The Australian Department of Climate Change
People have asked me if the Rudd Government’s postponement of the ETS means we’ve won, as in game over, time for that beach holiday in Broome? But the end of the game is nowhere in sight while our government still has a Department of Climate Change stacked with high paid executives that soak up $90 million a year. The gullible guys who leapt in with both feet are still top-dogs. The end is not even close while two of our largest daily papers don’t realize they are the real Deniers they disparage, or when the second in charge of our opposition still thinks we need to trade carbon. Joe Hockey (our shadow treasurer) said this week that “a carbon price is inevitable”. He used the same old line: “scientists say blah”, as if a consensus of “scientists” is either (a) faultless and incorruptible, or (b) in control of the weather.
Carbon trading, “inevitable“? How about “inane”? Even better: perilous, fraud-prone, and serpentine. It boils down to forced markets trading fake goods that nobody would willingly buy. It’s not a “carbon” market, it’s a Permit Market. And a permit (especially to something unmeasurable) is not a commodity to be traded. What better recipe to bake a crooked cake, and fan the flames of darker human instincts? Yea verily, let’s feed the dark side and invite the charlatans to our table. Why not give them press secretaries, diplomatic immunity, and an expense account as well?
…
Speaking of dark: the propaganda rolls on (thanks to your money)
Carmen Lawrence
Carmen Lawrence is a former WA state Premier, who is now the Winthrop Professor at the School of Psychology at UWA. (The same bastion of illogic that fosters Stephan Lewandowsky.)
She’s speaking on Tuesday about ways psychology can help “modify behaviors”, and thus tip-toes around the edge of the dark cesspit of Marxist style control. (It’s not up to you how you behave, it’s up to them.)
Lawrence claims: “We need to know about ourselves to deal with Climate Change”. Me, I think we need to know about microphysical processes in cloud formation instead. Knowing how people respond to TV adverts is about 15th on a list of the ten things we need to do.
In a free world, people convince other people to act with evidence, logic, reason, and good communication, and then the free citizens decide if it sounds like it’s worth the effort, or if “the other guy” (who says the opposite) — makes more sense. Instead of helping us taxpayers to understand the human psyche, the School of Psychology seems to think they should act as a wing of the government, to help change our behavior against our will. Polls in many western nations are split 50:50, this is not about helping a nation of people who’ve said they want to act, this is about changing the way people act, even if half of them don’t want to change.
It’s not what we pay our taxes for, to be “modified”.
In the Soviet Union the government often locked up people who disagreed with them in loony bins, in the tender care of psychologists. How did it work out for the Soviet Union? In retrospect who was right, the government and their psychologists, or the people they locked up?
Lawrence and co can research and discuss the ways to convince us of something, but if the thing they push isn’t real, it’s no wonder the usual technique (the truth) isn’t working for them. They can tie themselves in knots assessing and analyzing what “works”, but unless they can find a way to shift thousands of cubic kilometers of humid air up to the tropopause, they’re missing the point.
(Macha, who emailed this lecture link to me, asked “Hmmm…….in your words, is this “consensus by authority?”. I replied that it looked more like “…climate by psychologists.”)*
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Brainwash the kids
Shout (?) for Climate Change
Then there’s this mindless cheerleading program encouraging students of all ages to “Shout” for climate change. (I guess when you can’t speak with reason, shouting is all that’s left eh?)
If any student wants to create a 60 second advertisement to enter that’s shouting about, say, science, or logic instead of propaganda for bureaucrats, you could send your entry here too just in case the Shouting Team doesn’t have a sense of humor…
What’s worse than teaching kids the half truths of climate change? Worse is not even teaching them half the truth, but teaching them to assume it just IS, and then getting them to write the propaganda for you for free: That’s Orwellian.
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When will I declare it “Over”?
It’ll be time to sit back and party, when there is no government department trying to change the weather, when there are no more baseless propaganda campaigns funded by public money, and when 90% of the public knows the scare was wildly exaggerated. There will come a time when most people will say “I was always suspicious…”
But it’s not really over until they teach logic and reason in primary schools to stop the next generation falling for the next big scare.
…
h/t to Linda M for the Hockey story, and Macha for the warning about the free public Psychology lectures.
*And of course, there’s nothing wrong with psychologists discussing climate change, their informed opinion is just as valuable as anyones, but let’s find a psychologist who knows what the fallacy of authority is, and who understands that “positive feedback” is not neccessarily a friendly letter.
As a child and youth under communist rule I was compulsory educated to become the so called New Socialistic Humane. When I attended a university the first time had to pass exams on the Scientific Communism, Marxist Political Economy and other red pseudo-sciences. I was pity for the time loss I had to spent learning the red catechism. But it wasn’t that bad. I developed a sound immunity against such indoctrination. Then when I had met the AGW so called science I recognized it as a totalitarian ideology mocked up as a “science” once I had seen it. The similarity the Carbonari “science” to the Scientific Communisms is apparent.
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Another great post Jo thanks.
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1) Every pipsqueak cause has gone for the children. Let’s face it; the NEA was founded to promote world socialism. They have never repudiated that position. They are the largest “teacher’s union” in the U.S. I could write a book. I can’t keep up with what’s going wrong in so many of our public schools.
2) God help us when the social scientists (read psychologists) get a hold of us. Then I’ll not only be wrong but also pathological. Does anyone see any parallel with the old Soviet Union? I could write another book. But fortunately, like Adolf Balik I own my own mind and there’s nothing they can do to change it.
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I don’t ever think the education leeches in government will ever allow logic and reason in primary schools. Much less critical thinking.
I bet the western countries are going to run redistributionist governments until their economies have collapsed.
Right or Left, the both spend trillions for votes.
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One thing that needs to be corrected when talking about trading schemes for global warming is the term “Carbon Trading”. ETS schemes are not trading carbon, they are trading “Carbon Dioxide”, so that makes it a “Carbon Dioxide Trading” scheme.
The alarmists refuse to use the correct terminology because they know that the publics attention would be drawn to the hoax once they were informed they were trading an untradable gas that we all breathe out. CO2 is being traded not C.
It is the job of everyone who wish to expose the global warming hoax in future to make it abundantly clear to the public that it is “Carbon Dioxide” and not “Carbon” that is being traded. Carbon dioxide the plant feed that is responsible for the growth of all the veg and fruit that the public consume.
It would be a good start if this article was to correct the notion that it is carbon dioxide that is being traded and not carbon.
——-
[Can I put a razor fine point on that? They are not em>even trading carbon dioxide. If they were, people would be trucking cylinders of the stuff back and forward. (Market gardeners do actually that, but not the “carbon traders”). The “carbon” markets are trading an absence of carbon dioxide – something no one can measure – and that claimed “absence” is written into a certificate. Or as a variation, they trade the permits to emit. I am not so fussed about the wording “carbon” versus CO2 – though I know they are not the same — forgive the shorthand — I do sympathize, but in the end, this is not about trading any element, any molecule, or any commodity. It’s not a free market, it’s a fake one. What matters here is not whether C and CO2 are different but that this market is not trading real things. It’s a forced trade of an atmospheric nullity that no one would buy or sell in the first place if the government didn’t force them to.– JN ]
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“Shout out for Climate Change”??? Do they want the climate to change? I thought the current climate was, “like, the bestestest, like, ever” and we had to fear it.
Obviously, I am too old to understand, and I need to be re-born for I cannot be re-educated (excuse the shameless self-promotion).
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I suppose it will all be over when Psychology researchers don’t have to tag “climate change” onto their requests for funding.
Did anyone notice the Dali Llama admitted to being a Marxist the other day?
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“Shout (?) for Climate Change”
Maybe we could ‘help and encourage’ our kids to upload vids that will promote counter action.
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Adolf, thanks. The “Carbonari”… love it!
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@janama: I would have expected that. The reference I could find was http://hhdl.dharmakara.net/hhdlquotes1.html#marxism It made it into Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Dalai_Lama#Economics
His views are a summary of what people who believe economic exchange is zero sum. This, of course, is bogus. When I freely choose to work for someone, we both profit. When I freely choose to sell something, both the buyer and I profit. When I freely choose to buy something, both the seller and I profit.
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Sinan – it came from here. http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/im-a-marxist-says-dalai-lama-but-agrees-capitalism-has-helped-china/story-e6frfku0-1225869459169
His father would be rolling in his grave as he headed one of the most repressive feudal systems ever.
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It will be over when our politicians look to empower us rather than enslave and control us!
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When the psychologists and sociologists get involved you know the promoters have lost. The next step is to reduce funding 1 program at a time until they all are history.
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@janama: Thanks for the link. So, he said it here and a bunch of people with money burning their pockets went to see him. *Sigh!*
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Carmen Lawrence – oxygen thief. Always was and always will be. Is this Carmen “I can’t recall” Lawrence. What is someone with such a poor memory doing being employed by a university?
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the wonderful Dr Tim Ball has a recent article on his site
Biased Information Continues
Are Students Learning About The Corruption Of Climate Science?
(quoting from the first 2 paras)
The mainstream media actively promoted global warming, then effectively ignored evidence of corrupt climate science and essentially ignored the whitewash investigations of the activities of members of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They promoted Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” yet ignored the evidence of major scientific errors. They quickly condemned Martin Durkin’s documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” because of one small error on a graph. Durkin withheld the DVD until the error was corrected. Al Gore’s movie is still shown uncorrected in most schools, although a UK court ordered the government to have teachers advise students of the bias and errors.
It appears little has changed in the schools. Some teachers are giving both sides of the story, but they appear to be the exception. But why would a teacher change or be willing to present both sides? Governments continue to push the arguments based on the IPCC research. They were complicit in the whitewash investigations, and need the tax and control Cap and Trade provides. Most of the change in the schools comes from students who do some investigation often triggered by YouTube videos. In the UK court case the student complained to his father about having to watch Gore’s movie more than once.
