Skewering the clueless
As always, a great read!
Daily Bayonet GW Hoax Weekly Roundup
4 June, 2010 by
Quote of the Day – Kevin Trenberth
4 June, 2010 by
Quote of the Day
As the papers are full of James Hansen shrieking that 2010 will be the “hottest year on record” (in other words since about 1880*, and based on his own, highly suspect, GISS temperature data set), it takes a fellow warmist to get it right for a change:
“We have seen rapid warming recently, but it is an example of natural variation that is associated with changes in the Pacific [El Niño] rather than climate change.” (source)
(H/t WUWT)
*By the way, if the age of the earth were represented by one day, the period since 1880 equates to approximately 2/1000 ths of a second.
Rudd hints at new ETS
3 June, 2010 by
Is this a backflip on a backflip? Kevin Rudd is threatening a new ETS, to be introduced after the election and passed with support from the Greens:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has hinted at a whole new approach to climate change – a greener ETS, passed sooner than planned.
The federal government has officially delayed its ETS until at least 2013 after failing to convince the Liberals to pass it.
But Mr Rudd changed tack during a media conference with a well-known advocate for action on climate change today.
He opened the door to passing an ETS after this year’s election, and with the help of the Australian Greens, not the Liberals.
A recent poll shows Labor is losing votes to the Greens, who have soared to a record level of support.
“We need to make sure that the Senate becomes, shall I say, positioned in a manner which is able to deliver that change to Australia’s domestic laws,” Mr Rudd said at a news conference with the Maldives President.
You literally cannot trust a single word this man utters – a prime minister without any principles who will do anything to stay in power.
Read it here.
Sweet irony: Pacific islands "growing, not sinking"
3 June, 2010 by
The game's up
I love it when a story like this comes along – I couldn’t have scripted it better myself. After the wailing and whinging from the Pacific islands at every climate conference about how “sea level rises” are going to sink their homes and that we need to transfer billions of dollars in climate aid, we discover that the islands are actually … increasing in size! The ABC is shocked, shocked I tell you, that yet another disaster in the waiting cannot be pinned on climate change any more:
Climate scientists have expressed surprise at findings that many low-lying Pacific islands are growing, not sinking.
Islands in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia are among those which have grown, largely due to coral debris, land reclamation and sediment.
The findings, published in the magazine New Scientist [ouch, I bet that hurt], were gathered by comparing changes to 27 Pacific islands over the last 20 to 60 years using historical aerial photos and satellite images.
Auckland University’s Associate Professor Paul Kench, a member of the team of scientists, says the results challenge the view that Pacific islands are sinking due to rising sea levels associated with climate change.
“Eighty per cent of the islands we’ve looked at have either remained about the same or, in fact, gotten larger,” he said.
“Some of those islands have gotten dramatically larger, by 20 or 30 per cent.
“We’ve now got evidence the physical foundations of these islands will still be there in 100 years.”
Dr Kench says the growth of the islands can keep pace with rising sea levels.
“The reason for this is these islands are so low lying that in extreme events waves crash straight over the top of them,” he said.
“In doing that they transport sediment from the beach or adjacent reef platform and they throw it onto the top of the island.”
Barry Brook, well known climate alarmist, is shocked, shocked, I tell you:
“Sea levels are obviously rising – I think in the short term [the study] suggests that there’s maybe more time to do something about the problem than we’d first anticipated,” he said.
“But the key problem is that sea level rise is likely to accelerate much beyond what we’ve seen in the 20th century.”
Ah yes – your flaky computer models tell you that I guess? Well, take a look at the actual sea level measurements for a change, and you will see that they doing nothing unusual whatsoever – rising by a few millimetres a year like they have since the end of the last Ice Age – despite the “global warming” we have apparently had for the last 150 years.
But the people of the Pacific islands are not likely to give up their “climate debt blank cheque” in a hurry, so they’re doing some quick work to sweep all this under the carpet:
Naomi Thirobaux, from Kiribati, has studied the shape of Pacific islands for her PhD and says no-one should be lulled into thinking erosion and inundation is not taking its toll and displacing people from their land.
“In a populated area what would happen was that if it’s eroding, a few metres would actually displace people,” she said.
“In a populated place people can’t move back or inland because there’s hardly any place to move into, so that’s quite dramatic.”
Both Dr Kench and Dr Brook and scientists agree further rises in sea levels pose a significant danger to the livelihoods of people living in Tuvalu, Kirabati and the Federated States of Micronesia.
Sorry – doesn’t wash any more. Go to the back of the queue.
Read it here.
Al Gore and wife Tipper to separate
2 June, 2010 by
Separating
From The Sydney Morning Herald:
Former US vice president and anti-global warming campaigner Al Gore and his wife Tipper have told friends that they will separate after four decades of marriage, an aide said Tuesday.
“They’ve asked for privacy during this time, for them and their family,” said Kalee Kreider, of the Office of Al and Tipper Gore.
