Top Ten Conspiracy Theories

[Spy Bee]

The media decide that fuck all science reaches the public.  The mass media are shockingly bad in their consistent misrepresentation and denigration of science.

You'd agree that the media are controlled by the elite though, who have their own agenda?

 

Anyway, crack on.

[Jose Jones]

Did I mention that I think peer-review is bullshit?

 

Anyway, I'm taking an apathetic attitude towards life at the moment, so crack on.

 

Some peer-review stuff is a bit bullshit, as it can become a bit insular and some dodgy stuff does get through - however you normally find that scientist are pretty competitive and cover a whole massive range of different people and opinions so people are always working to prove or disprove theories or evidence that has been presented.  Over a bit of time the better science most often wins out.

 

As you are a dedicated conspiracy man, I find it hard to understand that you can't look at the historical precedents where science was fucked over by politicians, business and right wing wankers, and not see the complete similarity in what has happened to climate science.  Smoking causing cancer and acid rain being two rather obvious examples.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

You'd agree that the media are controlled by the elite though, who have their own agenda?

 

Anyway, crack on.

Yes.

 

Their agenda is best served by discouraging impartial, independent, sceptical reasoning.  Science is all about impartial, independent, sceptical reasoning.  Hence the misreporting.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Did I mention that I think peer-review is bullshit?

 

Anyway, I'm taking an apathetic attitude towards life at the moment, so crack on.

There's a good man!

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Hang on, 'warmists' don't even use the greenhouse effect model anymore! Also we've seen bloom in periods of high carbon in the past.

Wait!  What???? 

 

I assume by "warmists" you are referring to the overwhelming majority of qualified scientists who have studied the global climate and concluded that it is, as all the records show, warming.  They have then correlated increases in global temperature to increases in atmospheric concentrations of certain gases - let's call them "greenhouse gases" - with pretty unerring accuracy.

 

The greenhouse effect is no more a "model" than the water cycle is.  Life on earth could not exist (at least, in its present form) without it.  The trouble is that an imbalance in atmospheric chemistry can alter the strength of the greenhouse effect.

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and "warmists don't even use the greenhouse effect model anymore" is a pretty extraordinary claim.  Show your working-out, son.

[Rotpeter]

The good thing about greenhouse effect models is that there are so many to choose from.

 

Alas, none of them can generate 1990s output from 1970s input.

[aws]

I always listen to what the scientists say. If I didn't I wouldn't be driving around in my atmosphere-friendly diesel

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Spurious, at best, Consigliere.

[Alan Sex]

Yeah, that's why I am a horribly cynical bastard.

Yeah, but you have some bad qualities too.

[KopOut]

Does anyone else get the feeling that some shit is about to go down? All these conspiracy theories. Every day in work and just in general I hear people talking about conspiracy theories - Rothschilds, manipulation in the media, false flag terrorist attacks, phoney wars, the royal family etc...

 

People I would never expect to be discussing these things seem to be taking a lot about this sort of thing. My Facebook and twitter feeds are alive with this sort of thing. All from really level headed people. Some shit is going down soon. It has to. The world can't sustain his level of corrupted old style system anymore.

Yep. Shit's about to go down.

 

Head for hills, and pray shit aint comin' from the hills.

[Spy Bee]

Wait!  What???? 

 

I assume by "warmists" you are referring to the overwhelming majority of qualified scientists who have studied the global climate and concluded that it is, as all the records show, warming.  They have then correlated increases in global temperature to increases in atmospheric concentrations of certain gases - let's call them "greenhouse gases" - with pretty unerring accuracy.

 

The greenhouse effect is no more a "model" than the water cycle is.  Life on earth could not exist (at least, in its present form) without it.  The trouble is that an imbalance in atmospheric chemistry can alter the strength of the greenhouse effect.

 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and "warmists don't even use the greenhouse effect model anymore" is a pretty extraordinary claim.  Show your working-out, son.

