The new Lowy Poll has got some commentators arguing that climate fear is rising in Australia. What the survey actually shows is that 55% of Australian don’t want to spend money fighting climate change. The Lowy poll asked loaded questions, didn’t ask people to rank their concerns, and showed nearly everyone was critically worried about nearly everything. Was there a point?
Predictably, one small uptick is portrayed to pretend the climate religion is gaining momentum again.
The SMH leaps to say the climate of dread is heating up (they wish):
“In a striking shift in public opinion, 45% of Australians now see global warming as a ‘serious and pressing problem’, up 5 points since 2013 and 9 points since 2012. 63% of Australians say the government ‘should take a leadership role on reducing emissions’, while only 28% say ‘it should wait for an international consensus before acting’.” — Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald.
How important is a 5 point shift? The survey was of 1,000 adults in Feb 2014. The margin of error is 3.1%.
Peter Hannam doesn’t mention that the level of concern is 22 points down on the high that was recorded in 2006 when 68% of people thought climate change was a “critical threat”. Nor does he mention that more than 40% of Australians think nearly everything in the survey is a critical threat.
These threats are not prioritized. The Lowy institute didn’t ask people to rank their concerns. Peter Hannam could have given SMH readers the full perspective on the news- but evidently chose not too. His title is Environment Editor, not Climate Activist, though that might be more honest. The SMH also gave space to The Climate Institute which predictably pushed the scare factor too. Did they contact any skeptics? If they’d asked me I would have said that almost every other survey shows the long slow decline of a belief in man-made global warming. On the internet, people are just not looking. A CSIRO survey showed 53% of Australians don’t think humans are causing climate change, and 80% of Australians chose not to voluntarily pay money for “the environment”, and in 2013 only 16% of all Australians were “very worried”. The reason the Lowy survey shows something so different, is thanks to the loaded question design, and lack of options for half the population.
Are you super worried, a bit worried, or not worried – yet? (You will be!)
The Lowy Institute claim their annual Poll has “challenged preconceived notions about Australians’ views”. Shame their poll results have not challenged their own preconceived views. In Table 13 they assume climate change is a “problem” and something we have to deal with. The options are three shades of alarm. Skeptics are not people who’ve made a different choice, but merely alarmists who haven’t realized it yet. The weakest answer allowed is “until we are sure that global warming is really a problem we should not take any steps that would have economic costs”. It’s just a matter of time, right?
Respondents are pretty good at figuring out what the surveyors want them to say. In the long run, I daresay it will surprise the Lowy team when they realize the skeptics were right.
Table 13 (Click to enlarge)
As well as not starting with a loaded question, a neutral survey would offer a 3 or even 5 point scale with pro-action choices, neutral and skeptical options. Other groups that have done this — like the recent UK survey, showed fully 62% of UK citizens don’t believe in man-made climate. That survey was one of the first to ask very specific and useful questions and offer a simple Agree/Disagree/Neutral choice. It also showed that educated high income respondents were more likely to be skeptical than manual workers and less skilled respondents.
The Lowy Institute could have asked whether the real problem with global warming is that climate models don’t work, predictions are wrong, and scientists have been exaggerating. Just having that option there would shift all the other response rates wouldn’t it rather?
Even so, 45% of people chose “significant” costs , while 55% chose low or no cost, or don’t know. What does significant mean? Even in the halycon days of climate fears in 2008, at least 52% of Australians were not willing to spend anything over $10 a month on climate change. (That was from the Lowy Institute poll of 2008).
Everything is critical!
In table 11 climate change is ranked 6th 9th of 12 in “total: important threat”. But the Lowy Institute didn’t ask people about some of their most pressing concerns at all — namely, “the economy”. It also didn’t ask people to rank their fears. This is a Santa wish list — a kind of “name everything” — it’s a you-can-have-it-all list. If everything is “critical” then nothing is.
When even the least feared option is perceived as an “important threat” by 75% of respondents, you know this is blunt instrument.
Table 11 (Click to enlarge)
In table 12 (below) about half the population will say “yes” when asked if something (anything) is a critical threat and are also not asked to choose between threats. Given the error in the response rate, this makes a fair bit of the table fairly uninsightful. The top two threats are probably significantly perceived as more threatening, and the bottom one less, but this is not as useful as forcing people to choose. When they do, climate change universally ends up near the bottom of the list.
Only 3% of Americans name the environment as the top issue. In the recent CSIRO survey Australians ranked climate change as 14th out of 16 concerns.
Did the Lowy institute really want to find out what Australians think? They say they are non-partisan, but on climate change they aren’t hearing the voices of half of Australia.
Table 12 (Click to enlarge)
In Table 14 should we be “leaders” or “do nothings”
Golly – tough choices. Doesn’t it make you feel good to be someone who asks the government to do nothing? I’ve offered some more appealing and “leader like” options below that the Lowy Institute could have asked.
Table 14 (Click to enlarge)
Imagine if they had also given people just questions like:
- “It (the government) should demand evidence before taking action”, or
- “It should freeze all green subsidies until a Royal Commission considers the evidence.”
- “Australian should be the first country to do a proper cost-benefit analysis for spending public money to change the weather.”
- “Australia should take a leading role in standing up to exaggerated scares, and the rent seeking UN”.
Do we suppose that these options would have received 0%, 0% and 0%? So some percentage would have been dragged out of all three categories and shifted down the ladder of concern. If the same survey was done with 3 believer choices and 3 skeptical choices, we might finally get a meaningful answer.
Poor Sydney Morning Herald readers (especially those that watch the ABC too) will be continually disappointed and surprised as reality overtakes them. Presumably circulation figures will keep falling. Lowy Institute fans might pause too, to wonder if the institute is achieving much with preconceived notions and loaded surveys?
When I asked a telephone pollster how I could answer the question to show that i thought the climate change problem was natural and we should prepare for global cooling not global warming, she dithered around and failed. When I asked how to answer another question to show that I thought governments should act now to increase atmospheric carbon dioxide, she hung up.
Obviously my opions are not the ones they wanted.
482
Can I ask, do you live in a working class suburb?
112
Yes. I do Vic. Not fitting into the categorisation at all. I recently moved from the part of a struggle town where you end up if you follow the blue and red flashing lights to a part with big sheds and big dogs.
A higher education of a mostly technical/enginnering nature than most. Am a very multi skilled tradie but recently with a below average income due to lifes little hiccups and plowing the income back into the business.
182
I too, am a multi skilled tradesman. People of the ilk are creators and lateral thinkers due to a career in problem solving. I don’t know one that is swallowing the global warming rubbish.
210
Same here scaper, I only know a few trade unionists that parrot the CAGW line but privately admit they don’t believe in it, Just being good little socialists I guess.
160
Of course they parrot it. Big dollars in all those extras now required when a building goes up.
90
You might have missed my point. Do they only call working class suburbs because of the other surveys?
And while I have more letters after my name than in it, I’m a just a blocky now because of a few hiccups.
