Climate sense from The Australian

14 October, 2010 by

Which, let’s face it, is the only broadsheet in the country which demonstrates any kind of balance in the climate debate. The Fairfax press has already made up its mind on climate, suppresses any dissenting views, and spews one-sided alarmist propaganda on a daily basis. Two excellent opinion pieces and an editorial in The Australian today. Firstly, Bjorn Lomborg (the warmist/skeptic) warns against rapid action, which is precisely what Greg Combet advocated earlier in the week:

CLIMATE committees across the world are mistakenly putting the cart before the horse.

ADVOCATES of drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions now speak a lot less than they once did about climate change. Climate campaigners changed their approach after the collapse of the Copenhagen climate change summit last December, and the revelation of mistakes in the UN climate panel’s work, as well as in response to growing public scepticism and declining interest.

Although some activists still rely on scare tactics – witness the launch of an advertisement depicting the bombing of anybody who is hesitant to embrace carbon cuts – many activists now spend more time highlighting the “benefits” of their policy prescription. They no longer dwell on impending climate doom but on the economic windfall that will result from embracing the “green” economy. (source)

Then, Des Moore makes the blindingly obvious point that the science isn’t settled:

THE Royal Society’s report coincides with dissidence at the American Physical Society.

THE Royal Society’s September report, Climate Change: A Summary of the Science, has brought into the open the widening difference of views about how the science of climate change should be assessed. It comes after a prominent resignation from the American Physical Society (the top body of US physicists) for the refusal of the society’s executive to undertake a similar review despite requests from a large number of members.

In Australia, too, an examination of the Inter-Academy Council’s review of the processes and procedures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that, although the council’s chairman claims the IPCC’s findings stand, the review itself exposes serious flaws in the panel’s information and analysis. The examination by this group, which is a follow-up to its recent publication in the British journal Energy & Environment, is now being widely distributed in Australia.

All three assessments reflect the revelations provided by the exchanges between scientists actively involved in climate research – now known as Climategate – that some research results appear to have been falsified. These reports have spread widely in science circles in Australia. However, apart from The Australian, there has been almost no reference to these revelations in the Australian media. The Age, which had not bothered to cover the Royal Society’s report, was quick to report that the Royal Society’s vice-president John Pethica (who chaired the report committee) had rejected suggestions that the society had changed its position on climate change. (source)

And finally, an editorial savages The Age for its hopelessly compromised and biased reporting on climate:

ON a subject as important as our climate, reasoned, informed public debate is the key to finding the consensus that must underpin an effective policy response.

Interest groups that attempt to keep the public in the dark by suppressing alternative views have succeeded only in eroding the credibility of their own arguments.

So it is puzzling that a supposedly liberal broadsheet newspaper, The Age, not only failed to cover the Royal Society’s revision of its Guide to the Science of Climate Change but took a swipe at those who did. The story, which The Age ignored when it broke in this and major British newspapers on October 2, was significant because the Royal Society is regarded as the world’s most authoritative scientific body. It was clear from our report and commentary that the society was not dismissing climate change — far from it. The need for co-ordinated global action is no less pressing. But the Royal Society guide undercuts many of the exaggerated claims of looming ecological disaster, spun in order to scare the public into supporting various political positions. (source)

Read them all!

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

UN hysteria: disasters "scream for action" on climate

3 September, 2010 by

Hysterical

More disgraceful hysteria and uncritical journalism. Just yesterday, James Lee was shot dead after taking hostages at the Discovery Channel, in an attempt to force them to comply with his eco-warrior agenda. Today on Watts Up With That, Thomas Fuller writes in an article entitled “Stop the Hysteria”:

The deluge of catastrophic predictions  regarding global warming and its consequences have reached almost everyone on  the planet, and perhaps unintentionally have replaced Cold War bomb scares as  the primary source of doomsaying.

The messages are well-thought out and prepared  by professional communicators, with disturbing and graphic images of a  post-apocalyptic scenario lifted from Mad Max, and with about as much connection  to reality.

