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"If you telephone me or my family again I will report you to the police under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997."

[good fuck]

As soon as David Bellamy (remember him, gwubbing awound in the undergwowth?) started questioning the prevailing view of climate change he couldn't get back on telly for love nor money. Which may be a coincidence or he may have run into politics.

Actually, as Mr Bellamy later admitted, he'd read some dodgy "facts" about glaciers expanding rather than shrinking, took it at face value, drew erroneous conclusions which he then dissemintaed widely. To be fair to him, when the data was proved to be false, he publicly admitted he was wrong, but I don't think his credibility as a scientist has ever really recovered.

There's a lesson there for all armchair experts!

Not sure when Mr Bellamy recanted - do you have a date for that? Here's a link to an interview with Bellamy from Wednesday November 5, 2008: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/69623  in which he says things like "...there is absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide is anything to do with any impending catastrophe" and "...since I said I didn't believe human beings caused global warming I've not been allowed to make a TV programme." I also found an interview with him from 19 Nov 2009 at  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/6598056/Eco-hero-David-Bellamy-botanist-and-campaigner.html in which he adds "I'm sceptical about man-made climate change. There's absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide will kill us all. It's not a poison, it's the most important gas in the world. Carbon dioxide is an airborne fertiliser. How can farmers grow increasing amounts of food without a rise in CO2?" Those are the two most up to date interviews with the man I can find and it seems to me that even if he has come to accept that certain facts were incorrect (something I think we've all done) he still isn't convinced about carbon driving climate change - and neither am I.

I was taking a break from the board there and now I'm back...

Well ISTR last time it was mentioned you weren't sure it was a scam, plus you didn't think the causes of the Pleistocene glacial episodes were understood. What's convinced you it's a scam then?

I've said this before, but I'll repeat it more strenuously this time. Who in the name of good fuck doesn't think that our Sun is a significant climate forcing factor? Perhaps people who don't understand a fuckin thing about Earth sciences, but no Earth scientist, chemist, oceanographer, geologist, planetary, atmospheric or environmental scientist etc, etc thinks that. Read a fuckin textbook!

And carbon dioxide helps plants grow? Fuck me! A revelation!

I'm off again. See ye anon.

M.
Quaternary Science researcher

You seem to think that I believe science is a scam, which I do not. Certain climate evidence is being held up as Gospel by politicians, media and the corporate world. They are using science to cement their power and make a profit. What's the point of a carbon tax if carbon dioxide isn't the problem? And if carbon dioxide isn't the problem, don't you think we should be investigating that theory as vigorously as the opposite so that we can get some proper data on what is going on?

Much is assumed. I remember being told that we could tell what CO2 does to an atmosphere by looking at Venus. Earth's atmosphere has only about 0.05% CO2 and has a mean temperature 14.6 °C whilst Venus' atmosphere is 96.5% CO2 and has a mean temperature of 467°C - therefore more CO2 = higher temperatures, which seems to me to be unsound reasoning. Venus is also closer to the sun and an atmosphere composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide probably behaves much differently to an atmosphere composed chiefly of nitrogen and oxygen. Yes, at a certain point the levels of CO2 in an atmosphere will start keeping in solar radiation, but by the time that's happened we'd all have suffocated anyway. So far as we know, Venus also has no natural carbon sinks (life) to expand and contract with CO2 levels.

I'm not saying that climate change isn't a problem, but I don't believe that carbon dioxide is.

Who doesn't think that our sun is a contributing factor to climate? The people who stand to make money out of the CO2 based argument, that's who. How do you make money out of it being the sun's fault? Solar tax? You gonna' buy that? No, but you might be just taken in enough to pay a man-made-carbon tax.

TLS

A nobody with a questioning mind.

1: Invasion in Miniature - Van Dom

2: Nu-Earth Mutants - Clavell

3: Untitled - Mogzilla

HM: Untitled - Blue Meanie for actually making me groan.

Excellent work! Now, if only I was home and could open that link..!

I've just opened it for you and it's very nice! I now have a hankering to go off and watch Big Trouble in Little China again...

Hardly comparable, Bankers and child abusers?

No, bankers are much worse because their greed starves countless people in Africa to death, fuels wars around the globe and bankrupts entire nations. Those are the ones we're all really rebelling against.

True, but the Pope causes AIDS.

We're not going to have to get into a game of "My Bugbear's a Lot Bugbearier Than Your Bugbear" are we? 

Woo-hoo!

You have no idea how much I've missed this. My day has been made, Sir - thank you!

Very cleverly done, TLS.  I spent a good while looking through that, nice one.

That's very kind of you to say, thanks

As to the covering up of science thing, I think that it does indeed go on. As soon as David Bellamy (remember him, gwubbing awound in the undergwowth?) started questioning the prevailing view of climate change he couldn't get back on telly for love nor money. Which may be a coincidence or he may have run into politics.

