Scientists reply to hypocrites: We dare you to talk science instead how you hate “fossil fuels”

Caught with their pants down.

Unskeptical-scientists, like Hansen, Trenberth, and Mann, have plastered their name on a document aiming to stop scientific research. They want less science funding. Who hates science then?

The Ethical Poseurs

Who cares about the ethics of fossil fuels funding skeptics, but doesn’t care when renewable-energy corporations sponsor pro-crisis exhibitions? Siemens was principle sponsor of the UK Science Museum’s propaganda gallery on climate science. It makes EUR 80 million profit each quarter from wind and renewables. Where is the outrage? When mercenary corporates use museums to boost their profits, that’s OK for Hansen, Trenberth and Mann. The other big sponsor was Shell, which profits from gas sales, when its cheap competitor coal gets hit thanks to “climate-panic”. Shell, of course, likes windmills, which need a gas form of back up.

Time skeptics stood up for science funding

We skeptics need to stop buying into the bullying and intimidation of those who say fossil fuels can fund unskeptical research but not skeptical (i.e. real) research. The sole reason they do this is to starve skeptics and to poison the well for audiences. It is anti-science, anti-free-speech, anti-intellectual in every way.

Most times when a skeptic says “we take no fossil fuel funding” it caves to that meme. It feeds the monster. It is as if skeptics are confirming that unskeptical activists are right to “expose” and discuss funding without even discussing the research. It is never OK to use an ad hom in place of an argument. The correct response of any scientist accused of receiving any money “linked” to fossil fuels is to say:

“We’d be grateful if we were. Please give my details to the Koch Brothers.

So you are still too scared to discuss the science? If you can find a problem with my research, we would talk about that instead, wouldn’t we?

It’s time scientists talked science instead of “vested interests”

The Unskeptical-scientists don’t want to debate this through peer review, they’re terrified. Knobbling competing scientists by attacking their funding is their best strategy; their scientific case is riddled with holes.

That’s why it is great to see a group of scientists take this head-on, and you can join them.

The Natural History Museum has written an open letter to other museums – telling them to stop taking fossil fuel money (specifically Koch funding) for vapor thin ethical reasons, and because they are nice people who really care a lot about the planet.

CO2Science has an Open Response, where they are collecting names in support. Essentially, they point out that it boils down to a well funded mob complaining that skeptics got about 1% as much money from philanthropic donors as they did:

Instead of arguments based on science and facts, the movement labels any who question their dogma as “deniers,” funded, according to the letter, by “climate-change-denying organizations spending over $67 million since 1997 to fund groups denying climate change science.” The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Orders of magnitude more funding has been given by governments and foundations to organizations and individuals charged with “scientifically” proving the alleged evils of CO2 and inventing ways to cope with it. In 2011 alone, ten large foundations donated $577 million to environmental causes, nearly ten times more than the total funding since 1997 to the so-called “deniers.” And that does not count tens of billions of dollars from the government and other foundations. Apparently the movement’s scientific case is so weak that they feel threatened by any research that does not support their doctrine.

We applaud support for informative studies of the climate, for example, ocean monitoring programs, satellite instruments, or meteorological networks with high-quality data archives. This work needs no defense from scientific challenges, regardless of the source of funding. The honest scientists responsible for much of this excellent work cannot be blamed for the excesses of the anti-fossil fuel movement. But the signers of the letter include some of the biggest feeders at the climate trough, who benefit from millions of dollars of funding every year for research empires, which, in many cases, stoke a propaganda mill instead of producing real science. In the interests of transparency and intellectual integrity, the signatories of the “To the Museums” letter should have each revealed their annual and cumulative climate funding.

Their hypocritical ethics claims,  and the obvious outcome of less funding for science mean it’s hard to see any aim in this other than to shut down any investigation that threatens their status, their funding or their religious belief. Pure scientific parasites.

How can more funding for science be bad? The answer is “when the funding is already monopolistic, biased, and one-sided and extra funding makes the balance worse.” Though the danger here is merely that the well funded team produces more irrelevant, repetitive papers. If science journalists were half smart and properly trained, that would hardly matter.

Funding should be declared, but always research stands or falls on it’s evidence and its arguments. The time for talking about funding only comes after some grievous problem is found with the research, or if the research is hard to replicate and dependent on data collected and maintained by the same team.

They ask museums  “to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate science obfuscation.”

The letter has no chance of actually working because fossil fuel empire funds more pro-panic exhibits than it has ever funded skeptical ones. The UK science museum is very happy to take money from Shell and BP. Likewise British Museum, Tate, and others, ahem, are ethically quite OK with BP money, oil spills and all. Though the letter has already achieved what it probably wanted, which is mass PR as most in the gullible media sucked it up.

TO ADD YOUR NAME

We welcome additional signers, both US and non-US citizens, who are informed about CO2 and climate.
If you would like to add your name, please send a note to [email protected].

Include your name and a short affiliation, analogous to that of other signers. Also include a brief
paragraph to show that you are familiar with the facts of climate and CO2, either as a scientist, a
meteorologist, an engineer, or an informed person with another occupation. We will review this
paragraph and add your name to the list if we judge that you base your opinions on knowledge. Neither
information from this paragraph, nor your e-mail address, will be made public.

9.5 out of 10 based on 85 ratings

228 comments to Scientists reply to hypocrites: We dare you to talk science instead how you hate “fossil fuels”

  • #
    handjive

    Twitter failing to bridge gap between climate activists and sceptics

    “It’s about who interacts with who.
    There’s a sense there is a debate and that people are interacting across ideological divides – and it turns out it’s not like that,” he told RTCC.

    The findings have implications for campaign groups seeking to influence policy decisions via social media, suggesting simply tweeting slogans to followers who already agree could be a waste of time.

    Sceptics have long been accused of trolling, but Williams said the study indicated their minority status meant they were just more likely to interact with users they disagreed with.

    “There is a popular perception that sceptics must be irrational or unreasonable but this study doesn’t support that at all.”

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Two thoughts on this :

      (1) The whole creating an artifical and non-sensical “moral” argument linking coal and climate change. You can see how the rabid left are trying a different tack now that the climate change thing has been pounded by skeptics into the ground. The Left will keep harping on about is in true Saul Alynski style.

      (2) The Left have realized they cant stop things baed on science alone, so now they are demonizing coal, knowing full well that will decimate our industry and way of life.

      What I do struggle with is why normal people arent speaking up and challenging these idealogical crackpots?

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      • #
        Bulldust

        The word “alone” should be deleted from dot point 2) 😀

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      • #
        Just-A-Guy

        OriginalSteve,

        (1) The whole creating an artifical and non-sensical “moral” argument linking coal and climate change. . .

        . . . is nothing more than an argument based on two types of informal logical fallacies, The Moralistic Fallacy, and the Appeal to Emotion.

        Here are some quotes from the original letter:

        Museums are trusted sources of scientific information, some of our most important resources for educating children and shaping public understanding.

        They must act not only legally but also ethically.

        We are concerned that the integrity of these institutions is compromised by association with special interests who obfuscate climate science, fight environmental regulation, oppose clean energy legislation, and seek to ease limits on industrial pollution.

        Drawing on both our scientific expertise and personal care for our planet and people, we believe that the only ethical way forward for our museums is to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate science obfuscation.

        The open letter from CO2 Science, “TO THE MUSEUMS OF SCIENCE AND NATURAL HISTORY” — AN OPEN RESPONSE, addresses this logical fallacy by examining the real world moral implications of adopting actions based on the refuted hypotheses of Post Modern Science technocrats.

        From the Open Letter to Museums published by CO2 Science:

        For thousands of years only a small fraction of mankind lived well while the rest faced poverty, filth, hunger and disease. That has all changed over the past century and a half, thanks to the use of fossil fuels. The benefits of low-cost and abundant energy from fossil fuels have permitted a standard of living for most of society that exceeds the wildest dreams of past elites. Today China, India and other developing countries are lifting hundreds of millions of people out of deprivation by the greater use of fossil fuels.

        You can see how the rabid left are trying a different tack now that the climate change thing has been pounded by skeptics into the ground.

        Lest anyone get the wrong idea and come to the conclusion that if the first is a logical fallacy then so is the second, we can put that to rest straight away. CO2 is not a pollutant, so the argument that it’s morally wrong to introduce it into the atmosphere is a fallacy. Fossil fuels have contributed to the improvement of humanity so the argument that it’s morally wrong to deprive us of fossil fuels is not a logical fallacy.

        We all need to recognize how these arguments play out. What’s valid, and what isn’t.

        Abe

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      • #
        Just-A-Guy

        OriginalSteve,

        Thank you for providing me with the springboard from which make my observation.

        Abe

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        • #

          Abe,

          I take the intent of your comment, and if I might expand upon it a little by taking just one point from your Comment at 1.1.2, where you write this:

          Today China, India and other developing countries are lifting hundreds of millions of people out of deprivation by the greater use of fossil fuels.

          If there is anyone out there who seriously thinks that China is going to close the more than 400 large scale coal fired power plants, most of them new tech USC (UltraSuperCritical) plants which have come on line over the last seven or eight years, and close them inside their operating expected life term of fifty years, which will be around 2060, then they have rocks in their heads. On top of that, they are not slowing down their construction either, and in fact, have proved so successful at constructing them, that other Developing Countries are coming to China to get them to do the same in their Countries as well.

          No deals done ….. anywhere on the Planet will have the slightest impact on China’s construction of them either.

          The only places where coal fired power is demonised is in the Countries which already have it, those already developed Countries. Their coal fired power fleet is all but ancient now, and is due to become almost time expired, so while they close down, it had nothing whatsoever to do with this Climate Change scare campaign. They’re closing because they are time expired, and there’s nothing to replace them on a like for like basis.

          If there is a ….. moral imperative to close them down because of this scare, then close the damn things down right bl00dy now.

          Just do it.

          Not for an hour or so, but right down to a cold furnace. Completely.

          It would take at least three days to run them back up again to deliver power. That one week alone would totally and utterly end this whole thing. I couldn’t give a cr@p what scientists think, and neither will anybody else after a week.

          Whole Countries would grind to an utter halt. There would be anarchy in the streets, and nothing polite like current demonstrations, but absolute anarchy.

          There is right now such a complete and utter total dependency on coal fired power ….. for EVERYTHING, and people cannot do without power for minutes, and are screaming after hours, let alone what would happen after a whole week.

          It will only take that one week.

          After that, the greatest pity of all will be that Science will be so discredited, no one will ever trust some of them again.

          And all this is only in OUR already developed World.

          The Chinas, the Indias, the still developing World where they are building them will look at all this anarchy, and just shake their heads in wonder that we could allow that to happen. Will it stop them building their new coal fired power plants?

          Not one little bit.

          What will happen then is that Governments will suddenly start approving new plants to replace those old plants now running out of puff.

          And the renewable power ‘bubble’, well those useless towers will just stand there, like Ozymandias.

          Turn them off ….. NOW.

          I dare you!

          Either that, or tell the people the truth.

          One or the other.

          Tony.

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          • #
            Just-A-Guy

            TonyfromOz,

            Just a quick rejoinder before taking a break.

            TontfromOz said:

            If there is anyone out there who seriously thinks that China is going to close the more than 400 large scale coal fired power plants, most of them new tech USC (UltraSuperCritical) plants . . .

            CO2 Science said:

            If fully cleansed of such real pollutants, the exhaust from fossil-fuel combustion contains very nearly the same components, and in comparable proportions to those of a baby’s breath: a little oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor (H20) and carbon dioxide (CO2).

            When you look at the situation from an engineering perspective and look at the scientific evidence, these power plants are the best alternative to renewables regardless of the ‘climate change’ debate. Especially when the whole CAGW hypothesis has been falsified repeatedly, to the shame of it’s proponents.

            Abe

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            Len

            I see on Facebook that an ANU study says that Australia could get all its energy from renewable sources by 2050.

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              I’ll be 99 then, so when it doesn’t happen, no one will believe me when I say I told you so!

              You cannot run a Capital city, well, any city at all really, on Renewables alone.

              Tony.

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          • #
            tom0mason

            TonyfromOz,

            I see that China is exporting some of that great technology of theirs.

            Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to unveil a $46 billion infrastructure spending plan in Pakistan that is a centerpiece of Beijing’s ambitions to open new trade and transport routes across Asia and challenge the U.S. as the dominant regional power. The largest part of the project would provide electricity to energy-starved Pakistan, based mostly on building new coal-fired power plants.

            https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/china-to-finance-huge-coal-power-projects-in-pakistan/

            America threatens Pakistan with a shut-off of loan guarantees and financial aid to the tune of $1billion if they don’t toe the line on terrorists, China offers assistance to rebuild Pakistan’s crumbling power and grid system worth $46 billion.

            Now I wonder which of them will have the more influence in the long term?

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Happy to…I may not be up on the climate science as much as many of the learned one who post here ( although I have an engineering background ) and dont have as much time to read up on climate science as I’d like, however my comments span a variety of spheres, and I seem to be able to spot not-so-obvious social trends well……

          Cheers

          S.

          🙂

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  • #
    john karajas

    A good all-round geological education and then specialisation in stratigraphy & sedimentology tend to make for scepticism about how carbon dioxide influences climate. Just ask Bob Carter for instance.

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    • #
      King Geo

      Quoting John Karajas,

      “A good all-round geological education and then specialisation in stratigraphy & sedimentology tend to make for scepticism about how carbon dioxide influences climate. Just ask Bob Carter for instance”.

      Add King Geo (with a PhD in the discipline) and any other geo with a BSc, BSc [Hons] or PhD, who has grasped the concepts of their “soft rock geology” unit/units, or a BSc not majoring in Geology, but who have studied unit/units in “soft rocks geology”. Anyone who passed these unit/units should be totally incapable of believing in the “Theory of AGW”, unless of course they work in Government or Academia, in which case their “belief system” is severely compromised. In this case job security requires them to abandon their “geological soul”. How sad.

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        How about an ability to count, and a basic comprehension of the inexactitude of statistics?

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      • #
        ianl8888

        … any other geo with a BSc, BSc [Hons] or PhD …

        What’s wrong with BSc, MSc then ? [Both in hard, geological science …] 🙂 🙂

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      • #
        Leonard Lane

        How about adding engineers who are bound by professional certification/registration to make buildings, bridges, airplanes, etc. that do not fail often , and when they do, the engineer is liable for the failure.
        That plus the natural practical nature of engineers who make a career of doing things that work.

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      • #
        PeterPetrum

        How about Agricultural Scientist who knows just how good CO2 is for crops! Do I qualify? Apart from that nobody who reads the erudite contributions to this site from so many profound scientists can be in any doubt as to the gigantic con global warming / climate change / climate disruption is. I note that the media is calling the rain in NSW the “worst in 100 years”. I must have been in Oz for over 100 years then ‘cos this is no worse than times before!

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    • #
      Dariusz

      I agree with King Geo.
      Being a geo myself any geologist that thinks otherwise is either a geoscientific traitor or a coward. Sadly many geos do not show critical and independent thinking regardless of their qualifications. Just last week I came across a geophysicist who argued that science is settled. In fact that person did not think that geology is the branch of science critical to the GW debate. On the contrary, that person thought that sedimentology or sequence stratigraphy (which deals with deposition of rocks through constructions of seal level curves and paleoclimate- this is what I do) was not a tool to be used. That person although having a considerable geoscientific knowledge did spout only lefty slogans with absolutely no individual thinking. From my experience in science I mostly come across average geoscientists that treat their profession like a checkout person in the supermarket. Geology is about passion, being contrarian, endlessly asking questions, being brave and not being afraid.
      King Geo is an example of such a scientist.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      What if you just happen to be married to somebody who is both a Geologist and a Mining Engineer? Does that count?

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  • #
    FIN

    The Unskeptical-scientists don’t want to debate this through peer review, they’re terrified

    Even for you Nova this is possibly the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said and boy that was a tough field to run down. Since when did you guys do science of any sort, let alone peer review? Anyway, I thought you thought peer review was corrupted? Sheesh, incredible.

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    • #
      el gordo

      ‘…peer review was corrupted?’

      That’s true, alternative views to AGW rarely get a run in peer review.

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      • #
        FIN

        I think all of us would be grateful if you faux skeptics actually tried some peer review, but it seems beyond you. Of course we all know the real reason Nova would never do it and that’s because it’d get laughed out of existence.

        Reviewers have got better things to do than review theories of flat earthers. Who could blame them, you are dismissed as irrelevant and will be until you can manage to cobble something mildly competent? There was one attempt by the Junior Rocket Scientist with his curve fitting crap but it went down like a lead dirigible. Where is Junior’s second instalment anyway?

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        • #
          Dariusz

          Moncton wants to be debated any time but no one takes up on his invitations. Bob Carter is always open to debate, but instead he is vilified and eventually forced out of his position. Peer reviewed abuse ad hominem galore.
          And you dare to talk about peer review?
          Peer review? You can’t handle peer review!

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          • #
            FIN

            You still don’t get it do you? That’s not how science works, peer review is the debate not some half baked quiz show where Monckton can reel off a pack of debunked rubbish in one sentence and the rebuttal would take hours to present.

            Again, I challenge you or Monckton or anyone, actually do some science, present your case and submit it for review by people expert in the field.

            The way the political wind is blowing now you guys will rapidly become irrelevant if you don’t put up something, anything, pretty shortly.

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            • #
              RB

              I would not trust a scientist who talks about peer review as some definitive quality control. Every scientist has come across examples if not experienced the bias and utter incompetence of reviews by peers.

              I have had papers published and unpublished after peer review, and reviewed a paper for publication. At best, you merely find obvious errors or find the paper to be incomprehensible.

              There are usually two reviewers and sometimes its obvious one was a bit lazy. Sometimes its obvious that one hates you. I had the experience of having a paper rejected because I had neglected to consider something even though I had a whole section with a heading devoted to it. There was nothing controversial about it, just that I had a confrontation with the reviewer who was a (I’ll save you the snip).

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                FIN

                No-one said peer review was perfect, just the best we have at this point. To be fair, science has had a stunning impact on society over the past hundred years or so, just look at medical science for starters. Peer review must be doing something right. Beats entrail reading and witch doctors.

                Perhaps you’d like to present a better idea?

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              • #
                Rereke Whakaaro

                Perhaps you’d like to present a better idea?

                How about making definitive, detailed, measurable, and time-bound predictions, in relation to the subject matter, with a pre-defined date of verification? Then we can all see how accurate those predictions turned out to be?

                That happens all the time in Engineering and Architecture, so why not in Climate Science?

                That approach takes all the emotivity out of the discussion, and sorts out the sheep from the goats.

                Always assuming of course, that there are some sheep to be sorted out in the first place.

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              • #
                michael hart

                Hell will freeze over before the cloven-hoof brigade make an accurate and significant climate prediction.

                Their most embarrassing problem is that they thought the global mean surface temperature was such a sure fire winner that they neglected putting some serious and checkable numbers on other ones. That’s why they then had to change the name of the disaster from “global warming” to “climate change”.

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              • #
                Rereke Whakaaro

                But Fin issued a challenge, and I have taken it up. Fin now has to put up, shut up, or go away with his/her tail between his/her legs, and do this knowing that he/she is actually answerable to all of the climate community because, whatever happens, the outcome is likely to go viral.

                No pressure, Fin, but we are awaiting your predictions …

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              • #
                RB

                Science started in medieval times without peer review before publication.

                Only a teenager could think that papers in science journals are gospel and so wrong papers need to be weeded out. Most of what is published will end up in the rubbish as just a brain fart (50+ excuses for the pause and many on there not being a pause means a bucket load to go through the hoop an into the bin). More of a problem than bad work getting through is poor scientists not checking up on what they read and good work getting ignored.

                Have papers published on line as provisional publications. Registered reviewers get to publish their reviews before print publication with their reputations on the line for frivolous complaints.

                Any thorough rebuttal of work can be linked to a paper on line after publication so there is no fear that problems with bad work will go unnoticed.

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              • #
                Winston

                RB,

                It could actually be argued that Science has only headed off into a wrong direction and a backwater of mediocrity since the advent of peer review, and is sadly thus far the most successful single agent in stifling the pursuit of objective truth and scientific progress that has yet been devised.

                FIN,

                For your edification, the case of Jan Hendrik Schon bears consideration regarding the failures of peer review, bearing in mind his peers rubber stamped his work even though it was fraudulent, and was only picked up by an Honour student who noticed he used the same graph to describe two different experimental procedures. Most of his papers were reviewed by his friends and colleagues in a closely aligned clique within a nascent field of science, namely superconductors, condensed matter physics and nanotechnology. Sound familiar?

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal

                Compare then the case of Dan Shechtman who spent 25 years as a pariah because his peers were so mediocre that his discovery of quasi-crystals was ignored, ridiculed and rejected:

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shechtman

                Now tell me peer review is responsible for the integrity of science. Phfffft.

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            • #
              Annie

              You are feeling rude and tetchy today Fin?

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              OriginalSteve

              Hey FIN, why not prove we’re wrong by you comparing the number of pro-CAGW peer reviewed papers with skeptical ones, then tell us how heavily its slanted toward CAGW…..

              This should be good….

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              • #
                FIN

                That’s a bit like saying I should compare the peer reviewed papers supporting a spherical earth with those supporting a flat earth. Good one mate.

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              • #
                OriginalSteve

                Well then it should be easy for you to disprove it then…

                Still waiting….

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                RB

                That’s a bit like saying I should compare the peer reviewed papers supporting a spherical earth with those supporting a flat earth.

                Not peer-reviewed papers but that was actual done in the 90s (not needed but for alarmist like behaviour in history departments).

                Dr Jeffery Russell found tens of thousands of papers on a spherical Earth in RC archives but

                “In the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era, five writers seem to have denied the globe, and a few others were ambiguous or uninterested in the question. But nearly unanimous scholarly opinion pronounced the earth spherical, and by the fifteenth century all doubt had disappeared.”

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            • #
              Bobl

              Two things FIN.
              1. Peer review is NOT part of the scientific process, it’s a rather unimportant part of the Publishing process, where the publisher puts upon others to do it’s proofreading for it. Any science simply needs to withstand falsification, peer reviewed or not. Of course pretty much every part of global warming other than the 0.7 or so of warming measured since the LIE and Arrhenius has already been falsified once or twice.

              2. Secondly, Monckton HAS published in the Peer reviewed press.

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            • #
              Bobl

              Hmm, lets look at that Peer reviewed stuff.

              There was a peer reviewed paper that 300 cubic km of Antarctica west shelf was melting each year due to AGW – proved by ME right here on this blog to be wrong because melting 300 cubic km of ice over 2 million square km of ice shelf takes at least 15 Watts per square meter to do, some 20 times the energy available.

              There was a peer reviewed paper that claimed rainfall (and therefore evaporation) would increase 20% by 2020, proved false by ME on this blog because there is only enough back radiation from CO2 to increase hydrological cycling by 0.8%.

              That’s peer review 0 bobl 2…

              Plenty of other notable impossible claims from so called climate scientists in the literature that claim to have repealed the law of conservation of energy. Now you’d think peer reviewers would make a simple calculation to check that claims are energetically possible – but in climate science it appears not.

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            • #
              Dariusz

              No, you don,t get it. You are making an extraordinary claim and the proof of the anthropogenic global warming rest with you. I follow the explanation of the least estonishment and settle for the simplest explanation.
              Anyway the lack of warming has been unequivocally demonstrated by the satellite data despite some 20% co2 increase in the atmophere at the same time during the last 17-20 years.
              Having said that I am more than happy to be availble for a debate.
              By the way my life is all about peer review as it is a basic part of the scientific work that I do. I find hydrocarbons using a basic tool which is a peer review all the time. My success is everyone success, government is getting richer and even you are using electicity that comes from the fruit of my labor, not from the medieval Don Quixote technology.

              My name is Dariusz Jablonski, a geologist, a sequence stratigrapher that does sea level and paleogeographic reconstructions for breakfast and have been doing this in the last 30 years or so.

              I Can provide my further contact details upon a serious debate request.
              I dare you!

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              Bill

              Obviously you have not been paying attention. There is more than ample science out there that refutes your silly religion. Open your mind and do some research instead of constantly performing mindless attacks on those whose minds are open. Fanaticism by anyone for any purpose serves NO ONE.

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        • #
          Mikky

          OK, here is my peer-review of the ubiquitous statement “the world is warming”.

          To make such a statement would require a crystal ball, here is what the statement should be “the world has warmed”. Now go and campaign for this improved accuracy in science reporting, though the correct scientific statement does sound so much less alarming than the original propaganda soundbite.

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        • #
          Andrew McRae

          FIN,
          The double standard in funding and peer review for skeptics versus adherents has been going on a long time if you care to listen to those who’ve personally experienced it.

          http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/protecting-the-ipcc-turf/

          http://climateaudit.org/2011/09/02/nsf-on-jones-email-destruction-enterprise/

          http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/09/more-thoughts-on-the-war-being-waged-against-us/

          And we know it’s all intentional because of ClimateGate
          http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=1089318616.txt&search=keep

          It’s kindof funny that warmists always accuse skeptics of “endlessly repeating zombie arguments that have long since been debunked”, yet here you are doing the same thing. Rest, zombie, rest.

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          Slywolfe

          I reject the prejudiced selection of “peers”

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          FIN

          When you use ‘us’, whom exactly do you claim to speak for (other than yourself)?

          And when you write ‘do peer review’ what exactly are you referring to?

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          Raven

          Reviewers have got better things to do than review theories of flat earthers. Who could blame them, . . .

          So what you’re saying here is that reviewers make a judgement regarding the authors independent and prior to considering the content of the paper?
          In other words, the ‘review’ has effectively already taken place without having read the paper? That must be a time saver, right there.

          I think you’ll find that’s ‘gatekeeping’, not reviewing . . but thanks for confirming Jo’s post.

          But, just out of curiosity, what ‘better things’ have reviewers got to do if their commitment to review is so onerous? Perhaps they shouldn’t be conducting these reviews at all?
          Perhaps they should be taking the chancellor to lunch with a view to doing something ‘better’ . . like ‘cobbling together’ an application for s further Govt. grant?

          . . . you are dismissed as irrelevant and will be until you can manage to cobble something mildly competent?

          Perhaps you don’t understand how science works. The burden of proof rests with the ones making the claim.
          There is no need to “cobble” anything together while the null hypothesis prevails.

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          tom0mason

          FIN

          I’ve found a couple of faux skeptic for you


          Renowned Norwegian solar expert warns temperatures may ‘actually fall in the course of a 50-year period’ – [ By Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth and served as a referee for scientific journals. “Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally
          unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.”

          ¯
          And
          ¯
          Hurricane expert Christopher W. Landsea of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, was both an author a reviewer for the IPCC’s 2nd Assessment Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, but resigned from the 4th Assessment Report after charging the UN with playing politics with Hurricane science. Landsea wrote a January 17, 2005 public letter detailing his experience with the UN: “I am withdrawing [from the UN] because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.” “I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound.” Landsea added.

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          • #
            tom0mason

            And FIN — 3 more
            ¯

            Not part of the IPCC “consensus”, Yury Izrael (Director of the Global Climate and Ecology Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences and IPCC Vice President, for RIA Novosti) [http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050623/40748412.html] disagrees with the IPCC that he is a part of: “There is no proven link between human activity and global warming. This problem is overshadowed by many fallacies and misconceptions that often form the basis for important political decisions”
            ¯
            And
            ¯

            Award Winning Physicist Dr. Will Happer, Professor at the Department of Physics at Princeton University and Former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy from 1990 to 1993, WHO HAS PUBLISHED OVER 200 SCIENTIFIC PAPERS, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, The American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences: “I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect, for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow. Based on my experience, I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken.”

            ¯
            And

            ¯
            In a September 2005 Discovery Magazine article, emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University Dr. William Gray (a former president of the American Meteorological Association), was asked if the funding problems that he was experiencing were due to his skepticism of man-made global warming. His response: “I had NOAA money for 30 years, and then (because of skepticism) I was cut off. I couldn’t get any money from NOAA. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me.” Thus Gray – one of the most prominent hurricane experts in the world – was cut off from NOAA funding because he had been skeptical of global warming.

            70

          • #
            tom0mason

            FIN, more faux skeptics for you –

            “After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

            And…
            ¯
            Dr. John Brignell, a UK Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton who held the Chair in Industrial Instrumentation at Southampton: “Here was a purely political body posing as a scientific institution. Through the power of patronage it rapidly attracted acolytes. Peer review soon rapidly evolved from the old style refereeing to a much more sinister imposition of The Censorship….new circles of like-minded propagandists formed, acting as judge and jury for each other. Above all, they acted in concert to keep out alien and hostile opinion. ‘Peer review’ developed into a mantra that was picked up by political activists who clearly had no idea of the procedures of science or its learned societies.

            ……..
            And
            ……

            UN IPCC Scientist Dr. Madhav Khandekar, a retired Environment Canada scientist, said “seem to naively believe that the climate change science espoused in the [UN’s] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) documents represents ‘scientific consensus.’”

            ¯
            ……..
            And
            ……

            Dr. John Nicol, Chairman of the Australia Climate Science Coalition and a former Senior Lecturer of Physics at James Cook University: “The claims so often made that there is a consensus among climate scientists that global warming is the result of increased man- made emissions of CO2, has no basis in fact.”

            ……..
            And
            ……

            Dr. Jim Buckee, who holds a PhD in Astrophysics from Oxford University, lectured about climate change at the University of Aberdeen: “[climate skepticism] is the dominant view in professional science circles. I know lots of people in universities and so on and quite often they have to retire before they can say what they want because it’s so frowned upon- Any dissension is like a heresy. People are stamped on so they can’t be heard.”

