Jobs and junkets are on the line. Abbott could axe Flannery and the climate commission

Tim Flannery

No wonder Flannery and co. are playing double or nothing. While headlines have shouted for years that vested interests of the fossil fuel players dominate this debate, few journalists point out that the renewables industry, carbon trading markets, and the climate-scary-science-campaign have an all-or-nothing interest in propagating alarm. 

As I keep saying, those in private business who provide real goods to real voluntary customers will suffer from a carbon tax, but they still have a market. For them it’s a “dent” in profits. We’ll still be buying coal, oil and gas for decades to come. In contrast, those who make a living from government funds could lose everything in an instant. Their wealth and status depends on a forced payment and a decision from one Minister. It is far more ephemeral and subject to whim. The state-dependents are far more desperate. The stakes are higher.

Gillard calls the “climate commission” an independent body, which is only true in the same sense that any parasite can be described as “independent” of the host while being completely dependent on it.

This shows just how independent and apolitical the Climate Commission reality is:

 The Australian “Abbott says Tim Flannery’s job could be in danger ”

Andrew Bolt: More spin
Latest weather forecasts
TONY Abbott has signalled he could sack chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery if he is elected as prime minister in September.The Opposition Leader, who has vowed to dismantle the Climate Change Department and merge it with the Environment Department in government, said he did not see the point of paying Professor Flannery about $180,000 a year for his views which Mr Abbott considers already public knowledge.

Bravo Abbott. Without a logical position and empirical evidence, the Climate Commission is an advertising-scheme for a bad ALP policy.

I’m sure Flannery sincerely believes he helps, but does the net benefit to the nation exceed the cost? How are those predictions panning out — Anyone want an unused desal. plant?

Speaking of Desalination, Flannery sat on the sustainability advisory board of Siemens in 2011, which helps make desal plants (like Perth’s). It also makes wind farms. He is also the Panasonic professor, and a few years ago they held a whopping 40% of the market for rechargeable electric car batteries, and were moving into electric car making. For Panasonic, spending $690,000 on Flannery’s research was much cheaper and more effective than buying prime time advertising to tell Australians how much they need electric cars. After all, the ABC don’t even sell ads, but Flannery speaks unchallenged there.

In the end, vested interests are everywhere. Only evidence from our atmosphere tells us which side is right. I’m still asking for that Mystery Paper. Flannery can’t find it.

If he stuck to arguing the evidence and providing a service to the Australian people instead of to government gatekeepers, he wouldn’t have so much to fear. Half of Australia pays his salary, but they aren’t convinced humans can change the weather. How does Flannery serve them?  He calls them names.

Flannery 2011:

… compared climate change deniers to flat Earth believers and said the level of debate on the issue in Australia showed “a lot of heat, but not much light”.

A hypocrite on so many levels.

Flannery recognizes the power of the fossil fuel lobby (see below), but not the “government grants and junkets lobby”. If people are going to reason-by-vested-interests (which is unscientific) then let them at least be honest about the vested interests on all sides. What is magically pure about government money? Since when was $1 from oil more influential than a $1 from a whimsical government program?

Professor Flannery 2007 … said vested interests were hampering the biofuel push.

“The fossil fuel lobby is quite strong, they are a strong lobby group that wants to protect their patch and we see it with coal and petroleum,” he said.

Tim Flannery (2005) recognizes corporate money can corrupt, but never recognizes that coerced government money can corrupt too:

With the election of George Bush, the fossil fuel lobby became even more powerful, and it has been able to corrupt processes within the federal bureaucracy and the soliciting of scientific advice.

What he and the Climate Commission provides is one-sided, illogical, and unscientific.

The real cost of employing hypocrites and illogical people is far more than their salary.

Abbott will score flak for his suggestion from the rent-seekers and religious. The Coalition needs support from all the taxpayers who want tax dollars used wisely.

Other posts on Tim Flannery

h/t James, and snafu in comments too.

9.2 out of 10 based on 143 ratings

286 comments to Jobs and junkets are on the line. Abbott could axe Flannery and the climate commission

  • #
    inedible hyperbowl

    Tony Abbott in this interview indicated pretty clearly (in political guard mode using the word “review”) that the Renewable Energy Target is a goner.
    He might have just acquired my vote.

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      Overseasinsider

      What?? You were going to vote for the incompetent, inept, fraudulent, criminal and basically evil, ALP????????

      480

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        Dennis

        Surely not, people who post here, well most of them, are too intelligent to do that.

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        Quack

        i don’t want to vote for any of them!!! they make me sick with all their lies!!!

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          Safetyguy66

          Bring back the Dumbocrats Democrats lol

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          dylan

          i don’t want to vote for any of them!!!

          Ditto. Abbott has business acumen like Whitlam/Fraser/Rudd/Gillard. His plan is a dumbass book he carries around, his specialty are soundbites like the Tim Flannery one and he and his advisers apparently know nothing except shortterm political formulas. Perhaps he will be little better than the incumbent but shit compared to Hawke/Keating/Howard reforming govts. The front benches of both sides are professional politians with absolutely no experience of real life. Australia so desperately needs a small government party with experienced representatives who hasn’t been captured by greens, mining, sport, hoteliers…

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            MudCrab

            The front benches of both sides are professional politians with absolutely no experience of real life.

            Care to give some case by case examples to back your claims there, Dylan? 🙂

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              Rob H

              Back to you MudCrab. What examples do you have of politicians who have ever had a real job, started a real business, worked for a real company, created real jobs? I don’t think Lawyers qualify but in order not to eliminate too many people you can include them (1/2 point each). Union organizers? Sorry, no.

              Limit yourself to the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet.
              To make it easier I think we can eliminate both Abbott (although he was a “feature writer” in the press once) and Gillard, Shorten and Swan.

              Carry on MudCrab

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              • #
                MudCrab

                I see you a back and raise you a back back, Rob 🙂

                This is Dylan’s claim, not mine.

                Personally I don’t think he statement is correct for ‘both’ sides of politics and was interested into seeing if he could provide some data to support his claim.

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              • #
                Ted O'Brien.

                Rob, Mudcrab scores much better than 5 out of 10. I give you a singular example of the opposite.

                Barnaby Joyce is so far as I know the only small/medium business accountant in the parliament. The only one with his feet on the grouind, who knows and understands how the real world works. Most of Mudcrab’s politicians are bookworms, bogged in various theories, and actually lacking the intelligence needed to comprehend them.

                Rural Australia is in deep crisis thanks to bad policies promoted by the National Farmers’ Federation and the National Party. Policies acquired from their close association with the Liberals, and enthusiastically supported by the Marxists in the ALP.

                I can’t believe that this is not the case right across the exporting sector and import competing sector of our economy. It’s just that with the rural economy being so heavily dependent on exporting the produce of small business capitalism the problem is more visible here. To sum it up, current prices do not support ongoing production.

                Current conventional wisdom, aka Free Market Theory, and Economic Rationalism, dictates that when one sector of the economy is booming everybody should rush to that sector and the rest should shut down. Most of us plebs know that this is lunacy, but our leaders do not.

                The coalition, and the NFF too, have not yet noticed that their policies over the last 25+ years have greatly advanced the cause of Marxism. My fear is that September will for us be too late for them to discover this.

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                Ted O'Brien

                Reading it all again I find I addressed the wrong bloke. Sorry, Dylan. Mudcrab was quoting you.

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            Peter Miller

            I don’t know about Australia, but “professional politicians with no experience of real life” is certainly true of the UK, where the three main parties are all committed to a policy of energy lunacy and foreign aid waste. Cameron, Clegg and Miliband are all professional politicians and have only previously worked in political research, PR, or the media – some may call that the real world/life, but I do not count myself amongst them.

            The point is that most of today’s political leaders, and especially those on the left, have no idea how to create a real job. And by a real job, I do not mean non-jobs in government/quasi government like those held by Tim Flannery and his hangers on.

            Too often, politicians think that creating a raft of new complex regulations for business, which will inevitably require a new bureaucracy to administer, is job creation.

            Hopefully, Australia will have a new government in September, which will demonstrate to the rest of the world that the best way to react to supposed ‘climate change’ is to: i) dismantle the expensive bureaucracy monitoring it, and ii) scrap poverty inducing carbon taxes and subsidies on renewable energy.

            On another matter, it is almost impossible to log in to the comments section of Jo’s previous post.

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              Greg Cavanagh

              Politicians giving money away to good causes, is right up there with charity drives, in my opinion.

              Gathering and giving away somebody else’s money, not using their own money, making themselves out to be the public hero, and likely skimming behind the scenes anyway.

              Or as I’ve seen in my town recently; Greenpeace using young volunteers to scavange money from the local community. Not paying the poor kids, while embelishing a huge multi-national multi-billion dollar business.

              Or Creflo Dollar, for those who know him.

              Scammers the lot.

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              Ted O'Brien.

              Peter. A real job is one which generates a marketable product. Like, e.g. driving a bus taking people to work.

              Or driving a bus taking people on their annual holidays.

              However, driving a bus taking people on a “sickie” is not a real job.

              Is that clear?

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      Richard the Great

      The time is long past to end this charade and rid Australia, once and forever, of this egregious tax-payer-funded parasitic filth who have done nothing but rape, pillage, plunder and squander the assets of the nation.

      (And while they are at it they can ditch Flannery and Co as well)

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      • #
        David

        Dammit Richard pillage and plunder can be such fun. Read the Viking Sagas. But I do agree that getting rid of Flim Flam would be a good thing.

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      AndyG55

      I’ve always said that the RET was the one thing we really needed to get rid of, as well as ANY feed-in tariffs above normal wholesale.

      Australia SHOULD have a solid CHEAP electricity supply, despite the large distances often involved, and ANY and ALL artificial payments that raise the price of electricity to consumers, be they commercial or domestic, MUST be removed.

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    • #
      funkybarfly

      “There will be no Tim Flannery under the government I lead.”
      It’d be a winner Tony.

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  • #
    Dennis

    It has been suggested that when Tony Abbott remarked some time ago that the climate change/global warming alarmist propaganda was “crap” that he meant it but has been cautious about public opinion, as it was only starting to change away from a majority polled believing that action needed to be taken, and that the post Kyoto Coalition stance was based on taking action via their greenhouse office established in 1998, having signed the Kyoto Protocol but did not ratify it.

    Public opinion has since 1998 swung to a minority who still fall for the alarmist propaganda.

    It is good that Abbott has now made his position clear.

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  • #
    Manfred

    Church and State are finally showing signs of separation. Gird your loins for the strident, self-opinionated howls of protest.
    Seems like it could be time for yet another bottle of expensive champagne.

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    • #
      Dennis

      Capitalist. lol

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        Manfred

        Thanks Dennis…at least the expensive CO2 adds effervescent vitality to the drink, provides the necessary ejection pressure for the ‘pop’ and is visually engaging, the rise of bubbles in a chilled glass being quite entrancing. In contrast, Flannery’s CO2 emissions fall far short of any comparative mark in either utility or poetry.

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    Safetyguy66

    “If he stuck to arguing the evidence and providing a service to the Australian people instead of to government gatekeepers, he wouldn’t have so much to fear. Half of Australia pays his salary, but they aren’t convinced humans can change the weather. How does Flannery serve them? He calls them names.”

    Spot on. Prof. Flannery has so much passion and it is so misdirected. He is a man I had an enormous amount of respect for before he got caught up in his own importance. I think Australian of the year was basically the peak of his logical credibility. Almost everything that he has publically stated since has been quickly shown to be wrong and only the degree of error varies, from a bit wrong to completely the opposite of his hypothesis.

    Anna Rose in the documentary “I can change your mind about climate” shows in a few short moments the problem with having your mind fixated on an outcome rather than allowing your mind to be guided by balance of probability and weight of empirical evidence. When asked by David Evans “what evidence can you present that CO2 is affecting climate?” she immediately refers (without a second thought, a reflex almost) to modelling. This is really disheartening to anyone interested in science that someone so seemingly intelligent and well intentioned has allowed their emotional involvement to completely and utterly cloud their judgement.

    So it is with Prof. Flannery. His teenage dreams of Gaia and saving the planet from….. something…. have never really faded. He’s done some great science in his discipline, but allowed his emotional involvement to completely guide his intellect to the point he can no longer discern the truth, or balance of probability or evidence and separate it from what he would like to be true. He has as Tony Abbott basically puts it, priced his already free advice out of the market.

