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[See the concise and updating story of our bet with the US Brian Schmidt here.]
Brian Schmidt offered to bet against Maurice Newman, but what’s interesting is just how startlingly weak and underconfident the bet is.
How times have changed. In 2007 the IPCC seemed to be 90% confident that the world would warm by about 0.4 degrees over the next two decades. Now Brian Schmidt braves up to offer a bet of “anything above zero”. Is he really a sceptic? It appears so.
How much should we pay now to prevent “any warming above zero” in the next twenty years? $4.5 billion a year? How about nothing.
I sent something similar to this to three Australian editors yesterday, unfortunately at least two were out of the office. Holiday season.
As Australia’s largest sceptical climate blogger, I would be delighted to take up Brian’s offer of a bet (made to Maurice Newman).
Here’s the bizarre thing, I’m already a party to one of the largest bets on global temperatures, and would you believe, with a man also called Brian Schmidt? (My husband, David Evans, carved out that bet long ago in 2007, and as it happens, right now, things are looking good for us at the moment.) We have a US$6,000 exposure, Brian Schmidt has US$9,000 and the bet was split into three bets ending in 10, 15, and 20 years (so ending in 2027). Though this bet was based on a low end temperature rise of just 0.15 degrees C per decade, which was below the IPCC estimate, butwhich is not happening.
The other Brian Schmidt (the Nobel Prize winner) is offering to bet on any warming at all, something very conservative (for people convinced of man-made climate change), and potentially much riskier for me. Indeed, even if there is only a small amount of warming and he wins, it could still show that the current IPCC climate models are wrong, and skeptics like myself were right to criticize them.
Both Schmidt and I also agree that the greenhouse effect is real, so the question is whether other factors overwhelm it. For example, the Earth is covered by a blanket of cloud that covers 60% of the planet. Schmidt mentioned Roy Spencer’s work, but Spencer himself explains that if clouds increase by even 1 -2%, say, it will dramatically affect the temperature of Earth. The climate modelers Schmidt follows admit they are unable to predict cloud cover changes. Their models also don’t include any effect due to solar magnetic activity, and if Henrik Svensmark is right this would easily neutralize, or override any warming effect of CO2. Others, like David Archibald and Professor Solheim have noticed that longer solar cycles correlate with cooler global temperatures, and the current cycle appears to be very weak and long. The ominous slowdown in solar activity has many solar astronomers predicting a grand minima may occur.
To put this in perspective, some say (in a rather scary way) that CO2 adds the equivalent of 4 Hiroshima bombs of extra energy to our atmosphere every second. But the sun is so powerful, it is continuously adding 500 times as much energy. Surely a small change in the sun could swamp a trace gas, potentially anyway? The IPCC are 95% sure it can not.
In Brian Schmidt’s favour, there has been a warming trend for the last 200-300 years and it is reasonable to assume that it will continue. Though without understanding the cause of why the warming started so long before our CO2 emissions rose, this is more a dart-throwing projection than science. Conversely, not in Schmidt’s favour is the general cooling trend that has run for the last 5,000 years. Like the stock market, all rising trends continue until they fall.
Then there is a sixty year cycle of Pacific Oscillations, which has reliably oscillated for hundreds of years. We recently entered into a down-swing of that cycle, and will continue to be in it until the mid 2030’s. During these downswings, there are more La Nina’s and as the winds grow stronger over the Pacific, the deep cold waters are stirred which releases the “stored cold” and sucks the heat out of the atmosphere. Some of the warming in the 1980s and 1990s was probably due to the upswing of this same cycle. Those claiming the ocean has cooled the climate in the last 15 years, never acknowledge that the oceans might equally have been warming it in the 20 before that. There is no symmetry in this “science”.
Sincerely,
Jo Nova
Schmidt’s argument quietly marks the end of the era of the IPCC
Schmidt does not try to defend their predictions. His bet is a tacit admission the alarmists were wrong. But instead of admitting that, he is one of a growing group trying to shift the goal posts instead. This is a desperate rearguard action to save face and pretend that any warming at all in the next twenty years is some kind of “win”. A few years ago the extremists were saying we only had ten years til we hit a tipping point — now, golly, it’s only twenty years til we see any warming at all. Be afraid!
Twenty more years of nothing would make it 37 years of no climate trend. This would be far beyond utter and complete failure, but anything above that is being dressed as success.
There is no way we will let them get away with this.
The real policy question we need to discuss in our national newspaper (because it sure won’t happen in Fairfax or the ABC) is our action on man-made emissions. The Schmidt bet is nothing but an attempt to sidetrack us from the points Maurice Newman so devastatingly raised.
How much money should we spend?
Let’s spend nothing. Scrap all the carbon clauses, the subsidies to inefficient energy, the grants to climate models we know are broken. One-sided funding to scientists seeking a crisis has done more harm than good to science, but it has engendered a lot of namecalling. Unless there is a change, climate science will advance faster if the government gets out of the way. I have yet to see a single observational study suggesting we will improve the weather with carbon credits or windmills and solar panels. We could save lives and spend the money on medical research instead. The opportunity cost is ignored.
How many people must we kill appeasing the God of the Carbonistas?
—————————–
PS: to readers. You may wonder why I am willing to enter a bet which is basically accepting the failure of the IPCC models as a starting point. But I have access to some unpublished research that suggests this is still very much a bet worth making. I will explain in full soon. In the next few months it will become clear. This is the first hint of a new theme which is likely to come to dominate this blog. Wait til you see…
9.4 out of 10 based on 103 ratings
What I found most interesting about this was the skill, dedication and length of meteorological data taken in the 1800’s. When our climate is “the most important moral challenge” why is it there is so little interest in our longest and oldest data?
Who knew that one of the most meticulous and detailed temperature records in the world from the 1800’s comes from Adelaide, largely thanks to Sir Charles Todd. The West Terrace site in Adelaide was one of the best in the world at the time, and provides accurate historic temperatures from “Australia’s first permanent weather bureau at Adelaide in 1856″. (Rainfall records even appear to go as far back as 1839.) Lance Pidgeon went delving into the National Archives and was surprised at what he found.
If we want to understand our climate the records from the 1800’s in Adelaide are surely worth attention?
The BOM usually shows graphs like this one below starting in 1911. You might think you are looking at the complete history of Adelaide temperatures and that smoothed temperature is rising inexorably, but the historic records remain unseen. While “hottest” ever records are proclaimed in the media, few go hunting for older hotter records. Yet, one of the hottest temperatures recorded in Australia were recorded in 1828, and raging heatwaves with temperatures over 50C occurred in the 1800s. In 1896 a monster heatwave across the nation killed hundreds, and people were even evacuated on emergency trains.
 BOM temperature records for Adelaide ignore older warmer days: BOM The old equipment was not identical to modern stations, but it was recorded diligently and with expert attention, and in the same location for over 120 years. When compared side by side, the older types of screens produced slightly more extreme temperatures than the Stevenson screens but this does not mean that the old recordings should be forgotten. With careful adjustment the Adelaide record could be one of the longest in the world. Strangely, no one seems too interested. If these old records showed Adelaide was way cooler in the 1860’s, do we suppose an eager PhD student would not have jumped at the chance to splice historic old and new records into a long alarming graph and a popular thesis? The question begs…
I fear the cult of the young means the smarts of the oldest of old-timers is automatically discounted, yet those old codgers from the 1800’s weren’t necessarily old at the time, and were connected to the harsh realities of the natural world in way that soft cushy net-connected university grads could not imagine today.
Below, notice how commonly those red spikes go about 40C? Adelaide gets scorched nearly every year. It’s summer.
Thanks to Lance for his work and his patience.
— Jo
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Guest Post by Lance Pidgeon
Amongst the best temperature recordings taken anywhere in the world were the recordings taken at the West Terrace Adelaide observatory by the scientist, astronomer, meteorologist and pioneer of Australian post and telegraph, Sir Charles Todd K.C.M.G. M.A. F.R.S F.R.A.S. F.R.M.S F.S.T.E.
