^ +1
(a) That's what you grandchildren will say about today's science.
(b) You might say that it was old science but back then there was some serious comprehension of mathematics.
(c) The methods of science hasn't changed that much, the technology has.
(d) And you sill haven't read those hacked emails, have you?
It's very clear that they left out the data that doesn't support their theory.
easier to get research money, perhaps. But that research money won't be dependent on the results. If anything, it'd be a lot easier for the governments if climate change weren't true, as I already said, and which no-one has already provided a sufficient counter-argument to.
(e) Perhaps? For sure! This has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Governments and even companies have found out this is a great way to generate more money from the people. Extra taxes on fuel, energy, cars, road tax, consumer goods, packaging etc. all because of the environment. This amounts to billions in my country alone.
The article about the russian data was in some UK paper.
(f) This feels like a discussion with a religious fundamentalist.
(a) that's unlikely. Most of the modern scientific method hasn't changed all that much in the past 50 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_history_of_scientific_method(b) is that relevant? Just because you can do maths doesn't mean that your scientific method is rigorous. Plus it's not like we haven't come up with a lot more advanced maths recently.
(c) actually, the method has changed quite a bit. They only came up with the double blind (if that wiki link i posted is to be believed) in 1950. That's a fairly big one right there, in the field of medicine.
(d) i asked you if you had a link a while back, you didn't answer. I'll see if i can find them myself and report back.
(e) multi-billion dollar? really? Don't get me wrong, I agree that the govt is jumping on the bandwagon, as are a lot of companies which are "greenwashing" (as wikipedia seems to think the term is called). But in terms of actually making money out of environmentalism, it doesn't make sense. I listed the breakdown of the UK tax revenues a couple of posts back, and it showed that what the government got from green taxes, while not to be sneezed at, was a very small proportion of the total revenue. If you can explain to me how companies can make a killing out of environmentalism, with its central tenets of consuming (and hence selling) MUCH MUCH LESS STUFF, cleaning up after your polluting processes (which costs money, a lot of money, not to mention time and effort), helping to recycle old products (ditto) versus the status quo in capitalism which is to sell people as much stuff as they don't need as you can, while spending as little of your own money as possible in customer service/after sales/eco issues, then I'm all ears.
I can't speak about holland, but there was road tax, car tax, VAT, etc. etc. etc. here long before environmental issues became mainstream. Vehicle excise duty in the UK was introduced in 1888, and was introduced specifically for cars in 1920 (according to wiki).
(f) ooh, an ad hominem, nice. Right back atcha. You (by that i mean the climate-change deniers, not you personally) are using the exact same arguing and debating techniques which creationists use.
I listened to a fantastic debate about the similarities of many of these climate change beliefs to a religion...
There are many.
And many of these secular arguments quoted above bring Pascals Wager to mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager
The hot marketing ticket is "Greenwash" and no-one is immune.
that's possibly true, but as i already said, there's a difference between disagreeing with how to fight climate change, and refusing to accept that it's happening, just as there's a difference between the guys in greenpeace and the scientists actually doing the research.