There are about a million models that project different levels of warming, some of them come out accurate, a lot don't. All the modern models are a lot more complex than the basic greenhouse model, or we would have seen a constant rise in temperature, when in effect we haven't seen a rise since 1997.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

There are about a million models that project different levels of warming, some of them come out accurate, a lot don't. All the modern models are a lot more complex than the basic greenhouse model, or we would have seen a constant rise in temperature, when in effect we haven't seen a rise since 1997.

All the modern models are still founded on the Greenhouse Effect, because... well, because they're based on observations of the natural world and that's a fundamentally appropriate one.  Your "reasoning" appears to be analogous to someone who assumes that debates over human evolution ("Out of Africa" versus other competing theories, etc.) prove that modern scientists no longer rely on Darwinian evolution. 

 

As for the assertion that "we haven't seen a rise since 1997" - speak for yourself.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/Media/Commentary/2012/February/anthropogenic-global-warming-1997.aspx

 

Anthropogenic global warming 'stopped' in 1997…and in 1996, 1995, 1982, 1981, 1980, 1979, 1978 and 1972

 

On 29 January 2012, the UK's 'Mail on Sunday' newspaper published an amazingly inaccurate article  which began with the extraordinary statement: "The supposed consensus on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years".

Self-proclaimed climate change 'sceptics' have for the past few years been recycling the myth that anthropogenic global warming has 'stopped'. Indeed, an opinion article by former French politician Claude Allègre and 15 friends, published in the 'Wall Street Journal' on 27 January, included among its many erroneous  pronouncements "The lack of warming for more than a decade - indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections - suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause."

But what 'sceptics' always fail to point out is that, based on their logic, manmade global warming has actually 'stopped' nine times since 1970, in 1972, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1995, 1996 and 1997. And they fail to mention that the underlying anthropogenic warming trend is clear and unambiguous when temperature data for the past four decades are taken into account.

Here is a graph of global average annual temperature since 1970, using theHadCRUT3 data published by the Met Office on its website - the vertical axis shows values of temperature anomaly - the difference between the annual global average temperature and the mean value from the period between 1961 and 1990.

 

.

Using simple linear regression (ordinary least squares) we can detect and measure a clear trend over the 42-year period between 1970 and 2011, indicating an average temperature increase of 0.151°C per decade. This trend is statistically significant at the 95 per cent level, the standard test which means the probability that there is no warming trend at all in the data is less than 5 per cent.

It is important to note that simple linear regression using ordinary least squares is not really the most appropriate method for assessing these data as it depends onassumptions which are violated by global temperature measurements. Nevertheless we consider simple linear regression here as it is often used by many 'sceptics' to underpin their claims that global warming has 'stopped'.

So now let us look at just the last 15 years of annual average global temperatures, plotted in the graph below.

Using simple linear regression, we can see that the measurements for 1997 to 2011 define a warming trend of 0.034°C per decade, but this is not statistically significant at the 95 per cent level. This is the sole basis of the 'sceptic' assertion that there has been no anthropogenic global warming since 1997.

But now let us look at every consecutive 15-consecutive-year period of data within the entire dataset for 1970 to 2011. If we apply ordinary linear regression to each period, the results we obtain are listed in this table.

We can see that there are nine periods in which the data does not define a trend that is statistically significant at the 95 per cent level (p-value is higher than 0.05). Using 'sceptic' logic, no anthropogenic global warming was taking place during these periods.

Applying the same logic and technique, some 'sceptics' only look back over the past 10 years and claim anthropogenic global warming stopped in 2002. If we apply the same test to every 10-consecutive-year period since 1970, we obtain the results listed in the following table.

We can see that there were only five 10-year periods since 1970 when there was a statistically significant trend. On this basis, anthropogenic global warming 'stopped' in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, etc.

