Science « JoNova

Flashback: The Great Debate, a rare chance to shakedown the science

Dr Andrew Glikson

The litany chants“The Debate is over”, but hey where was that debate?

Could the Nova Glikson “Great Debate” be it? Surely not, you think, but debates in “climate science” are high stakes affairs, where branded climate scientists will not publicly debate well known skeptics. They know they can’t win. Instead, the closest thing we get to a real debate is a kind of debate by proxy. The heavyweights on the establishment side pretend to be above it all, but of course, they are only an email away from the man on the front line.

What started as a single pair of “Yes”, then “No” articles that started on Quadrant become a five part saga lasting more than a month. I’ve compiled it all into a PDF which can be printed or read from start to finish, and might be just the thing for fence sitters who like to read. Some people really hanker after the “back-and-forwards” answer and question format. For those that missed it, two years on, the Great Debate still remains a rare example where two opponents actually drilled down to the points that matter.

To Andrew Glickson’s credit, he did not knock back […]

Unthreaded

I’m travelling interstate at the moment, and with site maintenance being rather larger than usual, apologies for things being thin on the ground here. I have finally got email working again, and have been following the ever entertaining antics of the death threats that werent, the gun licence that wasn’t, and the accurate, restrained and well mannered scientists who aren’t accurate, restrained orwell mannered. I will be posting more soon.

8.2 out of 10 based on 22 ratings

Blogger’s speech to the NY Fed tells it like it is

Joint Post: David Evans and Jo Nova Robert Wenzel says to Federal Reserve: “Leave the Building to the Four-Legged Rats”

Finally a speech with attitude tells it like it is, at the US Federal Reserve. The speech was given by blogger Robert Wenzel in late April to the New York Federal Reserve Bank, because they invited him to speak. It deserves a read — a man who knows the details tallies up the score, and politely lays out the contradictions of the Federal Reserve at point blank range.

But it is much more than that. For the US Federal Reserve to invite Wenzel to explain Austrian economics to them is like “the team” in Australia inviting me along for lunch at the Department of Climate Change to explain why the CO2 theory ain’t too hot. If that happened (as if), what would I say? This is the nature of the choice that Wenzel faced. A slam-dunk, in the nicest possible way.

The convergence of common sense: Austrians are the skeptics of economics

Wenzel is an Austrian economist, which is like being a climate skeptic in climate change. In the 1930s, Keynesian economics took over from classical economics among the central […]

Unthreaded – Site maintenance coming

Apologies for the inconvenience. Unfortunately sometime this week the site will be offline for some hours (up to one day). This move is in an effort to reduce costs. Thanks to a generous offer from a reader (thank you David) for the suggestion. I hadn’t been paying attention, and bandwidth charges had rather surprized me. (Don’t miss the post on the ARC funding that I just put up too). Jo

PS: People emailing me during this day will have trouble. Please save those emails and send them again in a day or two.

8.5 out of 10 based on 13 ratings

Want climate resistant oysters, or climate “Justice”? The ARC has millions to help. But no money for skeptics.

File this under “Monopolistic Science”

Australian Taxpayer funds in 2012 are supporting around 50 projects about “climate change” or “greenhouse gases”.

One David McKnight has got $95k to study how Australian governments “spin” the news. So which cancer research project was knocked back so he could study a “hyper-adversarial” news system? And what is so bad about a competitive news system in any case? What are we aiming for — real news or better propaganda? (See my response to David McKnight in The Australian to see how confused this journalism lecturer is.)

The dollar values here are usually for three year projects. Some of these projects potentially produce press releases which are nothing more than disguised forms of government advertising for big-spending climate policies.

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Guest Post: Dr Roberto Soria, Perth

The ARC Major Grant results for 2012 were announced in Nov 2011. Here is what Australian scientists are up to this year.

The ARC (Australian Research Council) is the main source of funding for all researchers in all fields of natural, political and social sciences. Getting a grant will make a difference between carrying on doing research and finding another job, for many researchers. Take a […]

Has CO2 warmed the planet at all in the last 50 years? It’s harder to tell than you think.

Joint Post: Jo Nova and Tony Cox

Even most skeptics agree that the world has been warming during the last 50 years, but there is apparently no significant underlying warming trend in 46 out of 47 years of data. Something decidedly unusual happened to the world in 1977 and we don’t know for sure what it was. The world got warmer, and the change “stuck”. But there were no extra emissions of CO2 in that year, so there is no reason to pin this to CO2.

It’s difficult to believe we are not sure – but the last 50 years of warming trend depends on that single stepwise leap in 1977. Look at the graph below. Does it show one strong underlying warming trend, or is it really a trend so insignificant that it wouldn’t exist if there was not a step change that artificially bolstered it?

A series of two flat lines can appear to be a continuous warming trend if a linear trend line is fitted because it ignores the step change. McKitrick and Voselgang

This step effect was first noted by David Stockwell in 2009

The continuous warming appears to be obvious in the records of […]

Tim Flannery in Parramatta will be happy to answer your questions. Book now!

Tim Flannery is paid to help you understand why Australia is getting a Carbon Tax in eight weeks time. If you can’t fathom why the nation which emits just 1.3% of all man-made CO2 is going to pay three times the current market rate to reduce world temperatures by 0.00 degrees C, I’m sure Prof Tim will be delighted to help. Do book quickly. Sometimes these events sell out (even before they are publicized).

Australia’s Chief Climate Commissioner, Professor Tim Flannery, is visiting Sydney. The sixth biggest CBD in the country, Parramatta will host the next public forum for the Climate Commission. This is your opportunity to get involved in the conversation about climate change.

The Climate Commission provides independent, authoritative information on climate change to the Australian public.

Event details

Where: Parramatta RSL club , Cnr Macquarie & O’Connell St , Parramatta

When: 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM, Tuesday 15 May 2012. Doors open 6.00pm

Everyone is welcome. Book your place now to avoid disappointment.

Click here to Register for attendance H/t Pat

What would you like to ask Tim in our National Climate Conversation? Perhaps you wonder why he keeps calling us names? Maybe you can’t figure out […]

Pathological exaggerators caught on “death threats”: How 11 rude emails became a media blitz

Here’s a character test on climate scientists and some of the media. It tells us much how concerned they are about truth, and how willing they are to be gullible fools, to have manners, decency, to milk even the most vaporous wisp of evidence into a national headline. Credit to Simon Turnill and The Australian which put the news on the front page today. At least one paper is working to correct the record.

Character is destiny. Can people who do not care about the truth be trusted on any issue?

How bad were those threats? What threats?

According to Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim, the 11 documents “do not contain threats to kill” and the other “could be regarded as intimidating and at its highest perhaps alluding to a threat”. [The Australian]

What kind of evidence does a climate scientist need to issue a press release?

Answer: none at all.

How important is accuracy to our climate scientists?

Answer: rudeness equals a death threat, just like “fail” equals “very accurate” for climate models.

How reasonable, rational and accurate are climate scientists like Will Steffen, Andy Pitman, David Karoly? Billions of dollars depends on […]

The IPCC 1990 FAR predictions were wrong

Have the 1990 IPCC predictions been proved completely, unarguably and utterly wrong? Yes.

They predicted that if our emissions stayed the same, temperatures would rise by 0.3 C per decade, and would be at the very least 0.2, and the most 0.5. Even by the most generous rehash of the data, the highest rate they can find is 0.18 C per decade which is likely an overestimate, and in any case, is below the very least estimate, despite the world’s emissions of CO2 continuing ever higher.

Climate Scientist Matthew England called that “very accurate”. Since when did 0.18 = 0.3? (Shall we call it “climate maths”, or just call it wrong?) The IPCC had a whole barn wall to aim at, and a battalion of government funded gold plated AK-47s to hit the target, but they still missed.

Both England and the ABC owe Minchin an apology.

The un-Skepticalscience page uses a pea and thimble trick to argue the IPCC 1990 predictions were right (“Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC FAR”). As usual John Cooks site looks “technical” but uses complexity to hide the way they redefined the prediction in order to pretend it wasn’t wrong. Excuses excuses. Intellectual wordsmiths […]

David Evans explains the skeptics case (YouTube)

Last week we finished some YouTube versions explaining the skeptical case. These grew out of the interview we did with Nick Minchin and Anna Rose for the ABC documentary I Can Change Your Mind. They are what we would have said, if we’d been editing the documentary :).

In the interview we were on a mission to show the evidence the ABC won’t show — and of course, true to form, the ABC did exactly that, and didn’t show it. As David often points out, the mainstream media have never shown this data anywhere in the world, ever, even though it is extremely relevant, from mankind’s best and latest instruments, from impeccable sources, and is publicly available. Not to mention that billions of dollars of public policies depend on getting this right either.

This is a strictly no-budget approach to organize the message for those on the web who prefer to see video’s rather than read papers. Here are three YouTube’s by David Evans, thanks to Barry Corke (for the filming and editing). I hear that one I did will be ready sometime.

A little background. When the documentary interview happened in our kitchen, we noticed something interesting. We felt […]

ABC Biased. Scientist Matthew England, outrageous error or dishonest? Nick Minchin owed an apology

Bottom line: On Q&A Nick Minchin said the IPCC predictions were wrong. Matthew England said “Not true” their 1990 prediction was “very accurate”. But the IPCC predicted 0.3C per decade, and we got at most 0.18C per decade. (Forster and Rahmsdorf 2011 ) How is is “very accurate” when the result is below their lowest estimate?

[See our one-page version of this whole issue.]

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Oceanographer Matthew England owes Nick Minchin an apology. Will Tony Jones correct the record on Monday?

How strange is this debate where politicians know the science better than the “scientists”?

The ABC Q&A program shows they have no interest in pursing the truth on climate change. The panel was, as always designed to push an agenda. Five believers, with a sixth in the audience, faced two skeptics. No skeptical scientists were invited to attend, let alone sit in the front row with a mike, like England who was called in so the warmists could get the last word on the science without fear that a skeptic might disputing their version of events. We can’t allow people to damage the faith of those duped […]

The intellectual vacuum – alarmists are afraid of debate, they namecall and break laws of reason

In response to the ABC doco I Can Change Your Mind, the believers of man-made global warming are out attacking with logical fallacies, cherry picking deceit, and the usual barking mad irrelevant lines about tobacco and AIDS. Desperate eh?

Never before in one day on one post have I enjoyed responding to Mr Unskeptical himself (John Cook), as well as Stefan Lewandowsky (aka Lysenko-strikes-again) and Clive-break-democracy-Hamilton.

John Cook on the ABC website.

Cook is from the University of Queensland, and he runs the ambush site “Skeptical Science” (where even the name of the site is misleading, and where he dutifully parrots the government scientists).

John Cook

His litany of logical errors continues:

He’s still resorting to namecalling with a term he can’t define scientifically. Which paper do we deny John? You’ve had two years to find it, and you still can’t come up with anything better than papers which cheat by changing color schemes, or which use wind-shear instead of thermometers to measure temperature? He’s clinging to that consensus, when evidence is what matters. The fallacy is known as argument from authority — but in science, authority is trumped by data. In contrast, I keep referring to 3,000 ocean […]

The Highest Authority in Science is the Data

Joint Post David Evans and Jo Nova

“97 percent of climate experts say man-made global warming is a major threat”

The correct response: “So? The satellites, ocean buoys, and weather balloons disagree.”

The alarmists may have “experts”, but the skeptics have the data.

How do you find the truth about some disputed point in science? You find the most authoritative source of information. The vital thing that makes science different to a religion is that there are no “Gods” of science. There is no expert who is infallible. The highest authority in science is the measurements and observations. Here is the hierarchy of authority in climate science:

Data (empirical evidence) Climate scientists Other scientists Lay people.

For most of the last few centuries, science has been supreme over politics for settling the truth in matters pertaining to the physical world—empirical evidence beats anyone’s say-so.

But the modern political approach is to ignore that top level. To most warmists and the public who “believe in climate change” (as they so misleading say), the hierarchy is:

Climate scientists Other scientists Lay people.

The way the climate scam works is for the like-minded western bureaucracies to […]

Long live free speech

This is what we have free speech for. This excellent video says it all.

Ponder as you watch: could you imagine a production like this coming from anywhere else but the Land of The Free? (Think Spain, Sweden or France? Weep, that the land of the Magna Carta was not the obvious source or even a likely contender. Could we really see this video coming out of Berlin or Beijing, or more to the point, Sussex, or Liverpool? The tragedy…)

Yes, this video is so good I’m posting it here even though every other libertarian, freedom loving, and just plain sane blogger will post it too and I hate being repetitive. Yes it’s that good.

H/t To Catallaxy, Bolt, and to SPPI

The creators FreeMarketAmerica.org are looking for donations.

God forbid that I should admire the largest most successful collection of free people on Earth.

9.1 out of 10 based on 126 ratings […]

Choice magazine (government lap-dog) “likes” monopolies and propaganda. Oops.

For an example of modern government propaganda, wait til you see this: Your Carbon Price (No really, go spend 30 seconds there to try to guess what this production would have cost.)

I’ve never seen a website so slickly designed, so smooth to the point of oozing graphic designer dollars with every rollover. As I watched it, I was seeing our national productivity being buried under Gucci-layers-of-gloss-red-tape. It kept asking me private questions “your name” etc as if the spelling of “Jane”, “Joe” or “John” makes any difference to my carbon footprint (my name is Noneof Yourbusiness). Bring out the sick-bag as Dellers would say.

If regulators tie up the people in enough paper chains they eventually become as strong as steel bindings. “YourCarbonPrice” takes our money to tell us we might “earn” $2 – $5 dollars a week to help the country clean up polluters while we take cold showers, sell the second fridge, and smile with delight at being a “good citizen”. What more could we ask for? A George Orwell fridge magnet?

And watch the sycophantic supporters rush to slap their logo on the propaganda tool.

If I had a Choice mag subscription, I would write […]

Radio interview and 100,000th comment!

We are just 40 odd comments today from the 100,000th lucky commenter!!! Wait for it, we’ll be sending you on a world tour, a dinner for two, I might just post the Grand Winner both Skeptics Handbook I and II 🙂

Kerry Lutz

And for those who would like some weekend listening I did an interview with Kerry Lutz at the Financial Survival Network. (It’s 15 or 20 minutes). The overlap between skeptics of government science and skeptics of government money grows more obvious. We ranged through climategate to ad hominen arguements, the art of rhetoric, the regulating class, blaming “free markets” for the failures of unfree ones and spanish solar panels among other things. It was 11pm for me, somehow I could (mostly) string the words together.

PS: The comments counter is on the right hand column under “statistics”. (99,982…)

UPDATE: A Winner!

OK. Doing the numbers behind the scenes, it appears (!!!) Bob Malloy hit the big 100k, with Redc being mere seconds behind. So I’ll send books to both of you. Unless I’m wrong, I think Bob pipped redc for the title. (Gee Aye deserves an honorable mention for comment 99,999 and 100,002).

[…]

Burn those deniers houses down

A Tennessee Fireman’s Solution to Climate Change

Steve Zwick,

This propaganda has already set us back two decades, …

… there is a very public record of who has been lying to the public and who hasn’t – and it’s time to start using this information to make the liars and shirkers pay.

Let’s take a page from those Tennessee firemen we heard about a few times last year – the ones who stood idly by as houses burned to the ground because their owners had refused to pay a measly $75 fee.

We can apply this same logic to climate change.

We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices.

They broke the climate. Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?

Dear Steve,

I’ve got great news for you, all you have to do to avert a global catastrophe […]

When is a free market solution not the answer? When it isn’t free.

Profit through regulation of markets

Which caring environmentalists are trying to save the world through carbon credits? That would be the Banksters. Watch how the banks are working to “fix” the free market, via intervention and regulation, and milk the system to maximize profit. The so called capitalist pigs are really working in the style of the Soviets.

How sick is the EU carbon market? “It’s a dead man walking” according to Johaness Teyssen, chairman of EON.

The price of carbon hit record lows recently:

Carbon permits plunged to a record after European Union data showed emissions from factories and power stations in the region fell more than expected last year amid milder-than-normal weather.

EU carbon for December dropped 11 percent to close at 6.34 euros ($8.45) a ton, the biggest loss since April 28, 2006 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London. The previous low was 6.38 euros on Jan. 4. Power-industry emissions dropped to 2009 levels, said Matteo Mazzoni, an analyst for NE Nomisma Energia Srl in Bologna, Italy.

“That is the elephant in the room,” he said today by e- mail. “And then, of course, you have stagnating industrial production.”

But wait. Isn’t “lower industrial […]

So is the hot spot a “fingerprint” or signature? Is it unique?

Some people claim that I mislead people. But it seems they are the misled — not by me, but by their own heroes.

In the Skeptics Handbook I wrote:

“The greenhouse signature is missing If Greenhouse gases are warming the earth we are supposed to see the first signs of it in the patch of air 10 kilometers above the tropics. But this “hot spot” just isn’t there.

Weather balloons have scanned the global atmosphere but could find no sign of the predicted “hot-spot” warming pattern that greenhouse gases would leave.”

Sources: Sources: (A) Predicted changes 1958-1999. Synthesis and Assessment Report 1.1, 2006, CCSP, Chapter 1, p 25, based on Santer et al. 2000; (B) Same document, recorded change/decade, Hadley Centre weather balloons 1979-1999, p. 116 , fig. 5.7E, from Thorne et al., 2005

With all the benefits of hindsight, it stood up extremely well. (Damn, but I did do a good job 🙂 )

There are claims I should not call it a “signature”, but here’s how it is: The top alarmist researchers called it a fingerprint or a signature, the graph explicitly states that the hot spot is the pattern caused by “well mixed greenhouse gases”, and basically, […]

Soaking in money — a fake “independent” unscientific Conversation

What kind of organization receives all its funding from one source, then claims to be “independent?” (Yes, spot another GONGO idea).

The Conversation trumpets that it is “Independent” but it’s funded with $6 million from … the Government. As Tim Blair said “it’s a baby ABC“. (A Government organized “non government” organisation).

The Conversation gets 20,000 readers a day (apparently). According to the Alexa Stats, I single-handedly get about half the global traffic they do. They have an entire nation of university staff to help write stories. I’ve had ten guest authors and have written over 700 posts myself.

(If what they do costs $6 million, does that mean my site is worth $3m? Am I grossly underpaid, or are they grossly overpaid?)

This is another example of the self-growing-cycle of big-government. The site is dominated with stories that favor statist-big-government policies. They break laws of logic and reason, claim that experts are writing, but we non-experts working from home can point out the errors of those with professorships in our spare time, and with no PhD.

Consider the wit and wisdom of one Stefan Lewandowsky — who writes as a Professorial Fellow of a misnamed topic […]

JoNova

Recent Posts

Flashback: The Great Debate, a rare chance to shakedown the science

Unthreaded

Blogger’s speech to the NY Fed tells it like it is

Unthreaded – Site maintenance coming

Want climate resistant oysters, or climate “Justice”? The ARC has millions to help. But no money for skeptics.

Has CO2 warmed the planet at all in the last 50 years? It’s harder to tell than you think.

Tim Flannery in Parramatta will be happy to answer your questions. Book now!

Pathological exaggerators caught on “death threats”: How 11 rude emails became a media blitz

The IPCC 1990 FAR predictions were wrong

David Evans explains the skeptics case (YouTube)

ABC Biased. Scientist Matthew England, outrageous error or dishonest? Nick Minchin owed an apology

The intellectual vacuum – alarmists are afraid of debate, they namecall and break laws of reason

The Highest Authority in Science is the Data

Long live free speech

Choice magazine (government lap-dog) “likes” monopolies and propaganda. Oops.

Radio interview and 100,000th comment!

Burn those deniers houses down

When is a free market solution not the answer? When it isn’t free.

So is the hot spot a “fingerprint” or signature? Is it unique?

Soaking in money — a fake “independent” unscientific Conversation

JoNova

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