spoke to Ball on the phone and he was a complete prick, I'm still scarred by the trauma to this day.

As for the prices at this conference, well, you know what they say about fools and their money. Which in turn means the organisers may be many things but aren't fools.


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## Paul Marsh (Mar 10, 2010)

Well no one from AVfour has come forward yet to justify their pricing, although I did have one of the former organisers of the UK 9/11 'truth' movement argue on my blog the sort of "everyone charges, you charge for things line"

They are charging £60 for a one day conference for fucks sake!


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## fogbat (Mar 10, 2010)

Tinfoil is expensive, alright?


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## mike desantos (Mar 10, 2010)

You should have gone to the Cynthia McKinney meeting the other night mate , it was free.  You might have learned something from a woman 
of great intelligence, courage and integrity.


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## xes (Mar 10, 2010)

Paul Marsh said:


> Well no one from AVfour has come forward yet to justify their pricing, although I did have one of the former organisers of the UK 9/11 'truth' movement argue on my blog the sort of "everyone charges, you charge for things line"
> 
> They are charging £60 for a one day conference for fucks sake!


It's not _that_ expensive really. How much is it for a decent concert ticket? Football? About the same? What about a festival for the weekend, how much is glastonbury? 

Spiritual peoples and conspiranoids need to earn a living too. If this is how they do it, and there's an audience, so what? You're not giving them your money, why does it matter so much to you? Do you phone the festivals up and ask them why they charge so much? Seems a little odd to me.


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## Sgt Howie (Mar 10, 2010)

xes said:


> It's not _that_ expensive really. How much is it for a decent concert ticket? Football? About the same? What about a festival for the weekend, how much is glastonbury?
> 
> Spiritual peoples and conspiranoids need to earn a living too. If this is how they do it, and there's an audience, so what? You're not giving them your money, why does it matter so much to you? Do you phone the festivals up and ask them why they charge so much? Seems a little odd to me.



Follow the Money. Cui Bono? Etc etc.


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## butchersapron (Mar 10, 2010)

Don't help him!


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## Jazzz (Mar 10, 2010)

oh god, not you


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## Paul Marsh (Mar 11, 2010)

Sgt Howie said:


> Follow the Money.




There should be plenty of it..........


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## butchersapron (Mar 11, 2010)

Jazzz said:


> oh god, not you


Yep, me. (Or Paul or Sgt Howie - not sure who you were getting ready to run away from this time)


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

Paul Marsh said:


> Some of you will have seen this advertised, indeed I even considered wondering down for a bit of debate and jesting:
> 
> http://avfour.co.uk/index.php
> 
> ...



Dunno why you've suddenly gone so pro-establishment. Do you not agree with the blurb under the Bellamy and Ball sections? Seen the shit that state-funded agencies like ACTONCO2 come out with? Have you spoken to normal people outside of your ultra-liberal milieu? The only ones I know who buy into this carbon con are real dunces.


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## Paul Marsh (Mar 11, 2010)

Hi Ern - Long time no chat. 

Climate change denial is a small percentage of conspiraloon output, so I am not sure how disagreeing with them on that single issue makes me pro-establishment. (Although I do disagree with them) 

But, as I'm taking my PhD at the University of East Anglia, perhaps I would!


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

I think we're told a lot of bullshit about global warming. Not sure I'd go as far to deny that man entirely influences the climate but there is a hell of a lot of bollocks about it thats pretty much akin to "end times" nutters


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

Paul Marsh said:


> Hi Ern - Long time no chat.
> 
> Climate change denial is a small percentage of conspiraloon output, so I am not sure how disagreeing with them on that single issue makes me pro-establishment. (Although I do disagree with them)
> 
> But, as I'm taking my PhD at the University of East Anglia, perhaps I would!



Hi mate been a long time. The phrase 'climate change denial' is so politically loaded, it sets off alarm bells straight away. Every Geography
 Teacher I know would be dismissed as 'loons' if you followed this Monbiot-Gore mantra, as none of them are fans of this cod-scientific eco con. However I have come across one teacher who was a right Green loon - she was trying to teach kids that the Asian tsunami was down to 'global warning'. Criticise the lizard dudes all you like but they have nothing to do with the millions of left-leaning people who don't buy into the latest brand of the politics of fear.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> I think we're told a lot of bullshit about global warming. Not sure I'd go as far to deny that man entirely influences the climate but there is a hell of a lot of bollocks about it thats pretty much akin to "end times" nutters



Here here. Of course we pollute the air but if you listened to some of the cranks you'd think armageddon was approaching and Saint George and Saint Bono were going to judge us. SPIKED for their faults have some great articles on the issue.


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

Whenever I see that loon James Lovelock or half the stuff in the independent i cant help but be reminded of this:


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## kyser_soze (Mar 11, 2010)

*sits back and awaits the onslaught of the sci-tech forum peeps who don't know _le trolle superieure_*

Altho I would ask you both to identify which bits of the science you find so disagreeable.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> Whenever I see that loon James Lovelock or half the stuff in the independent i cant help but be reminded of this:



Lol. The Independent is the maddest of the lot. Much more than the Guardian which  judging by their Cif posters the tide is turning amongst their readership. urbean will be more to the loony fringe because a lot of free-thinking socialists and communists have left.
Have a look in the Gordian for a cif by some shock jock called Sunny who claimed the BBC were a 'denialist' propaganda vehicle...


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

I never said that I dont agree with global warming, that it doesn't happen etc, and there are a ton of examples of humans' destuctive impacts on the environment. But I do seriously question the extent of it, and there have been a few things which have happened that convince me that much of the so-called green agenda isnt really much to do with protecting the environment but (especially in poor countries) almost as a form of imperialism, because it impedes the development of poor countries which are trying to create an industrial base. In addition some of the arguments used domestically have a rather anti-w/c tone, having a go at people for not bothering to do recylcing and the like and having a go at people for being profligate in their waste of energy - ie its your fault basically going on cheap holidays all the time, and arguments against reducing the prices either domestically in the west or in poor countries, of flying. See the arguments over plain stupid and the like. 

Others can explain this much better than I can but I think that other environmental problems like pollution etc are also starting to be overlooked as a result of this. Also, haven't there been witch hunts carried out against scientists who have questioned the official line? 


I probably come across as really ignorant and I know others can explain the scientific and political aspects better than me but something always came across as quite wrong about the whole thing...


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## kyser_soze (Mar 11, 2010)

So your objections are political, and you think the science has been over-egged/wrong?

I tend to agree with this view when it comes to the longer predictive models FWIW - there's too much that is still poorly or not understood at all for the 'If we go over this much X events will happen' predictions, but the rest of your comments are a bit Daily Mail-esque, especially the stuff about flying.


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

Basically yeah. I don't think the science is necessarily wrong butits certainly sensationalised, as in scientists making a paper predicting that catastrophics events may occur in 200 years and the Independent or whatever getting hold of it and extrapolating from that that we're all going to die in20 years.

I take your point btw about the flying, i don't think i explained it very well in my post. Danny la Rouge did an excellent post on it a while back.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> So your objections are political, and you think the science has been over-egged/wrong?
> 
> I tend to agree with this view when it comes to the longer predictive models FWIW - there's too much that is still poorly or not understood at all for the 'If we go over this much X events will happen' predictions, but the rest of your comments are a bit Daily Mail-esque, especially the stuff about flying.



I think 'frog' said it perfectly and a lot more eloquently than i could manage to. She is right about the flying stuff too. Ultraliberals have this idea that they represent the left opposition to capitalism. Left-wingers can have views on the environment, law and order, immigration, racism and society in total opposition to the liberal agenda but as they control the media and state we are lumped in with the right.


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## xes (Mar 11, 2010)

HOLY SHIT, IT'S ERNY!! 

 Hello Ernesto  You've been "missed"


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

What pissed me off was the outrage from environmental types about the Tata Nano in India, the worlds cheapest car. I actually thought it was a very good thing that millions of dirt poor Indians who previously were unable to afford a car would now be able to, and it seemed to be constructed in quite a safe way. But no, this didn't really matter that millions of the world's poorest people in India (and across the world as well) could now improve their lives quite significantly, and in many cases have access to the city fm remote villages, instead we got a whole lot liberal handwringing over it.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

Because the Tamsins like their natives to look exotic and primitive when they go 'travelling' (nb not a holiday)


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

I did think there may be an element of that to be fair but I didn't want to say so ..


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## JimW (Mar 11, 2010)

The science is really solid, man-made global warming is happening, in so far as we can be certain about anything through scientific inquiry. That doesn't mean that the various responses of states or pressure groups are the correct ones, but don't trot off down the road to la-la land just to be a contrarian.

Here's a blog post with a whole set of links if you want to read a bit about the scientific consensus:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

Ironically the woman who introduced me to the whole thing was somene I was sort of seeing, who came from Martinique and felt very strongly about the way that "green" agendas were being used to control the development of poorer countries 

I havent said anywhere that humans dont/can't influence the climate tbh but I don't see why it shouldn't be discussed.


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## JimW (Mar 11, 2010)

Oh aye, I agree with that and what you said earlier about attention being drawn away from things like straightforward pollution which really fucks up people's lives right here and now (constantly hearing stories here in China like the recent one where dozens of children died or were made very ill/severely handicapped by heavy metals pollution from a nearby plant), but it's when the debate gets into questioning the science rather than the uses it's being put to that I think it gets dodgy.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

It's the cod science fed to kids that irks me. State-run websites tell them stuff like 'every can you recycle gives enough energy to power an African town' and 'if you leave the tap on when you clean your teeth the planet will run out of water', shit like that.


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> It's the cod science fed to kids that irks me. State-run websites tell them stuff like 'every can you recycle gives enough energy to power an African town' and 'if you leave the tap on when you clean your teeth the planet will run out of water', shit like that.



Exactly. I remember seeing a report ages ago on b92, the serbian news website, criticisng serbia for its profligate energy use and saying that if the entire world spent as much energy as they did then we would need two and a half extra earths, and also that if the entire world spent as much energy as the americans did we would need 30 extra earths or something. 


Unsurprisingly most of the commentators on there reacted angrily and to be fair why the fuck shouldn't they? Surely its actually better that poor countries have an increased standard of living rather than complaining that they're not still living in the dark ages. 


There are plenty of villages here in R of M with no electricity, no running water etc and believe me it isn't the picnic they want you to believe. It makes me very angry to be honest. And people want these guys to carry on living with the same shitty roads, drawing water out of wells, thereby trapping people in poverty and women in the home, and they would rather everyone still have horses and carts than anything that woul make their lives the slightest bit more convenient.


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

JimW said:


> Oh aye, I agree with that and what you said earlier about attention being drawn away from things like straightforward pollution which really fucks up people's lives right here and now (constantly hearing stories here in China like the recent one where dozens of children died or were made very ill/severely handicapped by heavy metals pollution from a nearby plant), but it's when the debate gets into questioning the science rather than the uses it's being put to that I think it gets dodgy.



There's a difference between science as it's presented in scientific papers and dodgy state propaganda fed to kids, as ernesto rightly points out.


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## kyser_soze (Mar 11, 2010)

So how do you propose you get kids growing up into adults who don't see recycling as a pointless, annoying excercise? How else do you propose to start changing behaviour, if not by encouraging kids to do these things by feeding them a half-truth - which ultimately is at the heart of most child-rearing and socialisation.


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

Perhaps by giving the information in a simplified form rather than outright lying. Kids are normally a lot moer intelligent than they'er given credit for.


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## kyser_soze (Mar 11, 2010)

But it's not outright lying, is it? I mean beyond the stuff you've made up, can you provide any _actual_ examples to discuss?


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## JimW (Mar 11, 2010)

> There's a difference between science as it's presented in scientific papers and dodgy state propaganda fed to kids, as ernesto rightly points out.


Yep, the idea that it's individual consumption or recycling decisions make much more than a happorth of difference is obviously disingenuous at a very charitable best. You get just the same here - campaigns to get kids to collect batteries for recycling or put half a brick in the toilet flush or booklets on being a green citizen. Now, heavy metal pollution from landfill is a massive problem here and the whole of north China is desperately short of water, but there's about ten thousand things a newly very rich state with almost unchecked executive power could be doing about that if it wasn't largely captured by the interests of capital. And at the same time, the entire national strategy is pushing a unregulated consumer economy that's creating all those 'needs' people never even knew they had only twenty years ago.


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

huh? it was ernesto that gave those examples, not me. I'll have a look tho.


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## Paul Marsh (Mar 11, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Lol. The Independent is the maddest of the lot. Much more than the Guardian which  judging by their Cif posters the tide is turning amongst their readership. urbean will be more to the loony fringe because a lot of free-thinking socialists and communists have left.
> Have a look in the Gordian for a cif by some shock jock called Sunny who claimed the BBC were a 'denialist' propaganda vehicle...




Come on Ern stop trolling. 

If a few old Soviet scientists found evidence of global warming based on a lack of icebergs off Murmansk in March you would be all for the idea.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

Paul Marsh said:


> Come on Ern stop trolling.
> 
> If a few old Soviet scientists found evidence of global warming based on a lack of icebergs off Murmansk in March you would be all for the idea.



I'm not trolling. Of course there is a bit of climatic change as there always has been. I'm baffled as to why someone like you would allow yourself to be duped by the likes of Monbiot and Goldsmith.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 11, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> I'm baffled as to why someone like you would allow yourself to be duped by the likes of Monbiot and Goldsmith.


I'm not baffled at all why you would need to resort to a straw man argument like that.

Are you still a moon landing denier too?


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

The problem with a lot of the rhetoric around the whole debate is that scepticism surrounding climate change, even before the latest debacle (which i haven't followed whatsoever btw - been too busy work etc) is actually a position that's held by a very very large number of people, probably even more than who support the bnp etc. it's acutally a *very* mainstream view, despite the attempts to label it stuff like "climate change denial" etc and in so doing create a false moral equivalency between sceptical views of the climate and holocaust denial, genocide denial etc. That sort of stuff simply pisses people off. Regardless of how correct the science is (and I do agree that humans have fucked up a hell of a lot about the planet) there is a hell of a lot of hysterical bollocks talked about the subject and if what the proponents of AGW say about their case is true then much of what is said is seriously not helping the environment whatsoever. It just appears like lecturing, talking down to people, and very frequently the actual science behind it is either explained incorrectly or forgotten altogether. Most people at least in the UK accept the need for recycling etc. But when something like half the population in a 2009 poll said they were sceptical about the idea of global warming people who accept all the propositions need to think about how the message comes across, and how it appears. Because this hysterical end times the world is going to end in 40 years bollocks is both bollocks and is not helping in the slightest.


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

JimW said:


> Yep, the idea that it's individual consumption or recycling decisions make much more than a happorth of difference is obviously disingenuous at a very charitable best. You get just the same here - campaigns to get kids to collect batteries for recycling or put half a brick in the toilet flush or booklets on being a green citizen. Now, heavy metal pollution from landfill is a massive problem here and the whole of north China is desperately short of water, but there's about ten thousand things a newly very rich state with almost unchecked executive power could be doing about that if it wasn't largely captured by the interests of capital. And at the same time, the entire national strategy is pushing a unregulated consumer economy that's creating all those 'needs' people never even knew they had only twenty years ago.



Cheers for that. Some really interesting posts frm you on this thread.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> The problem with a lot of the rhetoric around the whole debate is that scepticism surrounding climate change, even before the latest debacle (which i haven't followed whatsoever btw - been too busy work etc) is actually a position that's held by a very very large number of people, probably even more than who support the bnp etc. it's acutally a *very* mainstream view, despite the attempts to label it stuff like "climate change denial" etc and in so doing create a false moral equivalency between sceptical views of the climate and holocaust denial, genocide denial etc. That sort of stuff simply pisses people off. Regardless of how correct the science is (and I do agree that humans have fucked up a hell of a lot about the planet) there is a hell of a lot of hysterical bollocks talked about the subject and if what the proponents of AGW say about their case is true then much of what is said is seriously not helping the environment whatsoever. It just appears like lecturing, talking down to people, and very frequently the actual science behind it is either explained incorrectly or forgotten altogether. Most people at least in the UK accept the need for recycling etc. But when something like half the population in a 2009 poll said they were sceptical about the idea of global warming people who accept all the propositions need to think about how the message comes across, and how it appears. Because this hysterical end times the world is going to end in 40 years bollocks is both bollocks and is not helping in the slightest.



Spot on. And when we do express views here, all we get is 'troll troll' like its stone the blasphemers.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 11, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> *scepticism* surrounding climate change


That word doesn't mean what you think it means. Sceptics are people who judge things by the evidence, not those who stick their heads in the sand.



frogwoman said:


> a position that's held by a very very large number of people, probably even more than who support the bnp etc. it's acutally a *very* mainstream view,


Public opinion doesn't determine what is or isn't mainstream science.



frogwoman said:


> despite the attempts to label it stuff like "climate change denial" etc and in so doing create a false moral equivalency between sceptical views of the climate and holocaust denial


A denier is someone who denies or is in denial about something. The words that come before it designate what they are in denial of. Those who deny the reality of human caused climate change are climate change deniers.



frogwoman said:


> people who accept all the propositions need to think about how the message comes across, and how it appears.


If you're judging people's arguments by how polite they are then you're doing it wrong. But if you're going to insist on doing that then at least try to be a bit less one-sided.