Here thanks to Chris Gillham is the chart you get from the BOM West Terrace data in Adelaide. It could be even longer! (What a shame the West Terrace data stops in 1979). As it is, we see how incredibly constant the average temperature was.
Summary of the old Adelaide data…Nothing to see here. Move along!
How good is this old data?
Temperatures were recorded concurrently at Adelaide via multiple different methods using many different types of stands and equipment. Even the temperature at various depths under the ground was recorded but the most basic of these fantastic old records does not show on the BOM raw temperature data record here before 1887.
“The temperature of the soil is also ascertained by mercurial thermometers, whose bulbs are respectively 8, 5, and 3 feet beneath the surface.”
 … Image: National Library of Australia
Could these old measurements be wrong?
Keep reading →
9.3 out of 10 based on 131 ratings
Brandon Shollenberger writes a follow up of the survey last week that was inspired by Stephen Lewandowsky’s work (thanks to all the people who helped fill it out). Note the footnote and the background reading, before commenting. 😉 – Jo
Warmists Are Never Wrong, Even When Supporting Genocide
Brandon Shollenberger
Global warming proponents support genocide. That may seem hard to believe, but remember, they’ve said it’d be right to blow up dams and burn cities to the ground:
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage. If carried out willingly and on a sufficiently large scale, this process would require dismantling many of the key components of civilization; no person would be foolish enough to cut off their own limbs unless they were suffering from some kind of psychotic delusion, and no civilization would be willing to remove many of the pillars of its own existence. Looking from the outside, though, a civilization hacking off its own extremities would seem like exactly the right thing to do.
That view is not from some fringe element global warming proponents shun. James Hansen, arguably the most influential member of the cause, supported the book that was said in. Hansen has also suggested “coal trains will be death trains” and GHGs could “destroy much of the fabric of life.” Supporting genocide is incredibly extreme, but clearly some extremes are acceptable to them.
But supporting genocide? That’s hard to believe. I’d need some strong data to make me even consider the idea. That’s why I collected some. Using the approach of Lewandowsky et al, I created a survey (copy here) which got 5,697 responses (two of which I filtered out for being incomplete). Three items on the survey were:
You believe global warming is a [sic] real.
You believe global warming poses a serious threat.
You believe genocide is…
Respondents were asked to rate their level of disagreement/agreement (1-5) on the first two. For the third, they rated bad/good (1-5).
I found statistically significant correlations (at the 99.99% level) for all pairings of these items:
As you can see, people who say global warming is real but not a serious threat are more likely to oppose genocide. On the other hand, people who say global warming is a serious threat are more likely to support genocide. The effect isn’t large, but it is statistically significant. There’s more. The survey also included the item:
You have never been wrong.
The effect is small but statistically significant at the 99.99% level. Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with believing one has never been wrong. Believing you are fallible correlates with merely believing global warming is real. Combine these two findings, and we get:
- Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with believing you are never wrong.
- Believing global warming is a serious threat correlates with supporting genocide.
Therefore, global warming proponents believe they are never wrong, even when supporting genocide.
Quick note, Stephan Lewandowsky built upon correlation matrices like mine by using factor analysis and structural-equation modeling (SEM). These cannot change observed patterns; they can only tease out additional ones. I am not replicating those steps.
* * *
Jo Nova’s Footnote: The conclusions should be taken every bit as seriously as Stephan Lewandowsky’s finding that four potential unconfirmed skeptics (who responded to surveys on alarmist sites) say they believe the moon-landing was faked. Though Shollenberger’s study was five times the size, only used one version of the survey instead of two or three different ones, and makes no claim that 78,000 warmists saw the survey on a site which had no links to it. Plus when I asked for the data it was provided immediately. We look forward to further analysis 😉
Footnote #2: Filed under Satirical science.
Important background material:
All posts on Stephen Lewandowsky
9.8 out of 10 based on 80 ratings
 Another sign the debate is shifting, and probably in an irreversible way. Like a ratchet, the truth is slowly advancing, but once revealed, there is no going back.
The debate is gaining nuance: instead of scientists and deniers, there the public starts to see the argument is about shades of grey. The real debate has never been about whether greenhouse gases were real, instead it’s about how much global warming will happen. The cheating tactic of pretending the conflict was about something that nearly everyone agrees upon is like a ticking bomb for alarmists. The fuse has been lit. They will pay for their deception eventually.
Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council, is following up on his extraordinary front page article in The Australian. He is influential and was Chairman of the ABC, and of the board of the Australian Stock Exchange, and was Chancellor of Macquarie University until 2008.
Maurice Newman in The Australian today:
GIVEN the low-grade attacks on me following my piece “Crowds go cold on climate cost” (The Australian, Dec 31) readers of Fairfax publications and The Guardian may be shocked to hear I believe in climate change. I also accept carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The trouble is, I cannot reconcile the claims of dangerous human CO2 emissions with the observed record.
Newman is someone from outside science, telling scientists what science is, and he’s right:
The climate consensus of the 70s, like the period since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established in 1988, was dominated by politics, not science. I was reminded of how deeply political awareness has infected today’s academies when I received an apology from a respected climate scientist who corrected his own public cheap shot at me. He said, “I attempt to be politically even-handed … I try to steer a middle course as a scientist.”
Really? Surely science is not about neutrality? It is about evidence and conclusions which fall where they will. So when an internationally acclaimed climatologist like Roy Spencer from the University of Alabama at Huntsville dispassionately analyses climate models covering 33 years and concludes that both the surface and satellite observations produce linear temperature trends that are below 87 of the 90 models used in the comparison, he does not politically neutralise his findings. They are empirical fact.
Newman talks of the massive turnaround in the renewables subsidies that is currently underway – of how Europe is pulling back. Then puts a fine point on what caused the waste. Sloppy science and sloppy journalism. As I keep saying “The Media Is the Problem”. In Australia Andrew Bolt led the way, then The Australian, now there are tiny hints that some in Fairfax see a crack in the facade.
What we now see is the unravelling of years of shoddy science and sloppy journalism. If it wasn’t for independent Murdoch newspapers around the world, the mainstream media would be almost completely captured by the IPCC establishment. That is certainly true in Australia. For six or seven years we were bullied into accepting that the IPCC’s assessment reports were the climate science bible. Its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, told us the IPCC relied solely on peer-reviewed literature. Then Murdoch papers alerted us to scientific scandals and Donna Laframboise, in her book The Delinquent Teenager, astonished us with her extraordinary revelation that of 18,000 references in the IPCC’s AR4 report, one-third were not peer reviewed. Some were Greenpeace press releases, others student papers and working papers from a conference. In some chapters, the majority of references were not peer reviewed. Many lead authors were inexperienced, or linked to advocate groups like WWF and Greenpeace. Why are we not surprised?
We’re at the point where all the past cheating tactics (like bullying, namecalling and dodging debates) are starting to backfire badly. Coming sometime is the steep fall of public opinion on “climate change” down over the Continental Shelf of Abject Derision into the Trenches of Urban Mythology.
Keep reading →
9.2 out of 10 based on 172 ratings
Reader Cookster expressed amazement asked if the tide was turning and linked to Tom Switzers piece in the SMH today “Game Finally Up for Carboncrats”. It’s a no-holds barred description of the current state of the climate scare. I’m not a regular reader of the SMH (the left leaning major daily in Sydney), so I might be wrong, but I’m tempted to agree with Cookster. What I can’t tell from the other side of the country is whether this was put out in print in the main Op-Ed section (please let me know).