            ……..
            And
            ……

            Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote. “As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. PATTERSON SAYS HIS CONVERSION “PROBABLY COST ME A LOT OF GRANT MONEY. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not where activists want me to go.” Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. “When I go to a scientific meeting, there’s lots of opinion out there, there’s lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,”

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        • #
          tom0mason

          Maybe you should read ‘A Climate of Doubt about Global Warming’

          by Dr. Robert C. Balling Jr.

          Or anything else published by this author. Quite a few of his publications are freely downloadable.

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    • #
      James Bradley

      FIN,

      Please provide link/s to any climate change debate un-sceptical scientists participated in against sceptical scientists.

      390

      • #
        FIN

        Its called climate science James. Science is debated through peer review, not by blog or TV. You guys clearly aren’t qualified to do that otherwise presumably you would. Ergo you’re irrelevant.

        Easy to find but not on this blog.

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        • #
          Richard

          Science is debated through peer-review

          If you think peer-review is so awesome you might want to ask the IPCC why AR4 has over 5600 grey-references.

          420

          • #
            Just-A-Guy

            Richard,

            With your permission and for those viewers new to the debate;

            The term ‘grey-references’ refers to sources that are not peer reviewed and included newspaper clipings.

            The Intergovernmental Panel of technocrats, funded by the United Nations with our tax money, used newspaper clipings to produce a ‘scientific’ assessment.

            Are you still laughing?

            Abe

            380

        • #
          tom0mason

          FIN
          How is your ‘climate science’ verified?
          By checking the computer models against reality?

          Thought not!

          So all your distraction about peer review is just that distraction.
          The computer models and their output and the IPCC’s interpretation of them is all that matters. The UN-IPCC interpretation is all that matters as that cost us all real money and freedoms.

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          • #
            Leonard Lane

            And is it scientific to represent the spherical earth by a disc (flat earth?) in the climate models energy balance?
            Climate Models should be called flat earth approximation models.

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        • #
          James Bradley

          FIN,

          Debating point right there – you say it’s science.

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        • #
          tom0mason

          A bit of science for you —

          Dr Ferenc Miskolczi’s life as a NASA climate research scientist was made hell because he discovered that the extra water vapour being evaporated is not having a positive-feedback (increasing the CO2 warming effect by absorbing more infrared from the sun), instead it is going into increased cloud cover, which reflects incoming sunlight back to space. So it has a negative-feedback effect, not a positive-feedback effect. NASA’s climate computer models all have not merely a quantitative error in the effect of H2O on climate, but an actual qualitative error. They have a plus sign where the sign is really negative.

          Dr Miskolczi’s evidence is that, as stated on page 4 of Dr Miklos Zagoni’s paper http://www.scribd.com/doc/25071473/Saturated-Greenhouse-Effect-Theory , “During the 61-year period [since 1948] … the global average absolute humidity diminished about 1 per cent.”
          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
          Also of note is that the U.K. Met Office has published the results of a comprehensive assessment of global humidity measurements, covering the period 1973-2012. This data, surprisingly, showed that global relative humidity was significantly decreasing during this period versus assumptions used in climate models that relative humidity had to be increasing with increasing CO2 levels. This observed humidity data helps explain why climate models have been exaggerating global temperature increases.

          “I cannot accept that anyone has proven first that the CO2 rise is due to fossil fuel and without this, all this man made global warming is nonsense.

          One of the implications of the contents of this paper is that anthropogenic activities are not the dominant force behind the post-1800 global warming trend. Atmospheric CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas that is believed to have contributed to global warming since the beginning of the industrial revolution [1]. The use of fossil fuels (e.g. oil, coal, natural gas, etc.) is the dominant source of anthropogenic CO2. In line with the implications of this paper, Ryabchikov [23] shows that the main source of supply of CO2 to the atmosphere is not anthropogenic activities, but tropical regions of the ocean. These regions supply 2×10↑10 tons of air-borne CO2 annually to the temperate and circumpolar latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

          From the Conclusion of the 2007 paper ‘Formulations of human-induced variations in global temperature’ by Ernest C. Njau,and available at-
          http://www.aseanenvironment.info/Abstract/41015298.pdf

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    • #
      James Bradley

      FIN,

      PS

      Or even with sceptical scientists.

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    • #

      Good-o FIN, since you want debate through the peer review, you’ll campaign for skeptics to get funding so they have the resources (offices, access to data, subscriptions to journals, accountants, computer software & IT support, full time assistants, electricity, holiday pay and superannuation).

      I can’t wait to see you back up your words and show how keen you are for real science debate.

      640

      • #
        FIN

        Like I said earlier, science is debated through peer review, get your self qualified and away you go. Nothing stopping you at all except incompetence, laziness or not enough brains.

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        • #
          Oksanna

          Didn’t take long for the usual personal abuse to spew forth, did it? Back on topic and we are now waiting a link to FIN’s list of their own peer-reviewed work with an itemised accounting of the backers. Nothing short of full disclosure will be acceptable, pal. Alarmist gutter standards apply, to ensure a level playing field.

          530

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            The silence will be deafening regarding that suggestion. Good point though – well made.

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          • #
            FIN

            I’ll link to mine when you link to yours Oksanna, and how yours debunks the current understanding of global climate. You see, I dont need to, climate scientists have done it for me. You on the other hand have the burden of proof to over turn it. You’d have to over turn things like the melt rate of the West & East Antarctica and Greenland & the Arctic. Interestingly not long ago climate science was suggesting the Antarctic would gain ice but the new data coming from Totten Glacier suggests this is incorrect and that the East Antarctic is losing ice at an increasing rate, as of course the West is. A classic case of new data trumping old theories. Unfortunately all the newer data seems to point to a bigger problem not a lesser one.

            People who fund science need to be convinced that you’re not going to waste their money. After all would you give money to Doug Cotton? No, I didn’t think so, which might give you a clue as to why they wouldn’t fund you.

            Incidentally you do yourself no favours by arguing that polar regions are not in serious melt trends. The evidence for this is so compelling and, well, self evident that it defies reason when the faux skeptics do this. It just looks foolish and people will see that eventually.

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            • #

              FIN

              It is quite obvious from your repeated comments that you are a believer, and an uninformed one at that(*).

              So I ask you once again:
              Whom are you claiming to speak for when you say ‘we’ or ‘us’? Other, equally uninformed, even ignorant believers?

              You can be sure that there are plenty of your kind around, asn we’ve heard such ignorant drivel many times before.

              In this latest comment you even say it openly, ‘others have done it for you’, implying they have made the case for something you haven’t even specified. And which you haven’t even read yourself.

              I.e. you are taking somebody else’s word for .. well .. whatever it is you believe. And I’m pretty certain it’s not even the word of someone who knows what (real) science is, and how it’s done.

              Hence, you mostly produce word sallad with random ‘sciencey’ sounding terms and phrases thrown in and are unable to resond to almost anything.

              You could, if you’d lite to learn something from people generally far more knowledagble than yourself, read the many and responsens you have received. And if you have queries and still don’t understand ask follow-up questions and hope for somebody’s patience.

              But then again, your dilemma is that ‘learning’ hasn’t been your thing, and that’s what has gotten you to where you are now. Right?

              It’s rather ‘believing’ what somebody who claims ‘authority’ has told you what to believe. Hence the incoherent gibberish and nonsensical attempts at arguments.

              Because FIN, you really do believe that what you are offering here are arguments and even strong ones, dont you? Arguments for …. ? Something yet forthcoming?

              (*) Apparently you don’t even know what peer-review is, as you (repeatedly)

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Like I said earlier, science is debated through peer review, get your self qualified and away you go. Nothing stopping you at all except incompetence, laziness or not enough brains.

          FIN,

          Science is debated through experimental result and observation being discussed anywhere two interested parties sit down to discuss the matter. They explain their position with evidence and thoughtful argument. And here’s where you fail bigtime at science – they listen to each other, evaluate the other guys position and neither one dismisses the other as worthless because he disagrees about something.

          The truth of something is found through this process and peer review has little to do with it. There is no way to get yourself qualified beyond openness to learn. Credentials go only so far and then you’re standing on your own two feet or you fall based solely on the quality of your work as judged by others around you.

          FIN, you don’t measure up to this standard. All I see is FIN dismissing skeptics because we don’t toe the line you want us to. You get no respect from anyone here because you don’t respect us. Your mind is all made up and you can’t be bothered with anyone questioning what you say. You are pathetic at science, pathetic as a debater and pathetic at the art of giving the other guy the benefit of the doubt.

          580

          • #
            FIN

            They do dismiss the other guy if he’s talking absolute tosh Roy.

            You can toe any line you like Roy but until you present some science for peer review nobody apart from Bolt et al will take you seriously.

            028

            • #
              RB

              Over 50 published papers on different reasons for the pause and others on why there isn’t a pause. Looks like there wasn’t much debating going on before publication.

              Give it up. You’re putting lipstick on a pig.

              170

            • #
              sophocles

              SO where do we find YOUR publications?

              110

            • #
              ghl

              “Science is debated through peer review”
              Peer review is not debate, it is error checking.

              140

              • #
                FIN

                Effectively the same thing.

                019

              • #
                tom0mason

                FIN
                Peer review and a debate are two quite different things, usually with different terms of reference and often differing outcomes.

                It is obvious that you are misunderstanding what is a peer-review for and about. No it is not just error checking!

                Additionally your comment that a debate is error checking shows the paucity of your understanding of the subject, this is very evident from your earlier comments about debate.

                Poor lost FIN, I almost feel sorry for you and your dunner-headedness.

                And yes feel aggrieved that I have criticized you without offer any answers. Maybe that because IMO, you need some self improvement.

                30

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              They do dismiss the other guy if he’s talking absolute tosh Roy.

              And thus you prove me right by dismissing me.

              I rest my case.

              120

            • #
              Geoffrey Williams

              FIN,
              You do not seem to understand (or perhaps you do)
              But it is YOU who is making the claim for CAGW! YOU and not us,not the sceptics!
              We don’t have to prove anything, except to show that your science and models are not working!
              At this time (AFTER 30 YEARS OF TRYING) your arguments for global warming or climate change are more unconvincing than ever.
              The onus is on you to provide the proof for your belief and you have not done so.
              Forget your petty arguments about peer review and tell us what your science is!
              Regards
              Geoffrey Williams
              Sydney

              160

              • #
                FIN

                No I’m pretty sure you’ve got that the wrong way around Geoffrey, the established climate science is what it is, up to you to knock it over. The faux skeptic attempts to do so are nothing short of pathetic, to wit one Junior Rocket Scientist with his curve fitting crap. It couldnt even get past the blog review let alone peer review.

                017

              • #

                So you’re pretty sure, FIN?

                Well, at least a tacit admission that all you do is believing things. You then label what you believe as “the established climate science”

                Which you neither have read nor would understand if you did. Heck, you even have a hard time just formulating your beliefs. Most of your comments drift into lala-land quite quickly, about something completely unrelated …

                Why do you think that is?

                40

            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              Fin,

              You just don’t get it, do you?

              How many papers have you, personally reviewed? For how many of those, were you the lead reviewer? For how many of those, for which you were the lead reviewer, were subsequently not published by that journal? And, how many of those that were not published by that journal, were subsequently published by another journal, without any material changes being made?

              140

              • #

                RW I’ve done that and seen all sorts. Outright rejections happen for two main reasons.

                1. The whole thing is crap (incomprehensibly written, data or methods don’t support conclusions etc)
                2. The whole thing is boring. The journal publishes what it considers to be more substantial or important research than the submitted paper contains.

                Number 2 is a substantial proportion of recommendation for rejection without resubmission and these are rightly

                subsequently published by another journal, without any material changes being made?

                I’ve seen category 1 eventually published but with substantial changes. And?

                05

              • #
                Peter C

                Reply to gee Aye 3.4.2.1.1

                I am struggling to understand you here Gee Aye. You are always a bit obscure.

                2. Boring papers may be published in other journals, because they are they correct or contribute to the sum of knowledge.

                1. Crap papers get published with revisions. What is the point? You said AND?

                60

              • #
                Gee Aye

                peter… The “and” means what of it and unless you have an insight into RWs mind, you can’t answer it.

                Yes… papers that are sound should get published somewhere. Heaps are rejected on their first attempt because they were submitted, to either a journal that considers them not of sufficient significance (journal snobbery) or to the wrong journal (subject matter not of interest to readership).

                Crap papers sometimes go back to the drawing board and get the crap removed, some better analysis or new data and return again. They can be a bit like the ancient spade that has had three new handles and two new blades – ie not the same paper really.

                04

            • #
              tom0mason

              FIN,

              These guys also disagree with the whole premiss of CO2 mediated climate change (nee AGW.)

              “It is a remarkable fact that despite the worldwide expenditure of perhaps US$50 billion since 1990, and the efforts of tens of thousands of scientists worldwide, no human climate signal has yet been detected that is distinct from natural variation.”

              Bob Carter, Research Professor of Geology, James Cook University, Townsville

              and also from JCU

              Dr. John Nicol, Chairman of the Australia Climate Science Coalition and a former Senior Lecturer of Physics at James Cook University: “The claims so often made that there is a consensus among climate scientists that global warming is the result of increased man- made emissions of CO2, has no basis in fact.”

              CAGW crew must be getting really upset with all their pet theories getting knocked over one by one. Sadly all they can resort to is name calling, and spinning the same old modeled lies and hope that the sheeple take it for a second, third, or fouth time.

              Sooner or later they(the trough fund feeders) will realize they are hopelessly wrong. They will deny that CO2 can only cool the planet, with water as the main commanding thermostat, and that the sun ultimately governs how hot or cold the planet gets, and thus determines how much CO2 is in the oceans and atmosphere.
              The activist advocates masquerading as a ‘climate scientists’ will rail and vent against such ideas. These grant trough feeders will never admit that their version of their beloved modeled feedbacks are wrong, as true natural feedbacks are probably highly nonlinear and to some degree (and at certain times) some will be deterministic. Those kind of ideas are beyond their imagination, and therefore outside their ability to understand or model.

              And as someone far more qualified than me said —

              “It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.”

              Professor Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics

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        • #
          TdeF

          What absolute rubbish! Science is not debated and then the truth is arrived at by consensus. Someone is right and everyone else is wrong. First past the post. Darwin, Newton, Einstein. The sole test is whether observation matches prediction, not whether people agree with you. After 20 years of runaway tipping point man made Global Warming with no actual temperature change, the consensus view of the carbon cartel is in the bin. As for incompetence, laziness or brains. The world is not warming. Think about it. Explain it. Wear it.

          630

        • #
        • #
          tom0mason

          FIN

          ‘Climate science’ is naught but political chicanery.
          This is easily verified by the fact that interpretations of climate computer models is what drives the UN mandated IPCC and not the effects of real weather and climate. ‘Climate science’ drives the computer models upon which the whole scare relies.

          Your ‘climate science’ is a distraction, a political mask behind which is the UN’s socialist and communist elites lurk.

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        • #
          James Bradley

          FIN,

          Please provide links to any debate on the subject between two opposing views.

