Science « JoNova

The sleepers awake: the siege begins

The zeitgeist of the anti-tax revolt in Australia is beginning to gather momentum.

In the last month I’ve met a dozen mining and business leaders, 6 elected members of parliament, and I’ve spoken to 450 pastoralists in remote Australia. Each time the theme is the same: businesses are afraid of the tax, but they are also afraid to speak against it. The phrases I’ve heard specifically are “it’s a vindictive government”, and “they have long memories”. At least one of these business leaders was CEO of a household-name multi-billion dollar company.

It’s the same with business associations and committees. They’re wondering if they should focus on hammering out a better deal in the cat fight for compensation or take the “riskier” position and oppose the carbon tax outright.

For Labor the dark winds of discontent are gathering pace.

Things have gone distinctly pear shaped in the last week for the Labor carbon pricing plan. Polls are punishing the Labor party (it’s the lowest results for them in 15 years); the most powerful union leader in Australia (normally a Labor supporter to the end) has threatened to oppose the tax “if one job is lost”; Andrew Bolt is speculating on just […]

Ten more faulty assertions from Climate Minister Combet

Carter, Evans, Kininmonth, Franks

Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks & Bill Kininmonth

(Also on Quadrant, here and here.)

In a speech given at the National Press Club on April 13th, Climate Minister Combet has yet again revealed that he is receiving unbalanced scientific advice, and that his understanding of the problem of hypothetical dangerous global warming is inadequate. His predecessor, Senator Penny Wong, exemplified the same weaknesses and so does the government.

It is a structural governance deficiency of high order that our current government continues to take exclusive advice on global warming from an unelected, unaccountable international political body (the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; IPCC), as translated for Australian consumption by the CSIRO and by the Department of Climate’s advisor, Professor Will Steffen.

There are multiple clouds of impropriety hanging over the IPCC’s advice: ClimateGate, thermometers next to hot concrete and artificial heating sources passed off as measuring “global” warming, vital graphs of past temperatures that depend on a single tree in far north Russia, global data sets that are missing, official forecasts of temperature and atmospheric warming that are nothing like […]

Monckton returns to Australia: help needed

David Evans and I are honoured to have been asked to tour with Christopher Monckton and Ross McKitrick. July (and the Green controlled Australian Senate) is not far off, and there is much to do to make the tour happen, but details are coming together quickly. Where there is a will…

Thanks to The Climate Sceptics and Leon Ashby for their tireless work behind the scenes — Jo

——

From Leon Ashby

Dear Reader,

Please find attached a poster inviting you to help bring a very important tour to Australia in July.

A small group of volunteers wish to bring Christopher Monckton and several other speakers around Australia for an important tour to explain the science and politics of a carbon tax. We believe it will complement the “No Carbon Tax Protests” happening.

The reason for the extra speakers is to cover all angles of the debate. We want to do it as well as we can with this tour. Despite some large venue costs and a modest admission fee, we believe the tour will pay for itself, but being responsible, we need to have approx $100,000 in either donations, loans or guaranteed funds […]

Professor points out, it’s a less-than-nobel consensus

Garth Paltridge is an Australian atmospheric physicist with 45 years experience. He worked with CSIRO, the WMO, NOAA, and as Professor and Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies. He has explained why he’s skeptical of the theory of man-made global warming in his book — The Climate Caper: Facts and Fallacies of Global Warming. Here he explains how a scientific “consensus” can be bought. There’s more than one good reason why argument-from-authority is a fallacy. — Jo

A less-than-nobel consensus

Guest Post by Garth Paltridge

We hear that Julia Gillard is happy to have the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Academy of Science on her side while making her arguments for a carbon tax. Well of course she is. She and her predecessor bought them. And bought them but good. Over the last couple of years her Department of Climate Change (the DCC) gave them 27 million dollars in the form of research grants. That pays a fair swag of the salaries of the CSIRO and Bureau climate scientists who make up the majority of all employed climate scientists in Australia.

University climate researchers, while […]

Fairyland economics — Labor invents perpetual money machine

It’s fairy-land economics out there. In a big economic advance, the Labor Party realized that they can solve world poverty: the secret is to take money from the big producers, and hand it to anyone and everyone — it will not only keep our national economy productive and efficient, but millions of people will be richer! Why we didn’t do it 50 years ago!*

Millions to be ‘better off’ under carbon tax

Think of the possibilities! If it works on a national scale, why not go international — how much richer would we all be if we buried our five cheapest sources of energy in a pit under Maralinga, forced everyone to use the sixth, seventh, and eight best sources of energy, AND we took the profits from the most efficient successful operations around the globe (known henceforth as “polluters” (sic)) and gave them to all the world’s poor and needy?

Where do Gillard and Combet think the “Big-Polluters” get their money from? Would it be from:

(a) giant Swiss-bank-accounts held by Nazi war criminals, (b) ancient Saxon wishing wells, or (c) pots at the end of the rainbow?

Do they think the big-polluters pull money out […]

Bolivia gets stoneage legal system

UPDATED: See below

It’s the ultimate in pre-cambrian law. Gaia in the courtroom. Shh. The Statutory Spirits are at work. It’s not just the right to life for amoeba, it’s the right not to have your cellular structure modified.

Looks like salad is off the menu.

So is meat, fruit, tea and coffee, and no you can’t eat moths either. Who will prosecute the next cougar which violates the constitution by chomping on a Flamingo?

Looks like 10 million people might get to subsist on organic free range eggs, and milk from consenting cows. Perhaps they can reach a trade agreement for honey with The Andean Bee Collective. But then it’s not clear the honey doesn’t have a right to exist too.

Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth

Law of Mother Earth expected to prompt radical new conservation and social measures in South American nation

* John Vidal in La Paz * guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 April 2011 18.17 BST

John Vidal reports from La Paz where Bolivians are living with the effects of climate change every day Link to this video

7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]

Unthreaded

I’ve been with our five year old in hospital overnight (with asthma), and there is no time to post… thanks to all the people who have donated to Tim Ball’s case (and you can donate through Dr Ball’s website via paypal http://drtimball.com/), and to commenters and moderators here too.

Lubos has a nice line: “To err once is human, to err twice is accident, to err thrice is coincidence, to err four times is dumb, and to err 12 million times is to be David Suzuki.”

— Jo

h/t Val for the paypal address of Tim Ball.

5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings

Legal warfare against skeptics: one win, one needs support…

The Big Scare Campaign is desperate, when they can’t win with reason, they can always find a reason to sue and hope to silence their critics. Their deep pockets make them an ominous foe, and the legal battles are running hot. Actions are running against Andrew Bolt, and Tim Ball (see below), and we only just found out, that one was launched against James Delingpole by the East Anglia CRU.

It’s very significant that James Delingpole has won and won well, as James says:

If it sounds like I’m overdoing it, consider this: the PCC’s ruling must be among the first by any quasi-official body anywhere in the world to take the side of a Climate Change sceptic rather than that of the Warmist establishment. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The Commissions ruling:

In particular, the complainants were concerned that the blog posts described Professor Phil Jones as “disgraced, FOI-breaching, email-deleting, scientific-method abusing”. They explained that Professor Phil Jones had been exonerated of any dishonesty or scientific malpractice by a series of reviews.

…

Through its correspondence the newspaper had provided some […]

Patrick Moore takes on another Greenpeace Guru

Patrick Moore was a co-founder of Greenpeace way back in 1971. He abandoned them in 1986 so he could pursue his environmental passions. As you would. Last November he published a tempting book: Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist. And not surprisingly stretched a few of his old friendships. The Vancouver Sun has a rare debate between Moore and Rex Weyler, another co-Founder (see below for a snippet). Predictably, Greenpeace is firing their best ad hom, and referring to him as a “paid spokesman for the Nuclear Industry” and are busy rewriting history. They used to list Moore as a co-Founder on their website in the past (copy here), but now they say that they were formed in 1970, and he joined it in 1971, “see the letter”. I did see the letter, and it seems “Greenpeace” didn’t quite mean the same thing in 1970. What Moore joined in 1971 was a committee called, engagingly, “Don’t Make A Wave Committee” (I can see why that didn’t catch on) and it seems they had a boat called Greenpeace. He was also president of Greenpeace from 1977, and was even on the Rainbow Warrior when it was […]

Greenpeace: witchhunters with $280m dollars to spend

UPDATE: It appears ANZ is not feeling apologetic or likely to cave in to green threats. ANZ chief executive Mike Smith, has delivered a savage attack on Julia Gillard, declaring her party was part of the “weak government club” of the world.

Greenpeace have produced a hit job on the ANZ Bank: a (fairly) slick production designed to seriously hurt the bank’s brand name, and to make it harder for coal miners to raise funds (which ultimately makes it harder for the poorest in society to pay their electricity bills).

This is why I insist: Yes, this IS about the science. Even if we defeat the tax and trading scheme, as long as the public think “carbon is pollution” any honest business or business working with them will be subject to this bullying. Coal provides about three quarters of all Australian electricity. Yes, we need to get rid of the pollutants in coal production, but carbon dioxide is not one of them.

We are carbon life forms. There is no evidence that the climate models are right, and that CO2 emissions hurt the planet. Greenpeace could attack the coal industry because of poor safety standards, or because of […]

Poll Wars: Lying with loaded questions

The Carbon Tax is melting down Australian politics. The spin is running wild and the falsity of “carbon pollution” (sic) preys on yet another political leader.

