Brendan O'Neill on 'extreme weather' hysteria

14 July, 2012 by

Brendan O’Neill

You can bet the farm that if there’s some noteworthy weather event (with the emphasis on the term “weather”) somewhere on the planet, there will be a Green nut-job on hand to say it was all caused by man-made global warming.

Usually it’s couched in weasel words, of course, the most common formula being the “consistent with” ploy.

The floods in Queensland were “consistent with” global warming projections. The drought in south-east Australia was “consistent with” global warming projections. The rains that filled the dams and ended the drought in south-east Australia were “consistent with” global warming projections. The Victorian bush fires (that were actually worsened by a variety of non-climate related factors) were “consistent with” global warming projections. The record low temperatures in Canberra last week were “consistent with” global warming projections. My cat getting fleas is “consistent with” global warming projections. My losing a $2 coin down the back of the sofa last Tuesday is “consistent with” global warming projections. [Insert anything you like] is “consistent with” global warming projections.

As has been said countless times on this blog, it is, of course, the classic example of an unfalsifiable hypothesis: ask a greenie to describe the kind of weather events that would not be consistent with global warming, and you’ll get a stony silence. Because anything and everything is “consistent with” some global warming model somewhere. And I’m almost glad the warm-mongers continue to make these nonsensical claims, because every time they do, it moves them further away from proper science and into the realms of astrology.

Brendan O’Neill has a whale of a time exposing the neo-Medieval view of the planet punishing humanity for its sins:

Greens now constantly promote the wild idea that mankind’s irresponsible behaviour is causing “extreme weather”, and that only by being more meek, by radically overhauling our lifestyles, can we hope to tame this weather of mass destruction.

But haven’t we heard this kind of thing before? Yes. From the biblical era to the Middle Ages, the idea that the immorality of man was responsible for enraging nature or God and causing storms and floods was widespread.

So the modern green claim that floods in Britain are a consequence of our wicked over-reliance on fossil fuels, that is of our daring to live industrialised lives, is just a pseudo-scientific updating of the Noah story.

Genesis tells us it was when God saw “the wickedness of man was great” that he decided to “bring a flood of waters upon the earth”.

Today, greens give us a science-tinged version of that morality tale. Mark Lynas, one of Britain’s leading eco-thinkers, says that with all our fossil fuel-using and climate disruption “we have woken Poseidon (God of the Sea) from a thousand-year slumber, and this time his wrath will know no bounds”.

A columnist for The Guardian says recent floods are a kind of punishment for our polluting behaviour. “The turbulent weather we’ve seen is a warning of what lies ahead for us,” she said, unless we can be “cajoled, led, provoked and taxed into changing (our) ways”.

Here, Gaia replaces God as the sender of floods to reprimand man and “change our attitudes”.

Quick, stone another sceptic…

Read it here.

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Queensland: stop climate brainwashing in schools

14 July, 2012 by

Climate sense

A few days ago, The Australian reported on the fact that, in the Queensland curriculum, science is regarded as a “social and cultural activity”, an approach totally at odds with the concept of the scientific method:

“Science is a social and cultural activity through which explanations of natural phenomena are generated,” it says.

“Explanations of natural phenomena may be viewed as mental constructions based on personal experiences and result from a range of activities including observation, experimentation, imagination and discussion.

“Accepted scientific concepts, theories and models may be viewed as shared understandings that the scientific community perceive as viable in light of current available evidence.”