Switzer is well respected in Australian newsprint (he’s the editor of The Spectator Australia) which no doubt made it hard for the SMH to say no. But look how confident, and well informed he is. The bland truth is that Kyoto is over, and as Tom says:
“Prospects for a replacement are virtually zero. Rich nations are rejecting climate compensation for the developing world. Europe is in a coal frenzy. Germany, a former green trend-setter, is slashing unaffordable subsidies to the renewables industry. The European Parliament is losing confidence in the EU emissions trading scheme. No Asian nation has an emission trading scheme in operation. China’s and India’s net emissions are growing dramatically and governments, most recently Japan’s, are abandoning earlier pledges to reduce their nations’ carbon footprints. Even US Democrats, notwithstanding President Obama’s direct action-style energy plan, won’t pass modest carbon-pricing bills in the Congress. Add to this those debunked predictions (remember the vanishing Himalayan glaciers, disappearing North Polar ice cap?), and it is clear that Tim Flannery’s moment has come and gone.
It really would be remarkable if reality was nibbling away at Fairfax editors. Apparently the circle of believer-territory is shrinking. (First The Australian, then Fairfax, lastly the ABC…?)
Al Gore and Tim Flannery would not be too happy about this.
Tom Switzer:
“… Of course, the environmental doomsayers remain apocalyptic. You try going on the ABC’s Q&A and raise doubts about global-warming alarmism. You will still see the inner-city studio audience treating you not merely with hostility but with open-mouthed incredulity.
The climate-change Cassandras are increasingly marginalised here and abroad.
When they abuse, intimidate and victimise anyone with the temerity to criticise the fanaticism of their movement, the inclination of ordinary Australians is either to shrug their shoulders with a profound lack of interest or to grimace at this moral grandstanding.
Historians will probably look back at the years 2006-09 as the time when the climate hysteria reached its peak in Australia, when rational debate was at its most restricted and politicians at their most gullible.
Keep reading →
9.7 out of 10 based on 170 ratings
The 200,000 comment mark has crept up on me. Not long to go…
For the record there were 496,107 “unique visitors” to this site during 2013.
All told, the crowd spent 23,703 person-hours on this blog last year.
(Who is reading? See these comments).
I’m grateful to the commenters for generating such an avid conversation.
Thank you especially to the volunteer moderators who look out for me and make this possible.
Thank you to the people who donated in support. It is brilliantly useful, Cheers!
My favorite posts.
Gratefully, — Jo
UPDATE: JoNova Alexa ranking globally is 78,819 (similar to GWPF 80,292; Bishop Hill 102,464; Climate Audit 84,996). This site’s rank in Australia a very good 2,015. (Lower is better). Congrats WUWT global rank 10,250.
Right now, I’m getting 30% of my traffic from the UK, which is surprising.
9.6 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
 First they take your money to force their opinions over you.
Then they take your money to hide what they were doing, because they knew what they were doing was wrong.
It was a turning point in BBC coverage. The 2006 seminar with “climate experts” turned out to be mostly a workshop with Greenpeace, industry activists and lobbyists. It was the point the BBC dropped even the pretense of impartial news reporting on the climate. After this “high-level” seminar the Beeb announced it didn’t need balance in the climate debate. Then having made out they were so scientific and honorable, they spent the next six years burning more money to hide the names of the experts from the public that paid for them.
Is there any better argument to explain why state funded media is not just a waste of money, but irresponsible, immoral and unethical political advertising?
There is no saving the BBC. Over the last decade climate change was supposedly the “biggest scientific” challenge for the world, and a massive cost to the citizens who were falsely told they needed to change the weather. More than ever, public funds should have been used to analyze both sides of the science and the politics. Instead what we got were the personal views of a select few, pushing their own political activism, while poor people were slugged for the cost of the news, the legal folly, and worse of all, for the pointless expensive electricity.
David Rose, Mail on Sunday
The BBC has spent tens of thousands of pounds over six years trying to keep secret an extraordinary ‘eco’ conference which has shaped its coverage of global warming, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.
Tony Newbery, 69, from North Wales, asked for further disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC’s resistance to revealing anything about its funding and the names of those present led to a protracted struggle in the Information Tribunal. The BBC has admitted it has spent more than £20,000 on barristers’ fees. However, the full cost of their legal battle is understood to be much higher.
In a written statement opposing disclosure in 2012, former BBC news chief and current director of BBC radio Helen Boaden, who attended the event, admitted: ‘In my view, the seminar had an impact on a broad range of BBC output.’
Bizarrely in this day of 24/7 electronics, the actual news seems to have taken a year to get from blogs to the press.
The incentives in state media are all wrong
Journalists working for state funded media are by definition, personal beneficiaries of big-government, yet they are also supposed to be independent commentators of big-government. It might work for a while, but it was never going to last.
BBC workers don’t work under the discipline of the market, they get paid what big-government is willing to give them and the bigger the government the better. Ultimately, the BBC may take the money from the public, but where is the accountability?
This has taken years to unfold, and months to be exposed in the media (credit is due to David Rose for covering so well, what so few will even touch.) Read it all here David Rose, Mail on Sunday.
For BBC and FOI documents, details and action
Keep reading →
9.6 out of 10 based on 152 ratings
Oh the dilemma. German Greens have been so “successful” that coal use is rising fast. They helped get rid of the nukes in 2011, punished coal, and subsidized “renewables”. But woe…. energy has to come from somewhere, so the paradoxical crunch comes. Green policies mean that everyone is poorer, but the cheapest energy comes from coal …
The coal industry must be praying for more Green activism:
“IT’S been a black Christmas for green thinkers as Germany, the world leader in rooftop solar and pride of the renewable energy revolution has confirmed its rapid return to coal.
After scrapping nuclear power, Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions are back on the rise as the country clamours to reopen some of the dirtiest brown coalmines that have been closed since the reunification of east and west. The Australian
Though some say the problem is “carbon credits” are too cheap. (We need to be poorer?)
“…new figures show that coal power output in 2013 reached its highest level in more than 20 years. Researchers blame cheap CO2 emissions permits, and demand urgent reforms.
The stats: Germany is using almost as much coal as it did in 1990:
In 1990, Germany’s brown coal-fired power stations produced almost 171 billion kilowatt hours of power.
In 2013, it rose to 162 billion kilowatt hours…
So much money and so little achieved:
In 2014, the surcharge on electricity bills will provide some €23.5 billion of subsidies for renewable energies. A four-person household will pay a surcharge of almost €220 this year. – Speigel
It’s the dirtiest kind of coal increasing the most:
Germany’s switch to renewable energies is proving surprisingly good for brown coal as the use of it surged to a new high in 2013. Environmentalists are fuming and claim Germany’s clean energy image is sullied.
The share of German electricity generated from environmentally dirty brown coal rose 6.5 percent year-on-year in 2013… DW
UPDATE: TonyfromOz in comments points out that “dirty coal” is not so dirty if used in the newest hotter coal fired stations. See his comment below.
DW goes on to say that brown coal produces about 25% of German electricity. Combined with hard coal, it amounts to 45% of the total electricity. The reason coal is so popular is because coal is cheap and (oh the irony) because of the Green anti-nuclear stance.
“Energy experts said the gain in the use of pollutant coal was the result of a German policy aiming to phase out nuclear energy by 2022 and promoting the use of renewable forms of energy.” DW
A wicked thought just occurred to me: Big-gas companies like Shell have been sponsoring green NGO’s for decades (they bankrolled WWF from its inception, for instance). They like renewables activists (Big-Gas loves windfarms, because they need standby gas power). Imagine if coal companies were helping to sponsor anti-nuclear Greens. Two wings of the fossil fuel industry sponsoring competing activists? And none of them sponsoring skeptics? Greens, the useful idiots for every occasion? No. Surely not…
Getting back to the point:
China, meanwhile, last year approved new coal production of more than 100 million tonnes and has plans to add another 860 million tonnes by 2015.
India is set to follow China, and the IEA says coal is the fossil fuel nearly everybody wants.
In its medium-term coal outlook published last month the IEA said rising demand for coal was the “never-ending story”. In short, “coal once again exhibited the largest demand growth of all fossil fuels in 2012”, the IEA said. Despite rising demand, the world remains awash with coal, meaning in many places lower prices have pushed out gas, which is considered to be a cleaner source of energy.
Real free markets beat fakes even when they aren’t trying
The nub of the matter is that the EU spent three times as much on renewables subsidies as the US did, and had a forced “free market” in carbon emissions–but emissions are rising and coal use is increasing. In contrast, the US allowed the free market some actual freedom, and found the solution to reducing emissions:
The divergence [between the US and Europe] has come about largely because while Europe has pushed headlong into renewables with generous public subsidies, the US has harnessed new technology to unlock vast resources of unconventional oil and gas.
This meant in 2012 the US spent about one-third as much as the EU on renewable energy subsidies, $21 billion against $57bn, according to IEA figures.
It’s no accident that electricity in Germany costs almost twice as much as the US. According to The Australian, in Australia electricity costs even more than twice as much as in the USA. So Australia is the largest coal exporter in the world, but pays 20c a KWhr for domestic industrial power–a civilization bent on slow suicide?
No wonder Ron Boswell says we should dump the Renewable Energy Target. The Australian government must get the spine to take on the irrational green dogma, not just tweak a pointless scheme. At the moment the plan is just to get the Renewable Energy Target back to 20% — it rose above that because the target was fixed in GW not in percentages and (could it be a coincidence) Australian electricity use is falling for the first time in 50 years. It is partly due to solar PV use, but also because Australian manufacturing is in decline (perhaps in part due to the higher price of electricity, but also due to the high Australian dollar and industrial relations problems).
Graham Lloyd, environmental correspondent, does a good job in The Australian, (paywalled). This is a debate the country desperately needs.
* * *
Donna La Framboise could use some help, use the donate button on her site also if you haven’t already bought her latest book, or the famous book before that, why not buy them too? (Not only do you get great books, but they’re tax deductible for some …) h/t WattsUp
9.1 out of 10 based on 75 ratings
Brandon Schollenberger wants to test a theory, so he has made a short poll. He would like a broad sample.
The message:
As you’re aware, Stephan Lewandowsky has written several papers claiming to have found certain traits amongst global warming skeptics. I believe his methodology is fundamentally flawed. I believe a flaw present in his methodology is also present in the work of many others.
To test my belief, I’m seeking participants for a short survey (13 questions). The questions are designed specifically to test a key aspect of Lewandowsky’s methodology. The results won’t be published in any scientific journal, but I’ll do a writeup on them once the survey is closed and share it online.
(click below)
UPDATE Brandon says thanks, he has thousands of responses. The poll is not open any more.
(Or copy the link — http://kwiksurveys.com/s.asp?sid=jblyccj8lluam18284546)
This poll has appeared at WUWT and Bishop Hill. Feel free to do it (it is very short) or share the link with others.
There are only 13 points arranged as three questions. Click “Next Page” to finish.
8.2 out of 10 based on 68 ratings
Maurice Newman’s frank Op-Ed broke lots of rules last week — he used the words “fraud”, “deception”, and the IPCC on the front page of a major national daily paper. But the response to it has been a lower grade of apoplectic than what we are accustomed too. Which says something about the debate. Tick tick tick…
Graham Readfearn, journalist, has had nearly a whole week to summarize the strongest rebuttals around the world and he’s come up with 600 words of lame names. Newman is a “dizzy” denier, with “tricks on the brain”, and a “conspiracy dial”. Where is the science? Even as ad homs go that is barrel-scraping.
The Readfearn reasoning amounts to saying that Newman is either wrong because he is an old white guy (let’s be ageist, sexist and rascist eh?), or he is wrong because he cited Roy Spencer who is wrong because he’s a Christian. Thus and verily, ergo, ergot and a truffle too, climate sensitivity on Planet Earth is 3.3 degrees C.
If Spencer had been a Muslim would Readfearn have spent 6 paragraphs mocking the awkward conflicts with science and the Koran? Perhaps not. Instead he might have had to fill 6 paragraphs with more sexist, ageist and anti-right-wing material, though I expect he could have managed. He’s had practice.
Readfearn was probably “inspired” (in namecalling) via The Weekly Standard which discussed the climate Roy Spencer’s religious beliefs last weekend, or rather, which revived the same old intolerant attack lines that have been around for years.
Roy points out some of the hypocrisy in his reply:
“When warmist scientists like Sir John Houghton use the Bible to support action to fight global warming (e.g. his book Global Warming: The Complete Briefing) that was OK with everyone. Same with Katherine Hayhoe and Thomas Ackerman. So, I guess it depends upon whether the bible-believer agrees with them before the warmists decide to trash Bible-believing ways.”
Let’s use the Readfearn-sword-of-insight. If the climate is facing a crisis because Roy Spencer is a Christian, then the climate will also be OK because Hayhoe and Ackerman believe in God. Does two outnumber one? Has anyone done a survey on Christians in Climate Science, and can we pivot-table the skeptics and believers? (Quick, send the idea to John Cook.)
Life is like an endless Escher puzzle to the namecallers — one question leads to another, and before you know it, you’re back where you started.
Let’s put a bigger perspective on it. Readfearn attacks Roy Spencer, the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Roy was awarded both the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal and the American Meteorological Society’s Special Award. Readfearn is a journalist who ran a blog which got 14,000 comments (he says so on About Graham*). Notably, while he was working for the BBC news service, 911 happened. He now writes in quite a few green left publications including a regular with DeSmog. These are his career highlights.
Of course, experts can make mistakes, and Readfearn might be right about Roy, but if so, why doesn’t Graham discuss any science? If he cared about the environment, you’d think he’d care about getting those satellite measurements right.
Readfearn is convinced that Spencer is wrong, and The Guardian is convinced that his opinion is worth sticking up their masthead.
That says something about The Guardian.
———————–
* BTW Roy Spencer got 22,000 comments on his blog in the last three years, though I notice he doesn’t mention that on his About Page. (I had to ask instead.)
Roy’s reply is at Science and religion: Do your own Damn Google search.
(Jo says, if anyone finds God through Google, do let us know.)
9 out of 10 based on 99 ratings
Matt Ridley looks at pharmaceutical research and finds problems of confirmation bias, lack of access to data, and lack of replication of results. He compares it to the hockey stick debacle which is rising in notoriety to become the new benchmark of bad science. Articles like this are especially useful, because people concerned about Tamiflu might not know anything about the HockeyStick, and might not have read an article about the climate.
In Pharmaceutical research companies may do many studies on a drug but only choose to publish the ones with results they feel better about.
The Australian
PERHAPS it should be called Tamiflugate. Yet the doubts reported by Britain’s House of Commons public accounts committee last week go well beyond the possible waste of nearly half a billion pounds ($913 million) on a flu drug that might not be much better than paracetamol. All sorts of science are contaminated with the problem of cherry-picked data.
Science at a breaking point:
The problem seems widespread. A paper in the BMJ in 2012 reported that only one fifth of clinical trials financed by the US National Institutes of Health released summaries of their results within the required one year of completion and one third were still unpublished after 51 months.
The legendary bad hockey-stick saga is related to a new audience:
To illustrate how far this problem reaches, a few years ago there was a scientific scandal with remarkable similarities, in respect of the non-publishing of negative data, to the Tamiflu scandal. A relentless, independent scientific auditor in Canada named Stephen McIntyre grew suspicious of a graph being promoted by governments to portray today’s global temperatures as warming far faster than any in the past 1400 years – the famous “hockey stick” graph. When he dug into the data behind the graph, to the fury of its authors, especially Michael Mann, he found not only problems with the data and the analysis of it but a whole directory of results labelled “CENSORED”.
This proved to contain five calculations of what the graph would have looked like without any tree-ring samples from bristlecone pine trees. None of the five graphs showed a hockey-stick upturn in the late 20th century: “This shows about as vividly as one could imagine that the hockey stick is made out of bristlecone pine,” wrote McIntyre drily. (The bristlecone pine was well known to have grown larger tree rings in recent years for non-climate reasons: goats tearing the bark, which regrew rapidly, and extra carbon dioxide making trees grow faster.)
McIntyre later unearthed the same problem when the hockey-stick graph was relaunched to overcome his critique, with Siberian larch trees instead of bristlecones. This time the lead author, Keith Briffa, of the University of East Anglia, had used only a small sample of 12 larch trees for recent years, ignoring a much larger data set of the same age from the same region. If the analysis was repeated with all the larch trees there was no hockey-stick shape to the graph. Explanations for the omission were unconvincing.
One of the comi-tragic ironies here is that the scientist who “did the most” to expose the Tamiflu story according to Ridley is Ben Goldacre — but is this the same Ben Goldacre who appeared on the ABC propaganda-doco about climate (with Nick Minchin and Anna Rose, and which myself and David were also involved in). In that doco though, Ben Goldacre talks of denialists, and trust and how he trusts the experts on climate change:
Ben Goldacre: So it’s not that I trust them because I think they’re nice people or that I think they sort of play with a straight bat generally, like I’m basically assuming people aren’t actively lying, when I trust somebody else’s scientific opinion, when I trust the majority of opinion in a whole field, it’s because I know from all the work that I’ve done in other fields that there are checks and balances and structures where people will critique each other’s ideas and they will pull out the killer refutation of somebody else’s claim…. I’ve got no reason to believe that’s not happening just as healthily in climate research as it is anywhere else. [“I can change your mind” transcript]
Goldacre continued with this memorable gem:
Nick Michin: Have you read Booker’s book?
Ben Goldacre: Of course I haven’t, you know, these people are idiots. Chris Booker says that what is it, he’s got some bee in his bonnet about how asbestos isn’t really bad for you. You know, I mean, these are – they’re just not very interesting to people to most people, you know. If you’re really, you know, if
you’re really into climate change denialism then I’m sure this guy is like a massive figure to you but it’s just boring, it’s a boring, boring argument. I would literally rather slam my cock in the door than get involved in this.
So Ben would rather slam his **** in a door than get involved in this climate denial argument, however appearing in a documentary and staking his reputation on it, that’s different. He didn’t need to do any research for that eh? He said as much:
Ben Goldacre: And so I, rightly or wrongly, just kind of gave up… To have a big argument, meaningfully with the climate change deniers I would have to familiarise myself with this vast body of evidence and actually I don’t think it will be sufficiently good fun but I can’t be bothered, you know.
Message to Ben: no one said you had to go on TV to talk about climate science. If you can’t be bothered doing any research, just say “No, thanks”. Crass ignorance is not the best look.
Poking holes in Big-Pharma, when they deserve it, is all admirable and worthy but it’s an Occupy-Science kind of approved target. Real scientists and investigators who unpick dodgy science claims are the ones who will tackle any field of science, not just the ones on the fashionable-hit-list. After all, those who attack the critics of bad-science and defend the bad-scientists are pretty bad-scientists themselves. Touche?
Ben is welcome to join us in the real trenches, but he will need to do some reading first.
9.6 out of 10 based on 98 ratings
Sorry, I’ll be back soon…
6.8 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
Sometimes the consensus deniers are right, which is exactly why the term is so pointless and so profoundly unscientific.
The medical associations were unequivocal. Crash diets were a fad, unhealthy, and only slow sensible weight loss could work. So millions of people were fed expensive drugs for decades, monitored, and some even given risky bariatric surgery. Patients with Type II diabetes were expected to be treated for years, or possibly the rest of their lives. Nearly a tenth of the national health budget of the UK was spent managing diabetes. Fully 8% of the population have the condition in the US.
Now a new (albeit very very small) study cured diabetes in some cases in as little as a week with a diet that was thought to be bad.
In the trial the very low calorie diet was done for 8 weeks. Sticking to 600 calories a day is not easy (some reports say it was 800 cals). It’s about a quarter of what a normal guy would eat. But it shrinks fat in the pancreas and liver, and that seemingly returns insulin levels to normal. The really amazing thing is that the benefits turn out to stay around far longer than anyone thought. A word of warning, to anyone on medical treatment: the effect on blood sugar levels can be so dramatic it could be dangerous to start such a drastic diet without talking to the doc first.
The discovery, a “radical change” in understanding of the condition, holds out the possibility that sufferers could cure themselves – if they have the willpower.
Until recently received medical wisdom was that Type 2 diabetes was largely irreversible.
Prof Taylor asked 11 volunteers, all recently diagnosed, to go on what he admitted was an “extreme diet” of specially formulated drinks and non-starchy vegetables, for eight weeks.
After just a week, pre-breakfast (‘fasting’) blood sugar levels had returned to normal, suggesting a resumption of correct pancreas function.
Gordon Parmley, 67, from Stocksfield in Northumberland, one of the volunteers, said: “At the end of the trial, I was told my insulin levels were normal and after six years, I no longer needed my diabetes tablets.
“Still today, 18 months on, I don’t take them. It’s astonishing really that a diet – hard as it was – could change my health so drastically.”
Telegraph UK
While this study is tiny (11 people), there have been others suggesting something similar, and the idea came from the way people responded to bariatric surgery (it seemed to cure their insulin problems very fast). I think this study might be the first to use MRI’s to look at the fat inside the pancreas which dropped by a quarter over the 8 weeks. Note too, these people ate a lot of salad. Not all crash diets are the same, and some of the criticisms of crash diets are fair. Plus many on the crash diet may have made long term changes after the diet.
I’m not declaring that this is definitely a cure, or that it will work for everyone (it may only apply to a certain group), but I would bet people suggesting a radical low calorie diet would once have been called dangerous quacks (or deniers?). Once again, we see large organizations of well respected people saying that something is a “fact”, when it is merely the best guess they could make at the time.
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8.9 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
It’s amazing what sensible things turn up in the holiday period. The Australian not only published Maurice Newman skeptical discussion: “climate madness, dishonesty and fraud”, but two days later they published a scientist talking about natural cycles. The scandal! He’s introduced a new term into the debate: …”residual” anthropogenic driven climate change. Instead of CAGW*, we have RAGW. It’s a term that I could grow to like.
Michael Asten, professor of geophysics at Monash University, is suggesting the Australian government’s “Direct Action Scheme” ought to start with science. (How radical.) Before we spend $5 billion we ought to spend a small part of that on looking at whether we need to spend the rest of it. It’s a starkly obvious point, but almost never said. More than anything, both the environment and the people of Australia need some action, and it starts with reviewing the research. Where is the cost benefit study on climate action?
Bring science to climate policy
The Australian
THE Senate inquiry probing the direct action scheme to reduce CO2 emissions provides
opportunity for a review not only of the Coalition’s scheme but its underlying justification. Just as the National Broadband Network has been subjected to rigorous review and reframing, we should expect nothing less of the direct action scheme.
Asten lists the top five climate points that need scrutiny:
First, climate sensitivity is generally defined as the change in global temperature produced by a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. A range of studies across the past five years indicates this may be below, or significantly below, present values quoted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in which case published modelling projections of future global warming and sea-level rise become overstated.
Second, the disconnect between CO2 increase and global temperature change since 1900 is especially evident in the global warming hiatus of the past 17 years. The mechanisms for this hiatus are not adequately described by consensus science, but there is increasing evidence to suggest natural cyclic change plays a major role in this dichotomy between projections from climate modelling based on anthropogenic global warming theory, and systematic measurement using terrestrial and satellite observation platforms.
Third, cyclic variations in global sea level suggest natural cycles of about 60 and 30 years in length. Such cycles, which are deserving of considerable further study, suggest a significant fraction of the observed rate of sea-level rise of past decades may be attributable to the upswing of natural cycles. The consequence, if proven, on projections of future sea-level rise and associated planning and land-use policy is large.
Fourth, natural cycles in climate change are increasingly evident from precise studies of temperature records imprinted in cave deposits, ice cores, corals and deep-sea sediments. These provide mounting evidence that current global warming is not abnormal in a historical context, and variations are subject to a range of natural cyclic phenomena with periods ranging from about 60 years to millennia.
Finally, causative mechanisms for natural cycles in climate change are an essential complement to observational data showing natural cycles in climate change. Mechanisms involving highly complex interactions of solar physics, magnetic fields and cosmic rays are on the cusp of delivering insights into possible mechanisms.
The Direct Action program will cost $5 billion as Asten remarks:
The Senate inquiry would do well to recommend some thousandths of this sum be spent re-examining which projections are credible, which natural changes require mitigation of effect rather than cause, and what cost-benefit parameters apply to programs targeting residual anthropogenically related climate change.
As an aside, when I looked up Michael Asten, I came across Michael Ashley’s two year old criticism of The Australian for even publishing Asten’s opinion. Though it’s old, the reasoning is classic climate cultism.
Ashley has two arguments (both logical fallacies): the first is essentially that Asten is not a climate scientist. Who knew that only registered anointed Climate ScientistsTM can interpret data and speak about the climate? If that is the case we can only wonder why Ashley-the-astrophysicist’s opinion on climate is worthy of publication? He, apparently, is gifted to decide which climate scientists are right, and permitted to spout opinions on the philosophy of newspaper editorials as well, even though he is also not a Climate ScientistsTM, a JournalistTM or an EditorTM either. It’s one rule for them but “I Am A God.” Right?
The second argument (if you could call it that) is that Asten is wrong because there is “rock solid” evidence. But Ashley’s evidence about the atmosphere apparently is mostly opinion polls, and specifically a blogger opinion survey. He links to Cook’s meaningless keyword search of abstracts, that played word tricks with category names, hid the data, and mistakenly found a 0.3% consensus but called it a 97% consensus. Does Ashley approve of this kind of research? Perhaps not, he might be horrified to know he seems to endorse it. But here’s the trick: when Ashley wrote that article and linked to Cook’s site, the page it went to was a “consensus” page (bad enough) but it could not possibly have been that “97%” keyword study because it was not done then. So Ashley has linked to a page that John Cook changes, and thus pins his scientific reputation on a blogger’s moveable feast… We hope he checks his own experiments more carefully.
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9.3 out of 10 based on 129 ratings
This really has been a PR debacle of amazing proportions. The ship stuck in ice has captured something larger than I would have expected. Methinks the timing must be apropos.
Good scientists are distancing themselves from the publicity hungry climate lightweights and commentators on both sides of the fence are agreeing in their criticism.
A third effect we are barely starting to see may ripple on for months — that’s when mass-media victims realize that the “Russian Tourist ship” was really a boat load of Australian and New Zealander scientists, paid for mostly by taxpayers and loaded and advised by supposedly “expert” climate scientists. This misinformation was despite the boat having BBC, and Guardian media on board, and Fairfax press in one of the rescue icebreakers. Today I see evidence of the first two effects.
From Skynews. The French chief of polar science calls the Spirit of Mawson trip “pseudo-scientific” and laments the effect it is having on real research.
The head of France’s polar science institute has voiced fury at the misadventures of a Russian ship trapped in Antarctic ice, deriding what he called a tourists’ trip that had diverted resources from real science.
In an interview with AFP, Yves Frenot, director of the French Polar Institute, said he had no issue at all with rescuing those aboard the stricken vessel.
He said the trip itself was a ‘pseudo-scientific expedition’ that, because it had run into difficulties, had drained resources from the French, Chinese and Australian scientific missions in Antarctica.
Real scientists are angry:
The trip on the Akademik Shokalskiy was aimed at emulating a 1911-1914 expedition by the Australian explorer, Sir Douglas Mawson.
‘This kind of commemorative expedition has no interest from a scientific point of view,’ said Frenot.
Because of the rescue operations, French scientists had had to scrap a two-week oceanographic campaign this month using the Astrolabe, Frenot said.
‘The Chinese have had to cancel all their scientific programme, and my counterpart in Australia is spitting tacks with anger, because their entire summer has been wiped out.’
From the Financial Times, recognition of the PR disaster. Christopher Calwell agrees with Andy Revkin, who finds some common ground with skeptics:
A cruise that will cost the climate campaign dear
 By Christopher Caldwell
“The rescue of passengers from a Russian ship is a setback for those who warn of global warming”
“Those who stood to reap the benefits of the voyage were able, when things went sour, to pass on many of the costs.”
“The episode is a setback for those making the case for what used to be called global warming – probably the largest such setback since emails stolen from the University of East Anglia in 2009 cast doubt on the scientific neutrality of several climate researchers.”
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9.3 out of 10 based on 213 ratings
The saga just keeps going. The Chinese Icebreaker is now also stuck, and has asked for help so the Aurora Australis with 52 extra passengers rescued from the Russian Charter boat have to stay nearby to help. Twenty two Russian sailors are still trapped on board the Russian boat — the Akademik Sholaskiy. Plus other scientists in Antarctica still don’t have their equipment. Costs for everyone involved are continuing to rise. Though there is a free-for-all on social media…
Image first seen at Elmer Beauregard@m4gw
But seriously, trom The Australian by Graham Lloyd:
TAXPAYERS will foot a $400,000 bill for the rescue of a group of climate scientists, tourists and journalists from a stranded Russian research vessel – an operation that has blown the contingency budget of Australia’s Antarctic program and disrupted its scientific work.
The Antarctic Division in Hobart said it was revising plans and considering airlifting urgently needed scientific equipment that could not be unloaded from Aurora Australis before the ship was diverted from the Casey base to rescue the novice ice explorers just before Christmas.
The climate scientists and passengers aren’t free yet, their boat is waiting around to help the Chinese icebreaker.
The rescue bill continued to mount yesterday as the return of the Aurora Australis to Casey base was delayed after the Chinese vessel Xue Long notified rescue authorities it had concerns about its ability to move back into open water due to heavy ice.
The Australian icebreaker was put on standby late yesterday and ordered to remain in open water as a precautionary measure.
As usual, under the Treaty of the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), ships must respond to a distress message, and the costs are a “matter for the ship owners after the event… These can include fuel costs, crew costs and loss of revenue.” SMH.
Ultimately the costs could be millions:
In a debriefing on the rescue mission yesterday, Australian Maritime Safety Authority general manager John Young said the ships involved in the rescue would each be responsible for their own costs.
The costs, which would run to millions of dollars, could ultimately result in legal action between the ships’ insurance companies and the owners of the stranded Russian research vessel that sparked the rescue.
I wonder what the fine print says on the agreement between the Australasian Antarctic Expedition and the Russian Charter boat?
Meanwhile the silliest things are popping up:
It had to happen: Hitler gets stuck in the ice too… (great intro 😀 ) h/t Janama
UPDATE: Another one, We’re all going on a polar holiday
9.3 out of 10 based on 120 ratings
It is good news that the climate scientists, PhD’s, children, tourists and media are finally safe on board the Aurora Australia (though I note the webcam this morning still shows that boat surrounded by sea ice). Spare a thought for the sailors still on board the Shokalskiy.
Shub Niggurath writes to me today to explain that the ill-fated ship headed back to an area heavy with ice, knowing a storm was approaching. The ships captain had wanted to get away sooner, but was delayed because the expedition team was late returning due to a mechanical mishap. The details of that delay are below. Further down I note a New Zealand writer argues they were taking “undue risk” because sea ice data and wind data were available that “shows the ice didn’t come out of nowhere – nor from a sudden chill.”
Pierre Gosslin asks on his site why the organizers used a cheap “ice strengthened” boat that was not able to break ice, yet sold berths to inexperienced tourists, and ventured into major sea ice zones.
Looks like the Antarctic team was unlucky to get nice weather with less wind. I marvel that the Commonwealth Bay and Cape Denison area are known as the “windiest place on Earth” because of the Katabatic wind (which would normally help blow the sea ice away).
“…the true character of Commonwealth Bay was soon to reveal itself with katabatic winds, that drain dense cold air from the polar plateau inland behind Commonwealth Bay, which are the most ferocious and persistent winds on the planet. Cecil Madigan, the AAE meteorologist, recorded a mean wind-speed of over 71 kilometres per hour over nearly two years of recording. Cape Denison is now acknowledged as the windiest place on Earth.” [Australian Govt pdf]
— Jo
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Akademik Shokalskiy: the fateful moment
“The smallest mistakes can cascade into a disaster”
— Chris Turney
Akademik Shokalskiy and its passengers
It has been more than a week since the Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck in Antarctic sea ice. Its passengers have now been removed. Events are embedded safely enough in the past. Fortunately, beyond the monopoly of the flowery-but-unilluminating Alok Jha, the disinformation-obsessed BBC, and the forced gaiety of the eco-tourists, independent voices are available. One of them is Janet Rice, an Australian Green party Senate candidate.
 Akademik Shokalskiy and its passengers In any failure, cascades and systemic problems are likely to be present. Uncomfortable but obvious questions are on everyone’s minds: Anthony Watts and Andrew Bolt have put them out.
On the other hand, the official narrative is as follows: The Shokalskiy arrived at Commonwealth bay, Antarctica. They were two miles from open sea. ‘Suddenly’, a blizzard arose and thick ice packed around the ship. The vessel was trapped.
Consider how improbable the sequence sounds. Weather forecasts are easily available. A ship venturing to the Antarctic would have had access to the best possible forecasts. The captain would have known well in advance of approaching storms and high winds. The expeditioners proclaim how aware they were things could change on a dime. Which means, there must have been some limiting factor preventing action.
[1] On the 19th and 20th, two teams made round trips to Mawson’s huts in Cape Denison. The weather was good—in the words of Turney, “glorious sunshine” and winds “all spent”. The second party arrived back at the ship by morning on the 21st, at 5:30 AM. The groups used Argo all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs)
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9.3 out of 10 based on 91 ratings
Who could’ve dreamed up the script for this one? If you are following the saga of the climate-scientists stuck in sea-ice-they-think-is-shrinking, the latest patchy news is that the icepack is so thick and so wide that the Chinese rescue icebreaker is also stuck and has been for a day or so. It can’t send out the helicopter to pick up the scientists on the Russian chartered boat, the Akademik Shokalskiy, until it is clear of sea ice, and the wind has slowed. The Australian ice-breaker now is trying to free the Chinese ice-breaker (the Shokalskiy is too far into the ice pack). The 74 passengers on the Shokalskiy are waiting for either the helicopter to come, or, with more luck, the wind to change and the ice to break up.
Never before in modern satellite media communications has it taken so many journalists to say so little, so slowly and so vaguely.
Who would have believed it? The expert climate scientists have a media-crew-on-a-satellite link on-board, but they don’t have a meteorologist with access to the weather and wind information they needed. (If they did, perhaps they might have seen that ice coming?) The stuck scientists “phoned a friend” who called a friend, and one thing led to another, and before you know it, Johnathon Coleman (skeptic and meteorologist) is calling Anthony Watts (major skeptic blogger and meteorologist) and they are doing all they can to get the right information down to the people on the ship. As you would, good on them.
UPDATE#1: See Coleman KUSI on this video for the info. Skeptics Joe D’Aleo and Joe Bastardi of Weatherbell were also part of the team of meteorologists.
UPDATE#2: Press release says helicopter rescue should go ahead today. / Nope. AMSA announces conditions changed. It’s off.
Don’t expect to find out about this twist of the mainstream media though (KUSI aside), where The ABC and others won’t mention the phrase “climate change” when reporting this fiasco. In the magical world of media spin, a boat full of mostly Australian climate scientists has turned into a Russian passenger ship stuck in ice. (See my post where media crew on-board take hours to get the news out and everyone pretends this mission was not about promoting climate fear via the BBC World Service. See also Andrew Bolt’s take on the 7:30 report tonight.) The media contingent is so large on this mission there is not only a BBC journalist, and two Guardian reporters, but it also includes two Fairfax reporters on board the Aurora Australis as well. Never before in modern satellite media communications has it taken so many journalists to say so little, so slowly and so vaguely.
BTW: Note the mystery message on the deck of the Aurora Australis (Seen in the SMH article). What could it mean?
 View from the Aurora Australis | Photo: Colin Cosier (Fairfax Dec 30, 2013) Who pays?
Anyone know what it costs to rent an icebreaker for a day?
If things get worse there is a bigger American icebreaker which is coming to restock an American Antarctic base, and could get there in a week or two. If things go seriously (but slowly) pear shaped, there is a Russian icebreaker called the Federov, a mere 28 days (and a gazillion roubles) away. Ponder the cost of unexpectedly diverting 3 – 5 boats and full crews to the end of the Earth in dangerous conditions to rescue a boatload of experts and documentary crew on a reenactment and “raising awareness” mission. They were trying to let the world know about melting ice but instead ended up singing songs on deck, and bragging about how much they are enjoying their adventure, while taxpayers probably foot most of the bill, real researchers lose valuable help and resources, and real sailors risk their lives trying to get them out. It’s a bit like the ultimate school leavers party for those who never grew up.
Australian taxpayers have paid for much of the $1.5m mission (by proxy though agents and are quaintly referred to as “supporters”) with help from UK, US and New Zealand taxpayers too. But who will cover the cost of the rescue? (Speaking of which, I discovered that if we were serious, there are even nuclear icebreakers around Russia which apparently cost $100,000 a day.)
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9.4 out of 10 based on 172 ratings
The giant boondoggle is coming undone.
What makes this article remarkable is the strong language coming from a credible source on the front page of a major national daily. We have crossed another line in the decline and fall of the Great Global Warming Scare. Maurice Newman is chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council , was Chairman of the ABC, and of the board of the Australian Stock Exchange. He was Chancellor of Macquarie University until 2008. The Op-Ed and news article today sums up the worst of the last five years of climate, and is the first time I can recall seeing a well respected commentator use such unequivocal and damning language and so prominently. There is no hedging here, no pandering. Newman obviously reads skeptical blogs and is very aware of what is going on. Ponder that he was Chairman of their ABC, and if someone of his sensible insight could not clean it up, we need far more drastic action (that’s another topic we will explore soon).
His opinion piece in the Australian (Crowds go cold on climate cost), is discussed on the front page as a news item titled “Climate policies helped kill manufacturing, says Maurice Newman”. A broader audience amongst the intellectual hierarchy of Australia now knows they can ramp up their dismissals. Skeptics have gained ground.
Maurice Newman Op-Ed:
“IN his marvellous chronicle of human gullibility, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay wrote: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
It’s a pity Mackay did not live long enough to include anthropogenic global warming in his list of popular delusions. There has been none bigger.
He talks about the diabolical state of Germany and the UK,
“Australia, too, has become hostage to climate change madness. It has been a major factor in the decimation of our manufacturing industry. The Australian dollar and industrial relations policies are blamed. But, for some manufacturers, the strong dollar has been a benefit, while high relative wages have long been a feature of the Australian industrial landscape. It is the unprecedented cost of energy, driven by the Renewable Energy Target and carbon tax, which, at the margin, has destroyed our competitiveness. And for all the propaganda about “green employment”, Australia seems to be living the European experience where, for every green job created, two to three jobs are lost in the real economy.
“The scientific delusion, the religion behind the climate crusade, is crumbling. Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years. According to climatologist Roy Spencer’s research, “Over the period of satellite measurement, 1979-2012, both the surface and satellite observations produce linear temperature trends which are below 87 of the 90 climate models used in the comparison” – that is, 97 per cent were wrong.
“If the IPCC were your financial adviser, you would have sacked it long ago….
“…the climate change establishment, through the IPCC, remains intent on exploiting the masses and extracting more money….
On industrial wind plants, cosy relationships, and government subsidies, he asks the questions that should have been asked five years ago: Where is the outrage? Where is the media scrutiny?
