More nothing-burgers from the UN trying to establish some sort of perception of not be totally without merit ... the real issue with energy going forward is resource contention (wars); not global warming (scares).

Start building these then :) http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-81372753257766...

The IPCC are a bunch of discreditied numpties who are prepared to lie to promote their junk science, purely for their own financial benefit. They are making jobs and careers for themselves by trying to put the frighteners on everyone. Some governments, like the New Labour numpties, are using these lies as an excuse to steal even more tax money from us.

#2 If the US military is taking notice we'll never see it Scottwebb. Might be an idea to pray for rain though!

The US fossil fuel industries and right wing politicians are known to support anti-global-warming websites and bogus propaganda.

Beware of early a.m. postings ridiculing the IPCC and its scientists with give-away name-calling and phrases such as 'junk science'.

#6 Beware of junk science.

7. Guga, Rockall

I do ignore your commnents.

#8 Good, but why do you comment on them?

I see the greens have now managed to contaminate the UN with their nonsense to such a degree that it has become part of the problem. Maybe we should look at getting out of the UN as well as the EU, before these lunatics make us all go back to living in mud huts.

Guga

You have your good days and your bad days but recently the latter are outnumbering the former.

Most of your postings are interesting and informative but then we get the occasional rant that is hard to follow and even harder to fathom.

We all rant at times but I would rather read your informed postings rather than some of your more trenchant and flightly "speculations".

Just an observation.

Here in North America I see too many two car households where each partner is driving to work alone and not car-pooling and with increasing affluence we get more air travel.

Is it absolutely necessary to fly off to Thailand or Sri Lanka or Australia from the Americas or Great Britain for a holiday? Cannot we stay home and discover our own natural wonders and history without clogging the atmosphere with climate-threatening emissions.

The natural wonders of Canada are limitless but then what would one not expect of the second-largest country on Earth. To paraphrase one poster, you haven't lived until you have seen the Canadian Rockies and especially Lake Louise and Banff Springs and Niagara Falls.

Also, a trip to glorious Ottawa surprises many tourists by its plethora of "world-class" museums and natural beauty. Do drop by some time.

By the way, Guga, I do not think that the IPCC are a bunch of "discredited numpties" who embrace "junk science". - and by the way, what ARE "numpties". This is a new word to me. Is it Gaelic or what?

11. Timothy Charles Wingate

Numpty or Numpties are posters that embolden are enemies by saying silly things like “Bush & Blair are War Criminals” or people who are considered left wing extremist.

Hey Timothy,
Numpty was voted Scotland's favourite word recently; it means idiot, fool, dolt. You are quite right in all you say, including the fact that the IPCC are not numpties.
If anyone else out there is still silly enough to still have doubts go here: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/event.asp?month=3&id=5464

#12 You think our enemies are cowering in fear? Blair & Bush are the living definition of numpties: a liar taking orders from a halfwit.

Time to take action over the environment rather than imaginary threats in the Gulf.

I find the comments more interesting than the article. The article is nothing new, what concerns me if how the public appears to perceive what is happening in the world. Quite a few folk obviously don't believe that man is having an impact on Climate Change - despite all the evidence. But if you look closer to home, to you will find that the emissions from road transport are so bad that they are already exceeding levels that have been set to protect human health. If you don't believe me, google air quality management area - and Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, or Dundee.

This is a real issue and it is already happening in a city near to you. It could be affecting your health (or your childs) – not someone in a third world country - you and your family.

The politicians seem to have missed out on this wee point.

13. Vlad Tepes

I agree with Guga. I believed what you believed until I looked into the subject. The IPCC 'science' all started with the now discredited hockey stick graph.

Experts in statistics have said again and again you got it wrong. They still won't listen. They still pretend they got it all right.

Look up Professor Wegman:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wegman

The IPCC dropped the hockey stick knowing that it was a statistical error but plodded on with other research done by the same faulty methodology.

It took a long campaign to expose the most important graph to them as being wrong. Their thinking is not "We better tighten up our science". Instead they just drop one graph and move on to more dodgy graphs and models figuring the time it takes to discredit them is too long.

They don't give a hoot about science. It's all PR and selling a message: Whether that message be right or wrong.

15. fimo

Yeah right. It must have been so much better when Edinburgh was "Auld Reekie" and no one drove cars.

17. Statsman

Different pollutants. You can't see the new pollution.

