Why we need "Net zero"

[Beelbeebub]

23 minutes ago, Spinny said:

If only that were still true. In today's world academics get monitored and ranked by papers published and citations. Lots of junk journals and journals with biased editors etc. Academics can often engage in mutual back scratching, reviewing, citing, and naming each other on papers for mutual advantage.

The massive, overwhelming weight of scientific observations is on the side of climate change being real and humans being the main driver.  The "naysayers" are in the tiny minority and almost all have major links to the fossil fuel industry. 

 

But again, my argument is entirely uncoupled from climate change. Whether you believe the climate isn't changing,or it is changing but it's caused by sunspots or humans are changing thr climate but that's actually a good thing is totally irrelevant to the fact the UK is becoming more and more dependent on a substance we cannot obtain ourselves. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Beelbeebub

[JohnMo]

46 minutes ago, Spinny said:

I don't need to cite a paper to disprove something. Anthropogenic driven climate change through emmissions of carbon dioxide is a hypothesis which has not been scientifically proven. There are no papers that prove it occurs. All we have is a claimed correlation over 50-100 years between industrialisation and global CO2 emmissions and some average global temperatures. 50-100 years is a short time period - there are plenty of climate variations with no industrialisation - the romans grew grapes in england. It is a theory and correlation is not necessarily causation. Many models are built and used where CO2 driven warming is assumed as input and therefore produce warming output. There are alternative theories and many doubting and questioning scientists that are frequently censored, blocked, and cancelled. Others use their wealth to promote the theory by paying journalists to write anthropogenic climate change propaganda. That doesn't mean it is wrong, but it is certainly unproven and has very considerable doubt and uncertainty.

 

Unfortunately many people do not understand how science works, many people are unable to cope with things being uncertain, many people are content to watch BBC climate propaganda without questioning it, many people want to make political capital out of it, or to make money off the back of it.

 

It is very wrong to be tearing up the UK economy and finances as though it is a climate emergency when it is not. If we get some perspective we can think of many things that we were told 20 years ago would be upon us but are not - from polar bears dying out, coral reefs being no more, the sea lapping at the ankles of the statue of liberty, the earth ''boiling'', the polar ice retreating opening up the arctic seas - none of which has occurred.

 

In the internet age nothing sells like fear, every other piece of clickbait is a scare story. 

 

It takes all sorts - all opinions are good, even wrong ones.

 

Deleted the rest of the comment, it's not worth the effort.

[Spinny]

4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

There is a scientific reason that seemingly small rises in atmospheric can have a disproportionate effect on global temperatures.

There is also research that shows global temperatures going going back 1.2 million years. Is that long enough for you.

There is a scientific theory yes - a hypothesis. In physics we look to establish the veracity of theories using experiment with independent repetition. The experiments aim to show that the predictions of the theory occur in practice. To my knowledge no actual experiments have been done as it is clearly difficult if not impossible to replicate a mini earth and atmosphere to experiment on in the lab.

For the theory which does exist there are also strong counter arguments e.g. that (1) atmospheric effects reach a saturation point beyond which more CO2 no longer significantly impacts temperature and (2) that the impact of water vapour and clouds - present  in vastly greater amounts than the 0.04% of CO2 - drown out any CO2 effects. One theory was even based on variations in cosmic rays impacting the nucleation and formation of cloud cover. Lots of things impact climate - many cyclical.

In the longer term records there are clear disgreements over whether higher CO2 is actually a cause of higher temperatures, or indeed is itself caused by higher temperatures. Looking for simplistic dependencies in complex systems can be misleading.

I am not saying it is wrong, I am just saying it is not proven and is open to question. Unfortunately too many people would rather engage in  personal attacks, cancellation, and spurious appeals to 'authority', over actual engagement in scientific debate.

 

Certainly I have studied Physics. Presumably you are aware anthropogenic climate emergency is questioned by at least one Physics nobel prize winner.

 

But I think we get off the point, which is really just an appeal for recognising uncertainty and doubt, and not charging around like just stop oil fanatics insisting on net zero extremism.

 

[Roger440]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Not how academic peer reviewing works.

Rogue reviewers soon get found out, and the consequences are usually pretty severe.

There is a big difference between science (as in the method) and opinion.  Opinion is not science, it is just thoughts.

Worth studying Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend and how they differed in their approach to quantum physics.  It is heavy going philosophy but put the scientific method on a firmer footing.

If an opinion is said, heard or quoted, assume that there has been no experiments, data collected, analysis and reviewing.  An opinion is not science so cannot be falsified.

 

Hmmm. Science is just current opinion though.

 

If it wasnt, it would be "fixed". But its not. It changes as we learn and discover more.

[Onoff]

39 minutes ago, Spinny said:

Physics nobel prize winner.

 

Presumably if he hadn't have won he'd have no longer felt bound to think purely of peace?