If someone genuinely has questions about the science I'm always polite to them and so are all the posters I've seen on the climate science blogs and the pro-science posters here. People only get abuse if they continually use the same old wingnut talking points without making an effort to learn, or if they're just abusive themselves.



frogwoman said:


> this hysterical end times the world is going to end in 40 years bollocks is both bollocks and is not helping in the slightest.


If you want people to be polite to you then maybe you should avoid posting offensive lies like that about them.


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## kropotkin (Mar 11, 2010)

well said that man.


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## tim (Mar 11, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> *sits back and awaits the onslaught of the sci-tech forum peeps who don't know _le trolle superieure_*
> 
> Altho I would ask you both to identify which bits of the science you find so disagreeable.



Criticism has little to do with the "science" since very little of the stuff we're bombarded with on a daily basis is particularly scientific. We do get lots of cryptoreligious and reactionary scaremongering though. Snippets about the dangers, but nothing particularly coherent. 

This criticism goes for all sides. I don't find the Greens the Monbiots, the Ickites , the spokesmen of big business or the inconsistent overspun press releases of government particularly convicing. I'm not a climate scientist but the same is true for most of those with strong views of the subject,  including those posting here whichever side of the argument they take.

Too many twats talking about stuff they clearly know fairly little about


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## frogwoman (Mar 11, 2010)

good post, which is what i think tim as well (i include myself in the ill informed twats btw)


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## ernestolynch (Mar 11, 2010)

Yeah. The way that tub-thumper appeared ('signals') and preached at frogwoman - summed them up. Amazed he did not use the words unbeliever and blasphemer!


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## XerxesVargas (Mar 11, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> The problem with a lot of the rhetoric around the whole debate is that scepticism surrounding climate change, even before the latest debacle (which i haven't followed whatsoever btw - been too busy work etc) is actually a position that's held by a very very large number of people, probably even more than who support the bnp etc. it's acutally a *very* mainstream view, despite the attempts to label it stuff like "climate change denial" etc and in so doing create a false moral equivalency between sceptical views of the climate and holocaust denial, genocide denial etc. That sort of stuff simply pisses people off. Regardless of how correct the science is (and I do agree that humans have fucked up a hell of a lot about the planet) there is a hell of a lot of hysterical bollocks talked about the subject and if what the proponents of AGW say about their case is true then much of what is said is seriously not helping the environment whatsoever.



It seems to me that you are conflating two things here. The first is climate science, which shows that global warming is happening. The second is the politics of those who espouse measures to mitigate it.

There is definitely a hair shirt, anti-technology, streak amongst many of them. They have political motives beyond climate change - which is why the whole nuclear issue is confusing them so much. The science shows it as a no brainer, yet their politics won't allow them to go with it.


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## frogwoman (Mar 12, 2010)

@ signal - i have no idea why you feel the need to be personally abusive, at the risk of sounding like a twat for using that phrase. I don't know the science, and I am the first to admit that I don't know it. What I am objecting to is the way that it is used by various governmental types and environmentalists, some of which have a very dodgy agenda which seems to centre around the control of the population, especially those from poor countries. The green debate seems to centre a lot around having a go at africans or "chavs" for having too many kids or wanting what the rest of the global rich have had for a long time. 

One of the things I was tryng to point out in my previous post was that the whole idea suffers from a "presentation problem". It is too often associated with these types, and rest assured a huge number of people i know, most of whom are not remotely political, most of whom would not vote for the bnp, or care particularly about europe or 9/11 or any of the "loopy" stuff it gets associated with have expressed scepticism about it. i didn't say that popular opinion was a marker of whats scientific or what's not, but I said that since so many people obviously think this way, it is obviously a view worth paying attention to, and examination of WHY the public view it like this if it is indeed incorrect is in order, rather than just blaming the media. 

And don't pretend that i'm making up hysterical stuff that has been said about global warming, when even one of the UK's chief scientists, who in no way dispute the scientific consensus on the issue, said this: 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7003622.ece

and also i just found this: 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece - the point i was making in my previous post was that it's misused by governmental bodies, frequently to fuel a dodgy agenda, and in their rush to make hysterical claims many of them have actually ignored or sensationalised what the scientists are saying. Surely you can't argue with this and as a "pro-science" poster you should be concerned about these people making false claims and both misleading the public and fuelling climate change scepticism. I found the tone of your post very patronising btw and it kind of proved my entire point


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## ernestolynch (Mar 12, 2010)

Cool


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## Signal 11 (Mar 12, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> @ signal - i have no idea why you feel the need to be personally abusive


I was not personally abusive.



frogwoman said:


> examination of WHY the public view it like this if it is indeed incorrect is in order, rather than just blaming the media.


It isn't because some people are rude to trolls on the internet, it's because of the huge disinformation campaign by vested interests and far-right ideologues, which many journalists are aiding, whether through ignorance or otherwise.



frogwoman said:


> And don't pretend that i'm making up hysterical stuff that has been said about global warming





frogwoman said:


> the Independent or whatever getting hold of it and extrapolating from that that we're all going to die in20 years.


Provide a source for that or explicitly withdraw it.



frogwoman said:


> this hysterical end times the world is going to end in 40 years bollocks


Likewise.



frogwoman said:


> i just found this:


That was a mistake, not an exaggeration. The original source said 2350 and it was copied as 2035.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Amazed he did not use the words unbeliever and blasphemer!



I'm not amazed at all that you're still incapable of anything other than misrepresentation, nor that you're too ashamed to even admit to your loony views.


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## Pickman's model (Mar 13, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> I was not personally abusive.


like bill clinton never had sexual relations with monica lewinski.


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## frogwoman (Mar 13, 2010)

So in other words the media and "far right ideologues" (like, who? like the ones who are obsessed with overpopulation and believe that a "die-off" of millions of people from third world countries would be a good idea to save the planet?) are to blame and people aren't capable of thinking for themselves on the issue. 

im sorry but you sound like a religious nutter more than a scientist tbh since you are seemingly so affronted by people questioning your dogmas, without providing any evidence to the contrary. 


i think man does infleunce the climate btw, i would never deny that it happens altogether. the fact that i said this rather than stating explicitly "global warming does not happen" and making a whole lot of bullshit statistics up to prove my point one way or the other seems to have utterly escaped you


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## Pickman's model (Mar 13, 2010)




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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Judged on standards of evidence alone, any fair-minded person who bothered to look into the matter would have to conclude that the climate change deniers are just another species of barking conspiraloon.

They benefit from some very professional PR work paid for (documented) by Exxon and a certain amount of poor PR work on behalf of the scientists, that enables them to paint people who care about sound evidence as 'fanatics'

This PR strategy gets a lot of help from primmies and other non-scientific types jumping on the eco-doom bandwagon and cynical politicians looking for ways to profit from the science. The existence of such parasites on science however, does not logically imply that the science is wrong. It just implies that primmies are dope-addled romantics who can't do maths and that politicians are shits. But we knew that anyway right?


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Monbiot 3:16


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## Pickman's model (Mar 13, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Monbiot 3:16



remind me again of that text?


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Let's do the argument if you're up for it. Cheap shots don't buy you anything though, can you live with that? Can you deal with arguments based on evidence and logic? If so I'm game.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Pickman's model said:


> remind me again of that text?



And the proles shall throw on another layer and think not no longer of decadent days misspent in Magaluf. O! Ye!


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Guess not


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Gore 4:21


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

It's pretty clear, assuming that the scientists are actually correct about AGW (and the effects of industrial agriculture, resource depletion etc) that politicians are completely unwilling to confront capitalism about the awful fucking mess it's made of our planet and instead are trying to privatise responsibility for that mess onto ordinary people. That doesn't mean the science is wrong. It just means that politicians are spineless capitalist lackeys.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Come on ern, you've got a brain, fucking use it.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> So in other words the media and "far right ideologues" (like, who?


For example the Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute, SPPI, Lavoisier Group. The book reviewed here goes into detail if you're interested.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Meanwhile, it's absolutely no surprise at all that the Exxon PR guys have made common cause with lazy journalists and barking conspiraloons. Here's a lovely example of the conspiraloon as 'useful idiot' ... 

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=141992


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Why do you care So much though, Bernard? We'll get by, we always do.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

A few hundred million people in the third world dead from famine or resource wars during our lifetimes (assuming another few decades) as a direct result of capitalism? I think that's worth getting at least slightly upset about.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

*We* may get by, given that we're a relatively rich technically competent country way north of the worst problems, assuming the IPCC scenario rather than runaway climate change, which is at least very possible in my opinion.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> A few hundred million people in the third world dead from famine or resource wars during our lifetimes (assuming another few decades)? I think that's worth getting at least slightly upset about.



Look mate if people took your predictions seriously your pm box would be full of requests for Cheltenham tips. As it is you come across like chicken licken, pulling numbers out of yer ass.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

*Shrug*, that's because you're lazy and can't be bothered to check the science out for yourself. I suggest respectfully that you do so ...


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> A few hundred million people in the third world dead from famine or resource wars during our lifetimes (assuming another few decades) as a direct result of capitalism? I think that's worth getting at least slightly upset about.



Capitalism has already prematurely killed millions inRussia since 1992, celebrated by SWP, anarchists, greens and liberals alongside their Tory organgrinders.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

So it's therefore ok for it to kill millions more? Pretty weird argument you have there ern.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Capitalism has already prematurely killed millions inRussia since 1992, celebrated by SWP, anarchists, greens and liberals alongside their Tory organgrinders.



Which anarchists have celebrated that? -- or withdraw the claim.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Have you thought of doing Speakers Corner? You'd be a good draw.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Which anarchists have celebrated that? -- or withdraw the claim.



All the anti-Soviet posh cunts who eat out of skips.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

"Just the facts Ma'am, just the facts." Then draw some conclusions from them. 

But ignoring the facts in favour of conspiraloon crap, just because it's the easy option and it suits your personal prejudices. Well, that's lazy shit in my view.


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## tim (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> It's pretty clear, assuming that the scientists are actually correct about AGW (and the effects of industrial agriculture, resource depletion etc) that politicians are completely unwilling to confront capitalism about the awful fucking mess it's made of our planet and instead are trying to privatise responsibility for that mess onto ordinary people. That doesn't mean the science is wrong. It just means that politicians are spineless capitalist lackeys.



The  modern world  may seem like  a mess to hand wringing, broadband-enabled, middle-class Westerners, but the reality is also that it's given a vast proportion of the world's population a decent standard of living for the first time ever - it's, actually, a better place tolive than in has been in the past.  It's not only politically suspect but also in reality unrealistic to expect that trend not to continue in the same direction. 


As to global warming there arefor me two key issues firstly the need for a realistic non-hysterical and coherent presentation of the issues. Secondly,examining viable development strategies for the future that focus on the material and environmental needs of people. The latter willof course involve further agricultural development, and also the sensible exploitation of the energy resources available to us.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> "Just the facts Ma'am, just the facts." Then draw some conclusions from them.
> 
> But ignoring the facts in favour of conspiraloon crap, just because it's the easy option and it suits your personal prejudices. Well, that's lazy shit in my view.



Lazy that's right.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Sure looks like it. If you'd actually bothered to inform yourself on the subject, you'd know that I'm not just pulling those numbers out of my arse.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

tim said:


> The  modern world  may seem like  a mess to hand wringing, broadband-enabled, middle-class Westerners, but the reality is also that it's given a vast proportion of the world's population a decent standard of living for the first time ever - it's, actually, a better place tolive than in has been in the past.  It's not only politically suspect but also in reality unrealistic to expect that trend not to continue in the same direction.
> 
> 
> As to global warming there arefor me two key issues firstly the need for a realistic non-hysterical and coherent presentation of the issues. Secondly,examining viable development strategies for the future that focus on the material and environmental needs of people. The latter willof course involve further agricultural development, and also the sensible exploitation of the energy resources available to us.



What do we mean by 'further agricultural development' though? If it's more of the same capitalist industrial agriculture shit, then it's rendering arable land unproductive at the rate of about 10m ha per year.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Bern, if these are, as you predict, the end days let's go out smiling, driving V8s and eating steak.


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## rioted (Mar 13, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Bern, if these are, as you predict, the end days let's go out smiling, driving V8s and eating steak.


I'm going to save my share for my kids. I hope they're good enough to share with yours.


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## tim (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> What do we mean by 'further agricultural development' though? If it's more of the same capitalist industrial agriculture shit, then it's rendering arable land unproductive at the rate of about 10m ha per year.



It means using use our knowledge  to farm land in the most efficient way possible. How else do you think we can feed people properly? 

For an scientifilcally objective type you display a surprising enthusiasm for emotionally loaded language and a seeming disdain for the technological application of scientific discovery.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

rioted said:


> I'm going to save my share for my kids. I hope they're good enough to share with yours.



Share of what?


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## revol68 (Mar 13, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Capitalism has already prematurely killed millions inRussia since 1992, celebrated by SWP, anarchists, greens and liberals alongside their Tory organgrinders.



oh yeah loads of anarchists were cheerleading that, oh wait...

I'm no fan of the SWP but to accuse them of celebrating the shock therapy writ large on the former Soviet Union is just bullshit.

Seriously ernest your pseudo tankie shock jock act is played out to fuck, go read some books.


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## revol68 (Mar 13, 2010)

tim said:


> It means using use our knowledge  to farm land in the most efficient way possible. How else do you think we can feed people properly?
> 
> For an scientifilcally objective type you display a surprising enthusiasm for emotionally loaded language and a seeming disdain for the technological application of scientific discovery.



yes because science or rather more to the point it's technical application is some sort of objective matter not bound up with the rational and motives of political and economic power structures.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

revol68 said:


> oh yeah loads of anarchists were cheerleading that, oh wait...
> 
> I'm no fan of the SWP but to accuse them of celebrating the shock therapy writ large on the former Soviet Union is just bullshit.
> 
> Seriously ernest your pseudo tankie shock jock act is played out to fuck, go read some books.



Prove to me that those anarchotrot rats did not go 'kewl'
When the wall fell and the 'state capitalist' empire collapsed.


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## revol68 (Mar 13, 2010)

ernestolynch said:


> Prove to me that those anarchotrot rats did not go 'kewl'
> When the wall fell and the 'state capitalist' empire collapsed.



I think there was a hope that those movements could go on to offer something liberating, I think there was certain degree of caution too, which is perfectly appropriate as every potential revolutionary moment can open the door for new and more insidious forms of control.

Your stance on the otherhand leaves you open to the charge of supporting the shit heap that was the USSR.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

revol68 said:


> yes because science or rather more to the point it's technical application is some sort of objective matter not bound up with the rational and motives of political and economic power structures.



Well yes. 

For example, sustainable agriculture and unsustainable agriculture get about the same yield in best conditions, the latter though substitutes vast amounts of oil energy and waste e.g. in terms of nutrient recycling and loss to pests, in order to maximise investor profit by minimising labour, moving the goods to the richest markets, putting them in unneccessary packaging, wasting perfectly edible stuff that doesn't fit a particular marketing aesthetic, minimising the share of the profit received by agricultural labour etc.  

It's pretty easy to show that profitability is not a good indicator of sustainability. 

As an example, someone recently, I think it was Free Spirit made mention of a food sustainability scheme put forward and then scuppered because it violated WTO restraint of trade rules.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

tim said:


> It means using use our knowledge  to farm land in the most efficient way possible. How else do you think we can feed people properly?
> 
> For an scientifilcally objective type you display a surprising enthusiasm for emotionally loaded language and a seeming disdain for the technological application of scientific discovery.



Well, let's talk about the technological application in industrial agriculture of one rather old scientific discovery. The phosphorus cycle. 



> Human actions thus accelerate the natural cycle at two key points: in the entry of phosphorus into the biosphere from rock, and in the movement from soil into aquatic ecosystems. Additionally, by moving phosphorus away from certain spots on the Earth's surface (those where it is mined) and to others (primarily where it is used as fertilizer and animal feed), we radically alter the distribution of this element on the planet's surface. The effect of shifting large quantities to places where it would not naturally be found in high concentration has become a growing concern to aquatic ecologists and others who care about maintaining supplies of clean fresh water.
> 
> Most phosphorus moves downhill attached to eroded soil particles-whether over the ground as muddy runoff or in rain-swollen streams or rivers. As people increase the amount of phosphorus in the soil through use of fertilizers, the amount of phosphorus carried downhill per kilogram of soil also increases. The higher the concentration in the soil at the outset, the more is available to release downhill. And although it is likely that less than 5 percent of the phosphorus used as fertilizer in temperate areas makes its way into aquatic ecosystems each year, that is enough to cause major changes in those environments.
> 
> ...


 source

I think this is an excellent example of the way in which investor profits are maximised, via the use of cheap natural gas based fertilizer rather than sustainable nutrient recycling, to a large degree by passing external costs on to the rest of humanity in the form of environmental damage. Estimates of the external costs for UK agriculture run into a couple of billion per annum (see e.g. http://www.essex.ac.uk/bs/staff/pretty/AgSyst pdf.pdf )

The technical application can't be separated from the economic and hence political aspects without missing a great deal of what's going on.


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## tim (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Well, let's talk about the technological application in industrial agriculture of one rather old scientific discovery. The phosphorus cycle.
> 
> source



And? That's a justification for more research into the side effects of technology, its not a justification for its non-adoption; and do you see a non-technological solution to the problems outlined above?

you are using a computer and the internet, do you think about the side effects of that technology?


