by frog
I might as well keep featuring George Monbiot, incisive as ever, this time about the “leadership” shown at Copenhagen.
Even before the farce in Copenhagen began it was looking like it might be too late to prevent two or more degrees of global warming. The nation states, pursuing their own interests, have each been passing the parcel of responsibility since they decided to take action in 1992. We have now lost 17 precious years, possibly the only years in which climate breakdown could have been prevented. This has not happened by accident: it is the result of a systematic campaign of sabotage by certain states, driven and promoted by the energy industries. This idiocy has been aided and abetted by the nations characterised, until now, as the good guys: those that have made firm commitments, only to invalidate them with loopholes, false accounting and outsourcing. In all cases immediate self-interest has trumped the long-term welfare of humankind. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than either the natural world or human civilisation. Our political systems are incapable of discharging the main function of government: to protect us from each other.
Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.
Enough said really, but you can read the rest here.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Sat, December 19th, 2009
Tags: climate change, cop15, copenhagen, George Monbiot
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
...
Johann Hari on Copenhagen
(It’s well expressed and interesting)
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Fly
Your link does not work.
More coffee perhaps?
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Again, with feeling …
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-truths-copenhagen-ignored-1845114.html
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When the US alone can find trillions of dollars in an attempt to get their economy back to usustainable growth, but can only “lead” a global initiative to find 0.1 trillion dollars each year (by 2020) to help save the earth, you can be sure that the US government doesn’t believe in the science of climate change. And when countries resist independent verification of pollution reductions, you can be sure that they don’t believe in the science of climate change.
The whole conference was always destined to be a farce and, I suspect most non-deniers in the world knew it.
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Hope not.
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wat dabney,
do you seek to regulate..? with these questions here which appear quite demanding on air travel.. ?
BP,
farce..? why did you not assert this prior to the step-one (per PM Rasmussen@ APEC) which is now implemented by major polluting nations of CoP15. Could it be that stalking the Greens is part and parcel of deliberate ploys elsewhere also.
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I believe their system is to make payments quarterly for trips taken and that all MPs take part.
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“Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.”
(says in Yoda voice) Mmmmmm so certain you are!
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90-95% among climate scientists. I am in there. That is about as good as it gets in science. That is as certain as science ever really gets except in hindsight.
As for the certainty that they moved FAR faster to save the morally bankrupt bankers from actual bankruptcy,,, AT our expense… do you harbor any doubts on that score?
No, it is only science that leaves you uncertain. Which is unsurprising given the lies from the doubt merchants. What question remains unanswered in your mind. I am sure I have addressed them all, but clearly something remains to bring the ghost of this philosophical argument for uncertainty forward.
BJ
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They’ll be breathing a sigh of relief. All those fish and coral polyps. Africans and Asians.
Phew!
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bjchip,
“doubt merchants” may lie, but in the main their elites are, as I believe Mz Fitzsimons used this word the other day(tho with perhaps not the same connect) OUTLAWS.
Deceit, I sense goes well for these types—yay deliberate deceit and remarkably acceptable in their code and among code-players. An example: all the nations must be at the table (COP15) and reach agreement, they exhort, whilst ensuring failure by finding those few nations vulnerable to such agreements. Only takes a few after all, as they have proved. Yep, Including Lumumba et al.
Beguilers beware, for our answer is astir!
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Oh! all is lost!, woe the world and everything in it.
Give me a break guys, you want to avoid this on a political level? News Flash!! Democracy works by walking backwards! it is not really very good at being a “saviour” system. The reason democracy (and capitalism) has worked well in the past is due to a parallel system of morality that went with it, namely Christianity.
Perhaps the greens could revisit their position as the most anti Christian party in NZ due to the resultant loss of the democratic system’s ability to engage in forward thinking.
I won’t hold my breath.
The reality is we CAN do something about possible AGW, its called leading by example.
You guys berate me for not taking this issue seriously enough while the greens are engaging in everything BUT a realistic transition to a sustainable society.
Perhaps it’s time to stop meddling in the laws regarding good parents, and trying to ban everything from pies to international warfare!!!
Common guys, shift your focus from the idealistic and unattainable and show people a better way.
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Shunda,
Ah, right….
Religion does not inform the moral zeigeist. The moral zeigeist dictates what aspects of religion are adhered to. Morality and ethics are not held in monopoly by religion.
As a Christian, do you follow every word of the bible? I am willing to bet no. That is most likely because you perceive some parts of the bible to be inappropriate or out of place in the current world. This is you picking what to follow. It is not religion dictating to you what is moral but your morality dictating to you what parts of your religion you are willing to listen to.
Anyway, if any morality, it is many of the ‘Christian’ moralities that are the cause of our present problem. Some of the others hold the potential to lead the world to a better place, but this is not something unique to them but shared by many other moralities uninspired by selectively chosen scriptures.
And just as a side note. Never call yourself a skeptic; you are not. A skeptic is skeptical about all things, including religion. Saying you are Christian on one hand and a skeptic on another is self contradictory as to be a skeptic is to eliminate ones preconceived notions and approach a situation based on evidence while to be Christian is to hold a massive bias toward one particular hypothesis even though many others are equally plausible, and some at least falsifiable. It is like saying one is a Christian scientist, a Atheistic scientist, a Feminist scientist, etc.; it is nothing but contradiction. A scientist, a skeptic, can only ever be agnostic.
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“Shunda,
Ah, right….
Religion does not inform the moral zeigeist. The moral zeigeist dictates what aspects of religion are adhered to. Morality and ethics are not held in monopoly by religion.”
No perhaps not, but in the western society we live in it has, at least until relatively recently.
“As a Christian, do you follow every word of the bible? I am willing to bet no. That is most likely because you perceive some parts of the bible to be inappropriate or out of place in the current world. This is you picking what to follow. It is not religion dictating to you what is moral but your morality dictating to you what parts of your religion you are willing to listen to.”
If someone accepts the notion that there is an all knowing and holy God they also have to accept that they cannot fully trust their own sense of morality, if someone truly believes in God they are unlikely to completely trust their own understanding or anyone else’s.
“Anyway, if any morality, it is many of the ‘Christian’ moralities that are the cause of our present problem. Some of the others hold the potential to lead the world to a better place, but this is not something unique to them but shared by many other moralities uninspired by selectively chosen scriptures.”
Fair point, but it was Christians feeding the poor, providing welfare and moderating capitalist greed more efficiently than any movement to date.
“And just as a side note. Never call yourself a skeptic; you are not. A skeptic is skeptical about all things, including religion. Saying you are Christian on one hand and a skeptic on another is self contradictory as to be a skeptic is to eliminate ones preconceived notions and approach a situation based on evidence while to be Christian is to hold a massive bias toward one particular hypothesis even though many others are equally plausible, and some at least falsifiable. It is like saying one is a Christian scientist, a Atheistic scientist, a Feminist scientist, etc.; it is nothing but contradiction. A scientist, a skeptic, can only ever be agnostic.”
I have been intensely sceptical of what others have told me to believe about the religion I follow. The problem with Christianity is not Jesus, it is the people that claim to speak for him.
If I am sceptical of the desires and motivations of people I am in fact holding true to the teachings of Christ. It is no more difficult to be a sceptic and still believe in God, than to believe nothing exploded and became the universe we inhabit.
I am a sceptic of AGW largely due to the mirrored behaviour of it’s followers compared to shallow forms of Christianity I have experienced. The similarities are uncanny. I know from experience that I have gained not to trust a religious type devotion that is based on fear and ignorance.
In other words I have learnt to smell a rat.
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Shunda B @5.37pm
time to stop meddling in the laws regarding good parents, and trying to ban everything from pies to international warfare!!!
would this assertion of yours constitute adequate example as to why, in your words, the Greens are the “most anti Christian(sic) party in New Zealand”..?
