Not a 100% believer? Even borderline climate apostates like Pielke must be punished in the witchhunt

The witchhunt over tenuous connections to fossil fuel funding wants to do a lot more than just silence a few people. The aim is to maintain the global chill over all of academia. That’s why it’s so important we support the individuals under fire, and don’t give in.

Congratulations to Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Hayward, Roger Pielke, David Legates, and Robert Balling. All of them have been named to be investigated and lined up for character assassination like Willie Soon. Obviously they are effective and convincing speakers, and a threat to the climate-industry.

Stephen Hayward is flattered, and mocks the critics: “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Climate Skeptic?”

“Let’s start by axing a simple question: If I say “two plus two equals four,” does the truth of that proposition depend on whether I’ve received a grant from the Charles G. Koch Foundation? Apparently it does for Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), the ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources. He has sent letters to seven universities targeting seven academics who, according to the Democratic spokesman for the committee, were chosen because they seem “to have the most impact on policy in the scientific community.”

Even a tiny step beyond the approved line will be punished

Consider how hard-line the inquisition is. Roger Pielke Jr. accepts most of the consensus IPCC positions, even calling for a carbon tax, and supporting Obama’s proposed EPA regulations, but he’s under fire as much as those who question everything.  The aim here is much larger than just stopping Pielke — the real audience are the thousands of silent borderline skeptical academics watching on. Imagine if they spoke their minds?  The message to them is “don’t even think it”. All academics must be 100% believers, and even the smallest deviation from the permitted line will receive the same treatment.

The harassment and pressure work on whistleblowers. We are all human. Sadly even Pielke admits, despite having tenure, that the harrassment means he has changed the way he writes and researches:

The incessant attacks and smears are effective, no doubt, I have already shifted all of my academic work away from climate issues. I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject.

As Mark Steyn would say the process is the punishment.

Judith Curry writes: This whole issue has now become personal.

As Paul Homewood says: McCarthyism is not dead.

The real conflicts of interest in climate science matter for people waving unreplicable models

Judith Curry discusses the conflict of interests and points out that it not as relevant in climate science as in other areas where things are not so easily replicable:

The issue is this.  The intense politicization of climate science makes bias more likely to be coming from political and ideological perspectives than from funding sources.  Unlike research related to food and drug safety and environmental contaminants,  most climate science is easily replicable using publicly available data sets and models.  So all this IMO is frankly a red herring in the field of climate science research.

I would argue that many of the results used in climate science are not replicable in practice. They come from mysterious black box models or detailed homogenization methods, which even if the full code were available, would take individuals months of work to replicate. In the total absence of funding and grants, no one independent is going to replicate them.

In other words, the people who have conflicts of interest that really need exposing are not skeptics reporting on public datasets which can be replicated, but climate modelers and temperature adjusters who make public announcements with billions of dollars and lives resting on them, but which have not been independently replicated. And when I say “independently” replicated, I don’t mean by another group with the same conflict of interest.

If the evidence was so solid, and the models so reliable, climate scientists would be demanding and welcoming funding to outright skeptics to settle the issue. Instead, fans of the complex unskilled and failing models know that their assumptions are dubious and unsupported, and if a truly skeptical scientist were given equivalent resources to replicate it, they would probably tear it to shreds, exposing how fickle the projections were and how dependent it all was on a few key, baseless, guesses.

The antidote to pressure and intimidation is the support of the crowd

Send Pielke, and all the others your messages of thanks and support, through emails or on their blogs and here below. It does matter. No one should stand alone against the big-government grinding machine. Let those who bravely speak their honest minds know how much you appreciate it.

Hayward invites you to send him Grijava’s letter so he can autograph copies. (He says: download it here if you’d like your very own copy. (Send it to me with a self-address stamped envelope, and I’ll autograph it for you!)

 

 

 

9.6 out of 10 based on 130 ratings

174 comments to Not a 100% believer? Even borderline climate apostates like Pielke must be punished in the witchhunt

  • #
    Rod Stuart

    The harassment of Dinesh D’Sousa following the release of the movies “2016” and “America” was a precursor to this sort of Stasi behaviour on the part of the current American Administration.
    I have seen both of these productions and they are excellent, to the point and cunningly accurate.
    The subsequent treatment of D’Sousa was (or should have been) an embarrassment and a wake-up call to every American and every free citizen of the Western World.
    Take heed. The behaviour that follows this behaviour on the part of dictators have been seen before many times, and it must be stopped.
    As one of those free citizens I salute Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Hayward, Roger Pielke, David Legates, and Robert Balling for their knowledge reason and courage.

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      Free Willie Soon. NOW!

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      • #
        James Murphy

        Unfortunately the only free willie around at the moment appears to be that which belongs to Rajendra Pachauri… (allegedly)

        Sorry, but I think someone had to head to the gutter and say it, didn’t they…?

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        The more they harass us, the louder we will speak the truth….

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    • #
      gai

      The other shoe dropped.

      Here is part of the reason for attacking skeptics and censoring the news.

      Empire State Tribune(The Empire State is New York)
      Journalism Comes First

      The Green House Effect is Real, it Can Be Measured and the Results Verified, according to Study

      The climate-changing greenhouse effect exists and has been directly measured in the United States, a new study reports.

      The results were highly credible. They confirmed what scientists had already proven using models and lab experiments. Too much carbon dioxide gas emission is saturating the Earth’s atmosphere resulting to global warming.

      “We’re actually measuring the fact that rising carbon dioxide concentrations are leading to the greenhouse effect,” said lead study author Dan Feldman, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “This is clear observational evidence that when we add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it will push the system to a warmer place.”….

      Meanwhile back in the real world New York, Niagara Falls has frozen solid and there are icebergs floating around the base of the Statue of Liberty.

      New York City Surrounded by ice floes – Short video

      For the second straight winter, the frigid weather in western New York state and lower Ontario has frozen vast sections of the U.S. side of Niagara Falls, known as the American Falls, and the Canadian side, known as the Horseshoe Falls because of its shape.

      But the water never actually stops flowing underneath. That is no accident: the Niagara River is an important source of hydropower, so a long ice boom made of steel catches any icebergs, while ice cutters work around the clock to prevent the Falls from jamming up.
      (wwwDOT)syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2015/02/niagara_falls_is_it_really_com.html

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        They’re never asked the right question. The right one is,

        What evidence do you have that CO2 in the atmosphere can do what you claim it does?

        They cannot respond adequately to this question. Try it and see. You’ll get silence every time.

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          They can’t even reconcile their claims of warming with the weather they can see through their windows all day long. Their own thermometers give the lie to what they say.

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            The claim that the missing heat is in the deep ocean is not supportable by any measurement either, much less by good physics.

            They have a busted hand all the way around.

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            • #
              The Backslider

              Trenberth had a thread running over at The Conversation.

              I asked him by what mechanism the “missing heat” found it’s way down below 700 meters, particularly without warming the 700 meters……

              *crickets*

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        • #

          Roy,
          When the believers in climate are confronted with the real world evidence, they head in the opposite direction. This is what I found when Paul Homewood found evidence that the Paraguay temperature data had been corrupted. A standard bearer of the “science” did not mention the bearer of the evidence, but attacked a reporter of it – Christopher Booker. He then used name-calling to discourage the reader from checking for themselves and then false flags to distract people in the other direction. I did a diagram to illustrate the propaganda methods. I think it has applications elsewhere.

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      • #
        Annie

        So they have proved via models and lab experiments that CO2 is warming the atmosphere? Some “proof”….I don’t think. Good grief….when will they give it a rest? Don’t ask silly questions Annie, it’s all about Fear, Control and Taxes. 🙁

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        • #
          The Backslider

          That’s quite remarkable, considering that 25% of the total of anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the beginning of The Industrial Revolution have occurred since 1998, a period during which the temperature trend has remained flat.

          I think that my evidence trumps theirs…….

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      • #
        Alan McIntire

        Currently the average wattage per square meter, assuming an average temperature of 15 C or 288 K, is 390.7 watts.
        A century of increase in CO2 caused wattage flux of 0.2 watts/decade is 2 watts. Since wattage increases as the fourth power of the temperatue That would result in a temperature increase of about
        1/4 (288/390.7) degress K per wat increase, or 0.18 degrees per watt. At the measured increase of 2 watts per century, we can expect a temperatue increase of 0.36 K by 2115.

        I checked NOAA- atmospheric CO2 was 369.92 ppm in 2000, increased to 389.85 ppm in 2010- 10 years. the natural log of 389.85/369.92 is about 0.052475.
        The natural log of 2 is 0.693147.
        .693147/0.052475 is 13.2 If CO2 continues to double at the 2000-2010 rate, It’ll take 13.2 decades for a doubling, at which point the wattage increase would be 0.02 watts/year * 132 years = 2.64 watts for a doubling of CO2, only about 70% of the IPCC figure of 3.70 watts increase for a doubling of CO2.

        So using the figures in the study, the effect of CO2 is significantly less than previously calculated.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      The subsequent treatment of D’Sousa was (or should have been) an embarrassment and a wake-up call to every American and every free citizen of the Western World.

      True! And it’s true even in spite of the fact that D’Sousa himself admits to violating the law he was convicted of violating. The violation would have gotten a slap on the wrist at worst if you or I did it.

      Unfortunately for Obama, D’Sousa is not deterred, his sentence was confinement at night, short too, leaving him his days still free to work. And he’s working as hard as ever to spread the truth.

      It’s tragic that it takes an immigrant from a far worse place in the world to recognize and then act on the truth that native born Americans cannot or will not see, that Obama is their enemy, not their friend.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        If you’re in or from India, I take my cue from D’Sousa about India being the worse place. I have no personal knowledge nor have I anything against India. It’s what D’Sousa himself has said about his homeland relative to the United States.

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        • #

          Roy,
          Back in the 1970s India was a basket case like much of the continent of Africa. Now that country, with more people than Africa is enjoying phenomenal rates of growth. Despite that average living standards are still very low, but the there is a well-founded expectation that the next generation will be much better off than the current generation. India will not sign up to any emissions constraints, as the leaders know that they will halt growth. The worst impact will be to shatter people’s hopes for a better life for themselves and their children.

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            The west has become too clever for its won good.

            Prosperity is a double edged sword – on one hand we can relax , on the other hand we cant as we are constabntly stalked by envious Communists….

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      • #
        James McCown

        It’s tragic that it takes an immigrant from a far worse place in the world to recognize and then act on the truth that native born Americans cannot or will not see, that Obama is their enemy, not their friend.

        Roy, there are plenty of us here in the USA who know that 0bama is up to no good. The problem is the media are almost 100% behind 0bama, no matter how bad things get or how stupidly he behaves. And another problem are the Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot. Watch and see if they nominate Jeb Bush to be the Republican nominee for president next year. If they do, you’ll know they’re still fouling up.

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  • #
    mmxx

    It is scandalous that CAGW scientists will not enter into genuine scientific debate with climate science qualified skeptics.

    It’s even more damning that purportedly mainstream media have long since rolled over and accept any alarmist scientific positions without serious question.

    This week’s comment from the retired-in-haste President of the UN’s IPPC about climate change being his “religion” bells the CAT(astrophism).

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  • #
    pat

    yet 22 minutes ago Sky News/AAP are allowed to post this:

    26 Feb: Sky News: AAP: PM to tour cyclone-ravaged Yeppoon
    Mr Abbott will meet Yeppoon residents on Thursday night as well as volunteers and local disaster management workers as the town continues its clean-up and repair efforts after the destructive ***category five cyclone…
    http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2015/02/26/pm-to-tour-cyclone-ravaged-yeppoon.html

    24 Feb: Courier-Mail: Climate researcher questions Cyclone Marcia’s category 5 status
    What was important was that after the bureau conducted its post-storm analysis, it told people that they experienced category 3 impacts as it passed over the land…
    http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/climate-researcher-questions-cyclone-marcias-category-5-status/story-fnkt21jb-1227236188297

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    • #
      mmxx

      Whatever will be Marcia’s final official categorisation, it is patently clear that CAGW nomenclature for hurricanes/cyclones/tornadoes has to be shifted to another rating scale.

      Category 5 is just no longer frightening enough. It has a “Australian metropolitan dams will never fill again” taint to it.

      A new super-superlative scale must be introduced to accommodate people who have lost confidence in the under-performance of today’s top Category 5 cyclones/hurricanes.

      Why, even a narrow local mini-tornado now becomes eagerly-reported news around the world as a super-cell devastating mega-storm.

      Suggestions for new-generation scary classifications are invited.

      In future, Super-Five-Squared cyclones may yet turn out to be survivable for all who are unfortunate to lie in their paths.

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  • #

    Excellent post, Jo. I agree wholeheartedly. This is the time everybody should stand up and come forward – especially other scientists and those in academia. With their backs against the wall, their silence will not make things better, quite the opposite – giving in to bullies only brings about more extreme bullying. If they don’t step forward and say “Enough!” it will continue and it will get worse.

    If they can’t do this alone, for goodness sake, can’t they band together? In numbers they can protect themselves and each other.

    I do think this is leading into the end game. It’s so obvious now what the extremists want. The sheer weight of the lies and other falsehoods must be tearing at the fabric of their deception. Time for it to end.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Well, here is more work for people who don’t get paid much if at all.

      In normal circumstances Raul Grivalja’s letter re David Legates (the first on the list) would be fair and reasonable. If, as is most likely, it has sinister motivation, then it’s a different story. It should be noted, though many try to deny it, that receiving funding, either before or after an event, from a particular source does not necessarily represent corruption of any kind.

      This looks to me that Rep. Grivalja should be careful what he asks for. His own house would have much more of this ‘glass’ in it than any denier’s.

      When you look at the list of 19 funders for Heartland in 2012, a number of those companies would have legitimate interest in the information that Heartland accumulates, and would be competent to make their own assessment of that information. They would also very likely have provided funds to other research institutions for the same purpose.

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    • #
      Tim

      First they came for the skeptical scientists…

      170

      • #
        gai

        Very good bumper sticker to have made and to handout after asking if the person is for free speech or are they for censorship.

        40

    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      A.D.Everard,

      The end game began when they failed in Peru.