Two polls met head to head today, one showing 59% of Australians don’t want the tax, and other saying that 72% of Australians want government to negotiate with Greens on the carbon levy. It’s a PR war out there, and, humans being gregarious creatures, every side wants to be in the majority — it’s a critical mass type of thing.

It’s easy to figure out which poll is closer to the truth.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) poll asked 550 adults the simple question: “Thinking about the carbon tax. Are you in favour or against the introduction of a carbon tax in Australia?”. 59% were against, 13% didn’t know. Making it 72% who are not for it.

Meanwhile, proving that you can get almost any result you want on a poll if you ask the right questions, Galaxy Research asked 1036 people, the complex, loaded double whammy:

Thinking now about some federal issues. All sides of Australian politics agree that there is a need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions […]

Is man-made CO2 different? 1000 years? Try 4 years.

That CO2 you emitted last Tuesday: Is it coming back next month, next year, or in March 3011?

Tim Flannery makes it clear that CO2 circulates o-so-slowly, circa “a thousand years”. Remember that CO2’s “greenhouse” effect occurs at speed-of-light timescales, so if the temperature is affected, so must be the CO2 (according, at least, to the World of Flannery).

If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years… Just let me finish and say this. If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly. [Thanks to Andrew Bolt]

There are a few clues that maybe CO2 doesn’t idle the centuries away aloft, and that (I know you’ll be shocked) the Climate Commission (and IPCC) have overstated things: If emissions are absorbed by the global system in a matter of months, it rather blows the idea that we have to act decades ahead to stop the catastrophe. If CO2 levels adjust quickly, […]

40% of Australians don’t believe in man-made global warming (and boy are they irritated)

Who knew? CSIRO funded a 5,000 person poll last July and August and then sat on the results for months. Perhaps they were disappointed that only 50% of people thought humans have any role in changing the global climate? Worse, 90% of people acknowledge that the world is warming, and 40% have figured out that that the key issue is not whether it warms but whether it’s natural that matters, and it’s hard to call them deniers. How inconvenient.

Irritation hampers climate change science: The Australian, April 4 2011.

Let me guess, Tim Flannery realizes that the more he explains the climate, in a one-sided staged discussion, the more people become skeptical, right? But then again, it could just be that the explanations are not credible. He’s closer than he realizes.

A lack of “credible information” is one of the main reasons that 40 per cent of Australians do not believe that humans have a role in global warming, according to the head of the federal government’s Climate Commission, Tim Flannery.

So despite a $100 million dollar federal department, a whole UN agency, entire popular-science […]

Flashback: France ditches carbon tax as protests mount

UPDATE: The French protests were 2010 news (and have been rediscovered around the web). H/t Jeremy C and David for pointing out the date, for a couple of hours I thought it was 2011 news. It’s an apt time to remind everyone in Australia of yet another country that isn’t rushing to become “carbon free”. It’s a rather prophetic warning to the Gillard Government, especially since the NSW landslide election against the Labor Party last weekend is still being analyzed and viewed increasingly as a “seismic event” in Australian politics.

——–

The economic reality of big-debts, and poor decisions made by people spending “other people’s money” always hurts in the long run. Sooner or later it all ends in tears. It’s a common theme: there were deadly protests in Greece, then these French protests in March 2010, and this March, the mass London protests with 250,000 people. Civil unrest is coming.

From The Telegraph and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, March 2010:

President Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday scrapped the country’s proposed carbon tax and reshuffled his cabinet in populist tilt after suffering a crushing electoral defeat over the weekend, when his Gaulliste UMP arty lost every region […]

Scary Exaggerations Unfounded

GUEST POST: Dr David Evans and Professor Bob Carter

Their Latest Scary Forecast

The latest from the Climate Commission is very, very scary:

[I just love this graph. It’s so over-the-top, it’s like a “Pepsi-climate” ad -JN]

They reckon we have to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions immediately or we’ll fry. But these forecasts are based solely on what are essentially the same faulty climate models as in 1988, and are similarly exaggerated.

Their Earlier Scary Forecast Was Bunk

U.S. government climate scientists started the climate scare with a forecast to the U.S. Congress in 1988 which was based on climate models. Here it is, with the actual temperature that eventuated later added in red:

Hansen, 1988, forecast, projection, compared to UAH 2010

Source

6.6 out of 10 based on 8 ratings […]

Prof Vincent Courtillot speaks with clarity

I’m traveling at the moment, in Darwin tonight. I can’t really comment on the hot-bed of climate action that Australia is right now, but instead this is something from afar that caught my eye a few days ago.

Video’s bore me usually, but I enjoyed watching Courtillot — he’s possibly the clearest, fastest, crispest speaker I’ve ever heard, and it’s all the more amazing because he speaks with an accent. Don’t misunderstand — there are no jokes, no satire, and no punch lines here, just an honest summary of the state of the current scientific play, especially with his synopsis of the cosmic ray theory. (He is a colleague of Nir Shaviv).

