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From the Liberal Party site June 29th 2012 the details we hope to see unfold. The thought makes the arrival of The-Tax-On-Everything this Sunday easier to bear… savour the anticipation, and hope we don’t have to wait too long.
Abbott vows he will dissolve the Parliament if the voters choose “No Carbon Tax” (again) and the Labor party denies them their choice. Could they? Would they? Is it possible the Labor Party might knock back the legislation to remove That Tax?
The Coalitions Plan to Abolish the Carbon Tax
As soon as an election is called, the Coalition will take immediate and concrete steps to repeal the Carbon Tax.
Repealing the Carbon Tax will ease cost of living pressures on families, help small business and restore confidence to the economy.
On the day the election is called, I will write to the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to make it clear that, if elected, the first priority of a Coalition Government will be the repeal of the Carbon Tax.
Within the spirit of the Caretaker conventions, I will also formally request the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to desist from making any further determinations in relation to grants, funds or financing.
If elected, the Coalition will take immediate steps to implement our plan to abolish the Carbon Tax.
On day one, I will instruct the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to draft legislation that repeals the Carbon Tax and to have the legislation ready within one month.
On day one, the Finance Minister will notify the Clean Energy Finance Corporation that it should suspend its operations and instruct the Department of Finance to prepare legislation to permanently shut-down the Corporation.
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9.6 out of 10 based on 90 ratings
UPDATE: Dr Paul Bain has replied to say that pressing work commitments mean he cannot respond to this until next week. We look forward to that, and I will make sure it is available for readers here (should Dr Bain permit). – Jo
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Dear Dr Paul Bain,
Thank you for replying (and so promptly). I do sincerely appreciate it. Apologies for my tardiness.
I do still think I can help you with your research. Indeed, in more ways than you realize.
You describe in your Bain et al letter in Nature, that the number of deniers is growing despite “enormous effort”. There is a policy problem. I absolutely agree. No one is having any success getting deniers to believe in anthropogenic climate change. Could it be that they don’t understand deniers at all?
Let’s go through the points in your email reply to me, then the bigger implications.
First and foremost – obviously you did not provide evidence to back up your assumption that the “existence” of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is real. That doesn’t mean it does not exist, but I’ll get back to this. It is the key and only real point.
Secondly, you may regret the connotations with Holocaust denial (that’s good) but it is not the point (which is why I didn’t mention it). My problem with “denial” is more simple: it’s the conflict with its literal English meaning. The climate change debate is sold to the public as a science topic — so it follows that denier (as you use it) refers to being a “science denier”. Yet, despite that being the key logical definition of the term, that awkward point still remains, we still don’t know what evidence deniers deny?
if thousands of people are becoming deniers, they must have been believers before, and just what kind of denier changes their mind…?
Thirdly, there is another problem with defining deniers: if thousands of people are becoming deniers, they must have been believers before, and what kind of denier changes their mind — is there such a thing as a “flexible denier”? We have to wonder about deniers that are apparently able to adopt a new position, but then are unable to change it again? (Is it a form of group-Alzheimers where people were convinced, but “forgot” why, and now are impervious to hearing the same reasons that once convinced them, or could it be — alternate hypothesis here — that the believers are getting new information, and the explanations they used to believe are no longer convincing?) The first hypothesis involves a mass brain dysfunction, the second involves the internet working. Occam’s razor beckons.
I gather you feel that evidence about “the science” is not the point because you are studying the social policy? To which I would ask: Can social policies change the climate, or does climate change our social policies? Is reality the tide gauge results, or the council zoning? Dare I suggest that the point of all the evidence you published rests entirely on the evidence for man-made global warming (that base assumption) that you have not investigated? If there is no empirical evidence for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, or if the formerly convincing evidence has changed* there is the mystery solved of the rise of the deniers, right then and there. Deniers are the ones following reality.
Using accurate terms
One group in our society thinks it can change the weather (you call these “believers”), the other half of the population are not convinced (you call these the “deniers”). The believers have not yet named any empirical evidence to back up their ambitious claims, yet expect the deniers to pay $1,000-$2,000 per household per annum in Australia. The believers want money from the deniers, while the “deniers” want evidence, data, logic and reason (and preferably a debate with good manners). Clearly these labels are inappropriate. Using standard English definitions, those who believe in phenomenon without evidence are gullible. Those who want evidence are rational.
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9.7 out of 10 based on 117 ratings
 CATA have organised a protest
10 out of 10 based on 24 ratings
Donna Laframboise — author of the ground-breaking book “The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert” and writer of the NoFrakkingConsensus Blog — is finally coming to Australia. I’ve booked. Have you?
Donna has been a key player, researching the way the IPCC works with an experienced eye of a real journalist (how rare). Her book scored media attention around the world as it documented how the so-called experts at the IPCC had often not even finished their PhD’s.
“In 1994, Kovats was one of only 21 people in the entire world selected to work on the first IPCC chapter that examined how climate change might affect human health. She was 25 years old. Her first academic paper wouldn’t be published for another three years. It would be six years before she’d even begin her doctoral studies and 16 years before she’d graduate.”
She described how WWF affiliates are lead authors and involved in two thirds of the IPCC’s 44 Chapters. She organized the citizens audit of the 18,000 odd references in the last IPCC report. The 40 volunteers checked every reference to see which were peer reviewed, and found that a staggering 5,587 or 30% were not.
Read her book if you haven’t already. See you at the presentation 🙂
Jo
Details on the events in Australia below…
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9.3 out of 10 based on 38 ratings
The Galileo Movement are offering to send out 1 – 5 cartoon posters to you to coincide with that Tax-on-Everything that starts this Sunday. To order, email Galileomovement AT gmail.com. Let’s help the people of Australia understand just why we will be paying billions.
The Galileo Movement are looking for 100 people to donate $5 each to cover the costs of printing and posting. I like this idea. I’ve ordered and donated. Do join in.
The Galileo Movement suggest posting this on shops and business in their local area and displaying it on windows or notice boards — anywhere it will be seen.
I like it… 😀
(Click on the image to enlarge it)
A special big thank you to artist Steve Hunter who has allowed The Galileo Movement to use his illustration. Click here to visit Steve’s website. (He’s good!) [Try here if that first link stops working, his site is moving.]
You can download copies and print them yourself:
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9.2 out of 10 based on 45 ratings
 I’m humbled and delighted. People are finding all kinds of creative ways to use that carbon tax compensation. (Thank you!) Gillards naked vote buying bribe is a step too low for conscientious hard working Australians. Here Geoffrey Houston wrote to let the Prime Minister know (and CC’d me):
Dear Ms Gillard,
This note is to thank you for my Clean Energy Advance of $350, which arrived in my bank account yesterday. As a self funded retiree, extremely concerned for Australia’s future, it will certainly come in handy in the fight against your government’s destructive policies.
I have disbursed it as follows:
· $100 donation to the IPA, an organization working to defend free speech against the efforts of the Greens helped by your government and to reveal the futility and underlying deceipt of your carbon (dioxide) tax.
· $100 donation to the Liberal Party to support the fight led by Tony Abbott to win the next election and remove the carbon (dioxide) tax.
· $100 donation to Joanne Nova whose web site is a resource for all who wish to understand the science which refutes the alarmist claims underpinning your destructive carbon (dioxide) tax.
· $50 to the Galileo Movement, a grass roots organisation campaigning to remove your carbon (dioxide) tax.
I will be pleased to disburse in a similar fashion any further bribes which you send.
Geoffrey D. Houston., PhD
Another productive Australian seeking a good use for “tainted money”
Dear Joanne,
Attached is a Bank Transfer receipt for $344.88 being the amount that the Labor/Greens Parties are attempting to bribe (essentially my money anyway) me with by way of a ‘Clean Energy’ transfer to gain my vote.
I was born in 1942 and brought up in, what was then, a British colony in Africa. I lived and worked in that country for over a decade after their independence. In this way, I witnessed firsthand the transfer from a reasonably well administered country to what is now one of the more corrupt countries in the world. I have travelled quite widely and experienced different cultures over reasonably long periods in some. For instance, I worked and studied in UK for almost four years, I studied in USA for over a year and I worked in Papua New Guinea as a pilot/engineer for four years. I have also visited India several times over the years.
I never expected to see a third world level of corruption, in my lifetime, in Australia. The Labor/Greens are attempting to drag this great country down to those levels. I hope we, the voters, will be able to turn this situation around soon.
I would like to use your good services to ‘launder’ this tainted money as a contribution to your efforts in exposing the fraud that is ‘global warming/climate change/sustainable development’ fraud/scam. Please do not feel any bad conscience over the use of this dirty money – I know that you will put it to good use.
Prævalere veritas – Temperi gradus illegitimus carborundum
Best regards
Graham Chubb, Queensland
If you decide to invest your carbon tax compensation in removing the carbon tax, make sure you email the relevant Australian Parliamentary Representatives. (Please do not abuse this list, hand written emails are an asset, spam is not.)
For anyone who wonders: no, I don’t have a rich miner or oil producer supporting me. Unlike the scientists who call us names, there are no ARC Grants, or CSIRO and University jobs I can apply for. Which government fund will pay someone to point out the flaws in big-government policies? David and I are self supporting (and don’t want to be any other way), and donations mean I can spend more time writing, researching, and working to help reduce the tax burdens, red tape, and spectacular wastage of your tax dollars. Thank you.
(Remember that your costs will rise. So make sure you can cover those bills before you give away any compensation. )
Donations (Paypal) | Donations (other ways) .
Smiles and thanks aside. When someone who’s lived in the third world anxiously compares corruption there to Australia now, there is much to do.
9.6 out of 10 based on 66 ratings
Desmogblog mark yet another day in the Diary of How the Skeptics Won. They thought they had Brazil sewn up, but now realize with dismay that skeptics are getting heard (funny how the truth spreads). Brazil with the 6th biggest economy in the world and 200 million people is “influential”.
Chris Mooney, of DeSmog, shows us his prowess in predictions. Did he see this wave of skepticism coming? Shock me, No!
Last year, I wrote about how journalists in developing nations were doing a better job of covering climate change, largely because denial hadn’t really taken root in many of these countries. In particular, I singled out Brazil for praise: According to a study by James Painter of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and his colleagues, Brazil’s major papers contained the least climate skepticism in all of the 6 major nations surveyed (U.S., UK, China, France, India, Brazil).
So it is with much dismay that I report to you that, in conjunction with the Rio+20 conference, climate denial is making a strong showing in Brazil.
Memo to Chris: See what happens when you rely on the mainstream media? (They are not the ones leading the trends.)
Chris has only just now noticed a geographer called Ricardo Augusto Felicio (who has been a smash hit on the big Brazilian talk show in May. Mooney describes it as the ” nearly half-hour denial fest that has gone pretty viral”.) Ricardo, I’m happy to say, appeared on this blog more than two years ago. He helped to translate the Skeptics Handbook into Portuguese: Manual dos Céticos. (Thank you Ricardo!)
As always, like with the Australian Greens, when you can’t convince others that you are right, the answer is to shut down the debate:
… there is a clear issue of journalistic ethics that needs to be raised. Here in the U.S., I and many others have explained not only why one shouldn’t give science denialist claims such dramatic airings in the media…
🙂
 Click to download a copy in Portuguese. H/t Marc Morano
Athelstan points to Ecotretas for people wanting more skeptical articles in Portuguese.
9.6 out of 10 based on 66 ratings
UPDATED AGAIN #4 — Now with Vukcevics Hale cycle graph of Echuca. and #3 David Archibalds suggestion of the Hale Cycle at work. #2 with Willis Eschenbach’s graph and my thoughts, (see below)
Ian Bryce sent me a striking graph (or two). Looking at the original raw data from Echuca Victoria shows a dramatic cooling trend of nearly half a degree since 1900, and rather than being a siting anomaly, it’s repeated in two towns about 100km away.
Curiously he also finds peaks in the maximums at Echuca that look for all the world like they match the solar cycle. Is it a fluke, or could it be real? If it’s real, what conditions make the solar sun-spot cycle so apparent in Echuca — where its maximum temperatures seemingly peak with each second solar cycle. Can anyone find this signal in other places? — Jo
 The area is inland Northern Victoria Has there been Global Warming or Global Cooling in Echuca
Guest post: Ian Bryce
I have spent about 37 years working with processing tomatoes in the Goulburn Valley in Australia, and the last 25 years or so, with research into growing and processing canning tomatoes. Since 1984, our industry in Australia has trebled the tomato yields from our paddocks, which is quite extraordinary. I was wondering whether yields have partially improved due to hotter temperatures, and increased carbon dioxide.
Most of our tomatoes are grown within a 100 kilometre radius of Echuca, so I decided to look at the temperature data from the BOM for that site. It is a high quality site according to the BOM, and has a long temperature record. It also has a small population (10,000?), and therefore should not experience the “Urban Heat Island” effect [at least not at the rural airport, where the thermometer is — Jo].
 Echuca is on the Murray Darling River (top left) Wangaratta and Benalla are on the plains to the West of the Snowy Mountain Range. The only other high quality sites in our area are Benalla, and Wangaratta. Echuca is about 200 km from the coast and about 100 km inland from the Great Dividing Range. So it has an inland Mediterranean climate with hot dry summers and cool wet winters. It is about 36o south and 96m above sea level. North and west of Echuca are flat plains for hundreds of kilometres.
Below is a graph of the Echuca mean temperatures, which is the yearly average of the maximum and minimum temperatures. I was most surprised to find that the temperatures had decreased, rather than increased, and therefore the tomato growth should have been slower with the lower temperatures. So obviously the yields increased due to better tomato varieties and better farming techniques.
I then decided to check Benalla & Wangaratta as well, and low and behold the result was similar, with temperatures decreasing in both cases.
Jo Nova suggested that I contact Frank Lansner (Hidethedecline), who has undertaken the painstaking work of graphing all the temperatures around the world. In Australia he has divided the data into different climatic sites, including South-East Australia. His graph for about 52 sites is at the bottom. Once again we find that the temperatures are trending down. This was also confirmed by Ken Stewart (kenskingdom) in Australia.
I then decided to look at the maximum and minimum temperatures individually from the Echuca site, to understand what was actually happening to them. Surprisingly I found that the minimum temperatures were decreasing (see the lowest three graphs), but the maximum trend line was flat.
 … The thing that intrigued me about the maximum temperatures is the high peaks, which occur at the peak of the odd solar cycles, and four other times, when we had strong El Nino events. (Most recently, three in four years) It is interesting to note that we did not have the Super EL Nino in 1998!
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8.5 out of 10 based on 52 ratings
News coming in suggests Rio was a junket to nowhere. I’m still waiting for Monckton to go through the fine print. Is there a sting?
Still it’s not hard to feel happy. 🙂
It was so bad, even the cheer squad were shocked:
The organisers behind the 1992 Earth Summit, which this week’s meeting commemorated, were shocked and took the extraordinary step of denouncing the agreement in front of key UN officials at a private dinner of the conference’s great and good. Maurice Strong, who ran the previous summit, called it a “weak” collection of “pious generalities”, while former Norwegian premier Gro Harlem Brundtland – whose report gave rise to the 1992 meeting – said governments had “forgotten about the environment”. And Nick Clegg, who led the British delegation, revealed that the Government felt the result fell so far below expectations that it had considered “pulling the plug” on the whole thing.
It was so bad, the crowd even hints at the End of the UN. (Crack that champers!).
…as one top international official privately put it to me: “The UN could not survive many more meetings like this.” And there are increasing signs that businesses and some governments are getting fed up.
Oxfam are calling it a hoax summit. “They came, they talked, but they failed to act,” said Barbara Stocking, the chief executive of Oxfam. ”
Washington post: Rio + 20 “may produce one lasting legacy: Convincing people it’s not worth holding global summits…”
Looks like it might be party time for the worlds free citizens — no damage achieved by the UN (apart from the scandalous waste of money and resources used to clock up nothing but a neat networking op for political powerbrokers).
Yes – they did get the free lunch, but not the free global bureaucracy.
Climate Depot – Marc Morano, Craig Rucker and Christopher Monckton were there on the ground.
Morano delivered the press conference that told the UN that failure at Rio means success for the world:
Failure here is good for the world’s poor people. Failure is the only option for this conference if you care about the environment and poor people. Carbon based energy has been one of the greatest liberators of mankind in the history of our planet.
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9.3 out of 10 based on 103 ratings
I wrote yesterday about the unprecedented way the UN was locking out anyone at Rio that was not part of an official government delegation. More than ever before, the UN is not even pretending to to serve the people of the world. Even the facade is gone. The rules have changed since Monckton, Watts Up and the internet spoiled the party at Durban.
All the heroic NGO’s have been blocked from the negotiations (as well as those evil free market libertarians). They are only there for the theatrics. The real action goes on behind closed doors, in what Monckton calls a “concrete bunker”.
Lord Monckton Reports From Rio, via SPPI
The global coming together is not united. It’s separate conferences for the VIP’s and the riff-raff now. There’s a tent city darkly called “The People’s Congress” — which used to be near the main plenary sessions hall, but has been moved miles away. (Who needs “The People?”).
“Then the non-government organizations have been “corralled in the filthy, soulless, crumbling Rio Centro conference center, where hundreds of armed, sharp-suited UN goons kept them determinedly away.”
“Thirdly, to symbolize the total separation of the governing class from the governed that will become the norm as the UN takes power, the governmental delegates, traveling in a thousand-strong fleet of gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting limousines escorted by secret police on Harley-clone motorcycles, have been kept in near-total isolation from the non-government organizations and from the mere people.”
“If somebody hides something, it is because somebody has something to hide.”
Monckton explains why the UN is so afraid of the draft text leaking
The journalists are allowed in apparently, possibly because there is no danger of them reporting what is actually going on. (After all, environmental journalists are on a good junket too.)
So why the obsessive secrecy? Why are the national negotiators kept away from the non-government organizations that have always had access to them until now? Why are the updated negotiating texts not made available? One reason stands out. The UN knows perfectly well that if the people knew what was being inserted into the generally anodyne negotiating text they would not stand for it.
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9 out of 10 based on 97 ratings
In the comments here: E.M.Smith (Chiefio) responded to Paul Bain and then posted it on his own site. It’s very popular (thank you Michael!)
Dear Paul Bain:
First off, thank you for responding.
FWIW, I am a hard core skeptic. I’m the “target” of your analysis. As such, what folks like me think ought to be particularly important to you. So a bit of history on me and climate change.
I first came to the AGW issue thinking “Gee, this looks important, I ought to learn more about it.” At the Skeptic sites (like WUWT) I had generally kind acceptance and explanation of where I had parts missing from my understanding of the “issues” about AGW and where it was “gone wrong”. At “Believer” sites (an curiously appropriate term as it has all the hallmarks of a religious belief) I would ask simple and innocent questions and largely get derision in return. Simply asking “But doesn’t CO2 have a log limit on absorption effects that we have passed?” or worse, saying “But this article (on skeptic site) seems to have a valid issue.” would bring “Attack the messenger” responses. That, for me, was the first and largest clue about which side was indulging in propaganda more than in dispassionate examination of facts and data.
So I set about a long path of “learning for myself”.
At Believer sites, I’d have a load of links shoved down my throat with, effectively, “You idiot, read all this first or shut up”… At Skeptic sites I’d get “Well, here are some links, and the net-net is that the data are lousy and the models do not predict. But check it out yourself.” Hardly something to make one feel like Believers were doing decent unbiased examination of the facts.
But I read a lot of the links anyway. Most of them were of the form “Given the assumption that AGW is real, what bad thing happens?” Many more were of the form “Assuming the theory is correct, what does our model show?” While all of that is interesting speculation, none of it is really what I’d call Science. Where are the data? The analysis? The testable hypothesis? Etc. In short, where is the SCIENCE in “Climate Science”? (In most part it really ought to be called “Climate Model Storytelling” once you get to the end of the papers.)
At the core of it all, I found the general truth that there was Agenda Driven Politics. What published papers could be bought to support a pre-designed Agenda for political change. (Only much later did I find the Agenda 21 site at the UN and found the source of The Agenda… but it was nice to find that my earlier conclusion was supported by the facts.) The more I looked at the AGW “Science” claims, the more I found flawed and politically driven papers being written “for effect” with little in the way of actual unbiased search for truth.
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9.8 out of 10 based on 154 ratings
According to Greenpeace its an “epic fail”. WWF says its a “colossal failure”, and it’s so bad, Oxfam want to start all over again. That news may sound good to the free citizens of the West, but that’s only because we aim so low.
They may not get as much as they aim for, but they will still get what they came for.
Rio 2012: How big is this junket?
[It is] “billed as the biggest UN event ever organised. This time, 15,000 soldiers and police are guarding about 130 heads of state and government, as well as ministers and diplomats from 180 countries and at least 50,000 others.”
The Guardian
So 50,000 people got a trip to Rio. They may want world peace, free energy, and control over your light bulbs, your car, and your wallet, but most of them still got an expenses paid ticket to the Olympics of Global Bureaucracy. In the end they may say they are disappointed, but in reality they still scored one heck of a free lunch. And this is the point. As long as the masses are not saying that they want their money back, the show is a success. The junket is the point. The headlines crying “failure” are still advertising the meme. The world is still talking about hopes of environmental campaigners, not about the waste of money; Not about the 200,000 people starved by biofuel policies (and that was just the tally for 2010).
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9.5 out of 10 based on 63 ratings
This week Nature Climate Change published the Bain et al letter about ways to “promote pro-environmental action in climate change deniers”. How does Nature define this group? They imply that deniers deny science, but can the researchers, editors or reviewers name any peer reviewed paper with empirical evidence that the deniers deny? Surely this whole paper is not based on a name-calling assumption, a confusion about an illusory sub-species, Homo sapiens denier? Could Nature now be the Journal of UnScience? We shall see…
I have written to ask the lead researcher Dr Paul Bain:
Dear Dr Paul Bain,
Right now, it’s almost my life’s work to communicate the empirical evidence on anthropogenic climate change.
I can help you with your research on deniers. I have studied the mental condition of denial most carefully. There is a simple key to converting the convictions of people in this debate, and I have seen it work hundreds of times. Indeed, my own convictions that lasted 17 years were turned around in a few days. I can help you. It would be much simpler than you think.
Firstly, to save time and money we must analyze the leaders of the denial movement. I have emailed or spoken to virtually all of them.
They are happy to accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and causes warming, that humans produce CO2, that CO2 levels are rising, and that the earth has warmed in the last century. According to Hansen et al 19841, Bony et al 20062, and the IPCC AR4 report3, the direct effect of doubling the level of CO2 amounts to 1.2°C (i.e. before feedbacks).
All they need is the paper with the evidence showing that the 1.2°C direct warming is amplified to 3 or 4 degrees as projected by the models. Key leaders in the denial movement have been asking for this data for years. Unfortunately the IPCC assessment reports do not contain any direct observations of the amplification, either by water vapor (the key positive feedback4) or the totality of feedbacks. The IPCC only quotes results from climate simulations.
Since science is based on observations and measurements of the real world, it follows that a denier of science (rather than a denier of propaganda) must be denying real world data. I’d be most grateful if you could explain what “deniers” deny. Deniers repeatedly ask for empirical evidence, yet must be failing badly at communicating that this is the crucial point because none of the esteemed lead authors of IPCC working Group I seem to have realized that this paltry point is all that is needed. All this mess could be cleared up with an email.
The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is overwhelming, so the observations they deny must be written up many times in the peer review literature, right? After five years of study I am still not sure which instrument has made these key observations. Do deniers deny weather balloon results, or satellite data, or ice cores?
When you find this paper and the measurements, it will convince many of the key denier leaders. (But being the exacting personality type that they are, deniers will also expect to see the raw data. So you’ll need to also make sure that the authors of said paper have made all the records and methods available, but of course, all good scientists do that already don’t they?)
As a diligent researcher, I’m sure you would not have described a group with such a unequivocally strong label unless you were certain it applied. It would be disastrous for an esteemed publication like Nature to mistakenly insult Nobel prize winning physicists, NASA astronauts, and thousands of scientists who have asked for empirical evidence, only to find that the Nature authors themselves were unable to name papers (or instruments) with empirical evidence that their subject group called “deniers” denied.
If those papers (God forbid) do not exist, then the true deniers would turn out to be the researchers who denied that empirical evidence is key to scientific confidence in a theory. The true deniers would not be the skeptics who asked for evidence, but the name-calling researchers who did not test their own assumptions.
The fate of the planet rests on your shoulders. If you can find the observations that the IPCC can’t, you could change the path of international action. Should you find the evidence, I will be delighted to redouble my efforts to communicate the empirical evidence related to climate change.
Awaiting your reply keenly,
Joanne Nova
—————–
REFERENCES
1 Hansen J., A. Lacis, D. Rind, G. Russell, P. Stone, I. Fung, R. Ruedy and J. Lerner, (1984) Climate sensitivity: Analysis of feedback mechanisms. In Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity, AGU Geophysical Monograph 29, Maurice Ewing Vol. 5. J.E. Hansen and T. Takahashi, Eds. American Geophysical Union, pp. 130-163 [Abstract]
2 Bony, S., et al., 2006: How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes? J. Clim., 19, 3445–3482.
3 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8.6.2.3. p630 [PDF].
4 IPCC, Assessment Report 4, 2007, Working Group 1, The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 8. Fig 8.14, p631 [PDF] see also Page 632.
5 Bain et al (2012) Promoting pro-environmental action in climate change deniers, Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages600–603
——————
NOTE to commenters: This post refers to the term “deniers” so I expect the word to be used in comments as appropriate. But the point of discussion here is to define exactly what it is that “deniers” deny, not to toss insults.
UPDATE: A reply from Paul Bain
Credit to him for replying promptly. It is a start, at least, to the conversation. — Jo
Comments about the use of the “denier” label are a fair criticism. We were focused on the main readership of this journal – climate scientists who read Nature journals, most of whom hold the view that anthropogenic climate change is real. There was no intention to make comparisons with Holocaust denial, as some skeptics have claimed was our deliberate intention. Rather it should be noted that describing skepticism as denial is a term increasingly used in the social science literature on climate change (e.g. in Global Environmental Change, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Society), and is used informally by some within the climate science community. So we were using a term that is used and understood in the target audience, but which we thought involved a stronger negative stereotype (e.g. being anti-environmental, contrarian) than skeptic. My thought was this would highlight the contrast with the data, which suggests that you need not believe in AGW to support pro-environmental action, especially when it had certain types of (non-climate) outcomes (demonstrating a non-contrarian position). So in my mind we were ultimately challenging such “denier” stereotypes. But because we were focused on our target audience, it is true that I naively didn’t pay enough attention to the effect the label would have on other audiences, notably skeptics, especially because I don’t have the “denier=Holocaust denier” association that some of your co-travellers do – these people all pointed to the same single quote that I wasn’t aware of, and now that I am aware of it I can say I personally disagree with it. Although I hope this helps explain our rationale for using the term, I regret the negative effect it has had on the debate and I intend to use alternative labels in the future.
Beyond the negative reaction to “denier”, what has been interesting in many skeptics’ responses (in emails and on blogs) is that our research is propaganda designed to change (or “re-educate”) their mind about whether AGW is real, and I’ve received many long emails about the state of climate science and how AGW has been disproven (or about the lack of findings to prove it, as you highlighted in your email). Actually, the paper is not about changing anyone’s mind on whether anthropogenic climate change is real. There are also skeptics insisting that the issue is ONLY about the state of the science – whether AGW is real – but on this point I disagree. I am approaching this as a social/societal problem rather than as an “AGW reality” problem. That is, two sizeable groups have different views on a social issue with major policy implications – how do you find a workable solution that at least partly satisfies the most people?
Some climate scientists who endorse AGW seem to have assumed that the way to promote action is to convince skeptics that in fact AGW is occurring, and this has not been effective. Similarly, I don’t think skeptics will convince those who endorse AGW that they are wrong anytime soon. But the social/policy issue remains, whether you believe in AGW or not. So if policies are going to be put in place (as many governments are proposing), what kinds of outcomes would make it at least barely acceptable for the most people? For our skeptic samples, actions that promoted warmth and economic/technological development were the outcomes of taking action that mattered to them (even if they thought taking action would have no effect on the climate). So our studies showed that these dimensions mattered for skeptics to support action taken in the name of addressing anthropogenic climate change. The might also be other positive outcomes of taking action we didn’t study where some common ground might be found, such as reducing pollution or reliance on foreign oil. Overall, the findings suggest that if there was closer attention to the social consequences of policies, rather than continuing with seemingly intractable debates on the reality of AGW, then we might get to a point where there could be agreement on some action – some might think the action is pointless with regard to the climate (but many other people think it will), but if it produces some other good outcomes it might be ok. Hence, if governments were able to design policies that plausibly achieved these “non-climate” goals, then this might achieve an acceptable overall outcome that satisfies the most people (although admittedly not everybody will agree).
This is the message of our paper, and I hope readers of your blog will be able to accept my regret about the label and focus on the main message. Some have described this message as naïve, but a real-world example (noted by one of our reviewers) illustrates the general point: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/earth/19fossil.html?pagewanted=all
Kind regards
Paul.
Erratum: “Phil” Bain corrected to Paul Bain with apologies.
UPDATE: The headline has been shortened from “Nature — and that problem of defining Homo-sapiens-denier. Is it English or Newspeak?” It was too long.
9.7 out of 10 based on 131 ratings
No one says it quite like Rupert. Reprinted with permission, thank you. Read, enjoy the vivid panoply,
— Jo
My favourite extract — the 26 ethical flaws of propagandists
(For the full letter and context go straight to the post below – apologies to Rupert for discontinuous edits)
Climate change major risks: Such as? There is not one shred of empirical evidence for your assertion. There is, of course, an ocean of mendacious and fraudulent computer modelling by people with vast vested interests in promoting the scam.
You state that you do not underestimate my ‘strength of feeling on this important issue’. With respect, you are well wide of the mark. I have no strong feelings about climate change. Climate change is fact of life and, in that sense, is a banality. I do, however, have a prejudice against blatant chicanery and outright knavery.
Neither is this, anyway, a scientific issue. The science is clear. There have been and are no untoward changes in global climate outside those which flow from natural variability. There have been no recent climatic phenomena, which do not have numerous precedents. CO2 has nothing to do with the matter.
