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Macquarie Uni responds to Murry Salby. What they don’t say speaks volumes

In reply to my email request, a spokesperson from Macquarie replied today. The entire response to Murry Salby’s 20-point-list of serious accusations is reproduced in full (my thoughts below):

10 July 2013
STATEMENT REGARDING THE TERMINATION OF PROFESSOR MURRY SALBY

Prof Murry Salby

Macquarie University does not normally comment on the circumstances under which employees leave the University. However, we feel in this instance it is necessary to do so in order to correct misinformation.
The decision to terminate Professor Murry Salby’s employment with Macquarie University had nothing to do with his views on climate change nor any other views. The University supports academic freedom of speech and freedom to pursue research interests.

Professor Salby’s employment was terminated firstly, because he did not fulfil his academic obligations, including the obligation to teach. After repeated directions to teach, this matter culminated in his refusal to undertake his teaching duties and he failed to arrive at a class he had been scheduled to take.

The University took this matter very seriously as the education and welfare of students is a primary concern. The second reason for his termination involved breaches of University policies in relation to travel and use of University resources.

The termination of his employment followed an extensive and detailed internal process, including two separate investigations undertaken by a committee chaired by a former Australian Industrial Relations Commissioner and including a union nominee.

— Attributed to “A spokesperson” for Macquarie University

 

My thoughts

Is that it? This did not address any of Murry Salby’s points. What misinformation was corrected here? Macquarie University want us to believe his unpopular research conclusions had nothing to do with his termination of employment. But when he claims to have been employed to do research, they reply instead that he failed his teaching duties. Wasn’t that his point?

As I understand it, Salby was lured here for his research. He moved all the way to Australia in order to “rebuild his research program” for which he was promised many resources. According to him, Macquarie delayed, broke its contractual agreement and failed to provide them. (See points 1,2 &3). Macquarie don’t appear to disagree with this. When he protested, didn’t the university try to reduce his role to that of “a student teaching assistant”. (See point 10). If he objected to taking on that teaching role (say, in order to do the research he was originally employed to do) is that so bad?

Purely hypothetically, suppose, after they hired him, they realized he was not making the “right” conclusions. Wouldn’t it be o-so-convenient to withhold resources, then ask him to do more and more teaching, of a more and more onerous nature, and then starve him of time and resources to do his research, until he quit, or grew frustrated, or stepped over some arbitrary new line? It would be the bureaucratic way to sabotage awkward research. We don’t know that happened, but the response above does nothing to show that it didn’t.

What Macquarie University did not say:

First and foremost, they find no fault with his research or methodology.

They did not describe (with details) how forces outside their control made it impossible to provide Salby with the resources they were contractually required to provide. They did not describe making an effort to help him with his research. Nor do they point to other researchers they employ with skeptical views who speak highly of Macquarie Uni.

They don’t disagree with his points, implying they did cancel an air ticket on him leaving him in a foreign city with no accommodation and no warning, or even a courtesy call. Apparently, they did hold a misconduct proceeding which he was unable to attend because of the flight cancellation (really?). Macquarie claim that process was “extensive” and “detailed” but most people would expect that if that was the case, Murry Salby might have had the right to explain himself in person, rather than to be phoning last minute hotels in Paris instead.

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July 11th, 2013 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

State of the carbon market in 2013 is so sick the World Bank cancelled the report

State of the Carbon Market: Started in 2003, but wiped out in 2013

Each year  for nearly a decade The World Bank has published “The State and Trends of the Carbon Market” in May or June with great fan-fare and press releases. It’s the definitive guide telling the world how many dollars are turning over in the global markets (which really means “the EU market plus a few other bits”). I’ve been quoting their figures for years — The 2012 report told us that $176 billion dollars turned over in 2011. So what was the number for the 2012 year? Whatever it is, it’s so bad the World Bank cancelled the report.

Figure what the cancellation of the report tells us about the The World Bank. Was it publishing these figures for the last nine years because they were important for investors and policy-makers? I guess not, or they would still be publishing them. By dropping it at the first major downturn, we know the reason for the report was pure PR, something for whipping up momentum about the market and getting headlines in newspapers. The numbers in 2013 became a PR disadvantage — the World Bank did not want headlines like “carbon market collapses”, or “carbon trading falls by 50%” (or whatever the figure is). So the report had to go. Swept silently under the blanket and replaced with the less ambitious paper: Mapping Carbon Pricing Initiatives 2013.

Here’s the official explanation for the change:

This (new) report prepared by the World Bank together with Ecofys, replaces the State and Trends of the Carbon Market series. Unlike in previous years, the report does not provide a quantitative, transaction-based analysis of the international carbon market as current market conditions invalidate any attempt and interest to undertake such analysis.

You can see in this graph that the average price during 2012 (under the red line) was closer to half the value of 2011, though the graph tells us nothing about volumes.

…

Each year in the State of the Trends series the Carbon Finance Unit listed all the press coverage. Their priorities are clear, see the lists of their success — stories in Bloomberg, Reuters, Financial Times  (… 2010, 2011, 2012 )

Why would the World Bank be interested in promoting fear of man-made emissions? Could it be that they manage millions of dollars of funds and facilities, all of which would be pointless if man-made emissions are not a catastrophe waiting-to-happen.

 

Thanks To Scott the trader for help.

 

 

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July 10th, 2013 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Did Macquarie University sabotage, exile, blackban, strand and abandon Murry Salby?

Prof Murry Salby

NEWEST UPDATE #4: Both Salby and Macquarie Uni responded today. See this newer post.

UPDATED: After hours of emails and phone calls I still have not heard from Salby but have news that Christopher Monckton has spoken to him and confirms that “

“This case is outrageous. I shall be finding out further details from Professor Salby and shall then arrange for powerful backers to assist him in fighting the university, which – if his side of the story is in all material respects true – has committed multiple criminal offenses. This needs to be a high-profile case.” Christopher Monckton

(Thanks to John Smeed and Malcolm Roberts for passing on CM’s email).

Short of sending Murry Salby to Siberia, Macquarie University have seemingly done everything they could to sabotage and silence him and his PhD student. Is his research is so dangerous to the cash cow that is “global warming” that it had to be stopped at any cost?  Is is difficult to imagine any response they can give which would justify the behaviour described below if it is accurate. The truth will out in the end, and how will Macquarie’s reputation stand up then? I would very much like to hear what they have to say.

UPDATE #1: I have phoned and confirmed with Macquarie’s switchboard that Professor Murry Salby is no longer working there.

I have written to both Murry Salby and to several people at Macquarie University seeking their responses and confirmation. No reply so far.

UPDATE #2: I cannot find any “Australian employment tribunal” – at least the Fair work ombudsman has not heard of one. Suggestions would be welcome. UPDATE #3 (John Power suggests it is a term that includes Fair Work Australia, and the Australian Industrial Relations Commission.)

