Crikey: Believers waiting for skeptics to die? We aren’t waiting for them to grow up

Believers in man-made-catastrophe can’t win over skeptics with evidence and reason. Instead the peak “believers” intellectual strategy is to hope the oldies might die off in time to save the planet: Death isn’t an option: climate change activists aren’t waiting for deniers to die.

It’s sexist, ageist, intolerant and illogical: just what we’ve come to expect from “progressives”, eh?

Oh the hubris and arrogance of the terminally immature

Take their conclusion that because skeptics are older, they are less educated, more selfish, and more easily fooled. Doesn’t the alternative sound more likely? Could it be that believers are younger and so more naive, less worldly wise, and throughout history, more likely to be the gullible rollovers — the mere tools of the powers at large? It’s not just that it’s happened before, its a standard repeat theme throughout history.

But hey, it’s not their fault they are young and badly taught. When we don’t teach logic and reason at school anymore, we can’t expect them to recognize that con-men and crooks always pretend to be “helpful” at the start of a scam, and that people who attack the messenger are the one who are losing the debate. Besides, everyone knows that educational standards have slipped badly in the last 20  – 30 years, and that today’s students are given more self esteem and less, you know, facts and logic.

Whatever – – none of it tells us anything about the planetary atmosphere. Not that you can explain that to the starry-eyed fan of Gaia who keeps believing the witchdoctors even though their predictions of droughts, warm winters, hot summers, dead reefs, and wild cyclones were all wrong. And they don’t seem to care that their witchdoctors are helping themselves to buckets of taxpayer’s cash…

The immature believers struggle with numbers:

Mathew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions and the 2010 winner of the federal environment minister’s Young Environmentalist of the Year, says: things are moving faster than they ever have before, and the fact that solar didn’t work 20 years ago but works now is a problem that for some people is hard to face and admit to.”

So what does “works” mean? Not something you can measure with money or kilowatts. Coal fired electricity costs 3c a kilowatt wholesale, and the government is paying up to 60c a KWH for solar electricity. The Victoria Auditor General showed large scale solar costs about 5.5 times as much as coal, and at best, rooftop solar costs at least 9 times as much.

So Wright thinks something “works” when taxpayers have to fork out  5- 20 times as much for the same electricity? No sane business would sell a product like that in a free market, because no sane customer would buy it. (That must be why the numerically challenged like to make money through government grants rather than by competing with people who can do sums). What does “works” mean? Those of us with the humility to know that we don’t have all the answers, let the free market decide.

Lindsay Soutar is blind to big numbers and the big-money-on-his-side too. He thinks this is not about age, but about “money”, blaming mining giants, and energy utilities for the money he can’t name but imagines they spend. If he wanted to research his views he’d find the people who defend the status quo the most are the government departments, the financial traders, and the renewables industry. (Respectively in the order of $7 billion (US govt alone), $140b and $243b annually). The Big Money is with big government departments, big financial houses, and big-pro-carbon-scare industries.

Notably, like Wright, Soutar won The Young Environmentalist of the Year (2011), which only goes to show how much those awards are worth. More taxpayer money used to reward people who help the government get more taxpayer money. Sorry, was the environment important? How many species, or acres of environment did they save?

People who can’t deal with big numbers like “60”, are complaining that those who can are in “denial”. Our hearts go out to them. It must be tough to cope in a world with so many numbers.

Watch the so-called “compassionate” crowd bask in festering intolerance

Let’s rephrase the drivel. If I said this, would I be called racist?

“Conservative white older men (Progressive young black women) are the most likely group to deny the threat of climate change (the data)*.”

I doubt that statement is true, and I can’t be bothered looking up the polls to see. My point is that our so-called moral guardians are every bit as intolerant and racist as the racists they supposedly “expose”. Hypocrites united.

And their pop-psychology-reasoning is as vapor-thin as ever. Nearly every statement they make can be turned inside out, and turned against them.

“Younger people don’t have any financial vested interest in climate change, and seeing older people denying it annoys young people because they are putting profits and lifestyle in front of the future.”

Let’s rephrase that:

Older people don’t have any financial vested interest in climate change (because they are retired and free to speak without affecting their career), and seeing younger people denying the data, and falling into the same old traps, is frustrating for longer-lived and wiser folk…”

The same believers of man-made catastrophe are usually the first to yell “sexist” or “racist”, and yet they are the ones discussing the deaths of old white guys as if it might help the “planet”. The ageism is rampant, as well as ingratitude, arrogance and ignorance.

The name-calling betrays the “education” level

The term “denial” or denier or variation thereof, is a cheap Orwellian trick that the puppets unwittingly pick up. It  just can’t be justified in any form of it’s true English language meaning.

They can’t name any scientific observations we deny. They still can’t find that mystery paper in support of the assumptions that imply warming will be greater than 1.2C.

As long as the petulant name-callers deny the meaning of English words, and are still referring to Nobel Prize winning scientists as “deniers” there is no chance they can hold a polite conversation about the evidence. A real debate to help the poor and save the environment can’t even begin while one side condones a form of namecalling that stops them even listening to the conversation.