I suspect you subcribe to the view 'if you can't see it, it will not harm you.' Well you are wrong - very very wrong.

A "leaked" report & the only person the Scotsman quotes is from WWF. Merely smoke & mirrors.

Statsman the IPCC didn't drop the Hockeystick they merely buried it deep in their latest report. You are correct that it has been totally disproved.

19. fimo

You mean like CO2? That terrible stuff needed in abundance to keep plants alive?

21. statsman

It's a nice simple world you live in.

Try nitrogen dioxide and particulate material. If you want to get more technical try fine particulates - or even ultra fines.

And then take a look at the air quality in the cities.

#22 Hope you've got all day to argue your point Fimo! People love nothing better than to spout on about how those greens are trying to confiscate our cars etc. Even Dubya now concedes man-made climate change is real ... and that Iraq was a failure, but let's not get into that!

http://www.desmogblog.com/slamming-the-climate-skeptic-scam

-btw.

When is all this scaremongering going to stop?

I agree that fossil fuels have to be conserved as they are finite, and will run out one day.

This article talks about bio-fuels but you try filling your car up with used chip oil and driving it around the city. You'll soon get a tug from the cops and then be fleeced by customs and excise. In other words there is absolutely no encouragment to use bio fuels at all.

Taxing hydrocarbon based fuels is one thing but if the tax didn't apply to vegetable oil etc then I dare say that there would be many more people using it---and thereby conserving diesel. Isn't that what they want? Clearly not. They just want to tax everyone off the roads.

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is fuel cell technology. These can run on alcohol and the only significant emissions they produce is water. Why are we not seeing more of them on the road? One reason could be because of the criminally excessive duty on alcohol.

I've mentioned it before and I'll mention it again... Why are we burning fossil fuels to produce electricity when we coule be burning bio-fuels or generating using nuclear fuel, hydro-electric or wind?

If thesse people are REALLY concerned about the environment then they should stop talking about rediculously high taxes and start talking about taking action that will address the problem.

#24:

"http://www.desmogblog.com/slamming-the-climate-skeptic-sc...;

Load of propaganda. Nothing more, nothing less.

If anything, the latest IPCC report was over-optimistic - their latest predictions were going to be much more worrying but politicians from the biggest polluting countries insisted on watering down the scientific conclusions.

22. fimo

Exactly, back to your original point. Are you saying there were no 'unseen' pollutants when Edinburgh was called 'Auld Reekie' due to people burning a fossil fuel called coal? Are you saying the air quality was better then?

Get your story straight please:

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=6417...

27. fred bloggs

Get real. It is catalogued that the IPCC reports were written by political people that cherry picked the science they wanted to use. Many scientists had to resign because their views were being completely ignored. What's left are the dogmatic political UN bureaucrats with the scientific poodles that say what they want them to say.

Your views are nothing more than religious fervour for the Green religion.

Guga - I didn't know Rockall was an oil platform.

Petrol Head - I was expecting a broadside from you. But I am releived to see what you have said is very true.

Statsman - I am assuming you may have a biological background. The emissions were very different in Auld Reekie times - coal fires. Lichen doesn't like this environment and is only returning to our cities because we don't burn coal. So whilst air quality has improved in some aspects, it is far worse in others.

The emissions from road traffic is different - the can affect human health. And this is not scare mongering. But it is rarely mentioned - a point I find very strange, as it is linked to health. But there are problem areas in all the major cities. Try this link: http://www.airquality.co.uk/archive/laqm/laqm.php

Then we have Climate change - another issue that is linked. And there is Ozone depletion - another issue.

30. Rosemary

That's just emotional soothsaying.

Every generation has said "The world is terrible. Man is evil. The end is nigh." We used to go to church to get over it. When that went, people needed something new.

The Global Warming religion has proven an adequate replacement.

As the scientific consensus, basing itself on reliable facts and theory, maintains that global warming is dangerous, one finds flat earthist types in denial of it. They have invincible ignorance. The real questions are what mixture of government regulations and private efforts do we have and how entrepreneurs can help overcome the warming an d make jobs.

#29

Despite your imputations, I am not religious, about green stuff or anything else, but I have already 'got real' as you put it, in that I am concerned that seemingly intelligent people are ignoring the considerable evidence that the massive pollution being pushed into our fragile atmosphere by man in this energy-sqandering civilisation is having a disasterous effect on plant life, animal life and the future of the planet.