      Abe

      80

  • #
    pat

    and News Ltd’s Kate Fagan can write & publish this:

    26 Feb: News Ltd: Kate Fagan: Cyclones heading south: Was Marcia just a taste of what’s to come?
    Are cyclones moving further south?
    The answer is yes…
    But this week we saw a new record. “We’ve just had cyclone Marcia cross as a ***category five near Yeppoon. That appears to be an Australian record for the most southerly crossing of a ***category five. Whether that’s just part of variability or part of a trend we’ll have to wait and see.” says Steve Turton, Professor of Geography at James Cook University…
    In February of 1954, a category three or four cyclone crossed the coast at Coolangatta causing a huge amount of wind and flood damage. Strong gales whipped up large waves on the flooded Richmond River in Lismore, NSW. 23 people were killed.
    So even before climate change was a thing, it was possible for severe category cyclones to impact south of the Queensland border…
    And then there is this other little thing called climate change. In Australia, the climate change debate has produced little consensus but there does seem to be one agreed conclusion. Cyclones, when they form, will pack more of a punch. The Bureau of Meteorology put it in proper Bureau speak; “The number of tropical cyclones is projected to decrease but they may be more intense and reach further south.” So the decrease in frequency of cyclones will, by around the end of this century, be offset by the increase in intensity…
    Dr Kathleen McInnes from the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research team sheds some meteorological understanding on the matter. “With climate change, the oceans and atmosphere are warmer, so the atmosphere can hold more moisture which leads to greater rainfall and stronger winds. There are a number of studies that point to slightly fewer cyclones occurring in a warmer climate and that’s because some aspects of the atmosphere that favour cyclones may change in such a way that it will cause less of them to spin up. But when they do spin up the elements will be there for them to be stronger.”…
    Tropical Cyclone Marcia can’t yet be linked to unquestionable proof that climate change is happening. As the Bureau of Meteorology clarifies, “individual extreme weather events cannot be attributed to climate change without detailed attribution studies, which take some time to complete.” But Marcia can’t be pigeon holed as “just a freak storm” either. Especially if things really are starting to head south…
    Of the findings, Professor Turton said “It’s not so much a theory, its proven fact actually that the tropics are expanding, and depending on which methods of measurement are used, that expansion is between about 150 and 300 kms every 30 years. That’s an artefact of greenhouse gas emissions so it’s due to human induced climate change.”
    http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/cyclones-heading-south-was-marcia-just-a-taste-of-whats-to-come/story-fnjwvztl-1227240222096

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      “its proven fact actually that the tropics are expanding,…”

      Now there’s a barefaced lie! A double lie! What does this dopey professor think a tropic is?

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      • #
        DavidH

        “tropics are expanding”

        Only if the Earth’s axial tilt is increasing – that’s what defines the “tropics”, that of Capricorn and that of Cancer which are 23.4 degrees south and north respectively because 23.4 degrees is the axial tilt.

        According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia ‘at present, it [the axial tilt] is decreasing at a rate of about 47″ per century’. So the proven fact is that the tropics are contracting.

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  • #
    Byron

    No surprises here at all , the zealots hate and loathe the infidel/heathen but something We’ve seen throughout history is that the religious zealot’s hatred of the other has burned the hottest for both the apostate and the heretic , combine them in one person and The zeolots go incandescent and what few fragments of reason and restraint they have left are burnt away .

    I suspect the mindset is that while the infidel/heathen are something less than the “enlightened” zealotry and in need of eradication , They are limited by their ( insert trait here ) and could not be expected to come to “The Light” as the zealotry have . The apostate and the heretic on the other hand have known and yet knowingly spurned (apostate) or altered (heretic) the zealot’s unquestionable “TRUTH” and They regard that as the utmost act of evil .

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  • #
    pat

    make sense of the following:

    25 Feb: Rockhampton Morning Bulletin: Cyclone Marcia went from Category 1-4 in just 10 hours
    ON THURSDAY morning, Cyclone Marcia was marked as a system with the lowest possible severity — a category one — but by the time the sun set that evening, it had become one of the most powerful storms the state had ever seen.The Bureau of Meterology has released its first insight into Cyclone Marcia as a “serious weather event”, summarising the progress of an off-shore low to its peak as a category five system when it made landfall at Shoalwater Bay in Central Queensland.
    “Between 8am and 6pm on Thursday, Marcia underwent a period of extremely rapid intensification, increasing by three categories to a category four cyclone in approximately 10 hours,” the report states.That evening it took a hard left turn, and strengthened even more as it approached the coastline for Friday morning.
    It became a category five at 4am on Friday…
    Check out the full summary of Queensland’s brush with Cyclone Marcia below:
    Severe tropical cyclone Marcia made landfall as a category 5 cyclone at 8am at Shoalwater Bay, north of Yeppoon. The cyclone then weakened steadily as it moved southward over land during the day.
    The town of Yeppoon received significant damage, and wind gusts up to 156 km/h were recorded there as the cyclone passed to the west. A storm surge of 2 metres was recorded at Port Alma, but luckily this occurred near low tide.
    The weakening cyclone passed over Rockhampton during the early afternoon of Friday 20th February, where wind gusts to 113 km/h were recorded and again significant damage occurred…
    Impacts were still felt further south with heavy rain and flooding occurring in the Wide Bay and Burnett and Southeast Coast districts, particularly around the Sunshine Coast and the Mary and Burnett Rivers.
    Dangerous surf and abnormally high tides were also experienced around exposed beaches in southeast Queensland…
    http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/cyclone-marcia-went-category-1-4-just-10-hours/2555681/

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    • #

      @Pat: There won’t be much sense about Marcia until the JCU CTS Report comes out. Might take about 3 weeks or so.
      If the standard format is followed, the wind field modelling will be in the Appendices. Yep there’s modelling, but its the Holland wind field model, 1980 – 2004. Engineering stuff, no flim flam 🙂 Used in the analysis of traffic signs. If there’s a plastic hinge in the posts then it’s possible to calculate a lower bound to wind speed. Undamaged posts give an upper bound. Full details of the method with Yasi examples are in CTS TR 57:
      https://www.jcu.edu.au/cts/publications/technical-reports
      Hang on to your 156km/h for Yepoon. If correct, there will be a sign that verifies this. If 113km/h for Rocky is correct, there might not be any bent signs.

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      • #
        RB

        The best information that i could find is that in Queensland the design speed is 250km/h (as of 2011). It should stand up to gusts of that speed. A Cat 5 has gusts of over 280km/h.

        The report that you link to said that

        This figure shows that the area that sustained the highest gusts (South Mission Beach to Cardwell) received approximately 90% of the design wind speed for housing.

        Hence, the highest gusts were 225 km/h and even the link above says maximum of 240km/h gusts for Yasi. That is Cat 4 and I really doubt that it was even that big. The article has a section on Climate Change considerations. The design speed standard of 250km/h was implemented after Yasi while the research is for 1980 standards. I didn’t find what that was.

        The James Cook article has Yasi having winds of 45m/s in hardest hit areas. That is 160 km/h, lower limit of gust speeds for a Cat 3 and lower limit for sustained speeds of a Cat 4. Yasi was never a Cat 5 at landfall and probably not even before it.

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        • #
          The Backslider

          Yasi was never a Cat 5 at landfall and probably not even before it.

          I was talking with a dork over at The Conversation the other day who claimed to have been in the eye of a category 5 (Yasi).

          I told him to stop bragging and admit that by the time it got to him it was a category 1 or 2 at best.

          10

  • #

    I am surprised it’s just 7. What about Freeman Dyson, http://pindanpost.com/2013/04/25/denying-falsification/ Dr David Deming,
    and all the others that have found that AGW is codswallop, nothing but a religion. Dr Happer too.

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  • #
    bemused

    The climate will be the final arbiter.

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    • #
      Byron

      I would like to think it would but I think the usual suspects will still be screeching Their CAGW dogma when the interglacial comes to a close . As the eco-fashionable random burst of electricity style of generators become unable to generate even that while frozen solid and buried under snow and as overworked , ancient and just-not-enough-of-them REAL generators struggle to keep up with demand from collapsing power grids , there will still be those holding true to Their faith and insisting that 2040+* is the “Warmest Year Hevah” after adjustments .

      *( And no I don’t know whether 2040 will be the official end of the interglacial or not but thanks to the billions of dollars in climate “research” being spent trying to frame CO2 , adjust temperature records and offered as monetary sacrifices to appease Gaia there’s no money left for actual research so no-one else knows either )

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    • #
      Dave in the states

      Right. However, since there will probably not be any catastrophic warming either way, and assuming they get their leftest policies activated now, which is what they really want, they can later say; “Look it is working, at least in terms climate change we are saving the world from catastrophic climate change, so we can’t go back now.”

      50

      • #
        Just-A-Guy

        Dave in the states,

        They can never make that claim because the CO2 has continued to increase and will most likely continue to do so for years to come. In the mean time the temperatures are dropping.

        They can’t claim success if everybody knows they haven’t done anything yet. That’s why it’s crucial that Paris fail.

        Abe

        51

  • #
    pat

    my Marcia comments are all related to Pielke. without his voice, the ExtremeWeatherists have the floor to themselves.

    2 hours ago:

    26 Feb: ABC: Tropical Cyclone Marcia: Queensland Government gives $1 million to charities helping in recovery effort
    It comes six days after Marcia slammed into the coast as a category five system, devastating townships in central Queensland…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-26/1m-in-funding-from-qld-government-for-cyclone-maria-recovery/6265828

    BOM’s Gary Allan updates farmers on “climate science”…

    26 Feb: ABC: The weather bureau and its forward-looking farmer friends
    By Melanie Pearce
    The relationship between farmers and the Bureau of Meteorology is a long-enduring marriage made in the heavens, but it’s not without its stormy patches.
    “The bureau’s relationship with people on the land is one of the most fundamental relationships we have with the Australian community,” said Gary Allan from the Bureau’s Climate Information Services Branch.
    He met farmers in Bathurst and Mudgee this week to update them on recent changes in the terminology used by the bureau, particularly around ***climate science and how they can best access and use the information available to them.
    “Quite clearly weather and climate impacts what they do on a daily basis probably more profoundly than it does for the majority of Australians,” Mr Allan said…
    “I feel the bureau provides a good service but I think our expectations are extremely high; unrealistic and we expect if the bureau says it’s going to rain tomorrow we expect it to rain and it doesn’t we get very cranky,” she said…
    Gary Allan admits the bureau doesn’t always get it right or satisfy the high expectations of people on the land.
    “They want accurate information when they need it most and we can’t always meet that requirement,” he said.
    He says the bureau does sometimes get criticised for its handling of severe weather events and disasters such as storms and bushfires…
    Suzanne Davis says the forum was a bit like relationship counselling.
    “One of the things I’ve learned today is just how many variables there are in this so I now feel a lot more empathetic towards the bureau for any mistakes or omissions they might have,” she said.
    It was all smiles as the farmers left the forum in possession of a range of new weather information tools, but nothing could replace their joy in seeing a thunderstorm bringing a huge dump of rain.
    http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/02/26/4187326.htm

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  • #
    PeterK

    If the Republican Senator’s had the cohunas, they too should go on a witch hunt. However, their letters should be directed at all the NGO’s and the CEO’s of these NGO’s.

    Who have they funded, have they created any slush funds and for what purpose?

    What scientific papers have the NGO’s funded and not declared or the researcher not declared his / her receiving of funds from said NGO’s.

    I’m sure there are more intelligent people out there who could generate more targeted questions and concerns to the NGO’s than I have.

    If the democrats and the Green Groups want a fight, I say, ‘bring it on’. Maybe this is the only way, let’s have a main bout, a free for all in the public arena.

    And to Richard Lindzen, John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Hayward, Roger Pielke, David Legates and Robert Balling; thanks for all that you have done and will hopefully continue doing. We need more people like you, who understand the science to speak out ever more forcefully about the science and the rot in this big climate scam of the century.

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    Yonniestone

    The cultists have certainly come out swinging in 2015 but not many blows are connecting, the sure sign of a panicking contender.

    I’ve said it before that my idea of a true hero has changed greatly from younger years, Stephen Hayward’s response is inspiring.

    If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. Sun Tzu.

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  • #
    Peter Miller

    The Climate Inquisition is coming to get you!

    Knowing this inquisition has the likes and integrities of Mann, Hansen, Gore, Milliband and Pachauri on its side, I know with certainty that history will judge it harshly.

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  • #
    manalive

    It’s reminiscent of the IRS targeting conservative political groups (under Obama).

    190

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    toorightmate

    The modus operandi of Adolf Hitler and Barak Obama are chillingly similar.

    200

  • #
    ROM

    Rod Stuart @ #1 has already pointed out one of the very harsh lessons of history where what started out as social movement aimed at trying to improve the lot of people everywhere becomes co-opted and then is subtly is taken over and co-opted by budding psychpathic extremists to a point that when the adherents to the movement finally come to their senses it is too late for many of them.

    A well known quote is A revolution devours it’s children

    As Rod Stuart pointed out and I also wish to point out, as a political movement, in this case a green political movement, becomes ever more extreme it starts to reach not only into the world outside of it’s increasingly cult like ideology for victims but it also starts to reach down into it’s own ranks for any who are not fully committed or are believed to be not fully committed to the extremist ideology of the cult.

    As with all such extremist cult like movements as repeated history examples show us, no evidence is required.
    Just an accusation will get that person regardless of the strength of adherence to the cult ideology, despatched in one way or another.
    At the extreme end of it’s power, that despatch implies death usually in a most horrible way as the worst tortures are retained for the fallen, those accused apostates.

    It was down this deadly path that communism began with Lenin which cumulated in Stalinism with it’s estimated 30 million dead of it’s own people from starvation and the gulags.
    Stalinism, Mao Zedong and 60 million dead, Pol Pot, ISIS, Nazism, the Japanese Imperial Empire of pre WW2, the list if one wants to try and compile it is almost endless on what man does to his fellow man in the name of his very own extremist ideology of the vicious and deadly cult he follows.