Their Questions Tell a Tale
Each week I receive three or four requests from students doing projects on global warming. Some come from other countries, but most are from the US. Usually they seek answers to written questions. I give answers, but also attach a list of other sources so they can dig deeper.
The entire article is here http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23412
I’m with Jo; the game is far from over; in regard to the Dept of Climate Change I understand if the Govt get back in at the next election that Dept will be engaged in implementing the Govt’s renewable energy target designed to ensure that 20 per cent of Australia’s electricity supply will come from renewable sources by 2020; how realistic is this and how much money will it cost us
Who better to tell us the ineffectiveness than two Australian experts;
the first expert is Terry Cardwell who published a letter in the Morning Bulletin Rockhampton on 22 December last year; here’s the first para
I have sat by for a number of years frustrated at the rubbish being put forth about carbon dioxide emissions, thermal coal-fired power stations and renewable energy and the ridiculous Emissions Trading Scheme.
Frustration at the lies told (particularly during the election) about global pollution. Using Power Station cooling towers for an example. The condensation coming from those cooling towers is as pure as that that comes out of any kettle.
Terry has had a world wide response to that letter; The whole letter is online at http://www.mannkal.org/downloads/environment/terencecardwell.pdf;
Terry is now retired; he spent 25 years in the Electricity Commission of NSW working, commissioning and operating the various power units. Terry’s latest article is ‘The Madness of King Rudd’ it’s online at http://co2insanity.com/2010/05/08/the-madness-of-king-rudd/; Terry says in that article ‘In spite of all the screaming facts from all corners of the globe that now has become apparent about renewable energy and global warming Kevin Rudd still refuses to listen or look at the truth and still declares that 20% of our power generation will be renewable energy. IT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO DO THAT.”
The other expert is Peter Lang; He’s a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy products throughout the world, including managing energy R & D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide range of energy and end use management projects. Peter is widely publicised on the net but has an article ‘Solar Power Realities” at http://co2insanity.com/2010/05/08/solar-power-realities/ his Conclusion is: solar power is uneconomic. Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy but these additional costs must be carried by others
I say why have one taxpayer subsidise the other which is really what happens with these renewable schemes
And what to do – well I’m trying to concentrate my efforts on getting a change of government; (I have tried to communicate with the Govt in particular Senator Wong but have never received a response); at least the Coalition don’t have a renewable energy policy so they won’t cost the taxpayer as much as the Govt will and what I do is write to the Coalition and Independent members about climate change putting the sceptics point of view and try to get comments published by the main stream media so others can read that point of view;
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A long way off being over. Every 12 year old in the country read an argument for why we should turn from “Moo to Roo” in the recent NAPLAN test. Also I relieved in a year 3 class on Friday and the children, in a worthy unit on Reduce, Recycle, Reuse, Rethink also learn what a terrible state tyhe world is in- books they read include about global warming etc. They’re lovely teachers, very good friends too, but that’s what’s happening across the world. Keep it up Jo.
Ken
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The War on Freedom is never over.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eric Youle and Eric Youle, Bill Giltner. Bill Giltner said: This is SO not over « JoNova http://ff.im/-kL88s […]
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UWA FAIL. Do these academics realise their lack of critical thought really just ridicules the institution that pays them?
I Know of someone who’s son wanted to write a sceptical of AGW essay for his VCE. He was told by his teacher that he would automatically fail if he chose to write it.
He fought the system and eventually got an exemption from reasonably high up to allow him to write his essay. He did write it and did very well, apparently.
So, yes, there is still some independent thinking out there. Whether it’s being taught effectively in schools or not, I guess will come down to the bias of the teachers the children get.
So now the PR and marketing types have failed, the last resort are some academic psychs who can’t string an argument together properly. This must truly indicate defeat.
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PS: Maybe the Ministry of climate change should be changed to be one of the following:
Ministry of Sunrises and sunsets
Ministry of Makework programs
Ministry of Oxygen Theives
Ministry of the Unemployable
?
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Ken @ 17; there’s a nice article which goes into ‘moo and roo’ http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/page_7/5896358/in-defence-of-barnaby.thtml
getting down to the moo and roo bit and quoting “They have seen what he (Barnaby) did to Ross Garnaut. When the professor delivered his final fire-and-brimstone report on climate change at the National Press Club back in 2008, he said agriculture should be included in an emissions trading scheme. But there was more. Garnaut went on to point out that livestock, mainly farting cattle and sheep, were responsible for some 67 per cent of our agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. His study concluded that by 2020, beef cattle and sheep numbers could be reduced by seven million and 36 million respectively, allowing for an increase in kangaroo numbers from 34 million now to 240 million by 2020. This, Garnaut reasoned, would be more than enough to replace the lost lamb and beef production, and kangaroo meat would become more profitable than cattle and sheep as the price of emissions permits increased.
‘Sheep and cattle production is highly vulnerable to the biophysical impacts of climate change, such as water scarcity,’ Garnaut said. ‘Australian marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane from enteric fermentation. This could be a source of international comparative advantage for Australia in livestock production… For most of Australia’s human history of around 60,000 years, kangaroo was the main source of meat. It could again become important.’
Like half the Canberra Gallery, I made a call to Barnaby, asking for his response. He had his lines ready. First, he pointed out that by itself an Australian emissions trading scheme would do bugger all to tackle climate change. Then he did some mental arithmetic and calculated the Garnaut proposal would lump cattle farmers with massive costs, something like an extra $75 per beast. ‘That’s the end of our beef industry,’ he said. ‘Do you want to pay $150 for a roast and think that was an effective place for Australia to go, even though it did nothing for the global climate? If we’re going to be voting for a gesture, why don’t we have a tax for world peace?’ And then he started thinking about the professor and the kangaroos.
‘I’ve got no problems eating roo, Ross,’ Barnaby continued, addressing Garnaut rhetorically. ‘I’ve just got a bit of a problem mustering them. If you reckon you can build a fence to keep one in or you know how to herd them onto the back of a truck to get them into a saleyard, then I’d love to watch it. I can’t wait to see the local agent knocking down a pen of roos — and see them bounding over the rails. The only way you can catch a roo is with a full metal jacket and some people have a problem with that.’
And then he really started warming to his theme, painting a vivid, ridiculous and entirely hilarious verbal picture of the Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow from the University of Melbourne and Distinguished Professor at the ANU, the Director of the `Lowy Institute for International Policy, the former Ambassador to China, sometime Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Western Australia Ltd, Principal Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister and Special Emissary on Trade — the smooth, sleek and self-satisfied Ross Garnaut — out in a paddock chasing kangaroos.
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Momentum is a great thing. And momentum is with the sceptics.
There is NOTHING NEW coming from the AGW camp. Their wagons are circled and all that’s left is shouting. They shout when there is a hot spell somewhere, they shout when there is a cold spell somewhere, they’ve been shouting for well over 20 years.
But shout all you like, mother nature is deaf, and the general populous seems to be hearing less and less.
They’re also selling our kids short. I doubt there has ever been a more cynical generation.
As for Joe Hockey and the opposition, what they say from the opposition benches in an election year may be very different to what they do if they get the government benches. Lets hope so. The grassroots groundswell that ousted whatshisname (hehe) is still ringing in their ears.
I would like to have seen a cartoon of a fat female viking, mouth agape on stage.
I’m a little more optimistic.
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Jo , you are absolutely right.
I’m a believer in the pendulum “theory” — things in society/life are pushed one way but will eventually be pushed the other way to balance up to some extent. The further they are pushed in one direction the more likely they will be pushed to same extent the other.
The question is what will trigger the opposite push in this situation ? It has to be political and/or economic. The economic situation in Europe and the USA at present will at least put a halt to some of the more stupid programs ( they will simply be unaffordable ). In the USA , I think they will still push the alternative energy development ( which may not be a bad thing). On the science side it will take an absolutely huge error or mistake in the AGW info. to be proved or a massive breakthrough of proof on the anti AGW side to move the MSM / politicians ( I’m not holding my breath for either case — but I’m forever hopeful).
In the meantime we all have to do our little bit ( or in Jo’s case – massive bit )
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Jo – its not as bad as you think. This is why:
http://butnowyouknow.wordpress.com/those-who-fail-to-learn-from-history/climate-change-timeline/
The colour coding is nice!
So as the cooling phase of the PDO cycle kicks in, plus the effect of the solar minimum we seem to be having, more headline writers will start to ask the obvious question.
They already are:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/01/11/years-global-cooling-coming-leading-scientist-says/
http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/General_News/2010-02-10/8836/Croat_scientist_warns_ice_age_could_start_in_five_years
and etc…
Once the cooling is obvious to everyone there is no way that an ETS would get up in any democracy. That is why the win now is so important, because it gives us until 2013 for this to come through.
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Rename the Dept of Climate change to be “The Departure Lounge”
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The only people who really respond to TV adverts are those in “infotainment” industry – parasites all. Douglas Adams put them on a par with Telephone Sanitisers – he was a generous man.
Adolf Balik: #1
I love it.
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I, for one, would watch a program in which Ross Garnaut demostrates his roo herding skills. Sounds SBSish to me. Maybe they could put it on during half time in the Germany-Australia game…
I wonder what the funding history of the Dept of Climate Change reads like… or is that the Dept of IPCC Junkets? Did it grow enormously under Labor?
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I am incensed that the government is spending my taxpayer dollars on a “competition” to indoctrinate school children with climate dogma – you should check out the web site, which is stuffed with “teaching aids” to help with the brainwashing. And the government has changed the rules on political advertising, so whilst they were very happy to criticise Howard for such adverts, they’re now hypocritically doing exactly the same. We’ve already seen the tedious health reform adverts, and climate change will no doubt follow.
See my post here.
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Adolf Balik: #1
This is a very important point.
In any psychological attack, the perpetrators are limited by time. People are convinced at first, and they discuss it amongst like-minded friends and colleagues and they will even ridicule those that are unconvinced.