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

As I said above (perhaps I added it after you wrote) you can't separate the technical application from the politics and economics.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Or to put it another way, if we want to see sustainable agricultural techniques used, we need to fix the political environment that makes it more profitable to use unsustainable agricultural techniques.

Until we do that, 'organic food' remains a luxury for a few middle class hippies in rich countries.


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## tim (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> *We* may get by, given that we're a relatively rich technically competent country way north of the worst problems, assuming the IPCC scenario rather than runaway climate change, which is at least very possible in my opinion.





In your opinion eh! What puts you in a position to secong guess the IPCC (aside from their seemigly dodgy glacier claims that is). Are you a climate scientist yourself, do you have empirical evidence to show that the IPCC are underestimating this problem. If so why don't you denounce them?

Some people seem to love, find comfort in a good catastrophe storyand revolted by the idea that we as a society can cope intelligently with the problems and challenges we face. It's sad that in a seemingly sensible post religious age we still the old the end is nigh crap thrust down our gullets.


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## frogwoman (Mar 13, 2010)

good posts from bernie, as least he's actually attempting to have a decent debate rather than insults. 

thanks for the links btw signal.


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## tim (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Or to put it another way, if we want to see sustainable agricultural techniques used, we need to fix the political environment that makes it more profitable to use unsustainable agricultural techniques.
> 
> Until we do that, 'organic food' remains a luxury for a few middle class hippies in rich countries.



Organic food will never be anything else it's a marketing term aimed at foolish people with excess dispopsable income.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

That's not my point however. 

My point is that as long as it remains more profitable to externalise costs in the form of environmental damage and/or make wasteful use of petrochemical energy, we cannot achieve sustainable agriculture by any technical means. 

We can only do that by fixing the politics and economics that prioritise profitability over sustainability. 

The actual techniques of sustainable agriculture are already pretty well understood, it's the reasons why we're not (in general) using them that most need to be addressed, and those are political/economic.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> thanks for the links btw signal.



I'm still waiting for your links that say we're all going to die in 20 years and the world will end in 40. The ones you said you didn't make up.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

tim said:


> In your opinion eh! What puts you in a position to secong guess the IPCC (aside from their seemigly dodgy glacier claims that is). Are you a climate scientist yourself, do you have empirical evidence to show that the IPCC are underestimating this problem. If so why don't you denounce them?
> 
> Some people seem to love, find comfort in a good catastrophe storyand revolted by the idea that we as a society can cope intelligently with the problems and challenges we face. It's sad that in a seemingly sensible post religious age we still the old the end is nigh crap thrust down our gullets.



Have a look at some of the papers at this conference, held by the Hadley Centre and attended by most of the key IPCC contributors. Particularly session 1 if I recall correctly. 

http://www.stabilisation2005.com/programme.html

The thing you have to remember about the IPCC in this context is that they can't afford to be shown to be wrong for political reasons, hence their predictions are extremely conservative in comparison to the concerns of many actual climate scientists.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

tim said:


> do you have empirical evidence to show that the IPCC are underestimating this problem.


A couple of examples are here and here.



tim said:


> If so why don't you denounce them?


Because mostly they've been found to be underestimating it as new data came in. Secondly it's right for them to be conservative about it -- but people should recognise that and not try to paint them as extreme.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> I'm still waiting for your links that say we're all going to die in 20 years and the world will end in 40. The ones you said you didn't make up.



Willing to go on hunger strike until she does?


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## frogwoman (Mar 13, 2010)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver

Britain will be Siberian in 20 years apparently.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver





> Now the Pentagon tells Bush [...] A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer



Good try but it doesn't support your claim.

And whilst you can cherry pick the odd example like that, overall the media coverage fits this pattern.


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## frogwoman (Mar 13, 2010)

A link to someone's blog and "realclimate.org" is that best u can do?? 

btw, when i made the original post i thought it was clear that i wasn't describing actual claims made (although several have been very similar, as other posters that actually *agree with you* such as jimw have described) but of the overall tone of the coverage.

the funny thing is i don't actually question the fact that man has an effect on the climate. i don't see how pointing out that the argument has a "presentation problem" and that a lot more work needs to be done to convince ordinary people like me is such a source of controversy.


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## frogwoman (Mar 13, 2010)

BTW let's take another controversial issue. Despite the largely pro-Israel coverage of israel in the media, the majority of the british public are opposed to its actions, regardless of their views on "muslims" or whatever, which has been repeatedly revealed in several polls such as conservative organisations such as yougov who place consistent support of israel at about 2%, on a par with support of Iran. This is in spite of a very well designed and orchestrated PR campaign by zionists, among others. 

Your idea that it's the media that is forcing everyone to think a certain way in this case is patronising at best and downright ridiculous at worst.


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## frogwoman (Mar 13, 2010)

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/end-nigh-religious-language-global-warming-failing.php

This is a site which in no way doubts the existence of global warming but criticises the apocalpytic predictions made by many in the green movement which has seriously damaged their credibility.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> A link to someone's blog and "realclimate.org" is that best u can do??


Both of those are working climate scientists, so I think they are reasonable sources on the question of climate science.



frogwoman said:


> btw, when i made the original post i thought it was clear that i wasn't describing actual claims made [...] but of the overall tone of the coverage.


And what you claimed isn't anything like the overall tone of the coverage.



frogwoman said:


> the funny thing is i don't actually question the fact that man has an effect on the climate.


Maybe so, but that's not what it sounded like when you said: "we're told a lot of bullshit about global warming [...] I do seriously question the extent of it [...] witch hunts carried out against scientists who have questioned the official line". It's pretty obvious how comments like that are going to be interpreted in the context of a thread which is about conspiraloons who dispute mainstream climate science.

When you make claims of exaggeration and alarmism like the ones you've made *without citing a source or telling us who you're talking about* then the implication is that you're talking about the mainstream, not one or two totally uncharacteristic newspaper articles or primitivist wackos.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> Your idea that it's the media that is forcing everyone to think a certain way



I haven't claimed that.


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## rioted (Mar 13, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> Your idea that it's the media that is forcing everyone to think a certain way in this case is patronising at best and downright ridiculous at worst.


Forcing, maybe not. But reinforcing, certainly.

Many people in the west are bought off by the "success" of capitalism. They want their good, privileged (compared to their peers elsewhere) lives to continue. They don't want to hear anything prejudicial to that. They don't want to hear that infinite growth is impossible. Old style left, cobwebs like Ern hold on to the view, if we only had socialist state planning, we *could* achieve indefinite growth - under communism, the working class could achieve *anything*. "Scientific socialism" I think they called it.


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## purplex (Mar 13, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> I think we're told a lot of bullshit about global warming. Not sure I'd go as far to deny that man entirely influences the climate but there is a hell of a lot of bollocks about it thats pretty much akin to "end times" nutters



dont be too sure 

The Minor Signs of the Last Day   ...
* When orators and lecturers lie openly.
* When people blatantly follow their passions and whims.
* When lies prevail over the truth.
* When the offspring become a cause of grief and anger (for their parents).
* Music and musical instruments will be found in every home.
* People will indulge in homosexuality.
* There will be an abundance of illegitimate children.
etc.
http://www.islam.tc/prophecies/qiyaam2.html


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## frogwoman (Mar 13, 2010)




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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Thing is, when I hear someone arguing, either directly or by implication that thousands of scientists around the world are effectively making AGW up for their personal gain and/or ideological reasons, I think that I'm being perfectly reasonable saying that they're conspiraloons just like David Icke, Christopher Monckton and Alex Jones. It's just as implausible a claim whether you are arguing they're doing it for the lizards or the NWO or for nebulous 'left-wing' motives or laughably (given the fees charged by that loon conference in the OP vs typical academic salary scales) personal gain

I also think it's at least understandable that people who have taken the trouble to inform themselves about the science in question get just a little bit annoyed when they see the same easily checkable barefaced lies repeated ad-nauseam by a coalition of wingnuts, cynical PR weasels, lizard-fanciers and media hacks. Particularly when these easily checkable bare-faced lies are at least on the part of the PR weasels and very likely a good chunk of the smarter, better educated wingnuts, intentionally trying to prevent effective action at government level to avoid subsequent mass starvation, huge refugee problems and the like in the developing world. 

What should one do though when talking to well-meaning people who haven't bothered to inform themselves about the science, but have opinions about it anyway? Especially when these opinions suggest that they've bought into at least some of the false claims coming from the wingnut / PR-weasel / lizard-fancier coalition. 

Lecturing them or hectoring them is clearly counter-productive as we can see above. I don't claim to know what the answer is but I can tell you that it's immensely frustrating to witness otherwise sensible people falling for this shit.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

It's you lot who come across like fruitloops though. You exaggerate it all. It's like you were never told the Chicken Licken or Emperor's New Clothes stories as kids. I work with fairly intelligent people. Most of my friends are well-read and intelligent too. 99% of them say they think the carbon crunch stuff is bollocks. The brightest amongst them are the biggest skeptics. All the Geography teachers think your theories are nonsense too. Now you spend a lot of time online on places like Urbean where tbh they mainly follow the pack and don't think too much. Get out and talk to normal people tomorrow, not bedsit cranks hiding behind silly nicknames and long-winded blogs.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

If a hippy came on here and said, '99% of my friends think crystal healing works, and they're intelligent and well read too' should I be impressed by it?


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> If a hippy came on here and said, '99% of my friends think crystal healing works, and they're intelligent and well read too' should I be impressed by it?



Well, ignore me and frogwoman and carry on as you are chief.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> If a hippy came on here and said, '99% of my friends think crystal healing works, and they're intelligent and well read too' should I be impressed by it?



Well, ignore me and frogwoman and carry on as you are chief.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

'I know some geography teachers and they say X' is not evidence. If they're competent geography teachers they presumably have some evidence that they base these opinions on. So go ask them what it is, provide a reference and then we can have an evidence based discussion about it. 

Otherwise we cannot ... and the position you are arguing is really no stronger than that of crystal healing. i.e. 'I'd like this to be true and people who say it isn't are meanies'


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> 'I know some geography teachers and they say X' is not evidence. If they're competent geography teachers they presumably have some evidence that they base these opinions on. So go ask them what it is, provide a reference and then we can have an evidence based discussion about it.
> 
> Otherwise we cannot ... and the position you are arguing is really no stronger than that of crystal healing. i.e. 'I'd like this to be true and people who say it isn't are meanies'



It's your religion Bern. You've got your followers, keep on fighting the good fight against the evil carbon demons!


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

Sure, I recognise that 'religion' accusation is a useful rhetorical device up to a point, but if we go beyond the superficial for a moment, I'm the one who is arguing on the basis of a considerable body of evidence and you're the one who hasn't produced anything but a bit of tired rhetoric that you borrowed from a bunch of conspiraloons and wingnuts.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 13, 2010)

But you're the one eating lentils every night and wearing sack cloth and ashes.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

See, that sort of stuff really doesn't affect the scientific evidence a bit Ern.


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## laptop (Mar 13, 2010)

So.

A poster shows up, claiming to be "ernestolynch", and jumps straight in to argue the case for Peabody Coal and Exxon.



I say it's an impostor.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

The sad thing is though I suppose, that playing on people's prejudices actually often is rather more effective than evidence and logic. It works well enough for the racist right after all, but I'd really want to hope that people here were a bit smarter than that. I'd want to think that the evidence settles the matter and point to a thousand or so scientific papers showing that AGW is happening and the total absence of any that show that it isn't and think that was enough. It evidently doesn't work like that though. A few stupid stereotypes are apparently far more convincing to some people than the total weight of scientific evidence for AGW.

So OK, let's take a look at these stereotypes. The 'religion' one will do for a start. What's the actual claim here? That all the scientists are manufacturing fake evidence for AGW because they hold a shared religious view? Presumably some sort of primitivist dianic wiccan lesbian communist earth-goddess worship? (according to the wingnuts anyway) 

Have you ever *met *any scientists? Almost all the ones I know are atheists or agnostics, with a small percentage of extremely abstract and misty deists and a few Catholics or whatever who say things like 'I know it's irrational, but it makes me feel better and I've found that I can compartmentalise it from my rational self'

So what religion is it supposed to be that we're all fanatically supporting?


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 13, 2010)

This is really fucking depressing, but ok, let's take the next stereotype above. 

'Lentils, sackcloth and ashes' Where the fuck does that come from Ern? 

I'm guessing it comes from some sort of stupid Jeremy Clarkson stereotype along the lines of: 'I don't like green taxes and I don't like being told by the government that I have to sacrifice small luxuries for the greater good and anyone arguing that the science around AGW isn't a great big conspiracy (or whatever) is only trying to make me miserable because they're evil puritans.' 

The first trouble with that particular stereotype is that the government is imposing green taxes because they're a bunch of cynical neo-liberal capitalists who have no intention whatsoever of doing anything effective about climate change because it'd be bad for the City, but are happy to find a new excuse to tax individuals rather than corporations to generate revenue. They're probably even happier to find new funny money scams for the City like carbon trading but won't implement the only measure likely to be effective, a straightforward carbon tax on corporations, because they're neo-liberals to whom any restraint on corporate activity is total anathema. The evidence for this interpretation is clear to see in the Stern Report. 

The second trouble with that particular stereotype is that it conflates a due regard for scientific evidence with a bunch of romantics who can't do basic arithmetic (how many hectares does a hunter-gatherer need and how many per captia have we got?) There may well be mystical greens obsessed by Gaia, lentils and self-denial, but they aren't in general the people pointing to the scientific evidence and suggesting that capitalism stands in the way of any effective solutions, while actually proposing some potentially effective solutions based on solid science and socialist principles (if you think the Council Communists and Kropotkin are solid, which as a tankie I expect you don't).


----------



## tim (Mar 13, 2010)

rioted said:


> Forcing, maybe not. But reinforcing, certainly.
> 
> Many people in the west are bought off by the "success" of capitalism. They want their good, privileged (compared to their peers elsewhere) lives to continue. They don't want to hear anything prejudicial to that. They don't want to hear that infinite growth is impossible. Old style left, cobwebs like Ern hold on to the view, if we only had socialist state planning, we *could* achieve indefinite growth - under communism, the working class could achieve *anything*. "Scientific socialism" I think they called it.



Here's a sackcloth and ashes type for you. The middle classes will get their comeupance and the poor will just have to keep on sufering.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Have you ever *met *any scientists? Almost all the ones I know are atheists or agnostics, with a small percentage of extremely abstract and misty deists and a few Catholics or whatever who say things like 'I know it's irrational, but it makes me feel better and I've found that I can compartmentalise it from my rational self'



With a few notable exceptions, including one of the denial camp's star "credible scientists".


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## tim (Mar 13, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> If a hippy came on here and said, '99% of my friends think crystal healing works, and they're intelligent and well read too' should I be impressed by it?



Such a claim would be absurd as your dismisal of the the idea of using our scientific knowledge to increase agricultural production


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> With a few notable exceptions, including one of the denial camp's star "credible scientists".



Yep, there's a big crossover in the US wingnut right between people who hate the science around climate change and people who hate the science around evolution. 

A lot of the denier tactics are based on the creationist Wedge Strategy


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

tim said:


> Such a claim would be absurd as your dismisal of the the idea of using our scientific knowledge to increase agricultural production



You seem to have skimmed what I wrote above. Or are choosing to misrepresent it for some reason of your own. 

What I actually said was that the main barrier against sustainable agricultural production was economic and political. That while it's more profitable to produce unsustainably because that way you can externalise costs and pass them onto society as a whole as environmental damage, then we cannot achieve sustainability and hence, that if we want to achieve sustainable agriculture, we have to fix the economic and therefore the political conditions which make that so.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 14, 2010)

Bern you are being driven crazy by this carbon crunch jazz. You are at risk of turning into the new Brian Haw.


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## Captain Hurrah (Mar 14, 2010)

Our Brian.  Bless him.


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## laptop (Mar 14, 2010)

The only *real* question in this thread tonight is: who are you and what have you done with ernestolych?


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## tim (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Estimates of the external costs for UK agriculture run into a couple of billion per annum (see e.g. http://www.essex.ac.uk/bs/staff/pretty/AgSyst pdf.pdf )
> 
> The technical application can't be separated from the economic and hence political aspects without missing a great deal of what's going on.



Two billion sounds a lot, but in reality within the context of the size of the British economy it isn't that significant, particularly as we are talking about our daily bread. These are costs that our economy clearly manages to sustain. Furthermore, many  of those costs would be incured even by "organic" approach toagriculture you favour. Organic cows pigs and sheep still fart methane and the amonia they piss out still has to be dealt with. 

The report  is also clear that it doesn't 






> measured the positive externalities (the beneficial side-effects)
> created by farming and encouraged by certain policies (OECD, 1997a; Lobley and Potter,
> 1998; Hanley and Oglethorpe, 1999; van Huyelenbroek and Whitby, 1999; Darling and
> Topp, 2000). These include landscape and aesthetic value; recreation and amenity; water
> ...


