trysail
Catch Me Who Can
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2005
- Posts
- 25,593
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=422539&c=1
Adequate public debate has been smothered by the likes of the BBC taking a very biased position, and discouraged by the previous Labour government's astonishing support for seriously errored materials such as 'An Inconvenient Truth'. They even sent that awful piece of agitprop to schools throughout England & Wales. Their Climate Change Act was based on an act of faith in some of the participants who have come to the fore in the somewhat immature field of climate dynamics, and it received such negligible opposition in Parliament.
These events alone in the UK would easily be enough for the casual observer to conclude that indeed the 'science was settled'. But that, fortunately, is not at all true. The interactions of CO2 molecules with infra-red radiation is pretty settled, but that is as far from settling its contribution to climate dynamics as establishing the freezing point of water is to settling water's role there.
The lack of predictive skill from assuming CO2 is a key driver of climate is perhaps helping more people realise there is something not quite right. A key example of this the the lack of a clear global mean temperature rise for the past 16 years while CO2 levels continue to rise, but there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of others. What our 'casual observer' needs now is more clarification of the fact that there are serious and substantial differences of opinion about the size of the contribution due to rising levels of CO2. The evidence, in my humble view, is strongly favouring those who say the influence is likely to be modest, and very far from alarming. I wish Mr Holland every success in helping remove a little bit of the scales from people's eyes in this area.
-John Shade