A big shift: Labor heavyweight tells Greens MP off for zany and mean climate zealotry

The unravelling of the climate religion continues: Graham Richardson is an old-school Australian Labor powerbroker and former senior minister, and yesterday he was bagging out Adam Bandt, the Greens MP, for his atrocious timing, and “meanness of spirit” in using cyclone Debbie to score political points about climate policy “while hundreds of thousands of people are wondering what they will have left.”

What’s remarkable is how flat out unapologetic, no-pussy-footing plain and clear he is, and how much he is making the same points that sensible skeptics have been saying. Is this the first sign of a shift in the ranks of the Labor Party?

Richardson, 2015 was determined to fight for carbon pricing:

You need not worry, dear readers. This fearless correspondent will continue to wage war on this issue even when all my comrades have surrendered. 

Graham Richardson 2017:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to remain a hard-core supporter of climate change belief. The entry into the debate this week of zany zealot Adam Bandt was horribly wrong on several fronts.

He [Bandt] made the staggering claim that Malcolm Turnbull would have “blood on his hands” if he supported the building of coal-fired power stations, exclaiming that these stations would cause even more cyclones to hit the coast.

There is no evidence upon which to base this claim. In fact, over the past three or four years, far north Queensland has had ­almost no cyclones and experienced wet season failures in each of these years. The dam in Townsville is at a miserable 18 per cent ­because of those failures.

Sounds like a true skeptic:

Cyclones have been around forever and the advent of coal-fired power stations has neither ­increased nor decreased their frequency.

You would think this bloke would have learned a real lesson from Tim Flannery’s attempts…

Richardson goes on to mention failed predictions, and how Flannery got it “spectacularly wrong” and even how Arctic ice is melting, but Antarctic ice is stable.  It’s not news to us, but to hear from a Labor guy is.  And Richardson was one of the ones leading Labor into the Enviro-green mould nearly 30 years ago. Fitting then, if all these years later, he is leading them out of it:

As far back as 1989, I was the minister who took a submission to cabinet on global warming, as this phenomenon was then called. I am not prepared to dump my core ­belief, but like the sceptics, my view has gradually changed and so should theirs.

To get some idea of just how far he has come, here’s what he said nearly two years ago:

“Labor vacated the arena of argument. The sceptics and deniers have turned the 70 per cent-plus belief in climate change into a minority because no one has engaged them.” – Graham Richardson, May 2015

And I can’t resist, indulge me, I still like my reply at the time: No one has engaged the deniers!  Oh really? says JoNova

That’s right Graham, we unfunded bloggers and the few surviving skeptical scientists not evicted and blackballed from our universities (yet) have tricked 20% of the population because no one has put forward the climate change arguments except for:  The Climate CommissionCSIRODeutsche BankCitigroupRoyal Dutch ShellGEPanasonicThe ABC, The BBCThe GuardianFairfax, The Australian government, most universitiesThe EUThe UN, The World Bank, and the IMF.

With a budget of nothing we’re winning. Why? We have nature on our side.

 Reading Richardson’s comments in 2015, he might argue that he was bagging out the Greens then, and he still believes in climate change now, the difference is that now, he sounds more and more like a skeptic and has gone in hard to mock the prophets of doom.

Richardson 2015:

 I am starting to feel like the lone Japanese soldier stranded on a long-forgotten Pacific island still fighting a war for a lost cause. I am still a believer in climate change. I am not hysterical about it and don’t believe our cities and towns are about to be inundated by some permanent tsunami caused by human activity. I do believe our rainfall patterns will be interrupted and some areas will be drier, others wetter. It would be wonderful if we could focus on what those changes might be.

The Labor Party need more sensible voices like Richardson. To Richardson, when he says skeptics should be willing to change their views, I say, absolutely. My views are still open to change, and in the last ten years they’ve changed, I’ve become more and more skeptical.

 

9.7 out of 10 based on 99 ratings

75 comments to A big shift: Labor heavyweight tells Greens MP off for zany and mean climate zealotry

  • #
    Peter C

    It has taken Graham Richardson a long time to come to this position. At last he is beginning to engage his critical faculties. More labour supporters will follow, which will likely place Bill Shorten and the Liberal party in a difficult position.

    However before we congratulate Richardson remember:

    As far back as 1989, I was the minister who took a submission to cabinet on global warming, as this phenomenon was then called. I am not prepared to dump my core ­belief, but like the sceptics, my view has gradually changed and so should theirs.

    In his own words, he helped start all this nonsense and is responsible for getting us into the mess we are now in. He makes no apology for that. Also he has not dumped his “Core beliefs” whatever they are. And finally he calls for skeptics to change our views but gives no reason why we should do so, especially since he admits we are right.

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    • #
      Dave

      It started some time ago with Graham & Alan Jones

      This interview with Angus Taylor is revealing!

      Graham is making more sense as he gets older!

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        Just Thinkin'

        I wonder if it has anything to do with his near-death-experience……
        and this is his penance?

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      • #
        Geoffrey Williams

        Dave you mentioned Alan Jones, well as many of you may know he (Alan) has been giving the green warmists an absolute caning all this week on his 2GB breakfast show. Perhaps some of it is rubbing off onto big Graham.
        GeoffW

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        Nonsense. Richardson’s only interest is self-interest.

        Once a politician, always a politician.

        Don’t trust him. He’s flaky.

        Follow the money.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “At last he is beginning to engage his critical faculties. “

      Its called “growing up”… something most parliamentarians seem to miss out on.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Richardson is an old fighter like Turnbull… on the surface they may make noises to being sceptical, however i have my doubts. People thought turnbull was a solid right winger, but as was warned he is in fact a champers socialist….and then people shouldnt have been surprised when he backed tge Big Lie….to expect richardson to have a road to damascus conversion….yeah…..not holding my breath….

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        • #
          GD

          Richo’s self-admitted Labor mantra, ‘whatever it takes.’

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            The difference ( usually ) between the conservative ( usually religious ) Right and the socialist Left is that the Right is usually governed by a set of morals. The differenc ebetween moral and ethics is morals are usuall religiously based, ethics are the secular version of morals.

            Under Stalin, godless-ness was the official state belief system, and its a theme that has continued with the Left.

            Under the Russian Soviet system, and exposed well during WW2, the red army soldiers were not allowed to waver in their push to be victorious in order to prove the superiority of the Communist system. Any who did waver were usually executed by the much feared political Commisars.

            Its should be pointed out that Communism is a manufactured political system that works against inherent human nature and values, so as such can never succeed without brutal force to make it continue along….which begs the question, why woudl anyone touch it unless you loved th eidea of brutalizing a population for your own ends? Yes tyrants are similar, and without having a massive debate about it, IMHO religion is a good thing as it reminds even tyrants they are answerable to a higher power than themselves, which in the case of Christianity is YHWH God of the Bible.

            Socialism also allows nhilism to flourish, which should concern people….

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    • #

      Some are very slow on the uptake.

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  • #
    LevelGaze

    I have nothing but contempt for practically** all current Australian politicians.

    ** But I’m proud to be a Founding Member of the Australian Conservatives.

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  • #
    Stonyground

    I am a sceptic but I have always tried to make sure that I keep my opinions open to modification on receipt of new evidence. I started out as a true believer but became sceptical as I learned more about the climate change issue. If Mr. Richardson thinks that I should gradually change my belief he needs to point out in what way he thinks that I am mistaken and why he thinks so.

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  • #
    gnome

    There is nothing NOTHING! NOTHING! good to be said about Graham Richardson. His place in history is ensured.

    Don’t quote this (&*^_ of ()&$% to the world, because it will turn on you and demean your message.

    I hope there is a hell!

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    • #
      TdeF

      If you read Larry Pickering’s view of Richardson, who could disagree?

      However like Larry, he is just surviving for the sake of his young child and looks at the world through different eyes. Not for him the manipulative politically motivated stories of climate disaster and end of world, send us your money stuff. Anyone looking at the evidence of Climate Warming or Global Change would wonder why anyone believed it. If things change slowly, as he says, where is the greatest moral challenge, runaway, tipping point, 90 feet rise in 30 years disaster. Thirty years later, you can go to the same beach, swim in the same water and have an ice cream at the same shop and think, was someone pulling my leg? You don’t have to be a political commentator to know it is all made up.

      As for CAT 4 cyclone Debbie, I am still waiting for the photographs of endless bent transmission powers as in South Australia. Someone was pulling our legs there too.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Bang on, these self serving imbeciles are the reason this calculated insanity came to fruition, any other Australians that had their nations best interests at heart would’ve laughed at the globalists demands while continuing the prosperity of their country.

      Instead we got compliant leftists that whored themselves to the party pensions paid for by sheeple that obey the magicians prompts.

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    “I used to be sceptical, but now I am not so sure …”

    Sorry, but somebody would have to say it, so I thought I would get it out of the way …

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  • #
    Wayne Job

    To all those fools that in the early years after the scare of global cooling in the 70ties promoted the global warming stuff in the 80ties and 90ties I am reminded of Phlogiston.
    Graham Richardson was a pusher and promoter of the new age Phlogiston called Co2. The miracle molecule that causes more rain or less rain , more droughts or less droughts
    more hurricanes or less hurricanes, a wonder molecule, hurricanes of more intensity or less such an amazing little molecule.The incredible 10 to 20 metre sea rise molecule, I
    so impressed I now keep one as a pet and a companion for my cat. Graham if you read this blog I do hope you realise hoe stupid you have been, your projections have cost our
    nation billions and soon candles will be compulsory items not cake decorations. I am so glad I am very old and do not have suffer the cr## much longer.

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  • #
    pat

    also politically refreshing…

    30 Mar: Brisbane Times: Michael Koziol: Ambassador Joe Hockey praises ‘practical’ Trump administration and warns against ‘constant criticism’
    In his first major speech to an Australian audience since Donald Trump took office, Mr Hockey said the Republican’s rise reflected a citizenry that felt “impotent” and heralded “the arrival of disruption into the mainstream of American politics”…
    “We need to avoid the temptation to become constant critics of the new US administration because it is not a carbon copy of the previous administrations,” Mr Hockey told The Sydney Institute on Thursday night.

    “The new Trump administration is very focused on practical policy outcomes. It is not beholden to ideology or tradition. It is not in the DNA of the administration to procrastinate or give undue deference to process.”…
    In what he described as “an obvious break from past practice”, Mr Hockey noted none of Mr Trump’s cabinet members had a doctorate (PhD).

    Mr Hockey said the President’s hostility to the media, often delivered in late-night or early-morning Twitter bursts, was shared by many Americans. “His war against the media has public support,” Mr Hockey said…
    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ambassador-joe-hockey-praises-practical-trump-administration-and-warns-against-constant-criticism-20170330-gv9z9s.html?google_editors_picks=true

    30 Mar: Australian: John Ross: Carbon clean-up starts with research on thin ice
    The thinning of the Arctic ice may have an upside, triggering an explosion of sea life that sucks carbon from the atmosphere.
    A Harvard University-led study has found the ocean ice cap has become thin enough to let sunlight through, allowing regular “phytoplankton” blooms to flourish in the water under the ice.
    As well as providing the foundations of a food chain in water usually considered barren, these microscopic marine plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into energy…

    Arctic sea ice was once thought to block the light necessary for such life. However, in 2011, scientists found one of the biggest, thickest phytoplankton blooms ever seen under the ice-covered waters of the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Siberia.
    The new study suggests such blooms may have become regular events. “If sub-ice blooms are common, then the annual amount of carbon fixation occurring beneath the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean may have been underestimated by an order of magnitude,” researchers report today in the journal Science Advances.
    “These photosynthetic organisms form the foundation of the oceanic food web and constitute a major sink for atmospheric CO2.”…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/carbon-cleanup-starts-with-research-on-thin-ice/news-story/7779ce6e6028d6efef99c525191b5920

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  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    If we’re not talking science won’t gay eye be cranky ?

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  • #
    el gordo

    ‘I do believe our rainfall patterns will be interrupted and some areas will be drier, others wetter. It would be wonderful if we could focus on what those changes might be.’

    Ummm …. Graham believes in climate change so I’ll tell him straight, we can expect monsoon failure with global cooling.

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  • #
    RexAlan

    I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe the worm is starting to turn. In fact many of my friends on the other side are starting to become more rational, or so it would appear.

    Thank you Jo, you are truly one in a million.

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    • #
      Greebo

      Reading the vitriol being poured out over at the Oz over Sky’s sacking of Latham, I’m not sure anyone is rational anymore. Perhaps it’s a disease. I feel like I’m living in a Dan Brown novel.

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    steve

    he has been supporting climate change for thirty years, “sensible voice” he is not! When someone gets hit be a truck and only then concludes that they should stop walking on the road……..it is not the decision of a genius.

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  • #
    Graham Richards

    Fact:

    For Queensland zero cyclones = DROUGHT.

    WITHOUT TROPICAL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEMS THERE IS NO RAIN.

    And now wait for the inevitable wailing about the fertiliser run off, the silt build up & of course the damage to the reef by the cyclone caused by global warming, coal mining, gas extraction & the greatest sin of all electricity generation. Please follow up with other causes I have inadvertently ommited!

    I truly surprised that nobody else has forseen the weeping, wailing & gnashing of teeth. I shall immediately bury my head in my pillow & cry myself to sleep.

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    • #
      toorightmate

      Don’t worry, the journos and their producers will get to it.
      They were all too busy standing in the rain in Brisbane today – telling us that it was raining.
      Absolutely incredible – because Brisbane has never, ever, ever had an autumn rain event before!!!

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  • #
    Greebo

    Graham ‘whatever it takes’ Richardson, like Pickering, is facing his own mortality. I wish him well. However, he is no longer a “Labor heavyweight” . He writes often disjointed oped pieces for the Oz. The current crop of Laborites aren’t listening now, if they ever did.

    One thing he did right, and I won’t forgive him for it, was to rebut Turnbull’s attempts to join the ALP. It was right, because, as Richo said, there is no starting at the top in the ALP; I won’t forgive him, because if the ALP HAD accepted him. he would have been chewed up and spat out by now. Aahh, hindsight.

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    • #
      Glen Michel

      I always thought he ended up like an advocate on a school debating team trying to defend or promote the indefensible. Turnball that is. Augean stables of politics.

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    ivan

    Contrived .Richo just trying to put distance between the ALP and the Greens as climate catastrophe fails to materialise.His tax gobbling snout will be the trough when the next “greatest challange to humanity” comes along

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    • #
      James

      When he was the environment minister, I always thought that he just paid lip service to the greens, and give them a bit of what they wanted, in order to get green preferences. Now they see an opportunity to take votes from disillusioned liberals, who have had enough with Greaseball! I think that would be a winning strategy, if they dumped the green BS, and moved to a more centrist position, to the right of Greaseball, and not far from traditional Labor values.

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  • #
    turnedoutnice

    The problem is Leftie politicians were indoctrinated by fake climate science to persuade their voters to accept autocratic government, in order to prevent Thermageddon. Now we have experimental proof that the GCMs are a ‘pile of ****’, designed to deceive them, the cleverest of the Leftie politicians are waking up to how they were deceived so are asking hard questions.

    SA power cuts are a contributory factor: any politician who supports such energy policies is having to work a way out of their corner before u they are dumped by clearer thinking colleagues. The response of some has been to exaggerate 5% bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef by a factor of 10 and to claim Cyclone Debbie are both consequences of global warming when it’s just weather.

    Rationalise this as demonstrating how this modern Phlogiston scam will disappear by the end of next year. On a global scale, the Cold War is being disinterred to occupy the thoughts of the Proletariat and justify hammering the new Mahdis emerging from the Sharia Law countries.

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  • #

    Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. (Wikipedia)

    “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      A wonderfully appropriate piece of work.

      Good find Frederick.

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      • #
        Mark

        I am not as pessimistic as that. The voting population has been remarkably resistant to the AGW contagion. The book ‘Wisdom of crowds’ might better reflect the current situation.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          “The consanguinity of crowds”, may be more appropriate.

          This is typified by people saying: “Practically, there is nothing meaningful that can be done about it either way, so let’s just be optimistic about outcome, rather than pessimistic”.

          00

  • #

    “I do believe our rainfall patterns will be interrupted and some areas will be drier, others wetter. It would be wonderful if we could focus on what those changes might be.”

    It would be wonderful if all areas were permanently on the ready for both wetter and drier. For much wetter and much drier. Because this is Australia and that’s how it works.

    One rough way to guess weather from more than a week out is to check one of those BOM long-term maps…then turn it inside out. Reversing David Jones and Tim Flannery predictions is another handy trick. But really, I’d just follow the Dorothea Mackellar method.

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  • #
    TedM

    I heard Graham Richardson’s comment live, and at the time thought it quite remarkable for someone who had been a died in the wool AGW believer.

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  • #
    KinkyKeith

    Sorry PeterC at#1

    Fat finger , please see the red thumb as a green.

    20

  • #
    Uncle Gus

    Richardson is a man after my own heart. I’ve said time and again that it’s not climate change I disbelieve in – it’s climate alarmists.

    I’m perhaps a touch more sceptical about the effect of human industry on the climate than he is (I tend to doubt if we would be considering it at all if not for the joyous political bandwagon it provides!) but I see exactly what he means about not engaging with the sceptics. Sneering at people and calling them names is not engagement.

    20

  • #
    neil

    I cannot condemn Richardson for his slow realisation of reality, I was once a AGW zealot in the early 90’s I believed it all. But by the early 2000’s when nothing had changed no predictions had come to fruition I looked deeper and became sceptical, now I am a hard sceptic, I didn’t have to kowtow to party politics so I could accept and acknowledge the truth without repercussions. At least he is trying to make amends.

    Maybe statesmen like him can help pull Labor way from the fanatical fringe Greens.

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    • #
      toorightmate

      You need to go to those meetings where they sit around in a circle and say,
      “My name is Neil and I am a sceptic”.

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      amortiser

      Richardson a statesman? He is a dangerous factional warrior. Just ask Peter Baldwin.

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  • #

    “…but like the sceptics, my view has gradually changed and so should theirs.”

    This is a way of being right even when you are wrong. Very warmist.

    Moderates and lukewarmers are more damaging than the ranting puritans of Big Green. The old guard want bigger white elephants more quickly. The new guard want a steady, slow trampling of civilisation. Among the Holocene deniers, it’s the plausible moderates who have the potential to waste most, because they can do it for much longer.

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  • #
    PeterS

    The polarisation will increase between the hard core believers of man-made global warming disaster and those who also believe in it but are not so sure anymore. The latter will gradually change their stance as they come to their senses and change sides but the former will become more angry, arrogant and dangerous. We are already seeing the latter with people like Bandt when he lost control with his nasty attack on Turnbull, and likewise with the SA Premier Weatherill when he clashed with the Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg. Weatherill looked like pure evil. It will be fun watch as the lunatics lose even more control provided they are not still in power where they can create far worse damage to our nation much sooner than any hypothetical climate change catastrophe they are predicting. It all depends if the voting public wake up sooner rather than later. Question is whether Turnbull will change his tune or is in the other group – it’s possible but only time will tell. If he does then his credibility will skyrocket in many people’s eyes including mine. I won’t be holding my breath though. What we really need is a total flush of both major parties from top to bottom.

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  • #
    Cookster

    Graham Richardson was a government minister in the relatively sensible economic reformist Labor government of Bob Hawke. But the ALP of 1985 is nothing like the hard left wing ALP of 2017. In 30 years the ALP has regressed. Richardson obviously changed his views on climate change when he finally realised the ALP he once knew and loved was no more.

    Richardson isn’t the only ex Hawke government minister who writes for The Australian – there is also Gary Johns who is similarly scathing of the lunacy of the renewable energy target that manipulates energy markets to make coal unaffordable and intermittent wind power seem like an attractive nvestment.

    Both Richardson and Johns are a reminder how the ALP has lost its way chasing the inner city votes leaking to the far left “Greens”.

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    • #
      James

      The 80’s Labor party seem very appealing right now. I did not like them in the 80’s, but compared to the current bunch of politicians, they look very sane!

      40

  • #
    Dave in the States

    After 30 years of failed predictions, and with the exception of El Ninos, 20 years of no global warming, and the exposing of scientific malpractice/data manipulation/out right dishonesty within organizations such as NASA, NOAA, IPCC… and within supposedly seminal papers, and the in-viability of green energy programs, it is getting increasingly more difficult for the AGW faithful to keep the faith.

    It’s kind of fitting that Trump flushed the Clean Power Plan down the toilet, on the same day that Al Gore released his newest propaganda movie. (It was also pointed out by even MSM pundits that Al’s old movie had not stood well the test of time.)

    I guess a few hard core AGW believers and fellow travelers will hold on to the bitter end, but the rest the world is increasingly ready to move on.

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    • #
      PhilJourdan

      The pliant now seems to be “but the consensus is” as the data diverges. Of course Mickey Mann is still pushing bad science (claiming normal weather is now a result of AGW).

      It is not over. But the stage has moved. There is a large body of engaged faithful that will not give it up, even as glaciers cover Chicago and NY (not a bad scenario – at least the murder rate would go down).

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    • #
      Steve from New York

      I’m all for moving on, but there needs to be an accounting for those who inflicted the damage – if for no other reason than to prevent them from moving on to the next great cause.

      50

  • #
    TdeF

    ” I am still a believer in climate change.”

    This says it all. It indicates that climate change comes with being part of his side of politics and that in doubting ‘climate change’ he is betraying both is political beliefs and the climate change religion. He is simply moving away from being a true believer to an agnostic rather than an athiest, from adherent to fence sitter, from armageddon to an anticipation of mild changes.

    That takes no courage at all, unless you understand the rabid nature of the left of politics on their favorite Climate Change scare as the greatest moral challenge of a generation. He is simply stating the obvious, that it hasn’t happened, so perhaps it is not as serious as predicted? Hardly a sceptic then, more a reluctant realist afraid to break too violently with his friends. Agnostic. It avoids the acrimony associated with climate athiesm or being a dreaded denier.

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    • #
      TdeF

      I gave a talk to a senior and highly political group about a decade ago on the business of CO2 driven global warming, basically debunking the faux science by the simple device of using facts and real science. I demonstrated for example how melting all the sea ice in the world would not raise sea levels in the slightest. They know if you heat lemonade the CO2 comes out. People know this basic science but just do not connect the dots. However the leftie journalist members (tautology) en masse simply did not turn up to the talk. It was never about science or facts and they know it. They have always known it.

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  • #
    Carbon500

    There’s a way to go yet – read what follows.
    This comes from a weekly provincial newspaper in the UK. It’s unbiased, and publishes all aspects of what people say about the CO2/climate affair in the readers’ letters section.
    When I saw this, I wondered if it was a joke, but sadly I think it’s genuine. I’ve deleted the writer’s name to spare his blushes if he ever starts to think for himself and changes his views. I’m going to call the writer whose letter prompted the response below ‘Mr Sceptic’ – corny I know, but it’ll do!
    Here we go:
    “Mr Sceptic is guilty, once again, of propagating irresponsible nonsense regarding climate change. The scientific consensus is clear and incontrovertible: climate change is real: greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activity are the primary driver: and if we do nothing to address this problem the long-term consequences of rising global temperatures will be catastrophic. Unfortunately, by printing such letters this newspaper establishes a ‘false balance’, allowing the impression that the opinions of a tiny lunatic fringe of climate change deniers like Mr Sceptic carry the same weight and legitimacy as those of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. They don’t, the research evidence is clear, the matter is settled. The risk in printing his nonsense is that it creates false comfort and dissipates the sense of urgency that society must develop if we are to have any hope of solving climate change. And this is the most serious problem that humanity faces, perhaps has ever faced.”

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      TdeF

      Beautifully put. All the arguments for panic are there by rote. Straight out of the panic merchants handbook. Verbatim. I can see why you might have thought it was a joke.

      Too bad after thirty years there is not the slightest reason for panic and if in thirty years of the most peaceful time in the human history the occasional hotter weather by 1C is the most serious problem humanity has ever faced, it sure beats any other time in the last few thousand years, all the way back to the last ice age in the UK around 11,700 years ago. Then humanity was just discovering agriculture and the wheel in the fertile crescent and the writer’s house was probably buried a km under a glacier.

      What we need to know is whose fault was the last ice age and who or what caused all the ice to melt? Maybe the invention of porridge and the wheel? Someone should take the blame for porridge. The Scots probably, but they had enough of a problem discovering trousers.

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      sophocles

      Carbon500:
      hm. The Witch Hunts are obviously not a thing of the past, and the Witch Hunters are still alive and well. Sad.

      TdeF:
      Sounds like a Reverse Witch Hunt. Have fun 🙂

      Your assignment of porridge to the Scots is probably as erroneous as assigning this last Warming to Mankind’s supposed emissions of CO2, but it’s an amusing idea. My people (buffs finger-nails on shirt front and adopts an unbearably smug expression) had adopted the potato before the end of the sixteenth century while the peasants across most of Europe fought (almost) Holy Wars over attempts to introduce it.

      Perhaps it was something to do with “Give us this day our daily bread.” One does not make bread from potato. Chips, yes.

      Porridge was a staple part of the diet for centuries, if not millenia, before the Little Ice Age. It fell out of favour during the LIA because the grain supply often failed; it became too cold and too wet to raise any grain crops successfully, with shorter growing seasons than had prevailed centuries before. All of this sent prices for any which did become available into LEO (LEO=Low Earth Orbit) for wheat, barley, rye and oats. The scarcities triggered food riots and another form of Witch Hunt: Find the Grain Hoarders. Wet rye grain harboured the Ergot fungus, responsible for St. Anthony’s Fire, mass hallucinations and even more riots. Hm, Interesting Times. Life as a baker must have been pretty exciting, and financially risky with the local mobs setting your prices for you.

      Oats became the most common constituent at some stage. It’s a pretty hardy weed (Aneva Sativa). It grew as a weed among wheat, barley and rye crops. It was initially useful as animal feed, and, being a weed, it was a little hardier than the main crops which meant growing well wherever it’s a bit too cold for Wheat and Rye. Unfortunately, those who wanted their porridge and bread, and would not accept any substitutes, particularly the French peasantry, mostly starved and died, before finally revolting (1789).

      Grain raised as crops rather than harvested from the wild, originated about 10,000 years ago in the first growth of agriculture. So you will be hard pressed to track down who was actually to blame for that dish. We can probably blame the first farmers in Iraq for porridge. But it’s such a simple and obvious dish, it doesn’t seem at all unlikely to me that it could even predate The Great Warming of 12,000 years ago. Let us know how you get on 🙂

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    Dave of Reedy Creek, Qld

    Have to say with the mounting evidence in the USA of dodgy top level climate report that led to the obscene Paris accord, maybe it’s time for politicians to re-enter the real world. As a climate atheist I have never been able to believe the scandalous reports that have been dumped on us faster bombs on London in the Blitz. The ridiculous theory that is seemly projected was before 1979 the weather was Garden of Eden in kind. No storms, no extreme cold, no heatwaves, no floods, etc, etc. Do these people ever read or study history? Roman Warming, medieval warming, mini ice age, floods, disease and famine to name a few. If the greenie/lefty/ Maxists think Cyclone Debbie was the worst storm, have we forgotten Cyclone Tracy in Darwin? Graham Richardson must take some real blame, however as the old saying goes, too late to shut the gate after the horses have bolted!”
    If we want the real reason for the religion of Climate Change, as usual, follow the money.

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    TdeF

    I have always want to say that the CO2 warming argument, steady CO2 rise since 1900 and steady consequential warming entirely from CO2 and the alleged Greenhouse effect supported by endless computer models raised a serious science question which was never answered. To any scientist, it was the burning question utterly ignored.

    If the models were so comprehensive and so accurate, why didn’t they test them on the past? After all, we have all the data for the past. A model which does not accurately fit the past cannot be trusted at all to predict the future. That is normal science. Prove it.

    That’s where I am so impressed with Prof Weiss at 17:17 as the recent two hundreds years can be explained so trivially and so accurately by just two well known cycles. In fact he did the analysis and the two cycles popped out of the mathematics. That’s one hell of a coincidence. As he also notes, there is no need or requirement or place for a warming from monotonically increasing CO2.

    So how did so many alleged scientists come up with a hundred complex, comprehensive and exeprt computer models which could not even fit the immediate past and in thirty years have proven wrong on the immediate future. As an aside, these complete models cannot even predict the largest perturbations like El Nino and La Nina. In stark contrast Prof Weiss goes further to fit the many cycles of the last 2,500 years amazingly well (13:26). Michael Mann’s hockey stick does not even begin to fit the data for the following two decades.

    I guess to add insult to injury, Prof Weiss shows the small amount of warming in the late 20th century and correctly predicts the ‘pause’ and now predicts cooling. While Michael Mann is still in the courts defending himself and his personal science and reputation, we have our model. It is amazingly simple. One big De Vries solar cycle plus the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. By the Occam’s razor principle from 1300 AD , we have our explanation.

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      PeterS

      I think you are asking a rhetorical question. In any case the answer is obvious – it’s not about the science; it’s about power and money. Climate science as used by the alarmists has become anti-science.

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      sophocles

      TdeF said:

      If the models were so comprehensive and so accurate, why didn’t they test them on the past?

      They did. And, guess what? They failed!

      Mickey Mann’s The Great Hockeystick Illusion only became famous because his trees didn’t notice temperature and his reconstruction from them along with his Hide The Decline Trick, got rid of The Medieval Warming and The Little Ice Age nicely, so The Models were no longer embarrassed. And by splicing the modern thermometer record on at the end, he gave justification for the unprecedented part of the IPCC’s Unprecedented Warming.

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      sophocles

      Prof Weiss said two cycles, one of 60 years and the De Vries 200 year one.

      Dr Willie Dansgaard of Copenhagen University and a team pioneered the analysis of ice cores back in the 1960s. The ice core was one drilled by the US Military at Camp Century in the NW of Greenland, starting in 1960. It was a Cold War project. It closed down in 1965 after discovering the glacier they were working on was moving quite a bit faster than expected. The ice core was given to Dr Willie Dansgaard who extracted an
      interesting temperature graph from the ice core, one you could call The Hammer or The Hatchet graph. Note: no CO2 but then we weren’t expecting that.

      He pioneered the analysis of ice cores. He found two cycles, one of about 78 years and the other about 184 years. In 1972 (or was it 1971?) he made a “temperature forecast” that it would “be cool until the start of the 1980s when it would warm until 2015. The next fifty years would be chilly.” Notice: No CO2.

      I would think his 184 year signal would be the de Vries Cycle, but the 78 year one seems a bit out. This was the 1960’s and his equipment at the time would now be considered “rustic.” Given that the core was extracted from a moving glacier, and this was the first time ice core analysis had ever been done, there is considerable room for error in identifying all layers accurately.

      Prof Weiss’s analysis is interesting and fits. We’ll figure out all the cycles eventually!

      We know the solar Schwabe Cycle averages 11 years with a minimum of c. 10.5 years and a maximum of c. 12.5 years. There’s the Gleissberg Cycle of 70-100 years, average 85 years. The de Vries cycle is c. 204 years but I haven’t found any figures on whether or not it wanders around like the other cycles do.
      As it seems to have something to do with Jupiter and Saturn’s orbital periods, it won’t wander a lot but as those orbits are elliptical, there will be some variation in timings.

      There was a good posting recently on Tallbloke’s Talkshop blog: about the planet’s control of Solar Variability.

      Prof Zharkova’s discovery of the Solar double dynamo nails down the Schwabe Cycle’s variabiliy. Interesting prediction from that discovery is that “Solar Activity will fall 60% over the 2030s to levels last seen in the Maunder Minimum.” That’s a big fall. Brr.

      We live in Interesting Times. And it’s The Sun, Stupid 🙂

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    Baysidegal

    For Richo to change his mind or to mellow probably means he has bought shares in the coal industry. He always has a dollar in the back of his mind. As you can see I don’t think much of him, in fact I don’t think of him at all. Not since the Alpine Printing scandal.

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    Geoff Sherrington

    In the 1980-90 period I was active in combatting some of the Richardson verbal excesses on a number of topics.
    He was easier to understand once you realised that he had a strong motivation to stress words and acts that advanced his political progress and that of his party. If some particular statements appealed to him, he would adopt and amplify them, purposely neglecting contrary statements, even credible ones.
    No surprises there, that was just doing his chosen job, which he performed with some competence.
    The key question is whether he stretched the truth, either by accident or design. My hindsight view is that he preferred the technique of minimising those contrary views.
    For 6 years I was elected president or VP of the Northern Territory Chamber of Mines and Energy. The Commonwealth had and has no overarching Mining Act. The States and Territories have their Mining Acts, but it is important that the Commonwealth can and will override actions of the States when these conflict with State/ Territory initiatives.
    Therefore, the Chamber of Mines position was a fertile one for involvement of Commonwealth legislators on a range of topics like NT self- government, Aboriginal Affairs, uranium policy, national development, energy resources etc.
    Among all of this, there is a lasting impression of the widespread use, even dominance, of traditional Labor ideology. Richardson was one of the fold then, though in the last few years he has had to be a bit more flexible because he is a free lance reporter who has to make a living somehow.
    Beware of that ideology commitment wherever it lurks. Even unsuspected within yourself. We saw it in the last week when Michael Mann appeared before a US government committee. Just as disturbing. Just as dangerous. Science needs balance, to the exclusion of ideology, particularly when enforced or bullied in the Richardson style of old.
    Geoff

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