Growing out the beard, eh?

Best I can do?????
Lifeless geek? didn't say that, but you prolly know yourself better than I. I only met you that one time a couple years ago...

I'll leave the room of intelligence and leave you here to wait for an "intelligant rebuttal" oh wiseman.

you two have meat issues.

A different view:
Global Warming Documentary Video

There was a whole thread about the video a while ago, and there are a few posts in there about why the movie is flawed (especially because one of the main scientists they interviewed is actually supportive of the AGW theory, and was pissed about how he was s misrepresented on the issue).

George Monbiot also tears the movie apart, is you feel like searching for the article.

And Motherhucker, the beardfarming actually officially begins in November. ひげは冬限定作品です。

Sorry Oyuki, I didn't realise that there was already a discussion about it. I myself am quite skeptical about the whole man-made global warming issue so after I saw the video I was quite excited to show it to everyone.

Anyway the scientist you talk about is not the only scientist in the video, for example there is the director of the international artic research center who is Japanese, think his name is akasofu something, and who is quite against man-made climatic change.

I feel the film was picked on just for being against the main views on global warming prevalent on the media now. If you scrutinise other films, for example an inconvenient truth, to the point that this film was examined you are sure to find as many or more mistakes.

Regardless of which side you take on this issue, I think the film make some good points and many of the scientists in it do hold, quite boldly, their disagreement views.

Whenever someone base their argument on the consensus of a comunity, whether it be a comunity of scientists or a comunity of religious scholars, I am wary of the argument, since that "consensus" is usually quite subjective and more often than not is used to impose some idea or course of action on people.

Anyway, I wouldn't want to start a debate on this, like I wouldn't want to debate with a Christian person about his religious beliefs because there is not going to be an end.

Just let others know that there are also people (including scientists) who don't agree with the idea of man-made global warming.

For me, hige is impossible at any time. Well, a bushy one anyway. Not weeping though.

I'm glad I'm not particularly hairy. Fast growning facial hair would be a real pain. One of my buddies - he comes in to work clean shaven in a morning and by night time he has a real covering going on.

Global warming data is derived directly from scientific research. General consensus about what the data means follows, and the overwhelming majority of scientists believe there is a link. To put the subjectivity of global warming consensus next to that of religion (a human invention for which no credible scientific research is possible) is like comparing the northern lights to ghost sightings.

I am sorry but I can't help to see some global warming activists as religious fanatics who never question the postulates of their ideology. I guess it's just me.

Greenroome, you make a good point but what we are seeing from the GW movement (or Climate Change movement, as it seems to be called now - a nice get around for the fact the we're not seeing as much "warming" as some people would like) IS an almost religious belief in the idea and a total rejection of the entirely legitimate practice of testing and questioning conclusions and the need to remain critical. It seems that to question the orthodoxy of CC immediately makes one some sort of stooge for the fossil fuel lobby. CC has now become a political touch stone and every adverse environmental event and I mean EVERY event, is linked to CC. Aust recently had Rudd standing in front of the long suffering lower lakes on the Murray River espousing the need for an ETS. The implication being that unless we established an ETS a national icon and vital resourse would be lost when the two could not be more distant from each other. El Nino and La Nina and water allocations have an effect on the water levels in the Murray several orders of magnitude greater than any CO2 increase - but Aust has a government that would have us believe that if we can achieve an incremental reduction in CO2 output, then the waters will flow again! It is just crazy that CC/GW populism has got to this level. The meaningful worst case scenarios for sea level increases for the next 100 years are measured in 10’s of centimeters but we’re still inundated by predictions of wholesale population relocation. Each month China increases its CO2 emission by an amount larger than Australian national annual CO2 emission - Nothing Aust does will have an impact on CC, but such is the political mileage to be gained from pandering to the CC mob that logic and common sense are subjugated to pointless symbolism as governments strive to prove how devote they are.

There would have been a lot of Australian who voted for Rudd because he agreed to sign up to Kyoto. And he did. What was the result?

I’m actually a little surprised no one has offered up CC as being at least partly responsible for the financial turmoil of the past couple of weeks. It must kill the environmental lobby that their environmental end of the world predictions are so easily pushed off the front page by financial end of the world predictions.

