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Filed under: Skeptics are winning.
The EU was always the leader in the Great Green Push, and announcements on Wednesday are an excellent sign. Both the media and politicians are finally coming around, dragged by reality. This is the good news. The bad news is it’s cost hundreds of billions, and there are still renewable targets when there shouldn’t be, but we are over the peak…
Today is a big day in Brussels as the EU has begun the gradual process of rolling back its bankrupting climate and green energy policies. Of course this modest climbdown is not the end of Europe’s climate hysteria that has dominated Brussels for 20 years. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the beginning of a much deeper retreat of its unilateral approach in coming years. –Benny Peiser, 22 January 2014
The talk is for an “ambitious” 40% target by 2030, but really this is about dropping the legally binding nature of the targets. So as usual in warmist politics, no one is up front and honest. It’s a face-saving move as the green reality falls.
European Commission to ditch legally-binding renewable energy targets
Telegraph
Climbdown on setting mandatory […]
Mike has been an active skeptic in Scotland, and has designed a demographic and opinion survey that I think would give us interesting results. It’s very reasonable, I hope you can take a few minutes (it is short) please try to finish it if you start it. – Jo
I am writing to you on behalf on the Scottish Climate & Energy Forum, we are conducting a survey of those interesting in the climate debate. The aim of the survey is to understand the nature and background of those interested in the climate debate online. It will provide an invaluable insight into the education and work experience of participants, test the relevance of politics in forming views and assess employment and social factors for their relationship with views on climate.
We would be very grateful if you would take the time to complete the survey. The responses are confidential.
The url is: http://scef.org.uk/survey/index.php/868721/lang/en.
8.9 out of 10 based on 52 ratings
Showing that academics can cost the country more than they return, ANU’s Geoff Cary posits that there is an 80% consensus (an unmeasured, meaningless statistic) that there will be more fires in Australia 60 years from now.
This is an opinion about opinions of experts who use models that we know can’t predict temperatures. Not only is this “fact” already piled three layers of nonsense deep, the most abjectly stupid point is the fourth layer, the pretense that these models might, in their wildest dreams, be able to predict rainfall — which is an order of magnitude harder than just predicting global temperature. Predicting bushfires is dependent on knowing not just total rainfall in one region, but how that rainfall is spread throughout the year. Not to mention that bushfires depend on wind speed, wind direction, land-use (fuel load), and humidity.
Everyone knows that different climate models predict both higher and lower rainfall in the same areas at the same time, and the type of phrases used to describe the ability of climate models are: “low confidence” (National Centre for Atmospheric Research), “irrelevant with reality” (Koutsoyiannis ), or an “absence” of skill (Kiktev). Compare the different projections of climate models […]
A boat full of climate scientists and their adoring media entourage got stuck in sea-ice in Antarctica on Dec 24th, and they’ve finally made it back to Australia on Jan 21st.
The ABC PR machine covers for their embarrassment — lest anybody think that climate scientists might be clueless. In the ABC’s world an “Australian Research Team” with “60 scientists” left because “scientists believe there is evidence of climate change.” After they got stuck in ice they didn’t predict, and looked like partying fools on an ill-prepared junket, the magic wand of ABC-apologia stopped using the term “climate” and they underwent a magical transformation to become a “Russian Passenger Ship“.
The sudden lack of accurate reporting was all the more strange given that the ship and the icebreaker had a dedicated on-board media team from BBC World News, the Guardian, and Fairfax news. They had media on satellite connections, but probably needed meteorologists on it instead.
Repeat after me, The media IS the problem. If reporters were reporters instead of political activists, $1.5 million dollar junkets to promote climate scares would not be approved in the first place. Total cost of this mission now could be almost $4m:
“Director Tony […]
The Australian Academy of Science has announced its 2014 Academy awards to “celebrate scientific excellence.”
To show how excellent, their excellence is, the Frederick White Prize for scientific achievements contributing to the understanding of natural phenomena goes to Professor Chris Turney, University of New South Wales.
Professor Chris Turney
“Professor Turney is an internationally recognised earth scientist and research leader in both climate and environmental change, from the tropics to the poles. By pioneering new ways of combining climate models with records of past climate change (spanning from hundreds to thousands of years), he has discovered new links between variability mechanisms in the Australian region and global climate change”.
Australian Academy of Science
Curiously the 2015 McFarlane Burnet Award has already been awarded. Professor Lambeck will be doing wonderful work this year. Good to know.
