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Too frightening for words. Henry Ergas has a bone-chilling warning.
It takes time to get a feel for how spectacularly insidious the Australian carbon tax could be.
Firstly there’s the anti-democratic nature of it: apparently Gillard is doing things that are considered utterly beyond the pale in other nations. Ergas suggests that by granting “property rights” she is threatening to make the cost of removing her legislation all but insurmountable. (For all the world, it appears she’s determined to stop the opposition offering the people the choice to remove the carbon tax. Could it be, that for the sake of an advantage in the next election campaign she’s tossing the country down the nearest black hole?)
Secondly, the Australian Carbon Tax is a freakishly large sacrificial offering: Australians will be hit for $391 for every man, woman and child, and that’s just the first year (according to the government estimates). Compare this to the EU. There in the land-of-exploding-economies, each good citizen has had to fork out the vast grand sum of (wait for it) … one dollar fifty cents each (yes, $1.50). And, it gets worse, (how do you satirize this?) — that’s the cumulative total since the EU […]
On The Conversation Matthew Bailes, Pro Vice Chancellor at Swinburne University of Technology, is feeling sympathetic towards those poor climate scientists who have to deal with daily criticism, but he doesn’t seem to know much about how climate science works. I’d like to help him out, but don’t think the Conversation team would let me add my comments into his article, so I’ve done that here, responding to Bailes:
“Imagine for a minute that, instead of discovering a diamond planet, we’d made a breakthrough in global temperature projections. Let’s say we studied computer models of the influence of excessive greenhouse gases, verified them through observations, then had them peer-reviewed and published in Science.”
Verified?”#$%^!! Sorry, what’s that? No one in the official world of climate science has mentioned “verification” since the mid 1990’s. Shhh. In climate science they verify the observations first: when they fit the models, then they know the equipment worked. 😉
“Instead of sitting back and basking in the glory, I suspect we’d find a lot of commentators, many with no scientific qualifications, pouring scorn on our findings.”
No qualifications? Psst, Ivar has a Nobel Prize (and … in Physics). I know Nobels […]
Ominously, the embryonic markers of solar cycle 25 are three years late and are nowhere to be seen. Scientists are asking if this could be the start of another Maunder-type Minimum. (The bummer with that, being that during those 70 quiet years the world slipped into the Little Ice Age; animals froze in barns, people starved, disease raged… see The brutal cold of the Maunder Minimum and the Great Irish Frost for some light entertainment.)
If it were going to happen, we ought to start preparing now, right? You know, take precautions, “buy insurance”, figure out if CO2 actually does any useful warming (and if so, pump more of it into our atmosphere). You know it makes sense…
Seriously, if the cold is coming, we really ought to pay attention. — Jo
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From the press release today (June 14):
Major Drop in Solar Activity Predicted
“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, said of the results. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”
Normally cycles […]
No one from the big scare campaign is even pretending that this is about the science anymore. It’s just tribal name-calling, voo-doo dolls and poo jokes from preschool.
Al Gore hopes he has reality on his side. But the reality is the relentless slide of the polls. It’s the crashed Chicago Climate Exchange, the kaput green jobs. It’s the long list of countries who are are shaking themselves free of the eco-shackles. The apostles of a bygone cult are reduced to saying that warming causes cooling, death, disease and even prostitution in Ghana. The babbling last players standing are talking about saving the world from aliens. Sadly, those are not the nutters, no, they’re the ones from NASA.
The NASA crew worry that the aliens who have been blind to the last 60 years of I love Lucy beamed out to space, have instead been transfixed by a trace gas composition change from 0.028% to 0.039% on the third rock from the sun in a distant galaxy. I’m scared now, not of the aliens, but of our collapsing collective IQ. This is modern public debate (and from the team that got the man on the moon.)
7 […]
There is a lot to discuss at the moment. I’ll leave it in the hands of the able commentators 🙂
4.3 out of 10 based on 3 ratings
Another big La Nina could mean another cold winter for the Northern USA, and another wet flooding summer with potentially nasty cyclones for Eastern Australia (and the rest of the Eastern Pacific nations). La Ninas even affect the Indian Monsoon Season. If only we could predict them accurately.
Frank Lansner on HideTheDecline has noticed that one set of models (NCEP/CFS) is predicting a large La Nina brewing, while most of the others are still forecasting “neutral” conditions. The NCEP/CFS models were more accurate last year. If they are right now, we could be in for a large La Nina. On the other hand, Australia’s Bureau of Met is predicting only that “La Nina remains possible in 2011”.
