The climate change debate

Education Scotland tells us that climate change features prominently within the experiences and outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence and has already "proven to be a popular theme for study and interdisciplinary learning in many schools..."

But they do admit that climate change is a controversial and political issue. "A sizeable proportion of the UK public remain sceptical about the scientific evidence used to support it...It is vital that our young people are equipped with the skills to think critically and question how the media reports climate change."

 https://youtu.be/oCtK0E50OLc

OK. Here`s an example of a piece of media manipulation that young people should be made aware of: Invite a climate change sceptic on to a TV panel, bring in a celebrity science spokesperson like Brian Cox and fill the audience with young climate alarmists to cheer him on - and never let the sceptic finish a sentence. That is what happened down under on the TV programme `Science Weak`.

Despite all of that Malcolm Roberts, the sceptic, stood his ground and wasn`t quite annihilated.

"The key moment making headlines from the Q & A `Science Weak` episode — Brian Cox shows a temperature graph.  Malcolm Roberts said the GISS temperature data has been `manipulated`. The Particle Physics Genius’ reply was argument from incredulity: gushing, gratuitous astonishment spread over six attempts to form a complete sentence:"

"By who? NASA? The people the… Hang on a minute. No, no, see this is quite serious. But can I just – just one thing. NASA, NASA… The people that landed men on the moon?"

I"n a blink of reductio ad absurdum Cox sweeps aside a potentially useful discussion about thermometers near car-parks, airports, skyscrapers, and mysterious 1,200 km homogenized smoothing. In its place he gives cheap theatrical tricks."

http://joannenova.com.au/2016/08/brian-cox-thinks-17000-employees-at-nasa-always-produce-perfect-graphs-nasa-employees-disagree-who-to-believe/

Brian`s other big mistake was to talk about consensus. As one commenter on Watts Up With That has written:

"Genuine science bows to no authority, Brian, and it is not based on consensus; that’s the job of politics. Advances in science are not made by consensus: advances are made by the brave paddling upstream. If a theory does not agree with validated evidence, then the theory must [be] abandoned and reconstructed. If the predictions, projections, scenarios, or whatever you want to call them are wrong, the science is wrong. It’s scepticism that underpins science, not the cosy comfort of consensus."

"The house of climate cards will eventually collapse, but until then, the world’s poorest people – the ones Cox and his ilk claim to champion – will be denied life saving energy and continue to die in their millions. If Cox wasn’t a watermelon, he would be celebrating the lack of climate sensitivity*. But his is. So he won’t. "
　

 

*sensitivity to increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere