UPDATE: Dr Paul Bain has replied to say that pressing work commitments mean he cannot respond to this until next week. We look forward to that, and I will make sure it is available for readers here (should Dr Bain permit). – Jo
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Dear Dr Paul Bain,
Thank you for replying (and so promptly). I do sincerely appreciate it. Apologies for my tardiness.
I do still think I can help you with your research. Indeed, in more ways than you realize.
You describe in your Bain et al letter in Nature, that the number of deniers is growing despite “enormous effort”. There is a policy problem. I absolutely agree. No one is having any success getting deniers to believe in anthropogenic climate change. Could it be that they don’t understand deniers at all?
Let’s go through the points in your email reply to me, then the bigger implications.
First and foremost – obviously you did not provide evidence to back up your assumption that the “existence” of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change is real. That doesn’t mean it does not exist, but I’ll get back to this. It is the key and only real point.
Secondly, you may regret the connotations with Holocaust denial (that’s good) but it is not the point (which is why I didn’t mention it). My problem with “denial” is more simple: it’s the conflict with its literal English meaning. The climate change debate is sold to the public as a science topic — so it follows that denier (as you use it) refers to being a “science denier”. Yet, despite that being the key logical definition of the term, that awkward point still remains, we still don’t know what evidence deniers deny?
if thousands of people are becoming deniers, they must have been believers before, and just what kind of denier changes their mind…?
Thirdly, there is another problem with defining deniers: if thousands of people are becoming deniers, they must have been believers before, and what kind of denier changes their mind — is there such a thing as a “flexible denier”? We have to wonder about deniers that are apparently able to adopt a new position, but then are unable to change it again? (Is it a form of group-Alzheimers where people were convinced, but “forgot” why, and now are impervious to hearing the same reasons that once convinced them, or could it be — alternate hypothesis here — that the believers are getting new information, and the explanations they used to believe are no longer convincing?) The first hypothesis involves a mass brain dysfunction, the second involves the internet working. Occam’s razor beckons.
I gather you feel that evidence about “the science” is not the point because you are studying the social policy? To which I would ask: Can social policies change the climate, or does climate change our social policies? Is reality the tide gauge results, or the council zoning? Dare I suggest that the point of all the evidence you published rests entirely on the evidence for man-made global warming (that base assumption) that you have not investigated? If there is no empirical evidence for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change, or if the formerly convincing evidence has changed* there is the mystery solved of the rise of the deniers, right then and there. Deniers are the ones following reality.
Using accurate terms
One group in our society thinks it can change the weather (you call these “believers”), the other half of the population are not convinced (you call these the “deniers”). The believers have not yet named any empirical evidence to back up their ambitious claims, yet expect the deniers to pay $1,000-$2,000 per household per annum in Australia. The believers want money from the deniers, while the “deniers” want evidence, data, logic and reason (and preferably a debate with good manners). Clearly these labels are inappropriate. Using standard English definitions, those who believe in phenomenon without evidence are gullible. Those who want evidence are rational.
Let’s apply the more accurate terms to your letter: I’ve interchanged the terms believer for “gullible”, and denier for “unconvinced” or “rational”. The “reality” of climate change is more accurately described as the unsubstantiated speculation of man-made climate change (where is the evidence?). Here are a few select sentences transposed (in bold) with accurate terminology. Note how standard English changes everything:
This is the first study to examine how pro-environmental behaviours can be promoted among those who are not gullible or easily convinced of anthropogenic climate change…
As widespread acceptance of the unsubstantiated speculation about our ability to change the climate is considered critical to effective responses3, 4, rational public questioning about anthropogenic climate change is seen as an important obstacle to meeting the climate change challenge.
Where, for identity reasons,
deniersgullible people are motivated to hold a certain attitude, discrepant evidence is more likely to be avoided, dismissed as biased or judged against an unrealistically high burden of proof, whereas evidence supporting a pre-existing attitude is evaluated with little criticism.Disturbingly for environmentalists, attitudes towards climate change and climate science seem to have become part of a constellation of attitudes defined by the ‘culture wars’: one may have little more luck of convincing a rational citizen that unsubstantiated human induced climate change is real as of convincing a conservative Christian to support abortion, or a committed liberal to oppose it. If taken to its pessimistic extreme, it suggests that gullible activists should give up on rational citizens and focus on increasing pro-environmental behaviour in the willing gullible believers.
What is sociology without science?
I realize you are busy, and it’s not your job to study the climate models. Of course. But it is your job to study deniers, and it’s clear what they need — empirical evidence. Not just more assertions that there is overwhelming evidence, nor more arguments from authority about the vast number of committees which agree, nor more outputs from climate simulations. In the end, what the leaders of the “deniers” want is data. The evidence does not matter to policymakers (at least in the short term), but it matters for your conclusions. If your base assumption is wrong, so is your hypothesis, methods, survey techniques, and recommendations. Hmm?
Unfortunately, there is also another assumption in your letter which, albeit common, is abjectly wrong. You said: “deniers are being misled (for example, by media reporting norms and institutions with vested interests)”. But none of the “vested interests” quoted in your references is larger or even equal to 1% of the size of the vested interests that you appear to be unaware of. For instance, there is the $243 bn renewable energy industry, the $176 bn carbon trading market, the $7 bn annual US government funded science funds that depend on their being a crisis. Instead of deniers “being mislead by vested interests”, in reality, gullible journalists and scientists are ignoring the vested interests that are 100 – 1000 times larger which benefit from an unsubstantiated threat.
Furthermore: You say you are not trying to change anyone’s mind. — if I were you, I would not advertise that widely. It is indubitably more sinister to want to change someone’s behaviour without changing their mind first. This is manipulative deception, befitting Soviet propaganda at it’s worst, which I’m sure is not what you intended though it is how the Nature letter reads. In a democratic society, where people like myself pay for your work, we’d like to think that you are trying to help us understand the world, not to help us “behave” in ways you and the government deem to be appropriate.
The term “denier” is problematic
It cannot be defined, the subgroups within the group are contradictory, it rests on a baseless assumption, and forms a construct which produces meaningless results. Not to mention that it’s insulting, derisory and prejudiced. Possibly this is why so few researchers on the topic manage to produce any outcome other than increasing the number of “deniers”?
I realize this is an inconvenient challenge, but given how many lives and dollars are at stake (not to mention reputations) I’m sure you can afford the 10 minutes it would take to email the experts about the evidence. They will want to support your work.
We have of course, asked all the experts we could think of, with no success.
Sincerely,
Jo Nova
PS: When you ask them, they will assure you that the evidence is real, and that “the deniers” will deny it, so the scientific thing to do would be to test that hypothesis right?
Not long ago, I was sure I could find the evidence that the deniers denied.
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REFERENCES
(*Some evidence that has changed)
Thanks to Anthony Cox for help compiling the list.
- Anagnostopoulos, G. G., D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Christofides, A. Efstratiadis, and N. Mamassis, (2010). A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data’, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55: 7, 1094 — 1110 [PDF] [Discussion]
- Caillon, N., Severinghaus, J.P., Jouzel, J., Barnola, J.-M., Kang, J. and Lipenkov, V.Y. (2003). Timing of atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature changes across Termination III. Science 299: 1728-1731. [Discussion, CO2science] [Graphs]
- Christy J.R., Herman, B., Pielke, Sr., R, 3, Klotzbach, P., McNide, R.T., Hnilo J.J., Spencer R.W., Chase, T. and Douglass, D: (2010) What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979? Remote Sensing 2010, 2, 2148-2169; doi:10.3390/rs2092148 [PDF]
- Douglass, D.H. and Knox, S.R. (2009): “Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance,” Physics Letters A, Vol. 373, 3296–3300.
- Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearson, and S.F. Singer. (2007). A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology, Volume 28, Issue 13, pp. 1693-1701, December 2007. [Abstract] [PDF]
- Douglass, D.H., and Christy, J.R.(2008): Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth. Energy and Environment, Vol 20, No 1. [Abstract] [Discussion-LubosMotl] [Discussion JoNova]
- Douglass, D.H. and Knox, S.R. (2009): “Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance,” Physics Letters A, Vol. 373, 3296–3300.
- Koutsoyiannis, D., Efstratiadis, A., Mamassis, N. & Christofides, A. (2008) On the credibility of climate predictions. Hydrol. Sci. J. 53(4), 671–684. changes [PDF] [Discussion]
- Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S. Choi (2009), On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L16705 [abstract, PDF]
- Lindzen, R. & Yong-Sang Choi, Y, (2011) On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications, Asia-Pacific J. Atmos. Sci., 47(4), 377-390, 2011 [PDF] [Discussion – JoNova]
- Loehle, C., (2009): “Cooling of the global ocean since 2003,” Energy and Environment, Vol. 20, 101–104.
