Ultimately, Gaia should evolve into a machine, with little or no distinction between so-called “organic” components and synthetic parts. The “Gaiasts” want the earth to be a giant fern. Not happening.

Thanks to MarkE and Mid for the link. What a cracking article.
It stitches together various trains of thought that I have had lately.
One being this God and Gaia nonsense.
If there is a God He/She is doing a piss poor job as 99% of all species of all life that has ever existed on this planet is already extinct.
Fuck up or favoritism?
Neither. Just cold hard rock that’s hurtling through the universe without a thought in its head-
And us clinging on to it as best we can.
In the face of the facts, we should be rowdy and raucus!
Do not go gently into that goodnight!
Cos the planet doesn’t care a bugger either way!

This is how the global warming debate generally progresses, with the two sides invoking ‘the science’ rather like divisions of Christians invoking the Bible.

But there is another way to approach this question, which is to look at the political circumstances in which climatic science is produced, a process that also has its own laws and patterns. It is strange, at a time when the social construction of science is an established idea (Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he describes science’s progress through ‘paradigms’, is on every undergraduate’s reading list) that nobody thinks to look at the social construction of global warming theories. Global warming science is being produced in highly febrile times; and history tells us that the more the political temperature rises, the more science’s view of nature is distorted.

Ho ho ho. How originally boorish. Were it not for an infinite amount of Jeremy Clarksons having done this kind of tedium to death already it might raise an avalanche of tittering.

So what? There is nothing tedious about it. I guess people like the author of that snide remark just cannot take the pressure of having their boilerplate flat-earth views set up for ridicule.

Expect more of this “tedium”.

I periodically ask about such measures as developing better flood defences suitable for those countries that are likely to suffer most, or crops that are better suited to a warmer climate, possibly including GM*. My contributions to such sites as the BBC’s “Have Your Say” are seldom published, yet I am a well brought up boy who seldom uses strong language and tries not to make personal attacks. I tend to look on this as evidence that those responsible do not want to discuss solution, just promote their own agendas. The proposal by Gore that climate change denial be made a crime equivalent to holocaust denial served only to reinforce this opinion for me.

None the less, I cannot persuade myself that gratuitously causing pollution could be deemed virtuous and I avoid doing it (I also pay my oown fuel bills, so that may be a consideration). Doesn’t stop me claiming to pollute more than I do to wind up the greens though.

*I read recently that the Italians were developing GM tomatoes capable of growing with less water in case of ACC causing droughts, and they had to do it in Texas, GM research being banned in the EU. Wish I could remember where I saw it.

[and what was Italian cooking like before the introduction of pasta in the 13th century, and the tomato in the 17th?]

The question is HOW MUCH warming.

The answer – as far as measurable facts are concerned, i.e. the warming so far: 2/3 of a degree C. No big deal.

As to the future – there are several possible answers; we (science) don’t know which is true:

1. A minuscule amount, that is indiscernible in the general natural climate variation (like what happened so far).
2. A small (but discernible) amount – a couple of degrees or so. This is what the (worthless) climate models show. This is what the IPCC report says.
This warming has positive and negative effects, and the negative ones are small, we can easily adapt.
3.Catastrophic warming. For this to happen a warming runaway feedback loop has to take hold. Of this there is absolutely no scientific indication.

So the alarmist view, of a catastrophic warming is based on nothing, NOTHING AT ALL, except irrational fear. The alarmists themselves concede this point: there is no scientific indication of a warming feedback loop. It is just a vague possibility, it is in theory possible, but there is absolutely no indication that it is happening.

Would it be desirable to reduce CO2 emissions? Yes. (Would it be desirable to eliminate poverty? Yes.) Is it possible? No. (in both cases).