But then a natural BS detector kicks in, and people start to suspect that there might be flaws in what is being presented. They start to see the incongruence, and the way that all the facts fit neatly together, leaving no room for questions or doubt. They see the dismissive attitude to any counter argument, and the arrogance of those pushing the message. And they inwardly start to ask, “Why?”
But they will keep the doubts to themselves, for fear of being victimised, until they start to find other people who have asked “why”, as well. Once the number of sceptics reaches a critical mass, the whole psychological edifice collapses.
We are close to that point right now, with respect to climate change.
But those who would attempt to own your mind, for their own purposes, are also well aware of this. When they see the collapse starting to occur, they will introduce another psychological attack, on an entirely different subject. This will have an initial affect of confusing people, thereby extending the usefulness of the original attack, and making it easier to build and develop the structure of the new attack. They want to, and need to, keep you “on the back foot”.
These techniques are not new. And they were not invented by Gobbels (although that is what you are expected to believe). These techniques were certainly in use in the First World way, and were actually employed by the US government in convincing the population that America needed to enter the war in Europe. And that, ladies and gentlemen, led to the birth of Madison Avenue, and the advertising industry.
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val majkus @22
The beautiful irony of the kangaroo fantasy is the amount of diesel fuel burnt per kangaroo harvested. It equals approximately 1 L of diesel fuel, per kangaroo carcass delivered. The average saleable meat yield of a kangaroo carcass is approximately 10 kg. Do the Carbon calculations on that!
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The above calculation is only for the actual harvesting it doesn’t include cost of running remote freezer boxes, processing the carcasses, and freighting them to markets. The equivalent for cattle would be the diesel burnt mustering them into the yards on horseback in preparation for them to be trucked to the saleyards.
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If the politicians were exposed to a few more presentations such as this one we would make some progress
http://globalwarming.house.gov/files/HRG/052010SciencePolicy/happer.pdf
( Given the Prof. was only given 24hrs notice, one wonders what he would have said with more time –maybe not much better ! )
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Tel
The War on Freedom is never over.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
The US government seems getting ready for a domestic war. Why in the world is the EPA and the Department of Education buying close quarters combat shotguns?
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twawki @12,
The last — and unfortunately only — politician I can remember who sought to empower people to handle their own lives instead of having government do it for them was Ronald Reagan. And he is reviled by the left to this day. Even in his own administration they tried to get him to cool down his rhetoric, especially the speech that ended with the now famous words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” At his death the route from Point Mugu where the airplane landed to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley where he’s buried was lined with people wherever there was a chance to get a look as his casket went by. At about the time he was due, traffic on the 101 freeway just simply stopped and people got out of their cars, waiting silently for him to go by. I have never seen or heard of anything like that before. Traffic on the 101 freeway never stops except for accidents. Never!
I cannot picture that same level and depth of respect for any other president in my lifetime.
Where are the men and women with his convictions when we need them?
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Carmen Lawrence sez:
Utterly uninformed statement!
I have a whole library full of tracts related to the topic. Moreover, every fashion conscious academic in the human behavioral sciences has been framing new proposals for research grant money in terms the of “climate change existential crisis” for years now.
One academic I know, a researcher in the field of so-called “Food Ways” – the study of antediluvian recipes – has published peer review work about how celebrate TV chefs are effecting cultural trends in our eating habits in response to the climate change meme. Actually, it’s pretty interesting work.
Perhaps the best alarmist study of our post-modern era on the topic is: “Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive” by Jared Daimond, 2005. An excellent sci-fi adventure for all children over the age 10.
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Ross @33,
Well, call me a monkey’s uncle or maybe hang me for a horse-thief. I was too dumb to expect that the same Markey who co authored the cap-and-trade bill and who, among others on his committee subjected Lord Monkton to inexcusable discourtesy would ask an honest scientist to testify. He sure got an ear full. Happer didn’t beat around the bush.
Better testimony in 24 hours than the five I watched could do with a lot more advanced notice too. As the saying goes, Christians 1, lions 0 for a change.
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As evidence that the behavioral sciences are a robust forcing agent right down to the very bottom of the pedagogic food chain may I present the blog comments (scroll to page bottom) of Meteorology Professor Scott A. Mandia, Physical Sciences, Suffolk County Community College, New York.
Prof. Mandia, a highly experienced working teacher and feverish CAGW evangelist, posts comments from a paper with the aptly Orwellian title:
“Metacognitive Experiences And The Intricacies Of Setting People Straight: Implications For Debiasing And Public Information Campaigns”
http://www.unc.edu/~sanna/ljs07aesp.pdf
This fascinating behavioral science research was recommend to him by another “Earth sciences” teacher, Hank Roberts who spryly offers “ …that (the paper) shapes how I approach denial and confusion when trying to educate, if I’m being smart at the time. It’s very hard to do.”
The “debiasing” paper is full of hot tips on the best way to spread propaganda: “…Rhyming slogans and presentation formats that facilitate fluent processing will further enhance this (indoctrination) effect…” Perhaps Prof Mandia could have his meteorology 101 students put Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth PowerPoint presentation to rap lyrics as a collaboration final assignment!
The paper suggests actively suppressing alternative POV’s by never mentioning there are any and avoiding engaging in debate!
Mandia’s comment section offers a revealing insight into a group of working Earth Sciences teachers planning a misinformation campaign against the impressionable young minds of their own students, using the latest in metacognitive behaviorial research into “debiasing.”
Carmen Lawrence would be so proud!
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Ross Garnaut is an environmental vandal was a director of Ok Tedi the company responsible for the pollution of the Ok Tedi river in Papua New Guina. The mine development was subject to a tailings dam to allow heavy pollutants to settle and only allow “clean” water to flow into the river. When partially completed the dam collapsed following an earthquake and it was left unfinished because the cost of rebuilding was considered excessive. I assume that Garnaut as a director would have been party to the decision, one that adversely affected 50,000 people who lived downstream and were reliant on the river.
Garnaut also has a hobby farm where he raises beef cattle. Garnaut is typical of many of the leeches profiting from AGW and yet rarely ever practicing what they preach. The MSM and green groups would have given him hell if his message was anti AGW but of course as a member the carbon for profit club he is absolved of past actions.
His idea for farming roos is almost as stupid as the finding of his report on a number of levels not least of which is that containment is near impossible. Roos are good at burrowing, most go under rather than over fences and it would be easier to herd cats.
Roos are useful at another level the CSIRO is currently working on duplicating an enzyme found in their digestive system and if this can be introduced into cattle and sheep it will increase their digestive efficiency by at least 15% thus reducing methane output.Also cows do not fart methane they are ‘ruminants’ and belch over 90% of the methane and they are tastier than roos.
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Joe Hockey’s wife is a leader of one of the banks who are pushing the carbon trading market. He would be getting a huge amount of pressure to push the carbon trading agenda from the bedroom. Mickey Mann’s named his fraudulent graph the Hockey stick graph. Don’t know if there is any connection.
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Ross Garnaut is still a director of Ok Tedi and he supports Rudd’s 40% mining profit nationalization grab by the Rudd gov. Of course, Ok Tedi’s operations are offshore in a third world nation with weak environmental laws enforced by corrupt officials, so Tedi and Ross’ bonuses are exempt from the new profit tax. That’s the kind of fair dinkum mate he is.
http://www.oktedi.com/about-us/the-board-of-directors
toss another roo tail on the barbi for me!
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On reading “scientist say blah” My son replied “politicians say BOO!”
Hockey attended St Aloysius’ College in Milson’s Point and the University of Sydney, residing at St John’s College, where he graduated with degrees in Arts and Law. (He was a banking and finance lawyer).
Hockey is married to investment banker Melissa Babbage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hockey
Melissa Babbage is Head of Global Finance and Foreign Exchange for Australia and New Zealand, at Deutsche Bank. http://australia.db.com/australia/content/4557_5058.htm
No wonder he wants a price on carbon.
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Folks, remember one other little known fact – the existing employment anti-dismissal laws – I am not sure how one could easily dismiss the people in the Department of Climate Change – seems the Fabians have set this system up rather well, it seems.
And Jo is quite right, thhe game is far from over – the science has been settled, it’s plain wrong, so the fight goes to where it should have been from the start – in the political arena.
Humanity always seems to swing from Dark Ages to periods of enlightenment, but it seems that as long as the ALP and its fellow travellers control government, the government departments, and the education system, which they do, then we are in another dark age and then there is little we can do apart from civil insurrection.
What we have to do is to make sure the ALP gets thrown out of office this year, but if teh demographics are correct, and the UK is a sign, then I am not that sure this would happen.
If Rudd gets back, then I would personally leave the mining industry and go on the dole.
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Post script for my earlier post. Follow the MONEY
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Jo,
Reading your various comments and Carmen Lawrence’s comments, as well as the general pro-AGW comments, I come to the frightening conclusion that these people are not fabricating or conspiring to force AGW and carbon trading on us, they actually believe in it.
We are fighting the ressurection of Marxism – dressed differently, but still Marxism none the less.
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There’s a reason people have been scared by the CAGWists over cow ruminants and methane – they simply don’t know that methane levels are doing little, if anything the trend is reversing:
http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/m/me/methane-global-average-2006.jpg
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The Sunday Canberra Times tells us today that a local primary school has a program that “empowers children to act as mentors to family members, the community and students and teachers from other schools who want to reduce thir carbon footprint.”
Though I have no objection to the children growing vegetables, I can do without brainwashed brats telling me what to do, or even advising me.
I would like a definition of “carbon footprint”, too.
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Louis #45
How to tell the difference between BS and REAL BS:-
When someone expects you to believe in something dubious in which they don’t really believe, thats BS
When someone expects you to believe in something dubious in which they also believe, thats REAL BS
You might have seen an ad in Earthmovers and Excavators quite a while ago for an excavator bucket that contained the description “as useful as Carmen Larence at a Mensa convention”?
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Another Ian @ 48
Heh heh, no didn’t see that but then it’s not something I read often – DMP goes hysterical if they discover I had a bulldozer in my clutches. Archaeologists of the future will ponder for a long time over some of my creations in the Pilbara.
Like the BS definitions too.
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I`ve just recieved an email from Professor John Brignell who amongst many other things , runs a site called Number Watch at http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/
The site is , to quote Prof. Brignell :
“All about the scares, scams, junk, panics, and flummery cooked up by the media, politicians, bureaucrats, so-called scientists and others who try to confuse you with wrong numbers.”
He will be adding Jo Nova to His “Best of the blogs” list at the next update . His blogs list includes “Watts up with that” , “Greenie Watch” and “Climate Audit”
His on site essays are well worth reading
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Joanne, you are quite right in what you say. But I have faith that, sooner rather than later, the warmist scientists will realise they have been barking up the wrong tree about CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels being the key driver of global warming and climate change.
I am glad to see that solar scientists are finally coming out of the closet and speaking out. You would be aware that in its 2007 report, the IPCC simply dismissed the significance of the sun. I provide the following link which is of interest:
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/21/its-the-sun-stupid/
I also urge people to look up the work of Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Institute and what he has discovered about the direct correlation between solar activity, cosmic rays, cloud cover and temperature.
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Luboš Motl reported (in the “Bonus II” section) last month that there’s a new Czech Environment Minister.
BTW: I understand that ČEZ have recently tendered to extend a nuclear power plant near the Austrian border which would facilitate export of electricity into anti-nuclear Austria. (Austria tried to shut down the nuclear reactors in the Czech Republic.)
ČEZ is not shy in telling people about the realities of power generation and what is important for the environment.
Australia desperately needs an environment minister like Bízková and power utilities with the nous and spine like ČEZ.
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What children should learn the first about the debate is the difference between the Climatology and the Climatism. Then there is a genial essay on the topic.
http://www.darandcompany.com/Clim_Vs_Clim_-_050609.html
There is also one important point in it. Vinod Dar, who wrote it two years before the ClimateGate, delivered also a prediction. He told that the climatists either would have to take over the Western word by power that eliminates opposition or their campaign would scramble down due to growing mistrust within two years. Then two years later the ClimateGate and the Copenhagen crush came and the skepticism, that was virtually marginal two years ago, is cool now. The various Rudds can be formally in power but not in the totalitarian power that should be brought to them by the Climatism and they continue undermining their own trustworthiness by the travesty of science.
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Waylander: #50
I am currently reading his book, “Sorry, Wrong Number”.
In this book, Prof. Brignell does for bogus statistics what Jo has done for AGW, with the “The Skeptics Handbook”.
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My #54
I should have mentioned that you can trust his judgement … he is an engineer 😉
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To Bernd Felsche 52:
Well, the bad thing is Ms. Bizkova is a minister of a caretaker government appointed by the skeptical President Klaus for transitional period between the cabinet crisis and becoming elections. The Greens attacked the Prime Minister palace (Strakova akademie) and raised a poster above it: “Welcome to the ČEZ Republic” instead of the Czech Republic (the “Č” is read in the same was as “Cz” or “Ch” in English) due to it.
May be the most important goal of the carbon politic is really an implicit monopoly protection in the Western countries. You can hardly find a power plant that is younger then the operators who operate the machines. Power companies enjoy huge profit rate in the branch of industry, which is also hidden by environmental investment ordered with friendly companies of the energetically-ecological keiratses). Nevertheless, instead of investment into a profitable branch there are two generations who didn’t experience a new power plant construction. That means there are huge access barriers against a new investment and the CO2 limits are the essential part of the monopoly protection system. When a new investment wave into power industry come then the Nash equilibrium come, too, and the monopoly position of the current power-plant owners will be over. That is also why they want to curb carbon but they don’t want nuclear energy – the nuke would make the Nash equilibrium, too. But they like so called alternative sources. If you must have to have certain portion of alternatives they are also barriers against competitors.
Well and the ČEZ is a enfant terrible of the collusive European cartel of Energy curbing as ČEZ wants to build a new capacities and refurbish the old ones and expand. Then ČEZ face hate of Greens and the EU Committee.
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Rereke 54/55 I ordered a copy of each of John’s books about 6 years ago but his helping handssent me two copies of “Sorry”. Bot to worry … I let him know of the problem and he subsequently sent “The epidemiologists”. I held onto the spare “Sorry” until I managed to meet up with Dr Jensen when he was still a newly-elected MP; and handed him the “spare”. 🙂
I trust that Dennis has made good use of the book.
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To Mervyn Sullivan 51:
One of the greatest researchers in the field of Sun-Earth climate forcing was the late Dr. Landscheidt. There is one of his papers – short and well understandable one.
http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/solarwind.htm
He also developed method of solar activity forecasting with entangled Earth climate forecasting by which he predicted also the current minimum of solar activity. His disciples call the current minimum Landscheid’s minimum. They develop his methods with the most modern ways of computations based on the solar angular momentum derived from the solar system angular momentum.
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Yes Adolf (#56), it’s quite sad that Bízková had to get the role via presidential appointment and that her position appears all-too-temporary. Her predecessor had what we call “a dummy-spit” because the real world wasn’t doing what he (and Greenpeace, etc) wanted.
What are “keiratses”?
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Rereke Whaakaro: @ 54/55
lol, Prof Brignell`s site was one of the first sceptic sites I ran across . After being offended one too many times by the mainstream media`s rapturious cries of “Cool The Globe” and “The evils of man made CO2” and the shrieks of “Denier” I thought “What the hell have these people got against interglacials and plants ?” then “Sounds more like some sort of religious cult than a science”.
So I threw a search for “Global warming as a religion” in to bing and ended up at Numberwatch.It was nice to know that there was someone else out there that the whole AGW was shonky.
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P.S. Should have been a “thought” between “that” and “the” on the second last line of my post at 60#
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At least in Australia they call it what it is, The Department of Climate Change. In the United Stated the agency responsible bears the Orwellian appellation, “Environmental Protection Agency.” In our republic the legislative branch is supposed to make laws and the executive branch is supposed to enforce it. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA was empowered by congress to regulate CO2 if it deemed it necessary. The idiots in the MSM almost always report that the Supreme Court ruled CO2 a pollutant. It amazes me that congress would allow the EPA to usurp its authority.
Despite the whitewashing of the Mann investigation by academia I am still confident that Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli will break the wall of denial that surrounds the truth that is at the heart of the scandal. Namely, Mann committed fraud to obtain taxpayer grant money. I believe the tide is turning and that justice will be meted out to those responsible for the most costly scam ever perpetrated upon the people of this planet.
Had climategate not occurred the climate cabal may have succeeded in destroying the economies of the world in their pursuit of money and prestige.
“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. ‘-Allegedly from Edmund Burke'”
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E.A. I agree with you completely. The Canadian Government has already said it’s going to follow the U.S. lead (impossible not to). I think the AGW team has already done a great deal of economic damage all over the world. Bird choppers & solar power all pretty useless. We even have “smart grids” with a twist up here; the province wants to install smart thermostats so they can turn down the furnace and turn up the air conditioners from a control room somewhere in Toronto. All because they haven’t built a new base power plant in Ontario in generations. Spent all the money on windmills.
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To Bernd Felsche 59:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu
It is a very significatn reality of economic life but dealt like a “dirty word”.
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Eddy,
So true!
This one has always seemed downright prophetic, as applicable today and in the future just as much as it was in Camus’ lifetime.
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Frank Brown,
We’re building wind turbines here in the states too. We’re a bunch of Don Quixotes jousting at windmills while real problems go ignored. They’re a joke second only to solar as a supposedly green energy source. They’re big, ugly and for their size and cost, very inefficient power sources. But political correctness will prevail until things get bad enough that people start to really suffer. Then comes the backlash.
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on sunday, abc’s “landline” had wilson tuckey (no transcript as yet):
Political Maverick
http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2010/s2906930.htm
lots of ageism by abc! at one point, tuckey mentions ETS being a bad idea for farmers economically whether CAGW is true or not. abc immediately say Tuckey says he is not a sceptic, he just thinks the ETS is a bad idea.
the entire piece was suggesting Tuckey may lose at the next election because he played a part in Malcolm “the minister for goldman sachs” Turnbull’s demise as leader and Tuckey’s constituency is less rural than it used to be.
funny, i would have thought, given Turnbull’s total failure to win over public support even prior to the ETS fiasco, voters might be inclined to reward Tuckey at the ballot box.
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Roy @66
I hope so. Now our schools recommend the boys get Ritalin instead of a ball/bat and a big field. I’m a conservative, liberal, libertarian but I can’t help but think there is something else going on here. The middle class is taking a beating all over the world and no one seems very concerned. Certainly not our politicians. It can’t be that a nut case like M. Strong and Al Gore could be that influential. I hate conspiracy theories but just the same… it all smells really bad for all but a few well placed execs.
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Re Binny #31
10kg of meat per carcass might be questionable.
A legal roo carcass is from about 14.5kg up. And not much of the meat makes it to human consumption.
My father’s comment years ago was that “He could find a lot of kangaroo steaks around the front end of a bullock”
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Another Ian:@69
That is just based on a 50% ‘saleable meat yield’ off the averaged 20 kg carcass. The point is, people who indulge in the Kangaroo fantasy. Don’t think of a diesel 4WD driving all night, to deliver 50 carcasses back to a remote freezer box running 24/7 on a diesel engine
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Bernd Felsche: #57
Excellently done.
There are serious problems with the entire post-normal science movement, and one of them is bad statistics.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, statistics underpins almost every other scientific discipline; that an amateurish computer modelling techniques.
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We only consume 10% of a Roo carcass the rest was being sent to Russia. Russia has ceased imports of Aussie Roo meat.
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2643077.htm
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Eddy Aruda: #62
So the corollary is that, if the lone whistle-blower had not existed, or had not acted when they did, then the climate cabal would have succeeded?
So, as Jo points out, it isn’t over yet.
Dr Richard North, over at EUReferendum, often talks of the “political bubble” that serves to isolate politicians from reality. These “bubbles” (every country has them) are not created by the politicians, but by the senior bureaucrats that surround the politicians.
It is the “informal club” of senior bureaucrats that we are fighting, not just at the state (country) level, or at federal (and EU) level, but also at the level of the United Nations.
In all this, the politicians have little knowledge, concern, authority, or influence regarding long-term outcomes. Politicians come and go, but the bureaucracy continues regardless, and is largely self-replicating.
The climate change story has been damaged, and is probably past is “best-by date”, but in terms of the political bubble it is still intact, and will remain so until it can be replaced by something else.
We are in the process of winning a major battle, but we are far from winning the war. What if, in the next major battle, there is not a whistle-blower to come to our rescue?
Scary thoughts.
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Yet another warming scare zapped
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/yet_another_warming_scare_zapped/
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Gore groans
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/gore_buries_students_in_an_avalanche_of_woe/P40/
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James Delingpole credits our very own Bulldust as the first person the coin the term Climategate – he said he was reading WUWT and a poster called Bulldust asked how long it would be before it gets called Climategate.
http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-news.org/ClimateConference4
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Yar that be correct Janama. It was an offhand and cynical remark that became a self-fulfilling prophesy. If memory serves I posted on WUWT (on the original WUWT Climategate thread):
“I wonder how long before the media starts calling this ClimateGate…”
Tragically one cannot copyright a word … so I must keep my day job.
BTW Bulldust is a nickname I picked up in running (drinking) circles back in the day… as many people know me in real life by that name as my birth name. Given no one else seems to be using it in the blogs I read it serves as a useful nom de plume.
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BTW I see academic funding is still flush for people doing global warming-related research:
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/underwater-lab-the-first-to-plot-impact-of-climate-change-on-reefs-20100523-w3z7.html
This must have cost a bomb to fund…
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ABC also has this up already, in a piece called “Carbon dioxide affecting coral growth”. in other words, both headlines give the impression results are in, but this lengthy article – read it all – suggests otherwise. goes off at length into “ocean acidification”. can u believe BBC is on hand? Hoegh-Guldberg involved of course…
24 May: SMH: Underwater lab the first to plot impact of climate change on reefs
by Jo Chandler
ON AN idyllic coral atoll just a two-hour boat ride from Queensland’s Gladstone Harbour, out past the endless line of tankers queued to load coal for export, a half-dozen scientists work frantically against the tide.
Their objective? To explore the consequences of rising atmospheric carbon – which evidence overwhelmingly attributes to the burning of coal and other fossil fuels – on the delicate chemistry of the reef and the creatures living there.
The project team, led by David Kline, a young scientist from the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, is completing tests on a new underwater laboratory that will expose living corals on the Great Barrier Reef to the more acidic conditions forecast for oceans by the end of the century…
”This system here is the heart of the experiment,” Dr Kline explains to a film crew from the BBC natural history unit as he stands in the shallows, patting his hand on a floating platform loaded with pumps, cables and 50 instruments, all in constant conversation with ”the brains” – a computer program running in a laboratory a few metres away on shore.
International interest is high because this is the first in situ investigation of its type. Findings from the Free Ocean Carbon Enrichment (FOCE) project will be keenly studied by scientists around the world…
The fear, explains the director of the Global Change Institute and head of the Australian Research Council-funded research team, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, is that the change hits these creatures on two fronts – creating a more corrosive environment, and depleting stocks of building materials…
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/underwater-lab-the-first-to-plot-impact-of-climate-change-on-reefs-20100523-w3z7.html
as jo says, this is SO not over…
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Bulldust, That is a good credit!
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Congratulations, Bulldust. If I were you I would frame a print out montage of the original post with some big headlines from major newspapers and hang it in my study.
Mate, if I ever meet you in a pub, drinks are on me!
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@ Rereke Whaakaro #73
Nice post!
“So the corollary is that, if the lone whistle-blower had not existed, or had not acted when they did, then the climate cabal would have succeeded?” You will note I wrote, “May have succeeded”. I didn’t leave myself an out because I am a politician but because I do not have a crystal ball. I do not believe in coincidence and I believe that everything happens for a reason. I also prefer cocoon to bubble as it accurately describes the reality that most politicians are insulated. Washington, DC is, for all intents and purposes, located in a parallel universe.
The end of this nightmare will only occur when enough people are cognizant of the fact that they have been had, it has cost them a fortune and that if they do not take massive action their future, and that of their posterity, will be altered in a detrimental manner that will move us back to the stone age. Given a choice between cheap energy which powers our modern lifestyle and going green which in essence requires humans to learning the bow and the lance and revert to a hunter gatherer lifestyle, I believe people will choose what is in their best interest.
When that occurs both politicians and bureaucrats will adapt and survive. Politicians will placate the voters and bureaucrats will find another cause or reason to justify their existence. Our elected officials will allocate funds from taxes raised from the citizenry, the bureaucrats will squander the money allocated and this big blue marble we call Earth will continue to spin on it axis, revolve around the sun and journey through the universe.
it sure is fun posting after quaffing down a few beers with my brother! 🙂
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Eddy Aruda: #82
Surely not THE Aruda brothers? 🙂
When I was growing up there was a fashion for “end of civilisation” books – a genre started, I think, by John Wyndham.
One of these books postulated a mould that would attack hydrocarbons, in particular oil. Once you followed the book through the great breakdown of civilisation (without wars or riots – yeah, right), you got to a state where the only mode of transport was horse and cart, with the cart wheels being lubricated by tallow.
That is where the environmental movement would take us. And guess what – no mobile phones, no iPads, no Twitter, no Bebo – OMG!
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Jo says this Climate Change thing is SO not over and I would agree. There is work to be done.
However, I do think that when future historians – with the perfect vision afforded by hindsight – chronicle the “Great Climate Panic” of the early 21st century they will mark the purloined Climategate emails as the “tipping point” beyond which there was no return.
They will also recognize that Climategate is a phenomena which (like the anti-Obama movement in the US) marks a coming of age of “distributed journalism” as a revolutionary power standing opposed the oligarchic information authoritarianism practiced by the so-called “dinosaur” media corporations for the political forces they serve.
We are all painfully aware that without the Internet and the citizen journalism of CA, WUWT, Jeff Id, Lucia, Nova, Blair, Marohasy, et al, supported by tens of thousands of commenters posting links and leaks, we would never have learned about the Climategate emails. It’s well known that the CRU emails were first given to a BBC reporter, who simply ignored them. The implications that this single fact has for our integrity as a free democratic nation of informed citizens has barely been imagined by most of us yet. For every Climategate scandal revealed how many more have been suppressed by our mainstream media masters, not just in science, but in every field of human endeavour effecting government policy? The default misinformation technique of the mass media isn’t direct mendacity but enforcing public ignorance of the real issues by omission. Lying is reserved for attacks against facts they couldn’t contain.
The AGW debate, I believe, will be seen by historians as the crucial cultural-political phenomena of our age, a lens through which no other contemporary trend can be fully grasped without passing through first.
So, no, it’s not over and in a sense can never be over. Here on blogs like Jo’s you are sitting smack in the middle of history as it unfolds. At peak hour. Witness Bulldust! A clever commenter who boldly stepped forward to become a Hero of the Revolution, a slayer of orthodoxy, dogma and collectivist groupthink whose non de plume will no doubt live forever as a footnote in history!
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@Rereke Whaakaro 83
When I was young (many, many years ago) there was a popular television show called Little House On The Prairie. It romanticized the “pre-hydrocarbon” agrarian lifestyle. Many of the greens consider those times to be the best of the good old days. A few years ago, a reality TV show took a bunch of urbanites and had them live the same lifestyle as the pioneers of old. Gone were all the modern conveniences. From sunrise to sunset they labored and by the sweat of their brows they earned their bread. Despite doing their best they were judged to have been unable to withstand the Montana winter and would have died of hypothermia. They failed to gather enough firewood and of course they lacked modern means of insulation. Needless to say, the reality TV show was markedly different then the fictional program from my youth.
Life in the “good old days” was short, brutish and difficult. Could I live without my iphone? Sure I could. However, better living through modern chemistry is much more preferable. If any greens reads this post and disagree may I suggest that you trade places with someone from Sub Saharan Africa for a year and see how that works out? No electricity, running water or modern transportation so your carbon footprint will be minimized. Everything you eat will be organic and hormone free. Also, you will get plenty of exercise running from mosquitos in an attempt to avoid contracting malaria. You will also get plenty of rest hiding under a bed net from dusk to dawn and there won’t be any artificial light to disturb your slumber. Hopefully, you will bel less than thirty-nine years of age as most people in that area do not live past forty. But hey, the greens will be happy to see your life come to an early end as there are too many people on this planet and mosquitos are more important to environmentalists then people. I would love to see Al Gore make the ultimate sacrifice for Gaia. After inventing the internet, winning both a Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award he could set a great example for the rest of the greens who would hopefully follow his lead! A truly fitting end for such a wise sage. We could then erect a statue in his honor adjacent to the U.N building in New York. At the base of the monument the words “Al The Center of The Earth is Millions of Degrees Gore” should be inscribed.
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Shame on you Eddie for pointing out unpalatable truths to the “chattering classes”!
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Eddy @85
Gore deserves better how about “who made hundreds of millions from the suffering of hundreds of millions”.
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Already they are ramping up ocean acidification. I recently heard that “ocean acidity” has increased by 30%. Seems a little high for a change in [H+] from pH 8.2 to pH 8.1, but you can certainly sense the opportunities here.
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DavidC @88
Yep, because pH works on a logarithmic scale then the equation for the change of hydrogen ion concentration (which is the business end of pH) should be 10 to the power of 8.2 divided by 10 to the power of 8.1. (On an Excel spreadsheet, it goes =(10^8.2)/((10^8.1). The answer is 25.6% difference in pH.
A pity they don’t include the error bars on that one, because the historical record for measurement of oceanic pH is almost certainly worse than that of temperature. My guess is that they got that number out of somewhere dark and smelly.
Life on earth evolved in the oceans, and over periods where the atmospheric CO2 concentrations were much higher than now. It didn’t matter…
You’d also be aware that there is about 50 times as much tonnage of CO2 in the oceans than there is in the atmosphere. If this ratio is to be maintained, then only 2% of CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere. Can you please remind me why we’re trying to sequester the CO2?
That’s right, it makes a great research project, doesn’t it? Silly me. The aim of the exercise is not to discover stuff, but to get government handouts! What was I thinking??
Cheers,
Speedy
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Correction – 25.6% difference in Hydrogen ion concentration!
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I see Jemery Irons has thrown his hat into the ring and called on the people of the world to begin living within their means. I wonder what he will do with all the proceeds he gets when he sells his seven mansions and castle?
Eddy, how about “Here lies Al Gore, the greatest president who never was” and yes i remember LHOTP now that i am older i realise just how stupid that show really was. The eco warriors that i know are now looking to Avatar as their utopian world pipe dream (minus the blue people of course).
David post 88, yes a PH change of 0.1 is infact a 30% increase in acidity mind you it was 8.1 7000 years ago.
Jo is right we have but merely won a battle the war still rages, this will change/is changing. The bottom line is pollies want to get re elected so they will tell us what we want to hear. The whole manbearpig thing is falling apart under the weight of record snow and cold in the NTH Hemi. If as expected the Nth continues to be brutalised by severe winters more and more sheeple will wander from the flock this fact will ensure the war is won.
They can diddle the books all they like but people know when it is cold they dont need presidents who never made it and rail road engineers come romance novalists to tell then it is getting warmer, or in fact fraudulent scientists like in NZ
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/commentaries/crisis_in_new_zealand_climatology.pdf
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By the way i am by no means a religious person but i send my children to catholic schools, if you can look past the small religious component i would advise all others to do the same. These schools are free of gov indoctrination programs and can teach how they want.
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wes george @ 81:
An extravagant gesture (the free drinks) mate. I have to warn you that I have over 20 years training in mining environments, universities and the Hash House Harriers (“a drinking club with a running problem”). Lucky for you I have slowed down in both the running and drinking department… maybe there will be a couple brews before and/or after the Watts seminar in Perth 🙂
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Ooops i forgot something else, if they are teaching the current version of climate change in schools i wonder if they are teaching the older version?
I have in my possession a JPG of a Time magazine cover dated April 1977. The minor headlines read “Why we cant beat the Russians” and “M*A*S*H what exit will Frank take?” the major headline accompanied by a picture of a penguin (not poley bear) on a block of ice reads “How to survive the coming iceage”….”51 things you can do to make a difference”.
Or is this piece of history ignored like ice cores, MWP, LIA etc?
PS any help with posting JPG’s would be highly appreciated.
Cheers
Crakar
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Puleeze post the jpeg, Crakar. We ALL want a copy. Hi Rez if you can. It’ll go viral. Get a photobucket account.
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Bulldust,
It’s the least I could offer. it’s an honour to be able to say I’ve shared the same thread with the bloke who coined “Climategate.” 😉
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Makes ya wanna weep for bored bureaucrats:
paul Posted at 3:06 PM April 29, 2010
You should be thankful that you have something to do. To be employed and not have anything to do is not enjoyable. I should know as I have been a public servant for twenty years.
I feel sorry for him but not as sorry as I feel for taxpayers who have to stump up the money to pay him for 20 years of doing nothing.
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A very interesting presentation at the recent Heartland Institute conference, availabe here:
http://openparachute.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/scott_denning.pdf
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crakar24:
May 24th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
I am also a believer in the benefits of the catholic school system, however when the Australian Government introduce it’s national curriculum even catholic schools will be compelled to preach climate change according to the book of Rudd and the epistle of Wong to the unconverted.
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Bob,
My son was subjected to Al Gore’s block buster, before he watched it i told him about the UK court ruling. He told his teacher and asked if he was going to tell them all the errors first. His teacher then explained the contrversial history behind the movie to all the students before the screening. After the screening he told the students “well thats the movie”…..”believe it if you want, its up to you”. Then handed out the assignment.
Two schools can have the same curriculum, here is an example of the difference between indoctrination and education.
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I remember reading Bulldust’s comment on WUWT naming the Cru email exposure ‘Climategate.’ Good on you, Bulldust!
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Bob Malloy & Crakar24
Our kids attend a Catholic school because we find that it provides an extension of our family values. Unfortunately, the same cannot always be said of the state system, where “Politically Correct” appears to be the dominant moral code. Unfortunately, what happens when you believe in nothing – you believe in everything!
And there are lots worse things that your kids could be if they didn’t become Christian… Greenies, perhaps???
Cheers,
Speedy
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How would you have the climate bureaucrats (currently sponging the system) in Canberra and elsewhere around the (formerly) free world gainfully employed, Joanne?
What would you have them tend to instead?
I have been pondering this question extensively. People need a “cause” to support passionately – and the “global warming from people” idea seems to fulfill that in many.
– It looks “fixable”
– It gives the appearance of being “non-discriminatory” to any particular class of people (in reality, of course, it is hell on the poor)
– It has a “scientific” basis to “explain” it
– It evidently does not have to be “observed” to work passionately to “prevent” it
– Support of it gives alignment with a political class the world over that is appealing to “liberal” sentiments (The government needs to fix any real or imagined difficulty that human beings face)
So don’t pack up and head for the Gold Coast without supplying your idea of a suitable substitution for what has become for many not only their livelihoods but their raison d’être
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Rere, you have changed again! Before I forget what was the previous image?
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@crakar24 Speaking of polar bears and penguins, see my blog post titled Is the polar bear the new penguin?
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Hey, don’t knock State schools, we do teach family values, good citizenship, etc, and most teachers teach extremely well. But the curriculum, and MANY library books, and the NAPLAN test, are in all schools, including Catholic and independent, and don’t usually question CAGW. And I know some politically correct Catholic teachers. It has nothing to do with religion or if it’s state funded or not.
Ken
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As to whether the war is won…
I think this one is going to go the same way as “CFCs and the ozone layer” and Y2K. I think there will be a point reached where the “cognoscenti” will decide that they can’t achieve world domination but if they get enough concessions out of Government they will be satisfied. They will wait a couple of months or years and then start declaring that the problem has been solved and that temperatures are plummeting a 0.156 degrees per decade.
Notice how quickly all the clamouring about CFCs died down after enough Westerners converted to more expensive alternatives. Meanwhile I hear that CFCs for refrigeration are still manufactured and used in Asia.
Having been through the Y2K thing as an IT manager and knowing how little I needed to do to make my networks and PCs survive the predicted meltdown I still get annoyed at people who say “Oh well we only got through because people took steps to remedy the situation.” True if you ran a geriatric mainframe and COBOL but an utter sham if you were running systems that were not date critical.
I think AGW is still going to be milked. But hopefully it will not become the cashcow that many have been anticipating.
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crakar24: Speedy:
My three have all finished school. They all attended catholic primary schools, then had the choice of high schools. The eldest went all the way through the catholic high school system, my second completed two years high school in the catholic system, then changed to the government system, he now concedes it was a mistake, the youngest done all her high schooling in government schools. My opinion is the government schools accepts mediocrity to readily. I second speedy’s contention that catholic schools extend family values.
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Ken Stewart:
May 25th, 2010 at 7:25 am
Sorry if I’ve insulted you Ken I’m only stating a personal opinion based on observation.
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SUBJECT: Trashing Australia: How Rudd got his neo-Marxist history curriculum
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/trashing_australia_how_rudd_got_his_neo_marxist_history_curriculum/
THIS MARXIST/LEFTIST REWRITING OF AUSTRALIAS PROUD HISTORY MUST BE STOPPED!!
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Bob & Ken
At huge risk of going seriously O/T, can we all agree that raising and educating our kids is probably the most important job we’ll ever get? How we choose to do this is our decision, but no matter how good a school is, it struggles to make up for a poor family upbringing.
Which, in a strange way, brings us back to thread. The war isn’t over until the next generation are taught good classical logic and (dare I use the word?) “sustainable” moral values…
And a pinch of good science and an understanding of the scientific method, please!
Cheers,
Mike
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Y2K! Y2K! Y2K!
Aeroplanes are going to fall out of the sky!
All the drinking water is going to turn black!
People will be out of electric power for years and years!
All the polar bears will be extinct!
Cyclones! Hurricanes! Drought!
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The Y2K prognostication that had me shivering was that hair dryers were going to be unusable because they have a ‘chip’ in them that is not Y2K compliant. I haven’t got a gravatar, but if I did you would see why this one had me so worried – NOT.
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Like Carmen Lawrence I believe application of the social sciences to the climate debate can add insight to our behaviors. Preference failure, error cascade and consilience.
There is also something called a preference cascade, which accounts for why the AGW consensus is decaying rapidly. And why there will never be an ETS in Australia or the US. (and EU’s, New Zealand’s will soon be dismantled.)
I couldn’t find a good link to explain preference cascading, so I’ll give it a go:
People are influenced by the media, fashion and the convention wisdom of their peers to conform to the zeitgeist (the defining mood of a particular time in history.) As such, people tend to “go with the flow,” just to conform and get on with life. It’s not that they consciously suppress their true beliefs or form strong beliefs in support of the dominant orthodoxy they simply are worn down day after day into just accepting the orthodoxy. Most people lead busy lives and don’t jump on the web to research every eco-doomsday story the ABC produces on a daily basis. They might at first doubt AGW, but they feel they should believe in it (who wants to be a denialist?) because everyone says it’s so.
This kind of emotionally coercive consensus is very shallow – and therefore fragile – since like Rudd’s AGW policy it is based upon no real evidence other than the consensus itself. Our beliefs must be true because we believe in them.