- McKitrick, R., S. McIntyre, and C. Herman, (2010), Panel and multivariate methods for tests of trend equivalence in climate data series. Atmospheric Science Letters, 11: 270–277. doi: 10.1002/asl.290 [PDF] [Discussion – JoNova]
- McKitrick, R., McIntyre, S., and Herman, C. (2011) Corrigendum to Panel and multivariate methods for tests of trend equivalence in climate data series, Atmospheric Science Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 4, 270–277. [Abstract]
- McKitrick, R. and Vogelsang, T. J. (2011), Multivariate trend comparisons between autocorrelated climate series with general trend regressors, Department of Economics, University of Guelph. [ PDF] [Discussion]
- Miskolczi, Ferenc M. (2010), The Stable Stationary Value of the Earth’s Global Average Atmospheric Planck-Weighted Greenhouse-Gas Optical Thickness. Energy & Environment Vol. 21, No. 4, 2010 pp 243-263 [PDF and Discussion]
- Paltridge, G., Arking, A., Pook, M., (2009). Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Volume 98, Numbers 3-4, pp. 351-35). [PDF]
- R. Pielke Sr (2008): “A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system,” Physics Today Vol. 61, no. 11, pp. 54-55
- Spencer, R.W., Braswell, W.D., Christy, J.R., Hnilo, J., 2007. Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007/GL029698. [PDF] [Discussion WCR]
- Spencer, R. W.; Braswell, W.D. (2011) On the Misdiagnosis of Climate Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance, Remote Sens. 2011, 3, 1603-1613. [PDF] [Discussion JN]
- Svensmark, H. (2007). Cosmoclimatology: a new theory emerges. Astronomy & Geophysics 48: 1.18-1.24. [PDF] [Discussion – JN]
- Svensmark, H., Bondo, T. and Svensmark, J. 2009. Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and clouds. Geophysical Research Letters 36: 10.1029/2009GL038429. [Discussion CO2Science]
Well Said Jo.
Perhaps Dr. Bain is REALLY interested in learning where the real “Denial” exists.
20
Initially the data was convincing and we had no reason to question it. We also had no reason to question the climate models used to predict future atmospheric temperatures. We were presented these things by credible people. So we accepted the world is warming as CO2 emissions rise.
But then we note that there have been periods of rising temperatures and periods of cooling temperatures over time. We were all taught about the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. The end of the LIA coincided with natural rising temperatures and some natural sea level rise. These are to be expected and can’t be blamed entirely on CO2.
The AGW theory was that temperatures would escalate at a faster rate if we didn’t reduce CO2 emissions. But since 1998 there has been no increase in global warming and in more recent years there has been some cooling.
Through the Climategate emails we were exposed to scientists who were deliberately hiding data, deliberately withholding codes, and deliberately manipulating the peer review process to favour papers which agree with their position on climate change, and stop papers being published which didn’t support the group think line.
As time passed we read about the many hundreds of well qualified climate scientists, astrophysicists, meteorologists, geologists and so on question the tenets of the IPCC claims and point out that much of the warming since 1850 can easily be explained with better correlation to solar activity than than human CO2 emissions.
We have also been exposed to other factors which have a significant impact on climate change including deep ocean currents, the high level jet streams when impacted by solar flare activity, recently the CERN project in Geneva which has 8000 scientists from 60 countries working on the project proved that cosmic rays can create aerosols which is sufficient for water droplets to form and create clouds. Cloud creation is a major factor in the earth’s temperature. Cloud provides shade from the sun, but radiates back to earth some frequencies of radiation. They also bring rain and can form into and cause winds, and in extremes cyclones and hurricanes and tornadoes.
So then we asked do those climate models the IPCC used to predict future global temperatures include all those other climate driver variables we were told no, they are too poorly understood. The IPCC Climate models take as a base assumption that CO2 is the main climate driver. Then they make unproven assumptions about positive feedback mechanisms to magnify the warming effect of CO2.
Since CO2 is being pumped out at greater rates than ever, if their theories were true, temperatures would be continually rising. But there has been no rising temperatures since 1998 and in recent years there has been some cooling.
So if evaluating the information we have to hand, and not having sufficient evidence to convince me that CO2 is any more than a minor player in global climate gets me called a ‘denier’ by sociology professor types and others, then so be it!
30
…. and then of course there is the Tropical Tropospheric “Hot Spot” that climate modelers modeled would be present and would be the fingerprint of Anthropogenic warming…. However the real observations using real data from 70 years of weather balloons, show that the TT Hot Spot is missing. Thus their own modeling supports the falsification of their own Hypothesis.
But they deny that the missing Hot Spot is missing. In effect they reject real data and replace it with their own fantasy.
…and they have the gall to call skeptics the deniers… sigh.
10
Oh dear ‘Evans, pull the one!
01
.
Oh dear.
Somebody at Septic Science left an auto responder on.
00
MV It doesn’t seem to fit that profile – there is no sense in it and it actually looks more like Gee Ayes word convulsifier in action. He has as some sort of Uni project on the go.
00
KK have no need for random generators I can do this myself.
The person performs health fromagerie.
not so hard.
00
Got anything constructive to add to the debate, donkey?
Yeah, didn’t think so. Just trolling as usual.
10
And then there were those of us who have worked for a time as professional modellers, and know that even the best models can never be use predictively, because you can never know all of the variables present, in any situation you are modelling.
At best, they can give you a range of probable outcomes in a given time period (where the probability is always much less than 100%, and time is is usually measured in days, weeks, or months). They are also excellent in indicating that there are still things that you don’t know, and can help you decide where to look. At worst, they can totally confuse the research you are attempting.
But they can never, ever, be proof of anything other than the skill (or otherwise) of the modeller.
00
@ „…so it follows that denier (as you use it) refers to being a “science denier”
@ “…..we still don’t know what evidence deniers deny?”
Reply: Those are two very good points!
@ “One group in our society thinks it can change the weather (you call these “believers”), the other half of the population are not convinced (you call these the “deniers”)..“
Reply: It is presumably not as simple as it looks like. I believe in the ability of man to change the weather and climate, e.g. by extensive activities at sea and in the in the marine environment, and think I can prove it with the naval war activities during the two World Wars (http://www.seaclimate.com/ ), but regard it as grossly irresponsible to discuss anthropogenic climatic changes and AGW merely on CO2.
00
Two things:
First, it is relatively easy to change the local “weather”. Simply go out on a hot February day and start a large bushfire. In a couple of hours, voila! a major thunderstorm. Anybody with a can of diesel and a box of matches can do this.
However, the ability to change the climate – the trend of weather over an extended region for a prolonged period of time – is an intellectual wet dream short of major terraforming. In a few hours a decent-size cyclone gathers and expends more energy than all the world’s nuclear arsenal combined.
Second, your “evidence” of someone controlling climate is the fact that the start of WWII happened to coincide with three bitter NH winters. The inference is that these winters were “caused” as part of the war effort. Might I be so bold as to suggest you could be confusing cause and effect?
The roughly thirty year cyclical nature of climate was being speculated about by some amongst the ancient Greeks. The observation and the notion of a pattern goes back a long way. In more modern times these cycles can roughly be described in decades as:
1850 – 1880 – warming
1880 – 1910 – cooling
1910 – 1940 – warming
1940 – 1970 – cooling
1970 – 2000 – warming
2000 – 2030 – cooling
Furthermore, it has been noted through the years that the worst extremes of weather seem to occur during the swings from one state to the other (warm to cool, cool to warm etc). It is not by accident that the Brisbane River last flooded in 1974, nor that “Tornado Alley” in the USA last lived up to its name in the same year.
I have great difficulty in accepting that Mankind can control the climate to any great degree, much less over an entire hemisphere – at least not by any technology I am aware of. However, I have no trouble in accepting that people callous enough to deliberately start a major war would time their activities to take fullest advantage of known,cyclical changes in the weather.
I similarly have no trouble believing such people would also prelude their war activities by bankrupting entire nations and stripping them of their economic activity – manufacturing etc – which is pretty-much exactly what happened.
.
And pretty-much exactly what is happening now.
WWIII anyone?
00
Sorry, not for me … I am busy that morning.
00
.
I understand attendance will be compulsory.
00
For a few seconds, anyway.
Tony.
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@ memoryvault June 29, 2012 at 9:37 am „I have great difficulty in accepting that Mankind can control the climate to any great degree,…”
Kindly imagine the world wide impact of an El Nino, taking into account that it is a rather small water body, and only few degrees warmer than that of the surrounding sea (see here: http://www.seaclimate.com/f/images/buch/big/F-2_TM11.png ).
Imagine further that the ocean is holding 1000 times more water than the atmosphere has with just an average water temperature of about plus 4 degrees Celsius. What technical effort are necessary to bring cold water up to the sea surface to cool down the atmosphere over days, weeks, months or years? It would be technically no problem, could be done quickly, and at not so much costs. Vice versa, there is no “mean” to warm the ocean sea surface. That is a speciality of El Nino, and a purely natural event.