In March of this year, a couple in Argentina shot their two children before  committing suicide over fears of global warming. On Wednesday, in Maryland, James Lee apparently committed ‘suicide by cop’  after taking three hostages in an attempt to force the Discovery Channel to  alter its programming to suit his fears over the environment.

At what point will we call to account those who have preached ‘the end of  the earth as we know it’ to countless people? How many people will be driven to  desperation by those who distort the science? (source)

Yet just hours later we have the ever-responsible Sydney Morning Herald regurgitating precisely the same hysteria from the UN, which doesn’t give a sh*t about people, only about securing its role as a world government by the climate change back door:

UN climate chief Christiana Figueres on Thursday warned that a string of weather calamities showed the deepening urgency to forge a breakthrough deal on global warming this year.

Speaking before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup call.

“The news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate disasters is not the future that we want,” Figueres, newly-appointed executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters.

“Science will show whether and how those events are related to climate change caused by humanity’s greenhouse-gas emissions, but the point is clear: We cannot afford to face escalating disasters of that kind.” (source)

Just read that last sentence: “science will show whether and how those events are” … etc etc. Which correctly states that there is no evidence whatsoever to link them to AGW. But that doesn’t stop the idiotic Figueres from her hysterical pronouncements. And the Moonbat Herald is happy to broadcast them to its gullible readers.

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"Climate change" blamed for extreme weather

8 August, 2010 by

Moonbats

The environmentalists claim any extreme weather event that happens anywhere, ever, is now solely the result of climate change, because it will brainwash the public and frighten ignorant governments into desperately channelling even more precious taxpayer dollars to the scaremongers who claim they can “tackle climate change”.

Of course, extreme weather events have happened for billions of years, without any help from tiny anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. A quick search of an online news archive would reveal hundreds of extreme weather events, from floods, droughts, tornadoes, you name it, that had nothing whatsoever to do with climate change. [Update: You can do it for yourself here. Try searching “extreme weather” or “unusual weather” Update 2: Check Marc’s post at ABC News Watch here]

But it’s all different now. Any unusual weather event is blamed on climate change. It’s like the fact that extreme heat is “global warming”, but extreme cold is “just weather”. And the paper least able to distinguish climate fact from climate fiction is the Sydney Morning Herald, under the headline “Climate change whips up floods, fire and ice”:

CLIMATE change has been blamed for floods that have killed thousands and left millions homeless from Pakistan to North Korea, fires and a heatwave in Russia that have left 5000 dead and disrupted global food markets, and a severe tropical storm threatening Bermuda.

In Greenland, a giant ice island four times the size of Manhattan – about 225 square kilometres – has broken off the Petermann Glacier. It is the largest chunk of ice to calve in the Arctic since 1962. [So what caused the one in 1962? Was that global warming too? No, it couldn’t be because global warming hadn’t been invented then – maybe it was something called natural causes?]

Governments fear the devastation in Asia may stretch aid efforts as crops are destroyed amid soaring wheat prices, caused in part by Russia’s decision to ban grain exports until December 31.

”Mother Nature is playing a very evil hand,” Peter McGuire, managing director at CWA Global Markets, said in Sydney yesterday. ”It’s always the poor that suffer.” [At least this commentator realises it’s Mother Nature at work, not evil coal burning capitalists]

The weather drew comment from officials and activists [environmental headbangers] at international climate change talks in Bonn.

One US delegate said Russia’s heatwave and the recent floods that have devastated Pakistan are ”consistent with the kind of changes we would expect to see from climate change and they will only get worse unless we act quickly”.

But the environmental group Greenpeace [spare me] said negotiators at the talks were not getting the message.

”Russia is burning and Pakistan is drowning, yet they seem happy to continue as if they have all the time in the world,” said the group’s climate policy director Wendel Trio. (source)

It’s all nonsense of course. Whilst no-one could fail to have sympathy for the victims of such terrible events, even the alarmists don’t stoop so low as to blame such events on SUVs, but that doesn’t stop the Moonbat Herald. Journalism at its worst.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Climate change to increase weeds… no, wait…

18 May, 2010 by

Killer weeds killed off?

