It's a bit warm/ wet/ cold outside

[shaolin_monkey]

Oh man - pages 11 to 25.  It's so good. 

https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Real-Change-Labour-Manifesto-2019.pdf

[shaolin_monkey]

Page 98 as well:

Climate Diplomacy

There is no greater injustice today than countries in the Global South paying the price for a climate crisis they did not cause. Yet some world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, champion a climate-change denial agenda.

Britain's climate-change diplomacy was respected internationally, playing an important role in securing the Paris Agreement, following the leading role the UK played in securing the Kyoto Agreement. However, Boris Johnson – who has described global warming as a 'primitive fear... without foundation' – has overseen a 60% cut in the UK's global network of climate experts.

Only Labour can rebuild Britain's leadership on the most serious threat to our shared humanity.

We will:

• Rebuild our climate expertise within the Foreign Office, putting climate diplomacy at the heart of
our foreign policy.

• Use our influence at the UN, EU, G7, G20, World Bank, the Commonwealth and other global institutions to promote policies to tackle the climate emergency.

• Use our diplomatic expertise to negotiate and deliver more ambitious global targets to deal with the climate emergency, starting with COP 26 in Glasgow next year.

Damn, this is bloody good stuff!!

[The Legendary Shark]

I'm not making myself clear, so let me try again. I have every respect for scientists and experts, I respect their knowledge, their expertise, and their humanity. I also respect and love science - it's drokking fantastic, after all.

What concerns me is the politicisation of certain aspects of science, how it's used and abused and spotlighted, distorted through a political lens for political and financial ends. Thus it seems to the general public that there are only two positions to take - one either believes that climate change is 100% the fault of humans (which I personally cannot get on board with), or it has absolutely nothing to do with humans at all (which I also cannot accept).

So, as one who says that investigations, experiments, and analyses should encompass far more things than just CO2, and that our solutions should also look to casting a wider net, I somehow find myself lumped together with flat Earthers and people who don't believe in gravity.

There's a whole conversation going on in the Political Thread concerning the apparent failures of various media over reporting the "official line" without question, but on this thread questioning the "official line" is seen as the failure.

It's not as if science, drokking fantastic though it is, doesn't have its own inherent prejudices and biases. Professors don't tend to get tenure unless they broadly toe the line (which isn't, in itself, an entirely bad thing - stability is important) and, historically, the many and varied contributions of women have been marginalised, dismissed, stolen and ridiculed because, well, she's only a woman (though I believe this particular prejudice has, in recent times, thankfully fallen more and more by the wayside).

But science, like most other institutions, slowly evolves and old prejudices are left behind, sometimes to reveal new ones. Science is not perfect but it's the best tool for understanding the universe we've got. Indeed, when the ozone layer looked in danger of falling off completely, science offered a solution that very much seems to have worked as the ozone "holes" are getting smaller and smaller, with predictions guesstimating the layer should be back to "normal" by 2080. Hooray us! We've already saved ourselves once so we should be able to do it again, right? Well, hopefully. Ozone is also a greenhouse gas and restoring it has caused knock-on effects from the Antarctic as far as the equator, with knock-on effects from the knock-on effects spreading virtually all over the globe. This does not mean that ozone replenishment is driving climate change all by itself, or even at all, but it is having an effect as the system swings back into equilibrium.

Just like human emissions, the effects of ozone replenishment must be taken into account, even if only to be sure that the effects of one aren't being wholly or partially mistaken for the effects of the other. I'm pretty sure most climate scientists are aware of this.

So, once and for all, I am not anti-science. I don't believe that all the scientists and experts are foolish and wrong. I don't believe that all the data is inaccurate or worthless. I don't think the Earth is flat or that gravity doesn't exist. I also don't think it's wise to put all our eggs in one basket.

Politicians, on the other hand, are different beasts altogether. They like to simplify problems. "You're either for us, or against us." The almost evangelical political focus on CO2 is emblematic of political oversimplification. It leads the public to think that everyone knows exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. After all, we fixed the ozone layer so we can fix the climate.

