"Un-Skeptical Science" author in line for Eureka prize

24 August, 2011 by

Fully un-sceptical

Having cleaned the coffee out of my computer keyboard after reading this, and the fact that John Cook has just been appointed to the University of Queensland Global Change Institute as a (wait for it) research fellow in climate change communication (see here), I sent the link to my friend Luboš Motl at The Reference Frame. Luboš has already debunked Cook’s alarmist nonsense here, and I thought he might have a few words to say about this latest story. I wasn’t disappointed:

This guy has no clue about climate science or atmospheric physics but he has gained some notoriety for his mass production of talking points meant to spread the climate panic and produce doubts about well-established scientific insights that show that there is no reason to be worried about climate change.

Enjoy it here.

UPDATE: The most ridiculous thing about sites like Skeptical Science is that the agenda dictates everything. Cook completely believes that CO2 is the culprit, and anyone who doesn’t agree is a filthy denier (he believes this so strongly he’s even written a book about it), and so every single article and rebuttal is slanted to achieve that end. Science that confirms his position is treated with respect, science that contradicts it is rubbished and dismissed. It’s pure propaganda.

Now your response may be, well ACM is the same. And to an extent that’s true, except for the fact that ACM is here to respond to the alarmism spun by sites like Skeptical Science. We didn’t start it. We’re not the ones advocating the wholesale abandonment of Western economic growth.

At least the above story explains why he does it – fellowships, and the attendant research grants, and prizes are a pretty good motivation.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Head slap: Coalition climate policy "racist" – Combet

23 August, 2011 by

Idiot. No other word, sorry.

No matter how low Labor sink in their smears of anyone that disagrees with their deceitful carbon tax, they still manage to amaze by pulling a real shocker out of the bag:

Federal Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has accused Opposition Leader Tony Abbott of having a racist climate change policy.

Mr Abbott has warned that Australian businesses buying carbon permits under an emissions trading scheme could be conned by unscrupulous international traders.

…

Mr Combet described Mr Abbott’s position as “economic xenophobia” in an address to the National Press Club.

“It sends the signal that it’s somehow dubious to trade with foreigners. It’s typical dog-whistle politics, trashing the commitment that’s existed for many years on both sides of politics to economic liberalisation and open trade,” he said.

“It is in effect a white carbon policy designed to harvest more votes no matter what the cost.” (source)

Greg, you are a copper-bottomed idiot, I’m afraid [and no, that isn’t an ad hom, because it is conclusion drawn from a statement which any rational person would consider utterly and completely insane – Ed]. The small facts that (a) the biggest carbon trading market, namely that in the EU, is mired in fraud and corruption, and (b) as part of the carbon tax package we will be sending billions of dollars to dodgy third world dictatorships to purchase “carbon credits” in order to meet hopelessly unattainable emissions reduction targets, seem to have somehow escaped him.

Face-palm. But I guess we should be pleased that Combet is so desperate he has descended to this level.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Permanent "El Niño" claims questioned

23 August, 2011 by

It's a boy/girl thing

From “The Science is Settled” Department. Another of the alarmists’ claims is that increasing temperatures will see the natural El Niño/La Niña cycles disappear in favour of a “permanent” and damaging El Niño, which may, amongst other things, lead to more long-term severe droughts in Australia.

However, new research into ancient clam shells appears to show otherwise:

Ancient fossilized clams that lived off the coast of Antarctica some 50 million years ago have a story to tell about El Niño, according to Syracuse University researcher Linda Ivany. Their story calls into question contemporary theories that predict global warming could result in a permanent El Niño state of affairs.

…

The El Niño phenomenon, which occurs every two to seven years, is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the eastern Equatorial Pacific. El Niño can cause torrential rainfall in Peru, devastating drought in Australia, and generally wreak havoc on global weather. El Niño is the warm phase of a large oscillation in which the surface temperature of the tropical Pacific varies, causing changes in the winds and rainfall patterns. The complete phenomenon is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The prevailing theory predicts that rising global temperatures could cause the ENSO to collapse, resulting in permanent El Niño conditions, which could have a major impact on socioeconomic and ecological systems worldwide.

…

“The good news is that despite the very warm temperatures during the Eocene, the evidence from the clams and tree rings shows that the ENSO system was still active, oscillating between normal and El Niño years. That suggests that the same will be true in our future as the planet warms up again.”

Source.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Labor abandons its core vote

23 August, 2011 by

Albanese

… in favour of an urban green intelligentsia. Summed up by that front-bench schoolyard bully Anthony Albanese, ridiculing the Convoy of No Confidence:

“The Convoy of No Consequence outside. The Convoy of No Consequence, Mr Speaker. The Convoy of No Consequence, where a coupla hundred people gathered with no support from the mainstream organisations, the people who believe in one world government.” (source)

These are core Labor voters, battlers, truckies, hard working Australians who have been abandoned by their natural party, a party which now pours scorn on their petty complaints, and prefers the company of the inner city liberal green elite. The message is clear – traditional Labor voters are not wanted anymore.

And in return, those formerly loyal voters continue to abandon Labor, with the party’s primary vote back to its lowest ever: 27%.

Oh, how Labor will be punished. It’s really not a matter of “if”, but “when”.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

CSIRO mustn't criticise government policy

20 August, 2011 by

CSIRO uncovered

On its website, the CSIRO proudly claims to be “Australia’s national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.”

What it doesn’t tell you, however, is that the results of such research must not conflict with government policy, as Dr Art Raiche, former Chief Research Scientist at the organisation, revealed at the recent carbon tax rally:

The original Scientists of the CSIRO were the best of their day and the CSIRO was a non-Government organisation working with quality science and how useful it was to Australia. (research)

In the 80′s, I noticed we were under increasing pressure to become more “Business like” and the doors were opened to “Management Consultation.”

Layer upon layer of management was created, some intersecting others.

You think that your tax dollars went towards research but a lot of it was devoted to letting them play their management games…. the CSIRO was sent to fancy business schools in the US and Europe and they didn’t learn one thing… 

Management learned how to bring the most senior climate scientist under their control. It was OK to think independently…as long as Management approved of it.

We were given very strict, VERY strict guidelines on not publishing anything or publicly discussing any research that could be seen as critical to Government policy. If we did not do it, we would be subject to dismissal.

We had now become a Government Enterprise. We were told by the Chairperson that we Scientists no longer worked for Australia, we had to learn that we worked for the CSIRO. (original YouTube video here)

We have always suspected that CSIRO was merely doing the government’s bidding with its endless stream of climate alarmism – and now we know. Science has nothing to do with government policy, it is independent of any extraneous influences, and its sole responsibility is the investigation of scientific phenomena, analysis of data, developing and testing hypotheses and advising governments – not meekly following them.

Therefore the inevitable conclusion is that CSIRO isn’t doing science. It’s doing politics. In which case, why does it still exist?

UPDATE: Readers have helpfully reminded me of the saga of Dr Clive Spash, back in late 2009, which gives weight to the claims of Dr Raiche. The CSIRO tried to block publication of a report critical of the then Emissions Trading Scheme. Spash eventually resigned. Read the stories on ACM here, here and here.

[Thanks to No Carbon Tax.]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

More alien nonsense

19 August, 2011 by

Science fiction

Thinking about the alien invaders story some more (although I have no idea why), it becomes obvious that the entire premise is flawed anyway.

Even assuming that “aliens” can detect our changing atmosphere, the information would travel at the speed of light to the alien planet/spaceship, which must then travel at a fraction of the speed of light to reach Earth.

The closest star with a known planetary system is 15 light years away (see here), or in old money, 142 trillion kilometres (142 with twelve zeros). Voyager 1 is currently travelling at 62,000 km/h away from Earth, and even at that speed would take 260 thousand years to travel 15 light years. So even assuming our environmentally conscious aliens:

  • live on the closest planetary system to our own, AND
  • have been monitoring the atmosphere of a rather small, rocky planet orbiting a rather ordinary star, AND
  • have the technology to detect a 100ppm increase in CO2 from Earth’s emission spectrum, AND
  • have the same useless climate models we have here, AND
  • have the misfortune to count among their number the alien equivalent of James Hansen, who finds this treatment of a foreign planet abhorrent, AND
  • set off immediately on receiving this shocking information, intent on saving the Earth, AND
  • have the technology to travel at even 100 times as fast as the fastest human space vehicle ever, AND
  • are able to transport the numbers of invaders and weaponry required to subdue nearly 7 billion Earthlings,

they would still not arrive for at least 2,600 years.

And these researchers call themselves “scientists”? Actually, it has given me an idea: perhaps we could send all our climate alarmists off in a capsule to save some extrasolar planets instead, and leave the rest of us alone. Isn’t that a nice thought?
Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Climate Madness of the Year: tackle climate change to prevent alien attack

19 August, 2011 by

"This is a stick up. Give us all your petrol!"

I seriously had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools Day, such is the ludicrousness of this story.

