Wikileaks shows climate researchers targeted to be silenced

Emails released by wikileaks show that Roger Pielke was the target of an organized political effort to stop him speaking on climate issues. Remember, Pielke is largely an IPCC type guy — supporting most of their consensus including even carbon trading. Yet straying a tiny bit from the approved line made him a major threat — the IPCC message is a whole package and a flaw in any part of it could unravel the whole kit and caboodle.

Roger Pielke was surprised to find his name in the Podesta emails:

“The multi-year campaign against me by CAP was partially funded by billionaire Tom Steyer, and involved 7 writers at CAP who collectively wrote more than 160 articles about me, trashing my work and my reputation. Over the years, several of those writers moved on to new venues, including The Guardian, Vox and ClimateTruth.org where they continued their campaign focused on creating an evil, cartoon version of me and my research.”

Collectively, they were quite successful. The campaign ultimately led to me being investigated by a member of Congress and pushed out of the field.

That story has been told in the Wall Street Journal today:

My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic

My research was attacked by thought police in journalism, activist groups funded by billionaires and even the White House.

The relentless combination of trial by media, combined with the RICO threat (more on that below), and the loss of his regular role at 538 , wore down Roger Pielke (and no doubt deterred many others that we will never hear from). He stopped his climate research, stopped doing interviews, and stopped his blog.

How we protect the heretics? Pielke doesn’t have much to suggest:

If academics—in any subject—are to play a meaningful role in public debate, the country will have to do a better job supporting good-faith researchers, even when their results are unwelcome. This goes for Republicans and Democrats alike, and to the administration of President-elect Trump.

He’s missing the point though. Academia is a rotting wasteland and we need to do a lot more than fight for free speech for academics. If we support all good-faith researchers, academia will keep wallowing along. (Many poor climate scientists are still doing it in “good faith”.) What we need is competence — we need researchers who understand logic and reason, and know what the scientific method is, and who will debate publicly, defend their views and fix their errors.

This is not about “Republicans and Democrats alike”. It’s not “alike”, there is no equivalence — academia has become a politburo of regressive-progressives and bias. But none of them need be fired for their political beliefs, because that would be wrong.  Let’s just fire the incompetent ones. Fire people  because they don’t know what science is, because they refuse to debate, won’t reply to questions, and don’t admit their errors. Each prof that argues from authority or launches a cheap ad hom ought get a warning: three strikes and they’re out. Furthermore, they need to teach the proper basics too — let’s test all their students to see if they understand the scientific method — and if the students fail, the prof must get the sack. If it so happens that all the regressives get the chop, it’ll be the best thing for universities, for research, and for left wing politics, because others will come to fill their shoes and bring some intellectual rigor back.

Alright, so that’s a bit of a long term goal. In the meantime, we can support the people who are on the front line with messages, comments and letters to the editor and protests to the university. Since most of these attacks are nothing more than social stings and barbs themselves, then every grateful, supportive message is an arrow in return. Every letter demanding an explanation from their superior, the VC, or a journalist is a flanking move. Never underestimate how much this kind of work helps bolster people against the tide of ill will. We can help carry people through the attacks.

Pielke talks about the troubles that drove him out of the climate debate:

…look at the journalists who helped push me out of FiveThirtyEight. My first article there, in 2014, was based on the consensus of the IPCC and peer-reviewed research. I pointed out that the global cost of disasters was increasing at a rate slower than GDP growth, which is very good news. Disasters still occur, but their economic and human effect is smaller than in the past. It’s not terribly complicated.

That article prompted an intense media campaign to have me fired. Writers at Slate, Salon, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Guardian and others piled on.In March of 2014, FiveThirtyEight editor Mike Wilson demoted me from staff writer to freelancer. A few months later I chose to leave the site after it became clear it wouldn’t publish me. The mob celebrated.

In 2013, He presented at the US House and Senate, and said things that were largely in line with the fine print at the IPCC (if not so much with their advertising)  Pielke reported: “Those conclusions indicate no overall increasing trend in hurricanes, floods, tornadoes or droughts—in the U.S. or globally.” Obama’s science advisor John Holdren then attacked Pielke as not a mainstream representative in an essay “chock-full of errors and misstatements.” These in turn were then used as the basis to start a RICO (Racketeering) investigation — something usually thrown at the Mafia.

The “investigation” turned out to be a farce. In the letter, Rep. Grijalva suggested that I—and six other academics with apparently heretical views—might be on the payroll of Exxon Mobil (or perhaps the Illuminati, I forget). He asked for records detailing my research funding, emails and so on. After some well-deserved criticism from the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, Rep. Grijalva deleted the letter from his website. The University of Colorado complied with Rep. Grijalva’s request and responded that I have never received funding from fossil-fuel companies. My heretical views can be traced to research support from the U.S. government.

But the damage to my reputation had been done, and perhaps that was the point. Studying and engaging on climate change had become decidedly less fun. So I started researching and teaching other topics and have found the change in direction refreshing. Don’t worry about me: I have tenure and supportive campus leaders and regents. No one is trying to get me fired for my new scholarly pursuits.

Roger is not doing himself, or the institution of academia many favours with skeptics with that last description. If full academic tenure is not enough to keep someone saying what they believe to be true, what’s the point?

In an ideal world we should be grateful he fought so long on a grinding path (and though we wish he were still battling on, a lot of his tenured colleagues bailed out at the start). But what he is admitting here is that academic tenure eventually converts most researchers into full time spokesman for government programs they can agree with. They may have to move fields to find one that fits, but it’s a filter that works on all  but the most tenacious. (Praise be to Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, Curry and the few survivors who don’t give in. Praise also to the scientists who do real work without the luxury of tenure, or even a salary).

But the lesson is that a lone academic is no match for billionaires, well-funded advocacy groups, the media, Congress and the White House.

An academics shouldnt have to be a match for all these, especially not on their own. That’s where the institutions and other academics failed Pielke. What price did they pay when they stayed silent — hard to say. There’s no incentive in this system for other tenured people to speak up. If other academics won’t defend free speech, why should taxpayers defend academia?

Judith Curry has pretty strong feelings about the RICO threats (she faced it herself) — explaining why she thought many of the signatories who were for it had no idea what they were advocating or how dangerous this was for science. She knew some of them and wrote back:

What you have done with your letter is the worst kind of irresponsible advocacy, which is to attempt to silence scientists that disagree with you by invoking RICO.  It is bad enough that politicians such as Whitehouse and Grijalvi are playing this sort of political game with science and scientists, but I regard it as highly unethical for scientists to support defeating scientists with whom you disagree by such methods.   Since I was one of the scientists called out in Grijalvi’s witch hunts, I can only infer that I am one of the scientists you are seeking to silence.

Peter Webster did not exaggerate when he wrote:  You have signed the death warrant for science.

Today Pielke writes a regular column about sports governance for the Daily Camera, which is probably a good thing for sport, but his years of expertise in the climate debate have been silenced.

9.5 out of 10 based on 121 ratings

156 comments to Wikileaks shows climate researchers targeted to be silenced

  • #
    Dean_from_Ohio

    Lie, cheat, steal, and attempt to deceive. If you’re a Progressive, it’s what you do.

    502

    • #
      Dennis

      Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do.

      281

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Maybe I’ve missed something but is it worth launching a sceptic friendly journal so proper science is available?

        90

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          Ted O'Brien.

          Who pays? Our education system should be thrown much more on the free market. But the Montreal Protocol showed that not even that guarantees freedom from corruption.

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        • #
          Salome

          Nice idea, OriginalSteve, but one of the purposes (if not the main one) of an academic journal is to get university libraries to subscribe to it–and I suspect they won’t, so if will be left with a limited circulation and unable to get where it really needs to get, which is into the same ‘space’ as the truebeliever journals so that, perhaps, some sort of debate might actually happen.

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    • #
      Robert R

      There isn’t even any anecdotal evidence for their lies and false predictions. e.g. the Great Barrier Reef has never been in such good condition, the Coral Sea level looks like its gone down slightly over the last few years, not up like they are saying, and 2016 has been one of the cooler years in Queensland compared to the last 20 or so. The sea level isn’t rising, the beach sand is a lot wider than it was a few years ago on the beaches I walk along. The weather has been pretty tame and non eventful in the last few years too…..doesn’t look like the worst problem we are facing…….hey? Great Barrier Reef never looked so good as it does now!

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        Did you see the Attenborough program on Wildlife in Singapore? Coral growing with lots of tropical fish including “Nemos” in the second biggest port in the world. Much to his surprise, the Coral was colonising man-made structures. Singapore is nearly on the equator and the waters are warmer than on the GBR. Coral bleaching has nothing to do with temperature or with changing sea levels.

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        clive

        These”Climate Warriors”can’t seem to keep a track of the “Lies”they tell.The latest report on the reef,they said that the coral bleaching at Port Douglas was at about 90% and that it was only 6% at Townsville and 1% at the southern end.The trouble is,that according to them ,last year,the reef was almost 90% dead.Now it’s as healthy as it ever was.

        I wonder if any of these “So Called”experts have ever been to the reef,because it doesn’t grow back that fast?Or maybe they forget which lies they tell?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

      Who shall guard the guards, themselves?

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  • #

    Other then the Green-Left, I suspect that the number of people that believe in catastrophic climate change and these warming worriers is very small indeed. The majority of people are sick and tired of listening to these doom mongers and having to pay more for everything because of ostensibly useless virtue signalling aka solar, wind, etc.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Yes indeed. The average person cannot see any change in climate, but they are influenced by all those alarming headlines, or perhaps I should say were influenced because the Aesop effect** is working. Lately the cost and reliability of electricity is changing many attitudes.

      In Academia I wonder how much most of the academics care about Climate Change versus any threat to their funding. That leads me to wonder how much of the suppression comes from the management – the Deans, sub-Deans, the controllers of responses to ‘public’ demands on gender ‘rights’, race ‘rights’, gay ‘rights’, left handed ‘rights’, dying your hair purple or green ‘rights’ etc. who are all seeing threats to their funding if everybody doesn’t toe the line. They are the ones who are usually the first contact for politicians, bureaucrat and donors especially those well funded green ones.

      ** Refer to The boy who cried wolf (and think about the happy ending).

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  • #
    jorgekafkazar

    Lysenko is alive and well and collecting a salary at major universities all over the world.

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    • #
      Oliver K. Manuel

      My research mentor, the late Professor Paul Kazuo Kuroda (1917-2001) literally risked his life to expose the international spread of Stalin’s science under the guise of the united nations and national academies of sciences after 24 OCT 1945.

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      • #
        Oliver K. Manuel

        Nations and national academies of sciences were united on 24 OCT 1945 to hide the source of energy in atomic bombs – NEUTRON REPULSION .

        Fifty-seven years later BBC News admited Kuroda had secretly retained a personal copy Japan’s successful design for atomic bombs:

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2170881.stm

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      • #
        Oliver K. Manuel

        Thanks to Climategate, we now know that one-world globalism is the greatest threat to the integrity of science and the responsibility of governments to protect the rights of citizens to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

        https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2016/12/03/trump-what-dangers-does-he-face-from-globalists/

        Our greatest defense against world tyranny is to use our natural talents humbly to expose the truth as we are individually able to grasp reality.

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        Oliver K. Manuel

        World leaders and guilt-ridden scientists were told they were saving the world from nuclear annihilation by hiding “nuclear secrets” from the public, but Kuroda recognized the abuse of science to gain totalitarian control of the world.

        In 1956, Kuroda told the world there were, in fact, no “nuclear secrets” to hide. Uranium deposits became self-sustaining nuclear fission reactors on Earth two billion years (2 Ga) ago, without any assistance from mankind.

        In 1972 scientists of the French Atomic Energy Commission found self-sustaining nuclear reactors had burned spontaneously in the Oklo Mine in Africa. The Scientific American tried to describe this as an extremely unlikely event:

        https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-nuclear-reactor/

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  • #
    ianl8888

    Roger Pielke was surprised to find his name in the Podesta emails …

    Although Stalin was obviously not the first to use this technique, he put it quite succinctly:

    If you have a problem, get rid of the man. Then the problem goes away.

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  • #
    Glen Michel

    I presume we talk about Jr.

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      Glen Michel

      What I should say is that Roger Jr.is a climate alarmist who believes CO2 causes warming;his father-I gather believes otherwise,but acknowledges mans activities. From my point of view all the evidence points to natural causes and seems that the latest land set temperatures confirm that it’s related to ENSO. Well, most likely.

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    • #
      Andrew McRae

      I got through the whole article while thinking it was about his father, Roger Pielke senior.
      Had no idea Jo was talking about the son until I got to your comment.
      They’re both climate scientists and the senior is probably more widely known in skeptical circles.

      OTOH it must be unflattering to have people calling you “Junior” when you’re over 40.

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  • #

    And let us not forget that letter to
    President Obama, Attorney General Lynch,
    (unfortunate name in the context) and OSTP
    Director Holdren, requesting RICO laws against
    climate change skeptics by Jagadish Shukla,
    and nineteen other conn-sen-suss scientists
    including Kevin Trenbeth.

    https://judithcurry.com/2015/09/17/rico/

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    • #

      Best way to convince Loretta Lynch is to meet her by accident at some remote airport. You jump out of your own plane and make your way on to Loretta’s plane. First you talk about golf, grandchildren…the main reasons you did the plane switch thing. Then you ask her casually to do stuff. You might even have to ask her kind of hard, not so casually. In the end, she’ll get it.

      Capish?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      That letter is the de facto defining document of the United Soviet States of America.

      Forget about the Bill of Rights, and the old Constitution. They are overridden by RICO.

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      Robert R

      President Obuma came to Queensland once not so long ago and insulted our Great Barrier Reef without even looking at it. We thought it was very strange and inappropriate at the time. We think it is great that he has been Trumped!

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    Another Graeme

    Let me guess, this will be all over the msm come Monday morning…….won’t it?

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      aussiepete

      And therein lies the problem. The MSM have fallen for the “carbon pollution” scam and i’m sure many of the “talking heads” (revered by the masses) think that global warming is about soot.
      From conversations I’ve had with “the person in the street” it is apparent they haven’t a clue either. They think that soot from car exhausts, smoke stacks,fires and the like is the cause of global warming. They believe that even if it doesn’t cause warming we should clean it up anyway,and that’s probably fair enough but a different problem. They are fooled by photo shopped images of steam coming from cooling towers, even in person they don’t know the difference.
      Clean energy is the way to go they think.A 30 second sound bite on the 6 o’clock news from some apparently authoritative type is about as deep as their research goes.
      This is important because in the end this battle has to be won at the ballot box.</strong
      Readers of this blog and others have to remember that we are are in a vast minority, ultimately relying on the public vote whose science does not go much beyond their times tables, and even they are not taught anymore.

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      • #
        Dennis

        Since around the 1970s developed countries have legislated against environmental pollution and established Environmental Pollution Agencies charged with monitoring this and where appropriate issuing penalties for offences detected. Businesses are required to conduct annual surveys of their premises using consultants. Yet many including MSM employees have lost focus on pollution and the laws that ban polluting activities and instead push man-made global warming climate change socialist agenda. Including going along with the ridiculous leftist claim that CO2 is “carbon pollution”.

        Another example of how the media is a useful tool for spreading deceptive information.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Yep, just like MSM told you it’s been snowing in Saudi Arabia!

      Well at least the rest of the World heard about is via Arab and Russian news services.

      171

  • #
    Mark M

    Prepare the the Jim Jones’ kool-aide.

    97% alt ‘Science’, August 1, 2008: 100 Months to save the planet (theguardian)
    . . .
    If only the people who ‘believe’ in Doomsday Global Warming overpopulation saw their doctor for an assisted suicide note, the planet would be saved.

    For the rest unable to do that, warm the tar, pluck the goose feathers …

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  • #
    Another Graeme

    Climate alarmism is clearly the most dangerous religion the world has ever seen.

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    TdeF

    This approach is straight Marxist technique. Attack the man, destroy him or failing that, his reputation. Keith Windschuttle predicted and experienced the same thing when he predicted he would be labelled an ‘ist. Then front page, Melbourne Age, stated he was a plagiarist. This from an ethics professor at Melbourne University based on a highly edited extract of his book in which all the attributions were deleted. A humble apology was printed five days later on page 5 when the author saw the real book, but the damage was done.

    Tenure? So what. Professor Geoffrey Blainey was hounded from his post as head of the History department at Melbourne University by staff and students. So called Climate Science is just one of the many areas where you are not allowed have an opinion which differs, even with tenure. You will be forced out and need police protection even to give a lecture. As for RICO, what can you do when this is supported from the White House.