As usual, those who chant “denier” are the ones in denial.

900 peer reviewed papers that support skeptics

31,000 US scientists signed a skeptical petition (the debate is not settled)

The request for the evidence that no one can find.

Big-Government outspent Big-Oil 3,500 to 1

 

 

 

9.4 out of 10 based on 57 ratings

61 comments to Crikey: Believers waiting for skeptics to die? We aren’t waiting for them to grow up

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    brc

    Well, I’ve got news for young Mathew – the young people who have had attempted indoctrination forced upon them are even more skeptical than you would think. They have got the rest of their lives to find out that all the scares, all the finger wagging – it was all a load of crap!

    Young people generally nod along to people chanting the climate change mantra for the same reason they take to wearing their underpants hanging out of the top of the trousers. That’s because the social cost of departing from the narrative is higher than just going along with it, but not really caring or believing enough to lift their head out of an iPhone.

    I’ve got some uni-age relatives. They haven’t bought any of it. In fact one of them won a debating competition in high school on the topic of climate change policies being futile. In fact at a family gathering someone was trying to say that airconditioners should only be sold with solar panels to prevent brownouts, and I said they should just simply build another power station. A couple of the youngsters piped up ‘that’s what I have been saying’.

    Put it this way – does anyone who was of school/university age in the 1970’s still believe in the global cooling scare? Um, no. They are actually the ones who are most skeptical of Global Warming.

    The current fervent believers and brow-beaters don’t yet realise it, but they are currently sowing the seeds of failure for the next great climate scare that someone tries to put over an increasingly skeptical populace.

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      Rick Bradford

      This all reminds me of the comment made by Britney Spears when she was criticised by a group of middle-aged mums.

      “Of course they’re not going to like my music; they don’t understand it. They’re not teenagers.”

      Ms. Spears apparently believed that old people were born fully old already, rather than having grown up like anyone else.

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    Juliar

    The thing is people like Wright and people pushing ETS’s do not support free market and do not support capitalism. They support socialism where governments ‘tax the crap out of’ the citizens and especially the rich giving or spending money on unnecessary causes and bureaucracies. They also hate people who have lots of money which are generally big business people which explains why they hate people like Gina Rinehart (an owner of a mining company). To support socialism is to support more regulation, taxation and people being compensated. So many of the ALP’s policies are based on those socialist principles and Mr Wright’s organisation “Beyond Zero Emissions” support use of solar which again relies on subsidies through (you guessed it), taxation.

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    Tel

    They could just wait for the world to warm up and all those catastrophes to happen. What was supposed to happen again? An endless drought in South Eastern Australia if I remember rightly. Big drought like that is absolutely going to have people noticing. I’ll just push some of this water out the way and check if there’s a drought underneath.

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    • #
      observa

      I’ll just push some of this water out the way and check if there’s a drought underneath.

      A lot like the Northern Hemisphere where they have to shovel the snow out of the way to show the kiddies the world they’ll grow up in without ever seeing snow.

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    Otter

    ‘The Big Money is with big government departments, big financial houses, and big-pro-carbon industries.’

    Should that ‘pro’ carbon?

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  • #

    I can see it now.

    In thirty years when all us ‘old’ guys are dead and gone and they’ve got their way, someone will be searching around some library by candle light, as there will be severe power rationing, not enough to light up the library except for an hour or two a day.

    They’ll stumble across an old laptop, flip the top, and find that the battery still has some power left in it, thank heavens for Lithium batteries.

    They’ll enter ‘power cuts’ into the search engine, and after reading for a minute or two, you’ll hear this plaintive voice.

    “Hey, come and have a look at this. Some old geezer predicted this thirty five years back.”

    Tony.

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    • #
      Juliar

      Even during ‘Earth/Misanthropic/Eco-fascist Hour’ we still got to use the laptops once (I’m dead serious)! 😀

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    • #
      memoryvault

      Hey Tony,

      I originally wrote my articles about the “great green greasy greenhoax effect” in my newsletter “The Inside News” between 1987 and 1989. I put them all together in my book “The GreenHoax Effect” in 1990.

      I’ve been receiving emails along the lines of “hey you’re the old geezer that predicted this . . . .” for over a decade. So your prophecy is closer than you may think.

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      With respect, your scenario is far too optimistic, Tony. In thirty years time they would not be able to read, they would not know how to make a candle and the books would be burned just to keep warm.

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  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    From the referenced article:

    ”A great many people believe that one of the primary barriers to action on climate change is the existence of a cadre of ‘climate deniers’ — people who refuse to accept the now-overwhelming scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change …

    “I don’t think the climate deniers will ever change their minds. What will happen is that they will, to put it bluntly, die off. We might wish it otherwise, but I fear that change on climate — real change, non-linear change — will not happen until the generational cohort in which climate denialism is concentrated begins passing into the sweet beyond.”

    The problem with that strategy, says Australian Youth Climate Coalition national director Ellen Sandell, is death is too far away: ”Unfortunately, we don’t have that long to wait, all the science is saying that we have a narrow opportunity in which to act. Action needs to happen before they die because the longer we wait the harder it gets to make a difference.”

