Britain needs a new economic strategy to end its stagnation and close its £8,300 living standards gap with its peers.

Katie59

MaizieD

I cannot believe the exchange I've just been reading 😱

Many of the consequences of Global warming are just speculation not science, they are theories not proven, scientists may well largely agree, but nobody is going get a research grant to disprove the theories

Yes, they would, if they had a strong hypothesis for an alternative to a theory.

Seems to me that the global warming debate has so many different aspects to it and the public is being fed the most simplistic information. I was quite surprised to find out that I know nothing at all about the different layers between us and the sun - each with names I have forgotten.
In fact I still can’t for the life of me understand how any scientist can claim that there has been an increase in temperatures since 1850 and now. Really? How was temperature measured in 1850 and who verified it? The way temperatures are measured is apparently statistically based so I am more confused than ever.
From my understanding of the old fashioned method of conducting science, it’s actually okay to question current orthodoxy and conduct research and experiments to progress our knowledge. Oh for the good old days!

Oh dear ronib.

In fact I still can’t for the life of me understand how any scientist can claim that there has been an increase in temperatures since 1850 and now.

You might find this surprising but thermometers existed in 1850.

Institutions like the UK Met office, founded 1854, have been collecting data ever since their foundation. As a government institution the Met Office's data will be archived and available for study.

There will be other extant series available from institutions such as universities and records of keen amateur meteorologists.

I have no doubt that other countries have similar institutions and record series.

I don't know why you should think that only modern data is reliable.

Interesting fact. The first director of the Met Office was Captain Fitzroy. It was he who commanded The Beagle, the ship on which Charles Darwin was a passenger when it visited the Galapagos Islands, the source of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Now that's a theory that perhaps you'd like to pooh pooh...

Casdon

Oh dear ronib.

😂

MaizieD it is not about pooh poohing global warming theory but trying to understand its methodology. This is a perfectly legitimate question.

ronib

MaizieD it is not about pooh poohing global warming theory but trying to understand its methodology. This is a perfectly legitimate question.

I don't think that's what Katie is saying.

DAR ?

Well, what a good thing that bodies such as the EA are not so sceptical, because without mitigation planned and started decades ago when climate change barely made the headlines, many residences, businesses etc would be lost.

For example in Sussex Shoreham airport and local housing and business have been saved from flooding by millions of pounds worth of flood defences. There are so many examples of this agency accepting the scientific evidence and acting upon it. The defences were started before flooding became an issue, but is now defending and doing its job at least once a month, because of sea level rise. It is a major issue along the south coast, and it is clear that much land is going to be lost to the sea.

There are none so blind as those who woll not see.

Wwm2 floods are mentioned in the Old Testament.

ronib

Wwm2 floods are mentioned in the Old Testament.

Are you being serious or is this a wind up?

But i suspect that the floods mentioned in the Old Testament were caused by the massive volcano eruption about 1700 BC. North of Santorini. So certainly nothing to do with global warming - in fact a very different phenomenon.

M0nica I have just had a cataract operation.
Science seems to have sunk to the status of a cult.

ronib

M0nica I have just had a cataract operation.
Science seems to have sunk to the status of a cult.

Are those two things connected?

MaizieD in a way.
I am very impressed by the technology employed to remove cataracts. Science at its best.
As for the discourse surrounding global warming - science in decline.

I do wish you would back your statements up with links to sites that support your thinking ronib

MaizieD I am not so sure that there are any sites - however I am sure that you have heard of Sir Karl Popper on the philosophy of the scientific method. That’s a good starting point.

ronib I asked my partner about Popper and Kuhn and he said"Who's asking?" and laughed ... not sure what he meant.

growstuff that is not a very scholarly response. It is not a laughing matter!

What do you understand by Popper's 'philosophy of the scientific method', ronib?

MaizieD bear in mind that I studied the philosophy of science in the early 1970s. I am a bit rusty.
However I think Popper felt that a theory needed to have propositions which could be tested and shown to be false. In this way scientific knowledge could progress. So I presume in Popper’s view the notion that the evidence is settled and for example, CO2 alone is causing global warming would not pass as a scientific statement. There’s also the idea that a dominant theory will be replaced when new facts are discovered.

There are detailed explanations online for anyone interested.

Forgot to mention that experiments needed to be replicated - that is tested and verifiable.

I really cannot see how the work of Karl Popper can have any relevance to the climate debate. Popper's Critical Rationalism is based on the belief that if a statement cannot be logically deduced (from what is known), it might nevertheless be possible to logically falsify it.

Climate science is based on the measured facts of changes in such things as weather patterns, rainfall, temperatures windspeeds etc all factual and measurable.

Your absurd suggestion further up that thermometers used in 1850 might we less accurate than modern ones shows such a mind-boggling ignorance of how thermometers work and the fact that the 19th century thermometer collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co92811/thermometer-europe-1801-1900-thermometer is identical to the one that was being used until the development of the digital thermometer only a decade or so ago and that side by side they will give the same reading for the same heaated object.

To suggest that thermometers in the past are less accurate than the same device used today, suggests not so much a paradign in science as a complete change either in the structure of the performance of the materials - mercury expanding at a different rate when heated, now compared with nearly 200 years ago, or that the laws of physics have changed.

Kuhn's theories have been substantially challenged by a number of his equals, as much as anything because his theory of paradigm shift has been a normal part of scientific advance and is nowhere as cataclysmic as he suggests. It is also entirely unapplicable to the circumstances of climate change.

Remember what we are discussing here is whether climate change is taking place, not what its cause is. The factual on the ground evidence is there that climate change is taking place.

If you want to take the discussion to its cause. Does it matter?

If your house is on fire, does it matter whether it was caused someone dropping a match or a wiring fault? The main thing to do is to make every effort to put it out, in which case you would use water. What you wouldn't do is pour petrol on it and hope that, as a liquid it would put it out.

Whatever the reason for climate change, it makes sense for us to reduce any activity we engage in that would exacerbate it. It is much more sensible for us to pour water on it and not petrol.

M0nica so I don’t think I said that thermometers were in themselves inaccurate but rather how were temperatures measured back in the 1850s. For example, weren’t buckets of water first used? Then buckets themselves were changed and canvas ones were used which would have affected temperature. Also were temperatures measured mostly in Europe?
I find it quite difficult to understand the reluctance to examine the way data is gathered.

And of course the cause is important. Surely if as claimed CO2 is primarily responsible then that needs to be addressed.