The fourth name on the new Lewandowsky paper is Mike Hubble-Marriott, from “Climate Realities Research, Melbourne”. What isn’t listed on the paper, is that Mike’s “climate research” is published under the anonymous moniker of Mike, on a site called WatchingTheDeniers A site incidentally, which is linked in the paper. Perhaps they ought to have disclosed that?
Climate Realities Research has no website, it doesn’t appear to be a registered business, and Googling doesn’t shed any light on it. Just how serious is his research?
“Mike” gave it away on The Conversation blog a long time ago, sort of, saying “my real name which is Michael Marriott – thus, any charges of anonymity can be dealt with.” Hubble-Marriott, or Marriott, what’s the difference? Hmm. (See Watching the Deniers) In his other life, he worked for a law firm as an information services manager. Perhaps he still does? But now apparently he’s a climate researcher. OK.
I’m not fussy about qualifications, there are plenty of Profs who can’t think. But Lewandowsky and Hubble-Marriott think qualifications are all that matter. Hypocrisy anyone?
Mike commented on this blog in March 2010 as “Mike” on this thread, but in the end failed the logic and accurate English bar, and his right to comment was retracted indefinitely until he could improve. He couldn’t curb his reflexive use of the word “denier”, nor could he justify it. His whole blog is named after it. Watching the deniers. It’s not possible to have a polite open-minded science discussion with someone who thinks they are talking to a “denier”. After all, a denier has a defective brain, they can’t think, can’t reason, and it doesn’t matter what a denier says. Lewandowsky, Cook and Hubble-Marriott, know they are right. It’s unscientific.
I’d like to thank Mike for posting the comment (or link) that was the all time funniest for me, ever. In 2010, Mike turned up on my blog, asked questions, and got answers. He then dismissed or ignored the papers and the reasons we offered, and went back onto his site to say he’d studied us, “done an experiment” (the methods and design appear to be lacking a tad), and that the Dunning Kruger (DK) effect explained our over-confidence.
To appreciate the humour, you need to know that the DK effect is where people who don’t know much confidently overestimate their ability. His marvellous insight and experiment were written with a glorious honesty. Right at the start Mike explains how little he knows, and thus spends his entire post proving he himself is the ultimate case study in Dunning-Krugar. Projection, anyone? I swear, I was surprised it was not labelled “satire” at the bottom.
Here’s Mike Hubble-Marriott, co-author of Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook, talking about his scientific ability in 2010:
I have a confession to make: I am not qualified to discuss the intricate, technical details of climate science.
It’s beyond my capability.
I can grasp the essentials, and even make sense of (some) the actual peer reviewed research that I read. However I am very conscious that I have large gaps in my knowledge, and that crucially I am not qualified to critique the work of science.
In order to have a real understanding I’d need to pursue a Bachelor of Science and post-graduate degrees to be able to speak authoritatively on climate science.
Selected notes from his research:
My own experiment: Jo Nova’s blog
I entered these boards to see how readily the denier community centered around this board potentially exhibited the Dunning-Kruger effect.
…
These people are not stupid, they’re curious
The first poster accepts the papers are talking about CO2 concentrations and temperature rises: they simply reject the papers conclusions. The second poster does not think contain any evidence, and easily dismisses them.
Do I regard these individuals as “stupid”, “imcompetant” or “completely unskilled”? No, not at all! Actually, I did not expect them to be any of those thingsl. The heart of the matter is this: too many people think they are qualified in areas they are not.
I came away with the conclusion that many members of this community are articulate, engaged with the debate and intellectually curious.However, like me they lack a full understanding of the science.
Conclusions
At heart many “deniers” claim to be curious individuals. I think there is some truth to that.
Helping them understand just how fiendishly complicated the science that supports climate change actually is may engender more respect for the work scientist do. I also think those in the denier community might enjoy the oppurtunity [sic].
Perhaps we should be less concerned with bombarding the deniers with the results of research, but engaging them with how the science works. I actually think many of them would be fascinated.
