Idiotic Comment of the Day: Jessica Watson

15 May, 2010 by

Slips in global warming…

Celebrity not-quite-round-the-world-officially heroine Jessica Watson manages to slip in “global warming” [shurely “climate change”? – Ed] when speaking of her exploits on her blog last week (as reported by SBS):

“It’s a shame that my voyage won’t be recognised by a few organisations because I’m under 18, but it really doesn’t worry me,” Watson wrote on her blog last week.

“I mean there’s millions, properly [sic] billions of people who still don’t believe in global warming, so I’m more than happy to settle for a few people going against the tide and declaring that mine hasn’t been an official circumnavigation.” (source)

See the original blog post here.

UPDATE: She did smack down Kevin Rudd’s patronising flannel, so she’s not all bad!

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Academy dares question consensus – alarmists go ape

15 May, 2010 by

Stick to your guns

Another example of alarmists desperate to shut down debate on climate. The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (home page here) has circulated a draft two-page policy statement on climate change, the Canberra Times reports.

A copy obtained by the Canberra Times reveals the academy “does not accept that the science is settled” and notes many scientists believe “climate changes are nothing unusual, based on past geological records.”

Shock horror. It’s barely a sceptical view at all. More like a neutral view on the climate debate, and one on which even many pro-AGW scientists would have to agree. But it’s not a hysterical endorsement of the alarmist consensus, and the warmist headbangers can’t let that happen, so rent-an-alarmist Will Steffen gets in on the act:

Australian National University climate change institute director Professor Will Steffen said the draft was “a very poor, confused and sloppy document that obviously still needs a lot of work to improve its credibility.”

Translation: it has no credibility unless it peddles the alarmist nonsense of the IPCC. And the best bit of all, said without any hint of irony:

“It’s obvious someone involved in drafting this is showing their hand. This is not an objective document, and would appear to be politically motivated.“

[Editor of ACM falls of chair in fit of hysterical laughing at the blatant hypocrisy of that statement.]

And because this is the Canberra Times and because it is written by Rosslyn Beeby, the article then wheels out a dozen alarmists to say the same thing in equally tedious fashion. Message to ATSE: do not be intimidated by this kind of playground bullying tactics. Stand your ground, and stand up for scientific integrity and impartiality, not the quasi-religious dogma of the warm-brigade.

(NB. This article is not available online [why not, I wonder? – Ed], and was sourced from Warwick Hughes, with thanks.)

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"Non-Scientist" magazine's special report on "denial"

15 May, 2010 by


How "denial" is portrayed in Non Scientist

Note that they don’t devote a special report to investigating dodgy scientific practices in climate research, such as deleting emails, fudging data and skewing the peer-review process by intimidating journals. Oh no. That’s all fine and dandy. Instead, their special report sets up a long line of straw men about “denial” and then proceeds to blow them over:

From climate change to vaccines, evolution to flu, denialists are on the march. Why are so many people refusing to accept what the evidence is telling them? Over the next 10 pages we look at the phenomenon in depth. What is denial? What attracts people to it? How does it start, and how does it spread? And finally, how should we respond to it? (source)

And we don’t even have to look very far to see that this will be the usual tedious rant against climate realists:

A climate denier has a position staked out in advance, and sorts through the data employing “confirmation bias” – the tendency to look for and find confirmatory evidence for pre-existing beliefs and ignore or dismiss the rest. (source)

As if the consensus scientists are completely impartial and free-thinking, when their next funding cheque depends on alarmist research that grabs media attention? Or what about the fact that the IPCC’s sole purpose is to find evidence for a pre-conceived conclusion, that of man-made warming, and they will therefore ignore huge chunks of research because they are inconvenient? That sentence above describes the IPCC precisely. And, inevitably, the comparisons with tobacco follow:

In 1972, Tobacco Institute vice-president Fred Panzer outlined his industry’s “brilliantly executed” defence strategy. A key tactic was “creating doubt about the health charge without actually denying it” while “encouraging objective scientific research.”

“Objective scientific research”: those words would almost make you believe that Panzer was talking about objective science. But when doubt is your goal, the misuse of language is just another way to confuse the public.

Where tobacco led the way, coal and chemicals followed. And, of course, the fossil fuel industry has been working overtime – and with shocking success – creating doubt about climate change. (source)

The fact that governments and environmental groups have thrown billions of dollars at shonky science to “prove” man-made warming appears to have escaped the author of that little rant, who happens to be Richard Littlemore of DeSmogBlog, the warmists’ nirvana. Need I say more?