          140

        • #
          James Bradley

          FIN,

          Peer review debate in climate science?

          That would be the climate science debate you have on shutting down climate science debate.

          Way to go, FIN, another diversion designed to shut down debate from the ideologically enhanced and politically correct representative of the Clayton’s Science Corporation.

          150

          • #
            FIN

            You can debate how many angels dance on the head of a pin all you like James, nobody can stop you and no one will care what your conclusions are. And no one will fund it either, thankfully.

            025

            • #
              Backladderthe4th

              FIN,

              And yet here you are continuing to debate the diversion.

              141

            • #
              GI

              FIN,

              “You can debate how many angels dance on the head of a pin all you like James”

              So you can debate anything else, but it seems you just can’t debate ‘the climate science.’

              Little hypocritical of you, FIN.

              140

            • #

              Again you are trying to imply that you are speaking for many others, FIN.

              Who is it you (believe) you are talking for? And how did you get them to select you (of all) to represent them?

              50

              • #

                Sorry, should have read:

                And how did you get them to select you (of all) to represent them?

                Or how did you come up with the idea that you could speak for them, FIN?

                [Fixed it for you.] AZ

                30

          • #
            james Bradley

            FIN,

            Backladder beat me to it.

            60

          • #
            James Bradley

            FIN,

            And GI trumped it.

            40

        • #
          James Murphy

          I think we are all more than willing to talk about science whenever you are, FIN.

          I’m really very interested if you can actually do this, or if you’re only capable of copy/pasting insults.

          90

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          get your self qualified and away you go

          I know a lot of people who are just as qualified as Sir Issac Newton, but somehow that doesn’t seam to count for much within the Science Publishing Industry (for that is what it is).

          130

        • #
          Greg Cavanagh

          Come on guys, FIN doesn’t read replies anyway.

          60

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            Agreed, but the rest of us are having fun making him (or her) look silly.

            We haven’t had a half-decent troll to bait for ages. I am just hanging in there, waiting for the pointy sticks come out.

            100

        • #
          Leonard Lane

          FIN, did you read the flat earth comment?
          Maybe if more people knew the climate models are flat earth models you wouldn’t be so proud and arrogant.

          120

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          I say…no need to be rude, old chum…..

          You constantly reinforce our already low opinion of the Left, which is a pity, when this site has provided you ample opportunity to reverse that perception.

          Rather poor form….

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        • #
          tom0mason

          FIN as you offer nothing, I offer a comment from Steven Goddard site —

          http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-up-with-that/#comment-357834 )
          gallopingcamel (Peter Morcombe)says:
          May 26, 2014 at 7:00 pm
          usJim,
          Please accept my apologies for assuming that you had not taken the time to read the links I sent.

          While I am a physicist, I am not a climate scientist. My field is quantum electro-optics; I have been building lasers since 1970 for fun and profit, starting with dye lasers and finishing with the HIGS (High Intensity Gamma Source):

          https://www.phy.duke.edu/content/gamma-ray-production-storage-ring-free-electron-laser-2

          I only mentiion this as my understanding of the way that lasers work causes me to doubt the single layer radiative transfer model used by Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann and others when they claim a “Forcing” of several Watts/square meter caused by CO2.

          The main absorption lines for CO2 that relate to the capture of thermal IR from the Earth’s surface are in the 4 and 15 micron bands. The corresponding frequencies are 75 and 20 Tera-Hertz. The periods are 0.013 and 0.050 femto-seconds.

          As you correctly point out, these periods are shorter than the mean time between molecular collisions by at least seven orders of magnitude. However, a molecule cannot emit a photon unless it has first been raised to an “excited state”. The lifetime of these excited states is typically measured in micro-seconds or milli-seconds.

          If left undisturbed, excited atoms or molecules will eventually give up their excess energy via radiative transitions to lower energy states or via collisions with other molecules. When total pressure is low, radiative transfer dominates so the outgoing radiation is absorbed by CO2 (or water vapor) is re-radiated isotropically. This means that half of the outgoing radiation is returned to the surface exactly as claimed by Trenberth & Co.

          In the troposphere the mean time between collisions is quite short (~200 pico-seconds) so most of the outgoing IR radiation absorbed by complex molecules will be lost in collisions before a photon can be radiated. This means that in the lower atmosphere it makes no difference whether the energy is transfered by radiation or by convection. In either case the energy is retained in the troposphere.

          Currently, I am a big fan of the Robinson & Catling atmosperic model:

          http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n1/full/ngeo2020.html

          I have yet to read any person, scientist or otherwise, knock holes in what he has said about CO2.

          Well FIN you faux believer, use YOUR scientific acumen to rebuff gallopingcamel (aka Peter Morcombe) assertion.

          30

          • #
            Just-A-Guy

            tom0mason,

            This means that in the lower atmosphere it makes no difference whether the energy is transfered by radiation or by convection. In either case the energy is retained in the troposphere.

            Meaning that the leveling off of global temperatures, (as reported by satellites which measure temps in the lower troposphere), for the last 18 years is proof that the radiative forcing built into the IPCC models must be wrong.

            For if the models were correct, the troposphere would have continued to warm at the same rate as it did from the 70’s to the 90’s.

            Data trumps models every time.

            Abe

            20

        • #
          Bill

          FIN: you are repeatedly proving yourself to be just another troll, and a poor one at that. You could, at least, try using some facts once in a while.

          00

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        I can’t wait to see you back up your words and show how keen you are for real science debate.

        Please don’t hold your breath while waiting, Jo. We’d hate to lose you!

        220

        • #
          Yonniestone

          Jo’s not leaving anywhere Roy and that’s why the zealots like FIN are panicking by claiming that skeptics are unimportant then giving them attention with such energy spent, contradiction via paranoia much? 😉

          “We shall not cease from exploration
          And the end of all our exploring
          Will be to arrive where we started
          And know the place for the first time.”

          Sadly words people like FIN will never understand, but we shall never forget.

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        bobl

        Jo, can I get a supercomputer, I need one to calculate my new climate model.

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      David-of-Cooyal in Oz

      Dear FIN,
      Suggest you read “The delinquent teenager…” by Donna Laframboise for a complete analysis of how complete was the IPCC use of peer review.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

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      Malcolm

      well said Fin.
      Jo Nova- I dare you to discuss science instead of hate for renewable energy, electric vehicles and box office movie releases that you sprout week in week out on this blog. Jo Nova, you certainly can find a “problem” for the worlds solutions.

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        el gordo

        Okay, the plateau in temperatures prove CO2 does not cause global warming and the null hypothesis leads us to believe that global cooling will commence no later than 2017.

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        James Murphy

        well, Malcolm. what sort of science do you want to discuss…? Come on, we’re all waiting…

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          Malcolm

          James- 20+ red thumbs and your the only one with the curiosity to question my opinion, maybe I want to read about science rather than write about science?, there seems to be an opinion that everyone has made up their mind one way or the other, not true, a lot of chin-scratching still going on, trueful, easy to understand science/facts/ is going to have a better affect on fence-sitters than bragging about how poorly a movie has rated. my way of seeing this blog- too many threads and not enough quality, let each thread sit and mature so posters can build a case on each issue. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ve got to get in to the fast lane of the modern world.

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        GE0

        Have you noticed how readily AGW-types attribute ‘HATE’ to anyone who holds an opposing view?

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      tom0mason

      Just a couple of quotes from a much longer piece [eh, mod?]

      “I am ashamed of what climate science has become today.” The science community is relying on an inadequate model to blame CO2 and innocent citizens for global warming in order to generate funding and to gain attention. If this is what ‘science’ has become today, I, as a scientist, am ashamed.” — Research Chemist William C. Gilbert published a study in August 2010 in the journal Energy & Environment titled “The thermodynamic relationship between surface temperature and water vapor concentration in the troposphere” and he published a paper in August 2009 titled “Atmospheric Temperature Distribution in a Gravitational Field.”

      And

      “The whole thing is a fraud.” – Dr. Christopher J. Kobus, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University, specializes in alternative energy, thermal transport phenomena, two-phase flow and fluid and thermal energy systems and has published peer-reviewed papers.

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      tom0mason

      FIN,

      Research by Australian climate data analyst John McLean revealed that the IPCC’s peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired.
      McLean’s research revealed that the UN IPCC peer-review process is “an illusion.” McLean’s study found that very few scientists are actively involved in the UN’s peer-review process.

      The report contained devastating revelations to the central IPCC assertion that ‘it is very highly likely that greenhouse gas forcing has been the dominant cause of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.” The analysis by McLean states: “The IPCC leads us to believe that this statement is very much supported by the majority of reviewers. The reality is that there is surprisingly little explicit support for this key notion.

      Among the 23 independent reviewers just 4 explicitly endorsed the chapter with its hypothesis, and one other endorsed only a specific section. Moreover, only 62 of the IPCC’s 308 reviewers commented on this chapter at all.”

      Only four UN scientists in the IPCC peer-review process explicitly endorsed the key chapter blaming mankind for warming the past 50 years, according to this recent analysis.
      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      Yes the UN through it’s IPCC anti-science committee ensuring lots more of our taxes gets wasted.

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    TdeF

    I have responded as follows and time permitting, I am happy to help

    I am outraged at the business of AGW.

    1. Mankind does not and cannot control CO2 levels. It is set by simple equilibrium calculated by Henry’s Law
    2. 98% of all gaseous CO2 dissolved in the oceans, something with which everyone agrees.
    3. The half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 12 years. The IPCC states 80+ years but this is a lie. The C14 vs time (bomb graph) showing C14 vanishing exponentially and demonstrates the half life without debate
    4. The 50% increase in CO2 in 100 years is entirely natural, as evidenced by the C14 content
    5. The seas are alkali, not acid. They are not ‘acidifying’ but if anything, neutralizing. This is a lie.

    Before anyone talks about Global Warming, if there is no A in Anthropgenic involved, we can do nothing and we have done nothing.

    Worse, carbon, as one of the few light elements involved in life on the planet, is the core component of all life on earth. With few exceptions, all life on earth is formed by photosynthesis and CO2 capture
    Releasing O2 and forming carbohydrates C(H2O)n which decay to hydrocarbons (CH2)n. To call CO2 pollution is absurd.

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    • #
      TdeF

      For those who do not understand half life, it means if we produce CO2 by burning fossil fuels, half of the CO2 we produce vanishes into the vast oceans in 12 years. After five half lives or 60 years, only 1/64th only is left. So less than 256th of the total CO2 since the end of WW2 is left, 0.4%.

      In fact, since the IPCC was formed in 1988, 27 years ago, 80% has vanished into the ocean. If you consider it is pollution, 80% is gone, replaced by fresh CO2 with the same C14 content as the rest of the atmosphere.

      How then does the CO2 go up? Simple, the ocean surface is slightly warmer. Only recently have we heard Tim Flannery say that the massive oceans are the problem. They have stolen the warming. Surely they would stop to think that ocean surface warming might be the entire source of the increase in CO2, not the result?

      Does CO2 produce the observed warming? No. In fact no scientist expected it to do so, but there was an unproven hypothesis about a possible amplifying effect with increased water vapour. This has clearly turned out to be wrong.

      Finally, the switchover from thermometers to electronics with a resolution change from 0.5C to 0.01 C seems wholly responsible for the 1980s warming. There was no temperature change before or after this period. In other words, there was no warming. Moving Stephenson boxes is nowhere near as serious as changing what is inside them.

      No, not a sceptic, a heretic.

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        TdeF

        Sorry, up to the end of WWII, so half the 20th century.

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        Roy Hogue

        I wonder what the half life of global warming will turn out to be. 😉

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          Greg Cavanagh

          Science advances one funeral at a time?
          Perhaps another 20 years for the half way mark.

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          TdeF

          Good question. It was asked in Melbourne of a visiting Daniel Hannan, an amusing British member of the European Parliament, whatever that is. A de facto expert in meaningless bureaucracy, the simple question was that when AGW is shown to be complete nonsense, how long will it take for the whole infrastructure of funding, government departments, councils, laws and beliefs to vanish. He was clear. Twenty years. So a ten year half life would seem right. That was five years ago. The last hope for the IPCC is when 30,000 people extremely concerned about the evils of flying arrive by business class flights and limousines in Paris in December. I hope it is freezing.

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        James Bradley

        TdeF,

        Since you mentioned Tim Flannery – it may actually be the massive dams that filled against all his predictions that have stolen the heat.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Nicely put, TdeF.

      You realise, I hope, that I am going to plagiarise you like mad? 😉

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        tom0mason

        Rereke Whakaaro

        “You realise, I hope, that I am going to plagiarise you like mad?”

        You and me both 😉

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          Gee Aye

          I’d avoid that thing about CO2 vanishing… Or at least try to work out what it meant before quoting.

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      bobl

      Um, NO!

      It is recognised that only 1/2 mankinds emissions survive one year, that is 50% of Mans emissions is used by the biosphere in the first year. By my calculation that makes the half life of CO2 1 Year and the equilibrium time as short as 5 years.

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    • #
      TdeF

      That does explain John Kerry, happily married to a Heinz heiress and proposing sustainability 25 years ago? Sustainability? Beans produce methane you know, a much more worrying gas than CO2. So is John Kerry another Al Gore? Is it mandatory that executives in a Democratic administration push crazy Green causes like Global Warming and Sustainability? Is man bear pig an actual job?

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        OriginalSteve

        In the whole USA Elite circles, its a bit like european royalty ( minus the royalty ) – they all inter-marry to keep all the “Elite” bloodlines “pure”

        GWB, John Kerry, GHB were are all Bonesmen ( Skull and Bones from Yale ) – the USA is run by secret societies and Elite “think tanks”. People like Gates was made out to be this struggling inventor, whne in fact he came from a powerful and wealthy elite family…..

        Nuff said.

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  • #
    Shub Niggurath

    “Most times when a skeptic says “we take no fossil fuel funding” it caves to that meme.”

    Yup. Grow a spine already.

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  • #
    Phil Ford

    I would be happy if more climate sceptic scientists could receive fossil fuel funding. I don’t see how this is any different from the vast majority of pro-CAGW scientists receiving public funds to support their research. It is just a simple fact – now beyond any dispute – that unless one is prepared to follow the dominant narrative of CAGW propaganda one is not in line for any public funding.

    The cowardice and slippery greenwash of the fossil fuel producers in not standing up to CAGW bullies is very regrettable – and baffling. They should be proud of what their products achieve – every moment of every day all around the globe – for humanity (progress, in every conceivable way) instead of being cowed into issuing mealy-mouth apologia for their contribution to mankind’s health and wealth.

    I *heart* fossil fuels and I’m extremely grateful for all they have given me. It’s a genuine tragedy of epic proportions that so many people in the world today still have to go without the manifold benefits of a reliable, cheap and efficient fossil fuel supply. Actually, it’s a scandal.

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    Roy Hogue

    The letter has no chance of actually working because fossil fuel empire funds more pro-panic exhibits than it has ever funded skeptical ones. The UK science museum is very happy to take money from Shell and BP. Likewise British Museum, Tate, and others, ahem, are ethically quite OK with BP money, oil spills and all. Though the letter has already achieved what it probably wanted, which is mass PR as most in the gullible media sucked it up.

    They simply look out for their business interests. If the public wants to buy something then anyone in business would want to be selling what the public is buying. Add the outright bullying by government and of course they retreat from their best interest as fossil fuel suppliers, which is to say, we deliver a valuable product and we’re not ashamed to be doing it.

    That’s the tragedy in all this. The best interest of business is to sell what the buyer appears to want. Their best interest is to keep from being put out of business by government fiat. Their best interest is to get the best PR they can.

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    Just-A-Guy

    To All The Denizens Of JoNova,

    Up to this point, the time I’m writting this comment, there are 35 comments on this thread, including mine.

    Fifteen are on topic.

    Twenty are FIN-Troll related.

    Don’t feed the troll.

    Abe

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      Roy Hogue

      Abe,

      I understand your point. And now I’ll ask you to understand mine in return. 🙂

      There is a benefit for readers generally when we confront a troll and expose their foolishness, dishonesty or whatever it is that makes them a troll. It gives anyone of like mind with the troll a reason to think. It took me a long time to become convinced that simply putting down an unwelcome visitor isn’t the way to do it. Confront their errors head on, no name calling, no put down except to call out their failure. Confront error with fact and sound argument.

      This is why I confront FIN and others from time to time.

      Roy

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      We don’t feed trolls, we make fun of them, and we use them.

      The more knowledgeable folks here, point out the inconsistencies in their arguments, and through that, the rest of us learn.

      As the proportion of the general population who actually worry about climate change decreases, the trolls feel forced to increase their level of engagement with sites like this. Thus the level of learning increases in proportion.

      Trolls, taken in moderation, can be good for your education.

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      el gordo

      I’m with Roy and Rereke on this.

      Years ago Fin was a regular at Marohasy’s blog (under a different name) and was generally tolerated for his humorous robust approach in support of the peer review system and other inanities.

      I know it seems hard to believe, but we were once good comrades out to defeat the Deltoidians. He was ferocious and gave no quarter to the enemy, it was the most exciting time I have ever spent on the blogosphere.

      There we were shoulder to shoulder at the barricades and then bang, Tim and Jennifer banned both of us on the same day.

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    • #

      This is nonsense. A way to isolate and dilute trolls is to become a sceptic. Read Jo’s post sceptically and raise points of debate. If all everyone does is affirm what is written, no matter what, you leave a wonderful vacuum of debate. When FIN posts (he is on topic btw so hardly mindless trolling) into the vacuum there is a huge response. It is much more satisfying responding to FIN than to yet another post by someone nodding their head and congratulating Jo.

      So sceptic yourself up and write something interesting and the troll will disappear behind a wall of interesting debate.

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      • #

        Gee Aye, everyone, absolutely we need dissenters, and sometimes even trolls, but I’m almost at the point of moderating FIN for being too boring. He rarely adds anything novel scientifically and the hate-mail is predictable, borne of his fantasies, rather than any link to reality.

        I fear that having a boring troll might keep more interesting ones away, if you know what I mean. I would rather have a Mattb or John Brookes. At least they fished out some arguments from SkS for target practice.

        Perhaps you might comment more Gee Aye? I’d prefer that too. Just-a-guy has a point. The conversation with FIN is at the “baby” level of whether peer review is biblical and sacred or just another imperfect, tediously slow form of communication which has its uses. Regulars have done this point to death, and years ago, but for onlookers and new spectators, perhaps it’s useful. But I think it’s too dilute and repetitive.

        I would have preferred this thread spent more time discussing the hard questions of ethics regarding science funding. Would more corporate and private philanthropy save science?

        El gordo, are you sure FIN is the same person from Marohasy’s blog. Do you mean Luke?

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          Geoffrey Williams

          Jo,
          I agree with you about FIN.
          (See my post above re his science)
          All he wants is an argument! I say Dump him!
          I doubt that he has any real beliefs anyway.
          Let him go annoy someone else,preferably at a footy Match!
          Regards
          Geoffrey Williams
          Sydney.

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          Jo, I didn’t say that FIN’s arguments were particularly interesting or novel per se but compared to the background social chatter of other comments they are interesting and novel.

          I’m afraid I am not the best commenter as I don’t like getting drawn into debates about stuff that does not interest me or where a comment requires extricating the good stuff from the jaundiced and vexatious. Thankfully outright abuse seems to be less evident these days which I think is an improvement (notwithstanding this I hope The Griss is alive and well).

          My opinion on funding. Get it from wherever and whoever and do good science. As a fund seeker of many years I’d be happy if corporate and private money funded more science but I don’t see that the source of the money has anything to do with saving it or otherwise.

          Peer review – has limitations known to everyone. As do other aspects of the process/doing-of of science. Hardly seems interesting enough to merit comment at this level.

          I also find science funding unremarkable as a topic wrt the climate debate and I raise this knowing full well this idea regularly scoffed at. My personal experience of seeking money, assisting in the process of distributing money (government and trusts) and my observation of many scientists doing the same is that they seek funding because they want to find an answer to an unknown – a gap in knowledge. I am not saying they are saints and don’t know a thing or 2 about spinning an angle, but basically when they get the money they spend it getting the data to test their idea. Funding could work better for sure, but I’ve seen no evidence that climate research is a symptom of a problem.

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            OriginalSteve

            I havent learnt the most when “under fire” from the trolls, but ONLY when they were questioning the validity of certain **scientific** points, which forced me to double check my facts and the context therewith.

            In fins case, he seems to be doing what leftists do best – drone out the good stuff and replace it with boring white noise that turns people off.

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          • #

            Thanks Gee Aye, on funding, would you at least agree that confirmation bias affects most people, and so lop-sided funding where 99% of the money goes one way limits the creativity of researchers. Every single person they meet in the tea-room has a similar perspective, all their students are pre-programmed to know that CO2 must have a climate sensitivity of 1.5 – 4C. They may well be honest and hard working, but it takes a very brutal honesty to hunt through your most deeply held assumptions. And, lets face it, the skeptics on campus are mostly silent, or they’ve been sacked). Hence, even if there is a skeptic in the tea room, they are unlikely to say a lot.

            And once the halls of academia are stocked this way, the panels of ARC approval committees are stacked this way too.

            I’m not saying these researchers don’t work hard, or the process is not onerous and competitive, but I am saying “it’s broken”. Think, 18 year pause, expanding sea ice, missing hot spot, missing heat, and no progress at all in narrowing climate sensitivity in 25 years and with billions of dollars.

            As for Griss I worked with him to see if we could keep the good ones and lose the empty insults. But after several rounds, over several months, it reached the point where I said I’d moderate him for a few days so I could filter the less helpful ones, and he said he didn’t want to try. So he’s free to comment, but not unleashed, and that didn’t fit his style.

            On FIN, I think I want a better troll. If you know one, send them over.

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          el gordo

          ‘Do you mean Luke?’

          Yeah, when Fin said ‘Sheesh, incredible’ I thought it must be him.

          Luke was good at the science and we argued the toss for years, so I guess Fin is not our man.

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          Roy Hogue

          … but I’m almost at the point of moderating FIN for being too boring.

          Jo,

          I never judge anything only by the numbers of red and green thumbs — I’ve actually wished they weren’t there many times — but looking at the negative reaction to FIN, I would immediately get the impression that he’s very unpopular. So maybe I’ll stick my neck out a little and speak for those who click the red thumb without making a comment and say, yes, you probably should moderate FIN and not let him through unless he actually has something to say.

          He’s definitely not willing to debate the merit of anything. His one characteristic has been a putdown of skeptics, the topic under discussion and everyone who challenges him.

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          GE0

          Integrity will save science. Hopefully. Integrity in the work; integrity in the peer review; integrity in funding. Peer review not ‘pal review;’ perhaps even open peer review to a more general audience. Soon’s funding disaster is instructive: CAGW bullies were allowed to run roughshod over the details & I’ve seen little correction from normalist publications. See how the AGW-crowd circled the wagons on the e-mails? Our side should protect those of our sympathies from the bullying on oil money. If the criticism is ‘dirty money’ then science is not at issue.

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        Geoffrey Cousens

        “Interesting debate”;he’s got the intellect of garden gnome.

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    tom0mason

    But the bottom-line is that the ‘climate-science’ has nothing — but nothing — to do with science, period.
    Science, like the fake Green politics are what Alfred Hitchcock called a “MacGuffin”. Basically it’s a plot device that motivates the characters and advances the story by dominating the narrative but the MacGuffin is not what the story is about, or even an essential for the story.

    It is important to remember that ‘climate science’ is *only* about politics — Big Money and Power. Nationally there are bit players, and some are very wealthy and important people but the real play is that of the UN. And the UN requires this fake scare to get ‘carbon trading’ in place so that the UN’s elites socialist model is financed and that all national states can be controlled. The ‘climate science’ is settled! It requires that you all pay for the elites within the national government, UN and their pet project industrialists.

    The MacGuffin of ‘climate science’ is merely expensive decoration around the political scam that takes freedoms from people worldwide. Politics that is to ensure that the future is a very different, darker, place.

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      Just-A-Guy

      tom0mason,

      But the bottom-line is that the ‘climate-science’ has nothing — but nothing — to do with science, period.

      Absolutely on the money, Tom.

      President Eisenhower already warned us in his Farewell Adress:

      Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

      The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

      Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

      There is a name for people who belong to the scientific technological elite, the’re called technocrats.

      The Post Modern Science (PMS) technocrats of today are not scientists. They ceased to be scientists when they introduced politics into their science. They adjust the data to fit their models which are nothing more than conjectures and wishfull thinking. And then rather than defend their position with reasoned debate, rather than back up their so-called science with evidence, they call you names and refuse to talk to you.

      Classic behavior of a spoiled child whose too immature to have a discussion. Too immature to admit failure. Too immature to appologise for their mistakes. I mean, come on! Have we forgotten what the school-yard was like in the third grade? Wasn’t it just like that?

      We don’t need children to tell us what to do or how to think. What we need is for them to go home and grow up. Nothing short of that will suffice.

      The sooner the better.

      Abe

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        Just-A-Guy

        Oh, and by the way, anyone who thinks I might be over-stating things, consider this:

        Ask a climatologist to show you their programs or their data and how do they respond?

        “No! It’s my ball! You can’t play with it!”

        Keep your stupid ball, you little baby. It’s ‘flat’ anyways.

        Silly but oh so sad.

        Abe

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        tom0mason

        And as if to qualify your definition of ‘technological elite’, many administrators within the elite EU administration (a UN prototype used to test policy) call themselves ‘technocrats’.

        The future is Medieval; the future has UN sponsored Green technology. 👿

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        OriginalSteve

        I’d agree with that – its designed to make the common bloke depressed – thinking he needs a huge lab populated with boffins to do anything exciting or useful.

        I think in backyards the world over, new tech is being invented all the time. I think the trick is to turn off the tv and radio and focus on important stuff. I am convinced the MSM “news” is designed to depress people so they just give up on anything creative or questioning …. its like aural anesthetic for the creative part of the brain..who knows what else is pumped out in the non-audible frequencies as well ( i.e. SSSS )

        I also think the “always on” and “constantly connected” paradigm is designed to create a permenant state of anxiety and distract peopel from the hard questions …. walk into a public space and see how many people are looking at a screen and not each other.

        A lot ( but thankfully not all ) people are only as smart as their internet conenction these days.

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      OriginalSteve

      I’ll go out on a limb here ( seems to be my default position ) here and make a few comments:

      – The UN is a PRIVATE organization, created by bankers, funded by PUBLIC money.
      – The UN is not accountable to anyone.
      – The UN is sucked up to by govts the world over
      – Ergo, the UN is already a global govt.
      – In the Spanish Inquisition, the RCC did the “enquiring” but the spanish govt did the dirty work. There is a marked similarity with the UN.

      Out the front of the UN is a pistol with a twisted ( blocked ) barrel. The UN says this is to do with controlling the arms trade to stop people being killed – as the UN is a COmmunist organisation, its deeper meaning in world wide removal of any right of any citizen to defend themselves ( from the UN ).

      As the old saying goes :

      “An armed man is a citizen, a disarmed man is a subject”

      Either way, one thing is certain – once it all goes bang, the only way they can keep a lid on this is via martial law and mass round ups ( and executions of dissidents ).

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      • #

        Steve… on accountability. Since you seem so sure of yourself I assume that you know about this system http://www.un.org/en/strengtheningtheun/accountability.shtml plus the policies http://www.un.org/en/strengtheningtheun/pdf/A-64-640.pdf#page=27

        Since you know about it – if you didn’t then your claim above has no basis – and claim it has no accountability, on what basis do you reject it in its entirety? If you have an answer can you please give a proper answer and not an appeal to your audiences’ incredulity that the UN is accountable?

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          OriginalSteve

          Kind of like a voluntary “code of practice”?

          “developed a robust accountability system which rests on internal controls and oversight mechanisms, and tools to promote transparency and integrity”

          I find it intersting that places like the schools run by the UNRWA which were found to hold weapons dumps to fight against Israel.

          I had a friend who used to work for the UN a few years ago. Unless it has seriously cleane dup its act ( and mean SERIOUSLY ) she was horriified at what she saw in terms of wastage and activity. I cant go into details but you get the idea.

          I recall talking to UN-connected doctors who had come back from Rwanda and some of their stories.

          I think the day when a member nation can halt the UN and stop its activity cold, then its accountable. And no thats not a straw man argument.

          I have seen quite a few Australian laws that have UN treaties as the basic cornerstone of the legislation. Based on what I have heard direct from people and the fact that the has its own voluntary code of practice, in real terms, its not accountable to anyone.

          Would I trust it? Heck no.

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          OriginalSteve

          Another point on UN voluntary accountability :

          If the UN is accountable ( as you say ) , why is it rushing headlong, against the majority of people on this planet who may or may not understand Agenda 21, into what is creating in effect a Socialist world govt, in which none of us who actually vote, will have a say in? Did you vote for Agenda 21 to be implemented?

          Govts around the world are giving their power ( and public money ) to the UN so it can create a global Climate Change based straight jacket for all human activity.

          http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/un-climate-chief-not-very-far-considering-climate-change-public

          “Paris agreement will be ‘universal and applicable to all countries’

          Like a number of other events around the world, the conference in Geneva is looking ahead to the next major U.N. climate megaconference, in Paris, France in November 2015, when efforts will be made to finalize a global agreement on cutting “greenhouse gas” emissions.

          Next month U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will host a summit in New York where world leaders will be urged to make commitments ahead of the Paris conference.

          “This agreement will be universal and applicable to all countries,” Figueres said in Geneva. “It will address current and future emissions. If strong enough, it will prevent the worst and chart a course toward a world with clean air and water, abundant natural resources and happy, healthy populations, all the requirements for positive growth.”

          “Seen in this light,” she added, “the climate agreement is actually a public health agreement.”

