Let’s all jump on the ghost of a bandwagon!
The front page of The West Australian declared “Barnett backs Obama’s climate plans”
The dead-horse is getting flayed a bit longer and the spectators are cheering louder than when it had legs. A foreign, lame duck President, who just suffered a major defeat in the midterm elections has managed the “feat” of getting the Chinese to shake his hand and solemnly promise to keep doing what they are doing for another 16 years. (After that, they agree to change what was probably changing anyway.) Those who spent millions on climate-scare in the US election are licking their wounds. Gallup polls show the public just don’t care — ranking it 13th out of 13.
Despite those hard numbers, those who forecast the horoscopes on herd movements are getting very excited. Andrew Probyn, political editor of The West, exclaimed “The politics of climate change are again in the ascendancy”. It’s political astrology.
As I keep saying, the media IS the problem. With journalists like that, we get politicians like this.
Colin Barnett, conservative leader of my home state, is mimicking the David-Cameron style unconservative, big spending, non-leader and dutifully joining the chorus. In 2100, how historians will mock the song and marvel that state leaders seriously fell for the idea that wind-mills would turn back the tide, and solar panels could stop the floods. Look out. Global warming causes global cooling, and a tax can change the weather! Hey but it’s just as likely as the Chinese volunteering to curb their economy because we asked them nicely.
Colin Barnett has “embraced Obama’s demand for stronger climate change action, saying Australia needs to be bolder in its emission reduction targets”. He thinks we should phase out of coal and into gas. Mr Barnett runs a state with lots of gas and not much coal. Did anyone notice? Not so much. Political editors saw the “momentum” they were hoping to see, aligned the planets, and proclaimed the mood is shifting. Any excuse will do in the rush to follow the herd.
My letter to The West Australian today:
To the Editor
Let’s get serious about the climate and start talking numbers. How much does that insurance cost, and how many degrees, exactly, will it cool the planet? The cost is measured in trillions, and the degrees are measured in one hundredths. If Colin Barnett is serious about the climate he needs to be serious about the decimal places. If it doesn’t have the numbers that matter, it isn’t science.
Buying insurance for insurance sake is something a salesman would push. Has Barnett been fooled by the advertising? There’s a word for people who are not sceptical — and it’s “gullible”.
Global Carbon markets were worth $176 billion a year at their peak and almost a billion dollars a day, globally, was invested in renewables. There are billions of reasons to try to control the weather, but they are all dollars, not satellite measurements, ice core results, or data from weather balloons.
And since we are doing the maths, lets talk about the numbers Obama has in the US Congress. This is a lame duck President freely offering other people’s money to stop storms and hold back the tide. How about some healthy scepticism?
Witchdoctors used to say “Pay me and I will give you nice weather”. When anyone in the tribe got skeptical they’d bully and badger the unbeliever, calling them names. We have silicon chips in the voodoo-dolls now — otherwise nothing has changed.
The nicest interpretation I can put on Barnett’s enthusiasm is that he might be just a pragmatic opportunist. WA is a mining state with resources in nearly everything but not so much in coal. The gas sector profits from the climate scare. But I see no sign he sees through the advertising.
PS: I don’t normally get The West and I don’t normally follow state politics. If locals want to sponsor a subscription I could change that. I need about 4 people to cover $2 a week.
“…. is mimicking the David-Cameron style unconservative, big spending, non-leader…..” Brilliant. Can I borrow that phrase?
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David Cameron is a conservative, the problem is that he tends to forget the ‘-servative’ part.
Conservatives are supposed to be fiscally responsible, but under Cameron:
1. Foreign aid contributions have skyrocketed, mostly paid into the bottomless and unaccountable UN and EU mega-bureaucracies.
2. Government now directly funds the costs of some of the unreliable, expensive green energy, rather than the consumer.
3. Payments to the EU to support inefficient French, Spanish and Italian farmers have skyrocketed.
4. Investment into reliable, low cost energy supplies have ceased completely in favour of the expensive unreliable sort.
5. Because of Cameron (and not forgetting Clegg and Miliband), the UK economy is in transit to a high cost energy one, where energy poverty will soon be the norm, rather than the exception.
The obsession with all things green is something that Cameron and his Greenpeace wife are emotionally unable to abandon to the detriment of everyone in the UK.
The problem is that if you remove the ‘servative’, you get left with the ‘con’ and that is an affliction of far too many leaders in the parties of the right, when it comes to the non-problem of supposed man made climate change and ‘green’ energy.
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Heres a realistic take on the “enigma” of conservatives acting like communists – hint – they are all the same.
How so? Well simply “politics” is a way of creatingan artificaial duopoly.
Or put simply – your vote is meningless…….pointless….worthless…..yep, get over it.
Ask yourself – who puts up the candiddates you “Vote” for?
Who?
Another questiuon – Why is it that regardless of who you are allowed to “vote” for you get the same agenda? Green insanity, lurching socialism….a headlong plummet to a socialist mess where nothing works and all are miserable….
Any sane, rational person would conclude that its all rigged. A fixed race.
Simply put, voting is a charade – the people you “vote” for will give you the same agenda, regardless of who “wins”.
Why? Simple – classic Helgian Dialectic – control both “sides” of politics and you have a controlled outcome. The punters feel good because they could “vote” for who they are given and go back to sleep, while the globalists continue to rape the country…..
Lenin wasnt the only one who considered many to be “useful idiots”. ( in fact Lenin may not have said it, but I digress… )
If no one voted for just one election to serve notice – the effect would be profound. It would smoke out the trouble makers, and you could disband parties and re-form them.
You need to identify who the king makers are in politics and locate their sources of power and identify them. Then and only then will you find who truly controls power…..
Tell me i’m wrong….
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Really?
Best tell that to Obama’s Democrats who took a shellacking in the USA mid-terms.
The voters are not stupid. They know stupid when they see it.
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And yet…and yet the US Republican Party leadership is full of Republicans In Name Only (RINOs).
Not voting in an election? THAT’S JUST WHAT THEY WANT! Vote for the party that shows a grasp of what’s happening, the one that’s least green/red.
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The voters aren’t entirely gullible, but their recourse is limited. Yes, Republicans tightened their grip on the House slightly and seized the Senate, but what now? Obama says he’ll push through his views on illegal immigration vie executive order. Mitch McConnell, the new leader of the Senate says he’s not going to put up a fight on that score. WTF??? Same old, same old.
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Gruber says they are stupid. Now I’m confused.
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Hey Original Steve! You say, “Tell me i’m wrong….”
Not me. I think you hit the nail on the head. The game is rigged, and voting is just a way to flim-flam people into thinking that they are being “represented.” All your vote is, is a signal to politicians that lets them know when they have correctly guessed which lies you want to hear. Your vote has no effect on what the politicians will do, so how can NOT voting be any more useless than voting?
10
You forgot ….
(6) The wide scale immigration of Islam to weaken the home state.
Not at all conservative values I would think?
Unfortunately, it’s the New World Order in action!
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Unfortunately, most “conservatives” focus on the social side of conservatism, not the fiscal. Like the Left, theirs is a statist ideology with many vested interests to maintain, just different ones than Socialists. In most Western democracies there is a dearth of political parties that combine social liberalism and fiscal conservatism.
I recommend F. A. Hayek’s famous essay: “Why I am not a Conservative”.
40
Not enough social and fiscal conservatives!
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To add insult to injury, on Thursday this week David Cameron will announce he will flush £650 million down the toilet in donations to a new UN green fund.
For many conservative supporters in the UK, this will be the last straw with Cameron and his obsession of unreservedly supporting the green blob.
His obsession is going could cost the Conservatives the next election in May next year, when a coalition of the ecoloons seems to be the likely result.
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I suspect the problem has been, in part, defined right there. If his politics don’t support her activist ideals then he may be “cut off.” Men will do some pretty damn stupid things to prevent that from happening.
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Colin Barnett has been very clever as noted in Jo’s article – his comment praising Obama’s G20 speech is designed to promote WA’s massive LNG Industry, ie “saving the planet” by burning natural gas and not coal with the former giving off less CO2. Of course Colin knows full well that most of Oz’s large coal fields are in QLD & NSW, not WA. The move in his eyes is a political masterstroke. But given that the Theory of AGW is total nonsense of course means really it doesn’t matter whether you burn coal or natural gas, however the latter is politically more palatable for the MSM, except of course the “Socialist Fairfax Group” who only want RE in Oz, no matter what the cost to the Oz Economy.
