This weeks spot for all those thoughts that don’t fit anywhere else.
5.9 out of 10 based on 21 ratings
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… As I keep saying, it’s not that the media has a problem, the truth is the media IS the problem. If we had accurate and balanced reporting the global warming meme would have crashed and burned long ago, voters would have said “No thanks”; politicians would have wasted less money; scientists would be researching useful things; universities would have to fire professors who can’t reason, and we would all be richer. So when the budget office says our ABC costs us $1 billion, I say No, the cost is measured in national GDP. No wonder most of us have given up watching the old media. Here’s a study, by the Media Research Centre, reported in the Wall St Journal. Hat tip to the HockeySchtick blog and Tom Nelson. It refers to US networks so “ABC” means the American variety. Curiously, the New York Times looks good in comparison to the network news. It told its readers about the global pause only six months after its foreign competitors did. It was only a few years behind the bloggers. Networks Do 92 Climate Change Stories; Fail to Mention ‘Lull’ in Warming All 92 Times ABC, CBS and NBC ignore ‘mystery’ […] In reply to my email request, a spokesperson from Macquarie replied today. The entire response to Murry Salby’s 20-point-list of serious accusations is reproduced in full (my thoughts below): 10 July 2013 STATEMENT REGARDING THE TERMINATION OF PROFESSOR MURRY SALBY Prof Murry Salby Macquarie University does not normally comment on the circumstances under which employees leave the University. However, we feel in this instance it is necessary to do so in order to correct misinformation. The decision to terminate Professor Murry Salby’s employment with Macquarie University had nothing to do with his views on climate change nor any other views. The University supports academic freedom of speech and freedom to pursue research interests. Professor Salby’s employment was terminated firstly, because he did not fulfil his academic obligations, including the obligation to teach. After repeated directions to teach, this matter culminated in his refusal to undertake his teaching duties and he failed to arrive at a class he had been scheduled to take. The University took this matter very seriously as the education and welfare of students is a primary concern. The second reason for his termination involved breaches of University policies […] July 11th, 2013 | Tags: Macquarie Uni, Salby (Murry) | Category: Global Warming |  Print This Post | | State of the Carbon Market: Started in 2003, but wiped out in 2013 Each year for nearly a decade The World Bank has published “The State and Trends of the Carbon Market” in May or June with great fan-fare and press releases. It’s the definitive guide telling the world how many dollars are turning over in the global markets (which really means “the EU market plus a few other bits”). I’ve been quoting their figures for years — The 2012 report told us that $176 billion dollars turned over in 2011. So what was the number for the 2012 year? Whatever it is, it’s so bad the World Bank cancelled the report. Figure what the cancellation of the report tells us about the The World Bank. Was it publishing these figures for the last nine years because they were important for investors and policy-makers? I guess not, or they would still be publishing them. By dropping it at the first major downturn, we know the reason for the report was pure PR, something for whipping up momentum about the market and getting headlines in newspapers. The numbers in 2013 became a PR disadvantage — the World Bank did […] Prof Murry Salby NEWEST UPDATE #4: Both Salby and Macquarie Uni responded today. See this newer post. UPDATED: After hours of emails and phone calls I still have not heard from Salby but have news that Christopher Monckton has spoken to him and confirms that “ “This case is outrageous. I shall be finding out further details from Professor Salby and shall then arrange for powerful backers to assist him in fighting the university, which – if his side of the story is in all material respects true – has committed multiple criminal offenses. This needs to be a high-profile case.” Christopher Monckton (Thanks to John Smeed and Malcolm Roberts for passing on CM’s email). Short of sending Murry Salby to Siberia, Macquarie University have seemingly done everything they could to sabotage and silence him and his PhD student. Is his research is so dangerous to the cash cow that is “global warming” that it had to be stopped at any cost? Is is difficult to imagine any response they can give which would justify the behaviour described below if it is accurate. The truth will out in the end, and how will Macquarie’s reputation stand up then? […] July 9th, 2013 | Tags: Macquarie Uni, Sacked, Salby (Murry), Witch hunt | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | I thought warmer nights were a fingerprint of CO2 induced warming? John Cook has claimed that at