On the other hand it is an ethical issue. The ethical considerations arise from the activities of propagandists when:
- they seek to howl down any form of questioning or dissent,
- they use threatening vilification as a propagandist tool,
- they damage the careers of those who have the temerity to question their dogma,
- they wilfully and knowingly misrepresent data,
- they wilfully and knowingly suppress contra-indicative data,
- they claim data to be authentic and rigorous when, in reality, it is cherry picked from partisan environmentalist propaganda material,
- they undermine scientific method by refusing to disclose and share data/methodology,
- they wilfully subvert and prostitute their calling for personal gain and self-aggrandisement,
- they subvert hitherto trusted forums of scientific discussion and dissemination,
- they subvert the independence of peer review as a legitimate check and balance,
- they abuse the young by indoctrinating deviant ‘science’,
- they lay waste to the environment with worthless and hideously expensive machines (wind/tidal turbines) as well as other devices such as photo-voltaic cells,
- they oppress the poor by diverting land usage from food crop cultivation to uneconomic and inefficient mono-crop cultivation of so-called biofuels,
- they wilfully associate their personal conceits and financial interests with massive environmental pollution in the developing world,
- they are complicit, for the same reasons, in rainforest and other forms of environmental destruction,
- they manipulate the fiscal arrangements of entire countries on the basis of demonstrable falsehood,
- they spread lies designed to intimidate poorly educated and/or gullible populations,
- they claim economic insights based upon false assumptions, corrupted data and outright lies,
- they sustain vast departments of state to promote falsehood and scaremongering,
- they subsidise supposed independent pressure groups for the purpose of surreptitiously encouraging partisan lobbying,
- they lend succour and support from the safety of privileged positions, inherited and otherwise, to villains and scientific charlatans,
- they seek to close off and monopolise what should be legitimate debate on a controversial matter of importance, again from behind barricades created by privilege,
- they ostentatiously ignore whatever is inconvenient to their tendentious paradigm, however distinguished and credible the sources may be,
- they whitewash arrant knavery,
- they distort, in furtherance of their mendacity, the normal accepted meaning of language,
- they subvert the hitherto trusted organs of mass communication.
The questions are how to mitigate the damage/how to hold to account those responsible for it!
The letter in full below:
Keep reading →
9.3 out of 10 based on 84 ratings
Sorry the site was down twice yesterday. We are still figuring out what happened. It’s probably innocent, but we won’t know for sure until we’ve gone through the logs which are monstrous.
I suspect that restoring all 100k comments (lost to data corruption after the transfer of my blog) may have set the traffic over the limit with recaching from many automated spider bots and what-not’s that needed to update all 824 pages and 100,000 comments at once. The log files of the action on my site the last few days are huge, so it will be some time to sort out what happened. I gather the servers may have thought they were under attack and shut down.
When trouble strikes the site, check out my Twitter account for info. Don’t forget to follow @JoanneNova.
So why did I move the site in May?
Last year we did get a denial of service attack in June. We decided with that and the increasing costs, we needed to move the site to cheaper, more secure US servers. That move, and all the traffic went very smoothly, but cost more than $6000 over the year. And even on the cheaper servers, the ongoing bandwidth was still costing $300 per month, so when a dedicated skeptic, who also managed other wordpress blogs as a business, offered to help out with very reduced costs, I could not help but say “Yes Please”.
Hence the site was moved again to another server in the US last month. Because the site is so large not surprisingly there have been a few hiccups in the weeks since we switched it over. We should be fine, though there may be more hiccups in the coming days. This new server location will be a lot cheaper to operate in the long run.
If I was funded by Exxon we wouldn’t have quite so many drama’s in the switch, because we would be paying commercial rates which would be around $10,000 per annum I hear. 😉
I have no doubt the new web manager is doing an excellent job, but obviously he has paid work to attend too, and is packing in this new large role in spare time in between.
Apologies for the inconvenience. I trust readers will understand, and if we do turn up anything untoward or unexpected about the “Suspended” notice, I’ll post an update here. For the moment, assume it was one of those things that happen to large complexes of software and databases.
Cheers,
Jo
Here’s a brief synopsis of the events which took place in relation to this website – David T. (web thingy guy).
TLDR; not a government conspiracy.
Jo contacted me about the enormous costs of keeping her website up and I related that I purchase hosting bandwidth at wholesale prices out of the US. So, we took the site down for a couple of days and moved servers. Everything seemed to be OK. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen technical issues unrelated to the new website hosting solution, we lost a whole bunch of data about a week after the move. This issue has since been resolved.
We ended up losing almost a weeks worth of data since the previous backup. That data has been recovered but is still yet to be integrated back into the website. The server went down yesterday as a probable result of being re-crawled by Google though, I’m still analyzing the logfiles to confirm. And seeing as the logs grow by over a megabyte everyday, the analysis is slow going. For those who are not technically inclined here’s a short explanation.
Basically, this website is dynamically generated out of a database. Upon request, the result of the generated page is saved as a cached file. This is so the CPU and database don’t have to do any additional work to render the page on every additional request. Only when someone posts a comment. When Google visits your website, it requests as many pages as it can find. With our comments restored our cache needed to be updated so the CPU got hung up dynamically generating every page across the website from the database rather than as a cache file.
So, as a result, my technical support in the US disabled this website as the CPUs were hanging to the point of almost crashing the server. We stepped through a number of website upgrades and efficiency measures during that afternoon until I was satisfied the website would be OK. I checked the website before going to bed and all seemed fine…
At 2:30am we got another hit on the CPU. What I love about my web host providers in the US is their insane paranoia when it comes to security. The next CPU hang triggered an automated script which disables the web account until action can be taken to rectify the problem. This exists to terminate a denial of service attack so that every account running off the server doesn’t lose their website, and more importantly, their email. First thing this morning I have opened my inbox and discovered Jo’s site has gone down. Within an hour we put a resolution in place and arranged an action plan should the same event happen again. Short of writing my own bot and crawling the website, I don’t know if another crawl will take the site down. But, there is now a plan in place to gather data at a network level(beneath the server) to identify and implement a permanent fix should our current efforts be inadequate.
The state of the website at the moment can best be described as functional. We have recovered most of the comments lost and are working to splice those that are still missing into the database. It has been a complex process of weaving some database building scripts and webpage scrappers while firing them onto flat database dump files to create some execution scripts to run on the live server. This is all to marry three separate datasets together, all with conflicting references and placeholders. Not a simple issue.
I understand that 12 hours can be an eternity in internet time so, whenever any issues arise I do my best to resolve them as soon as possible. I appreciate your understanding in this matter and hope that answers any questions you may have concerning the various issues related to this site.