Science is being done into climate change that is outside the accepted focus, as with the cosmic ray theory - it's just that the results have a hard time getting through the political and media barriers and into the public eye. Those results and interpretations that do get out tend to be belittled and derided, the scientists undertaking the work characterised as fringe or kooks. For many years, the climate argument was presented as essentially settled and I'm sure even TB would concede that this was never likely to be the case given the sheer complexity of the systems involved.

I have sensed a slight back-pedalling in the global warming assault of late. For one, the very phrase "global warming" has fallen from Apocalyptic grace. It was once on everyone's lips, the same way that "nuclear war" was on everyone's lips when I was a kid, but now I think more and more people accept that the more accurate term for what's happening is the much more friendly "climate change". Changing climate is certainly a challenge the human race has to deal with - but it's a challenge the human race has always been dealing with and probably always will be. Cave men would either kill a particularly furry beast when it's cold or learn how to spin cotton when it gets warmer. Modern man has to figure out how to get around the inconveniences of having built cities in difficult places or managing the water cycle better. In the future, we may be figuring out how to deal with all those unexpected hurricanes and tornadoes plaguing a terraformed Mars.

So you see, I really don't think that all scientists investigating the accepted fields within the climate change issue are in cahoots with big business or politicians. At least, no more than the rest of us. A handful certainly will be political animals. A few will be mavericks. Most will just turn up and do their work to the best of their ability. Politicians and the media have been picking the bits they like from the data, the dramatic bits that make people scared, and also fostered a climate where those bits receive the most focus to the exclusion (in political and media terms) of all other theories. It's not the scientists who are at fault and it's not necessarily the science - it's the politicians, money men and media.

I posted a link to a scientific study of Dutch Birch trees earlier in this thread that seemed to show that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere may not be as big a problem as we thought. In itself, of course, it was just one study and didn't prove anything. That site, though, is replete with examples of studies showing that the CO2 problem really may not be a problem at all. Of course, that's only one website with a limited number of studies on it - but stuff like this is largely ignored by politicians and the media because it does not support the argument for us needing them to fix things. It is, in my humble opinion, up to us to flag these anomalies wherever we perceive them.

This does not mean that by pointing out such things as CO2 being beneficial to crop yields I am entitled to the same recognition or standing as a proper scientist or researcher. All I am is a single voice in a supposedly free country shouting about the hard work done by other people.

One only has to watch the egregious "An Inconvenient Truth", which is basically an advert for carbon tax, to see how the most extreme and alarmist climate research results can be presented as pure propaganda. I read that this horrid little movie is being shown in schools all over the place - talk about getting to 'em young!

I generally find that I don't want anything so badly that I can't get it by letter. At least with a letter you have a record - unless you record your own 'phone calls. They sometimes get very uncomfortable if you tell them that you're recording the call for security purposes as well.  And you can still ask your security questions.

Use their own tactics against them (put them on hold while you put the kettle on, about 3 minutes is about the limit) just for fun.  Impede the buggers back, I say.

Hardly comparable, Bankers and child abusers?

No, bankers are much worse because their greed starves countless people in Africa to death, fuels wars around the globe and bankrupts entire nations. Those are the ones we're all really rebelling against.

Just write to them instead.

Here's a good tip for annoying people who ring you up and ask you "security questions". Ask them security questions first. (What's your full name; job title; direct contact number; line manager's full name; line manager's job title; line manager's direct contact number; name of the department you're working for; contact number of same, etc., etc.). Then politely say "thank you for that, now how can I help you?", when they then try to ask you security questions just say "I'm sorry, I don't discuss sensitive information over the telephone but if you'd like to write me a letter I'll certainly read what you have to say. My address? Well, if you haven't got that already you shouldn't be contacting me, should you? Good day."

I just emailed ESA with it. Should I have used a green font? lol

If you wanted to do a scale image on an A4 page, the planets would have to be drawn with a really, really, really, really sharp pencil. Or not drawn to the same scale as the orbits.

You're right about the sharpness - I reckon it would be possible with a very thin line and a very dense spiral. No?

(I actually got the idea after watching a documentary about the London Underground Map.)

Well if it helps, if you intend to trace the orbits you could just draw them as perfect circles. The elliptical nature of planetary orbits is usually exaggerated for diagrams to make it clearer. For your drawing, the the difference between Aphelion and Perihelion would be no greater than the thickness of the line (assuming the line is thick enough to be visible).

No, that wouldn't work. Here's a pdf I made to try and explain it (230KB):  http://www.mediafire.com/?wc5ta4akzagudnj

Ooh, yeah - I can lose hours on sites like that. I remember in the early days of Satellite TV there used to be this German channel that showed videos taken from the ISS all night after the programmes had stopped. It was simply entitled "Space Night" and I've watched it for hours. I really miss that.