    Communism is not dead, it is an ideal pushed more subtly. Stalinist Marxism is driving so much journalism today. In Australia that includes the only Green in the House of Representatives, Adam Bandt with his PhD in communism. After a lifetime of denial, Senator Lee Rhiannon now admits she was trained in Moscow. It is nothing to do with Climate or warming or science. Everything is about power and modern society runs on electricity and telephones. Control the electricity and the internet and you control modern society. So our RET and NBN. Creations of the Stalinist left and happily supported by our Socialist PM who inherited his vast wealth.

    Yes, the bill to control the extreme CFMEU has passed into law, with the Hinch provision that it does not start until after the next election. In breaking news, new senator Hinch now says this was suggested to him by Malcolm Turnbull. So our faux PM is a friend of the Unions and the Greens. Who would have guessed?

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Well said — destroy the person, or their reputation.

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    • #

      Dr Michael Rodrick and Dr Graham Farquhar wrote papers on Pan Evaporation. They showed that pan evaporation where measured around the world had been decreasing. They have been moved aside from their research at ANU. One hears nothing about this now and I have seen that data collection at many if not all BOM sites has stopped.

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      • #
        Harry Twinotter

        cementafriend.

        References to back up your claim.

        01

        • #
          AndyG55

          [SNIP empty insults add nothing – Jo]

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          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            I think that Twinotter wants photographic evidence of people no longer taking measurements of Pan Evaporation.

            Also, for calibration purposes, he should also probably get photographic evidence of people not taking measurements at random, in order to support the null hypothesis.

            11

    • #
      clive

      And guess what is coming around the corner in the new year.A”New Carbon Tax”,thanks to”Turncoats”Hunt,Turdbull,She of the long knives and the other 54″Bed Wetters”of the Liberal Party.Pauline,you had better get started,with your recruitment drive ASAP.

      20

  • #
    ianl8888

    So our faux PM is a friend of the Unions and the Greens

    The Dyson Heydon Royal Commission is now disappeared for practical purposes. It simply never happened.

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    • #
      Dennis

      And the corrupt unions, their lack of governance no longer under scrutiny, are laughing.

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      TdeF

      The ABCC was another Howard/Abbott core policy. It was also the basis of a double dissolution election no less but now not law until after the next election.

      So Turnbull can argue he is has legislated a major change and achieved a Liberal victory by clever negotiation and simultaneously blamed Hinch for the fact that it is never implemented. Worse, it allows the big builders like Lend Lease to continue their open deal with the CFMEU to soak government contracts and those poor saps who believed Malcolm will be forced out of business.

      Dear Liberal/National parties. Can we have our real Prime Minister back soon? The one who said Climate Science was crap, socialism posing as environmentalism.

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  • #

    When they write the history of green hypocrisy there will be some doozies, like Leo chasing three New Year parties in three time zones with his private jet, Pachauri’s private jet from NY to India for cricket practice…

    But I reckon Tom Steyer takes the cake. Made his pile punting on Australian and Indonesian coal (not forgetting those tobacco investments!) then, just as the coal price started to tank in the spring of 2012, with impeccable speed and timing he declared war on coal and and started boosting the sort of new (read “medieval”) energy alternatives that are doing so much right now for southern Australia. Or maybe I should say, doing so much TO southern Australia.

    Now I know some are thinking that Chesapeake Energy’s tens of millions to Sierra for their war on coal was more hilarious, as was Woody flying in his vegan shoes and belt from the US to Cannes, but this is more about the hypocrisy element rather than the comedy element. In fact, the comedy award should go to John Travolta for advising people to cut down on flying while he had his very own passenger jets (note plural) nose-parked right in front of his house.

    Seriously, Tom needs to stick to his new hobby of vote rigging. Even if his gal Hillary won’t be starting WW3 or invading Moscow this winter, there’ll be other globalist authoritarian crazies to do the war and debt thing. Why get hung up on climate, Tom, when your real talent is numbers?

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  • #

    Climate alarmism is just in the Amateur League of dangerous religions alongside [snip]. If you want a real present and long-lasting danger you just cannot go past the one forged in 622 AD.

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    John Michelmore

    It is a shame that money and power drives economies, because in too many cases they destroys morality! What a disgrace these people are that are driven to destroy others for the gratification of money and power!

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    David S

    The global warming scam has been a cordinated and planned effort, infiltrating key institutions, academia, politics, media,religious institutions,schools,governments, big business,government departments etc.Even skeptics in power play lip service to the global warming God as happened in Australia under Abbott. The intimidation of skeptics by using terms like denier and conspiracy theorists makes people think twice about going against the mainstream. I find it fascinating that people who come up with a theory that a colourless odourless gas CO 2 which boosts plant growth somehow impacts dangerously to affect natural climate cycles. Surely it is those who dispute the natural course of things who are the deniers and conspiracy theorists. They believe in natural births, organic food, herbal medicines, unprocessed food wind and solar energy but when it comes to climate dispute the natural order of things. Crazy hypocrites!

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    pat

    before tackling the specifics, am posting this as a followup to comment #50, posted on jo’s Kelloggs thread re Oxford Dictionaries naming “Post-Truth” as Word of the Year 2016, with “Alt-Right” on the shortlist, and given an “expanded” definition.

    contrary to its headline, WaPo appears to be encouraging its readers to make the “F” word Word of the Year, as a correlation to Trump winning the Presidency!

    2 Dec: WaPo: Ben Guarino: Merriam-Webster’s plea: There’s still time to prevent ‘fascism’ from becoming word of the year
    This post has been updated.
    Fascism may be poised to join an elite pool of words — among them science, integrity, socialism, bailout, truthiness and the slang interjection “w00t” — that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has selected as word of the year.
    The word fascism, as Merriam-Webster noted on Twitter on Tuesday, spiked in November searches and was an object of interest all year long. The unusually high interest in its definition over the course of 2016 has propelled it to the fourth-most-searched word in the history of the dictionary’s website…

    In 2015, people were apparently thinking about the suffix “-ism.” Fascism scored high, but socialism topped the charts. Its popularity spiked after rallies held by self-avowed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, according to the dictionary…
    This year, words such as misogyny and fascism have had huge bursts of interest, particularly after the election…

    Merriam-Webster was unable to respond to a query from The Washington Post early Friday, to see whether the dictionary was so against fascism it would suppress the rules to allow another word to win. (Update: It will not. “We feel that the quantitative approach gives an objective measure of the public’s curiosity,” wrote ***Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an email to The Post “and it tells us all something about what we were thinking about for the past 12 months — as well as what sent us to the dictionary.”)…
    If fascism wins, it will round out a cluster of bleak words for the year 2016. Across the pond, the Oxford Dictionaries announced that “post-truth” was this year’s word…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/12/02/merriam-websters-plea-theres-still-time-to-prevent-fascism-from-becoming-word-of-the-year/?utm_term=.f13da4fa0ee1
    COMMENT: familynet: “Hysterical” should be the word of the year, but unfortunately uber libs aren’t looking up the definition, they just act it out.

    ***TWEET: Peter Sokolowski, Merriam Webster: Also: the Word of the Year is neither accusation nor diagnosis. Curiosity is not ignorance. ‘Democracy’ is also a frequently looked-up word.
    https://twitter.com/PeterSokolowski/status/804736428357939200?lang=en

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      TdeF

      Pat, ‘Deplorables’ must be up there for word of the year. Post-Truth is just an excuse for failure by the Clintons and their friends.

      According to Hilary seeking to be President, half the country are racists, bigots and homophobic and worse. Deplorables.
      You could only think this was a brain freeze, that she let slip what she was saying privately and forgetting that she was speaking to the Deplorables.
      Whatever Trump said was privately. What Hilary said was on National TV during an election.

      I wonder what her advisers were thinking behind the curtains? There would have been a lot of heads banging on walls.
      What possessed her to say this? Sheer frustration? Great word. Better than DelCon.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Still these words push the same idea. If you lose an election, make up a word and blame the ignorant voters, never yourself. At the end Hitler blamed the Germans for his failure. That’s what megalomania does.

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      clive

      Fascism,describes the “Left”exactly.

      00

  • #
    tom0mason

    It is sad.
    I feel very sad for what Roger Pielke has had to endure.

    It is also sad that climate studies, in the main, have never been about science, it’s about politics, money, and power.