Kreider confirmed that the Gores — whose affection for each other was evident at social gatherings in Washington for 40 years, notably during his failed 2000 White House run — had let friends know of their plans by email.
“We are announcing today that after a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate,” they said in the message, first reported by the online publication Politico.
“This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration. We ask for respect for our privacy and that of our family, and we do not intend to comment further,” they said.
Read it here.
Anthony Watts' Tour of Australia
1 June, 2010 by
Anthony Watts
Just booked my ticket to see Anthony on 13 June, so thought I’d give the tour another plug. Anthony writes the excellent climate blog Watts Up With That? which beats every other climate blog on the planet (whether sceptic or warmist) for popularity hands down. Also speaking will be David Archibald and David Stockwell.
Here is the full list of tour dates – hope some of my local readers can get along to some of these events:
Tour Schedule
Sydney NSW: Sunday 13 June 2010, 6:30 pm
Rockdale Town Hall, 448 Princes Highway (corner Bryant Street)
Anthony Watts, David Archibald and Tim Curtin
$25 per person, $20 if you make a booking or are a pensioner
Contact: Bill Koutalianos 0407 076 982
Townsville QLD: Monday 14 June 2010, 7:00 pm
Ignatius Park College Assembly Hall, 368 Ross River Rd, Cranbrook
Anthony Watts, David Archibald, Peter Ridd and Bob Carter
$20 per person
Contact: Michael Rowley 0407 727 163
Brisbane QLD: Tuesday 15 June 2010, 7:00 pm
Tara Ballroom, The Irish Club, 175 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane
Anthony Watts, David Archibald and Bob Carter
$25 per person, $20 if you make a booking or are a pensioner
Contact: Tony Gomme 0413 100 055
[Read more…]
ABC's stitch-up of Bjorn Lomborg
31 May, 2010 by
This is Bjorn Lomborg, I wanted to bring you a picture of Howard Friel, but I couldn't because there's not a single picture of him on the internet
UPDATE: Howard Friel responds personally to this post in the comments section (see here)
Interview? More like an ambush, as Robyn “100 metres” Williams on ABC’s Science Show devotes a long segment of the programme to Howard Friel, who has been embraced by the warmists for having written a book criticising Bjorn Lomborg’s book Cool It. Before we even start, you kind of know people are really desperate when they have to write an entire book just for that purpose. But anyway, we’ll let that pass.
Firstly, however, and I’m sorry to ask … but just who the hell is Howard Friel? I cannot find anything about him other than he is an “author”. Take a look at his Wikipedia entry – blink and you’ll miss it. [UPDATE: An answer is provided by commenter Pat B: “Mr. Friel is a hard-left idologue, an Israel-hater, and a minor satellite in the Chomsky system. He is drearily predictable, and his mode of entry into the climate debate is consistent with his established practice of attacking the ‘moderate’ left from the perspective of the ultra-left. His previously published work, all from Verso, an avowedly leftist publisher, attacks the New York Times for spreading George W. Bush’s ‘lies’ and its cover-up of Israel’s “crimes” against the Palestinians. Now he attacks Bjorn Lomborg – not by mistake, but because there is nothing the hard left hates more than the ‘soft’ left.”] He has no history of writing about climate, no knowledge of climate science that I can find, no qualifications whatsoever in fact to write such a book. Ah, hang on a minute – qualifications only matter if you’re a sceptic, right? That must be it – Al Gore gets a free pass to say whatever he likes – but every utterance of a sceptic is scrutinised to the last letter, including his qualifications. So I think we’ll do the same, just for balance: where are yours? [Read more…]
Yet another UN climate gabfest
31 May, 2010 by
What the ABC thinks CO2 looks like…
It’s a whirling carousel of junkets for UN climate negotiators, as the latest talks kick off in Bonn. The UN knows that the climate game is almost up, so at the same time as lining up the next fabricated crisis via which to tax, regulate and generally get up the noses of ordinary people (that would be biodiversity, by the way), will no doubt throw everything at getting a deal locked in before the whole AGW edifice collapses:
Six months after the Copenhagen climate talks, delegates from more than 190 nations were starting a fresh round of talks in Germany on Monday night.
The United Nations is attempting to revive talks for a legally binding international climate treaty. [Sorry, the patient died on the operating table]
The UN says the mandate for all nations is to agree on a long-term global solution to climate change. [How about “Do nothing and adapt where necessary for a thousandth of the cost of CO2 reductions”?]
Copenhagen did not deliver a treaty with mandatory targets or a deadline to reduce the planet’s emissions.
The UN will table a new text at the Bonn meeting to integrate the Copenhagen Accord into a stronger climate deal.
Yeah, good luck with that. Nobody’s really watching any more. Wonder how many Australia is sending at taxpayers’ expense?
Read it here.
OT: Kevin Rudd misleads Parliament on mining tax ads
31 May, 2010 by
Couldn't lie straight in bed
Desperate times call for desperate measures. And there isn’t anyone more desperate at the moment than our Dear Leader, Saint Kevin of Kruddistan, who, not content with bungling the home insulation scheme (resulting in the death of four young men), backflipping on his centrepiece climate policy, wasting billions of your taxpayer dollars on the school building programme, and presiding over the greatest increase in asylum seeker arrivals in history, has now mislead Parliament about the reasons for avoiding his own government’s policy on political advertising.
Rudd sought an exemption from the policy to spruik his mining super-profits tax, claiming, laughably, that the mining industry was behind a campaign of misinformation [well he should know, he’s an expert at campaigns of misinformation]. As Glenn Milne reports in The Australian:
[…] we only need to go as far back as Thursday when Tony Abbott asked the Prime Minister if he would now abandon the mining tax. Abbott cited four reasons; “the collapsing dollar, the falling stockmarket, the suspension of projects and the evaporation of jobs”.
It’s the falling stockmarket that concerns us here. In a lengthy answer, Rudd comprehensively rejected Abbott’s assertion that the government’s tax had had any impact on capital markets.
Let’s go the PM’s own words: “This goes to the other point he [Abbott] has made. I quote him from an earlier remark when he said, ‘Our sharemarket is under pressure because the government has totally mismanaged its proposal of a big new tax on mining’.
“Let us go to the facts of this matter. Share prices around the world have fallen because of the crisis in Greece and the honourable Leader of the Opposition would know that. Secondly, within mining itself he is yet to adduce any data to support the proposition. So on proposition No 1 about the dollar, on proposition No 2 about the share price, on proposition No 3 about employment: wrong, wrong, wrong, against all the factual data.”
Unfortunately the following day another piece of “factual data” surfaced in the form of Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig’s statement that he was exempting the government from its own lily white guidelines on taxpayers’ advertising to allow a $38m assault on the mining industry.
Among the reasons specifically cited by Ludwig for the exemption was the following: “I have also accepted the Treasurer’s advice that, as the tax reforms involve changes to the value of some capital assets, they impact on financial markets.”
So, the day after Rudd tells parliament Abbott’s claims the mining tax is affecting financial markets are garbage, his government uses the same rationale to justify rorting its own advertising standards.
But it gets worse. We now know that Swan first canvassed the idea of an advertising exemption based on market impacts at the time of the budget. So Rudd would have known about that justification since May 11. Then he told the parliament the opposite on Thursday.
When will the Australian public finally tire of this pitiful disgrace of a Prime Minister?
Read it here.
Shock: Newsweek runs balanced article on climate
30 May, 2010 by
Shock climate realism
Like toppling dominoes, media organisations and institutions are changing their stance on climate at an astonishing rate. Having realised that they have been thoroughly taken in my the politically and financially driven alarmism of the IPCC and many climate scientists, they are now back-pedalling furiously in order to limit the damage to their reputations. Newsweek, a veritable bastion of climate hysteria (thanks in no small part to the rantings of Sharon Begley), publishes a remarkably balanced article about the current state of the climate debate (thanks to Climate Depot):
This is no dispute between objective scientists and crazed flat-earthers. The lines cut through the profession itself. Very few scientists dispute a link between man-made CO2 and global warming. Where it gets fuzzy is the extent and time frame of the effect. One crucial point of contention is climate “sensitivity”—the mathematical formula that translates changes in CO2 production to changes in temperature. In addition, scientists are not sure how to explain a slowdown in the rise of global temperatures that began about a decade ago.
The backlash against climate science is also about the way in which leading scientists allied themselves with politicians and activists to promote their cause. Some of the IPCC’s most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles, and corporate reports—including claims of plummeting crop yields in Africa and the rising costs of warming-related natural disasters, both of which have been refuted by academic studies.
Just as damaging, many climate scientists have responded to critiques by questioning the integrity of their critics, rather than by supplying data and reasoned arguments. When other researchers aired doubt about the IPCC’s prediction that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035, the IPCC’s powerful chief, Rajendra Pachauri, trashed their work as “voodoo science.” Even today, after dozens of IPCC exaggerations have surfaced, leading climate officials like U.N. Environment Program chief Achim Steiner and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research head Joachim Schellnhuber continue to tar-brush critics as “anti-Enlightenment” and engaging in “witch hunts.”
All very reasonable commentary, which ACM fully endorses. And the final paragraph sums it up well:
There are excellent reasons to limit emissions and switch to cleaner fuels—including an estimated 750,000 annual pollution deaths in China, the potential to create jobs at home instead of enriching nasty regimes sitting on oil wells, the need to provide cheap sources of power to the world’s poorest regions, and the still-probable threat that global warming is underway. At the moment, however, certainty about how fast—and how much—global warming changes the earth’s climate does not appear to be one of those reasons.
Well said indeed. Let’s wait for the inevitable backlash and torrent of ad hominems from the hysterics towards this poor author…
Read it here (and reinstate my subscription – maybe).
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