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Oh the futility. Australia’s entire annual production of carbon from all that mining, construction, industry and everything is replicated in China every 18 days.
If we cut our emissions by an obscene, bleeding 25%, we will spend billions and yet China will undo all our hair-shirt “savings” in just 5 normal days. (And that’s at current rates, it gets worse by 2030).
Australia is a giant coal and iron quarry built at the far end of the Earth, with a tiny, but rapidly growing population spread across a vast land. Transport distances are eye-watering. We run 94% of everything off fossil fuels and there are no more easy cuts to be made. Gaia gave us more uranium than any other country but we are religiously opposed to nuclear power. (What would it take to change that — a bomb from China?). We’ve got more Sun, hot rocks and empty space than anywhere, so if solar, wind or geothermal were going to work on Planet Earth, it would be here. We are God’s Gift to the renewable industry — yet they all fail. (Today, Flannery’s Geothermal project crashed, last week Windorah’s solar farm shut, and last month, the whole state of […]
Matt Ridley in The Australian explains how every man and his dog is forecasting the doom of the Arctic sea ice, and not only have they been wrong year after year, but they all assume that if the ice all melts it’ll be a global disaster. But Earth’s already been-there done-that, and for years, and it was no-biggie. Polar bears obviously got through it, as did seals. Humans without protective solar panels somehow spread far and wide, and generally flourished.
I suspect the main climate refugees from the Arctic would have names like Donner and Blitzen. This is the one thing Matt doesn’t explain — in 8,000BC when the ice melted, what the heck happened with Santa?
Ice scares aren’t all they’re cracked up to be
This was a period known as the “early Holocene insolation maximum” (EHIM). Because the Earth’s axis was tilted away from the vertical more than today (known as obliquity), and because we were then closer to the Sun in July than in January (known as precession), the amount of the Sun’s energy hitting the far north in summer was much greater than today. This “great summer” effect was the chief reason the Earth […]
File it under: Amazing
A “Weather Bomb” storm in the Atlantic generates pounding seismic waves that can be detected through the Earth as far away as Japan. They used 200+ stations and could detect the distance and direction of these microseismic waves. This could be pretty useful to figure out more about what’s under the crust in the same way that an “X-ray” works on us.
Credit: Kiwamu Nishida and Ryota Takagi
Press Release: An Atlantic “weather bomb,” or a severe, fast-developing storm, causes ocean swells that incite faint and deep tremors into the oceanic crust. These subtle waves run through the earth and can be detected in places as far away as Japan, where facilities using a method called “Hi-net” measure the amplitude of the storm’s P and S waves for the first time.
9.2 out of 10 based on 45 ratings […]
Tell the world it is all an act.
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It’s a do or die moment for The Cause. Brexit has hit them hard, and the Trump factor threatens to wreck everything. The Paris agreement has stalled pathetically at 1.1% of all human emissions (they need 55% to come into force). They need a gamechanger or the illusion of one.
Next week expect a grand performance from US and China — or rather from two men who look solemn and can sign important looking carbon chastity vows on behalf of 1.8 billion people. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will say they have ratified the Paris agreement. Expect triumphant parades, and smiles, handshakes and talk of a historic moment. It’s all for show. China will agree to do nothing different until 2030 when its population growth peaks, and Obama can’t get the support of Congress.
But the gala performance may work if enough other countries fall for it — especially the stupidly obedient Anglosphere, and the trapped EU. India, Russia and Brazil will only buy into it they are fed enough pork. But the pork has to come from somewhere, and that’s us — The West. That’s who this show […]
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9.3 out of 10 based on 15 ratings
If I didn’t live 15,000km away I would be going to this for sure, for the debates on the solar cycles, planets, ozone and oceans — and because Nils-Axel Mörner, Roger (Tallbloke) and Christopher Monckton will be there. Piers Corbyn too, the man who beat the UK Met Office for weather predictions and the brother of Jeremy Corbyn (Labour leader in the UK). CLEXIT will be launched. Nils has published more than 590 papers on sea levels around the world and set up the Pattern Recognition Journal which was drastically closed by the publisher, because it “doubted” the IPCC conclusions.
