JackC

Pass friend.

Eh.. we'll have not of that colonial crap in this thread. I hereby claim this thread for Britian and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second. God bless her and all who sail in her. Harumph. Pass the gin.

They will its just a matter of when. As for Gordon Brown, (AKA Darth Vader) don't get me started, the man is a disaster zone. The idiot sold off most of our gold for next to nothing, what a berk. Gordon Brown is toast. He'll be gone by Christmas. Good fucking riddance too. Unelected tosspot.

But it's just not Marmite is it?

Robertson's Golden Shredless?

Actually, I was just thinking that we haven't had a religious brawl in a while. Breaks up the politics don't it?

The answer to this question could best be described by the Buddhist philosophy of "Mu" meaning none or without, intending to indicate that the question itself was wrong. Wolfgang Pauli stated it quite humourously as: "This isn't right. It's not even wrong".

Oil fields are not like big milkshakes where everyone can put their straw in and those with the biggest suck win. Oil is contained within porous rock formations that are capped with non-porous rocks. In order to get the oil out, you need to drill into the pay zone and actually force the oil out. The Hollywood idea of hitting gushers is ancient history. Forcing is usually done by drilling around the area and forcing in water or CO2 to flush the oil towards your producing well. Oil wells are drilled for literally miles, around corners, horizontally, along rock formations, then lined with steel casing before production can start. Sometimes you have to fracture the rock with TNT to make it permeable because the oil is locked up in the rocks and just wont move. In tar sands, you literally have to dig it out in lumps. There have been no new large reserves found in years and now the price of oil is high, old wells that had ceased to be profitable are now being reopened. An oil service company that I know of has recently got a job drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and they are contracted to drill 20 wells a day, 7 days a week, for the next 6 years. And the GofM isn't that productive. Oil production isn't a tap, you can't just turn it up to fill your storage tank just because you feel like it.

Trust a government? Are you mad? Interesting though. The most capitalist country in the world run by one of the most right-wing governments in the world, and as soon as the shit hits the fan, they go all communist and nationalise. Not that they could do much else without the economy imploding. Although I have a sneaky feeling, this mess could run on and on and on and on and on and on...

Good greif. Read the original research article. The uncertainties will have been discussed. I do wish people would criticise science for what it actually is.

So your basic objection is that we cannot know if some causal link is true because we do not know everything, and because we do not know everything there is doubt in anything we think we do know. That's a damn good way of making sure you can believe or deny absolutely anything you want. It might be a useful tactic for a lawyer, where the truth is less important than winning the argument, but not for a scientist.

But science doesn't work like that. They do not adopt a position and then find the evidence to support it. This is a cardinal sin in science and if someone is found doing it would mean the end of their career. No exceptions. Look up Jan Hendrik Schön to see what happens to fraudulent scientists. Yes, James Hansen has been uncharacteristically outspoken on the subject. That is rare in a scientist and was apparently a deliberate ploy on the side of Hansen. According to a recent BBC Panorama documentary, Hansen weighed up the options of making categorical claims against the alternative of caveats and decided that governments would take no notice if caveats were in place, so he blew the whistle. He apparently thought the message was so important that it needed to be categorical. His decision wasn't taken lightly. If CO2 is a greenhouse gas (it is) and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increasing through anthropogenic mechanisms (it has, by ~35%), what exactly do you need to see ruled out? What do you mean by "the diving headfirst mentality of it"? It's not like we're actually doing much about it. New coal fired power stations are being built, we're drilling for oil like never before, CO2 emissions are rising, treaties haven't made much difference. What exactly has changed?

Scientists hardly ever make categorical claims, that spin is usually put on by the media, politicians, lawyers and the like. So if you don't like the spin, get your science from scientific sources. But I think you're dong exactly what you accuse the so-called "GW movement" of doing: picking a position and finding the evidence to support it. In simple terms: CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Fact. Man is pumping about 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. Fact. The observed concentrations of atmospheric CO2 is increasing in proportion with anthropogenic emissions. Fact. With those three facts, you have got to consider anthropogenic global warming as a strong possibility.

Interesting choice of words. You said "find facts that support my clients position" and you didn't use the word "truth" at all. It seems the job of a lawyer is to take a biased position (either prosecution or defense) and present the facts that support that position. In fact you would be bad at your job if you presented facts that contradict your position. If you make the assumption that science works in the same way, you would be wrong. Science doesn't work like one of your cases. Scientist actually want to find the truth, not support their client's position.

A certain amount of skepticism is good but there is a difference between scratching your arse and tearing lumps out of it. Unfortunately, people have discovered that by promoting extreme skepticism and willful ignorance, they can muddy the waters enough to make the public think there is some legitimate need for debate. This technique is being used more and more often especially in areas like evolution and climate change. It''s pretty fucking dishonest really.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Oh good grief, not this load of tripe again. It's really getting old.

Blimey, she's a proper nut case.

An atheist wouldn't get past point #1 if he/she stood for president and you know it.

And by extension, I assume you're all for European democracies that say "fuck America"?

Congratulations to all at CERN, I am officially jealous. Very, very nice work.

The 10:1 ratio makes you wonder about the honesty of the average grassroots keyboard warrior.

For a minute there I almost thought it was trying to be a serious article.

People who queitly go about their business without forcing their beliefs on others generally get the same in return. If that's you call being ignored, then yes they're being ignored. Is that not what they want? It's what I want.

Ah yes, now I remember you.