    And this is what we are now starting to see as the green based climate catastrophe ideology morphs into a full blown extremist cult that has nothing to do with science and everything to do with persecuting those who do not follow the dictates of the extremist leadership or who are suspected of being apostates of the cult ideology.

    It is the usual path downwards towards a deadly extremism which is quite usual for such extremist cults, cults where the end justify the means no matter the cost in human lives.
    We only need to read the history of the third reich and the steadily increasing persecution of the european jews to see the same deadly trends beginning in today’s climate cult with increasingly vicious attacks on skeptics by the cult’s slime mongers including such as The Guardian, a media slime mongering publication of the first rank in the slime mongering of skeptics and skeptical scientists.

    We are seeing ever more vicious attacks on skeptics and luke warmers as the slime mongers of the climate catastrophe cult take advantage of the liberality of the skeptic blogs and some equally extreme media outlets to troll as much as they can get away with and to do their lying, grossly dishonest extremist slime mongering of skeptic scientists and now even of scientists who actually believe in the CO2 induced warming but who have dared to question the ultimate model predicted severe climate outcomes; ie Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr and etc.

    Not that the climate and science have much to do with the green climate cultist beliefs anymore as it is increasingly apparent that the agenda is power, power over all the nations and peoples of the Earth.
    Included no doubt in the future will be assassinations, green terrorism, threats, stand over and blackmail tactics, particularly against corporations, destruction of long standing heritage objects that the corrupted sensibilities of the cultist refuse to make allowance for , all of which are very much in vogue to day with the greens and Greenpeace’s hardening extremism and with no quarter or compassion given to any doubters, questioners and opponents

    The green climate catastrophe power crazy cult is now on a steadily steepening slide into an extremist Stalinist type cult where many of those who assume they are amongst the “chosen ones” because of their complete and total commitment to the climate cults catastrophic ideology will at some some time in the future, perhaps before very long due to the speed at which the Green climate cult is drifting towards total extremism, will find that they have become another one of those who will be wiped from the face of the earth as the cult reaches it’s most extreme and the internal power struggles intensify as they do with every such extremist cult movement.

    The Canadian government is already very concerned with some anti fossil fuel / climate extremists within Canada and the possibility / probability they will carry out an assassination or a violent terrorist attack.
    ______________
    [ quoted ]
    The RCMP has labelled the “anti-petroleum” movement as a growing and violent threat to Canada’s security, raising fears among environmentalists that they face increased surveillance, and possibly worse, under the Harper government’s new terrorism legislation.

    In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence.

    _________________

    And if you think I exaggerate go and do some hard reading of the history of the past extremist movements and mass cults and the path on their rise to power and the death, destruction and the utter horrors those cult like extremist political and ideological movements eventually imposed on their fellow man.

    And in the end for what?

    As always it is nothing more than the sheer psychopathic lust for total and unhindered power by a small incestuous group as we are seeing here today, that in the end comes to nothing as they eventually destroy themselves or are destroyed by other who no longer can stomach their depredations on human lives and humanity and society,
    And their cult like movement dies with them with only a few adherents still clinging to the desperate belief in the eventual resurrection of the cult.

    Sadly as we are already seeing in africa and the undeveloped world, in doing so the cults also destroy, often in the most horrible fashion, the almost uncountable lives of so many other quite innocent victim’s.

    Cults such as the Climate Catastrophe cult and the Green cult , now one and the same will in time just be another such failed cult found only in the long annals of the history of mankind’s most cruel, savage and inhuman cults and political movements.

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    • #
      ROM

      Ah! A red thumb
      Seems we have a full blown totalitarian stalinist cult supporter here I see .

      Or maybe just another newbie slime monger under training on a skeptic site.

      Of course he / she is probably too bloody dumb to read a bit of history and then find out that his / her low level useful idiot types are the ones sent into battle to get slaughtered or become casualties when internal warfare breaks out between the psychopaths at the top of the pyramid .
      The loser in these cult skirmishes is usually wiped off the face of the earth along with his / her supporters.

      So Red Thumb if you just happen to get caught backing the wrong psychopath at the top when the usual savage internal warfare breaks out over who gets to run the rotting cadaver as it always does in these cult like movements, expect to get some very rough treatment indeed and thats only if your very lucky.

      Enjoy because we certainly will as we watch as it all just collapses into a screaming heap of rotting ideologies and pathetic moans of the faithful “what went wrong” as Nature and Time do their thing regardless of the instructions your anti-human psychopaths at the top of your cult pyramid have instructed Nature to do.

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    • #
      gai

      ROM,
      “… the list if one wants to try and compile it…”

      Dr Rummel has compiled the list and written a book.

      DEMICIDE: Death By Government

      CONTENTS

      1. 169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide]

      I BACKGROUND
      2. The New Concept of Democide [Definition of Democide]
      3. Over 133,147,000 Murdered: Pre-Twentieth Century Democide

      II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
      4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
      5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
      6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
      7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime

      III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
      8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan’s Savage Military
      9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
      10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges
      11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
      12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing
      13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State
      14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse

      IV 4,145,000 VICTIMS: SUSPECTED MEGAMURDERERS
      15. 1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea
      16. 1,417,000 Murdered? Barbarous Mexico
      17. 1,066,000 Murdered? Feudal Russia

      IMPORTANT NOTE: Among all the democide estimates appearing in this book, some have been revised upward….

      Thus, the new world total: old total 1900-1999 = 174,000,000. New World total = 174,000,000 + 38,000,000 (new for China) + 50,000,000 (new for Colonies) = 262,000,000.

      Just to give perspective on this incredible murder by government, if all these bodies were laid head to toe, with the average height being 5′, then they would circle the earth ten times. Also, this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century. Finally, given popular estimates of the dead in a major nuclear war, this total democide is as though such a war did occur, but with its dead spread over a century….

      After eight-years and almost daily reading and recording of men, women, and children by the tens of millions being tortured or beaten to death, hung, shot, and buried alive, burned or starved to death, stabbed or chopped into pieces, and murdered in all the other ways creative and imaginative human beings can devise, I have never been so happy to conclude a project. I have not found it easy to read time and time again about the horrors innocent people have been forced to suffer. What has kept me at this was the belief, as preliminary research seemed to suggest, that there was a positive solution to all this killing and a clear course of political action and policy to end it. And the results verify this. The problem is Power. The solution is democracy. The course of action is to foster freedom.

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        ROM

        Gai @ # 16.2

        In a normal world I would thank you for that list

        In this no longer normal world or perhaps it is going by the times and that list, I can only say that your finding of this horrific information is of value in bringing to the attention of Jo’s blog denizens and the many lurkers on this site, the true and unbelievably horrific costs of extremist ideologies both political and religious when run by and at the behest of mankind’s most vicious psychopath and kleptocrats.

        Every organisation that starts down the road of extremism in it’s ideology finishes up towards the final days of the cult with a bidding war that produces ever more extremist demands from it’s adherents to prove that they are far more committed to the ideology and aims of the cult than any other members.
        And so a bidding war towards ever more extreme and deadly proposals and actions begins and rarely ends until the continued existence of the cult is no longer feasible even to the fanatical diehards

        That extremism also drives away the fringe believers who might be very vocal in support of the cult ideology but when it comes down to putting their own personal being on the line for the cult’s benefit, they very quietly fade off into the distance rarely to seen or heard from again.

        For the most part this is seen as a blessing by the most hard line of the cult fanatics as it is seen as “purifying” the cult of it’s weakest adherents and therefore it’s least wanted supporters who they believe may and often do turn to being the hated apostates or even outspoken turncoats who go on to reveal the inner secrets of the cult to the world outside.

        As an example of where the green climate catastrophe cult is heading down the road of extremism, and apart from calls for beheadings, for the blowing up of kids, for death penalties, for jailings for skeptics and doubters, for the forcing of scientists and editors out of their positions because they aren’t kow towing low enough to the green climate cult ideology plus many, many other extremist claims, we have another example of the bidding war towards ever more extreme positions that provides further evidence of the greens / climate cultists total swivelled eyed insane lunacy as recounted by the Canadian or American WUWT commenter Mac the Knife
        _____________________
        [quoted;]
        Here in the Great NorthWet, hydroelectric power is NOT designated ‘a renewable resource’. It has been politically redefined as “nonrenewable”, [ edit; confirmed from my past reading ] because there is a strong push to remove dams from the river systems! Now, utilizing the kinetic energy of water flowing from high elevation to low elevation is just about as ‘renewable’ as it gets. Irrational, innit?

        There is also a ‘push’ here in the Great NorthWet to ban the use of firewood and wood stoves for home heating. This ban may also include any outdoor fires, such as toasting bratwurst or marshmallows over an evening fire, down on the beach with a gathering of friends. Or charring a prime piece of beef over the ubiquitous pile of charcoal briquettes in a Weber kettle! Proposals to enforce the bans include using FLIR equipped helicopters to ‘target hotspots for further investigation’ and having neighbors report ‘potential offenders’. Insane, innit?

        “When Wood Stoves Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Wood Stoves!”
        And I will be one of them.
        [ / ]
        __________________

        This is the extremist antihuman ideology and insane demands that the trolling slime mongers are promoting when they infest the skeptic sites such as this.
        It is the same insane ideology that Al Gore is promoting all the while he enjoys an unparalleled lavish life style which he has never ever indicated in any way that he will renounce as his contribution towards “saving the planet”.

        It is exactly the same utterly irrational insane cult ideology that Flannery and Steffin are so vocal in supporting.

        And it is the same utterly irrational, insane fanatical cult ideology that will and is already on the way towards destroying the “green global warming catastrophe cult” in the eyes of an increasing many across the world.

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      • #
        Dariusz

        What a shattering and grim summary. Is that what humanity is all about? No wonder that the green blob is turning into the death cult. They understand the self destructing power of humanity and play to their best advantage. They say: We are not worthy of being the custodian of this Earth. Kill yourself and do a favour to Gaia. How ironic people that call themselves progressives. What horrendous mind f..k! With this thinking nazism and communism pales into insignificance.

        Where is Gandhi and his victims of his communist ideas that he introduced soon after India,s independence? He is a mass murder too contrary to a popular believe. Other individual is Rachael Carlson probably a person that caused more deaths than Mao. Hitler is only an upstart compared to them.

        10

  • #

    Just posted in another thread but here for completeness.

    Christopher Essex comes out swinging in the Financial Post:

    Save Willie: The global warming movement is anti-science, oblivious to how little we know about climate

    “Small minds do not understand the importance of unorthodox thinking to science”

    Beheading, war crimes, prison, death threats. Perhaps you think I’m talking about IS. No, it’s just the routine hyperbolic language of media climate activism, and the minds of our cultural overlords. Next December policymakers will try again to save the world from what they don’t understand by proposing policy on something else, which won’t work anyway.

    More worthwhile reading at the link to the FP article.

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Now Bernd you have shown us a task with an end point: to “free Willie”.

      Freeing Willie Soon of the burden of harassment being endured as a scientist is something that all scientists should see as a

      “Just Cause”.

      How can we best make our voices heard by those who might control Willie’s future?

      KK

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      • #

        I’ve been more explicit on my own blog.

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        • #
          KinkyKeith

          Liked the Obama art work.

          When he was first elected I thought, what a great change for America.

          Now I can’t believe anybody in that position could be so stupid as to surround himself with yes men.

          Just goes to show the importance of a REAL scientific education.

          Nothing beats it for getting at the truth; eventually.

          KK

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Nothing beats it for getting at the truth; eventually.

            And I hope eventually doesn’t turn out to be too late. The truth after the horse has escaped the barn will do nothing for us.

            40

        • #
          Byron

          I agree with K.K. on the artwork but what I was taken by was Your Shifting Heat Island Trends hypothesis regarding the European Alps , now all You need is a catchy acronym for it . (:

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          And how long did Stalin and what he put into motion hold sway over the Soviet Union? The picture isn’t bright for the so-called free world at the moment unless we can find the right leaders, convince the world the current leaders are rudderless and our new ones have workable plans that will benefit everyone.

          When the current thinking is that all sorts of good stuff dispensed free or at trivial cost by government instead of earning what you need and want (a la healthcare), is a workable road to Utopia, the prospects for overturning the thing in time are not exactly good.

          60

        • #
          gai

          Steven Goddard certainly does not pull his punches.

          He also puts up some good artwork at his site.

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          • #

            The artwork I show is from Goddard’s site and clicking on the image takes the reader to the Real Science article.

            What the avid witchhunters don’t realize is that Obama will not stand behind a single one of them when the proverbial strikes the ventilator. There is only one thing that is important to Obama and that is Barack Hussein Obama.

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    • #
      Robert

      I made the mistake of reading the comments there. Not good by any means. But no surprise, I have seen on numerous other sites today the “Soon made millions from big oil to confuse the climate issue” meme. It has gone viral, and like gossip the “story” seems to grow with each telling.

      Everyone is focused on the word “deliverables” in some of the material that was handed over to Greenpeace. What no one seems to get or notice is that everything Dr. Soon is getting grilled over is from 2008 and 2010 and there is nothing linking any funding to the “Models run too hot” paper recently published which is what started this attack on him.

      Since those orchestrating this witch hunt can’t argue the science, if they even understand ANY of the science, or refute the paper all that remains to them is to try and discredit the man. It will work with the masses who don’t understand science, who don’t actually read the paper but take the statements about it from some alarmist site and parrot them endlessly. For others it’s more noise from cornered rats who are beginning to understand where they are.

      It’s pretty friggin’ nauseating actually. But it reinforces why I long ago stopped hanging out with groups and deal with people only in small numbers of 1 or 2 whenever possible. I didn’t inherit the “pack mentality” that so many seem to be driven by. I’ve seen far too many instances of people being rude, obnoxious, and otherwise “asking for it” secure in the fact that their buddies are there and will save their behind if it hits the fan to want to bother with those types. I guess when you run solo you learn to deal with people more decently since it’s your bacon that will fry if you go stepping on toes and no one is going to jump in and save you.