30
Point not missed. I expect more phone calls and do suspect I was targeted.
20
The irony is most of the AGW support comes from people with letters after their names. There are a lot of reasons for this. Third rate academics are now in the lime-light and getting money and ‘respect’.
However it is also plain that the herd mentality and tribalism can trump any amount of letters after the name if a mindset or belief, which AGW is, is present in the craniums of the lettered individuals.
Self-verification is crucial to believers of AGW and subverting polling to obtain erroneous support amongst the wider community for a position is really just a variation of the insidious consensus paradigm.
161
This was all addressed in Yes Minister decades ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
I don’t think I can add anything to this succinct explanation about the veracity of surveys.
90
A Lewandowskyish poll.
220
No doubt they had John Cook consulting on the questions and how to ensure they get the results they wanted.
60
I don’t recall John Cook surveys asking actual people questions. Didn’t they simply ask themselves some questions and read into a selection of papers the answers they were looking for?
Aren’t you perhaps confusing it with the Lewandowsky Moon denier survey.?
30
I don’t think Lewandowsky asked questions either. He just read blog comments. So much easier.
20
The whole base argument by the global warming fraudsters is that as CO/2 increases in atmospheric concentration so does the temperature.
How many people would be aware that simple fact is wrong.
Near doubling in the last 25 years and no catostropheric frying of the planet or children should be enough to embarass the most vocal warmist fraudster.
All the other add ons that we are paying these fraudsters to “study” mean absolutely nothing.
Who cares if sea levels are rising 3 or 4 mm per annum?
Do the maths out to the end of the century that should be enough to put a few thousand of them out of work.
Who cares if we have more ice at one end the planet one year and not the next?
It ain’t the end of the world as the fraudsters would heve the mis informed masses believe.
And thats my point.
If the people were educated on the simple “unajusted, massaged and manipulated” facts.
They would undoubtedly understand that global warming is not as complicated as the the government funded fraudsters would have them believe.
More CO/2=higher temperature thats the argument and it is simply wrong.
No ifs buts or maybes.
Give people the simple facts, not the complicated bullshit and then do your pre programed survey.
But that would spoil the “party”, wouldn’t it?
180
The huge problem is that people are not taught to think critical by the main stream media. Most people are actually unaware that the climate change formerly known as Global Warming is a hoax by the UN and illuminati
140
Most people are still cowed by authority, be it the appointed or directly elected kind. Sadly they seem to have more respect for the appointed kind, while the EU does a passable impression of the latter by the former while dismissing the views of electors as populism.
20
The Lowy Institute is just another climate alarmist outfit that will cook surveys to get the result they want. Nothing new.
182
Bruce;
Isn’t it Lewandowsky who ‘Cooks’ surveys?
130
I think people are sick and tired of these loaded questioned surveys and feel they’re intelligence is being insulted in the process, most people can spot a straw man argument even if they don’t know the actual term for one!
If asked “Do you still hit your wife?” any answer is admittance to the allegation of spousal abuse and will put the respondent on the back foot for any further questions, it really is condescending to people and a major factor of why I very rarely ever complete a survey.
150
John Connor is one of the ‘Lowry Experts”. He is also the CEO of the Climate Institue, the well known hub of climate alarmism. Don’t you think there may be just a little of John Connor in this poll?
120
The questions all begin from the premise that the AGW Armageddon is real and present. How did anyone have a choice. The survey could have been summed up into a simple;
“Your going to die horribly, are you concerned about the manner of your death”?
171
The silent majority was surveyed last September so this survey holds absolutely no weight of influence. It’s all one way traffic.
Does anyone know of a sceptic converting to warmerism?
142
Yes, I do scaper. A geologist friend of mine with a reasonably high profile has done just that in recent years.
213
Sorry to hear of your geologist friends’ recent head injury. 🙁
192
Tell us more about that Bilb. Has he expressed his reasons for changing his mind?
122
In a sentence, Peter C, on the ever strengthening evidence and now the unavoidable fact that the biosphere is heating at an alarming rate.
My business partner, also a past skeptic, altered his view upon learning that the carbon isotopes in the atmosphere are increasingly from industrial sources ie anthropogenic in origin, meaning that the natural cycle argument falls flat on its face.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7366/fig_tab/477547a_F1.html
(this is what evidence looks like, Jo. I know that you don’t like to see it, as there is so inconveniently much of it, but that is the way that it is)
[BilB, The graphs you reference do not support, “… the unavoidable fact that the biosphere is heating …” The one you quote shows trends in carbon isotopes over a relatively short timeframe. Have you referenced the correct documentation? -Fly]
12
Bilb, have you got any evidence the biosphere is heating at an unavoidable rate?
As for the isotopes, your certainty is again misplaced (as is your incorrect psychoanalysis of my non-existent fear):
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/08/blockbuster-planetary-temperature-controls-co2-levels-not-humans/
41
Heating ?????????
NOPE.
21
I can’t see any here either….
Fact is , that nay heating that might have actually occurred, (apart for Giss and HadCrut “adjustments”) is miniscule to say the least.
And if you look at those “adjustments”, they account for basically ALL of the trend in the Giss and HadCrut abused temperature record.
Do you dare look !!!
And the Australia ‘adjustments are just as bad if not worse.
It is those “adjustments” that have created NEARLY ALL of the slight warming trend in the Giss and HadCrut data.
21
Funding !
133
Did all of your geologist “with a relatively high profile” have coworkers who all believed in AGW? How about your coworker? It’s been documented that people tend to believe what their coworkers do, or at least to express said opinions. I don’t know that I agree with the research, but the AGW crowd love to blame skepticism on coworkers, so I figure it’s the same for beleivers.
10
It’s pity that many Aussies are ignorant about recent evidence that shows that CAGW is a crock of crap.
Even the IPCC AR5 report has hosed down a lot of the rhetoric, exaggeration and alarmism, although Obama and his stupid advisors have refused to read or digest it.
But the Lowy mob are just one more group of lefty extremists who want to con us and help push the discredited Labor and Green agenda.
165
I think this survey indicates a more realistic situation. The majority of younger people, the ones who still have many years of work ahead of them and are the ones who have to live with the climate change reality, accept the science of global warming and want serious action taken to mitigate the impacts.
Less enthusiastic are older people (the 45’s and older), the ones with the bulk of the property and wealth. That says it all mostly. Next year’s poll will be interesting.
334
The majority of younger people are easily fooled. The majority of older people have seen it all before. They know a false scare when they see one. They didn’t spend decades raising their kids to watch their lifestyles get frittered away on stupid whimsy’s to change the weather. (I see you still have no evidence Bill).
I predict next years Lowy Poll will be as meaningless as this one.
313
My parents were frightened in the 1950’s by the scare over acid-rain.
What happened to that?
I was worried in the 1970’s when the Climate wonks were scaring us with tales of an impending ice age.
What happened to that?
In the 1990’s my children were told that the air would become toxic because of “poisonous” carbon isotopes.