Otherwise many of these individuals are left to the mercy of the peddlers of conspiracy theories and pseudo-science.
As Dunning-Kruger suggests:
…If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill
Perhaps scientists should be reaching out to the denier community and giving them an intimate insight into the scientific method and how they arrive at their conclusions.
Let’s give the man a point for honesty, and a smile for giving it his best. But enough is enough. WatchingTheDeniers is “like Deltoid” but without the science, which is really saying something. One of his main points of “research” is the trashy ad hom. He was one of the the ringleaders of the compulsive namecallers I wrote about. He, bless him, thinks it helps the planet to clutter the climate science debate with discussions about conspiracy theorists, and anti-Semitic deniers, as if they could affect the climate, or have anything to do with atmospheric evidence.
The name-calling attacks are so bad they would probably qualify as naked defamation. He and others on the web strung them by tenuous inference from the vapor. One technique used on WatchingtheDeniers goes like this: take a quote out of context, then mix it with quotes made by other people, then speculate about the connection, saying this “is similar too” that. If someone uses a two-word phrase which some anti-Semites also use, that is “evidence” the first user is also an anti-Semite. Read between the lines! It’s guilt by association of the most vacuous kind.
I expect he thinks that what he does is research rather than just advanced name-calling. Will Lewandowsky be helping his “research” out with any of the $2 million in taxpayer funds he has received? (See here and here for grant details.) I suppose, for even asking that, it will be more fodder for the “conspiracy ideation” machine. But that kind of science is ideatic, if you know what I mean… 😉
As for Recursive fury, (the paper of the moment) Mike’s past research and qualifications are irrelevant of course. The paper stands or falls on its own reasoning and I’ll have more to say about that very soon.
——–
Obviously Mike is welcome to discuss and defend his views on this thread, though moderation may be slow today.
You could almost be forgiven for wondering if the Bureau of Meteorology is a science unit or a PR agency. They seem professionally adept at getting headlines, but not so hot at predicting the weather.
On Jan 7th the BOM models forecast 50 spanking hot degrees across hundreds of square kilometers in central Australia. But it was a whole week ahead, the prediction itself cooled with a day or two, and in the area under the “purple searing spot” the result on Jan 14th ended up being around 40C instead. That’s fine in itself — predictions are difficult. What’s not fine is the PR storm that ensued, which is still being used, as if somehow the very fact that our faulty climate models predicted a record temperature (but failed) is evidence of man-made global warming. How many thousands of people all around the world now think that Australia had a 50C plus day this January? Did anywhere hit the fifty mark? No report of one so far. Watch the loop of Australia’s January temperatures here. The highest brown bar on that graph is 45 – 48C, and those hot spots are a thousand kilometers from the purple patch.
That said, it was awfully hot for a couple of weeks. Birdsville got to 49C on Jan 13th. Moomba 49.6C on the 12th. But even these temperatures are not “a new climate”. How many people around the world realize that 50C plus days have occurred many times before across Australia? Even if it had got to 51C, there are many approximate equivalents in the last 180 years. It’s like trying to rewrite history. The BOM were probably 100 years too late in adding colors to the scale. They should have been there all along.
The wild PR success of the “new colours” meme, meant that newspapers all over the world carried yet another free but disguised advert promoting bad government policies, poor science, and fraud-prone and unnecessary marketing schemes. Did the BOM push this angle, or was it the media?
So the modelers get it wrong, yet score a PR success anyway. What pain and embarrassment ensued when people realized the fuss was overdone? (Why put out predictions with so much map detail, if the details are so unreliable?)
The prediction (left) versus reality (right). The scale on the prediction graph goes up to 54C, but the scale on the reality stops at 48C. (For scale Australia is 4,000 km across.)