          Now “public health” also carries the potential use of emergency powers to force people to do thinge they would never normally onsent to.

          Did you ask to be “bolted down” by the UN and based on how things are tracking, you eventually will told how much power you can use, and how much food your kids can eat?

          If you read the UN Universal Declaration of Human rights, in Section 29c you read words to the effect of “you can have rights, as long as it agrees with what the UN says are your rights”.

          The basic question is this – can you trust the UN? Well, it champions man-made catastrophic Climate Change , something Sceptics know is completely un-provable scientifically. IN effect it is championing a huge fraud.

          Climate Change is an end-run around democracy on a world-wide scale.

          Old-school common sense says trusting any organisation that tries to do such a thing without the publics consent, would be tantramount to being extremely unwise.

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          this is a gish gallop that effectively says you were wrong.

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            Just-A-Guy

            Public Service Announcement

            Define “gish gallop”:

            The Urban Dictionary defines gish gallop as . . .

            . . . spewing so much [BS] in such a short span [of time] that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it. To make matters worse a Gish Gallop will often have one or more ‘talking points’ that ha[ve] a tiny core of truth to [them], . . .

            Abe

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            Just-A-Guy

            Gee Aye,

            Considering that you’ve placed your reply directly below OriginalSteve, I take it that you’re including both of his responses as one.

            Steve’s first response to you is:

            Kind of like a voluntary “code of practice”?

            “developed a robust accountability system which rests on internal controls and oversight mechanisms, and tools to promote transparency and integrity”

            Steve’s asking a question and providing a source for that question. The focus of this question, and therefore, the focus of this entire comment by Steve, refers to the ‘accountability’ of UN representatives in the field to the ‘UN leadership, it’s charter, it’s intended function,’ etc.

            He then lists five instances where the quoted statement from the UN is shown to be false. This is called evidence. With a little more time, you or I could find many more instances of misconduct. These too would add to the weight of the evidence proving that there is little to no accountability an the part of UN representatives in the field to the UN’s ideals.

            You don’t need to address each and every one of them. You can begin your reply in any number of ways, such as:

            The points you’ve made are . . .
            That’s a long list, so let me address just one in order to show how . . .
            There will always be exceptions, but as a rule . . .

            Regardless of which of these you would have chosen, two things were bound to emerge.

            1) All of Steve’s examples or very similar ones, can easily be verified on the net.
            2) Because they can be verified, (they’re not BS), this comment by Steve is not a ‘gish gallop’.

            You, Gee Aye, combined two seperate comments into one. Each of those comments treat a different aspect of ‘accountability’. The second comment looks at ‘accountability’ from the perspective of the UN as a whole vis a vis the peoples of the world. It asks, is the UN accountable to the people to whom they, the UN, intend to govern?

            On both points, Steve answers with a resounding no! And I agree with him. Furthermore, and this is important, Steve took the time to address each of two aspects of the issue of accountability seperately. The least anyone of us could have done was/is to respond to each one, seperately and in turn.

            Abe

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    Ruairi

    Reform is long overdue,
    In climate-change peer review,
    When those ‘qualified peers’,
    Are challenged by fears,
    That the skeptical viewpoint is true.

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    Richard Ilfeld

    A thought experiment. Pull all fossil fuel funding from out-of-house research. And all government funding too. Leave it to corporations with earned funds, and universities, from their own (seldom expendable) endowments. And Manic but brilliant individuals as has always be the case.
    With such rationing by value, would there be any research on “climate change” ie CAGW. Bell Labs of AT&T genesis might be a model, and the Wright Brothers.

    No money, probably no madness.

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    • #

      Absolutely true!

      Almost every racket relies and is dependent on that someone is feeding in more money. In this case, taxpayer money, fed into a system which delivers absolutely nothing of value in return. Merely demands for even more of it, and by increasing numbers of troughers.

      You are absolutely correct: Cut off the money supply, and all the madness, all the hysterical shouting and aoutrages claims, the doomsday mongering and the absolvation-offers by paying for token symbols, will disappear within months to a year.

      Not one single one of those ‘experts’ shouting their alarmism in the media, or in any other (semi-) official position does this on their own dime or time.

      And most of them aren’t dumb either. The moment they realize there is no more money coming for this kind of tripe, they’ll switch to something more lucrative …

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      Roy Hogue

      With such rationing by value, would there be any research on “climate change”…

      You’ve said it very well.

      It’s much easier to play with someone else’s money than with yours when there’s no payoff at the end of the game other than what you can produce that others are willing to buy and pay you for voluntarily.

      This has been the strength of a fee market in goods and services for a long time. And it ought to be (but isn’t) the strength of the market in research. Let them put their own skin in the game and see what happens. And I don’t mean just reputation, I mean money. That would keep the playing field honest. Progress might be slower but what would come of it would be a lot more useful.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        And before anyone says it, yes, I know this wouldn’t be perfect either. But so what? Nothing is ever going to be perfect.

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    old farte

    Jo has created a peer review forum. Human beings are peer-reviewers/referees to other human beings. The interesting thing is that Jo and Anthony allow other-siders to register their thoughts, unlike the other sides’ blogs, that follow Herbert Marcuse’s dictum to not allow the other side to speak. So, the blogs show that global warming alarmist/the UN needs to control the world economy/shut the opposition up folks are totalitarians.

    FIN, you know more science than I. When I was 5 years old, I was asked what I wanted for Christmas. A Butterfly net. Golden Nature guides. I freaked out my mom, keeping a pregnant moth in a jar with breathing holes in the lid. She freaked out to see tiny caterpillars rummaging throughout the house.

    Taking butterfly caterpillars in, watching them pupate and metamorphose into butterflies.

    Age 8, using Christmas money to buy a microscope. Age 9, same for a Newtonian reflector. And studying things with these instruments. Age 10, a chemistry set.
    Age 11, Tesla coil experiments. Long years with crappy science education in schools. Age 19, working with electron microscopy. Age 21, working with nucleic acids. Age 22, protein engineering, inventing new radio-isotope mammalian pulse-chase experiments. Graduated from the #3 program in biochemistry in the world, with a 3.95 GPA. Age 24, I ant to med school.

    Okay, FIN, your turn to talk about your scientific path from early childhood, and what facts, that you evaluated with scientific rigor, based upon being s cientistfrom a young age, led you to believe that without UN-devised restrictions on carbon-fuel usage, life on earth is going to be destroyed.

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      Just-A-Guy

      old farte,

      Age 22, protein engineering, inventing new radio-isotope mammalian pulse-chase experiments.

      I’ve read Trenberth, Mann, Cook, and others who’ve signed the infamous letter to museums. Judging by this srticle/stub in wikipedia on pulse-chase analysis, I’d say like this:

      “If all you had done in your entire life was that one thing I quoted here, you’ve contribued more to the well-being of humanity than any of those mentioned above.” This is more than just a compliment, it’s a fact that anyone reading what that is will agree on. Actual work solving real problems.

      You should definitely sign your name to the Open Letter response sponsored by CO2 Science.

      Abe

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      Roy Hogue

      old farte,

      What a remarkable resume. I doubt that FIN is completely lacking in some sort of credentials. But I’ll add my name to your challenge.

      FIN, let’s see your voyage from childhood to productive scientist or engineer.

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    Ross

    Doesn’t that letter tell you more about the research skills (or lack of them) of those who signed it and a complete lack of understanding of the real world.

    I’m sure it took Jo very little time to give the examples of Shell and BP to show how stupid these people are. If they want to play politics they should at least understand the basics of the game —I don’t think they realise it is a game where qualifications and reputations count for very little.

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    Dennis

    I have heard about the fin end of a wedge

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    sophocles

    I went to the website to see what natural history the museum had on display. I was hoping to see dinosaurs like old bronty and argentinosaurus et al. Nope. It’s not a natural history museum so much as an essay “museum” … about things `natural.’

    WAD. (Wot A Disappointment.).

    I checked their mission statement.

    The mission of the Natural History Museum is to affirm the truth of science.

    Ok, no dino skeletons there, just affirmations. Let’s read on:

    By looking at the presentation of natural history, we demonstrate principles fundamental to scientific inquiry, principles such as the commonality of knowledge and the unavoidability of the unknown.

    uh oh. This is starting to look like a justification for “post modern science” the science you have when you have no science. The looking at the presentation of natural history without actually presenting it is new to me.

    We inquire into what we see, how we see, and what remains excluded from our seeing. Through this inquiry, we act as museum anthropologists attuned to the social and political forces inseparable from the natural world.

    “Que?” to quote Manuel from Fawlty Towers. Fog facter = 0.8.

    Yup. A justification site.

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      Roy Hogue

      …attuned to the social and political…

      That tells their story in six words.

      If they remained a good museum they wouldn’t need to justify or more accurately I think, put forth an alibi for what they’re doing. Their work would do that for them.

      What something like this tells me is that they have started to doubt themselves and need to find affirmation from the world that they’re still OK. They’re looking to join the PC crowd so they’ll be acceptable again. Unfortunately they were very much OK if they simply fulfilled the role of a good museum.

      Tragedy is the word for this. And it’s the way so many good institutions have been going these days.

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    old farte

    Let’s just think. Where you live, is it comfortable? I used to live in San Diego. Within 2 miles of the ocean, nobody had home air conditioning. Nobody in the coastal zone had car ac.

    AC would have been comfy, 10-15 days a year. Not worth the expense for the vast majority of people or the time.. I found out, moving to Oklahoma. I was okay driving my Toyota 4 x 4, pu (Hi-Lux Aussie) albeit, sweating June-Sept, but I could handle it. On trading it in, the dealer wouldn’t give me a full-CA- value trade-in price.

    Today, every car sold in SD has ac. Has global warming made it more necessary than in 1980? No. I went there in August 2005 and w/o running the ac, just rolled the windows down a bit. Same as in 1975.

    Most January nights 40 years ago, you could go out with a light sweater. Same today. If global warming is happening, it’s close to imperceptible, from human-experience point of view.

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      Roy Hogue

      As far as car A/C goes, it’s become a necessary standard to remain competitive. But there’s some good justification for it. I drive a dark colored Toyota. And even in the winter, if it’s in the sun it can get very warm. And with mild winter days opening the window doesn’t always handle it, not to mention the noise when doing 60 – 70 MPH on the freeway. And I hate to admit this but the older I got the more welcome the A/C has become. We old guys deserve our creature comforts — we earned them. 😉

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    pat

    ABC’s Big Ideas – recorded at Womadelaide Planet Talks.
    the first five minutes – featuring the arrogant former ABC “Science” Broadcaster Dr. Paul Willis –

    Bernie Hobbs: Paul, you have put a lot of work into mapping out what the science is telling us we’re going to see this century. i’m sure it won’t be a happy picture…

    Paul Willis: by 2050 we could have 3 billion moving around the planet as climate refugees, & 50 million turning up in boats in Australia.
    most of those people will be undernourished, immune systems won’t be top-notch, it will be easy for diseases to get around;
    we’re living with species we haven’t lived with in the past, so we’re picking up diseases from them, which we have no immunity for.
    put all that together &, sooner or later, & it’s going to be sooner rather than later, there will be a pandemic, there’ll probably be several of them, & nowhere will be safe.

    Bernie Hobbs ABC: Not a happy story at all. well, that’s what the science is telling us.

    20 April: ABC Big Ideas: Is climate change making us sick?
    The impact of rising temperatures on human health is a little discussed aspect of climate change. If climate change is making the planet sick, then what does this mean for the human beings who inhabit it? Mosquito borne diseases are predicted to rise, along with heat related fatalities. There may also be food shortages, unless we tackle over population…
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/is-climate-change-making-us-sick3f/6394642

    Guests: Dr Paul Willis, Director, RiAus.

    (RiAus – Australia’s Science Channel: from their website: RiAus Foundation Partners: Australian Government (Dept of Industry Innovation, Science, Research & Tertiary Education), Santos, Govt of South Australia.
    RiAus Gold Corporate Members: INCLUDES: Australian Govt (Dept of Defense Science & Technology Org), ***BP (BRITISH PETROLEUM)
    RiAus Corporate Members: BBC
    Our Patron: HRH The Duke of Kent KG GCMG GCVO ADC,
    RiAus is a sister organisation of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.)

    how our Govt Depts & BBC are considered “corporate”, i’m not sure.

    Other Guests:
    Dr Ingo Weber
    practising anaesthetist, former chair SA Doctors for the Environment.

    in the Q & A at the end, Weber twice states people should take their Superannuation monies out of fossil fuels & invest them in renewables. ABC Hobbs comments – that’s 3 times you have said that, Ingo, so he obviously pushes divestment in the Talk.

    (Drs for the Environment Australia DEA: An Opinion Piece on Divestment
    by Dr. Ingo Weber
    Our global scientists have been indicating for many years, that humanity has overstepped the boundaries of our ecological systems…
    A “two in one” effective approach is to use our right to decide what our money supports.We can choose to pull our money out of those industries that have now become the root cause of preventing effective change, and invest this same money into companies that are employing alternative energies or are helping in reducing waste and consumption.
    Investing our money into sustainable technologies, rather than destructive technologies of the past, will double the effect and bring about significant positive change…
    DEA supports the fossil fuel divestment campaign…
    http://dea.org.au/topics/article/an-opinion-piece-on-divestment )

    Emily Johnston
    PhD student, University of SA, co-founder Adelaide’s ‘Science in the Pub’.

    (Emily won the Three Minute Thesis UniSA Grand Final 2014 with her presentation “Mosquito research: saving lives with pantyhose and paperclips”)

    Moderator; Bernie Hobbs
    science writer and broadcast, ABC Science Online.

    check out the other Planet Talks programs which I fear will all be on ABC Big Ideas eventually, with repeats, of course.

    Womadelaide: The Planet Talks
    https://www.womadelaide.com.au/program/the-planet-talks

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      tom0mason

      Please note that references to BP being British Petroleum are wrong!
      It changed its name and a lot of other things in it’s business 14 years ago…

      “In 2001, in response to negative press on British Petroleum’s poor safety standards, the company adopted a green sunburst logo and rebranded itself as BP (“Beyond Petroleum”) plc

      It is just BP a global company.

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    ROM

    A question for the more astute of Jo’s denizens;

    Why is it that down through history so many of these predictions of catastrophes to come such as future catastrophic sea level rises, future searing temperatures from burning coal, future extinctions of everything except global warmers and greens are almost exclusively the prerogative of intelligent idiots?