    These eminently mortal words were written by ” intern Freya Cole” who obviously has a wondrous career ahead of her – as long as she steers clear of any form of journalism.

    The trouble is knowing where to start.

    “A great many people” – how many is great? Is it six? If you have no friends, six is quite a large number.

    Is it two thousand? That is a great number – great enough to avoid Y2K, but how would you know what they believe? Do they all believe the same thing? Do they all believe the same adverts on TV, and buy the same deodorant?

    And, “one of the primary barriers to climate change…”. How many barriers are there? What about the others? Are they more interesting? “Hey, my barriers are more, ahem, interesting than yours, nudge nudge”. And, how can you have a barrier to climate change, or any other form of change for that matter? “No we don’t want these traffic lights to change, so we are going to put up a barrier to stop them”.

    Of course, the barrier that Ms Cole refers to is, “a cadre of ‘climate deniers'”. Well that would certainly be a barrier of sorts, given that a ‘cadre’ is, “a key group of Officers and enlisted military personnel necessary to establish and train a new unit.” Sort of like the dirty dozen, on steroids. Food for thought though, given that a large portion of the age demographic she refers to have had military training … hmm?

    “Real change, … will not happen until the generational cohort in which climate denialism is concentrated begins [dying]. Ah, so now we are at the nub of the problem. It is this mysterious thing called ‘denialism’ that is at the heart of it all. ‘Denialism’ is obviously some magical property that prevents the climate changing. It is us old people, who suffer from ‘denialism’ that stop the climate from behaving in the way that the models predict . That is awful, and such a burden to bear.

    But bear it we must, because: “the science is saying that we have a narrow opportunity in which to act”. And that folks, means that we cannot pop our clogs just yet – we still have a world to save. Hang in there skeptics, we owe it to our grand kids.

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    • #
      BobC

      Rereke, you’ve hit on the solution!

      If “Climate Deniers” are “one of the primary barriers to Climate Change” — and “Climate Change” is the primary risk we face (catastrophic warming just ahead!), then it must be the “Climate Deniers” that have prevented the climate from changing for the last 13 years!

      Far from being a problem, the “cadre of Climate Deniers” is actually saving the world, according to “Green logic” as demonstrated in this article.

      So, now both Skeptics and Alarmists agree that “Climate Deniers” are saving the world (albeit for vastly different reasons).

      Problem solved!

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  • #
    pat

    Crikey and Co are not mentioning their beloved Obama’s approval – and heavy taxpayer subsidies for – nuclear reactors in the US – the first in 28 years (which i posted about on a previous thread some days ago). Andrew Bolt is now featuring a New Scientist piece on the nuclear story (as if they can be trusted to report honestly on anything) which doesn’t even bring up the subsidies or the whole CAGW rationale being shamelessly touted as requiring it:

    16 Feb: WSJ: Obama Unveils Loan Guarantees for Nuclear Plant
    By HENRY J. PULIZZI And CHRISTINE BUURMA
    Touting nuclear energy as a critical component of the effort to confront climate change and meet the U.S.’s energy needs, President Barack Obama announced Tuesday roughly $8 billion in government-loan guarantees for Southern Co. to break ground on a new nuclear-power plant in Georgia…
    The reactors are “just the first of what we hope will be many new nuclear projects,” said Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, in a press briefing Tuesday…
    Southern Co. Chief Executive David Ratcliffe called the loan guarantee “an important endorsement in the role nuclear power must play in diversifying our nation’s energy mix and helping to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.”…
    Under the loan-guarantee program, the government promises to assume a company’s debt obligations if it defaults on debt incurred for the projects. Because new nuclear reactors cost billions of dollars to develop, the loan guarantees can be a key step for energy companies that plan to undertake such projects.
    Total cost of Southern Co.’s new units is projected to be around $14 billion. Of that amount, the share of the company’s Georgia power subsidiary is to be around $6.1 billion…
    The U.S. Department of Energy has the authority for $18.5 billion in loan guarantees. The administration’s fiscal-2011 budget request seeks to triple that amount to more than $54 billion.
    Energy Secretary Steven Chu, speaking at a press briefing Tuesday, declined to say when the second nuclear loan guarantee might be issued. Along with Southern Co., Scana Corp., Constellation Energy Group Inc. and NRG Energy Inc. were on a short list of companies with projects still in the running for federal loan backing as of May.
    “We’re working with the applicants as fast as we can to get through these processes,” Mr. Chu said.
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069301926799046.html

    despite what nuclear advocates claim, the Fukushima disaster is a long way from over. too much trouble for some to read the Japanese English press to see the shocking outcomes, not to mention the uncertain future for not only the reactors, but for the tens of thousands affected for many decades to come?

    well, how ironic, this is the same WSJ just 2 days prior to the first article i’ve posted:

    14 Feb: VIDEO: WSJ: Ghost Towns of Fukushima
    http://online.wsj.com/video/ghost-towns-of-fukushima/F89DA0B5-7229-4152-BAF8-F24BAC8D857C.html

    i’m sure Crikey won’t be carrying progressive darling, Glenn Greenwald’s piece in Crikey’s beloved Salon, which won’t find favour with Bolt either, or his many followers who continue to imagine CAGW is part of a leftwing, socialist plot!