Overseas, the story was picked up by all and sundry like the Telegraph UK , New York Times, Scientific American, Google hosted news,News Yahoo , CBS news, Business Insider and people were writing letters in foreign newspapers. Reuters made it sound like a living hell,“Australia’s record-breaking heatwave has sent temperatures soaring, melting road tar and setting off hundreds of wildfires – as well as searing new colors onto weather maps.” It was all caused by climate change and was “catastrophic” for Rolling Stone. The Guardian got so excited they incorrectly said it was unprecedented and read the colors wrongly as well, saying the forecast was for “over 52” when the forecast was for 50C. Atlantic Wire made a similar mistake: “See that deep purple in the middle of this acne-red weather report from Down Under? That right there represents 129.2° F or 54 °C — it’s a brand-new shade that the Australian bureau of meteorology was forced to add to its heat index because their country is, you know, kind of on fire. ”
Wired at least had a different take: “Australian Heat Wave Threatens Gadgets…” (This heat must be really serious).
The Economist got so excited they thought this heat wave would convert sceptics saying, “Some climate experts are convinced the 2013 heatwave will prove a turning-point in how Australians respond to warnings about human-induced climate change. In a country that relies on fossil fuels for much of its well-being (coal is the second-biggest export and produces about four-fifths of electricity), climate-change sceptics have often swayed political debate.”
(Let’s just say those unnamed climate experts predicting that a short heatwave will convert skeptics are probably the same ones predicting catastrophic warming, right? ‘Nuff said.)
(Thanks to ianl8888 for bringing this map from Tallbloke’s site to my attention)
This is a map of projected coal fired power plants that have been approved for construction. The map tells us a lot about the Kyoto Protocol, and more specifically, just how much clout does the UN really have.
Some parts of the world are increasing their coal fired electricity faster than others (Click to enlarge).
Kyoto was adopted in 1997, and so far, 195 Member Countries have signed up to it with that first signature. All but a couple of countries then added that all important second signature ratifying it, meaning that they were bound by what Kyoto asked for, a reduction of CO2 emissions to a level 5% lower than what they were in 1990. In 2007, Rudd added that second signature on behalf of Australia, leaving the U.S. as the only country not to ratify the Protocol. Some countries have said that they will not ratify any rehash of Kyoto, which expired at the end of last year. Only 24 countries are expected to ‘carry the weight’ and do a number of things in regard to the Protocol, and most importantly, their main task is to pay all the costs of those other 150+ Countries, considered by the UN to be still developing.
So then, now look at the map again. It shows 63 countries, all of them constructing NEW coal fired power plants, and every one of those countries signed up their original signature to Kyoto. So, they obviously took a lot of notice of what the intent of the Protocol was all about, lowering emissions.
Has the UN come down on them like a ton of bricks?
If Earth warms by 2 degrees The Great Barrier Reef is a goner, or maybe not. Tropical reefs are generally about 28C but even a one degree rise above normal temperatures can bleach corals.
This latest paper by Hume et al, showed that some corals survive in the hottest reefs on Earth which are in the Arabian/Persian Gulf and are a whopping 36 degrees C. In order to survive, corals do deals with symbiotic algae, but these are very sensitive to changes in temperature (or so we thought):
Reefs are made up of many species of coral, each of which have a mutually beneficial, or “symbiotic”, relationship with algae living in their tissue. These algae supply vital nutrition to the host but are sensitive to environmental changes including increases in seawater temperature.
Even a temperature rise of just one degree Celsius can harm the symbiotic algae, which in turn can increase mortality in corals. The associated loss of symbiotic algae is known as “coral bleaching” because the white skeletons of the corals become visible through the tissue depleted from the algal pigments.
Obviously those Gulf coral survive those wildly high temperatures with freak heat-loving-symbiotic-algae that can’t survive in normal oceans right? No. No. No. It was a plumb ordinary type, not even well known for living in warm areas. There goes that theory…
…the scientists were surprised to discover that the algae in Gulf corals belong to a group not known for its thermal tolerance.
