Which country has the most skeptics? Australia tops name-calling, limited, biased, ambiguous survey!

Graham Readfearn, at Ecowatch, thought the USA would top the list. He was wrong:

Published in the journal Global Environmental Change, the study found that 17 percent of Australians were “climate skeptics.”

Norwegians come in second at 15 percent, followed by New Zealanders at 13 percent and then Americans at 12 percent. The UK tied for fifth with Sweden and Finland, where 10 percent of people were skeptics. The lowest ranked country for climate skepticism was Spain, where only two percent of people were classified as climate skeptics.

The real number of skeptics is much higher. A better, more accurate survey in Australia showed that about 53% of the Australian population are skeptical; I note they stopped that annual survey after getting these clear results.

This survey of surveys were more ambiguous than usual — “rising temperatures” from any cause is now man-made. The surveyors merely asked if you thought “rising temperatures” (magnitude unspecified) were “dangerous” , and so you know what to say, they added “for the environment”. All spin and attitude, otherwise meaningless. This is all so horribly confounded:

While the survey did not directly ask people if they accepted the science linking climate change to human activities, the respondents were asked how dangerous rising temperatures would be for the environment.

People who thought rising temperatures were “not very dangerous” or “not dangerous at all” and who also thought claims about environmental issues were exaggerated were classed as “climate skeptics.” While the authors accept in the paper that their approach was limited, they argue that the method enables them to do a valuable comparison of skepticism across countries.

Well that redefines “skeptic” somewhat. Anyway… people were more skeptical if their governments were untrustworthy, and if that is the “driver” we can thank Rudd and Gillard for Australia’s shining role in this inconsequential meta-survey:

Generally, the study found that climate skepticism tended to be associated with a lack of trust in governments and “positive attitudes” towards private enterprise.

Those who can compete and win will want to; those who can’t, prefer government-managed redistribution. I’m not putting a judgement on this, it is simply the way it is.

The group the “progressives” now love to hate:

Skeptics also tended to be male and tended to vote conservative.

What about the free will option — where people hear a theory and are unconvinced by irrational, contradictory arguments that break the scientific method. The globe stopped warming and paused when emissions were rising, the drought stopped and the dams filled, and the hotspot was never glimpsed.  Children still know what snow is.

Across all countries, the authors wrote that only three factors—“political orientations (conservative), gender (male) and being unconcerned about environmental issues”—were “relatively consistent predictors” of climate change skepticism.

Their cause and effect assumptions are back to front. I used to vote Green back in the days when I was unskeptical. Now I don’t. My skepticism could be considered a “relatively constant predictor” of my intention to vote for parties that are unskeptical. With more voters being swinging and less loyal than ever, the old assumptions about people being voters first and thinkers second needs to be reassessed.

 

 

 

9.2 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

192 comments to Which country has the most skeptics? Australia tops name-calling, limited, biased, ambiguous survey!

  • #
    Gee Aye

    Surely as a scientist you were sceptical even when voting green? Do you mean perhaps that you were ignorant?

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    • #
      Bulldust

      Jo has described before how she used to assume that the CAGW stories sounded reasonable on the surface and that she became skeptical as she learned more about the subject. It would be prejudiucial to be overly skeptical before knowing anything about the field. On a more lay-basis I followed a similar path. I saw the Goracle’s film and was a tad alarmed, and started looking into the facts behind it. Needless to say, in the long run Gore’s film has probably done more harm than good for the CAGW cause. That’s what happens when you make alarming predictions which simply don’t bear out over time. That and all the scientific inaccuracies and disingenuous deceptions in the piece.

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      • #
        Gee Aye

        So she was selectively sceptical? A scientist on one hand but uncritical about things like CAGW that supported her political view? You think she is saying she both became sceptical of CAGW and sceptical as a thinker at the same time. So now it is my turn to disagree as I recall that she quite enjoyed throwing alternative theories into debates to stir up the hegemony back then.

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        • #
          James Bradley

          Gee Aye,

          “I recall that she quite enjoyed throwing alternative theories into debates to stir up the hegemony back then.”

          You make it sound like it’s a bad thing.

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        • #
          Ceetee

          That’s ridiculous Gee Aye. She has never struck me as someone pushing any party political barrow. In fact nobody here is particularly overt in that way. Many here may even be left leaning. If you know so much about her political views why don’t you enlighten us as to what they are because I certainly don’t know and frankly never cared. Politics are personal, this isn’t.

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        • #
          Bulldust

          Why are all your arguments 100% black and white? I am more skeptical of a politician making an election promise than a dentist telling me what to do about a root canal job. Being skeptical of one group, thought, ideology, scientific field flooded with tax dollars, politicians, etc can be in varying degrees. It simply isn’t a black and white, you’re skeptical or you’re not. Everyone is “selectively skeptical” in this way. I have my impressions of what Jo said over the years, but I’d rather she speak for herself. The gist of what I said in 1.1 is accurate ARAIK.

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          OriginalSteve

          As a general comment, at least skeptics are open to at least discussing opposing theories/ideas.

          Einsteins comments about when scientists did gang up on him and all that was needed was one person to prove him wrong, I’d suggest that so far skeptics have taken a similar and fair line.

          As a throw away comment I find skeptics are like dog owners and CAGW mob like cta owners – dog owners will geenrally entertain the idea of owning a cat along with a dog, whereas from my experince cat owners would never touch a dog.

          I guess dog oners are less dogmatic…..( sorry…bad pun )

          Hate mail to usual location….all opunyuns treated equally…..

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          • #
            mark

            As a general comment re dog or cat owners and sceptisism…you would be wrong. I have both types and a number of each…including fish…and children…a number of both types.

            I firmly believe in the scientific method. CAGW doesn’t!

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      • #

        I was mildly concerned until I asked a scientist “what about water vapour?” in his models and he stated that the role of water wasn’t important because it couldn’t be controlled.

        That was probably the point at shich I became an infidel and a heretic.

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        • #
          ianl8888

          Yes, except that water vapour is promulgated as the positive feedback

          I’ve asked that question – why has humidity as measured by the satellite grids not increased – and received the same answer as you … not important

          So I reply: no positive feedback, no crisis. One can guess the number of sensible answers that induces 🙂

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        • #
          Another Ian

          Bernard

          I’ve posted this before but as it fits with your comment I repeat the gist.

          I have a background training in modelling (where I was warned of the “DFS” – data free statement among other dubious practices) and have worked with modelling in a rangeland context – but not the CAGW area directly.

          I got my start into this about the time the LSM were burying the “Next Ice Age” of the 1970’s.

          In 1988 I was at a seminar on plant physiology at a US university and in discussion the presenter mentioned that he had just seen the workings of his area of the latest global modelling effort. He didn’t name names but it seems that Hansen was the only one in 1988.

          And he was horrified with how plant evapotranspiration was included – being done with a model of one plant stomate whose results were extraploated to cover the world!

          Then around early 2000’s I related this at a meeting that included people from the Australian efforts in this field. And I said I hoped that with more powerful computers and more knowledge that this had improved. To be told that, if anything, things were even worse!

          So, if this field of modelling is the sole demonstration of CAGW then I am a rejecter until there is a much better demonstration of why.

          And that will include CAGW modelling fraternity “ fessing up” with not only “what we’ve included” but “How well this has been included” and show their code to prove it.

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          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            You mention extrapolation.

            When the Hawke government in 1986 stacked the board of the CSIRO with political mates, with Neville Wran as chairman, the only possible explanation was that they intended to direct our science to suit their political objectives.

            Some time later we saw a front page headline: “Cows Australia’s biggest source of greenhouse gases”. A CSIRO scientist named Galbally working in Tasmania had discovered this.

            Now this was a monstrous lie. I don’t believe any scientist by any name said any such thing. Clearly what had happened was that the CSIRO’s now Marxist partisan publicity machine had taken a bit of Dr Galbally’s work, selected a bit that suited their purpose and extrapolated that across Australia, then published the lie to a gullible MSM.

            I knew that to extrapolate that work was ludicrous, because the methane emitted by cows varies hugely according to what they have eaten. Tasmania’s fodder is representative of only a very small part of Australia.

            But at that time so little research had been done into “greenhouse emissions” that the lie was allowed to stand for years, and was taught in our schools and universities. All for the purpose of corrupting democracy by persuading the electorate that they should vote away property rights for those villainous farmers.

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            • #
              Another Ian

              Ted

              “Extrapolation is the fertile mother of error”

              Quoted as said by the designer of the DH Comet 1 (Herschel Smith in “A History of Aeronautical Piston Engines”

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            • #
              Another Ian

              Ted

              And remember Peter Beattie’s big red map of dryland salinity hazard in Queensland?

              And ask what happened and where it was – heard any mention in the latest Qld budget?

              Redback in Qld Country Life suggested that it be framed, labelled “Red Poles” and donated to the Qld Art Gallery as their answer to “Blue Poles” – on the basis that its cost and controversy were similar

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              • #
                Ted O'Brien.

                I don’t recall seeing that map, but it sounds like more of the same kind of thing. I do remember that Peter Beattie’s mates gave him a job overseas until the Dr Patel inquiry was over.

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              • #
                Another Ian

                Ted

                Try the map on page 25 of

                http://www.southwestnrm.org.au/sites/default/files/uploads/ihub/salinityhazardrelease3.pdf

                And remember that the Queensland Salinity Management Handbook already said words to the effect that

                “In Queensland in areas of less than 600 mm of rainfall there is a negligible chance of dryland salinity”

                and the 600 mm isohyet runs about the upper edge of that area.

                The reason is that most of the rainfall is summer and in storms so the chance of deep percolation is reduced compared to Mediterranean climate areas.

                Jennifer Marohasy covered this on her blog at the time

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        • #
          Sheri

          “he stated that the role of water wasn’t important because it couldn’t be controlled.” Yep, that’s a sure sign science is missing from the equation.

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          • #
            Rod Stuart

            Frequently people are derogatory concerning the population of the “Apple Isle”, Tasmania.
            In that it has, by and large, been decimated by the diabolical religion of the Greens, ought not to incur wrath, but sympathy.
            However, it is home to a blog which I am certain many folks, and I am thinking of Sheri and Rereke in particular, would find refreshing.
            The latest post is called “The subversion of Science by Green-Left Politics”.
            John Jay lives only a few minutes drive away from our place.

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        • #
          ian hilliar

          Bernd, that was not a scientist. Not an atmospheric physicist, not a geologist, not an astrophysicist. That thing , my friend, was a mathematical modeller, Before it became a climate modeller, it was probably producing models for the advertising industry. You might think that that job description would require excellence in mathematics, but you would be wrong. They don’t even do statistics.

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      • #
        Dennis

        I am a sceptic but I am not a qualified sceptic. Early on I was taken in by the UN IPCC propaganda and even considered solar panels for my home to deal with the rising cost of electricity. I supported the Howard Coalition Government when they signed the Kyoto Protocol and with the Office of Climate Change they established proposals to enable Australia to lower greenhouse gas emissions, carbon pollution was not talked about at that time. And global warming was the hot subject. As it turns out the initiatives of those days and since have enabled Australia to meet the Kyoto targets to limit emissions, despite the foreign and internal criticism that Australia is falling behind on what they call its obligations.

        Thanks to this website and the many informed contributors here, and to other well informed journalists and scientists, the minority who get published, I am now a confirmed sceptic and the more thought I put into the deceptive propaganda the more certain I am that climate change is a massive con. Of course the climate changes, Earth Cycles are natural and the driving forces make human activity pale into insignificance, in my opinion.

        I do not want to go over well covered ground but to think that wind turbines are new green technology completely ignores the many uses of windmills for hundreds of years and that they have been replaced by superior technology that is reliable, wind or no wind. I wonder why the extremists have not pushed for timber sailing ships to replace modern shipping using metals fossil fuels. Surely the spin doctors could create a fairy tale, sailing ships are attractive vessels and they do use renewable energy.

        What I struggle with is that governments with access to the best advice possible have gone along with the madness and worse, the trillions of wasted dollars and adverse impact on economies and cost of living and running businesses. What started as a socialist plot worked out at The Fabian Society in England in the late 1800s finally gained traction after WW2 had ended and good people decided to for the United Nations to put good the extensive damage to countries involved and the refugees resulting from war being infiltrated by the socialists and fellow travellers soon after the UN was established. A former Labor Attorney General from Australia, a lawyer, offered his opinion on how international law or treaties could be written and signed by all member nations and filed away for use when the sovereign laws of member nations blocked socialist agenda. Prime Minister John Howard was once asked how that works, he replied only if a government agrees to it. European Economic Union member nations, for example.

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        • #
          Another Ian

          Dennis

          Unfortunately in my experience governments have a bad habit of ignoring the best available advice if it looks like that will be against the “Current Government Enthusiasm”.