Way back in October 2008, ACM ran the following story:

Invasion of the killer weeds

“Scientists have warned that more government funding is needed to protect Australia against a climate-driven weed invasion.” (ACM, 17 October 2008, link)

But hang on, now it’s all change, because the Sydney Moonbat Herald reports that climate change will actually eradicate some weeds:

Climate change may have an upside in helping Australian scientists put the squeeze on some weed species.

A CSIRO report has found that hotter temperatures and reduced rainfall in South Australia could lead to changes in the type and number of weeds growing in areas across the state.

It said existing weed problems in northern districts may shift south and landholders may have to deal with species they haven’t encountered before.

But it also found that as the climate warms the geographic range of some weeds that prefer cooler conditions may be reduced.

“If we can prevent the replacement with other weeds we may be able to put the squeeze on some weeds, particularly the notoriously destructive weeds Bridal Creeper and Scotch Broom,” lead author Darren Kriticos said. (source)

More weeds, same weeds, fewer weeds, different weeds. Who cares? As long as we can write mind-numbing stories about “climate change” to keep our editors happy.

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SMH: Temperatures to rise "12 degrees by 2300"

11 May, 2010 by

Throw some more snags on the barbie, mate

Another day, another desperate plea from the warmist camp. Why would anyone voluntarily subject themselves to the alarmism of the Sydney Morning Herald? Every day, its readers are barraged with acres of doom and gloom from some hysterical climate research, its authors desperate to get a headline and keep the funding going – and the Moonbat duly obliges. The headline screams “Too hot to live: grim long-term prediction“:

HALF the Earth could become too hot for human habitation in less than 300 years, Australian scientists warn.

New research by the University of NSW has forecast the effect of climate change over the next three centuries, a longer time scale than that considered in many similar studies.

The research suggests that without action to cut greenhouse gas emissions [of course – Ed], average temperatures could rise as much as 10 to 12 per cent by 2300. [Let’s skate over the idiocy of measuring temperature rises in percentages, which only an ignorant non-scientific writer would ever do – Ed]

”Much of the climate change debate has been about whether the world will succeed in keeping global warming to the relatively safe level of only 2 degrees Celsius by 2100,” said Professor Tony McMichael, from the Australian National University, in an accompanying paper published in the journal.

”But climate change will not stop in 2100 [Duh – Ed] and, under realistic scenarios out to 2300, we may be faced with temperature increases of 12 degrees or even more.”

Professor McMichael said that if this were to happen, then current worries about sea level rises, occasional heatwaves and bushfires, biodiversity loss and agricultural difficulties would ”pale into insignificance” compared to the global impacts.

Not content with this, the article goes yet further:

There was also a real possibility that much of the existing climate modelling had underestimated the rate of global temperature rise, they said.

Dr [Keith] Dear [also of ANU] said scientific authorities on the issue, such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had struck a cautious tone in forecasting future temperature rise and its impact.

Please stop, my sides are about to split… Ridicule is the only response that this kind of rubbish deserves. Every single word of this is based on flaky and inadequate computer models, which are hopelessly incomplete, and which are skewed to exaggerate the effect of CO2 and suppress the effects of everything else. They must think we were born yesterday…

Read it here.

P.S. As the warmists are all over sceptics’ qualifications like a rash, I think it only fair just to point out that both authors are not climate scientists, but specialise in epidemiology and population health. Just sayin’. (see here)

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Desperation as alarmists sense the battle is lost

10 May, 2010 by

The fate of a sceptic in Kruddistan

The more desperate the quotes, the more tragic the arguments, the more it reveals that the alarmists realise that not only is the planet not complying with their incomplete and worthless climate models, but also that the penny [Wong? – Ed] has dropped in the public mind. The public realises now that the IPCC is a politicised advocacy group, spinning the science to fit an agenda conceived back in the 1980s to regulate CO2. Witness the outpouring of vitriol on Tony Abbott for daring to suggest that school pupils be sceptical (see here for original story). Heaven forbid. In Kruddistan we don’t want any of that, they should just uncritically believe whatever Chairman Rudd and the Wongbot say.

