Government funds anti-science name-calling crowd: “deniers”, skeptics are old “will be gone soon”

There’s a mindset, a world view here that’s profoundly unreal, anti-science, and of course, fully funded by the Taxpayer from start to end (how could it be any other way?).

From the researcher who holds childish assumptions and misunderstands his own results, to the site that posts it all as if it were “higher thought”, to the trained communicator of science who then parrots the mistakes and insults half the population at the same time. Cheers! Private money couldn’t fund a satire likeThe Conversation”. (Well, it could if it were funny.)

The Conversation recall was funded with $6 million.

Stephan continues his war on science

Lewandowsky’s bread and butter stuff is breaking the central tenet of science — namely, that evidence is more important than opinions. His mission (though I don’t think he’s aware of it) appears to be to return us to pre-Enlightenment days when Bishops controlled the public conversation. In this post-post-modern era, some things are so post they’re posterior — some parts of science are returning to unscience.  This “science” is not about your data or reasoning, and not about your results — it’s about your ability to get a grant, a title, a university badge. Only certified practitioners of government authorized climate science grants are counted. On the gravy train, your opinion about the weather is bestowed with gravitas. In the old days, you had to make good predictions to earn respect, now dollars buys the substitute “authority” (case in point — S. Lewandowsky whose name is on $1.7m of recent grants, but virtually can’t speak without breaking a law of reason).

The big discovery this week for Lewandowsky is that the public “underestimate the level of scientific agreement” on climate science.

The “dumb” punters are sending a message to him in his research. In the real world there are independent scientists and government-dependent scientists, but Lewandowsky’s World has only the government kind and the “deniers”. This name-calling cripples his thinking (ain’t that the way?) The ritual name-calling hurts the tosser.  Try this theory on instead: perhaps the public are aware that “scientists” as a group can’t predict the climate yet? So Stephan asks them if there is a consensus, they say “No”, correctly. But Lewandowsky, blind to their wisdom, instead thinks that they don’t realize there is a consensus among his hallowed Bishops of Science — the government funded climate scientists. So half the public see through the propaganda. The prof marks them “wrong”.

The fools in the street are a step ahead of the prof. At least  31,500 scientists have put their names up to disagree with the IPCC, and readers here know the drill, there are 9,000 PhD’s and professors of real science (like meteorology). We can also name 2 Nobel Prizes in physics, and 4 NASA Astronauts. Of course, that doesn’t mean skeptics are right, but it means there is no consensus.

Underlying the prof’s assumptions that peer review always works, government scientists are right and independent scientists are mentally incompetent “deniers” or outright liars, is a kind of quaint delusion of his that unlike every other human endeavor, “Science” is free of corruption, and untainted by human ambition, networking or personality defect. In his mind, the peer review process could not be skewed by mass one sided funding, the granting bodies are pure and unbiased, and dedicated scientists work just as hard to prove their ideas wrong as they do to prove them right.  While independent scientists are tacky shills and zealots, government scientists are a breed above. They — the chosen ones — are immune even to the relentless campaign to denigrate “unbelievers” as old nutters bound-for-nursing-homes who squander their grandchildren’s future and pander to Phillip Morris while believing SARS was deliberate, 911 was an inside job and NASA faked that moment on the moon. If the chosen ones could just find evidence to show CO2 has no effect, they would publish it with joy (even knowing that they’ll be exorcised from the tea-room). Climate-angels fear not a fall from grace, to go from being a scientist to a denier. All the same,  Lewandowsky is on the border patrol with a bullies team yelling names at the scientists who left the religion. It’s a message the scientists can’t miss.

Now I’m not for a minute saying that government funded scientists are wrong because they are government funded. That would be an ad hom. Some are right and some are wrong, but it depends on their arguments and their evidence. (And this is what I mean by evidence.) What Stephan is doing, is his damnedest to stop that discussion about evidence from starting. Sure, if you pre-load a questionnaire with a statement that 97% of scientists tell you to eat cornflakes, then survey participants know which answer you want them to give. It doesn’t change a thing about that person’s belief about the power of a tax to change the weather.

Skeptics will be dead soon

This next quote tells you all you need to know about the philosophical depth of Science Communication in Australia. Skeptics are wrong because they want …evidence (the sods!) but it’s ok, they’re old and they’ll die soon. I don’t think Will Grant has thought too hard about this. (This ANU unit, by the way, is one where I once studied and worked. Sigh.)

Will J Grant from the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University said it was an interesting and useful study.

“We can say people are convinced by the consensus but the big caveat is sceptics and climate change sceptics in particular are never going to be convinced by this,” he said. “They will say science doesn’t work by vote, it’s about facts.”

“Realistically, though, most of those sceptics are of an older generation. We are never going to convince them but they will be disappearing from the political discourse soon.”

I’m guessing he doesn’t know a skeptic either.

If Grant accepts the deniers label, it figures the “old folks” just never got it and never will. But it’s tricky explaining the rise in skeptics since 2008, it’s like 30% of the population just suddenly got old.

Could it be a virus?

 …  and can I get a grant to study that?

Dear Will, the old folks are the wise ones.  A long time ago some were young and gullible.

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268 comments to Government funds anti-science name-calling crowd: “deniers”, skeptics are old “will be gone soon”

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    The executive summary of this assessment is that all that’s currently happening, is the propaganda is mainly funneling in our direction and because of the gradual shutting down of mainstream outlets, not getting out to the vast majority of the populace. On the occasions it does, it’s such a badly formed and inappropriate message, it’s actually contra-productive.

    http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/an-assessment-of-current-alarmist-propaganda/

    It’s interesting that so much of their propaganda firepower is aimed at us skeptics, when it’s actually the wider public, who’re giving less and less credance to global warming. Joe public no longer cares about it and the more extreme the propaganada becomes, the more it’ll be ignored. So far, they’re running true to prediction.

    Pointman

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      Mindert Eiting

      So it is, Pointman. Perhaps nobody noticed it, but in The Netherlands the Green Party is actually dead. They now have the size of a fringe sect. Almost no people here are interested in their program anymore. Even my Green friends think that AGW is a hoax. What’s happening here may happen elsewhere.

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        Mark

        Hey there Mindert.

        Well I can tell you that I noticed it. Also the great Green extinction in Ireland. Here in Oz we have seen a steadily reducing Green vote. We recently had an election in the Australian Capital Territory. It’s where our Federal Government is based. Greens went from four seats to one.

        It’s difficult to fathom the German love affair with the Green despots. One thing is certain; when the fat lady sings in Germany it really will be all over red rover.

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    Betapug

    US President Eisenhower in 1961:

    ..”a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”

    “Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

    From his farewell address containing the often mentioned “military industrial complex” quote, the never mentioned sections on the inherent dangers of government funded and directed research and deficit spending are startling in their prescience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenhower's_farewell_address

    You have to wonder at the way the real life responsibility leading in WWll, with it’s direct consequences in the life and death of thousands shaped his thinking, contrasted with sitting at a computer screen running endless speculative modelling exercises 400 years into a “virtual” future. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/wigley/magicc/

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    I suppose the “up” side to all of this is the name-calling, throw-more-money-at-it approach hasn’t worked well for much of anything, so it seems likely it will fail here also. Environmentalists have always believed intimidation was the way to go, and gathering huge sums of money, thinking everyone has their “life is about money” philosophy. They pretend to not want money and power (that’s the job of the evil oil companies) so you won’t notice they are all about money and power. Over time, the layers get peeled back and the lies and deceptions are revealed. Their answer? More money and name-calling. A self-defeating response most definitely.

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      Joe V.

      Environmentalists have always believed intimidation was the way to go, and gathering huge sums of money, thinking everyone has their “life is about money” philosophy

      It’s a great pity Environmentalists have come to be seen in such a way. Thats not any real Environmentalists I know, who are usually gentle & caring types.
      We have to be careful not to tar them with the same brush as the Leftie politicians , who have jumped on their bandwagon, opportunists that they are.

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    manfred

    “Realistically, though, most of those sceptics are of an older generation. We are never going to convince them but they will be disappearing from the political discourse soon.”

    The ageist Babylonian arrogance of Will Grant at ANU publicly demonstrates the abject and disgusting bias required to maintain the climate science funding spigot. One wonders whether as a younger man he may have desired his parents dead when they disagreed with his world view?

    And the evidence for his various statements? Unbelievable that individuals such as this wind up at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. In a single handed manner he is guaranteeing a widening gulf between science and the public, the latter realising only too well when they are being expensively ‘had’.

    He articulates the extreme ‘Green’ approach – dismissing senior generations on the basis that they not only won’t be around to contest this toxic brand of communitarian totalitarianism, and that the younger generation are too stupid to see it.

    He walks the perilous road of a fool and proves the axiom, ‘rising to the height of his incompetence’.

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    MadJak

    Oh well,

    A younger relative of mine put in an essay about Goreball wormin to his teacher about 6 weeks ago. He asked for my views, so I pointed him to David Evans synopsis of the sceptic case on this site.

    This relative was genuininely pissed off that his teacher was refusing to listen to the sceptic case. He was determined to nail her arguments to the wall.

    I helped him tone down his message about al gore being a lying ******** and toning it down by a few notches. Yes, we all know it’s true, but time and place and all that.

    He must have because he ended up acing the assessment (100%).

    I think a lot has been assumed about younger people being greenwashed. There are allways going to be the independent thinkers amongst us – with similar characters to other people in history who weren’t intellectually lazy to believe the consensus that the sun revolves around the earth and all that.

    If they’re waiting for us to die off, they’re really waiting for the sheeple to become dumber.

    How much dumber – well as dumb as they are I would suggest.

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      Winston

      It is a short step to genetically marking the individuality gene, culling those who have it or sterilizing them or both. These people who espouse this ignorance are unworthy of the “scientist” epithet, and fail to realize that the most vital component of humanity is difference, genetic and intellectual and physical variability which is vital for our survival as a species. The greatest threat to our survival is the ignorance and arrogance of those who claim to lead us, usually through an unearned sense of their own infallibility.

      In respect of Lewandowsky, the Sophist, as he is now known globally, a message for him- Psychology is not now, nor has it ever been a SCIENCE! It is unsubstantiated opinion dressed up as Science. Even Medicine, which is far more empirical than Psychology ever could dream of being, is only fractionally scientific in its foundation. You can call it Science, but it doesn’t make it so. You have the same Scientific authority as an eminent Iridologist or Homeopathy “expert”. Now you know your place in the pecking order, how about you just sit down and let the adults take it from here.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      I think a lot has been assumed about younger people being greenwashed. There are allways going to be the independent thinkers amongst us …

      There is an old saying that, “The fish don’t notice the water”. Intuitively we know this to be true, because it is integral to their environment (flying fish excepted).

      What the environmental movement has done, over the past four decades, is to blitz the population with propaganda about, “The Coming Ice Age”, and ‘Acid Rain” (which turned out to be a virus, I think), and “Global Warming”, and now “Climate Change”, and various other “Tipping Points”. We have had a serious of “Disaster Movies”, with images of people being freeze-dried as they stepped from helicopters, and tidal waves breaking over Mount Everest.

      Apart from the latter being good theatre (if you are into special effects), they have deliberately created, or tried to create, an environment of fear and worry in the general population, and especially in young and impressionable minds.

      But it all back-fires, because when you create an immersive environment, people, like the fish in the old saying, no longer notice it. But they do notice that the reality around them is discordant with what they have been told.

      Regular people in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea) have no illusions about how impoverished their country is, in spite of the constant and strident propaganda to the contrary.

      You can learn a lot about the climate change scare by studying North Korea.

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      BobC

      MadJak: Here’s a (true) story about climate change and the new generation. It happened last summer at the University I (occasionally) work at — I think it more likely that the warmists will die off first:

      **************
      It was in a project meeting with 3 graduate students and 4 professors. (I know the saying about too many Chiefs and too few Indians.)

      We were talking about the accuracy of the lab’s wavefront sensor (which was crucial to our project). The grad student giving the presentation put up a graph from another student who had studied this. The graph showed lines labeled “measured” and “actual”. The following exchange occured (Grad Student 1 is giving the presentation):

      Grad Student 2: “How did she get the ‘actual’?”

      Grad Student 1: “I think that is a Zemax simulation.” (Zemax is an optical design program.)

      Grad Student 2: “You mean it’s an ‘actual simulation’?” (Indication of sarcasm)

      Myself: “Come on, guys: This isn’t Climate Science.”

      Grad Student 3: (excitedly) “Did you see that report yesterday?” (I think he was referring to the NASA heat balance measurements.)

      Other Professor: “WE AREN’T GOING TO DISCUSS THAT HERE!”

      All the graduate students thought this exchange was humourous — the professors looked uncomfortable.

      I have hope for the new generation.

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        MadJak

        Thanks Bob – it’s obvious that there are more and more people inclined to ask those really tough questions like “where did those actuals come from?”. I have no doubt that some were students of yours.

        Of course the fact that we’ve gone through a period where people were loathed to ask what is an essential and simple question defies logic.

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          BobC

          MadJak
          October 30, 2012 at 5:59 pm · Reply

          Of course the fact that we’ve gone through a period where people were loathed to ask what is an essential and simple question defies logic.

          True — but Humans aren’t always logical. Hans Christian Anderson had a handle on this in his tale of “The Emporer’s New Clothes”. Hopefully, we are close to the end of the story.

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    Neville

    This is my last post from Jo’s previous story, but it is still relevant here.
    If you believe in CAGW to the letter there is still nothing you can do about it.
    Or go to China, India and demonstrate over there. Good luck.

    Simple maths, simple graph at my link below proves the case.

    By 2035 co2 emissions from the non OECD will increase by a whopping 73% but the OECD will increase by just 6%.
    China, India etc are dwarfing our tiny emissions growth and the entire OECD could all live in caves and we still couldn’t make a scrap of difference to climate or temp.
    The mitigation of AGW is the biggest lie promoted by the lying Gillard govt and anyone who believes their rubbish should hang their head in shame.

    http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/emissions.cfm

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    Peter Miller

    “Realistically, though, most of those sceptics are of an older generation. We are never going to convince them but they will be disappearing from the political discourse soon.”

    So being experienced and sceptical are always bad, while inexperience and youth are always good.

    The communists, whenever they seized power, had exactly the same concept.

    You can’t fool the old boys, but you can indoctrinate the youngsters – and if they won’t be indoctrinated, life can be made very hard for them.

    No wonder alarmists refuse to debate sceptics, as they know all too well their logic will be sliced and diced, a much better option is to ‘debate’ the subject with suitable pals of the infamous pal review process for climate ‘research’ papers.

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      elva

      Lewandowsky and his kind don’t like older people because they have lived through different weather events and ‘changes’ or cycles in climate over the years.

      It is an experience for them rather than needing dramatisation. Older folk don’t scare easily when a certain day or month is said to be the hottest or wettest for a long time.

      They were hearing such reports when they were children when the A-bomb was being blamed for increasing cyclones during the 1950s and 1960s. If more cyclones occur this or next year it will be CO2 that is blamed.

      In 30 years something else will be blamed when Lewandowsky and others like him are grey and entering nursing homes.

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      Dennis

      Do they plan to burn books?

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    Doug Proctor

    The “old” comment is revealing, as it reflects his experience rather than stats. My old ma used to talk about those who “preached to the choir”, and thought they were effective and influential. Grant apparently hangs out with the gushy eco-greens of the “young” generation, i.e. pre-adult with mortgages and a healthy cynicism about those to spend our taxes.

    The eco-green warmists have conflated agreeing that being Earth friendly is the same as being a socialist preservationist Luddite. The support he thinks has for DOING is far less than the support he has for TALKING.

    He is saying that being “old” means you are stuck in the paradigm of your youth, unable to reflect and change. Interesting. So young people get “stuck” and then can’t see where the truth lies. What does that say about his beliefs, since he was “young” when he adopted them?

    Truth is what you adopted before you could think, apparently. Sounds like what the Jesuits used to say: Give me your child before age seven, and I will have him for life.

    Grant should be squirming with the implications of his statement.

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      AndyG55

      “Grant should be squirming with the implications of his statement.”

      I doubt he is though.

      Sort of like labrador puppy chasing its own tail. No idea how silly he looks.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Doug,

      The eco-green warmists have conflated …

      Correction: The urban eco-green warmists have conflated …

      Rural eco-activists are much more pragmatic about what is possible, and many of them embrace warmer temperatures and increasing CO2 levels. They can see what it does to the weed(s).