least five times on his blog: The human fingerprint in the daily cycle. It’s also known as Diurnal Temperature Range, and the theory is that extra CO2 keeps us warm all night. Now Excellent* (Alarmed) Climate System Experts are saying that UHI (Urban Heat Island) effects can cause warmer nights too, at least in the future. (Perhaps this only applies to future-bricks, not past ones — you think?) City expected to feel heat as it expands Ben Cubby Parts of Sydney will be up to 3.7 degrees hotter by the year 2050, as urban expansion spawns ever more asphalt and concrete, new research suggests. The ”urban heat island effect” – the build-up of heat in built-up areas – will amplify climate change, particularly in the outer fringes of Australian cities, according to University of NSW researchers. ”If you are living near the edge of a city today, you will notice the temperature change, mainly through the minimum temperature change at night,” said Daniel Argueso, the lead author of the study that was prepared at the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. ”There […] July 9th, 2013 | Tags: Diurnal Temperature Range (DTR), SkepticalScience (debunking), Urban Heat Island Effect | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Another spot to tell odd news … 8.4 out of 10 based on 14 ratings … It’s a sign skeptics are winning. A few years ago the term “skeptic” had been turned into an insult. People would write to me and implore me to call myself a realist. (I wasn’t having a bar of that). Now, all kinds of wannabees are pretending they are skeptics even as they swallow and repeat the establishment lines ad infinitum. Take, for example, Professor Stephen Emmott. It’s a PR game — Emmott hopes the half-asleep audience will see the right keywords and not notice that what he actually says is the complete opposite of the badges and labels he claims as his own. Emmott (Emmott who?) has written yet another scary book and is doing his best to pretend he is the voice of reason. According to Donna LaFramboise his new book is just a rehash of a 40 year old one. (Geoff Chambers has all the other links). Let’s unpack the empty PR Quotes below are from The Australian. First up, Emmott tries to look reasonable by saying he won’t demonize climate skeptics: He [Emmott] affects bafflement at climate scepticism: “I have no idea why people don’t believe what is overwhelming evidence for climate change,” he says. […] There they go again. Last night the ABC again used taxpayer dollars to post up a slick advertisement for their favourite religion. Because Catalyst won’t read skeptical blogs, interview skeptics, or ask difficult questions, they give a false impression to any poor viewers who haven’t figured out that the presenters (in this case, Anja Taylor) are more activist than investigator. “The gorilla in the kitchen remained invisible. Where was cause and effect?” The Earth has had extremes of every kind of weather for 4.5 billion years. What makes the current ones any different? Any cause of warming could melt ice, raise sea-levels, shift jet streams, change cloud cover and shift evaporation rates. How do we know this warming is due to coal fired power stations? We only “know” because some climate modelers say so — but they rely on models that assume relative humidity stays constant when it doesn’t, and which are proven “unskilled” at precipitation, cloud cover and upper tropospheric temperature profiles. The models ignore lunar effects, solar magnetic effects and millions of observations so they can blame your SUV and air-conditioner for causing droughts, storms, blizzards, and floods. This is the modus operandi of the ancient witchdoctor. […] July 5th, 2013 | Tags: ABC, Catalyst (ABC), Propaganda | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | Peter Gleick — infamous for using deception to steal documents “for The Cause” (see fakegate) — tweeted that it was getting hotter every year. He attached a picture of melting traffic lights. “Hot enough for you?” How good is this man’s physics? This is a wider picture of events near to the traffic lights that melted in Kuwait. … 248am blog shows another angle. 9.1 out of 10 based on 100 ratings […] Which line matches the line on the left? On any given test one third of people will say A or B if the crowd around them does. In the 1950’s a psychologist called Solomon Asch wanted to find out how strongly people would conform to the group around them. He gave about 100 men a card (supposedly like the one in the image to the right) and asked them whether A, or B, or C matched the line. Not surprisingly, most people got the answer right if they are on their own, but if they were surrounded by a group of people who were giving the wrong answer, often they would give the wrong answer too. In the study, the test subjects thought that the people around them were being tested too, but those people were actors who’d been coached to give the wrong answer. Typically there were 6 or 7 actors and the test subject would be positioned last or second last, so they would hear the other