    I guess I feel this pretty keenly because I lived in Mildura at the time Prof. Flannery and Roy Slaven did the show “2 men in a boat” and declared “The Murray will be bone dry in 12 months”. As someone who had a 10 acre property within about 500m of the rivers edge, this worried me greatly and in a large part sparked my interest in researching climate change. Just like Jo and David, the deeper I dug, the less I found.

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    • #
      Dennis

      An observation by me, Flannery has developed a wild stare when he is facing the television camera telling one of his GW/CC fairy tales, I wonder about his mental state. If he has a problem that would not be a reason to try and insult him or gloat, but I really do suspect that he does have a problem as no level headed person would go public with the statements he makes.

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      • #
        Safetyguy66

        Yes I have wondered about that. As someone who likes to beleive the best about people, I will stick with thinking its just his passion shining through. But in the interests of discovering the truth, hes not in a position to be mindlessly passionate at the expense of he facts, which is certainly the mode he is currently in.

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        Dennis, I believe the scientific term for someone who stares wildly is “Connubialis Factum Rabidus”
        Or commonly known as “Nucking Futs”

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Amazing! Where on Earth did you learn Latin?

          I love it! 😛

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          • #
            Yonniestone

            Roy, I more abuse Latin than learn it as my various attempts show.
            I once had to write “Tepidus Advocator Ite Domum” 100 times on the town hall to get into the,
            “Populos Fronte De Ballarat”

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            • #
              Roy Hogue

              Apparently at least, you have something you can “abuse”. All I can do is murder it outright. I’ve picked up just enough Latin to get into serious trouble with. 🙂

              If I want to understand a Latin phrase I have to look it up or settle for computer translation. And you know how “good” computer translation is.

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              • #
                KinkyKeith

                Hi Roy

                Off topic; but you message arrived two days ago:

                Truly snail mail.

                Thanks.

                KK 🙂

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      • #
        ExWarmist

        Another (small…) possibility is that he is infected with an illness…

        The lifecycle of the organism is extraordinary. Ants become infected with the fungus when spores land on them from above, or when they encounter them on the forest floor. Once attached, the spores use enzymes to get inside the ant’s body where the fungus begins to grow. Within a week or so, chemicals released by the fungus cause the ant to wander off and bite on to leaf veins and other vegetation, moments before dying. Many ants are found in places where the conditions are perfect for fungal growth. Once the ant has died, the fungus slowly sprouts from its head and grows a pod of spores which are fired onto the forest floor at night, to infect other ants.

        He did spend all that time in Papua New Guinea in the 1990s.

        Through the 1990s, Flannery surveyed the mammals of Melanesia – discovering 16 new species

        Perhaps he caught something there. A strange mind altering fungis, “Alarmist Maximus Mindus Controllus”, that is spread by airborne spores to susceptible people who are naturally gullible and within earshot of the Alarmist speaker.

        >/whimsy<

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    • #
      ExWarmist

      Safetyguy66 says…

      Prof. Flannery has so much passion and it is so misdirected.

      Reminds me of…

      Turning and turning in the widening gyre
      The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
      Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
      The best lack all conviction, while the worst
      Are full of passionate intensity.

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    • #
      Peter Miller

      Safetyguy66

      That was probably the best quote I have ever seen on ‘climate change’.

      “In researching climate change, the deeper I dug the less I found.”

      Shakespeare put it another way: “Much ado about nothing.”

      Natural climate change deniers, like Flannery, have made a small fortune over gross exaggeration of AGW and the CAGW hoax. The time has come to put an end to this and:1) the bloated, expensive and pointless bureaucracies they have spawned, and 2) the energy poverty created by unreliable, expensive ‘renewables’.

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  • #
    gbees

    you mean the Earth’s not flat!? 🙂

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    • #
      David

      Sorry to disappoint you “gbees” but it is full of hills and valleys which interrupt the flatness. However it could well be a large disc and to support that I would refer you to that brilliant geographer Terry Pratchett who has written a whole series of text books on the Disc World. Now where did I put that medication?

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    • #
      Backslider

      Well, if you look at a climate model, then yes, the Earth is flat.

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    • #
      ExWarmist

      If you were very, very small (like an ant), or very, very large (like – as big as the galaxy, say…), then for all intents & purposes – the earth may as well be flat.

      The idea that the Earth is an oblate spheroid is really just a modern notion, and not very traditional.

      Without saying it too loudly, one could say “Urban Myth”.

      >/whimsy<

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    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      You’ve got to use the scientific method to determine if the world is flat. So let’s do that;

      You start with the assumption that the world is flat. Now you must find evidence to support your assumption. So you gather other peoples research into other subjects. But because they were not looking into earth flatness, you must interpret their data into a relational data set which is able to make inference into the flatness of the world. Because the data is not direct measurement, the bad data must then be identified and deleted from the dataset (you only want good data). So you invent an algorithm which ignores data you know is wrong, i.e.; the lumpy random data, you want good smooth data because you know the world is smooth. You can then use statistical methods to find a 95% match of some of the data to a straight line. Then you write up a paper and submit it to Nature Magazine (you must also supply 4 names of people who worked on the paper with you but are not credited as nominated reviewers to the paper). It gets published, and BINGO, the world is flat.

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      Backslider

      According to Mattb, the earth is in fact flat:

      the amount of sun that hits the earth is the same as if it were a flat disc. What’s your problem with that?

      Ha ha ha…plonk!

      00

  • #
    Neville

    Good post Jo, I think Flannery has well and truly worn out his silly, super expensive message.

    BTW a good post from WUWT.

    It seems that if the Marcott study used higher resolution proxies there would be many more spikes in temp .

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/03/proxy-spikes-the-missed-message-in-marcott-et-al/#more-83394

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  • #
    Ian

    The article on this in the SMH attracted 601 comments before comments were closed, many of which berated Flannery for his remarks in 2005 in an interview on Lateline by Maxine McKew that Eastern Australia would never see full dams again. Bit like the UK guy David Viner who forecast in 2000 that children in the UK would not see snow for 20 years or so. Additionally Flannery has purchased two sea front properties. For that he is labelled by many as a hypocrite and is also severely criticised for initiating the building of desal plants in Eastern Australia by his comments.However many of the respondents believe that humans can and must do something about climate change and cite the CO2 tax as a good thing. Reading their comments it is fairly clear they know climate change is occurring and consider humans are responsible . A few ask for the evidence but they get shouted down. But that said, 600 comments in about 6 hours shows how the MSM can influence thinking on Climate. To turn to another topic if you haven’t looked at Climate Audit yet have a look soon as the Lewandowsky paper controversy is front and centre and the outcome for Lewandowsky is not looking too good

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    • #
      Kevin Lohse

      We’re still getting snowfall in SE England in April, which though not unprecedented is very unusual. I’m worried that in 20 years my great-grand children will not know what a heatwave is.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        We have just turned our heat wave and “drought” off – I will wrap them up, and ship them to you via Fedex …

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        Mark D.

        I’m worried that in 20 years my great-grand children will not know what a heatwave is.

        Good one Kevin!

        Oh wait, that wasn’t humor?

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      • #
        Albert

        In Aus a heatwave now can be just one day 30c and above. In the past it was many days around 100F

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  • #

    While there may no explicit obligation for due diligence by the Climate Commission, the status of the commissioners as experts would clearly imply it should be expected.
    Expertise without due diligence would be an oxymoron and pretending to expertise while ignoring due diligence must be a fraud.

    Not only does the Commission not exercise due diligence in the material it cites, it also fails grossly to do so in choosing the material it ignores. Doing this clearly implies that either no conflicting information exists or that it is of such doubtful credibility as to be prudently ignored. Failing to address or even acknowledge the existence of abundant peer reviewed conflicting evidence and presenting their own preferred interpretation as uncontested scientific certainty does not deliver the expertise for which the commissioners are being so generously paid. This would seem to constitute both scientific malpractice as well as fraud at the level of grand theft.

    To make matters worse almost all of the commissioners also appear to hold career positions which entail a clear conflict of interest in that they would seem to enjoy substantial personal benefit from ongoing government spending predicated on a climate crisis.

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    • #
      The Black Adder

      Well said Walter!
      That the Commision is not showing due diligence, lead by the totally incompetent Flim Flannery
      Means they should all end up in the Dock!
      The cost of their lies are enormous, and therefore criminally liable!
      Book all the bastards and send ’em away for 20 years….

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      cohenite

      Correct Walter.

      The CC is part of the disentegration of values and standards which has occurred in this country since Gillard came to power.

      And noone holds them to account.

      Let’s hope Abbott is currently running in low gear and has his a..e-kicking shoes polished and ready for action after the 14th, liberation day!

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  • #
    Jaymez

    Despite what The Greens, Flannery and others say about vested interests, you can’t escape the fact that in Australia Government expenditure represents 36% of GDP in Australia and is therefore the largest ‘industry sector’. It is forecast to rise well above 40% in the decades ahead. That is why there are so many people who are so vocal protecting their patch. Notably those most reliant on Government largesse including heads of expanding Government departments, taxpayer funded Academics, The ABC and SBS, The Film Industry, and the raft of none Government bodies who are sucking off the Government teat.

    The fact that Government expenditure is such a large component of Australia’s GDP also makes a farce of the argument that our debt is a small percentage of GDP compared to other countries, when other relevant countries Government’s expenditure represent a much smaller part of their GDP. In the Asia Pacific region, which is the most relevant comparison for Australia, on average, Government expenditure is generally about half Australia’s GDP%, even in communist China (20.8%), but also in our other major trading partners, Singapore 17.7%, Indonesia 19.2%, Malaysia 26.3%, Philippines 17.3%. In fact the only economy which really stands out agaiinst this norm apart from Australia, is the one which has been struggling for three decades now, Japan, with 37.1%.

    If you want to look at all the basket case economies around the world, they are the ones where Government expenditure is a more significant part of GDP and that is where Australia is heading. Only an idiot would think it is better for the economy to increase the level of Government expenditure to private expenditure, but incredibly, that is the policy this Labor Government is following and which is being advocated by many in economic academia who have been brought up on a twisted version of Keynesian economic theory.

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      Jaymez

      Perhaps to put into perspective the total Government expenditure at 36% of GDP, and to demonstrate the ‘crowding out’ of private investment and competition, it is worth looking at the contribution of some of the major industry sectors as a percentage of GDP in Australia: Mining 8%, Manufacturing 8.4%, Agriculture 4%, Forestry and Fishing <1%, Construction 7.4%, Housing 7.5%, Tourism 2.6%, Transport 5.5%, Retail 4.5%.

      It has become a reflex action for many in Australia to automatically support anything which gives Government more control and input into any sector of the economy. It grows their income, power and influence base. What they don't realise is that it slowly shrinks the pie for everyone.

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      macha

      one of the best summaries of our taxation demise ever….go Topher !!!!!

      https://www.taxpayers.org.au/must-watch-the-forbidden-history-of-terrible-taxes/

      simple!.

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      Rob JM

      Stupid argument when you consider the government pays for health care, welfare, schooling, roads ect. A meaningful GDP comparison would be with a country such as Canada That being said we do need to cut back on the wasteful government spending such as Tim!
      You seem to also forget that the government debt is only low after the short sighted sale of profitable assets such as telstra and the ponzi driven house bubble consumer spending spree driven by dangerous deregulation of the financial system on the back of a mining boom. Low government debt yes, Massive Private debt Hell Yes!

      10

  • #
    ExWarmist

    I’m sure Flannery sincerely believes he helps, but does the net benefit to the nation exceed the cost?

    Tim Flannery also sincerely believes…

    Tim Flannery: That’s right. I was tempted in the book to simply give in and call it Earth System Science, because Gaia is earth system science and in many university departments around the world, as you’ll know, Robyn, earth system science is a very respectable science. But as soon as you mention Gaia of course, the scepticism comes out. I didn’t do that though, because I think there’s a certain elegance to Gaia, to that word and the concept, and also because I think that within this century the concept of the strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest. I do think that the Gaia of the Ancient Greeks, where they believed the earth was effectively one whole and perfect living creature, that doesn’t exist yet, but it will exist in future. That’s why I wanted to keep that word

    Sheer Lunacy.