 

— Jo

———————————————————————————————————
Thanks for your interest in the research presented during my recent lecture tour in Europe. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/another-nail-in-the-climate-change-coffin.php

Remarks from several make it clear that Macquarie University is comfortable with openly disclosing the state of affairs, if not distorting them to its convenience. So be it. Macquarie’s liberal disclosure makes continued reticence unfeasible. In response to queries is the following, a matter of record:
1. In 2008, I was recruited from the US by “Macquarie University”, with appointment as Professor, under a national employment contract with regulatory oversight, and with written agreement that Macquarie would provide specified resources to enable me to rebuild my research program in Australia. Included was technical support to convert several hundred thousand lines of computer code, comprising numerical models and analyses (the tools of my research), to enable those computer programs to operate in Australia.

2. With those contractual arrangements, I relocated to Australia. Upon attempting to rebuild my research program, Macquarie advised that the resources it had agreed to provide were unavailable. I was given an excuse for why. Half a year later, I was given another excuse. Then another. Requests to release the committed resources were ignored.

3. Three years passed before Macquarie produced even the first major component of the resources it had agreed to provide. After five years of cat-and-mouse, Macquarie has continued to withhold the resources that it had committed. As a result, my computer models and analyses remain inoperative.

4. A bright student from Russia came to Macquarie to work with me. Macquarie required her to abandon her PhD scholarship in Russia. Her PhD research, approved by Macquarie, relied upon the same computer models and analyses, which Macquarie agreed to have converted but did not.

5. To remedy the situation, I petitioned Macquarie through several avenues provided in my contract. Like other contractual provisions, those requests were ignored. The provisions then required the discrepancy to be forwarded to the Australian employment tribunal, the government body with regulatory oversight.

The tribunal then informed me that Macquarie had not even registered my contract. Regulatory oversight, a statutory protection that Macquarie advised would govern my appointment, was thereby circumvented. Macquarie’s failure to register rendered my contract under the national employment system null and void.

6. During the protracted delay of resources, I eventually undertook the production of a new book – all I could do without the committed resources to rebuild my research program. The endeavor compelled me to gain a better understanding of greenhouse gases and how they evolve. Preliminary findings from this study are familiar to many.

http://www.thesydneyinstitute.com.au/speaker/murry-salby/ Refer to the vodcast of July 24, 2012.

Insight from this research contradicts many of the reckless claims surrounding greenhouse gases. More than a few originate from staff at Macquarie, who benefits from such claims.

7. The preliminary findings seeded a comprehensive study of greenhouse gases. Despite adverse circumstances, the wider study was recently completed. It indicates:

(i) Modern changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane are (contrary to popular belief) not unprecedented.

(ii) The same physical law that governs ancient changes of atmospheric CO2 and methane also governs modern changes.

These new findings are entirely consistent with the preliminary findings, which evaluated the increase of 20th century CO2 from changes in native emission.

http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/07/02/swedish-scientist-replicates-dr-murry-salbys-work-finding-man-made-co2-does-not-drive-climate-change/

8. Under the resources Macquarie had agreed to provide, arrangements were made to present this new research at a scientific conference and in a lecture series at research centers in Europe.

9. Forms for research travel that were lodged with Macquarie included a description of the findings. Presentation of our research was then blocked by Macquarie. The obstruction was imposed after arrangements had been made at several venues (arranged then to conform to other restrictions imposed by Macquarie). Macquarie’s intervention would have silenced the release of our research.

10. Following the obstruction of research communication, as well as my earlier efforts to obtain compliance with my contract, Macquarie modified my professional duties. My role was then reduced to that of a student teaching assistant: Marking student papers for other staff – junior staff. I objected, pursuant to my appointment and provisions of my contract.

11. In February 2013, Macquarie then accused me of “misconduct”, cancelling my salary. It blocked access to my office, computer resources, even to personal equipment I had transferred from the US.

My Russian student was prohibited from speaking with me. She was isolated – left without competent supervision and the resources necessary to complete her PhD investigation, research that Macquarie approved when it lured her from Russia.

12. Obligations to present our new research on greenhouse gases (previously arranged), had to be fulfilled at personal expense.

13. In April, The Australian (the national newspaper), published an article which grounded reckless claims by the so-called Australian Climate Commission:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/last-summer-was-not-actually-angrier-than-other-summers/story-e6frgd0x-1226611988057 (Open access via Google News)

To promote the Climate Commission’s newest report is the latest sobering claim:

“one in two chance that by 2100 there’ll be no human beings left on this planet”

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/if-you-want-to-know-about-climate-ask-the-right-questions/story-fni0ffxg-1226666505528

Two of the six-member Australian Climate Commission are Macquarie staff. Included is its Chief Commissioner.

14. While I was in Europe presenting our new research on greenhouse gases, Macquarie undertook its misconduct proceedings – with me in absentia. Macquarie was well informed of the circumstances. It was more than informed.

15. Upon arriving at Paris airport for my return to Australia, I was advised that my return ticket (among the resources Macquarie agreed to provide) had been cancelled. The latest chapter in a pattern, this action left me stranded in Europe, with no arrangements for lodging or return travel. The ticket that had been cancelled was non-refundable.

16. The action ensured my absence during Macquarie’s misconduct proceedings.

17. When I eventually returned to Australia, I lodged a complaint with the Australian employment tribunal, under statutes that prohibit retaliatory conduct.

18. In May 2013, while the matter was pending before the employment tribunal, Macquarie terminated my appointment.

19. Like the Australian Climate Commission, Macquarie is a publically-funded enterprise. It holds a responsibility to act in the interests of the public.

20. The recent events come with curious timing, disrupting publication of our research on greenhouse gases. With correspondence, files, and computer equipment confiscated, that research will now have to be pursued by Macquarie University’s “Climate Experts”.

http://www.science.mq.edu.au/news_and_events/news/climate_change_commision

Murry Salby

 

* Post edited while I wait for a response from Macquarie university.

9.1 out of 10 based on 150 ratings
July 9th, 2013 | Tags: , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Oh Wait! Bricks and mortar will create warmer nights (weren’t we supposed to blame CO2 for that?)

I thought warmer nights were a fingerprint of CO2 induced warming? John Cook has claimed that at least five times on his blog:  The human fingerprint in the daily cycle. It’s also known as Diurnal Temperature Range, and the theory is that extra CO2 keeps us warm all night.

Now Excellent* (Alarmed) Climate System Experts are saying that UHI (Urban Heat Island) effects can cause warmer nights too, at least in the future. (Perhaps this only applies to future-bricks, not past ones — you think?)

City expected to feel heat as it expands

Ben Cubby

Parts of Sydney will be up to 3.7 degrees hotter by the year 2050, as urban expansion spawns ever more asphalt and concrete, new research suggests.

The ”urban heat island effect” – the build-up of heat in built-up areas – will amplify climate change, particularly in the outer fringes of Australian cities, according to University of NSW researchers.

”If you are living near the edge of a city today, you will notice the temperature change, mainly through the minimum temperature change at night,” said Daniel Argueso, the lead author of the study that was prepared at the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

”There is also the fact that urban canyons prevent winds from moving around freely.”

Read more: The Age

The study they refer too is Argueso et al 2013, where models-that-might-work, project how the landscape of Sydney will change and how that will be affected by the climate predicted for Sydney by other models (which don’t work). It’s a dozen assumptions multiplied by a dozen more to tell us what most skeptics could have told them for free. More asphalt, bitumen, bricks and mortar will absorb more heat in the day and release it at night.

Lucky tarmac, brick walls, roads and planes don’t increase temperatures near official thermometers, otherwise we might find a spurious signal pretending to be a “fingerprint” of man-made CO2 when it wasn’t that at all.

When is a fingerprint not a fingerprint, John?

Why no mention of the UHI factor?

Keep reading  →

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July 9th, 2013 | Tags: , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Fake polite guys, and Fake “skeptical scientists”: Stephen Emmott tries it on

…

It’s a sign skeptics are winning. A few years ago the term “skeptic” had been turned into an insult. People would write to me and implore me to call myself a realist. (I wasn’t having a bar of that). Now, all kinds of wannabees are pretending they are skeptics even as they swallow and repeat the establishment lines ad infinitum.

Take, for example, Professor Stephen Emmott. It’s a PR game — Emmott hopes the half-asleep audience will see the right keywords and not notice that what he actually says is the complete opposite of the badges and labels he claims as his own.

Emmott (Emmott who?) has written yet another scary book and is doing his best to pretend he is the voice of reason.  According to Donna LaFramboise his new book is just a rehash of a 40 year old one.  (Geoff Chambers has all the other links).

Let’s unpack the empty PR

Quotes below are from The Australian.

First up, Emmott tries to look reasonable by saying he won’t demonize climate skeptics:

He [Emmott] affects bafflement at climate scepticism: “I have no idea why people don’t believe what is overwhelming evidence for climate change,” he says. But in fact he does have an idea, and it has less to do with villainous deniers, whom he refuses to demonise, than with us lot in the media.

Emmott “knows” that man can control the weather, and calls the unconvinced  –“Deniers”. Who’s a demon then?  A denier is either a lizard-brain-operator who is beyond the reach of reason, or maybe “just” a Nazi sympathizer. Either way deniers are beyond the pale and should not be listened to. Note how “polite” he pretends to be while acting like an namecalling troll.

Secondly, Emmott drags out the old gate-keeper excuse to silence views he doesn’t like. He thinks newspapers should give no time to doubters of man-made climate change because they aren’t qualified:

It’s what you might call the spurious balance problem: “I think well-intentioned broadcasters and newspapers tend to give equal weight to a climate scientist and a climate denier in the interests of balance, so what you get is presented as a two-sided, balanced discussion and yet the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side that climate change is happening. You get equal time being shared by someone like Nigel Lawson, who last time I looked was not a bio-geochemist or an atmospheric physicist.”

Emmott’s qualifications:

“… a neuroscientist by training who branched out into complex, interdisciplinary computer modelling at UCL…”

Nigel Lawson, former M.P., and Chancellor of the Exchequer, has a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics, but he’s not allowed to express a view on man-made climate change. For that, he should have studied neuroscience.

Here is more of Emmott’s fake politeness:

“It’s fine to have a view,” he says, politely. “But it has to be based on something sensible.”

How big of him, allowing people to express their sensible views? But since sensible, according to Emmott, means parroting the dominant meme, presumably all critics “can have views” as long as they agree with him.

Oh boy, Emmott wants the title “skeptical”

Here’s Emmott trying to own the term skepticism, while not being one:

Apart from the fact that he would prefer not to be vilified for his views as a scientist, he’d like some credit for his own scepticism.

“Science is organised scepticism,” he points out. “Being sceptical is what scientists do all the time. What else might explain this? And the reason almost everyone in the science community is of the view that climate change is happening is there are basically no other explanations for what we see.”

Note the segue from the bland truth (science is skepticism) to the rank logical fallacy: ” There are no other explanations (that our blind eyes) can see”. It’s argument from ignorance. He might as well have told us he won’t listen to critics (because they’re as dumb as rocks) but he knows he’s right because the government approved scientists say so, and really he’s a skeptic even though he follows the herd slavishly, and can’t provide any evidence to back up his “faith”.

Further on, he shows how little he knows about climate models and climate skeptics:

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9 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
July 7th, 2013 | Tags: | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Witchcraft on Catalyst — Scary weather is coming, it’s all our fault, be afraid!

There they go again. Last night the ABC again used taxpayer dollars to post up a slick advertisement for their favourite religion. Because Catalyst won’t read skeptical blogs, interview skeptics, or ask difficult questions, they give a false impression to any poor viewers who haven’t figured out that the presenters (in this case, Anja Taylor) are more activist than investigator.

“The gorilla in the kitchen remained invisible. Where was cause and effect?”

The Earth has had extremes of every kind of weather for 4.5 billion years. What makes the current ones any different? Any cause of warming could melt ice, raise sea-levels, shift jet streams, change cloud cover and shift evaporation rates. How do we know this warming is due to coal fired power stations? We only “know” because some climate modelers say so — but they rely on models that assume relative humidity stays constant when it doesn’t, and which are proven “unskilled” at precipitation, cloud cover and upper tropospheric temperature profiles.  The models ignore lunar effects, solar magnetic effects and millions of observations so they can blame your SUV and air-conditioner for causing droughts, storms, blizzards, and floods.

This is the modus operandi of the ancient witchdoctor. “I can stop the storms — send us your tithe”. Any time Catalyst want to get a list of real questions to ask climate modelers, they only have to email.

There are hundreds of ways to define a record or trend, so there is plenty of potential for cherry picking and Catalyst take every opportunity. The records and trends that fit the approved meme get promoted. Any inconvenient data is kept carefully out of view. Warming saves more lives than it costs. Cold winters kill more people than hot summers. There is no trend in global cyclone energy, no trends in Australia or NZ. There have always been heatwaves and storms. The Angry summer wasn’t that hot according to the satellites. I could go on…

It’s not so much what Catalyst say, as what they won’t mention. So the water cycle is intensifying — double the climate models? But Catalyst won’t tell you that the temperature trend is half what the models predicted (and below their lowest estimate). They won’t tell you that the water vapor trends in the upper troposphere are crucial to the models but completely wrong. They mention the ARGO buoys and then ignore their most important result — that any warming so far is well below what the models estimate (inasmuch as we can tell). They mention the Arctic, but not the Antarctic. (Wasn’t this supposed to be global warming?)

Without a cause-and-effect link this isn’t science, it isn’t journalism, and we don’t need more state-funded propaganda.

Catalyst for regulation of energy use and bigger government perhaps?

— Jo

Anja Taylor prepares to warn of floods, droughts, blizzards, and hell-fire.

Thus on the seventh day…

global warming strikes again…

…with fire and brimstone

Sinners will get old and sick too.

… killing old ladies

The new Gods are totally biblical.

It’s coming to get you

 

 

Ken Stewart wrote to me this morning:

More Bogus Science From Catalyst

If you want a “perfect” example of lack of balance in the ABC climate reporting, this is it.  Literally.

Last night’s Catalyst (transcript here)  was all about extreme weather, complete with scary images and scarier narration.  For now I will leave the claims about more frequent high intensity rain events (I think they might find Toowoomba got a bit more than 100mm in an hour, and they mixed up footage of Toowoomba with the Lockyer Valley), January being our hottest month, the Pacific getting fresher and the Atlantic saltier.  I’ll just look at the claim that blizzards and heatwaves can both result from global warming.

Professor Jennifer Francis , from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, explained that the rapidly warming Arctic has created a ‘gentler’ atmospheric temperature gradient between the Tropics and the Poles.  This leads to weaker, more variable, jet stream winds, which then ‘meander’ north and south more.   This allows frigid polar air to penetrate further towards the tropics, and hot tropical air to penetrate further towards the poles.  Also, because the wavy jet stream is moving more slowly, this causes weather systems to persist for longer.

OK, that is a plausible explanation for the extremes being experienced in Europe.  But did your intrepid investigative science reporter Anja Taylor or researcher Wendy Zukerman then ask the good professor, “So is that happening in the Southern Hemisphere too? You know, with the Angry Summer?”

Who knows if they did.  But the answer is “no”. For while it is true that “The Arctic is warming faster than anywhere on Earth”, the Antarctic isn’t.

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July 5th, 2013 | Tags: , , | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Peter Gleick thinks (or pretends) CO2 can melt traffic lights

Peter Gleick — infamous for using deception to steal documents “for The Cause” (see fakegate) — tweeted that it was getting hotter every year. He attached a picture of melting traffic lights. “Hot enough for you?” How good is this man’s physics?

This is a wider picture of events near to the traffic lights that melted in Kuwait.

…

248am blog shows another angle.

Keep reading  →

9.1 out of 10 based on 100 ratings
July 3rd, 2013 | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

One landmark old study shows 75% of people give the wrong answer just to follow the herd

Which line matches the line on the left? On any given test one third of people will say A or B if the crowd around them does.

In the 1950’s a psychologist called Solomon Asch wanted to find out how strongly people would conform to the group around them. He gave about 100 men a card (supposedly like the one in the image to the right) and asked them whether A, or B, or C matched the line. Not surprisingly, most people got the answer right if they are on their own, but if they were surrounded by a group of people who were giving the wrong answer, often they would give the wrong answer too.

In the study, the test subjects thought that the people around them were being tested too, but those people were actors who’d been coached to give the wrong answer. Typically there were 6 or 7 actors and the test subject would be positioned last or second last, so they would hear the other wrong answers before their turn came.

So when faced with an obvious answer, about one third of the time people picked the group-think response instead. Ultimately only 25% of people did not succumb to the group effect in any of their answers, which means 75% gave at least one “groupified” answer to an obvious question.

Most of the people conforming were aware something was amiss, and admitted afterwards that they knew, but didn’t want to look stupid or out of place, but a few were convinced that the answer they gave was right. For them, apparently, the two different lines were the same length.

 

 

It takes 3 to form a group

Some interesting variations of the tests showed that we need three actors working to get the group effect. With only one or two actors people didn’t need as much to conform. With four or more in the group, there was no increase in conformity. (So Q&A is overdoing it — they don’t need a stacked panel of five — three would do).

But it only takes one to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes

What’s especially interesting to me is that it only took one “partner” who spoke the truth, to break the group effect. This is good news for the brave skeptical commenters who venture to sites and media-outlets where groupthink is at it’s most nakedly noxious. It’s also why the one person that speaks up to defend a victim can deflate the bully.

Naturally there are questions as to whether this effect is so strong in women, other cultures, with older people, or even in different era’s. One researcher tried to replicate it in 1980 with 396 engineering, maths, and chemistry students, but got wildly different results (like 1 out of 396, which seems a tad too perfect). But there are many other studies that support Asch’s original findings that people’s brains work differently when in a group. The herding instinct runs strong.

Imagine how hard it would be for some people to see the truth when surrounded by professors saying something else.

 

H/t to Howard Bloom’s entertaining book Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century.

   See my tweets @JoanneNova and share ideas with Facebook

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July 3rd, 2013 | Category: Science | Print This Post Print This Post | |

That’s a 0.3% consensus, not 97%

We’ve already found enough flaws, but Christopher Monckton analyzes John Cook’s 97% consensus paper and sharpens the scythe. He finds:

  1. It should never have been done, it’s an unscientific method — “consensus”
  2. The “consensus” was defined in three different ways. (Which hypothesis are they testing?) None of the three definitions is specific enough to be falsifiable.
  3. The paper strangely omitted the key results. (Why make 7 classifications, if they were not going to disclose how many papers fell into each category?)
  4. Of nearly 12,000 abstracts analyzed, there were only 64 papers in category 1 (which explicitly endorsed man-made global warming). Of those only 41 (0.3%) actually endorsed the quantitative hypothesis as defined by Cook in the introduction. A third of the 64 papers did not belong.
  5. None of the categories endorsed “catastrophic” warming — a warming severe enough to warrant action — though this was assumed in the introduction, discussion and publicity material.
  6. The consensus (such as there is, and it being irrelevant) appears to be declining.

The nice thing about this commentary is that Monckton provides a summary of the philosophy of science (showing Cook et al are 2,300 years out of date). Monckton has also checked Cook’s own data which was finally provided (several weeks after publication) and compares Cook to Oreskes, Anderegg, and Doran and Zimmerman and explains why they are wrong too.

Previously I’ve also pointed out the 12 reasons the paper fails, including that the number of papers is merely a proxy for funding, not evidence about the climate; most of the papers merely assume man-made warming is real, and some papers are 20 years old and the evidence has changed.

Monckton’s full commentary is here, selected excerpts below. – Jo

———————————————————————————————————

‘Quantifying the consensus on global warming

in the literature’: a comment

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Science and Public Policy Institute
5501 Merchants’ View Square, #209, Haymarket, VA 20169
[email protected]

 Capsule

The latest paper apparently showing 97% endorsement of a consensus that more than half of recent global warming was anthropogenic really shows only 0.3% endorsement of that now-dwindling consensus.

 Abstract

Cook et al. (2013) stated that abstracts of nearly all papers expressing an opinion on climate change endorsed consensus, which, however, traditionally has no scientific role; used three imprecise definitions of consensus interchangeably; analyzed abstracts only; excluded 67% expressing no opinion; omitted some key results; misstated others; and thus concluded that 97.1% endorsed the hypothesis as defined in their introduction, namely that the “scientific consensus that human activity is very likely causing most of the current GW (anthropogenic global warming, or AGW)”. The authors’ own data file categorized 64 abstracts, or only 0.5% of the sample, as endorsing the consensus hypothesis as thus defined. Inspection shows only 41 of the 64, or 0.3% of the entire sample, actually endorsed their hypothesis. Criteria for peer review of papers quantifying scientific consensus are discussed.

Introduction: no role for consensus in science

Though Cook et al. (2013) reviewed abstracts of 11,944 papers on climate change and concluded that 97.1% of those expressing an opinion supported consensus, the philosophy of science allows no role for head-count. Aristotle, in his Sophistical Refutations, (c. 350 B.C.E.), identified the argument from consensus as one of the dozen commonest logical fallacies in human discourse.

Al-Haytham, the astronomer and philosopher of science in 11th-century Iraq who is recognized as the father of the scientific method, wrote that “the seeker after truth” – his phrase for the scientist – does not place his faith in any mere consensus, however venerable. Instead, he checks. “The road to the truth,” said al-Haytham, “is long and hard, but that is the road we must follow.”

In 1860 T.H. Huxley said: “The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, skepticism is the highest of duties: blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”

Albert Einstein, when told that 100 Nazi scientists had published a book rejecting his theory of special relativity, responded that a single paper would have sufficed to refute his hypothesis. His own single paper of 1905 on the electrodynamics of moving objects had demonstrated why Newton’s laws, till then universally accepted as true, incompletely described the motion of celestial objects.

Popper (1934) formalized the scientific method as an iterative algorithm starting with a general problem (GP0), to address which a scientist proposed a falsifiable hypothesis or tentative theory (TT0). Thereupon others would either demonstrate during the error-elimination phase (EE0) that the hypothesis was false, in which event it was rejected, or, more rarely, demonstrate that it was true.

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9 out of 10 based on 82 ratings
July 1st, 2013 | Tags: , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Weekend Unthreaded

I’m looking for a facebook expert to advise me too…

6.6 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
June 30th, 2013 | Tags: | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Australia’s Angry Hot Summer was hot angry hype– satellites show it was average

Lewis and Karoly 2013:  climate change is “likely” to blame for the hottest angry summer.

Did your air-conditioner make Australia the hottest angry summer ever? Could be. If we apply mystery-black-box-techniques to data from a few sparse thermometers averaged over thousands of square kilometers we can find a “record”. If we compare that “record” to  models that are known to be wrong, voila — then the coal fired power stations heated more than just your home, they heated the whole country.

On the other hand, if we use thousands of measurements from satellites that criss cross the nation day and night covering every corner of the land, we didn’t have a hot angry summer, we had a normal one. The Lewis and Karoly study is moot. If we caused a normal summer, is that so bad?

The not-angry-summer is visible with no statistical analysis.

According to UAH satellite measurements summer in early 2013 was not a record. Not even close.

Satellite records only go back to 1979, but to answer the question “was this the hottest ever summer” we only need records back as far as 2010.

The peer reviewed, comprehensive, Lewis and Karoly paper does not contain the words “satellite”,  or “UAH”. Lewis and Karoly apparently do not know about the UAH satellite program yet, otherwise they surely would have emailed John Christy or Roy Spencer (as we did) to ask for the data. We can only hope that they get enough government support, more funding, and better education in future so that they may discover what unpaid volunteers figured out on the Internet for free 3 months ago. Frankly it is shameful that the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science is not connected to the world wide web and has not trained staff to use “google”.

How good are those surface records?

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9.2 out of 10 based on 76 ratings
June 29th, 2013 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

The old new Rudd: tinkering with useless schemes while ignoring the coal reality

Rudd has a chance to dump a dumb policy, but won’t

Australia’s overpriced, unneccessary carbon tax will become even more overpriced next Monday (from $23 to $24.15 per ton). A spokesman tells The Australian that the all-new Labor cabinet will reconsider it all next week and may bring in the trading scheme sooner rather than later. At the moment the Gillard-fixed-carbon-price will shift to a floating price (lately, a sinking price) in two years time in mid 2015. The current EU price is $6 AUD.

The Australian understands Mr Rudd will look at all aspects of the implementation of the $23 a tonne price on carbon as a priority. The reinstated Prime Minister sought to cement his commitment to tackling climate change, declaring he had “long been committed to a carbon price”.

Rudd mistakes token efforts in China for “action”:

He accused the Coalition of inconsistency on the issue and cited action in China as evidence “carbon pricing is now becoming more and more of a global reality”.

The real global reality and action in China is that it is building more coal powered stations than anywhere, and is one of the largest coal burning nations in the world. China (and India too) are not slowing down, and we are an inconsequential blip. We are the largest exporter, but only because all the larger producers of coal use all their coal up for themselves. China digs up and burns  12 times as much coal as we export. Who are we kidding?

The bottom line: any carbon scheme is useless, unpopular, vote-killing attempt to stop storms

Nothing can compete with coal, it looks set to become the primary fuel of the planet — overtaking oil in the next few years (see below). Our economy and lifestyle depend on it. Only 30% of Australian voters want action and are prepared to pay anything at all for it (and they are already voting Labor or Green). Most Australians care more about the economy than the environment. When asked about the environment, they care more about litter than air.  The carbon tax is a job-killing pointless scheme which won’t reduce global emissions by anything large enough to measure, and 1,100 scientific papers show it can’t change the weather, even if it did. If China is adopting a carbon price, it’s only because it will suck even more money out of the West and into the East. They’re not reducing emissions, and they’re not stupid.

How small is Australian coal?

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9.5 out of 10 based on 73 ratings
June 28th, 2013 | Tags: , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Flat Earthers believe in climate change

Flat circle, wall of ice around the edge. Hmm

Let it be known, the next time you are called a “Flat Earther” you can point out that the Flat Earth society (or at least their President) is on the same side as Al Gore and James Hansen. It’s a piece of useless trivia that’s good for useless conversations.

I did not believe there was such a group so I scoped out their site expecting it to be a joke. But if it is a satire, it’s a very detailed one, they have maps and t-shirts, and explanations, and so far I haven’t found the joke. Salon.com decided it was real:

Actually, even the Flat Earth Society believes in climate change

Yes, such a group exists. It thinks the world is flat — but also getting warmer

In his big speech on climate change today, President Obama mocked Republicans who deny the existence of man-made global warming by derisively referring to them as members of “the Flat Earth Society.”

As it turns out, there is a real Flat Earth Society and its president thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real. In an email to Salon, president Daniel Shenton said that while he “can’t speak for the Society as a whole regarding climate change,” he personally thinks the evidence suggests fossil fuel usage is contributing to global warming.

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9.3 out of 10 based on 56 ratings
June 27th, 2013 | Tags: | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Watch the spectacle that is Australian Politics: Ballot tonight. Rudd Wins PM

UPDATE: Rudd wins 57:45.

Who will lead the nation? A diabolical choice. Gillard has lost all goodwill and credibility. If she’ll lie once…  there is nothing she can say that will be believed. Polls are at record lows for the Labor Party here, but the dilemma is that the most popular Labor contender (at least in the polls) is also the former PM Kevin Rudd, despised by many in his own party, and whose polls were so low three years ago they turfed him out.  He still carries the baggage of all the worst policy calls — the boats, the “Climate” action, the NBN, the debt. The Unions that control Labor don’t want Rudd, who threatens their power, but are facing a wipe out either way. Will Rudd stand? (UPDATE: Heywood in comments says Rudd has agreed to contend). Will some other candidate pick up this poisoned chalice? Despite all this, the public perversely want Julia to go the election. Payback time?

Voting at 7pm EST tonight. See Bolt. (A bit over an hour to go).

“Gillard calls a leadership ballot for 7pm tonight. Says she will stand. Says no one has told her they will stand against her. “

Oakshott and Windsor both resign, doing the only thing they can after betraying their largely conservative voters: flee from their constituents retribution. Both these men have likely cost the nation billions of dollars with their self-serving decisions to seek political “stability”.

See this post for updates as they come in… this is a constitutional first in Australian history. Rudd still needs the votes on the floor of the House. The election date is up in the air. The Deputy (Albanese). The Treasurer?

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June 26th, 2013 | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

JCU caves in to badgering and groupthink — blackballs “politically incorrect” Bob Carter

So much for “higher” education. James Cook University (JCU) has blackballed Professor Bob Carter, not because of any flaw in his scientific reasoning, but because he speaks outside the permitted doctrine. His views on climate science do not fit with the dominant meme (or the grant applications). And then there were pesky complaints and emails from disgruntled fans of the prophets-of-doom. (Quite a drain on the office.)

They took his office a while back, then they took the title. Carter was still supervising a student, and another professor hired him for an hour a week with his own budget. It meant Carter could continue supervising and keep his library access. But that wouldn’t do. Professor Jeffrey Loughran blocked that as well. The library pass and the email was shut off on June 21. It takes an active kind of malice to be this petty.

Bob Carter

In years to come when everyone admits that the Great Global Warming Scare was hyped, JCU could have been seen as one of the rare beacons of academic honour and principle. Instead, apparently, it’s as spineless as any other bureucratic collective. The irony for JCU, is that Bob Carter has been working there for 31 years, and they only had to put up with him for a little bit longer in order to claim their glory (albeit post hoc) and then pretend that really they had supported him all along. The dominant meme is collapsing, thousands of respected scientists are speaking out and skeptic blogs are storming the awards. The evidence has turned, the carbon market has sunk to junk status, and assertive daring articles are appearing in mainstream media in places they would never have been seen a few years ago, like the New York Times, and the Economist. The climate scientists themselves are admitting they don’t know why the world isn’t warming. But the man who was right about that all along is persona non-grata.

Professor Bob Carter has been a key figure in the Global Warming debate, doing exactly what good professors ought to do, challenging paradigms, speaking internationally, writing books, newspaper articles, and being invited to give special briefings with Ministers in Parliament. He’d started work at JCU in 1981 and served as Head of the Geology Department until 1998. [UPDATE: to clarify, sometime after that he retired]. Since then he’s been an honorary Adjunct Professor. All JCU had to do was to approve an extension of this arrangement, giving him library and email access, at little cost to them, and he could have continued to help students and staff, provide a foil, a counterpoint, and keep alive the spirit of true scientific enquiry. (Not to mention his continued speaking, books, and influence on the National debate).

Chris Cocklin

Instead every person in the chain of command tacitly, or in at least one case, actively endorsed the blackballing. Each one failed to stand for free speech and rigorous debate. In the end, JCU didn’t even make any effort to disguise the motive. The only reasons given were that the staff of the School of Earth and Environmental Studies had discussed the issue (without any consultation with Carter) and decided that his views on climate change did not fit well within the School’s own teaching and research activities. Apparently it took up too much time to defend Carter against outside complaints about his public writings and lectures on climate change. (Busy executives don’t have time to say “Why don’t you ask Carter yourself?” or “We value vigorous debate here.” Presumably they are too busy practising their lines and learning the litany? )

Each of these eminent professors, no doubt, is certain that they are independent minded, tolerant of other views, and have exacting ethical standards. I gather any one of them could have risen above the lap-dog obedience to the dogma of the day. None did.

Their contact details.

As well as being a former IPCC lead author, Professor Cocklin currently holds ARC Discovery grants for two projects, one of which is ‘Sustainable Farming in Australia’.

Professor Cocklin is presently a member of the Advisory Board of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), the International Scientific Advisory Committee, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the Expert Advisory Panel, Northern Australia Ministerial Forum, and the Scientific Steering Committee of the Tropical Ecosystems Hub of the National Environmental Research Program.

Prof Cocklin might not welcome the discovery that SUVs don’t have much influence on cyclones. You think?

But since Bob Carter and John Spooner are about to release a new book (“Taxing Air”, more on that soon), now was as good a time as any for JCU to lift Carter to that rare seat in the Hall of the Blackballed. Bob Carter has really made it now. But JCU has surely lost far more than they have gained.

Bob Carter wins the cartoon war

Cartoon by  John Spooner: The Age Gallery

UPDATE: To hear Stewart Franks talk about this listen to Andrew Bolt on the radio on 2GB at 43 minutes.

9.4 out of 10 based on 158 ratings
June 26th, 2013 | Tags: | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Australia’s Big Science Vision – an eco-green form of sustainable mediocrity.

Where is the vision?

The Australian Government have reissued their research priorities for science. Sadly it’s infected with the eco-virus. There are seven “sustainables”,  and ten aspects of “change”. When it comes to maximizing our competitive advantage, the first point is the development of “reliable, low cost, low emission energy.” Say no more. After applying a wheel-clamp to the economy, we’re paying scientists to figure out how to drive cars with wheel-clamps on.

The Australian Academy of Science “welcomes the release” which tell us exactly how useful they are. They think this is a “long-term, strategic vision for Australia”. I think this is an eco-pop wish-list of bland mediocrity on a dead-end road. It’s time for real scientists to ditch the current associations, which have forgotten what science is, and start some new ones.

What should Australian public funded scientists be discovering?

I envisage priority number one as stopping the ravages of disease and misfortune, conquering cancer, and the common cold, or at the very least, reducing asthma and diabetes. As a bonus we’d sell the products for trillions to a clamouring world, to make us rich beyond our wildest dreams, the envy of the world, and a top destination for productive people and very wealthy tourists seeking the hearts and livers they used to have.

The Australian government has other ideas. Their top priority for Australian scientists, is, wait for it…. to “help Australians live in a changing environment” — something Australians have been doing for nigh on 40,000 years. (And we wonder why school children think science is irrelevant?) The Big Vision here is to try to help people and plants cope with a climate that is already about as good as it gets — a warm patch amongst bone-crunching ice-ages. Right now there are no super volcanoes, the big asteroids have missed, the black plague is not common, and hardly anyone is starving in Australia. It doesn’t get much better than this.

New  Strategic Research Priorities (PDF)

(The new Research Priorities my quick web page copy with the media release)

The environment is number one

The list:

  • Living in a changing environment
  • Promoting population health and wellbeing
  • Managing our food and water assets
  • Securing Australia’s place in a changing world
  • Lifting productivity and economic growth.

Australia is so overrun by the global-warming religion that our number one priority is the environment, and the first goal is ecological sameness: “Research will identify the level of environmental change human and natural systems can tolerate before fundamental ecological processes are irreversibly changed”.

Ominously the word “behaviour” crops up in all three of the top environmental themes. Apparently, one of our most pressing aims is to “Enable societal transformation to enhance sustainability and wellbeing”. So who voted to be transformed? And “Sustainability” has a double meaning. On the one hand, it’s a motherhood statement that hardly anyone disagrees with. I mean really, who would tick the box “I want to ruin the country for the grandkids”? But the dark side of “sustainability” comes with baggage. It’s code for set of political ideas. Who defines what level is sustainable, or what method is the best way to get there? It sounds like a call for the Psychs to apply for grants to help recalcitrant voters see the light. The minister would no doubt deny this, and hide behind the benign motherhood definition. Actual ARC funding begs to differ: on some science topics, if you aren’t a green voter, you are a… denier.