But I can't be only one wondering about contingency plans. Hopefully fixing the CO2 problem will put the climate back on track - but what if it doesn't? What if it has little or no effect? What if it has unexpected knock-on effects, causing even more extreme weather events as the atmosphere swirls back into a more natural equilibrium?

Does it not make more sense to investigate and test other possibilities alongside CO2? And shouldn't we be doing that now, just in case? Shouting people like me down, calling us climate deniers or flat-Earthers because we look at things from a different perspective, well, that's a political tactic, not a scientific one.

In the final analysis, it makes no difference what I think the levels of AGW are, so why the hostility? It's not like I'm advocating the abandonment of science or anything. In fact, I'm asking - pleading, begging - for more of it. Preferably without all the vitriolic political spin.

[shaolin_monkey]

I'm sorry if I came across as hostile Sharkey. I'm just a bit fed up of seeing all the same arguments come up time and again - we should be long past it now. 

The debate should not be about what is happening, as we know what is happening, but rather what we can do to get on top of it.  So that's what I'm going to concentrate on from here on in.

[The Legendary Shark]

You weren't hostile at all, SM, not a bit of it. I'm pretty sure we all want the same thing in the end - to live on a planet that isn't trying to kill us.

[shaolin_monkey]

Amen brother.

[Funt Solo]

Hopefully fixing the CO2 problem will put the climate back on track - but what if it doesn't?

What if it does?

[The Legendary Shark]

If it does you can all say "I told you so" and I'll be jolly happy to stand there and smile while you do.

[Mikey]

Shouting people like me down, calling us climate deniers or flat-Earthers because we look at things from a different perspective, well, that's a political tactic, not a scientific one.

... Preferably without all the vitriolic political spin.

You're playing the victim again. I don't see that anyone shouted you down - you made an initial post espousing a contrary opinion without any real substance which was rebutted again, and you threw some politics and claims of conclusions being directly related to money. You don't think there's a consensus amongst the scientific community, but there's one on this thread by the look of it, so if you want to talk about the political aspects, there's a thread for that sure.

Also, ozone is a really poor choice to illustrate your post I'd say. It has a cooling effect in the stratossphere and a warming one in the troposphere and a low residence time. The solution to damage to the ozone layer was to ban the use of CFCs and their ilk, not to add more ozone.

[The Legendary Shark]

Thanks, Mikey.

I didn't say I don't think there's a consensus, I said the paper which has been used to claim a consensus among all scientists does no such thing. There may very well be a consensus, but - contrary to what politicians and the media would have us think -  in science a consensus is not Truth, it's the most widely accepted current theory. In the minds of the public, this suggests that anyone questioning the theory is questioning the Truth. And only fools question the Truth. Consensus has become the new word for proof, the new word for faith.

But science is full of fools questioning the Truth, from Galileo tossing his balls over the parapet at Pisa to Al Gore making a film (I really must watch that again, see how it holds up). But of course most of them aren't fools questioning the Truth, they're thinkers questioning the most widely accepted current theory.

You are right, though, in that I wasn't literally shouted down, that was an overstatement.

Lastly, I'm glad you got my point about the ozone layer being a different thing to climate change, and that just because we seem to have fixed that problem it doesn't guarantee that we can fix this new one, hence my call for wider research and strategies.

[Funt Solo]

You didn't just compare yourself to Galileo? (Or Al Gore?)

Consensus doesn't ask for faith. In the context of the current debate, it suggests action.

What does it help to wander along and say "Well, but what if you're wrong?"

---

The house is on fire. I will apply water. Person walking by: "Yeah, but what if you're wrong?" (What good is that person doing?)

[The Legendary Shark]

Heh, no, I'm not Galileo - I don't have the differently weighted balls for it.

Consensus does ask for faith - a majority of people would be unwise to support something in which they have no faith. Okay, that's just wordplay. Scientfically, consensus does not prove truth - but politically, it does.

