Sea level sanity returning?

11 September, 2012 by

Sanity? (© SMH)

The previous Labor government in New South Wales slavishly followed the IPCC’s alarmist predictions for sea level rise, imposing onerous restrictions on waterfront development and reducing property values significantly in the process.

There have been a number of protests from residents in the Central Coast areas (see here, for example) over these alarmist and unnecessary policies.

Now however, a report from the NSW Chief Scientist abandons the previous policy of “managed retreat” in favour of further research into future sea levels and more individual freedoms to adapt as required, as the press release from Chris Hartcher explains:

The NSW Government today announced significant changes to the way the NSW coast will be managed, giving more freedom to landowners to protect their properties from erosion and dropping Labor’s onerous statewide sea level rise planning benchmarks.

Special Minister of State, Chris Hartcher said the changes mean councils will have the freedom to consider local conditions when determining future hazards.

The first stage of the NSW Government’s comprehensive coastal reforms will: 

  • Make it easier for coastal landholders to install temporary works to reduce the impacts of erosion on their properties;
  • Remove the compulsory application of sea level rise benchmarks;
  • Deliver clarity to councils on the preparation of section 149 notices by focusing on current known hazards; and
  • Support local councils by providing information and expert advice on sea level rise relevant to their local area.

Mr Hartcher said the changes strike the right balance between protecting property and managing the State’s vast coastline. (source – PDF)

The Chief Scientist’s report gives the following recommendations:

  1. Given the expected ongoing release of new and updated sets of global climate models and projections, work should begin on establishing the appropriate framework for deriving updated sea level projections for NSW coastal locations and then refining these projections as yet further model outputs become available.
  2. Considering the rapid pace of advancement in scientific understanding and computational and modelling capacity, and the improvement and lower costs of sensors, the NSW sea level rise projections should be reviewed at frequent intervals including at such time as the release of major new data for future climate projections.
  3. Sea level rise projections for the NSW coast should be reviewed through a process of formal consultations with experts in fields including climate science, geotechnical engineering, oceanography, atmospheric science, mathematical modelling, statistics, computational science and computer engineering. 

Perhaps the first sign of a return to sea level sanity?

The full report is available here (PDF).

(h/t Stewart F via email)

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Lewandowsky update

11 September, 2012 by

Lots of questions…

More on the moon landing denier paper:

I particularly like this bit in Lucia’s post in response to Lewandowsky’s third question:

3. Where do we go from here?

We read the contents of the invitations, note the dates and request copies of the other invitations and compare them. This will provide data to determine whether the method of inviting people was designed to introduce bias.

Precisely what the FOI will show. The University have advised that a decision will be made on 18 October 2012.

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The Lew Paper 'a landmark of junk science' – McIntyre

9 September, 2012 by

McIntyre: “junk science”

Steve McIntyre (Climate Audit) conducts a detailed and thorough analysis of the Professor’s moon landing denier paper, which concludes thus:

Lewandowsky, like Gleick, probably fancies himself a hero of the Cause. But ironically, Lewandowsky’s paper will stand only as a landmark of junk science – fake results from faked responses.

As Tom Curtis observed, Lewandowsky has no moral alternative but to withdraw his paper.

Unless it is acceptable practise for scientists to knowingly allow falsehood to be published under their name, on hearing of a significant flaw in their paper, the paper must be re-written if there is time; withdrawn and re-written if there is not time for a rewrite before going to press; or have a correction published if it has gone to press. Because these are minimal standards of proper conduct, suggesting that an as yet unprinted paper be re-written or withdrawn is no more offensive than suggesting that it contains major flaws. The only way my suggestions can be considered offensive is if it is insulting to suggest major flaws in somebodies paper. Such an ettiquette is, however, entirely inconsistent with the vigourous review that is the sin qua non of science. Such an ettiquette may have grown up among scientists by custom; but in that event it is irrational and I will not pander to it.”

Curtis did not allege “fraud or other scientific wrong doing” on Lewandowsky’s part. According to Curtis:

At most Lewandowsky has been too casual in screening for gamed responses; and slightly over interpreted the results. That represents a major flaw in the paper (if I am correct); but has no implications whatever about Lewandowsky’s integrity as a scientist. IMO, Lewandowsky’s choice of a title is, and should be, far more damaging to his reputation as a scientist than the other flaws (IMO) in his paper.

We’ll soon see whether Lewandowsky’s allegiance to the Cause and to his own self-importance is greater than his commitment to science. If Lewandowsky ignores Curtis’ call to withdraw the paper and, despite knowing of important flaws, proceeds to, in Curtis’ words, “knowingly allow falsehood to be published under [his] name”, it will also provide an interesting test of the relative strength of Curtis’ allegiance to the Cause relative to his commitment to science.

Read it here.

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Lew Paper?

9 September, 2012 by

Josh on Lewandowsky and the moon landing denier paper:

Cartoons by Josh

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Lewandowsky update

8 September, 2012 by

Lewandowsky, Rose and Oreskes

Yet more on the ‘moon landing denier’ paper from the buddy of John Cook at Un-Skeptical Pseudo-Science, who has a long history of smearing sceptics, and who devises a survey which conveniently shows that those who question the climate consensus are conspiracy theory kooks. Colour me surprised. Not.

The latest twist, according to Lewandowsky, is that the mere fact of querying the manner in which sceptic blogs were asked to participate in the survey is itself a “conspiracy theory” …

WUWT:

So explain to me professor Lewandowsky, how failure to receive or be able to find emails supposedly sent, without any other mode of contact or attempts at communication is somehow conspiracy theory.

If Lewandowsky sent an email, it likely ended up in SPAM. Lots of “take our quick survey” emails are spam these days. He should know better than to trust email as the only contact medium for something he deems important. Instead, he accuses us of being conspiracy theorists when we ask for proof.

Lucia:

I have absolutely no idea where anyone would get it into his wool-filled brain cavity that giving him permission to release information he claims to wish to release is evidence that I or anyone else harbor a conspiracy theory. I also don’t know why he thinks anyone would have egg on our faces if it turns out we are on the list. We are asking precisely because we want to know. Moreover, we are asking the information be shared because we want others to know.

I would also like to respond to his insinuation that we haven’t some how looked hard enough for the emails. I can only speak for myself, but I am happy to reveal why I am not going to look harder.

Conducting his survey may have been important to him at the time but it’s really nothing to me. I do not think its importance to him compels me to maintain records of our email exchanges for his sake. I does not compel me to burn email exchanges with perfect strangers into my memory nor to resurrect the hard drive which died in 2011 so that I can search for any emails he might have sent me in 2010.

As for me, I have searched all of my emails from 2010 with various search criteria, including old backups, and found nothing. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t sent, but it may have ended up in the spam filter, or in the trash. And for a time, my ACM mail trash was emptying every week for some unknown reason. So if it went in there at that time it’s gone for good.

Even if Lewandowsky does eventually release the names of the bloggers who were contacted, it won’t show the history of communication between the eight chosen sites and the five “sceptic” sites, or indeed any other sites that were contacted as part of the survey process.

However, the FoI certainly will, and will shows what steps were taken to secure the participation of any blog contacted as part of the research.

N.B. You can sense the contempt Lewandowsky holds for those who dare question his methods in the tone employed here. I guess he thought he could brand all sceptics as conspiratorial nut-nut jobs and we’d just quietly slink away and say, “Yeah, you’re right, we are nut-jobs”. And his defence mechanism to this criticism is to resort to childish sarcasm in his responses – as one commenter puts it, how “professorial” is that, professor?

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Labor's climate backflip No. 2

6 September, 2012 by

Backflips a speciality

First it was the abandoning of the post-carbon tax floor price, and the integration with the European floating price (see here). Now it is the abandoning of the plan to close the “dirtiest” power stations. Clearing the decks for a snap election, possibly?

PLANS to replace heavily polluting coal-fired power stations with “cleaner” electricity are in turmoil and a new rift has opened between Labor and the Greens after the government scuttled a key plank of its carbon policy yesterday.

Energy Minister Martin Ferguson yesterday abandoned talks to pay for the closure of some coal power stations – including Australia’s dirtiest facility, Hazelwood in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley – saying there was a “material gap” between what the generators wanted and what the government was prepared to pay, particularly with forecasts for lower energy demand.

Mr Ferguson denied the government had ceased the talks because of last week’s decision to abandon a $15-a-tonne carbon floor price from 2015 and tie the emissions trading scheme to depressed European prices, despite claims by industry experts that the decision had “breathed new life” into the most polluting brown-coal power stations.