What happened to that?
Now in the 2010’s it is all about the world getting hotter and hotter and …
What has happened to that?
The good thing from all that, is that young kids today, whilst they may not listen to their parents, sure do listen to their Grandparents who have been there, done that, and have stories and real life experiences to share.
The scare industry is actually on its last legs, because it has not, and never will deliver on what it promises.
140
The Ozone Hole in the 1980’s
What happened to that ?
.
Acid rain in the late 1970’s, early 1980’s.
What happened to that ?
.
Himalayan glaciers melting and dissapearing in the 2000’s
What happened to that?
‘
Arctic ice dissappearing in the late nougties
What happened to that ?
‘
Antarctic ice disappearing;
We know what happened to that; Ask Turney
_______________________
‘
And then the predictions;
‘
Peak Oil, Name your date
What happened to that?
‘
Late 1970’s; World wide Famine by 1980’s;
What happened to that ?
‘
Hansen in1988; “The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water.
What happened to that?
‘
Michael Oppenheimer, 1990, The Environmental Defense Fund:
”(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers…The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
What happened to that?
‘
Hansen 1986; Global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, ‘which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.’” (prediction for 2006)
What happened to that?
‘
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 20 March 2000
“Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. … Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
What happened to that?
‘
David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, 14 Feb 2004
“Unfortunately, it’s just getting too hot for the Scottish ski industry.”
What happened to that?
‘
April 22, 1990 ABC, [ American Broadcasting Corporation ] The Miracle Planet
We are now given not 10 years to save the rainforests, but in many cases five years.
Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens.
What happened to that?
‘
March 29, 2001, CNN:
“In ten year’s time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”
What happened to that?
‘
It just goes on Ad infinitum.
I guess they are just too damn dumb and up [ rude expression. self snipped ] to realise how dumb, stupid and ignorant and they are all now looking to most of the rest of the world.
______________
More, lots more failed CAGW predictions;
C3 Headlines ; Empirical Data Vs. Predictions
WUWT; The big list of failed climate predictions
200
Interesting, ROM, that you should lead your [snip bluster] attack with the ozone hole. What has happened with the ozone hole? first up due to rapid and concerted global action the hole’s growth has been arrested and its winter extent may now be beginning to reduce.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/
No doubt you are going to flash back with the skeptic’s take on this as it is not totally uncontroversial, but I notice that the articles of defiance appear to be mostly in the nineties. There are issues with the replacement gasses which now appear to have side effects, but considering the time frame this is a work in progress. Interestingly though it is postulated that the healing of the hole may be as much a factor of higher temperatures over the Antarctic, a byproduct of global warming.
Acid rain was arrested by widespread application of pollutant catching precipitators on coal fired power stations in OECD countries.
Glaciers?
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-explores-glaciers-retreat-in-the-himalayas-15652
Arctic ice is making great strides towards being a memory only.
Antarctic ice is similarly changing, though due to its great mass all of the mechanisms are not yet known. Jo Nova says that vulcanism is the cause. We’ll know in due course.
[As usual BilB fails in reading comprehension. Jo asked if vulcanism could be the cause, and discovered that alarmists have no rational reason that it isn’t. That doesn’t mean it is, merely that alarmists blame CO2 and rule out vulcanism without any basis in data. Which is pretty normal “logic” for them. The basis for their extreme confidence, arrogance and sneering is as vacuous as ever. – Jo]
Peak oil? 2008 appears to be the date.
As for the rest it is just a matter of timing and degree, but the Peak oil issue is the most devastating. It does not mean that oil supplies will stop, it means that there will be a long drawn out global economic slow down with more regular recessions in many countries. This will lead to the famine in due course.
I can see from your links, ROM, that you have a preference for [snip bluster]in extremely selective data such as the C3 temp trend “graph” which is a blatant distortion (even before the Berekeley BEST project) of the HADCrut4 data.
—
[Bilb – I’m so bored with your inflammatory bluster, backed with arrogance, but not evidence, that when I feel like it, I’m just snipping out the heated terms which are unneccessary to a scientific debate. – Jo]
13
Well, after spending billions of dollars banning CFC’s from the atmosphere, back in the ’80s, because, we were told, they were the cause, the hole is still there. And this is in spite of the, “rapid and concerted global action”, over the past , what is it, 30 years? Hmm, hardly rapid.
However, it is still there, and it is still well within the bounds of the historic recorded variation since the time it was first noticed.
And we should note at this stage, that there has never, ever, been any supportable evidence that it was man-made in the first place. It could have always been there, and been of no importance until mankind actually noticed it.
The fact that the CFCs were blamed, and then subsequently removed, with no appreciable effect, indicates that once again post-modern science has simply jumped to a specific conclusion (the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent) and then backed that with an Appeal to Populism, and Arguments from Authority.
This is tedious, like watching endless reruns of The Maltese Falcon.
40
Younger = less aware of the political dimensions to the so called science. If there is one thing you will always get teenagers on board with its “saving the world”. Combine that with a school system where lefty bed wetters are over represented in the staff and you have a breeding ground for whacko idealism.
Do you have anything new or interesting to offer or just statements of the bleeding obvious?
170
Hi BilB
The most disturbing thing to come out of the Lowy “push” Poll is the younger generation’s view that totalitarian regimes are better than democratic government. I suppose you support Clive “the ratbag” Hamilton’s view that democracy should be suspended to address the false doctrine of CAGW.
Also, I would have thought that the older generation who have the most to lose with all their property and wealth would want more action on CAGW if they thought it was an issue. Maybe the older generation have been around a bit longer and know a scam when they see it. They know the difference between weather and climate.
180
BilB,
Your generation are so naive and easily led, it is painful. Old men like Maurice Strong, Al Gore, David Suzuki, etc have sold your future, and the future of your children, and grandchildren into serfdom as slaves to “sustainability”, while they brazenly dine at $2000.00 a place, 5 course cordon bleu dinners, jet repeatedly around the globe congratulating each other on how clever they are, drive around in 12 cylinder chauffeur driven limousines, and reside in 10 bedroom 10 bathroom mansions which use more power than the average city block.
Ever wonder why multinationals like GE and Seimens, oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell, investment banks like Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, the various royal families around the world, the English gentry ( landowners scamming millions out of useless wind farms), and every narcissistic, inbred public parasite are so enthusiastic for CAGW and harbour such a burning desire to establish a multi-trillion dollar carbon casino to further line their pockets with unearned money generating nothing of use to society? Do you think that is some kind of obscure altruism? Concern for the planet?
You must be seriously mentally challenged to allow yourself to be scammed by so obvious a con job by such openly self-serving and predatory people. That you compromise your own future, and that of your children, so willingly speaks volumes for your blinkered ideologue mindset.