32. fimo

Who or what is dying?

Is this meant to dovetail nicely into that other branch of junk science 'epidemiology'? Vague statistical correlations multiplied by the population of a city or nation and bingo, hundreds of invisible body bags.

There's nothing more annoying than epidemiologists associating anything possible with a crude death rate and passing it off as science.

The real brainwashing going on re. global warming is by those who have a vested interest in industries and transport fired by fossil fuels, and by the fossil fuel industry itself.

There is none so blind as he (or she - pc) who WILL not see. Even if one concedes that global warming is a cyclical phenomenon, that doesn't proved a 'get-out' for us on the question of exacerbation by human activity; we still need to face up to how much worse we are making the situation by our insistence on maintaining the comfortable lifestyles to which we, in the West certainly, have become accustomed.

'Homo sapiens sapiens' - 'Prepare to meet thy doom within 100 years!'. Thus saith the sacred book of common sense.

35. fred bloggs

Plants breathe CO2!

You don't realise that by pushing this CO2 = Warm Earth myth, you are obfuscating real issues like the deforestation of the rainforests. Stories like this rarely get into the media now because of the sensationalist CO2 media frenzy.

And thanks Rosemary (30#).

You speak for me, you speak for our children and theirs, you speak for the unborn.

You display a normal human concern, one that has been there for as long as mankind has existed (but seems absent from the minds of those who command today's world): that those who follow us should inherit the chance of a better life.

Our generation knows no US, only ME. It is about grabbing all there is to be grabbed, HERE, NOW, and to hell with the consequences. Whatever gets in MY way must be eliminated. The unborn don't exist, they don't count... Après moi le déluge!

Posterity has no votes, no money, no place in our political and economic philosophy; which is consequently worthless.

When the Berlin wall fell, I wrote in my diary:

"Crass materialism has triumphed over dialectical materialism."

Well, the basic difference between the two is that, while the Soviets et al sacrificed the present to a hypothetical future, the masters of today's world sacrifice the future on the altar of their present (supposed) interests. And we just sit there and do nothing but utter the occasional moan. Or baa the fashionable nonsense put about by Cheney, Putin and their ilk...

Can one use words like "numpties" for such criminals or for us, their sheeplike accomplices?

38

Obviously, you don't understand the science. The important thing is that we are seriously disturbing the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere beyond the capability of plant life and the oceans to absorb it so that there is now excessive warming of the atmosphere .

40. fred bloggs

It's a political movement rather than a scientific one. Even the 'scientists' involved have to cover up gigantic inconsistancies in their stories e.g. Greenland being green for hundreds of years well before the invention of the car.

Look at what climatologists were saying in the 1970s:

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cooling1.pdf

Even if you do not agree with the consensus on climate change, surely you would still want a car that was twice as efficient and surely you want to pay lower fuel bills?

Think of the psychological environment and how that could be improved without cars forever slicing through your thoughts.

Maybe we will inscribe the words

"We could have saved ourselves, but we were too lazy and too mean" in the grand canyon for future visitors

#30: Rosemary

It may come as a shock to many but I am concerned. I'm not concerned about "global warming" because it may or may not be caused by man.

What I am concerned about is, as I said before, the total inaction of those who are preaching "global warming".

I always like to look at cause rather than effect. So-called "climate change" or whatever is an effect. The cause, may or may not be the burning of fossil fuels. This alone has a cause and effect. The effect will be that fossil fuels run out and the cause will be because we are using them up. Any effect on the climate that is down to man has the same root cause.

To address the aforementioned cause, we need to take action now that is viable. Trying to force people out of cars and aircraft is not viable. Powering the same cars and aircraft with fuels other than fossil fuels is most certainly viable. Likewise so is the proposition that we fire power stations using fuels other than fossil fuels.

I am at a loss to understand why these so-called "experts" are not progressing down this road. Let's face it, anyone can put about propaganda to scare everyone into accepting higher taxes and into giving up things that they enjoy but it takes a real man to actually do something about it that will not only work, but will be a permanent solution.

Well I understand this science-The earth is getting warmer and it has been for 12,000 years... Scientist over here say .07 % is caused by all humans and if we were to vacate the planet tomorrow that the earth would continue on it's natural corse... 1000 years ago was much hotter than it is today "according to scientist"
Also strange how the ones pushing Global warming the most are after money... Al Gore is already trading in energy credits, a company that he is highly invested in...While he is flying around in his private jet and drives the largest vehicle you can purchase in the states, accompanied by his motorcade of the same SUV's...
The biggest hippocrits over here are the ones screaming the loudest...

