You must watch this BBC documentary

[Ole Unka Phil]

It will probably change your mind on some things. At least it will make you more informed. You owe it to yourself to be completely informed and at least look at all sides of an issue. Science can be a very tricky thing. And often a political thing. It should not be but it serves some interests to make it so.

It takes about an hour. Give it your time. It's important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

Please now do not politicize it even more so and get this thread dlosed for that reason. Its not political unless we make it so. And some people have an interest in making it political. Don't feed into that nonsense. It's simply science and nature.

You don't have to comment. Just promise me you will watch it, at your leasure, one time in its entirety.

[personman]

I saw that documentary, and I spent the time to download a higher quality one off a torrent site.

However, I'm not so sure all of the arguments in it are valid. There seems to be a crazy history with the producer and one of the interviewees came out and said that his views were skewed in this documentary.

But it did bring up some interesting points and it was worth an hour of my time

[punkncat]

Beyond the repeating themselves more than needed its quite informative.

I kinda felt like saying "dur da dur" when they concluded that the sun affects temp...I mean for real?

[Niox]

Reply to that documentary by a bunch of comedians.

[Pacifist_Farmer]

While I agree that climate change is being overplayed in every way.

I do feel that many of the outcomes, increased efficiencies, decreased release of heavy metals, increased use of "renewable" sources for materials and energy, are fantastic.

Like every thing else take every thing you hear from any source with a big grain of salt.

[Dark Side]

I kinda felt like saying "dur da dur" when they concluded that the sun affects temp...I mean for real?

Really? I wanted to slap them.

[warbeak2099]

Science can be a very tricky thing. And often a political thing. It should not be but it serves some interests to make it so.

Gee really? You see, I think politics are unfortunately devoid of science. Scientists never seem to be consulted when making important decisions like... oh yea "No Child Left Behind". It's a flawed program simply because psychology shows that some children simply do not have the aptitude to keep up with the rest of their peers. However, the program was not created with the help of socialogists or psychologists. It was fabricated by uninformed politicians. Therefore, it is failing. The public school system is failing because it is being run by people who have no clue what they are talking about and refuse to listen to scientific research dealing with development and learning.

So I don't know if that statement is true. This crap that the politicians fling around is not science. It is "popular science" that has been flung around so much it has become true. Global warming, Freudian psychiatry, the bird flu "epidemic" that never happened, and even that idiotic myth about humans only using 3 or 5 or 10% of their brains (if we didn't use 100% of our brains everyday we would die). It's all fabricated and pushed down our throats by the media and by the politicians, not scientists. Again, it is not science, it is popularized nonsense.

Fantastic video by the way. I especially like the way it reveals that these people who are clamoring about global warming are nothing more than religious-like fanatics who will label anyone that listens to modern science as heretics and trouble makers. I suppose those of us who pay more attention to the objective data and evidence offered by scientists, are the misinformed. Not of course the groupthinkers who buy into emotional ranting and hype.

[Ole Unka Phil]

Excellent post warbreak.

[MANN]

The temp on mars has also been increasing in the past decade. What does this mean? well maybe it is the sun.

Edit: Great find phil

[warbeak2099]

Excellent post warbreak.

Yay I win sum internets?

[Jonneh]

Reply to that documentary by a bunch of comedians.

Marcus Brigstocke is really really funny, he is a bit hippy mental, but still very very funny and for the most part pretty sensible.

[Pacifist_Farmer]

I actually watched that whole thing last night, I wish youtube allowed for a bigger viewing area.

I was very impressed, you could boil it down to about 30 min. by cutting the repeats, and dramatic shots, but it was good.

So we can blame Margaret Thatcher and the hippies for the global warming scare, one wanted absolute power in the British government, and the others just wanted people to pay attention to them.

Global warming is just like every other hot button issue that comes up, if any of us stopped to look at history, we would all change our priorities, and approach things in a more reasonable manner.

Thank you for posting that video link Phil.

