Two million pageviews

Well, well, well. Google Analytics clocked up 2 million pageviews for joannenova.com.au in the last 12 months:

2,032,353 Pageviews
340,000 unique visitors
coming from 199 countries*
and leaving 38,000 comments

(*If anyone has a friend in Chad, Niger, or Zaire, you could email them and we could bump that country tally up to 200. Similarly, I’ve bombed out in Turkmenistan and North Korea. I guess there are places where “climate change” is not even a question they would ask in phone surveys … if they had surveys, or I guess, phones. Those are lands where esoteric debates about carbon footprints are irrelevant.)

All up, around 3,000 visitors drop in each and every day, and it often spikes to 5,000 – 7,000 (many of the unique visitors visit more than once).

Just for comparison’s sake, Quadrant online announced it had one million plus page views per annum, back in September. Coincidentally Quadrant and I both started out at about the same time, they with 156 supporters, and me with with one (thanks David. :-)).

Along the way lots of others have helped with the Tip Jar, some repeatedly, and I do so appreciate it. Even spare change. (If most readers gave 10 cents per view, I’d have a very decent salary :-). I started a special thank you list of names, but where do I draw the line? Some people have been very generous, and sometimes a small donation from a person with six kids and not much to spare can be just as motivating. I decided instead to stick with personal emails. (Give me time, I will get my email list up to date!).

Keep reading →

7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

Insurance that kills

A helicopter arrives at the scene of the crashFrom Metro.co.uk

The great Piers Corbyn popped in when I wrote the first post about the 10:10 video. His comment on that thread is the most popular (rated by thumbs up) of any of the 38,000 comments on this site (110 thumbs up). This below is that comment, which fits with my recent theme of What’s the harm in acting?

For those who don’t know, Piers uses solar factors and writes long range weather forecasts and does it with uncanny accuracy — he predicted the Copenhagen Blizzards a month before Copenhagen. His site is Weather Action. He’s so good at predicting atmospheric action that over 12 years, he won so many bets on the weather the bookies gave up and begged him to stop. (The odds were set by the UK met office.)

He discusses the often unseen but deadly costs of bad decisions. In this case, Natasha Jade Paton might still be alive today if authorities had sought better advice than that from deeply flawed climate models. Piers warned them they would run out of road salt.

There are thousands of people who think that “taking insurance” is like paying an extra $10 on your Pan Am ticket in case you have to cancel — i.e. irrelevant and minor. But the real costs of changing our energy systems (when we don’t need too) or building an unnecessary currency (affecting virtually every transaction around the globe) are v-a-s-t. Piers captures one specific example below of the deadly cost of bad decisions.

10:10 threatened to kill people, but Piers points out that their incompetence already does.

Keep reading →

8.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings

Donna Faragher: armed with unpublished complaint-mail and an unbankable license — destroys livelihoods

Donna Faragher, Minister for Environment and other stuff.

Some people have recently received replies from the Minister of the Department of Environment in Western Australia.

The ten second answer to the latest DEC excuses: The Thompsons License is unbankable; the Thompsons have already met the conditions; the complaints are unverified and often solicited, or relate to some other business, and Donna Faragher can teach you how to spell “business certainty” but she hasn’t got a clue what it is.

I’ve added my thoughts below, in between the full grey-box-quotes of the letter.

____________________________________

Minister For Environment; Youth

Thank you for your email to the Western Australian Government dated 22 September 2010 regarding the Narrogin Beef Producers cattle feedlot in Narrogin.

Good to see that through the magic of electronic communications it only took one month and four days to reply.

By way of background to your letter, Narrogin Beef is one of 44 licensed or registered cattle feedlots in Western Australia. The Narrogin Beef feedlot is the only feedlot in Western Australia which has been the subject of significant and ongoing community complaints about unreasonable odour. Between January 2005 and August 2009, 487 odour complaints were received, which complainants attributed to Narrogin Beef. This is a very high number of complaints regarding a licensed premises. Between December 2009 and August 2010, there were no cattle on-site and no community complaints regarding odour were received.

