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Agnotology is the study of how ignorance grows through repetition of misleading misinformation. You might never have heard of it, but it’s the perfect term for the climate science “debate”. Predictably its use began when those convinced of man-man global warming claimed fossil fuel groups were funding misinformation. But as per usual, unskeptical scientists opened a promising new front only to got burned by the evidence.
In the latest volley, from Legates et al 2013, John Cook’s “97% consensus” survey has become the case study in agnotology. Based on incorrect results, a flawed method, and a logical fallacy, it kept key facts hidden while sloppily blending vague language into a form that is easily and actively misinterpreted. That it passed peer-review is another damning indictment of peer review.
Cook still refuses to provide about half the data, but the data that has been made public shows (after some digging) that a mere 41 papers out of 12,000 was called a 97% consensus. The trick is that Cook et al interchangeably use different definitions of consensus.
The Bait and Switch
The Bait: In the introduction Cook states that the reason for the paper is “to determine the level of scientific […]
Tim Flannery. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Dear Tim,
Now that the government funded golden platform is gone, you say you will “not be silenced. ” Bravo, I say.
Perhaps I can help? When I didn’t want to be silenced five years ago, I set up my own blog. I got no government grants. Any financial support comes from readers voluntarily (thanks to Peter, Bill, Bernd, and Malcolm yesterday). I forgo a job to run this blog and get called a “denier” by government funded academics and politicians. Nevertheless, this is the largest skeptical climate science blog in the country, and one of the handful of largest in the world.
To help you until you get your own blog running in full, I extend an open invitation to you for a guest post anytime, unedited, and in full with graphs and images. Links to your own material will help your google rank.
You talked about the importance of scientific discussion, after the Climate Commission was abolished yesterday: “I believe that Australians have a right to know – a right to authoritative, independent and accurate information on climate change.”
Where better to post accurate information on climate change?
Keeping in the […]
For James…
6.8 out of 10 based on 16 ratings
The race in the media continues: The UK Daily Mail (again), The Spectator, The UK Express. The headlines the IPCC must hate just keep coming, now in major newspapers and magazines. Finally, maybe, some of the media is starting to get it. At last also the IPCC is feeling the pressure to explain the halting of global warming and the poor performance of its climate models.
This is all well and good, but before we celebrate, ponder that if science journalists had been doing their job 10 years ago, the IPCC would have been put on the spot before before the wild evangelistic doom-fest of 2007 where national GDP points were roasted with every chapter. Billions could have been saved.
As I keep saying: The media is the problem. With good journalists, and real reporters, everything else gets better. Shine the light…
The UK Daily Mail Tamara Cohen
World’s top climate scientists told to ‘cover up’ the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years
But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, yesterday revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.
Germany called for the references […]
Thanks to Steve Hunter. See more of his cartoons at Andys rant.
Taxpayers rejoice! The science-propaganda agency is gone for good. One down — scores to go.
Tony Abbott was sworn in yesterday. Today Greg Hunt rang Tim Flannery to tell him the commission is closed. His $180,000 3-day-a-week job as a sales agent for “climate change” is over.
BREAKING (ABC): The Abbott Government has abolished the Climate Commission, pushing ahead with its plan to scrap government bodies associated with Labor’s carbon pricing scheme and climate change policy.
The commission was set up under then prime minister Julia Gillard in February 2011 as an independent body “to provide reliable and authoritative” information on climate change.
Jo Nova applauds the Abbott government decision to cut waste and to stop funding an inept unscientific agency which was unbalanced to the point of being government advertising in disguise. Today is a great day for taxpayers. This agency propped up billions of dollars in pointless futile government spending trying to change the weather. Nothing will bring back money spent on desal plants that were mothballed when the floods came that real scientists predicted. […]
Worldwide momentum is shifting. With David Rose’s article in the Daily Mail, Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal (“We got it wrong on warming“), and the excellent article by Ross McKitrick in the Financial Post the skeptical message is going mainstream.
The war is by no means over, but the race in media coverage has stepped up a notch. Now, for the first time there is an element of competition, serious newspapers don’t want to be left behind. Editors have realized the skeptics have a case.
In Australia the grand failure of the carbon tax in the recent election is still ripping through the news, the institutions, and the mood. It was a categorical defeat. From comments and emails I know this event was watched around the world.
Roy Spencer, veteran with two decades of experience wonders if this is a turning point too:
“…recent events are quite exceptional.”
” We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations.”