[Ole Unka Phil]

Yes it is long. I believe they were atttempting to mimic the format of "Inconvienient truth" so hense the tidbits of great stuff are overly dramatized to an extent.

The real tidbits boil down to a couple of things:

Global warming has happened often and will repeatedly happen.

CO2 level is not the cause but a response to the cause. Which makes more sense. Warmer conditions result in naturaly higher levels of CO2 being produced. Which means they WOULD follow the trend of temperature fluctuations.

Increased solar activity direclty results in warmer periods. And happens to correlated exactly with Global Warming. All of them... from eons back. Directly affecting cloud formation and we happen to be in an increased period right now. Every Ham radio operator already knows that. And so do Solar astronomers. We follow the sunspot activity and its effects on Radio waves and we all know that effect is real and causing issues with long range communications. We also follow the "Space weather" forcasts pretty closely for this reason.

If we attribute CO2 to being the cause then we end up hurting a lot of people in developing countries without good reason. We actualy are killing people over this. They starve or die of disease while we encourage them not to develope their resources.

One thing for certain is that Global Warming does exist. But it has always existed. And it will persist for some time. And then it will revert whenever the Sun decides to calm for a period. We have no control over it. However if we invest tremedous amounts of money and sacrifice for this, eventualy it will cool. And then we will mistakenly assume it was the right thing to do. Fact is that at some point we probably will go into a mini ice age. And after all of this we will be inclined to believe we actualy affected that. Which will be wrong.

And lets remind ourselves that MANY scientists are in agreement that CO2 is not a cause but more of a result. We are being told differently. It appears to me that there is a greater consensus that we are being deliberately mislead. And these scientists are being persecuted for speaking out. Not only scientist but now Politicians are drinking the coolaid too. Because they feel they would look foolish to not go along with it. Thats not good for anyone to have a one way conversation on it. Nor to develop policy that kills people just so we all can feel warm and fuzzy like we are actualy doing something about it.

However... reducing demands on natural resources is a good thing. We should do that for many other reasons . But we can afford to do it here in America. We should not expect developing countries to do the same at this point. However we should help them develop effcient usages of their resources whereever we can. One world and we should all take care of it.

It is long but it is nessicary to view the entire thing. Because some of the stuff near the end is as important as the data presented as to the cause. Some of the results of the policies now being pushed are dangerous.

But lets quit fooling ourselves that we control the planet to that extent that we control the Sun. We are just along for the ride. And lets quit spending huge gobs of money on voodoo science and put it to better use. Lord knows we could save a lot of starving children in Africa with the money we are wasting on this nonsense.

[BobTheCow]

This crap that the politicians fling around is not science. It is "popular science" that has been flung around so much it has become true. Global warming, Freudian psychiatry, the bird flu "epidemic" that never happened, and even that idiotic myth about humans only using 3 or 5 or 10% of their brains (if we didn't use 100% of our brains everyday we would die). It's all fabricated and pushed down our throats by the media and by the politicians, not scientists. Again, it is not science, it is popularized nonsense.

I'm sorry, this part threw me for a bit of a loop. While few hold much stock in Freud's concept of psychosexual development, he paved the way for psychoanalysis as an effective form of therapy. His ideas on defense mechanisms, although far from comprehensive, were the first to have been developed, and much like psychotherapy, remain respected today.

Beyond that, how often are Freudian concepts thrown around in the political or public spectrum? While I agree with your criticism of No Child Left Behind, I fail to see how an attack on Freud is relevant or even correct.

[Mind'sEye]

There's no doubt that Freud established modern psychotherapy, but in attempting to explain ALL the mechanisms of the mind in one orderly system, he went well beyond his observations and the scientific data of his day. One could say Freud made things up to fill in the wide gaps in his knowledge. Today we have a greater understanding of development, environment, genetics and body chemistry, although much more remains a mystery. While most of Freud's ideas are not given creedence today, he (and his students Adler and Jung) stand as an example of the development of theory within an infant science. To that extent, there may be a comparison to modern climatology.