wrong answers before their turn came. So when faced with an obvious answer, about one third of the time people picked the group-think response instead. Ultimately only 25% of people […] We’ve already found enough flaws, but Christopher Monckton analyzes John Cook’s 97% consensus paper and sharpens the scythe. He finds: It should never have been done, it’s an unscientific method — “consensus” The “consensus” was defined in three different ways. (Which hypothesis are they testing?) None of the three definitions is specific enough to be falsifiable. The paper strangely omitted the key results. (Why make 7 classifications, if they were not going to disclose how many papers fell into each category?) Of nearly 12,000 abstracts analyzed, there were only 64 papers in category 1 (which explicitly endorsed man-made global warming). Of those only 41 (0.3%) actually endorsed the quantitative hypothesis as defined by Cook in the introduction. A third of the 64 papers did not belong. None of the categories endorsed “catastrophic” warming — a warming severe enough to warrant action — though this was assumed in the introduction, discussion and publicity material. The consensus (such as there is, and it being irrelevant) appears to be declining. The nice thing about this commentary is that Monckton provides a summary of the philosophy of science (showing Cook et al are 2,300 years out of date). […] July 1st, 2013 | Tags: Consensus, Cook (John), Monckton (Christopher), SkepticalScience (debunking) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | I’m looking for a facebook expert to advise me too… 6.6 out of 10 based on 20 ratings Lewis and Karoly 2013: climate change is “likely” to blame for the hottest angry summer. Did your air-conditioner make Australia the hottest angry summer ever? Could be. If we apply mystery-black-box-techniques to data from a few sparse thermometers averaged over thousands of square kilometers we can find a “record”. If we compare that “record” to models that are known to be wrong, voila — then the coal fired power stations heated more than just your home, they heated the whole country. On the other hand, if we use thousands of measurements from satellites that criss cross the nation day and night covering every corner of the land, we didn’t have a hot angry summer, we had a normal one. The Lewis and Karoly study is moot. If we caused a normal summer, is that so bad? The not-angry-summer is visible with no statistical analysis. According to UAH satellite measurements summer in early 2013 was not a record. Not even close. Satellite records only go back to 1979, but to answer the question “was this the hottest ever summer” we only need records back as far as 2010. The peer reviewed, comprehensive, Lewis and Karoly paper does not contain the […] June 29th, 2013 | Tags: Australian temperatures, Karoly (David) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Rudd has a chance to dump a dumb policy, but won’t Australia’s overpriced, unneccessary carbon tax will become even more overpriced next Monday (from $23 to $24.15 per ton). A spokesman tells The Australian that the all-new Labor cabinet will reconsider it all next week and may bring in the trading scheme sooner rather than later. At the moment the Gillard-fixed-carbon-price will shift to a floating price (lately, a sinking price) in two years time in mid 2015. The current EU price is $6 AUD. The Australian understands Mr Rudd will look at all aspects of the implementation of the $23 a tonne price on carbon as a priority. The reinstated Prime Minister sought to cement his commitment to tackling climate change, declaring he had “long been committed to a carbon price”. Rudd mistakes token efforts in China for “action”: He accused the Coalition of inconsistency on the issue and cited action in China as evidence “carbon pricing is now becoming more and more of a global reality”. The real global reality and action in China is that it is building more coal powered stations than anywhere, and is one of the largest coal burning nations in the world. China […] Flat circle, wall of ice around the edge. Hmm Let it be known, the next time you are called a “Flat Earther” you can point out that the Flat Earth society (or at least their President) is on the same side as Al Gore and James Hansen. It’s a piece of useless trivia that’s good for useless conversations. I did not believe there was such a group so I scoped out their site expecting it to be a joke. But if it is a satire, it’s a very detailed one, they have maps and t-shirts, and explanations, and so far I haven’t found the joke. Salon.com decided it was real: Actually, even the Flat Earth Society believes in climate change Yes, such a group exists. It thinks the world is flat — but also getting warmer In his big speech on climate change today, President Obama mocked Republicans who deny the existence of man-made global warming by derisively referring to them as members of “the Flat Earth Society.” As it turns out, there is a real Flat Earth Society and its president thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real. In