“Skeptics” are described as if they are one small block of fringe extremists, but not only is half the population skeptical in some sense, in this debate I am not on either extreme, but a centrist, smack in the middle. On the one hand, alarmists are convinced the climate is headed for a catastrophe, and on the other some people are convinced there is no greenhouse effect at all. Wes Allen, sits in the middle with me, and he’s been engaged in an intense debate with people on both ends of the spectrum. After a scorching critique of Tim Flannery’s work, he has swung his attention the other way. Here is his synopsis of the Slayers book, for discussion, and I’m sure it will generate a long passionate defence and debate, just as previous posts on this topic have. (eg: Why greenhouse gas warming doesn’t break the second law of thermodynamics and So what is the Second Darn Law?). I know the Slayers are keen to discuss their ideas. I’m hopeful people can remain polite, as that’s where progress may be made… many thanks to Wes here who has done a diligent write up, and has […]
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October 21st, 2012 | Tags: Allen (Wes), Greenhouse Effect, Slayers | Category: Global Warming |  Print This Post | | I’m impressed (really quite surprised) that this made it to the top story of the front page of The Australian. The syllabus for Years 10 -12 science students in Queensland contains this nonsense. What is good about it though (see below) is how it forces influential science leaders in the country to pick sides. Is science a “consensus”? Even on Climate Change? No says the Dean of Deans… The Queensland Studies Authority: “Science is a social and cultural activity through which explanations of natural phenomena are generated,” “Explanations of natural phenomena may be viewed as mental constructions based on personal experiences and result from a range of activities including observation, experimentation, imagination and discussion. “Accepted scientific concepts, theories and models may be viewed as shared understandings that the scientific community perceive as viable in light of current available evidence.” [QSA, Physics Senior Syllabus, 2007] [QSA Chemistry, 2007] [QSA, Biology 2004 amended 2006] The answer from QSA (The Queensland Studies Authority)? They said the statements concerning a view of science and science education should be read in the context of the entire syllabus and it was not, and was never intended to […] “In the old days they would have just bound her, thrown her into the lake, and waited to see if she floated. Though a primitive method of witch-hunting, it would surely be far more effective than Jonathan’s, and would require much less in taxpayer funding.” [MediaWatch comment by Preacher] Jennifer Marohasy belongs to the “wrong” tribe, according to the ABC’s Media Watch program. Media Watch is panting with excitement because — stop me if you’ve heard this before — she’s a scientist who earns money. My favorite part of the inadvertent expose-of-ABC-bias was the sneering voice-over, meant to be Marohasy or any supporter of her: petulant, petty and childish. The full ABC-festival-of-smug is right on display, thanks, as always, to the Taxpayers of Australia. It’s so bad, it’s satirical: MW: But many real journalists struggle when reporting science. “Struggle?” Mr Holmes? You mean they are so confused about the real world, they think if a US group funds a group who write about a distantly connected topic, that therefore, ergo, and quid pro quo — that tiny funding demonstrates that Lake Alexandrina was always […] March 20th, 2012 | Tags: ABC, Marohasy (Jennifer), MediaWatch | Category: Big-Government, Free Speech, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | UPDATE: While MediaWatch (ABC) is hassling Jennifer Marohasy, Marc Hendrickx at ABCnewswatch responds in kind, posting an excellent open letter to MediaWatch, asking if they can outline their own scientific qualifications to judge Jennifer Marohasy’s scientific work. ABC staff want to know her motivations, but Marc wants to know theirs. And “given that they employ 11 staff full time” and produce “one 15 minute show per week”, do they consider that this represents good value for the Australian taxpayer? Touche! Brilliant Marc. It’s a must read. ————————————————————————— Jennifer Marohasy has extraordinary influence. She’s so powerful that the ABC’s Media Watch program has singled her out, asking questions about her income and disclosures that they don’t even bother to ask Tim Flannery. Presumably they don’t think anyone still takes Tim seriously. They sent her a barrage of questions