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      Backslider

      I know, I know….. it sounds looney, but its actually his religion. Tim Flannery is a Pantheist.

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        ExWarmist

        Hi Backslider,

        WRT…

        here they believed the earth was effectively one whole and perfect living creature, that doesn’t exist yet, but it will exist in future.

        I would love to know what the empirically measurable criteria would be that demarcate the shift from “doesn’t exist yet” to “will exist”.

        So just what – specifically – would change such that we mere mortal humans could detect that Gaia had become physically manifest?

        Perhaps this.

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      MW@PNG

      “….Gaia will actually become physically manifest…” WTF.

      40

  • #

    […] alone, which he does not understand as shown by some of his ridiculous pronouncements, found to be one-sided, illogical and unscientific and go back to his real trade, dinosaur […]

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    The Black Adder

    I put Flannery in the same basket as Nice One, Catamongstmen, JB et al.

    Deluded with no hope of return!

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      FarmerDoug2

      No. Flannery is costing us a lot more.
      Doug

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        The Black Adder

        Heheheheeee,

        Nice one Farmer. I never realised this oversight.

        I can laugh at Nice One, JB and Catamongstmen for FREE!!

        Flannery costs me money!! Grrrrrr!!!!

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    Phillip Bratby

    In the UK we have the parasitic “independent” Climate Change Committee. It is full of alarmists and those with a vested interest. The only things it is independent of are integrity, honesty and truthfulness.

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    Mattb

    I don’t see the point of paying Flannery $180k to say what he’d say anyway. And I’d get rid of the MRET. So don’t count on Tony just yet.

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    crakar24

    OT,

    Heres one for Sonny this 40 story building in Grozny was completely gutted by fire but yet did not collapse into its own foot print, hmmmmmmmm thats strange.

    http://rt.com/news/chechnya-tallest-building-fire-280/

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      theRealUniverse

      Dont let NIST see it!! OMG a skyscraper that dint collapse due to large fires.. NOTE it was burning much harder than building 7 (sorry of topic on those pesky ‘conspiricies’ again) DD

      40

    • #
      Buffalo Soldier

      No news to me cracker24, I demolish them for a living. I’ll show you how to [snip. Sounds like a threat. We don’t do that.] ED

      00

  • #
    macha

    As posted earlier….one of the best summaries of our tax demise ever.

    https://www.taxpayers.org.au/must-watch-the-forbidden-history-of-terrible-taxes/

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  • #

    Here in the UK we need Abbott to win with a hard line on types like Flannery. It might make our ‘greenest ever’ PM David Cameron wake up and smell the coffee.

    151

  • #
    Byron

    Flannery`s missing something in that photo , namely a bowler hat , a bottle of snake oil and a patent medicine wagon in the background so I thought I`d put them in

    131

    • #
      Mattb

      Maybe there should be a Monckton vs Flannery snake oil title fight?

      123

      • #
        Kevin Lohse

        A man who points out the nakedness of CAGW logic against a man fully immersed in the fuzziness of global cooling denial arm-waving? A gross mismatch which should be banned by all civilised nations.

        120

      • #
        The Black Adder

        Flim-Flannery hasn`t got the guts to front Lord Monckton!

        He`d get beaten hands down. The Monck would win with marbles in his mouth!

        I know. I met the feisty Lord and it was the highlight of my year!!

        ….So far, it is only April!!

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      • #
        Eddy Aruda

        Maybe there should be a Monckton vs Flannery snake oil title fight?

        I suppose that is as close as the cowards who are pushing the CAGW scam will ever get to a debate on the hypothesis of global warming.

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        • #
          AndyG55

          No Eddy, NOT ONE of the CAGW scum would dare to debate LM.

          They KNOW that they would be on a hiding to nothing,

          because they have nada, zip, nothing, to back up their ludicrous claims.

          50

          • #
            Ian H

            Indeed. The media coverage of Monckton’s New Zealand tour has been bizarre and awful.

            Most of the media coverage has consisted on interviews with climate scientists and activists telling us how dangerous and wrong Monckton is. It is all people talking about Monckton. They’ve been very careful not to allow the man himself to speak.

            His one “interview” with Michelle Hewitson in today’s Herald was less of an interview than an attempted character assassination. This is a man notable for his views on climate change. That is why he is worth interviewing at all. Yet she didn’t ask him a single question on that issue and instead insisted on asking a succession of questions on incidents in his past dating back to the days of Thatcher. For example he apparently once compared some “climate activists” trying to disrupt one of his speaking engagements the ‘environmental Hitler youth’. Hewitson made a ridiculous mountain out of this breach of Godwin’s law. I guess she must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel in her search for dirt. The intent of the interview was clearly to try to portray Monckton as a clown.

            Unsurprisingly Monckton walked out.

            41

            • #
              Sugarplumfairy

              Unsurprisingly Monckton walked out.

              As clowns often do.

              She should have asked him how the Aids cure was progressing.
              [This comment does nothing for the topic of the post, other than seeking to take it off topic] -Fly

              04

              • #
                AndyG55

                do some research you ignorant little twerp.

                It was a far left wing newspaper reporter that grossly misrepresented what Lm had said about that. A deliberate attempt at smear..because its all that they have.

                11

              • #
                AndyG55

                I posted the above, then the original post I was replying to disappeared.

                Mods, maybe remove this and #47 since it now has no context.

                00

              • #
                AndyG55

                Darn it Fly, you must have had the fairy’s post in moderation or something. 🙂
                [You were too quick for me} -Fly

                00

              • #
                Backslider

                Sugarplumfairy – I really despise fly by trolls. You drop into here once in a while and post something stupid like the above.

                How about, for a change, you hang around a little longer, contribute any arguments you think you may have in support of CAGW or the topic at hand and we see what happens? Let’s see if you can take a little heat, argue a point and perhaps show a little intelligence (if you have any).

                30

              • #
                Sugarplumfairy

                You are correct Fly.

                I should have added that even when he is being interviewed in a hostile envionment, Flannery always treats his interviewer with respect and courtesy. This is in complete contrast to Monckton who hurls insults then takes his bat and ball and runs away.

                01

              • #
                Sugarplumfairy

                Sugarplumfairy – I really despise fly by trolls. You drop into here once in a while and post something stupid like the above.

                Thanks for that Backslider, but I have noticed some of your posts here. What’s that saying about people in glass houses….???

                03

              • #
                Backslider

                Thanks for that Backslider, but I have noticed some of your posts here. What’s that saying about people in glass houses….???

                And there you go again…. meaningless piffle.

                Either present an argument or flutter away.

                30

              • #
                Sugarplumfairy

                Hi Backslider,

                I was going to show some of your posts here as an example of your intellect but sadly they have all been snipped.

                02

  • #
    Tim

    Let’s hope the Coalition government would abolish all ‘Gravy Train Hangers On’ : The Energy Security Council, the Climate Change Authority and the Climate Change Commission, as well as the $10 billion Clean Energy Fund. They might also cancel the department’s 15-year $158 million lease.

    To quote the Red Queen: Bring it on

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  • #
    Albert

    Tim Flannery has proved by all his alarmist statements and his 100% incorrect predictions that it’s a complete waste of time to read anything he says, life is too short.

    141

  • #
    theRealUniverse

    So what happens when he (Abbot) doesn’t want to ‘pay back’ all the STOLEN money i.e. Carbon(dioxide) TAX that Juliar and her ratbag Treasurer Swann stole of the Australian people.

    30

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Whether or not he wants to pay it back, I think he will find that he can’t, because it has already been spent buying jobs for the boys (and girls) at the UN.

      140

      • #
        Safetyguy66

        Well I have a small prediction about the abolition of the Carbon Tax. Basically it wont happen because it sort of cant.

        Firstly only half the Senate is dissolved this period so chances are (could be wrong) the balance of power in the Senate will remain with the Greens. While Labour is unlikely to continue to vote on a bill its clearly been kicked out of office for starting, they will also be more dependant on the Greens than ever for whatever votes they can beg, borrow or steal to use on important topics.

        Also a lot will depend on the budget position come post election day. With the debt spiralling out of control, Abbott will have some solid excuses for not wanting to lose even a cent of revenue. Then add in the post Howard Labour GST “rollback” get out statement of “its just too difficult to unravel now” and you have a pretty perfect storm for Tony keeping the tax.

        Finally if all the above did align, then he will find himself in a position of being able to keep the tax AND blame Labour and the Greens for doing so. This is to me the most likely scenario for the CT. Id also say he will cut the subsidies, so we wont even get the benefit of the pathetic wealth redistribution measures (like they had any benefit anyway), but the tax will stay.

        Only real question is can he look himself in the mirror after being so 100% set on getting rid of it. At the end of the day hes a politician, he will find a way to peek at the mirror Im sure.

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        • #
          brc

          Abbott has to scrap the tax. It’s the defining issue that made his career. He must scrap it or he will suffer an enormous backlash.

          I’m pretty sure with the way things are going they will have balance of power in the senate, and the labor party post election will dump the carbon tax policy right after they dump Julia as leader. The same thing happened with the liberals and workchoices and Brendan Nelson. I wouldnt be surprised to see crean in as a caretaker leader, and he could easily walk from all things carbon tax. Even with a hostile senate he scrapping would pass easily.

          Even if the legislation couldn’t be repealed, I’m sure the tax amount could be reduced to zero.

          30

          • #
            safetyguy66

            I sure hope your right.

            I mean I notice a few thumbs down on my thoughts, thats fine, but can I make clear thats not the outcome I want, just one that I believe is quite realistic and even fairly likely.

            My preference would be for labour to lose in a landslide and Gillard, Garrett, Combet, Swann, Conroy and Emmerson to lose their seats, at the minimum.

            As a keen student of Australian political history I was rather hoping Mr Rudd would challenge the other week and win, then go in front of the media and say “this was a good government that had lost its way” I think I might have been in danger of laughing myself to death. Not that it would have helped labour, but it would have been pretty giggle inducing.

            Speaking of which, the following video shows the earliest known footage of the writing of the policy blue print for a carbon tax, that transisions into an RET with a base price per T set nearly 3 times above the market average.

            http://youtu.be/8gpjk_MaCGM

            20

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Reasonable analysis.

          And you are right. It will depend on the power balance in the Senate, which is too hard to call from where I sit.

          10

  • #
    John O'Hagan

    This post makes it clear – if that were necessary – what these astroturf denier blogs and sites are all about: “the Coalition needs support”.

    But as you are well aware, the Coalition has exactly the same emissions target as Labor, but ironically proposes to achieve it by a more expensive, top-down legislative regime rather than the efficient market-driven carbon price mechanism. The cost of that will also come out of tax revenue.

    So I look forward to your continued criticism of the Liberals after the election. Or will I?

    140

    • #
      Dave

      .
      Hi John O’Hagan,

      Did you supply the rose coloured glasses for Julia Gillard? You could also write a song for Tim Flannery:

      Goodbye GAIA and the Super organism

      Go away John O’Hagan.

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    • #
      Cookster

      What part of closing 4 government bureaucracies don’t you understand? You do realise these taxpayer funded bureaucracies consume far more economic wealth than they could ever create? The Coalitions ‘target’ is to keep the predominantly Left biased MSM hounds at bay. The existing government’s target is real and contributing every day to the government’s Budget problems. Lets see what happens post September but I’ll take my chances thanks very much.

      150

    • #
      Ian

      Hi John Can you advise which emissions trading scheme the government intended to join? I think it was the EU (current price $6per tonne). How does that meld with the Australian price of $29/tonne forecast for 2015?

      100

      • #
        Cookster

        Good point Ian. What fools are this government who “locked In” Carbon Tax compensation at the $23 Price so when the global price takes over the already bleeding government coffers will be drained to the tune of $17 / tonne at current prices. But then we should not be surprised as this was designed by the “World’s best treasurer”. The same World’s best treasurer who committed $2 Billion in spending against Mining Tax revenues that never eventuated due to flimsy assumptions by our politicised treasury.

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    • #

      John, wait, I’m just looking for all the posts where I have praised the Coalition low carbon policy…

      I think this is it: “Abbott still panders to the fake carbon scare…”

      John, you need to give us evidence for a/ how this site run by a volunteer is “Astroturfing” and b/ the scientific evidence I deny. Or you can apologise, and show how you are not an astroturfing troll.