    9 Feb: Salon: Glenn Greenwald: Repulsive progressive hypocrisy
    http://www.salon.com/2012/02/08/repulsive_progressive_hypocrisy/singleton/

    Judge Napolitano’s Freedom Watch: What If?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqD-Kn4c7ZU

    Ron Paul for President.

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    • #

      Hi Pat
      As of last week , they have decided to commission not one but two new nuclear plants in Georgia , how cool is that ? Long live cheap energy.

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  • #
    1DandyTroll

    Uhm, I wonder how old the skeptics are if Phil Jones and James Hansen are considered youngsters?

    What does that hockeystick Mann, a toddler with his suppressor?

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  • #
    Markus Fitzhenry

    Cricky, the story has been out for more than a day.
    February 14, 2012 – 12:28 pm, by Crikey

    One Comment @ 10,15pm 15/2

    Posted February 15, 2012 at 12:03 pm
    “”It is hopeless trying to carry on a rational discourse with the most the sceptics.””
    ———————————————

    Haaaa………

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  • #
    cb

    You may know this already. ‘Leftist’ is the more accurate label: progressive is just another masking concept.

    If you want to dig down more: about 4% of the general population is strongly sociopathic (the old, i.e. functional, definition: ‘the moral disease’.) About 1-in-3 people are strongly vulnerable to the manipulations (lies; or raped reason really) of sociopaths. Think of ‘sociopath’ as Master Vampire, and drone vampire = greenie, hippie.

    If you want to go down one more level, then you hit the biblical concepts of the lawless and fools. Same things.

    These are two interlocking real-world phenomena. If you were to read up on (case studies) both sociopaths and their victims, then the vile insanities of the world start to make much more sense.

    It also suggests the solution: identification and social isolation. As for the drones, the hippies, they are inherently stupid and should not be let near anything of any importance to anyone.

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  • #
    dave ward

    “And the fact that solar didn’t work 20 years ago but works now”

    Ah, but solar panels ARE more efficient now than they were 20 years ago. Spanish ones even work after dark…
    http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/4/13/its-true.html

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    • #

      Dave,
      you have no idea how close to the thinking of these people you really are.

      I had a comment resulting from my original Kyoto series from nearly four years back about how they were thinking of putting a large array in orbit to focus the Sun’s light back to the power tower on the surface so that the Sun can indeed produce power from a solar plant at night.

      I commented that surely this was a ‘leg pull’ and he berated me as a disbeliever. I mentioned it in one of those Posts from May 2008.

      Kyoto – A Perspective (Part 21)

      Tony.

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      • #

        Tony I doubt that was the intent. Solar power satellites have been proposed where either solar PV or thermal generated electricity is converted to microwaves, beamed to locations called rectenna(antenna/rectifier) farms and distributed from there. It requires relatively cheap and routine access to GEO(geostationary orbit). Solar power is good in space inside the orbit of Mars. No night, no clouds, no atmospheric absorption or scattering. There has been a lot of work done on this concept. Somewhat surprisingly, it may be cheaper to make the satellites from materials mined from the Moon.
        See Gerry O’Neill/high frontier/space colonies

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  • #
    Catamon

    I doubt that statement is true, and I can’t be bothered looking up the polls to see.

    Hmmm…disturbing statement on a site that purports to concentrate on the science and evidence based discussion.

    So if a poll and analysis has been done where the idea was to look at viewpoints and whether they vary across gender, race, age parameters, its somehow racist or an expression of “festering intolerance” to actually use the phrase that describes one of the groups surveyed??

    How should they have expressed their findings then? Whats the PC label they should have applied?

    For those who want to look at at least the abstract of the source paper.

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    • #
      memoryvault

      I went and read the abstract.

      About the only comment that seems worthwhile making is that apparently in the US, conservative white males are more intelligent and better educated than the rest of the population.

      As a result they seem to be predominately more skeptical about “Climate Change” scaremongering.

      So your point is . . . .

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    • #

      I can’t be bothered looking up the polls to see.

      Because, Catamon, everyone who can think knows that the climate is not about race, it’s about radiation. I won’t learn anything about the atmosphere by researching who said what or what colour their skin is.

      The festering intolerance is not the description of poll results (however irrelevant they might be), it’s the arrogant presumption to “know” what any group thinks without asking, to pretend to know their motivation, to assume that being old is the reason they are wrong, to spurn the opinions of any group as “unworthy”.

      They didn’t find that older folk don’t care about the future, they made it up. They didn’t find that older folk who are skeptics are less educated. They just projected their wish list of flaws onto opponents they don’t respect enough to even ask… or listen to. That’s intolerance.

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      • #
        Catamon

        They didn’t find that older folk don’t care about the future, they made it up.

        Oh, so you did look at the data and methodology of the study that the Crikey article was based in then?? Well done.

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      Eddy Aruda

      Why don’t you take up phrenology while you are at it? What’s next, the green version of eugenics?