      Too bad that is a lesson so many of these people attacking Dr. Soon appear to never have learned. Then again back in my BBS days I learned that a lot of geeky little wimps suddenly think they’re 12 feet tall and bulletproof once they are safely behind their computer monitor…

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      • #
        Byron

        I made the mistake of reading the comments there

        So did I , and it always comes back to the same non-points with the church of CAGW types

        1) In league with “Big Oil” ( The great Satan )
        2) 97% of scientists say ( Holy Writ )
        3) But He’s not a climate scientist ( Not one of the anointed )
        4) In league with the Koch Brothers (Lesser Satans )
        5) goto 1)

        There is no questioning , explaining , thinking , just chanting of the dogma and panic if anyone asks them to answer a question actually about the science .

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        Robert you’ve hit an important part of the puzzle in determining the personality types that are attracted by such movements, one facet of said type is picking a fight then screaming blue murder when you retaliate, I loathe that one.

        KK amongst others here could give an expert analysis of these profiles that would do it more justice than my novice attempts.

        60

        • #
          gai

          The are called BULLIES.

          They are brave if they are a lot bigger than you or in a group. They usually run screaming if you stand your ground and fight back.

          More important they never out grow the playground bully mentality.

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  • #
    pat

    Martin Clark –
    The Bulletin is posting BOM’s figs…they’re not mine or the paper’s.

    Willie Soon denies there’s CLIMATE & denies CLIMATE CHANGES.
    Kert is head of “CLIMATE” Investigations!

    25 Feb: VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: Democracy Now: ***Climate Deniers*** Exposed: Top Scientist Got Funding from ExxonMobil, Koch Brothers, Big Coal
    A new investigation exposes how one of the top scientists involved in ***denying climate change*** has failed to disclose his extensive funding from the fossil fuel industry…
    KERT DAVIES, Executive Director at Climate Investigations Center: Well, first, to clarify, it is a Greenpeace investigation going back to 2009, when I was there…
    And it is a very rare window into this universe and an amazing moment, actually, probably the most important investigation that Greenpeace has done on ***climate denial***…they want to keep us in the dark about climate change, and Willie Soon is one of their pawns, actually. They’re using him, and they’re using the Harvard-Smithsonian name to get that word out that there’s misinformation—that is, that there’s no scientific consensus, rather…
    http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/25/climate_deniers_exposed_top_scientist_got

    just DENIERS now:

    24 Feb: Business Spectator: Ryan Koronowski: Deniers’ favourite scientist quietly took money from the fossil fuel industry
    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/2/24/science-environment/deniers-favourite-scientist-quietly-took-money-fossil-fuel

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  • #
    Glen Michel

    This is beyond anything that is fair. This green/socialist fascism has to me met head on.They are like petulant kids who don’t get their way- that is no surprise I guess,but if this nonsense is not confronted then civilisation is at serious risk.No joke!

    220

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      If you want fair you need to look in the rules for card and board games. Fair isn’t in the lexicon of reality.

      I wish it were otherwise but it’s not.

      10

  • #
    pat

    just to give an idea how far-reaching Democracy Now is with it’s Willie Soon attack.

    from Wikipedia: In total, over 1,200 television and radio stations broadcast Democracy Now! worldwide.

    from its own website: Democracy Now is broadcast on Pacifica, NPR, community, and college radio stations; on public access, PBS, satellite television (DISH network: Free Speech TV ch. 9415 and Link TV ch. 9410; DIRECTV: Free Speech TV ch. 348 and Link TV ch. 375); and on the internet. DN!’s podcast is one of the most popular on the web.

    Democracy Now is funded by listeners and Foundations.

    60

  • #
    Athelstan.

    I hate to say it but I told you so.

    The man who has Kenya in his blood and is politburo chief of the left in dear old USofA, with a relentless grind and steadfast fixed stare on an immortal legacy and with PARIS in the forefront of his mind, Obummer ‘the operator’ quite consciously: unleashed his dogs of war many months ago.

    In the corridors of power in Washington, they’ve been winding up to this since a couple of years or more, and the dirty politics Chicago style tactics and of weaponizing the man made CO2 equals climate fiction – is now spreading its lies among us.

    Always, the classic strategem of extreme left wing; counter briefing, slander, denigrate, blacken the names of senior opposition figures in other words all of it is, character assassination.

    A mild 14-15 El Nino played right into their hands, did the great POTUS summon the Gods to bestow it, ah but the Gods may have the last laugh – they usually do and snow in December in Paris is on the cards.

    Realists like Lindzen can cope, lesser lights those ‘lukewarmers’ may need to make soothing noises and back off from the fight – that’s the idea.

    Meanwhile, what do we know? CO2> but temperatures have plateaued. Sea ice anomaly is >?……is mama Gaia cooling?
    Can Obama pull enough strings [China+India] to swing it in Paris? Who knows, the west – we need some serious political redefinition. Here in the UK and with a forthcoming General election – it might just happen. Obama may lose his nerve without lap dog a**e licking Britain at his side come Dec 2015 – one can only hope.

    Finally, Chicken little alarmism with its pedlars of catastrophe, lies and doom. Alack! the one thing that is always missing of course, in fact it’s not in their armoury…….. is a sense of humour.
    Ain’t it always true – realists always can lay 100% claim on rights, truth and lampoon.

    Is it not time to make Obama’s threadbare campaign the butt of the jokes, a laughable tenure it really always was – some legacy, some leg iron………. more like.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      I thought I was hard on Obama and his Chicago thugs but you’ve outdone me in spades.

      Well and truly said.

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  • #
    pat

    remember BBC’s Richard Black. here he is now:

    Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) – The Team
    Richard Black, Director
    Richard Black studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University before joining BBC World Service in 1985 as a studio manager…
    As BBC Environment Correspondent, his reporting assignments included many UN summits including five UNFCCC meetings and Rio+20…
    From 2012 Richard was Director of Communications for the Global Ocean Commission prior to setting up ECIU.
    (from Who We Are: Our Advisory Board reflects the breadth of society’s interest in energy and climate issues. It includes climate scientists, energy policy experts and economists, as well as a range of other stakeholders including MPs and Peers.
    All of our funding comes from philanthropic foundations. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the European Climate Foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and the Tellus Mater Foundation)
    http://eciu.net/about/the-team

    being quoted today:

    25 Feb: ClickGreenUK: All the reaction to Europe’s Energy Union and climate pledge
    ***Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), says the EU’s draft Energy Union document shows the intention to switch the EU’s electricity supply system to a ‘flexible, smart low-carbon grid’…
    “The Energy Union proposals are a bit more interesting and show that in principle the EU doesn’t want to continue with an electricity system dominated by fossil fuels, but switch to the kind of flexible smart low-carbon grid being pioneered in Germany, which should lead to a cheaper and more secure system that’s less dependent on Russia.”…
    The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group welcomed the Commission’s Energy Union framework strategy and its vision for a climate deal in Paris later this year, saying they show clear international leadership and a commitment to low carbon growth.
    But the group of European business leaders warned that including emissions from forestry and land use in the EU’s target to cut its emissions by “at least” 40 per cent (on 1990 levels) by 2030, would effectively reduce cuts required by other sectors – just when they are needed the most…
    http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/125652-all-the-reaction-to-europes-energy-union-and-climate-pledge.html

    20

  • #
    Manfred

    Imposed religious ideology (and idolatry) makes an extraordinarily unpleasant bedfellow. Whether it’s dressed up in black or green makes no difference. Its reliance on fear, subversion, psychotic zeal and mindless incantation is its life-blood. It is immune to logic or persuasion. It knows only force and seeks only dominance, and it leaves us with only one possible and rational choice.
    To win.
    The days of political correctness draw to a close.

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  • #
    Gary in Erko

    If they reckon the output of the terrible seven (sorry Enid Blyton) is due to the source of their pay checks, then get Soros or Obama’s vigilantes or Greenpeace to fund them instead. Simple !!

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Secret Seven or Magnificent Seven ( after the Seven Samurai of Akira Kurosawa), take your pick. We need a few superheros.

      00

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Shameless endorsement:

        Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is a treat to watch except for its 3+ hour length and English subtitles (unless there’s an English voice over version available now). It’s black and white but it couldn’t have been better done if in color. It’s truly a cinematic classic head and shoulders above most others. I sat through the whole 3+ hours in awe of Kurosawa’s skill — stayed up very late to catch it on PBS with no interruptions. And I’m a hard guy to impress with a movie. It lives up to everything I’d heard about it.

        If you haven’t seen it and get the chance, don’t pass it up. Watch The Magnificent Seven first if you haven’t seen it. It’s the rare remake of a classic that is also a classic in its own right.

        Both are probably available from Amazon like nearly everything else ever produced.

        The good guys deserve to win!

        20

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    pat

    Kert on DemNow says Willie Soon was a “pawn”.
    the real pawns are those trendy young greenies who won’t face up to who is behind the curtain & the MSM who pretend not to know either:

    PDF: Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)
    The Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group
    Business leaders urge Europe to keep up ambition on climate
    The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG) brings together business leaders who believe there is an urgent need for new and longer‐term policies for tackling climate change. Members include AECOM, Acciona, Anglian Water Group, Aviva, BT Group, Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc, Doosan, EDF Energy, Glaxo Smith Kline, Heathrow, Johnson Matthey, Kingfisher, Lloyds Banking Group, Philips Lighting, Shell, Skanska, ***British Sky Broadcasting, Tesco, Thames Water, Unilever, United Technologies Corporation, Virgin Group and Vodafone. The group is managed by The University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL)…
    HRH The Prince of Wales is the patron of CPSL, which is a member of The Prince’s Charities, a group of not-for‐profit organisations of which His Royal Highness is President.
    http://www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/about/press/press-releases/pr_pdfs/eu-2030-clg-press-statement.pdf

    Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership Advisory Board
    Chair Sir Ian Cheshire, formerly Group Chief Executive, Kingfisher plc
    Members
    Steve Almond, Managing Partner – International Markets, Deloitte & Touche
    Alan Belfield, Group Board Director, Arup
    Andrew Bester, Group Director, CEO Commercial Banking, Lloyds Banking Group
    Andy Clarke, President & CEO, Asda Stores Ltd
    Dame Amelia C Fawcett DBE, Chairman, The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation
    Philippe Joubert, Former President of Alstom
    Gail Klintworth, Group Customer Director, Old Mutual Plc
    José Lopez, Executive Vice President, Operations and GLOBE, Nestlé SA
    Michael Naylor, Partner at Auriga Partnership
    Tony O’Neill, Group Director of Technical and Sustainability, Anglo American
    Fred Phaswana, Chairman, Standard Bank
    Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder, Forum for the Future
    Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Vice President for Conservation Policy, Conservation International

    nothing new about this group either:

    Wikipedia: Bali Communique
    On 30 November 2007, the business leaders of 150 global companies published a communiqué to world leaders calling for a comprehensive, legally binding United Nations framework to tackle climate change…
    It has been led by The Prince of Wales’s UK and EU Corporate Leaders Groups on Climate Change, which are developed and run by the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership…
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali_Communiqu%C3%A9

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    RogueElement451

    I believe it was Voltaire who knew how to deal with this,,,,,er,,,,

    “I am attending to my correspondence whilst at my toilet , your letter is presently before me, shortly it will be under me”

    What quite extraordinary behaviour from Raul M Grijalva.
    Those whom the gods wish to destroy , they first make mad.

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    Having studied climate on and off for most of the last 50 years, my opinion is that Dr Soon will live to have the last laugh.

    Those of us who accepted continental mobilism have has the last laugh in the years since the theory of fixed continents was overturned. Scientists such as Emile Argand, who supported continental mobilism, were vindicated.

    Like Dr Soon is vilified now, they were vilified until the early 1960’s. When I was an undergraduate our lecturer in physical geography warned us that if we ever wanted to become academics at a North American university we must never reveal that we believe the continents move laterally. Movement up and down was OK, but no continent had ever moved from its proper place on the Earth’s surface. I had to memorize the orthodox mountain-building mechanism because the prevailing mountain-building theory made no more physical sense than the Ptolemaic theory of the solar system.

    That was in 1958. However, within ten years you could not get a degree in geology or geophysics without doing a course in plate tectonics that, among other things, traced the thousands of kilometers that continents had moved after the breakup of the super-continent Pangea. A turnaround of 180 degrees in less than ten years. I wrote the following as part of my M.S. study on why continental drift was rejected.

    Quote:

    The coup de grace (against mobilism) was administered by Bailey Willis and Charles Schuchert in coordinated articles published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin in 1932.” (Newman, 1995).

    These articles explained similarities in fossils on widely separated continents by postulating land bridges between the continents. The land bridges were an alternative to continental drift, but they no longer existed.

    As Schuchert wrote in his letter to Willis, “Remember, I am not raising these lands — they are primordial — I am only pointing out their existence and seeking among you geomorphologists a way to get rid of them….”, (Oreskes, 1999).

    Both Willis and Schuchert were familiar with Arthur Holmes’s theory that heat from radioactivity and convection could drive plate movement. Letters between Willis and Schuchert shows that both were striving to devise an alternative to continental drift.

    Schuchert was not comfortable with their collaboration, writing “…we live or die together, nicht wahr?” As a paleontologist and historical geologist, Schuchert was an expert in correlating rock strata using fossil evidence found in sedimentary rocks. But where the postulated land bridges once lay there are now islands of granite and basalt, igneous rocks without fossils.

    There was no evidence that the land bridges had existed and if they had that they had provided links between ancient plant and animal communities. Why Schuchert agreed to combine forces with Willis is not clear (Oreskes, 1999).

    Unquote

    Plate tectonics explained so much about the Earth’s geological history that, as in the time of Galileo and Copernicus, the theory was incompatible with Creationist stories of the Earth’s history, much more so than the historical geology that had gone before. At least one writer has suggested that Schuchert may have been influenced by his religious beliefs to join with Willis.

    I see some parallels between the theory of fixed continents and the theory that mankind is responsible for the modern warm period.

    Both strike me as appealing to ancient cultural beliefs about mankind that survive as vestigial fears in people who are not religious: including Original Sin, expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Flood, the final Apocalypse.

    Cain has a role there too as the criminal-farmer who disrupts nature with his plow, while his brother Abel, the nomadic herder, leaves a softer footprint on the pristine natural world.