Ross McKitrick, Canada:
“To those of us who have been following the climate debate for decades, the next few years will […]
Another round of government-funded PR went out a couple of weeks ago, across the obedient Pravda-media. It told us about another meaningless “record” that was probably not a record, and wouldn’t tell us whether man-made warming was the cause, even if it was. Not a single journalist had the wherewithal, nous or intellectual honesty to search the Internet looking for a different point of view. Though, in their defense, how could they have guessed that Prof David Karoly wouldn’t know about the UAH satellite program to measure temperatures? (It has only been running since 1979.)
This below, are the 12 month averages over Australia by satellite. Graphed at Kens Kingdom by Ken Stewart, with no doctorate in climatology and no government funds.
In the troposphere over Australia it was a hot year but not a record.
For the third time this year we’ve been hit with claims of a “hottest ever” record that doesn’t tell us anything about the climate, but does reveal a lot about the sick state of government funded science, corrupted, decrepit, and so far from being scientific it might as well be run by Greenpeace. If the government stopped funding climate science entirely, climate […]
(Click to go to Climate Madness)
Pop in on Australian Climate Madness and enjoy Simon’s parody “Escalating Hysteria”. John Cook pretends that skeptics “deny” the warming trend, and see the world as a series of flat segments. (Who’s in denial of the “halting”?)
But it’s alarmists who ignore the fact that the long term warming trend started two to three centuries ago, long before most man-made emissions, and the long underlying trend hasn’t changed. It was the IPCC who took the rising part of a regular cycle and falsely claimed acceleration by looking at shorter and shorter segments in a fake mathematical trick.
Only an unscrupulous fan of global warming could explain why the last decade “has warmed” by blending that data from last ten years into graphs from the last hundred.
Hat tip to Dave!
9.3 out of 10 based on 61 ratings
We are over the peak. Years late, the IPCC concedes some territory and wears headlines they must hate (“Global warming is just HALF what we said“, “We got it wrong on warming“), but PR still rules, and in the big game, this will quickly spin to a minor bump. It’s a classic technique to release “the bad news” before the main report, to clear the air for the messages the agents want to stick.
Since 2007 they’ve burned through their credibility in so many ways: think Climategate, and getting caught pretending activist material was science, being busted for 300-year-typos like the Himalayan Glaciers, plus 15 years of no warming, no hot spot, models being wrong, droughts ending, and ice returning, all the while pouring scorn and derision on anyone who questioned them. The IPCC were being hammered and they had to change tacks. Now, for the first time, the IPCC is making a serious retreat, presumably in the hope of being able to still paint itself as “scientific” and to fight from a different trench. Anything to continue the yearly junkets and to save face. What they hope is that no one will notice that the deniers were right […]
Dr Dennis Jensen in Parliament
Dennis Jensen spoke out about the hype around global-warming as long ago as 2004, when there were almost no politicians (or anyone for that matter) daring to publicly mention any skeptical thoughts. It was so risky. What he said then is still largely true.
Jensen obviously knows what science is, can see through the sacred cows, and has the background to foster and filter good science from bad. Science is much more than “climate”, and vested interests pull at it from all directions. We need a science minister who won’t be fooled by slick press releases or activists wearing lab-coats.
Science is broken, web sites are funded to smear senior scientists, namecalling is rife to the highest levels. Government funded work no longer belongs to the public — instead so-called scientists and their universities fight legal battles to hide it from critics, while they run away from public debate. Science has been misused, exploited and corrupted, to justify sweeping changes to the economy, our laws, potentially our way of life. The ARC has lost its way, funding political research disguised as “psychology” that is transparently designed to denigrate voters who disagree with the government. […]
It’s taken a week, but at least one Labor adviser has finally got a better answer as to why the Labor Party suffered a record loss. As long as Labor “spins” its mistakes, not only does it not learn any lessons, but it gives the public no reason to trust that it has changed. Labor suffers so much from not having open ongoing debate. If Kelty (and others) had said this two years ago, they would not be in such a hole now.
The Australian
…the party’s breach of trust with voters over the carbon tax was a bigger cause of its defeat than the disunity cited by senior ALP figures.
Mr Kelty, who is backing Bill Shorten in the mould of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating to become the next ALP leader, said the seeds for last Saturday’s loss could be traced back to the failure of Labor to explain to voters why Kevin Rudd was dumped in favour of Julia Gillard in 2010.
“To be honest, I think they lost the election in two points of history,” Mr Kelty said.