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        Mattb

        Ahh yes throw in the old city country divide too… such a baseless argument.

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          AndyG55

          And you know that its baseless, how ??

          I have lived in both city and country. I can assure you that country people love and cherish their countryside.

          They always look at things from a practical perspective. They care about their environment.
          >
          >.
          The inner city latte set.. not so much, To them, its just….. “oh. aren’t I a good boy (or girl).”

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            Mattb

            “I can assure you that country people love and cherish their countryside.”
            Who said they don’t. Although it is a generalisation that does not always appear to be accurate.

            “They always look at things from a practical perspective.”
            Rubbish. Some may, some may not, but is it a swqeeping unsubstantiated myth.

            “They care about their environment.”
            ditto

            “The inner city latte set.. not so much, To them, its just….. “oh. aren’t I a good boy (or girl).””
            ditto

            Your post is pretty much unadulterated romanticism.

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            Streetcred

            I drive in the country and see little or no littering away from the highways. I drive in the city and see the fast food packets and drinks containers littering the street.

            Who do I think has the higher consideration for their environment ?

            [corrected] ED

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            Sonny

            Streetcred,
            Have you considered the litter per capita?
            There’s maybe more people in the cities which accounts for more trash along with more take away?

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            John Brookes

            I’ve driven through South Australia, and those greeny country folk have chopped down every tree they could find. It is not so bad in WA, but I suspect that is because West Australian farmers were not quite as hard working as their SA counterparts.

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            Dave

            .
            John Brookes,

            You in WA are over 4 times dirty little wood burners than Queensland.

            Table 3. Estimated health costs per wood heater per year

            WA wood use tonnes/heater 2.5, Health costs/heater/year $2,507.
            QLD wood use tonnes/heater 1.1, Health costs/heater/year $593.

            Filthy dirty polluter John. Cut the WA waste wood burning!

            You were talking about tree cutting?

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            Grant (NZ)

            Streetcred, People who drive into the country have consumed their fastfood and drinks before they hit city limits and have disposed of them before leaving town. There aren’t to many places in the country to restock on fastfood and drinks…

            But I tend to agree with the premise that those whose work is more closely “land based” have a greater affinity for the land. They see much more than just a landscape as they drive through it.

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    Evo of Gong

    As a retired engineer I have been following the discussion on AGW for a couple of years and am now convinced that the ‘science’ has been corrupted. It seems that the AGW camp is suffering from ‘group think’ with peer reviewed papers are being reviewed by peers of the same mind.
    The new peer review paradigm is provided by the skeptical bloggers and the people who comment on their blogs. AGW papers are now scrutinised to a far greater extent than the academic peer review process allows.
    I believe that this is a healthy thing for the science of climate change and it is now more likely that the ‘truth will out’

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      John Brookes

      You are retired, and you think “science” has been corrupted.

      Do you not think for a second that the problem might just be your way of thinking about it? That maybe it all still works much like it did before, but you see it differently?

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        BobC

        John Brookes
        October 30, 2012 at 8:58 pm · Reply
        You are retired, and you think “science” has been corrupted.

        Do you not think for a second that the problem might just be your way of thinking about it? That maybe it all still works much like it did before, but you see it differently?

        That’s kind of inane John. Do you think he retired his mind? (When did you retire yours?)

        But, maybe you have a point — science has probably always been corrupt to some extent, since that is consistent with Human nature.

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        Bulldust

        Congratulations John … you just mimicked Will Grant perfectly. Being retired equates to unsound thinking in your view. Methinks you have been drinking Lewandowsky’s Koolaid again…

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        Evo of Gong

        Well, John Brookes, perhaps you should read a book called “Outliers” where the author claims that to be an expert in anything you need to have worked in the field for at least 10,000 hours. If you accept this hypothesis, retired people who have worked in a field all their working life, are more likely to be ‘expert’ that some fresh faced uni graduate.
        In my case I spent a large part of my working life using process models of various types to control industrial processes and so I know a little bit about mathematical models and their limitations. Theoretically derived models based on known physics are usually quite reliable but empirical models have many limitations, particularly with regard to the partial derivatives (ie sensitivities or gains). The process systems we worked on were far simpler than the multivariable, non-linear, long time constant models required to model the earth’s climate and so I was skeptical of predictions of the sensitivity of the global temperature predictions to changes in CO2 concentration.
        Unfortunately many of those in the AGW camp don’t seem to be willing to identify the limitations of the models hence my comment about the science being corrupted.

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          Gee Aye

          nice summation of models evo… you’ve caught the essence of the problem without making the mistake that many make of thinking that models have no value.

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          John Brookes

          Nicely said Evo. The models are, non the less, interesting. Not least because the results haven’t changed hugely since the very simplest models. And the simple physical mechanisms behing the models are easy to understand.

          I agree with you that the models are far from perfect, but they still have value.

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            Evo of Gong

            John, accurate models are extremely useful and, in fact I doubt whether many modern industrial control system could operate without them. They help provide improved quality, reduced waste etc – but only if they are accurate.
            Clearly the climate models are not accurate partially, I suspect, because all the factors effecting climate have not been identified or, if they have, they have not been quantified. (eg Svenmark’s cosmic ray theory of clouds) Despite this, the world is spending trillions of dollars based on the predictions of the models and this is something I believe is very, very wrong.
            More power to the skeptical bloggers (and the people who comment on them) to the ‘warmists’ to account

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    Rod Stuart

    This essay this morning is pertinent to the subject of Lewandowsky.

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    Bruce

    Below is a list of the scholarly endeavors of Mr Grant. Is it any wonder the ANU is rapidly becoming a frivolous university.

    Recent Writing

    Grant, Will J and Rod Lamberts. ‘Scientists and politicians – the same but different?’. The Conversation 18 Nov 2011.

    Wilson, Penny and Will J Grant. ‘Has the use-by date gone past its prime’. The Conversation 15 Nov 2011.

    Grant, Will J. 2011. ‘Only the lonely buck the climate consensus’. The Drum 7 Nov 2011.

    Grant, Will J and Lamberts, Rod. 2011. ‘Who’s afraid of big, bad coal? Al Gore’s ‘climate reality’ is a pointless fairytale’. The Conversation. Reposted at Climate Spectator

    Grant, Will J. 2011. Will Steffen: phoney debate is over, now for the carbon policy’. The Conversation.

    Grant, Will J and Lamberts, Rod. 2011. ‘Don’t preach to the converted on carbon tax: it’s the money vote that matters’. The Conversation, reposted at ABC Environment

    Lamberts, Rod and Grant, Will J. 2011. ‘Brand Science is dead, and it’s time to break up the company’ The Conversation, reposted at The Drum 17 May 2011, Science Alert and Scientific Computing

    Grant, Will J and Lamberts, Rod. 2011. ‘Ian Chubb will be a chief scientist hard to ignore’ The Drum

    Lamberts, Rod and Grant, Will J. 2011. ‘Gentlemen’s rules are out, scientists: it’s time to unleash the beast’. The Conversation

    Lamberts, Rod and Grant, Will J. 2011. ‘The Government’s war on science: deliberate attack, or abuse by neglect?’ The Conversation

    Lamberts, Rod, Grant, Will J and Martin, Aaron. 2010. ‘Public opinion about science’. ANUPoll 8, December 2010.

    Grant, Will J, Moon, Brenda and Busby Grant, Janie. 2010. ‘Digital Dialogue? Australian Politicians’ use of the Social Network Tool Twitter’. Australian Journal of Political Science 45(4)

    Grant, Will J. 2007. A Certain India: An enquiry into a claim to national territory. Phd thesis, School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland. (pdf, 25 Mb).

    Grant, Will J 2005. ‘The Space of the Nation: An Examination of the Spatial Productions of Hindu Nationalism’, in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 11(3): 321-347.

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      Winston

      To quote Bugs Bunny,

      “What a Maroon!”

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      llew Jones

      The most telling thing about Will J Grant is that his area of expertise is politics not science:

      Researcher / Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at Australian National University

      Will Grant is a talker, writer, thinker and reader, based primarily at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU. His talking / writing / thinking / reading has focused mostly on the intersection of science, politics and society, and how this is changing in response to new technologies.

      Experience

      Lecturer / Researcher, ANU 2008 – present.

      EDUCATION

      University of Queensland, PhD (POLITICAL SCIENCE), 2007

      (Another Robert Manne obviously or knows about as much about science as Lewandowsky, viz zilch).

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        AndyG55

        “Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science”

        Yet seems to have very little awareness of science, himself. oh well !!

        As you say, PhD in Political Science.. they add the “Science”, without having any.

        Probablty as illiterate as Loo when it comes to real science.

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    Neville

    Good luck to Anthony Watts and his online TV venture. If he can counter some of Gore’s dirty weather nonsense he will help the sceptic’s cause.

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/29/announcement-wuwt-tv-to-counter-al-gores-24-hours-of-climate-reality-on-november-14th-and-15th/#more-73274

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      John Brookes

      The real problem for Watts is that the US had a super hot summer, and then the arctic sea ice hit a record minimum, and now they have been hit with a super storm. When you are trying to insist that nothing unusual is happening with the weather, this trifecta is, well, somewhat inconvenient.

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        Mark D.

        Going with that “gut feeling” again John?

        The “super hot summer” is nothing compared to the 30’s (and where was all the CO2 then?

        Hurricane season goes through November. Sandy isn’t the biggest, didn’t track in an unusual path. So WTF are you on about?

        Or are you just making another false alarmist Bull Shit claim?

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        Bite Back

        I can always count on John Brookes to jump off a cliff. There’s absolutely nothing unusual about North American weather this past year. No records broken, nothing the slightest bit outside of experience just in my lifetime, let alone any longer period.

        Go John, go!

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        Mark D.

        John Brookes, I know how much you love empirical evidence so here is a little resource for you Northeast coast US hurricane tracks:

        (Give it a minute to load)

        Notice the number of hurricanes that tracked similarly to Sandy prior to 1910? Now that must be caused by CO2 right? So at what moment will you be retracting what you said above?

        Please feel free to look at the interactive record here: http://maps.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/# You can create your own maps too.

        This one is also interesting

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        • #
          John Brookes

          There may be a cyclical component, but my bet is that it will have an increasing trend.

          00

        • #
          John Brookes

          I don’t know if it fits with the “skeptical” mindset, but there is a new paper that uses tide gauge data to determine historical storms. Basically if a storm approaches the coast, you get a big tide, so you can identify historical storms from tide data. I haven’t read the original paper, but Tamino has a post on it. http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/storm-surge/

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      • #
        gary turner

        @ John Brookes
        October 30, 2012 at 9:00 pm

        As a Texian who has lived here for more than sixty years, I can say this summer was nothing special either in terms of temperatures or rainfall. There were some record high temperature events, but there were more low temperature records set. There was a lengthy drought, but we’ve had worse, much worse. In the Fifties, there were children who started school without ever having seen rain. Now that’s a drought. What we had this year was a simple dry spell, and nothing to write home about.

        As for Arctic sea ice, did you happen to notice the major high pressure area that blew a large portion of the ice into the North Atlantic? I thought not. That said, it is not unusual for the Arctic Ocean to have large areas of ice-free water. It has happened before and will happen again. The challenge, should it become common for a while will be to figure out how to take advantage of the ice-free seaways.

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        Richard The Great

        John- the earth has been on a warming trend, on and off, sicne the end of the Maunder minimum circa 1690. This is about 200 years before the Industrial Revolution kicked in in earnest and about 300 years before the IPCC says that mankind could have had any measurable influence on the climate (ca. 1990).

        Do you expect the warmest years to be at the beginning, middle or end of a long period of warming?

        10

        • #
          John Brookes

          Yeah, but the early warming was caused by increasing solar activity. And wasn’t some of the extreme cold back then due to volcanos?

          There are numerous reconstructions that show the earth’s temperature moving with all the forcings until this century, and then diverging unless you take CO2 into account.

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  • #
    Ross

    Here is a good laugh to start your day with.

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/10/29/a-kind-of-debate.html

    I wonder if they sent Lewandowsky an air ticket, would he have taken up the challenge !!

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    Gbees

    Greg Hunt on SkyNews now. Says he believes in human impact on climate due to our CO2 emissions. Weak response to a question about whether or not hurricane Sandy was due to human induced climate change.

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    • #
      Mark

      GBees.

      Yes indeed. I’ve heard the vapid, vacuous little twerp state the same thing on radio a couple of times.

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      • #
        gbees

        Further I wrote to Hunt about Wind energy and protested any policy to propagate wind farms. Here’s part of the reply from Hunt .. “There are different approaches to clean energy but we do not oppose wind energy only better planning protections.”

        So it seems he is a closet warmist although in recent times he seems to be outing himself …

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    • #
      Dave N

      Ask him how it is possible to distinguish from the storm data alone, the human influence difference between Sandy and the “Long Island Express” hurricane of 1938, or the Saxby Gale of 1869. Seriously, alarmists have little to no concept of history.

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      AndyG55

      Looks like I’ll be voting Labor next election. may as well get the total ruination over as soon as possible 🙁

      The liberals are way too limp-wristed to fix anything anyway. ZERO difference. !!

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      • #
        mark

        They will repeal the tax – that is something. Greg Hunt doesnt want to say anything controvertial as it may harm their campaign. Just think what the MSM would do to the Liberal party if they said that MMGW was a crock.They will get in and cut the tax, cut the funding for green agendas and cut the crap. Good enough for me as a starting point.

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        • #
          AndyG55

          “cut the funding for green agendas”

          Just like the Libs have in NSW and Vic? Hasn’t happened !!

          40

          • #
            llew Jones

            Both premiers are barely concealed closet Lefties. Try Campbell Newman for size:

            “Since Premier Campbell Newman was elected in March, the Office of Climate Change has been scrapped, solar rebates have been slashed and the solar hot water rebate cut.

            Environment Minister Andrew Powell has said he’s not convinced humans are influencing climate change.

            But Toby Hutcheon from the Queensland Conservation Council says it’s time the State Government accepted the science.”

            http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3597091.htm

            Those who claim to be skeptical of alarmist climate science and are unaware of how much further down the present UN dictated path this present genuine Left wing government is prepared to go and would vote it back into power rather than vote for a federal party of which more than half its present members are skeptics or the next best thing, need a good kick up the arse.

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          • #
            memoryvault

            vote for a federal party of which more than half its present members are skeptics

            I wouldn’t risk too much money betting on that assumption, Llew.

            Here is a clip where Andrew Bolt tries to get Dr Dennis Jensen to confirm there’s lot’s of skeptics in the Liberal Party. Dr Jensen refuses to say more than “there are some”.

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        • #
          memoryvault

          Mark,

          The truly depressing thing is you and Wes George and Chris M and others actually believe this.

          .
          Coalition written policy continues to support an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the Renewable Energy Target (RET), and their billion dollar “Solar Cities” program, amongst other insanities.

          A couple of weeks ago a large delegation of Liberal backbenchers told Abbott that these policies – especially the RET which is what is REALLY driving up electricity prices – were now quote “a rotting dead albatross around their necks as far as their electorates were concerned”. Abbott replied, on the record, that Coalition commitment to the RET was NOT NEGOTIABLE.

          Greg Hunt, who you may have noticed, will be the next Minister for Climate Change, speaks out on every possible occasion about the “dangers of MMGW”, and the “evil” of CO2, and the “need to tackle the threat of climate change”.

          Meanwhile Dr Dennis Jensen, the only true scientist in Parliament, couldn’t even get his own Liberal Party members to back him when he tried to table peer-reviewed papers critical of the whole AGW scam. In fact, the Liberal Party goes out of its way to keep Dr Jensen completely out of the public eye, for no other reason than he is an AGW sceptic.

          .
          And yet, despite these and a hundred other examples I could cite, you people go on ardently believing that, after the next election, it will all change. It’s like dealing with adults who still really believe there IS a Santa Klaus, and he lives at the North Pole.

          .
          Can I ask you something, Mark?

          If, after the next election the Coalition do the apparently unspeakable and actually implement their written policies exactly as they keep saying they intend to do, what’s your Plan B?

          Wait three years and vote Labor?

