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Australian polls have plummeted, and the credibility gap I mentioned earlier has already translated into votes. Whether people agree or disagree with the Emissions Trading Scheme, no one is impressed when a leader hypes something in the most hyperbolic and inflammatory terms, then bails suddenly, as if it was not a big deal.
The front page of The Australian today:
KEVIN Rudd’s personal standing has taken a hammering after his decision to dump his climate change policy last week, and for the first time since 2006 the Coalition has an election-winning lead.
Curiously, while the Labor Party dropped 8%, the Greens primary vote (10%) didn’t pick up a single point. The Coalition (the main opposition) gained just 3% (to 43%), so most of the rest of the disillusioned voters went to “others and independents”. All the commentators are writing it up to the “Climate” issue.
It may have taken a long time to come, but eventually things based on bullying and bluster crash to Earth. Both sides of politics could have stood taller in this if they had bothered to get a forum of advocates and skeptics together in the same room (perhaps a Royal Commissioner’s room) to politely […]
Thanks to Glenn Beck, we get bit more insight into the tangled web that The House of Global Warming was built on.
Who would have thought? Goldman Sachs has been working hard to save the environment for years.
Generation Investment Management (GIM) was founded by Al Gore, and a few friends, which included David Blood (former Goldman executive), Mark Ferguson (Goldman) and Peter Harris (Goldman). They are the fifth largest shareholder in the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). Then in 2006, when the CCX needed some extra funding, who should step up to buy 10% of the company – Goldman Sachs.
CCX is an exchange that won’t be doing a heck of a lot if carbon trading doesn’t become mandatory. All of these players have a vested interest in Cap N Trade legislation.
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
Dr Andrew Glikson (an Earth and paleoclimate scientist, at the Australian National University) contacted Quadrant offering to write about the evidence for man-made global warming. Quadrant approached me asking for my response. Dr Glikson replied to my reply, and I replied again to him (copied below). No money exchanged hands, but Dr Glikson is, I presume, writing in an employed capacity, while I write pro bono. Why is it that the unpaid self taught commentator needs to point out the evidence he doesn’t seem to be aware of? Why does a PhD need to be reminded of basic scientific principles (like, don’t argue from authority). Such is the vacuum of funding for other theories that a debate that ought to happen inside the university obviously hasn’t occurred. Such is the decrepit, anaemic state of university science that even a doctorate doesn’t guarantee a scientist can reason. Where is the rigor in the training, and the discipline in the analysis?
Credibility lies on evidence
by Joanne Nova
April 29, 2010
Reply to Andrew Glikson
Dr Andrew Glikson still misses the point, and backs his arguments with weak evidence and logical errors. Instead of empirical evidence, often […]
Sigh. Time to party right? Heigh Ho and ra ha ha and all that. Yes, forgive me for not cracking open the champagne. Rudd (Australia’s PM) has finally admitted what skeptics have known for two months, that he doesn’t have the courage of his “convictions” and that all the pious rhetoric was a bluff.
A week before the National Budget comes out, he’s announced he’s shelving the Emissions Trading Scheme that was a defining part of his election campaign for Kevin ’07. It shocked some of the pundits.
Naturally, it’s not bad news, but let’s face it, a green tax is still on the agenda, literally billions of dollars is still being wasted in government programs, we’re still “signed up” for UN agreements worth gadzillions, and to top that off, we have a Prime Minister who’s so unprincipled that in his own words he’s a donothing delayer, an inactivist, a man who gambles recklessly with our childrens future. He’s a political coward, and a failure as a leader, and he’s acting against what he believes is Australia’s best economic interests. He said all that, and all the quotes of his faux anger (see below) come from just one speech.
[…]
The Spectator gave me an unusual assignment. An open-ended request to gather thoughts over a couple of weeks and note them in a diary. It’s an interesting genre because it brings out messages that might not come to life otherwise. This was printed in the Australian Edition of The Spectator Magazine, out today.
Jo Nova opens her diary
Another friend, Troy, has had that transformation: not from a climate ‘believer’ to ‘sceptic’, but from being only vaguely interested to being hopping mad. Friends like Troy know my husband David and I are sceptical of man-made global warming, and have listened (if only politely). Then one day they’ll call us, suddenly very interested in details of missing upper tropospheric patterns or Vostok Ice core data or some other unlikely topic. It’s always the same pattern — no matter whether they’re an accountant (like Troy), a lawyer, or our high school babysitter. They’ve admitted some doubt in public, and then been shocked at the force of the response. The sneering derision — Oh My God! How could you? — is over the top. It has an extraordinary effect, as if a fuse has been lit […]
A joint post with Baa Humbug
It’s all about audacity.