The point of this post? Just another poke at the scientific hierarchy for awarding a prize to a man who uses broken models with proven flaws to help us understand the natural phenomenon that he so famously got 74 people and two ships stuck in. And there are people who think we should listen to and laud these associations?
[…]
The termination of the Pattern Recognition journal ought to be PR gold for skeptics. Nothing like this happens to unskeptical scientists, ever. It’s a telling spectacle.
A major science publisher gasped in horror that one amongst its scores of journals had “doubted the IPCC”, so the journal had to be axed forever. Oh the Crime! The over-the-top dummy-spit exposes the religious zeal in a supposedly scientific process. So much for the hallowed “Peer Review”. Fans of establishment science want us to believe it’s a gospel part of the scientific method, but it is neither intrinsic nor essential, and skeptics should not be fooled into thinking it is.
Peer reviewed papers may be gems or junk but we won’t know which by discussing who reviewed them.
Let’s follow due process in science, but that is not by review whether peer-or-pal, it’s by prediction, test, observation, and repeat.
Some people seem to have lost sight of this, and think that skeptics ought to be trying to play the Peer Review Game according to the fine print of arbitrary rules dictated by unscientists who hate skeptics and who don’t even play by the rules themselves. The game belongs to them — they set, […]
So how sure are they of their climate model predictions? So sure they demand we pay billions but when it comes to betting their own money, the modelers are all bravado over the chance to bet on any warming “above zero” 20 years from now.
The Guardian:
Some of Australia’s top climate scientists, including those from the CSIRO, have said they will be willing to bet Tony Abbott’s business adviser Maurice Newman $10,000 that the world will warm over the next 20 years.
These gutsy scientists are offering bets that the climate “might” warm, and which might pay out to a man who will be 95 at their completion. The Guardian takes them seriously?
Here’s an offer to those climate scientists, yes I’m interested in a bet, for sure, but I won’t be offering you a shot at winning in a situation where you predict (and we pay to prevent) far more warming than you are willing to bet on. Hypocrisy what? Your own models are abject failures, and we are forced to pay for policies fueled by your failures and your salary as well.
So show you have the balls and come and talk about a real bet […]
So much going on…
7.3 out of 10 based on 31 ratings
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In extraordinary news, the scientific journal Pattern Recognition in Physics has been unexpectedly terminated, a “drastic decision” taken just ten months after it started.
The publisher appears to be shocked that in a recent special issue the scientists expressed doubt about the accelerated warming predicted by the IPCC. For the crime of not bowing before the sacred tabernacle, apparently the publishers suddenly felt the need to distance themselves, and in the most over-the-top way. The reasons they gave had nothing to do with the data, the logic, and they cite no errors. There can be no mistake, this is about enforcing a permitted line of thought.
I must say, it’s a brilliant (if a tad expensive) way to draw attention to a scientific paper. It’s the Barbara-Streisland moment in science. Forget “withdrawn”, forget “retracted”, the new line in the sand is to write a paper so hot they have to terminate the whole journal! Skeptics could hardly come up with a more electric publicity campaign.
Naturally, as with all good Barbara-Streisland-moves intended to suppress information, as soon as I heard, the first thing I did was to seek out and download copies of all the papers. Right now, […]
[See the concise and updating story of our bet with the US Brian Schmidt here.]
Brian Schmidt offered to bet against Maurice Newman, but what’s interesting is just how startlingly weak and underconfident the bet is.
How times have changed. In 2007 the IPCC seemed to be 90% confident that the world would warm by about 0.4 degrees over the next two decades. Now Brian Schmidt braves up to offer a bet of “anything above zero”. Is he really a sceptic? It appears so.
How much should we pay now to prevent “any warming above zero” in the next twenty years? $4.5 billion a year? How about nothing.
I sent something similar to this to three Australian editors yesterday, unfortunately at least two were out of the office. Holiday season.
As Australia’s largest sceptical climate blogger, I would be delighted to take up Brian’s offer of a bet (made to Maurice Newman).
Here’s the bizarre thing, I’m already a party to one of the largest bets on global temperatures, and would you believe, with a man also called Brian Schmidt? (My husband, David Evans, carved out that bet long ago in 2007, and as it happens, […]
What I found most interesting about this was the skill, dedication and length of meteorological data taken in the 1800’s. When our climate is “the most important moral challenge” why is it there is so little interest in our longest and oldest data?