There is one article (out of six) that correctly claims that denial is a cheap slur:

The concept of denialism is itself inflexible, ideological and intrinsically anti-scientific. It is used to close down legitimate debate by insinuating moral deficiency in those expressing dissident views, or by drawing a parallel between popular pseudoscience movements and the racist extremists who dispute the Nazi genocide of Jews. (source)

But to be honest it’s lost in the noise… (h/t WUWT)

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Garbage squared: Global warming to "kill a fifth of all lizards"

14 May, 2010 by

It is an ex-lizard, it has ceased to be

This is the kind of nonsense you get when you pile one computer model on top of another (hopeless) computer model. So our diligent researchers took the outputs from the IPCC’s models (which drastically overstate the climate sensitivity and hence response to CO2) which predict catastrophic warming, and plugged those numbers into an extinction model for lizards. So we have Garbage In, followed by Garbage Out, which becomes the next Garbage In and finally Garbage Out again. In other words, we have “garbage squared”.

Global warming could kill off as many as a fifth of the world’s lizards by 2080, with potentially devastating consequences for ecosystems around the world, according to a new study.

Researchers who conducted a major survey of lizard populations worldwide, which appears today in the journal Science, say lizards appear to be especially sensitive to the effects of climate change and are dying off at an alarming rate.

The loss of the lizard populations could wreak havoc with ecosystems in which they are a crucial part of the food chain, since they are important prey for many birds, snakes, and voracious predators of insects.

The biologists in the study ruled out factors other than global warming as being responsible for the rapid decrease in the lizard population.

“We did a lot of work on the ground to validate the model and show that the extinctions are the result of climate change,” says Dr Barry Sinervo, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

“None of these are due to habitat loss. These sites are not disturbed in any way, and most of them are in national parks or other protected areas,” he says.

The scientists worked up models based on predicted probabilities of local extinction showing the likelihood of species extinction was estimated to be 6% by 2050 and 20% by 2080.

Read it here.

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Become a fan of ACM on FaceBook!

14 May, 2010 by

Now on FaceBook!

Become a fan of ACM on FaceBook! Click the link below and click “Like”:

ACM Fan Page

Now you will receive ACM posts in your news feed every day.

There’s also a new button in the left hand column with a link to the Facebook page.

See you there!

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Chris Uhlmann on Rudd's ETS about-turn

14 May, 2010 by

Refreshing

Chris Uhlmann is a rarity in ABC circles – a journalist who isn’t a global warming ecotard with an axe to grind. So it is refreshing to read his critique of Kevin Rudd’s volte face on climate change:

The nude ball is well known in cricket circles.

It’s a derogatory term applied to deliveries that don’t spin, swing or seam. With the bowler doing nothing to defeat the batsman nude balls usually disappear over the boundary and the fielding captain is forced to change the attack.

The Government’s defence for its new position on climate change is the nude ball of politics. After campaigning for three years on the urgent need for an emissions trading scheme as the central weapon for reducing Australia’s carbon footprint it abruptly shelved the idea because it all got too hard.

The argument for delay is that it couldn’t get agreement in the Senate, and that international progress is too slow.

The Prime Minister summed up the case for delay in his recent exchange with The 7:30 Report’s Kerry O’Brien. [See ACM’s comment on this here – Ed]

“We believe that an emissions trading scheme is the most effective and cheapest way of getting there, [Tony Abbott] has rejected that position despite the Liberal Party having formally embraced it,” Kevin Rudd said.

“I now have to confront the reality of that is what he’s done… the progress on global action has been slower than any of us would like. That is why we’ve announced a decision that we would not seek to reintroduce this legislation until the end of the Kyoto commitment period and on the basis that global action has been adequate.”

Abandoning the idea because of Senate obstructionism ignores the fact that the Prime Minister could seek to have both houses of Parliament dissolved and then put the matter to the people at an election. If he won that election he could then put his Carbon Pollution Reduction bill to the vote at a joint sitting.

It’s not something anyone would do lightly but it is something you would do if you believed that climate change was the great moral and economic challenge of our age.

Read it here.

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Daily Bayonet – GW Hoax Weekly Roundup

14 May, 2010 by

Skewering the clueless

As always, a great read!

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Rudd loses it on 7.30 Report

13 May, 2010 by

Grim faced

As the Herald Sun puts it, channelling the spirit of Mark Latham. Well, what else can the poor chap do? He’s claimed climate change is the greatest moral challenge since the dawn of time, but then drops the ETS like a hot rock when it looks like the public don’t like it. Not content with that, he then pretends that climate change is still at the forefront of Labor policy. What a joke!

THE PM has been accused of petulance and likened to Mark Latham after a fiery outburst during a television interview last night.

Some of his political opponents compared the prime minister’s performance on ABC Television’s 7.30 Report with former failed Labor leader Mark Latham.

“He’s starting to lose it,” opposition frontbencher Andrew Robb said.

The night before, a visibly angry Mr Rudd dismissed a suggestion he had shown political cowardice on climate change by deferring his carbon pollution reduction scheme until at least 2013.

