Leslie

I agree with what Telboy says. All those scientific pronouncements may well be correct but then we have to remember that science seems to have more theories than most and that cannot be discounted. We need true facts to be able to make a concrete and accurate decision about it all.

There is not an iota of doubt that there has been a significant change in the climate in the last 60 years or so in the way Telboy said and it now seems to be changing even more quickly. This statement is down to straight personal observation over the years and in my mind cannot be ignored. I have not got the deep facts that the scientists proclaim and therefore am not in a position to say one way or the other. In all honesty though, we should consider what is happening and take due notice since we bear a heavy responsibily towards those who follow us in the future.

Les

OllyK

Not much evidence that drinking coffee causes global warming, but should we ban that as well - just on the off chance? I'd prefer to get the facts and make decisions based on that rather than saying "X" may affect "Y" so we better stop "X" just in case!

I agree the planet is warming, it may be natural it may not. It may be a bad thing, it may not and in all honesty nobody knows. Encourage better use of resources because it's sensible rather than scaremongering people in to it with half truths and speculation otherwise if it does come out that there is no link to CO2 and global warming in a couple of years it will be even harder to get people to conserve resources.

TelBoy

Sorry, but i'm not a procrastinator. I've never been one who likes to sit back and wait for the irrefutable proof. If i can do something which in all likelyhood is going to be beneficial, on a macro level if nothing else, then i'll do it, not fanny about at the edges saying we don't have enough evidence here and now. If it all goes horribly wrong then i couldn't live with myslef if i knew i'd sat there waiting for somebody else to provide me with some sort of definitive proof when in the meantime i could easily make some small changes to my lifestyle.

hedgehog

Actually this meta-study has been entirely destroyed, the researcher, Naomi Oreskes, picked a selection of papers and placed her own intrepretation upon their conclusions. This intrepretation has been rejected most famously and publicly by Benny Peiser at Liverpool John Moores who said:

"Oreskes (1,2) presents empirical evidence that appears to show a unanimous, scientific consensus on the anthropogenic causes of recent global warming. Oreskes also claims that this universal agreement had not been questioned even once in the peer-reviewed literature since 1993. Her assertion has been extensively reported ever since.

I replicated her study in order to assess the accuracy of its results. All abstracts listed on the ISI databank for 1993 to 2003 using the same keywords ("global climate change") were assessed (3). The results of my analysis contradict Oreskes' findings and essentially falsify her study: Of all 1117 abstracts, only 13 (1%) explicitly endorse the 'consensus view'. However, 34 abstracts reject or question the view that human activities are the main driving force of "the observed warming over the last 50 years" (4).

Oreskes claims that "none of these papers argued [that current climate change is natural]". However, 44 papers emphasise that natural factors play a major if not the key role in recent climate change (5).

The most significant discrepancy with Oreskes' results concern abstracts that are undecided whether human activities are the dominant driving force of recent warming. My analysis shows that a significant number of abstracts reject what Oreskes calls the 'consensus view'. In fact, there are almost three times as many abstracts that are unconvinced of the notion of anthropogenic climate change than those that explicitly endorse it (6)."

The Al Gore film consists of lies built on top of lies, that people are quoting examples of it here as if they were fact without taking a look at the science (if a meta-study could be considered science) indicates just how effective his propaganda has been. However, that doesn't make what he is saying true it just highlights those who accept him without question.

I will include Benny's references in case you wish to look them up:

1. N. Oreskes (2004). The scientific consensus on climate change. Science, Vol 306, Issue 5702, 1686, 3 December 2004 (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/con

2. ISI Web of Science (http://www.webofscience.com/)

3. http://davidappell.com/archives/00000497.htm

4.) C. M. Ammann et al., for instance, claim to have detected evidence for "close ties between solar variations and surface climate", Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 65:2 (2003): 191-201. While G.C. Reid stresses: "The importance of solar variability as a factor in climate change over the last few decades may have been underestimated in recent studies." Solar forcing of global climate change since the mid-17th century. Climate Change. 37 (2): 391-405

5) H.R. Linden (1996) The evolution of an energy contrarian. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, 21:31-67.

6) Russian scientists K. Kondratyev and C Varotsos criticise "the undoubtfully overemphasised contribution of the greenhouse effect to the global climate change". K. Kondratyev and C Varotsos (1996). Annual Review of Energy and the Environment. 21: 31-67

oblong

Actually I think you will find Peiser's rebuttle of Oreske has been more thouroughly destroyed (ie has more errors) than Oreskes.

This is well documented here: http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/20...ut-peiser.html

and here: http://www.norvig.com/oreskes.html

Notable is that Peiser changed the search that Oreske used by including editorials and letters rather than just peer-reviewed papers.

Also noted in the first link: whereas Oreskes searched only "Sciences", Peiser included "Social Sciences" and "Arts & Humanities".

The first link also demonstrates that some of the abstracts which Peiser claimed reject or doubt the consensus don't actually do so.