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## Captain Hurrah (Mar 14, 2010)

rioted said:


> Forcing, maybe not. But reinforcing, certainly.
> 
> Many people in the west are bought off by the "success" of capitalism. They want their good, privileged (compared to their peers elsewhere) lives to continue. They don't want to hear anything prejudicial to that. They don't want to hear that infinite growth is impossible. Old style left, cobwebs like Ern hold on to the view, if we only had socialist state planning, we *could* achieve indefinite growth - under communism, the working class could achieve *anything*. "Scientific socialism" I think they called it.



Planning for 'socialism' like we've seen in now defunct political entities is discredited, and we won't be seeing anything like that again any time soon.  If you want to talk about socialism, then many moons ago people saw the great achievements of modernity, and the wonderful things created under capitalism, and wanted to get a share of that for themselves and others, seen as they had bloody well put the work in.  Now and in the future, when it comes to sustaining all of this as well as the problem posed by declining resources, there are people who want to see access to these wonderful things restricted.  It is mass access which is the problem to some.  What do to, nobody really knows perhaps, but wanting a decent standard of living does not necessarily mean gross materialism.  I know, however, that banning the irresponsible proles from foreign travel won't solve it, and is part and parcel of some proper hypocritical middle class wank.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Capitalism requires growth though, if the wheels aren't going to fall off. How much is arguable but a figure of ~3% per annum doesn't seem unreasonable. 

Nobody here (except maybe Ern if that is really him) advocates a return to Stalinism, but if there is a sustainable way for humans to live, it seems more likely to involve some form of socialism than a way of life that absolutely needs growth to work.


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## Captain Hurrah (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Capitalism requires growth though, if the wheels aren't going to fall off. How much is arguable but a figure of ~3% per annum doesn't seem unreasonable.
> 
> Nobody here (except maybe Ern if that is really him) advocates a return to Stalinism, but if there is a sustainable way for humans to live, it seems more likely to involve some form of socialism than a way of life that absolutely needs growth to work.



Yes, a return to the 'official' and at one-time far-reaching alternative to capitalism is dead.  You seem to miss the point though that I have not offered an alternative.  I can't.   I simply disagree with the rubbish that the best way to sustain what I view as unsustainable is by tinkering with consumerist patterns within said system, and including restricting access to middle class hypocrites.  I think the Talking Heads (never liked that band much) once said:  "In the future, rich people will travel thousands of miles across the world to look at poor people."


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

OK I agree with 'no to tinkering with consumerist patterns' but I think there is actually a coherent alternative, if you take the trouble to build it up from basics.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

So for example, if you want sustainable nutrient recycling, you're talking about an approach that has 80% or so of our food produced within a few hundred hectares in which we live. If that's the case and if we have some sort of direct democracy associated with it, then you immediately have the basis for refusal of work. Which completely undermines the basis of capitalism in the enclosures.


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## Captain Hurrah (Mar 14, 2010)

A model for change might by conceivable, but where is the rooted and coherent support among those under the current set-up who would benefit most, and where is the strength and _power_ to make these changes?  This is the difficult stuff.


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## GarfieldLeChat (Mar 14, 2010)

having met a number of their 'speakers' I'm afraid regardless of the elements of truth which they may have gained 'insight' into environmental issues they are pretty much to a man mental as fuck...  

They all seemed to have the same commonality between them however; they all appeared to have had some kind of mental breakdown at some point and this 'new' truth had then been revealed to them, afterwards...

as for Ian R Crane's ‘If you call me a conspiracy theorist, at least have the good grace to review the evidence with me’.  

I did.  

You utterly failed to provide a single shred of valid evidence for anything you laid claim to and are a charlatan and a scam artist.  I concede however that you entirely believe your own words.  however you are undoubtedly a conspiracy theorist.


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## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> The second trouble with that particular stereotype is that it conflates a due regard for scientific evidence with a bunch of romantics who can't do basic arithmetic



cool, just give us the raw data from the ground temperature measurement stations for the last 100 years and let's do some arithmetic

oh you can't can you


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## tim (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> So for example, if you want sustainable nutrient recycling, you're talking about an approach that has 80% or so of our food produced within a few hundred hectares in which we live. If that's the case and if we have some sort of direct democracy associated with it, then you immediately have the basis for refusal of work. Which completely undermines the basis of capitalism in the enclosures.



Do you really think anything like this is actually feasable? Forget the industrial and agricultural revolutions ever happened, repeal the enclosure laws,  abandon  the cities and go back to the land. Despite your rejection of the religious tag you seem keen to return us voluntarily or not to the garden of Eden. Isn't this idealistic agricultural socialist approach rather like the one taken by Pol Pot in the 70? How whould you deal with those of us unwilling to follow your lead? Will we all see the light and convert or send us of for re-education. Or perhaps you see yourself more in the mode of the American survivalist crazies going it alone on your plotdefended with a decent reserve ofguns and amunition or perhaps some more appropriate medieval weaponry.


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Mar 14, 2010)

tim said:


> Do you really think anything like this is actually feasable? Forget the industrial and agricultural revolutions ever happened, repeal the enclosure laws,  abandon  the cities and go back to the land. Despite your rejection of the religious tag you seem keen to return us voluntarily or not to the garden of Eden. Isn't this idealistic agricultural socialist approach rather like the one taken by Pol Pot in the 70? How whould you deal with those of us unwilling to follow your lead? Will we all see the light and convert or send us of for re-education. Or perhaps you see yourself more in the mode of the American survivalist crazies going it alone on your plotdefended with a decent reserve ofguns and amunition or perhaps some more appropriate medieval weaponry.



Pol Pot was actually a moderniser aiming for industrialisation, and an ambitious one at that.  But on a more serious note, isn't pulling a Communist bogeyman out of the hat just a tinsy winsy bit hysterical?  It's a bit like those who easily call others Nazis or something when clearly, by definition, they aren't.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> cool, just give us the raw data from the ground temperature measurement stations for the last 100 years and let's do some arithmetic
> 
> oh you can't can you



Actually I can ...

http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/ds570.0/

... and your point is?


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Captain Hurrah said:


> Pol Pot was actually a moderniser aiming for industrialisation, and an ambitious one at that.  But on a more serious note, isn't pulling a Communist bogeyman out of the hat just a tinsy winsy bit hysterical?  It's a bit like those who easily call others Nazis or something when clearly, by definition, they aren't.



I can confirm that I plan to shoot all the people who wear glasses come the revolution. Oh wait, I wear glasses myself .... dammit .... *boom!*


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> I can confirm that I *plan* to shoot all the people who wear glasses come the revolution. Oh wait, I wear glasses myself .... dammit .... *boom!*



Socialist planning has its flaws.


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## tim (Mar 14, 2010)

Captain Hurrah said:


> Pol Pot was actually a moderniser aiming for industrialisation, and an ambitious one at that.  But on a more serious note, isn't pulling a Communist bogeyman out of the hat just a tinsy winsy bit hysterical?  It's a bit like those who easily call others Nazis or something when clearly, by definition, they aren't.



Isn't advocating an abandonment of urban life and advocating that we go and live on plots of a few hundred hectares tinsy winsy bit absurd? As to the Pol Pot reference. Well the Kmmer Rouge policy was to depopulate the cities and send the population off to work on the land. They, rather brutally, put in to practice what Bernie wishes to happen.


----------



## tim (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> I can confirm that I plan to shoot all the people who wear glasses come the revolution. Oh wait, I wear glasses myself .... dammit .... *boom!*



How do you suggest we get to your new Paradise then?


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Slightly more seriously, given our chum Tim apparently has a bit of a tendency to jump to conclusions, perhaps I'd better spell out what I am actually saying. 

There are a number of factors which suggest to me that our present food systems are unsustainable. Firstly they're degrading something like 10m ha pa of arable land (Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society), secondly they require huge petrochemical inputs (problematic both because supplies are finite and because using them contributes to climate change), third; they're pissing away hard to replace nutrients like phosphorus into the lakes, rivers and seas where they're not only wasted, but an active problem, fourth; large numbers of people can't afford to buy food in our present system and/or don't have land to grow their own on and the trend for food prices is going nowhere but upwards. 

So something needs to be done. A good first step IMO is trying to imagine what food systems that didn't suffer from these problems might look like. Many of these problems can be solved by localising food supplies and nutrient recycling. It cuts out loads of petrochemical inputs and in order to successfully recycle nutrients at all, you pretty much have to do it within a few ha of where you are. Given population densities in places like the UK, this pretty inevitably means employing urban agriculture on something like a Cuban model in conjunction with large scale replacement of industrial with sustainable agriculture in rural areas. Given a sufficiently high oil price, an approach along these lines may be the only way for people on low incomes to afford a decent diet. Right now though, this sort of stuff is a fringe activity, old folks and hippies on the dwindling number of allotments and so on. That doesn't mean it isn't a potentially sensible response to changing conditions which we can reasonably predict.


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Mar 14, 2010)

tim said:


> Isn't advocating an abandonment of urban life and advocating that we go and live on plots of a few hundred hectares tinsy winsy bit absurd? As to the Pol Pot reference. Well the Kmmer Rouge policy was to depopulate the cities and send the population off to work on the land. They, rather brutally, put in to practice what Bernie wishes to happen.



No, they had set up a forced communal system out of peasant villages in the rural areas and then moved the urban population for the purposes of integrating them into this flawed system, one of the main reasons of which was to provide manpower in their planning for an industrialising economy.  I haven't seen any evidence here of Bernie arguing for something like that.  Go take a drink of water and have a lie down dear.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Actually I can ...
> 
> http://dss.ucar.edu/datasets/ds570.0/
> 
> ... and your point is?



before i bother registering, is that the raw data, the data which the CRU dumped?

does it include the 70 weather station locations in China which Jones used in his paper 'disproving' warming in the region being down to urban heat effect?

if it does you might want to get on to the Chinese, cos they dont seem to know where most of them are


----------



## JimW (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Slightly more seriously, given our chum Tim apparently has a bit of a tendency to jump to conclusions, perhaps I'd better spell out what I am actually saying.
> 
> There are a number of factors which suggest to me that our present food systems are unsustainable. Firstly they're degrading something like 10m ha pa of arable land (Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society), secondly they require huge petrochemical inputs (problematic both because supplies are finite and because using them contributes to climate change), third; they're pissing away hard to replace nutrients like phosphorus into the lakes, rivers and seas where they're not only wasted, but an active problem, fourth; large numbers of people can't afford to buy food in our present system and/or don't have land to grow their own on and the trend for food prices is going nowhere but upwards.
> 
> So something needs to be done. A good first step IMO is trying to imagine what food systems that didn't suffer from these problems might look like. Many of these problems can be solved by localising food supplies and nutrient recycling. It cuts out loads of petrochemical inputs and in order to successfully recycle nutrients at all, you pretty much have to do it within a few ha of where you are. Given population densities in places like the UK, this pretty inevitably means employing urban agriculture on something like a Cuban model in conjunction with large scale replacement of industrial with sustainable agriculture in rural areas. Given a sufficiently high oil price, an approach along these lines may be the only way for people on low incomes to afford a decent diet. Right now though, this sort of stuff is a fringe activity, old folks and hippies on the dwindling number of allotments and so on. That doesn't mean it isn't a potentially sensible response to changing conditions which we can reasonably predict.



Seen a few schemes trying similar in China - in the very poorest areas they haven't been able to afford the expensive inputs that fuelled part of the periurban agricultural boom and a few schemes are trying to make a direct jump to certified 'organic' (not quite the western standard but pesticide-free etc and better for the soil - which is extremely poor in a lot of China esp where the poorest populations are on the marginal land they were forced to in the mid-Qing population boom due to new world crops). Some of the social movements are trying to do it as cooperatives as well. There's been a slight return to farming as although it is rarely going to be the quick fix to poverty that a migrant wage might bring, it also doesn't involve the same shitty experience of leaving friends and family to get treated like shit in an unsafe sweatshop.
Bit on one scheme a friend is in touch with here: http://chinastudygroup.net/2009/10/alternative-food-networks-in-china/


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> before i bother registering, is that the raw data, the data which the CRU dumped?
> 
> does it include the 70 weather station locations in China which Jones used in his paper 'disproving' warming in the region being down to urban heat effect?
> 
> if it does you might want to get on to the Chinese, cos they dont seem to know where most of them are



Ah, so you're making a specific point about alleged malfeasance concerning the CRU data in particular then? 

You aren't just asking for any old global data set covering the past 100 years, but rather one that you want to claim is the subject of a _conspiracy_ ... 

I rather thought that might be the case.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Ah, so you're making a specific point about alleged malfeasance concerning the CRU data in particular then?
> 
> You aren't just asking for any old global data set covering the past 100 years, but rather one that you want to claim is the subject of a _conspiracy_ ...
> 
> I rather thought that might be the case.



where did i claim it was a conspiracy?, it was a fuck up

anyway, looks like that i wont be able to access the other data either because im not a member of some body or other organisation

(which i dont think is a conspiracy either btw)


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

JimW said:


> Seen a few schemes trying similar in China - in the very poorest areas they haven't been able to afford the expensive inputs that fuelled part of the periurban agricultural boom and a few schemes are trying to make a direct jump to certified 'organic' (not quite the western standard but pesticide-free etc and better for the soil - which is extremely poor in a lot of China esp where the poorest populations are on the marginal land they were forced to in the mid-Qing population boom due to new world crops). Some of the social movements are trying to do it as cooperatives as well. There's been a slight return to farming as although it is rarely going to be the quick fix to poverty that a migrant wage might bring, it also doesn't involve the same shitty experience of leaving friends and family to get treated like shit in an unsafe sweatshop.
> Bit on one scheme a friend is in touch with here: http://chinastudygroup.net/2009/10/alternative-food-networks-in-china/



Oh that's interesting. Thanks 

Are you familiar with Harry Cleaver's papers on the political role of 'Green Revolution' technologies in the far-east post-WW2? It's interesting stuff.


----------



## JimW (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Oh that's interesting. Thanks
> 
> Are you familiar with Harry Cleaver's papers on the political role of 'Green Revolution' technologies in the far-east post-WW2? It's interesting stuff.



Only very vaguely as I think it was mentioned in stuff I read mainly out of India that had a fairly robust critique, but as I recall I was just skimming it during an argument on some other message board in an obit thread for that Green Revolution bloke who died last year and whose name escapes me at the minute


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> where did i claim it was a conspiracy?, it was a fuck up
> 
> anyway, looks like that i wont be able to access the other data either because im not a member of some body or other organisation
> 
> (which i dont think is a conspiracy either btw)



Oh, it was free access when I first saw it. Maybe they've been having trouble with McIntryre too 

If you aren't claiming a conspiracy then fair enough, I apologise. But if all you're claiming is that Jones made some isolated fuck-up then the claim doesn't have much power in relation to AGW does it?


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

JimW said:


> Only very vaguely as I think it was mentioned in stuff I read mainly out of India that had a fairly robust critique, but as I recall I was just skimming it during an argument on some other message board in an obit thread for that Green Revolution bloke who died last year and whose name escapes me at the minute



http://libcom.org/library/contradictions-green-revolution-cleaver


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Oh, it was free access when I first saw it. Maybe they've been having trouble with McIntryre too
> 
> If you aren't claiming a conspiracy then fair enough, I apologise. But if all you're claiming is that Jones made some isolated fuck-up then the claim doesn't have much power in relation to AGW does it?



well its my understanding that CRU has done most of the work on average temperatures, so its their dataset that is really relevent

and i may be an isolated fuck up, but what it means is that in assessing average temperatures we now have to take the CRU on trust alone, because the data no longer exists

so it was a big isolated fuck up


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## JimW (Mar 14, 2010)

Cheers!


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

JimW said:


> Seen a few schemes trying similar in China - in the very poorest areas they haven't been able to afford the expensive inputs that fuelled part of the periurban agricultural boom and a few schemes are trying to make a direct jump to certified 'organic' (not quite the western standard but pesticide-free etc and better for the soil - which is extremely poor in a lot of China esp where the poorest populations are on the marginal land they were forced to in the mid-Qing population boom due to new world crops). Some of the social movements are trying to do it as cooperatives as well. There's been a slight return to farming as although it is rarely going to be the quick fix to poverty that a migrant wage might bring, it also doesn't involve the same shitty experience of leaving friends and family to get treated like shit in an unsafe sweatshop.
> Bit on one scheme a friend is in touch with here: http://chinastudygroup.net/2009/10/alternative-food-networks-in-china/



That is pretty interesting. I followed some of the links back to other examples. What particularly appeals to me there is that they're trying all kinds of different models around the basic concept of social agriculture and seeing which ones work. I think that's a valuable way to approach it, rather than getting hung up on some particular ideology and prescription for how things *should* work.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

I guess they must be onto something, because they're getting infiltrated by sinister capitalist stooges 



> Take a look at the website. SIFE stands for “Students in Free Enterprise.” Need I say more? Headquarters in the US, revenue $12.6 million US dollars. Don’t bother to look at the Wikipedia article – it’s just a list of results of some kind of competition among SIFE teams, with no explanation. The explanation comes on the SIFE China website: “SIFE is a global non-profit organization active in more than 40 countries.[...] funded by financial contributions from corporations, entrepreneurs, foundations, government agencies and individuals. Working in partnership with business and higher education, SIFE establishes student teams on university campuses. These teams[...] develop community outreach projects that reach SIFE’s five educational topics: Market Economics, Success Skills, Entrepreneurship, Financial Literacy, Business Ethics.[...] The effectiveness of their programs is judged at competition.[...]” And so on.
> 
> I couldn’t help but feel a little disturbed to see such an organization involved in these farmers’ markets, especially since a similar student group infiltrated a conference on rural social work last summer, and it turned out to be an arm of some kind of international think-tank trying to use Chinese villages as laboratories for new labor management techniques (I can’t remember the details – hopefully someone will write a report about this soon). SIFE seems to be different, but in any case it shows one of the many ways capital tries to colonize and recuperate such efforts to break out of the suicidal development path it has set for us. (I don’t mean to imply that such efforts might be sufficient to break out of that path, but they reflect a growing awareness of its problems and experimentation with other possibilities.) Maybe I should learn more about this student group, but it’s also possible this was just a short-lived effort pretending to play an active role in this movement that has been taking shape for years without the type of entrepreneurialism SIFE is promoting.


 http://chinastudygroup.net/2009/12/afn-in-china-part-3/


----------



## JimW (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> That is pretty interesting. I followed some of the links back to other examples. What particularly appeals to me there is that they're trying all kinds of different models around the basic concept of social agriculture and seeing which ones work. I think that's a valuable way to approach it, rather than getting hung up on some particular ideology and prescription for how things *should* work.