Health research?

There is no big-sky medical advance aim here, no attempt to catch the medical revolution sweeping across the world: the stem cells, the telomeres, the gene therapy. This is small time, tin-tack, sociology medicine. The government’s Big Idea, is to wonder how to make our medical system “sustainable” (that word again). How about we try inventing and discovering medical things here instead of trying to buy them later from the nations who are doing the real research now? The PBS would be affordable, wouldn’t it, if Australians owned the patents?

And I wonder why we are boosting “population” health and not so much, individual health. Resilient communities is all very well, but what about healthy people? It may seem picky, but the Nanny State mindset is trying to treat groups and communities. That’s not the government’s job, it’s the job of the people in those groups and communities.

What happened to “Breakthrough science”?

In the old version there was a category called “breakthrough science” and “frontier technologies” and astronomer, Roberto Soria, laments that there is no room in the new version for most of what Astronomy does:

“…the old item 3.1 (“Breakthrough science”) has now disappeared, and the new topic is much more focused on applied research. Pretty much every astronomy ARC application ticked the old box 3.1 (breakthrough science to understand some fundamental physical processes in nature, etc ) as well as 3.5 (with this project we will attract and train new students in science and maths, and they will then be able to work as engineers for the new economy etc). I know it was a bit of a stretch, but that was all we could do, and review panels understood that. Now even the fig leaf of “breakthrough science” seems to be gone, so I don’t know where quantum physics, astronomy and other pure research proposals are supposed to fit in. It’s clear from the new priorities that in this government’s mind, the role of a good scientist should be to change society’s behaviour (or shall we say, to provide academic justification to those political interests who want to change society’s behaviour), rather than old-fashioned pursuits such as observing and understanding how the forces of nature work.” — Dr Roberto Soria

 

New  Strategic Research Priorities (PDF)  |  Australian Research Priorities (my quick web copy)  | (The former priorities)

Has anyone seen the Coalition science plan?

9.3 out of 10 based on 70 ratings
June 25th, 2013 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Climate scientists move to atom-bomb number system, give up on exponentials

POSTED in the Satirical Tomes:

News that could have been, but wasn’t.

Climate modelers announced today that in future they would report everything in Hiroshima-atom-bomb-equivalents, or Habe. The President of Climate-Scientists-Anonymous said the old system of joules was boring, and no one understood what ten-to-the-twenty-two meant anyhow. “We leave that stuff to the computers” he said.

“The planet has been building up temperatures at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second, and it’s all our fault, say climate scientists.”

— Neda Vanovac, Climate change like atom bomb (interviewing John Cook )

…

Skeptics said they preferred exponentials, but could debunk alarmists with any units. Science Blogger Jo Nova said if Neda Vanovac had called “I would have told her that while John Cook’s figure sounded like a marvelous marketing gimmick, scientifically it was meaningless. For starters, the Sun blasts 1,950 Hiroshima’s worth of energy over the Earth every second (h.t to Wellerstein). So we got four more? Did Cook forget to mention that, or was he just trying to scare people?”

Jo explains that Cook’s units are a parody of science: “The atomic-bomb delivered all the energy in one spot, but the sun spreads it out. Science becomes mindless if you mash up things like volume and area. A million square miles is not like two square feet. McDonalds sells a Hiroshima Bomb worth of Big-Macs every 8.6 days. It’s like a bomb in the same sense that black is like white, 1 is like 2, being alive is like being dead. Things can be equated-to-inanity. Cook has achieved that.”

“Plus there has been no significant warming in the last fifteen years, so technically the rate was more likely to be zero bombs a second (0 Habe), not four. And in any case, the models predicted far more than four-bombs-a-second (4 Habe) —  realistically, they missed by as many bombs as they scored.”

Apologies this graph remains in the old units of degrees Celcius.* | Graph: David Evans.

How many bombs do the models miss by?

If pressed to come up with an exact number, Jo Nova says “The rate the Earth warms at is always changing and there are 22 major models and a hundred variations. Pick a number. There are a lot of ‘right’ answers to this question.”

“In 2010, Douglass and Knox calculated that models overestimated reality by 7000 quintillion joules annually.

“Five years of planetary heating amounts to a massive amount of energy. That’s 2,000 days of the sun bearing down on an atmosphere with growing levels of CO2. According to the IPCC favored models, the extra heat stored should be 0.7 x 1022 Joules per year (or 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules per annum or 7,000 quintillion joules).”

That’s 2.2 x 1014 boring Joules, every second. One Habe is (supposedly) 6.3 x 1013 so the models miss by 3.5 bombs a second. Judging by the graph, this is an underestimate. Cook doesn’t mention how he calculated “4” — what years were used, what data-set, or the Habe:Joules conversion he assumed. Frankly the number is so mindless, the process so useless, I can’t be bothered asking. We already know the models are wrong. Who care’s how wrong?”

Skeptical commenter Jaymez claims much of what Cook talks about is widely known to be wrong on internet science sites. “Neda, really should try a search engine sometime.” he said. “We know that there have always been floods and droughts, and the trends have not changed. Storm surges recorded for 5000 years show there have been much bigger storms than any we have seen. Global cyclone activity is low and about the same as it was 30 years ago. Australia had 50 degree days repeatedly in the 1800s and right across the country.”

Where are those extreme storms?

Alex Wellerstein had satirically documented the unit shift as well, and provides a calculator. Credit to him for these calculations:

  • The Sun deposits 61.34 billion Hiroshimas worth of energy onto the Earth every year — that’s 168 million Hiroshimas a day, 7 million Hiroshimas an hour, 117 thousand Hiroshimas a minute!
  • The USA uses about 24 thousand Hiroshima-equivalents worth of electricity per year!
  • The Haitian Earthquake of 2010 was equivalent to around 32 Hiroshimas!
  • Each year, McDonald’s sells around 26 Hiroshima-equivalents worth of Big Macs in the United States alone, 42 Hiroshima-equivalents worldwide (1 H-e = 21.4 million Big Macs)!
  • My electric bill for last month was for 4.42 micro-Hiroshima-equivalents! (Which is 126.2 nano-Hiroshima-equivalents less than this month last year!)

* (Click on the graph to see the post related to it).

Image: Adapted from Wikimedia  Lykaestria

Edited: H-bomb became “:atom-bomb”. Thanks Ace.

8.7 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
June 24th, 2013 | Tags: , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

The Ben Factor. One man drives a market. The world pretends it is “free”.

How much is that company worth? You can look at its PE, debt, market spread, sovereign risk, and discounted cash flow, but in the end, it’s the Ben Factor (BF) which dominates all companies, metal prices, and sovereign currencies in the West.

The Ben hath spoken, and said that in future, if the economy is looking better, he might slow the printing of $85 billion US dollars a month, some indefinite non-specified day. All that was … obvious. But, world-wide investors and traders hang off the words, trying to second-guess what the BF banality implies. No one will say it, but everyone knows that it the rate of the flow of easy cash so much as slows, all hell will break loose. Balanced on this thin veneer of pretense, stocks, metals and whole national currencies change direction within minutes.

