The start of the end — Mainstream press says “Politicians go cold on global warming”

The Zeitgiest is shifting. The unthinkable is now thought, and in public.

Politicians go cold as global warming debate loses spark

From: The Times July 23, 2013 12:00AM, Reprinted in The Australian

Soon will come the time when everyone says “I always knew it was wrong”.

Tim Montgomerie notes the great backdown of Kevin Rudd on the carbon tax and lays out the global carnage in the climate meme:

Throughout the world green politicians are presiding over similar climbdowns. From Washington to London, shale gas rather than any renewable technology is seen as the future. Even nations such as Germany and Spain, which led the march to green energy, are slashing unaffordable subsidies to the renewables industry. British Conservative Nigel Lawson has claimed that the average share price of companies in the renewable sector has fallen by 80 per cent over five years. “One renewable company after another is going bankrupt,” he declared. The heavy cost of green energy policies might have been justifiable if they had delivered results, but they haven’t. Since the Kyoto treaty on climate change, global emissions have continued to rise. Since 1990 they have increased by about 50 per cent. China’s increase in emissions has been 25 times greater than the reduction by the EU’s core nations. In so far as Europe has actually met its environmental obligations, it has only done so by exporting industrial capacity (and jobs). Once the environmental impact of imported goods has been added to its carbon footprint, Europe has clearly failed to keep its environmental promises.

One commentator, Bjorn Lomborg, spelt out the futility of Europe’s unilateral environmentalism. Germany’s efforts to combat climate change might, he calculated, just possibly delay a rise in global temperatures by 37 hours, but that delay will have cost German taxpayers and consumers more than $US100 billion in the form of renewable subsidies and higher electricity costs. That’s about $US3bn an hour.

Green enthusiasts are kidding themselves if they blame the global economic slump for the failure of climate change policies. Their policies were always an attempt to defy economic gravity.

Montgomerie’s description of Rudd is very short:

… in the past 10 days one of the greenest of green politicians has to all intents, constructions and purposes given up. Last week, Australia’s green movement suffered a defeat at least as big as those of the country’s cricket and rugby teams. Rudd announced he would ditch the carbon tax that had threatened to consign his Labor Party to one of the worst defeats in its history…

Some will argue that Rudd has shifted to a trading scheme which is what he always wanted, and he’s only brought it forward by a year. But everyone knows that the reason for the shift was not because it would be “better for the climate” to reduce the carbon-price by 70%. Even Rudd himself admits the shift was to reduce the cost of living pressures.

Priority number one is not the environment. (But don’t expect Rudd to say that).

9.3 out of 10 based on 116 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

Will an election be called this week, or will Rudd wait… ?

…. Update: See MV #10 — the man who knows the details.

7.2 out of 10 based on 53 ratings

Breakthrough: Labor Party discovers perpetual fountain of cash

The Labor government recently promised to reduce the price of carbon from the world-record-high of $25 a ton to a probably-could-be might-look-like $6 a ton price, as it switches (possibly) from a Carbon Tax to an Emissions Trading Scheme.

The compensation that was promised to offset the Carbon Tax will still be paid to voters, even though the Carbon Tax might end. Thus bread and fishes will be supplied, but hardly anyone will have to bake or fish. The innovation comes thanks to the impending-electron-factor — a strange combination of the Fibbs-Boson*, and a Poll flavored Quark.

Bonus for families as price of carbon falls

by: ADAM CREIGHTON, From: The Australian

July 20, 2013 12:00AM

THE Rudd government has banked massive overcompensation into the federal budget for at least the next six years, if the carbon price fails to meet Treasury’s optimistic price projections.

More than 80 per cent of households will be overcompensated for the effect of the proposed emissions trading scheme by between $140 and $410 a year in 2019 if the price of carbon permits only rises to $10, new modelling shows. Even if the price of carbon reaches the $38 a tonne in 2019 that Treasury currently projects, more than 60 per cent of households, including practically all pensioners and single parents, will receive excess compensation of up to $45 a year in 2019. National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling senior researcher Ben Phillips said given a possible drop in the carbon price to $6 under an ETS, the compensation package was “arguably too generous”, offering between three and five times the carbon price impact in assistance.

“Around 90 per cent of households are fully compensated,” he said. “Households reliant on pensions and allowances are likely to remain adequately compensated for a very long time because their payments increase with the inflation or wages.”