“Why are taxpayers promoting for-profit enterprises?
“From the UN down, the climate change delusion is a gigantic money tree. It is a tyranny that, despite its pretensions, favours the rich and politically powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless. But the madness of the crowds is waning and, as Mackay writes of the perpetrators: “Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.” We can only hope it comes before most of us descend into serfdom.
The news item on the front page refers to the Op-Ed and starts:
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9.3 out of 10 based on 256 ratings
LATEST NEWS: Aurora Australis abandons attempt to save Akademik Shokalskiy in Antarctica.
The SMH headline could’ve said “Another icebreaker abandons attempt to save climate scientist’s boat in Antarctica.” The Polar Star icebreaker has left from the US to come help. It will take 8 -9 days to arrive. ( Guardian) Welcome to Media-Sport, where we score points watching a part of the media dance around the hysterical folly of an Antarctic climate science expedition trapped in sea ice for six nights (and counting). The Art of Propaganda is not just in the telling of one-sided lines, but is crafted through parts left unsaid.
 More global warming, it is everywhere you look. View from Akademik Shokalskiy With three ice-breaker rescue ships trying to reach them, the latest news is that the scientists and media entourage may have to abandon ship and be helicoptered to safety (though right now even that is not possible due to the very rough weather). The ABC news home page at time of posting this has zero references to “Antarctica”, but does say there are cracks in ice around a stranded ship.
The decision to abandon the latest attempt was made at 9am Australian EST. The SMH story appeared at 4.40pm, and the ABC reported it on “just in” at 5.40pm. Marvelous how “fast” satellite communications and social media can work. No mention on The Guardian Australia site (despite them having a reporter on the boat). No twitters seen on the @GdnAntarctica, or @guardian, @alokjha (their journalist), @loztopham (their documentary maker), or #spiritofmawson or @ProfChrisTurney. (Perhaps those trapped on the boat don’t know?)
 Antarctica Live is the Guardian Live blog where you won’t find any live news at the moment. The Guardian calls it “Antarctica Live” but the latest news is from yesterday. What use is a live blog if extraordinary events happen and you don’t cover them?
A month ago the mission of the $1.5m expedition was “to answer questions about climate change”. Now the ABC describes the Australasian expedition as “a Russian ship stuck in sea ice in Antarctica.” The BBC has a reporter on board, and it only took 8 hours for the news to reach the BBC feed. Who is spinning the message to neutralize an embarrassing story then?
Let there be no doubt, the mission was to document and record scientific changes in Antarctica and to broadcast that to the world. Most scientific missions don’t have a dedicated media team, but this one named a staff of five journalists. There is a journalist and a documentary maker from the Guardian as well as a senior producer from the Science Unit at the BBC world service. (See the media list.) If they’d discovered less sea ice, fewer penguins, or big cracks, we know the images would be all over the mass media and it would be evidence for “climate change”.
But with the MV Akademik Shokalskiy trapped by thick sea ice, the mission apparently is to call it a tourist boat. The BBC now tell us the mission was “to follow the route explorer Douglas Mawson travelled a century ago”. Don’t mention the climate. (Search for the word “climate” on the BBC story for example…). If there is any doubt this was a climate science crusade read about it here: SpiritofMawson –The Science Case. It tells us the full message of doom including that they are studying an ice sheet that would raise global sea levels by 52m (!) if it melted. It doesn’t tell us that there is no sign that could happen. The site doesn’t mention that temperatures on Antarctica have cooled in the last 30 years, nor that sea ice has increased to record highs (I bet the team have noticed that now).
 … The spin is that team has “met heavy ice“. Not “been trapped by unprecedentedly thick sea ice, unlike anything Mawson ever saw, and in record levels”. If they had met thin sea ice, would it have been described as a dangerously thin layer, a risk for penguins, and a stark reminder of how much the climate is changing? Would it have been an undeniable factoid?
It’s not what the ABC says, it’s what they don’t say (a.k.a. “lying by omission”). The headlines could read “Global warming scientists trapped in Antarctica by record sea ice they didn’t predict”. As if. That would be against the religion.
How touristy is this boat? The three leaders are scientists, there are 8 other scientists and 18 PhD students on the boat. There are also 9 scientists back on the shore who presumably modeled the conditions in Antarctica and are world leading experts on sea ice eh? One of those experts is Matthew England who still describes the hopeless IPCC 1990 predictions were “very accurate”.
The world awaits news of the trapped ship, and after 7 hours of waiting for the third icebreaker, the tweet from team leader @profChrisTurner while surrounded by impregnable ice-sheets is to say that “it’s so warm it’s actually raining!” #spiritofmawson.
These are the advertising graphics for this Russian tourist boat that is following Mawson’s adventure –riiiight.
 Figure 1: The different components of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 science programme (aligned with the Australian Antarctic Science strategic plan 2011 to 2021). UPDATE: On Christmas eve, they were apparently only “2 nautical miles from open water” when they got trapped. Today they were grateful the Aurora Australis got as close as 10 nautical miles. Hmm.
MemoryVault comment (edited):
Why is there nothing on this story on the ABC News homepage?
Because yet again the ABC are playing fast and furious with the truth.
The original story about the research ship getting stuck in the ice was belatedly posted in the “justin” section early Saturday morning (Saturday 27/12/2013 7.04am), when it became obvious the story couldn’t be hidden any longer. I say “belatedly”, because there is a BBC film crew on board. Plus there are reporters from the Guardian. So the whole drama could be being covered live.
Since then, rather than post each new development as a “new” story – such as the failure of the Chinese icebreaker to reach them – the ABC has simply gone back and amended the original story, which now lies about two thirds of the way down the second page of the “justin” section.
However, don’t bother going there if you want to find out any of the real facts. Just some of the things that remain unreported are:
* This is the largest and most expensive Antarctic expedition ever mounted by Australia.
* It is being funded almost entirely by the Australian Taxpayer, as is the rescue operation.
* It’s not about “tourists”. There is the ship’s crew, the BBC documentary crew, the Guardian Reporters, a bunch of mad climate scientists, and a whole heap teachers and PhD students who actually paid for passage so they could be unpaid “research assistants” to the mad scientists.
* By the time this little “Climate Change PR fiasco” is over, the cost to the Australian Taxpayers will run into several millions of dollars.
It is interesting to note that the alleged purpose of this little taxpayer-funded White Christmas jaunt was to study the effects of climate change since Mawson was there, 1911 to 1914. Well, when Mawson was there, he was able to get his wooden sailing ship to within 50 yards of the shore. He couldn’t get closer, not because of ice, but because the water was too shallow. Conversely, the purpose-built, steel construction, ice-strengthened research vessel is currently stuck 60 kilometres out to sea, which is as close as they could get to Mawson’s landing spot, on account of all the sea-ice.
Still, despite the total farce of the situation, not to mention the enormous waste of funds and effort, you have to laugh. Here we have a full, professional BBC documentary film crew, PLUS reporters from the Guardian and Fairfax, caught in the middle of what would, in any other circumstances, be a Pulitzer Prize, Walkley Award winning real-life drama, and because of the politics of climate change, they can’t report it and it’s unlikely that a single second of footage will ever be seen by a member of the general public.
Can you imagine the coverage if instead of being stuck in ice that isn’t supposed to be there, they were all in a small Victorian country town surrounded by bushfires?
In closing, a word from the Member for Goldman Sachs and Communications Minister on fraudulent mis-reporting by the ABC:
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Followed by a comment from Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education, on the misappropriation of $1.5 million of taxpayer’s funds by the University of NSW, to partially finance this PR folly:
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
We hope the 74 people on board stay safe, and wish them some global warming.
Resources:
NSIDC — National Snow and Ice Data Centre
Cryosphere – Southern Hemisphere Sea Ice
WattsUp Sea Ice page
See also Watts Up “So much sea ice”
The Arctic sea ice extent is lower than average. (Not that that has anything to do with this story).
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