    For so many decades people have heard me say this, and many thought I was deranged, unhinged or mad. No, I just have to step out side and look at what all nature does to realize ‘climate science™’ is nonsense. Looking at the world holistically, the eons it has been here and all that has happened over the centuries, renders these political advocates’ arguments sterile.

    There is no science when the political machinery decides what the answers will be before the questions are asked.

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      tom0mason December 4, 2016 at 8:50 am

      ‘It is also sad that climate studies, in the main, have never been about science, it’s about politics, money, and power.’

      Indeed! Stop with the science rebuttal! Use the political rebuttal! Deliberate slaughter of the enemy invaders!

      “For so many decades people have heard me say this, and many thought I was deranged, unhinged or mad.”

      Tom only words of careful wisdom! I hab many fine hinges at good price! Your door look really good after! 🙂

      “There is no science when the political machinery decides what the answers will be before the questions are asked.”

      In most of physical science, answers are obvious. What the hell is your stupid question??
      All the best! -will-

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  • #
    Sceptical lefty

    “He’s missing the point though. Academia is a rotting wasteland and we need to do a lot more than fight for free speech for academics. If we support all good-faith researchers, academia will keep wallowing along. (Many poor climate scientists are still doing it in “good faith”.) What we need is competence — we need researchers who understand logic and reason, and know what the scientific method is, and who will debate publicly, defend their views and fix their errors.”

    This is undoubtedly correct. The trouble is, those at the very top (the Establishment, if you will) have little use for academics whose only interest is the truth. What is required is academics who will spout the ‘right’ message according to the needs of the moment. It is not at all reassuring to note that most people are willing prostitutes if the price is right, so finding suitable academics to stay ‘on message’ is fairly easy. The grant system ensures that tiresome individuals are consigned to obscurity or oblivion.

    As a bonus, those at the peak of tertiary education also have a significant influence on primary and secondary education. Thus, when the kiddies are taught WHAT to think, rather than HOW to think, they are adequately primed for their final dose of indoctrination at university.

    There are major problems in every ‘science’ that is not regularly subjected to the purifying flame of strict empiricism. This means just about everything that doesn’t have ‘Engineering’ in its name. I expect that the Engineering Sciences would be corrupt, too, if there was some way to put a positive spin on a bridge collapsing, or a car exploding after a minor accident, or an aircraft inexplicably falling from the sky, etc.

    It is depressing to observe proud right/left-wingers virtuously accusing their philosophical adversaries of responsibility for the present mess, while the Establishment quietly continues with the concentration and consolidation of its power. Power, after all, is what the whole game is about. And, if you really want someone to blame, it may be sensible to start with a good, hard look in the mirror.

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    Sorry for the repeat! Perhaps Joanne will forgive! 🙂

    h/t to Gail Combs 2 December 2016 at 2:30 pm

    THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
    by Rudyard Kipling

    It was not part of their blood,
    It came to them very late,
    With long arrears to make good,
    When the Saxon began to hate.

    They were not easily moved,
    They were icy — willing to wait
    Till every count should be proved,
    Ere the Saxon began to hate.

    Their voices were even and low.
    Their eyes were level and straight.
    There was neither sign nor show
    When the Saxon began to hate.

    It was not preached to the crowd.
    It was not taught by the state.
    No man spoke it aloud
    When the Saxon began to hate.

    It was not suddently bred.
    It will not swiftly abate.
    Through the chilled years ahead,
    When Time shall count from the date
    That the Saxon began to hate.

    I think Kipling has a much better handle on the ‘Deplorables’ than the progressives and media has.

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    pat

    reminder:

    23 Nov: Daily Caller: Chris White: ThinkProgress Blasts WaPo For Embracing ‘Fake News’ About Trump’s Climate Policies
    Romm directed his ire at the Post’s decision to publish a piece by environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg suggesting, “Trump’s climate plan might not be so bad after all.” The op-ed is beyond the pale, according to Romm, because Lomborg’s history of criticizing the Paris climate agreement makes him insufficiently hawkish on fighting global warming.
    “The goal of much, if not most, fake news is simply to spread a false headline far and wide,” Romm wrote Wednesday at ThinkProgress. ” Newspaper editors have known for decades that most people don’t read most stories much beyond the headline.”…
    Trump’s desire to scrap the Paris agreement, he (Lomborg) wrote, would give the U.S. the ability to find different, more innovative ways of tackling so-called man-made global warming. It would also help environmentalists fight climate change without destroying the economy.
    Romm, for his part, rattled off a laundry list of academic groups suggesting Lomborg’s arguments against the agreement amounted to “fake news.”…

    ClimateProgress took issue with pollster Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight website hiring Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. to write about global warming issues. Pielke, like Lomborg, is not considered a global warming skeptic, but he did devote at least one article to criticizing a Democratic talking point that global warming was making extreme weather more severe.
    http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/23/thinkprogress-blasts-wapo-for-embracing-fake-news-about-trumps-climate-policies/

    can’t see an actual link to the WikiLeaks email in question, so posting it here.

    Wikileaks: Climate Progress In Action
    From: Judd Legum
    To: Ted White, Fahr LLC & Tom Steyer, Fahr LLC
    28 July 2014
    I think it’s fair say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538. He would be providing important cover for climate deniers backed by Silver’s ***very respected brand. But because of our work, he is not…
    https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/19569

    ***poor Nate Silver – his brand is pretty much trashed after Trump’s win.

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    David Maddison

    Is anyone aware of any early engineering analyses that demonstrate the lack of economic and engineering viabilty of wind turbines?

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    Owen Morgan

    I believe that we are witnessing the ending of English-language universities everywhere as places where useful research gets done, effective teaching is delivered, or where people are free to express perfectly legitimate opinions, by which I mean opinions. We have moved down to a stage where facts are verboten, if they are the “wrong” facts.

    It’s not just the climate scam. That is a disaster, if not in the way the ClimateGate crowd would have had us believe, but some of the other orthodoxies, being imposed at universities across the world, are just as destructive. This isn’t the place to name them individually. The fact is that swathes of supposedly academically accomplished professors (they’re all professors nowadays) readily suppress valid intellectual positions which they don’t like, or simply lack the guts to defend.

    I think, a few years ago, I quoted here the Spanish saying, illustrated by Goya: “El sueño de la razon produce monstruos (“the sleep of reason brings forth monsters” *). We have already gone beyond the “sleep of reason”. Reason is being deliberately anaesthetized, or, quite simply, aborted.

    * “Sueño” translates as both “sleep” and “dream”.

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      Owen Morgan December 4, 2016 at 10:33 am

      “I believe that we are witnessing the ending of English-language universities everywhere as places where useful research gets done, effective teaching is delivered, or where people are free to express perfectly legitimate opinions, by which I mean opinions. We have moved down to a stage where facts are verboten, if they are the “wrong” facts.”

      I agree with your trepidation! Throw away religious ‘facts’! Treasure the profound skill of ‘Earthlings as toolmakers extraordinar’, exceeding that of the creator GOD! Beware the lack of ‘sanity’ infecting those same Earthlings! Experiment gone bad!!
      Perhaps a regimen of work learning, as with the ‘Guild Learning’, can help! Western Universities are now but asylums for the insane academics!
      All the best! -will-

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      Graeme No.3

      Owen Morgan:

      Yes, but? The old time Universities offered sanctuary to scholars and limited protection (Abelard etc.) The scholar/lecturer was paid by the students directly. Gradually this evolved into a set place with buildings and other facilities where intending scholars could come form all over Europe or further. In England the 2 Universities were conservative in politics and became even more so after The Glorious Revolution (1689). They were hotbeds of opposition to Darwin (although inviting him to dinner) etc.
      The University has gradually evolved into a Degree Factory by the seventies? Many of the original lecturers were from outside the academic mainstream but gradually were replaced by those who went from school to University, post doctoral runarond followed by taking a limpet position in an agreeable place. When the government started to flood the Universities with money based on the mistaken belief that university training was a necessary accomplishment then a huge agglomeration of Managers and other bureaucrats arrived. Most of the lecturers are interested in anything outside their speciality but are under pressure to “never rock the boat” lest it diminish the flow of money. That pressure is reinforced by the government bureaucracy supplying the funds.

      What has to happen is a reversion to the original model (near enough) where with the aid of the internet scholars can make a living outside of the government control. For all the claims about the cost of equipment etc. it would be much cheaper if the manufacturers did not have to deal with government bureaucrats and the extra add-on cost of the supernumary staff.
      There is nothing to stop true knowledge providers from coalescing aroud a small organisations to reduce the cost of what regulation is needed. The same applies to main stream media, and examples already come to mind.
      Idealistic? Yes. Possible? Wait a few years.

