Safe Speed Forums

From here for the following petition: "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop claiming that there is consensus on climate change."



Golden rule for answering questions when you're a "not altogether honest" politician: if you don't want to answer a question truthfully, answer a different question instead.

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

There is pretty much universal agreement on the issue. The only disagreement seems to come from American cynics who wouldn't want anything to harm their precious economy. We can see it all around us, look at the increases in extreme weather (notably flooding in UK) in recent years, which is highly likely to be linked to rising temperature.

I'm not part of the Congestion Charge, get the world on buses (which I delightfully like to call peasant wagons ) lobby, but something needs to be done.

Oh, I think there are plenty of global warming sceptics in the UK.

Many of us will have seen the recent Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle and there's a chapter devoted to the climate change issue in the recent Christopher Booker and Richard North book Scared to Death which also prominently featured Paul's work.

Also see Professor Philip Stott's blog here.

A sceptic, of course, is not necessarily a "denier" but what Paul Smith did should teach us all not to accept the received wisdom at face value.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Why is it, if there is so much agreement, that almost everyone I know thinks blaming human activity is all scary rubbish designed to increase taxation and control of people?

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

Because, like the vast majority of people, they don't have the knowledge or experience to be able to evaluate the science behind the issue and are simply believing what they want to believe?

I think it's because of several reasons:

- They have not accepted the received wisdom from the BBC and the Government and gone out to find their own sources and opinions
- They have an well founded distrust of the political (non-scientific) motives behind all the hysteria
- They have learned the lesson of history that today's fad is tomorrow's laughed-at mistaken dead end.

I, of course, take a different position. I am confident that the new generation of students, armed with their much superior exam. results and intellects than mine, will easily come up with a solution to climate change in the next few years.

Still, if all else fails, I'll be dead before it makes any real difference.

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

Exactly, they believe what they want to believe.

The fact that science and politicians have got things wrong in the past, doesn't mean they are wrong about this. As none of us have the time or capacity to study the issue for ourselves we are forced to accept whichever version best suits our own agenda. And lets be honest, that is the bottom line isn't it? People don't want to believe the AGW thing because they fear it means they will be forced to change their lifestyle in some way.

Some, maybe, but most don't believe in it because the science supposedly backing it is junk.


This applies equally to supporters as "deniers" of AGW. They too are believing what they want to believe.

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

Uh oh, argument circle developing, this is back to where we started . How exactly do they know the science is junk? They don't do they? Nor do I. Do you know? And by know I mean really know, not just suspect?

Supposing AGW was reported to be a good thing and that we were all to get to buy cheap gas guzzling cars and cheap fuel to encourage it! Wonder what people would choose to believe then




It does, because they too have no way of evaluating the evidence for themselves.

Rigpig, I think you are wrong in assuming people believe whatever suits them best.

I lead a relatively economical life as it is now, I walk when I can, I take the train, I turn off lights/appliances, I drive a relatively economical car (not that often), I work from home most days and i'm all for renewable energy where it makes sense.

I don't believe the man-made global warming (or climate change, now that they've changed their minds and decided it could get hotter, it could get colder.. they just dont know) not because I don't WANT to believe it - but because whenever you look into those arguing for it a little digging reveals vested intrests.

When you look at what politicians can gain from it, it's no surprise they back it. Every bit of major 'evidence' for man-made climate change has been disproved by the opposition, whereas those making a stance saying climate change is not related to us don't get disproved. They just get ignored, the other side have the press on side, and the press tend not to go with those not supporting the theory of man-made climate change.

When you look at the way their theories, predictions and reports have changed simply within the last 10 years - from a little bad, to awful, to calming down [the whole hockey stick thing], to getting worse, to 'climate change' from 'global warming' - you should surely realise they really don't know what's going on, they can't predict what is going to happen in 20 years, they can't predict what is going to happen next week - often they can't even get what HAS happened in the past correct (see the amount of differing opinions on past-temperatures due to different ways of reading them).

What is a fact is we simply don't know - neither side can be 100% sure, but one side is made to look evil, whilst the others saints. One side is far more convincing and apparently honest in their objectives, the other always has dirty things going on in the background.

One side suggests the evolution of man-kind and technology through concerted effort and a general desire to improve quality of life, the other seeks to oppress and fine in order to achieve it's aims.

