Brandon Schollenberger wants to test a theory, so he has made a short poll. He would like a broad sample.
The message:
As you’re aware, Stephan Lewandowsky has written several papers claiming to have found certain traits amongst global warming skeptics. I believe his methodology is fundamentally flawed. I believe a flaw present in his methodology is also present in the work of many others.
To test my belief, I’m seeking participants for a short survey (13 questions). The questions are designed specifically to test a key aspect of Lewandowsky’s methodology. The results won’t be published in any scientific journal, but I’ll do a writeup on them once the survey is closed and share it online.
Maurice Newman’s frank Op-Ed broke lots of rules last week — he used the words “fraud”, “deception”, and the IPCC on the front page of a major national daily paper. But the response to it has been a lower grade of apoplectic than what we are accustomed too. Which says something about the debate. Tick tick tick…
Graham Readfearn, journalist, has had nearly a whole week to summarize the strongest rebuttals around the world and he’s come up with 600 words of lame names. Newman is a “dizzy” denier, with “tricks on the brain”, and a “conspiracy dial”. Where is the science? Even as ad homs go that is barrel-scraping.
The Readfearn reasoning amounts to saying that Newman is either wrong because he is an old white guy (let’s be ageist, sexist and rascist eh?), or he is wrong because he cited Roy Spencer who is wrong because he’s a Christian. Thus and verily, ergo, ergot and a truffle too, climate sensitivity on Planet Earth is 3.3 degrees C.
If Spencer had been a Muslim would Readfearn have spent 6 paragraphs mocking the awkward conflicts with science and the Koran? Perhaps not. Instead he might have had to fill 6 paragraphs with more sexist, ageist and anti-right-wing material, though I expect he could have managed. He’s had practice.
Readfearn was probably “inspired” (in namecalling) via The Weekly Standard which discussed the climate Roy Spencer’s religious beliefs last weekend, or rather, which revived the same old intolerant attack lines that have been around for years.
“When warmist scientists like Sir John Houghton use the Bible to support action to fight global warming (e.g. his book Global Warming: The Complete Briefing) that was OK with everyone. Same with Katherine Hayhoe and Thomas Ackerman. So, I guess it depends upon whether the bible-believer agrees with them before the warmists decide to trash Bible-believing ways.”
Let’s use the Readfearn-sword-of-insight. If the climate is facing a crisis because Roy Spencer is a Christian, then the climate will also be OK because Hayhoe and Ackerman believe in God. Does two outnumber one? Has anyone done a survey on Christians in Climate Science, and can we pivot-table the skeptics and believers? (Quick, send the idea to John Cook.)
Life is like an endless Escher puzzle to the namecallers — one question leads to another, and before you know it, you’re back where you started.
Let’s put a bigger perspective on it. Readfearn attacks Roy Spencer, the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Roy was awarded both the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal and the American Meteorological Society’s Special Award. Readfearn is a journalist who ran a blog which got 14,000 comments (he says so on About Graham*). Notably, while he was working for the BBC news service, 911 happened. He now writes in quite a few green left publications including a regular with DeSmog. These are his career highlights.
Of course, experts can make mistakes, and Readfearn might be right about Roy, but if so, why doesn’t Graham discuss any science? If he cared about the environment, you’d think he’d care about getting those satellite measurements right.
Readfearn is convinced that Spencer is wrong, and The Guardian is convinced that his opinion is worth sticking up their masthead.
* BTW Roy Spencer got 22,000 comments on his blog in the last three years, though I notice he doesn’t mention that on his About Page. (I had to ask instead.)
Matt Ridley looks at pharmaceutical research and finds problems of confirmation bias, lack of access to data, and lack of replication of results. He compares it to the hockey stick debacle which is rising in notoriety to become the new benchmark of bad science. Articles like this are especially useful, because people concerned about Tamiflu might not know anything about the HockeyStick, and might not have read an article about the climate.
In Pharmaceutical research companies may do many studies on a drug but only choose to publish the ones with results they feel better about.
PERHAPS it should be called Tamiflugate. Yet the doubts reported by Britain’s House of Commons public accounts committee last week go well beyond the possible waste of nearly half a billion pounds ($913 million) on a flu drug that might not be much better than paracetamol. All sorts of science are contaminated with the problem of cherry-picked data.
Science at a breaking point:
The problem seems widespread. A paper in the BMJ in 2012 reported that only one fifth of clinical trials financed by the US National Institutes of Health released summaries of their results within the required one year of completion and one third were still unpublished after 51 months.
The legendary bad hockey-stick saga is related to a new audience:
To illustrate how far this problem reaches, a few years ago there was a scientific scandal with remarkable similarities, in respect of the non-publishing of negative data, to the Tamiflu scandal. A relentless, independent scientific auditor in Canada named Stephen McIntyre grew suspicious of a graph being promoted by governments to portray today’s global temperatures as warming far faster than any in the past 1400 years – the famous “hockey stick” graph. When he dug into the data behind the graph, to the fury of its authors, especially Michael Mann, he found not only problems with the data and the analysis of it but a whole directory of results labelled “CENSORED”.
This proved to contain five calculations of what the graph would have looked like without any tree-ring samples from bristlecone pine trees. None of the five graphs showed a hockey-stick upturn in the late 20th century: “This shows about as vividly as one could imagine that the hockey stick is made out of bristlecone pine,” wrote McIntyre drily. (The bristlecone pine was well known to have grown larger tree rings in recent years for non-climate reasons: goats tearing the bark, which regrew rapidly, and extra carbon dioxide making trees grow faster.)
McIntyre later unearthed the same problem when the hockey-stick graph was relaunched to overcome his critique, with Siberian larch trees instead of bristlecones. This time the lead author, Keith Briffa, of the University of East Anglia, had used only a small sample of 12 larch trees for recent years, ignoring a much larger data set of the same age from the same region. If the analysis was repeated with all the larch trees there was no hockey-stick shape to the graph. Explanations for the omission were unconvincing.
One of the comi-tragic ironies here is that the scientist who “did the most” to expose the Tamiflu story according to Ridley is Ben Goldacre — but is this the same Ben Goldacre who appeared on the ABC propaganda-doco about climate (with Nick Minchin and Anna Rose, and which myself and David were also involved in). In that doco though, Ben Goldacre talks of denialists, and trust and how he trusts the experts on climate change:
Ben Goldacre: So it’s not that I trust them because I think they’re nice people or that I think they sort of play with a straight bat generally, like I’m basically assuming people aren’t actively lying, when I trust somebody else’s scientific opinion, when I trust the majority of opinion in a whole field, it’s because I know from all the work that I’ve done in other fields that there are checks and balances and structures where people will critique each other’s ideas and they will pull out the killer refutation of somebody else’s claim…. I’ve got no reason to believe that’s not happening just as healthily in climate research as it is anywhere else. [“I can change your mind” transcript]
Goldacre continued with this memorable gem:
Nick Michin: Have you read Booker’s book? Ben Goldacre: Of course I haven’t, you know, these people are idiots. Chris Booker says that what is it, he’s got some bee in his bonnet about how asbestos isn’t really bad for you. You know, I mean, these are – they’re just not very interesting to people to most people, you know. If you’re really, you know, if
you’re really into climate change denialism then I’m sure this guy is like a massive figure to you but it’s just boring, it’s a boring, boring argument. I would literally rather slam my cock in the door than get involved in this.
So Ben would rather slam his **** in a door than get involved in this climate denial argument, however appearing in a documentary and staking his reputation on it, that’s different. He didn’t need to do any research for that eh? He said as much:
Ben Goldacre: And so I, rightly or wrongly, just kind of gave up… To have a big argument, meaningfully with the climate change deniers I would have to familiarise myself with this vast body of evidence and actually I don’t think it will be sufficiently good fun but I can’t be bothered, you know.
Message to Ben: no one said you had to go on TV to talk about climate science. If you can’t be bothered doing any research, just say “No, thanks”. Crass ignorance is not the best look.
Poking holes in Big-Pharma, when they deserve it, is all admirable and worthy but it’s an Occupy-Science kind of approved target. Real scientists and investigators who unpick dodgy science claims are the ones who will tackle any field of science, not just the ones on the fashionable-hit-list. After all, those who attack the critics of bad-science and defend the bad-scientists are pretty bad-scientists themselves. Touche?
Ben is welcome to join us in the real trenches, but he will need to do some reading first.
Sometimes the consensus deniers are right, which is exactly why the term is so pointless and so profoundly unscientific.
The medical associations were unequivocal. Crash diets were a fad, unhealthy, and only slow sensible weight loss could work. So millions of people were fed expensive drugs for decades, monitored, and some even given risky bariatric surgery. Patients with Type II diabetes were expected to be treated for years, or possibly the rest of their lives. Nearly a tenth of the national health budget of the UK was spent managing diabetes. Fully 8% of the population have the condition in the US.
Now a new (albeit very very small) study cured diabetes in some cases in as little as a week with a diet that was thought to be bad.
In the trial the very low calorie diet was done for 8 weeks. Sticking to 600 calories a day is not easy (some reports say it was 800 cals). It’s about a quarter of what a normal guy would eat. But it shrinks fat in the pancreas and liver, and that seemingly returns insulin levels to normal. The really amazing thing is that the benefits turn out to stay around far longer than anyone thought. A word of warning, to anyone on medical treatment: the effect on blood sugar levels can be so dramatic it could be dangerous to start such a drastic diet without talking to the doc first.
The discovery, a “radical change” in understanding of the condition, holds out the possibility that sufferers could cure themselves – if they have the willpower.
Until recently received medical wisdom was that Type 2 diabetes was largely irreversible.
Prof Taylor asked 11 volunteers, all recently diagnosed, to go on what he admitted was an “extreme diet” of specially formulated drinks and non-starchy vegetables, for eight weeks.
After just a week, pre-breakfast (‘fasting’) blood sugar levels had returned to normal, suggesting a resumption of correct pancreas function.
Gordon Parmley, 67, from Stocksfield in Northumberland, one of the volunteers, said: “At the end of the trial, I was told my insulin levels were normal and after six years, I no longer needed my diabetes tablets.
“Still today, 18 months on, I don’t take them. It’s astonishing really that a diet – hard as it was – could change my health so drastically.”
While this study is tiny (11 people), there have been others suggesting something similar, and the idea came from the way people responded to bariatric surgery (it seemed to cure their insulin problems very fast). I think this study might be the first to use MRI’s to look at the fat inside the pancreas which dropped by a quarter over the 8 weeks. Note too, these people ate a lot of salad. Not all crash diets are the same, and some of the criticisms of crash diets are fair. Plus many on the crash diet may have made long term changes after the diet.
I’m not declaring that this is definitely a cure, or that it will work for everyone (it may only apply to a certain group), but I would bet people suggesting a radical low calorie diet would once have been called dangerous quacks (or deniers?). Once again, we see large organizations of well respected people saying that something is a “fact”, when it is merely the best guess they could make at the time.
It’s amazing what sensible things turn up in the holiday period. The Australian not only published Maurice Newman skeptical discussion: “climate madness, dishonesty and fraud”, but two days later they published a scientist talking about natural cycles. The scandal! He’s introduced a new term into the debate: …”residual” anthropogenic driven climate change. Instead of CAGW*, we have RAGW. It’s a term that I could grow to like.
Michael Asten, professor of geophysics at Monash University, is suggesting the Australian government’s “Direct Action Scheme” ought to start with science. (How radical.) Before we spend $5 billion we ought to spend a small part of that on looking at whether we need to spend the rest of it. It’s a starkly obvious point, but almost never said. More than anything, both the environment and the people of Australia need some action, and it starts with reviewing the research. Where is the cost benefit study on climate action?
THE Senate inquiry probing the direct action scheme to reduce CO2 emissions provides
opportunity for a review not only of the Coalition’s scheme but its underlying justification. Just as the National Broadband Network has been subjected to rigorous review and reframing, we should expect nothing less of the direct action scheme.
Asten lists the top five climate points that need scrutiny:
First, climate sensitivity is generally defined as the change in global temperature produced by a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. A range of studies across the past five years indicates this may be below, or significantly below, present values quoted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in which case published modelling projections of future global warming and sea-level rise become overstated.
Second, the disconnect between CO2 increase and global temperature change since 1900 is especially evident in the global warming hiatus of the past 17 years. The mechanisms for this hiatus are not adequately described by consensus science, but there is increasing evidence to suggest natural cyclic change plays a major role in this dichotomy between projections from climate modelling based on anthropogenic global warming theory, and systematic measurement using terrestrial and satellite observation platforms.
Third, cyclic variations in global sea level suggest natural cycles of about 60 and 30 years in length. Such cycles, which are deserving of considerable further study, suggest a significant fraction of the observed rate of sea-level rise of past decades may be attributable to the upswing of natural cycles. The consequence, if proven, on projections of future sea-level rise and associated planning and land-use policy is large.
Fourth, natural cycles in climate change are increasingly evident from precise studies of temperature records imprinted in cave deposits, ice cores, corals and deep-sea sediments. These provide mounting evidence that current global warming is not abnormal in a historical context, and variations are subject to a range of natural cyclic phenomena with periods ranging from about 60 years to millennia.
Finally, causative mechanisms for natural cycles in climate change are an essential complement to observational data showing natural cycles in climate change. Mechanisms involving highly complex interactions of solar physics, magnetic fields and cosmic rays are on the cusp of delivering insights into possible mechanisms.
The Direct Action program will cost $5 billion as Asten remarks:
The Senate inquiry would do well to recommend some thousandths of this sum be spent re-examining which projections are credible, which natural changes require mitigation of effect rather than cause, and what cost-benefit parameters apply to programs targeting residual anthropogenically related climate change.
As an aside, when I looked up Michael Asten, I came across Michael Ashley’s two year old criticism of The Australian for even publishing Asten’s opinion. Though it’s old, the reasoning is classic climate cultism.
Ashley has two arguments (both logical fallacies): the first is essentially that Asten is not a climate scientist. Who knew that only registered anointed Climate ScientistsTM can interpret data and speak about the climate? If that is the case we can only wonder why Ashley-the-astrophysicist’s opinion on climate is worthy of publication? He, apparently, is gifted to decide which climate scientists are right, and permitted to spout opinions on the philosophy of newspaper editorials as well, even though he is also not a Climate ScientistsTM, a JournalistTM or an EditorTM either. It’s one rule for them but “I Am A God.” Right?
The second argument (if you could call it that) is that Asten is wrong because there is “rock solid” evidence. But Ashley’s evidence about the atmosphere apparently is mostly opinion polls, and specifically a blogger opinion survey. He links to Cook’s meaningless keyword search of abstracts, that played word tricks with category names, hid the data, and mistakenly found a 0.3% consensus but called it a 97% consensus. Does Ashley approve of this kind of research? Perhaps not, he might be horrified to know he seems to endorse it. But here’s the trick: when Ashley wrote that article and linked to Cook’s site, the page it went to was a “consensus” page (bad enough) but it could not possibly have been that “97%” keyword study because it was not done then. So Ashley has linked to a page that John Cook changes, and thus pins his scientific reputation on a blogger’s moveable feast… We hope he checks his own experiments more carefully.
This really has been a PR debacle of amazing proportions. The ship stuck in ice has captured something larger than I would have expected. Methinks the timing must be apropos.
Good scientists are distancing themselves from the publicity hungry climate lightweights and commentators on both sides of the fence are agreeing in their criticism.
A third effect we are barely starting to see may ripple on for months — that’s when mass-media victims realize that the “Russian Tourist ship” was really a boat load of Australian and New Zealander scientists, paid for mostly by taxpayers and loaded and advised by supposedly “expert” climate scientists. This misinformation was despite the boat having BBC, and Guardian media on board, and Fairfax press in one of the rescue icebreakers. Today I see evidence of the first two effects.
From Skynews. The French chief of polar science calls the Spirit of Mawson trip “pseudo-scientific” and laments the effect it is having on real research.
The head of France’s polar science institute has voiced fury at the misadventures of a Russian ship trapped in Antarctic ice, deriding what he called a tourists’ trip that had diverted resources from real science.
In an interview with AFP, Yves Frenot, director of the French Polar Institute, said he had no issue at all with rescuing those aboard the stricken vessel.
He said the trip itself was a ‘pseudo-scientific expedition’ that, because it had run into difficulties, had drained resources from the French, Chinese and Australian scientific missions in Antarctica.
Real scientists are angry:
The trip on the Akademik Shokalskiy was aimed at emulating a 1911-1914 expedition by the Australian explorer, Sir Douglas Mawson.
‘This kind of commemorative expedition has no interest from a scientific point of view,’ said Frenot.
Because of the rescue operations, French scientists had had to scrap a two-week oceanographic campaign this month using the Astrolabe, Frenot said.
‘The Chinese have had to cancel all their scientific programme, and my counterpart in Australia is spitting tacks with anger, because their entire summer has been wiped out.’
From the Financial Times, recognition of the PR disaster. Christopher Calwell agrees with Andy Revkin, who finds some common ground with skeptics:
A cruise that will cost the climate campaign dear
By Christopher Caldwell
“The rescue of passengers from a Russian ship is a setback for those who warn of global warming”
“Those who stood to reap the benefits of the voyage were able, when things went sour, to pass on many of the costs.”
“The episode is a setback for those making the case for what used to be called global warming – probably the largest such setback since emails stolen from the University of East Anglia in 2009 cast doubt on the scientific neutrality of several climate researchers.”
The saga just keeps going. The Chinese Icebreaker is now also stuck, and has asked for help so the Aurora Australis with 52 extra passengers rescued from the Russian Charter boat have to stay nearby to help. Twenty two Russian sailors are still trapped on board the Russian boat — the Akademik Sholaskiy. Plus other scientists in Antarctica still don’t have their equipment. Costs for everyone involved are continuing to rise. Though there is a free-for-all on social media…
TAXPAYERS will foot a $400,000 bill for the rescue of a group of climate scientists, tourists and journalists from a stranded Russian research vessel – an operation that has blown the contingency budget of Australia’s Antarctic program and disrupted its scientific work.
The Antarctic Division in Hobart said it was revising plans and considering airlifting urgently needed scientific equipment that could not be unloaded from Aurora Australis before the ship was diverted from the Casey base to rescue the novice ice explorers just before Christmas.
The climate scientists and passengers aren’t free yet, their boat is waiting around to help the Chinese icebreaker.
The rescue bill continued to mount yesterday as the return of the Aurora Australis to Casey base was delayed after the Chinese vessel Xue Long notified rescue authorities it had concerns about its ability to move back into open water due to heavy ice.
The Australian icebreaker was put on standby late yesterday and ordered to remain in open water as a precautionary measure.
As usual, under the Treaty of the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), ships must respond to a distress message, and the costs are a “matter for the ship owners after the event… These can include fuel costs, crew costs and loss of revenue.”SMH.
Ultimately the costs could be millions:
In a debriefing on the rescue mission yesterday, Australian Maritime Safety Authority general manager John Young said the ships involved in the rescue would each be responsible for their own costs.
The costs, which would run to millions of dollars, could ultimately result in legal action between the ships’ insurance companies and the owners of the stranded Russian research vessel that sparked the rescue.
I wonder what the fine print says on the agreement between the Australasian Antarctic Expedition and the Russian Charter boat?
It is good news that the climate scientists, PhD’s, children, tourists and media are finally safe on board the Aurora Australia (though I note the webcam this morning still shows that boat surrounded by sea ice). Spare a thought for the sailors still on board the Shokalskiy.
Shub Niggurath writes to me today to explain that the ill-fated ship headed back to an area heavy with ice, knowing a storm was approaching. The ships captain had wanted to get away sooner, but was delayed because the expedition team was late returning due to a mechanical mishap. The details of that delay are below. Further down I note a New Zealand writer argues they were taking “undue risk” because sea ice data and wind data were available that “shows the ice didn’t come out of nowhere – nor from a sudden chill.”