Entrance is open to anyone, and there is no registration fee — just a donation. If this were a government funded gravy train, it would cost hundreds to see lame predictable presentations by researchers who aren’t brave enough to question the dogma. Come to London, and watch the scientists and contributors who are pushing the bounds of science.
See the full programme and the extended abstracts in this 35 Mb document for full details.
Climate Change: Science and Geoethics
An international multidisciplinary conference to be held in London, UK September 8-9, 2016
8.9 out of 10 […]
Feel the guilt in the Gaia religion: New map shows alarming growth of the human footprint
“Humans are the most voracious consumers planet Earth has ever seen. With our land-use, hunting and other exploitative activities, we are now directly impacting three-quarters of the Earth’s land surface,” said Professor Laurance.
And three-quarters of 30% of the world is a fifth of the world. But algae will be feeling pretty cheezed right now. They wrecked up the whole atmosphere — but get no credit. Algae define the term “voracious consumer”. The pristine state of the atmosphere was transformed forever, plus the schmucks made oil.
But nothing changes the planet quite like a 10-20km wide rock dropping in and wiping out 90% of all species on Earth. That’s a “footprint”.
Note the magical 97% appears again — a sacred number of “certainty”:
A James Cook University scientist says a new map of the ecological footprint of humankind shows 97 per cent of the most species-rich places on Earth have been seriously altered.
9.3 out of 10 based on 52 ratings […]
For years, skeptical scientists have been pointing at data that showed the the world started warming somewhere from 1700 – 1820. This has been known from glaciers, sea level studies, ice cores, boreholes, ocean heat content estimates, and more proxies than any climate-nerd cares to name.
Finally, expert climate modelers are “surprised” to discover this:
“…their study had detected warming in the Arctic and tropical oceans from around the 1830s, just 80 years after the Industrial Revolution started in England. “It was an extraordinary finding,” she said. “It was one of those moments where science really surprised us. But the results were clear. The climate warming we are witnessing today started about 180 years ago.”
How many grant dollars did it take to figure out what skeptical scientists have been saying for years?
The correlation with global temperatures and actual numerical human emissions is abysmal, so now Abrams et al ignore the numbers and appear to suggest that “The Industrial Revolution” itself started the warming — as if the mere invention of the steam engine heated the world.
[Dr Abram] said the study attributed the gradual warming to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions linked […]
In a nutshell: a government funded group finds some bleached coral on the Great Barrier Reef, and repackages the stats to come up with the apocalyptic statistic that only 7% of the reef is not bleached! The SMH reported that “93% of the corals” are damaged. The reef is 2,000 kilometers long. Did anyone really think about these headlines?
Then in a development that “no one” could see coming, local tourism is damaged, potentially costing a lot of jobs.
“And the loss of these tourists could cost our tourism industry a whopping $1 billion a year, a report out today by The Australia Institute warned.”
This inspires local dive operators (who possibly know what the reef looks like) to pay for a two week expedition to survey 28 sites. They find about 5% damage and describe the difference as phenomenal. Indeed, they say the reef is pretty much just like it was 20 years ago when they last did a survey.
We know that both sides have an interest finding a healthy or unhealthy reef. The problem starts with self-serving taxpayer funded scientists who are paid to find a crisis. But they would not get away with it […]
Only higher education could produce something this silly.
The University of Sussex gets the credit for a paper that argues that countries that are committed to nuclear energy are progressing slower towards the holy grail of meeting “climate targets”. This discovery coincidentally comes exactly as the UK Hinkley Point “hangs in the balance”. What were the odds?