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Exactly right your highness, on all counts.
And don’t forget Perth is the host in 2016 to one of the largest conferences ever, LNG18 in Perth in 2016.
The Premier has obviously been reminded of that.
http://lng18.org/
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Oh, and BTW, they’re calling for papers.
Perhaps Jo should give one and bring them up to speed on why they are so very relevant.
Now that would be a gas!
80
Since the entire country contributes less than 1.5% of all the evil man made global CO2, it is not possible for Australia to have any affect on such.
So save your money.
51
Jo
My window overlooks the flightpath from Amberley to the CBD so we heard Obama before we saw him. The sheer cost of getting all those Osprey and choppers, cars and personnel for the students at UQ to cheer is bordering on obscene, especially when couched in terms of CO2 emissions. Did we hear anything about that from the watermelon greens? Not likely.
It was most interesting to read the G20 exit editorials and posts. As a multicultural household (Chinese and Australian) we watched the key bits on TV. First up was the potus at UQ and my take on it until he mentioned climate was that he was somewhat disconnected. When he mentioned climate I disconnected!
Your post on the 2030 aspirational has gotten a few laughs from the Chinese side. The deal has also copped a lot of flak for being a hollow and meaningless agreement which sees Xi waving off Obama as only China can!
I watched the potus fly past after the G20 exit press conferences. Obama was well scripted, all the questions has been given prior and his familiarity with the press selected to ask questions was palpable. In contrast, Tony Abbott was very much off the cuff and would have been happy to stick around if not for others waiting to speak.
Thinking on it now, there is some irony in the fact that Putin left early and Obama left empty handed. For mine in both cases it showed!
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Obama is a dead loss at home,
Here is a recent video of his local demographic deserting him in droves at a speech.
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Yeah the potus has been caught out Climate Grubering.
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Well in Australia, he seemed to find a younger and more impressionable audience – he even threatened to emigrate here.
30
He was careful where he went. And he won’t retire to Australia. Probably China or someplace with no extradition. Assuming the Dems don’t kick him under the bus just before the 2016 elections.
30
You probably didn’t see half the planes he takes. AF1 and a backup 747, C-17s for security personnel and vehicles(as many as five C-17s and 35 SUVs. Plus the up to 350 tagalong suckups have to ferried and fed. Not to mention the squadron(s) of F15s over the horizon at all times. Typical cost is $100,000,000 give or take a few million.
Obama will not concede; he will spend treasure and blood liberally to reach his ends. History gave us a word for it: Despot. Only by Congress standing up to him can he be slowed. People tend to forget that in the second QE bailout, the White House took control of over $250,000,000,000 to spend as it saw fit. There has never been an accounting. One can fund a lot of mischief with that. The next two years will shape the future of the planet for better or worse. Gonna be interesting.
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Interesting? You have a beautiful talent for understatement, James
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May we all live in Interesting times…
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And people wonder why I remain a Monarchist! You don’t see anything like that expensive kerfuffle with HM The Queen. Witness the Remembrance Day ceremony at The Cenotaph despite the security threat that had been discovered.
30
Forgot to mention that Osprey and helicopters mean the fleet is nearby. Add another multi-millions.
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Perhaps they were borrowed from the Russians, seeing as how they were in the neighborhood, anyway.
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That’s a very naughty statement.
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Hello Jo ,
I just read your old piece ‘ Man Made Global Warming Disproved ‘, It certainly is an eye-opener,.
What did the CSIRO say when you sent it to them ?.
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Yes, it was, wasn’t it..
Did you actually learn anything ?
Or are the blinkers and blindfold still securely in place.
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Frank, They don’t want to say anything. Prof Andy Pitman and I have discussed the evidence in private emails. He didn’t want me to publish his replies (I asked) — obviously he knows his answers look weak. Matthew England has commented on this blog to try to defend himself – I’ve published every comment he sent. If they had the evidence, and good answers, you can bet they would be delighted to come here and share.
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I can not believe how gullible people in Australia are about how Obama took over the G20 for his own agenda. Sorry America but I think you have a very rude leader and isn’t worth the time of day. be given the time of day. He is a bully.
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I’m not sure if he is a bully, quite possibly he is.
On the other hand he is very submissive to people in established positions of authority.
60
I have no problem with bowing. It is a sign of respect, but not of subservience.
Kneeling on one knee is a sign of subservience. Kneeling on both knees is a sign of submission.
41
It very much depends on who bows first, how deep the bow is, and whether it’s returned to the same degree. 0bama’s bows are of the subservient sort.
But it doesn’t matter. All his bows except the first one are designed to cover up the fact that his earliest bow was religious in nature.
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Now more than ever I suggest it’s time you guys on the contrarian side need to produce some science to back your claims otherwise you might just get steamrolled. Whatever you might think, the Chinese getting on board this train is an important development, perceptions matter, like it or not. If the US, China and Europe are all on board they represent the lions share of emissions so it would I’d imagine give the whole thing some serious impetus.
Drought is ravaging Australia now, and California as well, and we are not even in an El Nino. Add to that the likelihood that 2014 will be the hottest on record there is a real need to push back and counter the existing climate science if you’re going remain on the right side of history. Somehow I doubt you can but really your complete inability to produce a plausible counter theory up until now does not auger well.
I’m tipping some of the less extreme conservatives might just start to tip toe away from climate denialism, very carefully no doubt.
Cue the serial abuser, Griss, with lots of spittle flecked rage and no science.
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Chuckle, poor child.
Again you have produced nothing.. just an empty post full of propaganda mis-information and worthless ad homs.
Its all you have, just your own empty ranting with zero science to back you up.
Australia has droughts.. didn’t you know that ???
2014 will not be the hottest in any of the data sets, unless Gavin and Phil can do a whole heap of manipulating.. You know they will try though.
China will not be on board until 2030 at the very earliest.
By then the CAGNW farce should be well and truly buried.
They know that, and they are laughing like crazy at the stupidity of places like the USA who seem determined to collapse their own economies.
The two fastest developing countries , China and India, will be MASSIVELY EXPANDING their COAL-FIRED electricity supply for many many years… lots of lovely CO2 for the world’s plant life 🙂
That is the way it will be, nothing will stop that happening. 🙂
So all your childish yabbering is totally meaningless and pointless.
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FIN,
it’s nice to read your tongue in cheek comment aimed only at stirring the pot, because even you know this climate change deal between the U.S. and China is a turkey.
Xi Jinping played him like a trout.
You need to read the comment at this link.
Even you know you’re not being serious here.
Tony.
540
I think I’ve got under his skin.. certainly I am in his mind 🙂
220
I wonder if his Mother knows if he is using the computer ???
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Its so hilarious to watch his sort thrashing around aimlessly.
Even he must know that the supply of human release CO2 from coal and gas is going to keep going up, up, up.
China, India going gangbusters with their coal, hydro and nuclear.
Germany going back to coal in a big way because its ‘scared’ of nuclear (seriously?)
Then there are several African nations that are looking to get into ‘usable’ energy so that they can also gain a rise in prosperity.
If places like the USA and UK want to be bought back to the flock by destroying their own economies with useless “renewable non-energy”.. good luck to them 🙂
And there’s poor little Frank.. ever dependant on good old, solid, reliable COAL-FIRED electricity to get him through each unbearable day of his miserable existence, poor panic stricken child. 🙂
How hypocritical. !
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“And there’s poor little Frank.. ”
Whoops .. this one is Fin
same-o same-o. ! can’t tell them apart.
130
I love coming to this site as much as anything to witness the clownish antics of The Gristler. Could you find a more comically complete example of a Group Think Groupie?
And he’s like a nasty, yapping little lap dog that never sleeps and never goes away. A truly tragic case.
Little wonder Jo had to change her banner and remove the reference to fighting Group Think – hilarious.
222
Poor Chester.. feeling left out again? Irrelevant and inconsequential.?
Like a chihuahua X poodle yapping from the back of a dumb blonds car as he drives past.
171
Talking of dogs….the editor of a certain greenie mag has a dog called Chester. I wonder if there is any relationship?
80
Chester
“I love coming to this site as much as anything to witness the clownish antics of The Gristler. Could you find a more comically complete example of a Group Think Groupie?
And he’s like a nasty, yapping little lap dog that never sleeps and never goes away. A truly tragic case.”
Thank goodness you don’t engage in Group Think.
Yours,
Groupie…
30
You will have to convince me he has a mind before I will concede that you have gotten into it. Anyone whose thoughts are just an echo of what the media has told them to think does not in my opinion demonstrate the capability for thought, ergo they are mindless.
20
Did you know that last year, just the INCREASE in China’s CO2 output was TWICE the total CO2 produced by Australia.
Next year and the year after, and the year after………many times over, they will continue to INCREASE by more than twice, maybe even THREE time Australia’s total yearly production.
And hopefully a lot of that coal will come from Australia, although other countries are now being developed, (Indonesia, South Africa both have huge reserves of coal)…
… that way we will know we are doing our bit to enhance the world’s biosphere. 🙂
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I see the Queensland Government gave the ‘Fins’ of this world a poke in the eye today. The government signed a $2.2 BILLION deal with India so we can ship them more coal !!!
370
Sweet !!! 🙂
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FIN said…
I would have thought that OBAMA would be CAGW alarmists public enemy number one after he publicly and officially told the Chinese (and by extension India) that they can continue business as usual until 2030.
WHAT THIS MEANS IS THAT WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP CO2 LEVELS LOW ENOUGH TO AVOID FUTURE CATASTROPHIES (according to the IPCC synthesis report).
Have we already forgotten the “WARMING IN THE PIPELINE” or the “WE HAVE JUST 60 DAYS TO ACT” (that was Gordon Brown 60 days before Copenhagen FIVE YEARS AGO) or the “CO2 STAYS IN THE ATMOSPHERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS” meme and so on and so forth.
As long as China and India keep emitting, it makes NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER what other nations do.
Yet CAGW alarmists are licking Obamas boots. How perverse can it get?
440
Baa,
FIN is expressing what he wished Obama had done, because the cognitive dissonance of facing what Obama actually did, is just too much to bare. Where China goes, India will go, for competitive economic reasons, if for nothing else.
90
You’ve hit on the naked truth there Rereke.
30
Fin,
Just a couple of quick questions:
Would a true scientist proposing an hypothesis in good faith and conscience, reverse the onus of proof onto his detractors?
Does it seem credible or legitimate to you that, as observations have undeniably diverged from alarmist predictions, and global temperatures have not statistically risen for between 12 and 18 years (depending upon the data base), that alarmist advocates have increased their alleged certainty that CAGW is real?
Is it reasonable to consider computer simulations of climate as “evidence” when they are not validated by real world observations (171 out of 173 run hot), and do not contain or model accurately all the parameters involved in climate on either a local, regional or global scale?
Do you really believe the US or China will do anything tangible with this so called agreement when the POTUS has only 2 years to go before he leaves office, has a hostile congress determined to block any climate initiative (as Obama well knows), and with a Chinese leader who has put “action” on the lay away plan to 2030, by which time Xi knows that global warming will have been disproven by the inevitability of declining solar influence, and who has carte blanche to ramp up emissions hugely in the interim to make it easier to drop by a few percent in the unlikely event that the need arose? Just what do you think they will achieve other than continue to do exactly what they have been doing up to now? And do you really think that by 2030 that wind and solar will be anything other than a minor, boutique, and highly subsidized less than a couple of percent contribution to the generation mix?
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Here you go FIN – 1350+ papers to keep you awake at night.
Or just merely “awake”…
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Tell us, ExWarmist, which 3 bits of the science led you to switch camps – with references to your set of published papers please.
018
Why don’t YOU go and read them. (and don’t come back until you have finished them)
Its time you actually learnt some science, rather than just reading propaganda tabloid headlines and brain-washing from the ABC.
180
ps.. I imagine you would be totally crushed if they cancelled Peppa Pig !
Your whole education gone, in one little pork rind cut.
120
I mean which 3 bits of science other than experiment, observation and records… dude?
11
Dear Mod,
Subject was ‘3 bits of science’ and the modifier is ‘with references’ changing the topic of the sentence from ‘3 bits of science’ to ‘with references’.
I believe I could make a case for this if you could see the funny side of it.
For your consideration similar to that given shillyfilly.
20
Hi Chester,
My conversion from Warmist to ExWarmist was an extended process that occurred during 2008 and 2009.
The primary scientific contributors to my conversion were the works of Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ken Briffa and the rest of the members of the Hockey Stick Team who carefully illustrated their complete lack of understanding of the scientific process thereby losing all credibility for their results.
REF Jones Quote
Words fail me to describe how intensely anti-scientific Phil Jones’ quote is.
The Universe will not reveal it’s secrets to people who simply seek confirmation of their hypothesis, rather then it’s refutation.
120
“The Universe will not reveal it’s secrets to people who simply seek confirmation of their hypothesis, rather then it’s refutation.”
Sorry, but it is happening too much lately.
“……rather THAN it’s refutation”
00
You are quite right.
It should have been “than”.
Ahhh …proof reading. It’s a lost art.
00
Your right, except I just thought it was just another new “American” spelling! 😉
00
That statement is all anyone who actually understands science needs to see to know that the person who said it is not involved in a scientific undertaking.
The entire purposed of making data available is so something can be found wrong with it if in fact there is something wrong.
One does not achieve understanding of a thing when one only seeks confirmation of their perception of the thing. One reaches understanding by seeking out the flaws in their perception.
However if the goal is not one of understanding or truth but driven by activism or personal prestige, then one might not want the flaws uncovered.
80
Wow. 1350 papers to choose from yet your reasons for your assertions about AGW are based on the shit-shoveling over some stolen emails that, upon investigation proved absolutely nothing.
That’s scientific.
—–
REPLY: Define “shit-shoveling” science. That must be the sort that uses tricks to hide declines right? – Jo
03
If your methodology is broken – so will be your results.
20
I thought that he just provide 1350 such papers. Are you in any way short on comprehension?
20
I asked him to tell me which were the clinchers from those papers.
I thought it was obvious but clearly it’s you lacking comprehension.
As usual you guys put up such a compelling argument – I can’t work out why you need to concoct your conspiracy theories when you have such a solid case.
04
There is nothing to argue against.
The AGW meme has been pretty much empty of anything resembling science, right from its creation.
You need to go and see if you can get past paragraph one of a few of those papers….
… once you finish your year 9 exams, that is!
Baby steps first for you !
10
Hi Chester,
My apologies, I didn’t realise that you wanted a cheat sheet.
I will see what I can do for you.
Cheers ExWarmist
00
We can say the same about you after all it is your sort that is continually spewing the “big oil conspiracy” when your “evidence” according to you is so…
Oh, that’s right, you have no evidence, only speculation and models. Too bad.
10
No Australia is not being ravaged by drought,some parts of Australia are experiencing drought but then that’s what happens in Australia,it is actually a normal condition for large parts of the Continent because that is what the climate does and it has been doing it for a very very long time well before anyone coined the phrases el nino or la nina.
As for Mr Obama’s ideas,well they will last as long as their first outing in Congress,as for China, they do say the Chinese are “inscrutable”(look it up),they will carry on doing what they are doing now til 2030 and then they will decide to make some changes,what those changes will be is anyone’s guess.
But you won’t have to worry your little head about it because with this new trade deal there will be thousands maybe tens of thous of chinese students taking up Uni places and then remaining in Australia and becoming the new middle-class ousting the lazy leftists who will have to start working for a living,oh sorry got off topic,now where were we oh that’s right we were talking about 2030 and climate change,it won’t be a topic in 2030,it will have been consigned to the dust-bin of history….I always did want to learn chinese.
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Panzer, I was up visiting a colleague at Uni of Newcastle (NSW 150km north of Sydney) the other week.
The uni has just constructed a large new student accommodation wing.
Capacity of something like 800, from what I was told.
Most of this will go to “overseas” students.
They have space to build, up there, unlike at UNSW.
40
The Chinese are well known for their lack of scrutableness.
10
Fin, I hope you saw and understood this cartoon 🙂
Oh-bummer !!!
30
Answer me two question Fin:
1. Where is “the missing heat”?
2. How did it get there?
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A hypothesis or theory does not require a “counter theory”, but rather a null hypothesis.
This is where you warmists missed to boat as far as science is concerned. It is not for us to give it to you (although we have), but it should be part and parcel of everything you are looking at.
40
The Null Hypothesis is that Climate Change is still occuring in accordance with natural forces.
50
There you go Fin, you have it yet again.
00
Yeah, it’s all ’cause of nature, init?
00
It is important to note, FIN, in order to add to the credence of your comment, that neither Australia or California have ever suffered such similar droughts in previous times.
…Oh… hang on a sec….!
30
markx,
California only has a couple of hundred years or so of drought to go and it will definitely be unprecedented!
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_24993601/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more
10
Let’s hope the ANZUS Treaty is worth the paper it’s written on.
50
Why? Is somebody planning to go to war? If they are, nobody told me!
00
I am really proud of Tony Abbott for not being a sycophant and jumping on board what is essentially a lame duck President’s pandering to his diminishing core support base at home. I am also proud of the way Tony Abbott chose to speak out on the murder of the passengers on MH17.
410
Seems to me that Abbott clearly won the day.
Obama has no knowledge of Australian climate and weather nor is he aware that the measure of global warming is not national weather conditions but global temperature. That of course is affected by what is happening right around the globe and from that “average” it is very clear that there has been no global warming for almost 2 decades, despite increasing annual increases not only in the human CO2 emissions but more relevantly in the increase in atmospheric concentration of CO2.
If there is no global warming there is no science linking CO2 to extreme weather events. So not only is Obama a scientific illiterate but those who applauded his reference to Australian weather events as a measure of climate change are equally ignorant of the science.
Despite most of the leaders at G20 being as dumb as Obama in terms of the science Abbott and China got across the point that they are not interested in reducing the type of fossil fuel used to generate electricity but rather improving the efficiency of the process as delineated in the section on Energy Efficiency. That may well mean the need to build more efficient coal fired power plants in Australia as China is already doing.
The reality that the Europeans refused to face is that as Germany has phased out its nuclear plants, post Fukushima and though it is state of the art with solar and wind power generation, it is now building and operating coal fired plants as the only viable non nuclear source of base load power.
Given that in 2030 the whole AGW scam is very likely to have collapsed because the link between significant GW and human CO2 emissions has failed to materialise, Abbott will have been shown to grasp the fragility of the science better than most of his present G20 peers.
351
Obama is and always was a foundation member of the green blob, he was, is, and always will be in it for the money. Any thing he says about fighting global warming for the sake of the children and grandchildren is only so he can leave a bigger financial nest egg for his own heirs and descendants. Just like our own minister for Goldman Sachs did, right up to it cost him his spot at the top of his own tree.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/obamas-involvement-in-chicago-climate-exchange-the-rest-of-the-story
50
llew, I think you have coined a new phrase: “… as dumb as Obama”.
Now, that is a benchmark to live down to …
00
Germany has phased out its nuclear plants, post Fukushima …
And with the Japanese restarting at least one of the reactors at the Fukushima plant, Germany are now “studying the situation”, in order to assess whether they should also re-commission some of their more modern nuclear plants.
00
Barack Obama, the man who trumps his own auto cue. The man who relaunders every populist cliche in the service of his own poll rating. Even Isis are laughing at him and I bet the Chinese and Putin can’t believe the propitiousness of the circumstances. I’ll say this for Abbott, how gutsy was it to come out in the defence of coal in such a public way. It shows a man who is diametrically opposite to the facile Mr Obama.
230
Puleese, ISIS is a bona fide and well respected scientific research think tank: The Institute for Science and International Security which can be found at isis-online.org
I think you mean ISIL – Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.
00
Thank you Jo, for another informative, accurate and honest article, with which I fully agree.
200
Colin Barnett had a beauty of a brain snap at a WA state election when he proposed a mega expensive canal to transport water from the Kimberley to Perth and further points south. His proposal basically lost him that election and he was out of the limelight for a few years. That said he makes a very good Premier of WA but he does get carried away with some of his brainwaves.
It should also be said that the “West Australian” newspaper routinely publishes stirrer headlines that are designed to help boost circulation.
140
Good on you, Jo.
Barnett is already unpopular in this state. If he wants to alienate his remaining supporters, global warming is a good way to do it.
150
I’d have to ageee, global warming took down:
Howard, for refusing to sign kyoto
Rudd, for recanting on the ets, dethroned by his own party
Turnbull for supporting the ETS
Gillard for installing the carbon tax she said she wouldn’t
Rudd again from Gillards Carbon tax
cpt Bligh, for supporting gillards ETS and the stupendous rises in electricity costs she enacted in a historic landslide, the party can hold caucus in landrover.
That is the limit of my knowledge of the leaders names, but it also took down…
WA Labor before barnett in a landslide
NSW labor in a landslide
Vic Labor
NT labor,
Tas Labor, all mostly due to Gillards carbon tax.
By my count Mr Barnett, that is 11 leaders dethroned by the public or their own party partly because of their stand over Global Warming… Want some political advice… less than 20 percent of Aussies are prepared to pay for any action on climate change, anything you strip from the public pocket to fund this boondaggle is likely to see a backlash from the other 80 %. I would not advise sticking your global warmist head above the pulpit mr Barnett.
Mr Barnett, did we fire 11 leaders or 12?, do you really wanna take that chance? Go on, make my day!
180
I hope that Landrover has a wind turbine installed… or maybe it just runs on hot air?
40
obama is on the nose in america at the moment, so he is just seeking relevance by pushing around us little aussies. he surrounds himself with the hard left (uni students) to confirm his belief in his relevance.
he also seems to believe that the ordinary people of the world will believe that china have actually agreed to something, then he wonders why he is so on the nose and irrelevant. oh, our media love him of course, and so do the nobel prize people.. even gave him one for the colour of his skin and his political leanings, but i think the reality is that most people see past the facade.
210
Did the letter get published? A letter like that would be unlikely to get a run in the Age!
90
Mobihci, when referencing Obama, the term ‘show pony’ springs to mind. The US population at large, appear to have worked him out.
120
0bama? An entire show pony? Surely only the back half.
40
I wouldn’t waste good money on THE WEST in the hope of gaining quality news as they don’t even use it now for wrapping up fish and chips, such is the quality of its journalism. I recall a journalist employed at THE WEST saying (back then) the first socialist Premier, Burke, had more journalists working for his outfit than THE WEST had employed at the time. After their “training”, they dispersed into the MSM to spread their acquired talent.
Everyone at the G20 was following their scripts, as is Barnett in State politics. Politicians don’t actually run the show; they are the sideshow to keep most punters distracted from the main game, and in that respect, they are doing their job well. If everyone assiduously avoided the MSM, they might not be so brainwashed with false hopes. Jo’s reference to a “lame duck President” could be extended to include most pollies. Just how many actually deliver what a nation really needs? The old adage: “if their lips move, they are probably lying” is universal. Nothing beats doing your own independent research and keeping an open mind.
80
Here is what I sent to “The West” but they don’t often publish sceptic letters there I’ve found. Obama’s crapping on has really excited them, and reveals just how they yearn to hear news about climate action. The way I see it though, if foot to the boards development for 16 years, followed by nothing concrete is good enough for China it might be good enough for a few others too come next year?
The Editor,
In 2008 when Barack Obama was elected, he boldly declared that we should let this be the day where the seas began to retreat and the earth began to heal – or words to that effect. Then he went very quiet, and after six years of no legislation to speak of and certainly no carbon tax, he has lost control of both houses in the US and is now legislatively hamstrung. And just when it matters very little what he says, he comes out swinging once again on climate to the outright joy of the Australian press.
Meanwhile the Chinese have nobly stated that they will deal with emissions in 2030? Just so happens that their population growth will have flattened out by then and that they plan to nearly double their coal use in the interim. None of the grandstanding will come to pass, and that both announcements could be clapped with delirious cheering by the climate change movement smells like defeat. Voters have moved on, and the planet has stopped warming, and if the greeny left really want PM Abbott to be a one termer they would be well served by shutting up about climate – if they could.
200
Obama is doing all this to distract from Gruber letting everyone in the US know that Obama’s government thinks they are stupid. He is compounding the problem by using Global Warming as the distraction. Climate Change TM is the biggest insult to the public’s intelligence ever. News of his overseas global warming victory (sarc) with China arrives to an American public who are entering a freezing cold winter.
120
Yes one has only to look at the current WeatherBell Conus Anomaly figure of minus 2.368 degrees C to see that – reminiscent of the “Polar Vortex” earlier this year when the Conus Anomaly approached minus 5 degrees C, ie that is when the Niagara Falls froze, which is ironic because Obama will spend the last 2 years of his term literally frozen, rendered totally impotent by not having the numbers in either the House of Reps or the Senate. I wonder what both Houses will say on his return about his proposed US$3 million donation to the Green Climate Fund. They won’t be very happy vegemites will they.
120
Make that US$3 billion not US$3 million – silly typo KG.
30
http://i.imgur.com/tBQ9a3X.jpg 🙂
30
Tim Ball has a good column over at WUWT where he goes to town on the gullibles.
60
So Obama has to wait until his lame-duck period to even announce an agreement for China to INCREASE emissions? This illustrates as well as anything just how incompetent he is – even in his pet policy field he’s been atrociously impotent.
Has Obama announced, legislated, funded and implemented ONE climate policy, other than handing $billions to Obama donors like oligarch Buffett to build windmills and solar panels? (Hardly new technology – that was happening before he arrived.) It seems he will leave with marginally lower CO2, thanks to fracking. This for 8 years of pretending he’s Christine Milne!
60
I think that we should embrace what the China-Obama accord asks us to do. We should follow them.
We should offer to reduce emissions aggressively, say 28%. We should do it using what China and the US are doing…. nuclear, gas (from tracking) and hydro.
All the way with China and the USA.
Andrew
62
Hear! Hear!
Good stuff Jo. Honest, accurate, respectful.
All the things Im not 😛
90
Absolutely the MSM is a major problem with conveying balanced reporting, as in the fact it doesn’t bloody happen!
In years to come questions can be asked of the current crop of MSM journalists about CAGW,
– Was there an alternate scientific viewpoint offered?
– Was there scientific data offered as proof of an alternate explanation?
– Was there any physical evidence that CAGW was not occurring?
– Did the MSM produce heavily biased reporting in favor of CAGW?
– Did the MSM show favor towards left leaning politics?
– Was there a conflict of interest with public broadcasters and their respective charters?
– Was public money used to fund anti CAGW skeptical websites?
The resounding answer to these questions is YES, and I hope these people that have knowingly aided and abetted in this social regression, will not only have to explain their actions to the public, they will at some time be lying in bed in the dark with nothing but self reflection in their thoughts and suddenly realize that their behavior no matter how much they try to rationalize it was wrong on so many levels to the point of genuine self loathing and the brutal truth of their true worth in life.
70
Australian politicians and PM’s have been toeing the US line since I can remember. (Back to Kennedy at least.) Why would Barnett be any different and even rate a mention? It makes no difference who the players are, the policy remains. It’s always: ‘Yessir-nossir-3 bags full sir-how high should I jump sir?’
20
I have not commented on anything for ages but this is just too inane.
First the POTUS arranges a non-event with the Chinese, who kindly agree to keep increasing their emissions just as before until they level out in 2030, presumably because of a large number of nuclear and hydro power stations coming online by then. In return for this courtesy, the POTUS promises to drastically reduce the USA’s emissions by 2025, when he will have been the former president for 8 years. I wonder what the Congress will have to say about that?
Then an adoring audience at UQ accepts this non-event as the wondrous dawn of a new age in global cooperation. Does green credulity know no bounds? I just wish that a few enlightened journos and/or pollies would expose this flimsy edifice. Can’t be that hard, surely!
140
If Labour had won an election promoting the science behind Piltdown Man, they’d still be using it each election on the theory that someone believers might vote for them while the balance of the voters just treat it as noise. Climate will simply not go away as an issue of the Left until Sol goes nova.
80
Jo, re:
“There are billions of reasons to try to control the weather, but they are all dollars, not satellite measurements, ice core results, or data from weather balloons.”
But the “satellite measurements, ice core results, or data from weather balloons” all confirm AGW?
035
Sillyfilly:
Pre-industrial is taken to be pre-1750 A.D. So, for entertainment, here’s something to ponder.
Pre-1750, we are told that CO2 levels were 280 ppm.
They’re now 400ppm.
That’s an increase of just under 43% in the trace gas over which so much fuss is made.
The Central England Temperature record (CET) suffices as a Northern hemisphere proxy, although the alarmists will whine that it’s not global. With that proviso, let’s have a look at this dataset.
In 1750, the temperature was 9.69 degrees C.
in 2013, it was 9.56 degrees C.
I repeat, CO2 increased by 43% over this period.
So where are your figures to prove dangerous man-made global warming?
250
Ah! the ever irrelevant cherry pick to “hide the incline”. You’d think that the so-called “sceptics” would have something approaching a rational argument, alas we are, as ever, sadly disappointed.
07
We do have rational arguments, unfortunately the irrational such as yourself can’t understand them.
Still waiting for some evidence that CO2 is the cause. You’ve had years now, where is it? Must be hiding out with the missing heat huh?
40
“would have something approaching a rational argument”
We have, you just aren’t rational enough to understand it.
And yes, you are very disappointing, just another empty vessel bound for the knackery.
10
Silly filly: It really is time you started to look at some real-world records.
Your resistance to the most obvious conclusion (that C02 isn’t going to cause climatic disaster) is remarkable.
Nowhere in the CET is there anything to suggest a dangerous warming. Never in all its history since the mid-1600s has the average annual temperature reached 11 degrees, even during all the hysteria of the 1990s and the early 2000s.
Perhaps you should get a copy and ponder.
I’m not as you put it ‘cherry picking’ – the temperatures of around 9 degrees I cite are not unusual in the record, they’re regularly seen in centuries past – and clearly you consider the concomitant 43% rise in CO2 since 1750 I’ve pointed out to you as irrelevant.
Finally, I notice that you haven’t haven’t come up with any figures to demonstrate that my assertions are wrong.
10
Sweet mother of dopey foals! Do you never learn?
The satellite measurements tell you the Earth warmed for 30 years, then stopped warming. They don’t tell you what caused any of that. They do show temperatures flatlining while CO2 continues to climb.
The Vostok ice core results show temperature has been 2 degrees higher than the 20th century average for thousands of years at a time in previous interglacials, with apparently no great harm done to the biosphere. That takes the Catastrophe out of CAGW.
The weather balloons showed stratospheric cooling but no “tropical tropospheric hotspot” and no increase in humidity. That is confirmation of only 1 out of 3 things that are supposed to happen according to AGW. Humidity was actually decreasing slightly throughout the time CAGW theory says it should be increasing to act as positive feedback. That was proof that AGW theory was false, so we are left with the null hypothesis that the vast majority of recent climate change has been natural in origin.
Do you accept these basic interpretations of the data? Clomp once for yes and twice for no.
251
Clomp Clomp! Do you never learn?
Stopped warming? ‘hiatus myarsus’ claims another victim. On the hot spot, whoops warming trop, cooling strat as predcicted.
Oh and Jo’s graph on Vostok stops at 60 years ago, hiding the incline in the CE!
On water vapour:
Climate models predict that the concentration of water vapour in the upper troposphere could double by the end of the century as a result of increases in greenhouse gases. Such moistening plays a key role in amplifying the rate at which the climate warms in response to anthropogenic activities, but has been difficult to detect because of deficiencies in conventional observing systems. We use satellite measurements to highlight a distinct radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening over the period 1982 to 2004. The observed moistening is accurately captured by climate model simulations and lends further credence to model projections of future global warming.
And we should all know by know that Paltridge et al had significant problems.
Sorry dear, big fail!
19
Any paragraph that starts off, “Climate models predict …” is immediately suspect. Speaking as somebody who has spent decades writing models, I can say that they don’t, and can’t, predict swat.
Anybody who says, “Climate models predict …”, is simply demonstrating their own lack of practical knowledge and understanding of what models are, and how they work.
40
OK
Remember Al Gore’s Cherry picker Lecture? In An Inconvenient Truth.
He showed a graph of the temperature and CO2 records from the ice cores. (An older graph without too much inconvenient detail). In the 4 interglacials (before the present one) all of them the temperatures rose above the present (1.7-3℃) but the CO2 never went about 300 ppm.
He claimed that the present level of CO2 was far higher than in the last million years, so if CO2 controls the temperature how did those interglacials get above present temperatures?
Which is wrong, the temperatures or the CO2 levels?
20
Furthermore.. once those CO2 levels were up so high..(lol)…
… how was the temperature then able to drop back down, if all that CO2 causes heating.
10
Remember that this century we have massively high CO2 level.. (not really 😉 )
…. and its not warmed at all !
00
Doesn’t matter; it was worth it just to get sillyfilly to type Clomp Clomp. 😀
20
I have read your comments for some time now. I wish they were worth the time I spent on them.
Your screen name is a good description of the depth and quality of your writing. You should lift your game significantly if you want to be taken seriously.
120
I think a better name might be Gullible Gertie.