“We see that the algae are indeed special but in a way that we did not expect,” said Dr Wiedenmann. “The algae that we found in most of the corals in Abu Dhabi reefs were previously described as a ‘generalist strain’ that is usually not found in corals exposed to high levels of heat stress.”
“The system seems to be more complex than it is commonly thought …”
A few things to learn still about coral reefs then?
In the last week, Australia was flooded or burned, Gillard called an election 9 months ahead, two of her highest ranking party members said they would quit, Gillard cut down a long serving senator to pop in her “captains pick” candidate, and one of her former party members was arrested with 150 charges to be laid. Labor is back to the polling territory it spent most of last year at — a 32% primary vote and the Greens at 9%. But these polls are swinging wildly.
I can’t think why Gillard likes this uncertainty, and doesn’t call an election immediately…
The poll puts Labor’s primary support at 32 per cent – a wipeout of the six-point gain recorded between December and January – as the Coalition’s support rose four percentage points to 48 per cent in the past three weeks.
With the Greens steady on 9 per cent and “others” going from 9 per cent to 11 per cent since the poll in January, the two-party-preferred figure has the Coalition back with a huge election-winning lead of 56 per cent to 44 per cent.
Ms Gillard’s support as preferred prime minister fell four percentage points from 45 per cent to 41 per cent, while Mr Abbott’s support rose six points from 33 per cent to 39 per cent.
As a reward for their diligent, astute judgement, and vigilant service to Australia it’s noteworthy that according to The Australian,“Senator Evans will retire on a pension of $259,000 a year, with Ms Roxon on $235,000.”
Clouds over Amazon forest (Rio Negro). Image NASA Earth Observatory.
What if winds were mainly driven by changes in water vapor, and those changes occurred commonly in air over forests? Forests would be the pumps that draw in moist air from over the oceans. Rather than assuming that forests grow where the rain falls, it would be more a case of rain falling where forests grow. When water vapor condenses it reduces the air pressure, which pulls in more dense air from over the ocean.
A new paper is causing a major stir. The paper is so controversial that many reviewers and editors said it should not be published. After two years of deliberations, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics decided it was too important not to discuss.
The physics is apparently quite convincing, the question is not whether it happens, but how strong the effect is. Climate models assume it is a small or non-existent factor. Graham Lloyd has done a good job describing both the paper and the reaction to it in The Australian.
Sheil says the key finding is that atmospheric pressure changes from moisture condensation are orders of magnitude greater than previously recognised. The paper concludes “condensation and evaporation merit attention as major, if previously overlooked, factors in driving atmospheric dynamics”.
“Climate scientists generally believe that they already understand the main principles determining how the world’s climate works,” says Sheil. “However, if our hypothesis is true then the way winds are driven and the way rain falls has been misunderstood. What our theory suggests is that forests are the heart of the earth, driving atmospheric pressure, pumping wind and moving rain.”
Judith Curry has been following this idea for some time.
Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology, an author of the standard textbook Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans, is encouraging. “The process they describe is physically correct,” she said. “The main question is its relative magnitude compared with other processes.” She thinks it could explain why climate models do not get monsoons and hurricanes right.
If this is a strong driver, it means Australia is not covered in arid land because rainfall is low. If the trees were planted the rain would fall:
“I would have said Australia is a desert because of the global climate cycles, but if you do the calculations, a forest across the surface of Australia would produce forces strong enough to water it and you wouldn’t need to irrigate.” Sheil said.
The implications are huge. “In standard theories, if we lose forests the rainfall in the continental interiors generally declines by 10 to 30 per cent. In our theory, it is likely to decline by 90 per cent or more,” says Sheil.
If the paper is right, it’s a reason to plant many more trees, but it diminishes the role of CO2, shows the climate models are pathetically inadequate and is another reason why a carbon market, giant windfarms, and solar panels are a waste of time and money.
Two wind towers are down in the last week in the UK 18 miles apart (Devon and Cornwall). It was thought the first tower (a six story £250,000 tower built in 2010) collapsed in the wind:
“The bolts on the base could not withstand the wind and as we are a very windy part of the country they [the energy company] have egg on their face,” she said. “There are concerns about safety.”