Looks like the Antarctic team was unlucky to get nice weather with less wind. I marvel that the Commonwealth Bay and Cape Denison area are known as the “windiest place on Earth” because of the Katabatic wind (which would normally help blow the sea ice away).
“…the true character of Commonwealth Bay was soon to reveal itself with katabatic winds, that drain dense cold air from the polar plateau inland behind Commonwealth Bay, which are the most ferocious and persistent winds on the planet. Cecil Madigan, the AAE meteorologist, recorded a mean wind-speed of over 71 kilometres per hour over nearly two years of recording. Cape Denison is now acknowledged as the windiest place on Earth.” [Australian Govt pdf]
“The smallest mistakes can cascade into a disaster”
— Chris Turney
Akademik Shokalskiy and its passengers
It has been more than a week since the Akademik Shokalskiy got stuck in Antarctic sea ice. Its passengers have now been removed. Events are embedded safely enough in the past. Fortunately, beyond the monopoly of the flowery-but-unilluminating Alok Jha, the disinformation-obsessed BBC, and the forced gaiety of the eco-tourists, independent voices are available. One of them is Janet Rice, an Australian Green party Senate candidate.
Akademik Shokalskiy and its passengers
In any failure, cascades and systemic problems are likely to be present. Uncomfortable but obvious questions are on everyone’s minds: Anthony Watts and Andrew Bolt have put them out.
On the other hand, the official narrative is as follows: The Shokalskiy arrived at Commonwealth bay, Antarctica. They were two miles from open sea. ‘Suddenly’, a blizzard arose and thick ice packed around the ship. The vessel was trapped.
Consider how improbable the sequence sounds. Weather forecasts are easily available. A ship venturing to the Antarctic would have had access to the best possible forecasts. The captain would have known well in advance of approaching storms and high winds. The expeditioners proclaim how aware they were things could change on a dime. Which means, there must have been some limiting factor preventing action.
[1] On the 19th and 20th, two teams made round trips to Mawson’s huts in Cape Denison. The weather was good—in the words of Turney, “glorious sunshine” and winds “all spent”. The second party arrived back at the ship by morning on the 21st, at 5:30 AM. The groups used Argo all-terrain-vehicles (ATVs)
Who could’ve dreamed up the script for this one? If you are following the saga of the climate-scientists stuck in sea-ice-they-think-is-shrinking, the latest patchy news is that the icepack is so thick and so wide that the Chinese rescue icebreaker is also stuck and has been for a day or so. It can’t send out the helicopter to pick up the scientists on the Russian chartered boat, the Akademik Shokalskiy, until it is clear of sea ice, and the wind has slowed. The Australian ice-breaker now is trying to free the Chinese ice-breaker (the Shokalskiy is too far into the ice pack). The 74 passengers on the Shokalskiy are waiting for either the helicopter to come, or, with more luck, the wind to change and the ice to break up.
Never before in modern satellite media communications has it taken so many journalists to say so little, so slowly and so vaguely.
Who would have believed it? The expert climate scientists have a media-crew-on-a-satellite link on-board, but they don’t have a meteorologist with access to the weather and wind information they needed. (If they did, perhaps they might have seen that ice coming?) The stuck scientists “phoned a friend” who called a friend, and one thing led to another, and before you know it, Johnathon Coleman (skeptic and meteorologist) is calling Anthony Watts (major skeptic blogger and meteorologist) and they are doing all they can to get the right information down to the people on the ship. As you would, good on them.
UPDATE#1: See Coleman KUSI on this video for the info. Skeptics Joe D’Aleo and Joe Bastardi of Weatherbell were also part of the team of meteorologists.
UPDATE#2: Press release says helicopter rescue should go ahead today. / Nope. AMSA announces conditions changed. It’s off.
Don’t expect to find out about this twist of the mainstream media though (KUSI aside), where The ABC and others won’t mention the phrase “climate change” when reporting this fiasco. In the magical world of media spin, a boat full of mostly Australian climate scientists has turned into a Russian passenger ship stuck in ice. (See my post where media crew on-board take hours to get the news out and everyone pretends this mission was not about promoting climate fear via the BBC World Service. See also Andrew Bolt’s take on the 7:30 report tonight.) The media contingent is so large on this mission there is not only a BBC journalist, and two Guardian reporters, but it also includes two Fairfax reporters on board the Aurora Australis as well. Never before in modern satellite media communications has it taken so many journalists to say so little, so slowly and so vaguely.
BTW: Note the mystery message on the deck of the Aurora Australis (Seen in the SMH article). What could it mean?
View from the Aurora Australis | Photo: Colin Cosier (Fairfax Dec 30, 2013)
Who pays?
Anyone know what it costs to rent an icebreaker for a day?
If things get worse there is a bigger American icebreaker which is coming to restock an American Antarctic base, and could get there in a week or two. If things go seriously (but slowly) pear shaped, there is a Russian icebreaker called the Federov, a mere 28 days (and a gazillion roubles) away. Ponder the cost of unexpectedly diverting 3 – 5 boats and full crews to the end of the Earth in dangerous conditions to rescue a boatload of experts and documentary crew on a reenactment and “raising awareness” mission. They were trying to let the world know about melting ice but instead ended up singing songs on deck, and bragging about how much they are enjoying their adventure, while taxpayers probably foot most of the bill, real researchers lose valuable help and resources, and real sailors risk their lives trying to get them out. It’s a bit like the ultimate school leavers party for those who never grew up.
Australian taxpayers have paid for much of the $1.5m mission (by proxy though agents and are quaintly referred to as “supporters”) with help from UK, US and New Zealand taxpayers too. But who will cover the cost of the rescue? (Speaking of which, I discovered that if we were serious, there are even nuclear icebreakers around Russia which apparently cost $100,000 a day.)
What makes this article remarkable is the strong language coming from a credible source on the front page of a major national daily. We have crossed another line in the decline and fall of the Great Global Warming Scare. Maurice Newman is chairman of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Council , was Chairman of the ABC, and of the board of the Australian Stock Exchange. He was Chancellor of Macquarie University until 2008. The Op-Ed and news article today sums up the worst of the last five years of climate, and is the first time I can recall seeing a well respected commentator use such unequivocal and damning language and so prominently. There is no hedging here, no pandering. Newman obviously reads skeptical blogs and is very aware of what is going on. Ponder that he was Chairman of their ABC, and if someone of his sensible insight could not clean it up, we need far more drastic action (that’s another topic we will explore soon).
“IN his marvellous chronicle of human gullibility, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay wrote: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
It’s a pity Mackay did not live long enough to include anthropogenic global warming in his list of popular delusions. There has been none bigger.