60
Oooooops, there’s a boo boo.
sf
“But the “satellite measurements, ice core results, or data from weather balloons” all confirm AGW?”
Obviously a grave error of omission, gravity must work folks, it should read as:
“satellite measurements, ice core results, or data from weather balloons” all support the billions of reasons vested interests are desperate to confirm AGW.
184
Good to see the clown act continuing, does it do a double act with the 3rd Viscount of Brenchley?
110
Alright, I’ll play your little game.
Does it?
21
You’re the clown you should know.
03
Ok little donkey, you got the attention you so crave.
Now off you trot !!
Off to the back paddock, you poor lonely little nag. !
00
So am I.
00
“3rd Viscount of Brenchley”
Why does that so get up your nose?
00
“But the “satellite measurements, ice core results, or data from weather balloons” all confirm AGW?”
NO! to all of the above.
None of these measurements suggest even the slightest AGW.
111
But, Griss,
What about those Billions?
Surely it wouldn’t hurt to fudge the facts in order for Climate Scientists to back away from their financially driven beliefs with a bit of dignity?
11
Yeah Gris,
Haven’t you heard, ‘Money Makes the World Go Round’.
I think the Climate Alarmists figure the faster it goes around the quicker it will cool.
21
Now perhaps it was a typo, but really, it looks like SF has gone from making statements to making something that ends with a question mark.
Time was SF would have ended that with a period as a statement of fact, now it’s a question.
I do suspect it was either a typo, or the simple fact that SF is a literary incompetent.
10
Or both.
00
No they don’t! 18 years of NO WARMING confirms that CAGW is crap and before that miniscule amounts of homogenised warming over 150 years after a Little Ice Age confirms that there has been hardly any GW let alone that was caused by A or will be C.
10
“Hiatus myarsus” infects another victim. Contagion as a result of paucity of scientific intelligence!
BTW, The LIA in perspective: refer USNAS Temperature Reconstructions.
Excerpt:
The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998,1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years
04
If someone, i.e. Mann, comes up with an answer based on incorrect assumptions and input, then a varying group of others, also using the same incorrect assumptions and input come up with the same answer how on earth do you reconcile that with logic as making the answer any of them got correct?
“Garbage in == garbage out” which is all we’ve ever gotten from Mann. Of course he could release his data and let everyone prove his assumptions and input weren’t crap. He seems to prefer dragging things out in court though. Not very scientific.
Still no proof CO2 is the cause I see. You going to go hide out with the missing heat too?
20
Dear dopey donkey.. you seem to have a really bad case of “Hiatus myarsus”.
This is very strange considering the huge amount of horse s**t you manage to produce.
00
She’s still thinking the pretty pictures at woodfortrees mean something. I think it was Rereke who very nicely summed up that pretty pictures with no references as to the bounds, error bars, etc. etc. mean nothing more than that you have some wiggly lines with which to make a pretty picture.
Spent very little time on that site, just enough to see that whoever put it together seems to be making a big deal out of the fact that it uses C code or something.
Hell, I can download perl, python, C, java, and pretty much any other language you want to pick packages that are either GPL or otherwise free to use that will do the same damn thing. But without the “story” behind the lines the lines mean nothing.
00
What we have is Global Barming. ( not to mention O’Barming) . The wholeWestern World has gone barmy, over a preoccupation with a non-problem that keeps the assorted bureaucrats busy, avoiding the real problems.
100
Isn’t that always the reality of climate change these days? Let’s play to a big block of voters so they’ll vote for us instead of them. Neither man appears to care who gets hurt in the process as long as the politics of the thing gets taken care of properly.
I know little about Premier Barnett or what his responsibility and authority amount to except that he’s the equivalent of the governor of a state in the USA. But one way or the other he should listen to Tony Abbott instead of the liar from DC.
All Obama has is his rallying cry, floating as if by magic on nothing but hot air (any perceived pun is intended).
70
I have heard it said that people in WA hate Barnett but they hate the Labor even more.
30
I totally support Joanne’s editorial comments. How much is ‘climate change’,’insurance’ going to cost? Summarize the specific proposed actions and costs for our country and other countries. Write an executive summary with specifics, not a 2000 page propaganda report. It is criminally negligent to spend trillions and trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work, to address a problem that does not exist. There will be unintentional consequences to spending trillions and trillions of dollars on scams.
How much will CO2 emissions change? Will there be any change in climate change? Is the planet going to get colder? Data and analysis unequivocally supports the assertion that there is no extreme AGW problem to address.
What I do not understand is why there is any informed, caring person that would propose that that the world should spend trillions and trillions of dollars on green scams that do not work to address a problem that does not exist. There must be some deep group psychological factor which is blocking liberals from honest, independent, unbiased analysis, honest and frank discussion, and so on.
The liberals in every country on this planet have a never ending list of issues and programs that they would like to spend money on. That is an unequivocal fact.
What is astonishing (there must be a reason why this is so) is liberals in every country do not seem to either understand or accept economic reality, there is only so much GDP to spend on everything (see France, Italy, Spain, or Greece for an example of what of happens when the money runs out).
If countries spend more and more on green scams that do not work, to address an extreme AGW problem that does not exist, there will be less and less money to tax and spend on health care, educations, parks, nature preserves, child care, research, developing country aid, bike paths, and so on.
Creating a problem that does not exist and spending money on schemes that do not work is not win-win.
140
Jo, you don’t need a subscription to The West Australian unless you have a cat litter tray that needs lining.
I used to read “the Australian” but I can get all the left wing drivel for free elsewhere on the internet so gave that up too. Moved the PO box to within range of a nice walk so don’t need the excuse of buying the paper for the exercise either.
40
I don’t want to contribute to a subscription (for you) of that local newspaper. The attention of you and your spouse is s needed, but on a higher plane.
20
HUGE SOLAR PLANT LAGS IN EARLY PRODUCTION
One of the reasons is as basic as it gets: The sun isn’t shining as much as expected.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WORLDS_LARGEST_SOLAR_PLANT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-11-17-14-33-47
70
In defence of our journalists.
Or at least the sub-editors. In spite of the headline, great info:
There’s a lot more happening in Uranus than you think
50
I’m sure the P0TUS could tell us in minute detail, since his posture provides him with an ideal viewpoint.
50
somehow, i can’t see the US President mentioning he wants to reduce the temperature of the earth, now that he is back home and far removed from our Obamania journos!
17 Nov: Washington Post: Polar blast: Record-challenging cold to grip D.C. area Tuesday and Wednesday
Several records at our local airports are “in play” during this cold snap. Dulles (IAD) has a chance to break the record for its coldest low and high temperature on both Tuesday and Wednesday. BWI Airport has a good chance to have its coldest November 18 on record (Tuesday), as well as its coldest low and high temperature on November 19 (Wednesday)…
Even though we’ve had chilly weather over the past several days, the cold on Tuesday and Wednesday will be more severe – so please take precautions. Dress in layers, with hats, scarves and gloves. Outreach and efforts to assist the homeless will be particularly important as hypothermia will be a major risk. Finally, you might consider shutting off your outdoor pipes if you haven’t already for the season…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/11/17/polar-blast-record-challenging-cold-to-grip-d-c-area-tuesday-and-wednesday/
17 Nov: Washington Post: 50 percent of Lower 48 covered in snow, most this early in more than a decade
Over 50 percent of the Lower 48 is covered in snow on Monday morning, the most this early in the year in at least a decade…
After a series of powerful early-November winter storms, snow extends as far south as West Texas on Monday morning, according to NOAA’s National Snow Analysis. The Texas Panhandle is covered by up to four inches of snow, and a trace to two inches coats areas further south, including Dallas and Ft. Worth, as well as Lubbock, Abilene, and Odessa…
The entire states of South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma were coated in snow as of Monday morning…
CHECK THE PIC: Courtesy of Reed Timmer. 40 plus inches Negaunee, MI. WOW…
These chilly lows are up to 35 degrees below normal for this time of year in the central U.S…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/11/17/50-percent-of-lower-48-covered-in-snow-most-this-early-in-more-than-a-decade/
30
LOL.
17 Nov: Accuweather: Harsh Cold to Freeze Northeast, Set Records in South
The coldest air since last winter, now over the Plains and Midwest, will blast into the East during the first half of this week…
Bone-chilling nights will be followed up by frosty cold days with highs struggling to reach the 20-degree mark over the regions on Monday and Tuesday. Some locations in the Central states are forecast to stay below 20 F until Wednesday afternoon, including Minneapolis.