9.7 out of 10 based on 41 ratings
Joanne Nova and Ken Stewart
A team of independent auditors, bloggers and scientists went through the the BOM “High Quality” (HQ) dataset and found significant errors, omissions and inexplicable adjustments. The team and Senator Cory Bernardi put in a Parliamentary request to get our Australian National Audit Office to reassess the BOM records. In response, the BOM, clearly afraid of getting audited, and still not providing all the data, code and explanations that were needed, decided to toss out the old so called High Quality (HQ) record, and start again. The old HQ increased the trends by 40% nationally, and 70% in the cities.
So goodbye “HQ”, hello “ACORN”. End result? Much the same.
 That meant the ANAO could avoid an audit, since the BOM had changed data-sets, the point of auditing the old set was moot.
For me, this version is so much worse than the previous one. In the HQ data set the errors could have been inadvertent, but now we’ve pointed out the flaws, there can be no excuses for getting it wrong. Instead of fixing the flaws (and thanking the volunteers), it’s almost as if they’ve gone out of their way to not solve them. Instead it’s been complexified, rushed, has many typo’s and gaps, and the point (see below) about the “adjustments having no impact” — when they obviously do — begs to be audited by the Auditor General, the ACCC, Four Corners (ha ha) and 60 Minutes.
To make it all look o-so-convincing, the BOM asked three experts (from NOAA, NZ, and Canada) to look over it all, and score the BOM against its peers. But the peers standards are not too high in the first place: NOAA was caught with 89% of it’s own thermometers in the wrong spots near air conditioners and whatnot, and NZ’s records were so bad, they disowned them themselves. (NZ adjustimongered their temperature trends from 0.06C right up to 0.9C, got caught, and their response under legal pressure was to say but it’s ok, “There is no “official” or formal New Zealand Temperature Record”.)
How useful is it when a team of substandard institutions is asked to evaluate whether the BOM practices are “amongst international best practice” when it is international best practice to ignore concrete, car-parks, tarmac, and lose the data too? We aren’t impressed if the BOM is as bad as the rest of the world, we want open data, transparent methods, and reproducible results. We want high quality to mean, well, high… quality.
So how good is the new ACORN (Australian Climate Observations Reference Network — Surface Air Temperature) set?
 Because it covers a vast area, Alice Springs contributes 7-10% of the national signal. ACORN and the BOM claim that since the new results are pretty much the same, really they give more confidence than ever that Australia has warmed since 1960.
Ken Stewart and the independent BOM analysts team have sliced and diced through the ACORN data.
They conclude:
- Like the old HQ series, the Acorn record is also still impossible to replicate.
- The record is much shorter than 100 years for many sites. It’s supposed to be high quality, but it has many gaps and spurious errors. If volunteers can write code on laptops to check for errors — and find, for example, that one 36.8C was accidentally changed to a 26.8C (and there are many) why can’t the Australian BOM?
- Like the old series, Acorn’s trends are very different from what the raw data shows. (Why do we bother with thermometers?)
- Hot and cold extremes have been adjusted, for the most part warming winters and cooling summers, and at some sites new and more extreme records have been set.
Too tricky by half? The BOM tries to hide the effect of adjustments
Here’s a piece of sleight of hand — ACORN, they claim, has a random set of a adjustments of both up and down (which is what we’d expect).
The official CAWCR Technical Report No. 04:
“There is an approximate balance between positive and negative adjustments for maximum temperature but a weak tendency towards a predominance of negative adjustments (54% compared with 46% positive) for minimum temperature.”
But the independent auditors point the positive adjustments are larger than the negative:
While there may be a numeric balance of positive and negative adjustments, analysis of a representative sample indicates that adjustments predominantly increase warming.
This is for me the most sinister point. Recall that Dr David Jones, Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction, National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology, stated clearly that the adjustments made “a near zero impact on the all Australian temperature”. Knowing that critics were drawing attention to that statement and pointing out it was not so, the BOM apparently paid attention themselves to this matter. That’s fair enough, perhaps it was an honest oversight. But having been notified of the bias, they then went on to create a situation where they can state a half-truth which makes it appear his statement is true, while in reality is it still not. Is it just incompetence, or something worse? Did they not check the overall effect of their adjustments? Did they think that no one else would do that?
ACORN’s complicated methodology
Ken Stewart points out that in the CAWCR Technical Report No. 049 by Blair Trewin, it appears that the BOM are using a new technique to homogenize and “correct” the data which involves comparing the data to the 40 nearest neighbors. But the stations are still very far apart. As many as 20% of them are more than 100km away from their closest neighbor. Just how far apart are some stations which are being compared?
Keep reading →
9.7 out of 10 based on 126 ratings
 George Orwell, Photo: Wikipedia Sloppy language works for cheats and charlatans. In the search for the truth only accurate language will do. Orwell understood the power of language to change the way we think, indeed to fence off some possible options completely.
Roger Pielke Snr put out a call today asking for precise definitions and protesting about the misuse of the term “climate change”. But when did this nonsensical term start? Where else, but with the UN.
All the way back on May 9th 1992, UN defined “climate change” as man-made. See The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, (paragraph 6):
“Climate change is defined by the Convention as “change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (article 1 (2)).”
In other words, there is no “climate change” without humans because there cannot be, and by extension, the climate did not change, could not have, for the 4.5 billion years before 1880 when the first coal powered electricity station was fired up.
Such nonsense is what international treaties are made of. Only millions of taxpayer dollars could have propagated an inanity so profoundly inane, and so abjectly silly. No mere student report could have swept around the world destroying sensible conversation for two decades (and taking the entire field of paleoclimate as collateral damage too).
By misusing “climate change” so audaciously (and getting away with it), the UN ensured that an army of distracted or not-too-sharp supporters would adopt it, and it would reduce conversations about the role of man-made emissions down to a caricature. “Do you believe in climate change” — ask the thought police, it’s a loaded question that invites any sane person to say “Yes” — because who believes in climate-sameness?
The term “climate denier” springs from this sick well — as if, somewhere on the planet, in asylums or day care centers, there might be someone who denies we have a climate. Bystanders watching a debate at this nonsensical level don’t accidentally step into the dissenter camp — by default, they are “with the UN”.
The answer to stopping this is to turn the nonsense against those who issue it, and not fall for the tactic and join the perversion.
So when the journalists / pollsters inanely repeat the litany — there are lots of options.