Governments world-wide are admiring the brazen technique where 90 per cent of households are fully compensated. Both Singapore and Chile have issued a blanket invitation for the other 10% of Australian households to emigrate.

*Pace Josh the Cartoonist. (He does a great Calendar).

8.7 out of 10 based on 55 ratings

India threatens Wind farms with fines. They must accurately predict the wind a day in advance or else!

What the Nanny-State Goddess Giveth…

The intermittent power of wind towers plays havoc with electricity grids. Power black outs in India are so bad, they cut off the supply to 600 million or so people for two days last year. To make the grid more stable, an official somewhere decided it would help to have at least one day’s warning of how much electricity will flow from those towers. (Why not two days I say?)

“A directive took effect this week ordering wind farms with a capacity of 10 megawatts or more to forecast their generation in 15-minute blocks for the following day. “

To put some perspective on this, here is what 7000 wind turbines across Northern Europe (between the North sea, the Baltic Sea and the Austrian-Swiss border) produced in 2004. You can admire the stable predictable output that comes from averaging so many turbines over such a large area. Right?

Percentage of peak grid power supplied by 7000 wind turbines in Northern Europe in 2004

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9.2 out of 10 based on 84 ratings

Try to keep up with Australian politics. The zombie Parliament may rise again. Is that a Tax, a Trade or an Army I see?

So, we might have an election next month, we might trade carbon next year, the carbon price might be $24, or $6, or $40. We might have a new government soon, or none of the above.

Hows that stability working out for us now Rob Oakshott and Tony Windsor?

Kevin Rudd announced The Tax would move to become The Trading Scheme. But he still has to get it through Parliament, and it’s not looking easy.

The Greens don’t like it — because free market solutions are only “right” when the price is what the Greens want it to be.

The Coalition don’t like it either, though they are not so good at explaining why (watch Greg Hunt struggle here). The Coalition aren’t brave enough to say they prefer their own “no regrets” policy that could be unwound when the namecalling stops and everyone admits cooling Earth by 0.0C was always a waste of money. The Coalition won’t have to pay billions in compensation to their Green Army, but they can’t say that either. They know the love-media would crucify them if they admitted publicly that it was possible the models might be wrong. The IPCC can say that it is 90% sure, but no one is allowed to talk about the 10% chance there is some other outcome*. So we come to this bizarre moment in politics.

To get the Carbon Pox off his back, Rudd might have to recall Parliament, which everyone assumed was dead and buried for this government, and which also means debate on the floor and tricky questions. But even the zombie Parliament may rise, hints Rudd.

LABOR says it would attempt to drive through legislation to terminate the carbon tax a year ahead of schedule if parliament was to reconvene before the election.

But the Greens immediately put paid to any Labor plan, saying there was “no way” the minor party would allow legislation to fast-track the move to an emissions trading scheme through the parliament, now or after the federal election.

Climate Change Minister Mark Butler said laws to scrap the fixed price and move to an internationally-linked emissions trading scheme on July 1 next year would be ready before this year’s federal election.

“In the event that parliament were to resume before the election, I could take draft legislation to the parliament,” he told the ABC this morning.

“It may well be that legislation would be rejected by either house, in which case we would take it to the election seeking a mandate from the people,” he said.

On Monday on the 7:30 report Bill McKibben said the carbon price could even get to $40 a ton (and for once, I thought, let that man keep talking):

“…moving to an emissions trading system means that the price will be set by the market. If the European price turns out to be $40 a tonne next year, the Australian price will be $40 a tonne. How can you get to $40 a tonne? Well the exchange rate falls by 30 per cent, the Australian dollar value of permits will go up by 30 per cent, because now they’re set in Euros. The forecast should not be the basis of the policy. They got it wrong the first time by doing that, they’re potentially going to get it wrong again.”

Meanwhile the Labor Party are pretending they are helping Australians become $380 better off with their “new plan” — when they are really promising not to force people to pay as much as they originally planned, and in any case, the commissars in the EU (and forex traders) will be the ones who decide how much the Australian electricity bill will fall by.