Who knew that one of the most meticulous and detailed temperature records in the world from the 1800’s comes from Adelaide, largely thanks to Sir Charles Todd. The West Terrace site in Adelaide was one of the best in the world at the time, and provides accurate historic temperatures from “Australia’s first permanent weather bureau at Adelaide in 1856″. (Rainfall records even appear to go as far back as 1839.) Lance Pidgeon went delving into the National Archives and was surprised at what he found.
If we want to understand our climate the records from the 1800’s in Adelaide are surely worth attention?
The BOM usually shows graphs like this one below starting in 1911. You might think you are looking at the complete history of Adelaide temperatures and that smoothed temperature is rising inexorably, but the historic records remain unseen. While “hottest” ever records are proclaimed […]
Brandon Shollenberger writes a follow up of the survey last week that was inspired by Stephen Lewandowsky’s work (thanks to all the people who helped fill it out). Note the footnote and the background reading, before commenting. 😉 – Jo
Warmists Are Never Wrong, Even When Supporting Genocide Brandon Shollenberger
Global warming proponents support genocide. That may seem hard to believe, but remember, they’ve said it’d be right to blow up dams and burn cities to the ground:
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage. If carried out willingly and on a sufficiently large scale, this process would require dismantling many of the key components of civilization; no person would be foolish enough to cut off their own limbs unless they were suffering from some kind of psychotic delusion, and no civilization would be willing to remove many of the pillars of its own existence. Looking from […]
Another sign the debate is shifting, and probably in an irreversible way. Like a ratchet, the truth is slowly advancing, but once revealed, there is no going back.
The debate is gaining nuance: instead of scientists and deniers, there the public starts to see the argument is about shades of grey. The real debate has never been about whether greenhouse gases were real, instead it’s about how much global warming will happen. The cheating tactic of pretending the conflict was about something that nearly everyone agrees upon is like a ticking bomb for alarmists. The fuse has been lit. They will pay for their deception eventually.
Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, is following up on his extraordinary front page article in The Australian. He is influential and was Chairman of the ABC, and of the board of the Australian Stock Exchange, and was Chancellor of Macquarie University until 2008.
Maurice Newman in The Australian today:
GIVEN the low-grade attacks on me following my piece “Crowds go cold on climate cost” (The Australian, Dec 31) readers of Fairfax publications and The Guardian may be shocked to hear I believe in climate change. I also accept carbon […]
Reader Cookster expressed amazement asked if the tide was turning and linked to Tom Switzers piece in the SMH today “Game Finally Up for Carboncrats”. It’s a no-holds barred description of the current state of the climate scare. I’m not a regular reader of the SMH (the left leaning major daily in Sydney), so I might be wrong, but I’m tempted to agree with Cookster. What I can’t tell from the other side of the country is whether this was put out in print in the main Op-Ed section (please let me know).
Switzer is well respected in Australian newsprint (he’s the editor of The Spectator Australia) which no doubt made it hard for the SMH to say no. But look how confident, and well informed he is. The bland truth is that Kyoto is over, and as Tom says:
“Prospects for a replacement are virtually zero. Rich nations are rejecting climate compensation for the developing world. Europe is in a coal frenzy. Germany, a former green trend-setter, is slashing unaffordable subsidies to the renewables industry. The European Parliament is losing confidence in the EU emissions trading scheme. No Asian nation has an emission trading scheme in operation. China’s and […]
The 200,000 comment mark has crept up on me. Not long to go…
For the record there were 496,107 “unique visitors” to this site during 2013.
All told, the crowd spent 23,703 person-hours on this blog last year.
(Who is reading? See these comments).
I’m grateful to the commenters for generating such an avid conversation.
Thank you especially to the volunteer moderators who look out for me and make this possible.
Thank you to the people who donated in support. It is brilliantly useful, Cheers!
My favorite posts.
Gratefully, — Jo
UPDATE: JoNova Alexa ranking globally is 78,819 (similar to GWPF 80,292; Bishop Hill 102,464; Climate Audit 84,996). This site’s rank in Australia a very good 2,015. (Lower is better). Congrats WUWT global rank 10,250.
Right now, I’m getting 30% of my traffic from the UK, which is surprising.
9.6 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
First they take your money to force their opinions over you.
Then they take your money to hide what they were doing, because they knew what they were doing was wrong.
It was a turning point in BBC coverage. The 2006 seminar with “climate experts” turned out to be mostly a workshop with Greenpeace, industry activists and lobbyists. It was the point the BBC dropped even the pretense of impartial news reporting on the climate. After this “high-level” seminar the Beeb announced it didn’t need balance in the climate debate. Then having made out they were so scientific and honorable, they spent the next six years burning more money to hide the names of the experts from the public that paid for them.