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          • #
            mark

            Mr Memory. As i see it there are three options at the next election. Stay with Labor and die on the vine, go with the greens and make things worse or go with the Libs. As i said, there will be no moves to discredit MMGW before the election as it would be political suicide. Stay calm and the election will fall into their laps. After that they can cut the carbon tax (as stated) this will be the start of a concerted move to de Green the country. Ask Julia if what she says before the election is actually what happens after the election.

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            llew Jones

            MV I notice your history in the trade union movement.

            That obviously influences your anti-Coalition stance more than the distinct likelihood that there is a far greater chance that the Coalition will be far less likely to take our country as far down the UN IPPC path than the present bunch of ex-unionists/union lawyers who are running our country would do if they thought voters like you were giving your approval to their climate change policies at the next election.

            It is not only its embrace of the IPCC attack on cheap coal fired energy, so important to a competitive business sector, but also its other policies that are inimical to the competitiveness of that sector that make a limit on its time in power imperative

            The story is that Turnbull was rolled because of his understanding of the “physics” of alarmist climate science and thus his love affair for an ETS.

            One needs to be infected with an ex-union officials sort of fundamentalism not to observe that the Coalition would be far more susceptible to catching the climate skeptic virus in government that the bunch of ex-unionist brain dead operatives that run the national affairs in Canberra at present.

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          • #
            Winston

            All that is needed is for a well posed question to Abbott in the election lead up, such as “Will there be an ETS under a government you lead, Mr Abbott?”- But, who is going to put that question to him? The MSM sure won’t because they don’t want him to be forced to deny it, since they are in love with the concept of an ETS and Carbon trading (the fools!), and Abbott hopes not to be drawn on the question (sensibly) so it remains a future option for him should he need it, in case things get sticky for him financially and he wants to hedge his bets for the future- to chlorinate the contaminated fiscal well that Labor leave behind for him.

            So, the question remains- How can we force TA’s hand at that time to rule out an ETS once and for all? Any takers?

            10

          • #
            memoryvault

            .
            Mark,

            I am truly sorry that you can only see three alternatives. Let me see if I can help you expand your horizon. The following ideas are all based on the same likely scenario:

            The Coalition will win the next election with a comfortable majority in the House of Reps, but more or less evens in the Senate. They will scrap the carbon tax by simply bringing forward the transition date to the ETS. Apart from that the status quo will be maintained and electricity prices will continue to skyrocket at 25% plus a year.

            It is not the next election which is of prime concern, but the one after that. By then middle class conservative Australia will have finally woken to the fact that they simply are no longer represented in politics today. It is also the election where the opportunity lies to remove the Greens as a power in the Senate, which is critical.

            ONE:
            Write a letter to your local Liberal/National member or candidate. Tell them in no uncertain terms that you will not vote for them unless and until they have made their opposition to the entire “global warming” scam public knowledge prior to the election. Tell them you would rather vote informal (it doesn’t matter if you do or your don’t, only what you say you will do).

            POST (not email) this in an A4 envelope, Registered Post, with a signature required from the recipient. Encourage all your friends, neighbours and work colleagues to do the same.

            Repeat prior to the following election.

            TWO:
            Go out and find someone in your local community who is as pissed off as you are, and who has some standing in the community, and who is prepared to make an up to four year commitment. Get them to run as an Independent. No policies, no expectation of winning, just the stated aim of being there for the conservative public to register a protest vote against the Liberals/Nationals.

            Repeat for the following election.

            THREE:
            Support and assist the formation of a state Senate team based on nothing more than an updated, more sophisticated version of Don Chip’s original platform for the Democrats – to “keep the bastards honest”.

            Repeat for the following election.

            .
            Don’t expect too much from the coming election; consider it a learning curve, or preparation for the one following.

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            AndyG55

            Winston, this is a cut paste of an email I got from Greg Hunt. (highlight, mine)

            Hi Andrew,
            With respect on numerous occasions both he and I have said there will be no carbon tax or ETS.
            We simply want to repeal and will repeal the tax or the ETS.
            The commitment is absolute and unqualified.
            Cheers,
            Greg

            Now while the first line seems fairly straightforward, the higlighted part worries me, is it a typo or just a piece of cleverness. I only noticed it a lot later, just not sure about politicians.

            One of them needs to come out and say BOTH publically. Grege seems to indicate that they have, but I have not seen or heard them same both. Has anyone else ?

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            AndyG55

            ps.. It was sent from his iPad, so I sort of think it is a typo. !

            10

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            AndyG55

            Interestingly enough MV, I have contacted my local Lib and have actually got a reply. So I know she has read it. I also know that Greg Hunt has read what I have sent him.

            In fact he has just replied to an email asking for clarification of the “or” above.

            he was referring to if Labor brings the ETS forward…

            his exact words.

            “Just to make it clear, whatever form it is in we will seek to repeal it.
            The or referred to if they moved to ditch the tax early and adopt an ETS in 2013 rather than 2015.”

            So it seems you can put the idea of them getting rid of the tax by switching to an ETS, to sleep (for a while at least) !! 🙂

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            Mark

            mv

            Please be aware that there is someone commenting under ‘mark’ who is not me, ‘Mark’.

            Was that a crow with a hair-lip that just flew over?

            30

          • #
            AndyG55

            Let’s work on getting rid of the RET !!

            and only implement parts of the DAP when economically sensible… gunna be a while with the debt this current mob have racked up !!!

            30

          • #
            Andrew McRae

            AndyG55, with that reply from Greg Hunt you have unearthed some seemingly very good news.

            I wrote (but never posted) a comment to the previous thread that was very similar to MV’s comment above, and I also assumed the Libs were going to stab us in the back in the manner he suggests.
            The renewables (represented by CEC) cannot operate profitably without government redistributions distorting the market, so the end of the ETS implies the end of the CEC and RETs.

            Note to any Liberal Party policy wonks reading this:
            It is important to update your policy statement to remove the apparent contradiction between the presumed continuation of the RETs and CEC versus the latest statement by Hunt that the tax AND ETS will be repealed.

            Until this Liberal contradiction is resolved we should assume the puppetmasters behind the Libs are up to something fishy. Because this contradiction smells bad.

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          AndyG55

          Yeah, sorry, just getting frustrated with the Liberals.. they are so lack-lustre and namby-pamby !

          Time to wake up, guys !!!!

          30

      • #
        Dennis

        They fixed the $96 billion 1996 inherited by them Labor debt, and the $10 billion budget deficit, and the 8% unemployment, and ………. much much more. And look what Labor did with the inheritence the Coalition handed to them: Zero debt, $22 billion budget surplus, 4% unemployment, and much much more.

        20

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      Angry

      This trairor “Greg Hunt” is obviously in the wrong party.

      He should be kicked out of the Liberal Party so he is free to join the Green WATERMELONS !

      He is an utter disgrace.

      SHAME SHAME SHAME!

      22

      • #
        Mark

        Dunno how to break this to you angry but Hunt is in good company with all too many in the Coalition. They don’t care about us mate, they are all bought and sold goods.

        By the way, it looks like your SHIFT/CAPS LOCK keys are sticking again. Caps might look good to you but, believe me, it just looks crass to others.

        00

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          Dennis

          As compared to Green Union Labor Mark? You must be joking, surely.

          00

          • #
            Mark

            Show me where I’ve ever supported Green/ALP, Dennis. I’ll give you a hint, you won’t be able to.

            mv has pointed out chapter and verse from the Coalition’s platform where they support what can only be described as very costly ‘carbon pollution’ mitigation policies. If you choose to blithely ignore it then that’s your business but please don’t attribute false motives to me.

            I accept that nancy boy Greg Hunt has stated that the coalition will repeal the Carbon Tax. I remain unconvinced by his verbal gymnastics and dissembling about dismantling the ETS. There is huge pressure from Big Business to retain the ETS and I don’t think the Libs are up to the task of resisting it.

            Dennis, how often do you see so-called conservative parties repealing all the corrosive socialist laws enacted by the ALP? Hardly ever and that’s why you’ll have to pardon my cynicism cultured over almost fifty years of voting and observing politics in Oz.

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    handjive

    Judith Curry has a timely post:

    Climate change: no consensus on consensus

    The manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public’s trust in the IPCC.

    Our paper has just been accepted for publication.

    A link to the final manuscript is provided here [consensus paper revised final].

    Below is a ‘reader’s digest’ version of the main arguments made in this paper.

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    Dave N

    “They will say science doesn’t work by vote. It’s about facts”

    That quote is a keeper. Sadly however, government are stupid enough to believe him.

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    • #
      Sonny

      Dave the climate scientists ARE the government in the same way as IBM employees ARE IBM.
      They are all in this little stink pot together.

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    Sonny

    “Realistically, though, most of those sceptics are of an older generation. We are never going to convince them but they will be disappearing from the political discourse soon.”

    A fascinating insight into the mind of a would be totalitarian despot.

    “we admit you are too old and wise to fall for the propoganda but that shouldn’t worry us because you will die out soon to be replaced by children who have never lived in a “pre-climate change” world, easily indoctrinated by the new “education” system in which group think is the nodus operandi and thinking for oneself is “unreasonable”…

    Brownie points for the person who identifies the prominent scholar who has informed us that “thinking for ourselves is unreasonable when it comes to climate science”.

    Well, I’m only 27, but if the world is really heading in the direction that these people want to take us I might want an early departure with the rest of the “older generation”.

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    • #
      Dennis

      No, stay and keep proving the alarmists to be the dangerous political fools that they are, the world needs sensible young people.

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      MaxL

      Hi Sonny,
      I don’t know if this Professor of Psychology at Deakin University would qualify as a prominent scholar, but he seems to believe that only he and other experts have the right to voice their opinion.

      My thoughts on his first three paragraphs are:
      a bit cheesy“. Really? Maybe he might just look up a definition of “philosopher, n. Lover of wisdom; natural, moral, student of natural, moral, philosophy“. Addressing his students as philosophers is not cheesy, it’s what they are! This alone, shows a disrespect for his students.

      You are not entitled to your opinion“. Circular reasoning – in a paper discussing one’s entitlement to an opinion (or in a lecture), he immediately denies that entitlement thus enforcing his argument.
      Better to ask, ‘Are you entitled to your opinion?’ By asking a question, you get people thinking, otherwise you are telling them what to think.
      All people can argue for their opinion. How to be successful in putting forward a convincing argument is what he, as a philosophy teacher, should be showing them.
      It would be far better to say, “You are entitled to your opinion”. “Now let us see if we can express that opinion as a convincing argument”.

      A bit harsh? Perhaps, but philosophy teachers owe it to our students to teach them how to construct and defend an argument – and to recognize when a belief has become indefensible.

      Teaching philosophy is teaching “how to construct and defend an argument“. His sentence merely states: Philosophy teachers owe it to our students to teach them philosophy.

      I could go on, (it gets much worse) but seeing philosophy teachers display their total ignorance of logic makes me despair for our children’s future.

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    ““Realistically, though, most of those sceptics are of an older generation.”

    This sounds like something they would have told the Hitler Youth in their day.

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    RoyFOMR

    Unprecedented is a word that makes me wriggle with pleasure.
    Makes me feel special just like Dr Loo does.
    Ok, I don’t have a quarter of the brain that he believes he has not even at my peak – many moons ago.
    But I do share this with him, not his logic or sheer brilliance that would be presumptive but his joy at finding himself at the centre of HIS universe.
    Keep that feeling Stephan but a word of caution. Don’t equate your universe with that of others.
    That’s where hubristic madness lies mate. Next step is even worse. You’ll start seeing conspiracy in everyone else’s mindsets and may even progress to the next stage.
    LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE!
    Believe me young one, just because we’re all a wee bit mad doesn’t mean that you’re the only sane one!
    And never forget this. Unprecedented doesn’t mean not since 1962, 1943 or whatever. It just means never happened before; the Humpty Dumpty quote “”it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” was meant as a lesson not a guiding principle!

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    sophocles

    So we’re all “dangerously suspect of heresy” —a dangerous mindset.

    Catholic Church to Galileo, 1633 about his support for Copernicus’s heliocentric theory. Interestingly, Copernicus was a Catholic cleric …Galileo wasn’t. The Church apologised to Galileo last century—over 400 years late.)

    10

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      Louis Hissink

      The interesting thing about this historical event was that if the Holy See was the principal political power at the time, and no one was allowed to view the heaven’s via a telescope etc., then who, if anyone, was engaged in making astronomical measurements for calendrical purposes, let alone navigational ones. The profession of astronomer had yet to be created. Makes you wonder how things can be confidently be asserted historically in the absence of any accurate chronological observations. And is it important? Well if the centre of the universe was the earth and all moved around it, then would it matter if some other celestial body out there moved a little differently? After all, the earth was considered immovable by the authority of the time, the Vatican.

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    GregS

    I like it when I discover a new reason to live. Neat.

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  • #

    […] Nova describes his efforts as a ‘war on science’, Keep reading  → Both Universities need to undertake a far reaching investigation into ethics, methods and […]

    00

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    pat

    glad i don’t do business with telstra. they carry creagh’s entire conversation article and then link to the conversation in case u want to read it, word for word, twice:

    29 Oct: BigPondNews: Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation: Scientific consensus shifts public opinion
    http://bigpondnews.com/articles/TheExchange/2012/10/29/scientific_consensus_shifts_public.html

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    pat

    reuters point carbon has been shilling for a fix for months, now they come up with a headline that barely matches their opening para (all that is available without subscribing), trying to give the impression it’s a bit naughty, even “controversial”, but, as long as they only do it once, “firms, govts”(?) are on board…not that there’s any deal, mind u!

    Firms, govts say CO2 fix should be a “one-off”
    LONDON, Oct 29 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Industry and government feedback on the EU Commission’s controversial plan to rescue its ailing carbon market has revealed deep divisions among Europe’s biggest companies, although many are equally concerned about the power it could give to the unelected EU Commission…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2039802

    not really “near”, but:

    29 Oct: China Daily: Global carbon trading ‘near’
    By Lan Lan
    China’s emissions trading system, which is likely to be the world’s second-largest carbon market by 2015, may be a major player if it is connected to the proposed world system, said Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute.
    The institute in Washington is a non-partisan organization that promotes policies to protect the global environment…
    Steer used to be the World Bank special envoy for climate change before joining the institute in August and is optimistic about a global carbon market…
    “Carbon trading is not a panacea for solving all the problems, but by allowing trading to take place, it’s cheaper to address the overall problem,” Steer said…
    But if countries put a tougher cap on the trade and bring more countries into the system, that will drive the carbon price up, he said…
    ***A recent study found that 97 percent of experts agree that climate change is real and caused mainly by human activity…
    However, many experts have low expectations for the upcoming climate change meeting in Doha, Qatar, partly due to the state of the global economy.
    “There are some technical agreements that need to be agreed … but certainly no breakthrough is likely. It will not be as dramatic or glamorous as the last three,” Steer said.
    http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2012-10/29/content_15854194.htm

    not be as “dramatic or glamorous”???? steer’think tank WRI has al gore on the board:
    http://www.wri.org/about/board

    & an extraordinary list of interested donors:
    http://www.wri.org/about/donors

    10

  • #
    Ron Van Wegen

    “… pre-Enlightenment days when Bishops controlled the public conversation.”

    Oh, good grief – that’s a canard if ever there was one. “The” public conversation? Really?

    Then the “enlightenment” and all was well? A little more historical perspective and a little less “enlightenment” propaganda I think is in order here.

    History is a science too and needs evidence not hearsay and mythical generalizations.

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    mark

    I was under the impression that i was the only mark here. Are there rules that state that only one mark may enter the converstaion ? Maybe i can wait and be “mark time” or I can say something profound and then i can be ” mark my word” ?

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    • #
      memoryvault

      .
      It’s okay mark, the other Mark is Mark D, and he has a different avatar.

      20

      • #
        Mark

        ‘fraid not mv.

        I’m the original ‘Mark’, then came ‘Mark D.’ and now, lower case ‘mark’. Can’t blame you for being confused

        In response to marks question. Not for me to say, ’cause it ain’t my blog.

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        • #
          memoryvault

          .
          There’s THREE of you!!!!

          Now I am confused.

          40

          • #
            Winston

            They have got you surrounded MV. You’re a marked man.

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          • #
            Mark

            Oh, very droll Winston.

            Damn, there goes that crow again!

            20

          • #
            memoryvault

            They have got you surrounded MV

            Reminds me of the immortal words of General Patton at the Battle of the Bulge.

            PATTON:
            What’s our situation, soldier?