The Newspeak starts in the headline — what’s a “climate target”. My personal climate target is to move into the tropics each winter, but the EU climate target is not about reducing temperatures over Spain, but about “more windmills”. The climate target of the EU has apparently got nothing much to do with the climate:
…the EU’s 2020 Strategy — to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increase the share of renewable energy to at least 20% of consumption, and achieve energy savings of 20% or more by 2020…
They cluster countries in to 3 groups and discover that the countries that plan to maintain or expand nuclear energy (eg Bulgaria, Hungary and the UK) are not cutting emissions as fast as countries that have no nukes (Denmark, Ireland, and Norway).
Could it be, I wonder, because […]
The researchers don’t say it, but this is obviously the beginnings of cricket. (David says “baseball”).
Archaeologists found lots of round rocks like this that are around 70,000 – 1.8 million years old in a cave in South Africa. They thought they might be tools, but now reckon that they were used as a weapon for hunting. With models (yeah, yeah) these are apparently the ideal size and weight to score maximum high speed damage at 20-30m distance given the mechanics of a human arm. So before spears, people probably throw rocks overhand to hunt. We are the only animals that can do this — which might explain why a million years later people are still so enthused about cricket (and baseball).
Maybe the South Africans have an unfair advantage playing the game so much longer than everyone else. (David doesn’t think much of my theory, but cricket suddenly makes a lot more sense to me now).
Snippets from the press release:
9.5 out of 10 based on 40 ratings […]
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8.9 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
National Public Radio (USA): ‘Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?’
h/t to Climate Depot
Daily Caller Andrew Follett reports on a set of stories about population control “for the climate”:
‘We should protect our kids from climate change by not having them’ says Travis Rieder of NPR.
I reckon it seems fairer to have the kids first, then ask them.
Humans have put out 50% of all our emissions of CO2 since 1988, so everyone under 30 may have wished they hadn’t been born during the Anthropocene apocalypse. (All those hot summers, those boring lectures at school). Lets do that survey. How many 28 year olds think their parents made the wrong call in 1987?
Raising offspring is hard work. “Saving the world” might just be the excuse you’re looking for if you are not inclined to do nappies.
NPR Travis Rieder, a philosopher at Johns Hopkins University, told NPR. “The situation is bleak, it’s just dark … Population engineering, maybe it’s an extreme move. But it gives us a chance.”
Rieder said America produces a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) per person, and the world’s poorest nations will […]
When you can’t persuade people to fight your imaginary enemy, declare a war.
New Republic We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.
BY BILL MCKIBBEN August 15, 2016
Translated: Expect 200 million imminent deaths (equivalent to WWII). Give us your firstborn, and lots of your money.
Not quite a dispassionate scientist at work:
In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week, another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. “In 30 years, the area has shrunk approximately by half,” said a scientist who examined the onslaught. “There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this.”
Panic now? In late 2015, Antarctic sea ice shrank by 13 million square kilometers, and nothing seemed to be able to stop it.
Then autumn came. Sea ice is projected to recover by September (like it does every year). Nature is full of cycles. Nothing about the current batch of climate shifts […]
The key moment making headlines from the Q&A “Science Weak” episode — Brian Cox shows a temperature graph. Malcolm Roberts said the GISS temperature data has been “manipulated”. The Particle Physics Genius’ reply was argument from incredulity: gushing, gratuitous astonishment spread over six attempts to form a complete sentence:
By who? NASA? The people the… Hang on a minute. No, no, see this is quite serious. But can I just – just one thing. NASA, NASA… The people that landed men on the moon?
In a blink of reductio ad absurbum, Cox sweeps aside a potentially useful discussion about thermometers near car-parks, airports, skyscrapers, and mysterious 1,200 km homogenized smoothing. In its place he gives cheap theatrical tricks. Follow his thought to its logical conclusion — everything that NASA does (or presumably will ever do) must be 100% correct. NASA becomes an apostle of the holy order. He treats the brand name as untouchable, but NASA is not just Neil Armstrong and a Big Step, it’s an agency with 17,000 employees. But hey, none of them have ever produced a manipulated graph.