My goodness, there are some truly ignorant people in cyberspace.

So, `global warming`, as we are experiencing it, is entirely natural? Is this
all that you think is wrong with our treatment of our planet?

If you had done any study on pollutants at all, you would know that the most
toxic and dangerous air pollutants are also some of the smallest. One of the
reasons for this, is that our bodies fail to trap anything other than the
larger particulates. The smaller ones can get deep into our lungs and cause
real damage. We also absorb pollutants through our skin and ingest them in
our food.

Those who question environmental degradation often have their own agenda -
possibly employees of well known corporate polluters, or perhaps owners of
smaller scale `enterprises`. Both WWF and Greenpeace have extensive
information on their websites about the known effects on human health of
toxic pollutants.

You might care to consider why Type 1 diabetes has gone up by 500% in the last
20 years in children, and why Autism has increased more than 10 fold within a
10 year period, and is still increasing, and why Tourettes Syndrome and
Cerebral Palsy are all on the increase. Oh yes, and why there is a shocking increase in childhood and adult cancers and also in neurological diseases.

Well that is a very good point AutismRights!!!

45. Autism Rights

Has it ever occurred to you that infant mortality is next to nothing these days? All the babies that would have been previously too weak to survive are now put in incubators and kept alive artificially.

Is it that outrageous to suggest that as more and more weak babies are kept alive, the rate of childhood disease is likely to rise with it? Add to that improvement of disease detection and you have this illusion of everything getting worse.

Yo Statsman,
I am not in any doubt as I have studied the subject for many years at uni & have several qualifications. The trouble is that the only large credible work covering climate change as a whole has been done by the IPCC; if you don't trust that everything else is guesswork. Even the pseudo-scientific garbage spouted by the cynics (mostly car manufacturers and airlines) may seem plausible to the layman, but ask yourself why informed people have not commissioned a credible alternative study. The results have been clear for at least a decade, the research is now about whittling down uncertainties and the debate about proposing solutions, move on.

43 petrolhead:
There are many scientists, engineers and companies around the world engaged in the quest for alternative energy sources and renewable energy - get googling and find out!

Did hear about an Astronomer, who specialised in Sun Spot activity, could predict accurately the weather six months ahead. This ability enabled him to place winning bets with the bookies time after time. He really put his money where his mouth is!
Can anyone out there confirm this?

48. Vlad Tepes

This is the typical ham fisted thinking in this modern world. Do one dodgy study with bad statistics and stupid modelling -> Repeat same type of silly study ad infinitum -> Say you now have 'lots of evidence' -> Ignore any evidence to the contrary -> Make dubious claims -> Claim consensus -> Demand politcal change.

Whether it's global warming, passive smoking or any other vogue issue, these ingredients will work. Real science doesn't matter any more.

Statsman at 47 - You won't be convinced unless you do your own research. If you are motivated to do so. With the internet, it makes it a lot easier.
To give you a wee hand, I've cut and paste an article that I commented on (first post was no. 54), giving links to the relevant WWF and Greenpeace webpages.

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=702&id=154472007

The argument about `weaklings` is just garbage. When one in four people can expect to get cancer, it's about time you and the rest of the population woke up to reality. Those autistic children who have been tested show elevated levels of heavy metals, particularly lead and mercury, in their bodies. These are known neurotoxicants - mercury is 1,000 more toxic than lead. And that's not even taking into account the chemicals that are known to clobber the immune and endocrine systems.

#26 Yes I know petrol head, we should cut down on internet bulls**t emissions as much as CO2s! That link took me all of 5 seconds to find but it seems as reasonable as any 'climate change conspiracy' PR stunt run by Exxon!

"I am not in any doubt as I have studied the subject for many years at uni & have several qualifications"

Well that is good to know Vlad. Doubt is supposed to be a requirement of the scientific method but not for the catastrophic warming scare.

Perhaps, if you "know" that catastrophic warming is taking place you could explain why it is cooler than 1998?

51. Autism Rights

This is from the article you linked to:

""For example, it is probably the case that we are getting better at identifying autism spectrum problems and we are starting to identify the more subtle cases.