            OPS CAPTAIN:
            Well Sir, we enemy troops in front of us, enemy troops behind us, and enemy troops on both our flanks.

            PATTON:
            Good! Those damn Gerries won’t get away this time.

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          Mark D.

          I usually stay out of the politics of AU discussions. And yes Mark (with the taped up mouth) is the first.

          I think it would be a good idea if ‘mark’ would add something to his name to help prevent confusion.

          And MV, if I was one of the ones “ahead, behind, or flanking”, I hope you think it would be an allied force not an enemy.

          Patton:

          If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

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    connolly

    As there has been no statistically significant warming trend for the last sixteen years and the catastrophist hypothesis increasingly crumbles in the face of reality, we are seeing the emergence of a lower order sub-species of ad hominem. That is a divisive identity type politics (Gillard is using it against Abbott with gender and misogany). The catastrophists are engaging in an identity politics by wheeling in the discredited relic of the “youth revolution” of the late seventies – ageism. It will fail. Not the least reason being that their “green”economic revolution has spectatulalry failed to generate any job growth for the youth of this country. Outside of some university climatology departments of course.

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    memoryvault

    .
    TO AndyG55

    Sorry to reply right down here but we ran out of options up above.

    With regard to Greg Hunt and the Liberal Party and an ETS, I went through the first three pages of a Bing search and the only direct comment I could find was Hunt in an interview with Helen Dalley shortly after the release of the Garnaut Report. The article is not dated but the Report was released on 31 May 2011, so it was soon after that.

    I repost below without additional comment other than to highlight the relevant statement – repeated by Hunt twice.

    Helen Dalley:

    All right. Your side of politics has gone back and forth on an emissions trading scheme. A simple question, are you committed to supporting some sort of new scheme?

    Greg Hunt:

    We are committed to an emissions trading scheme. We are committed to the right scheme, not the wrong scheme, so we’ll assess the details once the government releases them of their final scheme. We’re here to be constructive. We’re here to do the right thing by the environment but to do it in a way which is about a modern economy and protecting jobs rather than destroying jobs. But we are committed to an emissions trading scheme.

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      AndyG55

      Well, I have the emails, and they will go to the press, via Bolta, Jo, or similar, if they go down that path.

      There are enough flat-out down-the-line LIARS on the ALP side, we don’t need any more on the Libs side.

      Have sent this quote to GH, will see what his response is.

      20

    • #
      AndyG55

      wow, that was quick !!

      GH’s response

      “There was no such interview last year.

      The last I spoke with Helen was some years ago when as a party we had a different policy.

      In the end I was able to design my ideal policy which was not an ETS or carbon tax and not an electricity tax.”

      very interesting !!!

      20

    • #
      AndyG55

      PS: where did you find this quote ?

      20

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      MV,
      Are you sure that is the right quote?

      Perhaps you should confirm it with Mark … ?

      00

      • #
        memoryvault

        .
        Apologies – I should have provided the link – very last question:

        http://www.getfarming.com.au/pages/farming/speeches_view.php?sId=9200020080909112323

        It’s apparently a transcript of an interview on Skye News.

        10

      • #
        mark

        Confirmed – sorry which mark were you referring to ?

        00

      • #
        memoryvault

        .
        I have now spent a few hours researching this matter and can report I was totally wrong.

        The Gillard government intends introducing an ETS based on the government allocating a number of carbon trading certificates and the derdy polluders having to buy the rest on some kind of artificially created “open market”.

        The Coalition, on the other hand, intend introducing an entirely different scheme wherein the government creates the trading certificates and puts them up for auction on some kind of artificially created “open market”.

        As any reasonably intelligent person can see, these schemes are as different as chalk and cheese. For those few of you still struggling to determine the difference, let me put it in the form of two imaginary press-releases:

        .
        JuLIAR Gillard after the last election:
        I promised the Australian people there would be no carbon tax under a government I lead, and I stand by my promise: – we introduced a carbon PRICE, not a carbon tax, which as any fool can understand, is an entirely different thing.

        .
        Greg Hunt / Tony Abbott / Malcolm Turnbull after the next election.
        We promised the Australian people there would be no Emissions Trading Scheme under a government we formed, and we stand by our promise: – we introduced an Emissions AUCTION scheme, not an Emissions TRADING Scheme, which as any fool can understand, is an entirely different thing.

        .
        I hope this clears up any confusion. And I apologise for even suggesting the idea that the Coalition could ever possibly stoop to deceiving the average voter.

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        • #
          AndyG55

          Again MV, can you cite a reference where that Emissions Auction scheme is mentioned. Thanks.

          10

          • #
            memoryvault

            .
            The full title (as near as I can gather) is the Emissions Reduction Reverse Auction Fund, but getting reasonable details in any one place is a “Mission Impossible” (and I think deliberately so).

            Here is a link to an article where Hunt touches on the subject, and reaffirms the Coalition’s commitment to an RET, plus solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and carbon capture and storage (CCS), plus other “climate science” insanities.

            20

        • #
          Dennis

          Correction, well done. People forget that the Howard Coalition signed but did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol to avoid hefty potential penalty if set greenhouse emission targets were not achieved but they then established a Greenhouse Office to oversee projects to reduce emissions in common sense and cost effective projects such as solar cities, clean coal technology development, future fuels, agricultural solutions including large forestry planting projects and more. The last I read about it Australia was on course to achieve the Kyoto emission level target without carbon dioxide tax con.

          00

        • #
          scaper...

          Hi there, MV. I’ve met Greg on occasion, have input to policy and he is my conduit to put a line or two on the floor of Parliament through Abbott. Remember the Dr Death tirade on Rudd by Abbott a few months before he was knifed? Quite proud of that one.

          Greg knows my stance on Global Warming and from personal experience, I would say…”when the circumstances change”…you know the rest.

          00

          • #
            Andrew McRae

            scaper, you seem to be saying that we have to apply “upwards management” to our politicians by educating the masses about the global warming non-problem and then have the public show leadership to the politicians.

            Is that what you meant? 8-S

            Probably only to be expected in this topsy-turvy world.

            00

  • #
    Sonny

    It didn’t take long for the Australian Lame Stream Media Propoganda arm to start ramping up climate change scare talk with Hurricane Sandy.

    http://m.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sandy-has-lessons-for-australia-bom-says-20121030-28gyg.html

    Of course it’s all the fault of unintentional carbon dioxide related man mad climate change and could not be the fault of dangerous geo-engineering experiments such as aerosol spraying which is happening in America and around the world (including Australia)…

    Sarcasm Off.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Yes – it is trash – they punch every button they can find. The hack that wrote the article doesn’t even know the difference between a hurricane and a tropical cyclone.

      Not even a climate scientist would get that wrong … (I hope),

      20

  • #
    memoryvault

    Llew Jones,

    Apologies as well for replying down here.

    MV I notice your history in the trade union movement.

    Any sort of history in the trade union movement in Australia – outside of corruption as a business model, and as a career-path into the Labor Party, is irrelevant today. Organised labour in Australia committed suicide in 1989 and has been on life support ever since, with membership as a percentage of total workforce declining every year since 1990.

    That obviously influences your anti-Coalition stance

    I don’t have an “anti-Coalition stance”. My utter disdain for party politics encompasses Liberal, Labor, Nationals and Greens with equal fervour and disgust. Vote for any of them and you are voting for a machine that exists solely to gain power, money and prestige, and which is beholden to nobody except the banksters and corporations that finance their election campaigns.

    The story is that Turnbull was rolled because of his understanding of the “physics” of alarmist climate science and thus his love affair for an ETS.

    True. But back then split in the Parliamentary Liberal Party was about 50% “dries” and 50% “Wets”. The “Dries” like Tuckey got decimated in the last two elections. This split is now 60 – 40 in favour of the Wets.

    there is a far greater chance that the Coalition will be far less likely to take our country as far down the UN IPPC path than the present bunch of ex-unionists/union lawyers who are running our country

    Are we talking about the same Coalition that introduced the concept of retrospective legislation, and disarmed the civilian population – surely the two greatest wet dreams of any wannabe dictatorship – including and especially the UN?

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    • #
      Chris M

      By then middle class conservative Australia will have finally woken to the fact that they simply are no longer represented in politics today.

      The trouble, MV, is that you are not a middle class conservative as your many anti-Liberal diatribes show. Having been a middle class conservative my entire adult life, I am confident that I can recognize someone who does not share those values. The probability that you are much further to the right than I does not make you conservative, something that you fail to understand.

      That’s not to say that the Libs are perfect, far from it, but the fact that they approximate my own values is the best anyone can expect in our political system. Even the less educated “Mel and Kochy” swinging voters of 2007 share most of those values, and presumably will swing back in 2013.

      You clearly don’t give a toss about whether the carbon tax is repealed or not, despite claiming to be a climate change skeptic. So what are you? I suspect that your ideas derive from a bygone era of right-wing unionism as exemplified by Laurie Short. Tough men who knew how to exercise and hold onto power, and who were immensely proud of being working class. Certainly nothing wrong with that.

      But don’t make yourself out to be something you are clearly not; it is an insult to the intelligence of the readers of this blog. You gave the game away when you talked about a Democrats-style party in your own image controlling the Senate via balance of power; a quixotic quest for power of your own.

      30

      • #
        KinkyKeith

        Hi Chris, a very interesting comment.

        As MV knows I enjoy reading his comments and get a lot out of them but have noticed that he has the reverse of the bias that I have.

        Where I want to illustrate a problem I generally look at an example that has been done on us by the Labour

        party, particularly because of very unpleasant past experiences of being knifed in the back by them and their

        extreme lack of money skills or perhaps better put their tendency to funnel money to friends family and

        associates as fast as possible and leave us broke and in debt.

        Basically they see tax payers as slaves..

        This does not mean I am whole hearted ly behind the Libs or JohnHoward but you take things on balance.

        I liked the feel of the Liberals when they were looking after the economy.

        BUT

        I certainly felt very unhappy about the libs trying to out-do Pauline Hanson in stirring up trouble against a largely blameless target.

        I certainly did not appreciate John Howard pandering to the French over atom weapons testing in the pacific –

        I felt disgusted by his behaviour there.

        I certainly did not like his buying votes from unemployed “mothers” before he got kicked out.

        I see this bad lib behaviour but on balance when they knife you, it’s from the front and they do less damage than the oythers.

        That said I almost exclusively vote Independent and the only times I voted Liberal was to oust Bill Morrison

        ( a nice guy) who was unfortunately attached to the Labour Parti (that’s PNG spelling – remember garnaut) and

        to get Tim Owen into Newcastle.

        If Tim doesn’t get a move on and do something for us he might only have one term. Novocastrains can be a bit

        tough like that but need to be tougher with politicians a little more often.

        As somebody said above: they are all bought and paid for.

        KK :).

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        • #
          Dennis

          I have never experienced a perfect political party in Australia but in my experience the Liberal and National Coalition have provided the best by far economic and financial management, and have done a much better job in other areas of government without the international socialist agendas of socialist Green Union Labor.

          30

      • #
        memoryvault

        You gave the game away when you talked about a Democrats-style party in your own image controlling the Senate via balance of power; a quixotic quest for power of your own.

        I won’t be around for the 2017 elections Chris M, which automatically precludes me from any involvement by my own, stated selection criteria.

        The Senate is supposed to be a House of Review on behalf of the States. Regulars here know I’ve written before about getting a team from each state to run on a ticket of having no policies, just a commitment to review all proposed legislation against a predetermined checklist. The checklist would be along the following lines:

        1) – Does the government have a mandate to introduce this legislation (was it part of their election platform)?
        2) – If there is no mandate, is there a sufficiently compelling reason (emergency etc) to consider the legislation now without sending it back to the people via an election to obtain a mandate?
        3) – Does the tabled legislation reflect what has been claimed, or are there hidden nasties?
        4) – Has the proposed legislation been honestly costed or is the cost likely to be significantly more than what has been presented to the people?

        . . . and so on.

        What I proposed then and now was the rest of us getting behind people like Jo, David Evans, Ian Plimer, Bob Carter and the other well-known sceptics to form a group in each state to run on a platform like that. No Policies except to return the Senate to a true House of Review. “To keep the bastards honest” as Don Chip put it.

        Exactly how you could construe an idea like that – especially without obviously ever even having read my previous posts on it – as “a quest for power of my own” defies all sense. But then, I suppose to somebody such as yourself, who elects politicians to “decide what’s best for the rest of us” (as previously stated by you), like they were a bunch of all-knowing Tribal Elders, such an idea probably has little merit.

        .
        Chris M, I asked you a question a few threads ago, but you declined to answer. I asked again in the last thread, but again you declined to answer. So I’ll repeat it a third time.

        .

        Chris M, sometime in the not too distant future there is going to be an election, and, failing some enormous error of judgement, the Coalition are going win with a landslide.

        They are also going to win with a commitment to an ETS, a commitment to a continuation of the RET, and a commitment to a billion dollar solar and wind energy program, all as part of their written, published Environment Policy.

        Now I know we fellow gentle readers have your personal, absolute, signed in blood guarantee that despite going into the election with these stinking albatrosses hanging around their necks (a Liberal backbencher’s description, not mine), they will nonetheless ditch these policies immediately upon winning office.

        But here’s the thing, Chris M. What if they don’t?

        What will be your advice to our fellow, gentle readers then, Chris M?

        Wait three years and vote Labor?

        Australians have been alternately voting for Tweedledum and Tweedledee for 46 years now Chris M – ever since the end of the Menzies era – and for 46 years we have been getting progressively screwed over in favour of the banks and the multi-nationals by ALL the major political parties.

        And your sage advice is to go on doing the same thing and hope for a different outcome?

        .
        Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

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        • #
          Truthseeker

          MV, you said …

          I won’t be around for the 2017 elections …

          Why not?

          10

          • #
            memoryvault

            Deteriorating heart condition.

            10

          • #
            Brian of Moorabbin

            MV, sad to hear that.

            10

          • #
            memoryvault

            .
            No need to be sad Brian, we all wear out sooner or later.

            I’ve had a most excellent life, done most of the things I wanted to (apart from writing the Great Australian Novel), had a wonderful partner in life these past 35 years, and will be survived by two strapping sons and two (so far) grandkids (aka Spawn of Satan and Seed of Evil).

            20

          • #

            memoryvault,

            that’s really sad to hear, but your attitude to it is spirit lifting for all of us.

            I know it’s trite, but you mention here:

            …..done most of the things I wanted to (apart from writing the Great Australian Novel)

            That my friend is an impossible task.

            It’s been tried often and only one novel comes even remotely close, Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert.

            If you haven’t already read it, find a copy and invest the time in reading one of the longest novels ever written, the fourth longest in fact. It’s almost 1500 pages of small print, with 852,000 words, half as long again as The Count’s War And Peace, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

            Without fraction of doubt, it is the best thing written by an Australian.

            Copies are hard to find, but I feel certain, that you especially, would like it, that’s if you haven’t read it already.

            Tony.

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          • #
            Mark

            mv, if your doctor is telling you that, then get another doctor.

            Mid 2002 my dear old mum was 80 and experienced a near fatal illness. She needed urgent surgery which was initially refused on account of her age. We have a good friend who is a retired doctor and he ‘leaned’ on the surgeon. The ‘op’ was done even though he insisted that mum would not survive. She was in the IC unit for three weeks after the op.

            Mum will turn 90 in December and now has great-grandchildren which wouldn’t be the case had we accepted the surgeon’s initial decision. Doctors can be wrong. Their problem is that they see so much death from early in their careers that it takes a disproportionate grip on their psyches compared to other professions.

            30

          • #
            memoryvault

            .
            Mark, thanks, but the only person refusing an operation is me.

            I have no idea what the all-up cost of a heart transplant is to the taxpayer (assuming a suitable donor), but I personally find the idea of wasting that sort of money so some old coot (me) who’s already had an ample and fulfilling serve of life, can have an extra couple of years, somewhat abhorrent.

            I have already been given a reprieve: if I’d had the stroke only seven or eight years ago I’d already be dead or a vegetable. My philosophy is to be happy with what you get, rather than always wanting more.

            I’d rather see the money spent on something worthwhile and lasting, like teaching children to swim.

            .
            Now, can we drop the state of my health and get back to me puttting the wind up all the Liberal supporters here?

            It’s so much more fun.

