THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS
At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.
This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.
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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
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John Ray,
Who are you? I thought you were another of Max’s sockpuppets,
Anthromorphic Global Warming A Serious Threat: No, soda pop gas and cow farts are not going to cause the end of the world.
Evolution: Yes, but probably not in the same sense that Peter Martin does.
Peter:
Peter, I voted and Max has counted my vote. I’ll do it again to save you from scrolling up:
I accept the theory of evolution, and I do not believe that AGW is a serious problem, i.e. I am a skeptic.
Max, John Ray is a blogger from Down Under who I followed for a long time. He is a psychometrician with a number of published works. I thought Robin’s comment about “cognitive dissonance” might be of interest to him, so I contacted him and passed along a link.
Link to one of John Ray’s many sites.
Peter:
You say:
It’s facile.
May I have a vote?
No there is no Global Warming. It is an invention of western Crusaders to undermine the economies of the peaceful and holy peoples’ of Islam.
Yes, Allah, peace be upon him, is responsible for everything that happens in this world. Not a single grain of sand that blows across the desert does so against the word of Allah. Peace be upon him.
Allah, peace be upon him , even made Mr Peter Martin. I’m a total loss to explain why though
John Ray,
How can you be a “global warming atheist” ?A ‘theist’ believes in God. A monotheist in one God, a polytheist in many Gods. An atheist in no gods. The best I can make of your comment is that you don’t believe in any God in connection with Global Warming.
That’s good. Neither do I.
I don’t normally pick people up on their bad English but as you’ve paraded your qualifications of PhD in psychology and your record of university teaching, I just thought it might be worth a mention.
TonyN,
I don’t like to criticize you on you own blog but your “its facile” reply was a bit lame. It’s hardly likely to make me stop to re-consider. You wouldn’t expect me to think to myself ” Yes, maybe Tony has a good point there”.
I suppose I could reply with “oh no it isn’t ” but that doesn’t get us very far.
Maybe you are saving your best arguments for the BBC? :-)
All that money that Al Gore spent trying to sell his carbon credits, shot to hell…….Still, a nice graph, don’t you think Pete?
If the majority gains the advantage will that constitute a “consensus” in your mind Pete? Could +/- 120 million people all be wrong? 120 million anti-science, holy roller, “deniers”?
(Probably one of Max’s sock-puppet stunts designed to skew the results).
Gallup Poll: New high – 41% of Americans ‘now say global warming is exaggerated’
JZSmith
Already had you counted in the poll, based on yor earlier vote.
Thanks for input on who John Ray is, i.e. not a “sockpuppet” out of Peter’s overactive (and slightly paranoid) imagination, but, in fact, a fellow Australian!
Max
Brute and JZSmith,
Hey, what’s going on?
President Obama has recently signed various spending, stimulus, recovery bills at a total cost of between 2.36 and 3.27 trillion US dollars (depending on whose estimate you accept).
That’s a pretty thick stash of taxpayer cash.
At the same time Obama gave the American people the stirring message that since Americans could once succeed in facing the challenge of putting a man on the moon, they will now also succeed in solving the current financial crisis.
Got me to thinking.
A dollar bill is 0.11 mm thick (0.0043 inches)
One trillion dollars piled up would be a stack 110,000 kilometers high
At the upper end of the estimate (3.27 trillion dollars) the stack would be 360,000 km high.
NASA tells us that, at its “perigree” (or shortest distance from Earth) the distance to the moon is 360,000 km.
No problem getting that man to the moon. Just stack him up on top of Obama’s (taxpayer) money pile.
Just something to think about as you try to go to sleep at night.
Regards,
Max
Note to our poll respondents:
We received a thoughtful vote by a new blogger named Osama Bin Laden.
He would fit into the category which we have not yet seen, the one that does NOT accept Darwin’s evolution theory (Allah, peace be upon him, did it) and also does NOT believe that AGW is a serious problem (Allah, peace be upon him, is in charge of weather/climate) .
But since this may in fact be a “sockpuppet” of one of our other posters, I am leaving Mr. Bin Laden’s vote out of the statistic for now.
Max
Brute,
“Evolution: Yes, but probably not in the same sense that Peter Martin does.”
How do you mean? Would this be in the same sense that JZ means though?
You and JZ don’t seem too forthcoming.
You ask “Could +/- 120 million people all be wrong? 120 million anti-science, holy roller, ‘deniers’? I’d say yes.