If I had to sum up my experience of rural Chinese people in a word it would be pragmatic. The whole frame of the argument is so different, despite some creeping hand-wringing liberal stuff amongst the new urban bourgeois. But out in the country there is an understanding of environment that comes with living on the land. Though there's of course plenty who'll try for a quick buck with illegal mining or whatever there's also plenty more who really do want a sustainable rural life that's neither primitivist or wholesale acceptance of the new commodity economy but probably more closely linked to the best of Maoism - which Dirlik argued patterned a lot of its rural economy after Kropotkin's ideas:





> Three premises were, I think, of fundamental importance to this vision. The first was “self-reliance” (zili gengsheng), which was a pervasive slogan in the years after 1956, but had its origins in the necessities of revolutionary struggles during the Yan’an Period, which also lent it great prestige. “Self-reliance” pointed to self-reliance at many levels, from the individual to the national, but one aspect of it that was extremely important because of its relationship to everyday life problems was its emphasis on the local and the place-based, both in terms of initiatives, and in terms of attentiveness to local needs. One aspect of local self-reliance was the combination of agriculture and industry at the local level, to answer directly to the needs of the population. The idea itself had its origins in China in Kropotkinite Anarchist thinking of the early twentieth century, which first found expression in practice in Yan’an, and acquired currency again from the late 1950s. How the experimentation with local economic forms may have prepared the ground for the township enterprises of the 1980s, which played a significant part in launching the subsequent economic development, is a question that still awaits close examination.


 http://chinastudygroup.net/2007/05/the-cultural-revolution-after-the-cultural-turn/

On preview: there's all sorts sloshing around here now including looney free marketeers and God-botherers also disguising themselves a rural aid workers while 'church planting'.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> cool, just give us the raw data from the ground temperature measurement stations for the last 100 years and let's do some arithmetic
> 
> oh you can't can you



None of the people I'm aware of who have produced their own analysis seem to have had any problems...



> > 1) Did you obtain all your data for your GHCN analysis publicly, without the need for any FOI requests? Did you find it difficult to get the data?
> > 2) In order to produce your method for aggregating data from individual stations and to produce your own code for your calculations, did you need to send FOI requests to any of the scientists who produce existing temperature datasets (GISS, HadCRU etc) or the individuals whose “analysis” you wanted to rebut (Watts, D’Aleo)?
> > 3) Did you file any FOI requests to get personal email correspondence of Watts and D’Aleo?
> > 4) Did you feel the need to call for a congressional investigation into the behaviour by Watts and D’Aleo or subpoena them?
> ...


http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/thanks/#comment-39988


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## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> what it means is that in assessing average temperatures we now have to take the CRU on trust alone, because the data no longer exists



Deleting a copy of something doesn't make the original go away too.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

double-post


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

JimW said:


> If I had to sum up my experience of rural Chinese people in a word it would be pragmatic. The whole frame of the argument is so different, despite some creeping hand-wringing liberal stuff amongst the new urban bourgeois. But out in the country there is an understanding of environment that comes with living on the land. Though there's of course plenty who'll try for a quick buck with illegal mining or whatever there's also plenty more who really do want a sustainable rural life that's neither primitivist or wholesale acceptance of the new commodity economy but probably more closely linked to the best of Maoism - which Dirlik argued patterned a lot of its rural economy after Kropotkin's ideas: http://chinastudygroup.net/2007/05/the-cultural-revolution-after-the-cultural-turn/
> 
> On preview: there's all sorts sloshing around here now including looney free marketeers and God-botherers also disguising themselves a rural aid workers while 'church planting'.



The 'self-reliance' idea does have a whiff of Kropotkin about it doesn't it? I think that's an important selling point for these ideas, besides their impact on the broader environment, at least potentially and in the long term. Self-reliance as a way of making communities more resilient against the random damage inflicted on them by the global economy. For example by long-term rising oil prices and their likely impact on food prices. 

(Also thanks for making this thread a bit more interesting than the usual stupid wrangling about climate change conspiracy theories. I had no idea that stuff like this was going on in China)


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> does it include the 70 weather station locations in China which Jones used in his paper 'disproving' warming in the region being down to urban heat effect?





> 1. The FOI request was responded to in full
> 
> The FOI request from Douglas Keenan was responded to by the university in full in 2007. The data used in the 1990 paper were indeed sent to Mr Keenan, including both the locations of the stations and the station temperature data for China, Australia and western parts of the former Soviet Union. For China, the data covered the period 1954 to 1983. The data were also uploaded onto the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) website.
> 
> ...


http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Easily checkable disinformation aimed at casting doubt over AGW research? 

Whatever next ...


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Deleting a copy of something doesn't make the original go away too.



so when the CRU said:

“We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.” 

they were lying


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> so when the CRU said:
> 
> “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”
> 
> they were lying



No. They do not hold the raw data. The raw data is held by those who own it.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

which includes measuring stations which no longer exist, you can wriggle around signal, but the fact remains that the raw data the CRU used is to all intents and purposes inaccessible


----------



## laptop (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> the fact remains that the raw data the CRU used is to all intents and purposes inaccessible



Translation: "when I said they dumped data, I was lying".


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> which includes measuring stations which no longer exist, you can wriggle around signal, but the fact remains that the raw data the CRU used is to all intents and purposes inaccessible



No. It is available from the people who own it, not from CRU which does not have permission to redistribute it.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/guardianstatement



yet Jones himself says two weeks later



> The climate expert at the centre of a media storm over the release of emails onto the internet has admitted that he did not follow correct procedures over a key scientific paper.
> 
> In an interview with the science journal Nature, Phil Jones, the head of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University East Anglia, admitted it was "not acceptable" that records underpinning a 1990 global warming study have been lost.
> 
> The missing records make it impossible to verify claims that rural weather stations in developing China were not significantly moved, as it states in the 1990 paper, which was published in Nature. "It's not acceptable ... [it's] not best practice," Jones said.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

Some of the information used in that 1990 study is no longer available, although it was provided for the FOI request in 2007.

There are no such problems with any of the subsequent studies which confirmed the results.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

laptop said:


> Translation: "when I said they dumped data, I was lying".



no, they say they didn't keep data



> Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e. quality controlled and homogenized) data.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> No. It is available from the people who own it, not from CRU which does not have permission to redistribute it.



some of it, lots of it isn't


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Some of the information used in that 1990 study is no longer available, although it was provided for the FOI request in 2007.



so your saying the information was lost sometime between 2007 and 2009

now that is careless


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> some of it, lots of it isn't



All of it is available from its owners.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> now that is careless



And irrelevant, since the results have been confirmed by subsequent studies.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> All of it is available from its owners.



but isn't it in the spirit of science to share information rather than every single researcher having to contact hundereds of weather stations every time they want to look into something?

the CRU are funded by the tax payer, its not some elite little club you know


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

that's why, for all his pathetic bleating, if it wasn't for a bizarre quirk in FOI law that is very likely to be changed because of this Jones would be facing prosecution and even a possible prison sentence right now


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> And irrelevant, since the results have been confirmed by subsequent studies.



Relevance here depends on your objective. If your objective is to assess the reliability of the conclusions, then if those conclusions have multiple independent confirmations, certainly this whole business is irrelevant. 

On the other hand for someone wanting to sling a bit of mud and raise a few doubts and to hint at malfeasance on the part of the CRU scientists (while carefully skirting around outright conspiracy theory), then it's totally relevant.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> but isn't it in the spirit of science to share information


Yes, but unfortunately only the people who own the data can make the decision to share it.



smokedout said:


> the CRU are funded by the tax payer, its not some elite little club you know


This question is nothing to do with the CRU. They cannot release other people's data.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Yes, but unfortunately only the people who own the data can make the decision to share it.
> 
> 
> This question is nothing to do with the CRU. They cannot release other people's data.



they are perfectly free to release the majority of the data that comes in from National Meteorological Services 

some of it they cant, some of it they dont know if they can because they "cannot locate them (the agreements), possibly as we've moved offices several times during the 1980s." 

flakier and flakier


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> that's why, for all his pathetic bleating, if it wasn't for a bizarre quirk in FOI law that is very likely to be changed because of this Jones would be facing prosecution and even a possible prison sentence right now





> Any assertion that the University has been found in breach of any part the Freedom of Information Act is incorrect. The ICO had not communicated with the University before issuing the statement and has still not completed any investigations into this matter. Media reports have been inaccurate.


http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/ICOcorrespondence


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> they are perfectly free to release the majority of the data that comes in from National Meteorological Services



The data that can be released is all publicly available on the internet. The small fraction of the data that cannot be released publicly is available from its owners.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

If your hypothesis is that the small amount of data that cannot be released increases the warming trend in the final analysis then you should test that hypothesis. A very easy way to do that would be to compare with the GISS analysis, which does not use that data, but uses all the publicly available data used by CRU.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

It's pretty clear that this is the real point though...


Bernie Gunther said:


> On the other hand for someone wanting to sling a bit of mud and raise a few doubts and to hint at malfeasance on the part of the CRU scientists (while carefully skirting around outright conspiracy theory), then it's totally relevant.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> If your hypothesis is that the small amount of data that cannot be released increases the warming trend in the final analysis then you should test that hypothesis. A very easy way to do that would be to compare with the GISS analysis, which does not use that data, but uses all the publicly available data used by CRU.



Thing is, if any of this was actually about whether that particular data had an effect on the overall evidence for AGW, that's certainly what you'd do. 

In order for this stuff to have an impact on the _overall_ case for AGW, because these results can be independently confirmed, he'd have to generalise the point and claim that _all or most_ science is flawed and by extension, that _all or most_ scientists are either incompetent (which is stupidly unlikely once the claim is generalised) or deliberately lying to us (conspiracy theory)

So he's just flinging a few turds and hoping something sticks with a few people who don't bother to think it through.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

no, this is in the context of the thread

this is why people arent buying it any longer


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/ICOcorrespondence



fucking hell their dirty bastards 

look at what the ICO actually said to them

"The prima facie evidence from the public emails indicate an attempt to defeat disclosure by defeating information.  It is hard to imagine more cogent prima facie evidence"

and later

"I can confirm that the ICO will not be retracting the statement put out in my name"

you can read the rest yourself, its been released on a pdf which cant be copied and i ant be arsed to type anymore - i guess they just wanted to put another hurdle in the way of anyone looking into the dodgy bastards

incidentally the statement the ICO put out was unequivocal

“The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.”

“The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.” 

and you wonder why people are questioning them


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

The ICO say that at face value, there is a case to investigate. That investigation has not been concluded. Any claims that a verdict has been reached are false.




			
				ICO said:
			
		

> As stated above, no decision notice has yet been issued and no alleged breaches have yet been put to the University for comment. That matter has yet to be addressed, but it will be over the coming months.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> The ICO say that at face value, there is a case to investigate. That investigation has not been concluded. Any claims that a verdict has been reached are false.



you're misunderstanding, the IOC made a statement saying there had been a bearch of section 77 but they could not take action as it was outside of the time period

section 77 breaches can be directed against individuals, in this case it related to data being destroyed rather than be released under the act, phil jones is a very fucking lucky man

they are still investigating the section 50 breach


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> in this case it related to data being destroyed



No it did not. No data was destroyed. It related to the suggestion to delete emails -- which were not in fact deleted. You seem to be relying on Jonathan Leake's misrepresentation of the issue.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

ok signal, you know best, the freedom of information commission obviously dont understand the act as well as you


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

They stated quite clearly that no verdict has been reached. I quoted it above.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

interesting how the FOI commission suddenly isnt credible when they dont say what you want

theres a lot of that about isnt there


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> They stated quite clearly that no verdict has been reached. I quoted it above.



no verdict can be reached, its outside of the time frame

“The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.”

i mean what more do you fucking want


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

you flounder a bit when you have to do more than post up links to pieces entitled 'how to talk to a climate change denier' dont you?


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> “The legislation prevents us from taking any action but from looking at the emails it’s clear to us a breach has occurred.”


I don't see that anywhere in their statement. The suggestion to delete emails was wrong though, although there's no evidence they were deleted. It makes no difference to the science though anyway.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

they said that in the original statement

the statement on the UEAs website is the FOI comissions response to UEA complaining about it


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> they said that in the original statement


No they didn't.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7004936.ece

their statement was made to the times

they've refused to retract it

is that clear enough for you


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

That quote was allegedly made in an interview with Leake, not in their statement.

But, like I said: The suggestion to delete emails was wrong though, although there's no evidence they were deleted. It makes no difference to the science though anyway.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

and the FOI commission have refused to retract it


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

it did also say

“The e-mails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information.” 

which again, is pretty unequivocal

the fact you (and the uea) are wriggling about trying to defend it just makes the flaky look even flakier


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

I'm not defending the suggestion to delete emails. I've already said twice that it was wrong. It makes no difference to the science.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> I'm not defending the suggestion to delete emails. I've already said twice that it was wrong. It makes no difference to the science.



so what were you doing over your last ten odd posts


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> so what were you doing over your last ten odd posts



Responding to things you posted that weren't true. And stating that the suggestion to delete emails was wrong but does not affect the science.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Responding to things you posted that weren't true. And stating that the suggestion to delete emails was wrong but does not affect the science.



You've been doing that for two and a bit pages now which is more than I have the patience to do these days. 

Interesting that smokedout keeps persisting with the disinformation isn't it? It's a bit like what JC was doing on that other thread on science. They just keep repeating disinformation over and over again no matter how much evidence is provided to show that it's disinformation and/or where the disinformation has some truth mixed in with it, show that it makes no difference to the soundness of the scientific case for AGW. 

That sort of shameless and persistent spamming of threads with disinformation really tends to lower the quality of debate here though and I really wish they'd fucking give it a rest.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> That sort of shameless and persistent spamming of threads with disinformation really tends to lower the quality of debate here though and I really wish they'd fucking give it a rest.



It helps move the thread on from the real issues that they don't want to answer...



Signal 11 said:


> If your hypothesis is that the small amount of data that cannot be released increases the warming trend in the final analysis then you should test that hypothesis. A very easy way to do that would be to compare with the GISS analysis, which does not use that data, but uses all the publicly available data used by CRU.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> You've been doing that for two and a bit pages now which is more than I have the patience to do these days.
> 
> Interesting that smokedout keeps persisting with the disinformation isn't it? It's a bit like what JC was doing on that other thread on science. They just keep repeating disinformation over and over again no matter how much evidence is provided to show that it's disinformation and/or where the disinformation has some truth mixed in with it, show that it makes no difference to the soundness of the scientific case for AGW.



what disinformation?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Responding to things you posted that weren't true. And stating that the suggestion to delete emails was wrong but does not affect the science.



no you havent, youve been nitpicking and wriggling before you finally accepted that what i was saying was true


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

As I said above, that's what he'd do if his aim was to make a reasonable judgement on whether the data in question affected the overall science. 

That's not what he (and JC on the other thread) are doing though. 

They can't actually make a case against the science based on evidence because there isn't any and if they actually try to claim that thousands of scientists around the world are making up the science of AGW for nefarious reasons, they'll rightly be laughed at as fruitloop conspiraloons like the ones in the OP. 

So instead they're just pumping out disinformation and smears and hoping that eventually everybody here will get so tired of painstakingly demonstrating that they're talking crap by producing actual evidence, that it'll go unchallenged.

Trouble is every thread where they do that turns into a fucking wasteland and I for one am fucking sick of it


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> no you havent, youve been nitpicking and wriggling before you finally accepted that what i was saying was true



Yes I have. What you said was not true. I have never disputed that the suggestion to delete emails was wrong. But it does not affect the science. Speaking of which, when are you going to respond to the real issues?



Signal 11 said:


> If your hypothesis is that the small amount of data that cannot be released increases the warming trend in the final analysis then you should test that hypothesis. A very easy way to do that would be to compare with the GISS analysis, which does not use that data, but uses all the publicly available data used by CRU.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> If your hypothesis is that the small amount of data that cannot be released increases the warming trend in the final analysis then you should test that hypothesis. A very easy way to do that would be to compare with the GISS analysis, which does not use that data, but uses all the publicly available data used by CRU.



That's what someone who actually cared to find out whether the science of AGW was correct or not would do. That he never does is precisely what shows that his purpose is nothing to do with honestly wondering about the science. 

IMO he's pushing a conspiracy theory, but can't just come out and say so, so instead he's emoting about the sinister iniquities of Dr Jones and hoping that people will get the message that scientists aren't to be trusted.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Yes I have. What you said was not true.



please, you're resorting to semantics now


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> please, you're resorting to semantics now



It's not semantics to point out that your claim that data was destroyed was false and that the issue was the suggestion to delete emails.

Are you going to respond about the temperature data or do you accept that there are no problems with it? I'll assume the latter unless you respond otherwise.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> It's not semantics to point out that your claim that data was destroyed was false and that the issue was the suggestion to delete emails.



for all we know all kinds of emails wre deleted, whether they were or not is immaterial as to whether there had been a breach of the FOI


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> That's what someone who actually cared to find out whether the science of AGW was correct or not would do. That he never does is precisely what shows that his purpose is nothing to do with honestly wondering about the science.
> 
> IMO he's pushing a conspiracy theory, but can't just come out and say so, so instead he's emoting about the sinister iniquities of Dr Jones and hoping that people will get the message that scientists aren't to be trusted.



this thread became a discussion of why people were increasingly moving away from the idea of agw

aren't we allowed to discuss why that may be?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> It's not semantics to point out that your claim that data was destroyed was false and that the issue was the suggestion to delete emails.
> 
> Are you going to respond about the temperature data or do you accept that there are no problems with it? I'll assume the latter unless you respond otherwise.



i think it's almost beyond doubt that there was warming between 1979 and 1995

whether that warming is significant or partly or wholly man made is not yet firmly established


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> i think it's almost beyond doubt that there was warming between 1979 and 1995


There has been a warming trend since 1975 and there is no evidence that has changed.



smokedout said:


> whether that warming is significant or partly or wholly man made is not yet firmly established


See chapter 9 of AR4 WG1.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> for all we know all kinds of emails wre deleted, whether they were or not is immaterial as to whether there had been a breach of the FOI



There's no evidence that any emails were deleted, but yes, that would have had to be investigated before any decision could be made, as would the question of whether the requests were vexatious.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> There's no evidence that any emails were deleted, but yes, that would have had to be investigated before any decision could be made, as would the question of whether the requests were vexatious.



well if the FOI requests were vexatious then i very much the commission would be so clear that they believed there to have been a breach


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> There has been a warming trend since 1975 and there is no evidence that has changed.



no, but there hasnt been any significant warming since 1995


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> no, but there hasnt been any significant warming since 1995



That's utter bollocks.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> That's utter bollocks.



Just to emphasise that ... 







 same source


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

Now we'll be back to the "not conspiracy theories" about the temperature data.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

They _are_ conspiracy theories, no matter how these characters try to dance around the fact, that's what they are, with very few exceptions. 

Given the number of scientists involved, the nature of scientific quality assurance practices and the lack of any convincing scientific case against AGW, the only possible way to avoid the conclusion that AGW is happening if you make the slightest effort to look into it, is that there is a massive global conspiracy of scientists to mislead the public for some reason or another. 

The only trouble is, if you say it that plainly, it quickly becomes obvious that it's a _barking mad conspiraloon fantasy_. 

So they try to pose as 'sceptics' asking penetrating questions. Trouble is though if you're sceptical about something what you're doing is looking for evidence and in this case the evidence is quite clear. A genuine sceptic given overwhelming evidence of something, accepts the evidence. It's the _absence of evidence_, e.g. in the case of astrology or crystal healing or creationism or something that makes them carry on acting sceptical. 

If you're a conspiracy theorist on the other hand, no evidence can possibly satisfy your questions, because the questions aren't about eliciting evidence regarding the truth of the matter, they're about strongly implying that there is something clandestine going on without actually babbling about lizards etc. 

That makes sceptics and conspiracy theorists easy to distinguish, because a sceptic, given an overwhelming mass of solid evidence goes 'oh, OK. Fair enough' and the conspiracy nut ignores it and keeps pushing the same shit and acting as though any facts and logic you may produce didn't happen.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> That's utter bollocks.



oh sorry, i was basing my opinion on your messiah



> Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
> 
> Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8511670.stm

is he wrong


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

dp


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> oh sorry, i was basing my opinion on your messiah


I haven't got one.



smokedout said:


> is he wrong


No, you are lying about what he said. He did not say that there has been no significant warming, as you claimed. See the thread JC2 started in the science forum using the same interview.

e2a: TBF, you may be genuinely ignorant of what "statistically significant" means, assuming you've ignored all the links I've already provided for you about it on this thread, which would be par for the course with you.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

The 'messiah' crack above is interesting isn't it?

I guess the thought there is to elevate the tactless Dr Jones from some random geek at UEA who nobody outside his immediate speciality had heard of until some creep hacked his e-mails, into the key mastermind behind the Krazy Klimate Konspiracy, to sort of inflate him into a brit Al Gore and use his personal failings in an illogical, but rhetorically effective attack on the credibility of science in general.

All without actually mentioning the global scientific conspiracy out loud of course


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> I haven't got one.
> 
> 
> No, you are lying about what he said. He did not say that there has been no significant warming, as you claimed. See the thread JC2 started in the science forum using the same interview.
> ...



how am i lying about what he said, i quoted him word for word


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

as a reminder



> Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
> 
> Yes


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> how am i lying about what he said, i quoted him word for word



No you did not.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

> to sort of inflate him into a brit Al Gore and use his personal failings in an illogical, but rhetorically effective attack on the credibility of science in general.
> 
> All without actually mentioning the global scientific conspiracy out loud of course



dont give me the high and fucking mighty routine

the last time we discussed this eric made smear after smear on hendrik tenekkes, all of which were offered with no evidence and not one of you had the guts to challenge him about it

i suppose im secretly funded by exxon as well

remind me who the conspiracy theorists are again?


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> They _are_ conspiracy theories, no matter how these characters try to dance around the fact, that's what they are, with very few exceptions.
> 
> Given the number of scientists involved, the nature of scientific quality assurance practices and the lack of any convincing scientific case against AGW, the only possible way to avoid the conclusion that AGW is happening if you make the slightest effort to look into it, is that there is a massive global conspiracy of scientists to mislead the public for some reason or another.
> 
> ...



What do you reckon? Is the above on the money or not Signal 11?


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> i suppose im secretly funded by exxon as well



I very much doubt anyone would be desperate enough to fund someone as inept as you.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> No you did not.



well no, i didnt quote him at all in that post, but i did later

i said 

"no, but there hasnt been any significant warming since 1995 "

when jones was asked 

"Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming"

he answered 'yes'

how exactly did i misrepresent his position?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> I very much doubt anyone would be desperate enough to fund someone as inept as you.



so why didnt you challenge eric when he claimed that tenekkes was paid by exxon?


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> What do you reckon? Is the above on the money or not Signal 11?



Spot on and many UK sceptics groups are qouted as saying so in this article:



> Michael Marshall, from the Merseyside Skeptics group that organised the homeopathy overdose is clear about the legitimacy of climate change sceptics: "In our view, climate change sceptics are not sceptics. A sceptic looks at the available evidence and makes a decision, and for homeopathy the evidence is that it doesn't work. But the sceptical position on climate change is that it is happening."
> 
> John Jackson, from UK Skeptics, agreed, added: "Terms like "climate change sceptic" are very damaging to scepticism - basically because this is not what scepticism is. We often get people calling us, referring to themselves as climate sceptics, but we argue with them. We accept global warming because the evidence is overwhelming."


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Ahhh nice catch. I imagined that they would be pretty pissed off at being associated with these conspiraloons but hadn't actually looked for a sceptics statement on it.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> well no, i didnt quote him at all in that post, but i did later
> 
> i said
> 
> ...


Because "statistically significant" and "significant" mean completely different things.

If you don't understand then read this and this.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Ah that's _evidence _though, conspiraloons don't need no steenkin evidence


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

Or if that's too difficult for you, just look at the diagram that was posted earlier...







...and tell us if the increase from the 1990s to the 2000s looks less significant to you than the increase from the 1980s to the 1990s.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Because "statistically significant" and "significant" mean completely different things.
> 
> If you don't understand then read this and this.



ok semantics again



> Ah that's evidence though, conspiraloons don't need no steenkin evidence



why didnt you challenge eric when he claimed that tenekkes was paid by exxon?

is it because you prefer your own conspiracy theory that anyone who raises doubts about agw is in the pay of the far right  oil companies?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Or if that's too difficult for you, just look at the diagram that was posted earlier...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



how significant does the drop from the 40s to the 50s look?

not what youd expect after the second world war when carbon emmissions rocketed is it?


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> ok semantics again


So, you didn't understand. That's to be expected.

Look at the diagram above and tell us if the increase from the 1990s to the 2000s looks less significant to you than the increase from the 1980s to the 1990s.

I assume that it doesn't look any less significant to you, so that will be the default answer if you ignore the question again.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Again smokedout, you're not relating to evidence like a sceptic, but rather like a conspiracy theorist. There is *tons* of evidence that Exxon has paid money to various front organisations and dodgy scientists like Fred Singer to tell lies about climate change. Maybe not the specific guy you're on about, I haven't heard of him, but there's masses of totally solid evidence (thanks to US accounting laws) that Exxon have knowingly sponsored disinformation on this subject. 

See e.g. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf

If there was evidence like this showing Dick Cheney funding the 911 terrorists, then it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory, it'd be a documented conspiracy and Cheney would have been shot by a firing squad sometime around 2002.

If you can produce equally solid evidence of a global scientific conspiracy to hoodwink the public about climate change, then I promise I'll stop calling you a climate conspiraloon and start taking you seriously.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> not what youd expect after the second world war when carbon emmissions rocketed is it?



Only if you think that CO2 is the only factor that affects the climate, which isn't the view of any climate scientists I'm aware of.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Because "statistically significant" and "significant" mean completely different things.
> 
> If you don't understand then read this and this.



its a bit late for this but, on this link the trend line on the first graph seems to suggest the anomaly by 2010 should be just under +0.6

but on the satellite data it seems to suggest that in reality it was about 0.2

riddle me that


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> its a bit late for this but, on this link the trend line on the first graph seems to suggest the anomaly by 2010 should be just under +0.6
> 
> but on the satellite data it seems to suggest that in reality it was about 0.2
> 
> riddle me that



The satellite data uses a different baseline. Haven't you got google on your internet?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Again smokedout, you're not relating to evidence like a sceptic, but rather like a conspiracy theorist. There is *tons* of evidence that Exxon has paid money to various front organisations and dodgy scientists like Fred Singer to tell lies about climate change.



yes there is, just like theres tonnes of evidence that UEA were plotting to delete emails and scupper the peer review process

that doesnt mean that all the UEA's work is bunk and neither does it mean that anyone who questions agw is secretly funded by exxon

unfortunately you seem happy to ignore conspiraloon claims against some of the worlds most respected scientists when it suits you


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> The satellite data uses a different baseline. Haven't you got google on your internet?



fair enough, i said it was late, what baseline do they use?


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> theres tonnes of evidence that UEA were plotting to [...] scupper the peer review process


Provide details of any papers you think were unfairly rejected.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Provide details of any papers you think were unfairly rejected.



If memory serves they were talking about the Soon and Balunias one


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> fair enough, i said it was late, what baseline do they use?



1979-1999, whereas GISS uses 1951-1980.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> yes there is, just like theres tonnes of evidence that UEA were plotting to delete emails and scupper the peer review process
> 
> that doesnt mean that all the UEA's work is bunk and neither does it mean that anyone who questions agw is secretly funded by exxon
> 
> unfortunately you seem happy to ignore conspiraloon claims against some of the worlds most respected scientists when it suits you



Well, yes I ignore conspiraloon claims generally speaking. 

I've never said at any time that all climate conspiraloon claims are funded by Exxon though, however convenient it might be from your point of view to pretend that I had. For example, it seems pretty clear to me that David Icke and Alex Jones can make plenty of money from their hordes of credulous admirers without any direct funding from Exxon.

Their interests converge however, Exxon-funded organisations like the Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute and dodgy scientist front groups like the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and Fred Singer's many organisations provide plausibly scientific-looking criticisms that the Ickes and Joneses can make use of to thrill their legions of credulous admirers with, giving them that utterly delicious frisson of knowing what's *really* going on ...


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> Because "statistically significant" and "significant" mean completely different things.
> 
> If you don't understand then read this and this.




incidentally for my benefit and the benefit of any other uneducated proles who happen to be reading could you explain what the difference between "statistically significant" and "significant" are, rather than posting links which dont explain?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> 1979-1999, whereas GISS uses 1951-1980.



i thought GISS used 1960-69

interesting though innit that wherever you put your baseline you get different results


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Well, yes I ignore conspiraloon claims generally speaking.
> 
> I've never said at any time that all climate conspiraloon claims are funded by Exxon though, however convenient it might be from your point of view to pretend that I had. For example, it seems pretty clear to me that David Icke and Alex Jones can make plenty of money from their hordes of credulous admirers without any help from Exxon.



tenkkes was president of the dutch meteorogical society for many years and is considered one of the worlds foremost experts on turbulence

interesting that you should attempt to lump him in with Icke and Alex Jones


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> i thought GISS used 1960-69


You may be thinking of CRU which uses 1961-1990.



smokedout said:


> interesting though innit that wherever you put your baseline you get different results


What do you think the difference would be if a different baseline were used?

And I'd strongly advise you to think carefully before answering this -- or google if it hasn't closed yet.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> tenkkes was president of the dutch meteorogical society for many years and is considered one of the worlds foremost experts on turbulence
> 
> interesting that you should attempt to lump him in with Icke and Alex Jones



You're getting a bit desperate there aren't you? At no time did I lump this bloke I'd never even heard of with Icke and Jones.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> You're getting a bit desperate there aren't you? At no time did I lump this bloke I'd never even heard of with Icke and Jones.



he's, in your parlance, a climate change denier

and therefore an obvious conspiraloon isn't he?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 14, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> You may be thinking of CRU which uses 1961-1990.
> 
> 
> What do you think the difference would be if a different baseline were used?
> ...



how about you answer my question first?


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

smokedout said:


> he's, in your parlance, a climate change denier
> 
> and therefore an obvious conspiraloon isn't he?



I've no idea. I haven't read anything by him.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 14, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> They _are_ conspiracy theories, no matter how these characters try to dance around the fact, that's what they are, with very few exceptions.
> 
> Given the number of scientists involved, the nature of scientific quality assurance practices and the lack of any convincing scientific case against AGW, the only possible way to avoid the conclusion that AGW is happening if you make the slightest effort to look into it, is that there is a massive global conspiracy of scientists to mislead the public for some reason or another.
> 
> ...



This is what I'm arguing. If the bloke you're on about has a some sort of scientific quibble, e.g. he thinks sunspots are responsible for the documented warming or something, then he might be a crank, but he's not a conspiraloon. 

If he's implying in any way shape or form that there is a global scientific conspiracy to deceive the public, then he's a conspiraloon just like Icke.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

is that what im implying?

he's a critic of the models btw, does that really make him a crank, his work on scientific modelling is quite well resepcted


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## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> incidentally for my benefit and the benefit of any other uneducated proles who happen to be reading could you explain what the difference between "statistically significant" and "significant" are, rather than posting links which dont explain?



"Statistically significant" means there is high confidence (usually 95%) that the trend is genuine and not an artefact of the noise. So the amount of data required to establish a trend with statistical significance depends on how big the signal is compared to the noise.

"Significant" is about whether the signal is significant in a given context. An increase of 2 degrees C in this room would not be significant. An increase of 2 degrees C in global average temperature would be in terms of its affect on the ecosystem.

In data with a low signal to noise ratio (i.e. noisy data like the temperature record), you may have a signal that is significant, but cannot be established with statistical significance.

In the same amount of data with a high signal to noise ratio you may have an insignificant signal that can be established with statistical significance. 

 The question that Jones was asked deliberately cherry picked a short subset of the data -- for which there is no justification whatsoever, given the data that is available and the long established physics that is known to be at work -- such that statistical significance could not be established given the signal to noise ratio in the temperature data.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> is that what im implying <snip>



Yes, that appears to be what you're implying. Your concerns about Dr Jones have no force with respect to the science behind AGW unless the claimed failings of Dr Jones are representative of a significant part of the scientific community. Signal 11 has shown multiple times (and been ignored by you, just as my theory about climate conspiraloons predicts) that the conclusions in question have been proved multiple times, independent of Jones's data set. So either you are saying nothing that challenges the science one way or another (in which case why are you bothering) or you are implying that there is a global scientific conspiracy to mislead the public.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> he's a critic of the models btw, does that really make him a crank, his work on scientific modelling is quite well resepcted



His article on climate modelling is not respected by experts in the field, as you should know, because laptop provided this link for you in a previous thread.



> [Response: The piece by Tennekes only shows that he is confused about the difference between predicting the future course of a chaotic system subject to constant forcing, and predicting the response to a substantial change in the forcing. He relies on vague suppositions hanging over from his experience with turbulence theory. If this is the substance of his criticism of IPCC, then it's entirely reasonable that he lost his funding. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that this is the reason for his lack of grants and relative inactivity, though. Gee, the guy is retired, and most folks like to do other things than write grant proposals in their golden years. --raypierre]


http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...en-op-ed-in-wsj/comment-page-1/#comment-11420


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## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> how about you answer my question first?