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        • #
          Chris M

          MV: As I am on a day off today, I can take the time to reply to you, futile as it may be …

          But then, I suppose to somebody such as yourself, who elects politicians to “decide what’s best for the rest of us” (as previously stated by you), like they were a bunch of all-knowing Tribal Elders, such an idea probably has little merit.

          You are not quoting me, and you are wilfully distorting whatever I said in the post you are referring to. The essence of parliamentary democracy is for the populace to elect a majority government and let them get on with governing, hopefully responsibly, while we get on with our own lives. There are many mechanisms for feedback and protest if we don’t like what they’re doing, and we have the opportunity for redress at the next election. They don’t have all the answers, or always make the right decisions, but then again neither do we.

          Labor and the Libs are not Tweedledum and Tweedledee – Tony Windsor tried the same tack to justify his 2010 decision – but in fact have quite different value systems. The voters do indeed have a real choice. You are living in the past with your reference to multinationals, an unavoidable fact of life in the world economy of today. Your final remark was an ad hom. I believe that I am very rational, and just because I disagree with you does not make you irrational either, only misinformed in my opinion.

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          • #
            memoryvault

            we have the opportunity for redress at the next election

            How? By voting Labor? You didn’t answer the question, merely avoided it.

            Labor and the Libs are not Tweedledum and Tweedledee

            BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIAN POLITICS POST 1966.

            After Menzies was gone, Australia had six years of power struggle within the Coalition government. This mostly translated into each faction offering ever bigger bribes to the electorate. Within that period the original Compulsory Superannuation Scheme was dismantled, with the funds transferred to general revenue to finance the pork-barreling. Despite assurances at the time, Australian retirees (aka pensioners) have been getting screwed ever since.

            .
            In 1972 Australians decided “It’s Time” and elected Gough Whitlam’s Labor government. Gough did so many things wrong they are not worth detailing here, but basically they translated into a massive increase if government spending and the Federal bureaucracy. The Australian people got screwed over – again.

            .
            In 1975 following The Dismissal, Malcolm Fraser and the Liberals got elected with the biggest landslide swing in Australia’s Federal history, with a clear, and stated, mandate to reduce government spending and shrink the bureaucracy. Big Mal immediately embarked on the biggest growth in both public spending and the size of the bureaucracy, in Australia’s federal history. The people got screwed – again.

            As icing on the cake Mal’s Treasurer – Johnny Howard – introduced retrospective legislation into our legal system, meaning that something somebody did yesterday which was perfectly illegal at the time, can nonetheless be declared illegal tomorrow, and back-dated a month. What that translates to is any future government can turn any Australian citizen into a criminal. The people got screwed – again.

            Despite assurances to the contrary, EVERY succeeding government has used retrospective legislation to target one group of Australians or another. We got screwed again.

            .
            In 1982 we got rid of Big Mal and elected The Drover’s Dog instead. Amongst other gifts, Hawke bestowed on us a second compulsory superannuation scheme (without mentioning we already had one), and used the Armed Forces to destroy organised labour in this country, as a personal favour to his mate, Peter Abeles. The people got screwed – again.

            In 1992 The Larrikin stood aside in favour of The World’s Greatest Treasurer, who presided over The Recession We Had To Have (TRWHTH). Stripped of all political spin, TRWHTH was nothing more or less than the greatest transfer of wealth this country has ever seen.

            Australia’s Big Four banks went into TRWHTH with combined capital assets of $32 billion, and came out the other side a few years later with combined capital assets of $280 billion. The difference was made up by Australian homeowners paying 18% and more on their mortgages. An estimated 300,000 families lost their homes to the banks. We got screwed – again.

            .
            So we got rid of Keating and elected Little Johnny Howard instead. Johnny got off and running by giving us a GST which was supposed to be revenue neutral, but isn’t. It’s also supposed to be redistributed back to the states it was gathered in. Ask a West Australian how that turned out. Screwed – again.

            Next Johnny disarmed the civilian population, meaning that when they eventually come to arrest you for commenting on Jo Nova’s site (declared illegal in July 2015 and back-dated to January 1, 2010), you won’t even be able to defend yourself. Screwed again.

            But maybe we should at least give the man credit for making the streets safer. After all, crimes involving guns only went up 16% last year, and drive-by shootings are down to only one every other week in Sydney and Melbourne. Screwed again.

            Then we got Workchoices. That’s where an unscrupulous employer could sack long-standing employees on the basis that they were no good, then rehire them back again immediately, stripped of accrued long service, holiday and sick pay. And on less money to boot. Good one Johnny. Screwed again.

            .
            Since then we’ve had KRudd and The Liar. Do I really need to go into details. Screwed again.

            .
            For this entire sorry 46 year period, EVERY elected federal government has promised to reduce government spending, reduce the bureaucracy, reduce business-strangling red tape, tackle the monopolistic power of the Big Four banks, bring to heel the multi-nationals, ensure competition in petrol pricing, improve education for our children, and minimise government intrusion into our daily lives.

            For this entire sorry 46 year period, EVERY elected federal government has increased government spending, increased the bureaucracy, increased business-strangling red tape, aided and abetted through legislation the monopolistic power of the Big Four banks, given the multi-nationals carte blanche, turned a blind eye to petrol price fixing, allowed our children’s education to hijacked by cultist crazies, and expanded government intrusion into our daily lives.

            .
            And you say the voters have a real choice?

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        memoryvault

        You clearly don’t give a toss about whether the carbon tax is repealed or not

        In a way you are right, but not for the reasons you think. If Abbott gets in he will replace it with the Coalition’s own form of climate insanity, so it will be gone, but the insanity will remain.

        If, by some cruel act of Satan, Labor manage to get back in, they have already signalled their intention of moving the start of the ETS forward, so they can get on with the rest of their planned climate insanity.

        Either way, the tax is gone but the insanity remains. As such, grand posturing over repealing or scrapping it, is exactly that – posturing; it is a sleight of hand, a diversion from the real issues.

        .
        Either way, the REAL 10 ton elephant remains the RET of 20% emissions (read CO2) reductions by 2020. Simple maths dictates this means a continuation of the current annual 20% plus increase in electricity costs, with the extra money gouged via our power bills diverted into the moonbeam and pixie dust fantasy of “renewable baseload power”.

        This, in turn means less, or NO investment in REAL baseload power generation. Labor have the stated aim of not building any more “derdy coal-fired power stations”. The Coalition have the stated aim of allowing investment in coal-fired power stations, but only if they can be shown to be “CCS ready”. Since “CCS technology” is the modern day equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, that means no coal-fired baseload power stations under the Coalition either.

        .
        Here is a news-flash for you.

        The climate is changing. The planet is getting warmer, or the planet is getting cooler, one of the two. Always has, and always will. Either way, the best possible hope for our survival and continued well-being is abundant, cheap electrical power.

        And that is the one thing we are NOT going to have under either party’s insane climate policies.

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        • #
          Chris M

          And commiserations from me as well on your state of health – I hadn’t seen that as I was composing my previous reply. With the excellence of modern medicine though, I sincerely hope you are around for a long time to come. We all need people to challenge our own views from time to time.

          30

        • #
          Chris M

          I suspect that the Coalition is in favour of cheap electricity, and it would be a good and logical policy to run with at the next election. If polling shows that the majority of people are no longer concerned about climate change, which is probably the case, that should embolden them.

          Recently when I mentioned to one of my co-workers (a young mother) the record Antarctic sea-ice area this year – the context from memory was the unseasonal cold snap with snow in the Blue Mountains – her reply implied that she believes global warming is BS, which was encouraging. Many younger people are prepared to think for themselves; if school-marm Milne keeps telling them what to think, they are likely to dig their heels in.

          30

        • #
          Mark

          mv.

          You could have mentioned that Fraser went to an early election in 1977 and received yet another record majority then promptly resumed his MO. i.e. did nothing! The people were crying out to be released from the socialist and PC disease unleashed on them by Whitlam.

          And there he was in 1982 conceding to Bob Hawke with a trembling bottom lip. Pathetic.

          20

          • #
            Chris M

            Completely agree Mark, it was a wasted seven years. Fraser was never much liked even by the people who voted for him; they were scarred by the chaos of the Whitlam years and scared of a return to Labor until they got their act together. Fraser is now a persona non grata in conservative circles due to his late-life conversion to socialism. Hardly a conservative icon!

            MV, good to see you’re enjoying yourself. Best wishes and good cheer. 😉

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  • #
    pat

    Sonny –

    imagine if the “scientists” at BoM weren’t “reluctant”!!!

    Scientists are ***reluctant to attribute any single weather event to the effects of global warming. Climate models, though, predict fewer – but more intense – major storms such as cyclones or hurricanes…
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sandy-has-lessons-for-australia-bom-says-20121030-28gyg.html

    and on and on Hannam (with Reuters, if u see the bottom of the article) entertain Braganza & Steffen’s straight-out CAGW propaganda. not a bit of concern about Sandy or the public, just pushing the meme, as always.

    10

  • #
    Rathnakumar

    Prof. Lindzen says “Stop accepting the term ‘skeptic’!” 🙂
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CurIOfnegYg

    40

    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Good point.

      I’ve never wanted to be known as a skeptic as I see my self commenting and examining this AGW scam from a

      science base.

      KK 🙂

      20

  • #
    Neville

    Roger Pielke jr lists the top ten hurricanes in the same area as Sandy. The damage is converted to 2012 dollars.

    http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/top-10-damaging-hurricanes-within-50.html#comment-form

    It’s great to have these genuine scientists available to settle all the BS that the MSM will throw at us in the coming days.

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  • #
    Neville

    Roy Spencer presents the facts on big storms like Sandy.

    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/10/frankenstorm-sandy-approaches/#comments

    Nothing unusual except that this time the two storms merged over land. But this happens probably every year somewhere on the planet.

    40

    • #
      Truthseeker

      Poll on whether or not Sandy was caused by “Global Warming” is here.

      WUWT reported it at 64% Yes and 36% No. It is now running at 36% Yes and 64% No. Shows the reach of WUWT. It also allows multiple votes, so it is as about as scientific as alarmist climate science.

      20

  • #
    Shevva

    When you sell your soul to the ‘Consensus’ for ‘The Cause’ it is very hard to get it back mentally. You are proving the doubters right and some peoples egos cannot handle this.

    It’s an intellectual blockage caused by their ego that’s saving the world.

    I deny the C in CAGW, I also deny the green house effect. These are 2 simple statements that Lew should easily be able to answer with a 1m grant, it’s probably tropo, spent a couple of weeks in Queensland in ’00.

    10

  • #
  • #

    All should read Joe Postma’s ground-breaking October 2012 paper just published here …

    http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Absence_Measureable_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf

    If short of time, read pp 47 to 49 where he cites my March paper and quotes recent correspondence I had with himself.

    I am happy to discuss/support/explain any of that quote or my paper.

    Doug

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    • #
      John Brookes

      “Principia Scientific International”. What an impressive name…

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      • #
        Truthseeker

        Well done John. Don’t deal with the science, just go straight to the irrelevant insult.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        The word “Scientific” has John all confused,
        he doesn’t know what it means because he has only seen “climate science”. ! 🙂

        Note the pdf even contains the computer code and data !..
        Very unusual in climate science, but standard in real science.

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    Truthseeker

    Everyone, just enjoy this. You will love it.

    21

  • #
    Senex Bibax

    Will Grant.. what a strangely appropriate surname

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    Bite Back

    I want to assure Lewandowski that this skeptic isn’t going to be gone any time soon.

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    michael hart

    I’ve already lived long enough to see strident adherents to the IPCC models make themselves look foolish in front of the world [not as if they found that difficult].

    I’ve often thought how interesting it would be to see and hear what gets said when year-on-year atmospheric CO2 concentrations actually start falling significantly.

    And I think I shall.

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    Brian Lemon

    This less than informed ?articlist? also quotes the famed 96% figure. Very post-modern of her… not checking something out before she accepts it as gospel in a bishophric way.
    The 96% figure, of course, comes from 79 out of 10,000 survey subjects.

    http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
    Questions:
    1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
    2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
    Results
    Results show that overall, 90% of participants answered “risen” to question 1 and 82% answered yes to question 2. In general, as the level of active research and specialization in climate science increases, so does agreement with the two primary questions (Figure 1). In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1 and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.
    Comment
    This statistic is based on a total of 79 people. There is no indication if there is any bias in response (i.e. are these 79 people funded in any way by any source that might affect their opinion.)
    On Question 1
    Obviously the temperatures have risen since pre-1800 – there was then a major cooling period (the little Ice Age) that didn’t correct until the end of the 1800s.
    On Question 2
    “Significant” is a relative term that really only means “not insignificant”. Most people who have studied this issue agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas which can increase global temperatures. Many disagree on whether there is a positive or negative feedback from other factors to make it major in effect. This survey was done before recent reports from the University of East Anglia that there has not been global warming for 15 years which might tend to disprove this theory as an increase in CO2 (which has increased dramatically over the past 3 decades) must result in increased temperatures or the study is disproven.

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      Winston

      Brian,
      I tend to believe (until someone can convince me otherwise) that so called GHG “back-radiation” is a fiction and that so- called “GHG warming” is (if it occurs at all) largely a non-radiative process, and is in any case miniscule in comparison to the phase changes of the water cycle, the mere pressure effects of having an atmosphere at all, and variations in clouds and their effect on solar insolation, while climate feedbacks I believe are logically net negative not positive as the IPCC claim.

      And yet, even with this “belief” in mind, I would answer a resounding yes to both questions- who wouldn’t? Where in those questions are the words “Greenhouse gas”, “CO2 emissions”, etc even mentioned? To say ‘no’ to the second question one would have to deny that UHI exists at all, to believe that altered patterns of land use (rural and urban) has no effect on climate either (even through such things as altered water run off, irrigation, tilling of soil, roads and pavement, etc etc), or that particulates/aerosols have no “significant” effect on temperature also.

      It is an absolute miracle they found those two dissenters- were they slipping in a couple of token “deniers” to give the impression of validity for the study, or were those two respondents just donkey voting to give two fingers up to the surveyors for asking stupid questions? Who knows, and really who cares? The fact that alarmists hang on to this sort of survey for validation of their theory is one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that they are simultaneously speaking through their hat and haven’t got a leg to stand on. And that is a neat contortion that is doomed to failure, and likely to lead to a fairly precipitous fall, which we are witnessing albeit in slow motion currently.

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  • #
    David Fura

    Ms. Nova,

    Please do not include “9/11 was an inside job” alongside fake moon landings and such. It does serious harm to your (deserved) reputation as a steward of scientific integrity. I recommend you watch the following 15-minute video to begin your education about 9/11. You will be surprised.
    Thank you.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw

    David Fura, Ph.D.
    Engineer
    Portland Action Group
    Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
    http://www.ae911truth.org

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    • #
      Sonny

      David,
      It works like this. Jo Nova is tackling the climate change conspiracy.
      It’s a large enough subject in and of itself without discussion the many other (potentially) true conspiracies that exist.

      While 9/11 is not really on topic for this forum, I would very much like If Jo was to start looking into Geo Engineering Aerosol Spraying (aka chemtrail conspiracy) because I see this is fundamentally linked to the climate change agenda. One day climate change will be used retrospectively as the excuse for dumping poison on us from the skies without our knowledge or consent. However there seems to be a complete media blackout on what is potentially the most significant issue facing our Nation today. Chemtrail spraying is becoming more and more obvious in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.

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      • #
        Gee Aye

        you two are so funny.

        No my conspiracy is better than yours. No mine is.

        There are no sonspiracies to see here. Deal with the science properly, without nutty dragon slayers and without coming up with nonsensical theories about global cabals etc, and you’ll see the problems melt away like so many ice caps.

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        • #
          Sonny

          Thanks for that patronizing condescending yet completely vacuous “debunking”.
          “Nothing to see here folks, go home”.
          There are plenty of rational scientists and engineers who have looked at both 9/11 and chemtrails and concluded that there is indeed a conspiracy afoot.
          But if you dont approach the issues with eyes wide open you will continue to drink the media koolaid.

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            KinkyKeith

            Hi Sonny

            I am not sure that America’s intelligentsia has the capacity to organise a 9/11 conspiracy.

            KK

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            Sonny

            Really KK?

            Based on the official story all you would need is a dozen or so people with box cutters and some basic flight training all directed and coordinated by a guy in a cave.

            I call this fairy tale for grown up.