"It's also the case that more and more people are becoming autism aware and are referring cases in, so there is actually an increasing waiting list in Scotland for autism assessments." "

I think you should try to understand what Dr. McClure is saying to you!

Incidently, what about weak babies is so hard to understand?

As the WHO states "The 30 million low-birth-weight babies born annually (23.8% of all births) often face severe short- and long-term health consequences. Low birth weight is a major determinant of mortality, morbidity and disability in infancy and childhood and also has a long-term impact on health outcomes in adult life."

http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/feto_maternal/en/inde...

If you keep more and more weak babies alive then, logically, diseases must increase if everything else remains the same.

Hopefully the full impact of alternative energies is being examined. The recent push in North America to promote electric cars seems to me to be an example of a backward step. Electric cars have to be charged by plugging into the electrical grid which in N.Amer still has a hugs portion of its capacity supplied by burning fossil fuels.This coupled with the situation that every time a fuel is converted from one type to another there is a loss of efficiency. Therefore the losses incurred by convertiing coal to electricity to battery power to source of energy for the car, the system is not a good replacement for gasoline. We have t be careful that the alternative is viable and not just attractive sounding.

#47 By all means post up some good news/ideas on the environment if you have any, Statsman!

55 Electric cars are ideal if your electricity is wind generated; you can leave them plugged in overnight (when it tends to be windier). Also if you leave them plugged in during the day when not in use they can feed power back into the grid. With wide ownership of electric vehicles they thus act as a very effective storage system.

#53 Still waiting for that ground-breaking study which shows either a) global warming doesn't exist or b) there is nothing we can do to prevent it. I'll be happy to be proved wrong on this.

Statsman #36:

Clearly you are an expert, and everyone else is wrong? My god - the WHO is wrong. The EU scientists have got it wrong. The UK scientists are wrong. Even the American scientists have shown traffic emissions are killing people - and they are wrong as well.

Incredible. All that research and money wasted!

58. Boab

Solar variance and CO2 follows warming (not the other way around). That's basically it.

Here's a couple of insights if you are interested:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M

http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/04/co2-lags-temperature-ho...

59. fimo

Have a look at this fimo:

http://tinyurl.com/mnzxs

It might help you understand why the world is in a scientific mess.

Ask yourself this, where are these dead people that solely died from pollution in say Edinburgh? Show me one.

Man-made global warming is real. Fossill fuel burning generation of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is leading to an excessive build-up of these gases in the atmosphere beyond that which can be reabsorbed by vegetation and the oceans. Hence the atmospheric temperature is rising to dangerous levels with serious consequences for the world. It's not rocket science!

62. fred bloggs

Is that directed at anyone or was it a spontaneous outburst of religious mantra?

63: see this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3569604.stm

The atmospheric temperature is rising to the level it was in the medieval warm period & less than that of the late Roman warming.

That this was not dangerous to anybody, even the Romans is not rocket science.

64. fred bloggs

Have you read all the comments? We have already gone through the Hockey Stick and how it is discredited. I'll link again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wegman

There are even links to the full report written by statisticians on that page.

Here's a little excerpt:

“It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent. Moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that this community can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility. Overall, our committee believes that Dr. Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.”

66.
Yes, the hockey stick is discredited by some; interestingly at least some of whom are supported by ExxonMobil...

The Scotsman should just change its name to Pravda East. They ingest this BS propaganda that's designed to advance socialist controls over the rest of us and spit it out in a factual format.

Message to the inhabitants of Rockall: global warming deniers seem to be becoming ever thinner on the ground - well, there isn't much ground on Rockall, is there? - but if anything noisier - even if epithets like "junk science" add only a little guano to your precarious perches.

Since I don't get any feedback from my own contribution (39# - no doubt too radically different both in tone and content from most of the rest - so be it), I'll try a short comment which I received not long ago from an American friend:

"I liked you comments on the violent anti-Gore screeches of the far right. What is interesting to me is that the far right is putting itself out on a limb that can be cut out from under them. More and more scientific evidence supports the warming hypothesis and more and more will continue to do so. In the end the rightists will have to bluster against the obvious. I hope it hurts them and believe that sooner or later it will.

It is - also - astonishing to me that in spite of the screechings of the right the great majority of Americans now agree that there is global warming and that it is an immense problem. How did that happen? Again, this doesn't help right wing extremists."