I’m not sure if other Australians would agree with me but I’d say Australia was culturally somewhere in between Europe and America. But closer to Europe and in particular the UK. I do feel very much like I’m in a foreign country in America. Much more so than, for example, in France where I struggle to get by on what French I can remeber from my schooldays. Your TV is hideously biased. AGW wasn’t a much talked about issue when I was last there. Clinton was in office and the news at the time was about some deal that he was trying to push on the Middle East.
There was no pretence at objectivity at all on the main TV channels. ABC, CBS and NBC seemed pretty much indistinquishable. If AGW is handled the same way then its not surprising that Americans are so misinformed.
Attention, poll respondents: We have a vote from Brute (4801)!
He has agreed on Darwin’s theory of evolution (with a caveat that he may not agree exactly with Peter Martin’s take on this).
He has stated that he does not support the suggestion that AGW is a serious problem.
Shall we put him into our statistic, or shall we wait until he and Peter can resolve what “acceptance of the Darwin theory of evolution” really means?
I’d say that as long as Brute accepts the validity of the theory of evolution of Darwin (regardless of who or what he may believe is “behind the scenes, driving it all”) we should accept his vote in that sense. After all, Einstein also expressed a belief in the existence of some higher power. I do not know whether or not Darwin, himself, ever took a stand on that question.
We are not conducting a poll on “religion”, but on whether or not respondents:
(a) believe the Darwin theory of evolution is valid, and
(b) believe that AGW is a serious threat.
It sounds to me that Brute has voted YES on (a) and NO on (b).
If I’ve got this wrong Brute can correct me.
Max
Max,
Can I draw your attention to this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism
About a third of the way down the page. I would say that the Anglican Church would align themslves with the last option. That’s fine. I’ll accept that, but a choice of any of the other four options, or opinions close to them, (Young Earth, Gap, Progressive and intelligent design), even though they may allow for an element of evolution, would clearly indicate a preference for religion over science.
Can this point be clarified?
Peter: yes, it’s important to know “what to be, and what not to be, sceptical about”. Too bad you’ve got the AGW/GHG one wrong.
Max,
Of course our little poll might be interesting but I don’t think either of us would claim to be able to it better than Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/14107/Third-Americans-Say-Evidence-Has-Supported-Darwins-Evolution-Theory.aspx
According to this poll, from 2004, half of the American population would say that the earth was less than 10,000 years old. That’s half of Americans rejecting science.
What about a comparable figure for Australia?
I did see one link suggesting a figure of about 5%. I’d say that was too low. This link suggests 25%
http://www.catallaxyfiles.com/blog/?p=352
I’d say that was a bit too high. But lets not quibble. Australia is considered to be second to Australia worldwide in non scientific creationist beliefs, but even so it is still well behind the USA. This link does say that “women, older people, Liberal voters and Queenslanders!!! were less inclined to believe in evolution. People from NSW, people living in the inner cities and those earning over $80,000 preferred evolution as an explanation of how we got here”
Reading between the lines, its the dumber section of the population who are most anti-science!
And is this anti science linked to AGW? Well why wouldn’t it be? How is it possible to reject what science says about the age of the earth and evolution? Some think ( if think is the correct word to describe their mental process) that it is very possible of course.
Is their (50%+ in the USA, 25% + in Australia) opinion on AGW of any validity at all?
Peter (#4789): far from answering my question “in an honest fashion”, you’ve not answered it at all. The reason, I think, is that you’re in denial about the reality of today’s world. Either you don’t see or you don’t want to see that, on the matter of “climate change”, the European and US governing classes (politicians, media, activists, institutions etc.) are on their own. Their fellow citizens are not interested: they have other priorities and are tired of the increasingly shrill cries for action. But, far more significantly, other countries are not interested either. None is following the West; nor is any likely to do so. There are billions of people in our world who live every day with poverty, hunger, disease, lack of water, corruption, exploitation, violence and death. They don’t know anything about AGW and, if they did, they wouldn’t give a damn – any more than the gangsters, corrupt officials, organisations and governments responsible for much of this misery. And, far from following the West’s (currently non existent) “lead”, the most powerful and growing new economies (China, India, etc.) are heading off in the opposite direction: building up the power of their finances, improving the lot of their people and establishing their world influence. They have little respect for the West, believing (with some justice) that it has called the shots and taken the benefits for far too long. Now it’s their turn. The world’s political and economic climate has changed utterly in recent years and the inevitable consequence is increased GHG emission. Get used to it.
