They put forward the proposition:
"I've seen the evidence. And I want the government to prove they're serious about climate change by negotiating a strong, effective, fair deal at Copenhagen."and invite you to opt to "Count me in" or "Count me out".
As I type this, 513 people have asked to be counted in. Unfortunately for the organisers, 3436 have asked to be counted out.
Interestingly, if you ask to be counted out, it asks you to say why (after accepting your vote). I don't know if you are asked to justify a decision to be counted in; if anyone does wish to be counted in then I'd be interested to hear. My reason?
As a Cambridge science graduate who studied the History & Philosophy of science, I find it insulting to be told that "the science is settled". First, science does not settle; that is not its nature. Second, science that contradicts observation is not "settled"; it is "wrong".
Update - It seems that the climate change believers have tried to manipulate the poll. The real results? As of 1620 on 28 October, 5984 votes were cast, with 764 asking to be counted in and 5220 asking to be counted out, i.e. very nearly 7 to 1....
I found these three comments in different places of the website:
ReplyDeleteBy drilling vast cores of ice from as far as 3.5 km down inside the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists can work out what the temperature was up to 1 million years ago.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s, we’ve added 500 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere.
It’s hotter now than at any time in the past 1000 years.
Presumably then, it has been hotter than this in the last 1 million years. But that means that over 700 years before human beings started pumping carbon into the atmosphere it was as warm (or warmer), as it is now.
So in the admission of the website itself, it is perfectly possible for it to be as warm as this without human influence.
And then it says:
The climate change we are experiencing cannot be explained by natural causes. It is only when we allow for increases in temperature caused by human greenhouse gas emissions that the current warming can be explained.
but the same page concludes rather unexpectedly:
In 2007 they [the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] concluded that it’s very likely the global warming in the last 50 years was caused by humans.
Logically, I can't see how these two statements can both be correct. "It's very likely" or it's the only explanation. You can't have it both ways.
Is it any wonder the vote is going against them?
You did better than me, Albert. I went round and round in circles on the website and didn't find a scrap of anything that could be described as evidence that would persuade me to change my view; I keep an open mind. Excluding times of conflict, are there many examples in history where science has been deliberately manipulated by politicians to further their own ends?
ReplyDeletedidn't find a scrap of anything that could be described as evidence
ReplyDeleteYes, I noticed that. I wonder why it was. I thought it was just me.
Excluding times of conflict, are there many examples in history where science has been deliberately manipulated by politicians to further their own ends
Well there was Nazi science which confirmed Nazism and Marxist science which confirmed Marxism, and...err...Galileo which confirmed that old maxim that scripture is there to tell us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go (as the St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas had already made clear).
Still, that shows the secularists have been worse at manipulating science than the Catholics. Hurray!