Thanks Dave...I still hold to my conviction (not denial...just very sceptical). And if it’s as you say re the REAL scientists all being in agreement...why do we still have the debate?

No - there are scientists within ALL fields that contribute to the debate - and there is not the agreement. Meanwhile, CC fury/religion continues to build fueled by marketers and big-money guys like Al Gore.

I could apply your logic to creation, and because I understand your position on hermaneautics, you’d also say that scientists who hold to a literal creation aren’t real scientists...and that the ‘consensus view’ 95% supports evolution. (This despite many creation scientists trainied in biology, cosmology etc.)

So, in the same way, how fair is it to continue to bag those scientists out (plus also the myriad of theologians, archbishops etc who may also hold that teaching), if they’re not the majority?

The more you push the issue, the more it will be defended...because, in essence, you’re trying to take away from the debate the very healthy aspect that makes science work.....doubt/scepticism....!

The so-called consensus view that homosexuality is genetic is another example....but I’ll leave that alone for now.

The bottom line is -

there is debate
debate is healthy
we don’t have consensus
eco agro is tiresome
we need to allow people different veiws without the huffy bevahviour
God’s in control, it’s his ecology
focus on waste and renewable fuels etc
adapt
be happy

Cheers.

Andrew Tilsley - 20 November 2008 02:27 PM

The bottom line is -

there is debate
debate is healthy
we don’t have consensus
eco agro is tiresome
we need to allow people different veiws without the huffy bevahviour
God’s in control, it’s his ecology
focus on waste and renewable fuels etc
adapt
be happy

Cheers.

Hi Andrew,

I particularly liked your last point ;)

What was that song again ? Bobby McFerrin said it so well :

link

Cheers, Kevin

Gordon Cheng - 20 November 2008 01:35 PM

Dave Lankshear - 20 November 2008 01:04 PM

Come on Andrew, we’re all having fun. Even David P is having fun…

A bit more fun, here.

:-D

Shakes head, and......
“crawls out into the rain to die. Alone.”

Oh, sorry, I was having an Ernest Hemingway moment.

David Palmer - 20 November 2008 02:20 PM

Dave Lankshear - 20 November 2008 01:04 PM

Dave,

You’re on. Beer’s fine, next time I up.

Depends on my mood, but I like Guiness, Tooheys New, Grolsch, have been known to drink those lolly water things like Cranberry Vodka cruiser things (OK, I shouldn’t admit that in public), and even beer with Tassie Devils on it (as a symbol of what man can do to his environment.  ;-)

A fine example of “Tilsley’s law” below, which simply put states:

“The longer a Sydney Anglican thread continues, the greater the chance that Andrew will attribute something homosexual to an opponent.”

Andrew Tilsley - 20 November 2008 02:27 PM

The so-called consensus view that homosexuality is genetic is another example....but I’ll leave that alone for now.

I wish you’d left it alone 6 different irrelevant threads (and subjects) ago, but we’ll leave that alone for now.

Hi Andrew,
I’ve been thinking about your statements along this line…

No - there are scientists within ALL fields that contribute to the debate - and there is not the agreement. Meanwhile, CC fury/religion continues to build fueled by marketers and big-money guys like Al Gore.

The “peer review” process basically IS the debate — a debate that is run according to the empirical rules of science.

(Edit: Dave L reconsiders this post in the clear light of day)

Deleted - and peace and goodwill to all.

Dave L reconsiders this post in the clear light of day

I wonder how many scientists had their fingers in their ears and singing la la la when the NASA scientists were spooking the world in the 60’s about the impending ice age?

I wonder if Christian scientists and theologians are sitting around today with their fingers in their ears in their attempt to address the so-called consensus and peer-reviewed position that homosexuality is merely genetic? (And, just to make this obvious...I’m raising this as an EXAMPLE....not actually raising the subject of homosexuality!)

I wonder if devout Christian scientists and theologians sit with their fingers in their ears as they attempt to rebut the consensus and peer reviewed position that we came from the goo via the zoo?

Basically, you’re putting up an argument that is totally flawed. Consensus does not automatically equal truth. You provide no room for someone to take a contrary view and then you insult folk by talking about the moon being made of cheese etc. I wonder if you had the chance to sit and talk with previous principals of Moore College or archbishops who held to a creation view, that you’d bag them out about their position? ...but you lessen yourself to do that on this forum.

Meanwhile, we significantly threaten our responsibility in responding to the great commission.

Also, and I think you’ve admitted this, people who hold a strong eco position end up being angry and depressed. This cannot be good. Driscoll touches on this by saying that when we focus on works and good deeds, we end up setting up ourselves for failure. We’re trying to please God by our actions. This is the flaw of Catholicism.

Dave, my encouragement to you is to do your bit locally, but stop owning the responsibilit of changing every Sydney Anglican. After a while, you’ll burn out and become bitter, and your efforts in gospel work Iwhich I understand are fruitful) will diminish.

Kind regards.

(Edit: Dave L reconsiders this post in the clear light of day)

removed

(Edit: Dave L reconsiders this post in the clear light of day)

Dave P, Gordo, Andrew, and other’s, move over Tim Blair and the “La la la” guys.

Seeing is believing.

However, for many it works back to front.  Believing means they cannot see.