Your later response – @7.22pm – suggests a somewhat blinkered view of appropriate christian endeavor and has me wondering whether you have ever seriously contemplated a contemporary christian perspective. Which might suggest that whilst I value your right to express an opinion I may honestly place a sticker over its value.. That you would constigate others from such a basis looks somewhat sad..
respectfully
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of rat.
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” time to stop meddling in the laws regarding good parents, and trying to ban everything from pies to international warfare!!!
would this assertion of yours constitute adequate example as to why, in your words, the Greens are the “most anti Christian(sic) party in New Zealand”..?”
No tom.
If you would like to draw conclusions from what I haven’t said go right ahead but I might just have to share your assertion: “Which might suggest that whilst I value your right to express an opinion I may honestly place a sticker over its value..”
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You still need to tell me what to explain better for you. Almost all the facts necessary are on the table now…. I am according you a measure of respect here in terms of “skepticism” because I think you can be “saved”
I won’t go into the religion aspects. I don’t generally unless it is a Jehovah’s Witness knocking on my door… (people who ask for it can’t complain), and even then I’ll be polite about it.
Just let me understand your reservations. I doubt that they will be cleared up by simple explanation… deep reservations tend to take time, and the answers need to percolate down to the source of the question.
ciao
BJ
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Shunda,
No perhaps not, but in the western society we live in it has, at least until relatively recently.
For the last two thousand years no society had followed that in the bible completely or even in majority. Nor did the Jews follow their texts completely. No, the moral zeitgeist does, and has for the existence of Christianity, dictated what of the bible is adhered to. The bible does act to guide in that individuals find reinforcement in scripture but, so long individuals choose what parts of the bible to believe or follow, the bible can not be said to be the source of morality.
I do not really see what you are getting at here, sorry. My point was that you choose what to believe and you choose what to practice and preach. So long as you are choosing you are either accepting that not all of the bible applies to today – and as such you are giving the moral zeitgeist more influence than the bible – or you are recognising that the bible is very likely corrupted and choosing what you believe to be the true message – and as such anything in the bible is questionable, including the assertion of gods existence.
This is true, but it is also mostly Christians that are those capitalists, Christians have put in great effort to make poor poorer and to eliminate benefits, Christians have systematically exploited more people at every turn than any others, Christians are responsible for the vast majority of suffering in the world today. It is not Christianity that drives this evil, nor is it Christianity that drives the good, it is those individuals’ own perceptions and values. It is those perceptions and values that allow them to interpret the scriptures in such a way that they see an obligation to help or permission to destroy. It is their morals that dictate what they see in the scriptures, not the scriptures that dictate what they hold as moral.
I am not a fan of atheists, but at least atheists and agnostics lack these scriptures and as such, while they may rarely miss out on the most giving of activities, they also find almost no ability to justify the evil acts that many religious peoples find so easy to justify.
I agree that there is no evidence to support one position that does not also support the other. A truly skeptical person would not declare themselves a Christian because of this but state clearly that he does not and can not know. That both positions are equally valid. That morality can not be derived from either source because of this. When you state that you are Christian, just as stating one is Atheist, it indicates that you have decided on the outcome before waiting for proof. When combined with my philosophy that one can never know in the first place it is obvious that any such position is totally unjustifiable.
I agree, also, that there has developed a cult like following around the theory of climate change. The cult like following is, however, irrelevant. Just as you have not let the cult like following that is Christianity distract you from the word of the Christ, the cult like following of many whom believe in AGW does not automatically invalidate it or, in any way, take away from the evidence that would seem to support it.
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I forgot a blockquote, how rare. I wonder why it never lets me edit despite having time left on the clock?
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Your final paragraph says alot to Shunda, Sapient.
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Ok BJ.
I will start with the fact that it has nothing to do with any religious belief of mine, if anything there is an advantage to be gained as far as “end times” doctrine goes.
I also need to state that I do believe the climate has been generally warming since the little ice age, which I believe was most likely a global event.
What I struggle to accept is some of the facts that relate to other areas that I have long been interested in i.e meteorology, geology, deforestation and horticulture.
Some of my concerns relate to the accuracy of surface temperature recordings and the relationship with urban heat islands. Micro climates are incredibly difficult to account for because they can be so small and so localized. If you put 10 thermometers in your backyard you would still have a wide range of temperatures recorded. Likewise long term weather stations that have had dramatic land use changes around them can not be of much use. Every single site would have to be intensively studied to determine how land use change has affected the local climate, even then the results could not be considered completely accurate.
Climate models.
As far as this goes I am extremely sceptical of the ability of human beings to create and run meaningful computer models for the climate of a planet. A planetary climate system is so complex with so many interactions that need to be included that I just can’t have any faith in them, particularly when they try and tell us all models are saying the same thing. Having a keen interest in meteorology I know how computer models are often in disagreement and even then they are only useful for a matter of days. They are very clever developments but even with absolute data values to input they have limited forecasting range, if a computer model struggles with the weather how on earth can they be reliable to predict an entire climate for a planet for the next century?
Then we have the continuation of citing islands like Tuvalu as proof of sea level rise when it is actually a sinking geological column (as are many pacific islands), why the need to appeal to the ignorance of the masses?
Or how about the loss of ice on MT Kilimanjaro, once again related to local climate change due to the loss of vegetation and the resultant loss of precipitation. Why exploit these false examples if the science is solid?
Then there are the political motivations of some less than sincere “environmentalists” to use climate change as a proxy for wider social reform.
In saying all of this I have no problem in reducing co2 because it is usually related to other heavy pollution and environmental destruction. I Have no problem in stopping deforestation or seeking sustainable forms of energy. I just don’t think we need AGW as a motivation to address these issues. Heck, if we address these other issues even if AGW is proven we will already be doing the right thing any way.
I just see too much other non environmental stuff going on here to be convinced the science is settled.
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Shunda,
I’m a bit confused about this. Yeah, you’re right that the greens shouldn’t try to moralise for us all and should concentrate on green issues (a sustainable NZ would be a truly great achievement). However, anti-smacking legislation proved to be anything but unattainable, whilst a sustainable society looks anything but attainable.
Do you really think the greens can make any inroads into changing the way our society operates?
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Shunda – the great warmer no-one wants to talk about is the Jet Engine (though it is not on the agenda) it is the single biggest contributor to global warming.
If you are looking for anti-Christian Parties – try the Maori Party first ….eh…..ay?
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“We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution, were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a person’s duty to understand the world rather than simply fight for it. ”
Ernest Hemingway
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Must remember to tell the many Christians in the Party to bugger off.
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Hilarious
Sapient raises the issue of consistency.
and the response is to categorise excuses not to to join the followers who “believe in GW” because they “choose” to believe in only Jesus. And thus scepticism about all else.
Then other followers of Jesus called shallow are compared to followers who believe in GW. Apparently the shallow Christians don’t disredit Jesus, but the shallow followers of GW discredit that “belief”. Apparently because sb’s believe in one redeems it, but not the other.
That’s about as deep as narcissism (personal self righteousness) gets.
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I am going to assume that the “Hilarious” relates to Shundas response rather than my raising the issue of consistency.
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Sapient, I think you have raised some fair points, however when you say:
“Christians have systematically exploited more people at every turn than any others, Christians are responsible for the vast majority of suffering in the world today.”
I don’t think you are painting a fair picture. I think there are many other ideologies that have on balance caused far more harm to humanity.
“It is not Christianity that drives this evil, nor is it Christianity that drives the good, it is those individuals’ own perceptions and values. It is those perceptions and values that allow them to interpret the scriptures in such a way that they see an obligation to help or permission to destroy. It is their morals that dictate what they see in the scriptures, not the scriptures that dictate what they hold as moral.”
Yes this is true for many, however the ones that have perhaps had a more “pure” devotion to teachings of Christ have had a profound impact on the world around us. The whole idea of public education was started by an extremely devoted Christian for instance, the good of the few has actually eclipsed the tyranny of the many to have given a net benefit to society, I guess it is the advantage of having some sort of moral bench mark which ensured that those with wicked intent would eventually be exposed.
