It is easy for simpletons and politicians to classify a complex issue into ‘yes and no’ or ‘true and false’ or some other variety of the black and white argument.  But life is never that easy and very few serious and complex issues are ever so easily and so conveniently classified.  Climate Change is certainly just such an issue. For starters, most people cannot even easily define the issue.

Just using the term ‘climate change’ is pointless since it is quite obvious that climate changes and always has.  Even adding ‘Anthropogenic ‘ (human caused) to the front doesn’t help much since it is a basic understanding of science that since we form part of the earth’s bio-system we inevitably affect it.  The truly telling word that makes all the change and causes all the debate is the word  ‘catastrophic’. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (CACC).

CC is obvious. ACC is pretty certain although the degree of effect is very debatable and should be the core of the debate.  But CACC is where you lost me.

CACC essentially believes we are all going to fry, starve, drown or die in mass numbers unless we all do the IPCC’s bidding and spend hundreds of trillions of dollars changing our lives and lowering our standard of living.  Conveniently, the bulk of that money apparently needs to go to poor third-world countries. It wouldn’t be the UN if it didn’t involve criticising the West and doling out huge amounts of aid to African dictators and other left-wing dictatorships!

But is that C really all that credible?

I am naturally a cynic.  It is my personality trait.  Rather than viewing it as a failing, it is indeed very helpful in business, allowing me to see through the marketing hype and over-optimistic predictions to see the truth.  I don’t fall for scams because I always ask myself ‘where are the facts’ and the pertinent questions. Being a cynic means you don’t trust easily.  Faith isn’t your first resort, but rather your last and blind faith is simply asking too much, period.  So naturally, the word ‘catastrophic’ aroused my instant suspicion. To be honest, I’ve heard it all before.  Blah, Blah Blah.

We had the post World War 2 fear that we would all die in a global nuclear war.  Then we had the pollution global scare of the 1970s where we all expected to die in mounds of rubbish, breathing toxic air and drinking deadly acidic water.  Then we had Y2K, that truly embarrassing example of global hysteria and now, we have CACC.  Originally, we just had Global Warming, but apparently that wasn’t sexy enough and probably too easy to confront so it was renamed CACC.

I’m not a denialist - which is a truly offensive term - but rather a cynic, demanding evidence and proof.  I don’t blindly accept the CACC position and so I ask ‘prove it’.  And that is where we part company.

The default position is always that climate is not heading towards catastrophe and as support for that I refer you to tens of thousands of years of human history where we were not destroyed by climate change. This of course is not proof that we aren’t heading towards catastrophe, but it remains the default position that CACC proponents have to debunk.  As a cynic, I don’t have to prove anything, not a single solitary thing. Rather, it is the job of CACC proponents to prove their case and to be honest, it has been an epic fail.

A 0.89 degree rise in over 100 years doesn’t really concern me and I’m not sure why it should concern anyone.  It clearly hasn’t harmed us in any way and there are good arguments that it has actually been a good thing. When I see that that global warming has stabilised and has for the last 17 years I again question the hysteria over warming.  After years of doom-and-gloom predictions that the poles would melt, they have resolutely failed to do so and even now are increasing in size again. The predicted six metres of sea level rise is closer to 6mm.  The UN’s prediction of 50 million climate refugees by last decade has been off by... fifty million.

But still the hysteria rages unabated and hasn’t it gotten personal? Anyone who has ever debated or argued at length knows that once the debate gets personal you know the other side has lost. Superior, evidence-supported argument doesn’t need personal attacks.  So now I am a ‘denialist’., considered a criminal by some and a fool by many in the CACC crowd, all because I don’t accept on faith a belief that has no support from either history or science.

I’m not a fool.  I’m a cynic.  If you want me to be a believer then you need to prove your case and to date, the CACC crowd have not even gotten close.  The one-time ‘gold standard’ Hockey Stick Graph which once adorned the IPCC reports and backdrops at news conferences is now generously described as bad science, although fraud is a better word.  The Climategate scandals have shown that people are willing to game the system to maintain the momentum of CACC.  But even such reprehensible behaviour doesn’t comprehensively negate CACC, although it certainly severely damages its credibility.  The real nail in the coffin of CACC is climate itself.

The world’s climate is stubbornly refusing to follow the IPCC’s predictive models.  Temperature refuses to rise.  Ice caps refuse to melt.  Glaciers refuse to disappear.  Extreme weather remains at the same level as it has for centuries and in some areas lower.  Sea level rises are in millimetres, not metres. Reservoirs and dams continue to fill, even in dry countries like Australia

Why is it that the use of the word "catastrophic" in relation to climate change, is usually only used by those on the denial side of the fence?

Why?
Moving the goal posts?

longweekend58 wrote on Jul 26^th, 2014 at 9:48am:


By who?
A sh!t load of those like you who deny the science.
But apart from those, I can't say I've ever seen a scientific article that supports ACC that uses the term "catastrophic".
Okay, I've seen some green stinking hippy types use the term, but nobody that actually knows what they're talking about.

Care to provide an example or two?

Life_goes_on wrote on Jul 26^th, 2014 at 9:52am:


deny what science? the hypotheses that are wrong EVERY TIME? or the predictions based on these hypotheses that are wrong EVERY TIME.

Life_goes_on wrote on Jul 26^th, 2014 at 9:52am:

yet another lie...
People like Plimer and Carter et al, have been called denialists and worse...  but they do not deny Climate Change or Warming at all...  the Thermageddonsists continually lie and slander and libel these people who merely dissent fromtheir opinions re AGW.

Grendel wrote on Jul 26^th, 2014 at 10:05am:


onion news can be so awesome.  they use biting satire to great effect.  the trouble is that with the limited IQ of many on here (eg skippy or bobbY0 they would assume it is a genuine news report.

Quote:


Quote:
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http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26824943

Even if you dont believe in climate change, the continued burning of fossile fuels is just not viable for the future of the human race.   Already, since the start of the industrial evulotion, our planet's biodiversity had been decreasing sharply.   the rate of extinction is now approach if not greater than of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.   In the past, it was caused by catastrophic events like asteroid strikes, volcanic eruptions.  But we are living in between ice age period, life supposed to be prosper rather than dying out. 

All over the Earth, you can see natural environments like forests, sea beds, farmable lands gave ways to large mines.  And with increasing population, even a primary school student can see that this cannot go on forever. 

We have to reduce our blueprint on this planet.  We have to start seriously turn away from our dependence on non renewable energy to clean and renewable ones.  Even if you dont belief in climate change, then you should still agree with this sensible transformation.    Our ancestors survived many cycles of extinction through luck, and the ability to adapt.  Well, if we want to advance our civilization to the next level, then we need to adapt and change again.  Dont be the weak link.