          I refuse to add another oxymoron in describing that as “Current Government Wisdom”

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        • #
          PeterPetrum

          Dennis, your experience, and “amateur” climate skepticism almost exactly mirrors mine. I was a believer (but never voted Green, Jo – I have always seen them for what they are) until my normal scientific curiosity led me to read more widely, and here I am. I had a reply from Dennis Jensen today (the WA Liberal who is leading a push to have a Government inquiry into the CAGW scam) to my letter congratulating him on his initiative. I am hopeful that some of the Lib MPs will come out of the closet prior to Paris!

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          • #
            Janet Thompson

            Peter, I’m reading on my iPhone and the screen is too small. I meant to like your comment and instead I hit the down button and now I can’t fix it. I very much appreciate your comments.

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        • #
          ian hilliar

          Dennis, they HAVE pushed for wind powered, and even solar powered ships-remember the “Solar Sailer” on Sydney harbour? No? You must have blinked.

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      • #
        Robert O.

        I tend to agree that most skeptics tended to accept that the climate scientists knew what they were talking about in view of the support they received from government and the media, but then they realised that the predictions they made were little more than fairy stories, and their credibility was lacking with events such as the infamous hockey stick. However, the momentum of the warming industry by then was large and the leadership taken over by politicians, economists and bankers whilst the honest scientists started to jump off the bandwagon. So today we are inundated with stories which support the AGW concept, however spurious, and fail to hear anything to the contrary which highlight their error apart from on the various web sites such as Jo’s and Watts. And now as the Paris meeting approaches we will continue to hear more fallacy from the leading lights of the AGW industry such as our own, now privately funded, climate council which doesn’t seem to have a problem in getting media coverage.

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      Gee Aye,

      You wrote:

      Do you mean perhaps that you were ignorant?

      I know that Jo has stated that she was unaware of all the details. Both words, ‘ignorant’ and ‘unaware’ portray the same state of affairs, i.e. a lack of sufficient knowledge. But ignorant is mostly used as an insult. You never hear people “you’re just an unaware fool.”

      That’s the problem I see in your comment. Your choice of ignorant over unaware.

      And when you think about it, at some point or another, we’re all ignorant of ‘stuff’; until we’re not.

      You also wrote (further on):

      . . . she quite enjoyed throwing alternative theories into debates to stir up the hegemony back then.

      My impression is that you’ve chosen ignorant rather than unaware precisely to ‘stir up the pot’. Obviously I can’t prove it ’cause I’m not phsychic, but that is my impression.

      Abe

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      • #
        Gee Aye

        JAG that is your bias and experience. I meant it as a neutral term and experience it as such often so didn’t feel the need to pander to your version of PC. I happily describe myself using the word when it applies… Which is often

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        • #
          Just-A-Guy

          Gee Aye,

          I too use that word to describe myself, but even when I do it’s only if I feel I should have know better. If I learn something about anything today I won’t say, “Wow, I was ignorant.” I’ll say, “Wow, I didn’t know that.”

          To be more succinct, with regard to CAGW ® and Climate Change ™ I did say, “Wow, how ignorant of me.” That’s because I’ve always been very curious whan it comes to science, especially physics, and have always been keen to investigate as much as possible. In the case of Global Warming ™, I just accepted what the so-called ‘scientists’ said as true without really digging deeper into the actual facts. So, how ignorant of me.

          I guess what I’m driving at is that it’s not about political correctness, it’s more about the accurate usage of the English language.

          Finaly, you could have made your point that I was wrong about you ‘stiring the pot’ without adding the superflous statemnt, ‘so didn’t feel the need to pander to your version of PC.’ and I would have gladly accepted your clarification as to my incorrect assumption about your motives.

          Abe

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        • #
          GI

          Leaf,

          The concept is: once you pull the pin you run away from it – not toward it.

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    • #
      aussieguy

      Do you mean perhaps that you were ignorant?

      Then let’s be less ignorant! 😀

      Firstly, what the flying fire truck is Global Environmental Change journal?


      Here we go…

      http://www.journals.elsevier.com/global-environmental-change

      Global Environmental Change is a peer-reviewed international journal publishing high quality, theoretically and empirically rigorous articles, which advance knowledge about the human and policy dimensions of global environmental change. The journal interprets global environmental change to mean the outcome of processes that are manifest in localities, but with consequences at multiple spatial, temporal and socio-political scales. The journal is interested in articles which have a significant social science component. These include articles that address the social drivers or consequences of environmental change, or social and policy processes that seek to address problems of environmental change. Topics include, but are not restricted to, the drivers, consequences and management of changes in: biodiversity and ecosystem services, climate, coasts, food systems, land use and land cover, oceans, urban areas, and water resources.


      Intellectuals with a Pro Climate Change agenda. What a surprise! …NOT! Note the usual Climate BS bingo being used!

      “Social”, there’s that word again! See how this isn’t real/actual science? (More specifically not about Climate Science). Its pseudo-intellectual activism (a focus on Social Science) posing as an intellectual authority.

      Seriously, look at all the “white papers” they publish!
      => http://www.journals.elsevier.com/global-environmental-change/most-downloaded-articles/
      (Its endless discussion about why everyone won’t fall for this Climate Change nonsense.)

      Oh look, more BS Bingo word to add to the list!

      contrarian discourse => When people don’t agree or chant their narrative.



      Look at the highlight of the “climate skeptics” article in question!
      => http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09593780/33/supp/C

      Highlights


      • Climate scepticism is highest in Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the USA.
      • Higher levels of CO2 emissions per capita are positively associated with scepticism.
      • Country vulnerability to climate change is correlated positively with climate scepticism.
      • Political conservatism, gender and low environmental concern are key predictors of scepticism.


      This is not “high quality, theoretically and empirically rigorous article“. This is pseudo-intellectual Leftist academics (Social Science majors) writing papers of nonsense.

      If you’re a Conservative, Male, and don’t give a crap about eco-nuts and their issues: you are very likely against Climate Change.

      So by logical extension, if you are a Leftist, Female, and regularly sprout how morally superior you are in matters of the environment: you are very likely FOR Climate Change.

      …Gee. You needed to write a paper about that?



      SIDE NOTE:

      I’ve always wondered why they keep using emissions per capita as their standard for measurement instead of absolute emissions of a whole country when it comes to promoting Climate Change in Australia.

      Then I looked at the numbers…
      http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/10296/economics/top-co2-polluters-highest-per-capita/

      …Because it pushes Australia from 18th (total emissions) to 10th (emissions per capita)! That way, they can claim we should do more like Germany (27th per capita but 7th in total emissions!).

      They have intentionally selected a criteria in order to have numbers to support their narrative in Australia! => “Australia is a big emissions polluter!”

      (It is identical to Feminists in American colleges who intentionally get the definition of rape re-defined and broadened in order to support their political narrative of “rape culture” in American colleges!)

      What a pack of disgustingly dishonest *beep!* *beep!* *beep!* *beep!* *beep!* *beep!* 😡

      …And then I remember: They are modern day Leftie activists, not scientists. Their objective isn’t to be honest…Its to push their political agenda on everyone.

      Then it becomes clear for all to see.

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      • #
        RogueElement451

        Good comment AG

        looking at the statement you quote :-

        • Climate scepticism is highest in Australia, New Zealand, Norway and the USA.
        • Higher levels of CO2 emissions per capita are positively associated with scepticism.
        • Country vulnerability to climate change is correlated positively with climate scepticism.
        • Political conservatism, gender and low environmental concern are key predictors of scepticism.

        they can draw some correlation from those countries but how about as well as conservatism , they add in such factors as money in circulation, the more money the more scepticism!! ban money
        How about chewing gum use , I am sure this is far more prevalent in the named and shamed Countries …Ban chewing gum!!
        Dishwashers
        Cars
        Size and quantity of airports ,the list is endless.All would show correlation.

        But I think they will the strongest evidence of correlation with their theory would be EDUCATION.
        Another crap piece of pseudo science ,exploiting the masses for personal gain. How about the correlation between the production of peer reviewed alarmist voodoo and scepticism , I think they might find that also very strong.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Reading this I also wondered if Protestantism might have also figured as a contributing factor.

          I find with protestantism there is a significant impact on education through pursuing rugged individualism and rugged analysis of things, and not following the crowd/group think.

          20

      • #
        Just-A-Guy

        aussieguy,

        If I was a mod, I’d give you a star.

        Abe

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      • #
        Another Ian

        Aussieguy

        I put this up n a previous thread but I’ll risk a repeat here.


        And another gem, from an Anon:

        Sociology: The study of a group of people who do not need to be studied by a group of people who do.”

        Jul 13, 2015 at 1:15 PM | Registered Commenter Robert Christopher”

        From http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/7/13/integrity-and-scholarship-at-the-lse.html#comments

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        I thought the Global Environmental Change journal was an instruction book.

        Sort of like, “Do It Yourself Armageddon.”

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      • #
        Oswald Thake

        Dunno about the rest of you blokes (and sheilas, too, of course) but whenever I see the words ‘peer reviewed’ used as some sort of implicit guarantee of scientific quality I reach for my scepticism!

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      • #
        ScotsmaninUtah

        Aussieguy,

        That site will make one appreciate the joys of “watching grass grow” !

        40

      • #
        sophocles

        I’ve always wondered why they keep using emissions per capita as their standard for measurement

        It’s probably because they consider all emissions to be caused by humans, not natural sources. That way, they can beat the population of the offending country with a `moralist’ club to modify their emissive behaviour, eg walk instead of drive, and emissions will fall. Yes, a fairy story.

        It’s interesting to note that the OCO CO2 sensing satellite sees high emissions over heavily forested areas, and surprisingly little over heavily populated areas. In NZ, we have some large and dense forests which, even thought they use CO2 to build trees with, also emit CO2 from the dying, dead, and decaying vegetation or leaf mould on the forest floor. NZ has only about 4.4 million humans, 6.7 million cows and somewhere around 30 million sheep (bushy tailed possums are unknown but thought to number about a billion 🙂 ) to create CO2, yet it is still assigned to the population through the “per capita” measurement.

        A significant quantity of the CO2 in Oz appears to drift in as a plume from the Indian Ocean way off to the West South Western Coast and across Australia and NZ. The plume probably starts where cold water surfaces and sheds its CO2 load. But the atmospheric load in Down Under is attributed to the population through the per capita assignment.

        It’s best taken with generous shovelling of dry sodium chloride…

        20

    • #
      ian hilliar

      GeeAye,If one ha a brain, but is ignorant of certain facts, and then is made aware of further information, they are able to reassess their position, and even reverse their stance on an issue. You, on the other hand, have been made aware of facts which would cause any intelligent and rational human being to become extremely sceptical of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming. Yet you cling to the false visions proffered by the climate models. What does that make you?

      10

  • #
    Dennis

    I was recently advised by a very well educated female that she loves “windmills” and thinks they look great. And that Denmark provides all of its electricity from them and sells electricity to other countries.

    So there.

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    • #
      llew Jones

      Denmark has considerable sources of oil and natural gas in the North Sea and ranks as number 32 in the world among net exporters of crude oil.[1] Denmark expects to be self-sufficient with oil until 2050.[2] However, gas resources are expected to decline, and production may decline below consumption in 2020, making imports necessary.[3] A large proportion of electricity is produced from coal; wind turbines meet about 39% of electricity demand by 2014 (see Wind power in Denmark).[4]

      In February 2011 the Danish government announced the “Energy Strategy 2050” with the aim to be fully independent of fossil fuels by 2050.[5] The European Renewables Directive set a mandatory target at 20% share of energy from renewable sources by 2020 (EU combined).[6][7] The Danish government targets 50% wind power in the electricity system by 2020.[8]

      Denmark’s electrical grid is connected by transmission lines to other European countries,[9] and had, according to the World Economic Forum the best energy security in the EU in 2013 [10] although this had fallen to third in the EU by 2014. [11]

      wiki

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Well to be honest, wind turbines are a bit phallic.

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        Annie

        Well, they infuriate this female. I was incensed by the sight of so many polluting the view in the Solway Firth the last time I was in England.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        A brief spurt of activity and then they are useless?

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        Graeme No.3

        More seriously, despite ever increasing amounts of wind capacity, Denmark still has to import electricity. When the wind blows and there is excess electricity their very efficient CHP plants stop producing electricity but have to keep supplying heat, hence no reduction in gaseous emissions. The excess wind electricity has to be ‘exported’ to Norway or Sweden for pumped storage or to Germany. In any case the law of supply and demand means that unwanted electricity depresses the price, so much so that at times the Danes have to PAY others to take it. On the other hand when they need electricity guess what happens to the price?

        The descendants of my norwegian forebears are sniggering about the amount of loot they get, from Danish stupidity.

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        tom0mason

        Rereke Whakaaro

        “Well to be honest, wind turbines are a bit phallic.”

        As they spread the syphilitic idea that renewable energy is somehow attractive, needed, and worthy.