      Show me a Labor guy willing to speak science, take on the carbon bullies and admit they are a skeptic and I’ll shower them with praise. Here’s the weird thing, I actually know of some, but such is the ALP poison vibe on free-climate-speech, I can’t name them, let alone praise them in public. Sad isn’t it?

      Look what happened to Gary Grey.

      382

    • #
      AndyG55

      John, if the Libs don’t get start to get rid of all this climate crap, I’ll be up them just as much as I am the Lab/Greens. I have already set several very rude emails to them regarding their continued support for the RET.

      I don’t expect everything to happen immediately (much as I’d like it to), but so long as I see the Libs making every effort to kill this moronic farce, I’ll be happy.

      And Flannery, Steffen etc chuck into the bin… pure BLISS !!

      110

    • #
      Backslider

      This is where John Stands (from his blog):

      John Redding (The Australian, Last Post, 14/12) calls the ABC’s coverage of global warming “shamelessly one-sided”. Agreed; and that would be because the science is one-sided. Does he expect the tiny rump of scientists who reject it to be given equal time with the vast bulk who accept it? Would he also put the views of flat-earthers on an equal footing with those who know it as round? Just because there are several views on a topic does not mean they are all equally valid, or warrant equal airtime.

      Please show to all of us John who this “tiny rump of scientists” who reject global warming. I do not think you will find any, just as you will find few around here who reject global warmimng.

      What skeptics reject is the alarmism that is NOT supported by any scientific evidence.

      Flat earthers huh John? Ok, please show me a climate model that uses a spherical (not round) earth.

      the vast bulk who accept it

      Argument from authority – how scientific of you John.

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    • #
      Backslider

      astroturf denier blogs

      Ahhh…. conspiracist ideation!

      51

    • #
      Rob JM

      Direct action via building new more efficient coal power plants could actually be abbots plan. I’m hoping anyway 🙂

      30

    • #
      Backslider

      John O’Hagan – yet another fly by troll… too gutless to try and stand up for himself.

      00

    • #
      Catamon

      John its more a site for driving outrage, indignation, to support the whole “bad Govt” theme. I suspect many here will vote “against” the Govt largely based on the “Julia lies” assertions (they probably believe the latest on super as well). Which is funny since they will be hoping that Tony is lying on his Direct Action policy? Its useful to drop by to see how it compares to similar types of blogs by Ackerman and Bolta. Sort of like taking the temperature of the current right wing nutbaggery. Oh and occasionally they have references to the Lord our Monkton, who seems to have an active fanclub here, and he/they are hilarious.

      04

  • #
    John Holliday

    It sounds like Flannery should study sustainability.

    10

  • #
    michael hart

    “TONY Abbott […] said he did not see the point of paying Professor Flannery about $180,000 a year for his views which Mr Abbott considers already public knowledge.”

    I like his turn of phrase.

    Just like every time BBC goes off to Greenpeace for a quote on a story about nuclear-power, genetic-engineering, fossil fuels, etc, you name it. Every time they come back with the same reply: “It’s bad, it’s evil, stop it, make it illegal, everything is going to die, drone, drone, drone…”

    Why does anyone ever even bother asking them what they think? It’s already public knowledge and they spend most of their time shouting it at us anyway.

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    • #
      Another Ian

      Sort of why WWF stands for “Waiting for the Wheels to Fall-Off” IMO

      50

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Michael,

      That is how modern journalism works. A regular jobbing Journalist is not allowed, under threat of pain to sensitive body parts, to state a personal opinion.

      So they toddle off to ask the “right” questions, from the “right” people, who will give them the “right” answer, and thus they can quote somebody else, and that is all OK.

      160

  • #
    handjive

    Archimedes would be rolling in his grave, scratching at the lid, at the junk science the Climate Commission propagates.
    .
    This Climate Commission youtube video, released April 2, 2013 titled “Climate Change Fuelling Wilder Weather” at the 1.06 minute, claims sea levels will rise because of melting polar ice caps.
    .
    When the LNP change this policy page, then I will believe them.

    41

  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    When the LNP change this policy page, then I will believe them.

    That web page is two years old! Two weeks is a long time in politics. The NLP will have changed their position several times since then – depending on the current polling results.

    71

    • #
      handjive

      Rereke,

      We are both climate rebel foot soldiers working towards the same goal. So, with the greatest, utmost respect …

      Sure, that LNP policy page is 2 years old, but that only highlights the fact that in 2 years, the LNP have not attempted to address, or change, or even alter their climate policy based on real dynamic science, favouring the fraudulent “settled science” of the UN-IPCC/Climate Commission/CSIRO/BoM.

      Here is the LNP supporting the sequel to the failed UN-IPCC Kyoto Protocol only 8 months ago.
      No sign of change of policy there.

      If I may quote David Archibald, a Perth-based climate scientist and energy analyst from a speech he delivered at an anti-carbon tax rally in Sydney on July 1, 2012:

      ❝ As for any politicians who have ever believed in global warming, or supported the carbon tax, or a carbon-constrained economy, there is no hope for them.

      They are either too stupid or incompetent to be taken seriously.

      Merely recanting, at this late stage, won’t be enough.

      Make their lives hell too, just as they wished a diminished life on you. ❞

      50

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        handjive,

        The respect is mutual.

        I have worked within the political framework in three jurisdictions in my time, and there are sufficient similarities for me to assume that all politicians are much the same.

        They are really like possums in the headlights for most of the time. They know what they are told by their Party hierarchy, and by their personal staff, many of whom are volunteers, and also what they are told by the Party’s PR and market research companies.

        The volunteers are there because of their political ideology, and they will stick like glue to the current party-central group-think. The PR company is there to make the politician look good (within the party hierarchy) and to make them presentable to the electorate, at election time, as the least worst option.

        The only people they meet on a regular basis, who can give them an “independent” view of what is happening, are the folks from the Party’s market research company. What they give them is a snapshot of responses from their electorate, based on the questions asked, and the supplementary comments made by each interviewee for each question. This is where the public have an influence on future policy. If the polls indicate that the public do not go along with the carbon scam, then the political attitude will change.

        Originally, the polls did not include questions on climate change – “The Science is Settled” – so there was no adverse feedback. That is now changing, and it is the pressure from the internet that is the cause. Questions are being asked, and the answers are being taken onboard. Those answers will, absolutely, be taken into account in setting the Party policy statement at election time. Whether they stick with it after the election, is another matter, as Julia Gillard is discovering.

        That is why the sceptical blogs are so important. Whether or not blogs cross the tees and dot the ayes, from a scientific terminology perspective, is immaterial, at least we are making people think, and question, and when they don’t like what they find out when they think and question, is when the pressure comes on the politicians, and policy starts to change.

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        • #
          crakar24

          Sooooooooooooo what you are saying RW is that it is just a popularity contest, simply work out what the public want and offer it to them (within limitations of course) have i got it about right?

          41

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            Pretty much.

            Although in the interests of job security, people like me tend to dress it up a bit.

            20

        • #
          Catamon

          That is why the sceptical blogs are so important.

          Maybe, but not in the context you quoted.

          The volunteers are there because of their political ideology, and they will stick like glue to the current party-central group-think.

          That’s what the sceptical blogs are about. 🙂 You can tell by how fast and viciously newcomers who dont subscribe to the group think here get abused.

          02

  • #
    Ace

    Well I dont know anything about domestic Australian politics except you should demand Bob Hawke be reinstated. Nor do I watch Australian TV, as I havent watched any TV except German TV for years now (and thats usually with the sound off). But to me that bloke in the picture looks like hes a presenter on a childrens TV show presenting things to children.

    Meanwhile, with your immense empty hinterland and uranium reserves its a mind boggling testament to political dogma triumphing over sense that you are not long established 100% nuclear. Has Australia at least got the ability? Even Iran does now!

    Now even James Hanson……in case nobody noticed, now discretely ejected from NASA……….promotes nuclear.

    50

    • #
      Buffalo Soldier

      Australia has Les Gold from hardcore pawn visiting right now, at least as an aussy I’m not going to tell him I’ve muted German TV for 7 years, Australia is reaching critical level ace. Be here or be square.

      11

      • #
        Ace

        Sorry Buffalo…I remember Sydney as it was in the Seventies. You cannot hope to re-discover perfection. I wont ever be coming back to ruin my memories of the place as it was then.

        10

    • #
      Mattb

      Ace, even Tony will tell you nuclear is a hard sell when you have some of the finest and most accessible and most bountiful coal reserves in the world.

      112

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      If you think the climate change lobbying is bad, the anti-Nuclear lobby in Australasia is an order of magnitude worse.

      They are more … how can I put this delicately? … “rabid”, and they are less well informed about the modern state of the science, than the “ban carbon” brigade.

      They still refer to photographs of the devastation in Japan at Hiroshima, as an example of “what might happen here”. The fact that atomic bombs and nuclear reactors are totally different technologies is immaterial. If any industrial process is reliant on atoms, then it needs to be banned forever … hang on a minute … ?

      131

      • #
        Safetyguy66

        Even to argue against nuclear power using Chernobyl as an excuse is pretty lame. Its like wanting to stop the next model of Ford sedans because the model T was hard to drive. Even Fukishima(sp) was not solely caused by ageing or failed nuclear technology, it was a massive natural disaster feeding into the swiss cheese incident model via some drowned deisel pumps/generators.

        If warmists were half as smart and dedicated to modern science as they think they are, they would be rejoicing at Australia holding almost half the world’s known Uranium deposits and building so many high quality reactors you could see us glowing from Jupiter!

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        • #

          The link below takes you to a comparison of TMI and Chernobyl, and there just is no comparison.
          So, as Safetyguy66 mentions above, to use Chernobyl as an excuse against nuclear electrical power generation is laughable.

          When you see the actual cause behind Chernobyl, the deliberate switching off and bypassing of safety measures on an originally flawed design to carry out an experiment, you can be thankful that such idiots have no say in how this form of power generation is regulated these days.

          Three Mile Island and Chernobyl: What Went Wrong And Why Today’s Reactors Are Safe

          Tony.

          50

          • #
            Tel

            …you can be thankful that such idiots have no say in how this form of power generation is regulated these days…

            It is very dangerous to underestimate human stupidity.

            I think we have easily sufficient technology to safely run a reactor, but then there’s the trust factor involved. Could you trust government to run it? Look at what else they get up to. But could you trust a private company? The Fukushima reactor was old, and should have already been shut down, but the temptation is to run the thing as long as possible rather than shut it down when the design life is reached.

            Both governments and private companies have done their share of jaw dropping stupidity.

            Consider that Obama is now encouraging the banks to lend more to high-risk borrowers, in order to reinflate a housing boom… because, hey what could go wrong with that?

            20

        • #
          Ace

          Oh Chernobyl…when the worst possible nuclear accident conceivable actually happened. Total death toll: 46.

          There has been no discernible increase in morbidity in any radiation related diseases anywhere in Europe under the footprint of the fall-out. The town itself is another matter. The Russians seem to go in for housing workers practically IN the plant.

          Biological surveys have found the local fauna to be exceedingly healthy. Low level radiation exposure is in fact good for you. And no, I’m not being ironic. Although my source for that is a TV documentary (back when I watched it).

          30

          • #
            Ace

            …talking of Russians, anyone seen that fecking gimungous HOLE in the Earth they’ve dug. The workers town sits like a pimple on the rim, about to topple into it someday.

            20

          • #
            crakar24

            Thats not true Ace, when i play COD2 single player and enter a radioactive area i die within seconds………..oh hang on my mistake i am getting reality and my computer simulations mixed up, carry on.

            50

      • #
        crakar24

        Ah yes RW but there maybe another factor here at play (and yes i await the cries of conspiracy nut to reverbrate throughout the hallways of the internet…but i will not be silence LOL)

        STUXNET was a computer virus and was developed in conjunction between two countries and its sole purpose was to disable Siemens controllers in nuclear reactors, it was developed to target one in particular. Like all virus it escaped and spread across the world and was found in many countries including Japan before the Fukashima accident.

        There are reports that suggest even after power was restored the Japanese could not get the reactors back under control, now this could have been for many reasons but one reason we cannot discount was because of STUXNET but alas we will never know.

