Climate Change: The Facts - Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.:
"Climate Change: The Facts, featuring 22 essays on the science, politics and economics of the climate change debate.
I will post, occasionally, parts of this excellent book
1. The science and politics of climate change Ian Plimer We derive scientific evidence from measurement, observation, and experiment. Evidence must be repeatable and collected over and over again.
Computers do not generate evidence: they analyse evidence that should have been repeated and validated.
On the basis of the evidence and analysis of evidence, an explanation is given.
This explanation is a scientific theory and must be in accord with other validated evidence from diverse sources (this is known as the coherence criterion in science).
Unlike in law, there is no inadmissible evidence in science. Science is underpinned by practitioners who must be sceptical of the methodology used to collect evidence, the analysis of evidence, and the conclusions based on the evidence.
On the basis of new evidence, scientists must always be prepared to change their opinions.
Science bows to no authority, is not based on a consensus, and is in a constant state of flux.
No great advance in science has been made by consensus: advances have been made by individuals paddling upstream .
If a scientific theory is not in accord with validated evidence, then the theory must be abandoned and reconstructed . It is scepticism that underpins science, not the comfort of consensus.
The theory of human-induced global warming is not science because research is based on a pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored, and the analytical procedures are treated as evidence.
Furthermore, climate ‘science’ is sustained by government research grants.
Funds are not available to investigate theories that are not in accord with government ideology.
Many Western governments have a politically popular ideology that argues that:
i. There is an increase in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2) by human activities;
ii. The increased CO2, a greenhouse gas, will lead to ever increasing global warming;
iii. There will be tipping points, sea level rises, extinctions and ocean acidification;
iv. Climate change will be irreversible and that human emissions of CO2 must be reduced or stopped as soon as possible; and
v. In order to stop climate change, energy sources need to be shifted from coal, gas and oil to wind, solar, tidal and biomass.
i. There is an increase in emissions of carbon dioxide by human activities
Point (i) is correct.
These emissions derive mainly from the developing world and the understandable desire of its people to reach the same standard of living as the Western middle class .
It was coal in the Industrial Revolution that originally led to the rise of the middle class in the West.
Now the new industrial revolution in China, India and East Asia is causing the largest migration of humans that has ever occurred,
the rise of the middle class in these nations, and the use of steel and electricity, both of which derive from coal.
The very slight increase in atmospheric CO2 has led to a slight greening of the planet .
As all farmers know, CO2 is plant food and the emission of increasingly large amounts of CO2 by humans is good for life on Earth.
ii. The increased carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, will lead to ever increasing global warming Point (ii) has shown to be invalid on all time scales.
