Oops a day late, sorry! But still, a great read!

Fellow sceptic blogger Magnus over at Klimathot-Gameover has sent some links to YouTube videos of Ian Plimer’s talk to the Sydney Mining Club on 6 November 2008. It’s in five parts:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5

An editorial and two excellent articles from The Australian today. Here’s the editorial, with links to the other articles:

The science on global warming is certainly not settled

DELIGHTED doomsayers who applauded the announcement last week that an ice sheet on the west Antarctic cost was collapsing should leave the champagne on ice. Because, as Greg Roberts reports in The Weekend Australian, it appears everything is icier in most of Antarctica. This is not to deny that other parts of the planet appear to be warming up, or even to argue against the orthodoxy that human activity is responsible. But every warning of what global warming will lead to is not inevitably accurate. As Adelaide geologist and Eureka Prize winner Ian Plimer points out in an interview with Jamie Walker in the paper this morning, predictions of what will happen to the planet under a range of climate conditions to come will not necessarily occur simply because they are predicted by computer models. As any economist will explain, models deliver on the data provided by the programmers. “Garbage in, garbage out” as one anonymous expert famously put it. And as our understanding of the environment changes, so will what we expect to happen. “Always changing the future is” as a famous, if fictional, futurologist says.

For environmental activists, any suggestion prophecies of planetary peril should be considered carefully is heresy. Climate change doubters are apologists for Western consumer lifestyles that produce the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, they argue. But there is more sociology than science in such suggestions. For people who believe it is wrong for all Australians to have electricity when many Africans do not, global warming is a statement of faith. Many scientists are equally upset, saying the evidence is in and people who question the cause and effect of global warming should defer to those who have done the work. The problem is, as Professor Plimer demonstrates, expert irritation does not disguise the fact that the science is anything but settled. Atmospheric scientists dominate the global warming debate, he says, and their focus on carbon dioxide emissions excludes other disciplines and obscures other issues that may describe what is going on and why.

Perhaps scientists who say there is a 90 per cent certainty that global warming is human-induced are correct. But as Professor Plimer argues, such claims are impressive-sounding figures of speech – scientists can believe them, but they do not know. No one does. This is not to deny the need for ever-more research on global warming or the case for development of economically sustainable sources of alternative energy. In Australia there is bipartisan support for both. But to assume we know how much the planet will warm this century and what effect this will have is a matter of faith, not reason. And faith-based research is less science than secular religion.

Read it here.

These are the crazy depths to which we have sunk. The harmless gas, carbon dioxide, essential to all life on earth, but demonised by governments all over the world, has now been branded a health risk by the moonbats at the US EPA:

“After a thorough scientific review ordered in 2007 by the US Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed finding… that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare,” an EPA statement posted on the agency website said.

“This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation,” Administrator Lisa Jackson said.

“This pollution problem has a solution – one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country’s dependence on foreign oil.”

Science or politics? You decide. Maybe they should think about deeming oxygen a health risk – after all if it weren’t for all that pesky oxygen in the atmosphere, there wouldn’t be any bushfires…

Read it here.

Ross Garnaut is, of course, Krudd’s handpicked climate change advisor, and in front of the Senate enquiry into the ETS, even he urged significant changes to it.

“If there were no changes at all it would be a line-ball call whether it is better to push ahead or say we still want the [emissions trading scheme] at the centre of our mitigation effort but we’ll have another crack at it and do a better one when the time is right,” he said.

Wow, that’s high praise indeed. The criticism of the ETS has been universal, yet Penny Wong, in her ivory tower, brushes it all aside, saying that starting again is not an option:

“People have their own opinions. The Government’s made decisions in the national interest,” she said.

“Going back to the drawing board on emissions trading would significantly increase business uncertainty.”

We’ll see.

Read it here and here.

Of course, they are doing it in their “personal capacity”, but all the media reports are plastered with references to CSIRO, which does nothing for that organisation’s reputation as an impartial scientific body. Penny Wong must be rubbing her hands with glee…

And the reality is that whatever the climate science, the ETS will do nothing for the Australian climate, nothing for the global climate, but everything to destroy jobs and the Australian economy, so everything that follows is ultimately pointless!

Dr James Risbey says if applied across all nations, the Government’s targets imply a 50 to 90 per cent chance of exceeding the dangerous threshold of a 2 degree global warming.

He writes: “In other words this is Russian roulette with the climate system with most of the chambers loaded.”

Three others have made a joint submission, saying the Australian targets will not achieve climate protection and that even if every nation on earth adopts and succeeds in meeting Australian targets, global emissions would still be above a pathway consistent with long-term climate protection.

And the ABC is only to happy to help out the alarmist cause:

The views of these climate researchers are widely held in Australia’s scientific community. [That doesn’t make them correct – Ed]

“I think that the scientific community as a whole, including every climate scientist that I know in CSIRO [sorry, I thought this was a personal submission… – Ed], is of the view that first; climate change is a very serious problem, second; that global strategies at the moment are inadequate to provide the satisfactory path forward and I think also people hold the view that Australia needs to be doing more,” he said.

I hope they take a hefty submission from Ian Plimer to counterbalance the nonsense these guys are spouting…

Read it here.

Phew, that’s more like it. The Herald is back to peddling the usual alarmism after the brief flicker of enlightenment yesterday… I’m not even going to quote it, but you can go there and have a laugh (or cry) if you wish.

Read it here.

No, you did read that correctly, and it’s not from Miranda Devine. In a balanced and intelligent article about Ian Plimer’s latest book, Heaven and Earth, the author, Paul Sheehan, openly questions his own views on “climate change”:

What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I – and you – capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let’s see.

This is the point which most believers in AGW are unable to get beyond. Ian Plimer’s arguments against the alarmism of AGW are compelling:

“To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable – human-induced CO2 – is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.”
…
The setting up by the UN of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 gave an opportunity to make global warming the main theme of environmental groups. “The IPCC process is related to environmental activism, politics and opportunism. It is unrelated to science. Current zeal around human-induced climate change is comparable to the certainty professed by Creationists or religious fundamentalists.“

It’s a small step, but an important one. The book is published tomorrow and I hope to get a copy as soon as possible.

Read it here.

Finally, the opposition climate change spokesman, Greg Hunt, has gone on record criticising Penny Wong and the Kruddites for using stealth techniques to brainwash our children into believing the government’s AGW agenda:

[She] announced a taxpayer-funded competition for students in grades 3 to 9, awarding prizes such as iPods and Nintendo Wii consoles to students who best answer the question, “What does climate change mean to me?” using short stories, poems, songs or art.

Ms Wong — charged with selling the Government’s emissions trading scheme amid a global recession — has written to every federal MP urging them to write to local schools to promote the competition.
…
Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt accused the Government of politicising schools “with a campaign that supports an unpopular and widely regarded as flawed Government policy”.

“It is Orwellian to impose this political campaign on our young students when almost every single school is still waiting for the solar panels Mr Rudd promised them in 2007. If Mr Rudd is so worried about emissions, why is he holding a competition that promises a return jet trip and gadgets that use electricity as prizes?”

Read it here.

One of the great warriors against the AGW madness, Marc Morano, has launched a new site:

www.climatedepot.com

I’m sure it will become essential reading for sceptics the world over.