Regarding “control of climate”, I have never said that man can control climate, but man can influence weather and climate. Unfortunately science has done nothing to assess the impact of many ocean uses, e.g. of screw driven vessels, fishing boats etc. since about 1850 (more here: http://www.seaclimate.com/a/a3.html ).
However, the sudden increase of ocean penetration during naval war periods, has worked like a field experiment on large scale. During the two world wars the naval war area was mainly confined to the adjacent seas in Northern Europe (1914-18 and 1939-42), and by a thorough assessment of the winter period, it is not so difficult to proof evidently that naval war activities have contributed to the continental weather and climate conditions. Helpful in this respect is, that the North Sea and the Baltic Sea have a special function during the winter season, which makes it much easier to analyse the extreme war winters as caused be sea water conditions.
The reference material, http://www.seaclimate.com/, which is available as book in international online bookshops (e.g. US/amazon.com), deals with the first three WWII years on about 150 pages , respectively ¾ of the book. I would be happy to continue the discussion on the material presented.
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The implication that “denier” was an acceptable term in the social sciences papers on global warming was the opposite of what I found in my first attempt at a survey. There’s partial support for the statement that the term is on the rise, but none for it actually being acceptable.
Drat that pesky evidence, always getting in the way of a good story.
– – – -8<– – – -8<– –
O/T
Any Jonovians interested in meeting up IRL for a commemorative "final carbon-tax-free beer" on Saturday?
It's a sobering thought… hah!
Though I live in Brisbane, I'd propose the Belvedere Hotel at Woody Point/Redcliffe as a decent excuse for a Saturday drive and to make more CO2 on the trip out of spite. 🙂 We could make a lunch out of it. Any takers?
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Andrew, the meetup is a great idea. If others suggest ideas, I will put up a thread just for social gatherings.
Note that the Carbon Tax Rally is on Sunday (see the post before this one). Do send in those ideas. Jim Simpson has been holding a climate sceptics group each week in Sydney. It’s very popular.
Jo
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Hi Jo – Just quick note (albeit a titch late) confirming that the Climate Realists of Five Dock (numbering around 50 members currently) continue to meet most every Thursday evening at Club Five Dock, 66 Great North Road, Five Dock from around 6:30pm for drinks downstairs in the ‘Dockers Bar’ followed usually by dinner for those interested. Nowadays I’m finding several dedicated sceptics remain on for late night coffee, sometimes beyond midnight! More the merrier. Give me a ring on 0417 285 884 – Cheers’nBeers, Jim Simpson
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The Belvedere Hotel at Woody Point is it then. At lunch. We will wear our No Caron Tax T shirts. Ha ha. Love it. Last beer before tax. I might actually drink champagne, because it has more bubbly carbon dioxide than beer.
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sign me up!
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Andrew, thanks for drawing attention to your survey. Yes, I wish we had thumbs up working. That was a comment worth reading. Well said.
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I had an ulterior motive… by proposing a location near Bribie island I was hoping to lure MemoryVault out for a chat, as I recall him saying he is in that area. However I also recall him saying he’s on a contract with a mining company so whether he will be on-site or off-site on Saturday could be pot luck.
This feels weird. But the occasion demands it. Two takers is two more than I thought I’d get, so it seems to have “passed peer review”. 🙂 So it is a goer.
The time shall be 12:30pm in the steakhouse and a table for 4 has been booked under the name “Andrew”.
Plus any other climate realists are welcome too. This was a late notice idea. If more than 4 turn up… we’ll improvise something.
The BoM predicts the weather will be fine tomorrow… damn, forgot to ask for a table inside. 😉
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Be there at 12:30. Looking forward to it! Wearing pale corduroy cap and no carbon tax tee shirt.
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…and I believe a good time was had by all!
TheRealUniverse was nowhere to be seen and I really think a whole universe would have been spotted easily.
Thanks to Richard and ‘Thumbnail’ for coming out and regaling me with great stories of their life’s adventures, it was my highlight of the month. Plenty of deep’n’meaningful conversation. A few beers and bubbly undoubtedly caused some “fugitive emissions” that would infuriate the regulating class if they ever find out about it. 🙂
Happy to meet Jonovians again some time.
00
Another powerful post, thanks!
One of the things that Julia Slingo (top honcho at UK Met Office) has said that makes sense is “I’m not sure if I believe in global warming. My first reaction was that it’s not a religion, not like you believe in God or not. It’s a scientific question, and there are evidences to back up conclusions about global warming”. Unfortunately too many people who believe in AGW don’t know a thing about it, let alone the flaws. It’s a silly mash of Al Gore’s movie, recycling, polar bears, save the tiger, organic food and solar panels. Is belief alone, enough to mobilise a planet or does it require knowledge?
What is the difference between belief and knowledge? A man might believe in vengeful God who punishes with eternal damnation but still commits sin. The same man knows that the tax man exists and so pays his taxes despite a much lesser form of retribution. Perhaps over simplified but you get the picture. I visit many web sites, outside climate scepticism, where the watch word is ‘watch what they do, not what they say’. So if we look at all those believers including Julia Slingo, do they act like they know CAGW exists or is their god an imaginary construct? Rio anybody? Are the experts of sociology, who would condemn sceptics, watching what the believers do? Are they even watching themselves?
It seems to me that the greatest contribution most believers are prepared to make is to sacrifice other people’s money and lifestyle. They don’t even take the trouble to understand the issues, the options or the costs. Are the people who are labelling us deniers putting as much energy and time into it as we are? What value is their contribution?
Time to stop blindly believing in CAGW and start understanding it. Perhaps then it might be possible to lure us away from scepticism. However it might have the opposite effect.
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To stick with the religious theme: Mat 7:20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
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There appears to be a problem with the Link to Bain et al in Nature, in both this & the previous article.
I get a similar problem , with rendering , on selecting some other Categories from the Nature Index
, such as eg. the Nature Communications, & Nature headings.
Perhaps it’s just me and my Apple
“
“
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Second paragraph of “What is Sociology Without Science”:
‘that depend on their being a crisis.’
Should read:
‘that depend on there being a crisis.’
Excellent letter. I’m bookmarking this post.
Alan
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The term “denier” is used without ever defining the characteristic features actually are. But the 2009 “97% of climate scientists” survey gives us the minimum criteria for knowing that someone is not a denier. It is someone who supports the “mainstream” view that the world has warmed, and that humans are responsible for a significant part of it. That could be 10% or even -10%. So either “denier” is a term of intolerance, or those who use it and quote the survey don’t know what they are talking about.
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I discuss the survey in detail on my own blog.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2012/06/18/97-of-climate-scientists-claim-they-are-not-climate-deniers-survey/
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I doubt Bain et al. is going to have the attention span to take in what your saying though. Well constructed and all as it is don’t Sociologists have an altogether different mindset ? Isn’t it rather about what you can make people believe or at least how to herd them into reacting, rather than what may be true.
I mean what kind of societal discipline can there be if everyone just does as they think or believe to be right ? Isn’t it largely about changing behaviours , in line with whatever the government chooses to be desirable ?
I’m afraid Sociologists are a lost cause, much as they must think of ‘Deniers’.
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When I was at university, the Sociologists were a group of people who wished they were invited to parties. 🙂
00
Is it only me, or have others noticed that the only debate going on involves the social ‘sciences’ (read Hayek on the effect of the qualifier ‘social’). Mann, Hansen et al seem to have retired from substantive scientific debate (if some ever engaged) and left it to these soft ‘sciences’ to debate our intransigence/lack of belief/denial/whatever.
??
00
Wouldn’t that be, because if they’re taking the line that the Science is settled, then the only ‘legitimate’ debate should be about how to rein in, coral & subdue these recalcitrant ”Deniers’, by ‘social’ means if possible, & short of resorting to the electrodes.
00
Au contraire, I think they’re losing/have lost (pick your tense) the argument on the hard science, and the social ‘scientists’ are arguing from a position of ignorance. They haven’t the hard science training/knowledge +to evaluate the actual evidence and thus merely accept what they are told is the consensus.
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Of course, if the Smeertens & Stapel cases are any indication, social ‘scientists’ have already learnt a lot from the methods of climate ‘scientists’.
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The softer “social sciences” provide quite strong stuff. But it is about discouraging others from objecting, not providing unsubstantial argument.
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Thank you Jo for pulling back from the “discussion” far enough so that we can see the structure that is needed in the examination of Man Made Global Warming claims.
The substitution of terms idea was magic in that it allowed a completely new take on how everyone thinks about this problem of analysing AGW claims and the forces that distort perception.
Nobody should feel embarrassed about having been taken in by the AGW Scam; that was simply us placing too much trust in people who were themselves “believers” rather than “knowers” and were unaware themselves that the theory was baseless.
Many “climate scientists” had incrementally added their own “small” lie to the bigger pile that already existed just to hold funding for their job but there have been very nasty and cynical forces at work as well and we should not hesitate to fight to expose these fraudsters wherever they hide in Universities, Parliaments or Politicized agencies like the money sucking United Nations.
When all this mess is cleaned up we may then get to see Psychology Departments doing their job to expand our understanding of “How Humans Think” rather than “What they Think” and it’s ugly appendage “Helping Humans to think The Right Thoughts”.
People at the University of Queensland could perhaps use your reply to Paul Bain as an illustration to show that thinking needs structure and logic to avoid making a mess of the information being processed.
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Just think of the opportunity Bain et al have to get in on the ground floor in a groundbreaking study on the psychology of the greatest living example of mass delusion and hysteria in human history! He’s missing his chance at a Nobel prize, if only he knows it.
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Hello Winston,
I do believe you have hit on the PhD topic of the next two decades: “How Did It All Happen?”
🙂
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” It is indubitably more sinister to want to change someone’s behaviour without changing their mind first.”
Wow! Wish I’d said that! An excellent, damning point about Dr. Bain’s letter and views.
[You’re welcome to borrow it anytime, just make sure you credit the author. Mod oggi]
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Brilliant, Jo! I sure hope he spends that ten minutes asking… and then looking… and then searching… you might have another realist out of it. 🙂
00
Very powerful post Jo. Brilliantly constructed. Likely to be a very uncomfortable read for Dr Bain (and others).
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Brilliant response, Jo, absolutely brilliant.
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Quite so.
Check
Check mate.
Speaking of funding and vested interests, would the good doctor like to reveal any climate change related funding he may have received, and state whether he would have received the same if climate change was not included in the study.
Just to clarify, would the good doctor please reveal all of his failed funding applications of the past 10 years. I’m interested in knowing how many applications failed/succeeded when climate change was/was not the basis of the subject matter.
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“The believers want money from the deniers..”
That should read “The believers want money from everyone, including the deniers..”
Otherwise, brilliant job once again, however I personally wouldn’t be as kind to Bain; on this point he has been sucked in by alarmist rhetoric.
Since I’m “on the wagon” for a while I’ll be (for want of a better word) toasting the introduction of the carbon [dioxide] tax with CO2-filled mineral water.
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I prefer the term “alarmists” because most people know or believe that climate changes all the time but also now realise that the alarmists are on a political agenda using climate change as an excuse for control purposes.
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Dennis,
The alarmists are Al Gore, Flannery etc the rest are the gullible, Buffoonery Bill, GA, JB, MattB etc (apologies to those not named).
00
While I don’t disagree in the slightest, I’m afraid the time and opportunity to protest such action is long since past. It was lost the day the majority of Australians agreed that it was acceptable to tax the living daylights out of smokers, specifically to “change their behaviour”.
00
The important point, rather buried above, is that a large number of what I would call active sceptics like myself, started out as AGW believers. That is, we generally agreed that greenhouse gas emissions were causing significant climate warming and this potentially could be a problem. It is only when we started looking at the science, that we realized how weak the evidence was.
I’d add that you really need a science or engineering background to penetrate the projected consensus and get to the actual science.
If Dr Bain wants to research the sceptic phenomena, I suggest he takes a group of believers and a group of sceptics and test their scientific knowledge, especially knowledge of the climate. I think he will be surprised by the results.
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WHAT!!
Devise and conduct a repeatable experiment with measured, observable, falsifiable results?
Good God Man, what are thinking? – This is climate science we’re talking about here.
sarc/off
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Quite right!
What we need to do is to model the scientific knowledge of the believers, and compare that with a model of the scientific knowledge of the sceptics, and then homogenise the results over large geographic areas and adjust for reporting bias on the part of the sceptics.
That should do it quite nicely.
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Hey, if you’re not pre-occupied…
But no pressure…and I don’t mean that in the exploding kiddies kind of way. 🙂
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Here’s a game of “Spot the Denier”:
(True story; happened this summer at the University, in the Electrical Engineering Department.)
It was in a project meeting with 3 graduate students and 4 professors. (I know the saying about too many Chiefs and too few Indians.)
We were talking about the accuracy of the lab’s wavefront sensor (which was crucial to our project). The grad student giving the presentation put up a graph from another student who had studied this. The graph showed lines labeled “measured” and “actual”. The following exchange occured (Grad Student 1 is giving the presentation):
Grad Student 2: “How did she get the ‘actual’?”
Grad Student 1: “I think that is a Zemax simulation.” (Zemax is an optical design program.)
Grad Student 2: “You mean it’s an ‘actual simulation’?” (Indication of sarcasm)
Myself: “Come on, guys: This isn’t Climate Science.”
Grad Student 3: (excitedly) “Did you see that report yesterday?” (I think he was referring to the NASA heat balance measurements.)
Other Professor: “WE AREN’T GOING TO DISCUSS THAT HERE!”
All the graduate students thought this exchange was humourous — the professors looked uncomfortable.
I have hope for the new generation.
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Good comment Phillip,
I started out not as a “believer” but as an “acceptor”.
It was taken for granted that people speaking on behalf of the UN or a University would be reliable.
Sadly we found that they were only political.
The damage to the credibility of Universities worldwide and to the UN has been enormous and like so many people I feel that for the UN this has been the last straw and that Australia should immediately cease ALL FUNDING to that organisation.
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I am very annoyed that those people have been so deceitful.
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Keith, I’ve always known that the UN’s IPCC was primarily about extracting money, but at the same time I thought GHG warming was real and potentially a problem. What I subsequently learned was the extent to which climate science had been corrupted/politicized, and how poor and agenda driven much/most of the published work is.
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KinkyKeith
FijiDave
Great minds, and all that… 🙂
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Philip, I was never a ‘believer’ , I was an ‘acceptor’. An ‘acceptor’ of the AGW nonsense as I had no reason to be otherwise – after all, I listened to the BBC for two hours a day and ‘accepted’ that which I didn’t know then – their propaganda.
Then, one day, I happened upon joannenove.com.au and the WUWT, and the heavy curtains drew aside and the light shone… and the rest is history – for me.
BTW, it was a kick in the guts to come to the realisation that the BBC, which I thought the one uncorrupted news source on the planet, was no better than Communist era Pravda and the likes.
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Nice one Jo.
Excellent in fact. Terminology who would a thunk.
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I wonder by what methods it was decided that the planetary climate just before the industrial revolution was/is optimal for Homo Sapiens Sapiens, and by what methods we will be able to forever lock in that climate. Recent research in the Rift Valley appears to show that our brain/intelligence evolved faster during periods of wild weather and, conversely, stalled in periods with stable weather. Observation of the myriad of dysfunctional societies around the planet seems to suggest that we have a depressingly long way yet to go before we can truly claim to have evolved past Homo Sapiens Barbaricus. Or, are we a failed experiment?
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Well expressed as usual Jo but bear in mind that in this post modern, post normal science, outcomes based education era we find ourselves in today it is plausibility, not facts, that drive the discourse. Bain and others of his ilk fit this model to a “tee”. Bain’s objective appears rather not to inform but to persuade – as such he is a propagandist.
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O/T but still of interest to people here I wager… the Government is trying to foist legislation upon us that will determine who can own what media and it will be determined “in the public interest.” I don’t know about you, but I get a creepy crawly feeling whever politicians start saying they are doing things because this is what I want – last time I checked I am a member of the public and I have interests in how this economy is being (mis)managed. Anywho, here is a piece raising the issue at the SMH:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-obscure-world-of-public-interest-20120628-21572.html
I draw your attention to a particular paragraph:
I must thank the author because it reminded me once again of Yes Minster, the timeless BBC classic:
I think the parallels are self-evident. I would want this Government gone yesterday, except a little part of me keeps nagging and reminding me that the Rainbow Coalition is such a source of comedy gold … shame the lefty comedians are unwilling to run with it…
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more deniers than ever in USA and Briton, Canadians are a little slower than the rest
http://www.angus-reid.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2012.06.27_Climate.pdf
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I wouldn’t be so sure about their Canadian stats. Their survey participants had to some extent “self-selected” by previously agreeing to become “Angus Reid Forum panelists”. Of course we have no way of knowing what the prior beliefs and assumptions of these “panelists” (in any of the 3 countries) might have been.
But apart from this, in addition to Suzuki’s outpourings, we poor Canucks seem to be bombarded with green propaganda masquerading as “reports” and “studies” duly relayed by unquestioning media mavens.
For example, there’s a relatively new kid on the enviro-advocacy block that popped up the other day which calls itself “Sustainable Prosperity” (SP) which has issued a glowing “report” on British Columbia’s (much despised) carbon tax. In its press release it propped up its own findings with those of a “study” from the Pembina Institute (not known for being a hotbed of objective anything!) – based on 39 “interviews”
From what I’ve been able to glean, so far, SP appears to be a home away from home for a good number of “academics” and others whose backgrounds include prior employment at Environment Canada and/or known “green” politicians (e.g. Stephan Dion!) – not to mention WWF and/or like-minded organizational roots.
SP’s primary “goal” is the implementation of “Environmental Pricing Reform” across Canada! Although one might wonder how one goes about “reforming” something that has never existed 😉
I’ve highlighted SP’s report (and the considerably less than full disclosure pertaining to its authorship, along with a few other eyebrow-raising details of its connections and funding) at my blog:
Sustainable what?!
P.S. Great response to Bain, Jo 🙂
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A little of the thread but..New warning..
“The Financial Times Editorial Openly Admits Agenda For A Centralized, Anti-Democratic, Dictatorial Global Gov’t”
http://www.4thmedia.org/2012/06/26/financial-times-editorial-openly-admits-agenda-for-a-centralized-dictatorial-global-government/
———–
Possible upcoming events that could will change your life..
1. 1/7/12 Australian CO2 TAX introduced.
2. 27/7/12 – on wards, False flag event (ie bombing) at the London Olympics (quite probable)
3. ~/9/12 Global financial meltdown rumors of the ‘planned’ EU and other collapse aimed at Sept.
Have a nice day.
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TRU,
You will be labelled a tin foil hatted conspiracy theorist if you keep this up.
The global war of terror is real, still i dont understand how you can declare war against a tactic?
The latest false flag event failed (re Turkey and their A4) but they will try again. Once Syria is attacked Iran will be treaty bound to help Syria repel its invaders, war with Iran will start, cue Russian/China.
All the chess pieces are now in place unfortunately Russia are the chess champions.
One world government is a step closer (just need to get rid of the non compliant governments)
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F4
Tony.
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Coming up with a better tactic might be worth a try.
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The war on terror is fake as there WAS NO TERROR BY ISLAMISTS!!! is was done by a rouge element inside the US Govt.. FACT. Along with ALL the other false flag events. All exposed.
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Who are these rouge people? Communist infiltrators or just perpetually angry?
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Gee Aye
Once again you are obviously behind the times with modern militant techniques.
It is well know that a group, an unknown group, which could be termed “a known unknown” group managed to infiltrate the Virginia offices of the Pentagon by waiting till dark and using a swipe card stolen from Donald Rumsfeldt. The roups name derives from the fact that they covered their entire skin and clothing in ROUGE which prevented sensitive infra red sensors from detecting their presence.
p.s. If you had read Ian Plimer’s Wonderful book, “Heaven and Earth: a Full Carbon Economy” you would have found this out on page 576.
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Are these the ones who set the explosives in the WTC?
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No GA,
These are ones that mystical drove an object with the same structural strength of a coke can through 9 feet of reinforced steel and concrete leaving nothing but a perfectly round hole behind.
(KK talks about the Pentagon, please read the comments more carefully next time :-))
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Hi Crackar
You know your modern history.
The theory was that someone in the Pentagon blew out part of the wall and dumped fragments of an airliner there to make it look like an inside job hence the Rouge Group.
I think there was an earlier WTC bombing before the airliner thing where they used a van; the was The Van Group.
The final catastrophe was the Airliner Group’s work and it was not pretty.
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The never ending problem with “skeptics” is that they aren’t skeptical. They simply choose what they want to believe, and then proclaim it as some sort of virtue.
The interesting thing to me is how people without sufficient expertise to come to an independent decision end up having an opinion. That’s me. I listened to both sides, and think the AGW mob are more likely to be correct – that we have a problem that is worth worrying about. But like most of you, I don’t know enough to be sure that they are right or wrong. But I’ve formed an opinion nonetheless, just as you have. If it was a quiz night, we’d just have to wait until the end of the round and they’d tell us the answer. But its not, so we just have to let things play out in the real world. Not the world of politics and opinion, but the actual atmosphere and ocean.
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One of your better comments John,
I understand what you are saying but you dont have to be an expert to know when a prediction goes belly up.
Eg. Based on my theory of AGW the planet will warm by X degrees over the next X number of years. X years later the opposite has happened.
Ice loss
Rain fall
Sealevels
Cyclones
Droughts
Etc
Etc
Etc.
Every prediction ever made has blown up in their faces like a bad trick cigar. You dont need to be an expert to know or understand this, only the gullible could still beleive.
Look at it this way many years ago you would have thought Al Gore was your hero now he is an embarrassment, same goes for Flannery, Panchuri, Suzuki and now Lovelock.
So who is left John, who can you point to and say “He is fighting the cause for us” without embarrassing your self?
No one thats who all you have left is policticians the rest have jump from the sinking ship, its about time you did.
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What Crakar says.
Plus you don’t have to have a PhD to evaluate a process.
I personally have a background in the history and philosophy of Science and the processes used in Climate science are seriously broken.
And hence – not to be trusted.
(briefly) They commit basic flaws such as the following.
[1] Starting with a pre-determined conclusion. The UN IPCC assumed as a starting point the position of the UN FCCC that human industrial emissions (in particular CO2) would cause Global Warming.
[2] The impact of [1] is to cause the selection of methodologies that allow for the pre-determined conclusion to be supported. This favours Models, and Proxy studies where the proxies can be cherry picked or massaged with programs and statistics to produce the required “positive” findings, over empirical studies.
[3] An inability to question core assumptions. Minimal funds to research natural drivers for climate change, active attempts to shutdown contradictory research, Svensmark and bend results Trenberth/Landsea.
The list of process corruption just goes on and on – I could spend all day enumerating the issues.
The activity that is called “Climate Science” is just not Science – it is a sham, a hoax, a rort, a corruption, a diseased form of science that should be massively defunded as a means of cleaning out the poisonous muck that festers in it’s name.
If you stop looking at the official climate science artefacts, and start looking at the processes by which they are constructed the deceits become very visible.
Yours sincerely,
ExWarmist
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John Brookes,
You say we should wait and see. Are you prepared to come out firmly and say “repeal the CO2 tax in the meantine”?
If not why not?
00
John, I mostly agree with your thinking. However, in what way is your loyal support of AGW science helping it to improve? The science lacks credibility. It’s so poor that even politicians, who have had the finest one to one indoctrination with the most persuasive climate scientists, begin to waver when the bill for doing anything arrives or they think the public is turning to the other side.
Climate science needs a serious kick up the butt. It needs to have systems in place that can mitigate the effects of poor scientists or excessive bias. It doesn’t need people to keep their head down and pretend it’s ok in the hope that the public will meekly follow it into CO2 poverty.
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John
I find the term ‘climate change contrarian’ to be most apt. ‘Skeptic’ implies a lack of confirmation bias (of which there is scads) and ‘denier’ rubs people the wrong way.
This was the first site I came to when I decided to properly acquaint myself with the science. I learned a fair bit in the beginning but once I’d heard one rotation of all the arguments it became a bit stagnant.
My time spent here definitely solidified my position.
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Tristan,
You think you are not subject to confirmation bias- you are kidding yourself. Only one side of the argument considers themselves unimpeachable and that is the alarmists. Supposedly we are subject to confirmation bias, when your “3 hat chef” of choice serves up a shit sandwich and we gag on the first mouthful. Apparently we should have deferred to his expertise and swallowed it down, smiled and thanked him very much for the delicious meal. Dessert, anyone?
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Winston
Of course I’m subject to confirmation bias. I acknowledge it as much as I am able. To do otherwise would be an impediment to learning.
There have been plenty of studies, claims or conclusions from the side of climate science that I’ve felt were misrepresentative. Fortunately, climate science is not a static beast. It is constantly being refined and expanded such that poor papers tend to get superceded pretty quickly.
In contrast, what I find among most (but not all) contrarians is a willingness to support and recycle the most spurious of claims.
Example: Anyone who has done the most basic research on the topic of UHIE would know that rural and urban stations show almost identical trends and that the areas which have seen the largest amounts of warming are places like Alaska, Greenland, Siberia and the Arctic. But good ol’ UHIE gets wheeled out at every opportunity.
I don’t know who the ‘three hat chef’ is, Flannery? I don’t pay any attention to him.
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Tristan,
You say you listened to “one rotation of arguments”. With any scientific hypothesis, only one point of contention is sufficient to cause a re-evaluation of the basic tenets of the theory. Climate science subverts this principle by not re-evaluating the basic tenets, but recalibrating, modifying and “refining” the data to suit the theory. That doesn’t automatically invalidate the theory, but it certainly makes one reluctant to accept it until these principles are followed transparently, honestly and to the letter. The issue has been so politicized with so many hidden agendas that the well has been poisoned. As to UHI, this has not been addressed as you have contended because trend is not the issue. Heat generated from human activity does occur independent of CO2’s influence, to the point that microclimates can vary anything up to 9 degrees across a city. That is superimposed on any background trend. Rural areas show the same influence through altered patterns of land use, clearing of vegetation, planting of crops, irrigation etc- all once again independent of CO2. You fail to differentiate between influences on an upward trend of temperature, you fail to quantify it, and then you seek to use the trend itself as proof of CO2 and GHG theory, even though every skeptic I’ve ever met agrees that temperature has trended upwards in the last 150 years. To the latter I say- so what? Variations of greater magnitude by a factor of ten have occured in past history independent of man and independent of CO2. UHIs influence has not been debunked, rather it has highlighted how the effects are not really just urban, hence the term is a misnomer.