last Friday, which she hammered in a detailed reply on the weekend. I hear they are still sniffing around anyone they can think of who may know something about Marohasy, asking leading questions and volunteering information that isn’t correct. Media Watch (aka Witch Hunt) thought this was a question worth asking: [To Jennifer Marohasy] In your recent opinion […] March 14th, 2012 | Tags: ABC, Flannery (Tim), Hendrickx (Marc), Marohasy (Jennifer), Murray-Darling River | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Welcome to Australistan. I haven’t read the whole 400 page Finklestein report, but Mark Steyn tells me that the Chinese government likes it. What more do you need to know? As Steyn says, this is not a left-right thing, it’s a free-unfree thing. Tim Andrews at Menzies House launches a New Free Speech Campaign: “This is a proposal that would seem right at home in North Korea or Zibmabwe. I never thought – as dark as things seemed- we could stoop this low here in Australia”. People asked me if this would “affect your blog”. Ha ha, I laughed, Will it? Right now, I’m discussing whether I’d need to move to Fiji, or Florida, or become a citizen of the Dominican Republic in order to express my views. Could I split my blog into a different domain name each day to avoid being “monitored”? ( I could have 365 blogs: joannenova1.com.au, joannenova2.com.au… it would play havoc with the search engines.) Alternately, perhaps I write 100% satire, cartoons, irony, and the exact opposite of what I mean? Ho Ho. Who has the rule book on the Soviet black market for ideas? What can we learn and how does it translate […] March 5th, 2012 | Tags: Finkelstein Review, Free Speech, Steyn (Mark) | Category: Big-Government, Free Speech, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Thank you DeSmog! Without FakeGate we would not have had this cartoon. (Readership est 850,000) Cartoon by John Spooner. The Age. Source:The Age John Spooner: The Age Gallery Spooner: Nat.Lbrary collection Spooner: The National Times Collection 🙂 TRANSCRIPT: Julia Gillard to Tim Flannery (top picture) “Tim, sorry to drag you in like this. I’m not that upset that you were so wrong about water shortages now that we’re drowing in the stuff. And how were you to know that there would be no statistically significant increase in warming for the last 15 years of increasing CO2 emissions.” Julia Gillard to Tim Flannery: (lower image) “No! I want to know why I pay you 10 times what Bob Carter gets and he still wins the argument!”
On Wednesday I mentioned the Carter/Flannery disparity in wages: And if Bob Carter receives an honorarium type amount of $1500 a month, the pull of those big dollars must be powerfully tempting for people like Tim Flannery who struggle along on about $1200 each day he works. […] February 18th, 2012 | Tags: Carter (Bob), Cartoon, FakeGate, Flannery (Tim), The Age | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | The Climate Change Scare Machine Chart The believers of man-made-weather-disasters are wetting themselves with excitement. It painful to watch grown men drool. Poor things, they were really wounded by Climategate, and they’ve been waiting, praying that some day someone would level the playing field and show that skeptics were just as petty, shameless, and money-grubbing as their team turned out to be (not to mention hypocritical, deceptive and incompetent). In their dreams. Instead the hyped non-denier-gate shows just how incredibly successful the Heartland Institute is. Look at the numbers. The skeptics have managed to turn the propaganda around against a tide of money, and it is really some achievement. … Entity USD Greenpeace $300m 2010 Annual Report WWF $700m ” ($524m Euro) Pew Charitable Trust $360m 2010 Annual Report Sierra Club $56m 2010 Annual Report NSW climate change fund (just one random govt example) $750m NSW Gov (A$700m) UK university climate fund (just another random govt example) $360m UK Gov (£234 m) Heartland Institute $7m (actually $6.4m) US government funding for climate science and technology $7,000m “Climate Money” 2009 US government funding for “climate related appropriations” $1,300m USAID 2010 Annual turnover in global carbon markets $120,000m 2010 Point Carbon […] February 16th, 2012 | Tags: FakeGate, Gleick (Peter), Heartland Institute, Innumerate | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Sorting real journalists from sock puppets is not too tricky: real investigators tell you what the story is about; PR writers tell you what to think. Do they “discuss” ClimateGate emails … without quoting the emails? Who digs for details, and who hides the evidence?
The PR writers for Big-Government were quick to come up with excuses for ClimateGate II. Which is all very well, but it’s blindingly obvious where their own personal prejudices lie if they won’t print the emails that they are supposedly discussing. It’s not so much cherry-picking, but cherry-denial. “Don’t mention the radioactive cherries, but lets discuss how cherry farmers have been victimized, talk about the history of cherry tree farming, and hear their excuses and assertions that the cherries are an essential part of our diets. Don’t mention the Geiger counter. OK?” The top 10 excuses for PR writers who pose as “journalists” to ignore ClimateGate emails This is standard issue damage control for ClimateGate — protect the cheats and liars, attack the whistleblower, and use excuses and padding-fillers to cover a story without actually giving the public any information on the […] November 30th, 2011 | Tags: ABC, BBC, Black (Richard), ClimateGate, Cubby (Ben), Journalism, Media bias, Media Coverage, Revkin (Andy), Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | RE: “Sceptic: one inclined to doubt accepted opinions” by Michael Bachelard, The Sunday Age ———————————– For free, and just because I’m a nice person, I’m going to help Michael Bachelard with his science articles. He’s a Walkley Award winner writing for the two largest “broadsheet” circulation papers in Australia. He knows indigenous issues, politics and industrial relations, so “climate science” was the … er, obvious next step, right? The Age (and by default, it’s sister The Sydney Morning Herald) decided to pretend to investigate the most burning climate questions the public could offer. But their investigations apparently amounted to phoning up government agents and fans of the policy, and asking them what to write.
It’s titled: Sceptic: one inclined to doubt accepted opinions, but it could have been titled Journalist: one inclined to parrot groupthink Poor Bachelard is out of his depth in the science trying to answer Stephen Harper and Harry Hostan’s questions. For an investigative journalist he had odd ideas about how to get answers, almost never contacting the people or groups he wrote about directly. Who knows, maybe the servers at Fairfax don’t allow emails out to non-lefties at the moment, because he doesn’t seem to […] November 17th, 2011 | Tags: Journalism, The Age | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | |
The Labor Party claim they think science is important: ”We can’t let this debate be waylaid by people who don’t accept the science,” Ms Gillard said in May. Yet, when Dr Dennis Jensen wanted to table peer reviewed papers on the Parliamentary record this week, Kate Ellis refused to allow it. Jensen is the only PhD scientist in the Australian Parliament and the papers are directly relevant to the policy under discussion. The ALP will accept an unaudited foreign committee report, whole, without question, but not scientific evidence from an elected Australian representative. Who are the climate science deniers? Is it the same team that calls people mindless denigrating names? Ms Gillard said in Parliament in March that Mr Abbott should admit he was ”a climate change denier” The Labor Party denies the science From Dennis Jensen’s press release about the censorship: “I approached Minister Ellis, about tabling some of the scientific evidence I was about to use in my speech”, Dr Jensen said. “The Minister refused without reason my simple request for honest and evidence based parliamentary debate.” “It seems the Labor Party is unwilling to […] Dr David Evans lays out four crucial pieces of evidence, and calls for a debate with Prof Andrew Pitman. But the evidence is so unarguably strong for skeptics, we know that the name-calling-team-who-want-our-money will do anything to avoid a public debate. If the evidence is “overwhelming” why are they so unwilling to explain it? — Jo —————– Submission to the Inquiry into Carbon Tax Pricing Mechanisms Dr David Evans 20 September 2011 Dr David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005, and part-time to the Department of Climate Change from 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. Evans is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University. Global warming has become a scam. Let me explain how it works. It has superficial plausibility. Yes, global warming is occurring. Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and levels are rising. And yes, every molecule of carbon dioxide we emit causes some global warming. Many non-scientists think that proves the case, but it doesn’t. In particular, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that carbon dioxide is merely […] September 21st, 2011 | Tags: Andy Pitman, Australian Politics, Carbon Tax, Douglass (David), Evans (David), Evidence, Knox (Robert), Pitman (Andy), Water Vapor | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Catastrophic killer storms are coming! ‘The Australian Greens say Tropical Cyclone Yasi is a “tragedy of climate change”.’ “DESTRUCTIVE hurricanes such as Katrina and Rita are likely to be more common … Tim Flannery warns.” “These hurricanes have been a catastrophe just waiting to happen.” … The IPCC concludes: “Studies showed … future tropical cyclones would likely become more severe with greater wind speeds and more intense precipitation.” AR4 10.3.6.3 Tropical Cyclones (Hurricanes) pp786 … Wow, that’s scary! Let’s look at the studies: “These studies fall into two categories: those with model grid resolutions that only roughly represent some aspects of individual tropical cyclones, and those with model grids of sufficient resolution to reasonably simulate individual tropical cyclones.” Oh? That’s models, or er… other models? But where are the observations? CO2 levels have risen to the highest level in a million years, presumably Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Cyclones are at all time highs, stronger and nastier than […] September 6th, 2011 | Tags: Cyclones, Hurricanes, School Resource, Storms | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Background Briefing ABC Radio National July 17th I’m sure Wendy Carlisle thinks she’s helping Australia. The awarded writer who calls herself a science journalist, breaks laws of reason, makes a litany of careless errors, ambushes interviewees with false claims, and devoutly stares past hundreds of peer reviewed references as if they don’t exist. Yes, Anything but the evidence! She thinks hunting through resumes of retired scientists is a good way to inform us about the need for a Carbon (sic) Tax. It’s a wake up call ladies and gentlemen. This is the state of “science” at your ABC where polite discussion and meaningful research has been replaced with tabloid guttertalk. The ABC is not part of the problem, it IS the problem. It’s not just that we spent $1 billion last year on the ABC — the real cost of the propaganda-machine disguised as “impartial reporting” is the billions of dollars we have already malinvested due to the ABC’s inability to provide rigorous and relevant science reporting, and the multi-billions more we are about to waste. The nation is about to undergo a […] July 20th, 2011 | Tags: ABC, Ball (Tim), Carlisle (Wendy), Evans (David), Monckton (Christopher), Oreskes (Naomi), Singer (Fred) | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | The Bunyip decided to take a closer look at the rap singing Climate Scientists (in that profane Hungry Beast rap video) and gives us an idea of what kind of rigorous science they pursue. He’s noticed, for example, that one of the rap-singer-scientists claims a 97.7% (!) certainty that the Murray has not had a worse drought than the most recent one in the last 1500 years. Snippets below from Insane Clown Posse — Part II All thanks for the eye-opener go to Melbourne University’s Ailie Gallant (below)… It is not Allie’s efforts to attract attention (which can also help with the funding), but her co-authored paper on water flows in the Murray Darling Basin which has brought so much re-assurance. In particular, it is the remarkably specific conclusion that there is precisely, and she is very exact about this, a 2.3% likelihood tht any of the many droughts over the past 1500 years were worse than the one just ended – the same dry spell during which the she began smokin’ dos’ stats in her climate crib. And her methods? Well, let’s just say that the Professor is — yo, lab bitches — down with […]
The PR machine has spent twenty years pretending to be scientific while they push poll the phrase “carbon is pollution” (Don’t you want to stop pollution?) But turn the polling inside out and the nonsense is exposed. Stephen Harper takes the PR team’s theme to its logical conclusion and uses it against them. ——————– Forget plate tectonics and continental drift. A trace gas in the atmosphere can reshape the Earth, at least, that’s apparently how many people see it. A new survey shows that over a third of the population think that climate change induces not just tsunamis, but even volcanic eruptions. Worse, 37% of people are so convinced carbon is pollution that they think it would be a worthwhile aim to reduce the carbon content of their body. (The ultimate diet, you might say). About a quarter of the population are so plum-confused about what carbon is, they would rather not eat food with carbon in it. (Crikey!) The numbers taken in by the mass delusion are shocking. Nearly half the population think food would be safer without carbon. This is the unscientific bias of our national bureaucracies, […] April 30th, 2011 | Tags: Harper (Stephen), JoNova's Favourites, Polls | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | Ten more faulty assertions from Climate Minister Combet Carter, Evans, Kininmonth, Franks Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks & Bill Kininmonth (Also on Quadrant, here and here.) In a speech given at the National Press Club on April 13th, Climate Minister Combet has yet again revealed that he is receiving unbalanced scientific advice, and that his understanding of the problem of hypothetical dangerous global warming is inadequate. His predecessor, Senator Penny Wong, exemplified the same weaknesses and so does the government. It is a structural governance deficiency of high order that our current government continues to take exclusive advice