I completely agree with you Rag-Doll about the embarrassing scenes we see with politicians standing in front of anything from a bush fire to a child's destroyed sandcastle on the beach wringing their hands and blaming it on CC. My number one desire in all this would be to have the issue (a scientific one) removed entirely from the sphere of politics and handed over to scientists and economists. Effective solutions don't fit with short terms of office, and the issue is too open to political manipulation. I realize this is an impossible proposal but it illustrates the point that scientific problems should not be tackled by populists.

I'm interested in scientific consensus without the baying crowd editing the story, and whilst natural El Nino / La nina events should be treated as such, the IPCC would be laughed out of their seats had they not taken them into account. Scientific peer review is incredibly thorough and stories de-bunking CC would sell just as many papers as CC itself. Actually, probably more.

ps. Mooooo! (there we go, still on topic)

A quick segue re: Mooooo...(Brought on by the extinct words thread)
... I heard the other day that "Moo" now means "boring".

I wondered why my kids Moo-ed when I asked them to clean up thier rooms!!!

BACK ON TOPIC:
As someone who saw the ballot papers and studied the stats of the last federal election and the last WA state election there is a massive swing to voting green (not that it bore fruit - as no candidates were actually elected!) but upon closer inspection (asking Green voters for example) it seems that the majority of people vote green as a vote FOR THE ENVIRONMENT - it is not a vote for Green's Policies because lets face it they don't really have any of substance - it is simple a vote to express desire for something to be done on the environmental issues.

With this information - sorry - but it is now a politcal tool. Whether that is good or bad thing for the environment itself is debatable and probably only able to be examined in retrospect. But more and more environmental issues will be a part of politics. Because it wins or loses votes.

Yes people like the idea of a peaceful and green environment where there is no pollution, with plenty of fish in the sea (as long as they can still have their orange roughy, their sushi and sword fish dinners and go fishing on the weekends), with animals roaming free in their unspoilt natural environments (as long there is still land for development, and farming and homes and we don't have dangerus animals roaming the streets or crocs or sharks patroling the beaches) and vast tracks of unspoilt forests (as long as the local paper is still delivered each morning) and clean skies ( as long as they can still fly overseas for holidays and by those out of season vegies) and long as fuel is still cheap enough to keep the car on the road.......

Supporting the environment is a bit like supporting democracy. Seems like a no brainer until one considers the consequences!

The idea appeals, the practical consequences don't.

Spot on Rag-Doll, which is why I've (alarmingly) found myself pondering the idea of a board of scientists and economists making tough unpopular unilateral decisions based on fact not desire. Never thought I'd be considering dictatorship, but we're collectively too soft to make the tough moves required until it's way too late.

Successive Australian governments have allowed the country's greatest/most productive river get to a deplorable state through overuse, and are only now buying back irrigators' water entitlements. They knew about El Nino/La Nina, periodical prolonged drought, and CC yet couldn't make the unpopular decisions needed.

IMO the green vote is the middle classes trying to lessen their guilt about the lives that they lead. They have no intention of giving up on their SUV's etc but they feel that if they vote Green then everything will be ok.

I don't vote green, not because I don't think that true environmental issues are important, they are, but because those green politicians are no better than any other zealot. They are too fundamentalist that would have us back clicking stones together in an instant. I agree with Greenroome in that its time that the Environment was de-politicised as doing or saying something just because its popular in the present is not gonna do anything for the environment in the long term.

I am not arguing that - I think you are spot on...and I don't vote Green either!

But I do think that 'the masses' see it that way (the SUV driving middle classes as you put forward). IMHO I think the Green conscience appeasing vote is far more endemic and diverse than that though! It is people who have given up the SUV, people that could never hope to buy the SUV - the young...the old... It is no longer that select group appeasing thier nagging guilt!

I also don't think it achieves too much to cast that Green vote... And de-politicising environmental issues would be far more beneficial. But will it happen? Can it happen?

Ze Commander-in-Chief

I'm going to miss him.

I especially like the 'global warmings' plural bit.