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      Wayne, s. Job

      Intolerance is the calling card of all true believers in false ideologies, including the belief in CAGW. This is a fact as valid as saying that things do not fall upward.

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    Ian Hill

    “Younger people don’t have any financial vested interest in climate change, and seeing older people denying it annoys young people because they are putting profits and lifestyle in front of the future.”

    “Older” people are merely reacting to the massive insult to the intelligence in relation to carbon dioxide being called pollution and the resultant carbon tax law now in place. They also have an interest in their children’s future more than their own.

    Once I got interested in the subject it took me less than ten minutes to find and become convinced that the graph showing a logarithmic decrease in temperature increase with increasing CO2 was correct. This positive feedback stuff is nonsense. Why don’t all packed gymnasiums spontaneously combust? Did I hear someone say that they are air conditioned? Well the Earth’s atmosphere is air conditioned too. There’s no greenhouse glass up there, just very sparse CO2 molecules which prevent air circulation with as much effectiveness as netting with mile wide holes in the wire.

    “Cohort replacement”? Give me a break. Today’s 30 year old AGW believers are tomorrow’s 50 year old sceptics. People change their views on current events all the time. It happens gradually.

    I don’t like reading stuff I wrote twenty years ago. Bloody hell, did I really think like that then?

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  • #
    Joe's World

    Jo,

    Since creating the velocity mapping…
    I have found that the circulation of the planet is based on circular motion. This is generated with the differences of velocity in conjunction with centrifugal force.

    On the planet surface at the 48 degree latitude is where the strength of centrifugal force is too weak to pull water back to the equator. It is the point of water traveling north and south.
    If energy was equal to each other, they would cancel each other out. But in circular motion, you have the weaker velocity that is counteracted with the stronger centrifugal force. these are just slightly weaker to each other and counteracting each other. The density of the atmosphere is different from the planet and have generated different parameters to the planet surface.
    This circular motion generates everything from snow flakes to cyclones to currents.
    http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/lalonde-joe/world-calculations.pdf
    http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/lalonde-joe/world-calculations-2.pdf

    Since I am the ONLY person studying motion, I have no one to even look at this research. I still have a massive amount to do yet…like plotting the velocities of other planets, tilting velocity mapping, time differences in tilting and solar heat displacement on our planet surface, etc.

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  • #
    Sonny

    I am 28 years old. I am a graduate of mechanical engineering (Hons) at the prestigious, elitist and pro global warming – Melbourne University.
    I am fit, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t believe in you BS global warming theories.
    I am pissed off to the point of wanting to devote the rest of my life, at whatever personal cost, to fighting the lies and corruption that is the heart of CLIMATE CHANGE.

    You wish I were dead? Come and get me! I’ll see you on the streets.

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    • #
      Sonny

      And do you know how much I get paid for my views?

      SWEET F&@$ ALL!!!

      I have not received a single dollar! Not one solitary penny!
      I only wish that climate change denialist could pay a basic wage, I could quit my current job and do something genuinely useful for mankind – hasten the death of the global warming cult.

      Ahh to hell with it. ILL DO IT FOR FREE AND IN MY SPARE TIME.

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        Joe's World

        Sonny,

        I do know how you feel!
        I have put in a great deal of effort and studying in order to understand this planet with motion. Not paid, just on my free time.
        I have been thrown every excuse from the “LAWS of science” to grid variations. I of course, check each excuse and found MAJOR flaws and errors. I calculated 129,600 grid squares that our scientists are suppose to be totally following. Stations of temperature data which have moved to different locations, which then changes accuracy.
        Accuracy is far from our current scientists agenda.
        Model manipulation…When you hear our axis has shifted “based on our models”, that is an inaccurate statement. Our axis is too deep in our core for any surface event to effect it. The true statement would be that our “crust shifted over the axis”.
        But science is full of inaccuracies that current scientists protect with the vale of uncertainties or with wording meant to confuse.

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        Catamon

        You could contact the Heartland Foundation. Seems they pay reasonably well??

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          Robin Guenier

          Catamon:

          So the evil Heartland Foundation has an annual budget of $6.5m. Wow – so that’s what the alarmists mean when they talk of “well-funded” scepticism. No wonder they’re so worried: after all, Greenpeace only has a budget of a measly $310m.

          Heartland – so far as I know – is the only significant organisation promoting CAGW scepticism. Compare that to Greenpeace, WWF, FOE etc. etc. plus all those national and international government and government-related bodies promoting CAGW by deploying billions of dollars (link).

          That the greens are so worried about the threat to their beliefs coming from such a tiny, ill-funded organisation illustrates perfectly their absurdity and fundamental lack of confidence in the validity of their claims.

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        • #
          Tristan

          And now, Catamon, you and I will watch JoNova viciously attack the Heartland Institute over it’s apparent obfuscation of honest debate.

          Because that’s what our champion of truth does. Doesn’t she Jo? Whistleblower is her middle name, remember? She doesn’t brook no silent subversion of truth. x

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            Eddy Aruda

            Honest debate? Hmm… You aren’t referring to all those debates the skeptics keep winning, are you? Thank God the debate is not over, right, Tristan?
            So when is your master debater, Al Gore, going to debate and finally put that final nail in the skeptic’s coffin! Probably when trolls quit hiding behind screen names! Right, Trisan?