    These old myths have been dressed up with science for modern people for whom the traditional religions no longer satisfy.

    But in science you need to work hard to keep up. If you go to sleep for ten years you will wake up to discover that what you thought was settled science is now regarded as fairy tales. Which is why at age 70 or so I enrolled to do the M.S. in Earth science.

    Most readers of this blog will live long enough to see if the Svensmark-Shaviv theory of cosmo-climatology becomes established. If so, then plate tectonics and cosmo-climatology will together be the foundation for future courses in Earth science and geophysics. Maybe so, maybe not.

    My own reluctance to accept alarming predictions of AGW arises from the fact that our best instruments show a much higher level of uncertainty than do the climate models.

    https://geoscienceenvironment.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/the-emperors-of-climate-alarmism-wear-no-clothes/

    You will note that the effect of the Sun does not seem as small when you examine the data as it does when you examine the models. That is why I do not dismiss Dr Soon’s papers.

    That is not to say that I enjoy his lectures or share his other views on climate, but we ought not to dismiss his work in solar science. He may yet have the last laugh.

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      RB

      It should have been difficult to get the movement of tectonic plates accepted but not to the point of it not being allowed to be explored. That is science.

      This is the problem with CAGW. A good scientist lets others postulate, which is OK, but the ease with which it was accepted by Climate Scientists as irrefutable is a worry.

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    pat

    25 Feb: Forbes: James Taylor: Record Cold And Snow Destroy Global Warming Claims
    Yet another bitterly cold, snowy winter is destroying alarmist global warming claims, proving once again that over-the-top global warming predictions are proving no more scientifically credible than snake oil.
    This morning, stunning photos show New England lobster boats frozen in port, looking like they are stranded deep within the Arctic Circle. The boats have been frozen in place for weeks, which would be remarkable enough if this were the middle of January. However, the calendar is about to turn to March…
    Connecticut is experiencing its coldest February in recorded history. So is Michigan. So is Toronto. Cleveland and Chicago are experiencing their second coldest February in recorded history. Frigid and record cold temperatures are being set from Key West to International Falls. At the same time, blizzard after blizzard is burying much of the nation with record winter snow totals, with winter snowfall records beings set from Boston to Denver…
    Global warming activists are in full-throttle damage control, desperately claiming global warming causes record snow and cold…
    National Geographic published an article titled, “Blizzard of Nor’easters No Surprise, Thanks to Climate Change.”…READ ALL
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2015/02/25/cold-and-snow-destroy-global-warming-claims/

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    Mikky

    This witch hunt may well end up being more of a witch promotion, it can’t be just me that is now reading about and agreeing with these witches. There may now be many second division witches working harder to get into the premier league.

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    pat

    Martin Clark –

    here’s the BOM preliminary report again:

    25 Feb: Courier-Mail: Brian Williams: Weather bureau defends claims it exaggerated strength of Cyclone Marcia
    A preliminary report released this morning says that between 8am and 6pm last Thursday, Marcia intensified rapidly, increasing by three categories to a Category 4 in about 10 hours.
    On Thursday night it turned almost due south and reached Category 5 at 4am on Friday.
    It made landfall at Shoalwater Bay north of Yeppoon as a Category 5 at 8am…
    The seaside town of Yeppoon received significant damage, with wind gusts up to 156km/h recorded as the cyclone passed to the west.
    “A storm surge of 2m was recorded at Port Alma, but luckily this occurred near low tide,’’ it says.
    The weakening cyclone passed over Rockhampton during the early afternoon where wind gusts to 113km/h were recorded and again significant damage occurred….ETC
    The bureau says the report is preliminary and some information relating to intensity and track is preliminary information based on operational estimates and subject to change.
    http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/weather-bureau-defends-claims-it-exaggerated-strength-of-cyclone-marcia/story-fnkt21jb-1227237685342

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    TdeF

    The world has steadfastly refused to warm despite homogenization. The ice caps remain, in Antarctica at record levels. Yes, it is even snowing again in the Middle East and the US is frozen. Even Australia has had a cool summer, no matter how much people try to promote records and the cyclones just refuse to be Category 5 and the bushfires refuse to kill hundreds. No islands are drowning and some are rising. Even Pachauri has been caught practicing his soft porn on his staff and resigned. It is all falling apart, so what do the Stalinist Greens want? A good old fashioned purge! A holy war against the unbelievers. An inquisition. Damn those satellites.

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    tom0mason

    The last message to the apostates was that they will undergo a period of ‘assimilation’.
    ‘Assimilation’ is the process by which the CAGW warmisteria integrate beings, cultures and technology into their collective.
    “You will be assimilated” is just one of the few phrases employed by the UN-IPCC apparatchiks when communicating with other (non-believing) humans.

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  • #
    cedarhill

    It’s not really a “witch hunt” but merely more evidence of how the Left has kicked off their 2015-16 campaign season running up to the US Presidential election. The US Democrats, sans Obama, are minorities in the State Governors offices, the State Legislatures and the US Congress. So what to do if you’re trying to reverse the election results?

    The techniques developed by Lenin, Goebbels, etc., before they seized power are being used in their current form. Intimidate, suppress, false naratives, straw men along with the usual deceit and outright lies. Oh, and add the near monopoly of the world’s media that’s coordinating, repeating and amplifying the message. The Lefts real problem is deciding on the message de jour which explains all their polling and focus groups. The common terms of “progressive”, “denier”, etc., are sourced to these methods.

    Sadly, they work and they work very well. Pielke is just an example of how one loses real science facts to the political class.

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      Just-A-Guy

      cedarhill,

      the Left has kicked off their 2015-16 campaign season running up to the US Presidential election. The US Democrats, sans Obama, are minorities in the State Governors offices, the State Legislatures and the US Congress. So what to do if you’re trying to reverse the election results?

      In order to achieve the goal you’ve pointed out, they need a springboard, some tangible achievement.

      This is what the Macarthyist inspired witchunt is all about. That springboard is the Paris Climate Summit this year. Success there would give the democrats something to rally around. They’ll also try to use all the other international gatherings before that as stepping-stones to that end.

      The skeptics’ point is that the left is willing to sacrifice scientific integrity in order to advance their political machinations. They don’t care how many peoples careers they infect.

      Abe

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    llew Jones

    An article on funding both sides of the CAGW debate.

    Global Warming: Follow the Money

    http://www.nationalreview.com/article/414359/global-warming-follow-money-henry-payne

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    Dave in the states

    I have seen this first hand going back decades. While I was an undergraduate a good friend of mine was a graduate student and eventually obtained a PHD in the climate sciences. He told me point blank that man made global warming was bull crap and showed me much of the raw data. I won’t give the name because that is not what friends do. It could and would cost his reputation and career.

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    Tom O

    Sadly, I live in Arizona, but this jerk isn’t my representative – nor, come to think of it, anyone who has a mind of their own, either. We have dumbed down the culture through iodine deprivation and fluoridation, through lowering the standards of education and emphasizing brainwashing instead of “the basics.” That is how “libtards” grow into existence.

    A couple of strays thoughts. If you are wrong, and you know you are wrong, you will NEVER debate because you know you can’t win. If you are big enough, and you always are when you have the “elite mafia” who can’t get enough money no matter how much they have, behind you, you bully your opposition because debate isn’t necessary. And that is the situation with “climate science” as it presents itself to the public today. They are wrong, they know they are wrong, but big money and personal interests are backing them, so they will never accept data as proof there is another point of view.

    The average person will inevitably accept as the truth what they are told a thousand times a day to be the truth, regardless of whether there is any proof backing what is being said. That is why the big lie about terrorism pounded over and over makes people willing to give up their freedom so they can feel safe, all the while they are less safe because their every movement is tracked and quantified. Both of these are weapons used to demoralize people, to make them willing to do anything “the elite” wants, and will eventually lead to the extinction of “the common man” and his hopes for a better life.

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      Roy Hogue

      The average person will inevitably accept as the truth what they are told a thousand times a day to be the truth, regardless of whether there is any proof backing what is being said.

      Repetition unfortunately does tend to make a repeated assertion true unless countered immediately by someone with an appearance of authority at least as good as and preferably better than those who promulgate the untruth. Therein lies the disadvantage of the skeptics. A teacher is a greater authority in society than parents and most other people. Therefore once the teaching profession is corrupted or forced into teaching something that’s wrong, the opposition has little or no chance to counter it successfully.

      Add government leaders and the many years when there was no attempt to counter the untruth and you get today.

      Then you add the opportunists who see money to be made by jumping on the band wagon and… …well, it’s called popular culture, which now embraces climate change without significant questioning of any kind. They don’t even have a reason or an incentive to care about whether it’s correct or dead wrong.

      And yet more and more people are becoming skeptical about climate change. Perhaps crying, “Wolf,” too many times is a bad idea after all.

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  • #

    It is but an example of the rule #1 from the Climate Change Handbook:

    Rule no.1 Argument supporting Climate Change is the sign of mental acuity and a superior moral position whereas argument against Climate Change is a sign of mental deficiency and moral depravity.

    Corollary to Rule no.1 Data supporting Climate Change is sacrosanct and above suspicion whereas data that does not support Climate Change is automatically suspect and immediately subject to question and disparagement.

    And then rule#2:

    Rule no.2 Climate Change Researchers are extremely competent and are ingrained with immaculate ethics whereas any researcher who reports findings against Climate Change is automatically an incompetent possessing all the ethics of a starving alley rat.

    I have expressed these and other rules as well as definitions in my Climate Change Dictionary located here:

    http://wp.me/P4MyHW-4q

    When there are Billions of Dollars at stake in research money for investigating something that has been nothing but a chimera from day one, there are gonna be casualties. The first and foremost is that of truth. The second is those who try and speak the truth. When it comes down to millions of dollars to support Al Gore’s lifestyle, what does it matter if some honest researcher’s reputation gets trashed?

    Sarc/satire off. (Need I really?)

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      Roy Hogue

      Forgive me, I can’t resist.

      Rule no.1 Argument supporting Climate Change is the sign of mental acuity and a superior moral position whereas argument against Climate Change is a sign of mental deficiency and moral depravity.

      Corollary to Rule no.1 Data supporting Climate Change is sacrosanct and above suspicion whereas data that does not support Climate Change is automatically suspect and immediately subject to question and disparagement.

      And then rule#2:

      Rule no.2 Climate Change Researchers are extremely competent and are ingrained with immaculate ethics whereas any researcher who reports findings against Climate Change is automatically an incompetent possessing all the ethics of a starving alley rat.

      Then rule no.3 should be — Rules number 1 and 2 are a crock. 🙂 or 🙁 as appropriate to one’s understanding of reality.

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    • #
      Gary in Erko

      “the Climate Change Handbook”
      … Climate Change™
      Alt 0153 –> TM superscript

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    Ruairi

    When the state declares open season,
    On science,on knowledge and reason,
    When ‘climate denial’,
    Goes on public trial,
    Will we then have arrests for high treason?

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    Roy Hogue

    I would argue that many of the results used in climate science are not replicable in practice. They come from mysterious black box models or detailed homogenization methods, which even if the full code were available, would take individuals months of work to replicate. In the total absence of funding and grants, no one independent is going to replicate them.

    In other words, the people who have conflicts of interest that really need exposing are not skeptics reporting on public datasets which can be replicated, but climate modelers and temperature adjusters who make public announcements with billions of dollars and lives resting on them, but which have not been independently replicated. And when I say “independently” replicated, I don’t mean by another group with the same conflict of interest.

    If the evidence was so solid, and the models so reliable, climate scientists would be demanding and welcoming funding to outright skeptics to settle the issue. Instead, fans of the complex unskilled and failing models know that their assumptions are dubious and unsupported, and if a truly skeptical scientist were given equivalent resources to replicate it, they would probably tear it to shreds, exposing how fickle the projections were and how dependent it all was on a few key, baseless, guesses.

    My opinion also. It takes very little examination of the past history of the global warming “debate” (putting it in polite terms) to arrive at that conclusion. They haven’t a leg to stand on, hence they use name calling, character assassination and fear to this very day because they can’t use anything else.

    It doesn’t seem to be working well for them.

    Thank you, Jo. And forgive my duplicating so much of your statement but it gives context to my statement of support.

    I’ve given up arguing anything about the science. There isn’t any science to argue about. I just ask, where’s your evidence? And so far not a single answer except silence.

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    Dennis

    Worth reading, Piers Akerman Blog Daily Telegraph regarding a new propaganda release on fracking in Australia, and also about the IPCC Chairman;

    http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sex_the_silly_old_man_and_a_hothouse_of_indecent_desire/

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    Dennis

    Christopher Monckton warned us that our Prime Minister was under attack for his stand against the climate change industry and now an industry business interests player is having another go at replacing him.

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    This is in fact great news for climate sceptics – almost up there with the “splattergate” video.
    It was a huge blunder by the complete plonker of a congressman. Maybe he’s just being used as a puppet by someone like Holdren.

    Loads of mainstream climate scientists like Gavin, Simon Donner, Eric Steig, who have no sympathy at all with climate sceptics are criticising him for it – and even climate activist PR guy Bob Ward!

    More on the backlash in the media at
    http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/democratic-congressman-draws-backlash-over-climate-funding-probe-20150225

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    • #

      Alex H @USthermophysics 1:12 PM – 24 Feb 2015

      “Why didn’t Rep Raul Grijalva disclose the $78,854 he’s taken from environmental lobbying groups in his letters to Roger Pielke Jr. & curryja?”

      Ya Raul, from whence comes your money??

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    DoubtingDave

    That link to the national journal given by Paul Matthews above is interesting,why would the likes of Mann or Ward appear to defend their science enemies ?. When GreenPeace used FOIA to attack Dr Soon it seems obvious that person[s] unknown at the Smithsonian worked hand in glove with them,insuring that greenpeace recieved every thing they could find with soons name on it including all his emails,so have they unwittingly set a precedent in that all the emails etc of any scientist that works for or with the Smithsonian are now fair game for FOIA requests from sceptics.Is this why Mann and his ilk are concerned.

    40

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      gai

      That was my first thought.

      Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander?

