'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

Summed up very nicely,..

...that terrible Prof. Jones dismissing ***OPINION*** voiced against the overwhelming ***SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE***. It's a bleedin' outrage! Call the Daily Heil now! And so what if most of that opinion masquerading as science if funded vested interests making billions from carbon-based fuels?

And, Andrew, as for your collection of ad hominem quips against Steve Jones and your final hyperbolic nonsense about the possibility that the Tories would be able to close the BBC, you can do so much better.

@JC_ Fail

The evidence does not "overwhelmingly support AGW". There is reasonable evidence of a trend in global temperatures in the last 30-40 years. This evidence has been getting considerably less convincing over the last 10 years as observed temperatures have steadfastly refused to keep rising, and have been wildly different to the models.

As someone who writes statistical models for a living, I am decidedly unimpressed by the climate change modellers. Their models are unstable for minor perturbations in inputs that are very unknown. For example, take one of the climate model and tweak the constant they use for cloud formation a small amount and watch the five degree change in predicted mean temperature in 100 years time. There are plenty of other examples of this. In fact, when climate "evidence" of this form has been shown to real statisticians the results have been scary (read up on the discrediting of the hockey stick curve for a great example - essentially with the methods the researchers were using, any auto-correlated sequence of temperatures would have generated broadly the same shape of graph).

Finally, and most importantly, the question of anthropogenic or not is still undergoing considerable research. Even on such a pro-AGW source as the BBC you routinely see stories that proudly claim, "finally climate change is proven to be Anthropogenic". Then the same claim is made again on a new story 6 months later - clearly showing that the consensus is not that the proof is widely believed. For a little bit of balance and knowledge of the uncertainties in this space, look at something like the report mentioned here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11438570

I can hang disparaging labels on people too

If I'm a AGW "denier", then those who say so must be AGW "believers", right? Maybe we just exist to test your faith.

Why

bring police misbehaviour into this discussion?

@Frank

+1 for the Aliens reference.

Of course the Earth isn't doomed!

The temperatures could go up to thousands of degrees and the Earth would happily keep on the same ol' orbital path about the sun without so much as a hickup.

Even with the more modest predicted change in climate, it is only the ongoing viability of human civilisation (not even the human species is at any serious risk, we survived quite fine without advanced civilisation for hundreds of millions of years). Billions might die, those left might be left scratching around in the mud for tubers. There won't be any easily-accessible resources left to restart with because we long ago used them up in our current round. But in the end, so what? Humanity as a civilised culture is a tiny tiny tiny space in planetary history. What have we actually done for the bits of the planet that aren't ourselves?

Humanity either survives or it dies. We certainly would be smart to care about this, but the Earth doesn't care one whit: vacated ecological niches will just be refilled in a relatively short time and diversity re-established under wherever the climat settles (or not - lack of significant active lifeforms hasn't stopped Venus, or Mars existing - their geo-chemistries are ticking along nicely thanks.)

It really really pisses me off when people like to imply that the Earth (or even the universe!!) is somehow dependent on our cultural presence for its continued existence. Get it into our stupid collective heads: We as a species+culture simply don't matter to anyone but ourselves. We either get our act together in the name of self-preservation or fail to get preserved. In the latter case, there will be no-one to notice, let-alone mourn, our abscence.

@N'n'G

...for failure to dispose of now-useless scripts of Godspell , and lost towel.

Uh, no there it is - wrapped around the Sub-Ether Sens-O-Matic...

The main problem is...

That whole method relies on assumption, swathing general assumptions about anything and everything. You can have all the evidence in the world to say you're correct about one thing or another, but if the laws of physics suddenly change tomorrow and all the planets in the universe turn into pink tubby custard then it was all meaningless.

Don't believe anything!

theories which match the data

But the only data we have is historical and a bit rubbish because we are left with what little remains and that data is the product of many 'theories' and there is no way to attribute it between them. We can't conduct useful experiments to obtain more or more relevant data because they need to be the size of the planet and would take decades if not centuries to complete.

So there is sod all data to match theories for them to become accepted and we are not going to get more data in a hurry and still won't be able to attribute it to particular theories.

The quality (the level of confidence with which it can be used to predict the future) of a theory does not depend on the absence of data which disproves it, it depends of the quantity and nature of data which has failed to disprove it.

If you understood scientific method you would not accuse someone who observes the quantity and nature of data failing to disprove AGW theory is lacking of taking an anti-science position.

Gratz on the slimy creationist quip, that's a new one.

RE: Alright, I'll call you on it

"Science uses a process called "The Scientific Method"...." Yeah, but unfortunately a lot of "research" today isn't driven by that proces or even by real science, it's driven by funding. A lot of funding is coming from non-scientific people that want to make a profit. That's all fine and dandy if they are wanting to build things for the betterment of mankind, like more efficient airliners, or cheaper medicines with less side-effects, but the inconvenient truth is the AGW "research" seems to be driven by people like Al Gore, who just want to make money for themselves by herding the sheeple in the direction they want.