243
“Old men like Maurice Strong, Al Gore, David Suzuki, etc have sold your future, and the future of your children, and grandchildren into serfdom as slaves to “sustainability”, while they brazenly dine at $2000.00 a place, 5 course cordon bleu dinners, jet repeatedly around the globe congratulating each other on how clever they are, drive around in 12 cylinder chauffeur driven limousines, and reside in 10 bedroom 10 bathroom mansions which use more power than the average city block.”
So spot on Winston.
You show me someone preaching environmental sustainability (lol its wankword bingo) for the sake of the next generation and Ill show you a well off lefty who earned all or most of their life’s wages from the public purse. It might not be causation, but its a stronger correlation than carbon and weather.
140
BilB needs to realise that he is on the side of the bad guys. If he takes a casual glance in the mirror, he will notice that he is wearing a rather fetching Brownshirt, with matching jackboot ensemble.
142
Agreed. It seems a very large majority of environmentalists who want to shut down fossil fuels actually got rich off fossil fuels. There is a very clear “I have mine and I could care less about what happens to you” attitude in all of this. People who claim to care about the environment are often the most damaging.
70
Couldn’t agree more Sheri (love the Badger). Watching the well heeled preach austerity to the poor and emerging poor is quite a sickening thing, yet we are bombarded by people advocating a return to agrarian socialism via backyard veggies and powering your wireless (old word for radio) (TV wont be allowed of course) from a Government approved solar panel.
I regard environmental activist tweets etc as the great irony of the 21st century.
You would think if they had any courage to their convictions whatsoever, they would resist using fossil fuelled derivative technology to espouse their hatred of fossil fuelled derivative technology. Lets face it, using your iPhone to complain about pollution is a bit like driving your SUV to the next anti road funding rally isn’t it? Oh wait they do that too, don’t mind me…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-ackerman/american-consumers-outsourcing-emissions_b_4777213.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2014/04/22/drive-your-suv-to-an-earth-day-rally/
30
I have taught young people for a long time.
I would not base too many things on their intelligence !!!!!!!
112
And I would certainly not base anything on your intelligence, blob !
82
I suspect that this is what the far-left agenda driven alarmistas are relying on..
First “dumb down” the students with loads of feely-touchy stuff and other socialist clap-trap..
….then bombard them with mis-information about a non-existent problem.
They certainly seem to have sucked you in big-time, blib.
91
“They certainly seem to have sucked you in big-time, blib.”
… but then.. you do appear to be fresh out of junior high.
51
Ahhh, the Green Agenda rears its head – the inconvenient olders who’ve seen it all before, heard the same old stories as always dressed up, this time in Green and green drag, the cunning mix of required for endless funding. Actually, spoon feeding the brats almost guarantees that many kick back some time later against the party line. Olders are a massive persisting inconvenience for The Greens. If they could legitimately….
And it would be very good if you stopped sprinkling oxymorons about — science of global warming. It never was, never is and never will be about ‘science’. It was only ever about politics and money.
91
Are you still a misanthropist BilB? Still want to see grannies dying from energy poverty?
The problem with young people is they didn’t live through the global cooling scares of the 70’s or the cold war which was much more threatening than global warming would ever be. Us old fogey’s aren’t alarmed by measles or chicken pox because we actually had those diseases, We aren’t alarmed by cold and hot weather because we experienced that too. Nor are we very worried that computers will go haywire if their clocks roll over (Y2K) either, because we saw that too. On the other hand, we saw the damage science can do, we’ve seen thalidomide, skin cancer going up with sunscreen use instead of down, science’s total failure with Aids. Climate change is a made-up concern of wimpy children who have never known real hardship, never had measles or Chicken pox or any number of other common diseases, have known very few of the great failures of science, never saw the cold war, never faced conscription and never really had anything important to fight for. This has made the X’s and Y’s soft, gullible and skittish, time will eventually turn the tables, and the idealistic blinkers will fall from their eyes and expose the way the world really works. That’s when in later life they will become sceptics (realists), and conservatives.
101
“That’s when in later life they will become sceptics (realists), and conservatives”
Most do when they grow up but a few never do…
60
Never grow up I mean.
40
BilB,
You embrace the green ideal of inefficiency and waste.
The youth of tomorrow will be flat out finding employment and there will be no taxpayers to support their Centrelink. payments.
The youth of tomorrow will be denied the opportunity to rant at authority from the halls of universities and will not have the impetus to rally for lost causes.
But take joy in the fact that Australia will possibly be at the forefront of the UN as previously third world and underdeveloped countries that embrace carbon technology raise they living standards and the wealth of their people.
And take heart you may still contribute as a worthy member to those countries trawling the world for peasant workers, especially the really dumb ones that became educated in a cause but didn’t understand the real world.
You’re just another dead monkey, BilB.
70
Global warming will make you beat your wife/abuse little boys more often – true or false?
When conducting an opinion survey and wanting a particular answer, then how you word the question is everything. If you don’t believe this, then ask John Cook..
181
I bet many of the brainwased sheeple would immediately agree
70
The public twigged long ago that climate science was being manipulated. All these loaded surveys do now is to confirm the dishonesty and desperation of those involved (Peter Hannan SMH, the Lowy Institute and the Climate Institute). I do wonder at what point these people and organizations can be taken to court for deceptive practice?
221
Some might call it the expected backlash and inevitable evolution of a politically devolved science discipline where a thoroughly corrupted science discipline has taken over policy decisions and policy implementation from the policy generating and policy implementation prerogatives of the publicly elected political apparatus.
Others might just say quite simply, the public are sick to death of having the claims of a supposedly catastrophic event arising from an unproven, supposedly man made global warming rammed down their throats on a never ending daily basis.
Big changes are under way and it is change of a type and structure that the catastrophe promoting CAGW ideologists, who believed they controlled the narrative, never believed would ever happen.
There is still a long hard road ahead for the skeptical side of climate science and unfortunately with the flow over of the worst excesses of a badly corrupted and highly politicized proscription wielding climate catastrophe science into most other science disciplines, it will also take time before the gross excesses of a ideologically based CAGW science is completely exorcised from the rest of Science.
From P. Gosselin’s German NoTricksZone blog
Climate-Policy Expert Oliver Geden Sees Paradigm Shift In International Climate Policy: Depoliticization Of Climate Science
[ selected quotes ]
An insightful commentary in Germany’s flagship daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung looks at the status and future of global climate policy development. In the commentary, climate policy expert Oliver Geden of the Foundation for Science and Policy (SWP) in Berlin writes that “climate diplomacy has long since maneuvered itself to a dead-end” and that “global climate protection is on the verge of upheaval“. Both climate science and climate-economic science have led policymaking into an impossible situation.
Geden first points to 25 years of no progress in getting policymakers to curb greenhouse gas emissions. “When one compares the mood that prevailed between the 4th IPCC report of 2007 and the Copenhagen Climate Conference of 2009, we notice that nobody is risking announcing a coming breakthrough in climate negotiations. Moreover, also warnings of approaching large catastrophes are getting less coverage“. Climate conferences have suffered a long string of failures, and the result, Geden writes, is that a new approach appears to have been adopted by countries:
Unlike the situation before Copenhagen, no climate diplomat or NGO representative still seriously believes it is possible to get big emitters like the United States or China to obligate themselves to far-reaching emissions reductions through a UN treaty.”