      Since Raul Grijalva is demanding the universities fork over all the information on the Skeptic Scientists and Willie Soons e-mails were included, that leave the door wide open for Inhofe to demand the same for the likes of Mike Mann and more important information on James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt… of NASA. We already know that Hansen has been in bed with the activists going so far as to travel to the UK to protest.

      Congressional Republicans Preparing to Investigate NASA Temperature Tampering

      …We know the Senate is onboard with the idea of holding hearings into this scandal. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has long been one of the biggest global warming skeptics on Capitol Hill, and now that Republicans hold the chamber, he sits as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He has already promised to hold hearings on the problems with the science behind global warming, along with investigating government agencies’ environmental regulations enacted to supposedly counter it….

      U.S. Office of Government Ethics

      Executive branch employees have a continuing obligation to take the actions necessary to comply with ethics laws and regulations concerning conflicting financial interests and impartiality. Executive branch agencies are required to educate employees about these and other ethics provisions. Moreover, many employees are required to file periodic financial disclosure reports.

      …Executive branch employees have a continuing obligation to take the actions necessary to comply with ethics laws and regulations concerning conflicting financial interests and impartiality. Executive branch agencies are required to educate employees about these and other ethics provisions. Moreover, many employees are required to file periodic financial disclosure reports.
      Disqualification Required by Conflict of Interest Statute

      A criminal conflict of interest statute, 18 U.S.C. § 208, prohibits an employee from participating personally and substantially, in an official capacity, in any “particular matter” that would have a direct and predictable effect on the employee’s own financial interests or on the financial interests of:
      the employee’s spouse or minor child;
      a general partner of a partnership in which the employee is a limited or general partner;
      an organization in which the employee serves as an officer, director, trustee, general partner, or employee; or
      a person with whom the employee is negotiating for or has an arrangement concerning prospective employment.

      A “particular matter” is virtually any Government matter to which an employee might be assigned, including policy matters and matters involving specific parties, such as contracts or grants….

      We already know that impartiality is a dirty word in Obama’s government.

      MORE POPCORN!

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    • #
      gai

      Perhaps it is time for all us skeptics to send Representative Grijalva a similar letter with copies to Senator Inhofe.

      http://www.inhofe.senate.gov/contact

      Office Locations….

      Washington, DC:

      205 Russell Senate Office Building
      Washington, DC 20510-3603
      Main: (202) 224-4721
      Fax: (202) 228-0380

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    llew Jones

    Roy Spencer’s closing remarks:

    Follow the money, folks.

    So, while we wait to see just how the current witch hunt plays out (which I am told has now been extended to some skeptical-leaning think tanks), let me ask:

    1) Are you OK with the fact that U.S. energy policy has been informed by an international scientific organization (the IPCC) whose outgoing chairman this week admitted that global warming is his “religion“? Or that others in the IPCC have admitted their goal is global income redistribution? Is this the “unbiased” source of scientific information you want your government to rely on for energy policy?

    2) Are you OK with the fact that U.S. government funding for research into natural sources of climate change has been almost non-existent?

    The governmental Goliath is coming after David. It will be interesting to see what happens.

    The rest of his post here:
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/

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      David-of-Cooyal in Oz

      G’day Llew,
      I wish you hadn’t called them a “scientific” organisation. Since reading Donna Laframboise’s “The Delinquent Teenager” a few years back I’ve been aware that the IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is formed from over a hundred people nominated by their respective governments without any requirement for scientific qualifications. And they prepare their asessment reports before the scientific papers they “rely on” are published.
      Scientific? No.
      Dave B

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        Just-A-Guy

        David-of-Cooyal in Oz

        Now you’ve gone and done it!

        You’ve openned up a can of worms!

        The only reason they release the Summary for Policy Makers before the scientific(sarc) Technical Summary is because they need to adjust the science to fit their policies.

        The Summary for Policymakers will be released on Friday, 27 September 2013. The accepted Final Draft of the full Working Group I report, comprising the Technical Summary, 14 Chapters and three Annexes, will be released online in unedited form on Monday 30 September. Following copy-editing, layout, final checks for errors, and adjustments for changes for consistency with the Summary for Policymakers, it will be published online in January 2014. (Emphasis added)

        The corner stone of post-modern science is that instead of science informing policy, it’s the policy that informs the science.

        Abe

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        llew Jones

        I agree with you David. The closest expression to science I can come up with when thinking of the IPCC and the alarmist cult of climatology is pseudo science. Those words are Roy Spencer’s who is a fairdinkum scientist.

        Any examination of the rationale of the alarmists, male and female, who lead the UN’s IPCC, is that their basic assumption is of a fragile Earth which essentially stems from a Pagan world view. That’s why a little puff of human produced CO2 literally sends them (further) around the twist.

        I can think of a lot more accurate, negative expressions for those clowns but that will do for now.

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    DoubtingDave

    The Smithsonian in 2014 released an ‘official climatechange statement’ which you can find on their site smithsonian.com ,they also announced a symposium that took place on oct 9th 2014 entiteld ‘living in the anthropocene”prospects for climate,economics,health and security’ featuring [in their words] ‘some of the nations top crtical thinkers’ last name on that list was Thomas L Friedman a pulitzer winning columnist from the NEW YORK TIMES.Now which paper did the journalists that broke the dr Soon story work for ??? stinks doesnt it

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      DoubtingDave,

      Now which paper did the journalists that broke the dr Soon story work for ??? stinks doesnt it

      One of the co-authors of the Willie Soon paper, William M. Briggs, has been blogging about this scandal ever since it began. He wrote on his blog that it was Greenpeace that began the whole thing. You can read about it in his article called, “Goon Squad Fails To Distract Public From Fact That Climate Models Stink: Update 3”.

      Anyway, the whole episode stinks no matter what direction the wind is coming from.

      Abe

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      llew Jones

      The “anthropocene” is a flash name for the claim that humans are guilty, at least since the Industrial Revolution, for stuffing up the Earth’s climate. Like the rest of the broad spectrum of climate change alarmism it is really nothing more than an attempt to make anti-human ideas look “scientifically” respectable.

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    handjive

    Mel Brooks – The Inquisition

    Mel does it in song & dance.

    10

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    handjive

    I was going to link the Australian government’s page to Ian Plimer, with the comment:

    “At first they came for Ian Plimer, but I said nothing …”

    I am happy to report that the Liberal Government seem to have deleted that page.

    This was the ‘oogle link:

    Responses to Professor Ian Plimer’s 101 climate questions

    by C Change – ‎2011
    Jan 1, 2011 – In late 2011, Professor Ian Plimer—a geology professor and expert mineralogist with no background in climate science—released his latest …
    You’ve visited this page many times. Last visit: 21/01/15

    The link now leads to this page:
    http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change
    . . .
    Credit to the Abbott government.

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    SBN

    From Angus Gillespie, VP of CO2 for Shell Oil

    You will struggle now to find climate deniers inside the Oil Industry. It’s just become unacceptable.”

    The jig is nearly up, when you get fossil fuel companies no longer being able to publicly hold the line then you’re in trouble.

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    • #

      Shell’s statement indicates to me that it doesn’t tolerate dissent. That free and innovative thought is not welcome.

      (Royal Dutch) Shell has funded Greenpeace, etc for a long time. At first I suspect simply to keep them off their backs, in what used to be called a “protection racket”. But it’s become a “habit”, something that cannot be questioned, as the preaching of mantra in the indoctination process (esp. “universities”) has brain-washed even graduate Engineers. When there are not enough rational Engineers left, the industry will become too dangerous as systems decay and the believers will be unable to deal with it rationally. All that they’ll be able to do is to say that they understand the feelings of the families of the victims.

      Shell is far from unique. 🙁

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      • #
        gai

        You have it backwards. Shell (and BP) started the whole scam to get rid of the competition (Coal) they also bought on the cheep solar and wind turbine companies.

        http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/a-kook-classic/#comment-333708

        https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/proof-that-us-warming-is-mann-made-part-2/#comment-401533

        Enron, joined by BP, invented the global warming industry. I know because I was in the room….

        The basic truth is that Enron, joined by other “rent-seeking” industries — making one’s fortune from policy favors from buddies in government, the cultivation of whom was a key business strategy — cobbled their business plan around “global warming.” Enron bought, on the cheap of course, the world’s largest windmill company (now GE Wind) and the world’s second-largest solar panel interest (now BP) to join Enron’s natural gas pipeline network, which was the second largest in the world. The former two can only make money under a system of massive mandates and subsidies (and taxes to pay for them); the latter would prosper spectacularly if the war on coal succeeded.

        Enron then engaged green groups to scare people toward accepting those policies. That is what is known as a Baptist and bootlegger coalition. I sat in on such meetings. Disgraceful…

        http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/15/lessons-from-the-global-warming-industry/

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    pat

    ***from the same University Wisconsin-Madison which Fairfax/Peter Hannam reported was behind the declaration that Marcia was a Category 5 cyclone!

    25 Feb: WaPo CapitalWeatherGANG: Jason Samenow: Even as the eastern U.S. freezes, there’s less cold air in winter than ever before
    Residents of the eastern United States are enduring one of the most painfully cold periods in modern times. Since January, Syracuse, N.Y., has never had more days below zero. Bangor, Maine is witnessing its coldest month ever recorded. On Tuesday, Washington Dulles Airport experienced its most bitter morning measured so late in the season, plummeting to minus-4.
    Yet, in what may seem like a paradox, the amount of wintertime cold air circulating around the Northern Hemisphere is shrinking to record low levels. This winter (2014-2015) is on track to see the most depleted cold air supply ever measured.
    “We are still on pace to break the all-time record — no question about it,” says Jonathan Martin, a professor of meteorology at the ***University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Despite the brutal cold in the eastern U.S., the whole hemisphere is warmer this winter than it has ever been in history.”…
    In a study accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate, Martin found that four of the five smallest Northern Hemisphere cold pools on record — averaged over the winter — have occurred since 2004…
    “You just need to look around and see how big the globe is,” Martin says. “The thing this simple analysis makes clear is that there is such an obvious difference between regional weather and global climate. There’s a better way to measure global change than backyard thermometers.”…
    While some warming naysayers have attempted to discredit surface temperatures datasets because of adjustments made for quality control (the methods for which have been published in the peer reviewed journals and gained widespread acceptance), Martin says his results from upper air data are difficult to refute.
    “Skeptics have jumped all over the surface data, but you can’t really do that with temperatures about a mile above sea level [analyzed from atmospheric data],” Martin says. “They make a pristine signal.”…
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/02/25/even-as-the-eastern-u-s-freezes-theres-less-cold-air-in-winter-than-ever-before/

    Jason-CapitalWeatherGANG in the comments: Here’s a link to the full study: http://marrella.aos.wisc.edu/Cold_pool_REVISED.pdf

    also, Jason-CapitalWeatherGANG, in the comments, responds to a reader questioning the data:

    “WeatherMann555- I’m just summarizing the author’s rationale as written in the paper. I am fully aware the 0 to -1C at 850mb is often a good rain-snow proxy in the eastern U.S. I’m also fully aware it can be mild at the surface when it’s -5C at 850. But you’re really nitpicking here. The -5C is a perfectly reasonably approximation for the cold pool boundary. If you don’t like it and bother to read the paper, you’ll see he gets similar results at -10C and -15C… the cold pool is shrinking for a range of boundaries. On your final point, he was expressing his belief- which by the way is supported by a vast scientific literature”

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  • #
    TdeF

    Possibly the most infuriating problem for Big Wind and Big Carbon in protecting their billion dollar a day incomes is that they cannot cutoff the money supply for their opponents. That is simply because there is none.

    The popular revolt against the faux science of Global Warming is a grass roots one. Knock over one journalist, scientist or blogger and another one pops up. Self funded retired scientists, school teachers, geologists and independent journalists and bloggers are finding they have mass support. No one believes the silly science scare any more and career warmist scientists are having real trouble hiding what is possibly a real decline in world temperatures.

    A freezing December in Paris could well be the end of the IPCC and their thousands of loyal Nobel Laureates. The great human tragedy is that an amazing amount of real good could have been done instead of building a quarter of a million windmills. The greatest period of world peace in human history and we have built windmills. That was the tragedy of Global Warming.

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      TdeF,

      a quarter of a million windmills. The greatest period of world peace in human history and we have built windmills.

      It’s amazing how people in the wind business don’t take into account the fact that we used windmills extensively in the past. The only reason we stopped using them was because mills running on fossil fuels can run when we want them to run and not when the wind is blowing. If wind was better, we would never have stopped using them.

      Am I missing something?

      Hmmm. . .

      Abe

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      • #
        TdeF

        No, you are missing nothing. Windmills are useless, a blot on the landscape. You should see the miles of them on land and in the Baltic sea.

        At least quiet achiever Bill Gates is making sure his Billions are being used sensibly to improve our world, not handed to public officials like the UN.

        The whole UN is starting to reek. They offered the human rights prize to the monster rapist Gadaffi with his own sex den under the main university! The very concept behind the IPCC, Government’s ability to control the weather, is not even likely, so a junket for massively self indulgent pornographers like Pachauri. As for the IMF and their former head, Domenique Strauss Kahn, he swears he limited himself to four orgies a year in Paris and did not know the girls were prostitutes. Are these very powerful and rich unelected people of principle supposed to be looking after everyone?

        Australia sent over 120 people to Copenhagen. The Paris IPCC meeting should be boycotted, not only by all our politicians, but also by the ABC, BOM and all those councils who have been pushing Agenda 21 and have their holidays booked at our expense. Can we get our money back from the windmills and the desalination plants? Can we put them on ebay?

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        • #
          Just-A-Guy

          TdeF,

          I’m sorry to burst your bubble but Gates and his wife are the most highly invested people in the Agenda21 education iniciatives in the US. You know what club I’m talking about, right?

          Abe

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        • #
          Just-A-Guy

          TdeF,

          Not to mention his staunch support for the green blob.

          Take special notice to this quote at 4:40 into the video.

          “Now if we do a real great job, on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10% to 15%”

          from his estimate of projected population of 9billion ppl.

          So, how exactly do you reduce 1billion ppl in the projected population with the use of vaccines?

          Or thru better health care. unless you’re talking about reproductive contraception?