Temperatures this low can make it dangerous for outdoors activities if you are not wearing the proper clothing…
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/harsh-cold-to-freeze-northeast/37451243
17 Nov: USA Today: Novem-brrr: Record cold roars into East, South
Record cold temperatures will plunge through much of the country on Tuesday, bringing subfreezing temperatures to about 200 million Americans from the Midwest to East to South.
Frigid air — which originated in Siberia — is rocketing all the way to the Gulf Coast, where record low temperatures are possible both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings…
In unusual weather for mid-November, as of Monday, snow covered more than half of the USA, according to the National Weather Service…
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/11/17/november-cold-snap/19162375/
30
Remember the poll being run here:
Tell us what you think
http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/polls/
China and the US have struck a new deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Do you think Australia will need to adjust its climate change policies as a result?
No 55%
Yes 44%
Unsure 1%
16464 votes counted
For once the ABC have kept it running for far longer than most of their polls.
Some 16,000 plus people have voted.
55% to 45% believe Australia should not adjust it policy in the light of the China/US climate change handshake.
Seems Joe Public isn’t buying the politically correct left/green/ABC dogma that Australia needs to be bolder in its emission reduction targets.
70
I didn’t know how to answer that poll.
I would like to have answered “YES”, but I knew that what I meant wouldn’t have been proper conveyed.
YES, we should change our policies.
1. Dump ALL funding form climate alarmist groups.
2. Get rid of the RET and all backing for solar and wind.. let them stand or fall as logic suggests.
3. Use the direct action funds to upgrade our coal fired power, and to build dams in the north of Australia to allow for expansion of agriculture.
121
Hi Griss. I’m glad that you worked out the implication of voting yes.
30
Good spot!
It is like the old question: Answer, “yes” or “no”: “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
The only correct answer is …
30
“I have a WIFE ? ” (:>))
20
Sweet old Bob, you can’t phrase it as a question cause it’s supposed to be an answer.
00
While I generally enjoy Griss’ profuse commentary I think that to
is a big mistake. It’s very unlikely to be economically viable.
The crux of the argument is presented by agricultural economist Bruce Davidson in his 1965 book “The Northern Myth: a study of the physical and economic limits to agricultural and pastoral development in tropical Australia.”
A more recent summary of a 2008 report essentially echoes the opinion of Davidson. See here.
Here are some of the arguments (these only refer to water):
• Rainfall was seasonal and for six months of the year there is virtually no rain.
• The rain falls mainly on the coastal plain and flows quickly to the sea. Little rain falls in the upper reaches of streams and rivers making it difficult to capture, unlike the Murray-Darling Basin.
• Large storages would be required but the topography of the area provides few reasonable sites.
• Evaporation rates are extremely high and only 20% of the rainfall enters the streams and rivers.
The report concluded that the north could never be a major food bowl because neither public nor private sector cost effectiveness criteria could justify the high cost of capturing and storing surface water.
The more recent report also states that “that intensive agriculture could be more cheaply produced in Australia’s temperate zones and that northern Australia was unsuited to intensive agriculture and best suited to large scale cattle farms.”
00
Maybe their ABC are trying to behave according to their charter so the LNP won’t cut $50m a year of ABC funding as stated in the SMH today?
Funny to see Q&A being influenced by the Bolt Report, I’d buy shares in a Dependable product soon to be in big demand. 🙂
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Meh, the climate lemmings can’t wait to sacrifice their prosperity (and ours) on a sacrificial altar dedicated to the green god, Gaia.
Somebody should tell Barnett and the gaggle of swooning politicians and credulous media that Australia recognizes a /division/ between church and state!
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Barnett ‘s state has gas.. he should be using it.
NSW, Vic, Qld all have coal.. so should be using that !
Also note that there is huge LPG conference coming up in Perth shortly….
… that would, of course, have nothing at all to do with his comments 😉
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just as Obama was “prepped” to pepper his Uni of Qld speech with local refs such as BrisVegas, XXXX and “Beautiful one day, and then perfect the next”, he was obviously also prepped to pretend to be doing something about climate change while here. our CAGW-obsessed MSM seems incapable of reporting on anything else:
17 Nov: ABC Lateline: Merkel stresses importance of action on climate change
Mrs Merkel told the Lowy Institute that the effects of climate change won’t stop at the Pacific Islands and that world leaders must agree to binding cuts at next year’s UN summit in Paris…
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4130557.htm
at bed-time i switched on Tony Delroy’s Issue of the Day & was instantly greeted with a fellow going on and on about how, now that US and China are boring down on CAGW action, Australia will be forced to follow blah blah. did Delroy enlighten him about what the so-called “deal” with China really entailed? not on your ABC life.
when McAlpine says: “Investors need that certainty”, whatever does he mean, ABC? don’t spell it out, whatever you do.
it couldn’t mean taxpayer money & even higher electricity bills, surely! ABC audiences are the most ill-informed on the CAGW debate.
17 Nov: ABC Lateline: Gone with the wind
KERRY BREWSTER, REPORTER: It can blow a gale here in the sheep country near Goulburn in New South Wales – perfect for generating energy. But this may be the last wind farm to be supplied by the global energy company Vestas for quite a while.
KEN MCALPINE, ASIA-PACIFIC VESTAS: Well there are dozens of projects ready to go in Victoria and NSW; in fact just about every state and they’re ready to go. They’ve been in the planning process for years now. But until the Renewable Energy Target’s future is resolved, those projects can’t proceed.
KERRY BREWSTER: Why not?
KEN MCALPINE: Investors need that certainty. Investors need to know that there’s a future for their projects…
KERRY BREWSTER: But with a government committed to cutting the target and Labor pulling the pin on negotiations, investors won’t be getting their confidence back any time soon…
KERRY BREWSTER: This seemingly endless supply of parts is destined for an American wind farm. Many US states are offering incentives to invest.
KEN MCALPINE: The politicians there, they want the jobs, they want this industry and so that’s where we’re building our factories, that’s where we’re building our projects. Texas, California, Iowa, Kansas – they’re all going ahead with wind energy in a big way.
KANE THORNTON: We know that countries like the US, like China are very aggressively pushing renewable energy into their energy mix, and so, it’s not surprising that international investors are going where the market opportunities are.
KERRY BREWSTER: The traditional oil and gas state of Texas has become America’s wind capital. Using an incentive similar to Australia’s RET, Texas now generates three times the amount wind energy Australia does and there’s no sign of investment slowing…
KERRY BREWSTER: Over the next year, an estimated 20,000 new wind turbines will be installed outside Australia.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4130559.htm
from Bolt’s thread on last night’s Q&A:
‘Conservatives this time were represented by Malcolm Turnbull, who actually praised the phony global warming deal Barack Obama made last week with China and urged the rest of the world to get on board. The very first panel discussion had Turnbull endorsing the global warming scare, with Jonathan Holmes, Tanya Plibersek and Ben Elton all belting the Government for not being more warmist. Host Tony Jones also attacked the Government’s direct action policies and claimed that to emit carbon dioxide was to “pollute”.
“The best that Turnbull could say in the Government’s defence was that emissions trading, which he’d supported, had worked better in theory than in practice. Not one person was sceptical about Obama’s “deal” or catastrophic man-made warming.’
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Re Lateline last night and their report on Wind Power.
Have you noticed how the only place these Wind companies are installing all their turbines is in the already Developed World, you know, where all the money is.
Have a look at the data at this link and see how many of those still Developing Countries actually have Wind Power.
So much for investing in those poor Countries.
Also of note was how the Vestas Company say it is becoming problematic to install new Wind Plants here in Australia.
Funny, isn’t it? Turn off the Government money tap and all of a sudden, new wind plants become problematic.
Every new Wind Plant that has been constructed here in Australia gets a gift of half the construction cost, up front, from the Federal Government and the State Government where the plant is being constructed.
It’s the same everywhere they are built. Half of it is always
taxpayer’sGovernment money.There’s no hint of altruism either, no plans to build them for the Developing World, that great UN ideal of where the money goes to.
No, these companies are only after those Government gifts, and he who pays gets the towers.
The meme all along is that the more of these there are, then the cheaper they become.
That is also a lie.
The price is inflated so when the Government fronts up their half, then in actual fact it’s well more than half.
Oh, and the World total for wind power currently – 2.1%.
The World total power consumption is 23,000TWH per year.
60% of all that is required ABSOLUTELY, on a 24/7/365 basis.