So DEC received 487 complaints from an unlisted number of people. Was that 22 complaints each from 22 people, or 487 complaints from one? Did it include emails? Did it include all the times DEC phoned up previous complainants to invite them to give more “feedback”? (Do solicited complaints count?) What process has the department used to make sure that none of those complaints are really about other causes, like the smell of the piggery next door? Or how about the time that I hear Coles put manure on their gardens and people complained. Janet told me those complaints were still in the file listed against Narrogin Beef. The local action group (helped by big city lawyers) also made sure that there were handy flyers around town with the local Complain-about-The-Narrogin-Beef-Feedlot-Hotline-Number (Dial: XXX YYY Winge-winge-winge). Anytime someone fertilized their garden, there just might have been a handy reminder on the next door neighbor’s fridge to call Donna Faragher at DEC.

Keep reading →

7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings

Funeral for Property Rights

UPDATED: Dates for the West Australian Speaking Tour below

Magna Carta

The Thompsons protest on Monday was moving. Janet Thompson delivered one of the best speeches I’ve heard at a protest. I was going to copy parts of it and attach the full speech in documents. But so much is worth saying, I’ve put it here almost in entirety.

In Part I – Janet reads the eulogy to “property rights”: from the Magna Carta til Maxwell Szulc was put in jail for clearing firebreaks on his own land.

In Part II –– she recalls those who are not with us, and then those who are. Government infringements on rights destroys lives, and breaks up families. Janet gives us brief examples of other travesties unfolding.

In Part III — Matt reminds us that the government encroachment affects us all, contributes to suicides and points out that we bow daily to the UN. Every other time people have been subjected to centralized, unelectable power, the death toll has mounted. Now we are now presumed guilty until we prove our innocence.

Matt quotes Ayn Rand:

““When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours and approvals–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed.””

JoNova

The Protest — Image thanks to Quadrant

Part I — The Eulogy to Property Rights

Private Property Rights was born in England on 15 June, 1215, and passed away in Australia on 26 July, 2010, after a long illness.

Private Property Rights was preceded in death by his father, Will of the People; his mother, Common Law Rights (née Magna Carta); and a sister, Right to Trial by Jury. He is survived by a cousin, Freedom of Speech, with whom he shared a close relationship. Even though that cousin is terribly ill himself, we are privileged to have him here with us today.

Our friend died slowly – not because of his enemies’ incessant attacks, but because we failed to stand up for him

Our friend was quiet and unassuming. In fact, even though we gathered here today consider Private Property Rights to be one of our best friends, we did not often speak of him, or even think about him. He was one of those friends that we took for granted. He did not resent this … he was forgiving. But his very existence depended upon our belief in him. Our friend died slowly – stoically — over a long period of time, not because of his enemies’ incessant attacks, but because we failed to stand up for him. We failed to be the antidote to his enemies’ poison. And without us, his best friends, defending and protecting him, he had no one. And so he suffered death by a million cuts while we tried to ignore the assaults and pretend that our friend would survive on his own.

Keep reading →

8.3 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

What’s the harm in acting anyway?

Saving energy or stopping pollution is a good thing. What’s the danger in acting now?

Bishop Pachuri of the IPCC and his wind powered staff
We can save energy and stop real pollution without setting up a whole financial bureaucratic system based on “thin air”. The wholly unnecessary trading system feeds the sharks of finance with more money and power. We waste blood, sweat and tears and encourage cheats. We reward fraud and foster corruption.

When we trade real things, people who cheat get caught easily. They can’t get away with it for long. But in the quasi world of meaningless permits-for-air, the only limit to cheating is “what they can get away with”.

For example: Carbon credits paid to China to build hydro dams end up helping bankers buy yachts, and feed the mafiosi in China. They evict homeowners, don’t pay them enough compensation, flood their valleys and commit these people to homelessness or more slavery to bankers through mortgages.

Sure, some useful outcomes might occur. But hoping we get lucky is not “planning”. It’s policy-by-accident. If solar energy, say, is a good idea all on its own, we don’t need to invent fake reasons to force people to use more of it.

We could for example tax fuel or gas and subsidize the less efficient energy sources to encourage the switch… oh, that’s right, we already do.

The real price is often invisible. It’s all the things we won’t do that we could have: $3.4 billion dollars spent on carbon sequestration is not just “money”, it’s 46 million people who didn’t get cured of blindness and another 100 million who won’t get clean water — some of whom will die from cholera or dysentery.