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        Owen Morgan

        The English universities were disastrously bad by the eighteenth century. The Scottish ones were then definitely superior, but not necessarily more welcoming. Somebody like John Wilkes, a dissenter, had to go to Leiden, in the Netherlands, for a university education. Since the language of instruction in Leiden was Latin, which was the case in most Western European universities of the time, an inability to speak Dutch wasn’t an impediment. The notoriously philandering Wilkes probably found Leiden ladies with a remarkably good grasp of English, too.

        What we are seeing now is a reversal of the situation to that time, when English universities were no good. It’s affecting all of them. The Scottish ones gave up the ghost about twenty years ago. American colleges are committing suicide on a daily basis. Jo Nova regularly documents nightmares from Australian ones and I don’t think Welsh and Irish and NZ ones have any reasons for optimism, either.

        I partially agree about the expansion of the universities. Since my father was the first person in my family ever to be permitted to attend a university, I can never condemn parents for hoping to see their offspring graduate. Many of them, too, have never had a graduate in the family.

        Even the wild expansion of universities in the U.K. in the nineties wasn’t automatically wrong. Given my background, I am dead against pulling up the drawbridge behind me, as a whole generation of British politicians did in the Sixties and Seventies. The explosion of the university population wouldn’t have been a problem, if the performance of the schools had justified it, but it didn’t.

        In her 1996 book, “All Must Have Prizes“, Melanie Phillips described how ill-prepared new undergraduates were for British universities, needing remedial courses in Maths, French, German, even English and any kind of science, despite gaining A-grades in their final year of school. I don’t believe anything much has improved since then. In fact, I suspect my grandmother, a would-be-scholarly Welsh-speaker forced to leave school at fourteen, probably spoke and wrote English better than most of the people accepted to British and American universities today.

        The tragedy is that students who are accepted to university with minimal knowledge or potential are there merely to be imprinted with the accepted “Graduate” status, to make up the numbers. Once they are there, impaled on the notion that failing to graduate is the worst disaster that can ever happen to them, they are very vulnerable to dictatorial demands about expression and belief.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    Many climate researchers foretold,
    The Pause and the trending to cold,
    With their methods maligned,
    By a closed warmist mind,
    Which was spawned in a consensus mould.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      I quite like the idea of a consensus mould. It makes warmism sound like it is some form of irritating fungus, like athletes foot.

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    pat

    regulations, regulations, regulations:

    Judd Legum – founder and editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress, based at the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta – is married to Roshini Thayaparan, an attorney with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission:

    We spoke to (Judd) Legum, who is married to Roshini Thayaparan, an attorney with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – NY Observer, 16 Sept 2016 “How ThinkProgress ‘Progressive in Chief’ Judd Legum Spends His Day

    Wikipedia: FERC is self-funding, in that Congress sets its budget through annual and supplemental appropriations and FERC is authorized to raise revenue to reimburse the United States Treasury for its appropriations, through annual charges to the natural gas, oil, and electric industries it regulates…
    FERC is independent of the Department of Energy because FERC activities “shall not be subject to further view by the Secretary [of Energy] or any officer or employee of the Department”…
    FERC is composed of up to five commissioners who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

    for those who like detail!

    PDF: 74 pages: FERC: Common Metrics Report: Performance Metrics for Regional Transmission Organizations, Independent System Operators, and Individual Utilities for the 2010-2014 Reporting Period
    Staff Report
    Federal Energy Regulatory Commission August 2016 (Revised October 2016)
    Acknowledgements
    Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Staff Team includes:
    Roshini Thayaparan
    https://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2016/08-09-common-metrics.pdf

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    pat

    Legum’s email was also addressed to Ted White, Fahr LLC:

    11 Dec 2013: PR Web: Ted White Tapped for Special Engagement Managing National Clean Energy Initiatives
    Denver, Colorado (PRWEB)
    Moye White LLP name partner and renowned corporate attorney, Ted White, has been engaged by Fahr LLC, an umbrella entity for prominent investor and philanthropist Tom Steyer’s extensive business, policy, political, and philanthropic efforts, to act as Fahr’s Managing Partner…

    Jan 2014: PR Newswire: SASB Announces New Board Members
    The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board™ (SASB)™, a 501c3 non-profit organization that provides sustainability accounting standards for use by publicly listed corporations in the U.S., today announces five new members of its board of directors. The new board members, who will serve a minimum ***two year term effective starting January 2014, are:
    Jack Ehnes, CEO of CalSTRs
    Jack Ehnes is the Chief Executive Officer of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), the largest teacher-only pension fund in the world. Mr. Ehnes is Chairman of the FTSE Environmental Markets Committee; serves on the boards of the National Council on Teacher Retirement, Ceres, and the Public Employees Board of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans; and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on Long-Term Investing…
    Peter Knight, JD, Founding Partner of Generation Investment Management
    Mr. Knight is a Founding Partner of Generation Investment Management. Mr. Knight served as Chief of Staff to former VP Al Gore when Mr. Gore was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later the U.S. Senate…

    ***Ted White, JD, Managing Partner, Fahr LLC
    Ted White is managing partner of Fahr LLC, is the umbrella entity for investor, philanthropist, and advanced energy advocate Tom Steyer’s business, policy, and philanthropic efforts…
    Returning board members include board chairman Bob Eccles, PhD, Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School…ETC
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sasb-announces-new-board-members-241265131.html

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    pat

    ***two-year terms now upped to three:

    13 Jan 2016: SASB Announces New Members to Board of Directors
    The new board members, who will serve a ***three-year term effective January 2016, are:
    Audrey Choi, CEO, Institute for Sustainable Investing – Morgan Stanley
    Audrey Choi is CEO of Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing. She is also Managing Director and Head of Morgan Stanley’s Global Sustainable Finance Group. In these roles, she oversees the firm’s efforts to support resilient communities and promote economic opportunity and global sustainability through the capital markets. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Audrey held senior policy positions in the Clinton Administration, the Commerce Department, and the Federal Communications Commission…
    Laura Tyson, PhD, Professor, Director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact at the Berkeley Haas School of Business
    Laura Tyson is a Professor and the Director of the Institute for Business and Social Impact at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. Tyson was a member of the US Department of State Foreign Affairs Policy Board and a member of President Obama’s Council of Jobs and Competitiveness and the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She served in the Clinton Administration as the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (1993-1995) and as Director of the National Economic Council (1995 – 1996). She is a member of the Board of Directors of Morgan Stanley, AT&T, CBRE Group Inc., and Silver Spring Networks. She is an economic advisory board member of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation…
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sasb-announces-new-members-to-board-of-directors-300203439.html

    Ted White is still listed as a Board Member:

    SASB: Board of Directors
    MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG
    Philanthropist, Founder of Bloomberg LP, and the 108th Mayor of New York City
    SASB, Chair of the Board
    MARY SCHAPIRO, JD
    Former Chairman, SEC
    SASB, Vice Chair of the Board
    Ms. Schapiro’s service as the 29th Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) culminated decades of regulatory leadership. She was the first woman to serve as SEC Chairman, and the only person to have served as Chairman of both the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)…
    Ms. Schapiro is a member of the Boards of Directors of General Electric Company, the London Stock Exchange Group and Mitre Corp…
    She also previously served on the Boards of Kraft Foods and Duke Energy…
    KEN MEHLMAN
    Member & Global Head of Public Affairs, KKR
    Mr. Mehlman spent a dozen years in national politics and government service, including as 62nd Chairman of the Republican National Committee and Campaign Manager of President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign as well as in high level positions in Congress and the White House…member of the Council on Foreign Relations…
    CURTIS RAVENEL
    Global Head, Sustainable Business and Finance Group, Bloomberg LP…
    JEAN ROGERS, PhD PE
    CEO, SASB
    Ex-officio member of the SASB Board
    Dr. Jean Rogers is the CEO and Founder of SASB. Since 2010 SASB developed from an idea formulated in collaboration with the Harvard University Initiative for Responsible Investment at the Kennedy School of Government into a globally-respected, ANSI-accredited, independent standards-setting organization…
    Jean’s leadership experience includes 10 years as a Principal at Arup, a global engineering consultancy focused on sustainable development. Jean was also a management consultant at Deloitte, working in the environmental and manufacturing practices to help leading companies improve business and product performance through sustainability…
    In 2015 she was named one of the Most Powerful Women in Accounting by CPA Practice Advisor and in 2015 and 2016 she was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today…
    LAURA TYSON
    Director, Institute for Business and Social Impact – Berkeley Haas School of Business
    Tyson was a member of the US Department of State Foreign Affairs Policy Board and a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. She served in the Clinton Administration as the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (1993-1995) and as Director of the National Economic Council (1995 – 1996)…

    ***TED WHITE, JD
    Managing Partner, Fahr LLC…ETC
    http://www.sasb.org/sasb/board-directors/

    it’s all about regulations to protect certain interests against competition.