But, suspiciously, bolts were missing from the base and the second tower collapsed not far away. Sabotage is suspected. Who knows? The first tower was supposed to last for 25 years, and withstand winds of 116 mph. The night it fell, winds were only about 50mph.
There was fierce local opposition to the wind turbines. People do hate those things. That said, tampering with them would be a criminal act and also, logistically, possibly difficult to manage (according to some commenters on the Tele’s blog, “almost impossible”). Accusing people of sabotage might be a convenient excuse for a company with “egg on their face”. In other words, we don’t know. Wind towers have fallen over before: There have been some 1500 incidents or accidents in the UK. It happens. (See also Businessweek 2007) .
Remember the evidence is overwhelming, and deniers deny the evidence. But in Oct 2012, two atmospheric scientists were reporting, yet again, the models are wrong. Twenty years after we started looking for the fingerprint of the amplification required to make the CO2 theory of global warming work, it still isn’t there. Forgive me for harping on. It’s still The Most Major Flaw in climate models.
Researchers made an assumption that water vapor would amplify the direct warming of extra CO2 from a small harmless amount to a large catastrophe. They started with the theory that relative humidity would stay constant in a warmer world and the thicker layer of water vapor would warm the world even more. Greenhouses gases in this instance means mainly water vapor; the assumption is that extra water vapor is heating up the upper troposphere (both by displacing colder drier air, and by condensing and releasing the latent heat absorbed in evaporation). It was predicted by James Hansen in 1984, is repeated by all the climate models and by the IPCC in AR4.
The graphs from this recent paper show once again that the models are wrong, the observations lie far outside most of the models. No matter how many ways they reassess the same data and rejig the models, they aren’t getting a match.
The problem in a nutshell: If they drop the assumptions about amplification by upper tropospheric water vapor, the models will match reality but they won’t predict a crisis.
The weather balloons produced the dramatic images showing just how “missing” the hot spot is. But people have been searching with satellites too. The satellites don’t have the vertical resolution of the weather balloons, because they measure large thick bands of sky. So while researchers won’t find the “hot spot” exactly with a satellite, they hope to find the right ratio of trends in the upper atmosphere compared to trends in lower bands. (More cynically, one might say they hope to get a vague fit to the models by using the less precise and more fuzzy satellite data rather than the higher resolution data from the weather balloons.)
Does this topic matter? These climate researchers think so:
Given the importance of both models and observations, it will be important to continue to investigate this discrepancy between models and observations.The representation of upper tropospheric warming in models is important to climate sensitivity and thus future projections of anthropogenic global warming.
In other words, the models can’t calculate climate sensitivity and future temperatures without getting this right. This is central.
In the words of the researchers: “… most atmospheric models exhibit excessive tropical upper tropospheric warming”.
In this graph, the vertical line up from 1.05 and 1.1 are the satellite measured ratios, show where the yellow bars (the model predictions) ought to be if they matched the satellites.
Figure 3. Histogram of the ratio of the T24 trend to the TLT trend over 1981–2008 from AMIP ensemble members in the tropics (20S–20N). The T24 to TLT trend ratios for RSS and UAH are shown for comparison. The T24/TLT trend ratios under the histogram bins represent the bin center values.
The black circles and crosses (below) are supposed to fall around the blue square and the red square. This is what 90% likely looks like if you are the UN, and you want more money.
Jessica Wright of the Sydney Morning Herald blatantly tries to smear The Heartland Institute with outright falsehoods:
“A sister pro-tobacco lobbying organisation and corporate member of ALEC, the Heartland Institute, paid for Senator Bernardi’s accommodation and travel to the US on four separate occasions in 2010 and 2011. The institute recently ran a two-day conference in the US entitled ”Can Tobacco Make You Healthier?”