&
In summary, since climate science and climate [e]con[o]mic science appear to have painted themselves into a corner, Geden writes:
The relationship between climate policy and climate science currently finds itself in a phase of upheaval…[…] Climate science will have to get used to the fact that its comparatively privileged status will remain restricted when it comes to its access to media, general public and research funding. Its real influence on political action will hardly go beyond the extent that is usual in other political fields.”
[ / ]
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This, unfortunately seems to be true. Despite all the hard work that we skeptics have put in over more than a decade, 46% of the respondents to the survey still said global warming is a critical threat and only 18% said it was no problem at all.
The correct answer is “What global warming?”
How do we ever cut through all the noise generated by the Alarmists?
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A comment from Andrew Montford’s Bishop Hill blog seems to fit very well with the headlines of Jo’s thread post above.
“There seems to be a huge market these days for sciency sounding nonsense with lots of numbers from which progressives (or fake charity fund raisers) can pick and choose some alarming statistic to support their cause.
It only goes to show just how innumerate most people in politics are. Sad really.”
Jun 6, 2014 at 10:18 PM | Billy Liar
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If people could do real math and remember back more than 2 hours, most of the things that are produced as “science” would fail miserably. I’m sure the perveyors of these messages are thankful everyday for math illiteracy and poor memories.
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Just another loaded survey. I think a question along the lines “Since there has been no significant global warming for 17 years do you think global warming is another political scam, Yes or No.” It would probably run 50/50, certainly not 70% for the no case.
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This comment at WUWT by Prof Robert Brown of Duke university is probably the best and most interesting coverage of the UHIE etc that I’ve read in a long time.
Robert Brown says:
June 6, 2014 at 5:57 am
OK, don’t want to trigger a firestorm here – is the implication from Mr Buske that maybe UHI heat propagation/leaching out into the environment is the cause of the NTH warming? That’s what I infer. Is this even feasible? I wouldn’t have thought that a UHI footprint could be big enough to cause any measurable hemispherical effect.
I think you’re dead on the money. The fact that e.g. HADCRUT4 does not correct its temperature record for UHI in the land surface record (while there is little evidence of equal heating or evidence of much less heating of both the neighboring oceans or the troposphere above) is absolutely an anthropogenic effect on the (predominantly northern) hemisphere temperature computation. The fact that the GISS correction somehow often manages to increase or leave neutral the UHI correction it does compute in the present relative to the past, so that correcting for UHI actually increases global temperatures as the world’s urbanization has proceeded is also absolutely an anthropogenic effect on temperature. The fact that thermometers have, over the greater part of the thermometric record, been used regularly only on the land, in or near urban centers that have monotonically grown, surrounded by an ever-increasing margin of forest turned to farmland, to shopping malls, roads, and parking lots, and even in the present are sited in official weather stations located (say) ten meters or so from a vast complex of treeless concrete runways at airports, in an office building downtown in a major urban center, in between buildings in a government complex surrounded by parking and with buildings acting as a reflector oven during the day — that’s an anthropogenic cause of increase in the computed thermometric record.
It is a simple matter of fact that the southern hemisphere has comparatively few major urban centers and a much smaller population. It has fewer thermometers, and the thermometers it has are much, much less likely to have been read in the same site, regularly, for 164 years back to 1850. In 1850 Antarctica, much of Africa, much of South America, and the bulk of Australia were Terra Incognita, untouched and unvisited by westerners with their fancy scientific instrumentation, unsettled, uncivilized, unknown). Its oceans were visited by whalers and pirates and slavers, not scientific expeditions. Even now, almost 1/3 of the population of the Earth lives in just two countries — India and China, both in the northern hemisphere. Even now, the southern hemisphere has only 800,000,000 people! — that is between 11% and 12% of the total world’s population! It is also important to remember that 80% of the southern hemisphere is ocean and 20% sparsely populated land, where in the northern hemisphere over 40% of the surface area is (comparatively heavily urbanized) land.
Finally, it is a simple matter of fact that computed temperatures — oops, I meant temperature anomalies as we have no idea what the actual global average temperature(s) are even today within one whole degree centigrade either way — are almost never presented to the public with credible error bars. There is a simple reason for that. If they were, the uncertainty of the estimates in the 19th century would be far greater than the total anomaly, and would only gradually shrink to where a warming “signal” could emerge from statistical and measurement “noise” by around the second half of the twentieth century, and would remain commensurate with most of the warming observed in the single burst of conceivably anthropogenic CO_2 driven warming in the entire thermal record, that covers roughly the period between the 1982-1983 El Nino and the 1997-1998 “super” El-Nino that was the last burst of statistically significant (and instrumentally resolvable!) warming we’ve seen in the last 16 years. And yes, southern temperature uncertainties are even today much greater than northern temperature uncertainties because there are far fewer thermometers more erratically measured in a much smaller land surface area, and systematic or not ARGO is damn sparse compared to the incredible number of NH thermometers throughout much of the record.
However, the SH record is, by its nature, much less susceptible to the UHI effect, which is an entirely anthropogenic artifact in the computation of global temperatures, while being even more susceptible to the anthropogenic neglect of a proper treatment or presentation of error.
The very, very interesting thing is that one would expect to first order — in what is admittedly a horrendously nonlinear coupled chaotic system with strong non-Markovian dynamics that I’ve asserted in other posts cannot currently be modelled or predicted in any believable way out to the long (climate, vs weather) term at the granularity of current model computation or any granularity they are likely to achieve in less than decades — is for well-mixed atmospheric CO_2 to have a larger water vapor feedback driven warming of the southern hemisphere than in the northern hemisphere, as the ratio of humid warmed ocean to drier land is 4:1 in the south, 3:2 in the north. Yet we observe the opposite.
A truly cynical skeptic might consider this to be first order evidence supporting two possibilities that either or both could independently be correct. One is that we have the wrong sign for total feedback due to water including all oceanic and atmospheric and albedo-related effects, given the actual dynamic process that govern the ocean and its contributions to local and global temperatures. This is basically consistent with Bob Tisdale’s ENSO-dominant hypothesis (and with Trenberth’s “missing heat” hypothesis that seems to be converging with Tisdale’s). The second is that UHI is important, and computing the land surface record without compensating for it leads to anomalous warming that is not reflected in the oceans or troposphere because it is anthropogenic local warming, not global, but happens to warm the places we are most likely to position our thermometers with a clear time dependent gradient due to monotonically increasing population and land use change.
rgb
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Thanks Neville,
Robert Brown is a pretty clever guy.
I don’t know why he thinks I must be a Truly clinical skeptic just because I think both propositions are probably true. What about just being an ordinary person who has read a lot of the arguments and thought about them a bit.