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          Eddy Aruda

          Do you ever say anything intelligent, humorous or meaningful. Your ignorance and gullibility knows no bounds!

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          Wayne, s. Job

          Catamon,

          Reality does not seem to be your strong point.

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        Wayne, s. Job

        Sonny,
        I am in my seventh decade of life and I am equally indignant to this sham.
        It would seem young people such as yourself with their brain wired correctly as individuals do not accept falsities, those wired differently as herding animals go with the flow.

        It would be of interest to people such as myself to get your feedback as to how many people in your peer group are wired as individuals. The fate of our future lay’s in your generation.

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      memoryvault

      Sonny,

      Problem is you’re a mechanical engineer who doesn’t drink or smoke. Sorry Sonny, but that’s a mutually exclusive state to be in.

      You need to spend some time with a few older engineers.

      Ones who drink and smoke.

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    Sonny

    Lets have a look at who Ellen Sandells is:

    http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/recipients/?m=ellen-sandell-2009

    Hey hey! You went to the same uni as I did!!!! You’re only 1 year my junior?!!!

    Oooooooooooo you have links to the UN? You want Melbourne uni to he carbon neutral by 2030??

    You are deserving of Australian of the year!

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    cameronH

    I think that it is time for all of these young no nothings to understand that the foundation of this nation, as in the wonderful constitution, the stable political system, the legal system built on the rule of law that applies to all citizens equally ect ect was largely built by old white men, ie old white Anglo Celtic Males. When is the imense wisdom an foresight of these people that constructed such a marvelous and peacefull nation going to be recognised.

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    Sonny

    Crikey intern Freya Cole didn’t write Rather than trying to convince climate sceptics with political pseudo-scienctific propoganda backed by government shouldn’t we just actively hunt them down with big guns?

    That’s the argument not raised in a recent Gaist article, where writer David Roberts doesnt argue that “ideological genocide” — that, is people with a clue being killed and being replaced by a new, more indoctrinated generation — may be the best move to combat climate deniers:

     ”A great many people believe that one of the primary barriers to action on climate change is the existence of a cadre of individuals who would do us all a favour if they all died off quickly and painfully — people who refuse to accept the now-overwhelming scientific evidence bought by governments around the globe to grab more tax and support the UN’s agenda 21.

    “I don’t think the climate deniers will ever close their minds. What will happen is that they will, to put it bluntly, be killed for the Breyer good. We might wish it to happen sooner, but I fear that change on climate — non-linear, decoupled, multi variable change. — will not happen until the generational cohort in which climate denialism is entrenched, is swiftly an brutally eradicated from the earth without mercy”.

    The problem with that strategy, doesn’t say Australian Youth Climate Coalition national director Ellen Sandell, is death is too good for these guys: ”Unfortunately, we are blood thirsty and trigger happy, all the science is saying that we have a narrow opportunity in which to amass weapons. Action needs to happen before they die naturally because the longer we wait the harder it gets to find them.

    But she doesn’t admit it is frustrating. “It is irresponsible and disheartening to see older people not giving themselves up to the chopping block ,” Sandell didn’t tell Crikey.

    “Younger people have huge financial vested interest in climate change, and seeing older people refuse to buy the hype annoys young people because they are putting the truth, honesty and integrity ahead of our one world future.”

    The demographics of the climate change movement are clear. “At a majority of the anti-climate tax rallies the general age was middle-aged-plus. But if you looked at the rallies GetUp! and other similar groups put on as well as rallies organized by the Nazis in 1939 for the Hitler youth – there was 40 times the amount of people and a majority were young – just like Sandell didn’t say.

    Conservative white older men whom regularly oppress women are the most likely group to deny the threat of climate change, doesn’t write Roberts at Grist:

    “Older white men pedophilic men are a privileged group. They saw their fathers occupy a position of unquestioned normative dominance over their subordinate women. And yet history is passing them by; America is becoming more diverse, more urban, more suburban, more bourbon, and more socially retarded. White men (I hate them so much!!!) are in the process of losing their position of power over women and children.

    Mathew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions and the 2010 winner of the federal environment minister’s Young Environmentalist of the Year, doesn’t  agree with Roberts’s hypothesis.

    “I think there are possibilities to why successful people come to the floor during public debate and deny global warming,” Wright told Crikey. “It’s their logic. They look back at the history of planet earth and see that in the grand scheme of things, nothin much different is happening in the climate today than it ever has, it’s just more economical to argue that pollution has something to do with it.”

    “Then along comes this story and that is all bad news and dangerous climate change. That rewrites history for them and this consequently could change their happiness and retirement, because now their savings and their pension will be invested into environmental ponzi schemes.

    He doesn’t say people don’t like to imvetigate the past. “For example, 20 years ago they might have decided that solar is very expensive and doesn’t work very well,” Wright noted. “They might have trouble revisiting that because they are relying on the decisions that they made initially, 20 years ago. But now, things are moving faster than they ever have before, and the fact that solar didn’t work 20 years ago but is subsidized by the government at the expense of their health care, and investment into infrastructure is a problem that for some people is hard to face up to.