“I agree, also, that there has developed a cult like following around the theory of climate change. The cult like following is, however, irrelevant. Just as you have not let the cult like following that is Christianity distract you from the word of the Christ, the cult like following of many whom believe in AGW does not automatically invalidate it or, in any way, take away from the evidence that would seem to support it.”
Well I guess I have to agree, I am a sceptic of the claim that the science is settled, I am not against taking preventative measures in case it turns out to be true. It is just the extreme measures some are suggesting may cause a bigger crisis for my kids than global warming could.
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SPC said:
“Then other followers of Jesus called shallow are compared to followers who believe in GW. Apparently the shallow Christians don’t disredit Jesus, but the shallow followers of GW discredit that “belief”. Apparently because sb’s believe in one redeems it, but not the other.”
So Global warming is a deity?
Cool!
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When you state that you are Christian, just as stating one is Atheist, it indicates that you have decided on the outcome before waiting for proof.
Sap, being an athiest for me means having come to a position based on the currently available evidence, and being open to change if other evidence is forthcoming. Religion, being based on faith rather than evidence, in fact not being open to evidence, is in no way comparable.
When combined with my philosophy that one can never know in the first place it is obvious that any such position is totally unjustifiable.
Not practical. If 100% knowledge was needed before taking positions on so many things, we’d never have survived this long. Just need to deal with the evidence available and be open to further change.
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Shunda,
What are the extreme measures that would be worse than, say the worst case scenario on warming? In addition, are those measures any “worse” that the measures needed to attain a sustainable society?
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“I’m a bit confused about this. Yeah, you’re right that the greens shouldn’t try to moralise for us all and should concentrate on green issues (a sustainable NZ would be a truly great achievement). However, anti-smacking legislation proved to be anything but unattainable, whilst a sustainable society looks anything but attainable.
Do you really think the greens can make any inroads into changing the way our society operates”
Yeah I do actually.
Are you saying because it is going to be hard why bother? because my belief about the motivations of many AGW believers is that they are fundamentally lazy in their approach. It is far easier to pontificate and expect our politicians to fix this “crisis” than to actually get our hands dirty and do it our selves. We do need a cultural revolution, does anybody ever look to the current leaders for a revolution?
There is work to be done at a grass roots level, few are doing it, why is that?
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Shunda,
The beauty of science is that not only is it acknowledged that science is never settled, but that such is embraced.
I am not overly concerned about global warming in all truth. There are definite down sides but there are definite up sides as well assuming that we are able to survive. I find it very hard to believe we would not be able to survive. I have come to be of the opinion that the human race needs a near cataclysmic event to finally turn itself around.
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Valis,
It is important that people realise that all is assumption. If people realised that I think the world would be far better as opposed to the present where everyone seems convinced they are, objectively, in the right.
Thesim is a belief in the god hypothesis. Atheism is a belief that the god hypothesis is false. There is not presently any any evidence which supports one over the other and the superiority of the atheistic hypothesis is only as a result of a general rule of thumb. That rule of thumb is only assumed to apply in this case and only applies assuming that our logic is absolute; something that we would seem to have strong evidence against. There is not enough reason to support either hypothesis over the other. To support either in light of this is simply irrational.
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Shunda
If you want just a taste of the reasons for sceptisicm in Christianity, belief in a man being God, is not faith in God/or there being a deity.
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“The beauty of science is that not only is it acknowledged that science is never settled, but that such is embraced.”
That’s the problem Sapient, many AGW believers don’t share that sentiment.
“I am not overly concerned about global warming in all truth. There are definite down sides but there are definite up sides as well assuming that we are able to survive. I find it very hard to believe we would not be able to survive.”
So do I, I guess the question some would ask is survive in what numbers?
“I have come to be of the opinion that the human race needs a near cataclysmic event to finally turn itself around.”
Sad but true, I just listen to the crap that comes out of peoples mouths about the end of the recession, no body wants to understand what could have happened. The lessons are not being learned people will consume themselves to death.
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Still SPC, Jesus was a fairly successful chap when all is said and done, in fact, his impact on the world is so profound you could almost call it supernatural
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Merry CHRISTmas!!
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Shunda,
I’d never say that but, if the goal is a sustainable society (and I can’t think of a better goal, given the alternative to a sustainable society), then we’re talking about a very different society from the one we have now. Getting there will mean a huge and widespread mindset change. Do the greens have the resources for the kind of education campaign that would be needed to change the mindset of enough people to foment societal change? If so, how?
You said that a sustainable society was attainable and I’d be interested to know how you think the green movement might attain it.
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Shunda,
As a side note. If I could convince myself to believe in a monotheistic god, I would not rely on texts which are known to be so corrupt. I would go directly to the source.
We can be fairly certain that the bible bears little resemblance to what it used to. We have a fair amount of evidence of its modification at and before Constantinople, we have excluded books, we have orally tansmitted stories and events, we have events that differ markedly between the included books and between the included books and excluded books. The bible has been in the hands of an elite for centuries whom we know manipulated the teachings for their own purposes. We have no way of knowing if Jesus ever even existed or ever did what he is said to. The early accounts certainly do not mention him doing any of his proposed miracles. And then there is the Jewish texts, originally oral, passed on for centuries orally; stories we have hard written evidence to show is false.
No, if I were to worship a monotheistic god, I would look at creation. I would look at the sky and the stars and the planets and life and listen to the story being told through such. Eliminate the corruption of humans and, even assuming no human corruption, the corruption of the ‘angels’ that supposedly passed on the message of god (which could just of easily have been sent by Lucifer, many of the events in the bible actually making such more likely).
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Classic. In the Washington Post, Mann writes a pack of self-serving rubbish about the fraud and dishonesty exposed in the leaked emails. Commentators tear him a new one and dissect his lies for all to see.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121703682.html
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Sapient
The irony about faith in (the authority of) God is that they rely so much on the messages of other men about God, and their faith requires belief that these messages of men is akin to word from God.
Shunda likes to point out how the GW response advocates are somehow credulous believers without keeping an open mind about the science.
Yet the Christian religion is about having a closed mind about the veracity of the bible word, essentially an unquestioning faith in the men who wrote it – that they could know about God – something that is beyond any scientific test.
Their article of faith is that they believe in the child created in the world as God from God, and they call that child the word of God in the flesh and associate faith in him with belief in the word of the bible (thus the totality of all the writing in the bible is associated with faith in the child created by God – as if the work of all those bible writers was the work of God).
A problem, the last great global flood story (in the bible) is myth – it is not a true story.
GW denial may however have a few islanders building arks later this century.
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Sapient my own research came to a different conclusion to yourself, It seems to me that the bible is a remarkably pure text pretty much as the original authors wrote it, indeed the dead sea scrolls had a couple of complete books that showed a remarkable accuracy of the modern translations.
The other thing that you need to consider is the nature of extremist religious devotion in keeping these texts pure. At least as far back as Christ there were orders and sects that worshipped the scriptures more than God himself, Jesus spoke of them as destructive people to be avoided. Interestingly though these people actually served a purpose in keeping the texts pure. This form of religious devotion is often revealed in modern times as legalism and in ancient times as Pharisees.
The single biggest problem is not the bible, but using it out of context, there is even a scripture that states “the sum of the word is truth”.
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SPC, I guess if you believe in the possibility of a God there is also the possibility that God can communicate with people and direct experiences that people can record. I don’t see why it is inconceivable that an absolute handful of people over the millennia have recorded that possible interaction.
At the end of the day if an all powerful God wanted knowledge of himself communicated in written form he could make it happen in spite of human failings.
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Are you saying because it is going to be hard why bother? because my belief about the motivations of many AGW believers is that they are fundamentally lazy in their approach. It is far easier to pontificate and expect our politicians to fix this “crisis” than to actually get our hands dirty and do it our selves.
