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Someone took their employer to court claiming unfair dismissal resulting from their beliefs about AGW. The claimant said it was about philosophical beliefs, the employers argued that this is an issue of science, not belief – the claimant won.

I find it so sad that someone would choose to live a life based on something they don’t actually understand, relying solely on assumption, bias and ignorance (and absolute trust in those who have conflicted interests).

I guess the next step is labelling as heretics those who have reason to not accept the arguments of the significance of man-made factors driving climate change … oh wait, they already labelled 'climate change deniers'



What a contrast from those who are sacked because the data from their transparent scientific methods and their logically irrefutable conclusions/perspective (not beliefs) doesn’t tally with political agenda.

This could go a long way to explaining why there are so few funded studies supporting the notion that anthropological activities don’t significantly affecting the climate.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

To compare belief in AGW with belief in the world's major religions is fatuous as the moral sense of whole civilisations is based on the latter spiritual frameworks.

Just because you sincerely believe in something doesn't make it factually correct or worthy of deference by others.

P.S. I am a non-believer.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

So does this this mean Next time someone hits me with a green tax, I can demand that they not force their beliefs onto me and quote them that ruling.

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nigel_bytes

The essence of a religious belief system is that it relies on just that - belief - and cannot be proved or disproved by science or other means.

I am unsure if AGW passes this test. The climate change supporters seem to think that the science proves that they are right. If so, then their views cannot be classed as equivalent to religion as no abstract belief is required. On the other side of the argument, sensible people (we will call these "deniers" for short) do not think anything has been proved. Thus, their sincerely held belief that AGW is rubbish is more akin to a religion and should be accorded the appropriate protections in law.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

No the reason that there are so few such studies is for the same reason that there are no funded studies studies establish whether the Earth is flat.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I'd just prefer scientific studies which have no preconceived or preordained outcomes.

There are, of course funded geodetic surveys which measure the shape of the earth.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Which start out with the preconceived notion that the Earth is approximately spherical. You would prefer them to waste time and money considering the options that the Earth is: flat, toroidal, saddle shaped, the interior of a sphere. Despite the fact that the overwhelming evidence and consensus of opinion that the Earth is indeed spherical (ish)

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

The laywer does make an interesting, and valid, point.

His lawyer has got his thinking backwards and the ruling should have gone against them.

The more evidence there is which supports your views, the less legal protection you need against prejudice and discrimination because you have the means to argue (and prove) that you are correct.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

You still need protection from idiot bosses even if what you arguing is well known and indisputably true.

For example I once had a run in with a former boss after my company car (a sporty front-biassed 4WD car) had a puncture on one side of the front axle. I wanted to replace both tyres on the same axle with a type similar to the existing tyres. He wanted to replace just the punctured tyre and with the cheapest nastiest tyre he could find. I told him if he did that I wasn't going to be driving that car anywhere, he said if I was refusing to do my job I'd be sacked.

In the end I took it to his boss who was a car nutter and agreed that having 3 part worn Dunlop SP-9000s and one brand new Linglong was retarded and would lead to an accident and that I should get two SP-9000s to replace it. This is common sense, well known and well proven, but I was still going to be sacked over it thanks to an idiot boss, until the upper management intervened.

In this particular case the top level management were the ones doing the sacking so he didn't enjoy that extra layer of protection. Sure his views are less provable than my views on the above issue but in both cases we still need protection if someone is at risk of being sacked for taking action based on those views.

In your case, you were not going to be sacked for your philosophical beliefs and you were the one arguing that it was an issue of science (well, automotive engineering) and safety. You won and so should the company in the case in point.

I agree that there are stupid and intransigent bosses (and workers, come to that) but the law should not protect any old "sincerely held beliefs". Suppose I sincerely believe that I should have every Wednesday off and my boss disciplines me for non-attendance. Whose side are you on?

The answer is that it comes down to reasonableness. You are a salesman and the company gives you a car to visit customers. Due to your own belief in AGW, you refuse to drive and go by bike instead. You fail to visit sufficient customers and you are disciplined/fired. Would it be reasonable for the law to protect you?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I was not aware that the basic shape of the Earth was subject to large scale changes due to very small changes in the prevailing conditions. As observable roughly Earth sized celestial bodies do all appear to follow a near spherical format there is little evidence that alternative layouts are worth examining. Then again perhaps we should stop commercial mining and domestically landscaping our gardens just in case this could cause the planet to turn into a cuboid. We also know that the magnetic field poles have reversed a number of times in the past so generating magnetic fields could be dangerous, all it might take is too many runs of the Large Hadron Collider!

Joking aside, your answer is rather telling in that it implies you accept that studies into climate change are carried out with a preconceived bias towards the conclusion in order to secure funding. This is true of course, however it is hardly good science. I do think man is having some effect on the climate, you only have to look at how cities and deforestation can affect local weather patterns or the ozone depletion due to CFCs, however I remain to be convinced that human contributions to green house gases are a significant driver for climate change or that just cutting co2 emissions is the answer. I think we should be conserving resources and looking at more sustainable ways of generating the energy we need, what concerns me is the backlash against tax based environmentalism justified by ever increasingly doom laden climate change studies, when it comes, will set true environmental causes back by years.

I wonder if not believing in AGW would make being taxed for it against our human rights?