This one? or did I miss something else?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Yes, that appears to be what you're implying. Your concerns about Dr Jones have no force with respect to the science behind AGW unless the claimed failings of Dr Jones are representative of a significant part of the scientific community.



ffs bernie, my claims about dr fucking jones were that he broke the law which has further led to many of the uneducated proles like me to become suspicious of agw

how on earth that makes me a fucking conspiracy theorist is beyond me

when you all stop resorting to slurs, abuse and dismissal of genuine public interest (which includes foi requests to the scientists involved) then you may have a chance of winning us over

at the moment, in most people's eyes, you just look like a bunch of pointy head cunts 

my position all along has been i dont know, for that ive been consistantly cunted off, accused of being a conspiraloon etc

you really do your position no favours


----------



## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

and incidentally if you want to attack my class, and tell us we cant go on holiday or have a car then youd better fucking have a real good think about the way you're approaching this, cos youre badly losing the political argument right now


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 15, 2010)

If your argument has any force, you have to make it apply to climate scientists other than Dr Jones. If you don't then it doesn't do anything. If you do then you are a conspiraloon unless you can produce some actual evidence of a global scientific conspiracy to deceive the public about climate change.


----------



## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> This one? or did I miss something else?



why didnt you challenge eric when he claimed tenekkes was funded by exonn?


----------



## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> If your argument has any force, you have to make it apply to climate scientists other than Dr Jones. If you don't then it doesn't do anything. If you do then you are a conspiraloon unless you can produce some actual evidence of a global scientific conspiracy to deceive the public about climate change.



the ipcc say that they are 90% certain climate change is man made

that dont constitute proof in my book


----------



## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> His article on climate modelling is not respected by experts in the field, as you should know, because laptop provided this link for you in a previous thread.
> 
> 
> http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...en-op-ed-in-wsj/comment-page-1/#comment-11420



a comment on a blog now, your sources get better and better


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 15, 2010)

Well, nighty night, don't let the lizards bite


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## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> The question that Jones was asked deliberately cherry picked a short subset of the data -- for which there is no justification whatsoever, given the data that is available and the long established physics that is known to be at work -- such that statistical significance could not be established given the signal to noise ratio in the temperature data.



thats those far right bastards at the beeb for you, funded by exxon on the sly i tell ya


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## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> thats those far right bastards at the beeb for you, funded by exxon on the sly i tell ya



No. Read the article. The questions were sent in and many of them like that one were transparent attempts to mislead.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> a comment on a blog now, your sources get better and better



A comment on a blog *written by a climate scientist*.


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## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> Well, nighty night, don't let the lizards bite



night bernie, the lizards will be fine, im keeping the heating on to keep em warm


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## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Signal 11 said:


> No. Read the article. The questions were sent in and many of them like that one were transparent attempts to mislead.



what, you mean theres some kind of conspiracy going on?


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## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

incidentally signal, for the third time

why didnt you challenge eric when he claimed tenekkes was funded by exonn?


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## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> the ipcc say that they are 90% certain climate change is man made


More than 90% certain that most of the warming over the 20th century was man made. Mainly because a significant amount in the first half was solar driven. There's much more certainty over the second half...

      Benestad 2009: "Our analysis shows that the most likely contribution from solar forcing a global warming is 7 ± 1% for the 20th century and is negligible for warming since 1980."

      Lockwood 2008: "It is shown that the contribution of solar variability to the temperature trend since 1987 is small and downward; the best estimate is ?1.3% and the 2? confidence level sets the uncertainty range of ?0.7 to ?1.9%."

      Lockwood 2008: "The conclusions of our previous paper, that solar forcing has declined over the past 20 years while surface air temperatures have continued to rise, are shown to apply for the full range of potential time constants for the climate response to the variations in the solar forcings."

      Ammann 2007: "Although solar and volcanic effects appear to dominate most of the slow climate variations within the past thousand years, the impacts of greenhouse gases have dominated since the second half of the last century."

      Lockwood 2007: "The observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanism is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified."



smokedout said:


> that dont constitute proof in my book


Science doesn't work like that. If you want absolute certainty, go and talk to a priest. This was explained to you three years ago.


----------



## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> why didnt you challenge eric when he claimed tenekkes was funded by exonn?



Because I don't know anything about any funding he may or may not get and I'm not interested. The claims in his article had already been addressed and that is what matters.


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## Signal 11 (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> what, you mean theres some kind of conspiracy going on?



An individual sending in a misleading question does not constitute a conspiracy.


----------



## rioted (Mar 15, 2010)

smokedout said:


> and incidentally if you want to attack my class, and tell us we cant go on holiday or have a car then youd better fucking have a real good think about the way you're approaching this, cos youre badly losing the political argument right now




You don't mean "my class" do you? At the most you mean a small part of it, living in the West in the lap of luxury. Getting fat off the crumbs from your masters table.


----------



## Captain Hurrah (Mar 15, 2010)

rioted said:


> You don't mean "my class" do you? At the most you mean a small part of it, living in the West in the lap of luxury. Getting fat off the crumbs from your masters table.



I've got a Maoist cap going spare if you want one.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 15, 2010)

Not seen a Maoist on here for years! Hello, 'rioted', I like your nickname.


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## Captain Hurrah (Mar 15, 2010)

Tipp-ex and a rucksack spring to mind.


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## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

you might be getting fat


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## kyser_soze (Mar 15, 2010)

Well this was fun and edifying to read on a Monday morning, and is a superb demonstration of the many-faceted nature of the climate change issue.

1. It shows that many, many people are still deeply confused about whom and what to believe.

2. That many of those in support of the science, irrespective of it's accuracy, are (at least on this thread) failing to observe the group dynamics of their 'camp'

3. That in at least one case, (Bernie), the science is being used (in a well supported and developed way) to support a specific political viewpoint, which is exactly the thing you accuse the neo-libs of. This is not a criticism BTW, it's just a _point_.

4. Shouting 'Look at the numbers!' isn't enough anymore. Irrespective of the _actualité_ of the UEA shenanigans, irrespective of their being other science done on the same subject which reached the same conclusions, the _image_ is one of a prominent university climate department behaving inappropriately. That it came just before the IPCC conference, and there have since been several reports of questionable claims.

5. The flights argument is a load of arse. The main beneficiaries of cheap flights are not the w/c or 'the poor', it's been the ABC1s and business accounts. The majority of C2Ds who can afford to fly still only take a single overseas package holiday a year, not multiple weekends away or transatlantic.

6. I'm a sceptic who accepts AGW, but not the futurology. Which is basically all the long term models are.


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## Belushi (Mar 15, 2010)

Spot on Kyser, top post.


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## JimW (Mar 15, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> ...
> 
> 2. That many of those in support of the science, irrespective of it's accuracy, are (at least on this thread) failing to observe the group dynamics of their 'camp'
> 
> ...



This is going to be true in so far as you've identified some vague 'many of those', but personally I fully expect the 'scientific community' or whatever you want to call it to be full of the usual careerists, egos and idiots that any human endeavour accumulates. Still find what I've seen of the science they've produced compelling enough to a lay reader, even some of the 'futurology' - it's always been a given that this will be speculative by its very nature.
Even with the UEA scandal, the clear 'group dynamic' was a bunch of people who knew what they were talking about fed up to the back teeth with wasting time handling the irrelevant objections of disingenuous wreckers. Obviously not very clever in the politicised environment the 'sceptics' have created but entirely of a piece with bog standard human behaviour in any number of fields.
Can't see how a genuine sceptic could come to much of a different conclusion. What criticism I have seen falls precisely into that pettifogging focus on this or that detail that is the hallmark of the silly cunt getting it all wrong and missing the larger truth, sometimes clearly deliberately and with ulterior motives. As I said, I'm not a scientist and may be the dupe of a vast global conspiracy of men with pocket protectors, but I highly doubt it. If nothing else, the emerging message doesn't serve the ends of capital AFAICS, though no doubt it will adapt in due course.
Doesn't make some of the more ridiculous anti-human green responses right, but then that never followed anyway. That people have used the science as the basis for some crappy politics doesn't negate it.


----------



## kyser_soze (Mar 15, 2010)

Don't disagree with any of that TBH Jim, my post was merely a collection of general points about the thread so far. 

But the simple social truth is that 12 months ago there were more people who believed the general case for AGW, and in the wider issues of CC, than there are now, and it's been a spectacularly quick reversal, and the response of someone like Signal on this thread to people expressing exactly those opinions, while understandably born of frustration at their failure to see the truth as he (and others) sees it, is not going to wash anymore - or at least not for a while.


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## JimW (Mar 15, 2010)

Same here really, wasn't so much disagreeing with you as having a bit of a general waffle.


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## ernestolynch (Mar 15, 2010)

Nice points, chief. So many people are starting to disbelieve the AGW agenda, not because we are all dupes of or in the pay of Exxon or whoever; but because of the ranters who label any hint of scepticism or doubt as denialist torturers of Gaia. Never mind the dodgy UEA dudes, or those Miliband goons, the sight of a bunch of braying toffs demanding an end to cheap flights makes most people sick. By the way, due to family reasons we use cheap air travel a lot and the argument above that regular folk aren't benefiting is crap. Gatwick is full of people visiting family in Ireland, Poland, etc or normal people enjoying weekends in European cities. The Plane Stupid and Greenpeace cunts want us back on Slattery's and the National Express.


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## Captain Hurrah (Mar 15, 2010)

Get the fuck to Pontin's you scum!


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## kyser_soze (Mar 15, 2010)

I will state, here and now, that I'm a big fan of flying, _however_ it doesn't negate the fact that cheap flights have benefitted the hazily defined middle class (BC1s) more than it has anyone else.


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## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> I will state, here and now, that I'm a big fan of flying, _however_ it doesn't negate the fact that cheap flights have benefitted the hazily defined middle class (BC1s) more than it has anyone else.



i'm not sure its that simple

its a bit like on t'other thread about abolishing tax for those on less than 10k, whilst most of the people who will benefit are better off than that it could also revolutionise the life of someone earning 200 quid a week

in other words the value of the benefit to those at the bottem is greater

badly put, but if you get my drift


----------



## frogwoman (Mar 15, 2010)

http://eastangliaemails.com/


----------



## ernestolynch (Mar 15, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> http://eastangliaemails.com/



It's all a conspiraloonacy.


----------



## JimW (Mar 15, 2010)

I did sit through some really long and tedious argument about those emails on some other board when the news broke and in the kerfuffle that followed, and there really isn't a smoking gun. The bit s where for example, iirc, they tried to stop some bloke's paper getting included in a conference were obviously an underhanded stitch-up, but fitted entirely with just finding the person in question a one-note idiot. As I said, stupid considering how the issue's getting politicised but a million miles from showing any sort of vast shadowy conspiracy. 
I'm broadly in agreement with ernest, frogwoman and seems most of us posting here about the crappy liberal agenda that's been built on global warming, but as I said in the first post, it's not because there's much of significance up with the science.


----------



## Bernie Gunther (Mar 15, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> Well this was fun and edifying to read on a Monday morning, and is a superb demonstration of the many-faceted nature of the climate change issue.
> 
> 1. It shows that many, many people are still deeply confused about whom and what to believe.
> 
> ...



I'm a bit confused by a couple of things there. First in 2. what do you mean by 'camp' ? 

I for one absolutely decline to take any responsibility for George Monbiot, Plane Stupid, Green Taxation, Deep Ecologists or Bono. As you recognise in point 3. I have a specific political viewpoint that's based on the science and which is quite openly held. I don't think I have much in common with most of what the media considers the main 'players' apart from taking the science seriously though and so I'm a bit puzzled about what 'camp' we're talking about here.  

I'm extremely suspicious of anything (e.g. point 4) that sounds even vaguely like 'people concerned about AGW need to learn to play the media's game' at least on it's own terms, for example by offering Dr Jones up as a 'personality' so that the deniers can play the same sort of games with him here that the US ones play with Gore. The media may prefer to see things in terms of popular/hatefigure 'personalities' like we were talking about professional wrestling or something, but that's just a distraction from the important stuff here and I can't see it having any positive impact. 

What I see the deniers doing right now with the UEA fuss is trying to turn the argument in the direction of conspiracy theory by using the personality of the unfortunate Dr Jones as a proxy for the science and by using the usual media witchunt techniques to imply, via his personality as proxy, that the science of AGW is untrustworthy. I don't think playing the media game helps with this. 

I think calling the deniers on their conspiracy theories, explict or implied, is a better approach.


----------



## kyser_soze (Mar 15, 2010)

By 'camp' I mean there's either willing, or naive, blindness in terms of both how the groupthink dynamic (irrespective of the evidentiary base) works, and of how there is now a grant market for this science that those making the biggest claims of death in the future get publicity. Beyond the usual academic to and fro I mean.

By not engaging actively in the media, you lose. No matter how good the science is, you lose the public debate. It's the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand and saying 'Until you play by my rules of engagement I'm not talking.' Look at Signal 11 - put him in front of an ignorant audience and he'd go apeshit at them in minutes. You won't win a public and political debate based solely on the science, and were never likely too. 

What's happened with the UEA & Himalaya nonsense is that the _faith_ that were starting to be built on (i.e. public accept the main argument of the science and trust what scientists say about it) has been rapidly and calamitously eroded. The UEA guff is probably a case in point to look at when it comes to bad handling of the press by scientists - the truth of the situation as a whole, and the fact that the same results had been found by another means (which should have acted as a reinforcer) was lost. Dr Jones (or more significantly UEA) should have hired professional help from the get-go of the story - as it was their side was drowned in noise and irrelevant coverage for most of it.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 15, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> <snip> there is now a grant market for this science that those making the biggest claims of death in the future get publicity. Beyond the usual academic to and fro I mean.<snip>



Is there any evidence that bigger death claims make any difference to grants? Publicity based on more sensational claims yes, I can see that. Usually that's some scientifically illiterate journalist sensationalising the fuck out of a far more considered statement made by some poor sod of a scientist though in my experience.

As to the rest of it, I'm not saying 'don't engage the media' I'm saying, don't engage on their terms, specifically when they try to turn difficult science into something they're more comfortable with, i.e. personalities. I can already see what I believe to be climate conspiracy types trying to inflate Jones into some sort of demonised proxy for the science in the same way that Gore is used by their US pals. 

I think playing that game is counterproductive and I'd rather go on the attack, because I think what's underlying the latest round of denier progress is fundamentally a species of conspiraloonery. Sure Dr Jones' ill-considered (from a PR point of view) remarks in those hacked e-mails are what gave them the ammunition, just like 'Hmm, it's awfully *convenient* for Bush isn't it?' gave the 911 conspiraloons their ammo. 

That doesn't mean what they're trying to convince the public of, that AGW is some sort of massive hoax cooked up by thousands of scientists, is any more plausible than the idea that Bush and his cronies could organise 911, not fuck it up and keep it a secret afterwards. Less so if anything as the evidence to show that AGW is happening is arguably rather more solid than the evidence that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for 911.


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## smokedout (Mar 15, 2010)

Bernie Gunther said:


> less so if anything as the evidence to show that AGW is happening is arguably rather more solid than the evidence that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for 911.



conspiraloon


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## frogwoman (Mar 15, 2010)

my position all along has been "i dont know". I'm really not sure who to believe on the issue and so far everyone on this thread who has been argueing with me hasn't actually put together any evidence as to why i should believe them tbh. 


i think it's absolutely beyond doubt that humans can influence the climate, i accept the need for recycling etc, and probably do a lot more than many people posting on the board. but i am really not sure that everything claimed by the AGW hypothesis is correct, there seem to be a lot of points that don't add up and using what is basically little more than emotional, abusive terms and links to people's blogs etc really doesn't help convince me and probably not anyone else. 

signal 11 if someone posted a link to a blog's comment or something on any other thread on here they would just be laughed off, why should we accept the same standard of proof for anything to do with climate change/global warming? I'm genuinely not having a go, i'm asking a question.


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## frogwoman (Mar 15, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> By 'camp' I mean there's either willing, or naive, blindness in terms of both how the groupthink dynamic (irrespective of the evidentiary base) works, and of how there is now a grant market for this science that those making the biggest claims of death in the future get publicity. Beyond the usual academic to and fro I mean.
> 
> By not engaging actively in the media, you lose. No matter how good the science is, you lose the public debate. It's the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand and saying 'Until you play by my rules of engagement I'm not talking.' Look at Signal 11 - put him in front of an ignorant audience and he'd go apeshit at them in minutes. You won't win a public and political debate based solely on the science, and were never likely too.
> 
> What's happened with the UEA & Himalaya nonsense is that the _faith_ that were starting to be built on (i.e. public accept the main argument of the science and trust what scientists say about it) has been rapidly and calamitously eroded. The UEA guff is probably a case in point to look at when it comes to bad handling of the press by scientists - the truth of the situation as a whole, and the fact that the same results had been found by another means (which should have acted as a reinforcer) was lost. Dr Jones (or more significantly UEA) should have hired professional help from the get-go of the story - as it was their side was drowned in noise and irrelevant coverage for most of it.



excellent post kyser. 

btw, i agree that the "cheap flights" thing was a bit of a silly example and i probably shouldn't have chosen it. 

who is going to tackle the points that i raised earlier about poor countries and carbon emissions etc?