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          David Fura

          Gee Aye,

          AE911Truth is not proposing any conspiracy theory for 9/11. We are simply calling for a criminal investigation (the first) for the murder of 3000 people on 9/11. This should not be controversial.

          The only 9/11 conspiracy theory here involves some dude in a cave in Afghanistan and 19 Arabs with box cutters hijacking airplanes, hitting 2 towers, and knocking 3 towers down.

          The technical investigations run by NIST (U.S. National Institute of Standards & Technology) had many problems.

          1. NIST did not explain how Building 7 went into free-fall for the first 8 stories of the collapse (100 feet). This 47-story skyscraper went from 100% support to 0% support instantaneously. This is consistent with controlled demolition but not fire-caused collapse. No modern steel-framed skyscraper has ever collapsed from fire before or after 9/11. Building 7 was not hit by an airplane.

          2. NIST did not explain the presence of nano-thermite in the WTC dust. This high-tech incendiary explosive was discovered by independent scientists and reported in a scientific journal. When the scientists heated up these red-gray chips they witnessed a high-energy burst and production of molten iron that cooled into iron-rich microspheres. Molten iron is a product of the thermite reaction. NIST did not test the dust for explosives and claims that they don’t need to even today.

          3. NIST did not explain the presence of iron-rich microspheres throughout all the WTC dust. These microspheres have a chemical fingerprint matching the microspheres produced by the heated red-gray chips, and similar to the chemical fingerprint of known thermitic reaction byproducts. All sides agree that the microspheres were formed from airborne molten iron and that the WTC building fires, even with jet fuel, were not hot enough to melt steel to produce this molten iron.

          4. NIST based their ‘investigation’ into the Building 7 collapse on a computer model. They described a Rube Goldberg sequence of events with unprecedented behavior throughout. They failed to provide any experimental validation of the key steps and refuse to release their modeling of the key steps because they say doing so would “jeopardize public safety.” They did not model an explosives scenario because they claim that only the very-loud explosive RDX could have been used to demolish Building 7, and further claim that nobody heard the 140 dB boom this would have produced. They ‘reason’ that no observed 140 dB boom means that no RDX was used, and therefore no explosives were used on Building 7.

          This is just part of the appetizer. If you truly have an open mind and want to learn more then feel free to send me an email.

          Best Regards,

          David Fura
          [email protected]

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            Sonny

            Hi David,
            For me the failure to investigate the presence of explosive residue due to the apparent absence of 140 dB noise is the most obvious red flag in the NIST “investigation”.
            If there was really no evidence of thermitic reactions then NIST would have had no problem analyzing dust samples to prove it.
            By claiming that the absence of a secondary effect (a noise event) is sufficient proof that a primary event (explosive or incendiary detonation) did not occur without analyzing the dust sample should make any sane scientist or engineer very uncomfortable.
            In any case I reject the claim that a 140 dB noise would necessarily be heard:
            1. NIST provided no evidence which takes into account viewer distance, reflections, refractions, noise absorption.
            2. There was no Noise Engineer with specialized audio equipment present to record the event nor did NIST provide evidence of the analysis of noise recordings from camera crew etc

            It’s pretty bloody simple. A claim that there was no explosive residue in the dust requires analysis of the dust.

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            Mark D.

            David Fura:

            2. NIST did not explain the presence of nano-thermite in the WTC dust. This high-tech incendiary explosive was discovered by independent scientists and reported in a scientific journal. When the scientists heated up these red-gray chips they witnessed a high-energy burst and production of molten iron that cooled into iron-rich microspheres. Molten iron is a product of the thermite reaction. NIST did not test the dust for explosives and claims that they don’t need to even today.

            3. NIST did not explain the presence of iron-rich microspheres throughout all the WTC dust. These microspheres have a chemical fingerprint matching the microspheres produced by the heated red-gray chips, and similar to the chemical fingerprint of known thermitic reaction byproducts. All sides agree that the microspheres were formed from airborne molten iron and that the WTC building fires, even with jet fuel, were not hot enough to melt steel to produce this molten iron.

            I think you might spend some time looking at slag, a common additive to cement.

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          • #

            So is this discussion proof that government funding for stopping the anti-science crowd is working or not? Maybe it’s just not possible to interject science into things people so badly want to be true?
            (This is a reply to Sonny, also.)

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          • #
            Sonny

            Sheri,
            Your comment/question is very disturbing.

            1. Government funding should never be used for repressing the viewpoints of anyone. Do you really think taxes are appropriately spent muzzling individuals with alternative ideas?
            2. Who is the anti-science crowd? Science has nothing to do with groups, or affiliations. It doesn’t give a toss about popularity or the need for belonging.
            3. Yes you are right about the difficulty of not being able to use science as a persuasion for people who have formed strong views.
            You just need to look at the people on this blog who still claim that the earth is still experiencing catastrophic global warming despite them being stumped time and time again by questions that they refuse to answer.

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          • #

            Sonny: Guess I should have put the /sarc tag on the comment about government spending to stop the anti-science crowd.
            The “anti-science” crowd is anyone who uses methods not part of science to prove their point on what should be a matter of science: climate change, vaccinations, chemtrails, 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, etc. Anti-science is taking an event an giving it mystical or predictive qualities it does not have. Conspiracies are part of this and there are no exceptions. (The scientific answer to “conspiracies” is we just don’t know. We can argue about how many decades and billions of dollars should be spent trying to find out and when it’s time to give a rest. I realize 9/11’s hated Bush, the government, etc, but scientifically, the basis for the conspiracy and evidence is very shaky. So how many billions do we invest in finding an answer? If we get an answer, then what? It’s really about revenge and proving one’s hatred of the government if justified. That’s not science. Note: I do call climate change a conspiracy. I do not use that term for anything, so don’t ask.)
            I also do not blame the government much for the climate change mess. Mostly, I blame Al Gore and the very scientifically apathetic people who followed him. I blame people who love apocalyptic lifestyles where they get high off the anticipation of bad things to come. I blame people for rejecting or not bothering to learn scientific method. I blame those who profit from what they know is a lie–this is the part where the government blame comes in,. They saw a lie and rode out to their advantage. If human beings chose to believe the worst and reject rational thought, that’s entirely their fault. I do believe in free will and the ability to decide in most cases. (Please avoid the usual “What about Johnny? He got hit by a chunk of flying metal and his brain is damaged? He has no choice. Unless your argument is there are a lot of Johnnys out there and that’s our problem, an exception does not prove your case, any more than a hot summer proves climate change.)

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            AE911Truth is not proposing any conspiracy theory for 9/11.

            Really? Then why are you bothering? Oh, I get it now. It’s criminal to find yourself in a mess so outside your experience and training, so overwhelming that you make bad decisions at the time.

            How easily we want to second guess those who were there and then lay blame on someone. Is that what you’re all about? After all, you nailed down the real culprits in your second paragraph.

            The only 9/11 conspiracy theory here involves some dude in a cave in Afghanistan and 19 Arabs with box cutters hijacking airplanes, hitting 2 towers, and knocking 3 towers down.

            2 hit, 3 down = domino effect by the way.

            Also see my comment on your original comment.

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      Sonny

      Well done David Fura,
      Very few people have the intellectual honesty and intestinal fortitude to genuinely investigate 9/11. The reason is obvious. The implications are absolutely terrifying. We have to abandon completely our normalcy bias. For most this is too much to ask.

      Many on this forum have realized that there is a conspiracy of sorts surrounding global warming and climate change. (some might say a “confluence of vested interests”). They can see that the powers of corruption can give a lie very long legs indeed)

      They are not yet ready to see the “confluence of vested interests” that makes possible all manner of crimes against humanity.

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      • #
        Mattb

        Yes well done David. It is definately worth making posts like this and kudos to Jo for removing the reference to Elvis still being alive after I emailed her some recent holiday photos from the Carribean.

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        • #
          Sonny

          Is that all you have for us Matt B? Ridicule?
          Well it may be effective for some. But I guarantee that others who have liked my comments and respected my opinions on this blog over the past years might now look into some of these other areas a little more closely and come to their own conclusions.

          As we all know there are no true conspiracies, and no government secrets and no crimes against humanity have ever occurred.

          /sarcasm off.

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            Gee Aye

            Ridicule it is unless you can present something approaching sense. Here is an encapsulation of everything I have every read on chemtrails.

            1. Some bloke (always blokes) makes a baseless assertion like this: I know what contrails look like and where and when they should occur. I see these other trails from planes that are different or at the wrong time/altitude therefore

            2.These are deliberate releases of chemicals.

            [a skeptic might step in and point out the fallacy of point 1 i.e. the possibility that the person might not actually know all about contrails and that there is no evidence that what is observed is chemical]

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          • #
            Mark D.

            Sonny, I’ve got more than that. Trouble is you don’t see it, you don’t hear it.

            911 Truthers are all fricking nuts (near as I can tell). There is a reasonable explanation for everything that happened that day.

            23

          • #
            Sonny

            Thousands of engineers and scientists disagree.
            I am one of them.

            Your baseless ad hom attack means nothing.

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            Sonny

            1. Sofia Smallstorm
            http://www.aboutthesky.com/
            Therefore your first argument fails. It’s not only men.

            2. Refer to point 1.
            Analysis from chemtrail fall out how’s all sorts of chemical and biological crap.

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          • #
            Crakar24

            Having given this topic a large degree of thought over the years i have come to the conclusion that for the official story to be maintained one would have to accept that just about every government department within the USA is completely incompetent.

            Now there is a chance that this may be the case as it is here in Australia however is it possibly that ALL departments where so incompetent on the day at the same time, that is the question.

            I believe the answer to that question is no.

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            Gee Aye

            Thanks Sonny,

            Sofia is indeed a woman so I was wrong on my parenthetical comment. And thanks for the link that demonstrates my points 1 and 2. The caption to the photo says it all.

            02

          • #
            Mark D.

            Sonny says: Thousands of engineers and scientists disagree.
            I am one of them.

            Your baseless ad hom attack means nothing.

            Your ineffective argument from authority means even less.

            Does anyone else notice the comparison to techniques used by the AGW crowd?

            Sorry that my “Fricking Nuts” comment hits so close to home you big talking engineer.

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          • #
            Mark D.

            OMG! I just looked at the link Sonny provided on “chemtrails”.

            I submit; more proof of the Fricking Nuts claim I made…………now extended to include not just “Truthers but also Chemtrail nutists.

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          • #
            Gee Aye

            Mark D, the link was mesmorising. Did you notice that she is also onto those evil 9/11 conspirators?

            and this…

            The entire biological world is being eradicated, to be replaced with nanotechnology and controlled pseudo-life forms

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          • #
            Sonny

            Mark D, I think you need to look up te meaning of “authority”.
            I have authority because I am an independent engineer working in industry? No.
            I would have authority if I was an engineer working for the government? No.
            But I would need to tailor my engineering advice to suit the government agenda? Yes.
            What is that Agenda? Agenda 21? Yes!

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          • #
            Sonny

            Gee Aye.
            You have cherry picked a statement from a poll that people are asked to fill.
            It nowhere says that Sofia subscribes to that view. That’s like me attributing to Lewandowsky a belief based on one of his poll questions.

            Here is the POLL.

            How aware are you of chemtrails?

            I believe what people are seeing are ordinary jet contrails.
            This is a weather-modification experiment the government is not telling us about.
            The spraying is part of a huge geo-engineering plan, and the global-warming hoax is part of it.
            Chemtrails are just another conspiracy theory put out by paranoid people who think everything is a conspiracy.
            I am very concerned about what is happening to our world and earth. I know that this is warfare against humanity and all living things.
            This is about depopulation. The elite intend to reduce our numbers drastically and make us into slaves.
            Chemtrails are like the emperor’s new clothes. People can’t see them until they are shown. Then they see them all the time.
            I have never seen a chemtrail. There are no chemtrails being sprayed where I live.
            I have seen the spraying for years. It is destroying our sky, our visibility, our health. The cover-up is deliberate and designed to fool the masses.
            The entire biological world is being eradicated, to be replaced with nanotechnology and controlled pseudo-life forms.
            Who and why? are my biggest questions. I’m scared to think about what’s going to happen.
            We can’t use the word “chemtrail.” It has been tainted and is ruining the public-education effort.

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            Sonny

            Notice the debating tactics Gee Aye and Mark D use?
            Ridicule, Name calling “truthers” “nutists” etc.
            It’s basically just intimidation and bullying tactics.
            And even if I am “nuts” (I assure you that I’m perfectly sane) does thy preclude me from being correct? Are the two mutually exclusive? I wonder how many peoole have acquired mental illnesses due to the torture of being involved in a war or conlict? Does that render what they have learned or their beliefs null and void and not worth considering?

            It’s time to step up your game.

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            Mattb

            At least I used humour!

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            KinkyKeith

            I have to pay that Gee.

            KK

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            Gee Aye

            mattb… let us hope that the quote i quoted was understated humour

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            Mark D.

            Interesting…..Does ones insanity make them wrong? No I suppose not necessarily. Does ones insanity call to question their ability to make sound and rational decisions? Yes it does. Would it possibly cloud their ability to discriminate (the scientific meaning), I think so. This is why Lewandowsky did his poll isn’t it? So Sonny, let’s wonder out loud; out of 100 sane people, how many would read that link and rank it high on a believability scale?

            This is what Lewandowsky is trying to test, a theory that “skeptic” people like Sonny seemingly can’t help themselves falling for all kinds of “conspiracies”.

            Lewandowsky in my opinion, is demonstrating confirmation bias. On the other hand, who can blame him? I (like Lew I suppose) shudder in disbelief when supplied with such a web link as Sonny has done above.

            Am I a “bully” when I attempt to shock you into a self-assessment of sanity? No, I’m trying to do you a favor. If it isn’t working then you may have lost the ability to self-assess. You maybe need help of the professional kind. Unfortunately, you may also be confirming Lewandowsky. The other reason I’m harsh with this kind of linking, is so that any new visitor here would find us mostly rational most of the time…..

            Sonny, just to be certain, do you think Agenda 21 (a real agenda, documented and not at all secret) is the cause of “chemtrails”? Is Agenda 21 what caused the 911 WT building collapse? Otherwise why did you toss that into this current rant of yours?

            **************************************
            Gee Aye, if you found it Mesmerizing you were in too deep. PULL UP get out of there don’t ever go back!!!! (you didn’t get to the spinning Moiré page did you? I hope your speakers were off……..

            10

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            Sonny

            Hey Mark D.

            I never made an assertion as to the cause of Chemtrails. I have used the scientific method of direct observation to record chemtrail events on multiple different dates in the Victoria region. I have filmed and photographed this. I have watched apparent “contrails” appear from horizon to horizon caused by what looked like a jet but strangely given it’s apparent proximity, made very little to no sound.
            The white trail left behind persist for Three hours feathering out into a white haze. On the same day I observed and photographed a full rainbow (halo) around the sun which I have read is a characteristic optical effect associated with chemtrails rarely
            Observed naturally. Based on my location and the aircrafts trajectory and height it was clearly not departing or arriving at any airport. later in the day I observed extremely fine strands of unidentified material which looked like spider webs falling from the sky which I found covering my vehicles windscreen. I since discovered the term “chemwebs” and found very interesing films on utube from other Australians documenting this same phenomenon.

            Do you want to know more?

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            Sonny

            Debunk this …

            To my mind this is incontrovertible evidence of a man made fibre fallout from chemtrails. This is not my video but I have observed the exact same phenomenon on or after days in which large white trails are in the sky.

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSm6uIRMOk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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          • #

            Sonny:
            A YouTube video does not constitute scientific proof. Nor does correlation indicate causality. Common mistakes people make when trying to “scientifically” prove something.

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            Sonny

            You are right Sheri,
            At some point when scientists fail society (as they have with climate change) you have to rely on your Own senses to determine truth from fiction.
            Since I have seen this phenomena with my own eyes I can conclude it is real. I.e proof for me that these long web like strands exist.
            The only natural hypothesis I am aware of is that it is from Balooning Spiders.
            I find this incredibly hard to believe based on the volume, size and height from which they fall. I will have to speak to an expert on spiders to form what you might constitute as scientific proof. I believe thy independent laboratories have analyses these chemwebs and concluded that they are not a known substance (like a spider web).

            But as you have said Sheri YouTube isn’t proof so I’d need to collect samples and have It analyzed in a lab… And then I could go to all the major news outlets and they would run the story….