So it is with a wry smile that I read this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.  It shows utter desperation in the face of a lost cause, even down to the headline, “Climate scientists cross with Abbott for taking Christ’s name in vain“, which once again tries (and fails) to portray Abbott as some religious nutcase:

TONY ABBOTT is under pressure to justify telling students it was considerably warmer when Jesus was alive after leading scientists said his claim was wrong.

He urged year 5 and 6 pupils at an Adelaide school to be sceptical about the human contribution to climate change, saying it was an open question.

In a question-and-answer session on Friday, the Opposition Leader said it was warmer “at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth” than now.

Leading scientists said there was no evidence to suggest it was hotter 2000 years ago.

The president of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Kurt Lambeck, said true scepticism was fine, but required looking at published data with an open mind. “To make these glib statements to school students, I think, is wrong. It’s not encouraging them to be sceptical, it’s encouraging them to accept unsubstantiated information.” Tas van Ommen, who as principal research scientist with the Australian Antarctic Division collects climate data from ice cores, said any definitive statement about temperatures 2000 years ago was “completely unfounded”.

He cited the 2007 report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found the available data from climate records was too sparse to make clear statements beyond about 1000 years ago. Dr van Ommen said the confidence that global warming was linked to greenhouse gas emissions was based on multiple lines of evidence.

Yawn. We’ve heard it all before. As soon as you quote the IPCC, it’s time to switch off. And then they wheel out Fairfax’s alarmist in chief:

David Karoly, a Melbourne University federation fellow and climate panel lead author, said Mr Abbott’s statement appeared to be based on Heaven + Earth, a 2009 book by the geologist and climate change contrarian Ian Plimer. It has been embraced by sceptics, but criticised by scientists working in the fields it covers. [Ah yes, of course, Plimer isn’t “working in the fields it covers”, right? – Ed]

Professor Karoly said: “It seems strange to me that the leader of a political party would be seeking to disagree with Australia’s chief scientist, the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists and Australia’s support of the work of the IPCC. He obviously knows better.” (source)

Probably right. The public have an innate common sense which Sackett (raving alarmist), the Bureau, CSIRO (all on the climate gravy train) and the IPCC (ditto) all lack. They can smell a rat – and it’s a dead, rotting, carcass of a rat with a stench that could strip paint. One letter writer in The Australian gets it right:

CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong says she was disappointed in Opposition Leader Tony Abbott for encouraging climate change scepticism in the classroom, which she claimed was “irresponsible”, (“Climate change natural”, 8-9/5).

Since when was scepticism in science a bad thing? Mr Abbott was quite right to point out it is an open question as to why the climate changes, and what role man plays in that change.

Surely we want our children to grow up with open and questioning minds and not to accept unthinkingly any proposition put to them in the classroom.

The irony in all this is that Mr Abbott is presented as something of a hardliner, as being inflexible. But it now appears the boot is on the other foot. It is Senator Wong who is the dour, inflexible one as she constantly refuses to accept there is a valid scientific position on climate change apart from her own doomsday alarmist scenario.

It is irresponsible not to present the full range of scientific views on climate change to young, inquiring minds — indeed the general public, and individuals should be allowed to make up their own minds, without fear of being labelled or ostracised.

Alan Barron, Grovedale, Vic (source)

Keep it coming, SMH. Just more evidence that climate hysteria, like Rudd, is on the skids.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

SMH: valiantly plugging the warmist agenda

22 February, 2010 by

The Sydney Moonbat Herald will print any old rubbish as long as it supports their conclusion (formed years ago) that global warming is real and dangerous. In this case, they publish an article from AFP that fits the bill perfectly:

Tropical storms to be more intense

Tropical cyclones may become less frequent this century but pack a stronger punch as a result of global warming, a new study says.

The study published on Sunday is an overview of work into one of the scariest yet also one of the least understood aspects of climate change.