an email to Salon, president Daniel Shenton said that […] UPDATE: Rudd wins 57:45. Who will lead the nation? A diabolical choice. Gillard has lost all goodwill and credibility. If she’ll lie once… there is nothing she can say that will be believed. Polls are at record lows for the Labor Party here, but the dilemma is that the most popular Labor contender (at least in the polls) is also the former PM Kevin Rudd, despised by many in his own party, and whose polls were so low three years ago they turfed him out. He still carries the baggage of all the worst policy calls — the boats, the “Climate” action, the NBN, the debt. The Unions that control Labor don’t want Rudd, who threatens their power, but are facing a wipe out either way. Will Rudd stand? (UPDATE: Heywood in comments says Rudd has agreed to contend). Will some other candidate pick up this poisoned chalice? Despite all this, the public perversely want Julia to go the election. Payback time? Voting at 7pm EST tonight. See Bolt. (A bit over an hour to go). “Gillard calls a leadership ballot for 7pm tonight. Says she will stand. Says no one has told her they will […] So much for “higher” education. James Cook University (JCU) has blackballed Professor Bob Carter, not because of any flaw in his scientific reasoning, but because he speaks outside the permitted doctrine. His views on climate science do not fit with the dominant meme (or the grant applications). And then there were pesky complaints and emails from disgruntled fans of the prophets-of-doom. (Quite a drain on the office.) They took his office a while back, then they took the title. Carter was still supervising a student, and another professor hired him for an hour a week with his own budget. It meant Carter could continue supervising and keep his library access. But that wouldn’t do. Professor Jeffrey Loughran blocked that as well. The library pass and the email was shut off on June 21. It takes an active kind of malice to be this petty. Bob Carter In years to come when everyone admits that the Great Global Warming Scare was hyped, JCU could have been seen as one of the rare beacons of academic honour and principle. Instead, apparently, it’s as spineless as any other bureucratic collective. The irony for JCU, is that Bob Carter has been working […] Where is the vision? The Australian Government have reissued their research priorities for science. Sadly it’s infected with the eco-virus. There are seven “sustainables”, and ten aspects of “change”. When it comes to maximizing our competitive advantage, the first point is the development of “reliable, low cost, low emission energy.” Say no more. After applying a wheel-clamp to the economy, we’re paying scientists to figure out how to drive cars with wheel-clamps on. The Australian Academy of Science “welcomes the release” which tell us exactly how useful they are. They think this is a “long-term, strategic vision for Australia”. I think this is an eco-pop wish-list of bland mediocrity on a dead-end road. It’s time for real scientists to ditch the current associations, which have forgotten what science is, and start some new ones. What should Australian public funded scientists be discovering? I envisage priority number one as stopping the ravages of disease and misfortune, conquering cancer, and the common cold, or at the very least, reducing asthma and diabetes. As a bonus we’d sell the products for trillions to a clamouring world, to make us rich beyond our wildest dreams, the envy of the world, and a top destination […] June 25th, 2013 | Tags: ARC Grants, Australian Academy of Science | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | POSTED in the Satirical Tomes: News that could have been, but wasn’t. Climate modelers announced today that in future they would report everything in Hiroshima-atom-bomb-equivalents, or Habe. The President of Climate-Scientists-Anonymous said the old system of joules was boring, and no one understood what ten-to-the-twenty-two meant anyhow. “We leave that stuff to the computers” he said. “The planet has been building up temperatures at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second, and it’s all our fault, say climate scientists.” — Neda Vanovac, Climate change like atom bomb (interviewing John Cook ) … Skeptics said they preferred exponentials, but could debunk alarmists with any units. Science Blogger Jo Nova said if Neda Vanovac had called “I would have told her that while John Cook’s figure sounded like a marvelous marketing gimmick, scientifically it was meaningless. For starters, the Sun blasts 1,950 Hiroshima’s worth of energy over the Earth every second (h.t to Wellerstein). So we got four more? Did Cook forget to mention that, or was he just trying to scare people?” Jo explains that Cook’s units are a parody of science: “The atomic-bomb delivered all the energy in […] June 24th, 2013 | Tags: Cook (John), Satire & Parody, SkepticalScience (debunking) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | |
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