Is there any better argument to explain why state funded media is not just a waste of money, but irresponsible, immoral and unethical political advertising?
There is no saving the BBC. Over the last decade climate change was supposedly the “biggest scientific” challenge for the world, and a massive cost to the citizens who were falsely told they needed to change the weather. More than ever, public funds should have been used to analyze both sides of […]
Oh the dilemma. German Greens have been so “successful” that coal use is rising fast. They helped get rid of the nukes in 2011, punished coal, and subsidized “renewables”. But woe…. energy has to come from somewhere, so the paradoxical crunch comes. Green policies mean that everyone is poorer, but the cheapest energy comes from coal …
The coal industry must be praying for more Green activism:
“IT’S been a black Christmas for green thinkers as Germany, the world leader in rooftop solar and pride of the renewable energy revolution has confirmed its rapid return to coal.
After scrapping nuclear power, Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions are back on the rise as the country clamours to reopen some of the dirtiest brown coalmines that have been closed since the reunification of east and west. The Australian
Though some say the problem is “carbon credits” are too cheap. (We need to be poorer?)
“…new figures show that coal power output in 2013 reached its highest level in more than 20 years. Researchers blame cheap CO2 emissions permits, and demand urgent reforms.
The stats: Germany is using almost as much coal as it did in 1990:
In 1990, Germany’s brown coal-fired […]
Brandon Schollenberger wants to test a theory, so he has made a short poll. He would like a broad sample.
The message:
As you’re aware, Stephan Lewandowsky has written several papers claiming to have found certain traits amongst global warming skeptics. I believe his methodology is fundamentally flawed. I believe a flaw present in his methodology is also present in the work of many others.
To test my belief, I’m seeking participants for a short survey (13 questions). The questions are designed specifically to test a key aspect of Lewandowsky’s methodology. The results won’t be published in any scientific journal, but I’ll do a writeup on them once the survey is closed and share it online.
(click below)
The Poll (closed now)
UPDATE Brandon says thanks, he has thousands of responses. The poll is not open any more.
(Or copy the link — http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=jblyccj8lluam18284546)
This poll has appeared at WUWT and Bishop Hill. Feel free to do it (it is very short) or share the link with others.
There are only 13 points arranged as three questions. Click “Next Page” to finish.
8.2 out of 10 based on 68 […]
Maurice Newman’s frank Op-Ed broke lots of rules last week — he used the words “fraud”, “deception”, and the IPCC on the front page of a major national daily paper. But the response to it has been a lower grade of apoplectic than what we are accustomed too. Which says something about the debate. Tick tick tick…
Graham Readfearn, journalist, has had nearly a whole week to summarize the strongest rebuttals around the world and he’s come up with 600 words of lame names. Newman is a “dizzy” denier, with “tricks on the brain”, and a “conspiracy dial”. Where is the science? Even as ad homs go that is barrel-scraping.
The Readfearn reasoning amounts to saying that Newman is either wrong because he is an old white guy (let’s be ageist, sexist and rascist eh?), or he is wrong because he cited Roy Spencer who is wrong because he’s a Christian. Thus and verily, ergo, ergot and a truffle too, climate sensitivity on Planet Earth is 3.3 degrees C.
If Spencer had been a Muslim would Readfearn have spent 6 paragraphs mocking the awkward conflicts with science and the Koran? Perhaps not. Instead he might have had to fill 6 […]
Matt Ridley looks at pharmaceutical research and finds problems of confirmation bias, lack of access to data, and lack of replication of results. He compares it to the hockey stick debacle which is rising in notoriety to become the new benchmark of bad science. Articles like this are especially useful, because people concerned about Tamiflu might not know anything about the HockeyStick, and might not have read an article about the climate.
In Pharmaceutical research companies may do many studies on a drug but only choose to publish the ones with results they feel better about.
The Australian
PERHAPS it should be called Tamiflugate. Yet the doubts reported by Britain’s House of Commons public accounts committee last week go well beyond the possible waste of nearly half a billion pounds ($913 million) on a flu drug that might not be much better than paracetamol. All sorts of science are contaminated with the problem of cherry-picked data.
Science at a breaking point:
The problem seems widespread. A paper in the BMJ in 2012 reported that only one fifth of clinical trials financed by the US National Institutes of Health released summaries of their results within the required one year […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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