If we employ thousands of accountants, lawyers and auditors to monitor a scheme that’s pointless, it means all these honest hardworking people are wasting everyone’s time and resources. They could be finding a cure for cancer, or feeding kids in Haiti. They could be teaching children here to use logic and reason, and help stop the next generation from wasting billions on manufactured scares.

Taking action to save us from “climate change” will result in deaths among the poorest poor who depend on cheap energy.

How many people would you kill in order to save us from a theoretical “modeled” threat?

Keep reading →

7.5 out of 10 based on 4 ratings

BOM, GISS have record setting bugs affecting a million square miles?

How bad are these datasets? How sloppy are the data records?

Western Australia (WA) covers 2.5 million square kilometers (1 million square miles, about a third as big as the USA). The average of all WA stations over one month last year was adjusted up by as much as a gobsmacking 0.5 degrees due to a database “bug” – which contributed to August 2009 being the hottest August on record?! That’s one heck of a bug!

Could it get worse? Unbelievably, GISS seems to have lost data for key WA locations that an unpaid volunteer found easily in the BoM online records. GISS only has to maintain copies of records for sixteen stations in WA* which have temperatures current to 2010, but in seven of them they are missing data, and it affects the results. Are they random errors? No, shock me, six errors are upwards: in one case making the spring 2009 average temperatures for Kalgoorlie-Boulder 1.1 C degrees warmer!

But with no-one auditing our BoM or NASA’s GISS, and no team jointly receiving raw data or regulating standards in either agency, temperatures recorded in the field could potentially be listed in official records as being quite different, and who would know? It’s left up to volunteers like Chris Gillham, a freelance journalist and web designer in Perth, to run a sharp eye over the data. Chris has been tracking WA data for the last two years and his site, Average Temperature Trends Across Western Australia, has methodically, neatly exposed some major flaws.

Just how much can we trust any of the pronouncements coming out, and how significant are any of the “records”, even if the adjustments are fair, unbiased and justified? The whole database is surely not “high quality” when bugs of that magnitude are running rampant and data goes missing that professionals can’t find, but people who are not “paid to find warming” dig up without much trouble.

–JN

New questions about reliability of GISS and BoM data

Guest Post by Chris Gillham

Fresh doubts have emerged about the reliability of temperatures within the Goddard Institute of Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis database with revelations that missing data errors have appeared for various months in the 2009 records of Australian locations, even though the correct mean temperatures are available from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).

In turn, the BoM data itself has seen adjustments that might leave researchers wondering about claims that Australia has suffered record high temperatures over the past 12 months.

Western Australia (for scale, it's about 600 km from Perth to Kalgoorlie). Showing some of the sites.

A BoM database bug: Oops, half a degree?

On September 1 last year, the BoM posted mean min and max temperatures on its website for the month of August 2009 at all its recording stations in Western Australia (2.5 million square kilometres).

However, on November 17 the mean temperatures for all WA recording stations were adjusted upward by as much as .5 C for August 2009.

When questioned about the adjustments, the BoM confirmed it had suffered a database bug and the upward shift was a consequent correction for August 2009, which the bureau says was the hottest August ever recorded in Australia.

GISS is “missing”data

The GISS database shows that in the following month, September 2009, there is missing data (999.9) at three Western Australia recording stations:

Esperance | Kalgoorlie-Boulder | Perth Airport

Despite the missing September data and as is evident in their tables, GISS has calculated the Spring (S-O-N) mean temperatures at those three locations as 17.5 C, 20.5 C and 17.7 C respectively.

Trouble is, the data isn’t “missing”. A quick search of the BoM website reveals the September 2009 mean temperatures were:

Keep reading →

8.2 out of 10 based on 5 ratings

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 10: Gore Orwell

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans
19 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures), the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick, and the seventh pointed out that the Chinese, Russian, and Indian climate establishments (which are financially independent of the western climate establishment) disagree with the western climate establishment about the cause of recent global warming and the eighth showed how government institutional and funding pressures created the consensus among western climate scientists. The ninth showed the evidence that the amplifying feedbacks, responsible for two-thirds of the model warming projections, are not present in reality—and that the lame response of the establishment was to miscolour a graph to mislead us into thinking those feedbacks were observed when they were not.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

Why is the Official Language so Orwellian?