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  • #
    pat

    tom0mason –

    it’s still British Petroleum to me & much of the world:

    20 April: Business Standard India: British Petroleum’s application for retailing jet fuel rejected
    The government has rejected British oil major BP’s application for selling aviation turbine fuel (ATF) to airlines because the company’s investment does not qualify it for a retailing licence, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Monday.
    “To get marketing rights for transportation fuels, namely, Motor Spirit (MS), High Speed Diesel (HSD) and Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) applicants must meet the requirements that inter alia include investment or proposed investment of Rs.2000 crore in exploration or production, refining, pipelines or terminals,” Pradhan told the Lok Sabha in a written reply…
    Pradhan said that of the $477 million invested in India, $259 million was said to be capital investment and another ***$2.3 billion was proposed to be further invested.
    ***BP’s $7.2 billion spent in buying 30 percent stake in 21 exploration blocks of Reliance Industries in the eastern offshore is not being considered as capital investment…
    The petroleum ministry had written to BP in March that it could apply afresh, detailing future investments to qualify for an ATF licence.
    http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/british-petroleum-s-application-for-retailing-jet-fuel-rejected-115042001025_1.html

    even for the CAGW-infested Guardian:

    BP joins list of companies fleeing Alec
    The Guardian-23 Mar 2015
    British Petroleum is the latest company to pull its membership…

    sloganeering about being “beyond petroleum” doesn’t change the fact it’s in the business of petroleum.

    50

    • #
      tom0mason

      I agree that in many peoples mind it is so. And often I see comments that wrongly allude to the idea that British government can control it. Back when the British government owned a sizable chunk of it, and controlled most of it’s decisions, thus returning lots of money to the British government, it was so.

      Now however as BP, and with it’s substantial greenwash filter in place, it is self-governed with shareholder control. Unless people note the change erroneous thinking about the control of the company will continue, as evidenced by your Business Standard India quote.

      It is now only BP one letter away from BO!

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    pat

    Jaitley adds some CAGW rhetoric at the end of this piece, but this is the take-home message:

    19 April: Economic Times India: Vishwa Mohan: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asks world to help make coal greener
    NEW DELHI: Underlining that “coal will remain the most important source of energy for India and many other energy deficient countries”, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has appealed to the international community to generate on a war footing “greener technologies”, especially of the kind that can help deliver “clean coal”…
    “Unless coal can be greened and cleaned, it may not be possible to reconcile development and climate change goals”, said Jaitley, while making his intervention on ‘climate change’ issues on sidelines of annual spring meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, on Friday.
    His remark assumes significance as it clearly indicates the country’s stand ahead of the crucial round of negotiations for a global deal in Paris in December. It shows that though India has been keen on playing its part in dealing with threat of climate change, it wants the world to give it “adequate carbon space” to achieve its objective of economic growth to deal with poverty and energy deficiency… http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/46975195.cms

    India is not going to slow its own economic development.

    Javadekar in Washington DC for the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate.

    20 April: ZeeNews India: PTI: Developed world has to walk the talk on climate change: India
    Washington: The developed world would have to “walk the talk” on climate change and provide a green climate fund to the developing world, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has said, ahead of a crucial UN meet on the issue in Paris later this year…
    Javadekar said India is a growing economy but climate change is a cumulative effect of hundreds of years of carbon emission by the developed world.
    “So historic responsibility is important,” he said.
    Referring to the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first climate agreement adopted in 1997, Javadekar said “the protocol is getting over. But the basic mandate and the principles of UNFCCC remains.”…
    “Because Paris is continuation of Kyoto, not negation of Kyoto and the principle of common and differentiated responsibility, the historic responsibility remains embedded and would ever remain embedded in Paris agreement also,” he said…
    “From here we are going to Moscow where BRICS would meet,” he said.
    http://zeenews.india.com/news/sci-tech/developed-world-has-to-walk-the-talk-on-climate-change-india_1581201.html

    our own MSM are not interested in reporting any of the above.

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  • #
    ROM

    As a layman can I just ask question, a question of Jo’s more astute denizens, a question that is I believe, relevant to the scientific structures, the administrative structures, the funding structures and the form and conduct more suited to the 19th century of the controlling professional associations under which science is conducted today;

    Are the basic administrative structures of science, particularly those two and three century old science supporting constructs such as the numerous scientific associations and universities that control the ways in which science is administered, is funded, is enforced and controlled now thoroughly broken and are they becoming irrelevant as well as becoming a major impediment to the way science is being conducted today?

    __

    From outside of science it certainly is beginning to appear that way as industry and society continue to change and adapt to ever evolving and changing societal situations.

    Science itself continues to move on but is becoming increasingly corrupted and now is being deliberately channelled to fit the various ideological memes of the times by the strictures and controls that the two and three century old science administrative societies and ivory towered university system along with an ever evolving and increasingly influential central government funding system is increasingly imposing heavy strictures and closely constrained guide lines on the free thinking and often radical thinking needed for science to continue to progress so as to justify it’s existence and most importantly, to satisfy it’s long standing unwritten contract with society.

    A contract between society and Science that basically says that we as a society will continue to generously fund science and give science and it’s practitioners a freedom to roam to the far limits of mankind’s intellect, a freedom that is denied to nearly every other sector of most societies.

    In return Science undertakes to always, without any caveats, to have the advantaging and development of technologies and knowledge systems that will advance the well being of society and it’s citizens both collectively and individually.

    Science administratively across the board now appears to be close to being locked down hard into a long lived stasis that had it’s origins in the 18th century and that no longer appears to be able to change and adapt to the new societal memes and mores that are being demanded by our always changing society of the today tomorrow and into the future.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      I think look no further than the disproportionate size of the pharma industry ( by way of one example ) and how it has somuch clout and sway over whole countries. IN effect , corporations now dictate social policy, as delievered by govts, so the multinationsla can easily sell its wares.

      I’ll go out on a limb and label the cholesterol “crisis” as being in the same basket as CAGW – an articifical crisis designed to create anxiety by demonizing a pefectly harmless and useful chemical.

      However, there is gold in making almost 50% of your population almost overnight into walking time bombs/customers who need your ( in some cases , dangerous ) wares.

      Talk about a guaranteed market. Then you get all the govt programs popping up, the GPs hop on board and then the most powerful force of all is harnessed – the concerned wife. Fat free stuff sales soar, GPs are ripping out cholesterol tests & drugs like crazy, drug companies are licking their lips, and the govt is adding yet another layer of bureacracy, and the sheep are cowering in fright from a new “crisis”……

      Job done…..

      QED

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    pat

    LOL – u must be kidding, Fairfax!

    21 April: Age Editorial: Climate change too important for dogma
    Climate change is a global issue that requires serious attention irregardless of ideology.
    ***Meanwhile, next week in Washington, DC, 17 countries are meeting for the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate to start work on a climate deal ahead of the Paris summit, which Erwin Jackson, deputy chief executive of the Climate Institute, calls “the first salvo”. In a signal that the government intends to bring little if anything to the discussion, Australia will be represented not by Environment Minister Greg Hunt but by public servant Gordon de Brouwer…
    Regardless of the personal beliefs held by the Prime Minister and his advisers, as a leading exporter – and consumer – of fossil fuels, Australia needs to take an active role in the global conversation about climate change. It needs to look beyond narrow dogma and act in concert with the international community.
    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/climate-change-too-important-for-dogma-20150420-1movix.html

    ***btw Fairfax, the Obama-initiated Major Economies Forum on Energy & Climate ended yesterday & no media was allowed!

    18 April: US State Dept: U.S. To Host Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate
    Secretary of State John Kerry will open the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate hosted at the U.S. Department of State on April 19-20.
    He will be joined in the opening session by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who also is serving as President of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris in December.
    The forum is hosted by U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern and chaired by Deputy National Security Advisor Caroline Atkinson.
    President Barack Obama announced the launch of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate on March 28, 2009…
    There will be no press accreditation for the Major Economies Forum and no press filing center.
    http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/04/240822.htm

    just to waste more taxpayer money & politicians’ time, there will be “two more meetings of the MEF before the UN conference in Paris in December” according to the Zee News India article i posted earlier.

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    Bulldust

    I see the Dr Lomborg “controversy” finally made it into The West:

    https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/27250782/uni-students-protest-climate-contrarian/

    No better than any of the other media outlets… simply parroting the mindless name calling. Apparently he is a “climate contrarian”, whatever that means, and the funding was “politically motivated.” Naturally the vast sums poured into consensus view climate science are all politics free.

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  • #
    pat

    21 April: Australian: John Conroy: Macfarlane rules out coal-plant closure assistance
    Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has reiterated the government’s position against aiding companies to shut coal-fired electricity plants in the wake of the release of AGL Energy’s emissions plan on Friday, The Australian Financial Review reports.
    According to the newspaper, Mr Macfarlane said coal plant closures were a matter for the market, which have been estimated to cost government up to $3bn apiece if it were to intervene.
    “The government welcomes industry decisions that take a long-term view, given the importance of energy to the Australian economy and welcomes decisions to invest in lower emissions technologies and energy sources,” he said, according to the AFR.
    “The government’s energy white paper makes clear that the government won’t pursue policies that pay for the exit of power generation, and it also states that the government will take a technology-neutral approach to ensure the market can confidently make long-term investments decisions.”
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/macfarlane-rules-out-coal-plant-closure-assistance/story-e6frg90f-1227313383225

    subscription required for AFR:

    No payment for AGL to exit coal power
    The Australian Financial Review – ‎4 hours ago‎
    Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane has ruled out the federal government funding the closure of dirty coal-fired power stations by 2050 saying it would cost $3 billion for one station alone.

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    pat

    20 April: SMH: Jenny Wiggins: Asciano optimistic on coal haulage outlook despite falling prices
    Asciano chief executive John Mullen has forecast the group’s Pacific National coal haulage business will continue to generate “reasonable growth” despite a slowdown in new mining projects and tumbling prices as some miners export coal at faster rates.
    “The good thing for us ironically about tough times for the coal industry is that they’re all trying to maximise their output to reduce their unit costs,” Mr Mullen told The Australian Financial Review.
    “So while iron ore gets all the publicity about increasing volumes driving down prices, there’s been a similar trend in coal … I think we’ll continue to see reasonable growth despite the tough times.”
    Both Queensland’s and NSW’s total coal exports rose in the most recent quarter, with Queensland’s exports increasing 8 per cent and NSW’s up 2 per cent, according to the Commonwealth Bank.
    “Volumes continue to grow in what would be the weakest price environment for years,” said Andre Fromyhr, analyst at the Commonwealth Bank…
    Container lifts at the group’s Patrick ports rose 3.6 per cent nationally in the three months to March, driven by new contract wins at Brisbane’s Fisherman Islands port and Melbourne’s East Swanson Dock…
    Asciano had to sub-contract work to rivals DP World and Hutchison Ports while it introduced the machines.
    It is now commissioning three new cranes, which are expected to arrive in May or June, so it can handle bigger ships…
    Traditionally, Asciano has moved containers on and off ships carrying between 2500 and 4000 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) but wants to be able to handle ships with a capacity of between 5,000 and 6,000 TEUs, Mr Mullen said.
    Asciano remains concerned about a proposed 750 per cent rent increase for rival DP World at the Port of Melbourne amid expectations it will face similar increases when its contract is renewed next year.
    “There is absolutely universal resistance to the egregious grabs of that nature, everybody from the shipping industry to exporters associations to stevedores to logistics companies is threatened by it,” Mr Mullen said.
    Both DP World and Asciano are pushing to have the port to be “declared” and regulated under the National Access Regime, which would give them the right to appeal to regulators when there are pricing disputes…
    http://www.smh.com.au/business/asciano-optimistic-on-coal-haulage-outlook-despite-falling-prices-20150420-1mollw.html

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    tom0mason

    A few comments from those on the inside —

    Mathematician Dr. Muriel Newman: “It remains very clear that contrary to what the politicians tell us, not only is there is no consensus of scientific thought on this matter, but the science is certainly not settled.”

    UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist: “Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” –

    Dr. Richard Lindzen: “The influence of mankind on climate is trivially true and numerically insignificant.”

    Award-Winning Swedish Climate Scientist Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified…there are no indications that the warming is so severe that we need to panic…The warming we have had the last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have had meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.’

    Dr. Judith Curry, the chair of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at GA Institute of Tech, explained her defection from the global warming activist movement. “There is ‘a lack of willingness in the climate change community to steer away from groupthink…’ They are setting themselves up as second-rate scientists by not engaging,” Curry wrote in 2010. Curry critiqued the UN IPCC for promoting “dogma” and clinging to the “religious importance” of the IPCC’s claims. “They will tolerate no dissent and seek to trample anyone who challenges them,” Curry lamented.

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    pat

    21 April: Mining Australia: Vicky Validakis: Rio Tinto ups iron ore and coal production
    Hard coking coal production was ten per cent higher than the first quarter of 2014 as a result of improved production rates at Kestrel South as the longwall ramps up and was 22 per cent higher than the fourth quarter of 2014 which included a longwall panel changeover.
    Thermal coal production was five per cent higher than the first quarter of 2014 primarily due to increased tonnage at Hail Creek where production from a processing plant by-product stream was prioritised in order to deliver increased margins in current market conditions.
    In 2015, Rio’s share of production is expected to be 18 to 19 million tonnes of thermal coal, and 7.1 to 8.1 million tonnes of hard coking coal.
    Rio’s CEO Sam Walsh said he was pleased with the company’s solid production performance during the first quarter…
    http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/rio-tinto-ups-iron-ore-and-coal-production

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    pat

    21 April: Uni of Queensland: University to ‘myth-bust’ climate change fallacies
    Researchers from around the world have contributed to a new University of Queensland course that uncovers why the topic of climate change is so controversial, exploding a number of climate myths along the way.
    The free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) includes renowned researchers from universities in Canada, USA and the UK – and even Sir David Attenborough lends his support.
    PHOTO CAPTION: Sir David Attenborough and UQ’s John Cook
    “97 per cent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming, however, less than half of Australians are aware of humanity’s role in climate change, while half of the US Senate has voted that humans weren’t causing global warming,” he (Cook) said.
    “This free course explains why there is such a huge gap between the scientific community and the public.”
    He said removing this gap was an important step in ensuring science supported policy development, leading to maximum benefit for communities, economies and the environment.
    The course, Making Sense of Climate Science Denial, is a seven-week program featuring interviews with 75 notable scientific experts.
    “The key to understanding the controversy is the science of science denial,” Mr Cook said…
    “We’ll also examine what the science says about how to respond to science denial, equipping participants with the tools they need to see through the fog of denialism.”…
    Other scientists interviewed for the MOOC include Merchants of Doubt author Naomi Oreskes, and Katharine Hayhoe, who has been named one of Time Magazine’s “100 most influential people”…
    The seven-week course begins on 28 April…
    Thousands of students from more than 130 countries have already enrolled…
    A video trailer is available at http://edx.org/understanding-climate-denial
    http://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2015/04/university-myth-bust%E2%80%99-climate-change-fallacies

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      pat,

      the science of science denial

      That’s a sure sign that Dan Kahan’s critically flawed paper push-poll, recently debunked by Jo in her article, Study shows skeptics know more about climate science than believers, will be used and abused as part of that course. Dan showed up to leave an initial comment basically saying ppl misunderstand him and his work and then another badly worded, poorly puctuated, drivel of a comment but when asked to discuss the logical flaws in his paper push-poll, quickly disappeared into the woodwork.