Of course, you need two good wings to live on Rockall...

Fred you are niavely not taking your conspiracy theory far enough.

Are you not aware that al Gore (clearly from the name a secret moslem terrorist) jets around the world in aircraft some of which at least are fueled by Exxon Mobil. This proves that he is actually secretly promoting scepticism by getting aging stars, who go around attempting to practice Kaballah magic, to endorse the warming story & thus discredit it.

Exxon's ploy was on the orders of the Elder Gods, who had taken time off from magically stopping hurricanes last year after all the Greens had predicted last year would have a record number of hurricanes.

Crafty creatures the Elder Gods.

67. fred bloggs

Aha the old ruse of the global warming religion: If all else fails try to use some ad hominem attacks.

Being qualified and practicing in the relevant area, I can understand exactly what the statisticians were saying and why they said what they did. These were the only conclusion that could have been drawn given the evidence.

Your Hockey Stick modellers, Mann and Jones, produced a model that would ALWAYS produce a hockey stick. It was trialled using white noise data and it still produced the same graph.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021750.shtml

ATTENTION GLOBAL WARMING HERD:

Take a second and breathe...in...out...in...that's good. Now, find the BBC program called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". Force yourself to watch it with an open mind. Remember that the global warming hype is lead by the 'greens'...the home of the communists that have failed elsewhere in getting the world to throw out capitalism. Check out the sites below and start thinking for yourself. In the late 70's it was global cooling. Now it's global warming. Most importantly, waste not...it saves money and that will help you buy another SUV. Support alternative fuel research so we don't have to depend on those in the Middle East that want us dead...or that looney tune in Venezula. And lastly, enjoy life, think positively, find God and take the rest of the day off. Find some grass or a bit of water and simply relax. Earth is a big place...and it can take care of it's self thank you.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

http://www.crichton-official.com/

#49: Yes. I know there are.

My question is to the effect of why are we being fed all this bullshit when the dogma being presented is not only unworkable, but even if it was workable, it would not solve the problems in time?

Why can't idiots like Al Gore actually tel the truth for once instead of polluting our brains with nonsense and coining it in in the process.

The real issue here is NOT climate change, it is the finate nature of fossil fuels. Solve that problem and the issue of climate change will go away (if it is in fact down to fossil fuels, which I personnally doubt).

This is far too important an issue to play politics with. It's all very well increasing taxes on fossil fuel related commodities but that will achieve absolutely nothing unless we actively invest NOW in alternative fuels and give people an incentive to use them by dropping the tax on them to zero.

It's the old story of condemning something but giving people no alternative but to carry on using it in order to massively increase the tax take.

71 What are you talking about? I didn't mention religion.
In any case the temperature is still rising and the graph is beginning to look dangerously high and steep...

Fred that is because your graph is unadulterated cr*p. The real graph is flatlining.

Statsman and co. - you have to use logic, which may be difficult for you. It is extremely difficult to argue the case for or against global warming as a purely natural phenomenon, but I tend to think that, logically, all that carbon dioxide chucked out at a great rate has to have an effect - it's not like burning trees, it's burning concentrated carbon in the form of hydrocarbons - which were laid down over thousands of years and are now being pumped out into the environment at a much faster rate than they were created. The laws of physics dictates that they do not disappear - as they used to say, dispersal is not disposal.

As to Dr. McClure, he is the shrink that headed up the SIGN committee on Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Shrinks are overwhelmingly of a certain view about autism - hence the SIGN draft guidelines on ASD recommended the use of dangerous, mind-altering drugs for the `treatment` of ASD, as opposed to benign treatment through the use of dietary change and nutritional supplementation. The finalised guidelines from SIGN have quite mystifyingly been delayed until after the election - even though their original schedule for publication was winter of 2006.

As to the incidence of ASD - if you had bothered to read post no. 54 in the link that I gave you, you would might possibly understand why your own arguments are fallacious.

If you have any better links, most specifcally to scientific studies that back up any of your assertions, I would love to see them. I'm afraid Wikipedia and blogs don't really cut it, as far as scientific peer reviewed research goes. I note that you undermine your own assertions about science in one of your links. Although there is certainly a largely unrecognised bias in scientific research, because of the cutback over the decades on independent funding of scientific research, there are still some excellent studies being done.