It used to be called “global warming”, then when warming paused it became “climate change”. And as of September 2010, it appears they are switching to “global climate disruption”.

Illustration: The government and media have stepped into an Orwellian twilight zone with global warming. Source.

It keeps getting less specific and less falsifiable. If the world hasn’t warmed by several degrees by the end of the century then man-made “global warming” was dead wrong, ok. But “climate change”? The climate changes all the time, like the weather, just give it a decade or two (see Figure 20).

And now “climate disruption”? So they are going to blame our carbon emissions for large storms, droughts, and floods? In biblical times they blamed the Gods, to whom only certain members of the establishment had a hotline—hmmm, better do what the establishment guys tell us to do or there’ll be a climatic disruption headed our way! How times change.

Keep reading →

7 out of 10 based on 6 ratings

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 9: The Heart of the Matter and the Coloring-In Trick

This point is THE critical one. It was the first point raised in the Skeptics Handbook, developed in the Second Handbook; the point that Dr Glikson had no reply to; the point that tripped up Will Steffen, Deltoid, and John Cook. As a modeler there was the moment in August 2007 when David saw the graphs below and said, emphatically: This is it. It’s over for the climate models. –JN

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans
19 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third was on ocean temperatures, and fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures), the sixth canvassed the infamous attempt to “fix” that disconnect, the hockey stick, and the seventh pointed out that the Chinese, Russian, and Indian climate establishments (which are financially independent of the western climate establishment) disagree with the western climate establishment about the cause of recent global warming and the eighth argued that hiring and firing policies and other government incentives created the consensus among western climate scientist that global warming is man-made.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

They Neglect To Mention That Evidence For One Link of their Theory Is Missing

The argument for man-made global warming consists of three links :

We humans are raising the levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere by our emissions.
Increasing CO₂ levels causes the temperature at the surface of the earth to rise, because CO₂ is a greenhouse gas. This is the “direct” warming effect of the extra CO₂.
The earth responds to the direct warming in many ways, called “feedbacks”. The feedbacks warm the earth further, amplifying the direct warming about threefold.

All three links must be true for the theory to be valid; a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Keep reading →

7.5 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

Rare historic weather observatory faces closure

The Library at Collegio Romano

How valuable is empirical evidence and long term data?

The Collegio Romano is one of the few places in the world with multi-centennial meteorological and climate data series (228 years!). Maurizio emailed me to let me know that it’s in danger of being broken up. He’s translated an Italian Petition on his site. I’ve copied parts of it below.

Not many people in the world appreciate how important and rare those long temperature series and historic collections are. It only takes a moment to sign the petition (see below for English instructions).

From Maurizio:

Help Save Five Hundred Years Of Weather Observations

The historical meteorological observatory of the Collegio Romano, in operation for 228 years, has been told to vacate its premises occupied from 1879. To this moment, nobody knows where it will be moved to, and worse, nobody knows what will be the future location of its Library, immense historical Archives and collection of old instruments, a priceless heritage cared for during more than two centuries by many great people with lots of passion.

Keep reading →

7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings

DEC, deceptive, duplicitous, or just clueless about money?

The DEC fight back with deception, bogus licenses (that no bank will loan money against), ask for things that have already been done, and turns a blind eye to the killer fine print clauses that make them kingmakers with veto rights over any business in the State.

This is a PR war, and the DEC response (below) is obviously designed to confuse the issue and slow down people who are asking questions. Instead of serving the people, they are deceiving the people. Shouldn’t we expect to get an honest reply from our “public servants”?

With all the emails headed into the WA Parliament about the Thompsons, people were asking DEC very awkward questions. In response DEC produced this reply (below). On face value, local parliamentarians might read that, and think this issue is resolved. Not so. Nothing had changed. DEC either naively don’t understand the World of Business, or worse, they do understand it, and are maliciously using it against their chosen targets.

DEC declare they’ve given the Thompsons a five year license for 10,000 head — but the fine print catch is that condition A1 makes it unbankable — no one would loan the Thompsons money to run a business with a license that says if they offend anyone anywhere in the world their license will be revoked without notice.

ODOUR CONTROL
A1 The licensee shall ensure that odour emitted from the premises does not unreasonably interfere with the health welfare, convenience, comfort or amenity of any person who is not on the premises.

This is yet another delay and deceive tactic by a Minister too weak to take on her own public servants.