In other words, we are talking about here is “post-normal science” where objective truths are no longer paramount, and where various societal “interpretations” can be overlaid on bare scientific facts. As I quoted in a blog post back in 2010:

The guiding principle of normal science – the goal of achievement of factual knowledge – must be modified to fit the post-normal principle…For this purpose, post-normal scientists should be capable of establishing extended peer communities and allow for ‘extended facts’ from non-scientific experts…In post-normal science, the maintenance and enhancement of quality, rather than the establishment of factual knowledge, is the key task of scientists… Involved social actors must agree on the definition of perceptions, narratives, interpretation of models, data and indicators…scientists have to contribute to society by learning as quickly as possible about different perceptions…instead of seeking deep ultimate knowledge. (source: Eva Kunseler, Towards a new paradigm of Science in scientific policy advising)

It’s utter garbage of course. But nowhere has this new flexibility of post-normal science been exploited more effectively than in the teaching of climate change in schools. Political correctness and “social and cultural interpretations” have trumped scientific objectivity, so that students are fed a stream of eco-propaganda cut-and-pasted from environmental activist groups press releases, which masquerades as impartial science.

The typical line would go like this:

Man-made emissions of CO2 are causing global temperatures to rise and we should cut our emissions urgently to avoid the risk of dangerous climate change. A tiny minority of scientists (or “deniers” as we should call them), funded by large oil companies who want to maintain the status quo, are paid to state that climate change is not happening/is a hoax/is a Marxist plot/etc etc…

Dissent is suppressed at all costs and only the “authorised” line is plugged. If you think this is exaggerated, have a look at the extract from a geography text book at the end of this post (see original here).

But it seems that a number of Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) members are in favour of an overhaul of Queensland’s education system, specifically the teaching of climate:

LNP members have overwhelmingly voted to ensure the removal of “environmental propaganda” about climate change from schools.

The motion, proposed by the LNP’s Noosa State Electorate Council, calls on Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek to require Queensland schools to “remove environmental propaganda material, in particular post-normal science about ‘climate change’, from the curriculum and as adjunct material at exam time”.

The mover of the motion, LNP member Richard Pearson, railed against “those false prophets who would poison the minds of our children in our schools”.

“Few people understand that the so called science of climate change is really what can be defined as ‘post-normal’ science,” he said, arguing it went beyond traditional understanding of science based on experimentation and falsifiable theories.

Another member spoke against the motion, saying he was concerned when people tried to dismiss differing opinions and he believed children to have access to all information.

The motion was nonetheless passed with overwhelming support from the LNP members at the gathering.

At last year’s conference, LNP president Bruce McIver questioned the role of humans in driving climate change, arguing the climate was always changing and children were being “brainwashed” in the way climate science was taught. (source) [Update: The Australian has more here]

I guess we wait for the brainless alarmists to start saying that this is akin to teaching creationism alongside evolution or that gravity isn’t settled science or some other idiotic comparison. No, it isn’t. Whereas there are centuries of hard empirical evidence for both evolution and gravity, there are about 20 years of flaky computer modelled projections on which the entire climate scare is based, not to mention the massaging of temperature data to prop up The Cause.

Furthermore, whereas there are no political gains to be made from evolution and gravity, climate change has been swamped by political motivations of global organisations like the UN and the IPCC (which, having been infiltrated by environmental activist groups, have already made up their minds that CO2 is to blame and are just desperately searching for evidence to back it up) and national governments, implementing pointless gestures like the carbon tax to appear politically correct (and in Australia’s case, stay in power).

For anyone to claim the “science is settled” and that only the approved version be taught in schools is delusional. At least Queensland LNP is taking a stand against this brainwashing.

Extract from NSW Year 8 Geography text book:

Propaganda (click to enlarge)

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Roman and Medieval periods warmer than today

12 July, 2012 by

Cooling trend?

Another story you won’t see anywhere on the ABC, firmly stuck in its groupthink mode and working itself up into a lather plugging a litany of dire and alarmist statements from a symposium on coral reefs, which has predicted, amongst other things, rises in sea levels of 1.7m by the next century (far exceeding even the “gold standard” IPCC projection).

I wonder if a “coral reef symposium” would get any media interest at all if it didn’t follow the well worn-path of alarmism and links to man-made climate change? Probably not.