The ETS project to tax everyone while in return only offering dispensation for our sins was always dependent upon suppressing the public’s natural self-interests while concealing all evidence to the contrary to the dominant orthodoxy.
If such an orthodoxy is subject to some kind of perturbation, public opinion can phase shift very rapidly back to its pre-orthodoxy worldview.
And that’s what is happening now. A year ago the Australian public was cowed into accepting a ridiculously impossible taxing scheme based on shame and fraudulent claims. Malcolm Turnbull, leader of the so-called opposition, was cowed right along with the public into grudgingly accepting the ETS meme of “carbon pollution.” (A classical example of preference failure.)
Then Climategate opened the preference cascade floodgate. People began to talk about the doubts they had all along for the ETS and CAGW and realized that they weren’t thinking shameful thoughts in isolation, but simply noticing what everyone else was also realizing. Hey, the emperor is butt naked!
Today we are witnessing a preference cascade towards the rational default setting most people have towards unjust taxation, sanctimonious politicians, media lies and power hungry bureaucrats.
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I see the level of the debate is not quite up to Will Steffen’s standards:
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-debate-almost-infantile-20100524-w81e.html
I notice that the language is carefully chosen to imply conclusions that are not stated. The implication that CO2 causes some warming means CAGW is inevitable is not stated but nuanced.
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Ken,
You have misinterpreted my post. I am sure state schools are very good and i am in no way demeaning the role they play in educating our children.
However when viewed in the context of this thread (“Speaking of dark: the propaganda rolls on” and “Brainwash the kids”) it is of my opinion that this is where private schooling wins hands down, i even gave an example of why in an earlier post.
IMHO a public school will teach what the Gov wants whether it be good or bad for example “AGW is gunna gitcha unless you do as we say”.
However in a private school free of the constraints of the Gov shackles the students are taught to think for themselves more so than public. As i said before there is a difference between education and indoctrination.
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Wes
Well written.
Speedy
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Thanks, Speedy.
Another example of AGW preference falsification turned cascade:
“Four years ago, when I first started profiling scientists who were global warming skeptics, I soon learned two things: Solar scientists were overwhelmingly skeptical that humans caused climate change and, overwhelmingly, they were reluctant to go public with their views. Often, they refused to be quoted at all, saying they feared for their funding, or they feared other recriminations from climate scientists in the doomsayer camp. When the skeptics agreed to be quoted at all, they often hedged their statements, to give themselves wiggle room if accused of being a global warming denier. Scant few were outspoken about their skepticism.
No longer.
Scientists, and especially solar scientists, are becoming assertive. Maybe their newfound confidence stems from the Climategate emails, which cast doomsayer-scientists as frauds and diminished their standing within academia. Maybe their confidence stems from the avalanche of errors recently found in the reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, destroying its reputation as a gold standard in climate science. Maybe the solar scientists are becoming assertive because the public no longer buys the doomsayer thesis, as seen in public opinion polls throughout the developed world. Whatever it was, solar scientists are increasingly conveying a clear message on the chief cause of climate change: It’s the Sun, Stupid.”
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/21/its-the-sun-stupid/#ixzz0ou88YsZz
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If your capable of thinking for yourself – well your just a sick, pathological animal in need of help…
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bulldust –
this is another such advocacy article and it’s on the front page of the NYT!
Climate Fears Turn to Doubts Among Britons
(from bottom of article: A version of this article appeared in print on May 25, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition)“Legitimacy has shifted to the side of the climate skeptics, and that is a big, big problem,” Ben Stewart, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said at the meeting of environmentalists here. “This is happening in the context of overwhelming scientific agreement that climate change is real and a threat. But the poll figures are going through the floor.” ..
In a telephone interview, Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist at the World Bank and a climate change expert, said that the shift in opinion “hadn’t helped” efforts to come up with strong policy in a number of countries. But he predicted that it would be overcome, not least because the science was so clear on the warming trend.
“I don’t think it will be problematic in the long run,” he said, adding that in Britain, at least, politicians “are ahead of the public anyway.” Indeed, once Mr. Cameron became prime minister, he vowed to run “the greenest government in our history” and proposed projects like a more efficient national electricity grid….
Meanwhile, groups like the wildlife organization WWF have posted articles like “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” providing stock answers to doubting friends and relatives, on their Web sites.
It is unclear whether such actions are enough to win back a segment of the public that has eagerly consumed a series of revelations that were published prominently in right-leaning newspapers like The Times of London and The Telegraph and then repeated around the world…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/earth/25climate.html
i now see these articles as signs of desperation.
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Wes @ 114 . I would like to think you are right about the NZ ETS scheme but we had our PM on Monday confirming it will go ahead on July 1 as planned. I think he is misreading the public but we’ll see.
I like the rest of post.
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Pat @ 120
I know what you mean by that “how to talk to sceptics” line. The answers all look good and pat, until you realise that they are only telling half the story – at which point they become a double edged sword for our warmist friends.
For instance, there’s one that is supposed to address the issue of earlier Ice Ages coinciding with periods when the CO2 level was several times higher than what it is today.
The stock explanation is that solar luminescence was lower in that period 450 million years ago – which is true. (The sun has been getting gradually (very gradually) hotter since its birth.) The first problem with their argument is that the solar output difference isn’t enough to account for the reduced global temperature. (Boltzmans law, temperature to the power of 4 etc). The second problem is that it can’t explain why the planet wasn’t a frozen iceball for all of the 4 billion years before that.
The stock warmist answers all seem to be of the same pap – plausible but fundamentally wrong.
Cheers,
Speedy
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Mercury Energy hikes prices to reflect ETS
Ah the perfect symmetry! The above link is of concern to those on the eastern side of the Tasman. At least my modelling predicted this.
Last week the Government announced in its budget income tax cuts and increases in GST. My prediction was that there would be no increase “discretionary” expenditure and that the vultures would swoop well before the tax cuts take effect 1 October. Here they are premising this on the ETS – probably so they can get a second bite later when GST increases. And then there is the multiplier effect where every customer of the energy company has to increase their prices.
What’s more Mercury is a Government owned electricity distributor. So if you are a Mercury customer the Government is helping itself to the tax cuts again.
Grrrr! I wish I hadn’t modelled reality so perfectly.
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Ross @ 121.
My read of the situation in NZ is that they are going to stick with the ETS (dumb and all as it is). From what I see there are many vested interests who have the ear of Government who have started to build their business growth plans around the ETS.
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Speedy @ 122
“The stock explanation is that solar luminescence was lower in that period 450 million years ago – which is true. (The sun has been getting gradually (very gradually) hotter since its birth.) The first problem with their argument is that the solar output difference isn’t enough to account for the reduced global temperature. (Boltzmans law, temperature to the power of 4 etc). The second problem is that it can’t explain why the planet wasn’t a frozen iceball for all of the 4 billion years before that.”
And it is equally likely that the standard explanation is also wrong as it is deduced from the assumption of a big bang event.
Not to mind, Hans Schreuder has reported that NASA discovered the moon is 40 degrees hotter than theory states here
The problem lies in the assumption that both the earth and moon are inert balls of rock, one with a gas film coating it (earth).
The observed temperatures can also be explained by the plasma model, in which the earth is encapsulated by a plasma double layer, whose existence is caused by the continuous flow, in and out, of electrically charged particles from the solar system itself, and the sun.
Temperature is simply a measurment of the intensity of Brownian motion, and accelerating charged particles might well be responsible for the observed temperatures for the earth, and moon, assuming an electrical system.
Restrict it to Victorian era gas-light physics and stanley steamers, (no electrical input) and you need to invent a gaseous greenhouse effect to explain the anomalous temperatures. It’s just that the idea of a greenhouse gas is wrong – as Alan Siddons showed, its a nonsense idea (see Greeniewatch). It was also what G & T stated in their much maligned paper on the physics.
Add plasma physics and the temperatures are easily explained.
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Grant @ 124 –I think you are right and probably John Keys old banking mates
( worldwide ) are putting on the pressure because they need another game to play given derivatives are going to have to be more transparent under the new US regs.
The question I’d like answered is given almost all of NZ’s electricity is generated from renewable sources how can a electricity supply company base a price increase on the ETS ? It’s a scam as we all know !!
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Hi Bob, Speedy, Crackar,
Yes I’ll certainly agree that the home upbringing is 10 times more important than anything that kids get at school. I was just supporting bob’s comment: the National Curriculum will be taught in state and private schools alike, all children do the NAPLAN tests, textbooks and library books are almost universally not questioning the consensus. It will depend a lot on individual teachers to develop quetioning habits. Sorry for reacting- state schools have copped a bit of unfair stick from the media so I was being a bit sensitive.
Ken
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Ken
No offence intended and none taken. Apologies if my response was ham-fisted but I tend to see red when the greenies target kids for their propaganda. Even more so when they push this propaganda at school. (Shout for Change, for example.)
Again, the family is the best teacher. My daughter went for the Lions Youth Award this year, and one of the questions they asked her in the interview were what her thought on AGW were. She simply told them that climate is always changing, and that there is no scientific evidence to link the warming to man-made CO2! End of story.
If only our pollies and journalists were this smaart!
Cheers,
Speedy
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When the Rudd government is tossed out lets move Mines and Energy into the new building now occupied by the obsolete Dept of Climate Change.
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I think you were generous calling them gullible.
I tend to think of them of lying blood sucking parasites.
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Now schoolds are BRAINWASHING children that Australia must farm kangaroos instead of cattle to stop global warming!!!
Enough of this BS!!
NAPLAN ‘moo roo’ outrage:-
http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/naplan-moo-roo-outrage/1830526.aspx
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Now schools are BRAINWASHING children that Australia must farm kangaroos instead of cattle to stop global warming!!!
Enough of this BS!!