But she apparently didn’t do much research. Heartland point out that the title was not “Can Tobacco Make You Healthier”, but “Can Tobacco Cure Smoking” and the “two day” conference was a 75 minute seminar from an expert, discussing another way to help smokers quit.
“The speaker, Prof. Brad Rodu, is one of the country’s (indeed, the world’s) leading authorities on the use of smokeless tobacco products to encourage smokers to smoke less or stop altogether. Given that message, it would be more accurate to say that Heartland sponsored a seminar on ‘how to stop smoking.’
It’s probably sloppy journalism. But in its darker form, thus can a propaganda artist pose as a journalist, defaming and denigrating those who oppose their own personal political choices. Will Wright apologize and correct the record? Does she care at all about getting her facts right? Does it matter that Sydney Morning Herald readers will be left blind to what is really going on, and instead of understanding what the real debates are they’ll be left to feed on their own conspiracy theories about nasty big-corporates funding politicians?
From The Australian (preferences could flow quite differently in 2013)
I’ve heard rumors she might rush a March election partly because the global economy is teetering… (and the coalition obviously heard those rumors too, with the mini-campaign launch they put on the weekend). But given that the polls are fairly awful it’s not surprising she’s put it off.
But it is surprising that she announced it so far in advance. She may be staving off challenges to her leadership. As Bolt puts it: ” Her declaration is likely to pressure her party critics into rallying behind her. She also gets credit for making a decision, and ends the latest bout of criticism about her management – whether over the Nova Peris pick or the Mathieson joke embarrassment. “
The upper troposphere is apparently teeming with particles of bacteria and fungi, surprising researchers.* Proving that life is tenacious and that microbes can survive just about anywhere, a team at Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered that quite a bit of what we assumed was dust and sea-salt may be bacteria aloft. Some of the little critters made it as high as the upper troposphere which is 10km up (where commercial flights cruise). No one is quite sure if the microbes “live” up there, or were just visiting.
The study showed that viable bacterial cells represented, on average, around 20 percent of the total particles detected in the size range of 0.25 to 1 microns in diameter. By at least one order of magnitude, bacteria outnumbered fungi in the samples, and the researchers detected 17 different bacteria taxa – including some that are capable of metabolizing the carbon compounds that are ubiquitous in the atmosphere – such as oxalic acid.
The bacteria were probably tossed up there by wind and waves:
When the air masses studied originated over the ocean, the sampling found mostly marine bacteria. Air masses that originated over land had mostly terrestrial bacteria. The researchers also saw strong evidence that the hurricanes had a significant impact on the distribution and dynamics of microorganism populations.
The microorganisms likely reach the troposphere through the same processes that launch dust and sea salt skyward. “When sea spray is generated, it can carry bacteria because there are a lot of bacteria and organic materials on the surface of the ocean,” Nenes said.
Microbes might seed clouds
(It’s another factor the IPCC models don’t include).
Eight reasons why this current heatwave is a boring, overhyped example of weather being used for political purposes.
1. It’s the long term trends that matter — not a few weeks of hot weather
As climate scientists keep telling us (except when they have a heatwave to milk), “weather is not climate”. It’s the long term trends that matter. One short four week period is not a long term climate trend, but it is an excellent opportunity to create hype and scaremongering in the newspapers. Scientists with little scruple and low standards are making the most of this.
2. The “records” we are breaking are pitifully short
Even if this is the hottest heatwave “ever recorded”, it doesn’t mean much in the long term scheme of things. Natural climate cycles work on scales of 11 years, 60 years, 200 years, 1500 years, and 100,000 years. We have decent temperature records for many locations for only 50 years. We have a scratchy patchy thermometer record for 150 years. Any scientist raving about breaking a 50 year record as if it means something is … embarrassing. There is too much noise in this system and too little data.
3. If a few weeks of extreme heat suggest CO2 is causing a catastrophe, then don’t a few weeks of Siberian record breaking cold suggest the opposite?