          Abe

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          • #
            TdeF

            I have never read a bad thing about Bill Gates. Innuendo is not really appreciated.

            Wretched poverty is the problem. The greatest contraceptive in history is quality of life. Wealth. It is measured in many ways but from the 19th century where 20 out of 21 children could die, a devastating existence for everyone. Misery beyond measure. Maternal mortality was 30% in Victorian days, so many children grew up with stepmothers. Given quality of life and a choice on children, the world population can stabilize. Otherwise sooner or later you run out of resources.

            However the solution is not mass murder but quality of life. This is nothing like the Club of Rome approach, survival of the richest.

            While current political Green parties are universally communists, they thrive on the underlying group of well meaning people who support what they think the Greens stand for. That is why the Greens are so politically popular and get funding, not because of their appalling, stupid, selfish and communist policies. Until this wolf in sheep’s clothing problem is solved, the world will suffer from the political strategies of the rotten Watermelons, a thin green skin on solid Red.

            Think of what could have been done with the cost of 220,000 windmills!

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            • #
              Just-A-Guy

              TdeF,

              Where is the inuendo in my post? Did you even watch the video? I’ve watched it three times in the past and watched it again before replying to you just to make sure of what I wrote.

              And even if you forget the contraception part of my statements, the Common Core – Agenda21 education reform in the US is pretty much his baby.

              . . . and his support for, belief in, propagation of CAGW is clearly stated by him in the video. Watch the video. Hear it from the horses mouth.

              A skeptic is only a skeptic if they’re a skeptic all the way. 🙂

              Abe

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              • #
                Rod Stuart

                There are a lot of rumours about Bill that might just be the tall poppy syndrome at work.
                However, he hasn’t missed a meeting of the Bilderbergers yet.
                Just coincidence? Maybe he thinks the Bilderbergers are just a bunch of lovely folks?

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            TdeF

            Thanks for the link to his speech. However it was Feb 2010, five years ago. Bill accepted what he was told that CO2 was rapidly warming the planet. Many people did. It was what we were all being told and we still being told by the IPCC and BOM and ABC and the Greens and many more, even today. Pachauri only admitted the warming had long stopped in November 2014, so they lied for 18 years. Global Warming is dying as a scare but it will take 20 years to die fully. History may show it was only an instrumental error anyway.

            In his talk, Bill’s declared his main interest was in seeds and vaccines. There is no point eliminating the world’s biggest killer, malaria, without a plan for the future. As for CO2, he promoted nuclear as a long term solution, which given the very limited fossil fuel remaining in the world, is only sensible and real Greens are against nuclear and everything else. So the alleged CO2 problem, if it ever existed, will be solved soon enough. He appears very Green in the old sense, very generous and very sensible and no communist. He does not want your money or political power. He just wants to help and is donating his vast wealth to do so. It is also clear he does not trust others like the UN to manage this for him.

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    William

    Just a digression, but of great significance to the whole global warming scam:
    On my property, over the years, I have placed five thermometers within an area of about fifteen diameter.
    Two of these are digital electronic thermometers, one is mercury, two are alcohol.
    To date, I have never had an occasion when two or more of the thermometers showed the same temperature. Granted, they all show values within 1.5 degrees of the average, but no two show the same.
    Given that the world is supposed to have warmed by 0.8 degrees over the past century, what do the observations of my thermometer collection say about this scam? What do “climate scientists” say about the implications of my results?
    Inquiring minds want to know.

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      William

      Whoops Edit: That was supposed to read “fifteen feet in diameter”

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    • #
      Mikky

      Your readings may vary but the long-enough averages won’t. If you monitor long-enough averages and find that one of them suddenly deviates from its position within the hierarchy then that may indicate a failure of that thermometer. That simple procedure is the basis of the much maligned homogenisation of temperatures, see some examples of it from Australia at my new blog:

      https://climanrecon.wordpress.com/

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    • #
      TdeF

      Good work. Yes, you have established the casual margin of error is around 0.5 C. This is sensible and people do confuse the modern digital devices with real accuracy. Reading the temperature to 0.001C means nothing if it varies 0.5C over this distance.

      This is why there is a real concern that the switch from thermometers to thermistors in the 1980s caused the sudden warming, with a 20 year plateau either side. What possibly made it worse was that to connect the two sets over their operating range, scientists used homogenization. So if you see an increase, you have to decide whether it is real or not. They obviously decided it was real as they expected to see an increase. In hindsight, is possible that 0.5C of the warming was just the change in instrumentation. That does explain an amazing coincidence.

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    Neville

    I think we should all do our best to expose these modern witch burners and support gutsy people like Pielke etc.
    But here’s an interesting thing about these corrupt witch burning fraudsters, they always seem to make a clueless mess of the science.
    Steve McIntyre has a new post highlighting one of Pachauri’s partners and one of the instigators of the false claim that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035.
    He now wants Pauchari to leave the Teri company as well. But his false science study was funded by the EU and others to the tune of many millions of dollars.
    So why don’t the MSM hound the real con merchants and fraudsters. Unbelievably at the time Pachauri said the people doubting the 2035 date were using VOODOO science and yet the idiot still retained his position until a few days ago?

    http://climateaudit.org/2015/02/26/revkins-source/#more-20687

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    handjive

    What you need to know …

    … is that a Cat 5 has sustained winds of 200km/h or greater for 10 minutes or greater.
    Trees are not just decimated (10%loss), there are only about 10% left standing.
    Cat 4 cyclones snap trees with metre wide trunks.
    The very few that survive a Cat 5 but are completely leafless.

    I will also make the point that cyclone proof houses have a roof pitch of 30-40° and no verandahs.
    These would have been lucky to survive a Category 3 cyclone.
    ~ ~ ~
    Photo comparison:

    Cyclone Lam cat 4 (via twitter, abc presenter joe o’brien)

    AND

    Cyclone Marcia cat 5(?) (via mamamia: Why is no one talking about THIS cyclone?)
    . . .
    I think I know why no-onw is talking about that cyclone.

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    pat

    for the record. searched today for “Jennifer Marohasy” news stories re BOM/TC Marcia. a story, surely, of great National interest…and topical:

    apart from this blog, which has no comments, ABC apparently never reported Jennifer Marohasy’s questions for BOM re TC Marcia:

    ABC Brisbane: Mornings with Steve Austin: Was TC Marcia really a category 5 cyclone?
    23 February 2015 , 11:05 AM by Gabrielle Burke
    Dr Jennifer Marohasy is a biologist with a house in Yeppoon, and she told Steve Austin that TC Marcia was a category 3…SOUND CLOUD (CAN’T PLAY)
    Steve spoke with Rob Webb, the Queensland Regional Director at the Bureau of Meteorology, about how they measured the cyclone and predicted a category 5…SOUND CLOUD (CAN’T PLAY)
    http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2015/02/was-tc-marcia-really-a-category-5-cyclone.html

    News Ltd apparently did not carry Jennifer Marohasy’s questions for BOM re TC Marcia in any of their newspapers other than Brisbane’s Courier-Mail.
    no news.com.au coverage, no regionals, no Australian, nothing on Sky News.

    Google has “Explore in depth (317 more articles)” under the following pair of links:

    Views on global warming led to weather bureau staff exaggerating …
    Courier Mail-24 Feb 2015

    Was TC Marcia really a category 5 cyclone?
    ABC Online (blog)-22 Feb 2015

    however, there is nothing but those two articles, and no ability to see “omitted” articles, once u click to look at them.

    separately, in google results for Jennifer, there is just:

    Cyclonic inflation
    On Line opinion-22 Feb 2015

    and

    Weather bureau defends claims it exaggerated strength of Cyclone …
    Courier Mail-24 Feb 2015
    (not in any other News Ltd outlets)

    neither of the following stories show up in a search for Marohasy. you would have to know and search the headlines to find them. their urls are in jo’s Category Five Storms… thread:

    9 News: 9 News: Nicholas McCallum: Biologist questions Bureau of Meteorology’s ‘category 5′ modelling on Cyclone Marcia

    24 Feb: Daily Mercury, Mackay Qld: Researcher suggests Cyclone Marcia was a category 3, not 5
    (Daily Mercury is an APN Media outlet)

    THE MSM IS THE PROBLEM.

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  • #
    Just-A-Guy

    pat,

    I found four others and two rss feeds. I tried the search in google the way you described it in your post and received 695 results. Most of the ones on the first three pages were blogs, fb, twitter etc, no news. I stopped there ’cause who has time for google, right?

    but

    There is a way to narrow down the amount of results in google to just exactly what you’re looking for but it takes a little more work than just a plain google search. If you want to know how, just ask.

    Abe

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  • #
    pat

    Just-A-Guy –

    i have multiple means of narrowing my search, depending what i’m looking for.
    what i wanted, in this case, was NEWS results on “jennifer marohasy” for the past week, so i searched her name, then clicked “news”, then clicked “search tools”, clicked “recent” changed it to “past week”.

    in fact, even jennifer’s first article on 24 Feb in the Courier-Mail:

    – Climate researcher questions Cyclone Marcia’s category 5 status by Sam Phillips & Brian Williams –

    does not show up in such a google news search.

    you would have to google the headline, if you knew it.

    OR YOU WOULD HAVE TO KNOW COURIER-MAIL SPELT HER NAME INCORRECTLLY AS “jennifer mOrohasy” – MOR INSTEAD OF MAR, in the first article, but not the two followups.
    if u did the same search above for “jennifer mOrohasy”, (for the “past week” that is) u would get one result, jennifer’s first Courier-Mail article.

    btw i’m still trying to find out if Courier-Mail published any of the 3 articles, includng BOM’s defense, in the print editions. does anyone know? editions to check would be 23, 24 & 25 Feb, because the first article is sometimes dated 23 & sometimes 24 Feb. the other two articles are dated 25 Feb.

    Fairfax/Guardian gave her no coverage.

    in case anyone hasn’t seen Calem Smith’s 3 min-plus youtube, here it is:

    24 Feb: Jennifer Marohasy: When Measurements Don’t Matter: Calem Smith (Youtube)
    http://jennifermarohasy.com/2015/02/measurements-dont-matter-calem-smith/

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      pat,

      Google this.

      Does this work for you?

      The advanced search feature you’re using, as well as the plain vanilla search are inadequate for doing drilling-down.

      There are other short cuts but I’d need to know you’re interested ’cause of the work involved typing everything up.

      Abe

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  • #
    lmwd

    There is an excellent editorial in today’s Australian! Climate alarmism rests on faith. I’ve said before this paper has been inching away from unquestioning support for some time.

    AFTER two stints as pope of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Rajendra “Patchy” Pachauri has seized the opportunity of a pause in global warming to announce, first, his resignation and, second, his undying faith in the cause.

    In a letter to be read from pulpits and weather stations across the world, Dr Pachauri vindicates the trust placed in him as pope of the IPCC by declaring that for him, “the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”

    It doesn’t take much faith in the scientific method to accept, as The Australian does, that during the past century or so industrial development and greenhouse gases have been associated with rising temperature. But it’s the overheated rhetoric on climate that shows we are often dealing with a dogmatic quasi-religion, not science.

    Lightning and a thunderous voice from the clouds may announce a revelation that believers revere as settled doctrine. But science has a habit of unsettling; as surprising results mount up, they put yesterday’s theories under strain. The current pause in warming may — or may not — mask an underlying trend that fits the global warming thesis. The general mechanism whereby greenhouse gases trap energy emitted by the Earth and push up its temperature may be well understood but much else is not — and should not be anointed as dogma.

    Climate models are attempts to mimic the complex interplay between human activity and nature; it’s dopey to hold them out as prophecy. The degree of man-made warming to come, its likely effects good and bad, and the case for remedial action balanced against other claims on scarce public resources are all matters for expert advice, rational debate and decisions open to review as new data comes to hand.

    It’s not blasphemy to probe the data, expose the false alarmism of the now notorious “hockey stick” graph or point out the lousy track record of climate models. It’s basic economics and common humanity to wonder aloud whether improving water quality in poor countries would be a better use of funds than the more speculative climate mitigation projects.

    Yet, as the 2009 Climategate emails showed, those prone to alarmism react to dissent and debate as if they are high priests of a besieged cult rather than scientists open to inquiry. Dr Pachauri’s panel serves up ex cathedra rulings on phenomena beyond its control and unbelievers — even “lukewarmers”, in the memorable coinage of Matt Ridley, former science editor of The Economist — find themselves anathematised.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/climate-alarmism-rests-on-faith/story-e6frg71x-1227240600787

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      David-of-Cooyal in Oz

      Thanks for that Imwd. I’m not a subscriber to the Oz, but have bought the weekend edition every Saturday for several years. To give them credit, book reviews they’ve published over those years introduced me to Kininmonth, Plimer and Laframboise whose work nourished my skepticsm. That, interestingly was initiated by Gore’s “Inconveniant Truth”, not quite the response he wanted I suspect.

      Conversely, the SMH won’t publish anything skeptical, by declared editorial policy, so I wasn’t too surprised to see them blaming global warming for the holes found iin Siberia , according to this report this morning. An interesting picture. A short reference to harvesting methane from nearby fields was not explored. That the SMH so quickly assigned responsibility to Global warming, raises my skeptical hackles, but I have no expertise in this area to seriously challenge them. I did find that methane boils at minus 162C under normal conditions. Does anyone have knowledge in this area?

      “>http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/scientists-know-there-are-more-giant-craters-in-siberia-but-are-nervous-to-even-study-them-20150226-13q7b5.html

      Cheers,
      Dave B

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        diogenese2

        Dave – this is a re-run of a story which emerged last summer. Google PINGO . These structures have been known about, counted and studied for centuries. Is just that most of the MSM did not know about them until now!
        Arthur C Clarke said he did not believe in UFO’s because he had seen so many of them. You only have to look up. He observed when people do for the first time they are amazed what they see, some people are unaware that you can see the moon in daytime.