Usually I find speakers are too slow, but Courtillot packs the words in, without overstatement or monotony. He’s is a smart man who knows his topic well and it’s unusually obvious.

7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]

The Tyranny grinds on: Update on the Thompsons

Background: Can a Western Government wipe out an honest business with red tape? (What a naive question…)

Janet and Matt Thompson

Matt and Janet spoke out as skeptics in May 2007 and their life savings and business are now at grave risk as they fight off bankruptcy. What has undone them is not the financial crisis, or any failure of their business, but impossible clauses and conditions. Indeed they were so profitable in 2007 they were turning away business. They’ve broken no laws, are popular with their nearest neighbors, 6000 odour tests showed there was little problem in the town, and the Thompsons complied with every departmental request to manage the farm. Yet licensing changes and new conditions were so onerous, that banks won’t loan money against the license (it’s not much of a licence). Clause A1 means their licence can be whipped away again at any time if they “offend” anyone anywhere or interfere with their “health and comfort”. How do we measure that — Let the loudest complainer win. (If complaints about “comfort” can shut down a business, there go the wind farms…. Why is there one rule for one business, but not for all?) Even […]

Lewandowsky bitten by a hoax

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky may not understand much about the climate, but he is a professor of psychology — so satire, humor, and hoaxes ought to be right up his alley, right? He’s realized he fell for the brilliant Alene Composta (a master satirist) replying to her and even sending her fake request for advice to fellow blogger John Cook (who fell for it too).

Alene ticked all the headline stereotypical victim-leftie boxes, her interests included “christine milne”, “organic gardening” and “batik hangings” and lets face it, “Composta” is a red flag, rather. So she wrote to Lewandowsky begging for advice in dealing with monster commenters from Bolt and Blair, and notably pointed to him surviving my scorn and ridicule:

I recently began blogging, especially about climate change, and after a month my site was noticed. Noticed by the wrong people, sadly. Readers of Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt have swamped my site with genuinely abusive comments, many relating to my disability, which I find very hurtful.

So my question to you is this: How do you deal with monsters like this?

I have read and savoured every column you have published at Unleashed, and I have read the hateful comments […]

130,000 Australians say No Carbon Tax, Greens flop, Labor issues biblical scare campaign

What a week downunder, just in case you missed it.

We’re a nation, up in arms. With three months til G-Day (when the Greens control the Senate on July 1) and the tax-based-on-a-lie likely to become legislation, the heat is on. Protests and smears are running strong. Forces are being mobilized, and people are being polarized. Yet the public is abandoning the carbon tax, and the parties who promote it.

As the mass rally movements begin the Big Scare Campaign fans responded with smears to paint the rally-goers as extreme fringe, loonies and nutters. The fringe in this case turns out to be 4 out of 5 people. Who are the “deniers”? When asked, do you support the carbon tax? One hundred and thirty thousand people said NO.

83% of the Channel Nine poll don’t want a carbon tax.

The Labor Party sent out biblical climate speaking notes to all it’s ministers — the floods and droughts are coming, oceans will rise up and wash away your home, there will be burning bushes, and the storms will kill your firstborn (or words to that effect). And they howl about Abbot running a fear campaign. Wait for the […]

David Evans, Carbon Accounting Modeler, Says It’s a Scam

Dr David Evans’ address to the Anti-Carbon-Tax rally, Perth Australia, 23 March 2011.

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen.

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools and liars out of our politicians.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now cheat and lie outrageously to maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in […]

JoNova

Recent Posts

The sleepers awake: the siege begins

Ten more faulty assertions from Climate Minister Combet

Monckton returns to Australia: help needed

Professor points out, it’s a less-than-nobel consensus

Fairyland economics — Labor invents perpetual money machine

Bolivia gets stoneage legal system

Unthreaded

Legal warfare against skeptics: one win, one needs support…

Patrick Moore takes on another Greenpeace Guru

Greenpeace: witchhunters with $280m dollars to spend

Poll Wars: Lying with loaded questions

Is man-made CO2 different? 1000 years? Try 4 years.

40% of Australians don’t believe in man-made global warming (and boy are they irritated)

Flashback: France ditches carbon tax as protests mount

Scary Exaggerations Unfounded

Prof Vincent Courtillot speaks with clarity

The Tyranny grinds on: Update on the Thompsons

Lewandowsky bitten by a hoax

130,000 Australians say No Carbon Tax, Greens flop, Labor issues biblical scare campaign

David Evans, Carbon Accounting Modeler, Says It’s a Scam

JoNova

Find Things

Register for emails

Recent Comments

Statistics

Handbooks

Most commented

Archives

Tags

Categories

Books

Recent Posts

JoNova

Find Things

Register for emails

Recent Comments

Statistics

Handbooks

Most commented

Archives

Tags

Links

Categories

Books