Now Rudd’s-latest-clever-plan to find the money to get rid of the Carbon Pox is to play tricks with the Fringe Benefits Tax, which evidentially helps people buy thousands of Australian-made Holdens, Fords and Toyotas. With Ford gone and Holden teetering on the brink, could it be that Rudd will “save” millions, but force businesspeople to waste hours keeping detailed logs? And then in the aftermath, Rudd will hand back millions from taxpayers to keep Holden from going under? With every week, business plans and career paths are hitting the shredder. The bureaucratic carnage knows no bounds…

Remember the aim of the Hung Parliament Festivities in September 2010? Here in Australia the big most important Thing was “stability” for business. End the Uncertainty, they chanted. Yes indeedy. It was never about stability for business, who are getting shafted at every turn, it was about stability for politicians wasn’t it Rob and Tony?

Punters are betting on election dates (August 24 or 31 maybe October 19). Odds for a Coalition win are at $1.40, an ALP win at $3ish.

h/t to Peggy for the betting odds.

*Yes, we know the models are already proven wrong. This is a hypothetical.

8.8 out of 10 based on 40 ratings

Wetlands like CO2 — “Gimme 700ppm” say sedge-grass

scirpus olneyi | Smithsonian

Not only does one particular grass seem quite happy at 700ppm, it was absorbing 30% more carbon dioxide, and there was no sign that it might not be equally happy at even higher levels. Will disaster strike the world at 401ppm? This 19 year study suggests (again) it might not be so bad. Arguably, 700ppm might be better. Even the C4 plants (supposedly the ones which prefer low CO2) still absorbed 13% more CO2 at 700ppm. (Absorbing more carbon usually means growing faster.)

During the worst drought years, growth slowed dramatically, but drought-stricken plants with 700ppm of CO2 around them still absorbed 4% more.

From the Smithsonian

High CO2 Spurs Wetlands to Absorb More Carbon

Under elevated carbon dioxide levels, wetland plants can absorb up to 32 percent more carbon than they do at current levels, according to a 19-year study published in Global Change Biology from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. With atmospheric CO₂ passing the 400 parts-per-million milestone this year, the findings offer hope that wetlands could help soften the blow of climate change.

Plant physiologist Bert Drake created the Smithsonian’s Global Change Ecological Research Wetland in 1987 at Edgewater. Back then, most scientists thought plants would gradually stop responding to rising CO₂. Whether or not terrestrial ecosystems could assimilate additional carbon—and act as powerful carbon sinks—was not known. This study tracked not only how much CO₂ wetlands absorb, but also the impact of rising temperature and sea level, changing rainfall and plant type.

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8.9 out of 10 based on 49 ratings

Holden Volt $2.50 to fill? But it costs more to run than a big SUV

The Holden Volt

The Holden Volt is an electric hybrid car that, according to advertisements, costs only $2.50 to fill. Thanks to a polished ad campaign, there are probably people out there who think it might be cheap to run.

The ads don’t mention that if you are an average driver, doing about 40 km a day, you’ll need to fill it every day. It still only has a 60-80km range on electric power, before it has to switch to petrol. (The charge will take about four hours from a home socket). Even so, it almost sounds useful, except that it costs $60,000. (And don’t even think about the network grid infrastructure we’d have to build if everyone drove one).

When RACQ (Royal Automobile Club of Queensland) looked at the average running costs of different models the five year total costs of a Volt were $74,000 – $78,000. The five year cost of running, say, a 2 ton Ford Territory (medium SUV) came in at $63,000.

So it’s cheaper to run an SUV for five years than it is to run a Volt

If you commute 60km a day, and can pick up one of these second hand, and drive it for years, you might end up saving money. Though at the moment it’s still $50k for a used one, and there are not many around. Annual Volt sales were projected to be in the “hundreds”.

Perhaps these total costs come out better over ten years?

Share the cost? We all pay more for a Holden Volt, even if we don’t own one

The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) released a warning in December that electric cars will cost a lot more than just the purchase price and the electricity:

Electric vehicles in particular are another new “appliance” which is set to place new demands on Australia’s power system. This review has found that each electric vehicle could impose additional network and generation costs from $7500 up to $10,000 per vehicle over the 5 years from 2015 to 2020 in the absence of appropriate pricing signals and efficient charging decisions.

Who pays that extra $7k – $10k per car? It is shared by all consumers… lets just hope not too many people buy a Volt.

Don’t take this the wrong way, I want everyone to be able to afford to drive across as much of Australia as I have, and if one day an electric hybrid makes that happen, I’ll be delighted.