The failure of the talks has widened the divisions between Labor and the Greens over energy policy, forcing the government to defend its commitment to cutting greenhouse emissions after Greens leader Christine Milne accused Labor of a “breach of faith”.

Senator Milne said that putting Mr Ferguson in charge of the process was like “giving the fox control of the hen house”.

She vowed to push to bring forward a Productivity Commission review of billions of dollars of compensation for brown-coal generators. Last night Mr Ferguson said Senator Milne’s comments were “childish” and that her “simplistic” attack on the government “reflects more on her and her lack of understanding of the energy market”. (source – paywall)

Just another Labor train wreck to add to the already overfilled scrapyard.

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Journey into the mind of a climate zealot

5 September, 2012 by

Character assassination…

Anna Rose is a co-founder of the hopelessly naive Australian Youth Climate Coalition, and also featured in the recent ABC documentary “I can change your mind” (see ACM’s post on it here) during which it became painfully obvious that no amount of logic, facts, persuasion or argument would ever change her mind.

Not content with that, she has now produced a book entitled: “Madlands: A journey into the climate fight” detailing her experiences on the “dark side”. However, rather than expose the evil motivations of sceptics, she has succeeded only in throwing into sharp relief her own zealotry.

Over at Jo Nova’s site, there is a fascinating review of the book, which you must read in full, but there are some excellent quotes which I will share here.

A constantly recurring theme of the climate debate is the manner in which the alarmists, rather than address the arguments, seek to impugn the reputations of sceptics (think Lewandowsky, for example). Rose is an expert at this:

Anna carefully character assassinates all the sceptical people she is about to introduce. She then gives them a fairly cursory hearing, ignores their arguments, and responds with personal attack and ridicule, appealing to the twin arguments of authority and consensus all the way.

The adjectives Anna assigns to adherents of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis are; eminent, highly respected, thorough, forward thinking, moderate and polite, intellectual, diplomatic, world-renowned, progressives and mainstream. Sceptics are described with derogatory words and terms like; attack dogs, more than a touch arrogant, fringe, wackiest, plays dirty, bizarre, contrarian, nutty, abrasive, notorious, bullying, dishonourable tactics, gang, cyber bullying, sexist, curious (in a derogatory context), petulant, bitter, web of denial, ideological warriors, generating hate towards climate scientists, and warped world vision. This sets the scene for the tone of her work.

Internal inconsistency is another hallmark of any quasi-religious belief system, which is revealed in her attitude to some fundamental climate issues:

She concedes on several occasions that the degree to which feedbacks occur, the climate sensitivity, is not known with certainty. And yet, when sceptics point out the same fact, she labels them as deniers of science. It’s a contradiction I find hard to fathom. There is another contradictory element in which Anna shows that she does not have a consistent line. When discussing aerosols, she virtually admits that the current climate models upon which the IPCC relies, do not include all the potential variables, specifically the effect of aerosols. How then can she point the finger at sceptics who decry the failures of the models and call them deniers of science? It’s just a contradiction I find glaring and mystifying. Anna can apparently point out a deficiency in a model and still believe in ‘the science’ but woe betide any sceptic who does the same thing.

And the review highlights the obvious point that has been made on this blog many times, namely, if the sceptics are so insignificant and their arguments so weak, why the need to devote such attention and effort to eliminating them?

Early on, Anna describes Nick Minchin as one of the ‘remaining few high profile climate-sceptics in Australia’. In other parts of the book she uses terms like ‘tiny’ to describe the group of people who are still sceptical. Based on this I ask myself a hypothetical question. If it is true that there are only a ‘remaining few’ and that the group is ‘tiny’, why is it then so necessary for her, and others, to go out with such zeal to convert every last disbeliever into a believer?  If these sceptics are in such a small minority, then surely their argument must be lost already. Why can’t they just be left to wither on the vine? Why can’t they just be by-passed and ignored?

The conclusion follows straightforwardly:

Could it be that Anna’s zeal to track down and convert even the ‘few remaining’ doubters and heretics could actually be a marker of her own insecurity about the veracity and resilience of her own belief.

Read it all.

Madlands is available on Amazon on 1 October 2012.