1. Water ( including all parts of the water cycle), cools the earth
2. The slight increase in global temperatures which is estimated to havs occurred over the past 100 years is likely an artifact caused by the Urban Heat Island effect.
He says that there is first order evidence supporting both of these propositions. I agree
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3. The “adjustments” made to Giss and HadCrut are pretty much the same, or a bit more than, the estimated global temperature rise.
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I think this story about research on different road surfaces contributing to local warming really speaks to your post in terms of how local infrastructure has the potential to affect temperature records. Logic says if you were going to correct for urbanisation, it would be a downward correction. But lets face logic isn’t big on the list of concerns when you already know the answer to your hypothesis, as long as it scares people, it was a good outcome.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/06/04/white-roads-help-reduce-urban-temperatures/
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I have always hung up on pollsters or should I say mobsters. If everyone hung up on pollsters, the politicians will have to get out and about and talk to real people about real issues of concern instead of using polls and focus groups to develop spin.
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Response to Peter C
Surveys such as the Lowy one create a false context. For example, I am sure that if faced with a choice between funding hospital beds and funding climate issues that the 46% you mention would reduce significantly. And, if you asked the 46% if they would give up driving a car or air travel to support the climate “emergency” I would say you would be lucky to hit double digits.
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Mem,
They should ask you before they make up the next survey. Choice questions make more sense to me, especially when judging how important issues really are to people.
I wonder how many people chose to pay more for “carbon offsets”, when they book air travel. I always decline. Same for “green energy”, when I buy elctricity.
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Me thinks Lowy is long on climate investments and short on facts to back it up.
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More focused propaganda from institutional groupthink – a crude attempt to manipulate opinion. Manufacturing a “survey” to orchestrate prospective action…becoming one of the oldest most hackneyed tricks in the book. Later someone will cite this garbage as “justification” for action from you know who ‘for your own good’.
Elsehwere, with antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria becoming an distressing problem, due primarily to the will-nilly prescription by prescribers and their dog to people convinced that all upper respiratory infections should only last a week, we see the peddling of the following bizarre melange of fact and fiction:
On the wings of catastrophism — is this how World Government is born?
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That really clinches it. If they really thought that global warming would kill millions then they would have backed off.
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Yep. Trouble is we have been scared so often that no one listens anymore. It all comes about because the PC brigade stopped kids being read those really scary bedtime stories. The Boy Who Cried Wolf comes to mind. The young elites and the old stupids don’t understand that such stories carry very important messages; messages best taught to the young.
Example: My daughter had her wedding reception in a hall next to the water at Pearl Beach (central coast N.S.W) a few year back on the night we were told to expect a Tsunami originating in the Pacific. All the warnings about potential disaster were repeated ad-infinitum. After each course everybody descended the few metres to the waters edge to see if the Tsunami was coming. In the end it was another complete fizzer with the experts expressing concern that no one took their warnings seriously. I wonder why?
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the american equivalent got the perfectly-timed headlines to go with the White House/EPA carbon rules. i will post the data in a second comment for anyone who wants to critique the loaded questions, which are really about cleaning up power plants:
2 June: ABC America: Broad Concern about Global Warming Boosts Support for New EPA Regulations
Seven in 10 Americans see global warming as a serious problem facing the country, enough to fuel broad support for federal efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions – even if it raises their own energy costs, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds…
Notably, indicating public concern about the issue, 63 percent of Americans say they’d support a regulatory effort that significantly lowered greenhouse gases even if it raised their own energy expenses by $20 per month. (The figure is hypothetical, meant to test attitudes about the possible cost of new regulations. Actual cost impacts, if any, are a subject of sharp debate.)…
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/06/broad-concern-about-global-warming-boosts-support-for-new-epa-regulations/
2 June: WaPo: A huge majority of Americans support regulating carbon from power plants. And they’re even willing to pay for it.
By Scott Clement and Peyton M. Craighill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/06/02/a-huge-majority-of-americans-support-regulating-carbon-from-power-plants-and-theyre-even-willing-to-pay-for-it/?tid=hpModule_f8335a3c-868c-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394
FROM THE COMMENTS:
FROM THE COMMENTS:
If you look at the survey questions, you will find that they DO NOT level with those questioned about the science or the costs…
Sweet fancy moses on a tricycle. This old nugget again. People are SO uneducated in general and science particularly, yet for some reason we continue to interview the average Joe/Jane on the street like they even know what in the Sam Hill they are being asked…
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scroll down for the questions:
.pdf: Langer Research: ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST POLL: Global Warming/Greenhouse Gases
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE AFTER 1 p.m. Monday, June 2, 2014
Broad Concern about Global Warming
Boosts Support for New EPA Regulations
http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1161a1EPARegulations.pdf
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Just as loaded: Would you say it’s a very serious problem, or a problem but not a very serious one?
Or how about a net benefit to the nation?
Likewise, we have to reduce global warming don’t we?
25b. (HALF SAMPLE) Do you think the federal government should or should not require states to limit the amount of greenhouse gases produced within their borders, in an effort to reduce global warming?
They are not even trying…
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What the Climate Change™ campaign desperately needs right now is a massive weather catastrophe, preferably in a Western city, as deadly as Hurricane Katrina or worse (please forgive the sarcasm).
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Clearly it all depends upon who is doing the survey.
http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/article/Climate-Beliefs-November-2013
I seem to recall the buffoon brigade sounding off about Yale so no doubt it was all about denegrating this study. There is a huge gulf between 3% and what this study demonstrates. The gap in between, I think, is a fools paradise.
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“The data in this report are based on a nationally representative survey of 830 American adults, aged 18 and older, conducted from November 23 – December 9, 2013. All questionnaires were self-administered by respondents in a web-based environment.” So the Yale poll had fewer participants and is in a different country. That’s like comparing Mercury to Saturn. You could have at least picked a different poll in Australia.
I confess to having lost total interest in the Lowy poll when I hit this: “AUSTRALIA’S BEST FRIEND IN ASIA” Really? A poll on “best friend” countries? How laughable.
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The most interesting part of the poll to me is how reflective it appears to be of the domestic political situation. The lowest result of the ‘action now etc’ response came in 2012 – at the height of Gillard’s unpopularity and the hammering she got for the ‘carbon tax lie’. This seems to agree with basic principles of human psychology – people were persuaded not to like Gillard or her tax, so it was easier to disagree with the entire premise that action on climate change is necessary. Compare that figure to 2006/2007 when the issue became salient during Rudd’s ascendancy, and now – when we can see the tide swinging back in favour of immediate action as Abbott’s popularity plummets, the evidence in favour of action is stronger than ever, and the deniers are being seen as increasingly shrill and desperate.
Interesting indeed.
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Reply to Steve.The problem with trying to perpetuate a lie by weaving it into another lie is that your story becomes so convoluted that no one will listen to you.
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The straw man cometh.