on global warming from an unelected, unaccountable international political body (the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; IPCC), as translated for Australian consumption by the CSIRO and by the Department of Climate’s advisor, Professor Will Steffen. There are multiple clouds of impropriety hanging over the IPCC’s advice: ClimateGate, thermometers next to hot concrete and artificial heating sources passed off as measuring “global” warming, vital graphs of past temperatures that depend on a single tree in far north Russia, global data sets that are missing, official forecasts of temperature and atmospheric warming that are nothing like […] That CO2 you emitted last Tuesday: Is it coming back next month, next year, or in March 3011? Tim Flannery makes it clear that CO2 circulates o-so-slowly, circa “a thousand years”. Remember that CO2’s “greenhouse” effect occurs at speed-of-light timescales, so if the temperature is affected, so must be the CO2 (according, at least, to the World of Flannery). If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years… Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly. [Thanks to Andrew Bolt] There are a few clues that maybe CO2 doesn’t idle the centuries away aloft, and that (I know you’ll be shocked) the Climate Commission (and IPCC) have overstated things: If emissions are absorbed by the global system in a matter of months, it rather blows the idea that we have to act decades ahead to stop the catastrophe. If CO2 levels adjust quickly, […] April 6th, 2011 | Tags: Carbon cycle, CO2, Mauna Loa | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Who knew? CSIRO funded a 5,000 person poll last July and August and then sat on the results for months. Perhaps they were disappointed that only 50% of people thought humans have any role in changing the global climate? Worse, 90% of people acknowledge that the world is warming, and 40% have figured out that that the key issue is not whether it warms but whether it’s natural that matters, and it’s hard to call them deniers. How inconvenient. Irritation hampers climate change science: The Australian, April 4 2011.
Let me guess, Tim Flannery realizes that the more he explains the climate, in a one-sided staged discussion, the more people become skeptical, right? But then again, it could just be that the explanations are not credible. He’s closer than he realizes. A lack of “credible information” is one of the main reasons that 40 per cent of Australians do not believe that humans have a role in global warming, according to the head of the federal government’s Climate Commission, Tim Flannery. So despite a $100 million dollar federal department, a whole UN agency, entire popular-science […] What a week downunder, just in case you missed it. We’re a nation, up in arms. With three months til G-Day (when the Greens control the Senate on July 1) and the tax-based-on-a-lie likely to become legislation, the heat is on. Protests and smears are running strong. Forces are being mobilized, and people are being polarized. Yet the public is abandoning the carbon tax, and the parties who promote it. As the mass rally movements begin the Big Scare Campaign fans responded with smears to paint the rally-goers as extreme fringe, loonies and nutters. The fringe in this case turns out to be 4 out of 5 people. Who are the “deniers”? When asked, do you support the carbon tax? One hundred and thirty thousand people said NO. 83% of the Channel Nine poll don’t want a carbon tax. The Labor Party sent out biblical climate speaking notes to all it’s ministers — the floods and droughts are coming, oceans will rise up and wash away your home, there will be burning bushes, and the storms will kill your firstborn (or words to that effect). And they howl about Abbot running a fear campaign. Wait for the […] March 27th, 2011 | Tags: Australian Politics, Flannery (Tim), Greens, Polls | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Greg Combet (our Minister for keeping-the-weather-the-same) can keep a straight face when he tells coal miners that their jobs are protected with him. You might think that’s insane, (especially if you are Green) but he has a point. Even if carbon mattered, our coal exports do not. (Not that Combet seems to explain this point very well, he seems to think people won’t notice the contradiction about supposedly “making the big polluters pay”, even though he’s taxing mom-and-dad and partly-exempting Big-Coal). Australia is the worlds largest exporter of coal, you’d think our production mattered. But Combet knows that it makes no difference at all to the environment if we dig masses of coal up and send it to the Chinese to burn. Australia might have lots of coal, but it earned the ‘biggest exporter” title only because lots of the other contenders forfeited. Basically, we only win because there are not many people living here. Other places dig up a lot more coal, but coal is so handy, vital, and irreplaceable that they keep every last sodding bit, burn it all themselves and have none left over to sell. Australia sold about $55 billion dollars worth of coal in 08/09, […] |
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