NAPLAN ‘moo roo’ outrage:-
http://sl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/naplan-moo-roo-outrage/1830526.aspx
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British University students not buying the message.
http://sppiblog.org/news/oxford-union-debate-on-climate
Lets hope students in Australia are given the opportunity by their teachers to explore both sides of the debate. I know this will be outside the curriculum and I see the teachers union leaders as left wing, however I truly hope their are enough free thinking teachers on the ground to balance the debate.
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BBC – Polar bears face ‘tipping point’ due to climate change
Polar bears are all doomed again according to COMPUTER models.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8700000/8700472.stm
“Climate change will trigger a dramatic and sudden decline in the number of polar bears, a new study has concluded. The research is the first to directly model how changing climate will affect polar bear reproduction and survival.”
“Educated guesses
Until now, most studies measuring polar bear survival have relied on a method called “mark and recapture”. This involves repeatedly catching polar bears in a population over several years, which is cost and time-intensive. ”
“We may not see any substantial effect on polar bear reproduction and survival until some threshold is passed. At that point reproduction and survival will decline dramatically and very rapidly”
—————————————
Far better then, to sit in an office and make a computer model to do it, that is obviously more scientific, and cheaper and accurate, than counting them?
“we MAY NOT see any substantial effect on polar bear reproduction and survival, until some threshold is passed”
ie whilst the numbers of bears may actually be seen (ie by counting them) to increase in the coming years.
They say, the computer model predicts a tipping point sometime in the future, when they will die. So basically they can still scare you, even IF the numbers are increasing,
because the computer model, because their assumptions of the real world says so?
Potty ‘pseudo science’
How do they get funding? (oh!, It is cheaper than counting real polar bears)
Anyone like to make the obvious comparisons, to volcanic Ash cloud computer models(met office), AGW computer models, finacial risk (banking), BSE spread computer models, etc,
Of course, as the computer model now says they will be endangered,
This computer projection can now be used as IPCC propaganda to manipulate the emotions of the public and small children (ie at infants school – polar bears are dying because of humans – said my 5 year old daughter) Even as the polar bear numbers may be static or even increasing.
Can I get some funding, to count (to model bee population, for example – climate change) as I sit at my desk, £200,000 – £300,000 should do it. Where do I apply.
Barry
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Definitely not over :
“a mammoth blow for warming” was the tag in The local fairfax rag yesterday as they try to blame sudden cooling on the absence of another evil gas , Mammoth produced methane. here`s the link to the article that the fairfax article was based on :-
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/mammoth-extinction-triggered-climate-cooling/1#uslPageReturn
The fact that the sudden cooling occured before the massive drop in megafauna numbers and drop in methane levels seems to have eluded them , never mind the astonishing amount of snap frozen mammoths
found with autumn blooming flowers in amongst the grasses in their stomachs and mouths . Never mind the remains of mammoth hunting humans found in mammoth bone and hide huts/tents crouched in a circle around a fire pit , 50 people in one large hut.(possibly waiting for the snowstorm from hell to end , except it didn`t)* Nevermind the frozen remains of a whole variety of megafauna found , they`ll just blame it on trace amounts of that evil greenhouse gas disappearing after the event that it`s disappearance supposedly triggered .
Sheesh ! Talk about being unable to tell the difference between a cause and an effect.
* ( that bit`s just conjecture on my part , they could have just crouched `round a firepit till they died of coincidence)
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Barry @ 134
You’ve got it in one. To extend on your thoughts, this, I can tell you, without a word or a lie:
Buying a ticket in the lottery tommorow MAY result in SIGNIFICANT ECONOMIC GAINS for you.
Unlikely. But possible.
The same as Anthropogenic Climate Change MAY (Insert bad thing here….)
Cheers,
Speedy
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Headway being made in “Old Blighty”
http://sppiblog.org/news/oxford-union-debate-on-climate#more-1756
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Sorry, I now see Bob Malloy beat me to the punch.
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The indoctrination of the kids (I have two, six and ten) is my main concern. Not just by the school, but you’ve got popular culture (i.e. Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus) blowing warmist smoke as well. The limited parental authority you are currently allowed to have doesn’t stand up well to this, and of course it’s all emotional appeals to children, especially the girls. How can you fight that? And not get them in trouble at school?
What I would deeply love is a Sceptic’s Handbook for Kids!
And it’s not just AGW, it’s the whole enviro public religious movement. There are adverts on kid’s TV for helping to take back the wild, because those poor animals are losing habitat. I live in Canada, with one of the lowest population densities on Earth and 80%+ of that within a 100km stretch of the U.S. border. The concept of their being a lack of wild in Canada is as absurd as any hockey-stick chart. Which is another reason why AGW can’t die, it’s been the enviros/watermelon’s Trojan horse.
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Paul:
May 25th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Good post Paul, well said.
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Australian TV Exposes ‘Stranded Polar Bear’ Global Warming Hoax | NewsBusters.org
http://newsbusters.org/node/11879
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Forgive me for going off topic for a post, but I think you guys will enjoy the parallels I have been seeing in the CPRS and the other four-letter great big tax called the RSPT (Note: even 3 of the 4 letters are recycled).
Here are the basic facts – as opposed to the rhetoric we have been getting from teh Labor loons:
1) “Resources belong to all Australians” – NO, in fact and in constitutional law they do not. Resources belong to the states (i.e. the people of those states) in which they occur… not ALL Australians. Resources occuring in the territories and in Australian waters outside state waters are property of the Commonwealth Government and to tax as they see fit.
2) Royalties – mineral resources are exhaustable (i.e. not renewable) and attract a special tax, called a royalty, for their exploitation. As the resources belong to the states, it is up to the states to determine what royalty is charged and at what level. It is not the jurisdiction (or whatever terminology the legal types prefer) of the Commonwealth Government to determine royalties for resources in the states. End of story.
Types of royalties:
Volume based – paid on a per tonne basis of the resource extracted – these are not common, but coal and low cost bulk resources (sand, gravel etc) in WA attract such a royalty.
Ad valorem – paid on the value of the mineral expolited, often adjusted for the stage of production at which the final sale occurs. Under the WA Mining Act 1978 the royalties are levied at 7.5% of revenues for ore (e.g. iron ore – lump), 5% for concentrates (e.g. nickel concentrates), and 2.5% for metal (e.g. gold). Minerals exploited under “State Agreements” often have concessionary royalty rates…. this is an artifact of history and a story for another day. Note well that ad valorem taxes come “off the top” before deductions, as opposed to RRT-style taxes.
Resource Rent Tax (RRT) – e.g. PRRT (Petroleum RRT). Levied on the after-tax profits of the company exploiting the resource. This is levied at a much higher rate (40% for PRRT) but obviously has a lot of deductions which are applied in a complex fashion.
Anywho… it has been exceptionally annoying for me to see vast amounts of disinformation in the whole RSPT (Resources Super Profit Tax) debate recently, mostly coming from the side of Government, but the mining industry has been good for a bit of FUD as well. Typical garbage was this morning’s article in The West:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/7295032/economists-back-proposed-mining-tax/
Let’s have a look at this shall we, and see how similar this is to the CPRS debates:
Classic appeal to authority, straight out of the textbook. Economists are, after all, the experts when it comes to the economy, just like climate scientists are for the climate. Quite unlike climate scientists, however, most economists will joke about the fact that you can never get 2 economists to agree on anything. We are a cynical bunch…
Yes, most of which has been coming from the politicians and their advocates, particularly those pushing the tax. For instance, claiming that extracting $12 billion from the mining industry over 2 years (budget forward estimates) while simultaneously claiming that this new tax will increase mining activity… even a non economist should be axclaiming WTF?
So let’s start our debate by stating things we all agree on (like CO2 causes some warming):
Well duh…
They already do…
Yes, we already covered that…
and the conclusion is… drumroll please…
Implying that the RSPT should go through… what this blatantly ignores is that it is not the place of the Federal Government to levy royalties… that is constitutionally the states’ decision.
The entire rhetoric of the debate as framed by Labor is wrong. They start by saying the minerals belong to Australians and therefore the Commonwealth Government should get a larger share of the pie to spend wisely as only they know how…
Now don’t get me wrong… as an economist I know that economic theory shows that an ETS is theoretically the most effiicient way to reduce CO2 emissions just as a RRT is theoretically the least distorting form of royalty. The big BUT is that in the case of the CPRS the tax is not warranted by science, and in the case of the CPRS it is not the Feds decision to make, it is the States’ decision.
Now that we have stripped the debate back down to the basics what does that leave? Well the RSPT is simply another ambit tax grab by Federal Labor based on faulty arguments and appeals to experts. Sound familiar?
PS> Don’t get me started on the poor use of statistics in this debate…
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PS> I note the original letter signed by the economists emphsises over and over again that the a new RRT should be instead of traditional royalties:
http://resources.news.com.au/files/2010/05/26/1225871/437188-economists-on-mining-tax.pdf
This pivotal fact (with which I totally agree) is downplayed by teh newspaper articles, plus the fact that it is the individual States’ decisions to determine how royalties are applied… not the Feds.
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More junk science on ocean “acidification”:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/reef-team-tries-a-little-time-travel-to-assess-acid-damage-20100523-w42x.html
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davidc @144,
From the link:
What a load of [insert expletive here]. Even my cats would laugh at that statement. They need to change whatever it is they’re smoking because it’s not doing them any good.
Not a word said about the actual ph of the water — if they even checked it — just more scare mongering. If you’re a scientist worthy of my attention then give me actual information. Tell me the current ph and then measure how it changes over time along with what changes on the reef. If the rate of “acidification” is so great then you should see measurable differences in just a year or two. But no, instead you’re going to give your lab rat a dose of salt that would kill a horse and then declare that salt is dangerous to humans because the rat died.
Must we suffer this kind of foolishness endlessly or can we finally jerk ourselves back into reality at some point?
Someone (can’t remember the source) once remarked that God loves fools. He must love them; he made so many of them. So that probably answers my question. And maybe I’m just a fool for hoping to see a little sanity in this world before I leave it. Nuts!
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