      True faux-science in full glory ignominy. (sorries for the big word but nothing else quite fit the bill.) 😉

      Abe

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    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      pat,

      Notice too how no discussion of the science will take place either. Only how to ‘win an argument’. 🙂

      So they didn’t make it about proving they’re right, because they can’t, so they made it about proving we’re wrong. 😮

      Fat chance, I say. 😉

      Abe

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  • #
    pat

    21 April: The Conversation: Explainer: the models that help us predict climate change
    by Kamal Puri, Research program leader, the Centre for Australia Weather and Climate Research at Australian Bureau of Meteorology,
    Aurel Moise, The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research at Australian Bureau of Meteorology,
    Robert Colman, Leader of the Climate Change Processes Team at Australian Bureau of Meteorology,
    Tony Hirst, Research Group Leader, Earth System Modelling at CSIRO
    Disclosure Statement
    Kamal Puri has received funding for the development of ACCESS through the Australian Climate Change Science Program, Department of Environment.
    Aurel Moise has received funding through the Australian Climate Change Science Program, Department of Environment.
    Robert Colman has received funding through the Australian Climate Change Science Program, Department of Environment.
    Tony Hirst and the Earth System Modelling Group receives support from the Australian Government Department of the Environment, the Bureau of Meteorology and· CSIRO through the Australian Climate Change Science Programme, and from the Australian Government National e-Research Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) initiative.
    VIDEO: Climate modelling from CSIRO on Vimeo.
    This is the final article in a series on climate change in Australia, to coincide with the launch of new climate websites by CSIRO.
    http://theconversation.com/explainer-the-models-that-help-us-predict-climate-change-39568

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  • #
    pat

    pure spin:

    20 April: The Verge: Apple: ‘We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it.’
    Company releases 2015 environmental impact report
    By Jacob Kastrenakes
    The environmental impact report was released alongside a new video this morning, also speaking to Apple’s commitments and progress on sustainability. Minimizing Apple’s negative impacts on the environment has been an increasingly prominent goal under CEO Tim Cook, and videos like these show how Apple is packaging that focus into a product as much as anything that the company would sell. That’s nothing to complain about: Apple’s outspoken stance on climate change makes it a potentially strong ally for environmentalists to have on their side…
    http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/20/8456211/apple-environment-sustainability-report-2015

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    • #
      ianl8888

      … Apple’s outspoken stance on climate change …

      That’s genuinely funny. John Cleese could not skewer the hypocrisy any better

      Like the Irish bloke who recently took Richard Branson of Virgin down. Branson was carrying on in his usual fashion about “saving the planet”, so the Irishman tweety-pied him: “You own airlines, you daft bugger !”

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    • #
      tom0mason

      LOL 🙂

      Tim Cook is singing to the choir of iPaytooMuch, hip-to-be-green, in-crowd.
      He almost certainly knows that without high concentration energy that only comes from fossil fuels most of his iPhashion electronic accessories could not be made.

      China and Korea gets all the environmental and social grief, iPhashionistas have the fake ‘saving the planet’ glow.

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  • #
    Bulldust

    Tragically three are dead as a result of the wild weather in NSW:

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-21/three-killed-in-dungog-as-cyclonic-weather-batters-nsw/6407836

    The ABC must be waiting a few hours out of respect before they wheel out the climate alarmists saying this was caused by evil coal-fired power stations. I will be stunned if they don’t in the next few days.

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    • #
      el gordo

      Here is Hannam’s angle in the SMH.

      ‘The strength of the current event was driven by the steep gradient between the warm over the Tasman and cool air at upper levels of the atmosphere, making for a classic east coast low set-up.

      ‘At this time of year, sea-surface temperatures off Sydney are about the warmest they get during the year, and this year they have been abnormally warm – right around Australia.’

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  • #
    LevelGaze

    Sorry to be O/T here, but when I try to view Bishop Hill blog I get a ‘forbidden’ message.
    No other explanation, no ‘error (fill in the numbers)’message. Sounds like some sort if hijack to me.
    Anyone know what’s going on? I run Google Chrome.

    30

    • #
      LevelGaze

      IE is a bit more informative.
      It’s a 403 error.

      30

    • #
      tom0mason

      Bishop-Hill all looks OK to me on each of it’s two independent but linked sites

      1.
      http://bishophill.squarespace.com/
      ¯
      2.
      http://www.bishop-hill.net/

      You may also wish to search ‘google search hijacking’ in your favorite non-google search engine (https://duckduckgo.com ?)

      But I’m running Linux and all sorts of browsers you might not have heard of (qupzilla, SeaMonkey, Surf, Midori — all are free, and have Windows versions I believe) and a furious amount of security, anti-ads, anti-flash, no java, etc.

      10

      • #
        LevelGaze

        thanks for replying.
        Sorry, none of these are working for me.
        It’s late. I’ll investigate it tomorrow.

        10

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        http://www.bishop-hill.net/ worked for me just now. I also use Google Chrome.

        ——————–

        Nuts! This bugs me. I typed it without the http:// prefix but It’s added by something in spite of me. I’m at a loss to figure out whether it’s Chrome or Jo’s web pages that add http:// in front of a URL that I type without it. It’s completely unnecessary to be there since it will be assumed if you don’t put in https:, ftp:, etc.

        Anyone know more than I do?

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        • #
          tom0mason

          Usually the blog-site software auto fills an internet address. I believe that the blog administrator can have the address checked for validity on some blog providers.

          I have found that spaces at the beginning and punctuation words inserted in the web address is enough to foil the autocorrecting but allows the address to be readable.

          E.g.
          ¯¯¯h tt p:/ /bishophill.squarespace[dot]com/

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  • #
    David Wood

    It seems to me that the biggest problem with funding is that whoever provides the money, maybe not always but mostly so, usually wants the results of the studies, research, or whatever, to confirm their bias, otherwise the money soon dries up.

    This applies not only to CAGW but also to the studies funded by, for example, “big pharma” and so on.

    Is there an answer to this? Probably not so long as greed is the main driving force in the way the world works.

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  • #
    pat

    France Diplomatie: Australia – Meeting between Laurent Fabius and his counterpart (Paris, April 21, 2015)
    Laurent Fabius will meet with Julie Bishop, Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on April 21…
    Laurent Fabius, who in his capacity as president of the COP21 has just participated in the Major Economies Forum in Washington, will work with Ms. Bishop on preparing for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference…
    http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/australia/visits-3260/article/australia-meeting-between-laurent

    21 April: ABC PM: Australia’s approach to
    climate ‘different’, but ‘fair, constructive’: talks negotiator
    MARK COLVIN: Two days of climate talks in Washington have wrapped up with the lead negotiator for the US acknowledging that Australia’s government has a ‘somewhat different perspective’ on managing climate change.
    But special envoy Todd Stern says Australia continues to play a “fair and constructive” role on the international scene.
    The Industry and Science Minister Ian Macfarlane, who’s in Washington for other meetings, has defended Australia’s record.
    North America correspondent Lisa Millar reports…
    TODD STERN: …It goes right to the heart of economic growth, development et cetera and if there’s a 190 plus countries and more or less everybody’s got to agree in the end. It’s a dive with a high degree of difficulty, there’s no question about that.
    LISA MILLAR: And there have been questions this week about Australia’s ability to dive deep.
    When asked about the Abbott Government’s contribution to the debate, Todd Stern said he understood the Prime Minister and his team had a somewhat different perspective on how to manage climate change than the last.
    TODD STERN: But I think on the international scene they are a… they are a…. fair and constructive participant…
    IAN MACFARLANE: We’ll certainly be in step with the rest of the world and we will have a position by the middle of the year. There is a cabinet ministerial taskforce, a very high powered taskforce headed by Greg Hunt, Julie Bishop, Andrew Robb and myself and obviously cabinet will sign off on it as well.
    But we will take a very strong position to Paris that will be in step with what the rest of the world is proposing.
    I can assure you that Australia won’t be an outlier in this, we have as I say a very sound record in lowering emissions. We are one of the few countries in the world that are on target in terms of meeting our 2020 commitments, and we’ll continue to play our part.
    LISA MILLAR: And he’s again confirmed there’ll be no more negotiating over the Government’s renewable energy target of 32,000 gigawatt hours.
    IAN MACFARLANE: How anyone can say we’re not prepared to compromise it’s beyond me. It’s time that people got serious about this. There is no policy or logic basis to a number higher than 32. The Government has moved twice already and we won’t be moving again…
    http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4220853.htm

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  • #
    pat

    on in Melbourne 11 April – 17 May.
    check out the Maldives exodus caravan!

    20 April: Guardian: Anna Madeleine: Art+Climate=Change 2015
    PHOTO CAPTION: The Maldives Exodus Caravan Show will roam the streets of Melbourne Climarte festival.
    Curated by artist Soren Dahlgaard, the Maldives exodus caravan will roam the Melbourne streets with an exhibition of video, performance, music and games exploring the political tension and environmental issues of the Pacific islands that bear the brunt of climate change. It’s part of Art+Climate=Change 2015, which features keynote lectures, public forums, and 25 curated exhibitions exploring artistic ways to engage with climate change…
    http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2015/apr/20/the-week-in-aussie-arts

    ClimArte founder, Guy Abrahams loves a US President!

    16 April: Artshub: Guy Abrahams: Science has shown us the facts but art is needed to stimulate action on climate change
    Artists in ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE2015 have created works across a range mediums and practices, offering a myriad of avenues for audiences to engage, reflect, and be inspired to take action…
    In Ice Texts, David Buckland quotes US President Barack Obama and asks the viewer, ‘Will you look your grandchildren in the eyes and tell them that you didn’t know?’ Amy Balkin’s socially engaged project, Public Smog, aims to have the Earth’s atmosphere listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List…
    Barack Obama said, “We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and the last generation that can do anything about it.”…
    http://www.artshub.co.uk/festival/news-article/opinions-and-analysis/festivals/guy-abrahams/what-climate-art-can-do-that-climate-science-cant-247724

    perhaps Abrahams is simply acknowledging a sponsor?

    Art+Climate=Change 2015: Program Partners
    includes: Government of the United States
    http://artclimatechange.org/partners/

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  • #
    Just Thinkin'

    Tony,

    Would love to give you more than one green tick.
    You are totally correct.
    Shut down all coal fired power stations, at the
    same time. Nothing for a week. And the LOUDEST
    bleaters…well, you know who they would be.
    Anyone who has been in the power industry knows
    that you need consistent, reliable base load, with
    spinning reserve. Lose generating capacity and
    something will be switched off…and at the most
    inappropriate time. Then the long wait to fix the problem
    or start up a stand-by unit, which usually take
    about four hours at a minimum.

    Always love your posts, Tony. Keep it up.

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  • #
    Dave in the states

    At university I took a class deceptively titled “History of Science and Technology since the Industrial Revolution”. It was in fact about environmentalism with the theme that the Earth’s eco systems were perfectly balanced until man came along. The problem is mankind…ect… I had to read Silent Spring and an awful book by Jeremy Rifkin calling for the abolishing of animal agriculture. It wasn’t a waste of time because I learned a lot about the environmentalist mind set. One of the interesting things was that the professor lamented that environmentalists and engineers usually sharply disagreed about just about everything. Indeed there was one engineering student, not me, that challenged the professor on just about everything.

    One big difference between environmentalists and engineers is that the quality of the engineer’s science is not verified by peer review. It is ultimately proven by the hard realities of the physical world. If the engineer errors, airplanes crash and people die, buildings collapse and people are crushed, ships sink and people drown.

    In the real world, environmentalists’ and social engineers’ faulty science, regardless of peer review passing or failing, can also have deadly consequences. Enviro-Socialism can cause widespread poverty, and did cause starvation of millions when central planners blundered. And banning DDT caused millions of poor children to die from malaria, for example.

    60

  • #
    Cookster

    Another thought provoking post made more entertaining by the contributions of “FIN” who I note has still not provided any links to support his or her position. Big on personal insults but non existent on facts despite being challenged to do so ad infinitum.

    But now slightly off topic and I notice the Australian Climate Change “Authority” (ACCA) is jumping up and down this morning in the Left leaning Fairfax media demanding Australia increase its emissions reduction target from 5% by 2020 to 30% by 2025.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/australia-should-get-off-sidelines-with-30-per-cent-emissions-cut-by-2025-report-20150421-1mq1fe.html

    A few things for ACCA chairman Bernie Fraser and fans of renewable energy to answer:

    1. What renewable energy potential does Australia have? The Greens won’t allow new dams to be built to expand Hydro. We have no Geothermal potential like New Zealand or Costa Rica. That leaves wind and solar which has been pointed out many times over cannot ever hope to replace Australia’s current or projected energy needs.

    2. What does Mr Fraser expect the effect on Australia’s international competitiveness to be by massively increasing energy costs?

    3. How many more Australian jobs will be lost for the few jobs created in the heavily subsidized renewable energy market?

    4. How will Australia replace its energy generation capacity by moving to renewables since by my personal research Solar and wind has no hope of doing that?

    When will Mr Fraser and other fans of renewable energy admit you cannot compare Australia to other developed nations as we don’t have access to Hydro, Geothermal nor Nuclear energy?

    Mr Bernie Fraser is yet another economist who outsources his knowledge of science to people with vested interests. But I guess as a former governor of the Australian Federal Reserve he will never be personally affected by massively hiked energy costs and his tenure as chairman of the Climate Change “Authority” is little more than a retirement fund for him and his family. But of course the usual media suspects will lap this up across the front pages of their rags and TV screens (ABC). Sigh.

    30

  • #
    nfw

    That one line about parrot killers (wind machines) needing gas would explain Shell’s offer to buy BG Group.

    10

  • #
    Doug  Cotton

    Prof England from University of NSW, one of those scientists promoting the hoax, appeared on ABC News about half an hour ago and I have just sent this email to him …

    Dear Prof England

    I speak as one who is arguably a world leader in the study of planetary thermodynamics. I have been able to explain temperatures in all planets, both above and below any surface and, more importantly, I have been the first in the world to correctly explain the required energy flows to maintain such temperatures, even down to the core. What James Hansen postulated in utter rubbish based on a school boy understanding of thermodynamics.

    You, Sir, with respect, have been sadly misled by climatology “science” which is not in accord with physics and which ignores entropy considerations altogether.

    I suggest you read the website http://climate-change-theory.com (now endorsed by our growing group of persons like myself suitably qualified in physics) and my peer-reviewed papers linked therein.

    The most prolific greenhouse gas, water vapour, causes the surface to be at lower temperatures, not higher ones. The IPCC wants people to believe that about 1% of water vapour causes most of “33 degrees of warming” so that, rain forests (with 4% water vapour) should be warmed by over 100 degrees. That single fact should give you cause for disbelief of the fictitious fiddled physics taught internally within the infant science of climatology. And, by the way, it is totally incorrect of them to add back radiation flux to solar radiation flux and then use the total in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations to get their 288K (15°C) surface temperature.

    If you’d like a free copy of my book “Why It’s Not Carbon Dioxide After All” just ask.

    Douglas Cotton
    Sydney 02 (number provided)

    00