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Climate Commission's 'manufactured drivel'

4 September, 2012 by

Regurgitating propaganda

Judith Sloan rips the Climate Commission’s latest propaganda to shreds:

Sadly, I do not have space to address the deficiencies of another recently released government report, the Climate Commission’s The Critical Decade: International Action on Climate Change. (Note: the hyperbolic title.) This intellectually dishonest report paints a picture of international action on climate change that is at odds with reality.

Even the earnest environmental reporters in the mainstream media could not take its content seriously, pointing out its many gaps and misinterpretations. The report makes the most of countries’ commitments and a possible global agreement, while ignoring the soaring emissions from China and failing to recognise that the lower emissions growth in a number of countries is primarily due to weak economic conditions.

It states that “it is in Australia’s interest to tackle climate change”, which is an incorrect statement in the absence of global efforts to tackle climate change. Unlike trade liberalisation, going alone inflicts only economic damage on a country such as Australia and makes not a jot of difference to world temperatures.

The appendix of the report also contains a number of extremely misleading vignettes of climate-change policies, both in operation and those proposed (the two are deliberately mixed up), in a number of countries.

It waxes positively about the New Zealand emissions trading scheme, while failing to note that any further extensions have been indefinitely delayed and the local price on carbon emissions is currently well south of $10.

The Climate Commission is nothing but a mouthpiece for government climate propaganda.

Read it here (paywall).

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Lewandowsky: FoI request submitted to UWA

3 September, 2012 by

UPDATE 2: This post explains why an FOI on this matter is warranted.

UPDATE: Lewandowsky responds to some of the points here. Sadly, given his previous form, I can’t help but agree with one of the comments over at Bishop Hill:

I think they dreamed up their dramatic headline conclusion of “climate sceptics are nutters” and worked back from there.

Once they got headline exposure in a couple of major newspapers, their mission was accomplished. (source)

Just an update on this. I have submitted a formal Freedom of Information request to the University of Western Australia for copies of all of Prof Lewandowsky’s emails to climate blogs (any climate blogs) in relation to the ‘moon landing denial paper’ as I’m calling it (see here and here).

The University may seek to avoid disclosure on the grounds of confidentiality, but I think there is a strong public interest case to be made.

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Lewandowsky data show more alarmists believe the moon landings were faked

3 September, 2012 by

Sample size who believe NASA faked the moon landings

Recall the recent paper by Stephan Lewandowsky entitled “NASA faked the moon landing – Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science” (see here).

Look at the title again – it directly links belief in the faking of the moon landing to scepticism of the alarmist claims of mainstream climate science.

Recall also that the survey was posted on 8 websites, all sympathetic to the consensus position, many of which are vociferous critics of any kind of questioning of the Cause.

Recall further that in my original post I queried how many responses would actually have been from sceptics, given the demographics of the sites in question, despite the fact that the paper claims the sample size to be over 1000.

Bishop Hill has obtained a copy of the raw survey data (Excel spreadsheet here so you can check for yourself). The column entitled “CYMoon” lists the responses to the question:

The Apollo moon landings never happened and were staged in a Hollywood film studio. (source – PDF at page 28)

using the following key:

  • 1 – Strongly disagree
  • 2 – Disagree
  • 3 – Agree
  • 4 – Strongly agree

Counting the responses in this column gives the following result:

  • Disagree or strongly disagree – 1 or 2 (i.e. the moon landings were not faked): 1135
  • Agree or strongly agree – 3 or 4 (i.e. the moon landings were faked): 10

Since there are such a tiny number of moon landing deniers, I decided to take a look at the actual responses to the climate questions from the ten that believed the moon landings were faked. Astonishingly, the responses reveal that six of the ten either agree or strongly agree with ALL of the following statements:

  • I believe that burning fossil fuels increases atmospheric temperature to some measurable degree.
  • I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years has increased atmospheric temperature to an appreciable degree.
  • I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years will cause serious negative changes to the planet’s climate unless there is a substantial switch to non CO2 emitting energy sources.
  • I believe that the burning of fossil fuels on the scale observed over the last 50 years has caused serious negative changes to the planet’s climate.

So in fact, out of the sample of 10 that believe the moon landings were faked, a majority (60%) accept the consensus position on climate science.

Analysis of the moon landing deniers (click to enlarge)

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