Guest Post: Frank Lansner
Another Large La Nina Imminent?
For months the NCEP/CFS has been predicting a stronger second La Nina dip. Prior to the last La Nina, the NCEP/CFS was much better at predicting the La Nina — and personally I feel confident with the NCEP/CFS Prediction. It does seem to suggest that a La Nina will be upon us in a very short while. If so, global cooling is likely to shift into a faster gear.
Cooler water is appearing […]
The truth about “death threats”
The death threats scare that was widely publicized in June 2011 turned out to be opportunistic hyperbole based on a five year old letter, one unverified remark at an event a year ago, and recycled old boorish emails. Yet the shameless propaganda machine continues to repeat the baseless claim without admitting that it was a transparent attempt to score sympathy points.
Why can they get away with it? Because media outlets like The Canberra Times won’t apologize for printing such vacuous unsubstantiated claims, and they won’t correct the record. And Catalyst (which soaked in the one-sided hyperbole with Science Under Seige last night) won’t do enough “investigation” to get the story straight.
The facts on the “death-threats”:
The only “death-threat letter” the ANU could name in June 2011 was five years old. (It was posted in 2006 or 2007.) Even that was not serious enough to officially report to the Australian Federal Police. (Issuing a death threat is a criminal act punishable with a 10 year sentence in the ACT.) The other threat the ANU could “confirm” was a year old off-hand remark by an unknown person at a university function. Other reports of […]
Brilliant. The country-and-western economic thesis. It’ll catch on. So much for those Keynsian doctorates.
Ray Stevens, composer, comedian, singer. 🙂
We’re printing money
Obama Money
Let’s do what the government does, it works for them, it might work for us, so I forgot my ethics and morals and swallowed my pride We took out every credit card we could get and took out the maximum debt
5.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]
You wouldn’t wish a wounded government on any nation. They’re too dangerous.
The timing could hardly be worse. We’re about to force our nation to spend far more on its energy than it has too, while our competitors are decidedly not doing that, and the world faces a economic meltdown of the “generational” type. We’re the last cab off the rank in a race to nowhere and most of the competitors have moved on to other events.
“Far from saving the worker, the ALP have become the unwitting schmucks who screwed the workers to help the banksters”.
In a desperate bid to score a “bounce” in the dismal polls, Gillard is pushing through the carbon legislation next week.
The 15 minutes of fame or a face saving “legacy” will last only until the rest of Australia wakes up to just how monumentally stupid, utterly pointless, and expensive and ineffectual this tax is. And they are waking up. The rise of skepticism in the polls is a one way street, a monotonic increase. No one is shifting into the believer camp.
Only an idiot would think a tax can change the weather.
Far from making skeptics “give up”, […]
Catastrophic killer storms are coming!
‘The Australian Greens say Tropical Cyclone Yasi is a “tragedy of climate change”.’
“DESTRUCTIVE hurricanes such as Katrina and Rita are likely to be more common … Tim Flannery warns.” “These hurricanes have been a catastrophe just waiting to happen.”
…
The IPCC concludes:
“Studies showed … future tropical cyclones would likely become more severe with greater wind speeds and more intense precipitation.” AR4 10.3.6.3 Tropical Cyclones (Hurricanes) pp786
…
Wow, that’s scary! Let’s look at the studies:
“These studies fall into two categories: those with model grid resolutions that only roughly represent some aspects of individual tropical cyclones, and those with model grids of sufficient resolution to reasonably simulate individual tropical cyclones.”
Oh? That’s models, or er… other models?
But where are the observations?
CO2 levels have risen to the highest level in a million years, presumably Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Cyclones are at all time highs, stronger and nastier than […]
We all knew a fall was coming after the debacle with the Malaysian swap of asylum seekers for refugees.
The Australian:
Tony Abbott’s record lead over Julia Gillard: Newspoll
After a devastating decision in the High Court last week wiped out the Prime Minister’s Malaysia Solution for asylum-seekers, Labor’s primary vote has stuck at a record low of 27 per cent.
The Coalition’s has risen to 50 per cent – the highest since John Howard was prime minister at the time of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The Greens dropped from 14 to 12.