And why, I wonder, did the ABC choose not to report on a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change that showed the Roman and Medieval periods were actually warmer than the present, without any help from man-made CO2? Because it doesn’t fit the rusted-on groupthink, maybe?

A new study measuring temperatures over the past two millennia has concluded that in fact the temperatures seen in the last decade are far from being the hottest in history.

A large team of scientists making a comprehensive study of data from tree rings say that in fact global temperatures have been on a falling trend for the past 2,000 years and they have often been noticeably higher than they are today – despite the absence of any significant amounts of human-released carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back then.

“We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low,” says Professor-Doktor Jan Esper of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, one of the scientists leading the study. “Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy.” (source)

They certainly are. But don’t expect such policies to change anytime soon.

Warmist journal New Scientist does its best to prop up the consensus and wheels out Michael “Stick” Mann to rubbish the results:

The finding does not change our understanding of the warming power of carbon dioxide. In fact, it shows that human CO2 emissions have interrupted a long cooling period that would ultimately have delivered the next ice age. [So we’ve stopped an ice age? I would have thought that was probably quite good news…]

Esper says temperature reconstructions will have to be redone because past studies probably underestimated temperatures during the medieval warm period and other warm periods going back to Roman times. The further back in time, the greater the underestimate would be.

But others have doubts. [Michael] Mann argues that Esper’s tree-ring measurements come from high latitudes and reflect only summer temperatures. “The implications of this study are vastly overstated by the authors,” he says. (source)

Because when you’re an activist first and a scientist second, like Mann and the rest of the Hockey Team, your mind is firmly closed to even the possibility of contradictory evidence.

Link to paper here.

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Donna Laframboise in Sydney

11 July, 2012 by

ACM author with Donna Laframboise

Last night I attended the Sydney talk of Canadian author and blogger Donna Laframboise, whose book, “The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the world’s top Climate Expert” has recently been published here in Australia.

A large crowd had gathered at the Sheraton on the Park to hear Donna speak about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In her talk, she explained how despite protestations that the IPCC was a collection of the world’s best climate scientists, much of the IPCC’s reports were written by students and environmental activists, and that many appointments to the panel were politically motivated.

She also showed that the IPCC’s claim only to rely on peer-reviewed science was false, with over 30% of the references cited in the recent AR4 coming from newspaper clippings, WWF and Greenpeace reports, press releases and other grey literature. I wonder how much of that grey literature supported “the consensus”? I’m guessing roughly 100%.

I have corresponded with Donna in the past and it was great to meet her finally! Donna, I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in “Fantasy Island”.*

John Roskam of the IPA

 

Donna Laframboise

 

Signing books

* Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog: Welcome to Fantasy Island!

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Labor's shameful hypocrisy over Greens

10 July, 2012 by

Bunch of nut-jobs

The slow and painful disintegration of the Labor/Green alliance is a joy to watch – Labor’s chickens are all coming home to roost.

But at the same time it reveals the astonishing hypocrisy at the very heart of the ALP.

Back in 2010, Labor were only too happy to welcome the Greens into their fold, with friendly handshakes and smiles all round and Bob ‘n’ Julia signing their marriage pact before the assembled press.

Only later did we find out that a condition of the Greens’ support was “taking urgent action on climate”. So Julia, abandoning a pre-election promise not to introduce a carbon tax, announced that she would be doing precisely that.

Why did Labor MPs not protest back then at that cowardly surrender of principle? There was just a stony silence, because they had agreed to sell out their principles (such that they were) to stay in power at any cost (and what a cost it will turn out to be).

But now, barely a week after the introduction of the carbon tax, Labor has apparently and suddenly rediscovered those principles that it so hastily rejected in 2010, and is now desperately trying to distance itself from the extreme-Left party of environmental headbangers with which it chose to share a bed. It’s nothing short of pathetic.