        On second thought maybe we should not tell the anti nuclear lobby this or they will add sabotage to their list of grievances.

        70

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Crakar52-1

          … its sole purpose was to disable Siemens controllers in nuclear reactors, it was developed to target one [type] in particular.

          My editing.

          Well, I was told by a friend, who knows this bloke … etc etc, that the STUXNET virus was written by a Department of Government in a western power who shall remain nameless, in order to target centrifuges, believed to be used by a certain Middle Eastern Country, to increase the purity of regular nuclear fuel to weapons grade.

          Apparently STUXNET was designed to look around a network and find all of the control systems on that network. Unfortunately, the network itself was not secure, and the virus found a way out, and off it went.

          It seems that cyber-warfare has the same dispersion properties as biological warfare, and will become yet another example of shooting oneself in the foot.

          20

          • #
            Ace

            Yeah Rereke……but like Crakar its risking accusations of conspiracy “ideation” to suggest there could even be OTHER factors at work. What Crakar said about Siemens systems being targeted was widely reported at the time. Who benefits most directly from STUXNET then? Not Israel. Not the USA. But some American competitors of Siemens.Govt contractors themselves in all likelihood.

            I hate default suspicion of American motives. But that seems patently a high probability motive. STUSXNET would not even have to be effective for the story to deter companies everywhere from choosing Siemens, just in case.

            I also thought the story reveals the levels of weird duplicity in Western relations with Iran.Ie, WTF was a German company doing enabling Irans nuclear industry anyway? But this is just one example. The Anglo / German Heckler und Koch not only arms many Western military and police, their superb G3 and MP5 weapons also arm the Iranian army, the Iranian Revolutionary Gaurd and, via Iran, the Taleban.

            00

  • #
    Bruce

    Two quotes with respect to Steffen, Flannery et al:-

    “Why should you think so?” responded Johnson. “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

    There is something fascinating about (climate) science.
    One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture
    out of such a trifling investment of fact.

    Mark Twain.
    Life on the Mississippi

    I added ‘climate’

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  • #
    Safetyguy66

    A song I love, that for me at least will now always be known as “Flannerys tune”, without any insult intended to the awesome Lisa Richards…

    Enjoy

    http://youtu.be/zVy-2U0bdls

    00

  • #
    pat

    btw why is my google australia News homepage still listing this?

    Australian climate has shifted for good: scientists
    ABC Online – ‎Apr 2, 2013‎

    everything else on the page is either minutes or a few hours old. i’ve noticed google’s AL(GORE)RITHMS doing similar with CAGW scare stories in the past, but it is increasingly annoying to see them continuing the practise.

    20

  • #
    Mike

    Tim Flannery and James Hansen need to go and live on the front line. Let’s all chip in and send them to Antarctica with ice makers, shovels and bathers. A holiday and pilgrimage rolled into one.

    20

  • #
    pat

    NZ CO2 market split emerges as traders bet on intervention
    BEIJING, April 4 (Reuters Point Carbon) –New Zealand’s carbon market has split in two as speculators buy government permits at more than NZ$2 while companies with caps under the scheme pick up bargain U.N. credits for a few cents each…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/1.2260735?&ref=searchlist

    10

  • #
    pat

    sounds like UNEP wants another huge bureaucracy to pretend to police the CO2 trading corruption! read all:

    March 2013: pdf (13 pages): UNEP Global Environment Alert Service:
    The impact of corruption on climate change: threatening emissions trading mechanisms?
    This bulletin provides an overview of recent discussions about the impact of corruption on environmental governance, with a focus on emissions trading. It reviews new definitions and the latest corruption assessment methodologies in order to emphasise the broader challenges faced by GHG trading mechanisms and climate finance…
    The implementation of cap-and-trade systems in both developed and developing countries has been recurrently tainted by cases of fraud and bribery, abuses of power, and other conventional forms of corruption. Corruption in this sector has also taken more original forms, such as the strategic exploitation of ‘bad science’ and scientific uncertainties for profit, the manipulation of GHG market prices, and anti-systemic speculation (Lohmann, 2007; TI, 2012a; Wara, 2007). The challenge that corruption poses to climate finance also contributes to broader debates about the impact of corruption in environmental governance…
    http://na.unep.net/geas/archive/pdfs/GEAS_Mar2013_EnvCorruption.pdf

    00

  • #
    crakar24

    Greetings fellow bloggers, watched this show last night on the ABC

    http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/abc1/201304/programs/ZX9100A001D2013-04-04T203228.htm

    It is the first part in a series and they talked about what drives the climate here on Earth, they stated the main things that drive climate are………….what for it…………..the sun and the orbital characteristics of the Earth/rotation.

    These two factors drive/create the Hadley cells and the boundaries of these cells are governed by the jet streams.

    For example a cell boundary sits over northern England so the position of the jet stream determines if England gets a shitty cold winter or a mild winter and the term “climate change” or any of its variants was not mentioned.

    How refreshing it was to watch a documentary about climate and not be subjected to indoctrination………….of course this was only part 1 and they may just be roping me in but i live in hope and will be watching the remaining episodes with great excitement.

    There is hope for humanity yet it seems

    Cheers

    Crakar

    156

    • #
      crakar24

      A thumbs down

      HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

      So the troll does like it when its religion is not constantly on display for all to see. [snip]ED

      74

      • #
        Mattb

        I gave that one a thumbs down as you are acting like a complete [snip]. The other one wasn’t mine btw.

        17

        • #
          Heywood

          How about explaining exactly why he was being a [snip]”.

          50

          • #
            Mattb

            [snip]

            in response to a random thumbs down? I means seriously a bit OTT don’t you think. [snip] how many thumbs down do I get?

            08

            • #
              Mattb

              Oh yeah and
              “tell me why [snip]

              08

              • #
                Heywood

                But your original [snip] post was referring to his post at #34 BEFORE he made the above statements ( your reference to the other thumbs down gives it away).

                So, what about his post at #34 necessitated a thumbs down and your calling him a [snip]

                60

              • #
                Heywood

                Note. At the time I posted, post 34.1 only had ONE thumbs down.

                41

              • #
                Mattb

                sidestepping the snips. GC I gave 34.1 a thumbs down, and noted that the single thumbs down at 34 was not mine. the 1st 34.1 thumb was mine, and the [snip] is evidence that Crakar was out of line.

                00

    • #
      Mattb

      So Crakar… who are these scientist who think that if the sun didn’t exist, or we had a different orbit, then we wouldn’t have a different climate it is all just about CO2?

      Let me just quote (google) the European Environment Agency:
      “The Earth’s climate is influenced by many factors, mainly by the amount of energy coming from the sun”
      So sun = major driver = tick from mainstream science

      Also it is abundantly well known that orbital changes, such as the Milanckovic cycles, are major drivers of historic (and future) climate extremes.
      So orbital cycles #2 = tick from mainstream science.

      One wonders if it is the first time you’ve watched a mainstream science doco. If you watch a few more you may find out that you’re being lied to by skeptics who are taking advantage of your, hmmm, lack of smarts?

      113

      • #
        Backslider

        Mattb – When you can get so much wrong in your understanding of 4 short paragraphs, why would you bother?

        140

        • #
          Mattb

          so just what is it that I have wrong. I am abundantly CORRECT in that mainstream science thinks that the sun is the most important factor in giving us the climate we have. I am abundantly CORRECT in that mainstream science is 100% aware of the significant impact of orbital changes.

          Take your time, find out what the man upstairs thinks before you get back to me.

          110

          • #
            Backslider

            It has flown completely over your head what carakar24’s post was about.

            If you continue with your ad hominem you will find yourself ejected from this website.

            80

            • #
              Mattb

              lol you and whose army?

              010

            • #
              Mattb

              Mr BS, I present the following statement:

              “It is the first part in a series and they talked about what drives the climate here on Earth, they stated the main things that drive climate are………….what for it…………..the sun and the orbital characteristics of the Earth/rotation.”

              The whole basis of my rant is that Crakar seems to think it is a revelation for a science based documentary about the basics of the climate to state that these two factors are the main factors. Where has Crakar got this opinion? Crakar is wrong.

              I have never seen a documentary about the basics of the planet’s seasonal weather/climate or even historic climate that would not have made this clear. (note I’ve not seen gore’s).

              012

              • #
                Backslider

                I’ll say it again: What crackar24 said has flown completely over your head. I would quit on that line if I were you.

                70

              • #
                Mattb

                I think you’re not putting the appropriate emphasis on the “wait for it…” part of Crakar’s post.

                09

              • #
                Popeye

                Matt says “(note I’ve not seen gore’s).”

                I’ll call you on that – WHAT, haven’t watched your heroes fairy tale cartoon – bul.sh.t balderdash – he’s got to be your HERO?

                Cheers,

                10

              • #
                Mattb

                no I’ve really NEVER WATCHED IT!

                00

            • #
              Ace

              Backslider…..you are too understated. Let me spell it out so even Mattb can understand as your assuming him to have the intelligence to see what you are gently pointing out will never get us anywhere:

              Mattb. what Cakar24 SAID was that the show SAID that solar and orbital influences ARE the orthodox science. He IMPLIED that CAGW believers, like yourself, would not like this statement of fact.

              What YOU then “thought” he said……….though how the heck we cannot any of us fathom I wager…….is that these factors are NOT orthodox. But in fact he said they are!

              You then slated him for saying (according to you ) the OPPOSITE of what he said!

              Crikey, how I hate people who do that.

              The comprehension skills of what?

              31

      • #
        Backslider

        you’re being lied to by skeptics

        Ok sonny, out with them. Or are you just in the habit of making baseless accusations?

        80

        • #
          Mattb

          Ok that he misunderstands basic science and does not understand skeptic arguments.

          Clearly Crackar thinks that it is some sort of anti AGW revelation, a vertiable turning point in the dabate, that the ABC would broadcast such climate HERESAY in that the sun is pretty damn important, and that the orbit is pretty damn important.

          Where does he get those kinds of opinions? One could assume that his reading of climate skeptic blogs at the exclusion of actual science has led him to have a completely incorrect view on what the mainstream science position on climate is.

          110

          • #
            Mattb

            but you are right it is highly possible he is just an idiot and has only misunderstood, not been lied to, by skeptics. As surely skeptic sites would not broadcast such levels of ignorance.

            010

            • #
              Ace

              No…you are the idiot Mattb…you cannot understand the simply stated things he wrote:

              “Backslider…..you are too understated. Let me spell it out so even Mattb can understand as your assuming him to have the intelligence to see what you are gently pointing out will never get us anywhere:

              Mattb. what Cakar24 SAID was that the show SAID that solar and orbital influences ARE the orthodox science. He IMPLIED that CAGW believers, like yourself, would not like this statement of fact.

              What YOU then “thought” he said……….though how the heck we cannot any of us fathom I wager…….is that these factors are NOT orthodox. But in fact he said they are!

              You then slated him for saying (according to you ) the OPPOSITE of what he said!”

              11

              • #
                Mattb

                “He IMPLIED that CAGW believers, like yourself, would not like this statement of fact.” which is exactly what I called him out on, as it is absolute codswallop. I’m now told by Roy that that was possibly an out of context literal interpretation, which may be true. But you don’t seem to think so? I’m glad that at least I’m not the only one who thought Crakar’s post was loaded.

                I did NOT say that I thought Crakar said these facts are NOT orthodox (is that like mainstream?) I said I thought Crakar was pointing out that most climate docos would pretend they were not.

                00

          • #
            Backslider

            As I have said, what crakar24 said has flown completely over your head. Please do not take that out on him.

            70

            • #
              Mattb

              then how about you explain how it has flown over my head rather than just repeat that as though it is true. maybe what I’ve said has flown completely over your head?

              09

              • #
                Backslider

                maybe what I’ve said has flown completely over your head?

                I hardly think so sonny.

                Ok, to demonstrate the insignificance of your ignorance, here you go:

                crakar24 told us about a documentary he saw. He told us what the episode was about. He then told us that he was delighted to see a doco that did not harp on with climate alarmism, for a change.

                Got it now?

                110

              • #
                Herr Majuscule

                Mattb believes this easily discredited theory of NASA’s:

                A blanket around the Earth

                Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the “greenhouse effect” — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.