I can programme a model into my computer at work .. which tell us that if we do not find "cure" to some disease or other .. end of world ist nigh within my lifetime.

If I programme this differently I get a far different outcome. Peer reviews do accept that computers only do as programmed to do.

Idiots und scare merchants will seize the spin und whip it up to achieve whatever their hidden agenda

Ja.. am a cynic. I do not accept anything without having some proof. Paul could present his arguments with logic und the peer review as I said to Ern in off-forum chat - ist the one of the average chap who live in the real world out there.. living the reality .. not the "model" or placebo of suggestion

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Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
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That is the only part of your post I agree with mate. Because for sure, nobody can be absolutely certain one way or the other; it is 'best guessology'. And if thats the case with global climatologists, what hope do the rest of us have except choosing to accept one version of events or another.

But as for the rest, I remain confident that people will believe what they want to believe for their own reasons. Not everyone bothers to run any sort of mental analysis as you have done, most can't be bothered. Others wouldn't necessarily admit they disbelieve AGW theory for selfish reasons.
I can't prove that of course, its a hunch.

Similarly, those who believe the climate change sceptics may just be right. The thing is, they don't know for sure why they are right.

On another forum I have as my signature:

"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism." (Vaclav Klaus, Czech President)

There may well be some truth in the idea that man-made emissions have contributed to climate change. And, given that oil resources are finite, it makes sense for us not to be profligate in our use of oil. But what annoys me is the way all kinds of zealots and interfering busybodies seem to use "global warming" as an excuse to seek to restrict human freedom in so many ways.

You have to drive tiny, slow cars (if you drive a car at all), you can't fly on holiday, you can't buy certain types of lightbulbs etc.

I think many of the types of people who were dismayed by the fall of Communism have taken up eco-fascism as an alternative totalitarian creed.

And, incidentally, I haven't taken a leisure flight for twenty years.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

True - most people don't analyse the situation much - they hear on TV/Read in the paper and make up their mind based on that - I know people who seem to change their mind depending on what has been said in their favoured news source

Ironically I think it's possibly because I work from home, and therefore get more free time, that I look into these things in more detail than most which has lead me to be untrusting of those supporting AGW. My more enviro friendly way of working, has caused me to distrust those trying to make people more enviro friendly!

Well I have to admit that my own confusion on the issue is caused by the fact that both sides are capable of couching a convincing argument. I am frustrated by my own inability to make a reasoned and calculated decision as to which version is most credible.

I do know that apocalyptic predictions of population overload and resource depletion have never so far come true, which does rather suggest to me that, based on experience, the current apocalyptic predictions of the possible effects of "global warming" are at best much overdone.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

True, the evalgalists don't help. This, one way or the other, is a very important issue and it cannot be handled in a way that is going to turn people off.



Means nothing. Just because predicitions have been wrong before doesn't mean this one is wrong. It has been previously declared, against suggestions otherwise, that man would never fly, nor reach the moon nor build computers small enough for us all to own one etc etc etc. All of those have happened.

Different kind of prediction. I'm talking about the "we're doomed" type of prediction. In the early 1800s, Thomas Malthus predicted that the Earth's population would soon outstrip its agricultural productivity. It didn't happen, and we have 6 times as many people today.

In the 1970s, it was widely predicted that by now we would have run out of oil. We currently have more declared reserves than in 1973.

If these predictions are *never* right, it's a strong indication that the current ones won't be, either.

But whatever happened to the individual jetpack and the two-day working week?

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

two-day working week? called self employment

Ignoring science for a moment, the government's solution to all global warming / climate change problems is that we should pay them. That's rather put me off the idea.

I would guess that humans are having an effect on the climate. But how much an effect I have no idea. Could be quite big, could be quite tiny.

Whether or not human activity is having a bad effect think that it is quite important not to waste energy.

Of course then you have to define "waste" because I have been told that energy can't be created or destroyed so pure "waste" isn't possible. It's usually heat. And in an insulated house in the UK at this time of year, is heat a waste?

The lack of purely logical science and the abundance of "global warming/climate change is/is not happening and you must accept that because I say so!!" is getting quite boring and helps nobody.

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Andrew.