Off-topic chat, page-68

Hi captainblood,

The significance of a civilised debate on "climate change" - i.e. global warming

I can understand your reasonable and personal wish to discuss Anteo-related matters, which has been a starting point for this discussion.  Yes, it does need to be on another thread now, but when a poster's genuine statement is made about the perceived future, with which some of us clearly disagree, it is not unreasonable for a counter view to be expressed.

What I find pleasing is the tenor of discussion we have observed, and I am impressed by both Stockcount and Nashezz, in the way they have presented their views, without rancour or denigration of others.  This is in contrast to much of what I have observed in other forums. I have been staggered at the anger shown there.

Incidentally, I am going to call the debate by its proper name, anthropogenic global warming (AGW, sometimes preceded by "catastrophic - CAGW)..  Why was the name changed?  Was it because around 2000 the temperature rise paused, and is still relatively stable?  So we can't call it global warming any longer, let's call it something that no-one can argue with.  Now anything to do with weather is called evidence of climate change;  well, the climate is always changing, and the AGW sceptics that I have met do not deny that climate change is occurring, nor do they think that humans have had nothing to do with rising temperatures.  The question is the degree and the significance of those effects.

The debate about AGW does need to be pursued, not necessarily here, but in all kinds of ways.  Why? 

1. If AGW and its future as perceived by the "consensus" is correct, and we humans can alter those effects to influence the climate in our favour, it is crazy that we are not doing so.  And really, at the global level, we are not.
2. If the AGW argument is incorrect, we are clearly harming ourselves in two ways.  First, we are forgoing the benefits for all humankind of cheap and available fossil-fuelled energy, including for the energy-poor developing world, condemning many of the latter to ongoing privation and early deaths.  Second, we would have to ask ourselves, how is it that we have come to accept in the Western world, this conviction about AGW and the action that we must take?  How could we have got it so wrong?  Who has benefited, wittingly and/or unwittingly?

Those are my reasons for the critical importance of this debate, if not here, in many places elsewhere, in communities, workplaces and families.  Meanwhile, there are other ADO-threads that those not interested in the debate, can follow.