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The ABC keeps giving us more reasons to say “Privatize the national broadcaster”. Such is the quality of the insights on offer.
Clive Hamilton, ethics professor and former Greens candidate, uses most of the alarmist toolbox on the ABC Drum –-the name-calling, hypocrisy, and argumentum ad auctoritatem. He still can’t tell the difference between science and religion, he thinks science works like a church, with decrees issued from the Mount. He talks of the mythical God known as “the science”. Clive has read the leak of the latest commandment from on high, and it says “95%”! There is gnashing of teeth:
Further confirmation of the science will certainly not persuade any climate science deniers. They are beyond persuasion, because the argument is only superficially about the science. It’s really about culture and ideology.
Strangely, he’s unwitting hit upon a truth. But it’s a projection of his headspace, run rife. Who denies the evidence showing climate models are broken. Whose argument is superficial? Who doesn’t even know what science is? Yes, really this is about culture and ideology. His. And it’s a dark ideology; read on.
What Clive wants more than anything is to monsterize anyone who questions his faith. His […]
Two weeks to go…
7.4 out of 10 based on 32 ratings
Note the mass emissions in the Amazon and Africa in Sept 2007
The Carbon tracker shows the major CO2 polluters as they splurt out CO2. See the massive plumes of CO2 around the planet.
Look at China… watch clusters of coal fired power stations bursting into life only to shut down a month later. (Or maybe not.)
Is that mass rallies of four wheel drives each August in the Congo? No, it must be air-conditioners in Kinshasa…
😉
Tom Quirk tells me that the intermittent polluters around the equatorial region are likely to be massive fires. (And there are even monster fires as far north as Siberia).
I’m intrigued but I want some data. The NASA Earth Observatory obviously have some data — see the picture here of the same month as the picture at the top (sept 2007). It is not enough though. The dots represent the number of fires, but not the intensity, and not the fuel load…
Note the active fires in the Amazon and Africa in Sept 2007
Watch the global wildfires rage and die out in this animation below:
8.2 out of 10 based on 36 ratings […]
Skeptics are often accused of being ideologically motivated to find reasons to “deny” the threat posed by man-made Global Disruptification (or whatever it is now called). Which begs the question of what ideology motivated Jo-the-former-Green, along with all the other former believers, to convert. It certainly wasn’t the money (we know from first hand experience). Could it be that damn truth-seeking ideology?
Judith Curry points out that “motivated reasoning” also applies to believers (to which I would add, yes, double-yes, and more-so — follow that money). When grants, careers, junkets, book sales, and offers to sit on golden-commissions are on the line, it doesn’t take much motivated reasoning to find excuses to believe your work is “science” even as you ignore opportunities to follow data that doesn’t quite fit, or delay publications of inconvenient graphs, while you double check, triple check, and invite like-minded colleagues to help find reasons the graphs are not important.
Some scientists are so motivated that they call opposing scientists petty names, and toss allusions they must be “funded” by vested interests, even as they ignore the billions of vested interests funding the name-callers. Meanwhile, all the silent so-called scientists in the tea-rooms that let the […]
Let the historic dissection begin. Man-made global warming is a dying market and a zombie science.
The Carbon Capture Report, based in Illinois, tallies up the media stories from the English speaking media on “climate change” daily. Thanks to the tip from Peter Lang, we can see the terminal trend below. The big peak in late 2009 was the double-whammy of Climategate and Copenhagen (aka Hopenhagen). It’s all been downhill since then.
Mentions of “climate change” in news, blogs and tweets dropped suddenly from July 29, 2011
Source: Carbon Capture Report
But something that caught my eye was the drop in mid 2011 (or precisely — July 29, 2011) when media stories fell by half, a step-change fall from which they never recovered.
Media Matters, and Joe Romm make much of of the fact that after Paul Ingrassia (a skeptic) was appointed as Reuters deputy-editor-in-chief news coverage of climate change fell by half.