It’s not a five year license, it’s a five minute license

Five minutes after 10,000 cows arrive at Matt’s farm, all it takes is one noisy neighbour to start phoning in complaints that their health and welfare is being “interfered with” and DEC can take that license away. As I explained earlier, this vague condition is so sweeping and powerful it would immediately shut down Perth airport or any other business in the state should DEC choose to apply it.

Keep reading →

7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings

Thompsons update – protest in Perth on Monday

Tower of Hope

Presents
The Death of Property Rights

Please and join us for the
Funeral Service

To be held on the steps of
Parliament House Perth
11:00 a.m.
Monday, 25 October 2010

Followed by the
Burial Ceremony

Cottesloe Beach,
Approximately 1:30 p.m.

“wear black, and bring your truck”

Are you fed up with our government stealing assets, destroying good businesses and ruining families? Are you sick of inordinate red tape being used against you?

Monday lunchtime next week join us at Parliament House in WA, meet Matt and Janet Thompson, Peter Spencer (the 52 day hunger-striker who has won the right to challenge in the High Court), and Maxwell Szulc (a WA farmer who, I understand, cleared fire breaks on his own land, and was jailed for it. Incarcerated! He is being released this Monday morning, which is why the protest is Monday).

I know you have other things you need to do, but if the government keeps growing, when will any of us be less busy?

This is about free speech. What is happening to Matt and Janet is a warning to all of us. Speak against the Establishment and face targeted ruin. The DEC admit they didn’t follow procedure, and have treated the Thompsons unfairly. Why won’t they fix their mistake?

Matt and Janet Thompson are now down to simultaneous opposing injunctions and writs. They’ve launched several against the DEC in WA, and against the constitutionality of the EPA regulations (wait til you hear how obscenely silly the fine print is on those laws). The NAB (or receiver) immediately returned fire and issued one against them. The Thompsons have got no legal aid, so they’ve been doing almost all of the research themselves. This is what it comes down too. We have to stand up for ourselves.

Keep reading →

7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 8: Do Most Western Climate Scientists Believe Global Warming is Man-Made?

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans
19 October 2010

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

Yes, But It’s Murky

Photo adapted from Youxue Hong Wikimedia

The vast majority of scientists in the western climate establishment believe in the theory of man-made global warming (but not Chinese, Russian, or Indian climate scientists, as noted). But here’s where it gets murky.

The believers basically took over western climate science in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and since then have:

Fired anyone who expresses disagreement with their theory, or hindered their career (publishing, promotions, funding). Al Gore sacked a few skeptics in his time as Vice-President of the USA.
Hired into climate science positions only people who agreed with their theory.

Government-funded institutions are the only employers of “climate scientists”, so once the believers were in control of the few bodies that determine funding of government science, it was game over. Believers got all the funding and positions; skeptics were forced out. There are no checks and balances in government funded science, no competition from privately-funded science in the climate area, no auditing as there is in financial matters, no regulation as with food and drugs, and no organized and funded opposition to test the theories and champion alternatives.

Keep reading →

9.2 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

What the heck are science journalists for?

From The Skeptics Handbook II

Last week a science journalist at The Guardian wrote the best summary I have ever seen of the state of the profession known as “science communication”. Only, he thought it was a spoof. Well, it is — and it’s satirically funny at the same time as being an unwittingly cutting commentary. (We laugh at the formulaic approach because we know it’s so true, and then we bang our heads on the wall…).

Science journalists who churn out mindless ritual productions are effectively being PR and marketing writers. Dangerously, though, they are dressed as “investigative” journalists. The public assumes they are checking that their stories don’t break laws of logic and reason, that they are supported by evidence, and that they are providing the whole story. Their PR is the most powerful advertising there is, it’s not just free, it’s a third party endorsement.

Ironically, the same journalists probably don’t realize how important they are. They think they’re there for a fluffy feelgood reasons: to help promote science, raise public awareness, and attract school leavers into careers in science. They don’t realize that their most important role is to protect science itself and be guardians of logic and reason in a world that isn’t so far from the stone age. Science Communicators ought to have been acting as back up auditors on science itself — as a check and balance to notify the world of systemic failures: corruption and bias in funding, manipulation in peer review, lost or withheld evidence. Journalists could have been the last official backstop against science being exploited, but instead of exposing the corruption, they covered for it.