It is one of Shunda’s standard bullshit lines to say that we’re so blinded by AGW that we just want govts to solve the problem for us and don’t want to do anything ourselves. I don’t know anyone with that attitude and certainly Shunda couldn’t name anyone that posts here who thinks that way, but he says it nonetheless. As has been said many times, there are two (at least) sphere’s of activity that must occur to deal with this problem, the personal and the collective, with the latter requiring govt intervention. It is Shunda who thinks only one of these need occur, not most greenies.
“The beauty of science is that not only is it acknowledged that science is never settled, but that such is embraced.”
That’s the problem Sapient, many AGW believers don’t share that sentiment.
Name one.
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“It is one of Shunda’s standard bullshit lines to say that we’re so blinded by AGW that we just want govts to solve the problem for us and don’t want to do anything ourselves. I don’t know anyone with that attitude and certainly Shunda couldn’t name anyone that posts here who thinks that way, but he says it nonetheless.”
What you don’t seem to realise Valis is most of your supporters are not as intellectual as you or most people on this blog. I say it because people are still talking about Tuvalu and Kilimanjaro as evidence of warming.
Evidence of ignorance and laziness.
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To support either in light of this is simply irrational.
You may be right from a pure logic perspective, but that’s useless in a practical sense, where we have to make decisions on imperfect information. Just throwing our hands up doesn’t cut it. I don’t know for certain that the sun will come up tomorrow, but believing it will is NOT equivalent in a practical sense to believing it won’t.
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Sapient
The Old Testament is as it was 2000 years ago – it was completed by this time. The Protestant OT is the same as the Tanakh (Jewish bible). The Catholic Church adds in other pre Christian era religious writing not in the Tanakh – presumably on the basis of their knowledge of the existience of these books and not deciding to accept the authority of Jews as to which of them were appropriate writing about God (an act of a rival authority).
There is evidence of some editing of OT books, but before 2000 years ago.
As to having the bible (including New Testament) that there use to be, the question is whether there ever was an old bible – because this could not occur until someone compiled a collection of books and called them the completed official bible (as the Jews did with the Tanakh). There was some debate for some time about which books to include or exclude in the early centuries. Whether any of the books included in the final canon was actually changed from its original version is a most interesting question (but given it only became part of the “holy word” bible on inclusion in the Church canon this is a moot point – the change would only indicate earlier Christians had a different view about God, one which was pre “holy word” status).
The real bible writing debate has been for the most part about accurate translation.
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What you don’t seem to realise Valis is most of your supporters are not as intellectual as you or most people on this blog.
But you are talking to us and we are saying largely the same things as those others. Either those others are right too, perhaps despite their lack of understanding, or we are wrong as well. So stop hiding behind those others you can attack safely as they are not here and deal with us.
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Shunda
Why would “God” communicate a flood myth story which is not true? Why would God communicate the story of the conquest of Canaan for which there is no archeological evidence?
To declare God’s power to do these things by the lying boast of having already done them?
Even a cursory study of such as anthropology would realise someone was boasting the God of the Jews was more powerful than other Gods so this made them a chosen people. And thus their King was King of Kings and their capital the scene for the building of a new world order.
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SPC, I guess if you believe in the possibility of a God there is also the possibility that God can communicate with people and direct experiences that people can record. I don’t see why it is inconceivable that an absolute handful of people over the millennia have recorded that possible interaction.
At the end of the day if an all powerful God wanted knowledge of himself communicated in written form he could make it happen in spite of human failings.
All conceivable, just no evidence for any of it, unlike AGW.
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SPC I thought there was evidence of the conquest of Cannan, and as far as the flood goes to be honest I don’t really know. The event was to wipe out a particularly wicked civilization which it achieved, as far as the mechanics of it go I have no idea. I don’t accept the fringe “flood geology” theories though if thatis what you mean.
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“So stop hiding behind those others you can attack safely as they are not here and deal with us”
Tuvalu and Kilimanjaro Valis, what’s the deal.
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“All conceivable, just no evidence for any of it, unlike AGW”
Well there is a 2000 year old book and a fellow that claimed to be the Son of God and the fact that this chap changed the world like no other person in all of recorded history.
The difference between you and I Valis is that I believe AGW could be true I am just sceptical about it.
You write of my beliefs even though there is some fairly powerful world events in support. Lots of people claim to be God Valis, why was this guy so influential?
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Is Frogblog to Christianity what Copenhagen was to Climate Change?
Shunda, are you Al Gore?
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Valis,
We can not be justifyably certain – we can not know – because of this to be certain is to be foolish. To not be certain does not mean that one can not act, one mearly acts acknowledging that they may not really be effecting their desired change. They acknowledge that others may be right and they listen (unlike many greens, blues, and reds).
~
SPC,
Yes, as far as I know this is correct. The Old Testament is, however, not the main point. Though notably, as you say, the Old Testament is derived from the Tanakh; a book derived from many books which were in turn derived from orally transmitted traditions, teachings, and stories. There was massive opportunity for corruption.
It is not a moot point. The bible as it exists today consists of scriptures which were modified and chosen but humans, not divine providence. Some scriptures, whole books, were discarded in favor of others. Many of those included differ in their accounts and the discarded books appear to differ even further. This is a clear indication of human influence and thus brings in to doubt the entire bible as it has been subjected to human corruption. This assuming that the bible was divine word in the first place and, even so, the divine word of god rather than lucifer.
~
Shunda,
Well the changes made by Jesus are irrelevant as they would be made regardless of if his word was true. The only evidence to support Jesus being the son of god is his own word and the word of his followers, words which only bare weight if we already accept their word in the first place (A circular argument). The book, and the claims of the book, only bare weight if you accept that either the book is the word of god and god never lies or that the book is one hundred percent accurate, both of which require you accept the other and use the other to support themselves (again, a circular argument). So, in summary nothing you just provided provides any support for Christianity.
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Shunda B,
As I’d thought such a tall silo as the one you inhabit must have so very high goalposts. So as not to mix the metaphors too drastically — yes I shall try later when I have the time to read through the above — do I correctly assess you as somewhere approaching the middle with the ‘ground’ beneath you somewhat shaky, shifting..
Christ, you will permit me, knew no such thing as a merry CHRISTmas. Despite which the meritorious measure of mankind’s attainments since his reality permits me wish you those very sentiments.
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“Is Frogblog to Christianity what Copenhagen was to Climate Change?
Shunda, are you Al Gore? ”
Yes.
I’m so serial. (see southpark episode “manbearpig”)
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Shunda,
I ask again, what are the extreme measures that could cause a bigger crisis for your kids than global warming could? In addition, would that crisis be larger than the one that will result from not reaching sustainability, which is one of your aims?
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Tom, as a stupid religious person in a silo, I don’t understand your point, can ya dumb it down a little?
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Essentially Christians and Greens have much in common. Is is it not true that most of you have a sort of “oridinal sin” attitude to man? Carbon based energy is the forbidden fruit of modern times. Most have some sort of a doomsday theory and preach that we must redeem ourselves in some way.
Most believe in sacrificing our individual pursuits for the sake of the collective. Most consider prosperity to be some sort of sin.
Sofistek asks “What are the extreme measures that would be worse than, say the worst case scenario on warming?”
How about taking billions of dollars from the people to give to international bureaucrats, crony corporates and dodgy science institutes? We have already spent billions on these people with little benefit. Now it is proposed that billions more needs to be sacrificed. What are they going to do with our hard earned cash? Even if AGW is your main concern, where is the benefit?
Sapient said “Thesim is a belief in the god hypothesis. Atheism is a belief that the god hypothesis is false.”
Not quite as I see it. Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of deities. Someone who who sees conflicting evidence or does not see enough evidence to form a belief may be an athiest i.e. have an absence of belief.
This is a rational scientific attitude – the sceptical one – “a questioning attitude, or some degree of doubt regarding claims that are often elsewhere taken for granted.” In history and today we see that widely held strong beliefs often turn out to be incorrect even amongst sincere learned people and scientists. Ask Copernicus and Galelao.