Gillard was immensely unpopular precisely because she showed complete disregard for the electorate when she knowingly lied to the electorate about introducing a carbon tax/ETS, knowing full well that was her intention at the first opportunity she could get. Having ascended to the PM role through white-anting (probably not without good cause) an incumbent but incompetent PM in Rudd, she could not translate her (allegedly) charming private personality into a remotely likeable public persona, with her annoying vocal affectations, her condescending method of talking down to people as though they were stupid or were naughty school children, and her tendency to shape-shift into various guises and personas at the behest of her minders who were constantly spinning her a different style in the vain attempt to win her some public sympathy.
The only reason her popularity didn’t reach single digits was because she was FEMALE. the female pro-Gillard lobby would have fallen behind Hitler if he wore a skirt convincingly, such was their special brand of confirmation bias in believing that the first female PM MUST be competent and wonderful, and that it must have been chauvinism and misogyny that was responsible for her lack of public appeal. Fact remains that as a product of Emily’s list tokenism, and precipitously parachuted into the top job for which she actually lacked the skill, the wherewithal and the competence to handle with aplomb, she clearly showed the folly of elevating people of either gender above their level of competence.
Climate change is a joke to most thinking people, with a few young impressionable minds in the socialist alliance chorus of disapproval having the loudest voices giving the impression that the majority cares. For the most part, the majority of adults think climate change is either a massive exaggeration, a complete scam, or couldn’t care less. Get out among real people, Steve, instead of only polling those sitting in the circle passing the bong around, and then you might have a better idea of what the silent majority truly think. Surveys like this are intended to hide what most people believe, not highlight the true thoughts of those bothered with analysing it.
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By the way Steve,
Just precisely what “action” should we be taking, and just how much difference to the “climate” will these so-called actions make?*
*When answering ensure you can quantitatively tell me just what temperature we will achieve (within 0.2 deg C), what % reduction we will achieve in cyclone intensity, cyclone frequency, severe weather events, droughts, floods, etc to the nearest 2-3% should suffice. And don’t forget to show a chain of causation in just what actions will achieve what result, and by what mechanism these results are achieved.
Shouldn’t be too hard, for a bright young thing like you.
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Steve,
You’ve obviously posted here because no else would read your drivel and you crave affirmation for your tenuous belief system.
But, because of your belief system, and its supporting totalitarian structure, you can’t get a bite on alarmist sites because your regime actively suppresses freedom of speech.
You are so heavily censored and moderated there is no one to sing to.
You use the very tools you protest against for validation.
This is too bizarre.
[Snip – A step too far, James -Fly]
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James Bradley,
Your comment is a prime example of the intensely bad taste that Jo Nova tolerates from “believers” on this blog site to intimidate those with alternative view points. It is a cheap tactic worthy of Vladimir Putin and his goon brigades.
—-
[Well Jo doesn’t tolerate it, thanks for pointing out them out when you see them, but you appear blind to snips I and the mods do on skeptics. – Jo]
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I notice, BilB, that you merely resort to more rhetoric in righteous indignation. You were so incensec you didn’t even give me a red thumb.
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Ah, there it is, and that’s all you got, BilB?
One stooge with different troll names.
“cheap tactic”, “Vladmir Putin”, “goon brigades”
Pot kettle buddy, suck it up.
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Hannam would never report on the EU curbing renewables, of course, but he would find a sympathetic farmer to exploit up front, before making wild claims about just about everything:
7 June: SMH: Peter Hannam: Blackout on green projects if target for renewables is axed
Peter Keatley is a sheep farmer. But the 59-year-old, whose property sits in NSW on the outskirts of Canberra, is also in the business of harvesting wind.
The Keatley farm hosts five giant wind turbines, which are set to generate an inflation-adjusted $50,000 a year for at least 25 years.
This income will allow Keatley to pass his farm on to his son rather than selling out when he retires. ”I love them,” the 59 year-old says. ”They’ve turned my life around.”…
This week saw US President Barack Obama unveil the most ambitious policy in US history to cut greenhouse gas emissions…. and news that China was also working on a cap for its greenhouse gas emissions…
In Australia, however, the clean energy sector – which by its own count employs 24,000 people and has generated $20 billion in investment – feels under siege, amid government plans to dismantle climate agencies and uncertainty about the future of the nation’s Renewable Energy Target…
Since the start of the year, shares in renewable-focused companies have dived as the wider market has rallied.
Infigen shares are down about 25 per cent since January, while shares in Silex Systems, a solar power project developer, have almost halved in five months. Geodynamics Limited, a speculative geothermal or ”hot rocks” play, was trading above 9¢ in January but now changes hands at 5 cents…
Tony Wood, director of the Grattan Institute’s energy program, warns that Australia’s renewable energy industry may struggle to attract investors back if there is a large-scale flight of capital…
According to the Clean Energy Council, the peak body for companies operating in renewables, about $14.5 billion of renewable energy investment will flow if the RET remains as it is. More than 6600 jobs would be created if approved wind farms proceed…
But the make-up of a panel reviewing the target has raised alarm bells among renewable energy investors…
David Harries, an architect of the original renewable energy target design in 2000 and now a director of clean energy consultancy EMC, says that at a Perth event last month Mr Warburton said the target had been set up at a time when human-generated greenhouse gas emissions were thought to cause climate change.
”Now we know that’s not true, we have to question the whole target mechanism,” Harries, an adjunct professor at University of Western Australia, remembers Warburton as saying. But Warburton told Fairfax Media this reading of his view (about climate change) was ”absolutely not correct”…
Major energy companies, Origin Energy and Energy Australia, have repeated their calls for a weakening of the renewable energy target.
Origin’s main case is that energy demand is slumping, and may slump further, as Australia’s manufacturers shut down…
AGL, the third energy major, has sat largely on the fence, being both a big owner of renewable energy and of fossil fuel-sourced power…
”The RET is good for NSW consumers and households – it ultimately saves money,” Amy Kean, the state’s renewable energy advocate, told Fairfax Media…
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year estimated global temperatures could rise between 0.3 and 4.8 degrees this century because of increasing carbon emissions.
Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, told Fairfax Media the world is on course for the high end of that range – at least 3.6 degrees of warming – on current energy investment patterns…
The Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is halting new fossil fuel investments, the first major local bank to do so.
”At some point of time, countries like China are going to wean themselves off the importation of fossil fuel,” Andy Pitman, a climate scientist at the University of NSW, says.
”If we don’t have a Plan B, and Plan A ceases to be viable because our export markets have dried up, we’re screwed.”
http://www.smh.com.au/business/blackout-on-green-projects-if-target-for-renewables-is-axed-20140606-39oj0.html
TIME TO WAKE UP, FAIRFAX:
6 June: BBC: Matt McGrath: Upset at UN climate talks as ministers go missing
Negotiators and campaigners have reacted angrily to the failure of many environment ministers to attend UN talks in Bonn.
They say governments gave an undertaking last year to come here and update plans to cut emissions.
But so far, around 50 ministers have turned up, with representatives from the UK, France and Brazil notably absent.