Meanwhile the largest scam in modern science is running amok under his nose…

When the news-mag journos wonder why blogs are taking over, it’s because they left a vacuum. The bloggers came to fill it.

Science journalists could have saved the world billions of dollars of money that were wasted following a dead end. That’s money that could have been put towards finding a cure for multiply resistant superbugs, creating better long range flood and storm forecasts, or just saving the hairy nosed wombat.

Rubber-stamping-PR-writers become unwitting tools of tyrants

Imagine if parts of the government wanted to use the good name of science to justify demands for money or power. The government, having buckets of money, could pay for lots of scientists to do lots of fairly irrelevant, minor, repetitive or speculative research (modeling comes to mind). Then a steady stream of press releases would spring forth, leading to a similarly steady stream of cut n’ paste PR, dressed as “reporting”.

Some smart sharks in the government twigged that through this round-about-method with obedient “journalists” they could buy a conduit to get their favorite message repeated ad hoc, ad nauseum and ad infinitum. If the government wants a “scientific” message to back up their scare campaign and ask for more public money, the starting point is to set up an institute to “report on a problem”. Obviously, no institute thus created would ever actually declare “there’s no problem” (and “we should all go home”). It becomes a self fulfilling cycle with journos being the o-so-helpful tools to keep it running.

Keep reading →

10 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 7: Other Climate Establishments Disagree

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans
6 October 2010

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

The western climate establishment consists of the climate science research bodies in the western world, and their climate scientists. The leading organizations are the IPCC of the United Nations, the CRU in Britain, and GISS and NOAA in the United States. Personnel move around within the establishment, getting funding from the same sources, collaborating on projects, and publishing in the same journals.

There are other climate establishments in this world, and they haven’t come to the same conclusions about what causes global warming.

The Chinese torpedoed the Copenhagen negotiations in 2009, refuse to commit to any quantified emissions reduction targets, and say more research is needed to establish whether warming is man-made.

Low Carbon Plot, Gou Hongyang

In February, one of China’s largest Power Companies ordered $60B US dollars worth of Australian coal — the largest export contract ever for Australia.

In August 2010 a book appeared in state-sanctioned bookstores in China that strongly suggests the Chinese government completely rejects the theory of man-made global warming (Low Carbon Plot, by Gou Hongyang):

“Will the increase in Carbon Dioxide definitely lead to the planet warming? Although there have been many many reports published by research institutes that verify this, but from the viewpoint of the history of man, and scientific method, the theories have not yet achieved scientific proof.

But, after many years of repeated indoctrination from every kind of propaganda machine, and the mixing together of environmental pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources, people have already formed a conditioned reflex, when the wind blows, the grass bends with it, and quickly hang these things on the hook of “carbon”, and attempted to get rid of carbon at a faster rate.”

Keep reading →

7.8 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 6: The Hockey Stick

I know the Hockey Stick is old news to most blog readers here, but it’s easy to forget that the people reading the mainstream news (ie: most of the West) have no idea of the scale of the audacity involved. Up until the 1998 MBH paper came out, it was widely understood that there was a Medieval Warm Period, indeed there were hundreds of papers available at the time. The Hockey Stick Graph completely rewrote everything, yet was accepted and widely promoted without anyone so much as asking for the data… until, of course, McIntyre and McKitrick tried. It will do down in the annuals of science as one of the most egregious examples of “the not-so-scientific” method. — JoNova

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans

6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third discussed ocean temperatures, the fourth discussed past temperatures, the fifth compared the alleged cause (human CO2 emissions) with the alleged effect (temperatures).]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

Why the Establishment Had to Manufacture the Hockey Stick

Norseman arriving in Iceland

Faced with the obvious disconnect between human CO₂ emissions and temperature (Figures 21 and 22), the climate establishment either had to change its theory or change its data.

The establishment’s anti-scientific attitude that its theory triumphs over data was famously on display in the Climategate email where Kevin Trenberth, who believed (in 2008) that global warming was still occurring but was bemoaning that no one could find it using actual real-world measurements, said “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

They chose not to change their theory, so they had to change their data (thereby disqualifying themselves as scientists). Because the CO₂ figures come from historical consumption data that are very hard to dispute, they had to change the temperature data instead.