    Drain the Swamp, Trump.

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Connection, connection, connection.

      First, familiarize yourself with those who hold the keys to the treasury.

      Second, take one step clear from that association.

      Third, rig up a large diameter feedline from treasury to you with a small hidden feed back to your former associates and

      Last, get that tap turned on fast.

      KK

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    pat

    10 Nov: Boulder DailyCamera: Sarah Kuta: CU board shows support for faculty, students’ academic freedom
    DENVER — The University of Colorado’s Board of Regents reaffirmed its support for academic freedom on Thursday in light of recently released emails that showed that a liberal group targeted CU Boulder Professor Roger Pielke Jr. for his writings on climate change.
    At a regular meeting in Denver, the regents passed a resolution 9-0 to send the message that “faculty and students must have complete freedom to study, to learn, to do research and to communicate the results of these pursuits to others.”…
    ***Though he was not mentioned in the resolution, Pielke was the motivating factor behind it, according to its author, Regent John Carson, a Republican from Highlands Ranch…
    Carson said he felt that type of conduct was unacceptable and that he thought the board should show all CU faculty and researchers that it stands behind them.
    “I want to go on record making clear that I don’t think this type of conduct is appropriate and we’re going to defend our faculty and we’re going to go on record, when we find out about these types of things, opposing it,” Carson said…READ ALL
    http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_30558681/cu-board-shows-support-faculty-students-academic-freedom

    7 Nov: WashingtonTimes: Valerie Richardson: Tom Steyer inserts climate change into politics with heated Colorado race
    Democrat Alice Madden, a candidate for the at-large seat on the University of Colorado Board of Regents, has made no secret of her climate change advocacy even as the state’s flagship university system wrestles with flaps involving dissenting views on global warming…
    The previous month, three University of Colorado Colorado Springs professors came under fire for warning their students that there would be no debate on human-caused climate change, and that anyone who disagreed should drop the class…
    “Question of the day: Do you think that all nine of the elected CU Regents should believe in man-made climate change?” asked Ms. Madden in a Facebook post reprinted on Complete Colorado. “Seems like a basic premise for a premier research and teaching institution with 12 Nobel Laureates.”
    She later dinged the board for failing to discuss global warming, saying such topics are “verboten.”…
    The Board now has a 5-4 GOP majority…
    Republican legislators met in September with the UCCS administration after three professors told students, “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course.”…
    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/nov/7/tom-steyer-invests-100-million-to-get-climate-chan/

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    pat

    SMILE:

    17 Nov: CortezJournal: Trump’s triumph is seen as mandate on fossil fuels
    By Elizabeth Shogren, High Country News
    PHOTO CAPTION: (***THE ‘INDIGNANT’) Environmentalists prepare for battle against a Trump presidency that they believe puts the planet at peril. From left, Sky Gallegos, executive vice president of Political Strategy for ***NextGen Climate Action; Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club; Anna Aurilio, D.C. director of Environment America; and Kevin Curtis, executive director of the NRDC Action Fund.

    Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune wore an ***expression of indignation as he articulated a post-election message for Sierra Club’s 2.4 million members: Acknowledge the pain and alienation you feel over Donald Trump’s victory and then gird yourself for a fight.
    Brune gathered with other national environmental leaders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. When they scheduled the press conference before the election, they expected it to be a celebration of Hillary Clinton, who had pledged to make clean energy and addressing climate change a priority. Instead they mourned the major threat the environment faces. “Make no mistake; the election of Donald Trump could be devastating for our climate and our future,” said Brune, after declaring solidarity with women, minorities and religious groups who were similarly dismayed by Trump’s win.
    Like many other people, environmental leaders were stunned by a presidential election that defied the polls and put into power a man who calls climate change a hoax and has vowed to do away with the Environmental Protection Agency, take the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement and cancel President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and much of the rest of his climate legacy…
    The environmental leaders make no attempt to sugarcoat their defeat. League of Conservation Voters, NextGen Climate Action, the Sierra Club, EDF Action, the NRDC Action Fund and Environment America collectively spent more than $100 million on the 2016 election in large part to elect Clinton and help green-minded Democrats take control of the Senate…
    With Republicans retaining control of the House and Senate, the environmental leaders do not expect any near-term legislative wins …
    http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20161117/NEWS01/161119889/0/FRONTPAGE/Trump%E2%80%99s-triumph-is-seen-as-mandate-on-fossil-fuels

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      el gordo

      They have been caught unawares by Trumps victory and are in panic mode, wonderful to see.

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        Dennis

        May the long march back to the centre right of conservative politics continue.

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        • #
          el gordo

          Cory looks the man in the Big Apple, he has sensed the winds of change well in advance and he’s building a large following through the interwebs.

          Di Natale also has a bight future in politics, but before then the CC agenda must be eradicated from the party platform and a return to simply fixing up the environment. That’s what Donald Trump plans to do in the USA.

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          • #
            PeterPetrum

            You amaze me! Do you really believe that the present day Greens have ANY genuine interest in the environment? Apart from using it for political gain.

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  • #
    Mark M

    Resident red-thumber, Harry Twitter claims he has been silenced and deleted @jonova.

    Is this true?

    http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2016/12/hottest-november-on-record-for.html

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      TdeF

      That’s Harry Twinotter or Twotter for short?

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      • #
        TdeF

        Twotter is much more comfortable with people who do not ask questions. A sort of hive mind.

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        Mark M

        Apologies.
        Spell-check thwarted that.

        It is indeed our friend, Harry Twinotter making this claim.

        Easy for me to ask, as I don’t have to spend time moderating.

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      Annie

      Hotwhopper? An interesting handle. We always referred to l!es in our family as ‘whoppers’!

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      • #
        AndyG55

        “‘whoppers’”

        Yep, specialises in ALL the climate LIES. !!

        That is why Twotter is at home there.

        [Please add some examples, links, refs, something – Jo]

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      In the link Twotter claims his comments have disappeared and has the hide to cry “free speech” yet when Eric Worrall attempts a response further down its deleted with ‘New comment policy: No more nonsense denial comments’ that leads to this page which states they support free speech as long as that speech isn’t deemed dangerous in their eyes.

      Dangerous thoughts like Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis who in 1847 suggested the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as “childbed fever”) could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, with mortality at 10%–35%. Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards. He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.

      Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis’s practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist’s research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.

      Be careful what you wish for O childish radicals.

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      James Murphy

      I really like people like Twinotter visiting this site, as he/she unfailing proves just how ignorant and insular the true believers of the AGW religion really are.

      I am all for giving these types of people enough rope to hang themselves (metaphorically only, of course) as many times as they want.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Actually, if memory serves me well, a Twin-otter is a high-wing monoplane, usually equipped with floats so it can take off and land on water, or skis for use on snow.
        I believe that there are lots of them in Canada, because of the terrain and weather conditions.

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        • #
          Mark Fraser

          In fact, the Twin Otter is an updated (including the second engine) DeHavilland Otter, done up by Viking Air, near Victoria, British Columbia. A wonderful company and a legendary aircraft. About 40km by ferry from me. Dozens of them equipped with pontoons ply the skies and waters serving BC coastal communities, including Vancouver. As I opined some months, dear Harry doth besmirch the good name….

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Quite possibly. The quality of the discourse here has certainly gone up.

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    • #
      PeterS

      I haven’t heard anyone blame Trump’s victory on climate change – yet.

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      AndyG55

      from the article

      “a vintage would have taken 100 days but we do the bulk of it within 60 days,”

      Its called EFFICIENCY. !!!

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      • #
        TdeF

        Wines have more alcohol and mature faster. That is the result of real science as practiced in California in conjunction with the University of California, Davis. The Judgement of Paris is a great read and the basis of the film Bottle Shock with the late Professor Snape, Alan Rickman. Understanding and mastery of malolactic fermentation, yeast development and many technical aspects of wine making finally involved chemistry and biology more than tradition and trial and error. Or you could blame everything on Climate Change.