5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
An editor has resigned after committing the dastardliest of crimes: He helped publish a skeptical paper in a peer-reviewed journal. God-forbid, imagine a paper being reviewed only by people who have some sympathies with your results? It’s unthinkable. We all know that Nature and Science, for example, dutifully send all the papers by alarmists to at least one skeptical reviewer, and since 97% of 77 climate scientists are alarmists, that means the other two scientists who aren’t, are very busy people. (75 of 77 climate scientists “agree” that the world is going to hell because of CO2). And who knows where they found that third skeptic?
Naturally, lots of journal editors have resigned when they’ve realized that, accidentally, they’ve only sent alarmist papers to alarmist reviewers.
As if we needed reminding about how bizarre, unbalanced, and unscientific is the creed of climate. Normally, if egregious mistakes are found, a paper would be retracted. If “normal” mistakes are found, those who found them could publish something called a “reply”. This resignation appears to be a first. Wagner chucked his job without even so much as phoning Spencer or Braswell, which makes you wonder if it was all a bit convenient.
To […]
For those who want science and not politics, the enormous scientific compendium known as the NIPCC reports has been updated to incorporate new results. There are hundreds of references to peer reviewed research. It is as always, thorough, professional and comprehensive.
The authors of the new NIPCC report conclude that “the net effect of continued warming and rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere is most likely to be beneficial to humans, plants, and wildlife.”
To summarize the executive summary:
The models overestimate the warming, don’t include chemical and biological process that may be as important as the physical ones. Plants like CO2, grow faster and the green biomass of the Earth tends to counteract the warming effects of CO2. New evidence shows the Medieval Warm Period was real, global and warmer than the present, while CO2 was 28% lower. The ice is not melting as much as people expected; the seas are not accelerating; there’s no change in rain or river flows that you can blame CO2 on. Life on Earth likes warmth. Amphibians, birds, butterflies, other insects, lizards, mammals, and even worms do better with a bit of global warming. […]
There’s not much point in me posting scientific information at the moment. Let’s face it, the political situation Down-under has reached new peaks of grand maladroitness and irascible incompetence, and most of the comments will want to unpack that.
Julia Gillard. Source Herald Sun. Photo: Lyndon Mechielsen
Bolt is forecasting that Gillard will be gone by the end of September. Today 500 people protested outside Albanese’s office, incensed that he called the Convoy inconsequential. (He created a lot of enemies with that one comment.)
For those of you overseas, sorry if it’s all so Australian-politics dominated, but really, there haven’t been that many democratic governments who have bollocksed up so many things, for so many people, in so short a time. This is history in the making. The cattle trade, insulation installers, building groups, asylum seekers (shutting down a working system, announcing East Timor , then Malaysia), Green loans, and cash for clunkers. And now of course, just in case there is a single business group left undamaged, they want to tax-the-rest to change the weather.
When the Rudd government took over in 2007 there was a chunky$20 billion dollar surplus, now there is $82 billion in debt and […]
Bad governments don’t just “waste millions of dollars” — mismanagement kills.
We live in one of the richest nations on Earth. But waiting times for one type of cancer treatment in Australia have blown out to the point where 2,500 people are dying every year. Why do we have money to waste on fruitless efforts to change the weather?
NEARLY 2500 cancer patients are dying prematurely each year due to poor provision of radiation therapy services, experts have estimated — with many more waiting far longer for the life-saving treatment than clinically recommended.
Graeme Morgan, former director of radiation oncology at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital, said it appeared state governments were attempting to give preference to other treatments such as chemotherapy due to the high upfront costs of installing the linear accelerator machines required to deliver radiation treatments.
Yet he said the result was that nationally, 15,600 Australian cancer patients were missing out on radiation therapy each year, and 2500 dying early — figures he described as “a disgrace”.
Thirty percent of one cancer patient group was missing out on starting radiation therapy within six weeks (ideally, it ought to be within 4 weeks):
“If you don’t treat […]
It’s nice to know Christian Kerr of The Australian reads my site and wants to quote me, but really Christian, where’s the conspiracy?
“Science broadcaster turned climate-sceptic blogger and convoy backer, Jo Nova, let loose. “The ABC coverage is so shamefully biased, a government PR agency could hardly have done a better job,” she claimed.
“They carefully avoided selecting any of the key messages in the speeches or petition (but they put in any odd unconnected grievance they could find). They didn’t interview the organisers, instead just showing a snippet of a song and a truckie tooting.” But the opponents of the rally were no less inclined to conspiracy.”