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7.7 out of 10 based on 83 ratings

The start of the end. Rudd ditches carbon tax for a trading scheme. Eurocrats now dictate what we pay.

What once was the Greatest Moral Challenge, has now been downgraded. Not because the evidence shows it is futile, but because of the polls. It’s democracy in action, working through the fog of ulterior motives, and the inefficiency of lazy journalists informing distracted voters or not, polled with non-specific questions. But somehow, through the haze, the public realizes they are getting a bad deal, and finally Rudd realizes there is no rescuing The Carbon Pox that voters didn’t vote for.

We were told we needed a price on carbon specifically to increase our electricity prices, reduce emissions, and to cool global temperatures by zero degrees. Now, apparently the cost of living is too high — even though that was entirely predictable and indeed a mark of the tax’s “success”. Instead of admitting it was a mistake, we’re “moving forward” and now we need to copy a trading scheme that hasn’t worked, and which is called “free” but is fixed by EU bureaucrats that neither we nor even Europeans can vote for. The New Zealanders are ahead of us.

Australia – a non-voting non-member of the EU?

Thus the Australian economy is now partly dependent on decisions made in the EU, which is where the price on carbon (sic) is set. A bit over a week ago the EU voted to cut the number of carbon permits to push up the price. How much do we suppose they were considering the effect on the Australian economies — zero or none?

As I’ve said before, a tax is still better than a trading scheme — it can be removed, and there are not so many middle-men creaming money out of the money-go-round and holding onto long-lived property rights. A trading scheme can’t be unwound without paying compensation.

The people who want a trading scheme the most are those working for or owning shares in corporations with names like Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Royal Dutch Shell. Yes, Big-Oil wants carbon trading too.

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8.9 out of 10 based on 86 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

This weeks spot for all those thoughts that don’t fit anywhere else.

5.9 out of 10 based on 21 ratings

News media networks report global warming 92 times, versus global pause, zero times

…

As I keep saying, it’s not that the media has a problem, the truth is the media IS the problem.

If we had accurate and balanced reporting the global warming meme would have crashed and burned long ago, voters would have said “No thanks”; politicians would have wasted less money; scientists would be researching useful things; universities would have to fire professors who can’t reason, and we would all be richer.

So when the budget office says our ABC costs us $1 billion, I say No, the cost is measured in national GDP.

No wonder most of us have given up watching the old media.

Here’s a study, by the Media Research Centre, reported in the Wall St Journal. Hat tip to the HockeySchtick blog and Tom Nelson. It refers to US networks so “ABC” means the American variety. Curiously, the New York Times looks good in comparison to the network news. It told its readers about the global pause only six months after its foreign competitors did. It was only a few years behind the bloggers.

Networks Do 92 Climate Change Stories; Fail to Mention ‘Lull’ in Warming All 92 Times

ABC, CBS and NBC ignore ‘mystery’ warming plateau in favor of alarmism about sea levels, allergies, weather.

JULIA A. SEYMOUR

From the Media Research Center

Recent years’ slowdown in global warming completely ignored by networks 92 climate change stories in 2013.

Stories citing experts or the latest studies promoting alarmism get covered more than 8 times as often as critical experts and studies.

Old-media bias means 8 times the alarmism

Just since Jan. 1, 2013, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programs have aired 92 stories about “climate change” or “global warming.” Not a single one of those stories mentioned the “warming plateau” reported even by The New York Times on June 10. The Times wrote, “The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.” Even though the Times piece wasn’t published until June 10, a warming slowdown had been reported by foreign media outlets in November 2012, and by The Economist online in March, Reuters in April and BBC online in May of 2013.

The problems with climate forecasting models weren’t mentioned either, even though a researcher at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg found that many climate models couldn’t correctly model known temperatures in China. Investor’s Business Daily reported on March 28 that “Only half of the 21 analyzed climate models were able to reproduce the changes in some regions of China,” he said. “Few models can well reproduce the nationwide change.”

Most of the study involves example after example of the one-sided media coverage we have already discussed here in detail. It would be interesting to see a study of UK, Canada and Australian media statistics.

Perhaps there is some good news? Things have improved since 2007 when skeptics got 1 mention in 13. Back then CBS was practically a climate propaganda machine with a 38 to 1 ratio of alarm versus calm.