“(Climate Change Minister) Penny Wong and I sat up for three days and three nights [so what? – Ed] with 20 leaders from around the world to try and frame a global agreement,” he said.

…

Mr Rudd’s deputy Julia Gillard defended her boss saying he was passionate about climate change action.

“You’re seeing the prime minister articulate the policy but also the passion and enthusiasm to deal with this question of climate change in that interview.”

Opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne dismissed that description of the interview, saying Mr Rudd was “just petulant”.

His colleague Greg Hunt went further: “He is making wildly erratic decisions and morphing into Mark Latham, but without the conviction.

“It appears that under the slightest pressure the prime minister is looking increasingly out of control.“

Read it (and watch an extract) here.

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US to legislate carbon cuts

13 May, 2010 by

Still desperately trying to wreck their economy for no environmental benefit, the Yanks are launching another cap-n-trade bill:

US senators on Wednesday unveiled a long-awaited plan on climate change, proposing to cut emissions 17 per cent by 2020 off 2005 levels through regulation of power, industry and transportation.

“We can finally tell the world that America is ready to take back our role as the world’s clean energy leader,” said Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts and close ally of President Barack Obama.

After months of fine-tuning, Kerry and independent Senator Joe Lieberman proposed a bill that would put the onus on heavy industry and power plants to cut carbon emissions, which scientists blame for global warming.

Read it here. And to understand just how pointless it all is:

The global temperature “savings” of the Kerry-Lieberman bill is astoundingly small—0.043°C (0.077°F) by 2050 and 0.111°C (0.200°F) by 2100. In other words, by century’s end, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 83% will only result in global temperatures being one-fifth of one degree Fahrenheit less than they would otherwise be. That is a scientifically meaningless reduction. (source)

In other words, barely measurable with a thermometer.

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UN: The fount of all hysteria

11 May, 2010 by

Hysteria Co., Inc

If it’s not climate it will be something else. The UN is watching its plan for world government through climate alarmism disappear in smoke, as the public realise that there are more important things to worry about, like erupting volcanoes and Greek financial crises and Islamic terrorism. So it’s now looking elsewhere for some other “cause” via which to regulate, tax and control the globe. This time it’s the extinction of species. As you read this report, just notice how often they have simply taken the climate alarmists’ dictionary, and applied it to extinctions:

  • “Business as usual no longer an option”
  • World needs a “new vision”
  • “Sustainable future”
  • “Tipping points”
  • “Irreversible” damage to the planet unless we “act now”

As the Sydney Morning Herald breathlessly reports:

KEY natural processes that sustain human life, such as crop production and clean water, face a high risk of ”rapid degradation and collapse” because of the record rate of extinction of animal and plant species.

That is the key finding of a major United Nations report, the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook.

The executive-secretary of the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, said: ”The news is not good. We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in history – extinction rates may be up to 1000 times higher than the historical background rate.

”Business as usual is no longer an option if we are to avoid irreversible damage to the life-support systems of our planet.”

The Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, said the world needed a ”new vision for biological diversity for a healthy planet and a sustainable future for humankind”.

The outlook finds extinction rates of plant and animal species will continue and potentially accelerate far above the natural rate across this century. Threatened species are on average moving closer to extinction due to the impact of humans and climate change. Coral and amphibians are under the most stress.

The report states that if the rate of species extinction hits crucial ”tipping points,” not yet identified, there is a high risk that natural systems that help crops grow and keep water clean could be damaged irreversibly. (source)

Just replace the word “extinction” with “climate change” and we’ve heard it all before. So the next logical steps will be:

  • develop computer models that predict that species extinctions will rapidly get out of hand (just ask Michael Mann for his cast offs)
  • tweak those models to demonstrate that extinctions are directly related to something easily regulated, such as land use
  • ensure that the models play down all other factors, especially those that are natural in origin
  • organise regular conferences to decide that the world needs to “urgently tackle extinctions”
  • describe extinctions as “the greatest moral challenge of our time”
  • require countries to sign a treaty promising not to expand land use, unless they pay a new “land tax”
  • companies can trade permits to build on undeveloped land in a Land Trading Scheme
  • in no time at all, fraudsters will account for 90% of all trading on the Land Permit exchanges

and we’re back to square one.

Think I’m kidding? Just you wait!

UPDATE: And of course the Greens can’t wait to jump on any passing bandwagon. Cue Bob Brown:

Humanity is sealing its own fate by rapidly destroying the planet’s ecological diversity, the Australian Greens have warned.

“It’s not going to change while we have governments who don’t care and governments who are making things worse,” [Brown] told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

“It is a prescription for our own fate if we don’t stop to consider the value, of least to ourselves, of wildlife and biodiversity.” (source)

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