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As to
ArticleArctic temperature trends, this has been shown to be strongly correlated to solar influences, not CO2. http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm[Typo?] ED
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So who exactly gets to tell me whether I’m allowed to have an opinion? You?
Who gets to profess themselves an expert? Someone anointed by another expert… but on what basis do we accept this second expert? Seems to me it’s turtles all the way down.
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John,
Maybe one way to reach a decision in this polarized atmosphere is to learn from other, more established, areas. One area where non-experts have long reached crucial decisions is the 12 persons of a jury in a criminal trial. One of the crucial elements is that the prosecution needs to substantiate the allegations. The jury hears the evidence, and the cross-examination. In a case, the failure of an able cross examination to make the slightest dent in the prosecution’s case is a very convincing argument in favour of the prosecution’s case. Conversely if the prosecution were found misinterpreting, tampering or withholding the evidence; or intimidating witnesses; or just relying on hearsay evidence then the case would most likely be dismissed.
This survey is the opposite. It is more the “believers” trying to convince themselves and others why critics should not be listened to. It has nothing to do with finding the evidence of some sort of future climate catastrophe that could justify any global policies. I would set the bar low for that evidence. Just something that is of sufficient quality to be even admissible in a court of law.
An example the low quality of the scientific evidence is the recent Gergis et al paper on Australasian temperatures record. Despite being highly acclaimed by the “believers” it lasted just three weeks. I have catalogued some of the reasons why the paper fails to substantiate its thesis. It includes a number of elements that would fail in a court of law, such as suppression of some evidence; misrepresentation of evidence as relevant; tampering with other evidence; and failure to adhere to established procedures.
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TU
In the absence of the flying fickle fist here is Thumbs Up: TU
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Got this email today, i like the ysefulness of their tips on beating the tax. (me in italics)
Dear Craig,
Top Tips to be Carbon Tax Ready
Rising fuel, gas and electricity prices are some of the direct cost impacts predicted with the start of the carbon tax on July 1. A price spike in indirect energy costs, such as travel, freight and waste removal, are also mooted.
But a recent MYOB Business Monitor report found 42 percent of the SMEs surveyed didn’t fully know how the tax might affect businesses; while four percent didn’t know at all.
In light of the report, MYOB recommends firms:
Review expenses for the year to date and identify direct and indirect energy costs
Really? You dont think we have already done that?
Ask suppliers about how the tax will impact their service costs and delivery to you.
You just said 46% cant answer that question
Consider locking in contracts with key suppliers now, at pre-carbon tax prices.
The prices have already risen to beat the people trying to beat the people raising their prices!!!!!!!
Improve business processes, upgrade equipment and software, and re-train staff towards efficiencies.
What spend more money in an effort to not pay a tax? How does that work?
Weigh up passing on price increases against customer expectations as well as profit/loss margins.
Why not this is what everyone else is going to do, if i do this i dont need to spend a cent (what was the point of this tax again?)
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Expect costs to rise more than expected. I remember my mother saying how with the switch to decimal currency prices rose by more than was attributable to the conversion. Then with the introduction of GST prices rose by more than was merely attributable to the tax,
Those who are in cash businesses with low value:high volume products are set to make a little bit more on every transaction. Most others do not have that opportunity.
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You can’t expect them to rise more than expected. If you are expecting them to rise more than expected then automatically that is what you are expecting.
00
.
Yeah.
It’s not like economics was climate science where everything is always going to be worse than we expected.
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MV don;t get me wrong, things can certainly BE worse than expected, we just cant EXPECT them to be worse than expected. You could say “I expect that the XXX will be wose than we previously expected.”
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.
Don’t be silly MattB.
In “climate science” everybody knows as soon as a peer-reviewed paper is published with some dire warning of impending doom, it will be followed within a few weeks by one proclaiming “it’s even worse than we first thought”.
Therefore, as soon as we hear of the first paper with its “worst case” assumptions, we know to expect it to be found to be even worserer almost immediately. In fact it is so prevalent I’m beginning to believe all climate computer models come pre-equipped with a “worseness” dial.
In fact a lot of time, effort and money could probably be saved by simply making it law that all computer models have to be pre-set to “worstest”. That way we would only have to suffer one implausible scenario dreamed up at taxpayer’s expense, rather than the apparently four or five deemed necessary today to go from, say, “methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas”, to “melting methane clathrates will destroy the planet by 2012” – which was a genuine claim, by the way.
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Well well well,
don’t expect prices to rise more than expected.
All along I have been attempting to calculate just what the rise in the cost of electricity will be.
Keep in mind that the full amount will not be passed on, as the Government (very cleverly, and also not advertising it) will be giving away some of the credits to the large scale power generating entities. That amount will rise again next year as they give away less credits and then bump up the price.
So, all along, the Government has been saying that it won’t be all that much.
As most of you know, I’m conservative with my calculations, and having worked it out as best as I could, I came up with a figure of around 2.5 cents, and not willing to just say I told you so AFTER the event, I have actually mentioned that here at this site a number of times, that figure of 2.5 cents per KWH.
Well, now the first power provider has released their figures, here in Queensland, Origin Energy.
They are raising their price by just a tick over 3 cents per KWH to a little over 25 cents per KWH, and this is for the standard residential cost, which is the main one we should be looking at here.
So, if that is the case, then it’s an easy thing for you all to work out exactly what it will cost you.
Take out your most recent power bill and roll over to the page that details your consumption. That is shown in KWH.
Now, just multiply that by 3 cents and you come up with the new amount.
Oh, and then, don’t forget to add on the GST as well.
Watch now as the Government seeks to investigate with a view to fining them millions.
25 cents per KWH.
Now compare that with the U.S. and the meme pushed by Greg Combet that we have relatively cheap electricity prices.
At the link hit the blue tab at the top that says Residential. Scroll to the bottom and see what the average price per KWH is, that number in the third column there 11.26 cents per KWH. Find a Mainland State with costs even close to ours, Connecticut, a State which has to import all its power, hence the high price, and even that is under 20 cents. The cheapest Idaho is just on 7 cents, less than one third what we already pay here now.
That average is less than half what we pay here.
Do not ever tell me this not about the money.
U.S. Electrical Power Costs.
As the urgers who support this iniquitous new tax say, hey don’t worry, we’ll be right.
Yeah! Right!
Tony.
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Consider locking in contracts with key suppliers now, at pre-carbon tax prices.
The prices have already risen to beat the people trying to beat the people raising their prices!!!!!!!
—————
Most contracts of Supply will have a clause to the effect that any increases in cost to the Supplier as a consequence of a change law (read government policy) will provide relief to the Supplier … in other words they will be entitled to pass on the cost increases. As it was impossible to estimate what these costs were beforehand, it will not be possible to compel the Supplier to fix their price for any length of time into the future.
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If you want to make your feelings known about the futility of this scam PETITION against the carbon tax
http://www.nationals.org.au/Home/RepealtheCarbonTax/Petition.aspx
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Well said Jo.
Perhaps reminiscent of the comment by Lt. Colonel Joe Vandeleur at the start of operation Market Garden in 1944, as seen in the movie A Bridge too Far:
“I have nothing else planned for this afternoon.“
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Very well put Jo, thank you!
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Jo,
Excellent article. Thank you.
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John Brookes
June 29, 2012 at 12:29 pm · Reply
The never ending problem with “skeptics” is that they aren’t skeptical. They simply choose what they want to believe, and then proclaim it as some sort of virtue.
The problem with knuckleheads like JB is that they want;
-the UN to rule the world.
-Humans to change the Climate, what a joke. Are you God JB? Because I certainly aint!!
Give up mate, the hoax is up!
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Seconded. JB anyone who has found this sight is not going to be convinced by your posts. Give up.
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I would venture that many who have found this site no longer even bother to read John’s posts.
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That’s an excellent letter, Jo – and actually a very concise essay on the malevolent ways in which the use of a simple word (‘denier’) is used with such casual disregard for truth and honesty. A real pleasure to read.
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A slightly different sort of reply to Bain et al …
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/the-nigger-word/
Pointman
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various posters of the blogerverse….