Spin has a price:
“They didn’t ever explain the change of leadership from Rudd to Gillard. Therefore […]
Readfearn’s quiz is one of the most trashy-teenage-smears I’ve seen in print. (Where else but The Guardian?). Monckton responds to Graham Readfearn’s vacuous attacks on Dennis Jensen M.P. with his trademark withering style. Readfearn had tried to be withering, in a 12 year old kind of way, but petty snark-by-association only proves how incapable he is. Readfearn (journalist) scorns Dr Jensen — PhD in materials engineering, CSIRO researcher, Analyst – Defence Science and Technology Organisation. But Readfearn has nothing at all on Jensen, not a single tiny point, the best he can do is try to paint Jensen with things other people said. It is scorn by proxy — Readfearn is really attacking Monckton. That the Guardian editors thought this worth reproducing says a lot about the intellectual caliber there. – Jo
A journalist with a grudge is a mere propagandist By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
A journalist with a grudge is a mere propagandist. Graham Readfearn, described as “a journalist”, heavily lost a public debate on the climate against me some years ago and has borne a steaming grudge ever since. Readfearn is no seeker after truth. He is an unthinking propagandist for the […]
We have discussed this issue at length on The Senate-Rage! post. I’ve taken those thoughts a bit further in an Op-Ed in The Australian today. There are no comments allowed there so here is a thread for further thoughts and feedback on our new Senate and whether we need to revamp the system. This is my first purely political op-Ed. I find it surprising that almost no one, on any side of politics, is speaking out for the little guys and the disaffected voter. Bob Brown (former Greens senator) calls it a “scandal” of “legally induced frauding”, that “must” change, so I know I am onto something. He thinks Liberal voters don’t know the difference between “liberals” and “liberal dems” and that “Stop The Greens” might fool Green supporters. How stupid are the voters. Really? — Jo
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Three cheers for micros by: Joanne Nova From: The Australian September 13, 2013 12:00AM
UNLEASH the sanctimony! Practically everyone on all sides of mainstream politics is not pleased with the success of the micro-parties in the Senate election. For goodness’ sake, car-loving, sports-crazy Australians may have elected car-loving, sports-mad senators. Is that so bad?
The not-quite-elected souls […]
Mycorrhiza helps root growth | Photo CAES
Amazing how the Agricultural Revolution started 10,000 years ago, yet we still know so little about plant growth. We’ve been tossing bulk carrier loads of fertilizer at plants all over the world, but wasting some of it, and putting up with poorer yields and slower growth by not paying enough attention to the microbiology under the surface.
Obviously good scientific research, real science, can still deliver big improvements. Here’s a study showing that fruit trees, which normally take six years to reach maturity, can get there in three or four with the help of the right bacteria and fungi. This would help us adapt to climate change (of whatever kind is coming), help with reforestation, help feed the starving and improve the ability of these trees to survive during drought conditions too.
It applies to not just one or two species but to many kinds of trees: oaks, pines, mesquites, acacias, citrus and guava. Presumably this would help the “direct action” plan store more carbon in our soils too, not that that will change the weather, but it will help improve our soils:
“…the beneficial bacteria are located in the immediate area […]
The clean up begins. I am beaming.
Just enjoy with me the small sweet pleasure of a day when government waste shrinks. There is no joy in axing jobs of workers, albeit ones who should never have been employed in the first place. But there is satisfaction in knowing that hundreds of pointless reports and press releases will not have to be debunked, and millions of dollars in taxes can be put to some other use (or returned to taxpayers – I can dream).
[The Australian] PUBLIC servants are drawing up plans to collapse 33 climate change schemes run by seven departments and eight agencies into just three bodies run by two departments under a substantial rewrite of the administration of carbon abatement schemes under the Coalition.
Looks like DIICCSRTE the Department of Everything is gone forever. (That’s the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education). Now the climate change programs will run under the Department of Environment and the Department of Resources and Energy. We are back to sensible acronyms.
The move is forecast to save the government tens of millions of dollars. The Coalition budgeted for savings of $7 […]
Unleash the Sanctimony! Practically everyone on all sides of mainstream politics is not pleased. For goodness sake, the car loving land of Australia has elected a car-loving Senator, and the sport-crazy nation will have a sports-mad Senator too. Is that so bad?
Wayne Dropulich, possible new Senator
You’d think so. The not-quite-elected-yet souls have barely uttered a word in public, but apparently this is such a disaster we need to remake the Senate voting system. I was amazed at how media commentators were using the term “representative democracy” as if these new members were somehow not representative, and as if only first preferences count in a preferential voting system where some of us had to write in 110 preferences. How arrogant. Blame the voter.