            Wake up Sheri.

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            Sonny

            Sheer here is a One hour YouTube presentation discussing chemtrails.
            This does not constitute scientific proof.

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ridMz3PN4&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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          • #

            Sonny–I appreciate you have a very caustic sense of humor. Understand this is not my first rodeo with chemtrails, 9/11, vaccinations causing autism, and many, many other conspiracy theories. I spent a year and a half researching and discussing these things with a true believer. I was struck by how some of the pictures of Morgellon’s diseaese looked like what I had last fall, except no chemtrails were involved. Yes, you would have to have the material analyzed by a reputable lab. Personally, if I really thought my health was endangered, I’d do it. Sure, you will tell me the lab will find nothing–maybe, but how many people actually do have the analysis? How many people understand how many of the “chemicals” in these trails occur everywhere? Do they know in what amounts (baseline). “Your own observation” is not science in most cases. It carries your own conspiracy leanings, negating the science aspect. I have three chronic illnesses with unknown etiology. I have been to many, many specialists and none have an answer or a cure (some of the conditions do have names). Since there is no known cause or cure for these things, should I dive in and blame the oil field I live next to? After all, oil companies hate their customers and want to kill them, right? Maybe it’s the power plant 20 miles away. Maybe it’s my water. Maybe it’s that cheap Chinese crap at my local discount store. That stuff smells so bad I even buy the toys for my dog. Maybe that’s what caused it, before I rid my house of those items? Maybe the wind turbines are spraying chemicals into the air as part of a government experiment (beside running cameras to film what everyone is doing). I’m pretty close to those to. However, being a scientist, I realize there are a lot of things in the world no one has an answer for yet and my health conditions are some of them. I don’t jump on the conspiracy bandwagon because science lacks an answer. That’s not logical or scientific. I read and observe and try to find a cause or cure, but I do it very systematically to avoid buying miracle cures from India. Yes, I believe you have seen the chemwebs and that you have no current explanation for them. That does not indicate a conspiracy–it indicates more research is needed. As for the government hushing this up, seriously, they have better things to do. Like take all your hard earnings and pour them into worthless green energy. 🙂

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            Gee Aye

            Sheri,

            nice demonstration of the formation of conspiracy theories. Basically, at some point, someone simply makes it up. There is always a plausible element to connect it with a real thing or event but in the end it is just made up.

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            Sonny

            Gee Aye, your attitude of automatically assuming conspiracies are all “made up”,
            Will preclude you from ever investigating them to determine IF there is any scientific evidence to support them. I’m not saying all conspiracy theories are true. I don’t believe the earth is flat for example. But you know what? I’ve looked into the evidence which suggests that it is round.

            Your mind will always be closed. You are far too trustworthy of the things that you are told are established facts. You are like most people in this respect so don’t feel bad. Some on this forum have the brains to question what they are told about the climate. Yet they will choose to not believe evidence of a much more sinister theory (9/11 or chemtrails) because it would cause too much cognitive dissonance and pain if they were to look into it and start believing. They might even be worried that such knowledge would seriously affect their happiness and emotional stability. (rightly so).

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            I would clarify that I don’t think conspiracies are made up. I believe they result from someone not understanding a phenomena, not getting an answer they are happy with and going out to look for answers on their own. There is always an element of truth or the theories would simply be rejected. Plausible is necessary for most conspiracy theories, but probable is not.
            Sonny–you make the same complaint I often see in conspiracy people. If I don’t agree, my mind is closed and I have no sense and I just don’t understand. It never occurs to you that perhaps it is you that is mistaken. I have never met a conspiracy theorist who thought it was possible they were wrong–in fact, asking for proof and questioning assumptions just made them angry. I am not saying such a person does not exist, only that I have not met one. Referring to people who don’t agree as “lacking the brains to question” is an invalid attack. They may have questioned. You don’t know. You just assume if they disagree with you, they didn’t look hard enough. You know the truth and others just don’t want to know. You seem to believe if conspiracies were proven true and we all knew the “truth” we would be better off. Your idea of a great life is knowing your government is out to kill you? Seriously?
            Note: The government is definitely not well-behaved and should be monitored. The EPA is under investigation for basically pumping diesel fumes into sick people’s lungs to test air pollution damage. However, this was done in the open and documents do exist to prove it. Other experiments have been done and the government has been chastised for them. These are not proof of conspiracies, just that people employed by the government as no better behaved than anyone else.

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            Mark D.

            Sonny says: Debunk this …

            To my mind this is incontrovertible evidence of a man made fibre fallout from chemtrails. This is not my video but I have observed the exact same phenomenon on or after days in which large white trails are in the sky.

            Sonny, I can’t tell if you are really sincere in asking the question, but this one time I’ll assume so and answer.

            The video is absolutely showing young spiders “ballooning”. The hint should be the proximity to tall structures (the light poles). If you happen to catch one of the filaments you’d see the young very small spider at one end of the web strand.

            I have a sailboat and every year about mid summer they start doing this from every other mast in the marina and they are prolific.

            There is a followup point to be made here. If you were a person that spent a lot of time indoors, this phenomenon would be entirely foreign. Therefore the new observation could be (through suggestion) made out to be “very unusual”. Same as the various cumulus formations would be if someone just recently started looking up at the sky.

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            Mattb

            What this shows to me also is that Lewendowsy’s research “could” be a useful topic in terms of seeing what % of people hold a view based on bias (whether conspiracy or the opposite) and what % hold a view that at least demonstrates that they consider each topic on its percieved merits (rightly or wrongly).

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            Mark D.

            Mattb, Lewy’s “research” is useful for seeing what percentage of researchers hold a bias.

            That said, there is some research left to be done: The number of skeptics that abhor the fringe elements that claim to be skeptics.

            Why don’t you walk over and ask Lew to get some funding for that……..

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            Sonny

            Hi Sheri,

            I would be more than welcoming of evidence that would prove my hypothesis regarding 9/11 and chemtrails wrong. So far they have not been forthcoming.
            Do you have any specific evidence you can refer me to that could change mind?

            That’s an interesting point you raise about “do we really want to know”?
            This would depend on the person. I’m personally on an unrelenting search for the truth so ofcourse I am open to being proved wrong! I suspect most people have a very low threshold for bad or uncomfortable news relating to covert government operations and agendas.

            Nowhere did I say that “the government is out to kill me”, although one night come to such a paranoid conclusion based on the “population problem” that high power people love to talk about.

            The motivations for chemtrail spraying could be many and varied and could be (although I don’t suspect they are) perfectly benign in nature.

            E.g. To prevent global warming (please research Geo Engineering – there have been conventions on the subject in Canberra)

            Please watch “What in the world are they spraying” and “why in the world are they spraying” and make up your own mind.

            That’s all I have to say on this topic. I’m sorry if this topic is upsetting for some people but I believe that people should be made aware if what IS going on above their heads.

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            It took a bit, but we arrived at the “prove a negative” request I often get in conspiracy theory. This is evidence that you do not understand scientific method. In science, one proves their hypothesis right. The correct question is “Do you have irrefutable, testable proof that the chemtrails are part of a government conspiracy and not naturally occurring phenomena?”. You made the claim, you prove it. That’s science. “Prove me wrong” is conspiracy theory. Also, using that “logic”, I could claim aliens made the earth, and live at the core now. They are responsible for all the bad things, not the government. Now prove me wrong…….
            If the motivations for spraying chemtrails is benign, why worry about it? If they are “fixing” global warming, would that not mean that the government did realize the problem and that the chemtrails are actually working since no warming is currently occurring. Though you would think the government would have announced a success like that.
            I have watched multiple videos on chemtrails and read hundreds of pages of theories. I did make up my own mind.
            One last thought–why would the government spend millions on arial spraying when I can think of at least a dozen more clandestine ways of say….drugging the population, testing chemicals, poisoning us to keep us sick and compliant, whatever. All chemtrails being sinister or clandestine would prove is that our government is really, really bad at clandestine activities and they really should find a better method.
            I, too, will leave the subject now, as we seem to have covered most points. I realize you passionately believe what you post and it is not upsetting. I just don’t find any of the conspiracy-type arguments for this phenomena compelling.

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            Sonny

            Sheri,
            You are 100% correct. I cannot prove this to the standard required by the scientific process. But even if I did – got a sample tested by a reputable lab etc the best I could accomplish by way of disseminating the information is via YouTube. (which you have said does not amount to scientific proof). So actually you are asking me to achieve the impossible.

            Luckily my intention through these various posts was merely to raise the question not provide a definitive answer or scientific proof.

            Like the emperors new clothes, once peoples awareness had been activated they will begin to start LOOKING AT THE SKY.

            By the way I am very disappointed that despite your lengthy research into these conspiracies you have not provided me with one reference to debunk these theories.
            I will have to continue looking.

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            You have definitely made people aware of the chemtrails theory, if they were not already familiar.

            I reject the idea that in real life, stories always end the way they do on cheesy science fiction shows where all the evidence is destroyed and the men in black take you away. Real people are often smarter than that and unpopular ideas have been proven (like ulcers are caused by bacteria–by the researcher infecting himself). You can surely rise to the occasion. Saying you are destined to use YouTube for such revelations merely excuses you from having to be very creative in educating people. Educating people is hard work and takes a lot of time.

            Repeating: It’s your hypothesis and it is up to you to prove it. One cannot prove a negative. Again, prove to me that aliens did not create the earth and are living in the core. You can’t. It’s up to me to prove the aliens exist. That’s how science works. Even if I cannot provide an alternative theory, if you cannot definitively prove your theory, I still must reject your theory. Claiming a theory is correct because there is no other explanation is a logical fallacy. Until you understand that idea, no scientific answer can possibly be found. When you reach that point, I would be happy to discuss chemtrails with you.

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            Mattb

            tough audience tonight

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            Gee Aye

            Sonny, regarding the step up the game comment… you are applying not applying the criteria you use to assess the arguements of promponents of AGW ie some verifiable data.

            You are going down a long and twisted path of assertion and rhetoric and expect respect and to not have any skeptical comment?

            Show me the data… yes data… instead of made up stuff and you will have earned yourself less mocking. It is not bullying, it is the same rigour that is required of anyone who wants to convince someone else of something extraordinary. We ask this of climate scientists and we ask it of you.

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            Gee Aye

            regarding the poll question. I made no comment on its meaning so I cherry picked nothing. However, anyone who dares to risk their sanity can delve into the site and find that indeed there is much supporting comment from the site owner for various fear campaigns about how we are being manipulated by “others” with bugs, drugs, 9/11,aerosols etc etc The list is endless and every increasing and includes both deliberate conspiracy to manipulate theclimate to make temperatures increase (ie global warming is true) and the conspiracy to make us think climate is increasing (global warming is false).

            So my quote was out of context as you say but completely indicative of the mindset of the author.

            Good luck staying sane.

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      Roy Hogue

      David Fura,

      World Trade Center 7 was not an intentional act of demolition. You cannot provide the slightest credible motive anyone who could have done it would have had for doing it. What was to be gained? Who could gain from doing it? Who paid the bill for it? You have no answers.

      The fact that you don’t understand something you see doesn’t make it a flying saucer.

      The worst of this foolishness is that it would need to involve so many people that a leak would be inevitable. Someone would have had to see all the preparations for bringing down the building; many someones without a doubt.

      Oops! There goes your secret.

      I’ll not even get into any of the other nonsense you got started.

      None of this passes the smell test. Remember that towers 1 and 2 were first claimed to be intentional demolition (steel doesn’t melt nonsense, ignoring the fact that no one claimed that steel melted). But that theory was shot so full of holes you could use it for window screen.

      World Trade Center conspiracies are a dead end. Get a life!

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    Neville

    The NBN is in a complete mess, but why isn’t that surprising?

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_nbn_business_model_crumbles/

    This just proves what a clueless shambles this Gillard govt has become. If the NBN is added to the budget bottom line we will need decades to clean up this Rudd /Gillard disaster.

    But once again why wasn’t any sort of viable business plan submitted for the best industry groups assessment before these idiots proceeded with this massive white elephant?

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      Dennis

      A farmer said yesterday, NSW mid north coast, that the NBN Company has offered in writing to connect his property for $200K, NBN offered to pay half. Is that the kind of business acumen being provided by the small army of very well paid executives now looking after NBN business, it appears so.

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  • #
    Neville

    Fitzgibbon is correct, susidies for stupid renewables should be scrapped. They can’t work and they won’t reduce our permanent need for reliable cheap coal, gas etc.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/fitzgibbon_goes_cool_on_pricey_green_power/#commentsmore

    But most importantly wind and solar won’t make a scrap of difference to the climate or temp.

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      AndyG55

      If the ALP ever did get back to reality, and drop the RET, while the Libs retained it, I’m pretty sure that Labor would pick up a LOT of votes.

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        memoryvault

        .
        Funny you should mention that. Joel Fitzgibbon, the Labor Government Chief Whip, has just called on his party to drop the RET. Such a move would leave Abbott and the Liberals a long way out on a very thin limb.

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          AndyG55

          I’m sure Greg hunt would have already seen it, but i sent the link Neville posted to him, with the comment I just made above.

          As you say, a very thin limb, and it could put Labor back in power, which is their ONLY care.

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          Mark

          I’ve listened to his interview with Chris Smith earlier this afternoon. He’s a dunce mv; still believes in AGW and tried to blame Hurricane Sandy on it!

          The only reason for FitzGibbon’s statement is that he has reason to believe that his parliamentary tenure is under threat from his rightly indignant constituents.

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    inedible hyperbowl

    Jo –
    It has been pointed out to me by a young physicist that Lewandowsky suffers from a disorder known as “physics envy“. Physics envy is when you do not have the intellectual capacity to learn any physics, as a substitute one manufactures stories to cover the the deficiencies in intellectual capacity.

    and OT – please can you and David find the time for the watt’s TV?

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    warren raymond

    That a humongous new tax would keep us and future generations ‘safe from dangerous climate change’ was not only an insult, but an unprecedented show of arrogance by a ruling elite that is determined to deceive and defraud us.

    That it is merely a redistribution program was confirmed during the Rio summit, where UN stooges no longer talked about ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’, but about ‘climate justice’.

    My son (a doctor) used to be a believer ‘because of the scientific consensus’, became a denier when he heard that.

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    PeterB

    Lewandowsky has a new piece on The Drum.

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    pat

    sanity prevails? what about offshore turbines? not a done deal as yet:

    30 Oct: UK Telegraph: Robert Winnett: Death knell for wind farms: ‘Enough is Enough’ says minister
    Wind farms have been “peppered” across Britain without enough consideration for the countryside and people’s homes, a senior Conservative energy minister admitted last night as he warned “enough is enough”.
    John Hayes said that we can “no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities” and added that it “seems extraordinary” they have allowed to spread so much throughout the country.
    The energy minister said he had ordered a new analysis of the case for onshore wind power which would form the basis of future government policy, rather than “a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective”. The comments sparked speculation that Conservative ministers are planning to drop their support for wind farms — a move which would trigger a major Coalition rift.
    Mr Hayes, who was appointed energy minister in last month’s reshuffle, is understood to believe that there should be a moratorium on new onshore wind farms…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/9644558/Death-knell-for-wind-farms-Enough-is-Enough-says-minister.html

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    Tim

    While billions of dollars and untold creative energy is spent on this fraud,what about real environmental hazards? How about the unfettered nuclear industry, depleted uranium being dumped over the ever expanding theaters of conflict the West is engaged in, or the genetically modified plants and animals that are displacing and corrupting the natural species that inhabit this planet? Or how about the ineffective, logistical & petroleum intensive mega-agricultural industry, poisonous herbicides and pesticides dumped onto our food by companies like Monsanto, free-trade that sees tons of diesel fuel burned to bring plastic trinkets from Chinese factories to America’s shores, and the list goes on ad infinitum. I don’t see any taxes diverted to these causes.

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      Truthseeker

      Tim,

      Post-modern environmentalism has nothing to do with the environment.

      Didn’t you get the memo?

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      Mark D.

      I don’t see any taxes diverted to these causes.

      Thank God!

      How about no taxes, then let the fat bastard bureaucrats figure out how to solve all the “problems”?

      I think there would be far less problems……

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    Crakar24

    Grant wants evidence? We should give it to him before we all die, heres some evidence of snowball warmaing (just the web link as there are too many to list)

    http://iceagenow.info/

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    scaper...