What does this show us? When one uses flawed logic, inappropriate statistical methods and very small global temperature datasets, one is unable to detect underlying trends amid the noise. In essence, one cannot see the wood for the trees. To analyse the underlying trend in global temperatures, you need enough data to be able to detect and measure it. Otherwise you can mistakenly conclude that absence of evidence means evidence of absence. It is completely arbitrary to limit an analysis to just 10 or 15 data points. If, for-instance, one considers the last 18 years of data, and not just the last 15, one finds a statistically significant warming trend of 0.118°C per decade since 1994.

Climate scientists are interested in what the noisy global average temperature data of the last 15 years shows us. They do not conclude that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have suddenly stopped causing the Earth to warm, as it is based on sound physics. But they do suspect thatother factors may be 'masking' the anthropogenic global warming trend, such as a cooling effect caused by an increase in the amount in the atmosphere of aerosols from the burning fossil fuels which reflect sunlight, or changes in solar activity.

So next time you read or hear that anthropogenic global warming 'stopped' in 1997, remember just how flaky that claim is.

[Croque Monsieur]

Did I mention that I think peer-review is bullshit?

 

Anyway, I'm taking an apathetic attitude towards life at the moment, so crack on.

[Spy Bee]

[banger]

When you want to talk about climate change you must also remember not to cherry pick data sets that back up your claims , such as the graph above that starts in the 1970's , yes the 1970's where the fear was another ice age was coming because of global cooling.

[Stouffer]

Global warming my arse; I've got the heating on.

[Russ Atmosphere]

Global warming my arse; I've got the heating on.

Your anecdotal evidence will probably be rich pickings for the science-haters.

[Spy Bee]

When you want to talk about climate change you must also remember not to cherry pick data sets that back up your claims , such as the graph above that starts in the 1970's , yes the 1970's where the fear was another ice age was coming because of global cooling.

The temperature of the planet has always changed.

 

And I don't hate science, but I don't trust the establishment. Climategate 1 & 2 give me enough reason to doubt the science and reporting on this subject.

[Anny Road]

Extinction WTF does it matter. In some ways I would like to be here to witness the biggest even in human history. It's gonna happen at some point anyway. May as well be at the party and enjoy the ride.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

When you want to talk about climate change you must also remember not to cherry pick data sets that back up your claims , such as the graph above that starts in the 1970's , yes the 1970's where the fear was another ice age was coming because of global cooling.

Maybe I was too young at the time, but I've never seen any data to support the hypothesis that a new ice age was imminent.  (In fact, the strongest argument I've heard in favour of it is a line from "London Calling".)  There is, however, lots and lots and lots and lots of data to demonstrate the reality of global warming.  As illustrated in the article above (which is a statistical refutation of bullshit - not an "alternative theory") the cherry-pickers are those who try to deny global warming.  The graph above could have started at any time.  It uses a 40-year timeframe, rather than the 10-year one chosen by the "warming has stopped" crowd, simply because it's enough to demonstrate the point.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

The temperature of the planet has always changed.

 

And I don't hate science, but I don't trust the establishment. Climategate 1 & 2 give me enough reason to doubt the science and reporting on this subject.

That's a bullshit cop-out.

 

Whenever there has been a major and rapid change in the climate, it has resulted in widespread extinctions.  The current one is being caused by humans.  We can, at the very least, stop the worst of the shit that we're doing in order to slow it down.  But we won't, because our economic and political systems are set up to reward short-sighted and destructive behaviours.  We're fucked.  The first to die will be the most vulnerable - people living in the poorest countries and poor people living in the rich countries.

 

But, hey, that's not our problem, is it?

[Anny Road]

Has that not been happening for 20 years?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

[Spy Bee]

Don't get preachy, it doesn't suit you.

 

I stated that the planet has always changed temperature and it has. I am sceptical as to whether AGW exists. I'm not a climate scientist - neither are you, but you seem to think your opinion is more valid than mine.

 

I actually do think conservation of the planet is massively important. 

[Anny Road]

Do we ever seperate the survival of the planet with the survival of mankind. Maybe it's one or the other.