Michael Mann’s contribution to modern science may one day be remembered as the guy who made it statistically possible to get a thousand year temperature graph using any local telephone directory as a data source. (Who needs tree-rings?)
If you were a guy who’d been caught producing scientific work so inept that people could pour in random data and get the same “curve”, then you might take a satirical video on the chin (or crawl into a hole). But if you’re Michael Mann, and you also used the wrong proxy, you hid your data, used graphs upside down, and invented deceptive “tricks” to hide declines, then you might call your lawyers.
The Minnestoans for Global Warming (M4GW) made the hilariously popular Hide The Decline video, which has now been removed from YouTube. Mann claims they defamed him “by leaving viewers with the incorrect impression that he falsified data to generate desired results in connection with his research activities”. The Minnesotans said “please do”, and responded undaunted by producing a new version (see below).
10 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]
It’s a case of Big-Spin and Bluster. It’s what they do: aggressively push a simple message, a theme, a piece of marketing, and like all the rest of their audacious PR, it’s at best a half-truth, and in this case, a lie.
Rajendra Pachauri states:
IPCC studies only peer-review science. Let someone publish the data in a decent credible publication. I am sure IPCC would then accept it, otherwise we can just throw it into the dustbin.
As usual, it’s honest volunteers who have conscientiously tested the IPCC by going through 18,500 references. And the final total? Fully 5,600, or 30% of their references are not peer reviewed. Donna LaFramboise at NoConsensus has coordinated the dedicated team (that is a lot of references to go through).
How many times do we need to show they are incompetent and dishonest?
9.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings […]
Last week I was invited by the ABC to respond to Clive Hamilton and the Parliamentary Committee report on ClimateGate. It was published a couple of hours ago on the ABC Drum. (Or Try this link, who knows why the article moved? 14-4-09)
The issue of the ClimateGate emails leaked or hacked from the East Anglia CRU is not that complicated. The emails are damning because anyone who reads them understands that they show petty, unprofessional, and probably criminal behaviour. We know the guys who wrote them are not people we’d want to buy cars from. They are hiding information. We don’t need a committee to state the obvious.
The emails show some of the leading players in climate science talking about tricks to “hide declines”, they boast about manipulating the peer review process, and “getting” rid of papers they didn’t like from the IPCC reports. It’s clear the data wasn’t going the way they hoped, yet they screwed the results every way they could to milk the “right” conclusion. Above all else, they feared freedom of information requests, and did everything they could to avoid providing their data. ClimateGate shows these people were not […]
British campaigner urges UN to accept “ecocide” as international crime
Some British lawyer thinks that the UN or another undemocratic body ought to have the right to try someone for crimes against “peace”, which would apparently include crimes against non-humans too: you know, harm to flat-fish, garden-variety weeds, fungus, and algae.
It’s easy to imagine the “law” descending into high farce: People call for trials of oil CEO’s for raising CO2 levels; the price of energy rises. People in Scotland build tidal energy generators; Children in Mongolia freeze, and kids in Bolivia can’t afford to go to school. The tidal energy generators go on to destroy the habitat of the yellow bellied mud lark; the Bolivian kids go on to become cocaine farmers; the Mongolian kids don’t go on to become anything, and the UN calls for trials of the people who called for trials of the oil CEOs.
Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers” who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.
Trials for people who twist, deny, and distort science? Bring it on, I say. Skeptical […]
This is a glorious NASA image from The Earth Observatory. The Himalayan Mountains in Southern China on Christmas Day, 2009. If you’d like a large version, you can soak in 4Mb of detail. I’ve posted it just because it’s captivating and we are so fortunate (for all NASA’s failings) that we can marvel at a view like this.
Note the scale (bottom right). These are rivers of ice one kilometer wide “unnamed”. Imagine what it would take to melt this ice?
7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
Did I say a few days ago there would be more feature articles? Well already, here is another long professional article.