There’s a bit of a history of these things in the media:

Another BMI Special Report, Fire and Ice, noted that print media have warned about impending climate doom four different times in 100 years. Only they can’t decide if mankind will die from warming or cooling. BMI conducted an extensive analysis of print media’s climate change coverage back to the late 1800s.

It found that many publications now claiming the world is on the brink of a global warming disaster said the same about an impending ice age – in the 1970s. Several major ones, including The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek, have reported on three or even four different climate shifts since 1895.

Methodology

The MRC’s Business and Media Institute analyzed all stories mentioning “climate change” or “global warming’ on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “World News with Diane Sawyer,” “World News Saturday” and “World News Sunday,” CBS’s “This Morning,” and “Evening News” and NBC’s “Today” and “Nightly News” from Jan. 1, 2013, to June 15, 2013. A few casual mentions, such as the mention of climate change in a a fashion story, were excluded from the analysis.

Image adapted from wikimedia: OTVbelweder-front.jpg Tube TV-set of 1957-60, model OT-1471 “Belweder”. 14-inch screen diagonal. Designed & made in Poland.

9.3 out of 10 based on 90 ratings

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

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

10 July 2013
STATEMENT REGARDING THE TERMINATION OF PROFESSOR MURRY SALBY

Prof Murry Salby

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

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

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

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

— Attributed to “A spokesperson” for Macquarie University

My thoughts

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

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

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

What Macquarie University did not say:

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

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

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

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8.6 out of 10 based on 152 ratings

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

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

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

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

Here’s the official explanation for the change:

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

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

…

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

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

Thanks To Scott the trader for help.

9.7 out of 10 based on 74 ratings

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

Prof Murry Salby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Jo

———————————————————————————————————

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

Remarks from several make it clear that Macquarie University is comfortable with openly disclosing the state of affairs, if not distorting them to its convenience. So be it. Macquarie’s liberal disclosure makes continued reticence unfeasible. In response to queries is the following, a matter of record:

1. In 2008, I was recruited from the US by “Macquarie University”, with appointment as Professor, under a national employment contract with regulatory oversight, and with written agreement that Macquarie would provide specified resources to enable me to rebuild my research program in Australia. Included was technical support to convert several hundred thousand lines of computer code, comprising numerical models and analyses (the tools of my research), to enable those computer programs to operate in Australia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Murry Salby

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

9.1 out of 10 based on 150 ratings

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

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

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

City expected to feel heat as it expands

Ben Cubby

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

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

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

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

Read more: The Age

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

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

When is a fingerprint not a fingerprint, John?

Why no mention of the UHI factor?

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9.6 out of 10 based on 45 ratings

Weekend (sort of) unthreaded

Another spot to tell odd news …

8.4 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

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

…

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

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

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

Let’s unpack the empty PR

Quotes below are from The Australian.

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

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

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

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

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

Emmott’s qualifications:

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

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

Here is more of Emmott’s fake politeness:

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

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

Oh boy, Emmott wants the title “skeptical”

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

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

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

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

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

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9 out of 10 based on 83 ratings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catalyst for regulation of energy use and bigger government perhaps?

— Jo

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

Thus on the seventh day…

global warming strikes again…

…with fire and brimstone

Sinners will get old and sick too.

… killing old ladies

The new Gods are totally biblical.

It’s coming to get you

Ken Stewart wrote to me this morning:

More Bogus Science From Catalyst

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

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

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

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

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

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8.7 out of 10 based on 75 ratings

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

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

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

…

248am blog shows another angle.

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9.1 out of 10 based on 100 ratings

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

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

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

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

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

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

It takes 3 to form a group

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

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

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

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

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

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

See my tweets @JoanneNova and share ideas with Facebook

9 out of 10 based on 65 ratings

That’s a 0.3% consensus, not 97%

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

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

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

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

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

———————————————————————————————————

‘Quantifying the consensus on global warming

in the literature’: a comment

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

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

Capsule

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

Abstract

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

Introduction: no role for consensus in science

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

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

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

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

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

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9 out of 10 based on 82 ratings

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My thoughts

What Macquarie University did not say:

City expected to feel heat as it expands

Let’s unpack the empty PR

Oh boy, Emmott wants the title “skeptical”

More Bogus Science From Catalyst

It takes 3 to form a group

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

Capsule

Abstract

Introduction: no role for consensus in science

JoNova

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