Finally, worldviews shape how we perceive and respond to risk. A group of scholars from Yale and elsewhere have found, for example, that egalitarians, or people who prefer a society where wealth, power, and opportunity are broadly distributed, are more concerned about global warming, whereas hierarchists, who prefer a society with leaders on top and followers below, tend to be less concerned.

More to the point, the researchers discovered that when proposed solutions to global warming clash with people’s worldviews, those people are more likely to reject evidence of the problem altogether. “People spin the information to keep their worldview intact,” says Paul Slovic, founder and president of Decision Research.

Fearful futures, hopeful actions
With such significant obstacles in play, what can social scientists recommend about how to inspire the response we need to global warming?

First, several suggest, messaging needs to reach people’s emotions and trigger fear about the dramatic consequences to come. Specifically, this means making future hardships vivid, personalized and credible, says Slovic. For example, he suggests addressing: “How will it change the whole economy and whole quality of life in a particular region? Will the forests die out? Will the summers be so hot and dry that the Earth will be uninhabitable?”

In other words, the fear-mongering is necessary precisely because of the way most of us are hard-wired. Dry statistics mean one thing, but gut-felt fear might actually inspire action.
For more great links to the social psychology behind marketing global warming click here. The main thing is that as Christians we are free to understand the risks, take appropriate action, but not be bound by the mindless panic that grips some, because we have ultimate hope...even if civilisation should crash and burn around us. (And I for one don’t put that high on the cards, but it is possible.)

And Andrew,
far from “predicting cooling in the 70’s”....

can I remind you that they knew what Co2 could do by the late 1800’s and that global warming was basically quite mainstream by 1953! (At least amongst the science community).

1953 Popular Mechanics: Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature

The Red Mullet points to some ancient history about global warming, via a 1953 magazine article - 1953 Popular Mechanics: Growing Blanket of Carbon Dioxide Raises Earth’s Temperature.

From Climate Progress by Joe:

Yes, I know everybody used to think we were headed toward an ice age. Well, except Dr. Frank Baxter (and Frank Capra) in 1958. And except for James Hansen for three decades, of course. And the National Research Council along with the vast majority of climate scientists from the 1970s on.

But Popular Mechanics warned us a full 55 (!) years ago.

Actually, Time magazine reported on Plass’s work in May 1953, in an article titled “Invisible Blanket,” which ends “for centuries to come, if man’s industrial growth continues, the earth’s climate will continue to grow warmer...”

Hi Dave, Back at post #144 on the 18th Nov I drew your attention to the work of Prof Don J Easterbrook

and you rather sneeringly responded

Dave Lankshear - 18 November 2008 11:54 AM

Hi David,
has this “geologist” published any climate papers? Does he understand that he’s contributing to the “Exact Correlation Strawman”? Does he even know what a spectrometer or the RFE is? What about big words like “La Nina”? How about yourself, can you google “climatologist” and “geologist” to help figure out who to quote on this one?

After several episodes of this kind of thing, I responded

David Palmer - 18 November 2008 06:30 PM

Dave,

You have been studiously avoiding my points, putting up fug instead, yes fug.

and got back

Dave Lankshear - 20 November 2008 11:45 AM

Sighs. Dave P, I’ll indulge you once more, but I have honestly replied to these assertions of yours many, many times before and am tired of repeating myself

Returning to Prof Easterbrook, he was Professor of Geology (now emeritus) at the Western Washington University, State of Washington (ie not some “geologist"). I actually found his paper quite interesting as he had spent several decades studying alpine glacier fluctuations in the North Cascade Range (a very beautiful area, I might add) as well as a study of climate change as evidenced over the past 17,000 years from the GISP2 Greenland ice core. 

He has managed to link the North Cascade pattern of glacial advances and retreats with the Pacific Decadel Oscillation curve (showing warming and cooling of the Pacific Ocean), and further that this cycle is of a 30 yr duration. Apparently while the IPCC has been predicting a ca 0.5 degree C CO2 induced rise in average global temperature over the past decade, back in 1998 Easterbrook predicted the next global cooling cycle to begin about 2005 +/- 3-5 years until about 2030 with another warming cycle, unrelated to CO2 from 2030-2060.

Now I don’t know whether he is totally right or even wrong, but certainly as far as 1998-2008, 53 peer reviewed IPCC climate modellers got it wrong, whilst the “geologist” buried in the North Cascades got it right. Inconvenient I know, but facts have a habit of speaking for themselves (OK, David Stove would want me to rephrase that but I don’t have the time).

What I would say is that I’m far more impressed by scientific investigation than computer modelling by an incestuous group of 53 climate computer modellers peer reviewing one another’s work.

Currently it is a fact, apparently that the Pacific Decadel Oscillation has moved from its warm to cool cycle and I believe also there is still very low sun spot activity.

Ah, but yes I know we love our computers, so powerful, so exact, incredibly precise to the umpteenth decimal point. I love my computer too, visit it frequently, believe everything it tells me until I remember there are blokes out there mostly in the 70’s, 80’s now, scratching their heads because they have spent a lifetime studying the science according to scientific method, and they know all this computer generated 400-500 ppm CO2 induced global warming is a load of nonsense.

Sometime soon people will see the emperor has no clothes and my old mate Arthur Schopenhauer will chuckle in his grave, repeating again

“There is no opinion so absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted”

Poor Kevin Rudd. I just hope his radar is in sufficient good working order to hear, “caution, caution”, being quietly but insistently tapped out for now, but surely gathering Bolero like momemtentum over the next year or so.