I just had an argument with a close friend about this yesterday. He bought me coffee, then proceeded to read to me this text from the latest Paris Accord in a monotone voice, word for word: http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf
His wife was sitting next to him and looked about as bored as white bread. After listening to him drole on for about five minutes, and realising this document did not actually say anything, I proceeded to bring up my following opinions:
– That this current document and summit was as worthless as all those that had come before
– Nuclear power is the only viable green energy source, but there is stifling of technological advances and advances in safety in the field by lack of funding from investors and democratically elected governments.
– Coal power is the best and cheapest source of power we have, and it is not going to be replaced by any green technologies completely. On this point, green technologies can help with extra power demand when the baseload is exceeded, but it is pointless for when people use less power because as far as I have read coal power stations can not simply reduce or stop producing as much energy at any given moment with regard to demand.
– That story about an Indian village that got green power, and when they realised how terrible it was they rejected it and demanded real power. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2717149/Bihar-village-rejects-solar-powered-micro-grid-demands-real-electricity.html
– That global warming and climate change was being used as a grand diversion tactic that draws attention and people away from local activism and from forming local environmental protection movements in their communities. That these local activists and groups could potentially have the most power in stopping environmental pollution at a community level, and that carbon emissions is nothing in comparison to toxic dumping from industry.
– I had a personal conversation with a government-funded ice core data scientist once and upon asking him the question if he personally believed humans were causing climate change he only had one word for me – No. He was on the news that very evening in an interview and responded by saying something along the lines of human beings certainly were the major cause of climate change. This outlined how scientists have to keep good relationships with organisations that fund them, sometimes regardless of scientific fact or finding, and that this was in turn a sad bastardisation of science. He was very surprised that I considered something that was pro-global warming to be equatable to a bastardisation of science.
– After the last point, I inquired if he had any position on the hockey stick and Al Gore
At this point, before being able to answer, he was so infuriated that he began claiming that by my argument, I can not reputably claim any studies are legitimate because everyone is funded by someone, inevitably putting their research into a certain bias. Instead of being able to consider any scientific study AND through considering the bias analyse the constraints of the study to have a better understanding of the claims the study makes, he seems more comfortable with believing everything MSM, king obama, and all climate-orthodoxy scientists say. At the end, he was trying to suggest that we should continue this online, quoting only peer-reviewed studies. When I said peer-reviewed doesn’t mean jack s~~~, he had to be dragged away by his wife before he wasted more time and could come up with some kind of hard and fast rule for this back-and-forth.
I should also point out that this friend has a few unhealthy habits of the following:
– Pointing out that I am a slob, and if I would only read this book he has about cleaning and throwing out things that don’t bring happiness to me then I would be a better man. He also actively makes reproaches against my smoking of tobacco (which I have started again after taking the time to review this other example of scientific research confusing correlation with causation and not acknowledging issues with selection bias in the selection of subjects for research. Roll your own organic, all the way).
– Small white lies in conversation to make it seem like he knows more about a certain topic, and almost instantly inventing absurd comments to go along with what I say which might not be relevant. It makes me think he has a auto-responder set up in his mind for certain buzzwords.
So to me it sounds like he is employing this kind of lie in this conversation again, and actually hasn’t a clue about the possibility of science orthodoxy being wrong. Probably because he has not researched both viewpoints before and being a proud democrat has a vested interest in the political allegiances to his team. Regardless of all this, he is still funny and a good friend of mine, but this conversation really got me feeling rotten.
To be honest I would rather not have a conversation with him about this ever again, so even though my silence would be considered as me having a lack of scientific argument, I would prefer him to remain in his own bubble. But if he does keep persisting, I will try to use arguments against probability-based scientific claims, and quoting cases where climate scientists have been caught fabricating, cherry picking and manipulating data.
I think he now believes I am one of those climate denying people. I may need to adopt a “Don’t give a f~~~” attitude to all of this.