Media Matters found a 48% decline in climate-change coverage over a six-month period, after Ingrassia joined the agency in 2011.
But Ingrassia started in April 2011 not July. Media Matters compares 6 months before the global fall Oct 2010 – April 2011 — to […]
Proving that nature can outdo anything humans have done, a new paper shows that sea-levels off Western Australia may have risen as high as 9 m above the current level during the last warm period over a hundred thousand years ago. The authors (O’Leary et al) conclude that seas were 3-4 m higher for most of the last warm period (known as the Eemian) but towards the end of the period a large sudden rise occurred. They suggest that an ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica or Greenland or both, causing a 5m rise (17 feet).
The point of the paper was this double spiked shape of the sea level rise during the last warm interglacial known as the Eemian.
The Age interviewed O’Leary who said “he was confident that the 17-foot jump happened in less than a thousand years – how much less, he cannot be sure.”
Figure 3 j Relative sea-level curve for Western Australia. Ageomorphically defined palaeoMSL datum of C2:5m 120 kyr ago (Fig. 1c) anchors a predicted relative sea-level curve at Red Bluff, which includes a GIA signal based on the test calculation (see Methods) plus the following ESL history: ESL jumps from 0 to 3.4m […]
Stick with us overseas readers. The spectacle goes on…
How times have changed
Back in 2007 both major parties wooed the Green vote. Now Green is so on the nose that Abbott not only declared that he was putting them last on preference swaps*, but felt it was worth egging the Labor party to join him. The ALP did not scoff. Abbott is marking the Greens as worse for the nation than the Labor Party. In response the Labor Party put out a definite “maybe-sorta-kindof”. Rudd ruled out “deals” to form government (though it’s not clear what that means exactly), but he naturally wants to use preference swaps and won’t be bragging about it.
Both major parties are competing to look tough on “irregular maritime migrants”. Though both still pay lip service to the climate-scare. It’s a shame the Liberals are still too afraid of the name-calling bullies to stand up and ask for evidence, or to promise to set up an independent science agency to audit the IPCC claims on behalf of Australian taxpayers.
Where did that bounce go?
The honeymoon is over for Rudd.
Sportsbet have the Conservatives at $1.11. Labor at $6.50. The Labor Party suffered […]
From the AIRS satellite at NASA
Watch how greenness and CO2 oscillate. Carbon dioxide is the yellow stuff on the map.
As you watch the yearly cycle, hold on to the thought: “my car can change global CO2 levels”…
(My favourite part starts half way).
Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
These three images come from the video above.
In March each year CO2 levels are rapidly rising, because the vegetation in the northern hemisphere has been dormant for months.
8.6 out of 10 based on 58 ratings […]
Arnold Schwarzenegger uses all his best scientific reasoning to wow the crowd at the annual National Clean Energy Summit on Tuesday in Las Vegas, Nevada:
Speaking of greenhouse gas deniers: “Strap some conservative-thinking people to a tailpipe for an hour and then they will agree it’s a pollutant!
The Huffington Post reports
(H/t toJunkScience.com via ClimateDepot)
Steve Goddard responds: Guy With Thick German Accent Wants To Kill His Political Opponents Using Poison Gas?
Hey, but it was only a joke… (a bit like leaving people who are not-good-with-numbers in charge of national accounts eh?)
9.1 out of 10 based on 78 ratings
Finally climate scientists are starting to ask how the models need to change in order to fit the data. Hans von Storch, Eduardo Zorita and authors in Germany pointedly acknowledge that even at the 2% confidence level the model predictions don’t match reality. The fact is, the model simulations predicted it would get warmer than it has from 1998-2012. Now some climate scientists admit that there is less than a 2% chance that the models are compatible with the 15-year warming pause, according to the assumptions in the models.
In a brief paper they go on to suggest three ways the models could be failing, but draw no conclusions. For the first time I can recall, the possibility that the data might be wrong is not even mentioned. It has been the excuse du jour for years.