    Not According to Wright, the answer to solve the generational divide is in good communication and accepting that a few decades ago people had a different understanding of pollution and the environment and that their views are old and uncool and they had better die off now, because we are fantasizing of committing murder.

    “It’s about communicating fairly to these people,” he says. “There’s no reason to have scorn on them because 20 years ago they didn’t know any better. – we should put them out of their misery now!”

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    Tags: climate change, climate change deniers, climate science

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    Comments page: 1 |
    Whilst I applaud the youth of the nations action and concern about anthropogenicly induced climate change there are some of us ‘oldies’ that are deeply concerned about the matter and our inadequate reaction to it.

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      BobC

      Sonny
      February 16, 2012 at 12:10 am · Reply
      Crikey intern Freya Cole didn’t write Rather than trying to convince climate sceptics with political pseudo-scienctific propoganda backed by government shouldn’t we just actively hunt them down with big guns?

      Ha Ha Sonny! But don’t believe that they aren’t actually fantasizing about killing us — remember 10:10? After all, CAGW is the current location of many of those former Communists who also didn’t mind “breaking some eggs” to make an omelette.

      The problem with this “solution” however, is that (at least in America) it’s the old farts that have most of the guns and training in their use.

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        Mark D.

        ……it’s the old farts that have most of the guns and training in their use.

        yes, and that demonstrates just a small bit of the wisdom brought about by having less years in front of you than you have behind.

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    Bernal

    Hey Sonny, that’s what I’m talking about.

    You are willing to fight for your freedom at personal cost.

    That is a nice contrast with wee Ellen, Australian of the Year, who made a conference. No doubt, at tax payer expense. A freaking conference. She is getting a good start on applying her lips to the gov’t teat, the corruption, writ small, that you are talking about. No doubt in years to come the twit will be jetting around the world to conferences on the health benefits of organic candle light.

    Yes, the most damaging generation, the Baby Boom generation, is dying off. Wee Ellen is the sapless progeny of the bien pensant. You are the child of we who have seen the error of our ways. Sorry about this crap we are handing you.

    I for one am resolved to do as much damage as possible to the prevailing orthodoxy on my way out of this life.

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    I have some strong views on todays youth but I won’t comment for fear of being banned from the blog.
    All I can say is…

    WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT you binge drinking, sleeping around, irresponsible, molly coddled, awarded for failure know nothing GULLIBLE YOUNG PUNK?

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      Madjak

      Hey Baa,

      You do realise that to be a rebellious young punk now, you need to critique what the man tells you about AGW?

      I think you will find the smarter less malleable young punks now see agw as being just another way for some members of the more drug addled of the older generation to screw over the young uns.

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    Dagfinn

    A recent poll in Norway shows young people least concerned about climate change, with those above 60 most concerned. The idea that “deniers” are older is clearly not a universal truth.

    Here’s a Google translation that seems to be somewhat readable.

    http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aftenposten.no%2Fnyheter%2Firiks%2FKlimaendring-blant-unge-6762545.html

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    Llew Jones

    Nothing wrong with having a bit of fun at the expense of the inconsequential non scientific wing of the alarmist brigade but they have lost the battle, if in fact they were ever a significant part of it.

    To indicate how far off the pace they are they have not even identified the real target. It is without doubt the general populace, the ones who do the voting, and not a small cadre of “deniers”, that will make sure their cheap energy derived lifestyles are not ravaged by semi paranoid green nutters.

    Are we humans all potentially exploitable end of the worlders? Not a human trait that can be easily exploited as this ancient story indicates:

    “In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Freya Cole entered her boat.”

    The majority of Aussie people, who mostly are probably not very interested in the science are intent on throwing out a government that employs the same scaremongering tactics. The Noah story indicates human nature is a pretty consistent animal and is more amenable to skepticism than alarmism when the latter has a hair shirt solution only.

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    I have spoken to more than 200 people in the southern united states in the last 40 days , of which only 2 …. I repeat 2, had any belief in CAGW . Both were dreadlocked hippies !, long live older white folk , CAGW is dying a slow painful death here , even California is beginning to turn .

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    The immature believers struggle with numbers:

    That headline in Joanne’s Post says it all.

    The two things that give me the most incredulous looks from listeners when I say it are the following:

    Question 1. How much coal does a large scale coal fired power plant burn to produce its electricity?

    Most have absolutely no idea at all. Some venture a response and it’s usually “Oh! A hundred tons or so.”

    Without letting on, I then follow up and ask them what time frame that hundred tons might be burnt in, and the response is always around one year.

    When I tell them that the average plant will burn close on 6.5 MILLION tons of coal a year, the looks I get (always) are outright astonishment followed by “that’s not true, surely.”

    I just tell them to go look it up, but it’s absolutely true.

    Question 2. How much CO2 is produced from the burning of one ton of coal?

    That’s an unfair question really, because not one person has ever answered other than to indicate no idea.

    When I tell them that on average one ton of coal being burned produces 2.86 tons of CO2, the response (no kidding) is nearly always, “yeah! but that’s a gas.”