A guy that rebuilds cars for a hobby is probably better connected to reality than a Monash graduate in Marx and Pashukanis.
Those with God-like insight say ignorant voters “accidentally” voted them in, assuming those people are too stupid to know how preferences work, and that those voters are not happy with the result. Commentators raved about the mere 0.22% of the vote that one new Senator got in first preferences, but they ignored […]
Tony Abbott announces Australia is open for business again.
Finally Australia steps back from a porkbarrelling party that stood for nothing more than being in power.
They broke promises to anyone and everyone with Olympian success. And it was not just the usual politician broken promise of failing to solve a problem they promised to solve: they brought in The Carbon Tax after dishonestly guaranteeing they would not. Would they have won the 2010 election if they hadn’t made that promise? (It would only have taken 400 voters in Corangamite to rewrite history.) They’ve taken broken promises to an all new level, where nothing they say can be trusted. It was not a question of them trying and failing, it was a question of being elected through deception. Every single Labor member chose to break that promise; any one of them could have stopped it. This is not a “leadership” question. It’s a question of integrity, and it applies to every member of the party.
The Labor Party also told us Tony Abbott was a misogynist, relentlessly negative, and a denier, and in return the Labor Party received one of the lowest primary votes in history.
I […]
Yes I’m having a party. : -)
The total seats in the house of Representatives is 150, so when a party gets 76, they win.
UPDATE: 7:28 pm Eastern Time (5:28pm in the West, polls are still open): ABC giving 42 seats for Labor, 72 to the Liberals.
This election will be called soon.
UPDATE: 7:41pm Eastern Time. 43 Labor, 73 Liberal.
Treasurer Wayne Swan looks like holding his seat. 30% counted. Swing against him is 2.5%. The Worlds Greatest Treasurer, who proved so adept at spending other people’s money on things like $800,000 tin sheds will keep his seat. Anyone in charge of the national cheque book can accrue $250bn of debt… spending money is the easy part. Paying it back is another thing entirely.
UPDATE: 7:56pm Labor doing better. Greens get their man.
Labor 48; Liberal 73; Green 1: Other 2
Adam Bandt, sole Green member of the house of Reps elected? again (or as good as) in Melbourne
The ALP / ABC have set expectations so low that Labor will claim anything over 50 seats as a “win”. It helps them put a good spin on a bad loss.
UPDATE 8:20pm: Done deal. […]
This election everyone is talking preferences. The Senate is a wild-card and no one is game to say how things will pan out. (Antony Green is scathing about our current system). The preference deals were subject to a major networking gambits with much wheeling and dealing behind the scenes.
Leon Ashby, president of the Climate Sceptics has been working very hard in South Australia, and convincingly makes a case that he has a very good chance. I wish him the best of luck. It would be something to see him beat Sarah Hansen Young of The Greens for the last senate seat position in South Australia. (The Shooters and Fishers Party took out the local Green Senator here in the West Australian State election last March. It happens).
Instead of accepting the preference deals, you may prefer to vote below the line but it means numbering up to 110 candidates. (Hints below for foreigners to follow the lingo*) Is it worth the effort? Above the line voting means preferences will flow as per these lists at the links below. It may be more effort to follow these lists than to number 1 – 110.
Australian Electoral Commission Links
[…]
Christopher Monckton is very popular in outback Australia isn’t he? For the sake of the farmers I’ve met, it seems only fair to spread a voice telling some more of their stories. (The ABC certainly weren’t too willing to inform Australians about the Thompsons plight or Maxwell Schulz either.)
The inner city and rural producers have become so disconnected, it is like a visit from aliens — Jo
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The bull and the Borg
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Captain’s Log, Stardate 2013.67: Antipodean climate extremists are going to have a field day with this one. In Australia (where else?) a pedigree Hereford bull has been named “Lord Monckton”. And the Prime Directive forbids me to intervene.
Peter Manuel, who farms many thousands of acres in the Lofty Ranges, became so exasperated with the Natural Resources Management Board of South Australia for interfering with farming that he arranged for Lord Monckton (the real one, that is) to visit the state and give a series of talks to farmers.
Lord Monckton’s semen is now available at premium prices
Peter is chief executive of Farmers’ and Landowners’ Group Australia (FLAG), which campaigns to defend […]
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