This Sunday please make the effort to get to the RALLIES!! that are occuring.. There is no use preaching to each other. Show the government that we want change now, Pollies are interested in one thing…themselves… labour backbenchers and/or independants will do whatever they can to save their own hide. Unfortunately they think they still have a chance.. come and show them their dreaming
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Where are all the rallies scotty?
I would love to go to one in Cairns!!
If we can get rid of the useless Greenie, PEW, WWF Dickheads in the world…
…I`d go for it!!
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Well-written, thoughtful, measured and precise post.
That’s what keeps me coming back to this blog.
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A Suggestion to herald in the great cash grab
1) Go somewhere out of the way (beach, paddock etc)
2) Build the biggest bonfire you can
3) Put some oil in it so it’ll really smoke
4) Enjoy the warmth it gives
5) Take a photo and print it out
6) Send it to your favourite catastrafarian with the following note written on it
TAX THIS BIATCHES
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excellent as always jo.
as a former “believer” – the turning point for me was simple:
9 Oct 2009: BBC: Paul Hudson: What happened to global warming?
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8299079.stm
a little over a month later Trenberth’s email from the Climategate cache confirmed what should have been obvious. the predictions were simply predictions … and therefore not scientific facts:
From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer
Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/kevin-trenberths-real-travesty/
post-Climategate, what little media coverage there was failed to mention Hudson’s BBC article at all, and did not focus on the fact Hudson had freaked out the “CAGW Team”, nor the fact Trenberth agreed reality was not matching the predictions.
the MSM’s failure to address the above matter clinched it for me. i was no longer sceptical of the sceptics, i was now sceptical of the “CAGW Team”, the ever-more-propagandistic MSM
and pollies and institutions of every stripe who pretended the above matter either hadn’t arisen, or that it didn’t matter.
what concerns me most now is how do we get the 1992 UN definition of “climate change” revoked, so that education in the related Sciences can return to some semblance of sanity.
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I would argue that those who can predict the future are rational. What other definition of “rational” do we have?
If evidence helps you do that then yay evidence! If tea leaves helps you do that then yay tea leaves!
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And therein lies the problem. They can’t predict the future — not with science or tealeaves. They can’t even predict the past, much less the present.
Let him whose prophesies come true be the real prophet. Shun the rest like the plague they are.
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The so-called IPCC consensus is based on 5 fundamental mistakes in physics. Three of them are elementary but because so many people have been indoctrinated, including serious subjects like Physics teaching students incorrect science, it’s taking some time for us grey heads, taught properly, to show these dumb schmucks they have been conned.
I’ll give a concrete example: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm This is the American Physical Society official website ‘proving the GHE’. It’s completely wrong. In the derivation of equation 15, this is claimed: ‘The warmed surface radiates as a blackbody, and also loses heat through rising in air currents or evaporated moisture.’
There is no such physics because in the atmosphere, radiation and convection are coupled with their sum set by the heat flux into the radiating body. Engineers know this from 70 years of theory and practice: http://www.thermopedia.com/content/204/
The consensus argues that the additional energy to the Sun’s SW heating comes from ‘back radiation’ and the article even ‘proves’ the emissivity of the local atmosphere is 0.76. Tackle them about this and these schmucks claim ‘we can measure it’. Yet the instruments they use, ‘pyrgeometers’, do not measure energy flux even though they are calibrated in W/m^2. When used singly they measure a temperature radiation field.
This is proved by going to the manufacturers’ website: http://www.kippzonen.com/?product/16132/CGR+3.aspx Go to the bottom and it states that to measure net flux, the only true datum, you need two, back to back.
This fundamental mistake comes from meteorology but is spreading back to physics. Dr Bain – you must understand that the science I am supposed to be ‘denying’ is phantasy physics, a construction derived by incompetents to take money from the rest of us on false pretences. To fix it you correct three other mistakes. There is no net CO2-AGW. You will not die if Australia burns coal,. The CO2 will be mopped up by plants making new coal on the land or chalk in the oceans. It’s called recycling.
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Yes Sparticus..great you put this. WRONG physics abounds in the scientific community and especially the media. Even on here. so its a hard road to undo it. Not just the climate debate either.
Of course when its an orchestrated global scam put forward by the elites to issue in world govt then wrong science doesn’t matter..
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Look, it’s really simple. Climate reasearch has been of a quite low scientific standard for decades. It still is. End of philosophy.
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Thats quite obvious if Mann and Tremberth still have their job!!!
🙂
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Mann was a patsy, accelerated PhD if he did what was wanted. Shakun is apparently the same.
The villain are Hansen, Sagan and Houghton because they are/were all processional physicists. Hansen introduced Sagan’s incorrect aerosol optical physics. Houghton introduced the claim that the lower atmosphere is a black body radiator when it creates imaginary ‘back radiation’ from the 1906 Schwarzchild two-stream approximation.
Because Trenberth trained in maths then meteorology, the latter teaching false ‘downwelling IR’ physics, he is not to blame except for his refusal to accede that he was wrong and to join in with the fake ‘abyssal heat’ which is to be the scam in AR5.
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Jo: you say: “so it follows that denier (as you use it) refers to being a “science denier”.” Exactly, but so not fair using actual logic and stuff. This conflating of not agreeing that disaster is coming with denying science is so dishonest.
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“What is Sociology Without Science?” Answer: Sociology. I personally couldn’t give a rat’s what a Sociology professor calls me. As far as I am concerned, anyone who resorts to using the term “denier” to describe me automatically renders their position null and void.
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Jo,
You make me almost willing to call myself a denier — a rational one of course. 😉
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Craig Loehle
June 29, 2012 at 11:48 pm · Reply
Jo: you say: “so it follows that denier (as you use it) refers to being a “science denier”.” Exactly, but so not fair using actual logic and stuff. This conflating of not agreeing that disaster is coming with denying science is so dishonest.
——————————————————————————–
Unless you actually do deny the science, as I do…
Becaue their ‘science’ is junk physics. The energy budget comic cartoon created to promote AGW, KT97 and kin, is simply ludicrous, it doesn’t describe this world, but a completely imaginary one.
The AGWScienceFiction comic cartoon has shortwave, Light, driving their Earth’s temps, Light in the real world does not have to power to heat land and oceans.
The AGWSF meme is “shortwave in longwave out” – they have excised completely the actual real direct heat from the Sun, they have taken out downwelling direct, beam, thermal infrared from the Sun. This is the electromagnetic wave/photon/particle whatever, that can actually heat land and oceans. It’s what we feel as heat, because it warms us up. We cannot feel visible light, it is not hot, it is not thermal. That’s why it’s called Light and not called Heat.
All the supposed ‘science’ arguments about ‘backradiation’ are gibberish because of this. Claiming that diffuse upwelling radiation from Earth has power to do work, it hasn’t, it’s useless, undirectional energy. The direct heat from the Sun, the thermal infrared they’ve taken out, does have the power to do work, it’s a coherent stream of real heat which has the power to move molecules of matter into vibration which is what it takes to heat something up.
Visible light, shortwave, can’t do this anyway, because of its size, it’s tiny, it works on the electronic transition level, good for converting into chemical energy, not heat energy, in photosynthesis, and good for us being able to see the world.
Their claim that visible light heats the oceans is also ludicrous in the real world because water is a transparent medium for visible light – it is transmitted through without being absorbed at all.
However, visible light is absorbed on the electronic transition level by the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen in the real world’s atmosphere, that’s how we get our blue sky, AGWSF says the atmosphere is transparent to it, it isn’t. Visible light is reflected/scattered by this process as the electrons absorb its energy briefly and then come back to ground state releasing a like photon they absorbed. Blue gets scattered more because it is more energetic, it gets bounced around the sky more.
The AGWSF science fiction has an Earth surrounded by empty space, they don’t have an atmosphere.
This empty space of their imagination is created out of ideal gas molecules, a purely fictitious construct (ideal and real are technical terms in this, real means real), of no use in calculations because it has none of the properties of real gas. Ideal gas has no volume, no attraction, no weight, is not subject to gravity; ideal gas is a hard dot of nothing zipping through empty space bouncing off other like imaginary molecules and so ‘thoroughly mixing’. So, their ideal gas carbon dioxide can stay up in the atmosphere accumulating for hundreds and even thousands of years, because it isn’t real. The real carbon dioxide has real weight, it is heavier than air. It will sink in air, just as water vapour lighter than air will rise. They don’t have gases buoyant in air. They don’t have Air.
Like their screwing with science history with Arrhenius, they screw with science history here too, they haven’t included van der Waals. In the real world real calculations have to add in volume etc. to the imaginary ideal gas formula.
For the nonsense about Arrhenius/Fourier, see http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/ Arrhenius got the wrong end of the stick, misunderstood Fourier, and anyway, Wood showed that Arrhenius didn’t know what he was talking about.
In the real world Air is a fluid gas (liquids and gases are fluids), as such the primary means of heat transfer is convection. They don’t have convection because they don’t have the heavy real ocean of gas weighing a ton on our shoulders (1 stone/sq inch). That’s why they have only radiation.