    When I tell them that it is actual physical tons, and that is not complex Science, but Science that they learned in the first year of High School themselves, the looks in response are outright incredulity.

    So I explain it to them, and even then, they don’t believe it because after all a gas weighs a lot less than a hard lump of coal.

    Then I just extrapolate question 1 with question 2.

    What this means is that an average large scale coal fired power plant is emitting 36 tons of CO2 EVERY MINUTE.

    Again, the looks are of outright astonishment.

    I was asked to give a small talk to a group of around 30 people about this same thing.

    I was in a small meeting room, and I went through the above, patiently explaining it.

    After I did that, I added that just in the U.S. alone, and just from the generation of all electrical power, the CO2 emissions amounted to 3.25 BILLION tons each and every year.

    I have come to know that there is usually always one person who will respond with the usual, “see, if it’s that much, then no wonder there’s a problem,” and that happened at this small meeting.

    Straight away I asked them what the CO2 concentration in the Atmosphere is, and not many people really know that.

    This one young lady did know, and she replied 389 Parts per million, (this was a couple of years back now)

    So I then followed up and asked what percentage of the total Atmosphere is 389PPM, and none could work it out out, so I explained that amounted to 0.0389% of the Atmosphere.

    That’s a hard thing to visualise, so I asked them that using that percentage, what volume of this room we are all sitting in is that CO2 part of the overall, and waiting patiently for an answer, with none forthcoming, I added that it amounted to around the size of a cigarette pack, bad example I know, but the size is for comparison only.

    Standing at the front of the group, I got to see their faces. Some looked around the room. Others just looked stunned.

    People have no concept whatsoever about something that has been rammed at them, and they believe, even if they have some quiet doubts in their own minds, but tell them the facts, and there is just stunned silence.

    Tony.

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    (Doug,you are waaay off topic again.You also cross post this comment at another thread as you have been doing a few times before.Please stop this or I will start snipping out the way off topic comments) CTS

    When solar radiation (UV, visible and IR etc) travels through space we do not know what its end effect will be until it strikes something. We will observe its effect and say – there’s some light from the Sun – but it may be more light if it hits a white surface than a dark surface, as a camera exposure meter will confirm. It may generate thermal energy (more or less depending on what it strikes) or it may appear as light as it starts to penetrate the oceans, but end up as thermal energy in the deeper depths. Of course some will be reflected or scattered and strike another target sooner or later, and another etc.

    My point is, “heat” is the transfer of thermal energy, but thermal energy is not a fixed amount of energy travelling along with radiation. The energy in the radiation has to go through a physical process of being converted to thermal energy. This happens only for those frequencies in the radiation which are above the natural frequencies that can be emitted by the target, because the target cannot re-emit those frequencies. (The hotter the source of spontaneous radiation, the higher will be the peak frequency.) So solar radiation can be converted to thermal energy in the Earth’s surface, but radiation emitted from a cooler atmosphere cannot be converted to thermal energy in a warmer surface. “Heat” only appears to be transferred (and only from hot to cold) because only radiation from hot to cold will be converted to extra thermal energy in the target.

    It does not matter whether you are increasing the rate of warming in the morning or decreasing the rate of cooling later in the day, you still need extra thermal energy to do this. You cannot get this extra thermal energy from a cooler atmosphere, morning or evening. You cannot say the Second Law is not broken because of the direction of net radiation or net heat flow. All that matters is, what actually happens between any two points – one point on the surface and one point in a cooler atmosphere. What goes on between other “points” – a point on the Sun and another point on the surface is irrelevant. The Second Law must apply between any two points.

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    Madjak

    I must be a freak then.

    Never mind, I will be reminding my wussy born again christian grandchild that my generation were largeley a bunch of useless twats who allowed themselves to be manipulated by selfish, drug addled hippies who sold out to become callous capitalist bastards who manufactured a great big green scare, marketed it as being rebellious and managed to move the standard of living backwards for no other reason than their own flawed ideals.

    I will of course explain, that my generation were too stupid to realise how they were being manipulated even as some older wiser people tried to explain how we were being tricked.

    And I will explain how my generation were so caught up in the ideal of saving the planet, and how that gave their meaningless existence some sens of purpose that they ignored the real pollution and real injustices that was happenning all around them.

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    BrianJay

    “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” -during a 1984 presidential debate with Walter Mondale

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    GregS

    So they’re waiting for us to die off – what a laugh! Here’s an opportunity for you Jo – write a “Skeptic’s Diet & Lifestyle Guide” book, to keep us skeptics alive for as long as possible. Oh, include advice on how to maximise our fertility as well….. 🙂

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      Robert

      I’m afraid to have children. Sooner or later they have to leave the nest and it seems fairly apparent that rather than turning them into thinking, functioning human beings our schools and political systems prefer they become mindless idiots.

      Many of my friends home school as a remedy to that which is an option, but I have to admit to being afraid of raising intelligent offspring only to have them come home one day spouting the kind of drivel we get here from John Brooks or Ross James.

      That would be more pain than anyone should have to endure.

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