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      Bodge it an Scarpa

      On a Fbook debate re Wind Turbines last night, I received a comment from an advocate the “Those Wind Turbines are definitely not as ugly as the high tension power lines from conventional Power stations ! How the hell does she think the electricity from Wind turbines is connected to the grid ? By Telepathy ?

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      • #

        How the hell does she think the electricity from Wind turbines is connected to the grid ? By Telepathy ?

        Cue Curly

        Tony.

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        Bodge it an Scarpa

        And that folks is the kind of mentality on display by many Facebook users every time Flannery’s Climate Council and the Labor Party put up posts condemning Abbott/ LNP for cutting funding to the alternative energy industries , or Climate change related posts etc. ! Jo stated recently that she can’t be bothered doing battle in that arena,but IMO , engaging with the misinformed morons on Social media and attempting to educate them with simple to understand scientific facts is the only way we are going to have a hope of winning this war. With only 17% being sceptics, there are a lot of mugs out there that need educating. Tonyfrom OZ, could you provide me with a link to your blog please ?

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        • #

          Bodge, re Facebook, it’s not that I can’t be bothered, but there are only so many hours in the day. It is important, and I appreciate the effort it takes for skeptics to fight on those fronts. Thanks.

          Let me know what we bloggers can do to help you battle the FB/Twit wars.

          BTW: I repeat my post — there are a lot more than 17% skeptics. This survey is as biased and ambiguous as most of them. The most specific and useful questions show that 50 – 60% of Aust/ UK are skeptical that man-made global warming poses a serious threat.

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            Bodge it an Scarpa

            Thanks for the reply Jo. Actually, I am relatively new to Facebook, and still not all that certain how it operates. Although I often get the feeling that I am on my own when I get involved in FB debates re Alternative Energies, Climate Change, Politics etc. I know that is not necessarily the case. The battles I get into apparently are only seen by my so called ‘friends’ and their acquaintances. I don’t have access to all the other similar debates that may be taking place on FB, involving perhaps thousands of others. One possible useful tool, may be like Michael Smith News does on a reasonably regular basis, in that he puts a current post on his’Timeline’, and because I have MSNews listed on my own timeline, i receive that post on the Public News Feed page. I can then ‘share’ that post and make a comment that my circle of friends etc can see and also comment on. I also have Jonova Science Blog listed as a favourite, so any relevant criticisms of for example the Climate Council’s current disingenuous posting re Denmark’s Wind Turbines producing 140% of demand, that you may put on your own timeline, would appear on the public page where I and any other FB users that list you as a ‘favourite’ can comment and ‘share’ the post around within their particular circle. Perhaps other contributors here that are more familiar with the working of FB would care to offer some more learned advice. Cheers.

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          Just-A-Guy

          Bodge,

          The link to Tony’s blog can be found on any comment he makes. Just click on his name at the head of the comment.

          For all other readers out there. Any commenter on this blog with a web-site of their own will have a link at the top of any/every comment they post. (If they choose to put it there)

          If the name is the same color as the date of the comment, there’s a link attached to that name.

          Cheers,
          Abe

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            Bodge it an Scarpa

            Thanks Just a Guy .

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              Bodge it an Scarpa, (and how I just love that screen name)

              as Abe mentioned, the link to my home site is my username at the top of the Comment.

              While that takes you immediately to the site, you’ll see that there are around 6 or more Posts a day, so finding any of mine can be a a task.

              So, to make it a little easier, I included the link to just my own Posts at that site at the bottom of my Bio. That bio is just some introductory text. At the bottom of the text is the permanent link to all my Posts, and again, there are more than 1200 of them since I started in March of 2008. You’ll find a lot of music Posts, one of my passions in life, and if you just keep scrolling down (umm, and down, and down) you’ll see all the titles and some introductory text for each Post.

              I feel sure that anything you need to know will be there.

              As to facebook and Twitter, well, for me, I’m afraid there are just not enough hours in the day for me to be going to those sites. As it is, I spend almost 10 to 12 hours a day in front of the computer doing what I do.

              Other than my home site, the main place I come to comment is here at Joanne’s site, and thankfully, she allows my lengthy comments, where other sites either limit the length or moderate them into oblivion. I don’t make my comments long out of a wish to ramble on, but to try and tell as much as I can about the subject. I’ve noticed that the ABC site now uses number of characters to limit the length of comments there. So much gets left out if what I have to say cannot address the sum of it all.

              I thought that in retirement I was supposed to slow down. I’m flat out like a lizard drinking.

              Link to TonyfromOz Bio

              Tony.

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                Bodge it an Scarpa

                Thank you Tony. I enjoy reading all your contributions and try to use the facts that you present in my own contributions on FB debates, particularly those centred on Alternative Energies. This past week the Climate Council and Labor Party have been posting and reposting the rubbish about Denmark’s recent achievement of producing 140% of their electricity requirements, omitting to inform that it was a temporary spike at 3.00 AM on a particular windy day. I have posted rebuttals on all of them using information that I get from Jo’s blog here, and I do detect a gradual change of tone from respondents leaning toward the rational side. I really would like to see this claim completely blown out of the water, in addition to destroying the credibility of both the Climate Council and Labor. Not that either have had any cred in my book for quite some time now. The name Bodge it an Scarpa, though not an original, was a trade name that I considered using for my mobile mechanic business before I retired Lol.

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    Let the Climate Council’s Will Steffen homogenize those figures for you; removing those respondents whose stated intention was to vote LNP.

    Everybody’s entitled to their point of view. 😉

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      Dennis

      And for published polls target people living around polling booths that favoured the side you want on top, and the electorates, knowing that more than half should be them. As the polling experts do to analyse past election results and to predict the next outcome. Such as the high number of seats Labor won in 2007 but with many marginal, indicating that the 2010 election result would be very close. As it was.

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    Keith L

    The very first thing that tipped me off was the initial insane reaction to reasonable scepticism. At the time that I became aware of the AGW story I was well and truly out of the loop. I was working in Nigeria and not spending more than an hour a week on the internet. I was not following any science sites and this was before JoNova and WUWT anyway. (About 2007 maybe?) The first indication I had that something was not quite right was when I heard the insanely vicious and irrational over-the-top reaction to a sceptic. I think it may have been when Lomborg was first attacked but I am not sure. I decided that something was a bit out of whack when such vicious non-scientific attacks were made on the guy for what sounded like a quite reasonable statement.
    I became totally sceptical when they tried to tell me that they had a usefully accurate quantitative model of the climate.
    Having done physics, maths and computer modelling I knew that chaotic non-linear systems of dozens of mutually dependent variables are a bit difficult to model.
    Since then I have seen no evidence of a scientific foundation to this story and plenty of evidence of a corrupt leftist and special interest gravy train.

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      are a bit difficult to model

      Minor problems. There’ve been million-dollar prizes in mathematics waiting for the solutions to just two of those small problems. 😉

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      ianl8888

      … chaotic non-linear systems of dozens of mutually dependent variables are a bit difficult to model

      Well, yes they are, by golly … in fact, even the IPCC has stated that this is an impossible goal. Then, much to our amusement, it proceeds to ignore its’ own statement – but still sends us the invoice in any case

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    pat

    ***Canada gets singled out, but not Australia! Chatham Rules for these talks:

    13 July: RTCC: Ed King: What could a legally binding UN climate deal look like?
    A mooted UN climate pact could end up working like a credit ratings agency, say influential figures involved in crafting a Paris pact.
    Countries that default or break their pollution cutting promises will lose credibility and trust amongst their peers, which will impact them in other venues and on other issues.
    Rogue climate states (***Canada) could miss out on benefits such as protection from trade sanctions, or “in club” transfer of low carbon technologies.The suggestion was one of a series set out during a session hosted by the London-based E3G think tank last week …
    ***The session was held under the Chatham House rule – so names are off-limits…
    There appeared to be a consensus that judging whether Paris is a tough deal will not simply swing on whether a new treaty or protocol is developed.
    The legal form of a deal is one way of determining how binding it is. But so too is language, how specific pledges are, and the institutions that are created as a result…
    Climate hawks hope countries will commit to a tough new regime under a legally binding treaty in the French capital.
    But support for a deal with some legal options but without an overarching UN treaty has support from the Australia, Japan and New Zealand.
    The US government is also holding out against a new treaty as it would have to get it past a hostile Senate…
    Track Zero, an influential lobby group, wants emissions from fossil fuels to fall to zero (or net zero) by 2050.
    But some emerging economies are less keen. India and China worry mid-century is too soon; top oil producers like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia see this as a red rag…
    It seems unlikely the US or China would agree to their respective commitments coming under international law…
    But it seems unlikely that the US, EU and others, who in 2009 promised to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance, would agree to long term financial hand cuffs…
    http://www.rtcc.org/2015/07/13/what-could-a-legally-binding-un-climate-deal-look-like/

    ***how CAGW – a ‘CLEAN’ Trillion a year!

    13 July: InsideClimateNews: More ‘Green Bonds’ Needed to Fund the Clean Energy Revolution
    A critical piece of the funding needed to transition to a low-carbon world—bond financing for climate-saving projects—grew by 20 percent to nearly $600 billion compared to last year, but it’s still short of what’s needed, according to a new report.
    “It has grown 20 percent, which is good. It’s not good enough, but it’s a start,” said Sean Kidney, chief executive of the nonprofit Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), which wrote the report and is helping create the market in bond financing for green and climate-related projects…
    Researchers at the International Energy Agency estimated last year that it would take about $53 trillion in infrastructure, energy efficiency and other projects to get the world on track to meet the 2-degree promise. An earlier IEA estimate put that figure at $36 trillion over 36 years—a projection that was shortened to a ***”Clean Trillion” of investment per year…
    Climate-related bonds are an answer to filling the gap because the overall bond market is worth an estimated $100 trillion—which means it has more money flowing through it than the world’s stock exchanges, according to the CBI. The United States is the largest bond market, accounting for about one-third of the total.
    CBI’s report said the market for climate-aligned bonds totaled $597.7 billion in June, with bonds that are labeled “green” making up 11 percent of the overall total…
    And while it’s still growing fast, the market could grow much faster if there were more green bonds available for investors to buy. The report, the most extensive accounting of climate-related bonds, was commissioned by HSBC’s Climate Change Centre of Excellence…
    Kidney and others had hoped the fast-growing green bond market, now at $65.9 billion, would have topped $100 billion by now, but growth was slowed by two factors. China’s entry into the green market, which will bring with it big offerings to finance its planned expansion in renewable energy, was delayed until this fall; and U.S. corporations have been slow to embrace the new bond market…
    The most recent U.S. green bond issuance came from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which issued $32.9 million in green municipal bonds to finance clean power projects for the city, according to CBI.
    Low-carbon transport projects, such as building commuter rail lines, represented 70 percent of the $597.7 total climate-aligned bonds, followed by clean energy at 20 percent…
    India has set a target of 165 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity by 2022, and the report suggests that the nation will need to finance $70 billion in debt to accomplish it…
    The majority of the bonds earn investment-grade status from ratings agencies such as Standard and Poor’s…
    http://insideclimatenews.org/news/13072015/more-green-bonds-needed-fund-clean-energy-revolution-climate-change-finance-global-warming-solar-wind-China-India

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Pat,

      In your first piece, was Russia mentioned?

      Also, it is interesting to me that India and China are less than enthusiastic. Between them, they have almost half the world’s population, and it could be argued that voting power in matters such as this, should be scaled on a population basis. Why should Mauritius have the same voting power as Brazil?

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    Hugh

    Graham Redfearn:

    Only 51 percent of registered voters thought that global warming was mostly caused by climate change

    I’m inclined to think a global warming causes a climate change, not the other way around.

    What he meant to say: most of the global warming was human-caused. Well, possibly, but the last 15 years show that other reasons of variability still exist.

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      Winston

      Such linguistic precision by Graham Redfearn. Just about sums up the intellectual rigour of the average warmest, don’t you think Gee Aye?

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      Far better they think global warming is caused by climate change than blame CO2 for it.

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    Justification enough for skepticism is the alarmists’ fondness for trashy push-polling. As above.

    By now, if your eyes aren’t spontaneously trying to roll round the back of your head at the mere mention of the word “survey” then you must be in the pay of Big Dopey.

    Whoops. My eyes just hit bone. Shouldn’t have written the s-word.

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    • #

      “I am master of all I survey.”

      1st Social ‘scientist:’ Look, those
      septic sceptics are getting a foothold
      despite gate-keeping ‘n such,and it’s
      a travesty, it’s a travesty as
      great as missing deep ocean heat.

      2nd Soc Sci: So what do we do Lew?

      1st Soc Sci: We do a Survey, that’s what
      we do.

      2nd SS: Good idea Lew, that’ll bring some
      recursive fury into the science.

      1st SS: Say, ‘Recursive Fury? I like it!