We do frequently need to come to a conclusion in order to act despite being not fully certain – thus the importance of continuing to learn and increase understanding of reality and of individual cost / benefit analysis before acting. Obviously, if you look at what man has achieved thechnologically we have learned a lot that we can benefit from.
This video has some good comments on the attitude of AGW sceptics.
http://vimeo.com/8183300
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“I ask again, what are the extreme measures that could cause a bigger crisis for your kids than global warming could? In addition, would that crisis be larger than the one that will result from not reaching sustainability, which is one of your aims?”
Clearly if humans don’t reach a sustainable use of the environment then eventually we will consume ourselves to death, however this is an issue that does not require climate change to address.
While all the energy has been spent on one issue environmentalism, the actual proven problems have been continuing unabated. Deforestation is continuing, the oceans are being vacuum cleaned of fish and we are still rapidly heading towards an energy crisis.
If AGW turns out to be a farce, the world will chuck all these issues in with the nutty greens who mislead everybody.
Personally I find it appalling that this one issue has eclipsed all others, no progress is being made where it needs to be.
I am using my ability to try and do my part for the community I live in, the biggest problem I have is trying to prove to people that I am not a radical “greenie”.
I can honestly say I don’t have any idea who the greenies are in my area, they are invisible, there is nobody promoting a sustainable community in a visible way.
I have made submissions to my council and offered my help in the areas I am experienced in with some success, others hit the first hurdle and just go into meltdown mode.
If people are prepared to be in it for the long hall, perhaps without any recognition then a fully sustainable NZ is completely attainable. Uncharted territory needs pioneers, who’s going to do it?
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Shunda – it’s my belief that the same thinking that you exhibit toward climate change is that which allows the people you rail against to cut forests, drain wetlands, trawl the bottom of the oceans and haul dead dolphins up in their nets. You are simply choosing to be disgusted by the actions of others, to cover your own anti-environment thinking. You’ll not make progress with your minor claims of environmental degradation that you see around you, til you face up to your own support for the biggest degradation of them all.
As to your claim that it was the ‘nutty greens’ that have mislead everyone over climate change, surely it was the scientists who rang the warning bells?
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Sallydeb,
Long time no confrontation.
As I see it an atheist is someone whom believes that there is NOT a god. The belief that there is not a god necesitates that the individiual considers there be sufficent evidence to support that posistion. Not someone whom judges that there is not enough evidence either way to justify certainty; that is the agnostic.
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Thanks Shunda
Sorry it took me a while to get back to this. I see that the christianity meme flourishes without actually settling the issue of the existence of deities or the nature of Jesus… which is exactly what I’d expect it to accomplish.
Nope… never regarded your reservations as having religious roots. If I did I probably wouldn’t be willing to work on this at all. Religion should have nothing to do with science except in a “render unto Caesar” sense which applies both ways.
The sidetrack people got onto here is seductive but not relevant to your concerns. Some of which are not related to science at all… but I will attempt to address all.
The first issue you broach is that of the surface temp records. The issue being how well they are actually maintained, the Urban-Heat-Island effects and the land-use changes around these. I actually have pretty good confidence in these, that’s not to say complete, but it is pretty good. A fair example of what IS done is provided
herethrough RealClimate but the site is down.Let me see if I can’t dig up a different link to it… hmmmm
http://134.178.63.141/amm/docs/1996/torok.pdf
Look into figure 2 which has the text of the paper-based station log being applied to the Mildura data. This is actually done throughout the climate record. You will also find several places in which stations are removed from being part of the record as a result of having excessive UHI or other effects. This is assessed station-by-station.
Every single site would have to be intensively studied to determine how land use change has affected the local climate, even then the results could not be considered completely accurate.
This is in fact done by the various Met offices in each country.
I can’t claim that “every single site” is as well studied and documented as the Australian sites are documented. I would expect that the sites in most of the OECD countries are well documented and studied…. would have less confidence in the Russians and less still in some other places, but the places where the UHI is expected to dominate are the places it seems most likely to be removed by scientific scrutiny… which may well explain why the overall records being used are substantially without any UHI signal.
The surface record isn’t really dubious and since it looks very much like the satellite record during the overlap period we have, it seems to me to be extremely difficult to challenge.
That one was fairly straightforward…
The models…
I just can’t have any faith in them, particularly when they try and tell us all models are saying the same thing.
Well they don’t all say the SAME thing… though the successful ones do all provide similar answers with respect to the gross effects of increasing CO2 and they do all provide decent regression tracking to the climate past. There are a couple of things notable about the models. The very famous quotation is good to remember…
“All models are wrong, some are useful”.
They don’t attempt to “model” changes in solar input as the solar output is not well predictable. THEREFORE any notion that they “failed” to predict the latest solar minimum or its effects is simply a red-herring. Similar considerations with respect to ENSO variations.
Tamino is fairly thorough –
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/not-computer-models/
Basically you don’t have to do the details the way the full scale climate models do, to get the results that indict our CO2 and us as the culprits.
Another source of this sort of information is a full-on statistical approach which starts and ends with the statistics and doesn’t look hard at any of the science underneath them…
http://tqe.quaker.org/2007/TQE158-EN-GlobalWarming.html
You may note that this is one of those cases where the religious nature of the person generating the information is quite clear.
The islands and Kilimanjaro are not cited by scientists. Some folks on the political end of this may do so, but I have not ever seen actual scientific claims relating to AGW that have anything to do with either. The indication you are getting that these are political in nature is a true indication. However, this casts no doubt on the science, just on the knowledge of the politically oriented people making the claims. They can be ignored as noise. I often make the effort to ignore noise… it has nothing to do with the science here. If you can find an instance of an actual scientist discussing this as evidence of AGW I’ll be surprised.
The political motivations fall outside the scientific realm entirely. You have to separate them from the science….
as the scientists themselves have no common collective political motivations. I know many and some are Republicans and some are Democrats and some are born-again-Christians and some are atheists and some haven’t voted in 2 decades.
…again, you are correct in noting that some people are hopping on this bandwagon hoping to upset the current world order. Which, while it is not IMHO, a bad idea, it remains separate from the science. I would imagine that you have no love of the bankers and businesspeople who are currently in charge of profiting from the unsustainable rape of mother earth that has been going on for many decades.
However, even so, it is a wholly separate issue to AGW.
We do not NEED AGW to want to reach for sustainability, but this does not affect the need to address AGW.
Heck, if we address these other issues even if AGW is proven we will already be doing the right thing any way.
Quite so, and Greens advocate positively on all these issues.
The issue here is to separate the politics from the science. Look at the science on its own. Ignore the noise.
respectfully
BJ
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“Shunda – it’s my belief that the same thinking that you exhibit toward climate change is that which allows the people you rail against to cut forests, drain wetlands, trawl the bottom of the oceans and haul dead dolphins up in their nets.”
How so? All I can see is a pointless diversion from the issues we can actually do something about, alienating the population through idealism gives exactly the same green light, as our last election so dramatically shows.
“You are simply choosing to be disgusted by the actions of others, to cover your own anti-environment thinking. You’ll not make progress with your minor claims of environmental degradation that you see around you, til you face up to your own support for the biggest degradation of them all.”
How exactly am I supporting “the biggest degradation of them all”? If climate change is truly the problem you say it is engaging in sustainable management will address it by default.
“As to your claim that it was the ‘nutty greens’ that have mislead everyone over climate change, surely it was the scientists who rang the warning bells?”
That may be so but that is not the position the majority of the population will take.
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Shunda – Those people who do the things that appall you have the same thought you do about climate change – ‘it’s just ideology, with no basis in the real world’. They see no real need to leave the forests intact. Their concern is their livelihoods. Resources like forests and fish stocks are wasted if they’re not exploited. They will take that view til the very end, down to the last tree, the last fish. You are doing the same thing with calls for global action on something that threatens all of those things. You are looking so close to home, at the details that you deem important, that you can’t see the real threat, just as the hector’s dolphin killing fishermen look at the fullness or otherwise of their fish bins and dismiss the bigger picture of overfishing/by-catch as ‘not immediately important to them’.