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    pat

    the bigger picture:

    3 Dec: Zerohedge: Tyler Durden: House Quietly Passes Bill Targeting “Russian Propaganda” Websites
    On November 30, one week after the Washington Post launched its witch hunt against “Russian propaganda fake news”, with 390 votes for, the House quietly passed “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017”, sponsored by California Republican Devin Nunes (whose third largest donor in 2016 is Google parent Alphabet, Inc), a bill which deals with a number of intelligence-related issues, including Russian propaganda, or what the government calls propaganda, and hints at a potential crackdown on “offenders.”
    A quick skim of the bill reveals “Title V—Matters relating to foreign countries”, whose Section 501 calls for the government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly.”
    The section lists the following definitions of media manipulation:…
    LIST
    ***Curiously, the bill which was passed on November 30, was introduced on November 22, two days before the Washington Post published its Nov. 24 article citing “experts” who claim Russian propaganda helped Donald Trump get elected…
    While the bill passed the House with a sweeping majority, it is unknown if and when the bill will work its way through the Senate and be passed into law, although one would think that it has far higher chances of passing under president Obama than the President-Elect…
    Those interested can read the full “H.R. 6393: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017″ at the following location” bill that may soon proclaim much of the internet to be criminal “Russian propaganda” at the following link…READ ALL
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-02/

    the earlier, even more insane, European Union equivalent:

    14 Oct: European Parliament: MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION on EU strategic communication to counteract propaganda against it by third parties
    (2016/2030(INI))
    Committee on Foreign Affairs
    Recognising and exposing Russian disinformation and propaganda warfare (BEGINS WITH #7, TO #59. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, Member States, the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the EEAS and NATO.)
    MINORITY OPINION
    Minority Opinion tabled by GUE/NGL MEP Javier Couso
    The report identifies two threats regarding propaganda: a State actor, namely Russia, and terrorist groups such as Daesh. It wishes to tackle radicalisation and terrorist propaganda though enhanced Member States and EU cooperation. But focuses on granting the EU the means to support its own strategic propaganda campaigns, mainly against Russia.
    We reject the report since:
    • It is irresponsible to place a State like Russia at the same level of threat as Da’esh’…ETC
    http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&reference=A8-2016-0290&language=EN

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    pat

    CAGW political? never:

    June 2014: The Atlantic: Inside a Green Billionaire’s Brain Trust
    by Clare Foran and Ben Geman
    Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer wants to put climate change front and center in American politics and he has assembled an all-star team of Democratic operatives in his bid to do it.
    The list of players working with Steyer’s NextGen Climate group is full of high-powered veterans who’ve held important positions in some of the Left’s biggest victories of the past two decades — including operatives in President Obama’s 2008 election win and advisers in the Obama and Clinton administration…
    ***Here’s a look at some of the strategists, communications experts, and political advisers working to turn Steyer’s dreams into political reality…READ ON
    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/inside-a-green-billionaires-brain-trust/443961/

    ***some of those listed in The Atlantic article have moved on, others are still there, e.g:

    LinkedIn: Josie Mooney
    Current: Democracy Partners, SEIU, NextGen Climate
    Advisor to the President on China UFCW (United Food and Commercial Workers International Union)
    2011 – 2013 (2 years)

    so Josie simultaneously works for:

    Steyer’s NextGen Climate

    Democracy Partners, the Robert Creamer firm, enmeshed in the Project Veritas videos about voter fraud & inciting violence at Donald Trump rallies, and

    SEIU, the biggest public-sector labor union in the US, which stands accused of being one of the major organisers behind the violent protests in Chicago that caused Trump to cancel a major rally, & involved in organising the anti-Trump protests post-election!

    3 Dec: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: At 46 Years, EPA Will See HUGE Changes Under Trump
    Not only is Trump looking to roll back Obama-era regulations, the incoming administration reportedly has plans to fundamentally reform major decades-old environmental laws: The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
    No doubt, Trump will work to repeal the “waters of the United States” rule and the Clean Power Plan rule for power plants. But his handlers suggested the new administration would work with Congress to pursue major legislative changes to stop regulatory overreach.
    “We have to get into the weeds so that we can determine definitively what is and what is not a pollutant,” North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer, Trump’s energy policy adviser, recently told reporters.
    “Have a more prescriptive and clearly defined directions rather than these broad authorities, authorizations, that give too much flexibility to the bureaucracy,” he said.
    To do this, Trump has put together an EPA transition team to come up with a plan to figure out which regulations to roll back and what candidates would be good fits for agency positions.
    Heading up that team is Myron Ebell, the director of environmental policy at the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute and a longtime critic of EPA regulations. Environmentalists railed against Ebell being on the team, calling him a “climate criminal.”…
    Ebell shares Trump’s goals.
    “I have dedicated my career to fighting for the best policies to promote energy affordability and protect both our environment and our climate,” Ebell wrote in a November blog post.
    “I have been frustrated by the leadership of the modern environmental movement,” Ebell wrote, adding “the leaders of these groups are more concerned with concentrating power in Washington than in improving the environment outside the Beltway.”…ETC
    http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/03/at-46-years-epa-will-see-huge-changes-under-trump/?print=1

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      pat December 4, 2016 at 1:43 pm

      “CAGW political? never: June 2014: The Atlantic: Inside a Green Billionaire’s Brain Trust by Clare Foran and Ben Geman”

      Pat,
      You seem to be promoting “INSANITY”, but you are not quite that ‘insane’, yet. What the hell is going on?

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      • #
        tom0mason

        promoting “INSANITY” Will?
        No, I think not, Pat I believe is performing a service.
        From the angle of “knowledge is power” to know how adversaries are connected, and to fully understand their motives and possible actions, is a key to finding methods of action to mitigate against their moves, or even to defeat them.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    It will be easy for VIC to get rid of Hazelwood Power Station because the Portland aluminium smelter will likely now close down due to serious damage caused by the latest power failure.

    It consumed about ten percent of VIC’s electricity and employed about 2000 people directly and indirectly.

    See, when you deindustrialise, you don’t need so much electricity…

    The Gangrenes can enjoy their windmills and no jobs.

    http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/12/02/09/30/vic-smelter-in-jeopardy-after-blackout

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    • #
      Dennis

      And more tax revenue lost from the smelter operations and their employees, but also service businesses supplying smelter needs lose revenue and reduce taxable income. Another blow to national prosperity, “It’s the economy, Stupid”.

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      • #
        Analitik

        One Portland’s smelter closes, Dan Andrews will claim he has reduced Victoria’s CO2 emissions. A claim which he will then repeat when Hazelwood closes.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Once there are no more industrial users of electricity, Australia might well be able to run on windmills and household battery packs as long as no one wants air conditioning, hot water, cooking or heating. (Gas could be ised for heating, cooking and hot water but they might shut down the gas supply as well as the madness goes deeper.)

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      • #
        James Murphy

        Don’t forget that the Greens in the ACT wanted to ban gas services to all new housing developments, and remove any incentives to use gas for anything, so the idea is out there already.

        http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-14/act-greens-pledge-'ambitious'-energy-plan/7841148

        In a previous version of this article, the Greens were quoted as saying that electricity was more efficient (defying numerous laws of physics, as the Greens are want to do), but I see that ‘their’ ABC seems to have edited that part, and have just left it with “Gas is expensive, dirty and unnecessary,”.

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        • #
          James Murphy

          I should add that the Greens candidate, Michael Mazengarb has no shame in admitting via the Greens website that “…I now work as a clean energy market analyst, providing advice to the government and the renewable energy industry…”

          Of course, such an obvious conflict of interest seems to be acceptable, as it’s all about ‘saving the planet’.

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    • #
      clive

      You forget.The Gangrenes don’t do”Work”That’s just for us”Plebs”so that we can supply them.

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    Raven

    Here’s a similar parallel opinion piece written by Linda Feighery. It’s interesting because it isn’t affected by people looking to “save the planet”.
    She’s spent 10 years in biomedical research and lays out similar issues within her branch of academia.

    It illustrates that research in likely any field has no real checks & balance mechanisms so it’s utterly powerless to defend itself against infiltration from, say, climate alarmists or probably any other culture. The assumption is that academia is pure. Here’s the link:

    From funding to publishing, academic research needlessly burns through time and money.