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    I’m not sceptical in the least. I simply don’t believe one skerrick of what the warm-mongerers keep spouting; ever more shrilly, as their walls crumble. When not one of the anointed ones dares to challenge their nemesis in public, on a level playing field, then cowards and snake oil salesmen they will be deemed.

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    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      The western style snake oil sales men, the ones that put a plant in the crowd then ask for volunteers, is exactly how I see these panic merchants.

      By the time the townsfolk wizen up the con, they are long gone.

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    Peter C

    There is some Good News here!

    Scepticism in a changing climate: A cross-national study
    Bruce Tranter, ,
    Kate Booth

    Abstract

    Despite the findings of climate scientists, the proportions of climate sceptics appear to be increasing in many countries

    It has been an almighty struggle against seemingly overwhelming odds and it certainly is not over yet. But it does seem that the combined efforts of climate skeptics everywhere is having an effect.

    Hooray!

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      That’s because we have had to argue with an ideology. Forget the science, nothing’s changing that’s worth worrying about. Yet.

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      Ross

      Peter C

      Despite the picture Redfearn is trying to paint ( still only a relatively low number of sceptics is most countries) the opinion polls that rank concerns of voters have AGW way down the bottom of the list (eg recent Pew poll in the USA). Politicians listen to voters at the end of the day.
      He should also be aware of recent polls asking how much people would be prepared to pay towards reducing AGW in anyway — very low $ figures and in the case of the Swiss they voted against any increases in their form of ETS. Moneys talks as they say.

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    toorightmate

    The difference between 53 and 17 is homogenisation.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Don’t knock homogenisation. It has kept my age at 25, for more years than I can mention.

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        Greg Cavanagh

        If you apply the “new math” of CAGW, you should be getting younger every year.

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        Another Ian

        Can you claim to be the “oldest 25 year old” on the planet then?

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          Another Ian

          Horror thought – just how old is that homogenised milk we are being sold?

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            ROM

            “Homogenised Milk” otherwise known in some circles as “smashed up milk”

            Homogenised data; ??

            “Smashed up, mashed up data”??

            Somehow that seems a pretty accurate description with only a nodding acquaintance to the original product!

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    Ursus Augustus

    “Children still know what snow is.”

    I know, I know. I watch in horror at all those children playing in the snow as the “antarctic Vortex” decimated their fragile hold on reality and they were reduced to throwing snow at each other in a frenzy of fear as armaqgeddon confronted them……

    The pooor little children.. I just… (sniffle)… cried as I watched their torment. How will they explain it at school in Global Warming Studies?

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    • #
      Manfred

      How will they explain it at school in Global Warming Studies?

      They won’t in case their heads explode in class.
      (The link to the You Tube video appears now almost impossible to find – unsurprisingly)

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    Paul

    Their ABC is now using the term climate change to mean pollution of any kind. See Andrew Bolt “ why is the ABC running this blantant global warming deceit? “. ie pollution = global warming = climate change. As a skier I much prefer the mini ice age stuff. Also I don’t know why we are not contributing to Thorium reactor research as that is the only energy way for the future.

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    • #
      Peter C

      Right on Paul,

      Australia has lots of Thorium. We have a lot to gain by redirecting wasted Climate Change dollars to Thorium research.

      Enthusiasts for Thorium are proposing that small scale reactors might be practical. That could save a lot of transmission losses.
      I am hoping to see a local Thorium power station in my suburb in my lifetime.

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        Do you think the Greens will let you dig up the beaches again? Should have extracted the Thorium on the first pass!

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    • #
      Matty

      Don’t most people know that a lot of ABC emissions are probably pollution ?

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      Manfred

      Utterly predictable. The meme will segue seamlessly to ‘pollution’. Picked that that dance step awhile ago.

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        Rollo

        Another new word is “sustainability” . A teacher I know mentioned this is the word used to introduce green/eco BS to unsuspecting primary school kids. A weasel word that can mean almost anything.

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        • #
          Ted O'Brien.

          Not new. It was introduced many years ago for exactly that purpose, to instil the belief that what we are doing is wrong.

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          Spetzer86

          There’s a lot of new words and old words with new meanings popping up in Western education. All part of making the new Global Citizen to go with the New World Order. A lot of information regarding Western education here: http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com

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            bobl

            It’s interesting to note that the idea of returning 7 Billion people to an atmosphere of 270PPM with a crop yield 1/2 what it is today is totally unsustainable, leading to the absurd result that Sustainability is totally unsustainable.

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          Manfred

          Sustainability.
          Ok. Let’s begin with the essential cornerstone without which the whole notion collapses. Economic sustainability.

          An excruciating irony lies in the observation that the leading eco-marxist promoters of the meme (Europe, US) “function” in a state of unprecedented indebtedness, one that is ultimately completely unsustainable. Little wonder that UNFCCC Christiana Figueres pontificates about a new economic order as The Pontiff confabulates about The Poor.

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      There’s a private Czech-Australian consortium with much of the research taking place in Bohemia (Czech Republic) University of West Bohemia; Pilsen under the guidance of Miloslav Hron. Local industrial conglomerate Škoda (not the same company that builds cars) has decades of experience building nuclear reactors and chemical plants; as well as trains, ships, … seem to be involved. The SPHINX (SPent Hot fuel Incineration by Neutron fluX) reactor is a Thorium-based transmuter of difficult actinides from other nuclear plants; turning them into something that’s easier to handle while producing lots of heat.

      Good system for Australia? Well, when the countries who buy Uranium from Australia have nowhere to put their radioactive waste for the next 30,000 years, they could pay Australia to take it back and use it to (partly) fuel SPHINX-style reactors to transmute the waste into something more useful or as benign as the ore from which it came.

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    Manfred

    It’s fascinating how those that ‘disagree’ with the meme are labeled as a ‘skeptic’ (on a good day — bad days bring the yellow stars of coal train and denier). This is the new age of totalitarianism, where disagreement is impossible, discourse and debate intolerable and only total belief will suffice.

    The obsession with those that disagree is extraordinary. It is also a societal red flag. From Lew and his hangers on to 350.org, to the likes of ecowatch, they’re all profoundly OCD when it comes to disagreement. Why? Why bother?

    Because I think, while their belief trumps all, they nevertheless retain a sneaking suspicion that they didn’t leave every rock up-turned in their search for the truth. They trusted their ideological disposition. And they will continue to do so in the main. But they’ll also continue to have the existential haunting angst that their process of discovery wasn’t as thorough, as intelligent, as scientific compared with those that ‘disagree’. It makes for internal restlessness, intellectual insecurity and an obvious over amplification of ‘belief’.

    It creates the yellow stars of denier and an inverted envy that is desperation.

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      RogueElement451

      Something from 1990 to cheer you up

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGOMtTQFxh0

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      • #
        Ian Hill

        Thanks RE. I enjoyed watching that.

        In the 25 years since then absolutely nothing has been discovered to undermine the basic message that the “Greenhouse Effect” is a furphy. Indeed plenty of new data underlines that message.

        What has changed is the staggering amount of money wasted for the AGW “cause”.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          There was just enough hype, and construed evidence, to fire the starting gun.

          Then the race was on, to see which lemmings, could jump off the cliff, first.

          I sometimes get depressed, in observing this, because I understand that lemmings are somewhat immune to fact, and evidence, and reason, and are almost impossible to stop, when the cliff edge is in sight.

          Paris is starting to look a lot like the edge of a cliff.

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            Manfred

            Paris is starting to look a lot like the edge of a cliff.

            For whom exactly?
            One worries about this RW. The hapless lemmings locked into their evolutionary end-point, or the observers?

            I have a sickening feeling Paris will be used as a springboard for Plan B.

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      Manfred

      Thank you RE451. Any / all anti-depressants welcome.

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    pat

    i am sceptical about all polls/surveys, including this one:

    14 July: HuffPo: Daniel Marans: Climate Change Trails ISIS, Iran On Americans’ Threat List
    Americans are less concerned about climate change than they are about the Islamic State, Iran’s nuclear program and other threats, according to a new study released by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday…
    The poll results come as a growing number of world leaders describe climate change as a threat to international security…
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/14/americans-climate-change-threat_n_7794280.html

    14 July: Pew Global: Jill Carle: Climate Change Seen as Top Global Threat
    Americans, Europeans, Middle Easterners Focus on ISIS as Greatest Danger
    In advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris this December, many publics around the world name global climate change as a top threat, according to a new Pew Research Center survey measuring perceptions of international challenges. This is particularly true in Latin America and
    Africa, where majorities in most countries say they are very concerned about this issue. But as the Islamic militant group ISIS maintains its hold in Iraq and Syria and intensifies its grisly public executions, Europeans and Middle Easterners most frequently cite ISIS as their main concern among
    international issues…
    Global economic instability also figures prominently as the top concern in a number of countries, and it is the second biggest concern in half of the countries surveyed…
    These are among the findings of a new Pew Research Center survey, conducted in 40 countries among 45,435 respondents from March 25 to May 27, 2015. The report focuses on those who say they are “very concerned” about each
    issue…
    http://www.pewglobal.org/2015/07/14/climate-change-seen-as-top-global-threat/

    Australia: 60% ISIS; 38% Iran; 37% Cyberattacks; 37% Global climate change

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      pat,

      Here’s a strange coincidence for you:

      Cyberattacks and Global climate change both got the same marks, 37%.

      What’s at the root of Cyberattacks? Infesting computers with malignant data.
      What’s at the root of Global climate change? Infesting computers with malignant data!

      Abe

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    sophocles

    Strike One: I remember the 1974 Time Magazine article on the squeaky clean all singing incoming Brand New Ice Age mankind’s pollution was about to drop us into.

    Strike Two; was spotting the upside down graph of the Interstadial Temperatures and CO2 concentrations of the present Quaternary or Pleistocene Ice Age in An Inconvenient Truth. That was a very inconvenient mistake by Gore. I went back and examined every single statement and researched it for myself. By the time 40% of the film had turned out to be rubbish, I dropped it where it belonged—into the Most Convenient Trash Container.

    Strike Three: was the sublime ignorance of Thermodynamics expected of the audience—downwelling IR from the elusive Tropospheric Hot Spot warming the surface when the air up there was colder than the air down here. Shades of The Gore Film.

    Somewhere in there, I read Svensmark and Calder’s Book The Chilling Stars rapidly followed by Svensmark’s research papers —Ball Four, take a walk.

    Sometime after all that I read Richard Feynman’s essay on “Cargo Cult Science” for the second time. It’s so good, I read it again two months ago.

    I guess that all makes me a Septic Sceptic … 🙂

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      ScotsmaninUtah

      Sophocles
      great post … Thanks 😀
      Feynman is one of my favorite physicists.. and his essay “Cargo Cult Science” is a must read ….

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    graphicconception

    Oh my goodness! We are only fifth in the UK.

    Sorry, Jo, I will try harder.

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    “Across all countries, the authors wrote that only three factors—“political orientations (conservative), gender (male) and being unconcerned about environmental issues”—were “relatively consistent predictors” of climate change scepticism”.

    None of these assertions are actually true but they desperately want them to be. They’re still bashing away at a propaganda stereotype they created, which means they’re off target. Speaking personally, I’m more leftish than neo-con, our host (like so many prominent skeptics) is actually not a bloke, and judging by their pastoral photography has a regard for nature.

    Once you start condemning 53% of the population with simplistic stereotypes just because they don’t agree with you, it’s yourself you’re pushing towards the political margins.

    Pointman

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    pat

    compare the pics in this ABC piece:

    15 July: ABC: Nicole Butler: More snow headed for southern Queensland, Bureau of Meteorology says
    The forecast came as temperatures plunged below average across Queensland, on Tuesday morning.
    The coldest part was Kingaroy, where the mercury got down to -3.6 Celsius, Wellcamp was next with -3C.
    It was more than five degrees colder than normal on the Darling Downs, where Warwick recorded -2.9C, and Oakey had -2.7C.
    The mercury plummeted a massive seven degrees below average, to -1.8C at Clermont in the central highlands.
    The state’s north also felt the big chill with Hughenden recording an almost freezing 0.3C, which is nine degrees below average…
    Brisbane residents woke up to the coldest morning of the year so far, with 5.4C or about five degrees colder than usual.
    Teeth were chattering louder at nearby Ipswich, where the mercury dropped to -0.8.
    However, BoM forecaster Michal Paech said no records were broken, “and the reason we’re all talking about the temperatures is just because we had such a mild start to winter in Queensland”.
    “It’s the first cold outbreak we’ve had”…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/more-snow-headed-for-southern-queensland/6620992

    with the choice of pics in this one:

    15 July: Daily Mail: Emily Crane: And you thought the big chill was over! Australia is shivering through the COLDEST week in two decades as Antarctic blast re-freezes the country
    Melbourne’s CBD set to experience the coldest temperatures since 1996
    Average maximum is predicted to be under 12 degrees for rest of the week
    Blizzard-like conditions continue across NSW and Victoria ski resorts
    Sydney temps forecast to drop as low as six degrees on Wednesday
    Only three times in the past 20 years has the temperature in Melbourne failed to exceed 11 degrees in two days, according to Weatherzone meteorologist Rob Sharpe…
    The Bureau of Meteorology issued a weather warning on Wednesday to sheep graziers in areas surrounding Canberra, Victoria and southern NSW.
    They warned of a high risk of losing lambs and sheep exposed to the cold temperatures, rain and northerly winds predicted for the rest of the week…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3161539/Parts-Australia-shiver-COLDEST-week-19-years-arctic-blast-freezes-country.html

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      A friend of mine, now sadly no more, reminiscing of boarding school in Warwick in the 1940’s spoke of the wash basins freezing overnight in winter.