Wind supplies its power at a 30% Capacity Factor, so averaged across the whole year that comes in at around a little over seven hours a day.
And it never will.
Tony.
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The journalists in the MSM are totally delusional on the Obama/Xi climate deal with notable exceptions such as Andrew Bolt, Maurice Newman and Greg Sheridan. Its about time that Worksafe conducted some drug testing in their workplaces because its about the only explanation I can come up with for so called “clever” people totally ignoring the evidence.
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It’s religious fervor. I am surprised that there are no reports about Obama healing the sick and the lame.
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I thought he only did that on Saturdays, after attending morning prayers.
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And before 12:05 pm prayers.
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Fresh on the back of its failed 40C forecast for Brisbane on Sunday, the BoM again has egg on its face. Contrary to its forecast for today in Brisbane, it has been raining steadily for over 4 hours already.
BTW, the UHI effect is strongly evident in the Brisbane region temperature record … apart from Brisbane Aero, all other stations are in built up areas or the City; temperatures are regularly up to 8C warmer than Brisbane Aero.
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Egg on their face? Brisbane at 38.5C on Sunday was well above normal and not much below the forecast 40C. Suburban Archerfield not too distant from the city in the west was 41C. Rather than the UHI it has more to do the proximity to the moderating influence of Moreton Bay, which the airport lies next to.
I think last Sunday night was one of the worst nights in Brisbane for a decade.
And what rain? in my part of Bris there has been stuff all, just hot and muggy.The BoMs three to five day forecasts are excellent, just take anything further out with a grain of salt.
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Archerfield is 1. Also an airport 2. Not rural, and 3. VERY LOW. UHI territory at it’s worst. Yes, it was hot, what do you expect with a norwesterly in November, but it has nothing to do with global warming, it’s just normal chaotic weather!
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There’s got to be a PhD in researching the phenomenon of voluntary gullibility. Is there an antidote? Is there a critical thinking serum available to inoculate the populace against the viral meme of gullibility?
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St John, you might try giving Prof. Lewandowsky a call at Bristol University. The School of Experimental Psychology are bound to have PhD opportunities in this regard, which may also be quite well funded.
As for the global insufficiency in critical thinking, I haven’t heard of a critical thinking serum, or more importantly, an antidote for The Pill that Lowers IQ Permanently, which may have already be in the water supply or routine inoculations, courtesy of the UN.
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THC does that, no pill necessary
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compare with ABC Lateline’s Merkel report last nite. guess ABC couldn’t be bothered mentioning the rise in Germany’s CO2 emissions for the last three years. too much information is not good for the ABC audience:
17 Nov: Carbonbrief: Germany debates programme to save 2020 climate target
But Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions have been rising for the last three years, bringing this interim goal into question…
Germany’s environment and energy ministers both say that Germany’s new Climate Action Programme must ensure that the 2020 target is met, despite German newspaper Der Spiegel reporting the target would be weakened earlier this week…
But if the government is to hit its overall 2020 goal for the whole economy, it’s going to need more emissions reductions from the energy sector.
The government expects the Energiewende’s current policies will mean the energy sector emits 70 million tonnes less in 2020 than it did in 2013…
This is tricky, because the main cause of Germany’s recent emissions rise is an increase in the use of coal to generate electricity. Coal was responsible for about 45 per cent of Germany’s power in 2013, compared to about 42 per cent in 2010…
But there is a lot of uncertainty about whether proposed reforms to the EUETS will curtail coal use…
COMMENT: A 70 million tonnes of CO2 gap. This is almost certainly greater than the CO2 saved by every single wind turbine and solar panel in Germany.
The arithmetic on this is clear. They won’t meet the target. And it is time people stopped being so deluded on the issue.
COMMENT: The green movement however only have themselves to blame if climate change “skeptics” use this against them. Germany was stupidly held up as a beacon in the fog. Did people not notice the coal power plants being built?
The whole thing is depressing. On the one hand we have people like Bill McKibben telling us to “do the math”, on the other we have people like Bill McKibben telling us that Germany is showing the way. It’s impossible to not conclude that the green movement simply is not up to the task.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/11/germany-debates-plan-to-save-2020-emissions-reduction-target/
even CAGW-invested Bloomberg will report the following…not so our MSM. compare with ABC Lateline’s “Gone with the Wind” last nite:
17 Nov: Bloomberg/Businessweek: Harry R. Weber: EPA Power Plan Risks Blackouts, Higher Costs, Grid Operator Says
Texas will see big coal unit retirements, higher electricity bills, weaker transmission reliability and a greater risk of blackouts if a government plan to cut emissions from power plants is implemented as proposed, the state’s grid operator said.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc.’s analysis, posted on its website today, estimates the impact the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Act regulation will have on the state’s power generation…
The North American Electric Reliability Corp., a not-for-profit group that assures adequate power reserves to keep the electric grid functioning, has urged EPA to consider delaying the first deadline of its plan…
EPA says there have been no instances of lights going out because of the Clean Air Act. Liz Purchia, a spokeswoman, said in a Nov. 13 e-mail that any rate increase is “dwarfed by huge benefits” to public health. She said today the agency is reviewing Ercot’s analysis…
Ercot said the EPA carbon emission reduction plan will force the shutdown of 3,300 to 8,700 megawatts of coal-plant capacity, and will cause consumer energy costs to rise by as much as 20 percent by 2020. The estimate excludes the costs associated with transmission upgrades and new capacity…
The proposal may result in transmission reliability issues and will strain the grid’s ability to integrate new intermittent renewable generation, Ercot said in the analysis. Almost 10 percent of Ercot power output last year came from wind…
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-11-17/ercot-says-epa-carbon-cut-plan-will-have-significant-impact
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Pointed out many times (I’ve actually inspected one of these new state-of-the-art plants near Cologne on the east side of the Rhine), but the warmista counted on the MSM not publishing this plus the general lack of interest and knowledge from the populace at large
It seems these two factors still apply … oh well
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West Australian, please explain:
just clicked on this, with its mention of coal:
Robb hopes to nail India FTA in a year
The West Australian-33 minutes ago
Mr Modi will reportedly use the landmark speech to call on Australia to help his country meet its energy demands through coal and gas exports…
but got this instead, same url, with not a hint about coal!
18 Nov: West Australian: AAP: Aust, India to fast-track free trade deal
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/national/a/25540592/robb-hopes-to-nail-india-fta-in-a-year/
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give thanx for the internet:
18 Nov: Sky News: Robb hopes to nail India FTA in a year
Mr Robb said India shared many similarities with China.’It was like talking to the Chinese 15 years ago…They’ve got hundreds of millions in poverty – 300 million don’t have power yet. There’s so much that can be done and I think now they’ve realised what they have to do. This will set us up for the future’, he said…
Mr Modi will reportedly use the landmark speech to call on Australia to help his country meet its energy demands through coal and gas exports.There are 300 million Indians who live without access to electricity…
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2014/11/18/robb-hopes-to-nail-india-fta-in-a-year.html
18 Nov: SBS: LIVE: Indian PM Narendra Modi addresses parliament
Mr Modi will reportedly use the landmark speech to call on Australia to help his country meet its energy demands through coal and gas exports.
There are 300 million Indians who live without access to electricity…
Mr Abbott wants to reignite Australian investment in India and show Mr Modi that Australia has what it takes to drive infrastructure projects and provide energy for his enormous country.
The Hindu nationalist seems to have accepted these overtures, inviting Mr Abbott to India as his first official bilateral visit since becoming prime minister…
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/11/18/live-indian-pm-narendra-modi-addresses-parliament
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Barnett was jumping on Obama’s publicity machine to gain some publicity whilst pushing the feds for some help getting his oil out of the ground. The warmist media have been groomed, selected and positioned by the left and are spoon fed their lines. They are not independent but activists performing their duties in return for promotions,travel and other perks that have been slung their way to keep them churning out the propaganda. You watch they’ll all be off to Paris on a paid trip if they play the game.
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Hewson has a piece on the ABC Drum supporting the CAGW meme and rubbishing Abbott for not kowtowing to the UN IPCC komissars:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-18/hewson-time-for-an-apology-on-climate-change/5898552
My response to the 97% statistic (in case the ABC mods get a hold of it):
I was going from memory … hope the 77/79 was accurate. Dr Hewson, can’t explain the GST on birthday cake, is a CAGW supporter. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
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That 97% line is the climate change equivalent of Godwin’s Law.
As soon as you quote it you are immediately deemed to have lost the argument.
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