    “I have spent the last 10 years in biomedical research in both Ireland and the United States, and during this time I have become increasingly concerned by the wasteful state of academia. In particular, I have serious concerns regarding the publication process, which is intricately linked to the acquisition of funding.

    Firstly, it is almost impossible to publish “negative data.” There are a few journals such as the Journal of Negative Results that are willing to publish such findings, but leading scientists don’t publish in this journal. There is neither obligation nor incentive for researchers to publish negative data so it goes into a drawer and never again sees the light of day. This is highly unethical on a number of levels. It leads to duplication after duplication of experiments that many researchers know don’t work. It delays research, as scientists inevitably go down extraneous paths before finding the one that may lead to some fruitful data. This is not only a waste of tax payers’ money, but I am appalled to think of all the animals that have been needlessly sacrificed because of this unspoken policy. It should be mandatory to publish negative data; this should be a prerequisite for being funded. Most importantly, we need the senior scientists of the world to lead by example.

    Furthermore, in the West, we now insist on only hiring scientists who have published in top-tier journals. If you suggest to any of the top institutions that this policy is in place they will vehemently deny it, even though the publication history of their recent hires suggests otherwise. This is also a highly unethical practice as it pretty much excludes most of the world from participating in research at this level. Indeed, according to a conversation I had with the PI of a very well-funded lab in the U.S., to produce enough data to publish in these journals can cost well over $1 million dollars per paper. This is an elitist sport now. “We are an equal opportunity employer” no longer applies. “We employ people who have a science lineage only” seems more appropriate. By that I mean those who have come from wealthy labs who could afford to publish in the journals that are deemed acceptable.

    In addition to money, it takes time and an inordinate amount of data to publish in these journals. This presents another ethical issue, which is that this data could be disseminated in significantly less time if it was published in bite-size chunks. Moreover, even once a manuscript is submitted, it can take journals up to a year to make a decision to publish it. During this time, the reviewers, who are experts in the field, have been known to sit on their review while they steal ideas and progress them to a point where they will be ahead of the submitting author for the next paper, as some of my peers have experienced.

    Finally, the funding bodies, many of which are publicly funded, only award grants to scientists with top-tier publications, further perpetuating the problem: they too are excluding the vast majority of the world from scientific endeavor. Furthermore, they are allowing journals—for-profit business entities—dictate the future of research, as well as who may participate.

    Curiosity and science go hand-in-hand. Maybe it’s time we became a little more curious about how we have evolved from science-for-the-benefit-of-humanity to science-for-the-benefit-of-relatively-few.”


    From there, it’s a small step to the UNSW to set up The Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science

    “Centre of Excellence”, my foot . . . more like one giant self licking ice cream.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      “In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.”
      ― George Orwell, 1984

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  • #
    mc

    Never underestimate how much this kind of work helps bolster people against the tide of ill will.

    Exactly; I never do underestimate how much this kind of work helps bolster people against the tide of ill will and that is why your work in this field Jo is so important and so valued.
    I for one, owe you a debt of gratitude.

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    Gordon

    I don`t know if anybody else has noticed on this forum, but….. well… the world still has not come to an end! seriously the world is still working, the sun sets and rises,the wind was blowing pretty good today, the birds were out, so were the squirrels. Everything seems okay to me!
    So why are these researchers still being employed?

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  • #
    Mark M

    Australian tax-payer question for the innovative PM Turnbull:
    Q. How many methane-drained cow farts must be stopped before Australia prevents it’s first drought?
    A. Shut-up & pay your tax.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    The cluelessness of some people is staggering. I saw this posted elsewhere.

    QUOTE
    I love our local wind farm – would much rather have that near me than a pollution-pumping coal plant!
    END QUOTE

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    • #

      Oh you merry ol’ king Coal,
      don’t chop birds, don’t
      stop supplying life-giving energy
      when the wind don’t blow or blows
      too strong – black-out pending.
      Renewables, sad story, ‘back to
      the golden-age’ ending – serfs,
      oxen, returning to the fields,
      what wealth there is syphoned
      off for UN philosopher, or
      other divine kings.

      A serf.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Obviously not a bird lover…….

      I love our local coal plant – would rather have that near me than an anti-environmental wind bag.

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      • #

        Well yes Yonniestone I’m intrigued by birds
        and nay-chur per se. See my 14th (illustrated)
        Edition of serf Under -ground Journal,’A Book
        of Feathers. ‘ Herewith on Blue Wrens. )

        Playboy of the Southern World.

        Superb Blue Wren
        Malurus cyaneus.

        ‘Some birds, like characters
        In tales of true romance,
        Are faithful unto death …
        Not this bird, however.

        Oh he’s the jewel
        Of Australian birds,
        She’s more subdued in colour,
        Though quite cute nevertheless.

        But he, why he’s as beautiful
        As a Regency beau dressed
        In sky blue apparel …
        But much more macho.

        For a bird, not large,
        He’s well endowed, a Napoleon
        Of the Australian bush,
        The Don Juan of his patch of forest.

        Look! He’s just returned from carousing
        With hens from a near by commune,
        Pleased with himself, perky tail
        Held aloft like a banner.

        Only to find the she bird’s
        Out’a. there. Unknown to him,
        She’s carousing too.
        Oh well, c’est l’amour.

        And all seems well in the hippy
        Commune, every bird happy,
        The chicks get fed, the long line
        Of wrens cyaneus flourish.
        (Variety, they say,
        Is the spice of life,
        And some say it strengthens
        The gene pool.’

        bts

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        • #
          Annie

          The male blue wren around here seems to spend most of his time fighting his rival; the reflection of himself in the car wing mirrors and sometimes also the house windows. I wouldn’t mind so much but he poops everywhere in the process. We have to tie shopping bags over the mirrors to protect them (a nuisance process) and clean the paintwork (or duco for those who prefer the term).
          He has even managed to crack our dauggter’s car wing mirror!

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  • #
    theRealUniverse

    Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, Curry = luke warmists..Being luke warm doesnt help the ’cause’., thermodynamic truth please!

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  • #
    Harry Twinotter

    Roger Pielke Jr?

    Old news. He wrote stuff on climate that was no good, climate scientists criticized it, and he lost credibility. Sounds like a good outcome to me.

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    • #

      Sounds like the usual trashy ad hom from Harry. And he wonders why we chuck out some like this?

      If only you had some, any, evidence eh?

      92

    • #
      Glen Michel

      Far better you go back to Sow,Harry. Noting the poor standard she puts up I think it will suit you better.

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  • #

    Mother Nature does not do politics.

    CO2 in the atmosphere only matters to plants.

    Thermalization and the complete dominance of water vapor in reverse-thermalization explain why CO2 has no significant effect on climate. Terrestrial EMR absorbed by CO2 is effectively rerouted to space via water vapor.

    CO2 is not merely harmless, it is profoundly helpful. It is helpful in that it is plant food and reduces plant’s need for water.

    Sunspot number anomaly time-integral plus net of the effect of all ocean cycles plus effect of water vapor increase provides a 98% match to temperature anomaly measurements 1895-2015. Analysis and graphs are at http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com
    Now peer reviewed at http://irjes.com/Papers/vol5-issue11/E5113145.pdf

    A looming issue that humanity should be addressing is the worldwide decline of water tables.

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    G Warburton

    “The multi-year campaign against me by CAP was partially funded by billionaire Tom Steyer, and involved 7 writers at CAP who collectively wrote more than 160 articles about me, trashing my work and my reputation.”

    These words were in the first quote of your posting. The writers should be named in the same way that they must have named Mr Pielke in their attacks. They should not have anonymity and should be open to challenge from anyone that meets them or even works with them (if there are people who work with them who value the truth).

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    The targeting of someone for destruction of their credibility, honesty, their employability and certainly their reputation has been going on for a long time. At one time it was called, the politics of personal destruction or something similar. I think that term came about during the Bill Clinton presidency.

    Shoot down the messenger when you cannot shoot down the message is probably as old as the human race.

    This will be no consolation to Roger Pielke but he’s in the company of some of the worlds finest men and women, those who dared to speak the truth without regard for the consequences.

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    Richard deSousa

    Tom Steyer is the billionaire who has spent nearly $100 million on climate change fear mongering for the last decade and has nothing to show for his efforts. The subject has remained near the bottom of concern from the public in the US. I hope he keeps pissing away his fortune!!

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  • #

    Poor poor Roger — he can dish it out, but cannot take it. Crybaby.

    01