"What if you're wrong" is the reason we have seat belts - we hope we'll never need them but we're glad they're there.

[Funt Solo]

Data is the reason we have seat belts.

Your argument against action being taken against runaway CO2 is (as you've stated several times) "what if we're wrong".

In that context you'd be arguing against seat belts on the basis that wearing them might enact some more dangerous outcome despite the safety benefits.

You're a slippery eel in a debate setting: starting with undermining scientific consensus on CO2 emissions by claiming it's actually a political agenda. Anytime anyone confronts you on it you sidestep and bring up another semi-relevant issue.

Now I'm not sure why you're even talking (or why I'm responding). If you agree (with the science) that CO2 emissions need to be drastically curbed, then we agree with each other and there's little point in a debate (although there might be some in discussing action). If you disagree, then state why and defend your position. Otherwise: what are we doing?

[Mikey]

Consensus does ask for faith - a majority of people would be unwise to support something in which they have no faith. Okay, that's just wordplay. Scientfically, consensus does not prove truth - but politically, it does.

Scientific consensus is A Thing. It's slightly different from the general use of consensus - it refers to the process of presenting, discussing and publishing via peer review within the particular field , it's not just a canvassing of general opinion.

[The Legendary Shark]

I agree that the consensus seems to be that CO2 emissions should be drastically curbed.

But that's not enough. Nowhere near. Methane emissions also need to be curbed, for example. And, while we're at it, other toxins. For one thing, artificial fertilisers and pesticides used in the US leech into rivers and gather in the Gulf of Mexico, causing dead zones. These dead zones attain higher temperatures than unaffected waters, making more energy available to hurricanes. In the mind of the public, more energetic hurricanes must be due to climate change, which is due to human CO2 emissions. So they'll blame the CO2 (which the politicians know how to tackle) and ignore the other causes - especially as the agri-corporations pump so much money into the green movement to fight that nasty CO2 (and as much  into political lobbying).

The danger, as I see it, is that CO2 is an oversimplification of the problem which leads to a belief in an oversimplified solution: handle the CO2, solve the problem.

Now, I know that we're stuck with the current global governmental network and I know it's corrupt and power-hungry and I know I don't trust it but I also know this monstrous network has a measurable effect on just about every aspect of life - and I hate that, as you all know. Governments don't do anything that doesn't benefit governments and their friends and benefactors. When governments detect a crisis, they devise ways to exploit it in such a way as to make that exploitation seem like positive action. This is my view, and I know it puts me in the minority.

What bigger crisis is there than the ruination of our most precious jewel, the planet Earth? But that ruination is being carried out by the biggest corporations - and us, for supporting them - and those corporations pay a fair bit in taxes and, er, other contributions. So governments can't really pin very much on them - maybe a few symbolic slaps on the wrist, for appearances' sake.

What's needed, politically, is an ambiguous bogeyman. The public's starting to cotton on to the fact that we're not looking after our planet very well but we can't blame the Big Corporations because of all the £ involved. But hang on - the scientists are moaning about CO2. That'll do. We'll "solve" the problem by blaming CO2 and taxing it. We'll take money from the people, sinking them further into debt to make them easier to control, and use it to subsidise the Big Corporations' green initiatives. We'll also chuck some cash at science, so long as it studies AGW to support our plans. It's a win-win because everybody produces CO2 and CO2 is a greenhouse gas that raises temperatures, but no one corporation is responsible because CO2 is inevitable. Therefore, CO2 is the ideal bogeyman.

This is why I believe that CO2 is only a part, and to my mind a relatively small part, of the overall problem. It needs to be tackled, of course it does, and a great deal of study has indeed been done in this area because (I suspect) that's where the governments, and their partner corporations, put the money. To convince us that CO2 is The Problem and that they have The Solution.

I know, I know - my conviction that governments are an intrinsically illusory and inherent abuse of power with no other objective than to maintain the status quo is colouring my opinions but, hey, at least I'm consistent...