explod
explod
- Joined
- 4 March 2007
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A comment by a friend of mine today:-
" I find it ironic when I did my env science degree at UQ some 20 years ago, the lecturers and professors were warning exactly what is playing out. One professor was particularly concerned about food production (it was an ag college) and look at what is playing out. Farmers in Australia are taking this very seriously, they are looking at worst case scenarios so they can make decisions around the long term viability of their operations or what crops they can adapt to. And try telling my friend in Western Samoa this is all a hoax, his community is watching this unfold. It doesn’t take a genius to look at the cause and effect of continuing on this path. And as Michael says if the science is found to ever be wrong at least we won’t be pigs swilling in our own trough and our kids will have an intelligent economic system that respects the earth" and another:-
"almost every single one of mr cane's 'facts' is a distortion, if not a downright misrepresentation. each falsification is created in the same way and is a standard practice of every climate change contrarian
i prefer the word 'contrarian' to denialist. mr cane, and his like, are simply contrary—as in mary, mary—for the sake of being contradictory. they are generally people with a noticeable lack of formal education who wish to make up for that inadequacy by demonstrating that they can 'do' science or maths just like someone who has considerably more expertise
their standard practice works as follows:
all graphs of natural phenomena show rises and falls—ebbs, flows, increases, decreases—over an historical period. by isolating small sections of these graphs, or samples of statistics extracted from them (i.e., zooming in on those instances of fall, ebbs and decreases) you then argue that this accumulation of negatives must necessarily mean an overall negative
zoom out to the whole graph, however, and it becomes evident that the sections of ‘falls’ on the graph are outweighed by the ‘rises’, and that the overall trend of the graph is upwards
the other ploy of contrarians is to argue graph-by-graph (or one set of statistics at a time). in fluid or dynamic systems (such as climate) overall trends are much more important than individual instances of change. for example, while rainfall in one isolated region may appear to have increased, the evaporation rate may also have increased. on top of that, while precipitation totals might very well have increased, that rain may have arrived in short, heavy bursts and run-off may have been far greater than normal. a contrarian, will select 1 section from the overall set of statistics to support their misrepresentation
governments often use a similar sleight-of-hand, claiming that they have injected a further $Xm in one area of expenditure (health, for instance), while quietly extracting an even greater amount from the overall expenditure in that area
the best thing to do with climate change contrarians like mr cane is to ignore their preposterous claims for the simple and glaringly obvious reason that real life events are rapidly overtaking them
i apologise for taking up much more of your time, lisa, than replying to mr cane’s ignorance warrants…"
" I find it ironic when I did my env science degree at UQ some 20 years ago, the lecturers and professors were warning exactly what is playing out. One professor was particularly concerned about food production (it was an ag college) and look at what is playing out. Farmers in Australia are taking this very seriously, they are looking at worst case scenarios so they can make decisions around the long term viability of their operations or what crops they can adapt to. And try telling my friend in Western Samoa this is all a hoax, his community is watching this unfold. It doesn’t take a genius to look at the cause and effect of continuing on this path. And as Michael says if the science is found to ever be wrong at least we won’t be pigs swilling in our own trough and our kids will have an intelligent economic system that respects the earth" and another:-
"almost every single one of mr cane's 'facts' is a distortion, if not a downright misrepresentation. each falsification is created in the same way and is a standard practice of every climate change contrarian
i prefer the word 'contrarian' to denialist. mr cane, and his like, are simply contrary—as in mary, mary—for the sake of being contradictory. they are generally people with a noticeable lack of formal education who wish to make up for that inadequacy by demonstrating that they can 'do' science or maths just like someone who has considerably more expertise
their standard practice works as follows:
all graphs of natural phenomena show rises and falls—ebbs, flows, increases, decreases—over an historical period. by isolating small sections of these graphs, or samples of statistics extracted from them (i.e., zooming in on those instances of fall, ebbs and decreases) you then argue that this accumulation of negatives must necessarily mean an overall negative
zoom out to the whole graph, however, and it becomes evident that the sections of ‘falls’ on the graph are outweighed by the ‘rises’, and that the overall trend of the graph is upwards
the other ploy of contrarians is to argue graph-by-graph (or one set of statistics at a time). in fluid or dynamic systems (such as climate) overall trends are much more important than individual instances of change. for example, while rainfall in one isolated region may appear to have increased, the evaporation rate may also have increased. on top of that, while precipitation totals might very well have increased, that rain may have arrived in short, heavy bursts and run-off may have been far greater than normal. a contrarian, will select 1 section from the overall set of statistics to support their misrepresentation
governments often use a similar sleight-of-hand, claiming that they have injected a further $Xm in one area of expenditure (health, for instance), while quietly extracting an even greater amount from the overall expenditure in that area
the best thing to do with climate change contrarians like mr cane is to ignore their preposterous claims for the simple and glaringly obvious reason that real life events are rapidly overtaking them
i apologise for taking up much more of your time, lisa, than replying to mr cane’s ignorance warrants…"