He talks about the diabolical state of Germany and the UK,
“Australia, too, has become hostage to climate change madness. It has been a major factor in the decimation of our manufacturing industry. The Australian dollar and industrial relations policies are blamed. But, for some manufacturers, the strong dollar has been a benefit, while high relative wages have long been a feature of the Australian industrial landscape. It is the unprecedented cost of energy, driven by the Renewable Energy Target and carbon tax, which, at the margin, has destroyed our competitiveness. And for all the propaganda about “green employment”, Australia seems to be living the European experience where, for every green job created, two to three jobs are lost in the real economy.
“The scientific delusion, the religion behind the climate crusade, is crumbling. Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years. According to climatologist Roy Spencer’s research, “Over the period of satellite measurement, 1979-2012, both the surface and satellite observations produce linear temperature trends which are below 87 of the 90 climate models used in the comparison” – that is, 97 per cent were wrong.
“If the IPCC were your financial adviser, you would have sacked it long ago….
“…the climate change establishment, through the IPCC, remains intent on exploiting the masses and extracting more money….
On industrial wind plants, cosy relationships, and government subsidies, he asks the questions that should have been asked five years ago: Where is the outrage? Where is the media scrutiny?
“Why are taxpayers promoting for-profit enterprises?
“From the UN down, the climate change delusion is a gigantic money tree. It is a tyranny that, despite its pretensions, favours the rich and politically powerful at the expense of the poor and powerless. But the madness of the crowds is waning and, as Mackay writes of the perpetrators: “Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.” We can only hope it comes before most of us descend into serfdom.
The news item on the front page refers to the Op-Ed and starts:
The Polar Star icebreaker has left from the US to come help. It will take 8 -9 days to arrive. (Guardian)
Welcome to Media-Sport, where we score points watching a part of the media dance around the hysterical folly of an Antarctic climate science expedition trapped in sea ice for six nights (and counting). The Art of Propaganda is not just in the telling of one-sided lines, but is crafted through parts left unsaid.
More global warming, it is everywhere you look. View from Akademik Shokalskiy
With three ice-breaker rescue ships trying to reach them, the latest news is that the scientists and media entourage may have to abandon ship and be helicoptered to safety (though right now even that is not possible due to the very rough weather). The ABC news home page at time of posting this has zero references to “Antarctica”, but does say there are cracks in ice around a stranded ship.
The decision to abandon the latest attempt was made at 9am Australian EST. The SMH story appeared at 4.40pm, and the ABC reported it on “just in” at 5.40pm. Marvelous how “fast” satellite communications and social media can work. No mention on The Guardian Australia site (despite them having a reporter on the boat). No twitters seen on the@GdnAntarctica, or @guardian, @alokjha (their journalist), @loztopham (their documentary maker), or #spiritofmawson or @ProfChrisTurney. (Perhaps those trapped on the boat don’t know?)
Antarctica Live is the Guardian Live blog where you won’t find any live news at the moment.
The Guardian calls it “Antarctica Live” but the latest news is from yesterday. What use is a live blog if extraordinary events happen and you don’t cover them?
A month ago the mission of the $1.5m expedition was “to answer questions about climate change”. Now the ABC describes the Australasian expedition as “a Russian ship stuck in sea ice in Antarctica.” The BBC has a reporter on board, and it only took 8 hours for the news to reach the BBC feed. Who is spinning the message to neutralize an embarrassing story then?
Let there be no doubt, the mission was to document and record scientific changes in Antarctica and to broadcast that to the world. Most scientific missions don’t have a dedicated media team, but this one named a staff of five journalists. There is a journalist and a documentary maker from the Guardian as well as a senior producer from the Science Unit at the BBC world service. (See the media list.) If they’d discovered less sea ice, fewer penguins, or big cracks, we know the images would be all over the mass media and it would be evidence for “climate change”.
But with the MV Akademik Shokalskiy trapped by thick sea ice, the mission apparently is to call it a tourist boat. The BBC now tell us the mission was “to follow the route explorer Douglas Mawson travelled a century ago”. Don’t mention the climate. (Search for the word “climate” on the BBC story for example…). If there is any doubt this was a climate science crusade read about it here: SpiritofMawson –The Science Case. It tells us the full message of doom including that they are studying an ice sheet that would raise global sea levels by 52m (!) if it melted. It doesn’t tell us that there is no sign that could happen. The site doesn’t mention that temperatures on Antarctica have cooled in the last 30 years, nor that sea ice has increased to record highs (I bet the team have noticed that now).
…
The spin is that team has “met heavy ice“. Not “been trapped by unprecedentedly thick sea ice, unlike anything Mawson ever saw, and in record levels”. If they had met thin sea ice, would it have been described as a dangerously thin layer, a risk for penguins, and a stark reminder of how much the climate is changing? Would it have been an undeniable factoid?
It’s not what the ABC says, it’s what they don’t say (a.k.a. “lying by omission”). The headlines could read “Global warming scientists trapped in Antarctica by record sea ice they didn’t predict”. As if. That would be against the religion.
The world awaits news of the trapped ship, and after 7 hours of waiting for the third icebreaker, the tweet from team leader @profChrisTurner while surrounded by impregnable ice-sheets is to say that “it’s so warm it’s actually raining!” #spiritofmawson.
These are the advertising graphics for this Russian tourist boat that is following Mawson’s adventure –riiiight.
Figure 1: The different components of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 science programme (aligned with the Australian Antarctic Science strategic plan 2011 to 2021).
UPDATE: On Christmas eve, they were apparently only “2 nautical miles from open water” when they got trapped. Today they were grateful the Aurora Australis got as close as 10 nautical miles. Hmm.
MemoryVault comment (edited):
Why is there nothing on this story on the ABC News homepage?
Because yet again the ABC are playing fast and furious with the truth.
The original story about the research ship getting stuck in the ice was belatedly posted in the “justin” section early Saturday morning (Saturday 27/12/2013 7.04am), when it became obvious the story couldn’t be hidden any longer. I say “belatedly”, because there is a BBC film crew on board. Plus there are reporters from the Guardian. So the whole drama could be being covered live.
Since then, rather than post each new development as a “new” story – such as the failure of the Chinese icebreaker to reach them – the ABC has simply gone back and amended the original story, which now lies about two thirds of the way down the second page of the “justin” section.
However, don’t bother going there if you want to find out any of the real facts. Just some of the things that remain unreported are:
* This is the largest and most expensive Antarctic expedition ever mounted by Australia.
* It is being funded almost entirely by the Australian Taxpayer, as is the rescue operation.
* It’s not about “tourists”. There is the ship’s crew, the BBC documentary crew, the Guardian Reporters, a bunch of mad climate scientists, and a whole heap teachers and PhD students who actually paid for passage so they could be unpaid “research assistants” to the mad scientists.
* By the time this little “Climate Change PR fiasco” is over, the cost to the Australian Taxpayers will run into several millions of dollars.