As to low birthweight - have you considered that an increase in this is becau

What seems hardest to understand among the deniers of any connection between global warming and human activity is:
1. the absence of any recourse to the precautionary principle;
2. the refusal to see the immense economic and industrial opportunities to which this challenge - and this danger - give rise. Opportunities which the oil companies are particularly well placed to exploit.

One gets the feeling of a crassness and dearth of entrepreneurship and imagination in certain huge corporations almost as bad as that of Soviet central planners or the workers in Yugoslavia's failed industrial system.

Peter C. and Rosemary - thanks for your really quite eloquent contributions. Yes, I can understand the fears of people that this is just another way to rip them off. But, the real shock is just as you say, Peter - why on earth they don't see the economic opportunities presented by economic backing of alternative energies and technologies. Perhaps it's because they are, of necessity, less open to control by financial elites. Thatcher was all for nuclear energy, on the basis that it was a lot easier to control than the NUM, with its tens of thousands of members.

Why people are against windfarms is very strange - if they would elect to have a nuke power station in their backyard, they would at least be able to say that they recognised the choices we have to make. With some, I suspect that they just want to negotiate a cut of the profits, which is fair enough.

Wake up folks, the UN which is as corrupt a body as any cadever wil lever be wants to run your country and every other western industrial state into third world poverty while the UN lives in the lap of luxury in NYC.

2 trillion dollars could also, assuming significant economies of scale, provide about 5,000 x 1 gigawatt nuclear reactors which could provide all the world with roughly our standard of electric power.

While I absolutely agree with you Rules about the Iraq war being a waste I think providing the world with wealth would be better than replacing about 20% of US electricity.

Peter 83 while communism in Russia failed the reformed economy of Yugoslavia didn't - which is the main reason western governments, intent on proving communism didn't work, had to destroy Yugoslavia. Talking of waste if the $15 billion spent bombing them & letting us steal Kosovo had been put into x-prizes we would probably now have cheap space access, Moonbases & be engaged in substantial zero-G manufacturing.

Owning Kosovo or the solar system - tough choice.

61: Statsman - had a quick read of the link. Nothing new - lies, dam lies and stats...you know how it goes.

To recap - pollution in the cities is so high it is exceeding the limits set by the EU to protect human health. This has led to the designation of air quality management areas. If you live in a city, there may well be one close to you. The problem – road traffic. This is not scare mongering – it is real.

Statsman has asked to see the bodies of the people who have solely died from pollution in say Edinburgh? Clearly, this is further evidence that he doesn't quite understand what he is going on about.

Pollution exacerbates respiratory and cardiovascular conditions - and this is what leads to premature death. So you are unlikely to find 'pollution' as cause of death.

This is a complete sideline, Neil 87#, but I did watch what was happening in Yugoslavia from the Seventies onwards and I fear your beliefs about that country don't hold water.

Co-management worked very well for a while but failed for lack of entrepreneurial competency. The workers didn't see why they shouldn't go on producing indefinitely what had sold well at the outset (rather like some of today's oilmen who'd rather go on as they always have done)... Besides, post-Tito, the whole country fell by into the hands of a military-industrial party clique, which in the late eighties turned violently nationalist with the failure of the economy (two nationalisms, primarily that stirred up by Milosevic in Serbia, flanked by Tudjman's in Croatia). If you look, say, at Milosevic's propaganda in the late Eighties, so many things are reminiscent of the line taken by Hitler in the years before he came to power...

I've always been convinced that the obscene civil wars in this country were totally avoidable. However, Europe, Russia and the U.S. failed miserably to take bold action to prevent conflict but on the contrary took sides... Be that as it may, the country was already ruined long before it was bombed...

What I was getting at is that some of today's capitalists are all too reminiscent of yesterday's Soviet and other apparatchik incompetents. Perhaps they've had too cushy a time in the post-Communist world in which (pace Orwell) all the pigs have turned to farming...

#11 Timothy Charles Wingate: It's finally happened! You've posted a comment I can (almost) agree with. Canada is indeed a spectacular country. I was lucky enough to visit about 15 years ago before our little treasures arrived. We were based in Beaconsfield, Quebec and our hosts showed us around Quebec city, Montreal and Ottawa (sadly that trip landed on a public holiday when most museums etc. were closed). We also had a stopover in Toronto en route to NYC where we toured the CN Tower and got soaked at Niagara Falls. We'll all be back some day!
The only fly in the ointment is one of your main points, the air travel. However our carbon footprint is light as most of our breaks are UK based these days so I'll just consider us in credit.
I know it's a little off topic but hands across the ocean and all that. Have a good day.