      50

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    pat

    ***”Greg Combet was the RESPONSIBLE minister”. nice placement of the adjective, Jericho:

    15 July: ABC: Greg Jericho: The ‘war on wind’ is part of a much bigger fight over renewables
    The Abbott Government may be many things, but a friend of renewable energy is clearly not one of them, and it will take more than Greg Hunt professing his love for it to convince anyone otherwise…
    The first five months of this year has been the warmest start to any year on record. According to NASA, the average global air and sea temperature from January to May was 0.77C above the mean temperature from 1951 to 1980…
    ***If June to December temperatures just average what occurred over the past five years, then 2015 will break the record for the hottest year…
    But if we take a longer-term view, the past 10 years, and the past 20 years to May were both the hottest on record…
    If the earth was an athlete you’d be testing it for drugs, because it keeps breaking records so frequently, something unnatural must be affecting its performance…
    He (Greg Hunt) told reporters on Monday that the “purpose” of the CEFC was “to support innovative and emerging technology”…
    So let us go back.
    ***Greg Combet was the responsible minister.
    But his second reading speech made absolutely no mention of emerging technology and only referred to innovation in a broad sense blah blah blah
    (Greg Jericho writes weekly for The Drum)
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-15/jericho-the-war-on-wind-is-part-of-a-much-bigger-fight/6620394

    there’s so much more to Greg than “writing for The Drum” and incredible that ABC continues to employ him:

    Wikipedia: Greg Jericho
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lankiveil/Greg_Jericho

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      toorightmate

      He shows numerous graphs in his various posts.
      It is a pity he can’t understand graphs.

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    el gordo

    ‘When confronted with inconvenient science, those in denial often reject the evidence by accusing the experts of fraud or conspiracies. We saw a perfect example of this behavior just a few weeks ago. When scientists at NOAA published a paper finding that there was no ‘pause’ in global warming, one of the most common responses from those in denial involved the conspiratorial accusation that the scientists had somehow fudged the data…’

    Dana Nuccitelli / Guardian

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    pat

    meant to add that, in true Wikipedia fashion, there is much defense of Jericho from Bernard Keane/Crikey, Tim Dunlop who has written for ABC’s The Drum, and ABC’s Jonathan Green!

    ABC sees itself as waging war against Rupert Murdoch, when it is funded by all Australian taxpayers and should, therefore, fairly represent everyone.

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    pat

    did ABC report the following? nothing online from them or from Fairfax or Guardian. why did ABC even allow a 10-year-old’s attack to go to air on Q&A, when it should have been suspect from the start?

    14 July: News.com.au: Lanai Scarr: Ashton Platt, the 10-year-old boy whose question on Q&A stole the show, was scripted for him
    THE family of a 10-year-old boy who asked a video question on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night about Tony Abbott’s “attack” on free speech has admitted it was scripted for him…
    But the boy’s mother, Suzi, said the question was not a spontaneous one by her son and the whole family had drafted it…
    His father, Paul, also admitted on Neil Mitchell’s 3AW radio program that it was not written directly by him.
    He said that until recently his son had been a “huge supporter of Tony Abbott”.
    ***“We find that quite interesting because of all the negative media,” Mr Platt said.
    “As a family we tend to watch predominantly the ABC and the SBS.”…
    http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/ashton-platt-the-10-year-old-boy-whose-question-on-qa-stole-the-show-was-scripted-for-him/story-e6frfmyi-1227441778619

    the “negative media” quote from people who state they “predominantly” watch taxpayer-funded ABC & SBS is also telling & should be taken into account by Ray Martin.

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    Jo, I have read through the original paper (not the Redfearn article).
    You are right that their re-definition of sceptic is muddled. In fact they have two slightly different definitions, requiring a ‘no’ answer to ‘is climate change dangerous’ AND thinking that either ‘environmental claims exaggerated’ or ‘not concerned about envt’.
    With either of these definitions they reduce the overall number of sceptics, and miss sceptics like me who are concerned about the environment.
    Their reasoning is circular, and their conclusion about a link between scepticism and lack of environmental concern is a direct consequence of their skewed definition.
    Despite this muddle, they still manage to conclude (correctly) that “Contrary to expectations, climate sceptics are not merely the mirror
    image of environmentalists”.

    I’m not sure that it is fair to say “name-calling” though. There isn’t really any name-calling in the paper, unlike some social science papers.
    Except perhaps this final sentence: “Integrating such accounts may provide a way to both understand and address the social problem of climate
    scepticism.”

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    JLC of Perth

    So Australia has the most skeptics? There’s something to be proud of.
    There is a strong foundation of common sense in the Australian character, a lack of respect for authority, and a first rate bullshit detector. We can be fooled for a while but we can’t be fooled forever.

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    Sheri

    I am curious how many people here never fell for the nonsense. How many took one peek at the science and screamed “NO!!!!”?

    As for conservative, male and unconcerned about environmental issues, in the US I don’t see that pattern. Many skeptics are very, very concerned about the environment, which is why they started fighting the psuedoscience. My guess is “unconcerned about environtmental issues” means not an unthinking follower of political green edicts. Conservatives have sold out to the climate change people because they want to be part of the cool kids. You’re left with libertarians who have principles and stick by them. (Not always true, but that is the direction things are going.) It’s interesting that half the skeptic blogs appear to be written by women, yet males are most skeptical? None of the survey matches actual observations, but in a “science” that makes up data and ignores anything it doesn’t like, that is really not surprising.

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      Dave in the states

      I am curious how many people here never fell for the nonsense. How many took one peek at the science and screamed “NO!!!!”?

      Count me. But I was mentored. I first became even aware of the issue only at university, but I had a good friend who was a graduate student and a geologist. My friend had access to the data for advanced graduate studies (palio climatology) and walked me through it.

      A few years ago one of my cousins who is (Gov) biologist talked down to me about being “ignorant” and a D of the science, as if I knew nothing of the science on this issue and the many related issues. How “ignorant” he was of my life journey and education.

      Although I am more conservative politically and economically now, that has not always been the case. That has come from life experience and maturity. Such a progression from youth is not unusual.

      Jo is right about there being more and more skeptics today. The more informed people become pertaining to the actual science, the more skeptics there will be.

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    Ruairi

    Some questions in climate surveys,
    Could be answered in several ways,
    Such as; whether or not,
    It’s too cold or too hot,
    Should we act right away and who pays?

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    bodge It An Scarpa

    OZ tops the list at only 17%. No wonder we can’t make any headway against the Alarmists. Just as well that the climate is on our side and slowly winning the battle for us !

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    Janet Thompson

    I could not be more proud of my Aussie Sceptical Friends! What fantastic minds, admirable work ethic, and dogged determination to out the truth. I’m honored to know many of these scientists. I’m pleased to call them friends.

    Keep on keeping on, stalwart crusaders!

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    William Astley

    The cult of CAGW are forced to name call, will not participate in a formal written debate concerning climate ‘science’, as the data and analysis unequivocally supports the assertion there is no CO2 warming problem to solve.

    This is a puzzling graph. How many paradoxes are required to change a scientific theory? (P.S. How many psychologists are required to change a light bulb. Only one but the light bulb really needs to want to change.)

    https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/certaintychannel_ipcc_reality.png

    Why is there no tropospheric hot spot and why is there almost no tropical region warming in the last 30 years?

    http://joannenova.com.au/2015/05/new-satellite-analysis-fails-to-find-the-hot-spot-agrees-with-millions-of-weather-balloons/

    As the earth is a sphere, not a flat table top and as the greenhouse gases are evenly distributed in the atmosphere, the most amount of greenhouse warming should have occurred in the tropical regions where the most amount of long wave radiation is emitted to space, not in high latitude regions.

    Why has the cult of CAGW been silent concerning the lack of tropical warming?

    http://www.eoearth.org/files/115701_115800/115741/620px-Radiation_balance.jpg

    P.S. There are cycles of high latitude warming in the paleo record which correlate with solar cycle changes. In all cases in the paleo record, the warming period was followed by cooling (sometimes abrupt cooling) when the solar cycle slows down or was interrupted. There has been an abrupt change to the solar cycle, there is now record sea ice in the Antarctic for every month of the year. Based on the paleo record the planet will now cool.

    Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
    http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif

    Let’s assist the cult of CAGW with understanding the facts that support the assertion that the CAGW theory is incorrect, an urban legend.

    CO2 is not the knob that controls the planet’s climate. Paleo data and recent data supports the assertion that warming due to a doubling atmospheric CO2 will be less than 0.3C. There are periods of millions of years in the paleo record when atmospheric CO2 is high and the planet is cold and vice versa.

    In the recent period (last 30 years), 7 out of 8 times the planet warmed and then atmospheric CO2 increased. Based on analysis of the ice sheet cores, atmospheric CO2 rises 400 to 600 years after the end of the glacial cycles, not before.

    Cause must lead effect, not follow affect. The increase in planetary temperature is causing atmospheric CO2 to rise, rather than the converse.

    There are multiple observations that support the assertion that the majority (more than 75%) of the recent warming was due to solar cycle changes and that the greenhouse gas mechanism is incorrectly modeled by the IPCC’s general circulation models.

    P.S. There are fundamental errors in the IPCC’s general circulation models. Convection cooling dominates in the troposphere (convection mechanisms dominate up to 20km, 20 km to 50 km is the transition zone as radiative mechanism gradually dominates which requires stratification and less molecules to reduce the convection mechanism), the troposphere is not stratified in the troposphere convection due to the number of molecules convection dominates.

    Observations support the assertion that greenhouse gases cool the troposphere by increasing convection cooling rather than warm the troposphere by blocking long wave radiation. In the troposphere convection dominates. In the troposphere, the greenhouse mechanism causes long wave heating of the greenhouse gas molecules which in turn warm adjacent non greenhouse gas molecules by collision. The greenhouse heated gas mass then rises, causing higher altitude cold gases to fall.

    Greenhouse gases cool the troposphere by moving heat from the bottom of the troposphere to the top of the troposphere by convection. This explains why there is no tropical tropospheric hot spot at 8 km which the IPCC’s general circulation models (GCMs) predict should occur and explains why there has been almost no tropical region warming.

    Observations support the assertion that the greenhouse mechanism is limited in the stratosphere.

    Higher in the atmosphere there is an increase in ions (Conductivity increases by a factor of 30 from the surface of the planet to 20 km for example) which inhibits/limits the greenhouse gas effect (the greenhouse mechanism requires stratification and neutral gas, there is no greenhouse gas mechanism on the sun), in the higher regions of the atmosphere where there is stratification and where radiative mechanisms dominate over convection. This is shown clearly by a comparison of top of the atmosphere spectral long wave radiation measurement by satellite at 100 km vs spectral measurement by planes at 20 km.

    At 100 km long wave spectral measurements shows that there is significant long wave radiation at all frequencies. (i.e. There are dips at the frequencies of the greenhouse gas absorption frequencies but no blockage.)

    http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/acs.2014.45072
    Do Increasing Contents of Methane and Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere Cause Global Warming?
    The conventional anthropogenic theory (backed and promoted by IPCC and other national and international organizations over the last 25 years) completely ignores the main physical phenomena of the heat transfer in the atmosphere. In particular, it assumes that the heat transfer in atmosphere occurs exclusively by radiation. Meantime in the lower dense layer of troposphere (William: Below around 20 km) it occurs mostly by convection (67% by convection, 8% by radiation, and 25% by water vapor condensation) [1], which is intensified considerably with any additional release of the so-called greenhouse gases. Moreover, analyzing the postulates of the conventional theory one can find out that this theory completely ignores the fact that molecules of methane and other greenhouse gases (H2O, for example) intercept the infrared solar irradiation in the upper layers of stratosphere and, thus, prevent overheating of Earth.

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    Phil Ford

    “…The real number of skeptics is much higher. A better, more accurate survey in Australia showed that about 53% of the Australian population are skeptical; I note they stopped that annual survey after getting these clear results.”

    Lol. Says it all, really. Jo, I’m still waiting for you to write your book – please! (Sorry to keep going on about it.) I love your wry sense of humour about all this stuff.