It is interesting to note that the alleged purpose of this little taxpayer-funded White Christmas jaunt was to study the effects of climate change since Mawson was there, 1911 to 1914. Well, when Mawson was there, he was able to get his wooden sailing ship to within 50 yards of the shore. He couldn’t get closer, not because of ice, but because the water was too shallow. Conversely, the purpose-built, steel construction, ice-strengthened research vessel is currently stuck 60 kilometres out to sea, which is as close as they could get to Mawson’s landing spot, on account of all the sea-ice.
Still, despite the total farce of the situation, not to mention the enormous waste of funds and effort, you have to laugh. Here we have a full, professional BBC documentary film crew, PLUS reporters from the Guardian and Fairfax, caught in the middle of what would, in any other circumstances, be a Pulitzer Prize, Walkley Award winning real-life drama, and because of the politics of climate change, they can’t report it and it’s unlikely that a single second of footage will ever be seen by a member of the general public.
Can you imagine the coverage if instead of being stuck in ice that isn’t supposed to be there, they were all in a small Victorian country town surrounded by bushfires?
In closing, a word from the Member for Goldman Sachs and Communications Minister on fraudulent mis-reporting by the ABC:
Followed by a comment from Christopher Pyne, Minister for Education, on the misappropriation of $1.5 million of taxpayer’s funds by the University of NSW, to partially finance this PR folly:
It’s just another day on the road back to reality.
The New South Wales state government in Australia has announced it will tell its local councils that not only are they not bound by the IPCC sea-level predictions, they must do their own research on their own beaches. It’s the polite way of saying that no one believes the IPCC predictions anymore, worse, that they are so sure the IPCC is wrong that councils have to get different advice. For the IPCC it’s just one more signpost on the path to oblivion.
The NSW government will order councils to study the scientific evidence for sea-level rise on a beach-by-beach basis, amid fears that many local authorities may be undermining property values by imposing punitive planning conditions based on predictions contained in reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
IPCC credibility has crumbled in so many ways. People were suffering real pain — properties near the ocean in some councils were being denied the approvals to renovate or expand, and their values had fallen. Owners were locked into properties they couldn’t improve and couldn’t sell. The NSW state government told councils last year they didn’t have to follow the IPCC recommendations, but some still did. Now they are telling the councils “to adopt a commonsense approach to sea-level rises based in part on the science of what is actually happening in each location.”
“Councils which fail to respond to their communities can ultimately be held accountable by their residents/electors.”
One resident and elector who is outraged by the Great Lakes Council is Beverley Harbutt, whose home is on absolute beachfront at Boomerang Beach.
Ms Harbutt said she had been facing increasing financial pressures due to a marital break-up some years ago and had been forced to move in with her son Mark and his partner and put the house out to holiday rental.
She has tried for several years to sell the house, but prospective buyers lost interest when they found out the local council had designated it as subject to coastal hazard from rising sea levels, and had imposed severe planning restrictions, she said.
“It’s wearing on the soul, on the mind, and on the pocket,” she said.
Mark Harbutt said council policy had debased his mother’s place by $1 million. The house had been valued at $2.7m and the best offer coming in now was only $1.5m.
The real commonsense approach would have been to say that councils have no business telling people they can’t extend their own home on their own property in the first place (assuming the extensions are safe and not be too big an imposition on the neighbors). Owners and investors should be able to decide for themselves if they want to take the risk the sea will rise dramatically. Al Gore and Tim Flannery don’t seem to be selling up to move to higher ground.
This would be a true free market solution — where smart investors who were not fooled by b-grade science reports could step in to buy beachfront properties that gullible patsies were selling.
Where are those advocates of a “free market solution” now?
A special mention here goes to Paul E who helped the Mosman Council get a better grip on sea level projections. That council also deserve kudos for rejecting the CSIRO predictions too. From September 2013:
The Peak Power story is that spikes in electricity occur 6 to 10 days a year and we need to cut back on the power we use at home to ease spikes. In Australia, the spikes are on the hottest days of summer, and commentators tut-tut and blame the profusion of air conditioning in our homes. Their story goes that there is no point in building more power stations because the spikes are short lived. [See Western Power, Reneweconomy,The Queensland government, and Urban Ecology for examples of people making out residential air conditioners are to blame. That last link has this hysterical quote “The big mistake was putting air-conditioning in cars.” If people were not used to being cool in their vehicles, they would not demand it in their homes. (Tony O’Dwyer, National Economics)”. Never let the riff raff use the industrial magic tools eh? Keep the air conditioners for the elite academics, pollies and white collar office workers! — Jo]
But here’s the kicker. There’s one day of the year when more people are at home than any other day, so if home air-conditioners were the problem, then Christmas Day should be a peak electrical headache. Instead, it’s the lowest electrical consumption day of the year. It’s not just the lowest, but far and away the lowest, and not just this year, but every year that power records have been kept.
Power consumption on the Eastern Australia electrical grid on the Christmas Day compared to the Wednesday the week before.
A half a dozen days a year the Summer Power generation in Australia does indeed spike, and demand is sometimes as high as 32,000 to 35,000MW. But the load curves of power use tell us that homes are not the problem. The load curves are always lower over the weekend, and especially on Sundays. Peak power spikes just don’t seem to happen on the weekend. While some workplaces are open on a Sunday, there is only one day a year when almost every workplace is shut–Christmas. Nearly everyone in the country is at home, possibly with the air-con on all day. Arguably there is more cooking than usual, and the fridges get worked pretty hard as well.
The graph above shows two Load Curves. The top line is a normal working day, Wednesday 18th December 2013. The red line below that is the power consumption for Christmas Day 2013 — which looks closer to a typical Winter load curve with a small peak in the morning, then a slight dip and a further small rise again in the late afternoon. On a normal work/school day residential power consumption has a two peaks a day, one in the AM and one in the PM when everyone gets back home.
Compare the two points where both curves dip to their least power consumption. The lowest electricity use on a normal work day minimum is still at least 17,500MW, while on Christmas Day it’s down to 15,500MW.
The peak electricity use on the work day shown is 27,500MW, and the peak for Christmas Day is 19,500MW. The average for the work day is around 22,000 MW, and for Christmas Day around 17,000. Usually, a normal working/school weekday the peak is closer to 30,000MW with the average around 25,000MW. Schools are closed in Australia from mid December to the end of January (many schools have closed before the 18th December).
This Christmas Day load curve can be used as a good indicator of residential power consumption. See how the gap between the dip point around 4AM and the peak for that day is barely 4000MW. On one of the record Peak Power days, the gap between the dip point and the peak is sometimes as high as 14,000MW–with most people at work.
That maximum extra residential consumption for the day of 4,000MW tells us that residential consumption is not the largest contributor on Peak Power days, and that home air conditioning should not shoulder the blame for spikes.
