"Denial"

This is a bit of an essay, and a scattershot one at that; I apologise, but I feel like I have to comment on this.

I was just watching Prime Minister's questions when some idiot MP made the following accusation of the opposition:

"They're all a bunch of holocaust and climate deniers".

The reaction of parliament lay between apathy and endorsement. It was then I realised that this whole disgusting mindset has become ingrained in the minds of most of the British populace. If the above statement doesn't jar with you, you are as guilty as anybody else.

Why should it jar?

Because it equates scientific scepticism of a hypothesis with denying against overwhelming evidence that millions of people were brutally murdered.

People who don't appreciate the absurdity of the statement therefore don't understand the crux of the whole scientific process: scepticism.

It's actually extremely ironic. As soon as you start hounding people who are sceptical of a scientific hypothesis, you have become the exact opposite of a scientist, and you stand contrary to absolutely everything that science has ever achieved and everything that it stands for; namely a sublime freedom from dogma (religious, political) and authority, and subservience to only one idol: empirical evidence, and hence, objective truth.

I am of the opinion that scientific thought is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. Therefore, when I observe instances such as the time a politician was laughed at and heckled on TV by an audience for saying that he was "sceptical about anthropic global warming", it truly sickens me. It sickens me that these people sit around soaking up the benefits that the work of thousands of scientists have brought them whilst they flaunt their ignorance of that very process.

And worst of all, these people are all totally disingenuous! Nobody in the population is acting on their beliefs anyway. They are still acting just like the very 'deniers' they demonise, driving cars, flying planes, wasting resources. And government is even worse. All this talk, this absolutely pointless rhetoric and flying off to make big fancy climate deals which they then ignore, and just 1% of our nation's energy is generated by renewables.

So there we have it. Global warming is, by and large, a dogma, and has become totally separated from the scientific basis from which it sprung.

And no, I am not a fascist, I have very liberal views. And no, I don't have shares in oil companies, and no, I'm not in denial. In fact I think reducing our oil consumption is an extremely urgent priority, for the simple reason that it is a finite resource and we don't have that much time left with the stuff.

If you want to disagree with the above, go ahead. Alternatively if you'd like to present me with reasoned arguments for CO2 causing global warming, I'd love to hear from you.

But please, if I hear any more anti-science, ad hominems, or political nonsense which has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand, I'm going to flip.

I agree with your post entirely. That quote was so absured it actually made me laugh at it. having skepticism is never a bad thing. Even if a theory holds true 99.9999% of the time, having that open mind and bit of skepticism lets you see that one time it doesnt hold.

I believe most people equaite being skeptical with not having an open mind, which is completely false. Being skeptical means you can accept (note, not blindly believe) any reality that the objective proof provides..which to me means very very open minded.

There seems to be some evidence that the Earth is warming faster than it used to during previous cycles by looking at ice core samples. CO2 levels are also higher, but that doesn't imply causation of course; it could equally be a symptom of the problem as trapped gasses are released.

The problem with climate change is that there's so much stuff pretending to be science (Al Gore, bad reporting in the mass media), that it's hard to separate legitimate stuff out from the crap.

potholer54 has some very interesting videos on the subject that looks at evidence for and against either side, as well as debunking some of the crappy myths.


Edit: that MP comment is also ironic given that the government decided to completely ignore scientific evidence and expert testimonials from one of the most respected medical journals in the world when formulating drugs policy.

Edit 2: also I think part of the problem isn't that people are being well educated on the issue and are generally skeptical, but a lot of ignorant people believe it's a conspiracy theory and use flawed arguments to justify it, and that the government are just looking for an excuse to get more taxes (which is actually true I suppose)

I'm of the opinion that something needs to be settled science for some period of decades prior to it becoming acceptable to hound deniers.

This is also a valid part of the scientific process: If you want to question and overturn evolution, that's fine but you better come packing some serious evidence. It's just a waste of time otherwise and time is not to be wasted. The way I look at it, everybody is close minded about the vast majority of statements that could be made. The trick is to be open minded about the minority that can actually potentially be "true".

All science can ever do at the most basic level is say that something is not true and not that it is.

There is no denying that the Earth is heating up, that's an ironclad fact. Just look at the glacier retreating of the last 50 years in timelapse and you'll see it before your very eyes. How much of that is due to human activity is unknown, but considering the relationship between CO2 and heat retention (and we've double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the last 150 years), it's not a stretch.

Having said that, the Sun is going through a very long peak season in intensity and activity, more than we've ever recorded before. What's causing it and how much it is contributing to our warming is up for debate.

Even if we're only responsible for a minutae of the Earth's heating, as the sentient species of this planet we have the implicit responsibility to protect it for all other species as well as our own. We hold this planet in escrow for our children, their children and so on. Anything we can do to keep it as pleasant (or habitable) as possible should be done.

I'm sure I read somewhere that Scotlands energy generation is roughly 20-24% renewable from wind and hydro. They're bringing up your national average.

I think you guys are kinda missing the point of his post...This didnt seem to be intended to be a global warming debate to me...

but since you all felt the need, Ill just say that weather we are conributing or not, we need other fuel anyways case oil will run out much sooner than anything else...that reason in itself is good enough for me.

Xei, I agree with you. Though I am no scientist by any means, a lot of what I do involves a lot of science, and a lot of people tell me is lies just because it's not supportive of their magical way of thinking, pisses me off. And that statement made my jaw drop. The fact that people buy into phrases like that just because they include scary words like "holocaust" and "climate."

That's just like the governments awesome job of basing all of their reasoning for some of the most assinine shit ever on "terrorists."

I realize that that's not related to the original purpose of this post, I just had to throw that out there.

But I must agree. I have changed a lot in the past year or so as a result of actual science. Seein things work, how they work. I often wonder how I so long bashed scientific questioning of things, and I'm sorry I did. Because now I feel dumb, as now I use science to regularly question other things. ;)

You can't blame people though. I feel like the world is getting stupider. People are starting to accept things at base value now, just because they include "sensitive" words and topics. Idunno.