Catalyst’s catastrophism

4 June, 2014 by

In cinemas now!

In cinemas now!

Catalyst is supposed to be a science programme, but ends up looking more like a low-budget disaster movie.

Last night’s episode was a case in point:

NARRATION
… But fire is changing. Over the past decade, every forested continent has seen an alarming surge in large, uncontrollable fires. [pause for dramatic effect] Mega-fires.

Prof David Bowman
The sort of metaphoric equivalent of an atomic bomb, that’s what a mega fire is, it’s muscular, it’s mean, it’s big, it’s aggressive.

Prof Tom Swetnam
Really fast burning fires. And their local intensity is just amazing.… these are extraordinary fire events.

NARRATION
So extraordinary, they demolish the very ecosystems that have thrived with fire for millennia.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

‘Angry Summer’ gives way to ‘Abnormal Autumn’

3 June, 2014 by

Chief Alarmist

Chief Alarmist

I wonder if the propagandists, sorry, er ‘scientists’, at the Climate Council sit around all day thinking of these cheesy monikers?

According to head agitprop generator Will Steffen, the climate is in a foul mood. No, really:

The climate system is in a foul mood. From “angry summer” to “abnormal autumn” – we’re running out of words to describe the relentless extreme weather that Australia is experiencing as global temperatures continue to increase because of climate change. Now the exceptional heat has carried on into the autumn of 2014 in Australia.

What we are witnessing here is the final crazy rantings of a scare that is in its death throes. Nobody is listening any more and we have to scream, shout and throw tantrums to get any attention.

Yes, we have had a warm start to Autumn, but other parts of the globe are colder than average, meaning, surprisingly, that global temperatures have still barely changed since 2001. As for the climate being in a ‘foul mood’, the weather outside today is a beautiful Autumn day, thanks very much. The only ones in a foul mood are the hysterical alarmists who aren’t getting their way any more.

That won’t stop them, however. We will no doubt have Wild Winter, Stormy Spring, Sweltering Summer… all thanks to our crazy catastrophist climatologists.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

The flip side of ‘consensus’ is groupthink

1 June, 2014 by

Group-think rules…

Group-think rules…

Christopher Booker, writing in the UK Telegraph, examines the flip side of ‘consensus’:

Some time back, a reader drew my attention to the book in which, 40 years ago, a Yale professor of psychology, Irving Janis, analysed what, with a conscious nod to George Orwell, he called “groupthink”. It is a term we all casually use (which even he derived from another writer), but he identified eight symptoms of groupthink. One is the urge of its victims to insist that their view is held as a “consensus” by all morally right-thinking people. Another is their ruthless desire to suppress any evidence that might lead someone to question it. A third is their urge to stereotype and denigrate anyone who dares hold a dissenting view. Their intolerance of “independent critical thinking”, as Janis put it, leads them to “irrational and dehumanised actions directed against outgroups”.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

‘Get at the truth, and not fool yourself’

29 May, 2014 by

Don't diss me, man

Don’t diss me, man

John Cook’s 97% is, quite frankly, bullshit. A simple statistic by, for and on behalf of, the simple minded, to be bandied about as often as possible, hoping that no-one actually bothers to enquire what it means.

And relying on the old adage that a lie, repeated often enough, will eventually become the truth. “97% of climate scientists agree that… [insert assertion here]” is a big heavy weapon used to beat dissenters around the head.

As always, however, the reality is vastly different. What do they agree on? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Q: What do you do when you have no arguments?

27 May, 2014 by

A: Appeal to emotion instead. From Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science:

Mawkish sentimentality

Mawkish sentimentality

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

The inanity of the Left

25 May, 2014 by

Sometimes one is just staggered by the inanity of the Left, witness the outrage at Tony Abbott’s wink in a radio studio.

Click for full image

Click for full front page…

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With: ,

UQ: Threats and hot air – and an FoI

22 May, 2014 by

Pacman lives!

Pacman lives!

UPDATE: Even the Washington Post is now in on this story, with a piece entitled: Is it copyright infringement to post a lawyer’s cease-and-desist letter?

More popcorn required, as UQ jumps the shark on the release of data relating to John Cook’s Consensus Project.

If you google “97%” and “climate” it returns nearly 13 million hits, all thanks to Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science’s attempt to shut down debate. The Consensus Project used a number of raters, the majority of whom were warmists, to review abstracts from 26,000 papers and categorise them as to their agreement or otherwise with the global warming consensus. The results were then published in a journal, the abstract of which reads: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Warmist apostacy: the climate jihadists strike

15 May, 2014 by

The warmists are coming to get you…

The warmist mob is coming to get you…

The intolerance of the climate caliphate makes Boko Haram look like the Salvation Army.

Just as the soldiers of Allah must not be impeded from spreading their message through the lands of the infidels, and any apostate sentenced to death, so must any convert from the religion of climate alarmism be similarly punished.

Only last night I was at a lecture given by the great conservative philosopher Roger Scruton (thanks to the IPA), and the threads that ran through his subjects were free speech, political correctness and the suppression of dissent.

There is an ‘accepted’ (PC) view on important issues in our society, such as climate change, gay marriage, immigration, integration etc – if you want to know what they are, just tune in to the ABC, or read the Sydney Morning Herald or the Melbourne Age. Those media organisations subscribe wholesale to the PC bible. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Budget 2014: Fixing Labor’s mess

14 May, 2014 by

Labor's economic policy

Labor’s economic policy

Giving any Left-of-Centre party the reins of government is like giving Dracula the keys to the blood bank.

Firstly, they spend like there is no tomorrow, and when they run out of money, they just put up taxes and/or borrow more, which eventually cripples the economy and bankrupts the government. It never gets to that stage of course, because the electorate, who generally appear to have very short memories, vote them out at the last minute and leave the fiscal conservatives to clean up the mess. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With: , , ,

Coalition’s ‘direct action’ policy almost as pointless as carbon tax

11 May, 2014 by

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

I was reprimanded by a commenter yesterday for being ‘inconsistent’ and apparently ‘more interested in insulting those on the other side of politics’, as a result of not having sufficiently criticised the Coalition’s direct action policy.

Well, there are a number of reasons why posting has been light over the past few months, including a variety of other commitments which have meant the blog has been lower down the list of priorities, but I am very happy to go on the record to state that the Coalition’s direct action policy on climate is almost as pointless as Labor’s ETS or carbon tax. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,
«Previous Page
Next Page»