Known in the Atlantic as hurricanes and in eastern Asia as typhoons, tropical storms are driven by the raw fuel of warm seas, which raises the question about what may happen when temperatures rise as a result of greenhouse gases.

Tom Knutson and colleagues from the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) looked at peer-reviewed investigations that have appeared over the past four years, when the issue began to hit the headlines.

Their benchmark for warming is the “A1B” scenario, a middle-of-the-road computer simulation which predicts a global average surface temperature rise of 2.8 degrees Celsius over the 21st century.

“It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged,” says the paper.

But storms could have more powerful winds – an increase of between two and 11 per cent – and dump more water, it warns.

The SMH will love this of course, since it bolsters the IPCC’s position on hurricanes and cyclones. But it’s all based on model projections and speculation: may, likely, could. We already have 30 years of low-level warming since the late 1970s to use as an empirical test of change in cyclone energy, and what do we find (click for full size):

No change…

And that’s the point – we now regard the projections of climate models as being more “truthful” than empirical observations.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Shock: SMH publishes sceptical climate article

27 January, 2010 by

Turning sceptical?

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are to the global warming religion what L Ron Hubbard is to scientology, so to see even a few shards of agnosticism creeping in is fairly surprising, and encouraging:

The claims made about the science have been rash, asserting dogmatic certainty about human-induced warming when the reality is that the overall picture is quite unclear. This has now backfired, with the IPCC admitting mistakes in its 2007 report, and the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, which the IPCC has drawn heavily upon, shown to have been, at the least, devious in the results it has made public.

There may be some link between the rashness of the global warming campaign and the haplessness of the politics that has followed. The best current bet is that, after Copenhagen, emission controls is dead as a serious international issue. And further, only some environmental disaster that can be convincingly linked to climate change will rekindle it. The ”sceptics” have won the politics.

The clumsy politics is international and local. An emissions trading scheme, as proposed by the Australian Government, is very bad policy. It is a form of taxation on carbon under another name. To tax carbon will lead to thousands of pages of regulation – a godsend to bureaucracy, but paralysing for initiative and industry.

Read it here.

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Nauseating start to Copenhagen

7 December, 2009 by

Loving every second of it

Loving every second of it

Wouldn’t have expected anything less, naturally! All lovingly reported by the Sydney Moonbat Herald:

A landmark conference on tackling climate change opened here on Monday, with negotiators from 192 countries aiming toward a deal to ward off global warming’s potentially catastrophic effects.

The meeting will climax on December 18 with more than 100 heads of state or government in attendance.

Opening ceremonies began with a short film featuring children of the future facing an apocalypse of tempests and desert landscapes if world leaders failed to act today.

“There will be hundreds of millions of refugees,” Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN’s panel of climate scientists, said in the film.

“Please help save the world,” said a little girl, plaintively. (source)

So no emotional blackmail there, obviously…

It’s only been going three hours, and already I want it to stop.

Don’t forget to check out the Cut out ‘n’ keep guide to Copenhagen in the sidebar!

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Lefty heads pop at Sydney Morning Herald

1 December, 2009 by

What's that popping sound?

What's that popping sound?

But, but, but… we wanted an ETS, they stutter. Their little lefty heads are popping at the sight of Tony Abbott as the Liberal leader – makes my day! It’s only taken a few hours for the knives to come out for Abbott of course, in a sign of what we can expect over the following weeks and months:

A leading climate-change sceptic [1] seized [2] control of Australia’s opposition on Tuesday, vowing to kill carbon trading legislation [3] ahead of key UN talks.

Right-wing [4] maverick [5] Tony Abbott ousted [6] Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull by just one vote, 42-41, in a result that should doom marathon attempts to pass emissions laws.

[1]: Guilty as charged

[2]: “Elected” is the usual word

[3]: Guilty as charged

[4]: When is anyone ever accused of being “left-wing” in the Moonbat Herald?

[5]: That’s right, portray the guy as a loony from the start

[6]: Again, “elected” is what I thought happened

Here’s looking forward to some more Moonbat Herald madness!

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,
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