Hi Peter,
Your Gallup poll figures are irrelevant to our discussion. I provided poll figures as well, for the USA and many other countries.
Get used to it, Peter: people can accept Darwin and still reject AGW as a serious threat. Our little poll has confirmed this.
Darwin makes sense to most educated people.
AGW as a serious threat does not.
Your suggestion was that people who do not “accept” the validity of the “mainstraeam consensus” opinion (as you put it) that “AGW is a serious threat” are those that “reject science”, including “Darwin’s theory of evolution”.
This suggestion has been proven invalid by our poll.
Now you are “waffling” about “Gallup polls” in the USA on the Darwin theory, etc.
Let’s close this particular discussion with you, for once, admitting that your judgmental view on how the world works was wrong.
It can happen to anyone, Peter.
Regards,
Max
HELLO POLL RESPONDENTS!
Thank you all for having participated in our little poll.
I’m happy to announce that the vote of Brute has also been added to our poll, and that we have now reached a very high 85% response rate to our questionnaire and can, therefore, close the poll.
Mr. Brute’s vote was:
YES (for the Darwin theory of evolution) and
NO (for the premise that AGW is a serious threat)
We have no vote from Mrs. Brute, who has also been an occasional contributor to this site.
This puts ut at: 10 respondents who voted the same as Brute and 1 respondent (Peter Martin) who voted YES on both propositions.
We have now confirmed the statistic that 91% of respondents who DO agree that the Darwin theory is valid, DO NOT agree that AGW is a serious problem, while only 9% of those who DO agree that the Darwin theory is valid, also DO agree that AGW is a serious problem.
This seems to directly refute the assertion by Peter that those who reject AGW are the same individuals as those who reject “science”, (i.e. Darwin).
I believe we have enough votes together now to close our poll.
Does anone have any objection with this conclusion?
Thanks again for your participation.
Max
I agree with your summation Max, but surely it raises an interesting connundrum.
If you believe that;
A) Mankind can only live in an atmospheric soup of precise proportions without causing catastrophe -of which Co2 at 280ppm is the key ingredient- surely that degree of precise engineering can only come about through;
b) some sort of intelligent design/creation by God?
Therefore if you believe in a)how can you vote against b)?
Discuss-preferably with lots of tax payers money for the robust reseatrch needed. Anyone want to jump on board this latest bandwagon?
Tonyb
Peter Martin, Reur 4799 most of your rambling was not worthy of response, but of some interest, you posted the following image, which I notice is in hilly terrain “somewhere”
Are you able to fill us in with a bit more detail, like what part of the world, and any possible correlating data such as T records over say the past decade or so? Or regional earthquakes, storms, building codes or whatever that might be relevant?
The same website also posted this image, which I thought was good fun:
And this:
Are you sure it is not a satirical site?
I worked in Windsor Ontario quite a bit in the 80’s, and would visit the Detroit area in Michigan from time to time. Based on my experience, the procedure that was required to exit the tunnel or the bridge under/over the Detroit River, (where my passport was required), leaves the firm impression that Ontario was not then part of the USA. Has anything changed since then?
Great Peter. Than by the same token, 180 million Americans could be wrong also. Therefore, I suggest that the legislation/taxation regarding “climate change” be applied to the AWG faithful…..the “true believers”.
Max,
With your vote/poll results all tabulated and that question finally settled, may we re-vote regarding last Autumn’s U.S. Presidetial election with the results of the vote from this threads respondents binding?
Seems as if we could settle some of the world’s most pressing issues right here on Tony’s website.
Max
When i read “Instead the Parker study uses the proxy of comparing night minimum temperatures between calm and windy nights, using a reconstructed wind record. “, i virtually choked on my breakfast. For a moment i couldn’t believe a scientist would do something so mind bendingly stupid and call it evidence, then i remembered the topic. It really is quite depressing.
Bob_FJ,
Re: 4822
Funny, I was thinking the same thing. I noticed that the houses in Mr. Martin photograph are built on a slope with cellars….not a standard construction technique used in areas of the world where permafrost is prevalent. Structures in these areas are generally stabilized above ground, on pylons, to provide an air gap to prevent conditioned space from affecting the substructure (melting/undermining the permafrost).