Would putting all the climate scientists in a room solve global warming...

[steve2470]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/13/downing_cambridge_climate_conference/


The Maldives cabinet meets underwater to raise awareness

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A couple of anecdotes I thought typified the fundamental disagreement.

Dr Eric Wolff of the British Antarctic Survey was given the job of summing up the room's view after seven scientific presentations. He attempted to do this with a succession of statements to see how far the consensus could stretch. He inched the audience along with statements they might agree with ("CO2 levels are higher than they have been historically", and "Humans have contributed to CO2 increases") and then catapulted them across a chasm of logic ("So we're all agreed things will get warmer? Yes? Good! Send more money". He didn't actually say "Send more money" – I made that up.)

Yet not everything in the skeptic camp smelt of roses. Nils-Axel Morner had gone around the world and found sea levels haven't risen much, if at all, in places often cited to be most vulnerable, such as Tuvalu. Yet the instrumentation record says something different. I would very much like to know which of these is right, or if they are both wrong, or how they could both be right. The Maldives, Tuvalu and other islands have opportunistically jumped on the compensation bandwagon, and for sure they don't seem to be sinking beneath the waves. Then again, nobody has challenged the buoys data.

Morner also has a graph he likes to use tilted through 45 degrees so the upward trend line is horizontal. This sort of trick doesn't belong at a scientific event.

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[sharp_stick]

1. I don't think Morner belongs at a scientific event

He's just as qualified as the well coiffed meteorologist you see on the tube telling you about inversions and those damned Canadian cold fronts but no more so. Throw a degree in front of some people and then yammer on telling them what they want to hear seems to work for a lot of idiots around the world. Just take a peek at the success of Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

This moron also believes in dowsing so he's likely not as qualified as your local weather girl, he's more on par with the guy screaming on the corner about the end of the world next Saturday.

[wtmusic]

2. Deniers don't belong at a scientific event either

but maybe the zero-energy and flat earth conventions were sold out? :shrug: