You’ve got mail!

17 July, 2014 by

Warm mail

Warm mail

Usually I just ignore this kind of crap, but hey, it’s a very good day today, so for your entertainment I will share this email received earlier today:

Are you serious?

The debate on climate science is so far into the positive, with thousands of scientifically proven articles stating the same that I am surprised you even exist. But then you are supported by the big business/Liberal party end of town.

Shame on you for misrepresenting the science of human induced climate change. There may be other factors involved, but we as a species have made the greatest impact. Except for you lot of course, who have no positive impact at all.

How many PhD’s on your books do you have by the way?

Disgusted. Next thing you’ll tell me that the bible is all true and that the world is only six thousand years old.

Thanks, Andrew. I know it’s tough when your religion suffers a knock, but as the song goes:

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Media sheds tears for axed carbon tax

17 July, 2014 by

It's all too much! Sob!

It’s all too much! Sob!

The inner-city basket-weaving yoghurt-knitting sandalistas that make up the Fairfax and ABC’s environment desks are already writing the eulogies for their beloved tax.

First cab off the rank is the ABC’s Sara Phillips (see ACM here), who attributes the public’s lack of enthusiasm to an ignorant fear of the unknown, stoked up by who else? Tony Abbott:

In the lead-up to last year’s election, Abbott repeatedly told us that the carbon tax would be a wrecking ball through the economy. He told us that electricity prices would be all kinds of terrible as a result of the carbon tax. He told us that the carbon tax wouldn’t bring down Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a tax, he said. A Great Big New Tax On Everything.

He was wrong on all of these accounts, of course. But the damage was done.

‘Of course’ he was wrong! You fools! She continues:

But like Shelley’s creation, it was not quite the horrendous beast we feared. The economy continues to defy prediction, quietly growing.

The latest figures from December show that Australia’s emissions have dropped 0.8 per cent, with most of the fall being explained by a 5 per cent drop in emissions from electricity generation.

It grew thanks to putting adults in charge of the shop last September, and the removal of that hopeless bunch of pre-schoolers who had spent six years grinding the country into the ground with their incompetence. But nice try, anyway. Just remind me what difference those emission reductions would have made to the climate again… oh, that’s right, zero.

Fairfax isn’t far behind, with a gushing, tear-stained hymn of praise for the Senate climate warriors of the Left. Be warned, strong stomach required:

Amid ongoing speculation over Christine Milne’s leadership style and future, the Greens leaders’ Senate performance has been passionate, emotional and, most of all, resolute. Senator Milne had a great deal invested in the legislation that created the price on carbon that kicked in on July 1, 2012. Its abolishment [sic] on Thursday was personal.

She has spent much of this week seamlessly switching between offering forceful condemnations of the government’s undoing of the legislation and in promising renewed vigour from her minor party in restoring action to address global warming.

Just moments before the final Senate action that killed the carbon tax 39 votes to 32, Senator Milne appeared very much a political leader determined to keep climate change at the forefront of the political debate.

“This is a critical moment for our nation and there are a number of new senators in this chamber today,” she said.

“Their vote today and the vote of every person in this debate will be the legacy of their political career.”

And with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten committing Labor to campaign on an emissions trading scheme as a central theme of the next federal election, his party’s leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, championed the cause with her usual skill and smooth, calculated passion.

Another standout performer in this debate has been Tasmanian Labor senator Lisa Singh, grasping her new junior environment and climate change portfolio with gusto.

The shadow parliamentary secretary was Labor’s most riveting advocate this week for keeping the price on carbon.

Again, just moments before that argument was lost, Senator Singh delivered a stinging rebuke to the government and those senators who joined with it in repealing the legislation.

“We are sending this country backwards,” she said.

“All for what? For playing politics. Playing politics with Australia’s future; playing politics with the environment; playing politics with our children.

“And it is an outrageous moment in Australia’s history.”

Too much for my stomach… Pass the sick bag.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Celebrate! Australia’s carbon [dioxide] tax is GONE!

17 July, 2014 by

Crack open the bubbly!

Crack open the bubbly!

The carbon tax, that utterly pointless environmental gesture that would have done nothing for the climate, has been repealed today in the Senate. Good riddance.

The toxic tax, together with the originally planned emissions trading scheme, has claimed, over the years, about half a dozen senior politicians, including Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull, all of whom have shackled themselves to the altar of climate change alarmism, and paid the price.

The Australian reports:

THE carbon tax has been repealed, fulfilling Tony Abbott’s “pledge in blood” to abolish the landmark Gillard government scheme.

The Senate passed the government’s amended carbon tax repeal bills by a margin of 39 votes to 32 at 11.14am, with only the Labor Party and the Greens opposing their passage into law.

It was the Senate’s third attempt to pass the repeal legislation.

The vote was held as Bill Shorten gave a clear pledge to take a new carbon pricing mechanism to the next federal election, due in 2016, in the form of an emissions trading scheme.

They never learn, do they? Idiots. You can add Shorten to the above list of climate victims.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

The Scientific Circle Jerk

16 July, 2014 by

Good enough, right?

Good enough, right?

The alarmist line goes like this: peer-review is the process which separates ‘proper’ science from the incoherent rantings of deniers.

Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the gold standard by which climate science should be judged. Hence the alarmists’ obsession with it – almost like the inevitable ad hominem attacks on any sceptical author, this is an ad editionem on the publication.

‘Not peer-reviewed’ is the equivalent of the big oil cheque in the post – you are inferior to us and therefore we don’t need to consider you or your arguments any further. Except of course when that ‘not peer-reviewed’ literature happens to support the alarmist cause, since a sizeable chunk of the IPCC reports are built on press releases and news articles from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. Who said anything about applying the rules consistently?

Anyway, it is clear that there are numerous opportunities for corruption of the peer-review process. How about a paper written by an AGW believer, and peer-reviewed by three more AGW believers? They are highly unlikely to call out a paper that might be scientifically bogus, but which advances an agenda on which all four agree.

When there is a status quo, which is in the interest of scientists to maintain for financial or business reasons (in climate, the massive funding of climate research which bolsters the consensus), how likely is it that anyone will put his head above the parapet, to get it shot at and blown off?

Well surprise (not), since that is exactly what happens, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

In a July 8, 2004, email, one scientist assured another that the hypothesis they shared would prevail “even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Exactly 10 years later, RetractionWatch.com reported that Peter Chen, a researcher at Taiwan’s National Pingtung University of Education, had undertaken such a redefinition. “SAGE Publishers is retracting 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a ‘peer review and citation ring,’ ” noted RetractionWatch’s Ivan Oransky.

According to a statement from SAGE, “it was discovered that the author had created various aliases on SAGE Track, providing different email addresses to set up more than one account. Consequently, SAGE scrutinised further the co-authors of and reviewers selected for Peter Chen’s papers, [and] these names appeared to form part of a peer review ring. The investigation also revealed that on at least one occasion, the author Peter Chen reviewed his own paper under one of the aliases he had created.”

And we all know who is responsible for that quote about redefining peer-review, don’t we? That’s right – Phil Jones of CRU at the University of East Anglia, he of Climategate fame.

Read the rest of the article here, and the original op-ed that prompted it here.

h/t Hockey Schtick

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Hypocrisy of the BBC

11 July, 2014 by

BBC: loves Gore, hates Lawson

BBC: loves Gore, hates Lawson

Censorship now rules at the British publicly funded broadcaster, the BBC.

On a current affairs programme in February of this year, Lord (Nigel) Lawson of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) was brought in to debate Sir Brian Hoskins of the (ultra alarmist) Grantham Institute, home of the odious Bob Ward.

Subsequently, a Greens activist (naturally) complained that the BBC was guilty of giving ‘false balance’ to the flat-earthers. Hugh Muir of the Grauniad takes up the story:

It still sends a frisson down the spine of certain producers to give airtime to the former chancellor Lord Lawson so that he can chip away at the widespread scientific agreement over the causes and impact of climate change. The temperature is always a little higher with a heretic in the room. And yet this route towards excitement has its dangers. As the go-to guy in the thinktank of his own creation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Lawson was called in February to the studios of the Today programme for debate with Sir Brian Hoskins, a climatologist from Imperial College London.

Things did not go as they should, and the broadcast became the subject of a complaint from Chit Chong, a Green party activist. Reviewing the broadcast, the BBC’s head of editorial complaints, Fraser Steel, took a dim view. “Lord Lawson’s views are not supported by the evidence from computer modelling and scientific research,” Steel says, “and I don’t believe this was made sufficiently clear to the audience … Furthermore the implication was that Lord Lawson’s views on climate change were on an equal footing with those of Sir Brian.”

And they aren’t. Sceptics have their place in the debate, Steel says in his provisional finding, but “it is important to ensure that such views are put into the appropriate context and given due (rather than equal) weight.” Chong is only partially satisfied. He’d like a right of reply and perhaps a balancing programme. And others say “due weight” should mean not having Lawson on at all. Still, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Furthermore, the Telegraph reports:

Lord Lawson wrote that Fraser Steel, head of the unit, apologised to Mr Chong “for the fact I was allowed to appear on the programme and to make clear this will not happen again”.

In other words, they won’t be inviting Lawson back, effectively censoring his contribution to the debate.

But let’s look at whether the BBC sticks to its own rules, and, guess what? Surprise! The ‘false balance’ argument only applies to sceptics.

A Google search of “Al Gore” and climate on the bbc.co.uk site reveals nearly 12,000 hits, and top result is from just three days ago! Didn’t they get the memo? You can’t have unqualified people speaking about climate! We all know that Al Gore has no science qualifications and therefore has no right to speak on climate change, apart perhaps from having made a ludicrous and inaccurate propaganda video in 2007.

But that doesn’t stop the BBC giving Gore a platform to spout yet more propaganda, unchallenged.

See? It’s not a question of false balance, it’s a question of getting the right message out – the alarmist message. As Lawson rightly says:

“If there is to be a ban on non-scientists discussing climate change issues (which I do not, of course, support), this should in the best BBC tradition be an even-handed one. That is to say, they should also ban non-scientists such as energy secretary Ed Davey, Ed Miliband, Lord Deben (chairman of the government’s climate advisory committee), Lord Stern (former adviser to the government on the economics of climate change and development) and all the others who are regularly invited to appear.”

Let’s have a look at the ABC (the Australian Bolsheviks Collective) here in Australia. Top of the list must be cracked-crystal-ball-wielding Tim Flannery, he of the many and varied dud predictions. A Google search of his name on the ABC web site reveals nearly 7,000 hits with ‘climate’. Just last week, the ABC spruiked Flannery as a ‘climate scientist’ (see image).

Flannery a 'climate scientist'?

Flannery a ‘climate scientist’? [click to enlarge]

He is nothing of the sort, of course. He’s a mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist (whatever that is), and… ta da! … ‘global warming activist’. Thus spake Wikipedia. So it doesn’t matter if you’re not a climate scientist, global warming activist will do just as well.

We can add to our list other favourites of the ABC, Stephan Lewandowsky (psychologist), Clive Hamilton (no idea, but certainly not climate science), Robyn Williams, etc etc. So it’s all fine and dandy for our public broadcaster to drag in unqualified persons to rattle on about climate change, as long as it’s the approved message they’re spouting.

But think about the reverse – if engaging Lawson to debate Hoskins is false balance, how about the BBC get on the phone to Dr Roy Spencer, or Pat Michaels, or Richard Lindzen? They are as distinguished climate scientists as you could hope to get, so that should satisfy the ‘false balance’ conundrum, right?

Er, no. Roy Spencer manages a tad over 300 mentions on bbc.co.uk, and only one in the last 12 months… and a fair amount of those hits may also be reader comments.

Surely Lindzen will do better?

Nope. The learned professor manages just over 200 mentions, and in the last four years, just three…

How about Pat Michaels?

Zero. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

Clearly the BBC isn’t trying very hard to find any kind of balance on climate, and would rather censor debate in its own Stalinist fashion.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Czech president: Political Correctness = Political Cowardice

4 July, 2014 by

Milos Zeman

Milos Zeman

UPDATE: Watch Brigitte Gabriel comprehensively eviscerate political correctness here.

The Czechs have produced some amazing statesmen.

Former president Vaclav Klaus courageously spoke out against the climate change hysteria, knowing full well the smears and attacks that would come his way as a result. And now current president Miloš Zeman speaks out about the real cause of Islamic aggression around the world.

The libtard media are forever pussyfooting around the issue, cowed by threats of being labelled ‘Islamophobic’, endlessly repeating the myth that continual terrorist attacks in the name of Islam have ‘nothing to do with Islam’ and that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’. Anyone with half a brain knows that is complete bullshit, but the media does such a good job of shifting the blame on to the West that most people are completely in the dark. Islam is a violent, supremacist political ideology masquerading as a religion, which is wholly incompatible with Western democracy and freedoms.

Robert Spencer over at JihadWatch (an excellent site by the way), skewers the issue brilliantly. After whatever latest atrocity carried out in the name of Islam, he will say ‘How can the Imams and Islamic ‘scholars’ in the Middle East be getting Islam so wrong? Don’t they know that it’s a religion of peace? Anyone would think they were just greasy Islamophobes!’ and urges the West’s apologists to go and educate them about the real nature of their religion. Very powerful stuff.

Political correctness is the reluctance to speak the truth for fear of causing offence, in other words it is, as Zeman says, a euphemism for cowardice, and it is slowly destroying our society from within. In the climate arena, it is the fear of being labelled a ‘denier’ and to be judged morally bankrupt (‘think of the children and grandchildren’) if one dares to question the alarmist narrative, which is causing harm and poverty to millions. In relation to Islam, it is fear of being labelled ‘Islamophobic’, ‘racist’, ‘bigoted’, or some other equally offensive term, in the face of a significant threat to our Western freedoms – freedoms which in the past we fought hard to preserve, and which now, apparently, we are happy to give up, a little at a time, without a struggle.

But that’s typical of the Left. Rather than deal with the issue head on, the libtard’s easy option is to apply a label, thereby securing an imagined moral superiority which obviates the need for further debate.

Unless people have the courage to speak the truth about those things that are a threat to our society, climate hysteria and Islamic supremacism being just two, we are finished.

(h/t AB)

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With: ,

How to annoy a climate scientist – a guide

29 June, 2014 by

How annoying can you be?

How annoying can you be?

The Guardian helpfully provides a handy cut-out-n-keep guide for how to get up your local climate alarmist’s nose.

Graham Readfearn gives the poor little lambs a platform to wail about all the injustices they have to put up with. Here are the edited highlights:

Andy Pitman

From our very own doorstep, UNSW Sydney. Andy doesn’t like unqualified people saying the moon is made of cheese (as all climate sceptics believe of course), and should basically shut up. Freedom of expression doesn’t rate very highly at UNSW, clearly.

Everyone knows sceptics don’t believe the moon is made of cheese… they believe the moon landings were faked, stupid! Duh! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Sanity check: Chief Scientist’s prophecy worthy of Tim Flannery

26 June, 2014 by

And that’s not a compliment, by the way.

The IPA newsletter this afternoon dredged up this story which was reported early in ACM’s life:

sackett

Crystal ball cracked?

Well we are only five and a bit months away from December 2014 by which time it would be ‘too late’, but what has happened to global temperatures in the last five years? Pretty much nothing. Despite CO2 levels increasing significantly. Even if we had reduced our emissions to zero on 4 December 2009, the difference it would have made to global temperatures would have been too small to measure – by several orders of magnitude.

That she could have been Australia’s Chief Scientist is mind-blowing. Further from the cool level-headed academic dispassionately reviewing data she could hardly be.

There will be plenty more of these duff predictions proven woefully inaccurate, each one a nail in the coffin of climate change alarmism.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Gore blimey – Al slums it with Clive Palmer…

25 June, 2014 by

What the heck is Clive Palmer up to? But more importantly, what on earth possessed Al Gore to appear with him at a press conference in Canberra? From being the world’s top climate guru to slumming it with Australia’s most unpredictable politician – how are the mighty fallen.

gore_palmer

Miner celebrities

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Nine inconvenient truths from Greenpeace founder

25 June, 2014 by

Patrick Moore

Patrick Moore

When one of an organisation’s founders dumps on it, you know it’s gone off the rails.

Patrick Moore, who helped to establish Greenpeace in the 70s, correctly points out that it has morphed from an environmental organisation into a cross between an extreme-left political ideology and a fundamentalist religion. He also lists nine inconvenient truths for the great unwashed:

  1. The concentration of CO2 in the global atmosphere is lower today, even including human emissions, than it has been during most of the existence of life on Earth.
  2. The global climate has been much warmer than it is today during most of the existence of life on Earth. Today we are in an interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age that began 2.5 million years ago and has not ended.
  3. There was an Ice Age 450 million years ago when CO2 was about 10 times higher than it is today.
  4. Humans evolved in the tropics near the equator. We are a tropical species and can only survive in colder climates due to fire, clothing and shelter.
  5. CO2 is the most important food for all life on earth. All green plants use CO2 to produce the sugars that provide energy for their growth and our growth. Without CO2 in the atmosphere carbon-based life could never have evolved.
  6. The optimum CO2 level for most plants is about 1600 parts per million, four times higher than the level today. This is why greenhouse growers purposely inject the CO2-rich exhaust from their gas and wood-fired heaters into the greenhouse, resulting in a 40-80 per cent increase in growth.
  7. If human emissions of CO2 do end up causing significant warming (which is not certain) it may be possible to grow food crops in northern Canada and Russia, vast areas that are now too cold for agriculture.
  8. Whether increased CO2 levels cause significant warming or not, the increased CO2 levels themselves will result in considerable increases in the growth rate of plants, including our food crops and forests.
  9. There has been no further global warming for nearly 18 years during which time about 25 per cent of all the CO2 ever emitted by humans has been added to the atmosphere. How long will it remain flat and will it next go up or back down? Now we are out of the realm of facts and back into the game of predictions.

Delingpole has the story here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:
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