    So all the sceptics are old and will die out. Well, the warmists are in for a nasty shock.

    There is a whole new generation of very savvy sceptics coming through that don’t buy the Global Warming Doomsday Cult’s scare campaign and one day they will be part of the ‘political discourse’ so they can’t even get that prediction right either.

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      memoryvault

      .
      Good to see you back, scaper. Been on long service leave, or something?

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        scaper...

        Always a lurker here…just had nothing to say.

        Been working hard for a few months to refill the mischief jar. Also have taken in a homeless kid, he turned seventeen yesterday. He’s quite an impressive guy so will help him get on his feet. He’s indigenous and wants to earn his way in this world.

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          memoryvault

          .
          All good to hear.

          Advise your young bloke to do a TESOL accreditation course and get himself up to China for a couple of years teaching Business English. No money in it but get him to keep his eyes and ears open and learn about Asian cultural attitudes to business.

          Then he can come back to Australia and teach Australian business people how to deal with Asians for a couple of hundred bucks an hour.

          While both our idiot government and idiot opposition push for greater Asian language studies in our schools, while people in Asia furiously learn English because that’s the language of all the relevant computer software, the understanding of cultural differences remains a blank.

          I have personally witnessed a multi-billion dollar iron ore deal go up in smoke because an ignorant Australian Site Senior Executive did not now how to deal with a proffered business card from the Head of a Chinese investment consortium.

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    pat

    30 Oct: Daily Mail: James Chapman: Minister signals end of the wind farm: We can’t pepper turbines across the country – enough is enough, declares energy minister
    Onshore wind farms give other renewable energy sources a bad name, says Energy Minister John Hayes
    Existing and planned sites are enough to meet environmental goals
    Research into effects on house prices, noise levels and military radars has been commissioned, Mr Hayes told the Mail exclusively
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225531/Minister-signals-end-wind-farm-We-pepper-turbines-country–declares-energy-minister.html

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    pat

    31 Oct: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Ten years too late, it’s good riddance to wind farms – one of the most dangerous delusions of our age
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2225544/Ten-years-late-s-good-riddance-wind-farms–dangerous-delusions-age.html

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    Mark

    By the way Jo, great pic of you at ACM. Oh alright, grudging acknowledgement of your ‘other half’ who’s also present.

    http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/jo_david.jpg

    Ummm…do you have an available sister, Jo? Just askin’.

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    pat

    oops, the Christopher Booker article is from the UK Daily Mail.
    best excerpt:

    “What made this even more piquant was the fact that Mr Hayes chose to drop this bombshell just hours before attending a conference in Glasgow staged by RenewableUK, the professional lobby group for Britain’s wind industry…
    What made this even more piquant was the fact that Mr Hayes chose to drop this bombshell just hourbefore These are the very people who for years have been making fortunes out of the greatest public subsidy bonanza of modern times. Now Mr Hayes is to stop their gravy train in its tracks.
    It will give them the biggest shock of their professional lives…”

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    pat

    oops again, the excerpt is:

    “What made this even more piquant was the fact that Mr Hayes chose to drop this bombshell just hours before attending a conference in Glasgow staged by RenewableUK, the professional lobby group for Britain’s wind industry…
    These are the very people who for years have been making fortunes out of the greatest public subsidy bonanza of modern times. Now Mr Hayes is to stop their gravy train in its tracks.
    It will give them the biggest shock of their professional lives…”

    so excited to see the UK starting to roll back the gravy train, i’m having trouble with the laptop!

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    PaulM

    O/T

    With a Category 2 hurricane (which according to Their ABC drives hurricane force winds before it) now classified as catastrophic, what will they call Categories 3, 4, 5, 6?

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    It may take a decade or so, but “consensus” is starting to swing the other way, I suggest. Principia Scientific International (PSI) continues to add to its numbers scientists who know that carbon dioxide does not control our climate.

    As I mentioned above, on 22 October 2012 Joseph Postma published on the PSI site what must be one of the most comprehensive papers ever peer-reviewed on the topic. See …

    http://principia-scientific.org/publications/Absence_Measureable_Greenhouse_Effect.pdf

    Prof Claes Johnson was the first to put forward computations supporting the now-established fact that not all radiation striking a target actually transfers heat to that target. Radiation is not a bombardment of photons that explode like hand grenades and heat anything they collide with. If the radiation comes from a cooler source it is merely scattered and, energy-wise, the result is similar to reflection.

    In my own paper published on PSI on 12 March 2012 I discussed Johnson’s work and the quantification of heat transfer by radiation. Postma has cited my paper and included a detailed summary I wrote – see pp 47 to 49.

    The main effect of backradiation comes from water vapour – perhaps 100 times more effective than carbon dioxide in slowing the radiative rate of surface cooling. However, this radiative cooling makes up less than 30% of all heat transfer from the surface to the atmosphere. The important point is that the rates of non-radiative cooling can accelerate to compensate for any slowing of radiative cooling, thus leaving no net change in the overall rate of cooling.

    Climate change follows natural cycles, most notably 1000 and 60 year ones. Recent research has established that there were world wide temperatures similar to this period about 900 to 1000 years ago. So it appears the world will reach a 1000 year maximum in the coming 100 years or so, if not already. The superimposed 60 year cycle has been declining since about 1998, but did cause alarm in the 30 years before that. The cycles were not so well recognised then, so the IPCC et al made the huge mistake of assuming that 30 year trend should be extrapolated upwards for ever.

    In a nutshell, carbon dioxide does not, and never will have any effect on world temperatures.

     

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      memoryvault

      The cycles were not so well recognised then

      The sixty year cycle (thirty years warming, thirty years cooling) was the basis of climate as taught in physics when I was at high school in the mid Sixties. Back then time-series graphs relating to climate were delineated in 30 year scales, as opposed to the 10 year scales used today.

      Up until a few years ago the official definition of “climate” by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) was something like: “Climate is the measured change or trend in weather over a fixed period of time, traditionally 30 years”.

      Methinks far from “not being so well recognised” the well known 60 year cyclical nature of “climate” was disappeared sometime in the Seventies and Eighties, in much the same manner as they tried to disappear the MWP and LIA, and for the same reason; they were Inconvenient Truths.

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      Andrew McRae

      The main effect of backradiation comes from water vapour – perhaps 100 times more effective than carbon dioxide in slowing the radiative rate of surface cooling.

      OMG! I nearly fell off my chair.

      Well done, Doug.
      I guess you’ll soon be writing to Postma to correct him about his complete dismissal of backradiation.

      In a nutshell, carbon dioxide does not, and never will have any effect on world temperatures.

      It’s a shame about the short memory. But you are in good company with Postma:

      Backradiation neither causes active heating, nor slowed cooling, at the surface.
      (radiation from a colder ambient radiative environment should slow down the rate of cooling, and we agree with that.)

      Being able to hold two contradictory beliefs in your head and believe both of them is simply par for the course in SlayerWorld.

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        You only think there is a contradiction because you fail to understand that non-radiative cooling accelerates and compensates for any slowing of radiative cooling. So there is no net change in the rate of surface cooling resulting from the backradiation.

        If we look at Trenberth’s energy budget diagram on page 314 here we see 333 W/m^2 backradiation and only 396 W/m^2 for radiation from the surface to the atmosphere or direct to space. I would argue that, 333 of the 396 is merely scattered backradiation which, as explained in my earlier posts, does not transfer any (new) heat from the surface. So only 396 – 333 = 63 W/m^2 is transferring heat. Sensible heat transfer is shown as 80 + 17 = 97 W/m^2. Hence we have a total of 63 + 97 = 160 W/m^2 transferring heat from the surface. Of this, 97 / 160 = ~61% is transferred by sensible heat transfer. However, of the 63 W/m^2 of radiation we see that 40 W/m^2 goes straight to space. Hence carbon dioxide can have no effect on that cooling. That leaves only 23 W/m^2 being absorbed by the atmosphere.

        So, we have 23 / 160 = only 14% of heat transfer from the surface can possibly be affected by water vapour, carbon dioxide and their colleagues, (whom I refuse to call GHG’s) and it is not too hard to imagine other cooling processes accelerating to compensate for any slowing of this 14% of all heat transfer from the surface.

         

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    pat

    time to stop farming:

    31 Oct: Sydney Morning Herald: Reuters: Farming may contribute a third of emissions, study finds
    Food production accounts for up to 29 per cent of man-made greenhouse gases, twice the amount the United Nations has estimated comes from farming, a study published on Wednesday said.
    Looking at emissions across the food system – including forest clearance, fertiliser production and transport – rather than just farming itself – agriculture research organisation CGIAR said much more work was needed to cut climate change emissions from food.
    Its report, “Climate Change and Food Systems”, estimated food production was responsible for between 19 and 29 per cent of mankind’s total greenhouse emissions, far above UN estimates of 14 per cent based on a narrower definition of farming.
    “From a food point of view (the UN approach) doesn’t make sense,” said Bruce Campbell, who heads the CGIAR research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security…
    Many countries could make big cost savings by cutting emissions, he said. “There are good economic reasons to improve efficiency in agriculture, not just to cut greenhouse gas emissions.”…
    Global changes in diet, shifting towards vegetarianism from meat, would also help…
    A separate report by the CGIAR climate programme indicated that climate change is likely to reduce yields of the three biggest crops judged by calorie production – maize, wheat and rice – in developing nations in coming decades.
    That could force some farmers to make radical shifts to growing more heat-, flood- or drought-tolerant crops, according to the report, “Recalibrating Food Production in the Developing World”…
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/farming-may-contribute-a-third-of-emissions-study-finds-20121031-28jzn.html

    no wonder CGIAR can churn out reports two at a time. just check all their Who We Are links – a veritable CAGW industry all on their own.

    http://www.cgiar.org/

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      Sonny

      That’s right Pat.
      Nutrition is also on their hit list. Only government controlled GMO crops allowed
      Much easier to control and subdue people who are both in fuel poverty and woefully malnourished.

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      Global changes in diet, shifting towards vegetarianism from meat, would also help…

      That doesn’t make any sense. Ruminants can graze on land unsuitable for growing any food crop. They are efficient protein factories and nutrient concentrators for human consumption.

      Encouraging people not to eat meat means that more of the environment has to be taken away from the wild so that people can eat enough food to be productive and, above all; happy.

      People who believe that they are doing the animals good by not eating meat, miss the point that those animals wouldn’t be raised for agriculture; they wouldn’t exist or would be left to become feral pests in Australia; destroying whatever crops are grown as well as natural vegetation after they’ve stripped the crop. Remember; cute bunnies?

      Agriculture in the real world is nothing like Wallace and Gromit.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        Agriculture in the real world is nothing like Wallace and Gromit.

        No Wesleydale cheese for one thing. 🙂

        But also no other milk products either.

        Unless of course you still allow cows, or goats, or sheep, or yaks, for milking.

        But if you have got them, then half of the offspring produced will be male. Do you waste them or eat them?

        And if you are going to eat them, then why not breed some to make meat more efficiently than milk cows will do.

        Why not do both – have some for milk and some for meat?

        But that is what we do today. Isn’t it?

        What was the question again?

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    Carbon500

    It seems to me that the ‘old folks’ (Gore et al) started the whole scare in the first place.
    Given the rebellious and refreshingly cynical outlook on life in the teenage years (I know, I was there) I don’t think that we need to worry too much about the future!

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    pat

    DM on the CGIAR report:

    31 Oct: UK Daily Mail: Buy New Zealand lamb to save the planet, say UN scientists – because British farming methods produce twice as much greenhouse gas
    British shops should sell New Zealand lamb rather than homegrown meat if they want to help protect the environment, experts have claimed.
    The suggestion, which is likely to outrage British farmers, comes after a study found the amount of man-made greenhouse gases from food production is twice as much as previously estimated…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2225772/Go-vegetarian-save-planet-Double-greenhouse-gases-comes-farming-animals-estimated.html

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    pat

    cheaper than lamb at least:

    NZ carbon climbs back to NZ$3 on firmer EU prices
    BEIJING, Nov 1 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Spot permits in New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme rose 11 percent week-on-week to close Thursday at NZ$3 amid stronger prices in Europe and low supply
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2043419

    EU leaves crunch votes off table for Nov. 15 meeting
    LONDON, Oct 31 (Reuters Point Carbon) – Key votes on whether to delay the sale of CO2 permits and ban some offsets in the EU CO2 market starting next year will not be held at an EU Nov. 15 meeting, according to a draft agenda published Tuesday, squeezing the time available to meet a year-end deadline into one December gathering…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2042915?&ref=searchlist

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    pat

    31 Oct: Reuters Point Carbon: U.N. calls in contractors to help clear CDM
    The U.N. has called in more than 40 contractors and shifted internal resources to help it unclog a bottleneck of requests from companies seeking carbon credits, officials at the body’s climate secretariat said on Tuesday…
    The support has likely helped lift credit issuance this month, with more than 26.6 million Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) being handed out so far – the most since January…
    Developers are racing to get their CO2-reduction projects registered because installations that are approved after December 31, 2012 and located anywhere but the least developed countries are barred from exporting CERs to Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme…
    http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/31/uk-cdm-backlog-idUKBRE89U0EX20121031

    31 Oct: Reuters Point Carbon: India HFC-23 emissions may rise if CDM boon ends – former official
    Moves to curb offsets issued to emission reduction projects that destroy HFC-23 could result in a steep rise in emissions of the highly potent greenhouse gas as governments are unlikely to force or pay companies to destroy it instead, former Indian climate negotiator Prodipto Ghosh said Tuesday…
    But if U.N. curbs do not come into force, an EU May 2013 ban on use of the credits in its Emissions Trading Scheme is likely to render the credits they produce worthless as the 148-billion market is the main demand centre for U.N. offsets.
    Prodipto Ghosh, a member of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Council on Climate Change, told Reuters Point Carbon in an interview that the Indian government is unlikely to compel the industry to cut emissions.
    “There is no domestic legislation that would make companies cut emissions of HFC 23 and there are no plans to impose such laws or include these projects in a national carbon plan,” said Ghosh, who for three decades was the most senior civil servant in India’s Environment Ministry.
    “These emissions won’t be covered by domestic emissions trading instruments either,” Ghosh added, referring to India’s nascent plans to cap emissions in power generation and energy intensive industries…
    India’s three qualifying HFC-23 projects, owned by Gujarat Fluorochemical (GFL), Navin Fluorine and SRF, prevent around 10 million tonnes of year of CO2 equivalent from being pumped into the atmosphere by destroying the gas.
    ***None of the companies, which have made hundreds of millions of dollars and in some cases over 50 percent of their revenues through selling the permits, would reply to questions about their plans…
    Martin Hession, vice-chair of the CDM Executive Board and former climate negotiator for the UK, said companies and countries would need to decide how to regulate HFC 23 emissions if no future agreement can be found at U.N. level.
    “It’s a political issue, and is not the remit of the CDM to say what happens to these projects once the crediting periods end. But one would ***hope *** that efforts to cut emissions of HFC-23 would have more momentum after being part of the CDM for so long,” he said.
    http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/10/31/india-hfc-emissions-idINDEE89U0C520121031

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    Lewandowsky’s bread and butter stuff is breaking the central tenet of science — namely, that evidence is more important than opinions.

    The same goes for the legal system. Imagine if the prosecution in a criminal case said.

    “Me Lud, I submit that a trial unnecessary. The evidence is in. All our best detectives agree that the accused is guilty. Furthermore, Me Lud, I submit an opinion poll from all the detectives in the land. 97% agree that, on the basis of the accused’s past criminal record; his association with undesirable elements; and the bad language he uttered to the arresting police officers; he is probably guilty of every unsolved crime imaginable. Finally, I submit that the defence is paid to be biased, so it is clear that anything they say is in deliberate denial of this expert consensus.”

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Yeah, isn’t that how the court system actually works, especially in high profile cases that have been all over the press?

      At least, until they finally discover that the dingo dun it after all.

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    There is one problem with this whole “old folks will be gone” idea. If one observes life closely, one notices that while the younger generation may now believe the global warming fairy tale, when they get older, the fairy tale starts cutting into their dreams for life. Students are gullible because they do not yet see the consequences of their beliefs. As the “true believers” now get older, they generally stop believing in large numbers and become those “old folks” that Lew is waiting for the death of. Translation: Lew just just cannot land on a viable theory to save his beloved climate change theory.

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