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

- All the data we have points the earth being spherical; no one has disputed that data.
- We all have means of observing, documenting and broadcasting data to the contrary and have had those means for a long time – yet there is no such data showing the planet is flat, not even a hint of it.
- A flat (or disc like) planet is extremely easy to prove, we don't need much funding to do that.
- All our experience points to the earth being spherical (we can't see France, nor the 'sinking' ships sailing towards it). Everyone can see that all other lunar bodies within visible range are spherical.
- The only workable scientific model is a spherical planet.
- There are no good arguments showing why the planet could be flat; there are undisputed arguments why the planet must be spherical.
- Practically everybody accepts the planet is spherical (>>99.9%).

Now for AGW:
- Possibly half this country are sceptics (certainly much more than 0.1% anyway)
- The latest data we have suggests (to some that) the planet is cooling.
- History shows the planet experienced deep and prolonged ice ages even with many times more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is now (which no one has disputed).
- Our (unbiased) experience doesn't guide us either way.
- Many of those who drive the pro argument have very strong conflicts of interest (tax, funding).
- There are compelling arguments showing why human activities aren't a significant driver of the climate.

Even you've advocated acting on AGW as a 'precautionary' measure - which is more or less an admission that we don't actually know what is going on with AGW. I can only assume that you [Senior Experimental Officer at Jodrell Bank Observatory] do not have a similar level of doubt that the earth is round - right?

Comparing AGW scepticism with flat-earth belief is highly disingenuous. For everyone else who has taken the time to understand the basic scientific principles, there cannot be a comparison - especially with the conflicts of interest.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

And more of the scam unravels,
Some large-scale computer simulations may be overestimating the impact of climate change on biodiversity in some regions, researchers have suggested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8344969.stm

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nigel_bytes

This short report finishes with a statement about migration of species.

It has always seemed silly to me that the environmental scaremongers say that lots of species will die out if the temperature warms by a slight amount. Surely these "at-risk" species will just migrate slightly North or South to match their previous average temperature.

Just moving from Dorset to Shropshire should do for a degree or two.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

What rattles my cage about the global warming thing is this....

The tax on a tank full of fuel for my car cost about 11% of my basic pre tax weekly wage. Which is harsh. This week the heavy tax on fuel is to save the planet from CO2. But all it does is hammer the majority of people in the middle and below on the income scale. While you and I have to think twice if we really need to buy a cheap commodity for an expensive price, is a professional footballer going to worry whether a litre of petrol is £1 or £5?

If this AGw is serious, then limit the amount of energy an individual can use, not on price, but a physical limit. Everyone gets a card with X litres of road fuel, Y KW/hrs of electricity and Z thingumies of gas. End of.

As it is, I will have to walk everywhere in the name of saving the plant, to make way for rich people, that have probably lost all the money from my pension and ISA

Ha ha!

I can see a few little snags with this. Poll tax comes to mind.

One allowance for the little old lady on her own in her large family home. One allowance each for the family with 6 grown up children living in a similar place next door.

If your company pays for your fuel this doesn't count towards your allowance while your neighbour has to pay for himself and gets penalised?

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

No. I don't accept a preconceived bias. What you deniers see as bias is actually the acceptance of a large body of existing research which it would be ridiculous to repeat. The idea that respected and respectable scientists will fudge their results in order to obtain funding is outrageous. The naysayers on AWG are promoting a much more palatable theory and one would expect them to attract massive funding both from government (Whose bedrock economic model is threatened by AWG) and the oil industry (who would suffer massive financial loss) The fact that this funding is not forthcoming strongly suggests that there is insufficient evidence to warrant it.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

Whilst just moving to a higher latitude would solve the temperature problem it would introduce a whole raft of problems because of the other changes in the habitat. A creature that is happy on the Dorset beach wouldn't thrive on the Wrekin.

Plant species, especially food crops, are generally specific to both temperature and day length so moving them wouldn't work

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

That's a good way to start. Can you understand the difference between ‘denying’ and ‘not accepting’?
Is this going to be another of those threads...


There's getting the same people to repeat what they did, and there's getting different people to ensure reproducibility; did you know that reproducibility is a fundamental scientific principle?

Don’t forget, AGW modellers don’t deal with raw data; all their data is processed, hence open to interpretation. Also, they generate models of the climate, again open to interpretation. The very least they could do is broadcast their raw data (say on a website), state what they did to process that data, state the model they used and explain why they decided upon that model.
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, and all that!


Hwang Woo-suk completely agrees with you.
Your statement has used the conclusion as the conclusion (if P then P) It seems you’ve assumed all the AGW climate modellers (I wouldn’t call them scientists, especially with they way they conduct themselves) are all respected and respectable.
No raw data, no respect. No explanation of model, no respect.


To who exactly? Those who get to keep their ‘green’ jobs, secure their funding, find a reason to suck more tax, or simply just wield more political influence?


Wait a minute, that cannot make sense. Surely you need funding in order to gather evidence, no? Surely the ‘palatable theory’ is enough to secure some level of funding?
The oil industry has an extremely obvious and strong conflict of interest (they make a good case even so), so few will trust them. They might be able to make an extremely compelling case if they could get access to those climate models, as well as the data used within them ....

However, the oil industry will keep going regardless: 'tax it more, not ending it'; 'reserving it'.


Remember, this planet repeatedly plunged into deep and prolonged ice ages when the level of CO2 was many times higher than now. Those who cannot reconcile this with our current ‘tipping point’ of global warming simply cannot be in a position to make any such far reaching claims of the effects of CO2 on the climate.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign