Just don't tell me the debate's over…
Remember Kevin O’Lemon? Now we have a new advert, just in time for Labor’s leadership ballot tomorrow morning at 10am Australian Eastern Daylight Time (11pm GMT): “Lemons never change their spots”:
All I am hoping for is that whoever wins will be so damaged that there will be a general election and the Coalition can dump the carbon tax.
Warming exaggerated every time
You will recall the article in the Wall Street Journal “No need to panic about global warming” (see here). Then came the response from the headbangers, swiftly dealt with by Pat Michaels here (“Wall Street Journal war of words continues”) and letter writers here (“WSJ: When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail”).
Now the original writers have responded in detail:
[…] an important gauge of scientific expertise is the ability to make successful predictions. When predictions fail, we say the theory is “falsified” and we should look for the reasons for the failure. Shown in the nearby graph is the measured annual temperature of the earth since 1989, just before the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Also shown are the projections of the likely increase of temperature, as published in the Summaries of each of the four IPCC reports, the first in the year 1990 and the last in the year 2007.
These projections were based on IPCC computer models of how increased atmospheric CO2 should warm the earth. Some of the models predict higher or lower rates of warming, but the projections shown in the graph and their extensions into the distant future are the basis of most studies of environmental effects and mitigation policy options. Year-to-year fluctuations and discrepancies are unimportant; longer-term trends are significant.
From the graph it appears that the projections exaggerate, substantially, the response of the earth’s temperature to CO2 which increased by about 11% from 1989 through 2011. Furthermore, when one examines the historical temperature record throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, the data strongly suggest a much lower CO2 effect than almost all models calculate.
Read it here.
Get 'em while they're young, right?
New Scientists wants climate indoctrination in schools, so it would be very proud of Australia, where such propaganda is disseminated widely thanks to Labor’s “Clean Energy Future” legislation. Yes, you read that right – a new website aims to indoctrinate school children with political propaganda on climate change.
This email popped into my inbox earlier today from the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency:
Engaging our future bright sparks
Australian teachers and students can now harness the kinetic energy of a soccer ball to charge a mobile phone or power a light bulb, as part of ‘Future Sparks – our clean energy show and tell’ program, which was launched on Tuesday 21 February 2012.
Read the full story ‘Engaging our future bright sparks’ about the Future Sparks program on the Clean Energy Future website.
So here’s the flannel from the website:
Green Cross Australia, CSIRO and the Clean Energy Council have joined forces to showcase the latest scientific and engineering developments to inspire and amaze students about the transition to cleaner sources of energy.
This initiative is proudly supported by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.
The Future Sparks website is now live and has been designed to fill classrooms with the buzz and excitement from the clean energy future industry. The website features a video and persuasive writing competition giving students the chance to flex their creative muscle and participate in the wider clean energy future conversation.
CSIRO have provided lesson plans that are flexible and fun, catering for a wide range of school settings. Future Sparks is compatible with the Australian Curriculum, particularly with English and Science, and the cross-curriculum priority of sustainability.
This website also provides core information on clean energy options, climate change science, emerging technology and includes many links, videos and games enabling students to explore further. Schools can readily access most videos and animations as they do not require YouTube access. (source)
Wow – the “buzz and excitement from the clean energy future industry”. I can hardly wait. You want indoctrination? We’ve got indoctrination. In spades. And when you visit the website, which is colourful and pretty and instantly attractive to youngsters, the climate propaganda is all there:
The Earth’s climate has changed dramatically since the beginning of time, but evidence now shows that human activity is creating a sharp increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Scientists agree this causes the temperatures on Earth to rise, which influences the climate – more extreme weather events, more often.
In some areas, the sea level will rise – and this is very worrying for people who live on small islands, particularly our Pacific Island neighbours.
There are now 7 Billion people on Earth – more than any other time in history – and this number is expected to continue to rise, putting further strain on the planet’s resources and adding greatly to climate change.
Animals will have to seek out climates to suits them – this will be a problem for alpine species in Australia!
Diseases will spread to new areas where the changed conditions will now suit microorganisms that can cause them.
So the change in climate will bring widespread change to our way of life and environment.
Take a look at this really cool video made by some other students to explain climate change. It is a perfect example of a Future Spark video – make sure you keep yours under 3 minutes for this competition. (source)
Click the video link (if you can stand it) to see how some children have been totally brainwashed already. It’s truly, truly shocking. Links to CSIRO propaganda feature prominently, as do photos of polar bears and bush fires.
This tidal wave of propaganda will continue until our government is changed, finally, and this kind of political indoctrination is taken out of the classroom. It is utterly disgraceful.
Joke publication (from Jo Nova)
New Scientist (or “Non-scientist” as it should be more accurately called) continues to smear any attempt at balance in climate education with misrepresentations, straw men and half-truths. Citing the Heartland documents, it recycles the same, tired old arguments that we have heard a thousand times before:
Children should be taught honestly what we know about climate change, as well as what we don’t know and where the uncertainties lie. Yet a plan outlined in documents allegedly from Heartland would build a curriculum around statements such as “whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy”. This is to create controversy where none exists.
There simply is no credible scientific alternative to the theory that humans are warming the atmosphere.
We all acknowledge that humans are warming the atmosphere. The question, and where the doubt lies, is in the magnitude of that warming, in particular relative to natural climate cycles. Why are supposedly intelligent publications incapable of understanding this obvious difference? If that warming is one degree, then this isn’t a problem. As we keep repeating, the catastrophic projections come from multiple positive feedbacks in climate models.
In 2010, a survey of 1372 climate scientists found that 97 per cent of those who publish most frequently in the field were in no doubt. They agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that human activity had caused most of Earth’s warming over the second half of the 20th century. By comparison with these scientists, the climate expertise of the small group of contrarians was substantially lower (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107).
Ah yes, science by head count, and the politicised statements of a political organisation, the IPCC.
In the face of such broad agreement, the leaked strategy smacks of tactics used by tobacco companies as the evidence linking smoking to fatal diseases continued to grow. They employed accusations of scientific conspiracy, selective use of evidence and dissenting scientists to contradict public health experts and confuse the public. Oil companies have already used such tactics in the climate change debate. (source)
Smears, smears and more smears. And hints at a scientific conspiracy and selective use of evidence were both clearly exposed in the Climategate emails, but that doesn’t seem to concern the editorial writers today.
Why do they bother? Only total indoctrination will satisfy the headbangers at Non Scientist.
Quote of the Day
Wonderful quote from The Atlantic on Gleick:
And ethics aside, what Gleick did is insane for someone in his position–so crazy that I confess to wondering whether he doesn’t have some sort of underlying medical condition that requires urgent treatment. The reason he did it was even crazier. I would probably have thrown that memo away. I might have spent a few hours idly checking it out. I would definitely not have risked jail or personal ruin over something so questionable, and which provided evidence of . . . what? That Heartland exists? That it has a budget? That it spends that budget promoting views which Gleick finds reprehensible?
Exactly. Global warming alarmists (and the Left in general) can’t handle dissent, so they try to suppress it at all costs.
Bitter enemies
Our dysfunctional Labor government limps from crisis to disaster and back to crisis again, as Kevin Rudd finally pulls the plug and resigns. Julia Gillard is expected to call a leadership ballot on Monday:
THE Gillard government faces days of uncertainty until Kevin Rudd declares whether he will challenge Julia Gillard for the Labor leadership, go to the parliamentary backbench or even resign from his Brisbane seat and force a by-election.
As government sources last night revealed the Prime Minister would today call a special caucus meeting for a leadership ballot on Monday, NSW independent Tony Windsor warned it was “more than likely” a change of leader would trigger a return to the polls.
And Wayne Swan launched an extraordinary attack on Mr Rudd, saying that “for too long, Kevin Rudd has been putting his own self-interest ahead of the interests of the broader labour movement and the country as a whole, and that needs to stop”.
Mr Rudd’s dramatic 1am resignation in Washington yesterday threw the parliamentary Labor Party into even more confusion and bitter recrimination as supporters of Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard blamed each other for the damaging events. (source)
Time’s up. A new election is required. This government has no credibility and no future.
Hypocrisy and double standards are wonderful things, employed to their fullest by the environmental left:
Climate fail
Cloud height anomaly
All the feedbacks in the alarmists’ climate models are positive. The CO2-induced warming of about 1 degree is amplified several times as a result of these feedbacks to produce the catastrophic warming projections of the IPCC. The possibility that negative feedbacks may be at work to reduce or eliminate such amplification is discounted without a second thought.
Here, however, is empirical evidence that a natural mechanism is providing precisely that:
Clouds around the world may be falling in response to rising global temperatures and having a cooling effect on global warming, according to analysis of satellite data by Auckland University scientists.
The first 10 years of data from the NASA Terra satellite, which uses nine cameras at different angles to produce a stereo image of the world’s clouds, shows their average height has lowered by about 1 per cent, or 30 to 40 metres.
Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes, says the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“This is the first time we have been able to accurately measure changes in global cloud height and, while the record is too short to be definitive, it provides just a hint that something quite important might be going on,” said lead researcher, Professor Roger Davies.
In a “negative feedback mechanism”, lower cloud height would allow the Earth to cool to space more efficiently, reducing the surface temperature of the planet and potentially slowing the effects of global warming.
“We don’t know exactly what causes the cloud heights to lower but it must be due to a change in the circulation patterns that give rise to cloud formation at high altitude,” Prof Davies said.
The Terra satellite is scheduled to continue gathering data through the remainder of this decade.
“If cloud heights come back up in the next 10 years we would conclude that they are not slowing climate change,” Prof Davies said.
“But if they keep coming down it will be very significant.” (AAP)
A longer explanatory piece is here.
The paper is entitled:
Davies, R. and M. Molloy (2012), Global cloud height fluctuations measured by MISR on Terra from 2000 to 2010, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L03701, doi:10.1029/2011GL050506.
and the abstract is here.
Josh on Gleick (click to enlarge)
Naturally, the blogs are full of the Gleick admission that it was he who solicited and then distributed confidential Heartland documents. Here is some recommended reading:
When ‘Heartlandgate’ first broke, I saw no parallels with Climategate. Now, with the involvement of Gleick, there most certainly are parallels. There is the common theme of climate scientists compromising personal and professional ethics, integrity, and responsibility, all in the interests of a ’cause’.
On the one hand, Climategate involved a large number of people that were involved in the IPCC. Apart from the FOI avoidance that was arguably criminal, everyone seems to have been ‘cleared’ by the various investigations. On the other hand, Gleick is only one person, but his actions are far more serious, particularly if they involve fabrication of a document.
WUWT on the National Centre for Science Education:
As part of NCSE’s expansion to defend the teaching of climate science, Gleick had agreed to join NCSE’s board of directors. On the same day as he posted his statement, however, he apologized to NCSE for his behavior with regard to the Heartland Institute documents and offered to withdraw from the board, on which he was scheduled to begin serving as of February 25, 2012. His offer was accepted.
“Gleick obtained and disseminated these documents without the knowledge of anyone here,” NCSE’s executive director Eugenie C. Scott commented, “and we do not condone his doing so.” But, she added, “they show that NCSE was right to broaden its scope to include the teaching of climate science. There really are coordinated attempts to undermine the teaching of climate science, and NCSE is needed to help to thwart them.”
WUWT on Gleick’s removal from AGU Task Force on Scientific Ethics:
Commenter FP writes:
Hmm, they’ve removed Peter Gleick’s name from this page.
It was there four days ago, according to google’s cache. Has he resigned/been fired already?
So now we know the identity of the Fakegate fake. His name is Peter Gleick, he has a PhD from Berkeley, he’s the winner of a MacArthur genius award, he’s a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and he runs a Californian research organisation called the Pacific Institute which advises, inter alia, on “integrity” in science. (H/T Roddy Campbell, Jabba The Cat)
Funny, that, eh? Before we examine a little more closely what he’s done, let’s just read a bit more about his Institute’s passionate commitment to integrity, shall we?
The Pacific Institute’s Integrity of Science Initiative responds to and counters the assault on science and scientific integrity in the public policy arena, especially on issues related to water, climate change, and security.
Ah. That kind of integrity. Protecting good, honest climate scientists against all the lies and misinformation and black propaganda ranged against them by the evil, Koch-Bros-funded Climate Denial industry: would that be the sort of thing you meant, Peter?
All in all a huge embarrassment for “The Cause”.
Littlemore (get him off my monitor)
Make sure you have a bucket nearby when you read this disgraceful rant by Richard Littlemore on MeDog’sGob:
While admitting that he impersonated a third party in order to induce Heartland to confirm its own ongoing questionable conduct, Gleick has effectively caught Heartland squarely in the headlights, proving that the Institute has dissembled and lied.
Whistleblowers – and that’s the role Gleick has played in this instance – deserve respect for having the courage to make important truths known to the public at large. Without condoning or promoting an act of dishonesty, it’s fair to say that Gleick took a significant personal risk – and by standing and taking responsibility for his actions, he has shown himself willing to pay the price. For his courage, his honor, and for performing a selfless act of public service, he deserves our gratitude and applause.
Heartland, in the meantime, deserves to be stripped of its charitable status and laughed out of the professional “think tank” fraternity for its amateurishness and the far-less-than-credible position that it has taken in the last week, denying its own responsibility in this “leak,” dissembling about the origin of the material and going out of its way to “fail” to authenticate documents that it knew all along were legitimate. (source, Webcite backup)
Thank you, DeSmogBlog, for confirming what we knew all along – that you reside in the gutter, and should be flushed into the sea with all the other excrement.
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