The Ben has spoken.

What hath changed since yesterday? Not much. But global paroxysm ensues.

Bernanke taper talk sends markets into a tailspin

Closing Bell: S&P 500 posts biggest fall since November 2011 on Fed’s stimulus plan

EMERGING MARKETS-Latin American stocks tumble to four-year low

China, Fed frenzy send Aust stocks tumbling 2%

Oil posts biggest drop in seven months

Stocks tumble around the globe

Respected commentators in the mainstream media report these events with straight faces, as if it is normal that economic activity in a free market depends on the King-maker-called-Ben. A bureaucrat. Millions of investors have effectively stopped assessing company profits, and they place bets instead on money supply. Will The Ben keep printing money at the same rate? Will it get harder to get loans? Will consumers stop buying things they don’t really need? Will consumers just stop? Can the BF manage an exponential rise with tweaks and announcements, opening the flow of the IV drip while telling the patient he is using less medication? How long will the placebo effect keep working?

The Dow, the S&P500, the ASX, TSX, FTSE have all become giant roulette wheels, but people stopped betting on the roll of the dice, and bet instead on whether the dice have six sides and six numbers. They bet on what the croupier will do next. How is his mood? Will he keep using the dice with three sixes, or switch back to the one with two? Will he say he’s using the slower dice, but secretly roll a more loaded one? Who checks the dice?

In an economy where supply and demand are known to be the key drivers of every price, no one utters the phrase that must not be spoken: “money supply”. No one discusses monetary aggregates. The US Fed tells us they are so irrelevant that they even stopped publishing the large aggregate known as “M3” a few years ago. No one in the mainstream complained.

In the West we have a paper-based financial economy and trust banks and government, more or less. The Western media hail the bureaucrats at central banks who set interest rates as heroes. (Central planners in the Soviet Union were also hailed as heroes by their press — but how could that possibly be relevant, eh?)

The big unspoken charade continues.

PS: The Ben apparently is on the way out. Who will be the next Ben? You can vote > “Other” > “Ron Paul” like I did. Go on. Poke them.

9 out of 10 based on 72 ratings
June 21st, 2013 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Economics | Print This Post Print This Post | |

More signposts on the road to the post-Climate-scare world

…

Not so long back, Deutsche Bank were writing 50 page reports on the science of climate change. They paid for giant 70 foot high towers of doom counting carbon emissions near Madison Square Gardens. They were so concerned about the planet they had a division called Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors (DBCCA). They weren’t driven by money, of course, only by the science.

“…we at Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors (DBCCA) have always said that the science is one essential foundation of the whole climate change investment thesis.”

But the science must have changed for DB because now they don’t even turn up:

Banks, investors desert key carbon market event

BARCELONA, June 1  – Governments and voluntary offset sellers took centre stage at a major carbon market conference in Barcelona this week after banks and investors – previously amongst the biggest exhibitors at the annual event – skipped it, in part due to rock-bottom CO2 prices.

The annual Carbon Expo trade fair is seen by many as a barometer for investment and general sentiment in the global carbon markets, many of which are plagued with regulatory uncertainty and withering demand.

Big financial players that at one time had a large profile in the market, such as Deutsche Bank and Barclays, were once again absent after missing the event last year…

— (01 Jun 2013, Reuters Point Carbon, paywalled)

 

The CDM market is so sick (94% down), the UN says it needs $15bn to fix it

CDM stands for Clean Development Mechanism, another pointless bureaucratic label that tells you nothing. Essentially it lets Western nations assuage their guilt by sending money to China to pay for dirty factories to be shut down. People in China promise that they wouldn’t have done it without the funding. People in the West nod solemnly and write them another cheque. No free market in the world operates this way and for obvious reasons.

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8.9 out of 10 based on 62 ratings
June 21st, 2013 | Tags: , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Even Big-Oil is begging for Big-Green subsidies

Royal Dutch Shell is concerned we won’t sequester away enough of that pollutant, carbon dioxide.

Carbon capture and storage [CCS], a way of cutting emissions from industry by burying them underground, needs more state support for the European Union to meet clean-energy goals, a Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) adviser said.

“We’ve got to be clear that the EU’s climate goals in the long run cannot be met without clear policy intervention and that CCS is vital for the delivery of that,” Graeme Sweeney, who advises Shell on carbon-dioxide strategy, said by telephone. — Bloomberg

If Royal Dutch Shell had so much as suggested that the warming threat might be exaggerated, a team of activists from Greenpeace, WWF and the IPCC would issue press releases overnight declaring “Vested Interests Promote Doubt and Denial”. Other lobbyists like, say, The Royal Society, would write a letter to Shell blasting it for “disinformation“.

But when Shell asks for more government handouts to fund its ventures in Carbon Capture and Storage, the vested interest is obvious, but the apoplexy and conspiracist accusations are nowhere to be seen. Shell, of course, sells oil, but it also sells CCS. And things haven’t been going well for Shell’s carbon storage projects. The EU carbon price has crashed, taking all the fun (and profits) out of carbon capture.

“We’ve made limited progress,” Sweeney said. “It’s time for us all to recognize that we really need a reset if we’re going to make all of this work.”

The first phase of a European Commission program to finance as many as 12 demonstration plants failed to fund a single one as member states were unable to supply the required matching funds by the deadline. Nine projects applied for funding under a second round that closes July 3, the commission’s website shows.

Sweeney sees a possible three to five demonstration projects being built in the EU, putting it on course to start commercial CCS plants in the late 2020s or early 2030s. He’s also chairman of the European Technology Platform for Zero-Emission Fossil-Fuel Power Plants, or ZEP.”    — Bloomberg

Big Oil has been demonized as the shady-hand influencing governments to get policies that give them profits. But the profits Big-Oil hunts are the green-gravy-train type, not the ones dependent on the oil price (which they will get in any case, because demand for oil is inelastic). In the end, Big Government is bigger than Big Oil, and it bought off most the sector off long ago by offering big-subsidies.

To be fair on Shell, they are just doing what any good corporate does — following the money. The profits that are at risk on the Shell annual return are not the ones from oil, but the ones from carbon capture. The numbers men at Shell know that no matter what anyone says about renewables, they are no threat at all to their oil sales (who wants a solar car?). But if governments stop buying the carbon-capture meme, there goes the one and only customer for the CCS.

Long ago, Exxon’s crime was to suggest there were “gaps in the science”. It was vilified, even though it had been funding climate change research for 25 years, including the work of IPCC authors at major universities.  Ponder that The Royal Society is so under the spell of the global warming doctrine that it opposed a corporate which funded scientific research. But when corporations trumpet the profoundly anti-science notion of “consensus” and exploit that to gain profits from taxpayers, that’s OK. There are no scientific observations that suggest the public or the planet would benefit from carbon capture. We know climate models don’t work. Who does the Royal Society serve? Not science, and not citizens.

As Andrew Bolt would say, it’s not about the principle, it’s about the side.

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And for Anthony A., can I just cryptically say, thank you! I owe you a letter and it’s on the way. I’m thinking of you. :- )

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June 19th, 2013 | Tags: , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |
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