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        • #
          ianl8888

          … most of the MSM did not know about them

          I’ve given a more technical comment below, but yes, the MSM are particularly determined to remain completely ignorant of geological science

          30

        • #
          David-of-Cooyal in Oz

          Thanks for that D. I will search Pingo.
          Cheers,
          Dave B

          00

      • #
        ianl8888

        An interesting picture

        Yes indeed

        The permafrost is a frozen layer, uneven in thickness, of mostly groundwater about 3-5m below the soil level (oftentimes deeper). It causes some difficulties for drilling 🙂

        Look at the SMH picture – the surface is frozen under several metres of snow and ice. So how does climate melt the permafrost at even moderate depth without first melting the surface ice ? [Someone will say: “That happened in summer but was not found until winter”. The outburst area needs a geological analysis of the sub-surface strata before saying why an outburst occurred where it did, and in any case, why was the crater then not filled with snow during the winter months prior to discovery ?]

        The area is an oil/gas field, with the hydrocarbons at depth in the reservoir under enormous pressure. Methane outbursts are not uncommon, depending on reservoir depth/pressure, fault zones, joint patterns, permeability and porosity in the host strata. Even gassy coal seams being mined at depth may be somewhat prone to outbursts, and have nothing to do with climate

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        • #
          David-of-Cooyal in Oz

          Many thanks Ian. Some hours after I posted my comment An image came back to me of something I saw on TV a year ot more back, but it was rather vague. I was aware of permafrost (undergrad geography in the 1960s), but not in the detail you’ve given.
          Cheers,
          Dave B

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    pat

    just up at WUWT:

    Anatomy of a climate witch-hunt letter from U.S. Representative Raúl M. Grijalva
    The letter below from Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona speaks to the worst sort of witch hunt tactics that we’ve seen yet…
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/26/anatomy-of-a-climate-witch-hunt-letter-from-u-s-representative-raul-m-grijalva/#comment-1870085

    i’ve posted:

    26 Feb: UPI: Brooks Hays: Democrats instigate climate funding probe, get pushback
    Several members of Congress have begun sending letters to universities, energy companies and trade associations, seeking information about funding to scientists who have been critical of climate change.
    Critics have been quick to label the effort a “witch hunt,” but those responsible say the outreach is a logical response to revelations that one of the country’s leading climate skeptics had been receiving funding from major players in the energy industry…
    Letters were sent to 100 companies and organizations signed by Sens. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., while additional letters were mailed to universities signed by Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz…
    http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2015/02/26/Democrats-instigate-climate-funding-probe-get-pushback/6901424960569/

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  • #
    thingadonta

    Part of the very reason we have democracy, and why public servents usually get paid so little (at least lower down the scale), is generally because of human bias and potential conflicts of interest.

    This problem is not just confined to the corporate sector; all governments, public servents, and academics on government payrolls, struggle with self serving bias and conflicts of interest. That is partly why we can vote governments out.

    The only people who often dont understand this, is those on the government payrolls themselves; they have potential conflict of interest in that their work often needs to come up with certain results in order to justify their existence, get promotions, advance an agenda, and so on.

    What is amazing is just how blind they often are to their own conflicts of interest, even though they are acutely aware of this problem within commercialism.

    10

  • #
    pat

    Another Ian –

    LOL. Meyer’s letter is hilarious. keeping our humour is vital, especially now.

    Just-A-Guy –

    the custom search results came out the same as mine, with the one missing with the wrong spelling.

    i’d be more amenable to offers of some tech help if World Cup cricket wasn’t on.
    the search method i’m using is very quick, & i usually find what i’m looking for, so i’ll plod along and look out for u once the cricket’s done with a couple of serious tech probs u might help me solve. howzat!

    meanwhile, a friend brought me the Courier-Mails cover the Marohasy dates. the 2 Jennifer articles ended up as a single article on page 8, 24 Feb, with quite a few omissions, making it weaker overall.

    BOM’s defence is on page 15, 26 Feb, & is basically the online version.

    some references, without mentioning Jennifer by name in an Editorial on page 22, 25 Feb:

    Editorial: Marcia can tell us a lot for the next big blow
    THE only certainty about the forces of nature are their unpredictability – the way they shift capriciously from the benign to the destructive and back again with little or no warning.
    As such, forecasters charged with predicting – and thus mitigating – the impact of possible natural disasters face the most challenging of tasks…
    As with any natural disaster, careful and honest analysis of all procedures and responses should be undertaken after every cyclone passes – not to lay blame for any perceived shortcomings, but to assess how we may be able to respond even more effectively.
    With Cyclone Marcia, questions have been raised about the Bureau of Meteorology possibly overstating the severity of the storm in the lead-up to it making landfall – based on readings apparently taken outside the most potent zone of the weather system.
    Was Marcia a Category 5 or weaker?
    And if the latter was actually the case, does the fact authorities consistently warned of it being a Category 5 risk instilling a degree of complacency given the fact we scraped through this event without loss of life or significant injury?…
    But warnings and threat levels carry with them varying degrees of urgency and response. And we can’t afford for people to think we can always “dodge a bullet” when a storm classed as Category 5 is steaming down on us if this one was not as severe. As always, the more information we have – and the more accurate it is – the better…
    http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx

    Jennifer achieved a lot by speaking out.

    lmwd –

    thanx for posting the Australian editorial. reason may be on the rise.

    now back to the cricket.

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    pat

    oops…”brought me the Courier-Mails COVERING the Marohasy dates”, not “cover”.

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    pat

    ouch, meant to say the most glaring omissions from the print editions of the Courier-Mail were what i described on jo’s “Category Five storms…” thread as:

    the killer lines are:

    – Systems Engineering Australia principal Bruce Harper, a modelling and risk assessment consultant who analyses cyclones, said it was often difficult to determine whether a storm was a marginal 3, 4 or 5.
    ***What was important was that after the bureau conducted its post-storm analysis, it told people that they experienced category 3 impacts as it passed over the land.
    It was dangerous for residents to be thinking they had survived a category 5 when it was a storm that degraded quickly.”
    http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/climate-researcher-questions-cyclone-marcias-category-5-status/story-fnkt21jb-1227236188297

    then i added:

    – but none of this is in quotation marks. who is saying this? Harper?

    if BOM has now said it was a Cat 3, MSM should all be correcting the record by now. –

    no wonder people haven’t heard that BOM allegedly “told people that they experienced category 3 impacts as it passed over the land”.

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    pat

    Bolt’s blog stopped accepting comments around midday today, with 145 anti-Turnbull comments (with a couple of exceptions) on his “Turnbull knows his last best hope to become Prime Minister is to destroy Abbott by Tuesday” thread.

    Tim Blair has rarely blogged during the recent attacks on the PM & today he simply blogs that he is on holidays…again…his readers are bemused.

    Coalition ministers turn on Tony Abbott
    Sky News Australia-15 hours ago

    every other line in the following, we are reminded Hartigan admires/supports Tony Abbott:

    27 Feb: Age: Former News Ltd boss John Hartigan calls for Tony Abbott to go
    Jared Lynch and Madeleine Heffernan
    Former News Corporation Australian boss John Hartigan has called for Prime Minister Tony Abbott to step aside in the nation’s best interest.
    Mr Hartigan, who is now chairman of Prime Media, said he admired Mr Abbott…
    Even his strongest supporters are now detractors…
    “Something has got to give and he’s obviously not going to take the tension on the line…
    Mr Hartigan also complained that political uncertainty was hurting the economy…
    Mr Hartigan was not the only business leader to comment on the turmoil surrounding the government on Friday.
    Announcing a disappointing half-yearly profit result for supermarket giant Woolworths, CEO Grant O’Brien said political instability was hurting consumer spending.
    Mr O’Brien said the ingredients that normally drive the consumer economy- low interest rates, relatively weak unemployment, declining food and fuel prices – were in place.
    But he “stability is a really important thing for all of those elements to turn into consumer spending. And stability across a number of factors, not the least is political stability…

    28 Feb: SMH: Business turns on Tony Abbott as cabinet urged to act
    Mark Kenny, Jared Lynch, Madeleine Heffernan
    In a development certain to add to the pressure on Mr Abbott ahead of the cabinet meeting, former News Limited boss and now head of Prime Media John Hartigan said Mr Abbott’s position now was unrecoverable…
    But both Mr Morrison, who has been tipped as a likely treasurer under a future Malcolm Turnbull prime ministership, and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop also reminded Mr Abbott that he held the leadership only at the will of his parliamentary colleagues – a direct repudiation of his previous claim to have the direct mandate of the Australian people.
    “Well it is a matter for colleagues, as John Howard said ‘who leads the party is always a gift of the party room’,” Mr Morrison told Fairfax Radio’s Neil Mitchell.
    Speaking in Auckland, Ms Bishop described it as “self-evident” that the individual members of the party room are able to elect the leader and the deputy leader of the Liberal Party…
    With the mood in the government febrile, the Bishop and Morrison comments appeared to be pre-emptive shots across the bow of the Prime Minister and his supporters not to use the threat of public retaliation as defence against challenge…

    27 Feb: Age: James Massola With Lisa Cox: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop nods off during Tony Abbott’s speech to NZ PM John Key
    PHOTO CAPTION: Julie Bishop nods off during Tony Abbott’s speech in New Zealand. Photo: ***ABC

    At one point, her head even dropped momentarily before snapping back to attention.
    Mr Abbott laughed off Ms Bishop’s nap later on Friday, declaring his deputy “incredibly hard-working” and a magnificently successful minister for foreign affairs.
    “I’ve dozed off from time to time at conferences, all of us have from time to time dozed off at conferences. I’ve missed some very great speeches because occasionally I’ve been contemplating, as it were, contemplating the inside of my eyeball,” he said…
    Ms Bishop took to Twitter and said she was “not sleeping [but] merely contemplating the media obsession with trivia”….
    Earlier on Friday the deputy Liberal Party leader gave off a completely different look, directing a withering glare at a New Zealand journalist who asked her about the prime ministership.
    When asked whether she planned to stand against Malcolm Turnbull if the leadership was thrown open, Ms Bishop delivered a scathing response.
    “These are hypothetical questions and this is all based on speculation and rumour,” Ms Bishop said. “I’ve not seen any source attributed to any particular member or minister. So it’s hypothetical, it is speculation, I don’t intend to add to it.”

    —–

    one of the leading attack dogs against the PM, Murdoch’s John Lyon, who is now shilling for Turnbull to be PM, writing about Malcolm in 1991:

    SMH: Raging Turnbull
    by John Lyons
    To celebrate Good Weekend’s 30th anniversary, we have selected 30 of the magazine’s best features of the past three decades. This article was originally published on April 13, 1991.
    Suddenly, he can turn. The charmer becomes the menacer, the defender of freedom of speech its most sophisticated challenger. He laughs, and disarms, but always be on guard. Remember, he can turn…
    His language says it all: he talks about “retaliation”, how he is at “war”, how certain fights are only “skirmishes”, a smaller part of the bigger “battle”. He says, “For some reason I exercise a peculiar fascination for some people in this city [Sydney]. The stories about me are unbelievable.”…
    Armed with an awesome, carefully cultivated network of contacts, Turnbull roams the corporate landscape, a hired gun after the main chance…
    He has some powerful enemies – he nicknames himself “Satan” – but even more powerful friends…
    Not everyone can smile while making a threat; it takes a particular personal toughness. “My tentacles spread to New York,” Turnbull says, smiling, when he finds out I am moving to New York. Almost before the threat hits its target. the charm is back on…
    Sometimes Turnbull suggests he has been badly done by, the victim of pernicious words from envious competitors; at other times, he becomes one of the most aggressive people you can meet, savagely attacking his enemies…
    Why does Malcolm Turnbull chill so many people?…
    She (Lucy Turnbull) has a personal fitness trainer and is a prized client of Sydney’s leading boutiques. Politically, she describes herself as “small-l liberal” – “I was disturbed when Malcolm joined the Liberal Party” – and says she thinks she has been instrumental in her husband’s relinquishing his political ambitions (he once wanted to be Prime Minister) on the grounds that the personal costs to family life are too high…
    Turnbull continued to be an unconventional student, At the University of Sydney he paid a friend $30 a week (plus carbon paper) to take notes for him – often he wasn’t in class…
    Nonetheless, with referees such as Sir Laurence Street, Neville Wran and Consolidated Press managing director Trevor Kennedy, Turnbull was awarded a Rhodes scholarship in 1977, leaving to study at Oxford…
    Turnbull, whom Dale knew only as “Malcolm the Footballer” because of his solid frame, announced to Dale he wanted to be Prime Minister by the time he was 40.
    “For which party?” asked Dale.
    “It doesn’t matter,” responded Malcolm the Footballer…
    The Turnbull game plan is hard to pick. He says it’s simple: he wants to continue doing what he is doing – merchant banking. He says he has given away any political ambitions: “I’m not sure that I’m really suited to the democratic process.”…
    http://www.smh.com.au/action/printArticle?id=61036358

    this man could be PM next week????

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      Len

      One of the traits of the Psychopath is charm. The fools in the press promote how charming Malcolm is not realising the connection.

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    JJM Gommers

    This issue of Mcarthyism is serious, I experienced this one time in my career, it would be a good scenario for a movie. I have worked for companies identified as “”Big Oil”” so nowadays I can’t do much because of that I am contageous, however I will have something in mind to battle the CO2 hype.

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    Wayne Job

    Reading thru this article and the comments it would seem that the revolution has begun, viva la revolution.
    Investigations into shonky temperature series, investigations abound into witch hunts, those that use politics
    as science offerings will in the fullness of time be made to look like idiots, as all others before them using fake
    science to pursue an agenda have also in the fulness of time been shown as false prophets, many examples
    are in the history books. The Earth refuses as it always does to co-operate and the normal cycles will continue
    as they always do. Being a little old now I have lived thru the ups and downs of climate and sadly for the war-mists
    wether they like it or not the weather is in a cool cycle tending to cold, as old Sol also has his moods, dictated by
    the giant almost suns in our solar system. Astrology it is not, it is called science, and the music of the spheres is
    a beat, a harmonic that is periodic and predictable. This cooling cycle that is starting to be seen is not a good thing the
    last one was called the LIA, each and every one from now on will be cooler. Like boy scouts we should be preparing.
    Thank you Jo you will go down in history as one of the good guys.

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