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Thanks for that BJ, I will have a look at those links after work.
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Greenfly this seems so religious! I am doing good deeds but because I won’t convert I am still in the sinners camp?
Look, at the end of the day AGW is about CO2 if we address the energy crisis there will be progress on this area as well, fossil fuels are not sustainable long term.
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Sapient,
Re the definition of atheism. There is some disagreement about the definition, both your use of the term and mine are supported in several references. Summarized at about.com:
There is, unfortunately, some disagreement about the definition of atheism. It is interesting to note that most of that disagreement comes from theists — atheists themselves tend to agree on what atheism means. Christians in particular dispute the definition used by atheists and insist that atheism means something very different.
The broader, and more common, understanding of atheism among atheists is quite simply “not believing in any gods.” No claims or denials are made — an atheist is just a person who does not happen to be a theist. Sometimes this broader understanding is called “weak” or “implicit” atheism. Most good, complete dictionaries readily support this.
There also exists a narrower sort of atheism, sometimes called “strong” or “explicit” atheism. With this type, the atheist explicitly denies the existence of any gods — making a strong claim which will deserve support at some point. Some atheists do this and others may do this with regards to certain specific gods but not with others. Thus, a person may lack belief in one god, but deny the existence of another god.”
An agnostic is not quite the same thing to my mind.
“Once it is understood that atheism is merely the absence of belief in any gods, it becomes evident that agnosticism is not, as many assume, a “third way” between atheism and theism. The presence of a belief in a god and the absence of a belief in a god exhaust all of the possibilities. Agnosticism is not about belief in god but about knowledge — it was coined originally to describe the position of a person who could not claim to know for sure if any gods exist or not.
Thus, it is clear that agnosticism is compatible with both theism and atheism. A person can believe in a god (theism) without claiming to know for sure if that god exists; the result is agnostic theism. On the other hand, a person can disbelieve in gods (atheism) without claiming to know for sure that no gods can or do exist; the result is agnostic atheism.
It is also worth noting that there is a vicious double standard involved when theists claim that agnosticism is “better” than atheism because it is less dogmatic. If atheists are closed-minded because they are not agnostic, then so are theists. On the other hand, if theism can be open-minded then so can atheism.
In the end, the fact of the matter is a person isn’t faced with the necessity of only being either an atheist or an agnostic. Quite the contrary, not only can a person be both, but it is in fact common for people to be both agnostics and atheists. An agnostic atheist won’t claim to know for sure that nothing warranting the label “god” exists or that such cannot exist, but they also don’t actively believe that such an entity does indeed exist.”
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Shunda Barunda:
“Deforestation is continuing, the oceans are being vacuum cleaned of fish and we are still rapidly heading towards an energy crisis.”
You are sounding just a excessively alarmist as the AGW doomsayers you berate. There is lots of wilderness around the world and many of our suburban areas have gardens overflowing with bushes and trees. Fish farms are becoming more common and there is still a lot of fish in the sea. And it is very likely that there will be plenty of fossil fuel available while we gradually develope other forms of energy for mass production of goods and services.
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Sallydeb,
The two are not compatable.
A belief IS a claim. If you believe then, by definition, you consider it to be true. If you consider it to be true then you do not consider it to be undetermined. Your description of the ‘weak atheist’ is not a description of atheism at all but of agnosticism, or rather a form of agnosticism better referred to as apathy.
To claim that atheism is an absence of belief in go is veridical, to claim that absence of belief in god is atheism is fallacious. An absence of belief in a deity can be an absence of belief either way – agnosticism – or a belief in no god – atheism. As Dawkins puts it, both atheists and theists are atheistic toward other religions; atheists and theists don’t not believe so much as believe that it is not.
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Shunda B,
as a stupid religious person in a silo, I don’t understand your point, can ya dumb it down a little?
Dumb down the self-confessed in effect asked me to insult you, Shunda.. Prior to your further responses and observations @12.17, @12.29 and @ 12.43 I might have felt obliged try, but since it is apparent your self-confessed flaw is incorrect – perhaps a slight of mind at the point of writing – I must respectfully decline the offer.
With sustained sentiments as aforementioned, yours
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An accurate interpretation of atheism comes from distinguishing it from agnosticism and deism.
Agnostics neither believe in deities, or not believe in deities because they will only choose to believe when they have more evidence (they are true sceptics). That said some agnostics are closet deists they accept that there may be God but they don’t want to encourage the religions (they are like those who think there is global warming but have chosen to withold support for doing anything about it – the it’s not all bad line and the cost of doing nothing are no more than doing something) which they see as flawed human constructs not worthy of their support. Whereas deists do believe there is a God and acknowledge this but then openly reject the human constructs as merely the works of men (they acknowledge global warming but won’t join the crusade on the terms of the believers except where they see good cause).
You will note the attempt to keep this part of the discussion relevant to the topic.
PS Shunda there is no evidence of the conquest of Canaan – if you know of any supply it on a general topic thread sometime. As for the bibles flood story – it is posed as a global flood ending all life on earth but for one pair of each kind (there is no evidence of such an event in world history – and there is no DNA support for it). There is no evidence to support the record of history in the bible.
The term son of God is ancient, it began as son of Godfaith – those who believed in a god/deity of their cult/city/kingdom. But later the King alone was the son of Godfaith. This later became son of God by faith (see Psalm 2 – where the King of Israel saw himself as a King on a son of Godfaith throne, having the role of a son of God by faith to do God’s work in authority over the law of the land. This later became corrupted to the third level – a royal prince being anointed (Messiah = Christ means anointed) as the son of Godfaith, the son of God by faith when on the throne in the role of King AND the third level a man being declared as the son of God. Jesus never claimed to be the son of God, Simon Peter said he was and declared him a such. Jesus is recorded as saying that humans should call God their father – he therefore was actually rejecting the title as belonging to any one man. Therefore Christianity is not the success of Jesus and his teachings, but of Simon Peter and his church – largely as the result of Constantine making the religion the state cult of the empire of Rome.
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In response to those who claim there is a god, I say I don’t believe it. I am not positively proclaiming any belief. I simply respond that I am not convinced by those who propose that there may be or there is a god.
Does that make me an atheist or an agnostic?
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In summary, we have free will and freedom of religion and freedom of religion allows people to define themselves – as either atheist or agnostic as they will.
The commonality is the reliance on evidence before deciding on such a matter – the distinction is that while the agnostic might entertain the thesis that God could explain some of the evidence (before there was confirmation), the atheist would not hold to a God exists theory while looking for evidence to confirm the theory.
In that sense both are science based, but one (agnostic) might entertain the positing of theories which are evidence based.
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Sallydeb,
That makes you a agnostic. But then again, there are some atheists who would suggest that – like how many homosexuals deny the existence of bisexuals so as to bolster their numbers – you are an atheist.
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Sapient
I don’t have to have evidence of nonexistence of a deity to BELIEVE there is no deity. All I need is belief. Sallydeb has the right of it here.
I don’t need to try to prove anything. I have alternative explanations for all that I need to explain and need no explanations for things that are too remote in time and distance to be examined (or to matter to me).
I believe there is no God is not a strong statement. I can’t show it to be true any more than a Deist can show there is a God. The agnostic position is where I would be without relying on Ockham, but I DO rely on Ockham for simplifications wherever possible. Not a strong argument though, not a strong position. The uncertainty remains… but not agnostic, as I BELIEVE that there is no deity, but require no evidence whatsoever.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ,
So you are certain that there is no deity? To believe is to be certain.
I agree that, via Ockham, the atheistic explanation is favorable scientifically and I give my preference to that explanation but given that there is no evidence to support one over the other there is no reason to believe one over the other.