                Certain gases in the atmosphere block heat from escaping. Long-lived gases, remaining semi-permanently in the atmosphere, which do not respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are described as “forcing” climate change whereas gases, such as water, which respond physically or chemically to changes in temperature are seen as “feedbacks.”

                http://climate.nasa.gov/causes

                00

              • #
                Heywood

                That’s how I understood it too. Mattb was a little quick on the “debunk the skeptic” train to realise it.

                It would be nice to watch a science doco about weather/climate without the rampant alarmism that usually infests such docos.

                70

              • #
                Ace

                YES lets explain it..AGAIN:

                “Backslider…..you are too understated. Let me spell it out so even Mattb can understand as your assuming him to have the intelligence to see what you are gently pointing out will never get us anywhere:

                Mattb. what Cakar24 SAID was that the show SAID that solar and orbital influences ARE the orthodox science. He IMPLIED that CAGW believers, like yourself, would not like this statement of fact.

                What YOU then “thought” he said……….though how the heck we cannot any of us fathom I wager…….is that these factors are NOT orthodox. But in fact he said they are!

                You then slated him for saying (according to you ) the OPPOSITE of what he said!”

                21

              • #
                Mattb

                “He IMPLIED that CAGW believers, like yourself, would not like this statement of fact.” and I pointed out that is untrue. I love that statement of fact. It is basic science completely accepted by climate science and totally consistent with AGW.

                00

          • #
            crakar24

            MattB,

            You stated

            Clearly Crackar thinks that it is some sort of anti AGW revelation, a vertiable turning point in the dabate, that the ABC would broadcast such climate HERESAY in that the sun is pretty damn important, and that the orbit is pretty damn important.

            Where does he get those kinds of opinions?

            And yet you have cast aspersions towards me based on your very own opinions, you are a fool.

            Thankyou Backslider for taking this idiot to task in my absence…..i owe you one

            Cheers

            71

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            Mattb

            Excuse me for interrupting into your “quiet” conversation with Backslider, but I would like to know what you mean when you say:

            … the exclusion of actual science has led him to have a completely incorrect view on what the mainstream science position on climate is.

            “Actual science”, I can understand as meaning Climate Science in the context of this discussion.

            But what do you mean by, “Mainstream Science?” What is “Mainstream Science”? Is it something that is actually definable, or is it merely something that sounds good, in a political sound-bite?

            In relation to climate, does “Mainstream Science” include Meteorologists, Climatologists, Atmospheric Physicists, Chemists, Oceanographers, Hydrologists, Geologists, and any other Earth Science speciality that I haven’t thought of? And how, and in what way, are these disciplines different to Climate Science?

            And if all of these separate disciplines could conceivably hold, a “mainstream position” on climate, in what way would that position be different from the position held by the Climate Scientists?

            91

            • #
              Mattb

              Mainstream is a fairly well understood term.

              Mainstream media
              Mainstream music
              Mainstream science

              I don’t use it to indicate “correct” or “better” they are indeed different things. But skeptic or warmist I think it is fairly to say tha the IPCC reports represent “mainstream” climate science. And in a discussion about climate science the “mainstream” is the “mainstreame climate science” position.

              But yes it is in itself not a scientific term if you like. As before and after galileo there was a mainstream science position on the sun. It was just a different theory/concept/etc that held the “mainstream” position.

              Ok you may not like the term of the concept. heck I don’t really like mainstream music, but I know what it is.

              06

              • #
                Ace

                No you like Radiohead.

                10

              • #
                KinkyKeith

                Young Matthew

                You are still getting it wrong dude.

                “Mainstream climate science” is unfortunately different from “Mainstream Science”.

                “Mainstream climate science” will never be remembered as a “stream” with the image of a pure

                sparkling natural watercourse but as a dirty sludge ridden sewer that is too smelly to

                contemplate (some methane perhaps).

                With some good will, the stench of MSCS can be washed away forever in the next few months and a new age of Science will begin.

                Bring on the new age of Climate Realism.

                Yours in Mainstream Science

                KK 🙂

                21

              • #
                Andrew McRae

                >> “heck I don’t really like mainstream music” : MattB

                That MattB is SUCH a hipster!

                He was into climate change before it was cool. 😀 😛 😀

                10

              • #
                Mattb

                Actually I think Radiohead peaked at “creep”.

                00

      • #
        KinkyKeith

        The “B” has finally conceded defeat for the scam that was Climate Science.

        It seems that they have now switched from the Global Warming Science to wanting to become welcome buddies

        back in the bosom of Mainstream Science where the rest of us have lived all our lives.

        Welcome Matt, but there are NOW some rules and it’s good to see you start by acknowledging that there is a

        Sun, which varies in output, and that orbital mechanics are the primary drivers of “the weather”.

        Sorry about that stupid CO2 idea but it had a very good run until mainstream science pulled the plug on it.

        It’s all over now
        Have you learnt your lesson well?
        You cant please everyone
        So you just gotta please yourself.

        KK 🙂

        30

    • #
      Mattb

      ok so i’ve looked a bit more in to this program, which is in fact about the weather and how it is impacted by the earth’s orbit. It is like a day in the life of. It is dinstinctly not about climate. So why would it have said anything abount climate change. Nomatter how he climate changes, the earth will still spin around itself and spin around the sun, and the moon will spin around us, and thus things change on the planet.

      There are many many documentaries about things that are not climate.

      17

      • #
        Heywood

        So that’s the best you’ve got? Crakar said the word “climate” and you watch the doco and decide it’s about “weather” so you take him to task on THAT point?

        Wow…..

        Oh. And I gave you a thumbs down as you are acting like a complete [snip]

        70

        • #
          Mattb

          Gumpy Cat gives thumbs down? It’s hardly a headline.

          No Heywood, mostly Crackar had been randomly slagging mystery thumbs downers as dipshits, so that started things off on the wrong foot.

          010

          • #
            crakar24

            Hey [snip],

            Part one of the doco shows what happens during a 6 month orbit of the sun about how the seasons change, about the Gyre in the oceans, the changing of the tides, the hadley cells, trade winds, jet streams and you water this down to a show about the weather?

            FFS [snip], i dont care if you give me a thumbs down if i offer my opinion however what i find fascinating is when mindless morons like you give a thumbs down on factual information. I liked the doco because i enhanced my knowledge on the subject of climate so i wanted to share it with all, i also found it refeshing because they did not blame things on C02 they just gave the facts but you in your witless rage gave a thumbs down.

            You sad [snip]

            113

            • #
              Mattb

              No you moron I DIDN’T GIVE YOU THAT THUMBS DOWN.

              I did a bit later but that was mostly for humour value.

              “i also found it refeshing because they did not blame things on C02”

              Look crakar… and this is the crux of the whole tit for tat thing we have going here. The doco is about what happens to the earth as it spins around the sun for a year. summer winter etc etc. Why would anyone blame the seasonal changes on the earth, and differences between poles and equator etc, on CO2. It would be a truly absurd thing to do.

              When I watched the doco I too enjoyed it for the science value, but not once did it even occur to me to think “why didn’t it mention CO2? this is skeptical clap trap”…. and that’s because it was a doco that is 100% unrelated to climate change.

              10

      • #
        Ace

        Mattb……why dont you just admit, you never read Crakar24s comment, you just glanced at it and made wild bigoted assumptions without actually bothering to see what he was actually saying.

        Either that or you really cannot understand very clearly implied views.

        11

      • #
        KinkyKeith

        That’s a lot of SPIN there Matthew.

        KK

        11

  • #
    crakar24

    It looks like Flannery is not the only village idiot, i touched on this in an earlier O/T comment but stumbled across this today, i cant access the paper but i have the abstract here

    http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1767.html

    Here is the MSM version

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23339-antarctic-ice-grows-as-climate-warms.html

    Essentially what they are saying is……….actually before i begin first you must take a deep breath and clear your mind of all logic and common sense. Calm yourself and attempt to get in touch with your inner Gaia, once you have done this then read on.

    Ready?

    Ok here we go, apparently the reasons why the Arctic is losing ice is a slam dunk however the reasons why the Antarctic has been gaining ice has alluded scientists for many years until now.

    What we have is this, the Arctic has lost 15% of ice whilst the Antarctic has gained 5%

    Arctic sea ice dropping more than 15 per cent, even as Antarctic ice has risen by more than 5 per cent.

    Facts on the ground

    ocean water below a depth of 100 metres has been getting warmer, in line with rising ocean temperatures worldwide, but surface waters and the air above have become cooler.

    And the reason why?

    The reason, say Richard Bintanja and colleagues at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, is that the deep warm water is melting the shelves of floating ice that extend from the continent. This is setting off flotillas of icebergs and creating a layer of cool, fresh water at the ocean’s surface. Measurements and previous modelling studies show this is happening, say Bintanja and his team.

    Take note that AGW is only warming the water below 100 meters!!!

    They hypothesise that the layer of cool surface water insulates the remaining floating ice from warm deep currents. Using a climate model, they show that a realistic injection of cool meltwater should bulk up Antarctic ice. They predict these trends will continue.

    I have a couple of logical dead ends with this paper, they claim that warm water (due to AGW) is melting the ice not surface water or the air as that has been cooling ie getting colder which flies in the face of the AGW theory anyway but lets move on. So this ice melt insulates the warm deep water from the ice? Really? wouldnt the fresh water simply warm up due to AGW? Ok so lets say it does not and the ice does not melt how does this then explain an expansion in sea ice? This little fact is conveniently left out.

    If the deep warm seawater melted the ice to begin with then how could it then refreeze the fresh water and lead to an expansion, no it can not the fresh water could only get warmer causing more melt and less ice.

    Another problem is that if this is the process on STH Hemi sea ice (ie AGW is causing more of the stuff) then why oh why does teh same process not happen in the NTH Hemi?

    What a joke science has become…..but of course morons like Nice One will swollow this whole and allow scientific abominations like this to continue.

    82

    • #

      All of this without reading the paper?

      16

      • #
        Mattb

        when you can get so much wrong in your understanding of 4 short paragraphs, why would you bother with the whole paper?

        28

        • #
          crakar24

          Ok i am here now arsehole lets debate the latest piece of junk science you seemingly endorse.

          63

          • #
            Mattb

            Crackar. why did you say “wait for it”, given that those two things are in fact the two main drivers of the annual weather cycly, and the overall climate?

            I appreciate that you appreciate that the show was not about climate change. But that is because it was not about climate change. I watch many many TV shows that are not about climate change and do not feel the need to post about them on this skeptical blog… so there must be a connection to you? If not, then I apologise, and please continue to post links to your fave TV shows that have nothing to to wit climate science.

            Game of Thrones maybe?

            14

            • #
              crakar24

              [snip]

              12

            • #
              Ace

              Most people with high school comprehension skills and a familiarity with the topic would easily read “wait for it” as referring to an anticipated denunciation of the show by warmists.

              In fact, what other interpretation is plausible?

              10

            • #
              Andrew McRae

              MattB politely enquired:

              Crackar. why did you say “wait for it”

              What is funny, MattB, is that this is the very first time you have asked Crakar about what he actually intended by his original statement. You have asked other people, such as Backslider. You were given opinions from others such as Ace, Backslider, and Heywood about what crakar intended. But the ultimate authority on what crakar intended in his original statement is crakar24, and only now are you actually asking him.

              I see now that crakar replied just before you wrote the above comment so you may have missed it, and yet ironically he didn’t even explicitly answer your question. No wonder you people were all talking past each other.

              All of you were having a nice little mudslinging match with each other for 3 hours and nobody stopped to ask crakar what he actually meant in the statement that triggered it all. You were ALL making assumptions. And you know what happens when you make an assumption. Hehehee.

              – – – – –
              And just to throw petrol on the fire…

              MattB’s interpretation was correct but only in the literal sense. By placing emphasis on the orbital contribution crakar24 just didn’t communicate his intention very clearly on the first go. He did eventually say what he meant near the end of the comment, but therefore that is where the dramatic emphasis should have been, not on the orbital contribution.
              I and several others understood what he meant, but that must be due to the context of this blog’s running theme instead of a literal interpretation of the comment taken out of context.