Over 130 turned up in Warsaw for the last major talks session…
But campaigners here say an undertaking was given at the COP in Doha in 2012 that ministers would meet here in Bonn and review their commitments to the Kyoto Protocol…
Mohammed Adow from Christian Aid: “It undermines their commitment to craft a global deal when they don’t show up, it sends a distressing signal.”…
Activists staged a small demonstration in the conference centre to highlight the lack of ministers in attendance.
According to Ambassador Jumeau, many of those who did come had no new commitments on emissions or climate finance to show in their presentations.
“I think what we saw on the screens and the lack of ministers goes together. They didn’t have anything to put up there or they were ashamed to do it.”
Other observers speculated that countries were keeping back announcements for the special conference being called by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in New York in September.
Ministers from some of the most significant economies like Brazil, India and South Africa didn’t travel. Neither did those from the US, UK or France…
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27726510
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Now there is a far more accurate reflection of what the Australian people think, as opposed to the Lowy Poll.
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things are so bad in Bonn, BBC’s McGrath has to resort to reporting this!
7 Dec: BBC: Matt McGrath: Climate change helps seas disturb Japanese war dead
Rising sea levels have disturbed the skeletons of soldiers killed on the Marshall Islands during World War Two.
Speaking at UN climate talks in Bonn, the Island’s foreign minister said that high tides had exposed one grave with 26 dead.
The minister said the bones were most likely those of Japanese troops…
“These last spring tides in February to April this year have caused not just inundation and flooding of communities but have also undermined regular land, so that even the dead are affected,” said foreign minister Tony De Brum, speaking on the sidelines of the UN climate negotiations.
“There are coffins and dead people being washed away from graves, it’s that serious.”…
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27742957
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Might be a lot faster and cheaper to shift the cemetery or secure it from wave action than ……
for the world to spend trillions of trillions of dollars to reduce carbon dioxide emissions which may lead to a possible temperature rise which could cause ice melting which might lead to sea levels rising slightly in possibly hundreds of years time ….. and cause more damage to the graves.
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don’t budge folks. our promise was as phony as the CAGW “science”:
6 June: Reuters: Alister Doyle: China says aid a key to climate deal, not just CO2 cuts
Promised aid of $100 bln/yr said key to UN climate pact
China, EU disagree over legal conditions for money
BONN, Germany, June 6 (Reuters) – China led calls by emerging economies on Friday for the rich to raise financial aid to the poor as a precondition for a United Nations deal to combat global warming…
“When the financing is resolved, this will set a very good foundation to negotiate a good agreement,” China’s chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua told delegates from about 170 nations…
Xie said developed nations, which have promised to raise aid to $100 billion a year by 2020, should have legally binding obligations to provide finance and technology to emerging economies, along with legally binding cuts in emissions.
But European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said it would be hard to treat promises for cash in the same legal way as cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases.
“More than one finance minister would say: ‘how are we going to do that?'” she told a news conference…
Developed nations agreed in 2009 to raise aid to developing nations to the $100 billion target by 2020 from an initial $10 billion a year from 2010-12.
But austerity cuts in many nations mean they have not set clear milestones for raising aid between 2012 and 2019, money meant to go to everything from expanding the use of solar power plants to flood defences along vulnerable coastlines.
Last month, a “Green Climate Fund” – a U.N. body based in South Korea due to channel billions of dollars to developing nations – said it was ready to start accepting cash after agreeing details of how it will work.
Donors will also meet in July, in a venue yet to be decided.
Peru’s Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who will host a U.N. climate conference in late 2014, said he hoped for contributions for the Green Climate Fund of $10 billion this year.
Alix Masounie, of the French branch of international environmental network Climate Action Network, said: “The Green Climate Fund is finally open for business … but it remains an empty shell,” adding that developed nations should come up with $15 billion as a first payment.
Berlin said on Friday it would provide cash, but gave no details…
Rich nations say the private sector is most promising. “We should use public resources to mobilise far greater sums of private finance,” said Trigg Talley, the U.S. representative…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/06/idUKL6N0ON2WS20140606
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I have to admit on the initial reading of Jo’s post I kept seeing Lowly Poll instead of Lowy, how’s that for learned social cynicism? 🙂
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Wot…not Richard Scarry’s Lowly Worm?!
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Annie of course!, it’s actually Anthropomorphic global warming and therefore only influences Busytown!
I’m glad that’s sorted and I’m sure we’ll soon get our money back from those well meaning but slightly illiterate people. 🙂
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Me too. I still think it is a LOWLY poll.
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So, lets commission a proper survey? Who do we throw money at?
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Perhaps Graham Young – Onlineopinion. Does professional surveys of around 3000 fairly often, shows skill and care with questions. He rather took apart the Lewandowsky survey (see A Fish Rots from the head).
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Hey Jo.. did you count correctly?
“In table 11 climate change is ranked 6th in ”
No it doesn’t.
There are 8 above and 2 below..
It right near the BOTTOM of the list, despite the leading propaganda questions.
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Thanks Griss, you are right. It is equal 9th of 12. Corrected.
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I wonder if SMH noted that more people are critically worried about the threat of asylum seekers than about gerbil worming? And that’s AFTER Sir Scott stopped the boats for almost 6 months. Seems that people are critically worried that “someone” might wreck Sir Scott’s good work and create a catastrophe. People seem to want spending on OSB.
That was all in the article, wasn’t it?
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Sorry, but I don’t think ‘people’ enter into the decision-making equation of the elite power-brokers running our planet. They give us lip-service to keep the democracy illusion going.
It would not matter if 110% were convinced that the thing was a total, criminal fraud…nothing would change their agenda.
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Another cool climate site for impressionable minds.
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/climate-change-is-no-joke
It’s heavily censored, but tolerating the odd “denier” for its self affirmment.
(Its quite safe. There’s little danger of them knowing what Piers is talking about)
Don’t you just love the cartoon though. All those scaredy followers flocking together on one pan and calling themselves scientists. Individuals seem to be what they fear most.
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I get really peeved because by the time I get to read Jo half of Australia has already commented. Get a life you lot.
Now the survey was done and published in time to embarrass the PM. I note several news bulletins here in the East saying Abbott must really include Climate Change in the G20 meetings because Barrack Bin Laden wants it in. Hello. The Illinois charity worker has seen the other side of the mountain and for him it ain’t pretty. He has had so many screw ups even the Democrats are distancing themselves. No one else has raised the topic so I guess even the Europeans are aware they backed the wrong horse and it will shortly have to be put down. In the trade it will be given the green dream, a most appropriate description.
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THE VERY BEST US DATA… !!!
Unaffected by adjustments, UHI, Mann, Hansen et al….
This data, although short, shows a probable COOLING trend in the USA since 2005 !!
This matches well with RSS, which shows a very probable cooling trend since 2001.
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Question is.. why haven’t BOM set up something like this ?
Are they afraid of the truth ????????
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