If there is a line 10 cm long and point A is 1 cm in from the left while point B is 0 cm in from the right and point C is randomly generated at some point along that line then it is rational to estimate that C is closer to A as it appears more likely but that would be no reason at all to believe that C is closer to A as it can just as plausibly be closer to B.
SPC,
I would assert that free-will and causality are mutually exclusive.
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Sapient – if humanity is to have free will there can be no sure knowledge of God. So for there to be free will it has to be faith alone, the choice to believe or to not believe. The agnostic simply waits for a good enough case/theory/arguement (as each one would see it) to move towards accepting on balance the case for God’s existence (possibly to the point of deism or otherwise some religion), while the atheist simply has chosen to believe without ultimate knowledge.
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SPC,
I do not understand how humanity having free will means there can be no sure knowledge of god. I assume you are referring to the notion that if god made his presence known then humans would fear so much that they ultimately gave up free will in favor of following (not that that is really different to at present for believers).
I do not accept the legitimacy of free will in the first place. If an atom has an estimated 1 in 1,000,000 chance of colliding with another given atom and it does and you then turn back time the chance is not 1 in 1,000,000 it is 1 in 1 as that will ALWAYS happen. There is nothing that can be done about it. Likewise, if it missed there was always a 0 in 0 chance of it happening. Causality and Free Will are mutually exclusive.
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sallydeb said:
There is lots of wilderness around the world and many of our suburban areas have gardens overflowing with bushes and trees. Fish farms are becoming more common and there is still a lot of fish in the sea.
and it sounds like clap-trap from someone who has breathes rarified air, where plain old fresh air would do.
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To believe is to be certain.
No, I don’t subscribe to that particular interpretation of the word and its usage.
Belief is not certainty. In most common usage it encompasses levels of uncertainty and “I believe that Copenhagen will start us down the proper path” is a good example (as it brings the thread back towards something resembling topic). This common usage makes it quite clear that belief does NOT entail nor require certainty.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ,
Different uses of the word. To equate the two is to equate the meanings of faith and faith.
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Verb
to believe (third-person singular simple present believes, present participle believing, simple past and past participle believed)
(transitive) To accept that someone is telling the truth.
Why did I ever believe you?
(transitive) To accept as true.
If you believe the numbers, you’ll agree we need change.
(transitive) To consider likely.
I believe it might rain tomorrow.(This definition is the same as “to accept as true”, but for a likely event “might rain tomorrow”).
(intransitive) To have religious faith; to believe in a greater truth.
After that night in the church, I believed.{This definition should be disregarded as it is the same as the transitive “to accept as true”}.
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I think we’re locking into some sort of semantics trap that serves nobody. Particularly since I speak American English as a first language. Most Americans would certainly understand what I just said, including the bit where “it encompasses levels of uncertainty” and not adhere to the more doctrinaire “Belief” required to make such a clear difference between “Atheist” and “Agnostic”. There isn’t such a clear distinction made by the Atheists and the Agnostics, nor is any such distinction required.
We get on well with fuzzy meanings. Lawyers and Philosophers we are not.
BJ
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Bj,
I agree about the semantic trap.
But yes, if one allows even a slight suspicion that one approach may be superior to count as belief in that approach then agnosticism may be considered comparable. Of course, if one does that then we get in to some very sticky ground and the definition becomes essentially useless.
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“You are sounding just a excessively alarmist as the AGW doomsayers you berate. There is lots of wilderness around the world and many of our suburban areas have gardens overflowing with bushes and trees. Fish farms are becoming more common and there is still a lot of fish in the sea. And it is very likely that there will be plenty of fossil fuel available while we gradually develope other forms of energy for mass production of goods and services. ”
Wow, where do I sign up guys, seriously.
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We all have belief, apart from those brain dead individuals that have never bothered to think about ‘it’. All versions of belief are of equal merit (including non-belief) as they are a personal choice and of no consequence to anyone else. Whatever rows your boat.
It’s religion that is the great evil. Tribalism is humanities greatest evil and religion is Righteous Tribalism, the worst of the worst.
Go about your personal belief, by all means, but when anyone starts suggesting that ” My God/Non-God is greater than your god/non-god” or “Thou shalt believe what I believe”… they are truly to be despised!
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Well I give up, Sap. The way you want us to use the word would render it useless. Sorry, but I believe the sun will come up tomorrow, though I am not certain of it. The same applies for my atheism and I think sallydeb had it right at 3:52pm. I don’t know any atheists who would claim certainty, so your definition is wanting there as well. Even Dawkins admits to being agnostic in the pedantic sense you’re insisting on. He’s a scientist after all and doesn’t deny the truth that certainty is impossible. That’s an extremely important fact, but not the end of the story.
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Valis,
Yes, well I don’t deal well with the non-literal. It is one of my shortcomings which is pointed daily.
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SPC,
“Godfaith” – thank you for this.. and the ramifications it likely opens up for single Gospellers.
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Shunda,
I’m confused by your answer about what would precipitate a worse crisis for your kids than global warming could. In your answer, you used the phrase “If AGW turns out to be a farce”, which wasn’t an element of your original concern for your kids. Your contention was that whatever crisis global warming could bring, some of the actions being advocated would bring a bigger crisis. So what are these actions that could cause a bigger crisis than global warming?
I’m also confused by your desire for a sustainable society, which I share, and your belief that no action should be taken on human induced climate change. One aspect of sustainability is that we should not degrade the environment that supports us. So we need to take action to stop degrading our environment. You acknowledge that humans may be the prime cause of current climate change so we should really take action on that, in case that turns out to be true.
But I still don’t know what those extreme actions are, that you fear.
However, you’re absolutely right that climate change has taken centre stage to the detriment of all other sustainability issues. It’s hard to understand why, since very few people would argue (though I have met a couple on this blog) that the earth is not finite (both in resources of all kinds and in the ability of the environment to render our pollution harmless to life). Maybe it’s because there has been a measured increase in the rate of extreme weather events, which was predicted by models, but as yet there has been no prolonged resource shortages caused solely by geology.
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Continuing in an epistemological vein while coming back to subject.
Shunda believes “Deforestation is continuing, the oceans are being vacuum cleaned of fish and we are still rapidly heading towards an energy crisis.”
I don’t believe her claim that things are so bad – I guess I have a more optimistic glass is half full attitude, I’ll admit to that bias. However I’ve traveled around quite a bit and seen much with my own eyes (as well as reports form others) to support my optimistic attitude. I’ve seen green forested areas developed in cities, town and countryside – much reforestation. You just have to go to your local supermarket – fish is available and no more expensive than meat – so it can’t be hard to find – it is widely available in millions of markets all round the world. As for fossil fuel, just earlier this month Greymouth Petroleum Confirmed Kowhai Gas Discovery anounced by Minister of Energy and Resources and Lindsay Clark. New sourses are regularly reported. Ironic – one arm of government in Copenhagen planning reductions in fuel use while another is happily announcing a new discovery to add to our future supplies. On current world wide usage and discovery there is enough coal for another 90 years or so. Usage may grow but new discoveries and means of extraction can be expected to be attained. Also with fantastic improving technology, greater efficiencies will make the fuel go further. Prospects for prosperity spreading to more people around the world should be very good if we don’t let politics get in the way.
I could cite many more examples but suffice it to say that I find much evidence to support my attitude as previously stated: “There is lots of wilderness and new forests around the world and many of our suburban areas have gardens overflowing with new bushes and trees. Fish farms are becoming more common and there is still a lot of fish in the sea. And it is very likely that there will be plenty of fossil fuel available while we gradually develope other forms of energy for mass production of goods and services.”
Future sustainability of human flourishing looks quite attainable to me.
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Good luck selling that as peak oil hits and carbon tariffs are placed on all goods produced from use of coal fired power stations and nations live within emissions caps.
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I think more and more people are coming over from the dark doomsaying side and into the light. CO2 emmissions hysteria will be consigned to history.