“Do you believe in Climate Change”:
1. What are the alternatives? (I mean, does anyone believe in climate unchange?)
2. Do you mean “climate change” as used in the English language or climate change as the UN defines it. (I need to I know what you are really asking?)
3. Have you heard of an ice age?
So yes, I agree wholeheartedly with Roger Pielke, but we need to do more than just expect science journals to be scientific, we must demand that journalists and pollsters use English.
More suggestions of responses welcome…
9.4 out of 10 based on 148 ratings
Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) –
A system of government where the least capable to lead
are elected by the least capable of producing, and where
the members of society least likely to sustain themselves
or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for
by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of
producers.
Thanks to treeman today (and before that Brice, Rupert, and Speedy who said: Ineptocracy — See also “Swan Song”).
Merci. ‘Tis a gem. If it is not in the Oxford now, it will be…
It could be that an ineptocracy is the inevitable end point of democracy……
…..
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
Possibly said first by Alexander Tytler (circa late 1700′s)
I posted this quote first in July last year in the slow death of democracy, a post so very relevant still.
Everyone takes the path of least resistance, and democracy sits balanced on a high peak above the rugged terrain of a hundred thousand years of tribal existence. No matter what direction that complacency takes, all roads lead to the valley of tyranny.
—–
9 out of 10 based on 88 ratings
Bank of America Pledges $50 Billion to Combat Climate Change
The unholy alliance between bankers and government is on naked display.
It’s the black hole in the kitchen: huge, obvious, and silent. And boy does it suck. As Climate Depot points out, Bank of America got a $45 billion bailout from the government during the global financial crisis. Now it’s promising $50 billion to “address Climate Change”. How Green is your Bankster?
It’s a feeding frenzy:
The bank’s new initiative includes lending, equipment finance, capital markets and advisory activity and carbon finance, as well as advice and investment help.
Bank of America will focus on promoting energy efficiency; renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydropower; lower-carbon transportation like electric and hybrid vehicles; and water and waste treatment and disposal initiatives. [Capitalgr]
They already spend nearly $20bn on climate and did it four years ahead of schedule. So why not $5obn?
The company has spent $17.9 billion toward its initial pledge, including $8.4 billion for energy efficiency activities, including low-cost loans and grants for retrofitting low-income neighborhoods for energy efficiency. It spent $5 billon on renewable energy projects, including helping the San Jose Unified School District in California to run on solar energy. An additional $1 billion went to consumer financing of hybrid vehicles. [WSJ]
A billion here, a billion there, and soon they’ll be talking real money.
Marc Morano asks “is that more than Heartland spends?” / sarc
Well Marc, says Jo, don’t forget it is spread over 10 years. 😉 It’s only a thousand times the Heartland budget. Expect the guys at DeSmog to immediately set up a Bank-of-America-Secrets site to protest at the evil influence large corporates have over democracy. SourceWatch will graphically connect Bank of America to scientists, solar companies, wind investors, Green Foundations, donors to the Democrats and on and on into one spaghetti bunker of vested interests. We look forward to it.
Meanwhile the global carbon market hit $176 Billion in 2011. The bankster-government self feeding loop operates independently but coincidentally in concert with the corporate-media loop: GE owns NBC, the Weather channel and lots and lots of wind turbine factories.
Any day now, the innumerate chanters of the “Big-Oil Funded Deniers” cult will learn to count past 10, and realize that they’ve been the useful idiots for the Money Masters. And pigs will fly (collect their dividends and end-of-year bonuses).
Does Climate Money matter? Is a monopoly good for a market?
Meanwhile the sleeping public dozes on zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
* * *
If you think the public needs to be woken up to the real conflicts of interest,
please support those who work against the billion dollar politico-industrial complex.
Every dollar for truth appears to be worth $1,000 for those pushing a self-serving agenda.
h/t Marc Morano
8.7 out of 10 based on 59 ratings
In an extremely worrying development, we can add Nick Drapela’s name to the list of skeptics fired for the heresy of speaking out. This email from Gordon Fulks came around today, and I want to spread the message. I have written before about the scientist of upstanding integrity and action that is Art Robinson — When he ran for Congress, three of his children doing PhD’s were targeted at OSU. The details of Joshua, Bethany and Matthews work are described on the Oregon State Outrage blog. These exemplary students were close to finishing their work towards PhD degrees in nuclear engineering when all three suddenly faced major obstacles and the likelihood of losing all their work to date. (See the Outrage blog for updates).
But the outrageous behaviour continues. Legal action may not be the answer (In Robinson’s case the Uni apparently wants them to sue, so it will be obliged to have “no comment” while OSU would get taxpayer funds to extend the case at length.) What we need is facebook, twitter, letters and emails – a campaign to let the State of Oregon (and especially university donors) know their university has regressed to a feudal religious institute — Jo
—————————————————————————————————————–
Gordon Fulks writes:
Hello Everyone,
In theory at least Oregon State University (OSU) seems to be a bastion of academic freedom, diversity, and tolerance. A wide range of ideas are openly discussed. The most viable rise to the top and the least viable fade away. But it is all a fairy tale, because OSU operates under a politically correct regimen that dictates what is acceptable to say and what is not. Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.
OSU is not yet as swift or efficient as the Soviet system when Joseph Stalin was trying to quash dissent among biologists who refused to go along with Trofim Lysenko. If warnings to compromise their integrity were not followed, Stalin simply had biologists shot. That quickly thinned the ranks of all biologists and persuaded the remaining ones to comply with Stalin’s wishes. Of course, it also destroyed Soviet biology, because Lysenko was pedaling nonsense. And Russian biology has never recovered.
We learned over the weekend that chemist Nickolas Drapela, PhD has been summarily fired from his position as a “Senior Instructor” in the Department of Chemistry. The department chairman Richard Carter told him that he was fired but would not provide any reason. Subsequent attempts to extract a reason from the OSU administration have been stonewalled. Drapela appears to have been highly competent and well-liked by his students. Some have even taken up the fight to have him reinstated.
What could possibly have provoked the OSU administration to take precipitous action against one of their academics who has been on their staff for ten years, just bought a house in Corvallis, and has four young children (one with severe medical problems)? Dr. Drapela is an outspoken critic of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, the official religion of the State of Oregon, the Oregon Democratic Party, and Governor John Kitzhaber.
Keep reading →
9.5 out of 10 based on 61 ratings
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