Since experts matter (so Cox tells us) let’s ask the experts — like say, Buzz Aldrin, […]
On the Eastern side of the country the new skeptical Senator, Malcolm Roberts is on Q & A.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Greg Hunt – Minister for Industry, Innovation & Science Linda Burney – Shadow Minister for Human Services Brian Cox – Particle Physicist and TV Presenter Lily Serna – Mathematician and TV Presenter Malcolm Roberts – One Nation Senator-elect for Qld
As usual it is 6 against 1 the skeptical views that 54% of Australians share. Glaciers will form in hell before the ratio on the ABC would run 1:6 the other way. For Groupthinkers it’s very important that the group discussing a “controversial” topic agrees with each other. This neutralizes any damaging effects of hearing a lone voice put forward counter arguments.
John Cook has sent in a Question about empirical evidence.
Cook points at “less heat escaping to space” – Jo says –this doesn’t mean anything. We assume he means less heat escapes at certain frequencies (which he should have said). Sections of the outgoing spectrum are missing (e.g. Harries et al), which shows that CO2 is stopping some outgoing radiation and is a greenhouse gas (and we knew that already), […]
In 2009: The 2016 Rio Games predicted be the last
Global warming could make 2016 Games ‘the last Olympics in the history of mankind’, says Tokyo governor.
“Global warming is getting worse. We have to come up with measures without which Olympic Games could not last long.
“Scientists have said we have passed the point of no return,” said Ishihara.
August 2016: The 2080 Games predicted to be the last
Move that disaster by 60 years:
“A sobering new study shows that by the 2084 Olympics, rising temperatures will make it practically impossible for most cities to host the summer games.
How will the Olympics cope with a 1.5C rise?
Answer, easily. Assuming the world warms, the IOC could shift games a whole 400km from Rio, where the average max is 28C in August to Sao Paulo where it’s 3 degrees cooler. Or they could shift the timing by all of eight weeks. If Moscow held the Olympics in September instead of July the event could survive an apocalyptic nine degree future rise. (Moscow in July has a 24C average max temperature, by September that has fallen to 15C average.)
The government […]
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8.7 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
Code Red: How the Bureau of Statistics bungled the 2016 census by Peter Martin
Reading Cod Red in the Sydney Morning Herald, the real problem of the 2016 census is laid bare. Budget cuts and DDOS attacks are not the issue. If the ABS had not been greedy for too much information, or totalitarian with threats of fines, their servers could have coped on the night. In a single day the big achievers trashed the reputation of the ABS and the Census, and of IBM.
A former head of the ABS described the grab for names as the “without doubt, the most significant invasion of privacy ever perpetrated by the ABS” — like an “Australia Card”.
Because of the invasive private information they demanded, some Senators (Greens and Xenophon) refused to comply. So the ABS threatened the public with $180 a day fines, and advertised that threat. They knew that they were asking too much, risking the good name of the ABS and of the census, and feared that citizens might object. That’s why they aggressively took the totalitarian route, threatening punishment to reduce conscientious objections. This combination created a recipe for millions of people to dutifully […]
Analogies don’t get more dead than this one. Whole sentences have been killed in the quest for a soothing salad. The poor souls at Reneweconomy …
A Valiant Eco-Worrier, Evan Stamatiou, imagines climate change as an influenza pandemic.
If you imagine climate change as a flu that the world is coming down with, then you could probably say that the physical symptoms are only just starting to be felt.
On the other hand, thinks Jo, if you imagine climate change as like the tide, then you don’t bother trying to stop it.
On the third hand (which is really my foot) I don’t imagine anything. Instead I hop along to a tide gauge and check the data. At 1mm a year, this is a flu that will hit in 3016. Panic in 500 years then.
….interventions to fight the symptoms of ‘Climate Flu’ still touch on a raw nerve for so many today.
No sir. “Interventions” to fight Climate Flu don’t touch any raw nerves at all. Skeptics couldn’t care less if someone wants to hand-wash their hair shirt and drive a hybrid. What touches a nerve are the way people with imaginary illnesses want to […]
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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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