Don’t be put off by the start. The sympathetic treatment of Jones is faint praise, not unreasonable, and in the end, taking an impartial line means telling something of both sides of the story. Articles like this will help skeptics far more than they will help the Big Scare Campaign.
There is plenty of ammo, and punches are landed:
On balance, the entire profession has been seriously harmed by the scandal. “We are currently suffering a massive erosion of trust,” concludes German climatologist Hans von Storch. “Climate research has been corrupted by politicization, just as nuclear physics was in the pre-Chernobyl days, when we were led to believe that nuclear power plants were completely safe.”
That any reasonably unbiased view ends up being supportive of skeptics is, of course, just what you’d expect of a topic where skeptics have so much of that essential ingredient reality on their side. I found the whole article worth reading, and I expect Parts 3 & 4 are the most interesting to skeptics. It’s good to finally see the work of people like […]
Watch out people. Greenpeace resorts to threats. Even The Guardian called it a “car crash”.
In their own words:
“We need to hit them where it hurts most, by any means necessary: through the power of our votes, our taxes, our wallets, and more.”
“‘We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It’s not working. We need an army of climate outlaws.’
“The proper channels have failed. It’s time for mass civil disobedience to cut off the financial oxygen from denial and skepticism.
“If you’re one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let’s talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.
“If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:
“We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.
“And we be many, but you be few.”
So the […]
Mark Gillar who writes the Hootville Gazette has taken the initiative and arranged a set of radio interviews with the who’s who of skeptics, like Lord Monckton, Patrick Michaels, Ann McElhinney, Marc Morano, Chris Horner, Steve Milloy, Joseph D’Aleo, and yours truly. The first one starts tomorrow morning (US time). You can e-mail or phone in questions. Some details are below, but most are on the Global Cooling Radio site and, of course, details may change in the future, so check in at his site.
Lord Christopher Monckton
Date: April 3, 2010 Time: 10:00 am Central DST To Listen: Visit our BlogTalkRadio Page Call 646-727-3170 to ask a question./p>
OR email to ask in advance [email protected]
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
This is the beginning of many full feature length articles that will come as the House of Mann-Made Global Warming collapses. It’s long, but when it’s a professional feature writer drawing a story of a professional scam-buster who works at the highest levels, it’s a great read. Enjoy 🙂 It’s not a grand scientific expose, but it does turn ClimateGate into a human interest story with momentum, and as such, it may reach a wider audience than any scientific expose could.
Photo: Mackenzie Stroh
This Man Wants to Convince You Global Warming Is a Hoax
Marc Morano broke the Swift Boat story and effectively stalled John Kerry’s presidential run. Now he is working against an even bigger enemy: belief in climate change. Somehow, he seems to be winning.
By John H. Richardson
Early on the morning of November 17, Gavin Schmidt sat down at his computer and entered his password. It didn’t work. Strange, he thought. He tried a few other accounts and none of them worked, either. Now he was alarmed. As a leading climatologist with NASA’s Goddard Institute in Manhattan, he’d been hacked before. He was used to e-mails from people who disapproved of his work, threatening […]
Art Robinson is a rare man. He’s risen above and laid bare the creeping failure in the infrastructure of modern science over the last 50 years. He describes how the control of the quest for knowledge itself has been usurped from individuals and private industry and taken over by the government.
At the end of the day, what does being a scientist mean if there is nothing other than a certificate? Where is the code of conduct? Where are the professional associations which stand up and decry those who breach the basic requirements? What sense of duty and honor is left in science when high ranking members can make statements that are dishonest and yet keep their jobs and their reputations?
I was struck with Art’s description of a true scientist–where the most important attribute is honesty, where humility is inevitable in anyone who understands how little we comprehend, and where being a scientist is a lifelong search, rather than a 9 – 5 job.
The 10 page paper How Government Corrupts Science is worth reading in full.
Below are some select parts that especially struck a chord with me.
How Government Corrupts Science
Isaac Newton was the greatest […]
I attribute much of the recent rapid rise of the skeptics to the ongoing effects of ClimateGate, yet in a sense the emails that were sprung from East Anglia did nothing more than confirm what most skeptics already suspected. Despite that, I’m convinced it was instrumental, and Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers, has written an unusually good summary in the form of a speech for the Colorado Mining Association.
With his permission, I’ve included my favourite points here, as well as a copy of the full speech. His blog is a part of the Energy Probe team.