4. 50C temperatures have occurred all over Australia before, and without any influence by CO2.
Correlation is weak evidence, and this correlation is so weak, it’s nearly non-existent. The price of postage stamps correlates with temperatures. Australians have been recording temperatures of over 50C since 1828, right across the country. In 1896 the heat was so bad for weeks that people fled on emergency trains to escape the inland heat. Millions of birds fell from the sky in 1932 due to the savage hot spell. Thanks to Chris Gillham and contributors in comments for the detail in this graph.
(click to enlarge)
5. Heatwaves have happened before many times, and there’s no long term increase
Since 1890 our BOM records show that there have been many clusters of five hot days in Sydney and Melbourne. This summer has been bog-standard and ordinary. Thanks to Geoff Sherrington for the idea and the number crunching on these graphs.
Jan 2013 is not over, but so far:
Sydney‘s highest 5-day average in 2013 is 30.5 (ending on 8th Jan).
Melbourne‘s highest 5 day average is 32 (ending on 7th Jan). (It’s not even on the chart!)
Heatwaves in January in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia
6. Global temperatures have been increasing for 300 years
Call me fussy. James Lovelock — the GAIA man himself — is calling it as he sees it, and good on him. Bravo. I’m just a little underwhelmed with the reasoning. Hat tip to Bishop Hill, Phillip Bratby and Barry Woods.
Some things are spectacular:
I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood and misapplied. We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. We need take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation.
Others are not:
…there is little doubt among scientists… that the burning of fossil fuels is by far the most dangerous source of energy. … we are changing the composition of the air in a way that will have profoundly adverse effects on the Earth’s ecology and on ourselves.
So Lovelock still thinks CO2 is a dangerous thing despite it also being food for life on Earth. Is getting energy from inanimate rocks really far worse than chopping down rainforest to plant a biofuel crop? Is is worse than feeding corn to cars instead of to hungry people?
He thinks windmills might become monuments of a failed civilization but at the same time thinks that this particular windmill might be less civilization-destroying if it were placed somewhere less sensitive. He reasons that a wind tower might make this special spot in North Devon “vulnerable to urban development and unsustainable farming” — as if farmers and land developers are on the lookout for space under 80m thrashing turbines.
Clash of the pointless symbols?
Lovelock admits that anything the UK does about energy is “mainly to set a good example”. That’s also the way he sees North Devon: It’s a good example of sustainable living. But having two good green examples in the one place doesn’t make for an ideal life, instead it makes for “industrial vandalism”. Oh.
Is there a better way to explain to anyone how green ideals just don’t add up?
What was that Ms Gillard said about not wanting to “gold plate” our electricity networks? The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) released a warning in December that electric cars will cost a lot more than just the purchase price and the electricity:
Electric vehicles in particular are another new “appliance” which is set to place new demands on Australia’s power system. This review has found that each electric vehicle could impose additional network and generation costs from $7500 up to $10,000 per vehicle over the 5 years from 2015 to 2020 in the absence of appropriate pricing signals and efficient charging decisions.
Who pays for the extra generation capacity? You do.
AEMC Chairman, John Pierce, said today that each electric vehicle could result in additional generation and network costs that, under current market arrangements would be shared by all consumers.
AEMC recommends several ways to split up the pricing, sort our metering so houses can figure out what was “the car” and what was “the house”. Me, I recommend we charge the EV owners the real cost, and let the free market do what it does best.
The AEMC last word — it’s easy to sell natural gas cars:
The final advice concludes that no significant changes need to be made to market arrangements to cater for the uptake of natural gas vehicles.