              00

              • #
                Mattb

                Andrew you are probably not too far from the truth. Crackar was mouthing off randomly before I even joined the thread, and personally I felt his comments about the doco were clearly loaded (you may disagree?). You say Crakar didn’t communicate clearly… in other circles that’s dog-whistle politics. Does that make me a dog too? not sure, but I heard it.

                But whatever then BackSlider joined in and I must say that since his first presence on this blog the slider has taken a particularly spiteful and vindictive approach to myself, and I’ve seen good reason and found great delight in not backing down… as BS is literally one of the most unpleasant, up him/herself, self-loving, and pig-ignorant characters I have ever come across in the world of the interwebs. I mean I have my days too maybe but at least I’ve the guts (or am nuts enough) to venture in to the lands that are off the map for most climate travellers.

                Bugger me I see Crakar has had his response to the direct question I posed snipped… not sure if self or mod.

                What is interesting though Andrew is I doubt I would have interpreted Crakar’s comments as such if it were not in the context of this blog and what I know of Crakar’s opinions from this blog. So I don’t see I took a literal comment out of context. TO me it was entirely in context.

                10

      • #
        crakar24

        GA,

        Yes GA i am a very observant fellow i know you struggle to keep but i am prepared to walk you through it if you like in really slow time just so you can be part of the adult conversation.

        62

    • #
      Mattb

      “It looks like Flannery is not the only village idiot”

      indeed.

      110

      • #
        Ace

        You can keep prattling Mattb but theres something you overlook. You are the only person you may be fooling into thinking you somehow didnt say what you did.

        Most people who visit web-sites do not leave comments.here are thousandsofreaders for every regular commentor. You may think of this as like a real-life conversation betweenb a few geezers round a TV setin which you can pretend you didnt say what you did, but thousands of people, for posterity, need only read what you actually did write to see you futile attempts at claiming otherwise. Everything you add to it will just drive home what an idiot you are, because you are too dim to realise this and go on digging an ever deeper hole.

        Ive also made mistakes on web-sites. But I didnt spend ages trying to pretend I hadnt.Its that that makes you the fool, as Crakar24 says.

        30

      • #
        Backslider

        indeed.

        Ahh… some self realisation from you. Good to see Matt Matt!

        10

  • #
    Popeye

    I was fortunate enough to watch this program last night on ABC1.

    Orbit: Earth’s Extraordinary Journey for those who missed it.

    This is the first documentary program I have seen on the ABC for years that didn’t once mention “global warming either catastrophic, unprecedented or runaway.

    It was an absolute pleasure to see what REALLY sets the weather, global temperatures & seasons.

    Pity Flim Flam or Stueffen don’t watch it – maybe if they did they’d LEARN SOMETHING!!

    Cheers,

    50

    • #
      Mattb

      lol… nah never mind:)

      But FYI this documentary is on ABC tonight and it too appears to be unlikely to mention climate change.

      Who’s Been Sleeping In My House?
      8pm – 8.32pm
      ABC1
      Tonight
      Adam Ford travels to Toowoomba where he investigates the 70-year-old mystery of a stolen baby and attempts to find the saviour of a house that was once deemed uninhabitable

      07

      • #
        Popeye

        Didn’t watch it did you Matt?

        Do yourself a favour & take 58 minutes out of your life and then come back here and refute ANYTHING they’re saying!!!! I have a feeling that you won’t be able to.

        Talk soon – cheers,

        30

        • #
          Streetcred

          That’s all very well to say, Pop’, but Matt doesn’t have a life … where’s he going to get 58′ from, a protractor ? 😉

          20

        • #
          Mattb

          I’m not sure if you are asking me to refute the climate doco or the Toowoomba doco? If you mean the climate doco I’m not sure what there is to refute… great doco. No I didn’t watch the Toowoomba one.

          00

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    “….compared climate change deniers to flat Earth believers”

    Wrong comparison Flannery. It’s climate scientists that believe a flat earth energy budget model is realistic – not “climate change deniers” (whoever they are I don’t know either).

    60

    • #
      Mattb

      Richard… the amount of sun that hits the earth is the same as if it were a flat disc. What’s your problem with that?

      115

      • #
        crakar24

        Really MattB? I will give you one chance to retract that stupid statement……but only one.

        72

        • #
          Andrew McRae

          I’m sorry but I’m going to assume that MattB will not give a calm decent defence of his statement and that it will again spiral into nasty tail-chasing as it did yesterday. On the basis of received intelligence reports I’m making a pre-emptive strike in the interests of liberating the people of Jonovastan from forced labour.

          The atmosphere is part of the Earth, so any statement about “the amount of sun that hits the earth” must include the upper atmosphere.

          The only rays of light that can hit the Earth from the Sun must pass through a region of space shaped like a flat disc with a radius equal to Earth’s radius and located just in front of the earth at an altitude of 100km (or whatever you define as the Top Of Atmosphere).

          Or more briefly, the total solar radiative energy that hits the whole earth in one second is the same as if the Earth were a flat disc of the same size.
          Or yet again less precisely, “the amount of sun that hits the earth is the same as if it were a flat disc.”
          That is clearly NOT the same as saying that the Earth is flat. It is also not stupid, it’s true.

          I invite MattB to clarify to the bloodthirsty mob, truthfully, as to whether the above interpretation is what he intended by his comment, and if not then in more precise terms what he really meant by it.

          Furthermore, I invite Richard C to point out precisely where in the IPCC-endorsed climate models, or any other part of Climate Science, does anybody actually treat the Earth as though it were a flat disc for any purpose. There may be one, but it is not the insolation flat disc that MattB alluded to because that particular flat disc is true.

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            Mattb

            “The atmosphere is part of the Earth, so any statement about “the amount of sun that hits the earth” must include the upper atmosphere.

            The only rays of light that can hit the Earth from the Sun must pass through a region of space shaped like a flat disc with a radius equal to Earth’s radius and located just in front of the earth at an altitude of 100km (or whatever you define as the Top Of Atmosphere).

            Or more briefly, the total solar radiative energy that hits the whole earth in one second is the same as if the Earth were a flat disc of the same size.
            Or yet again less precisely, “the amount of sun that hits the earth is the same as if it were a flat disc.”
            That is clearly NOT the same as saying that the Earth is flat. It is also not stupid, it’s true.

            I invite MattB to clarify to the bloodthirsty mob, truthfully, as to whether the above interpretation is what he intended”

            Andrew I could weep. some will doubt but yes that is exactly what I’m referring to. Quite beautifully put.

            “That is clearly NOT the same as saying that the Earth is flat. It is also not stupid, it’s true.”

            if I WAS gay as Backslider likes to suggest I’d be getting a crush just about now;)

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              Andrew McRae

              Whoah, steady there, tiger.

              You may be Flannery’s rent boy, but you `aint mine.

              Too much information!

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        Popeye

        Matt Matt Matt,

        Please do what I’ve asked you to do in comment 36.1.1 and you won’t make such STUPID statements as you have to Richard in comment 37.

        Also looking forward to your response to Crackar24 in 37.1.1

        Thanks & cheers,

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        Speedy

        Matt

        I’m assuming you don’t subscribe to the flat earth theory? (Hint: That one’s wrong too. Refer also CAGW.)

        Thanks,

        Speedy

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        Backslider

        the amount of sun that hits the earth is the same as if it were a flat disc. What’s your problem with that?

        Matt Matt Matt Matt! So, you are a flat earther in that you actually believe such tripe.

        Then you have the balls to come around here insulting anybody you can?

        Let me ask you one very very simple question Matt: Why are the poles cold?

        Thanks BTW, I needed a laugh today and you did it!

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          Why are the poles cold …. ?

          Um, …. Because they are covered in ice?

          🙂

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            Backslider

            Well yes, that is one factor. Snow and ice reflect sunshine, so there is less warming of the surface. But then, why is there snow and ice?

            Climate models treat the earth as though its a flat disc (modern day flat earthers, like Mattb), however this has a very fundamental and major flaw. Which is….?

            Let’s do an experiment! Get a small torch (pretending its emitting some of the sun’s rays) and go into a dark room and shine it (from reasonably close, say one metre) onto a large ball (pretending its the earth). What do you see when you shine the torch onto the equator? What do you see when you shine the torch (move the torch parallel up or down so you are still shining in a straight line) toward one of the poles?

            Same amount of light for each, but what is the difference?

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              Rereke Whakaaro

              But then, why is there snow and ice?

              Well that is a long story.

              When I was at school, I was taught about the refraction of light, and I learnt that the angle of refraction was dependent on the angle of incidence, and the difference in densities between the two media.

              And when I attended the University for the Totally Ungifted, I also learnt that radio, and heat, and light, and x-rays, are all just different frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum.

              So putting these two ideas together, I reckon that you get more snow and ice when it is colder. 😉

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                Backslider

                If you try my torch experiment, you will find that when you shine the small torch toward the equator, you will see a nice neat circle of light. When you move the light toward the poles, you will see that the light is spread out over a much larger area. Thus, the intensity per m2 is much higher at the equator and this is the primary reason why the equator is hot and the poles cold.

                Another factor is that the sun’s energy must travel through much more atmosphere at the poles. Then we get to the snow and ice.

                This is why Mattb’s earth as a flat disc is ridiculous.

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                Rereke Whakaaro

                Precisely,

                I wasn’t going to say (type) it, but it is all about the variation in intensity of the energy as the angle of incidence changes from 90o at the equator to something approaching 180o as you get close to the poles.

                Of course, my final paragraph was intended as a wind-up, which failed dismally. Ho hum.

                Still, the bottom line is that the Earth ain’t flat, the models assume it is, therefore the models cannot represent a global situation. QED.

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                Backslider

                I mentioned below that I smelled Mattb’s comment as a bait… but on second thought I don’t believe he would have the intelligence to think of it.

                My thought today was that if you treated the SUN as though it was a flat disc, then it really would not make a significant difference. His comment was ambiguous enough to apply that, but we all know he meant that the earth is like a flat disc.

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                Backslider

                I actually remember as a boy looking at the sun and it appeared as though it was a flat disc 🙂

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                Mattb

                “If you try my torch experiment, you will find that when you shine the small torch toward the equator, you will see a nice neat circle of light. When you move the light toward the poles, you will see that the light is spread out over a much larger area.”

                Of course it completely depends where you are observing from. If you were observing from the sun both would look like a nice neat circle of light.

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                Mattb

                “My thought today was that if you treated the SUN as though it was a flat disc, then it really would not make a significant difference.”

                wow the penny just dropped yeah?

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        Roy Hogue

        Richard… the amount of sun that hits the earth is the same as if it were a flat disc. What’s your problem with that?

        Matt,

        Yes, that’s a correct statement at face value. But even you must realize that since the Earth is not a disk but a sphere, that amount of sun is falling on a lot more surface. And most of that surface is not aligned at 90 degrees with the direction of the sun, not even at high noon. Surely the implications of this must get through to such a scientifically literate person as you and result in a light bulb coming on?

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          Backslider

          I actually smell a bait with Mattb’s statement…. let’s just wait and see.

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            Roy Hogue

            Would I do that? 😉

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              Backslider

              No no – I meant that the comment Mattb made was a bait… but see above, I no longer suspect that.

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                Roy Hogue

                Backslider,

                I’ve never known MattB to do something that deep. I think everyone would faint if he was to answer just one simple challenge that’s been put to him. But so far… …well, no danger of fainting I think.

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                Backslider

                What’s the bet that he doesn’t show himself on this thread again?

                I will call him out in this doozy wherever he posts…. what was it again Mattb?

                the amount of sun that hits the earth is the same as if it were a flat disc. What’s your problem with that?

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                Backslider

                No wonder the climate models show alarming warming… just imagine if the Earth really did behave as though it were a flat disc? We would all FRY!!!

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                Rereke Whakaaro

                What’s the bet that he doesn’t show himself on this thread again?

                Well, he was savaged quite severely. So he might not be seen again, and that would be a great pity.

                This site would loose something without the regular diehard believers. MattB and John Brookes quite often act as a catalyst for the regulars here, but they usually do it by interjection, and not by force of thread blitzing, as the trolls tend to do.

                They play the role of Court Jester, in keeping the rest of us honest and focused on what we want to say. Because for all of us, it comes down to what you know, and what you think you know, what you admit you don’t know, and finally what you don’t realise that you don’t know. Those who are cynical about the sceptics pull us up, from time to time, as being in the wrong place on that scale.