Note in the chart that while the 10 year “pause” passed the basic 5% test of statistical significance, by 13 years, the pause was so long that only 2% of CMIP5 or CMIP3 models simulations could be said to agree with reality. By 16 years that will be 1% of simulations. If the pause continues for 20 years, there would be “zero” […]
Four Apollo Astronauts are outspoken skeptics. This includes Buzz Aldrin and Harrison Schmidt (2 of the 12 men who walked on the moon) and Phil Chapman (Apollo 14) and Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7).
Donn F. Eisele, Walter M. Schirra, Jr. and Walter Cunningham.
Walter Cunningham is a fighter pilot and a physicist and was the Lunar Module pilot on the Apollo 7 mission. In a 263 hour mission in October 1968 the three astronauts covered four and a half million miles.
Over forty years later, he describes how the public trust built by the astronauts and technical specialists who put man on the moon has been abused by opportunists. NASA and science has changed. UPDATE: Ask yourself how hard it would be for the BBC, ABC or New Scientist to have done this interview (and years ago). Cunningham confirms that none of them have ever approached him to ask why he is openly skeptical, which tells you all you need to know about the impartiality of mainstream “journalists”. … * * * Below are selected snippets of Larry Bell’s interview with Walter Cunningham: “Those of us fortunate enough to have traveled in space bet our lives on the competence, […]
It just shows how dry Australia is and how pathetic we are with water. Australia’s largest river ends in an artificial dam full of feral European Carp. Lobbyists are campaigning hard (and successfully) to take water from upstream farmers to restore the flow. According to Jennifer Marohasy, one of the main outcomes will be to increase a massive artificial freshwater estuary that only exists because several kilometers of man-made barrages were built across the end of the river in the 1930’s. She makes a case that we’d be better off using the $10 billion dollars and the water to restore natural wetlands or to produce food. As she says “Taking one-third of upstream Murray water from farmers to feed a downstream carp fishery makes no economic, environmental or agricultural sense.“
I spoke to Marohasy on the phone today and she makes the point that the Murray River was in strife in the 1980’s, and it did need extra water-flow, but a lot of action had already been taken, and river health improved before this latest $10 billion dollar plan was pledged in April 2007. (For example, in October 2005 the “world’s largest delivery of environmental water“, […]
There is so much to talk about…
7.3 out of 10 based on 27 ratings
Murry Salby
Murry Salby was sacked from Macquarie University, and Macquarie struggled to explain why, among other things, it was necessary to abandon, and strand him in Paris and hold a “misconduct” meeting in his absence. Since then he has been subject to attacks related to his previous employment. I’ve asked him to respond, which he has at length in a PDF here. The figures listed below refer to that PDF, which encompasses 15 years of events.
I don’t have the resources (unlike the National Science Foundation, the NSF) to investigate it all, but wanted to give Murry the right of reply. On closer inspection the NSF report used by people to attack Salby does not appear to be the balanced, impartial analysis I would have expected. Indeed the hyperbolic language based on insubstantial evidence is disturbing to say the least. Because of the long detailed nature of this I cannot draw conclusions, except to say that any scientist who responds to a question about Murry Salby’s work with a reference to his employment is no scientist.
Remember the NSF report was supposedly an inhouse private document. It was marked “Confidential”, subject to the Privacy Act, with disclosure outside […]
The real cost of moral-vanity, of name-calling, poor reasoning, selecting one’s evidence, and the triumph of doing things because they “feel-good” rather than because of the cold hard numbers, is measured in the trillions. This disaster was entirely foreseeable, totally predictable, and completely unnecessary.
Thanks to Benny Peiser and The Australian, the utter folly is laid bare.
AS country after country abandons, curtails or reneges on once-generous support for renewable energy, Europe is beginning to realise that its green energy strategy is dying on the vine. Green dreams are giving way to hard economic realities.
Slowly but gradually, Europe is awakening to a green energy crisis, an economic and political debacle that is entirely self-inflicted.