When the media coverage of the Convoy was so dismally biased, I wasn’t suggesting a conspiracy. No one needs a conspiracy when good old fashioned incompetence will do. I have documented some of the poor media coverage of climate science, and especially ABC coverage, at length.
Indeed, Mark Scott, director of the ABC himself admitted that the ABC is there to help the government. The fact that he thought it was OK to admit that publicly tells you how far the ABC has come from any notion that it is […]
G.R.O.G. = Get Rid Of Gillard
… …
H/t: Just Grounds, Jeff, Craig. Thanks 🙂
Please, will the original artist comment so I can give credit and a link?
UPDATE #1: Could be Alex Werchon on CAN-Do? 4-Mar-2011? (h/t Dave N if so).
UPDATE #2: Andrew Bolt describes the Thomson meltdown as “out of control” — Senior members of the Gillard government are being accused of heavying the Health Services Union for reporting the allegation that M.P. Thomson misused Union funds to hire prostitutes… “overnight a dirt-covered shovel is left outside the door of HSU secretary Kathy Jackson, who was home alone.” Bolt also notes that the Labor Party connection with union thugs and conmen has some history.
“What we are witnessing is more like scenes from a mafia vendetta, not the processes of a responsible government.”
Andrew Bolt
Have these people no scruples?
9.2 out of 10 based on 17 ratings
Finally, a new day has dawned and solar power is cheaper than coal fired electricity! Gadzooks! It must be true, the Sydney Morning Herald says so.
…
“Solar energy cost hits par with coal fuel“
Who knew they conquered the low energy density, high maintenance, poor performance, bad weather, and general darkness at nighttime — all in the last weekend? This changes everything… oh, but wait, that’s odd — this only applies in some parts of New South Wales?
Silly me, and I thought the sun shone on the whole nation (and sometimes on the rest of the world too)?
THE cost of solar power in parts of NSW has for the first time crept below that of coal-fired electricity – seen as a key tipping point for the expansion of renewable energy. [SMH]
The dead-set give away is the “parts of NSW” — straight away you know that either someone is stealing sunlight from neighboring councils, or this isn’t a real “cost”, not in the same sense that you and I would use the word. When we think of the cost of something, it means we want to know how much we’ll pay. If we pay less up […]
Well which way is it then?
Last year Professor Andrew Pitman said the science was settled, he was a poor volunteer, and skeptics were rich (which was why they were winning).
…climate scientists are losing the fight with climate sceptics. That the sceptics are so well funded, so well organized, have nothing else to do, they kind of don’t have day jobs, they can put all of their efforts into misinforming and miscommunicating climate science to the public, whereas the climate scientists have day jobs and this isn’t one of them. All of the efforts you do in an IPCC report is done out of hours, voluntarily, for no funding and no pay, whereas the sceptics are being funded to put out full scale misinformation campaigns…”
[Source: It was so bad, the ABC broadcast it, twice — Eleanor Hall interviews Andy Pitman. Robin Williams thought it was so “useful” he rebroadcast the same factually incorrect, irrelevant material.]
Tom Nelson caught him telling prospective students in the Adelaide Advertiser that they ought to rush to study climate science so they can get paid well, be political activists, and change our understanding of the climate.
Almost invariably, climate PhDs with a physics […]
It’s important for the big-government-dependent parties to deny the power of the Convoy.
Less than a week ago, there was a rally at Parliament House with around 3,000-5,000 people. And today there was another one, this one with around 600 vehicles according to Matt and Janet Thompson, and this one by people who have gone to extraordinary lengths, driving up to 5,000 kilometers from all corners of the country.
The convoy is a rolling protest that involved thousands of people across the nation. In Sydney, people switched their headlights on in sympathy, and Andrew Bolt records at least one witness suggesting half the cars on the road had their lights on.
Feelings and support for the convoy are widespread and running high. One of the convoy supporters from near Clermont reports: ‘In only 24 hours, we gathered 300 signatures for the petition, local beef producers had organised fuel donations of over $13,000 and the CWA had organised food and drinks for everyone on the convoy. This support from a town of only 2000 was amazing and a testament to a united effort.’
Dale Stiller’s comment is typical on Just Grounds: The convoy has experienced nothing but support. There have been […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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