88. fimo

"Statsman has asked to see the bodies of the people who have solely died from pollution in say Edinburgh? Clearly, this is further evidence that he doesn't quite understand what he is going on about."

I understand perfectly what I am going on about. You're arguing it exacerbates respiritory problems and causes people to die. How do you measure this exactly?

They are first assuming traffic fumes are in a big enough concentration that they CAN kill. Then they fiddle around with vague associations to see how many death they can attribute to it as a percentage of the total number of particulates in the atmosphere.

It's a load of nonsense.

The fundamental problem is they don't have any properly identifiable causes and effects. They are simply assuming A causes B as the two things may be correlated in a particular geographical area. However, correlation DOES NOT imply causation.

Often the quality of the studies is statistically questionable. They often don't adjust for obvious things like age, social background, occupation etc. Furthermore, they do not look at possible alternative reasons for what they are seeing. Normally they don't care either as they just want a big fat research grant and their names in the press.

Nothing more than a stunt to tax you out of your cars.

#89 Old Roy
It is indeed a fact. Can you just imagine that anyone could intellegently predict weather temps. by the sun? It boggles the mind!

89. Old Roy

You mean Piers Corbyn:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Corbyn

It's the Labour MP's brother. He's very successful at what he does.

You know, there is an old saying. "Whenever you need to pee, someone is there to supply a bucket."

Statsman (92#) - you do seem to have chosen your name well.

One could perhaps find a statistically average man, but if one thing is certain, it is that there is no such a being...

It seems to follow from your line of argument that there can, for example, be no causative link between cigarette smoking and any form of respiratory ailment. But perhaps you also work for the tobacco lobby...

I recall the case of a young man who died of heart failure in a traffic jam in a tunnel, which the pathologist attributed directly by to traffic fumes - no doubt, of course, largely carbon monoxide, which does not come under our discussion. Of course, there will always be so many contributory factors involved in any death. Even in the case of a murder, the sophist can always say "he shouldn't have been there when he was."

You do make me think of the young man who got a good job on Wall Street when he replied to the question "What is 1+1?", "Well, what do you want me to make it?"

May I suggest that you get a job directing traffic for a few months and see whether you still think (?) the same way...

#91 Douglas from Bathgate

Come over to "the dark side" and agree with me TOTALLY.

Just kidding. Am glad that you enjoyed your visit(s) to Canada and if ever you stop at Ottawa I would be most glad to escort you and yours to the hidden treasures of this most cosmopolitan capital.

Gratified to see that we almost agree but - forums being as they are - we will have our occasional "differences of opinion" - termed by others as "slanging matches".

But then, that is the nature of the beast, n'est-ce pas?

Best regards.

#97 Peter C: Thank you.

#92 Statsman: Better minds than yours have made these obsevations - all over the world. I could provide you wit a number of links, but I can't be bothered - you know how to surf the web.

But then again, you are obviously better informed than all these people.

You must be a great person to work with.

99. fimo

Hehe. You are assuming they are better qualified than me. Don't be so sure. :oP

97.Peter, 99. fimo:

I like your posts; and now something for the weekend and our humourless friend the Statsman:

'A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant'.

Peter 90 in reply to mine 87
This is not the place to go into Yugoslavia & indeed i have done so previously.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2007/02/yugoslavia-m...
I do not hold out Yugoslav socialism as a great succes but I do not think it compared unfavourably with our own economy, which showed similar lack of innovation.

As regards Milosevic - it went unreported in the British media that Lord Owen described him on oath as the only leader who consistently genuinely supported peace & a man to whom racism was "anathema". While reporting of him in our media certainly compared him to Hitler that was merely their racist propaganda.

Statsman 100: Case proven.

101. fred bloggs

'A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant'

That's mathematicians. All the statisticians I know are somewhat off the wall. :D

To save the world I first had to eradicate my species - the answer become obvious through the constant witterings on comment boards !

People are now brought up to believe that adherence to propaganda is better than the scientific method. Science demands scepticism. It has done all through history.

Most scientific breakthroughs would never have been possible without the inputs of mavericks and free thinkers.

So all you sheep can go "Baa" because that's what it sounds like. Science sounds like a big hall filled with the noise of people debating.