In an ever more desperate attempt to justify action on climate change (which will achieve precisely nothing), “researchers”, and I use that term in its loosest possible sense, from NASA and Penn State conclude:

“Green” aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. “These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets.” (source)

And they accuse the sceptics of being mentally unhinged?

P.S. I assume those “researchers” got paid for this. Trough, pigs – again.

UPDATE: See here for a few more flights of fancy on this subject.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

19 August, 2011 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

It's all the CWM's fault

18 August, 2011 by

Warning! CWMs ahead!

That would be “conservative white males”. Desperate as always to avoid engaging with sceptics’ arguments, the Sydney Morning Herald decides that it’s their background that is more important.

Helpfully illustrated with photos of Pell, Bolt, Jones and Monckton, the SMH claims that sceptics’ political and cultural views are causing their (obviously deranged) attitudes to climate alarmism, and not hiding data, fudging results, pal-review, Hockey Stick, and all the other highly dubious practices of climate science:

A US-based study has found that white men with politically conservative views are far more likely than the rest of the population to doubt the science of human-caused climate change.

And the “conservative white male effect” has been linked to Australia, with one prominent researcher citing the existence of a successful, politically engaged and outspoken coterie operating in high-profile positions that attract wide media coverage.

In the US researchers’ paper published in the journal Global Environmental Change, Dr Aaron McCright and Dr Riley Dunlap analysed data from 10 annual US opinion polls on environmental issues.

They found 58 per cent of conservative white males – or CWMs for short – thought recent global temperature rises were not caused mainly from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels. This compared with 31 per cent of other adults.

Some 29 per cent of CWMs thought the effects of global warming would “never happen” compared with only seven per cent of other adults.

…

Professor Joseph Reser, a Research Fellow with Griffith University’s Climate Change Response Program in Queensland, agreed broadly with the findings, but said his own research and other comparable studies from the US and Europe suggested the proportion of true climate change sceptics was much smaller. [See here for Reser’s earlier study – Ed]

“If you look at this group of conservative white males, less than 30% are characterised as denialists – they are not a majority even within this grouping,” Professer Reser said.

“But these CWMs tend to stand out and do well in many social, work, and political organisations; they align themselves with those sharing similar views; and they are also more likely to be outspoken in their views and politically engaged, and to work and operate in sectors where their views get aired more.”

He said the fact conservatives were unduly confident about their own views on climate change “also makes them less open to differing views or able to accept that they might be wrong”. (source)

There are a number of points here. Firstly, note the intentional confusion between “sceptics” and “denialists” – terms that Fairfax uses interchangeably, despite the fact that most climate “realists” are “sceptics” and very few indeed are outright “denialists”. Secondly, Reser is quick to condemn CWM’s for failing to accept the possibility of error, which is precisely the charge laid against most alarmist climate scientists, who play down uncertainty as a matter of course.

I have to suggest the obvious alternative, and highly politically incorrect, conclusion here, that maybe those CWMs, thanks to age, experience and education, have a greater capacity for critical thought, and are not taken in by government and media propaganda?

Who cares anyway – it’s just another generalisation that the alarmists use to label the sceptics and thereby avoid having to actually respond to their points in a rational way.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Professor William Happer on climate alarmism

18 August, 2011 by

Climate sense

Professor Happer is the quaintly named Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University – a serious academic, not easily dismissed as an extremist or crank. He has written a cogent summary of climate alarmism which is an essential read. It is overflowing with simple common sense:

A major problem has been the co-option of climate science by politics, ambition, greed, and what seems to be a hereditary human need for a righteous cause. What better cause than saving the planet, especially if one can get ample, secure funding at the same time? Huge amounts of money are available from governments and wealthy foundations for climate institutes and for climate-related research. Funding for climate studies is second only to funding for biological sciences. Large academic empires, prizes, elections to honorary societies, fellowships, consulting fees and other perquisites go to those researchers whose results may help “save the planet.” Every day we read about some real or contrived environmental or ecological effect “proved” to arise from global warming. The total of such claimed effects now runs in the hundreds, all the alleged result of an unexceptional century-long warming of less than one degree Celsius. Government subsidies, loan guarantees, and captive customers go to green companies. Carbon-tax revenues flow to governments. As the great Russian poet Pushkin said in his novella Dubrovsky, “If there happens to be a trough, there will be pigs.” Any doubt about apocalyptic climate scenarios could remove many troughs.

Download the PDF here.

Filed Under: Climate
«Previous Page
Next Page»