“We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”

They needed to move the start of the global warming trend from before 1700 to a time when human emissions were becoming significant compared to today’s level—to say 1910, which is also at a minimum in the warming-cooling pattern (figures 20 and 22).

And to make the current warming unprecedented, they needed the current temperature to be greater than anything in the last thousand years. In a rare insight or slip, one of the leading establishment climate scientists sent University of Oklahoma geoscientist David Deming an email in 1995 that said “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period”, according to a statement by Deming to a US Senate Committee.

Keep reading →

8.9 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

Shock! Climate models can’t even predict a linear rise

SOURCE: Semi-Satirical News

Preschooler outdoes climate models

Back in 2001, little Alby Brushtail was just 4 when he predicted global sea levels for a decade by drawing a straight line through a graph. Today, Will Steffen, Director of the Climate Institute admits that global climate models are woeful at predicting sea levels in a story titled: “Sea levels rising at top end of estimates”.

The failure of the sophisticated models is all the more baffling because by 2001, global sea levels had been rising at the not-so-tricky, fairly steady rate of 3mm a year for the previous nine years. Despite this simple linear trend, even with the worlds best equipment and budgets of millions, the top experts only barely managed to predict future sea levels within their broad error margins.

In the end, they couldn’t outdo the four year old who drew the line in with an orange crayon in his preschool class and who simply said that the 3mm a year trend would “just keep going”.

For his remarkable success in 2001, Alby credited Mr Squiggle, but says he’s moved on now, and uses a ruler.*

Satellites have been measuring sea levels, on a global basis, with unprecedented accuracy, since 1992. They show that the seas have been rising roughly 3mm a year over the last 18 years. The most recent figures hint that, if anything, the trend has slightly slowed in the last four years.**

Look at that linear trend

Global Sea Level Change recorded by satellite at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Click on the graph to visit the site.

Not so satirical

Will Steffen is paid by the Australian tax payer, to provide the best, whole and complete information to the Australian public that he can. But it appears he chose not to tell Australians that global sea levels are showing absolutely no sign sign of upward acceleration. He spun a “business as usual” result into a hurry-don’t-wait message. And the Environment editor of The Australian didn’t seek out other opinions or bother to do the five minute web search that would have turned up the well recognized University of Colorado graph above.

Keep reading →

8.2 out of 10 based on 5 ratings

Robyn Williams shreds the tenets of science

Robyn Williams presenting at the Prime Ministers Awards 2006

As I keep repeating, there’s only ONE thing that makes science different to religion, and that’s evidence. Robyn Williams is the most lauded commentator on science in Australian (read the rave here, he was the first and only journalist to be elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science; a professor at two universities, and received 5 honorary doctorates) yet despite the accolades he mistakenly hails the opinions of paid PR hacks above evidence and reason, and hallows the Blacklist of Approved Climate Sorcerers, sorry, Scientists as if it holds the key to the question of climate sensitivity of a trace gas. (How many “scientists” do you need to warm a planet? Answer: Whatever $79 billion can buy.)

This odd juxtaposition of discussing modern science with neolithic reasoning is unfortunately de rigeur, such is the abysmal state of my profession, known (misleadingly in this case) as science communication. These same commentators who complain about “the people who confuse the public”, don’t seem to realize they’re the ones who lead the pack. They break laws of reason known for two thousands years, destroy the central tenets of science, and conflate irrelevant issues (let’s talk about the moon landing — the moon landing?). No wonder the public is confused.

Here are our tax dollars being used for a character assassination (or three).

Bob Ward

The interview with Robert Ward is one long attack on anyone who speaks against the word of the paid-fraternity-of-climate-scientists. It’s known as Argument from Authority. It is apparently the core philosophy of how Williams reasons — by following the head sheep. Williams is so enamored with this fallacy, he thought a stone age remark by Schneider (below) was worth using – not just once on his program but twice, as if one call to the Pagan leaders of science wasn’t enough.

Keep reading →

8.7 out of 10 based on 7 ratings

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 5: CO2 Emissions Versus Temperature

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans

6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third discussed ocean temperatures, and the fourth discussed past temperatures.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

Notice How They Never Directly Compare Temperature With Human Emissions of CO2?