The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution has a new bright idea. Big-Government is going to take £1 each from people using electricity and instead of giving it to people who make electricity, they’re going to give it to people who don’t absolutely have to have electricity. Those people might be paid for doing no useful work, or indeed, in a fabulous twist, they might be paid not to do no work, but just to be prepared to do nothing. It’s a brilliant left-of-center economic move, guaranteed to help the non-essential part of the economy at the expense of the part that does things that matter.
Expect to see the UK doing more non-essential things in future.
Businesses could be paid to shut down from 4pm and 8pm on winter weekdays, under plans approved by regulator Ofgem
by Emily Gosden
Hundreds of businesses could be paid to switch off their power between 4pm and 8pm on winter weekdays as soon as next winter to prevent blackouts, under plans approved by regulator Ofgem.
Mothballed old gas-fired power stations will also be paid to come back to stand-by so they can be fired up to prevent the lights going out when demand is high.
The plans – which together could cost household energy bill-payers about £1 each – were drawn up in the summer after warnings that the risk of blackouts had dramatically increased because old power plants are being shut down and replacements not built.
The United Kingdom leads the way in equalizing national wealth of the first world with the third. Rarely has one modern country done so much to reduce its living standards to create a level playing field. The answer to keeping Britain’s lights on is to turn some of them off.
It used to be there was another option, where the energy crisis would be solved by swapping one type of light globe for another. But this is “beyond electrical efficiency”. Nobody is really kidding anyone anymore that switching off the DVD at the wall will keep the heater running. We’ve moved to deep layer efficiency — the hunt for more efficient blackouts.
Where, once, people thought that insurance against power black-outs meant building bigger generators, now the insurance comes from crafting a team in readiness to take the day off.
Is this deindustrialization or postmodern arts graduates taking over?*
Ofgem said at the time that the spare margin – the buffer between peak demand and available supply – could fall as low as 2pc by winter 2015-16 if demand is high.
Under the plans, a large commercial site such as a supermarket complex using two megawatts of power could receive an up-front payment of £20,000 just to guarantee it could switch off if needed – even if it was never actually asked to do so.
But it’s a Free-Market SolutionTM which means it must be good, right. They’re going to find the cheapest going rate to be prepared to be non-productive.
National Grid would hold a reverse auction next spring where companies will offer the lowest price at which they will agree to switch off when needed.
It’s not communism, but it’s not capitalism either. Is it a new kind of thing, a sort of capiommunism? The “other, other plan” perhaps? Where capitalists compete to produce nothing, Greens say “omm”, and nobody builds a better power plant?
“Ofgem said at the time that the spare margin-the buffer between peak demand and available supply-could fall as low as 2% by winter 2015-16 if demand is high.”
I watched our local news last night and Eggborough power station,coal powered, is due to close at the end of 2015.
Eggborough produces 4% (you do the maths) of the UK`s total electricity supply but must close to meet our EU green targets.
Morons in Wasteminster, following morons in Brussels, this green scam will be the ruination of Britain and its people, one more reason to vote UKIP …
Reddit is a social media website which calls itself the “front-page of the Internet”. It’s possible you’ve even heard of it (but not from me.) One Reddit moderator proudly announced on Grist that climate change is the hottest battleground in all of science, and actual debate is too hot for Reddit.
I’d like to thank them for sending more traffic to skeptical bloggers as they stop pretending to be on the “front line” in science. Though to be honest, I don’t expect to notice the difference: their “environment” page is positively raging along, with most posts getting only 1-2 comments. “Front page of the Internet” my foot.
According to Nathan Allen, Reddit-science means following consensus polls and doing pop-psychology on your opponents , while allowing people you like to post conspiracy theories, but protesting when opponents do the same.
Here’s a wild idea, perhaps this debate is the hottest battleground in science because a religious theory about the climate has usurped real science, and thousands of scientists are rising up in protest? (If I’m right, the number of skeptics will be increasing and the tenor of the discussions will get more and more acrimonious. Oh look… UK poll suggests there are nearly five times as many skeptics as there were in 2005. Australian poll showed same trend. * I’m just sayin’…)
I think the real issue here is that Reddit attracts a pretty low base “scientist”, and the flame wars make it pointless. Reddit’s answer was not to raise standards by insisting that both sides stick to logic and reason (which would have blocked most of the fans of man-made global warming as well) but to block one side and allow the other to keep parroting fallacies.
Allen seems to miss that most of the believers commit all the same mistakes as the skeptics he’s blocking. Mistakes that start with himself — he calls people who disagree with him names which guarantees a scientific conversation never even begins. As long as Reddit allows the use of “denier” it isn’t discussing science, but just letting bullies score points.
After some time interacting with the regular denier posters, it became clear that they could not or would not improve their demeanor. These problematic users were not the common “internet trolls” looking to have a little fun upsetting people. Such users are practically the norm on reddit. These people were true believers, blind to the fact that their arguments were hopelessly flawed, the result of cherry-picked data and conspiratorial thinking. They had no idea that the smart-sounding talking points from their preferred climate blog were, even to a casual climate science observer, plainly wrong. They were completely enamored by the emotionally charged and rhetoric-based arguments of pundits on talk radio and Fox News.
As a scientist myself, it became clear to me that the contrarians were not capable of providing the science to support their “skepticism” on climate change. The evidence simply does not exist to justify continued denial that climate change is caused by humans and will be bad. There is always legitimate debate around the cutting edge of research, something we see regularly. But with climate change, science that has been established, constantly tested, and reaffirmed for decades was routinely called into question.
But maybe the problem with Reddit was that it didn’t attract high quality thinkers in the first place. This was the first page I clicked on. Not exactly front line analysis. Look out, Allen says the most important thing is that your comment doesn’t contain any conspiracies – like this right?
This comes from a self described “free market” orientated nonprofit that seeks to limit government in all areas of endeavor. It has been funded by Exxon/Mobile, The Koch brothers, and insurance companies.
This above mentioned bias is clearly expressed in the document. I would not call this science, but rather a presentation of information that supports a viewpoint.
Presumably in Reddit-science, these conspiracies are facts — turn off your brain — recite the litany.
Humans are masters of rationalization. Allen justifies one-sided censorship thus:
Announcing the all new Solar-Insolation Hiroshima Bomb App, thanks to Dale Kent.
Since 1998, Global Warming has been occurring at 4 Hiroshima Bombs per second, not that we can measure that rate to a statistically significant value*, or that it means anything at all. Every second the sun pours 2700 Hiroshima bombs of energy on the Earth at the top of the atmosphere.
As well as missing the big-picture, Cook and Nuccitelli show us they don’t have a good grip on cause and effect. The world may have been warming, but that does not mean that CO2 caused it. Though they would very much like you to think that.
