Climate: The Movie

[Witton Park]

A film chocka with climate change denialists spouting their Micky mouse climate change denialism, made by a climate change denialist, produced by a climate change denialist and financed by fossil fuels and climate change denialists - I’m totally stunned at the final conclusions

Useful, insightful stuff again Brian. You should try name-calling occasionally and avoid such well thought out contributions.

Many of these folk have contributed to IPCC output over the years.

What happens is, every few years there's a clear out of those at the most skeptical end of the argument, therefore shifting the average position further in the "desired" direction.
A method not exclusive to Climate "Science".

[Llani Boy]

A lot of old, very old or very very old men (not a woman in sight ) spouting their biased nonsense

Just like David Attenborough

[noel]

Yes, they tend to have watched the BBC, Sky News, C4 over the years.

The BBC tend to get stick from both extremes of any argument. Partly this is because they go out of their way to be fair, balanced and ensure their claims are supported by evidence.

[Fellbeast]

Just like David Attenborough

The difference being he’s not funded by the pro fossil fuel lobby and has nothing but the interests of the natural world and the future of humanity at heart

[Witton Park]

The BBC tend to get stick from both extremes of any argument. Partly this is because they go out of their way to be fair, balanced and ensure their claims are supported by evidence.

The BBC get stick from me because they go out of their way to NOT to be balanced.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...rong-too-often

6 years ago Noel.

I've linked to Brian's favourite paper, so it must be true.

[Witton Park]

The difference being he’s not funded by the pro fossil fuel lobby and has nothing but the interests of the natural world and the future of humanity at heart

I bet he's rocked up some airmiles over the years.

I remember watching Life on Earth with amazement. Great programme and should be compulsory viewing for school kids.

Is the source of funding a relevant issue? I would tend to think as he's paid by the BBC he has the interests of the BBC at heart.
If we looked at funding streams before we allowed anyone to pontificate in public on Climate, I'd probably jump towards the top of the list of eligible bookings
Me and Brian on the Daily Politics

Back to the Guardian, George Monbiot - I imagine you have a poster on your wall - believes Attenborough has betrayed the world he loves and has "generated complacency, confusion and ignorance"

[Witton Park]

You do appear to be fixated, again, on a 'shirts and jumpers' dismissal rather than the Science and data. I think the largest error you make is to completely misunderstand that no one is 'a climate change denier' despite the Tourettes-like repetition in the post. Quite the opposite - they're saying that the climate does, and HAS/IS/Will, always be/been changing as long as there is an atmosphere. When the 'Climate Alarmists' resort to name-calling, denigration, censorship and , claims of 'the science is settled' and brand skeptics as 'deniers' something other than science is going on.

Moreover, there is no real way to falsify alarmist claims and predictions and models as each one relies on the same assumption that human activity is the primary cause.


However,

Fundamentally, the debate is over a series of linked questions, which include.

Whether the climate change is 'natural' or 'manmade'.

Whether the change constitutes a 'crisis' or not.

Additionally, whether we're in a cold/cool period returning to a natural warmer/hotter period, or if we're in an exceptionally hot period which is getting hotter.

If it is a 'crisis', whether it's something we can do anything practical to stop, such as by changing our behaviour as humans globally.

If it is the case that climate change is not man-made, then whether the 'algae bloom' of Green Crisis Capitalism, together with the focus on CO2 as the primary culprit (debatable, if only we're allowed to debate this) and the mass global justifies the impoverishing of ordinary people, particularly the poor here and those in developing countries, in a wastefully futile, unnecessarily cruel and manipulatively totalitarian way.

If it is man-made, and we can practically intervene, whether the espouse policies currently being promoted now are ... mass global impoverishing of ordinary people, particularly the poor here and those in developing countries, in a wastefully futile, cruel and manipulatively totalitarian way. Especially if 3/4s of the global population by their clearly evident behaviour are hoodwinking the West into 'degrowth' policies and de-industrialisation. How far are we willing to degrade our society, and for how long, and massively weaken our industrial and energy securities in the face of some very nasty regimes doing the opposite and building up their capacities in these areas?

Other questions we should be considering - if only open debate was permissible - is even if we were to accept climate change to be wholly natural, and that we're in a cold period returning to an more warmer/hotter average, over which we have absolutely no control, what impact is this going to have on modern technological societies and human wellbeing globally? How, if possible, could we mitigate or accommodate the change for future generations (without default to another neo-Marxist dystopia).

My offer to those concerned is to crack on with an expansion of Nuclear.

It's green.
It's reliable.
It covers us for 60 years once up and running.
It would allow us to export to the EU and maybe beyond, turning around the current capital flows linked to energy.
It would allow us to increase grid capacity so more folk could chose to buy EVs if they like.

But I almost always get a no, with excuses, mostly claiming it's too expensive.

That suggests to me this is not a pragmatic "let's do the best for the planet" but a Malthusian reaction viewing the human race as a virus on the planet, which brings us back to David Attenborough.

[Witton Park]

The bit of bad science that was most obvious to me was where a graph was shown comparing the very slow rate of ocean temperature increase to that of the atmosphere, and then claiming that this meant that global warming was at a very low level. The heat capacity of the ocean is so much greater than that of the atmosphere, so a slow rate of ocean warming is precisely what you would expect. Most of us don't live in the ocean, so the fast rate of atmospheric warming is of greater concern!

Then there was the ridiculous claim that the IPCC don't admit any influence of solar activity variation. All the climate models do take into account solar variation and a variety of other influences, before trying to tease out the effect of greenhouse gases. And it was interesting to see a graph showing solar activity and global (rural) temperatures, showing that solar activity could explain the cooling from 1940 to 1970, but that there has been continued warming over the last 20 years despite a decrease in solar activity. And on the subject of graphs, there was a tendency throughout the scientific sections of the film to superimpose plots of quantities with different dimensions, which can give a completely misleading impression of the magnitude of one quantity relative to the other: a classic "bad science" technique.

The point that we don't need to worry about warming because the temperature has been much higher over most of the last 500 million years is laughable. Most of us in the Forum live in places where the underlying geology is sedimentary rock: the place was under water for much of the last 500 million years. We might just consider a rapid transition back to those conditions to be an emergency!

It is true, as claimed in the movie, that scientists can feel under pressure to produce results in accord with what their funding sources want. So why was it not mentioned that at least some of the scientists interviewed were funded by the fossil fuel industry?

Al Gore must be feeling very flattered to hear that he has single-handedly changed the narrative accepted by governments. In fact, most governments have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into accepting that climate change needs to be mitigated. The fact that they are making a hash of it, e.g. by denying poor countries the technology they need, doesn't negate that need.

Anthony - a thoughtful response and I appreciate that.

I'm going to try and re-watch it myself over Easter weekend. I'll take on board your comments when I do.

[noel]

Fundamentally, the debate is over a series of linked questions, which include.

Whether the climate change is 'natural' or 'manmade'.

Let's start with this one. I think there's a lot of evidence on this. Who do you trust to give you an answer on this? Have you looked at the evidence? What are your concerns about the existing body of evidence?

[Mossdog]

FOR SOME REASON I WASN'T ABLE TO REPLY DIRECTLY UNDER ANTHONY'S POST...hey ho

Yes, thanks for that reply Anthony and some interesting issues/points raised, some of which I want to return to, and to look at the original sources to check out and ponder. But for now, with my Sally session ticked off; too much screen time racking up; and the indoor rower beckoning, I have to log off.