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    Carbon500

    Bravo you Aussies! Al Gore’s book was the first on the so-called dangerous man-made global warming I read, and I immediately began to be suspicious about what was being said in this American publication.
    Then, thankfully, the Aussie influence kicked in – Robert Carter’s book was the next thing I read, and here was sanity, properly referenced and argued. Close on the heels of this book came the one by Ian Plimer – pointing out that the measurement of CO2 had in fact been carried out by by other methods for years prior to Mauna Loa, but that the current one had never been validated (i.e. compared) with the older ‘wet chemical’ methods.
    Right from the go, it was the Australians getting the alternative viewpoints out there, but not of course forgetting S. Fred Singer’s ‘Unstoppable Global Warming – every 1500 years’. This proved for me that there was some sanity in America!
    Now of course we have ‘Climate Change – The Facts’ – published of course in Australia. I’ve just got a copy, and I’m about to read it.
    And of course, we have Jo Nova’s website.
    Be proud of yourselves, Aussies!

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    Andrew McRae

    O/T and relevant to Consensus Science.

    Against the Tide – A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done
    http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1599429934

    Only the introduction is available for free, but it shows many people have problems pursuing unpopular hypotheses in physics even when their topic isn’t being politically inflated by the UN.

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    ScotsmaninUtah

    “CNN doing a great Job for the skeptics cause.. “

    Ditch meat to fight climate change?

    The whole point about cows here in America is that they fit nicely between two sesame seed buns 😀

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/opinions/mounk-climate-change/index.html

    The doom, gloom, alarmist and “End of the World” meme from CAGW Scientists and MSM, has done a lot to alienate the public here in America. But this article is one of those that is probably set to “anger” both Industry and Consumer.

    Sometimes all we need to do is sit and watch the CAGW cause implode !

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      Sheri

      If we destroy the cattle industry, where will we get organic fertilizer?

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      Carbon500

      I notice the comment that “Over the past few years, social scientists have started to study what shapes opinions about global warming, and how we might be able to prod climate change skeptics out of their complacency.”
      How dare they say that ‘skeptics’ are complacent?
      I think it far more likely that the true believers are the complacement ones. These are the ones who haven’t read around the subject, compared and contrasted views, and looked at a few numbers.
      They only believe in ‘the science’ and never produce figures to show that they’ve done any homework or looked at the real world around them. Not one can I recall having produced a reasoned argument in their own words to back up their point of view, either in conversations I’ve had or in blog or newspaper letter encounters. As soon as numbers appear, it all goes quiet. I’ve even heard one say that the ‘deniers’ were a problem. The newspaper open in front of her was the Guardian, of course.
      Skeptics? Complacent? No.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Social Scientists need Government funding too, so they have to find a tag-line to global warming.

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      Dave in the states

      This is a decades old battle. I recall the slogan: “Cattle Free by 93!”

      Being in Utah, your on the front line in the decades old war about who should control western lands and land use policy, the locals who live there, or (through government agencies) the greenies who mostly live in urban centers hundreds and thousands of miles away, working and living in climate controlled high rises.

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        ScotsmaninUtah

        Dave,

        …the greenies who mostly live in urban centers hundreds and thousands of miles away

        This is so true… lol !

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    Yonniestone

    As an Australian I’m very skeptical about this survey….

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    ScotsmaninUtah

    “and the hits just keep on coming….”

    The research highlighted in the EcoWatch article was not just about the number of Climate Change deniers per se, But, the research also tried to imply that we skeptics do not care about the environment “at all”.
    Untrue to say the least…
    I wonder what “other” negative associations (not already mentioned in Jo’s Blog)
    Climate Researchers are trying to make …?

    The article also stated that as a result of being a skeptic , we do “NOT” consider rising Global temperatures to be “dangerous”
    Now on this I would agree.. 😀

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      I would say that significantly rising global temperatures would be a major problem.

      One-tenth of one degree per decade, is not significant.

      No changes in nature are a problem, to mankind, if the rate of change is slower than our ability to adapt.

      I have even thought of a name for this principle. I call it “evolution”.

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  • #
    • #
      Another Ian

      Dennis

      “Labor is planning for another carbon tax if returned to government in Australia”

      Labor is planning on a non-return to government in Australia with another carbon tax

      might hopefully be a better warning

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        Dennis

        There is a rumour doing the rounds that the union selection panel otherwise referred to as the faceless men is plotting to dump Shorten and replace him with Combet, another former union executive. Combet was the cabinet minister who was forced to admit on radio that the Labor government had arrange to remit 10 per cent of our carbon tax revenue to the UN. And later he admitted that the next plan was to convert the carbon tax into an emissions trading scheme, not a new scheme but to pay our taxes into the EU ETS. What is next on their agenda? Australia becoming a member of the EU?

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  • #
    Delory

    FYI: Al Gore is talking at Melbourne Uni on Monday 27th July. Unfortunately it is a ticketed event (and tickets non transferable)

    http://algore.events.unimelb.edu.au/students

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    TdeF

    It was obvious from the start that this carbon dioxide scare was a political device by a Green political party recently taken over by the communist party. To me the very idea that the world temperature was critically dependent on tiny CO2 seemed absurd. However the cornerstone of the argument logically was that the CO2 increase was man made and the primary science question was whether you could prove it. The simple answer was that you can prove the reverse, that it is not man made. From radio carbon dating the air itself you can show it is very modern CO2.

    Fossil fuel CO2 has no C14. So if the CO2 increase was man generated, the C14 should be 2/3. It isn’t. This was well known in the 1950s at the birth of radio carbon dating. C14/C12 ratios are critical to determine the exact age of carbon objects, all things which once lived and all life on earth is carbon based. Then for a few thousand years, you can accurately compare C14 object with real dates. So we knew categorically that man released CO2 had only a 2% impact up to the 1950s including WW1 and WW2. Then in the 1960s, atom bombs doubled tiny C14, the perfect experiment. We saw the CO2 disappear rapidly, so fast on an exponential decay that we knew there was only one effective huge sink, the oceans. All was understood then. (C13 does not come into it and is not part of the Suess effect, despite a very dodgy entry in Wikipedia)

    What has been fascinating is the array of people with their own specialities who have bought into the argument. Atmospheric physicists, astrophysicists, astronomers, biologists, geologists often against a bewildering array of would be scientists like Tim Flannery (BA) and Al Gore (BA) and even Phil Jones (BA) and a new group of green ecologists who want to stop Natural selection. To them Global Warming was a once in a lifetime opportunity. What has been missing totally is any actual debate between scientists. Even economists have had debates and we seem them running carbon and renewable schemes as if these things make sense.

    So sceptic? No, not really. Without any proof that the 50% CO2 increase is man made, there is no reason to go further down the logic chain. It was broken at the start. The onus should been first on proof that the increase was man made and here everyone still ducks, especially the IPCC. As for the completely missing heat, Tim Flannery assures us that 90% of it is in the ocean and there is no ‘hiatus’. It is a ‘myth’ because Tim says so. How the heat escaped into the oceans without being seen is irrelevant apparently.

    Still, once again in Australia, Labor are promising not to have a Carbon Tax, despite just leaking their paper on how it would work. Tax the big companies and not the poor, as if that is possible. Bill Shorten says it is rubbish, that it will not happen in a government he leads. We have his promise. Of course he did lead Labor and the Greens three times to vote solidly against the Carbon Tax repeal in the Senate where it was passed only with the help of the independent senators. So the facts never get in the way.

    With the Anglican Synod praying for ‘success’ in Paris, you have to wonder if the world has gone mad. There is no science. It is not ‘in’. It never was. There is no man made CO2. A little science thing called equilibrium looks after that and besides, we need more CO2 and the glacier prone Northern Hemisphere above 40 where 60% of humanity live should be terrified of cooling.

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    Stan

    Jo, you said this about private enterprise: “Those who can compete and win will want to”. I don’t agree with this.

    The genius thing about private enterprise and free markets is that even if you cannot “compete” but still want to work, there is a place for you and you will get ahead. The concept is called comparative advantage. (Also, because a country is becoming richer, many more jobs are created.)

    And that’s one of the many reasons why countries with private enterprise, free markets and the rule of law have better-off citizens across the board than countries without.

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    TdeF

    One thing which I started to do was to check on spokespeople, like Climate Change commissioners. Thanks to the internet, you can see if your ‘expert’ actually has any expertise. You would not go to a doctor who just said they were doctors or a surgeon. It is amazing how many experts have no expertise or entirely the wrong expertise. This has to make anyone pause and ask why?

    You would have to say Tim Flannery was a shock, that people can get a hard science PhD in Australia without doing any hard science at all. Will Steffen has a PhD in chemistry, but ducks any discussion of equilibrium, the basic skill set of a chemist. The others are engineers and bureaucrat administrators with no particular expertise in climate.

    Then there was Dr. Patrick Moore’s book “Confessions of a Greenpeace dropout” helped explain the hijacking of so many good intentions and so much cash by communists and then lawyers, eventually forcing Patrick out. As Patrick said, Greenpeace people have no science at all, although he remembers one German woman who was a chemist, but she was the only science person. These people banned Chlorine as if you could ban sea water or an element of the periodic table.

    In Australia, we were treated to a series of alleged climate experts who were economists, even psychologists like Lewandowsky buying into the story as experts. Ross Garnaut and Richard Dennis are perhaps the most prominent Australian non science people who hold themselves out as experts. Add economist Bernie Fraser, the amazingly boring former head of Treasury who now quite inappropriately heads the absurd Climate Change Authority, put in place by Labor.

    So in being sceptical, it is important to listen to check up on people like Al Gore and see if he actually has any science skills at all to talk about a science proposition like CO2 driven Global Warming. Exactly like Tim Flannery, you see someone who was a writer, not a scientist. It does not take much to be a sceptic when you see the wall of non scientists with their hands out for your cash.

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    pat

    who will be held accountable for this CAGW folly?

    15 July: Financial Times: Christopher Adams: UK faces second winter with dearth of spare power capacity
    Britain’s creaking electricity system faces a second winter with an uncomfortably slim safety cushion of spare power capacity, forcing National Grid to again buy in emergency supplies to combat the risk of blackouts.
    The margin of capacity over demand is expected to be 5.1 per cent this winter, the grid has disclosed in a consultation document for power generators, compared with last year’s 4 per cent, which was the lowest level in seven years.
    Without having bought in the reserve supplies, the margin of spare capacity would have been just 1.2 per cent, the lowest level in a decade. ..
    But the risk of a plunge in temperatures has compelled the authorities again to go out and buy almost 2.6 gigawatts of back-up capacity from four power stations, which could be called on during any severe cold snaps this winter.
    ***It added that it had also struck agreements with “major energy users willing to reduce their energy consumption at critical times”…
    “It’s clear that electricity margins for that coldest, darkest half-hour of winter are currently tighter than they have been, due to power station closures . . . We feel we’ve taken a sensible precaution again this winter to buy some extra services,” said the grid’s Cordi O’Hara…
    Peter Atherton, utilities analyst at Jefferies investment bank: “Unfortunately, the closure programme has been progressing as planned, but the new build programme is running four to five years late.”…
    “With more coal closures already announced and the gas fleet under severe economic stress the problem is only likely to get worse in winter 2016-17.”…
    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/be010f16-2a41-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca.html

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    pat

    talking stupid!

    14 July: UK Daily Mail: Richard Gray: Are women the key to solving CLIMATE CHANGE? Females produce less pollution than men when travelling, study reveals
    Women produce 70 per cent less carbon dioxide using transport than men
    They drive fewer miles than men and are more likely to use public transport
    Female motorists were also more likely to favour green driving measures
    Researchers have found that women tend to adopt a greener approach to transport, putting in fewer miles behind the wheel than their male counterparts.
    They calculated that women emit around 70 per cent less carbon dioxide through their use of transport than men…
    ***They conclude that women should perhaps be given more of a role in helping to plan and run transport networks.
    Dr Lena Hiselius, an economist and expert of road and traffic use at Lund University in Sweden, said: ‘We would see more traffic solutions which promote walking, bicycling and use of public transportation.’…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3159604/Are-women-key-solving-CLIMATE-CHANGE-Females-produce-pollution-men-travelling-study-reveals.html

    ***passing the buck to women. just say no.

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      TdeF

      Women are also lighter in weight than men and have lower metabolic demands. Say the difference is 20%, so their own CO2 emissions should be 20% plus the lower useless muscle mass, so perhaps 40% lower from say 3 tonnes of CO2 per year down to 1.8 tonnes. Clearly men should be told to take a Bex and lie down and not move quickly while women do all the work, especially political jobs where decision making and lunch are the main requirements.

      There is even an argument for male culling, with perhaps only one man for about ten women, as in the wild. Men could fight to the death, reducing the total world population by 40%, alleviating population pressures. They could be left on the hillside as babies unless they looked to being high performers in the competition for women. This would please the Greens where the percentage of women in politics is much higher than in other parties. They could enforce a 90% women rule in politics through affirmative action, saving the planet from male pollution. It is the men who are the problem. There would be a world subsidy for nice shoes though funded through a UN Shoe Tax administered by Merchant banks.

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    Dennis

    The two carbon tax Bill they want us elect and pay

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    pat

    14 July: Wiley: Ways of knowing climate: Hubert H. Lamb and climate research in the UK
    Author: Janet Martin-Nielsen: Center for Science Studies, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
    Today, numerical modelling is widely seen as the leading method of climate research. Modelling enjoys a hegemonic status in the production of climate predictions and the discussion and policy application of climate knowledge. This dominance obscures past and present debates about which types of climate knowledge are important, which epistemic standards are used to judge that knowledge, and which applications of that knowledge are considered useful. In the existing historiography of climate research, the focus has overwhelmingly been on numerical modelling, and relatively little has been written about other ways of knowing climate…
    For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website…
    LINK PDF
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.349/abstract

    Zharkova responds to ***the climate people:

    14 July: WaPo: Chelsea Harvey: No, Earth is not heading toward a ‘mini ice age’
    Climate scientists aren’t buying it…
    It’s a dramatic idea, but it isn’t being embraced by many climate scientists, who argue that anthropogenic global warming — brought on by a human outpouring of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere — will far outweigh any climate effects that might be caused by the sun…
    However, the issue isn’t so simple for Zharkova, who is openly skeptical about the strength of anthropogenic greenhouse gases when compared to the influence of the sun…
    “What will happen in the modern Maunder Minimum we do not know yet and can only speculate,” she says. On the other hand, she adds, her gut assumption is that temperatures will drop as they did 370 years ago.
    The reason, she says, is her belief that the sun is a bigger influence on earthly climate than the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. “I am not convinced with the arguments of the group promoting global warming of an anthropogenic nature,” Zharkova says, adding that she would need to examine more research before she could take a clear stance on anthropogenic climate change. Given the right evidence, she says she might accept that human-caused climate change is a bigger factor — but her belief for the time being is that changes in solar radiation are likely to have a bigger influence on temperature changes on Earth, not just during times of solar minimum, but throughout history…
    However, this belief is in direct contrast with much literature on the topic. Georg Feulner, deputy chair of the Earth system analysis research domain at the Potsdam Institute on Climate Change Research, co-authored a paper in 2011 specifically examining the effect a solar minimum might have on Earth’s climate. His paper, and subsequent related research has concluded that any solar-related temperature drops would be far outweighed by human-caused global warming…
    While Zharkova is one of a small minority of scientists who do not fully accept human activities as the greatest drivers of current climate change, she says she’s surprised at the media response her study has garnered. “I didn’t realize there would be such a strong response from ***the climate people,” she says…
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/07/14/no-earth-is-not-heading-toward-a-mini-ice-age/

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    pat

    LOL:

    15 July: UK Independent: Tom Bawden: Iran nuclear deal: Oil majors have already started the scramble to tap the country’s rich resources
    The Iranian government and the oil majors have been quietly courting each other in the run-up to the agreement, with companies such as BP, Shell, Eni, Statoil and Total all thought to be seriously considering a move into the country.
    Iran has the fourth biggest oil reserves in the world but its production languishes at a disproportionately low 3.6 million barrels a day – just 4 per cent of global output despite having 9.3 per cent of its reserves.
    It also has the world’s largest gas reserves – accounting for 18.2 per cent of the total – but produces just 5 per cent of global output…
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/oil-majors-start-scramble-to-tap-irans-rich-resources-10389382.html

    15 July: Reuters: UPDATE 2-Britain hopes to re-open Iran embassy by year-end -Hammond
    By Estelle Shirbon and William James
    (Foreign Minister Philip) Hammond also said he had spoken to British finance minister George Osborne to ensure that the country was ready to capitalise on the “quite substantial” business opportunities that would arise from the diplomatic agreement.
    “I think Iran will want to use some of the unfrozen assets to address some really very large infrastructure deficits, including in the oil and gas production industry, where the UK is very well placed to play a role,” Hammond said…
    http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/07/15/iran-nuclear-britain-idINL5N0ZV2P720150715

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      Just-A-Guy

      I wouldn’t be surprised if that ‘nuclear deal’ has a clause preventing the development of ‘nuclear electrical power’ to go with it. Whether written or ‘understood’.

      Can’t have a ‘wrench’ in the works when you want to maximize profits!

      Abe

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    pat

    16 July: Lawyers’ Weekly Australia: Felicity Nelson: Dutch climate change case no roadmap for Australia
    The world’s first successful lawsuit over carbon emissions targets in The Netherlands has prompted lawyers to consider whether similar cases can be launched in Australia.
    The Dutch class action was brought by environmental group Urgenda on behalf of 886 individuals earlier this year.
    The group claimed the government’s plans to cut emissions by 14 to 17 per cent (based on 1990 levels) by 2020 were inadequate for protecting the public from the adverse effects of climate change…
    Environmental Justice Australia lawyer Ariane Wilkinson said it was unlikely an identical case could be brought in Australia.
    “[The Netherlands has] a completely different legal system and the opportunities in Australia are more limited,” Ms Wilkinson said.
    “[The Netherlands] has a civil law system and we have a common law system. The win in that case turned on establishing a duty of care and there were a few other international legal instruments that were able to be relied upon.”…
    ***Lawyers Weekly spoke to Ms Wilkinson ahead of a visit by the director of the Urgenda Foundation, Marjan Minnesma, to Australia next week. Ms Minnesma will speak at free events in Brisbane (21 July), Sydney (22 July) and Melbourne (23 July)…
    Ms Wilkinson said the Dutch win should inspire creative legal thinking in the environmental justice space in Australia.
    “You see more and more people turning to the law when the government isn’t listening to the community,” she said.
    “The science is clear on climate change. We have to act. When it is this urgent … independent lawyers acting in the public interest will be at the forefront.”…
    ***She said the second “really cool and interesting thing about the (Dutch) judgement” was the acceptance of the concept of climate justice…
    Professor Anton (Donald Anton, a professor of international law at Griffith University) is of the opinion that an Australian plaintiff might have standing to sue the government if they could demonstrate that the government has a duty to exercise reasonable care and that the threat of climate change was foreseeable by the government…
    http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/news/16831-can-we-replicate-the-dutch-climate-change-victory

    Environmental Justice Australia: The Urgenda climate case win against the Dutch Government
    How citizens win and what it means for Australians
    Environmental Justice Australia and Melbourne University Law School Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law are pleased to present a seminar with Ms Marjan Minnesma, the Director of The Urgenda Foundation. Ms Minnesma’s piece ‘Australia; Leader or Laggard?’ will also include information on Dutch organisation Urgenda’s recent landmark climate change case in the Netherlands…
    When: Thursday 23 July 2015, 6.00pm – 7.30pm, followed by refreshments
    Where: Melbourne University, Parkville, Theatre A in the Elisabeth Murdoch building
    There is no charge for this event but registrations are essential.
    About Marjan Minnesma
    Co-founder and director of Urgenda, Marjan Minnesma has been named ‘most influential person in the field of sustainability’ in the Netherlands in three consecutive years (2011-2013) by newspaper Trouw.
    Marjan has worked in the business and NGO world, as well as for leading Dutch universities, amongst others as the director of the Institute for Transitions at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
    PLUS MORE BIOS, FELICITY NELSON, ETC
    https://envirojustice.org.au/urgendaclimatecase

    From LinkedIn: Marjan Minnesma
    Campaigns director Greenpeace Netherlands 1998 – 2001
    Projects Shell International 1989 – 1990

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    pat

    in June Pakistan’s Minister for Climate Change suggested coal-fired power plants in India might have contributed to the heatwave in Karachi.
    a rebuttal with some facts for Earth Justice/Urgenda to consider, especially in light of Shell/BP/Total etc rushing into Iran to exploit their considerable fossil fuel resources:

    16 July: Nation Pakistan: Fears about environmental impact allayed
    However, the in-charge of a coal mining company in Thar doesn’t see the possibility of a similar situation emerging when the proposed coal power plants in Sindh and other parts of the country become operational in future. Project Manager Mining, Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC), Ahmad Naeem Aftab Pasha also doubts the authenticity of the reports which claimed the coal plants in India were behind the rising temperatures in the port city causing deaths of more than 1,500 people…
    Being the 7th largest coal reserves in the world, Thar coal’s power-generation capacity is even more than the combined oil potential of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
    ***It can cater the country’s energy needs for next 4,375 years…
    ***“Fearing the coal burning would destroy environment is not realistic at a stage when the country is facing acute shortage of electricity. China, India and other countries are meeting more than 50% of their electricity needs with coal then why not we?”…
    http://nation.com.pk/lahore/16-Jul-2015/fears-about-environmental-impact-allayed

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    ROM

    Late to the party again probably just as everybody is leaving.,

    If sometime after 1940, the German invaders of France had run a survey on how many Frenchmen supported the French resistance with a gurarantee that nobody would be exacted despite how they voted, I would suggest that they would have got figures similar to the survey Jo has headlined.

    However following the Normandy landings by the allies in June 1944 and the clearing of the Germans from most of France by some months later, it was apparently quite astounding the numbers of French citizens who came out of the woodwork and who nobody could recall ever being seen being at all involved in any way in the Resistance but who subsequently claimed to have been supporters of the French resistance right through the German occupation.

    I have a very strong suspicion that a similar mob psychology reigns when it comes to the global warming / climate change cult where once the public comes to see that the big swing against the climate change ideology is under way and who finally come to see that it is safe to condemn the climate change scammers, will finally and openly claim that they knew that the whole deal was a fake and a gigantic scam.
    Then we skeptics might be somewhat / very surprised by the numbers and percentages of citizens who quite suddenly let it be known that they hadn’t really believed all that global warming crap in any case.

    Nobody likes to be seen to be on the losing side.
    Everybody likes to be with the winner.
    And that is what I believe we are seeing here with the mob psychology still being careful not to be seen as yet on the losing side but increasingly inclined to switch over to what they are starting to suspect will be the winning side in these climate wars.

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      Glen Michel

      I can assure you that life in France went on as normal.Patriotic sensitivity aside most French people went about their daily lives.Many volunteered for the Russian campaign against Bolshevism.Curious pan- european stuff.

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      Just-A-Guy

      ROM,

      It’s better to be late
      at the golden gate,
      than to arrive in hell on time!

      A sign with this saying hung on the door of my employer during the summer break from school back when I was 15.

      I was agnostic then but I never forgot the wisdom of it.

      Abe

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    ROM

    The quickest way to get a reasonably accurate assessment of the populace’s attitudes to items such as the global warming / climate change scam and to ascertain the hidden levels of belief or skepticsm is to just give them a specific range of dollars per week or month or year starting at $0 and asking them if they would be prepared to donate a sum from that range towards the reducing of the CO2 aka “carbon levels”to prevent global warming / climate change and save the planet.

    Most I think would say they would give a couple of dollars per week as it is a bit like when the Red Cross or the Salvos come calling.
    Nobody likes to be seen as a total scrooge but if you can avoid those “good causes” which “global warming mitigation donating” might barely make it into in some’s estimation, from within the sanctuary of your own home then a high percentage of the populace will avoid donating or only donate a very small amount just to comfort their conscience.

    And that would be a relatively more accurate assessment of the populace’s current true attitudes towards the global warming catastrophe meme than any survey could uncover.

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    pat

    here we go again. Herald Sun also carrying the short AAP report, with FORMER board member quoted – why not a current member?