And the most pathetic figure in all of this is Greg Combet, climate change minister, who, despite having relied on the Greens to get his disastrous carbon tax through Parliament, now lines up to criticise the Greens with the rest of his Labor mates – breathtaking.

SENIOR Labor Left figures have backed calls for the party to take a tougher line against the Greens as members of all factions lashed the minor party for its stance on offshore processing and contempt for blue-collar workers.

As the NSW Nationals yesterday revealed they expected to preference the Greens last at the next election, Labor Left faction convenor Stephen Jones said he expected that NSW general secretary Sam Dastyari’s motion to take a tough line on Greens preferences would pass the state conference.

“When the asylum-seeker legislation was in the Senate, the Greens had the choice between being a protest movement or a parliamentary party,” Mr Jones said. “They chose to continue to be a protest movement.”

Senior left-aligned minister, Greg Combet, distanced the government from the Greens, declaring Labor did not share the same values.

“We (Labor) have different values and different policies, and we certainly distinguish from them (Greens),” the Climate Change Minister said. (source)

Double standards, Greg. You only have different values and policies when it suits you. When you need the Greens, those policies and values are abandoned in an instant. Because you have no principles other than staying in power. Shameful.

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Canberra's coldest mornings since 1965

9 July, 2012 by

A light dusting of global warming there…

From the Weather Isn’t Climate department. Cue Tim Flannery, Will Steffen or David Karoly saying that this is “consistent with global warming” in 3, 2, 1…

Canberra has shivered through its eighth straight freezing, frosty morning, the coldest stretch of winter mornings in 47 years.

The mercury dropped to a chilly minus 4.8 degrees at 6.51am this morning, topping off eight consecutive mornings below minus 2.3 degrees.

The eight-day cold spell, with an average minimum temperature of minus 4.9, is the coldest string of July mornings since 1965. The all-time record was in July 1962, when the average temperature over an eight-day period was minus 7.

Canberrans felt the worst of the cold on Wednesday, when temperatures fell to minus 6.1 degrees, 6 degrees colder than the long-term July average of minus 0.1.

Wednesday’s low is still far from the record July minimum of minus 10 degrees, recorded in 1971, but is just shy of the lowest temperature recorded this year, which was minus 6.3 degrees on June 20. (source)

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'Even the dead don't escape the carbon tax'

9 July, 2012 by

A situation that is no doubt being played out all around our country, and will be until this pointless tax is repealed.

Fraudulent price rises attributed to the carbon tax will become commonplace, and every time it happens, it will forcefully remind people just whose fault it all is, and how she lied about it before the election:

A Melbourne family who claim they were slugged an extra $55 “carbon tax charge” when burying a relative were told “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”.

Erica Maliki and her family were burying her father-in-law at Springvale Cemetery when she was told the price per burial plot had increased because of the carbon tax.

Her father-in-law died on June 30, the day before the carbon tax was introduced, and was buried early last week.

“I thought to myself, ‘What carbon could possibly be used by putting a man in a grave?'” Ms Maliki said.

“All they did was put the dirt back in. How can they charge us a carbon tax for burying someone?”

Ms Maliki’s son Zaid said the cemetery’s receptionist told his sister-in-law “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”.

“We are pretty upset… that comment was a kick in the guts,” he said. (source)

In any event, technically, burial is carbon sequestration. If it had been a cremation, however…

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Tweet of the Day: ABC's Dr Karl 'loves the carbon tax'

9 July, 2012 by

“Dr Karl” is a regular fixture of the ABC’s pop science output (see here), and therefore, almost inevitably, like all his colleagues at Auntie, a climate alarmist.

In response to a tweet about the carbon tax yesterday, Dr Karl replied:

Apart from not addressing the question, Dr Karl actually loves the carbon tax! What a surprise from an ABC science journo! A pointless political gesture which will damage our prosperity at a time when the global economy is spiralling into GFC Mark II – and Dr Karl “loves” it.