The media is finally starting to do what it should have done ten years ago:
A study by British public relations consultancy CCGroup analysed 138 articles about renewables published during July last year in the five most widely circulated British national newspapers: The Sun, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, which enjoy a combined daily circulation of about 6.5 million.
“The analysis revealed a number of trends in the reporting of […]
Peter Lang adds up the numbers from the Treasury and leading economic commentators, and finds that decisions the Australian Labor Government has made will cost the equivalent of about $17,000 for every man, woman and child if paid in a lump sum now, or $58,000 if paid bit by bit over the next 37 years to 2050. And that’s just for the ETS, not for the RET and other measures.
By 2019 Alan Moran estimates each year citizens would have to fork out billions for Green Schemes; Labor policies tally to $22b, Coalition policies to $7b, Greens policies to $27b.
If men-in-black-suits turned up at Australian houses forcing citizens to sign cheques for $17,000 per person in order to change the weather on Earth 100 years from now, there would be a revolt in the streets. That’s $68k per household of four. (Is this how you would spend $68 grand?) But if the government disguises those charges in electricity bills, and hidden increases in the cost of every item that has to be moved, heated or cooled, then some 30-40% of the nation sees no reason not to vote for this. […]
Was someone at SkepticalScience plotting to pretend evil skeptics created these pictures? (… surely not.)
Brandon Schollenberger found them on the SkS forum. Admire the effort taken to get the SkS penguins, the leaf insignia on the hat, the lapels, the button…
Reichstuhrer J.Cook
Or lo, is this just the weekend fun of teenagers let loose with photoshop? Looks like.
Spartans for Science, Watts, Monckton and Delingpole
Anthony Watts has a larger set (and a pretty good six-pack too) which is “lucky” (sort of), because not long after he posted the first few, the images disappeared from their original links. In a true SkS logical maneuver they were moved to …/images/a11gon3 (images “allgone”), which took real skeptics about five minutes to find. That set have gone too now (except for the 400 copies placed all over the Internet).
As Anthony says, Skeptical Science takes creepy to a whole new level.
Brandon wonders (like we all do) why anyone would bother? 9 out of 10 based on 77 ratings […]
Antarctic Sea Ice has hit it’s 23rd daily record for the year. (Thanks to Sunshine Hours for tracking these things.)
2013 is the red line. (click to enlarge)
In terms of the number of daily records in a year, the Big Year for sea-ice was 2008 where records occurred on 125 days. 2010 was nearly as “big” when records occurred on 118 days. 2013 is currently in fifth spot. If the tally rises to 28 records this year, it will leap to third place.
Not that any of this matters, of course.
“Sea ice in the Arctic and around Antarctica responds directly to climate change and may, if properly monitored, become increasingly important for detecting climate change.”
IPCC Third Assessment Report, Cryosphere Processes, Box 7.1
8.5 out of 10 based on 90 ratings […]
Michael McLaren, 2GB
Thanks to Joe V in comments for finding the links to my interview on the “Carbon Free Market”
Michael McLaren speaks with Joanne Nova, author of The Skeptic’s Handbook, who speaks about the stupidity of aligning ourselves with Europe’s ETS.
Listen http://www.2gb.com/article/ets-more-black-market-green-economy# or Download
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PPS: For commenters, please keep the language polite.
Emotions are running high in Australia. One anonymous commenter has posted over 400 comments here, if he repeats himself, either ignore it, or explain why he’s wrong. Links are appreciated in comments but not ones that don’t even have one line of explanation (eg youtube). We welcome all honest debate from all comers.
[…]
The thread to discuss the Grand Debacle that is Australian Politics at the moment.
Let’s insist that our politicians and commentators use accurate terms The Carbon Free Market is a Carbon Forced Market. “Carbon” is carbon dioxide. Pollution is something proven to damage people or the environment. Where is the evidence? Carbon credits are not a commodity they are a fiat currency, and a form of tax payment.
Finally, the voters get to pick.
8.8 out of 10 based on 102 ratings
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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