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It’s “irresponsible” to research health effects of wind-farms says Prof Chapman, USyd

Welcome to the cult of climate control where it’s responsible to spend $10 billion of Taxpayer dollars to change the weather with windfarms and such, but it’s irresponsible to spend $3.3 million to check if that harms anyone.

I hear that in houses kilometers away from a wind tower, the water in a glass can ripple, along with the water in the toilet bowl. Obviously since humans have no water molecules it couldn’t possibly …

Is it news that this research will finally be done? Not according to the ABC where the headline is about how much money is being wasted.

Millions in funding for research into wind farm illness criticized

IMOGEN BRENNAN: Sheep farmer Donald Thomas has lived near Waubra in Victoria for more than 50 years.

Since wind turbines were erected nearby about seven years ago, he says he and his family have had headaches, pressure in their ears and many sleepless nights.

DONALD THOMAS: It’s extremely frustrating. But the thing is, what the point they’re missing is the fact that yes, it is affecting us and it’s extremely unpleasant and so many of my neighbours have actually had to leave. It’s […]

March 25th, 2016 | Tags: , , , , , , | Category: Academia, Global Warming, Health, Media-matters, Wind Power | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Climate Grief — Believers mourning — It’s denial and anger (but it sure isn’t science)

Those who believe the Glorious Climate Models (GCMs) are in trouble. Many of them have spent their entire careers soaking in dire predictions, but things are falling apart — (or rather, not falling apart) — the models don’t work, the public doesn’t care, the media are not that interested, and skeptics keep winning Bloggies awards. Spare a thought for them. It’s tough out there for unskeptical people. Children still know what snow is.

Things are unravelling in believer-land and there is pain. They are witnessing “the wholesale destruction of the planet”, or perhaps the death of a hypothesis, which is nearly as bad.

Truthout, where no conspiracy is too grand, and skeptical scientists are bastards

The headline reads:

“Mourning Our Planet: Climate Scientists Share Their Grieving Process”

The 3,000 word extravaganza of psychological pain is published by an NGO aptly called Truthout (think, “LightsOut”?)

“Climate science researchers, scientists, journalists and activists have all been struggling with grief around what we are witnessing.”

There’s an angry professor calling other scientists who disagree “greedy, lying bastards” and talking of backing “you plutocrats, denialists, fossil-fuel hacks “ against the wall. Another professor blames ACD for the driving cause of her […]

January 29th, 2015 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Global Warming, Junk Science, Pseudoscience, Psychology | Print This Post Print This Post | |

What’s an alarmist to do? Extreme weather images lead to denial (like everything else does)

I sense much gnashing of teeth. There seems to be nothing a reasonable social-science communicator can do. If they write like conservative scientists, the public don’t worry enough, if they load on the fear and guilt, people turn off. They can hammer the anti-science notion of consensus, which seems to work a treat in inept five minute surveys, but “the consensus” has been all over the press, in school, and in documentaries, yet (wail and weep) the polls of public alarm are still sliding! The media is even less interested. (See Figure 1 below).

There plots the rise and fall of climate in the media. (Figure 1 in this paper).

For the last few years the media have tried showing a lot more high-gloss posters of floods, cyclones and cracked earth, and that is not working either. It doesn’t seem to matter if we show disasters-away with stoic Sudanese or disasters-at-home with suffering suburban mortgagees, the public disengage.

Here Nerlich and Jaspal use “visual thematic analysis” (a technical word for looking at pictures and saying things about them) and publish a paper in a journal with the unlikely title “Science As Culture“.

It appears the social science communicators have […]

February 20th, 2014 | Tags: , | Category: Academia, Global Warming, Junk Science, Pseudoscience, Psychology, Science Communication | Print This Post Print This Post | |

How well did that 50 degree forecast work out for the BOM?

You could almost be forgiven for wondering if the Bureau of Meteorology is a science unit or a PR agency. They seem professionally adept at getting headlines, but not so hot at predicting the weather.

On Jan 7th the BOM models forecast 50 spanking hot degrees across hundreds of square kilometers in central Australia. But it was a whole week ahead, the prediction itself cooled with a day or two, and in the area under the “purple searing spot” the result on Jan 14th ended up being around 40C instead. That’s fine in itself — predictions are difficult. What’s not fine is the PR storm that ensued, which is still being used, as if somehow the very fact that our faulty climate models predicted a record temperature (but failed) is evidence of man-made global warming. How many thousands of people all around the world now think that Australia had a 50C plus day this January? Did anywhere hit the fifty mark? No report of one so far. Watch the loop of Australia’s January temperatures here. The highest brown bar on that graph is 45 – 48C, and those hot spots are a thousand kilometers from the purple patch.

That said, […]

February 7th, 2013 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Australia, FakeNews, Global Warming, Junk Science, Lies-by-Omission, Media-matters, Meteorology | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Catalyst: climate astrology in your very own backyard

The ABC tv program Catalyst was quite special last Thursday. Was that a science report, or an advertorial?

Brisbane was recording temperatures with modern Stevenson Screens in 1890, as were some other stations, but the BOM often ignores these long records.

Forget gloom and doom it’s “kinder” climate now

The ABC team have shifted gear. They heard they should stop being all gloom and doom (it’s climate fatigue you know) and make it simple. So they did, and everything was delivered in a cheesy canter, like an episode of Playschool. Smile everyone! Floods will increase, but we won’t hammer you with ominous music, instead we’ll show Jonica-the-presenter cleaning the floor of her very own home, joking about the pesky trickle in the living room (To paraphrase: It’s flooded again — can you believe?).

Dr Jonica Newby reckons things have changed since she bought her house. It’s simply unthinkable that the climate now is not exactly the same at her house as it was when she first moved in — way back in the historic year of… 2000. (Gosh, eh? I wonder why the BOM don’t publish a paper on it?) Now our national debate is reduced to presenters, not […]

November 20th, 2012 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: Global Warming, History, Junk Science, Media-matters | Print This Post Print This Post | |
 
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