The Climategate emails confirmed much of what the sceptics had been saying for years.
They confirmed that the peer review process had been corrupted, that scientists were arranging friendly reviews. They confirmed that the science journals had been corrupted. That journals that refused to play ball with the doomsayers faced boycotts and their editors faced firing. They confirmed that sceptical scientists were being systematically excluded from the top‐tier journals. The Climategate emails confirmed that journalists were likewise threatened with boycotts if they didn’t play ball. The Climategate emails confirmed that the science itself was suspect. That the doomsayers themselves couldn’t make […]
Picasso-Brain-Strikes-the-Climate-Debate: Can’t think. Can’t reason.
Stephan Lewandowsky’s ABC article on climate change was headlined “Opinion Versus Evidence“. Then with dead-pan delivery, he lists the “evidence” but it’s all … opinions.
The question of “delusion” is looming. I mean really, is this a cry for help? There are not many laws of reason that Stephan leaves unbroken. He appeals to authority, attacks the “man”, and talks about everything bar the evidence on climate change. Is he serious? “Trust me” he says, the world is warming because AIDS is real, mass-murderer Ivan Milat was guilty, Lord Monckton is only a non-voting member of the House of Lords, a few skeptics are burko, 97% of paid climate scientists agree that we ought to be worried and keep paying them, and someone has discussed the actual money that climate scientists earn (how could they) and to top it off, the IPCC report is 3000 pages long (!).
Not to mention that Google Scholar (“I’m so technical”) finds lots of hits (thanks to Vice President Al Gore who arranged for the US Government to pay billions of dollars to his favorite researchers, and who also is on the Google advisory team), plus the world […]
The volunteers keep coming. Please take a moment to appreciate how much work it takes to do a proper translation, to check it, to edit it, and to edit and arrange the artwork. Then take another moment to think of old friends and contacts who might find it interesting, and e-mail it on. Thanks.
The reach of our global human network is changing polls.
Thanks to Weeraboon Wisartsakul for his expertise and patience.
See www.wwisartsakul.wordpress.com for his Thai blog.
Thanks to Jimmy Haigh for the double-checking and help.
Click on the image to download the pdf.
Volunteers have translated the first Skeptics Handbook into German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Danish, Japanese, Balkan, Spanish, Thai, Czech and Lao. The second Skeptics Handbook is available in French and Turkish. See all posts tagged Translations.
10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Today the Chairman of “our ABC” (it’s paid for by Australian taxpayers) said the unthinkable.
It’s not that he said man-made global warming was a scam, and he didn’t announce that carbon wasn’t a pollutant; he just asked for journalists to listen to other points of view.
“At the ABC, I believe we must re-energise the spirit of enquiry. Be dynamic and challenging, to look for contrary points of view, to ensure that the maverick voice will not be silenced.”
In a speech to senior ABC staff, he said that climate change was an example of “group-think”, and that they should listen perhaps “to other points of view that may be sceptical.”
Contrary views on climate change have not been tolerated and those who express them have been labelled and mocked.
I’ve been around long enough to know that consensus and conventional wisdom doesn’t always serve you well and that unless you leave some room for an alternative point of view you are likely to go down a wrong track…
These innocuous non-judgemental lines are too far from the doctrine.
Christine Milne of the Australian Greens responded, and in the true spirit of an open democracy and a free press, […]
Robyn Williams is Australia’s science communication guru in the sense that he’s one of the few in our country who’s been making a living at it with a regular radio program (or two) for decades. He’s been doing this so long, he was proclaimed a National Living Treasure, and that was twenty-three years ago.
He’s posted his thoughts on the climate debate at ABC unleashed, Climate Change Science: The Evidence is Clear.
He’s been passionately defending science for years, sharing curious points, and explaining how things work. And yet in the upside down world in which we live in 2010–after all these years, he (and nearly everyone else in our profession) has lost sight of the most important things in science, and somehow ended up defending science-the-bureaucracy, instead of science-the-philosophy.
It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw.
It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but instead, I’m exposing a grievous flaw. For science-the-bureaucracy is not science at all; it’s just another cluster of committees, each run by six or ten people who discuss articles published in niche magazines owned by mega-conglomerate financial houses and ultimately controlled by a few editors who print articles reviewed by […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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