I just wish I could buy my electricity from a generator which produces not-for-car-electrons…
As it is, it takes so much energy to make those big electric-car batteries, that people who own an electric car need to drive about 130,000 km before they even start saving any CO2. It’s quite possible that electric vehicles might produce more CO2 over their lifetimes than the equivalent petrol powered cars does. Not to mention that electric car factories are more toxic than normal car factories and that electric cars were deemed to be worse for the environment in a study by The Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
The best thing about electric vehicles is that in Australia, almost no one buys them. We have 15 million cars on the road, and in 2011 only 49 new cars were electric. That’s nearly one new one each week…
He’s dangerous. During his last Australian tour he debated at the National Press Club, and a phenomenal 9% of the polled audience changed their mind in an hour. Fifty university academics (including Lewandowsky) tried to get Monckton banned from speaking at a university. Activists were so scared they intimidated a few venue operators into canceling his speeches at the last minute (but the show always went on bigger and better somewhere else).
GetUp are so afraid Australians might hear more of Monckton and people like him, they panicked and ran a whole ad campaignpacked with conspiracy theories at the mere hint that libertarians might like to set up a Fox news equivalent in Australia. The travesty!
It’s an election year, we’re subject to a heatwave of weather propaganda. It’s the perfect time for Christopher Monckton to make an entrance, and right now he’s on a plane on the way. Officially the tour starts in South Australia, on February 2. See the dates and booking information below.
Thanks to Chris D for the info, and for organising it all. — Jo
Lord Christopher Monckton returns to Australia and NZ for a speaking tour late January – April 2013
See detailed South Australian Itinerary including preceding Sydney activity below. Although there may be some tickets available at the door, be sure to get a seat for you and your friends. Save money on service fees book in bulk for your friends
This is Big. At its very least, they’re talking of 3.5 billion barrels of oil, which is a Very Nice Discovery, thank you. At its largest, they are saying 233 billion barrels — Saudi Arabia, here we come.
Near Coober Pedy, Linc Energy has confirmed the Arckaringa Basin has lots of shale oil, so much that it could possibly shift us back to being an oil exporter. (We were self sufficient until 2000, but our oil production has been declining since then.)
Any discovery that comes with discussions about “national energy security” is one worth paying attention to. The news stories are just hitting the net now. Linc Energy has rights over more than 65,000 square kilometres of land in the Arckaringa Basin.
Note that there are virtually no farms and very few people living in the area. The blue splotch around Coober Pedy on the map below is not a lake.
SOUTH Australia is sitting on oil potentially worth more than $20 trillion, independent reports claim – enough to turn Australia into a self-sufficient fuel producer.
This is one of the best mainstream articles I have seen trying to make sense of the point: Why are we not warming? It is rare to see work that tries to cover this much detail and nuance. The great global warming debate might finally be beginning?
GWPF has a translation. Axel Bojanowski has managed to capture a concept that even if global warming has just stalled temporarily — the debate about why it has stalled is revealing in its own right. As I said in the Skeptics Handbook, “something out there affects our climate more than CO2 and none of the computer models knows what it is”.
Researchers Puzzled About Global Warming Standstill
How dramatically is global warming really? NASA researchers have shown that the temperature rise has taken a break for 15 years. There are plenty of plausible explanations for why global warming has stalled. However, the number of guesses also shows how little the climate is understood.
Bojanowski calls “NASA scientists” on their predictions
If a few weeks of extreme heat suggest CO2 is causing a catastrophe, then don’t a few weeks of Siberian record-breaking cold suggest the opposite?*
I bet Siberians would appreciate some global warming this winter.
People are dying of cold weather in Ireland, the UK, the US and Russia. Spare a thought for the those facing temperatures so cold that natural gas is liquifying in pipes.
“London: Extreme winter weather swept across western Europe, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at London’s main international airport and claiming several lives in Spain, Portugal, Scotland and France, including those of three Mali-bound soldiers.”
“With much of Britain expecting to be brought to a standstill today by a 40–hour snowstorm, shelves were left completely empty and basic items disappeared amid fears families would be left snowed in.
Supermarkets reported a “frenzy” as people stampeded along the aisles, filling their trolleys with bread, milk, vegetables and other essentials, leaving stores “virtually empty”.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
Print This Post | | 
Follow Jo's Tweets
Recent Comments