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The Scientists and Mother Earth do not care what “more and more people” believe. There is no reason whatsoever to be optimistic about what Mother is going to do to us if we ignore the warnings already given.
People will eventually get wise to the lies of CEI et.al. I don’t think that big money and big oil will be able to conceal reality with obfuscation as the temperature continues to push upward.
respectfully
BJ
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The Scientists and Mother Earth do care about “more and more people” though.
That ‘elephant’ is just not discussed nearly often enough in any discussion about sustainability.
To get back to the God bit… I suspect that one of the reasons it’s not discussed is that each of the religious tribes seeks world domination via ‘the womb-of -God’ as much as by ‘the word’ or by ‘the sword’.
The right to breed their way to world domination is very sacred to them.
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Anecdotal evidence counts for nothing except to bolster your preconceived ideas, especially as you likely ignore all of the evidence that doesn’t match your half-full optimism.
Annual conventional oil production (that’s the easy and cheap to produce sort) peaked in 2005. Production of all oil liquids peaked in 2008 and will likely not exceed that, as the recession has set back exploration and development projects. Natural gas is generally reckoned to peak a decade or more after oil. Oil is traded freely on world markets, so a discovery in one area doesn’t mean that area is any better off, unless the owning nation nationalises their oil industry and adopts a protective policy towards its resources. Natural gas is also traded globally but not as easily, so regional discoveries may be more likely to stay in the region. Coal reserve data is very poor but recent studies suggested that the real picture is very much worse than generally thought. Much of the high quality coal is gone, so increasing quantities extracted don’t necessarily translate into more energy. Of course, extraction of all of these fossil fuels have environmental consequences, even before we start burning them.
Alternatives to fossil fuels are unlikely to scale to cover declines. Some are unlikely ever to reach maturity (e.g. hydrogen, even though Steven Joyce still harbours hopes for it) or are a long way off making a significant contribution. Remember that the energy density of fossil fuels is very high. Electricity and hydrogen are just carriers, not energy sources. Oil and gas are also important inputs to many processes and products.
As for reforestation, can you point to any data that supports your hypothesis?
Like it or not, this is a finite planet with finite resources, both renewable and non-renewable. Your attitude (“don’t worry, let’s party!”) is not helpful for reaching sustainability. The alternative to sustainability should be obvious.
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110 – Joss Garman on Copenhagen
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joss-garman-copenhagen–historic-failure-that-will-live-in-infamy-1845907.html
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have done that flight – was beautiful :->
The latest deliberate manipulation of data presentation:
Wikipedia announced that it has fired its long time climate editor William
Connolley, . Connolley,a software engineer and host at RealClimate, a left-
wing AGW site that relentlessly punishes AGW skeptics and lavishly praises
alarmists, has been found to have changed over 5,000 Wikipedia articles to
promote AGW catastrophic speculation.
He has been observed altering history, most prominetly by removing the
Medieval Warming Period. But he also has been found to have described the
careers and accomplishments of AGW skeptics in the most unflattering way.
For background, Lawrence Solomon writes in the National Post:
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Ah yes, those rose-tinted aircraft windows! Mind you, from that height it’s difficult to hear the sweet chorus of huia, piopio and the mocking cackle of the laughing owl.
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You see greenfly, sallydeb is exactly what I was talking about, people will use doubt over AGW to ignore all other issues.
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Shunda – sallydeb is exactly what I’m talking about. She will always have been shortsighted with regard ‘all other issues’ – the forests, fisheries etc that she believes to be in good shape (Is she mad?) Her views on AGW are just an extension of her general environmental denial.
I don’t for one second accept your proposal that people will dismiss lesser environmental issues, such as pollution of streams, because of the stand taken by environmentalists over AGW. Not for a moment. Those who will baulk at doing anything about the ‘everyday’ degradations, would have done so anyway.
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The point is the environmentalists frequently exaggerate concerns about other issues as well as AGW as has been exemplified in this discussion. Envoronmentalists have reached peak credability.
I have read several reports like the following one recently.
Public skepticism about the officially promoted cause of global warming has reached an all-time high among Americans…….
…….50% of likely voters now believe that global warming is caused primarily by long-term planetary trends. ……
…….34% say climate change is due primarily to human activity….
….Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly over the past year. In April 2008, 47% blamed human activity and only 34% named long-term planetary trends as the reason for climate change. …..
More at
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/energy_update
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Sallydeb – you cite figures about the American public to support your claims???
Credibility for environmentalists is about to soar, as more and more ‘results’ come in. This brief period of back-swing that has excited you will be just that … brief.
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The problem Sallydeb, is that in spite of having EVERY advantage, stolen e-mails and the lowest level of solar activity in a century, the best that can be said of the temperature trend is that it had a statistically insignificant flattening, and the last decade is still the warmest on record, no conspiracy was found, no alterations of data are in evidence and the CO2 is still rising.
Physics, Mother Nature and Science do not give a rats hindquarters what the USian mob thinks. The politicians barely care themselves, as the average development there is roughly 6th grade and the big money required to sway them is all that matters. When however, it becomes more obvious JUST how much lying has been going on on the denialist side of this division, and it will become obvious to everyone within another decade or so, it will become more difficult for those denialists and their moneyed masters, to escape the mobs that come looking for them.
respectfully
BJ
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sallydeb,
Luckily, science is not conducted via opinion polls. Unluckily, many people think it is.
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The sceptics don’t get any where near as much money from their masters as the taxpyer funded researchers.
Indeed the truth is not to be decided by majority vote. It is yet to be fully discovered and better understood.
Have a look at this video that aparently shown in Opening Spot Copenhagen Climate Conference. I suspect that even many environmentalist will agree that the AGW alarm is a bit over stated here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OIPYUlHv38&feature=player_embedded
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No, because there’s less of them. 100,000 scientists getting research grants from government agencies, companies with interests in renewables and venture capitalists get more money for their research than 1,000 scientists looking for research grants from oil and mining companies.
However, that doesn’t explain the motivation behind 100,000 government research grants to explain things. But, for example, ExxonMobil has 48 billion reasons with dollar signs in front of them as motivation to sponsor other scientists.
Of course, I’m not suggesting that scientists can be bought off – but when no-one but mineral extraction companies wants to fund your research, then that’s got to say something.
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The only thing the skeptics money is used for is swaying public opinion.
The scientists would get money for doing science no matter what result came of it and NONE of it is paying for swaying public or government opinion.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1389
The scientists would get money for doing science no matter what result came of it and NONE of it is paying for swaying public or government opinion.
If it were not warming it would be cooling because the climate IS always changing and we WERE only a couple of thousand years from another glacial period.
You keep staring intently in the wrong direction while the people with money rob you blind, and destroy the planet behind you. The list of criminals doesn’t even include Scaife who is pumping money into CEI, or Monckton who jets around spreading the most incredible lies and speculation. In another 20 years it will be clear enough that even you will be unable to deny it any more.
Unfortunately, if nothing is done the CO2 trajectory will have locked in sufficient warming that we will be closer to plus 4 degrees than plus 2 and the chances of tipping the climate into a higher “stable state” than any human eyes have ever seen will be approaching unity. If nothing else we will have guaranteed at least a 6 meter rise in sea level at the end of the 22nd century with very good odds of an eventual 20 meters, and a good chance of deglaciating all of Antarctica.
YOUR way is to go on allowing wealthy people to do an uncontrolled experiment with the atmospheric chemistry of the entire planet which you cannot prove will not harm us all…
…and which the scientific evidence says with 90% certainty WILL harm us all.
OUR way is to stop the experiment, at least until we know better what harm we have already done.
Which is more conservative? Which is safer? Which would any rational human choose? Who owns the atmosphere?
I assert that we ALL have ownership in the atmosphere. We all have a right to some portion of it.
WHICH APPROACH PROTECTS THE RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS?!!!
You do not have the right to alter the atmosphere Sallydeb. NOBODY has that right. It was not ceded, it was not purchased, it is not granted. What is going on right now is theft.
BJ
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