    16 July: SMH: AAP: NSW Farmers call on government to act on climate change
    NSW Farmers has shifted its policy to recognise the impact of climate change on agriculture and urged politicians to act.
    Mullaley farmer Angela Martin, a former NSW Farmers board member, said the change sends a clear signal to governments that climate change is an issue farmers deal with every day.
    “Primary producers are on the front lines of seasonal variability, rising temperatures and more extreme weather, exacerbated by a changing climate,” she said on the final day of the group’s conference in Sydney.

    following is the official release, with the “Young Farmers’ Council” developing and moving the motion, not mentioned by AAP:

    pdf: 1 page: 16 July: NSW Farmers: 2015 Annual Conference
    NSW Farmers progresses climate change policy at conference
    Members used the final motion of the NSW Farmers’ conference this week to roundly endorse and pass policy recognising the impact that variable climate has on the farming community.
    The motion, developed and moved by the association’s Young Farmers’ Council, overhauled the association’s pre-existing policy in relation to climate change.
    Ms Angela Martin, a producer from Mullaley, said she was heartened by the motion from young farmers ahead of the 2015 United National Climate Change Conference in Paris in December.
    “They have been proactive and our change to policy sends a clear signal to government that we believe that climate variability is an issue that we are dealing with every day,” Ms Martin said.
    ***”Primary producers are on the front lines of seasonal variability, rising temperatures and more extreme weather, exacerbated by a changing climate.
    “We want to make sure that the association is in a position to be able to play an active role in the issue,” Ms Martin concluded.
    Members were in support of the association taking steps to encourage governments to support the transition from fossil fuels like coal and gas towards more renewable energy sources in rural, regional and remote areas where their operation can be shown to be of a net benefit to farming communities.
    http://www.nswfarmers.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/44105/068.mr.15.pdf

    NSW Farmers: Young Farmers Council
    All NSW Farmers members aged under 35 are eligible to participate in Young Farmer activities and to take advantage of the networks, training and other opportunities available…
    You don’t even need to be a full-time farmer to join, we have membership options for everyone…
    ***Event spotlight:
    Agriculture Meets the City
    Join us for the launch of the Sydney Young Farmer Branch for a night discussing sustainability in Australian agriculture on a world scale; the effects of climate change and the urban agriculture push…
    ***We have an exciting line up of speakers including World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour Manager Anna Rose and landscape architect Costa Georgiadis…
    Tuesday May 12, 2015
    Where? Commercial Hotel, Parramatta
    Tickets? Free for members, Non-members $25
    http://www.nswfarmers.org.au/advocacy/councils/young-farmers-council

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    pat

    behind every MSM CAGW push, there is a story!

    13 May: The Land: Jessie Davies: NSW Young Farmers launch Sydney branch
    PHOTO CAPTION: NSW Young Farmers Sydney branch chair Kylie Schuller; Earth Hour national manager and Australian Youth Climate Coalition co-founder and chair Anna Rose; NSW Young Farmers Council chair Josh Gilbert; NSW Young Farmers co-ordinator Camille Coleman
    NSW Young Farmers Council chairman Josh Gilbert was thrilled with the turnout, many of whom were keen to register as new members…
    NSW Farmers opened its doors to metropolitan members of all ages last year as a way to include Sydneysiders with an interest in agriculture, but not necessarily involved in primary production…
    Young metro members won’t have voting entitlements. The focus of the branch would be on generating informed discussion, networking and advocacy action. ..
    Young farmer and Sydney University agriculture student Felicity Taylor, “Bramble”, Moree, was keen to use the branch as a way to advocate for change. ..
    Guest speakers on the night were host of ABC’s Gardening Australia Costa Georgiadis and Earth Hour national manager and Australian Youth Climate Coalition chairwoman Anna Rose…
    ONE COMMENT ONLY:
    by Jock Munro: NSW farmers are very coy about their membership numbers but there are suggestions that it is at disastrous levels. Going into Sydney and recruiting people who have no skin in farming is a desperate and naïve action.
    http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/general/news/nsw-young-farmers-launch-sydney-branch/2732141.aspx

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    el gordo

    ‘You don’t even need to be a full-time farmer to join, we have membership options for everyone…’

    The cafe latte set, its nauseating.

    Good catch Pat.

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    TdeF

    The Climate Council. Talk about Deniers!

    Our Tim, Australia’s Alarmist of the Year, 2007

    According to Tim’s Climate Council diatribe, the following need to be hotly denied and he asks the reader to “bare” with him while he talks down to everyone from the lofty heights of a very dead wombat specialist and implies he is one of Australia’s “Top Climate Scientists” despite the complete lack of qualifications in the field.

    1. The Arctic seas ice melt has not stabilized. Also it is thinner, perhaps.
    2. Continued claims of a “hiatus” in warming are also flat-out wrong (even from the IPCC)
    3. Many more people, hundreds of thousands more die from cold than from heat in single countries in a year. (This was in a refutation of Bjorn Lomborg statements, but the text and graphs have been removed in the last 24 hours? The Graphs purported to show that the difference in died from all problems went up 30% in a hot summer in Ukraine alone, about 300,000 people more died from 600,000 to 900,000. Now that’s a heat wave! 50% more people than died in the Ukraine in one summer than from Nagasaki and Hiroshima) Alarmist?

    and then you get the usual stuff about how Climate Change actually makes bushfires far worse. Actually nothing at all about record Antarctic sea ice, which as we all know is due to Global Warming. He even has an article on an Australian Renewable Energy Race between the states. I guess South Australia won. That is why they have a desalination plant which is not used and a lot of windmills which are utterly inadequate.

    Then a grizzle about how people complained about poor Tim’s $180K pa. Chief Climate Commissioner’s salary but did not mention it was a part time 3 day a week job.

    Denier? What about those dams that would not fill even if the rains came. The question is who is funding the Climate Council and why? Of course under a Labor/Green Government, Tim would be back in charge. Our top Climate Scientist, somehow.

    So according to our Tim “enough with the myths already!”

    Denier? Tim’s Climate Council wants the resignation of Maurice Newman, an apology from the Australian, Bjorn Lomborg’s head on a spike for suggesting Climate Change is a low priority and a lot of money. Especially the last bit.

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    pat

    Chair of the NSW Young Farmers’ Council Josh Gilbert has all the predictable connections:

    LinkedIn: Josh Gilbert, Consultant at PwC Indigenous Consulting
    Josh is a currently working as a Consultant at PwC’s Indigenous Consulting, following his completion of his Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting Major) in 2012. He is also in the process of finishing a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Newcastle.
    ***2014 saw Josh take on the position of Chair of the NSW Young Farmers’ Council, selected as a Rural Achiever and an Art4Agriculture Young Farming Champion. With this has come many agricultural and media commitments, with Josh writing opinion pieces for The Land Newspaper, First Nations Telegraph and the Braford Journal, while also appearing on Prime 7 News and International TV…
    ***Indigenous Finance Cadet – Australian Broadcasting Corporation – november 2010 – 2014…
    ***National Earth Hour Ambassador
    Earth Hour
    As part of the 2015 Earth Hour theme of agriculture, I became involved in the Paddock to Plate cookbook and the Farmer Delegation to visit Parliament House in 2015.
    https://au.linkedin.com/in/gilbertjoshuam

    big smiles between Gilbert & ABC’s Joshua in the pic. no acknowledgement Josh ever worked at ABC, of course.
    scroll down for 3 min audio link:

    AUDIO: 16 July: ABC Rural: Joshua Becker: Young farmers rewrite NSW Farmers climate change policy
    PHOTO CAPTION: A move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy was at the heart of the policy changes suggested by Josh Gilbert, district chair of the NSW Young Farmers (left) speaking to rural reporter Josh Becker (right) (supplied:NSW Farmers)
    ***Young Farmers triumphed over sceptics and complex meeting procedures to push climate change onto the agenda at the New South Wales Farmers Association annual conference.
    In a rejigged policy on climate, they emphasised the need to move away from fossil fuels and closer to renewables.
    Young Farmers chair, Josh Gilbert, said he was pleased the policy now recognised that farmers would be the first to feel the impact of climate change.
    “It’s a bit surreal, but I guess fundamentally we got rid of some policy that NSW Farmers had that we felt was a bit outdated,” he said.
    “We’ve been able to rescind that and we’ve just inserted two new motions, which means NSW Farmers can now support their members who are advocating on behalf of climate change and they can also ensure that we’re looking for alternative energy sources and how that will benefit the community in the long term.”
    ***The association’s previous policy not only questioned whether climate change had been caused by humans, but also called on the Federal Government for a Royal Commission to examine the scientific evidence…
    “Now we’ve got a really strong policy that’s looking to the future and it’s really important that NSW Young Farmers have delivered that…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-16/nsw-young-farmers-put-climate-change-on-agenda/6624996

    it’s all sooooo CAGW.

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      FarmerDoug2

      The next local branch meeting is going to be interesting. There never seems to be anyone agrees with the “science” though there are some “following the money”.
      There must have been something going on for the motion to get “roundly endorsed”.

      Doug

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      TdeF

      Nice. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Climate Change. Alliteration.

      It is so easy to support the feel good, fun politics of being an young ambitious farmer interested in politics.

      She Sells Sea Shells by the Sea Shore.

      Climate Change Crops for Fun Farmers. Who needs science when you are dressing up and having fun?

      It is so cool to be relating to the inner city fixie riding bean spout munching latte drinkers.

      You have to feel sorry for all the young people who think Climate Change is real science, but do they care?

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    ROM

    Off topic;
    Mr Shorten/ Combet anf faceless men please take note.
    This is the way the world is going

    It seems the Brits are now well on the way towards making investors in renewable energy feel a very large amount of pain.
    In fact it might even bankrupt some turbine companies.
    It couldn’t happened to a better lot of scamming thieving b*******s.
    And the sooner, the better.

    Utilities
    UK Energy Policy – Investors Had Been Warned

    Lessons for Investors: many investors have been shocked by recent events, although they can’t really complain that there were no warning signs. Investing in a company or an asset whose economics depends upon government support / subsidy automatically carries policy risk. The level of risk varies and can be itigated to some degree.
    But if the underlying public policy is fundamentally unstable – which is the case for UK / EU energy policy – then the risk faced by investors is automatically high.
    It is extremely hard to mitigate against the policy risk in UK energy because the policy has a huge unaddressed contradiction at its heart – cost versus affordability.

    Investors often take a silo approach, looking at the potential returns on a particular project and comforting themselves that the legal framework around their particular investment will provide sufficient protection against policy risk.

    Unfortunately, experience from across Europe over the past five years shows that this approach often leads to very nasty shocks and the destruction of capital.

    In our view investors need to do their own assessment of UK / EU energy policy and decide for themselves whether or not policy is likely to be sustainable for the full payback period of their investment.
    Unless investors are certain that current and future energy consumers in the UK are both able AND willing to pay the cost of the policy, then there is clearly a material risk of investment becoming stranded.
    If your answer to the question “will consumers pay” is a No or a Maybe, then investing in assets that require a subsidy should be avoided, in our view.

    Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
    Winston Churchill

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      Yonniestone

      If the cliché of ‘selling someone a bridge’ still occurs then investing in renewables was definitely a bridge too far.

      40

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    […] Realism on the rise, with Australia leading the way, see Jo Nova for commentary. More sanity in Britain. A plan to make all new homes “zero carbon” has been […]

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    Bushkid

    Gee, if I told the authors of that pot of waffle that I am apolitical, female and do care deeply about the environment, yet remain highly sceptical of the great CAGW/climate change/variation/whatever thingy, would their brains explode? Worth a try I guess….

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    gh

    Gee Aye – Your first comment is fair enough. Ignorance simply being a lack of knowledge. No disrespect to Jo. Why did so many people jump on you?
    A few years ago I kinda believed the global warming nonsense. Simply because I had not researched it. I thought that even if they were wrong about co2 that we should definitely be reducing pollution and that the actions of government to reduce co2 would result in that. I was wrong about that.
    We need to learn and move on.

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    Ernest Bush

    Congratulations Australia from a male, conservative, skeptic. In reality, both the U.S. and Australian adult populations are about evenly divided on CAGW. This has been consistent in many polls.

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    I’m a climate ultra-skeptic — I think the skeptics are not skeptical enough!

    Yet the wording of questions on many climate surveys is so carefully selected that my answers often throw me in with the climate change cult.

    In one survey I ended up as part of the 97%.

    If I, an ultra-skeptic, end up being grouped with the climate change believers, then the surveys are garbage.

    Surveys, even if they are good surveys, usually have the results misinterpreted by politicians
    :
    Often, anyone who says humans have some effect on the climate (as I do) , or anyone who says the climate has warmed (as I do), is immediately assumed to be a true “coming climate change catastrophe believer” (which I am not — I think predictions of the future climate are nonsense).

    So some surveys throw me in with the climate cult simply because I believe there has been warming, and humans have caused some of the warming in at least two ways:

    – Building towns and cities (urban heat island effect) — economic growth causes warming, and

    – Burning coal in the Northern Hemisphere constantly dumps dark soot on the ice and snow in the Arctic, absorbing more solar energy than pristine ice and snow would absorb ( that might explain why so much of the “global warming” measured by satellites seems to be in the northern half of the Northern Hemisphere )

    My belief that the climate has warmed, and human have caused some of the warming, has nothing to do with the crazy claims of a coming climate change catastrophe.

    As an ultra-skeptic, I prefer more CO2 in the air to green the Earth, and a little warming so the winters are not so cold.

    The demonization of the airborne fertilizer CO2 is the biggest hoax in history.

    My climate blog for the average guy:
    http://www.elOnionBloggle.blogspot.com

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    “Skeptics also tended to be male…”

    They missed “white” and “straight”. It’s funny when the pc identity brigade try to insult you, but actually compliment you.

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    AJ Virgo

    The authors said male and conservative the two things progressives hate most but then they threw in “being unconcerned about environmental issues”.
    That is a nasty lie.
    This they do from their mistaken belief in CO2 catastrophe, the very thing the skeptics are too wise to accept.

    00