But if you want to scare people out of their money and impress fools, the Skeptical Science widget is just the thing. As SkS say on their page: “ Put a widget on your blog to let people know that climate change is important to you. ” To which JoNova adds, “The Sks widget performs a valuable service, advertising the bloggers who don’t understand big numbers or trends, and who struggle with statistical significance. If someone wants to show they think-with-the-herd, and not with their brain, the SkepticalScience widget is perfect. I thank the team at SkS for helping us to identify the gullible fashion-victims of science.
Just to help people get a grip on just how different those numbers are, I’ve graphed it below, so everyone can see how significant the four extra “bombs are”.
Warning, the thin black line representing the extra heat accumulated since 1998 is so small, subject to error bars, it may disappear, just like your money.
Are you a journalist thinking of using the John Cook Widget and PR? Here is a comment from Jo Nova you can use:
“Cook’s Hiroshima bomb units are a parody of science, not to mention gratuitously inconsiderate towards the bomb victims. An atomic-bomb delivers all the energy in one spot, while the sun spreads it out. Science becomes mindless if you mash up things like volume and area. A million square miles is not like two square feet. McDonalds sells a Hiroshima Bomb worth of Big-Macs every 8.6 days. It’s like a bomb in the same sense that black is like white, 1 is like 2, being alive is like being dead. Things can be equated-to-inanity. Cook has achieved that.
Plus there has been no significant warming in the last sixteen years, so technically the rate is almost as likely to be zero bombs a second, not four. And in any case, the models predicted a lot more than four-bombs-a-second –- a more useful App would show how many bombs-a-second the climate models missed reality by. Have you asked Cook if he can do one of those?” — Jo Nova
That quote is adapted from a previous post: Climate scientists move to atom-bomb number system, give up on exponentials. There, the figure was 1950 H-e (Hiroshima equivalents) of solar energy arriving, but that applies to the surface of the Earth, so includes losses due to albedo (where light is reflected of the planet and clouds), and 2700H-e applies at the top of the atmosphere before the losses. The pie chart above compares 4 bombs to 1950. The black line would be even skinnier with 4 compared to 2700 figure. I’m being as generous as I can…
How accurate is “4 bombs” a second?
1. Ask yourself if we can measure the temperature of the global oceans with all their churning currents to 0.01 degrees C. (Ask yourself if we can measure a lake to one hundredth of a degree.) Exactly.
2. Ponder that CO2 levels were rising relentlessly from 2003-2011**, yet there is no sign of warming in the oceans or the atmosphere during this 8 year period. Some will scoff that 8 years is too short to be meaningful. These are the same people that make Apps measured in seconds. There are a lot of seconds in 8 years, and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so where did all those extra bombs go? If the energy was hidden in the noise, that tells you all you need to know about how accurate the measurements are. Perhaps it’s 4±4 bombs? Perhaps it’s 4±10? If the measurements are accurate, and some other factor was causing the energy to head out to space, why did none of the climate models predict this flatness? Could it be they don’t understand the climate and the forces more powerful than CO2 remain a mystery to them? It could.
3. Remember that the 4-bombs-a-second crowd are 95% certain, based on these numbers, that you must obey them and pay them (or their “cause”) a lot of your money. If you ask questions about the numbers, you’re called a denier. If you don’t pay, they’ll put you in jail.
UPDATE: I added the caveats below, but made the font too small, and evidently people didn’t read them. So I’ve boosted them back up, added some bold, because they matter. Please read them all. :- )
** Why pick 2003-2011? Measurements before 2003 are highly inaccurate (see “ARGO” and links directly above). Over the next 8 years 9 x 1011 seconds worth of Hiroshima-bombs is missing from the global energy measurements. It will be called cherry picking by those who don’t understand cause and effect, but it matters, in terms of global energy budgets. Repeat after me: energy shalt not be created nor destroyed. The missing joules will not be found in graphs back to 1880, they can’t vanish from 2005 and appear in 1950. Nor can they appear in 2014 either.
***Just to make it blindingly obvious – I’m not suggesting a real imbalance (if it exists) would not be important. It would matter if there was a persistent long term artificial energy imbalance like the black line in the big pie. But 1. Our measurements are not accurate enough to detect it. 2. There is no evidence that it is unnatural, or caused by CO2. The models are proven failures.
A reader Russell writes in to tell me his Year 9 son Jordan and his friend, Tom, took on their teacher’s sacred belief in man-made global warming. Given no warning, and called insulting names in front of the class, they took up the challenge with gusto and stayed up til 1am that night to put the presentation together. Not surprisingly the teacher tried to pull out the next day, but the class would not let her.
One of the slides quotes Al Gore mocking “the tiny minority”, like the ones “who still believe that the moon landing was faked…”. Then it shows and quotes four Apollo Astronauts and Burt Rutan (the first private astronaut).
One of the ten slides
From reader Russell:
The other week at school my eldest son (15) was challenged by his teacher to present to the class why he is a ”climate change denier”. He had to do this presentation the next day.
At the start of his class the next day he advised the teacher he was ready. She told him she wasn’t interested now, maybe another day. His classmates started heckling her saying ”You Chicken Miss”. She eventually agreed and got another teacher to sit in as well. Before my son spoke she showed the class the promo to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. After his presentation the class gave him a standing ovation. There is a lot more to this story, the above overview sort of explains what occurred.
To start his talk he read out five quotes from the ”US Senate Minority Report” below, then his power point. She made him stop the Prof Carter video 3min into it, the Prof Ball podcast about 5min in and let the class watch the other 10min video all the way through.
May there be a thousand young rebels following in their footsteps, says Jo.
Russell explained his son and friends get a hard time at school, though it seems, give their teachers a pretty hard time in return:
“…They [the boys] question everything they being taught and who’s the messenger. They know the truth about AGW, Sustainable Development, UNESCO,OECD, over population, open borders, media, communism, politics, the list goes on. One his mates sent the 10min video ”Agenda 21 for Dummies” reply all on the schools email, even the teachers received the link.”
“… there is some history with the boys and this teacher, she is a true socialist. One example of this is she told Jordan ‘His opinion is irrelevant, and only when you become an adult people will listen to what you have to say. Shut up, I am the TEACHER and you’re here to learn.’
I expect the teacher in question will not forget this lesson (though possibly she will interpret her mistake as being to let students speak).
Russell says that skepticism is alive and well in teenagers, despite them being raised on the climate dogma:
“Children are waking up to this hoax. I know of at least 50 kids in year 9 that realise this. I coach an under 15 rugby team and all 20 of them don’t believe in AGW, plus his large group of friends that attend different high schools in the area. Sustainable Development has overtaken AGW. AGW is still pushed in the classroom but SD is across every subject.’
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By Christopher Caldwell
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