Obviously, he fails to spare a thought for the millions of ordinary Australians whose finances will be stretched even closer to breaking point by a policy which serves no purpose apart from keeping Gillard in power by appeasing the Greens.

I replied, naturally, enquiring what effect the carbon tax would have on the climate. I have yet to receive a reply. Quelle surprise…

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Labor rushes to dump Greens, but it's all too late

8 July, 2012 by

Bunch of nut-jobs

Evidence emerges that Labor is beginning to realise its huge mistake in ever forming a government with a bunch of extremist ecotards, otherwise known as the Green party.

Are they perhaps starting to twig that they aren’t a bunch of harmless tree-huggers, but are in fact a fanatical group of fundamentalist, anti-human Marxists?

Yesterday, the “faceless men” of Labor suggest preferencing the Greens last at the next federal election, and today union leader Paul Howes exposes them for what they are – a party of dangerous extremists who have no place in a democratic Australia.

But it’s too late – Labor has sacrificed itself on the extreme environmental altar and implemented a pointless carbon tax which was a condition of support from the Greens. Core Labor voters won’t forget the betrayal, and the party will be punished without mercy at the next election.

LABOR should consider preferencing the Greens last at the federal election, the party’s NSW secretary Sam Dastyari says in a declaration of war on Julia Gillard’s alliance partner made without consulting the Prime Minister.

Mr Dastyari, who described the Greens as “extremists not unlike One Nation”, said Labor must “stop treating them like they are part of our family … Where it is in the Labor Party’s interest to do so, we should consider placing (the Greens) last – just like we did with One Nation,” he said. 

The state secretary will move a motion at next weekend’s NSW party conference calling on Labor to “no longer provide the Greens party automatic preferential treatment in any future preference negotiations”, and hopes other state branches will follow suit.

The motion also declares that “extreme elements” of the Greens’ social and economic agenda “are at odds with the values and needs of many Labor voters”. (source)

And Paul Howes of the AWU finally (finally!) works it out as well:

If the Greens had their way, I doubt NSW would ever win the State of Origin.

There probably wouldn’t even be a State of Origin – we’d just sit around with Queenslanders and play pass the parcel. After all, the Greens in NSW have a policy of promoting “non-competitive sports” such as yoga, dance, trampolining and tai chi over the traditional sports that Australian children enjoy playing.

As their policy explains, the Greens “believe too much emphasis is placed on full body contact sports often causing unnecessary physical damage and confining opportunities for participation to the athletic elite.”

Sorry kids – no more rugby, no more Aussie rules, no more hockey or netball. Let’s all go meditate instead.

I’m not sure if the Greens who wrote this ridiculous policy have kids, or ever were children themselves, but expecting children not be competitive is just bizarre.

Children will find a way to turn just about anything into a competition – and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

In the blissful Green world-view, competition is bad, therefore winning is bad. No one can stand out, so we should all be brought down to the lowest common denominator.

They have got away with their grab-bag of loopy and out-there policies for years. They’ve got away with it by being passed off as a group of eccentric but basically harmless hippies.

People assumed that the Greens might have some weird ideas, but they are never going to run the show, so we don’t need to worry about them.

Well, we can no longer afford to be so complacent. (source)

Read it all.

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Craig Emerson dances on the grave of the Australian economy

3 July, 2012 by

Singing a requiem for Labor

If you haven’t seen this video, please be prepared with a sick bag – and don’t have any sharp objects around with which you may wish to inflict harm on your computer.

Craig Emerson comes to an interview with the ABC prepared with a pre-recorded soundtrack to participate in one of the most embarrassing interviews I have ever seen –  not just from this Labor rabble, but in my life.

On the day after the pointless and damaging carbon tax was introduced, and Gillard suggested those who questioned it were simply foolish, we have this:

Words. Fail. Me.

All I can struggle to manage is, keep it up, Craigie boy. You have just torpedoed another massive hole in your sinking government.

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