According to the man-made theory of global warming promoted by the western climate establishment, the recent global warming is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, which are dominated by carbon dioxide (CO₂).

So let’s compare the alleged cause (human emissions of CO₂) with the alleged effect (temperature).

Human emissions of CO₂ have been estimated from historical data for the period 1751 (before the industrial revolution) to 2007 for the major sources—coal, gas, and petroleum use, cement production, and gas flaring—by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center within the US Department of Energy. (The cumulative figures below extrapolate to 2010 using average annual emissions for the previous 14 years.)

Keep reading →

8.2 out of 10 based on 16 ratings

Is the Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Part 4: Past Temperatures

The public might not understand the science, but they do understand cheating

Dr. David Evans

6 October 2010

[A series of articles reviewing the western climate establishment and the media. The first and second discussed air temperatures, the third discussed ocean temperatures.]

Click to download a pdf file containing the whole series

They Don’t Tell You: The Current Global Warming Trend is Over 300 Years Old

A Scene on the Ice by Hendrick Avercamp, circa 1600

Satellite data only goes back to 1979, and global land-thermometer records only go back to 1850. Before that we have to resort to “proxies”, which are various natural phenomena from which temperature can be deduced. As we go further back in time, the errors and uncertainties increase.

Keep reading →

6.7 out of 10 based on 10 ratings

New Zealand – Where did that warming go?

UPDATED (below)

Think of this as a car crash. NIWA says: “The car’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Then: “We can’t find the keys (actually we’ve lost the car)”.

Later: “We weren’t driving it”.

Finally: “The car doesn’t exist”.

There’s a litany of excuses. The National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) claims New Zealand has been warming at 0.92°C per 100 years. But when some independent minded chaps in New Zealand graphed the raw NZ data, they found that the thermometers show NZ has only warmed by a statistically non-significant 0.06°C. They asked for answers and got nowhere, until they managed to get the light of legal pressure onto NIWA to force it to reply honestly. Reading between the lines, it’s obvious NIWA can’t explain or defend the adjustments.

Richard Treadgold was one of that team and wrote it up here.

The legal documents:

August 2010: The NZ Climate Science Coalition’s put together legal claims.

The NZCSC filed judicial review proceedings against NIWA, requesting the Court to:

• Declare the 7SS invalid
• Direct NIWA to prepare a valid replacement NZTR

September 14th 2010: NIWA “defended itself”

Treadgold colorfully summed up what happened when NIWA put out its defense.

NZCSC: “It’s faulty.” NIWA: “It’s not ours.”

How can this be the action of earnest, dedicated scientists — their answer to months of implied accusations of dishonest science? Having suffered, according to their supporters, attempts to smear their top scientists, how can NIWA respond by saying they don’t want to be held responsible?

They’re not defending the temperature record or the mistakes in it, they’re virtually saying: “You’re right, the dataset could be shonky, so we’re washing our hands of it.” Which gives us no confidence in the “science” they might have applied to it. What the hell’s going on?

…it gets worse.

Keep reading →

8.1 out of 10 based on 7 ratings

Recent Posts

Part I — The Eulogy to Property Rights

Saving energy or stopping pollution is a good thing. What’s the danger in acting now?

How bad are these datasets? How sloppy are the data records?

New questions about reliability of GISS and BoM data

Guest Post by Chris Gillham

A BoM database bug: Oops, half a degree?

GISS is “missing”data

Why is the Official Language so Orwellian?

They Neglect To Mention That Evidence For One Link of their Theory Is Missing

It’s not a five year license, it’s a five minute license

Tower of Hope

Are you fed up with our government stealing assets, destroying good businesses and ruining families? Are you sick of inordinate red tape being used against you?

Yes, But It’s Murky

Rubber-stamping-PR-writers become unwitting tools of tyrants

Why the Establishment Had to Manufacture the Hockey Stick

Not so satirical

Here are our tax dollars being used for a character assassination (or three).

Notice How They Never Directly Compare Temperature With Human Emissions of CO2?

They Don’t Tell You: The Current Global Warming Trend is Over 300 Years Old

UPDATED (below)

The legal documents:

NZCSC: “It’s faulty.” NIWA: “It’s not ours.”

JoNova

Find Things

Register for emails

Recent Comments

Statistics

Handbooks

Most commented

Archives

Tags

Links

Categories

Books