Because they don’t have a real atmosphere of gas, but empty space, they can’t have the Water Cycle. So they don’t have it. All pure clean rain is carbonic acid, in the real world, because real molecules have attraction and carbon dioxide and water vapour are attracted to each other. Carbon dioxide is fully part of the Water Cycle. As water vapour, with its high heat capacity takes away heat from the Earth and condenses into liquid water or ice giving up its heat in the colder heights to come down as rain.
They have taken out the Water Cycle because with it they can magic up the Greenhouse Effect, with the Water Cycle there is no such critter.
Their claim for the Greenhouse Effect is that “without greenhouse gases the Earth’s temperature would be minus 18°C, that greenhouse gases warm the Earth to 15°C, that is, by 33°C.”
In the real world, The Water Cycle cools the Earth by around 52°C, the Earth would be around 67°C without water – think deserts.
So there is no Greenhouse Effect of 33°C warming by greenhouse gases.
It’s a sleight of hand. A con trick achieved by taking out the Water Cycle, which brings temperature down to 15°C.
That’s the bottom line. There is no Greenhouse Effect, it’s an illusion, and the rest of the ‘science’ is junk to maintain that illusion.
And this is what they have introduced into the education system in the last few decades, so a whole generation has no concept of the real world, and so, no concept of the real science basics.
It’s the Fabian middle way to destroy knowledge, don’t burn the books and the teachers, change them. Educate the new teachers to teach nonsense to infant and primary school and by the time they’re getting their university degrees they think carbon dioxide can spontaneously rise into the atmosphere overcoming gravity by its own molecular energy.. The SuperMolecule is born.
The impossible science of a world created through the looking glass with Al.
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I agree, it’s a totally worthless claim, because it is based on a meaningless model of a spherical Earth with no atmosphere made of perfectly conducting material.
If the Earth was a lump of rock with no atmosphere for example (i.e. poor thermal conductor) then the sunny equator would get hot, and the poles would be cold, and the magical minus 18°C would mean nothing. The reason so many parts of the Earth are a comfortable temperature for water-based life forms is that the water transports heat from the equator to the poles and thus brings the whole lot closer to an average temperature. In the process of doing this, the water also changes the infra-red conductivity of the atmosphere, and it also carries the heat to different altitudes and re-radiates it, and a whole bunch of other stuff (e.g. snow on the surface, etc).
The effect of the water is vastly larger and more complex than the effect of CO2; you wonder why anyone would study CO2 at all.
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Yep, your a nutter Myrrh.
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John,
In a previous comment you said:
On what basis then do you have for calling Myrrh a “nutter”? It seems to me that Myrrh has a great deal more expertise than you (or likely I). I would reserve the ad hominems for people less well informed than yourself.
W^3
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actually he didn’t call him a nutter. “your a nutter” is completely meaningless.
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John,
Another meaningless contribution from a religious zealot who sees rational argument as madness. Your comment says a lot more about you than it does about Myrrh and none of it is complimentary.
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Myrrh, this is a fantastic explanation of the real energy flows in the climate system. I have always seen climate as the long term interaction of energy and fluids and weather as the specific events caused by specific conditions of that energy / fluid interaction at a specific location at a specific time.
So, if you accept the climate = energy x fluids (x = “interaction” in this context), then saying that the minuscule amount of energy that humans add (compared to natural sources) and the minuscule amount of fluids that humans add (compared to natural fluids) drive climate is just non-sensicle.
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Just sent this to our local coalition hopeful. Probably won’t make a difference. Can’t hurt.
Relative to Tony Abbott’s recent plan to abolish the tax on everything, I am a bit nonplused. If the coalition will not abolish the multitude of green schemes which waste money, and cause companies to waste money, it is all for nought. Unless you can provide me with some concrete evidence that CO2 is in any way significantly related to global temperatures, you can forget about any support from me, because that means the coalition is just as big a farce as the government.
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Typo, should be as bold: “They have taken out the Water Cycle because without it they can magic up the Greenhouse Effect, with the Water Cycle there is no such critter.”
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Tel – “The reason so many parts of the Earth are a comfortable temperature for water-based life forms is that the water transports heat from the equator to the poles and thus brings the whole lot closer to an average temperature. In the process of doing this, the water also changes the infra-red conductivity of the atmosphere, and it also carries the heat to different altitudes and re-radiates it, and a whole bunch of other stuff (e.g. snow on the surface, etc).”
Yes, and in the wind system too. They don’t have our great wind system either because they don’t have fluid volumes of air getting heated at the tropics and moved to the poles. As volumes of air get heated they become less dense and rise and colder denser heavier air from the poles flows beneath in a cycle of exchange.
The real world huge convection cycles in the fluid mediums of ocean and air which transfer heat around the Earth.
Someone had to know real world physical systems and physics really well to create this fictional AGW world by tweaking real science. Taking laws out of context, changing properties, giving the property of one thing to another to take out convection, but their explanations always come without any internal coherence because of it and they tie themselves up in knots when confronted.
The ‘warmists’ who set themselves as if they’re the real sceptics, who also subscribe to this fictional fisics, can get just as nasty as the CAGWs in defending the irrational consequences, no gravity, no sound…
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To Whom it may concern,
I apologize, profusely, for your failure to convince me that I should disregard the evidence of my senses. I am extremely sorry that for all my coursework and real world experience, I still think our current technology is too limited to accurately capture, let alone predict, the state of the Earth’s climate. I am deeply disturbed by my abject failure to place credence in any apocalyptic vision whatsoever. I humbly beg forgiveness that you haven’t been able to alter the tactics that work for greedy, craven, scientifically illiterate politicians into ones that will work for me, and apparently the population at large. It is indeed all my fault.
Sincerely,
I. M. A. Denier
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Absolutely brilliant Jo, my favorite quote of the week.
This is why I tend to harp on the notion of environmentalists as Sith, as a descriptive not as invective. Environmentalism as an ideological position seems to have wrapped itself very tightly around the axle of the notion that their position is so unassailably correct that any and every means necessary to gain control over others actions.
BTW – did you catch the mention of the term “change agents” in this quote from Bain et al
The term “change agent” is one I only ever hear used by ‘agenda 21’ conspiracy theorists to describe the nefarious agents of the ‘new world order’. This is actually the first time I have encountered the term in the wild being used by someone other than an ‘agenda 21’ conspiracy theorist, and possibly a self-styled ‘agent’ themselves. Makes you wonder.
W^3
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Brilliant logical legerdemain!
But there is something missing in all this objection to the “denialist” pejorative: A first principle of scientific inquiry is the falsifiable hypothsis, the objective of which is in effect to reject a key piece of theory if evidence indicates that only chance is at work. It is proper and necessary to attempt to find evidence that is inconsistent with theory, especially because doing so is in opposition to confirmation bias (which everyone has). Calling skeptics denialists can only be done by people who have forgotten or never knew this first principle.
As to the evidence skeptics seek, we can also use the falsifiable hypothesis principle as an efficiency tool. True, something as complicated as climate will not surrender to an experiment as logically simple as light being bent by a massive object in space. But the onus of CAGW alarmists should be on trying to explain away inconsistant evidence such as the missing mid latitude hot spot. We don’t see this. We know the reason why.
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What means “Your comment is awaiting moderation.
Huh?
(It means it is awaiting moderation) CTS
(I have approved your other comment) CTS
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post of the month!
If there was such a thing. Maybe you should institute one – ask if anyone has prizes to donate.
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How about a life time subscription to the
watch towerGreens policy updatesTim Flannery’s “We are the weather makers” no i know “tips on how to beat the carbon tax” even though the whole point of the exercise is to punish you with it.Care to add any other idiotic prizes GA?
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The response to Dr Paul Bain was excellent Jo. It raised many of the elements that Bain should be familiar with in his area of study:
The use of language as a form of shorthand to evoke a feeling or an image
The use of labelling to dehumanise, alienate or marginalise an individual or group
The sociology of the media and the sociology of education in presenting ideas and concepts with the purpose of seeking behaviour change
It is disappointing that Bain did not revert to sociological and behavioural research methodology and evaluation and in particular did not appear to consider his own levels of personal objectivity, values and bias when approaching his ‘dissertation’. On the positive side, the content of the ‘dissertation’ would offer many opportunities for sociology students to identify a number of elements contrary to sound sociological discussion.
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Well said Ash.
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Studying ‘science’ has become a bit suspicious to me, since the expression increased in usage over the past 20 years.
Scientific thinkers need to be identified & encouraged to study scientific subjects and to do science.
‘Studying science’ however has rather become open to the wishy washy consensual approach we see in eg. Social Science and Media Studies.
Consensus is cited as evidence where it is little more than evidence of what’s fashionable and
fashions change.
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