                I have never met Matt, and don’t know him at all, but I get the impression that he is at least one generation younger than me, which means that he probably has not had the basic Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Maths training that I had at secondary school, let alone the easy transition from school to the more advanced tertiary science that I took for granted. If at school, he was taught that the world was flat, from a theoretical perspective, to make the math more palatable, then that is what he understands to be the truth. I don’t think we should cane him for that.

                What worries me more, is the obvious implication that the Climate Modellers assume that the world is flat, and that is what we should be focused on.

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                Mattb

                “Well, he was savaged quite severely.”
                what you mean backslider was a c*nt? I think I’ll survive.

                “but I get the impression that he is at least one generation younger than me, which means that he probably has not had the basic Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Maths training that I had at secondary school”
                Lol lol lol. Such a loaded statement. ok okk only people over 60 know science. It is such a crap statement and an insult to the fine physicists I’m happy to call friends I don’t even know where to start.

                “If at school, he was taught that the world was flat, from a theoretical perspective, to make the math more palatable,”
                I’ve never been taught that actually, it is just pretty basic science/maths to see that it is occasionally not an incorrect way to treat the earth, and just because it is occasionally so does not mean that the entirity of climate science assumes it is so especially to the point where it would literally write-off the science.

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          Mattb

          slider blah blah rereke blah blah but Roy the point is that occasionally it may be useful to consider the earth as a flat disc as it may make the maths easier and is in fact an accurate representation. If the earth was indeed flat it would not magically attract any more or less light form the sun than that which the sun directs towards it.

          For example it intercepts the same amount of sunlight as would a flat disc of the same diameter. So my point is that you appear to dismiss climate science because it is occasionally convenient to consider the earth a disc. My fear is that you give the impression to the casual reader that in climate science everything about the earth is considered to be the same as if it were a flat disk, which is simply not true.

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          Mattb

          “Yes, that’s a correct statement at face value.”
          Thank you Roy, thank you, a million thank yous. you may wish to read this BackSlider.

          “But even you must realize that since the Earth is not a disk but a sphere”
          gosh really?
          “that amount of sun is falling on a lot more surface.”
          you don;t say
          “And most of that surface is not aligned at 90 degrees with the direction of the sun, not even at high noon.”
          wow I wish you’d been my science teacher.

          “Surely the implications of this must get through to such a scientifically literate person as you and result in a light bulb coming on?”
          yes all of which is well understood and incorporated in climate science.

          Nothing I said, btw, and I mean not one single thing, would suggest that any of your comments above would be things I would
          question.

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            Roy Hogue

            Good for you Matt! You can fight for yourself — not the way I would do it but you can fight for yourself.

            And then you add,

            yes all of which is well understood and incorporated in climate science.

            Now I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume your statement is true. But then I have to ask, if all this is incorporated in climate science, why do their computer models (surely based on this understanding) fail so badly at predicting even the near future? They haven’t even predicted the past or the present correctly, Matt.

            The hurdle you need to jump is not to fight back because someone tires of your off the wall or ridiculously incomplete statements and calls you on it. You need to fight back by showing us you understand why that simplifying flat disk assumption is inadequate — and why a lot of other stuff built into climate science is inadequate.

            The world is running 90 miles an hour down a dead end street over this crap. Help the sensible people put on the breaks before it’s too late. That’s what we all want here.

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              Mattb

              a simple way to look at it is that the models, as far as I am aware, do not try to predict the unpredictable or unrelated. There are things that can happen that can cool and that can warm (take el nino for example) but if you ran a model then it has no idea if in 15 or 20 years time year X will be El Nino, so it is not appropriate to expect a model to be able to predict this.

              TBH I’m not convinced the models are doing all that badly. Sure I see a lot of graphs here for example tell me they are terrible, but it just doesn’t seem to stack up… there is always something that is tricky or slight of hand.

              look go back to Richard C’s post that started this flat earth business:
              “It’s climate scientists that believe a flat earth energy budget model is realistic ” I mean it is such a false statement. what does it even mean. yes climate scientists believe that the energy the earth receives from the sun is that same as though the earth was a flat disc… but this idea that the whole energy budget treats earth as a flat disk is simply not true. No one is simplifying the earth as a flat disc other than in entirely appropriate situations.

              p.s. Roy for you I shall attempt to be a smart ass. apologies for being so in part in 37.1.5.3

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                Mattb

                sorry… attempt to NOT be a smartass

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                Roy Hogue

                a simple way to look at it is that the models, as far as I am aware, do not try to predict the unpredictable or unrelated. There are things that can happen that can cool and that can warm (take el nino for example) but if you ran a model then it has no idea if in 15 or 20 years time year X will be El Nino, so it is not appropriate to expect a model to be able to predict this.

                OK, Matt — by this I think you are saying that the climate is not suitably predictable by models. If so, then why are we even here? The thing is over and done with because models have been the foundation of all the dire warnings from the beginning.

                But we are here and predictions are being made largely relying on what some computer model of the climate is spitting out. We are being told that the planet is warming ever faster and faster, yet no credible data supports this. The supposed records being set are just marginally higher than some arbitrary reference time and in only a few places. The possible meaning of record or near record low temperatures elsewhere is either ignored or credibility is stretched to the breaking point to make them part of the warming phenomenon.

                What do you say about evidence that food crops were once grown in Greenland or evidence that the River Thames was once frozen over in winter to the point where you could skate on it? Climate simply changes with time, as you point out yourself. We know or think we know some of the reasons, none of which looks like CO2 to me.

                I don’t want to labor over this too much. But the case for human caused global warming is falling apart. Not even the IPCC really believes there is good evidence for it. The cause has always been a political one.

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                Mattb

                Roy as far as I am aware the Thames froze over as recently as the 50s or 60s. It’s no big deal. here’s a link to some images: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=thames+frozen+1963&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=9exgUY72KIn8iAee_oCQDw&ved=0CDgQsAQ&biw=1258&bih=664

                I did not say the climate is not suitably predictable by models. the underlying impact of GHGs on climate do appear to be suitably predictable and predicted by models. We know there are other cycles, and I use el nino as an example, that we know are regular, but there is NO WAY at present (or ever) of predicting which years will or will not be el nino years, and how long they will last, and when the next one will be. So a model CANNOT predict this and does not attempt to. The models look at long term trends, and as far as I am concerned they do a decent enough job. I can tell you January will almost definitely be warmer than June in Perth… but I can’t tell you if the 2nd week of June will be cooler than the 1st week of June. Does that mean we can’t make weather forecasts, or seasonal predictions?

                This is an oldie but a goodie at Brave New Climate: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/08/how-hot-should-it-have-really-been-over-the-last-5-years/

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    Dave

    .
    Seems that Timmy Flannery is not the only one to go.

    These 3 below:

    1. UWA
    2. The free Electric Car recharge station owners & developers
    3. And the EV owners

    Are all going to be under investigation for misuse of public funds (taxpayers) in Perth (a very private circle apparently) involving Federal and local government members in WA?

    Wonder who Loo?

    Coming shortly to a city near you, the snouts in the trough are about to be severed served some documents.

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    Dennis

    Too many were fooled by Kevin07 and voted Howard out. Competence and management was discarded. Abbott offers us a change back to competence and management.

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    If we eliminate all the crooks, who will run the one-world government that emerged from the ruins of WWII?

    Driven by fear and loathing of the destructive nature of humans, leaders united to form the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945, to subjugate and deceive humans to prevent them from destroying life on earth with the forbidden knowledge of the power that vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and almost destroyed Los Angeles: http://omanuel.wordpress.com/about/#comment-3100

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    Two recent discoveries illustrate how little we actually know about the Sun and its variability.

    http://news.yahoo.com/suns-magnetic-heartbeat-revealed-180828850.html

    http://sciencementality.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/mars-missions-scaled-back-in-april-because-of-sun/

    Oliver K. Manuel
    Former NASA Principal
    Investigator for Apollo
    http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
    [These are interesting topics, Manuel. But they are on the wrong thread. Please resubmit the comment somewhere more appropriate] -Fly

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    Rod Stuart

    My fear is that a Coalition government won’t put an end to the entire nonsense, including the tax with no purpose, the climate commission, the renewable energy scam, the “clean” energy initiative, and all of the other rorts that are not well publicised. They sound like they might only go part way.

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      Mark

      Rod, your suspicions are certainly not without basis. It will be up to the electorate to keep the pressure on. Do you recall back in the ’90s when the Howard government had to backtrack on an automatic fuel excise increase which had been legislated by a previous ALP government. There was a public revolt at what was clearly an unjustifiable tax-grab.

      My concern is that nothing Abbott has stated about repealing the ‘carbon tax’ addresses the transition to an ETS. It’s just possible that the price might be stuff-all by that time but I still want to see everything related to this scam dead and buried in unhallowed ground.

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    Raymond

    As someone who worked with the Climate Change Commissioners over a number of years, nothing would make me happier than to see this rag tag bunch of freeloaders and scare mangers lose their jobs. Bring it on arm Abbott!

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    Raymond

    Sorry, that should say “scare mongers”

    20

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    Ace

    Rod Stuart:
    “My fear is that a Coalition government won’t put an end to the entire nonsense, including the tax with no purpose, the climate commission, the renewable energy scam, the “clean” energy initiative, and all of the other rorts that are not well publicised. They sound like they might only go part way.”

    It’ll be the same everywhere. Like Mattb, they’ll never openly admit being wrong. So it’ll be like those scenes in Family Guy when Peter Griffin tiptoes backwards out of a potentially embarrassing situation.

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      Steve

      From Tony Abbotts speech to the IPA anniversary dinner.

      “John, there is one campaign where you will not prevail – namely your urgent advice to me in the IPA Review last August to be more like Gough Whitlam. You had a great deal of advice for me in that particular issue and I want to assure you that the Coalition will indeed repeal the carbon tax, abolish the Department of Climate Change, abolish the Clean Energy Fund. We will repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, at least in its current form. We will abolish new health and environmental bureaucracies. We will deliver $1 billion in red tape savings every year. We will develop northern Australia. We will repeal the mining tax. We will create a one stop shop for environmental approvals. We will privatise Medibank Private. We will trim the public service and we will stop throwing good money after bad on the NBN. ”

      Cheers

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    Steve

    Jo,
    I read your blog all the time , but never comment. I would like today, if I may, to make a point regarding one of your statements in your post. “As I keep saying, those in private business who provide real goods to real voluntary customers will suffer from a carbon tax, but they still have a market. For them it’s a “dent” in profits.”
    The point I wish to make is that as a small business person of well over 30 years, the carbon tax has been “the straw that broke the camels back ” for many businesses. Whilst I realize that you live in Perth where things are still buoyant, the east coast is struggling big time. For example the building industry has recorded something like 33 months of consecutive negative growth after the GFC, taking that industry back to levels seen in the 70’s. Profits are few and far between for many, and unnecessary impositions like the carbon tax eat into whats left, rendering the business unstainable and unsellable. If your profit has already been substantially reduced, due to other uncontrollable factors, then that “dent in profits” can be the difference between surviving in business or going under. The “market” often only remains if the business absorbs the extra costs of the carbon tax. I therefore submit that the carbon tax is a lot more serious than a ” dent in profits “. The overall premise of your post, is of course, totally correct.
    Regards,
    Steve

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    Neville

    The Bolter has Bob Carter on the Bolt report tomorrow morning to fact check Tim Flannery.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/bolt_report_tomorrow10/#commentsmore

    On channel 10 at 10 am.

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    […] Jobs and junkets are on the line. Abbott could axe Flannery and the … http://joannenova.com.au/&#8230; “renewables” ». « Rupert Wyndham ponders the wanton hypocrisy of Paul Nurse and The Royal Society … The Australian “Abbott says Tim Flannery's job could be in danger ”. Tony Abbott said he ….. The article on this in the SMH attracted 601 comments before comments were closed, many of which berated Flannery for his remarks in 2005 in an interview on Lateline by Maxine McKew that Eastern Australia would never see full dams again. Bit like the UK guy … […]

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    Ted O'Brien.

    While reading the comments here I wonder how many of the “names” are in Tim Flannery’s office?

    Tim has the money, so he has the time to waste us and our time. It’s his job.

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