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## Combustible (Mar 15, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> By 'camp' I mean there's either willing, or naive, blindness in terms of both how the groupthink dynamic (irrespective of the evidentiary base) works, and of how there is now a grant market for this science that those making the biggest claims of death in the future get publicity. Beyond the usual academic to and fro I mean.



These sort of claims are always particularly bizarre.  Even if AGW were disproved tomorrow it wouldn't at all lessen the need to study and model the climate.  A lot of research money still goes to lots of scientific areas which get next to no publicity and are of much less interest to those outside of the field.  Anyway much of climate research will get zero publicity outside of scientific journals.

 Even if it were true that it were necessary to generate publicity to get the grant money why do you think it is the biggest claims in death that get the publicity.  You only have to look how eagerly stories that 'global warming is not as bad as we thought' are jumped on to see that this is incorrect.


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## Bernie Gunther (Mar 15, 2010)

frogwoman said:


> <snip> who is going to tackle the points that i raised earlier about poor countries and carbon emissions etc?



I'll have a go. The points are a bit spread out, but think that I get the gist. 

First thing, at least to my way of thinking is that there are actually multiple environmental and resource disasters in progress, climate change happens to be getting most of the publicity, but arguably it's not the most immediately damaging (long-term is a different story). Among the other really important ones are land degradation and the exhaustion or degradation of certain critical resources, aquifers, oil fields etc. 

Secondly, pretty much all of them are either obviously caused by or very closely linked to capitalist models of development and the global financial architecture. 

Typically, liberal environmentalists largely miss the latter aspect or at best pay it lip service. They might want to ameliorate certain particularly gross injustices, but they aren't calling capitalism into question. Very often what the governments are doing is privatising responsibility. Asking individual citizens to make essentially meaningless sacrifices but asking nothing of corporations (where a simple carbon tax for example, might help a lot) In my view that means they aren't addressing the environmental and resource problems, but instead posturing a bit around the edges of them and all too frequently, coming up with scams that cynically exploit these problems.

So for me the place to start with questions about emissions in the developing world is a bit like the place I start when someone tries to talk to me about population control and carrying capacity. To paraphrase Bookchin, as long as you have to have 3% growth year on year to stop the wheels falling off capitalism, it's pretty pointless to talk about population control and carrying capacity, because even if you somehow get rid of all the brown people the way some deep ecologists particularly in the US seem to be suggesting, you still have the same problem coming back to bite you somewhere down the line, because it's a structural problem of capitalism rather than an excess of brown people. (I'm deliberately using confrontational words here because 'green' Mathusians really piss me off)

Similarly, I think it's inevitable that the governments of developed nations will try to push the hardship originating in environmental problems created by capitalism onto developing nations. You can see it pretty plainly in the Stern Report where they conclude that the medium term issues are totally dealable with in rich developed countries and that they can sell the resulting expertise to the developing nations who are worst hit, via climate change insurance (thereby putting them into further debt) The development models for those nations are still going to be giving them the shitty end of the stick in a global economy, for example by encouraging them to grow monoculture crops for export (via debt) rather than being self-reliant and sustainable. In the case of the more advanced developing nations, India, China et al, the single strongest motivation for unsustainable development, pouring out masses of carbon emissions etc, is participation in the global economy at the end of a slightly less shitty stick. 

Given that overthrowing global capitalism is a bit of an ambitious precondition for fixing these problems, I'm much more inclined, in terms of suggesting action, towards trying to build resilience against these impacts in our communities (and encouraging communities in the developing world to do the same) and sort of vaguely hoping that if you do that bit right you build the foundation for subsequent effective resistance to the policies and structural factors that are inflicting these problems on us. Most of the steps we'd need to take to build that resilience are at least somewhat effective in terms of global systemic problems like climate change, and more importantly under fairly predictable future conditions, rising energy and food prices for example, they're just common sense. Most of what you'd need to do to pull it off involves specific changes in law and policy that you'd need to struggle for and learning how to organise things effectively and generate solidarity at a community level instead of relying on imposed discipline from corporations and governments.

I want to see subsistence taken out of the global economy as far as possible and implemented sustainably, but that's anathema to capitalist development models. It's not just a matter of rich hippies building eco-villages, but also a matter of self-reliant communities in developing nations not starving because they can't afford to buy the food that's openly for sale a few streets away from where they live (as in several recent 'famines') So I wouldn't be trying to tell people in developing countries 'You have to sacrifice development for the good of the planet and by the way you owe the IMF $3b for climate change insurance' I'd be saying, 'Here are some ideas on how you can protect your community from being fucked over by a global economy run by delusional bookies and gangsters.'


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## frogwoman (Mar 15, 2010)

thank you - that was a really well argued reply. i'll come back to some of the points you made later.


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## Paul Marsh (Mar 26, 2010)

Well to return to the original post, I have not been able to smoke out anyone from AV4 to justify their exorbitant prices (presumably because they can't) 

I suspect if we start awarding snake oil salesman awards to people in 9/11 truth circles we will never stop, but I think AV4 deserve the Alex Jones Trophy For Services To Snake Oil Sales 2010. 

If only I could afford to get into one of their events to present it!


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## Jazzz (Mar 26, 2010)

Paul Marsh said:


> Well to return to the original post, I have not been able to smoke out anyone from AV4 to justify their exorbitant prices (presumably because they can't)


I can think of an alternative explanation.


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## Blagsta (Mar 26, 2010)

Jazzz said:


> I can think of an alternative explanation.



They need to pay their lizard overlords?


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## xes (Mar 27, 2010)

I still don't think the prices are that steep. Think about how much a concert costs. We paid 40 quid to see the who. 40 quid for 2 hours of music. In shit seats. AV4 is value for money using this as an example to compare it to. People will pay what they think it's worth, if they don't think it's worth it, then they won't pay. Why go on some obsessive mission to try and "oust" them for overpricing? I'm willing to bet a years wages you've never done it to the organisers of Glastonbury or any other highly prices festival. All seems a little (lot) strange to me.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 29, 2010)

I'm no fan of the who, but I'd wager that seeing them live would be more thrilling than listening to Icke rattling on about his mental health symptoms.


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## Jazzz (Mar 29, 2010)

Citizen66 said:


> I'm no fan of the who, but I'd wager that seeing them live would be more thrilling than listening to Icke rattling on about his mental health symptoms.



David Icke isn't speaking at this event. Do pay attention


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## butchersapron (Mar 29, 2010)

Yes, this is a c-list event. Imagine how much the A-list would cost.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 29, 2010)

Jazzz said:


> David Icke isn't speaking at this event. Do pay attention



£169 for a tribute act? 

I'd want nothing less than the messiah himself for that kind of wedge. I'd maybe settle for him in hologram form.


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## Jazzz (Mar 29, 2010)

You can see David for thirty-five

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=368562


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## frogwoman (Mar 30, 2010)

http://www.unitetheunion.com/news__events/latest_news/unite_tells_climate_protesters.aspx 

one for ern here - as i said on the other thread, if true it confirms something i've thought for a very long time.


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## butchersapron (Mar 30, 2010)

Jazzz said:


> You can see David for thirty-five
> 
> http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/user/?region=gb_london&query=detail&event=368562



September the 11th eh. 

£35 for three hours. Maybe he's c-list as well.


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## xes (Mar 30, 2010)

Citizen66 said:


> I'm no fan of the who, but I'd wager that seeing them live would be more thrilling than listening to Icke rattling on about his mental health symptoms.



But it's horses for courses. Some people are more than happy to pay stupid money to see bands and things. What makes them any different to people who are willing to pay stupid money to go and see people speak about a subject they're interested in? 

I really don't get the issue here. Only because it's something that the majority of people dissmiss/ignore. We're not all the same, as i'm sure you are aware.


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## xes (Mar 30, 2010)

butchersapron said:


> Yes, this is a c-list event. Imagine how much the A-list would cost.



I saw 1 "A-list" UFO "nut" for 25 quid  (Nick Pope)
That was the whole day, not just for him


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## Citizen66 (Mar 30, 2010)

xes said:


> But it's horses for courses. Some people are more than happy to pay stupid money to see bands and things. What makes them any different to people who are willing to pay stupid money to go and see people speak about a subject they're interested in?



They're watching live music performed by talented people?


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## butchersapron (Mar 30, 2010)

xes said:


> I saw 1 "A-list" UFO "nut" for 25 quid  (Nick Pope)
> That was the whole day, not just for him



I think that the market may be indicating they/you are losing the battle then.


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## xes (Mar 30, 2010)

Citizen66 said:


> They're watching live music performed by talented people?



talented, only by the view of those who go to see them/buy the music ect. Sam thing here, those who follow this stuff, and like to hear more, are going to be just fine with paying to do so. There is no real difference.


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## xes (Mar 30, 2010)

butchersapron said:


> I think that the market may be indicating they/you are losing the battle then.



not really, it was only a 1 day thing, and he was the "biggest" name on the list. Also, it was the first one of the conference organisers. May have something to do with it.


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## Sgt Howie (Mar 30, 2010)

xes said:


> But it's horses for courses. Some people are more than happy to pay stupid money to see bands and things. What makes them any different to people who are willing to pay stupid money to go and see people speak about a subject they're interested in?
> 
> I really don't get the issue here. Only because it's something that the majority of people dissmiss/ignore. We're not all the same, as i'm sure you are aware.



Glad you agree that conspiraloonery is basically another arm of the entertainment industry.


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## xes (Mar 30, 2010)

Sgt Howie said:


> Glad you agree that conspiraloonery is basically another arm of the entertainment industry.



to an extent it is, yes.  

Fill your self up with mindkandy *licks lips*


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## Citizen66 (Mar 30, 2010)

xes said:


> talented, only by the view of those who go to see them/buy the music ect. Sam thing here, those who follow this stuff, and like to hear more, are going to be just fine with paying to do so. There is no real difference.



Of course there's a difference. If everyone had the ability to write Darkside of the Moon it wouldn't have sold millions of copies. Anyone can have a think about a global event, put their own spin on it and then get up on stage and say "I think what happened was blah blah blah..."


The two aren't comparable. I'm not defending the grotesque riches of musicians here, but Icke is no Roger Waters.


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## xes (Mar 30, 2010)

Everyone does have the ability to be artistic. And Icke and co, are artistic in a way. They can captivate an audience just as a musician can. They just have a different tune to play. (god, how corny is that!)


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## Sgt Howie (Mar 30, 2010)

xes said:


> Everyone does have the ability to be artistic. And Icke and co, are artistic in a way. They can captivate an audience just as a musician can. They just have a different tune to play. (god, how corny is that!)



All true.


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## Jazzz (Mar 30, 2010)

butchersapron said:


> September the 11th eh.
> 
> £35 for three hours. Maybe he's c-list as well.



Do you know anyone else that can sell out the Brixton Academy for a lecture? This show is an extra date as May 15th sold out months early.


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## Citizen66 (Mar 30, 2010)

xes said:


> Everyone does have the ability to be artistic. And Icke and co, are artistic in a way. They can captivate an audience just as a musician can. They just have a different tune to play. (god, how corny is that!)



Does he still treat his fans to a bit of boyzone for his dramatic entrance? 



^^ I just uploaded that from a documentary. 



> No matter what they tell us
> No matter what they do
> No matter what they teach us
> What we believe is true
> ...


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## kyser_soze (Mar 31, 2010)

Jazzz said:


> Do you know anyone else that can sell out the Brixton Academy for a lecture? This show is an extra date as May 15th sold out months early.



So what? There are preachers who can sell out venues 5 times the size of the Academy, doesn't mean they aren't talking bollocks to credulous fools, does it?


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## smokedout (Mar 31, 2010)

butchersapron said:


> September the 11th eh.
> 
> £35 for three hours. Maybe he's c-list as well.



capacity of the o2 it 5000, lets say he pulls 2

venue hire, security and production costs at a max 20k

publicity max 5k although i havent seen any so probably zero

even so 45k for a nights work aint bad, you don't make that presenting grandstand


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## xes (Mar 31, 2010)

kyser_soze said:


> So what? There are preachers who can sell out venues 5 times the size of the Academy, doesn't mean they aren't talking bollocks to credulous fools, does it?



why is someone a credulous fool becasue they don't like what mainstream media tell them, and look for something else? Or they believe in x-y-z? What makes them more of a fool than someone who believes everything they read on the BBC?


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2010)

They're _not_ "credulous fools becasue they don't like what mainstream media tell them, and look for something else?" They're credulous fools for swallowing anything that seems to challenge the mainstream media.


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## xes (Mar 31, 2010)

It doesn't make them any more foolish than someone who falls hook line and sinker for everything in the MSM. (ie- half the population)


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## Louis MacNeice (Mar 31, 2010)

xes said:


> why is someone a credulous fool becasue they don't like what mainstream media tell them, and look for something else? Or they believe in x-y-z? What makes them more of a fool than someone who believes everything they read on the BBC?



Ultimately the foolishness is in the content of what they believe in, not in where it comes from. Although if the source has a long and consistent history of spouting rubbish, then a healthy degree of scepticism.

Louis MacNeice


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## butchersapron (Mar 31, 2010)

xes said:


> It doesn't make them any more foolish than someone who falls hook line and sinker for everything in the MSM. (ie- half the population)



It makes them _at least as bad_ as this mythical beast the sheeple.


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## xes (Mar 31, 2010)

butchersapron said:


> It makes them _at least as bad_ as this mythical beast the sheeple.



quite, I agree.


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## kyser_soze (Mar 31, 2010)

xes said:


> why is someone a credulous fool becasue they don't like what mainstream media tell them, and look for something else? Or they believe in x-y-z? What makes them more of a fool than someone who believes everything they read on the BBC?



Because they're still not applying critical thinking skills to _whatever_ they listen to? 

It certainly doesn't make them any better than someone who only trusts MSM.

Which I see is a point BA has already made. Dammit.


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## xes (Mar 31, 2010)

What sources outside of MSM do you trust Kyser? (geniune question, not digging for some odd point system)


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## xes (Mar 31, 2010)

Let me add to that....

What you say about critical thinking is important in everything we come across. As we all build our opinions on what we read/see/learn about. So, those who only ever read 1 sort of news, will only ever have 1 sort of opinion. What needs to be applied to conspiracy theories, applies with news outlets aswell. Too many people listen to both,(or 1 or the other) and just go with it. Never bother doing their own reseearch into it, and that's half the problem. As it gives people who'll just chat shit about anything, a platform to chat shit about anything on. (including MSM sources) But, and as the song quoted on the other page "no matter what they tell us, what we believe is true" Kind of has a point. What you believe to be true, is, and the same applies to me. Truth is in the opinion of the beholder (to rehash an old saying)


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## kyser_soze (Mar 31, 2010)

xes said:


> What sources outside of MSM do you trust Kyser? (geniune question, not digging for some odd point system)



Tell me what you consider to be MSM first. What you consider MSM and what I consider MSM might be two different things. However...

Generally speaking I give credence to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Prospect magazine (within it's scope of opinion, and of course you'd probably call this MSM since it's sold in WH Smith), Monocle (again, within it's frame of reference). 

I don't really delineate between mainstream and non-mainstream media tho - it's a pretty simple job to use Manufacturing Consent and similar media critiques, plus ones own research about sourcing (thanks to the internet), to at least hazard a guess at where the real story lies.

Generally tho I treat the 'news' like wiki - a good starting point for personal research if I'm interested in something, and I will happily look at pretty much any source - but by the same tack I'll also dismiss certain types of source quicker than others.


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## xes (Mar 31, 2010)

MSM= BBC -Fuax - Sky - ITV basicly, any mainstream news channel. Pumping out the same old tripe day in day out. (well, that's my take on MSM, as you say, we probably have different views on that)


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## Sgt Howie (Mar 31, 2010)

xes said:


> MSM= BBC -Fuax - Sky - ITV basicly, any mainstream news channel. Pumping out the same old tripe day in day out. (well, that's my take on MSM, as you say, we probably have different views on that)



You've convinced me, from now on I'm going to get all my news from some anti-semite on YouTube


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## xes (Mar 31, 2010)

another one converted


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## kyser_soze (Mar 31, 2010)

xes said:


> MSM= BBC -Fuax - Sky - ITV basicly, any mainstream news channel. Pumping out the same old tripe day in day out. (well, that's my take on MSM, as you say, we probably have different views on that)



Aside from the BBC, these are all TV sources only. And despite what you might think, there is a big gulf between the approaches to newsgathering between Sky, ITN and the BBC.

That aside, apart from C4 News and occasionally Newsnight, I don't watch telly news.


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## smokedout (Mar 31, 2010)

Sgt Howie said:


> You've convinced me, from now on I'm going to get all my news from some anti-semite on YouTube



i recommend presstv and pravda


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## Paul Marsh (Apr 1, 2010)

Sgt Howie said:


> Glad you agree that conspiraloonery is basically another arm of the entertainment industry.



But one that requires a lot less in terms of investment - films cost a shed load to make, the light shows at some gigs cost thousands, a TV programme may employ researchers for several months etc etc. 

If you go to to see Icke its one poorly researched individual standing there with a microphone on his hand, trousering wads of cash


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## frogwoman (Apr 1, 2010)

TheRealNews is one i trust (OK it does have a very left wing agenda but still).


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