Political Correctness

 Can you explain?

Reb has a point, as regards England anyway. We have, some would say, an immigration problem. Only one view point is ever discussed by main-stream politicians. the "Crazies" are left to voice the concerns of the silent majority.

The reason for this polarization is political correctness... "serious people" no longer have the balls to say what they think. The media is, of course, the real reason we're are all so disenfranchised... any contrary opinion is vilified and backed-up with personal attacks.

England is a country. The United Kingdom is composed of four Countries. I think you should leave your geography teacher's hat at home! I find your ignorance on this matter absolutely startling. Hence, I include for your education:

England (pronounced IPA: /ˈɪŋglənd/) (Old English: Englaland, Middle English: Engelond) is the largest and most populous constituent country^[1][2] of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Incredible!!

A major problem we have in the global warming debate is that footnotes have fallen out of fashion. It used to be that when we said "the evidence shows ____" there was a note that said exactly what that evidence was and where to find it, so that everything was done logically and scientifically. Ah, those were the days...

What it comes down to, though, is not to ask if we are the problem. It is to ask if we are the solution. 

So, because England fails to meet the criteria of one definition, it no longer has the right to call itself a country. Complete bunkum! The United kingdom is not a country. The four countries that comprise the Union are, in their own right, countries. The reason you have difficulties understanding this is baffling! Is this an American thing or just you and your crazy mates? Try telling 50-odd million Englishmen that they no longer have a country on somebody elses say so. Get real!

There are very few truly independent countries in Europe, most are bound by European Law. They remain countries nonetheless. What's next? rewriting the past to suit a distant power's perception of it? Perhaps, in the future we'll all be communicating in United-kingdomish? ( or American Language?).

I'd settle for that... England is only a province and the USA becomes SWFPbC&M!

Equally plausible. Game drawn by way of stalemate, I think. 

"1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct."      I agree that that alone cannot be considered solid evidence of globale warming.

" 2. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years. "      I think I know what you meant by "lagged," but I'm not sure.  I think that if the heat is really high, and the CO2 isn't that high, but they still line up most of the time, then maybe that means that the effects of CO2 are more intense than we thought.  If you mean that CO2 went up, then 800-2000 years, later, heat went up, do you expect any measurement over 100,000 years old to be accurate?

"3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming. "      I agree that it isn't possible to attribute one-time events to global warming, but the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season killed almost 20 people, displaced tens of thousands, and cost about 500 million USD in damages. 

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/11/29/hurricane.season.ender/index.html 

"6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility. "   First of all, it never claims the Gulf Stream will stop, it just says that all of the melting glaciers will put a few million gallons of freezing cold water in it.  Think about this, if you put ice in a glass of warm water, what happens?  Duh, the water cools down.  If you put a lot of ice in even a fairly large glass, the water will really cool down.  Picture that happening with the Gulf Stream.  The East coast of America and the coast of Europe will drop a couple degress.

"8. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia."        Is that really what the evidence says?  Greenland won't melt for millennia.  Strange, I could have sworn that was the idea around 30 years ago, along with the fact that man's never been on the Moon and that the Holocaust never happened.  Greenland wouldn't melt for millenia if humans weren't here.  Guess what?  We are, and we're killing the Earth.

"9. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing. "  Where are you getting your evidence?  Show me a source and I'll show you a misguided experiment.

"10. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.  "     Again, that was the idea 30 or so years ago.  Today, we have better measurements.

I   agree with #11 - I haven't heard anything about that either.  Most of the rest of your points, however, are pretty much from either old experiments, or (sorry I have to bring it in) a religious point of view.  I don't know how much of England's government is ruled by religion, but I do know that the American government has almost nothing to do with religion.  (Not to say we don't believe in anything, we just don't go to the Bible for all of our law-making decisions.)  Many religious person I know refutes global warming with ridiculous statements.  I'm not saying religious people are stupid, because I am religious, I'm just saying it's no use denying what's happening today with a book that's 2000 years old.  

Well, to reluctantly join in- the film, as I recall (and there is some chance that I don't remember that part right), correctly mentioned not the gulf stream but a larger system that spans pretty much the whole globe, excepting only the east Pacific. Cold, salty water sinks to the ocean floor in the North Atlantic and moves around the globe bringing that cool water to warm climates, where it rises again and flows back in conveyor-belt fashion according to Japanese researchers. This apparently acts as a regulator that keeps warm areas cooler and cold areas warmer.

If the water is not cold or salty enough, it stops sinking and the conveyor shuts down. The last time this happened, the Ice Age was ending, and a sudden flood of fresh water from melted glaciers diluted the North Atlantic water, it stopped sinking and the Ice Age went into a relapse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7015723.stm

There has been a lot of controversy about English schools showing Al Gores film, a judge recently ruled that despite the scientific inaccuracies of the movie, it still could be shown to pupils in the context of a balanced debate.

The judge assorted a panel of neutral experts, and asked them to deliberate on the ambigous facts. 

http://article.wn.com/view/2007/10/10/Gore_climate_films_nine_errors/

Alarmism makes a tidy profit for the media, that is the nature of the beast!

The more worried people are, the more they seek information about their impending doom.

The film itself, is unashamedly biased; Gore is just a name to sell a brand

 Come on, I'll repeat it again, the alarming thing is not that's it's warming up, it's the SPEED at which it is warming up, not leaving the environnement adapt quick enough (flora has a migration rate that is however very slow, for example).

"C. the recent (1990) surge in global "warming" occurred concurrent with many temperature recording sites in the Artic/Siberian areas going OFFLINE concurrent with the demise and disintegration of the Soviet Union.Oh! So global warming is only caused by the fact that they opened one in Sahara and closed one in Alaska and didn't take it into consideration? All this for such a silly mistake! Come one, your argument has nothing to do with the actual way they collect the data.

And do you think american scientists had access to Soviet data? Or the inverse? And the surge goes farther back than 1990, it's just that it's getting faster and faster but the beginning of the surge coincides with the beginning of industrial revolutions.

Maybe you shouldn't take everything for granted in a book with such a title and, does the book tells it's sources, for example? Are they reliable sources? Is the book peer-reviewed and are it's sources peer-reviewed? Or is it just a polemic book trying to sell by being original and bringing "proofs" to people who are too ready to believe it since they want to believe it and lack any arguments elsewhere? But of course, I guess you know better than the scientifical world who is in quite a concensus (even american government scientists have finally admitted few years ago that the Earth was warming up, a thing that they denied before). The "opposition" to global warming is getting fewer and fewer in the scientifical world, but of course it's probably just a conspiration, ah those scientists...

Ahem..

And whatare you leading to?

a) There is some alarmist, therefore global warming is a myth?

b) There is some alarmists who exagerate or offer dubious information for whatever reasons, like in everything, and that one should not take every scrap of information he hears or read for granted until sufficient support has been provided, but of course that doesn't change anything to the fact that serious publications and concrete data confirms that there is a global warming and that most of the serious previsible scenario-theories aren't that nice?

I'd vote for b, personally, but I'm not sure what you meant. 

Noneoftheabove, you dont seem to have understood the context of my previous postings

My point is that, there are a lot of people out there (evidently yourself included), that are unable or unwilling to countenance alternative "scenario-theories"

The scientific concensus is not always accurately portrayed in the media, (especially those media with profit-driven agendas), then you get people jumping on the bandwagon, those people take to the cause wholeheartedly, even entering into epic conversations about it, proud of their new-found knowledge. 

For these people, the stakes are high (or to use a poker analogy, they are pot-committed). There is no turning back, to contradict any part of their previous diatribe would make them look quite foolish.