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When Christopher Monckton debated at the National Press Club in Canberra last July, he showed exactly why the fans of a man-made catastrophe are so frightened of free speech and open debates. With no slides or other images, in a single hour, he still changed the opinions of fully 9% of the audience , including influential journalists who had expected nothing of the kind. The Roy Morgan polling organization tracked the moment-by-moment opinions of a representative sample of 350 people throughout the debate, and Gary Morgan, the CEO, announcing the result, said that in his long experience of polling he had never seen a swing like it in opinion on any subject in so short a time.
John Cook of un-SkepticalScience tried to rescue something from the event for the “cause”, but here Monckton shows how the claims that Monckton was “confused”, “lying” and “misrepresenting evidence” all come to naught, and if John Cook only had the manners (or curiosity) to ask Christopher first, he would have found that out before airing his poor research and logical errors in public. Monckton quotes peer reviewed references ad lib, and does calculations off the top of his head. Cook makes out […]
Cheerio! Thanks to the dedicated souls who nominated it, this blog is a finalist in 2012 Web Bloggies Award. (Ta Pat, Val, Baa). š ! That’s a success on its own (it’s already bringing in new readers). Cheers!
With your help, we can reach a wider crowd. The different traffic, new links and other bloggie-spin-offs can help your favourite sites rank higher in searches and means the messages you want to share travel past new eyes. (Shameless hinting…) And all you need to do is vote and spread the word (so email, facebook, letter boxing, billboards ;-)). Some excellent blogs have made the finals, it’s smorgasbord of skeptics, and Anthony Watts has helpfully listed my favourites, so below is his detailed guide to making your vote count. My one sentence version is: Click here to vote, put ticks in the grey circles next to your choices (one in each category you care about), do the “catcha” funny word to prove you are human, then wait for the email, AND verify the link to prove you are not a troll. You need to do all those steps to be counted. Thank you to all who take those few minutes.
It’s time […]
Hand back your science degrees Trenberth et al.
Thirty eight of the worlds top, most consequential climate scientists sought to slap down the Nobel prize winner, astronaut and glitterati of science, and all they could come up with was a logical fallacy and a single paragraph of incohate, innumerate, and improbable evidence. It’s hand-waving on stilts.
Is that the best they can do?
Trenberth and co try to rebut No Need to Panic About Global Warming, but those 16 eminent scientists quoted evidence and pointed out major flaws in the assumptions of the theory. They described forms of scientific malpractice, and called for open debate. In comparison, the 38 climate “scientists” offered hardly more than argument from authority, “Trust Us: We’re Experts” they said as if the lesser beings, who were mere Professors of Astrophysics, Meteorology, and Physics, were too stupid to know the difference between a doctor and a dentist. I mean, sure the 16 skeptics could be wrong, but if the evidence is so overwhelming, why can’t the 38 experts find it?
Q: What kind of doctor is a scientist who can’t reason?
A witchdoctor.
First — the Fallacy
1. “Do you […]
Mark Steyn hits the spot:
“America is now the land that rewards failure– at the personal, corporate, and state level. If you reward it, you get more of it. If you reward it as lavishly as the federal government does, you’ll get the Radio City Christmas Spectacular of Failure, on ice and with full supporting orchestra. The problem is in that abolishing failure, you also abolish the possibility of success, and guarantee only a huge statist sucking swamp. From Motown to No Town, from the Golden State to Golden Statists.What happens when the policies that brought ruin to Detroit and decay to California are applied to the nation at large?”
Mark Steyn, After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, p 219.
Steyn delivers the depressing punches with rare wit.
8.4 out of 10 based on 65 ratings
misanthropology (from Urban Dictionary): the scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of hatred in humans misanthropology-the opposite of optimistology.
Lost word, sighted on the Neologism thread at (Diggingintheclay) that inspired The Doomsians are Panixilated post.
For what it’s worth, I think misanthropology is often just a veneer, it’s not a real hatred at all, but just the semblance of it. It’s much more small minded. It’s not about “hating humans” so much as it is about impressing the chick (or boy) next door. A kind of competition to get to snob-land first: ‘I look down on humans more than you do.” (Which translates loosely as: I, the exalted one, speaks from a greater height, fellow misanthropist….)
It’s about status, eh. Like everything.
7.8 out of 10 based on 44 ratings
From the Facebook page: Movimento-de-Forconi
During the last couple of weeks, truck-drivers in an advanced western region with 5 million people have blockaded roads and ports protesting at the sudden 40% rise in the fuel price (due to taxes) which is wiping out their business. The fishermen joined in, so did farmers. The area is heavily dependent on road transport, and was apparently paralyzed for days with fuel shortages, and empty supermarket shelves. On the internet, people are describing this as a middle class uprising, and on the verge of revolt. Can you name the location?
…shades of a magna-carta type moment
Possibly not. The mainstream media are not describing this uprising at all … it’s o’ so unnewsworthy. And you can imagine that readers might not care if this were taking place in the back-reaches of Venezuela, the slums of Chad, or the dark corner of Uzbekistan. But it wasn’t. It’s was in the West, in Sicily. Who knew?
Word on the internet is that the middle class producers are rising up en masse. It’s known as the āMovimento dei Forconiā or āPitchfork Movementā. Just like the The Convoy of No Confidence in Australia last August, it […]
Put those “other comments” and news here. Thanks!
Jo
5 out of 10 based on 19 ratings
David Archibald, polymath, makes a bold prediction that temperatures are about to dive sharply (in the decadal sense). He took the forgotten correlation that as solar cycles lengthen and weaken, the world gets cooler. He refined it into a predictive tool, tested it and published in 2007. His paper has been expanded on recently by Prof Solheim in Norway, who predicts a 1.5Ā°C drop in Central Norway over the next ten years.
Our knowledge of they solar dynamo is improving, and David adds the predicted solar activity ’til 2040 to the analysis. Normal solar cycles are 11 years long, but the current one (cycle 24) is shaping up to be 17 years (unusually long), and using historical data from the US, David predicts a 2.1Ā°C decline over Solar Cycle 24 followed by a further 2.8Ā°C over Solar Cycle 25. That adds up to a whopping 4.9Ā°C fall in temperate latitudes over the next 20 years. We can only hope he’s wrong. As David says ” The center of the Corn Belt, now in Iowa, will move south to Kansas.”
He also predicts continuing drought in Africa for another 14 years, with droughts likely in South America too.
If he’s right, […]
New Element Discovered The CSIRO announced the discovery of a perverse, perplexing atom
The new element is Governmentium (Gv). It has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lefton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons or protons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction normally taking less than a second to take from four days to four years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 3-6 years. It does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.
When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, […]
Despite all the headlines we see, 2011 in Australia was remarkable for its extraordinary averageness. It is a rare year that is more average than 2011 was.
(This email was spotted on it’s way to various government officials. — Jo)
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Guest post from Steve Woodman 2011 was the 52nd coldest year on record in Australia, colder than 1912, 1914, 1915 & 1919
Alarmist propaganda outlets such as the ABC were clearly disappointed by 2011 and were forced to resort to decadal temperatures rather than individual years to provide it with its headlines 1:
āLast decade equals warmest on record: UNā
The article then goes on to say:
ā2011 ranks as the 10th warmest year since 1850, when accurate measurements beganā
That may be so in a global sense, but if the ABC took a more local perspective, in Australia, 2011 was below the 1961-1990 average (see the graph below) 2.
8.3 out of 10 based on 49 ratings […]
A new brief summary of the reasoning and evidence behind the skeptics case. –Jo
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The Skepticās Case Who Are You Going To Believe ā The Government Climate Scientists Or The Data? Guest Post Dr David M.W. Evans
We check the main predictions of the climate models against the best and latest data. Fortunately the climate models got all their major predictions wrong. Why? Every serious skeptical scientist has been consistently saying essentially the same thing for over 20 years, yet most people have never heard the message — here it is, put simply enough for any lay reader willing to pay attention.
What the Government Climate Scientists Say
Figure 1: The climate models. If the CO2 level doubles (as it is on course to do by about 2070 to 2100), the climate models estimate the temperature increase due to that extra CO2 will be about 1.1Ā°C Ć 3 = 3.3Ā°C. [1]
The direct effect of CO2 is well-established physics, based on laboratory results, and known for over a century.[2]
Feedbacks are due to the ways the Earth reacts to the direct warming effect of the CO2. The threefold amplification by feedbacks is based on the […]
Oil on Canvas George Crie (cropped). "Panic Attack or Anxiety PTSD" Neosurrealismart.com.
I just love some of these terms. Verity Jones (Diggingintheclay) and E. Michael Smith (Chiefio, see the postscript) are rolling on a neologistic wave, and they’re generating something special. The comments thread on Diggingintheclay is quite abuzz (and this comes from both that and Chiefio’s thread).
Adjixtered: Adjusted without adequate or meaningful explanation
Cliflation: The tendency for anything climate related to be inflated in importance, size, warming tendency, etc. (I think the pronounciation doesn’t capture the “climate” origin, hence I suggest “Climaflation” — as in “The clown fish research has been Climaflated.”)
Empixelated: To uncritically believe anything presented to you by the pixels on your screen. āJones was sure Mann would be empixelated by the latest runs of HADcrutā. (I think this needs a different example: The Department of Climate Change produced brochureware websites designed to empixililate unsuspecting taxpayers.) (H/t Another Ian for the word “empixilated”)
Envirallax (noun) ā the apparent shift in importance of a report, quotation or publication related to climate science due to the difference in belief or opinion on the causes of climate change between two readers (cf. parallax). Related terms […]
Gillard once lauded the genius of the carbon market. That part of the “free” market which is free to move, is moving — and right out. The smart money is saying that carbon trading is a dead dog. It’s a has-been-tulip, a sick puppy, a sinking ship.
The future of global carbon trading is so “certain” that Barclays Bank is not even bothering to leave one part time guy in the US office with a post box, so they can pretend they still have an interest in it. The mood has so changed, they see an advantage in letting the world know they’re not wasting a single cent more on carbon trading in the United States of America. Well that made my day. :-).
“That is not good news for carbon-dioxide trading, especially not in the US,”
Barclays was the first UK bank to set up a carbon trading desk, and fast to move into carbon trading: “Barclays Capital is the most active player in the emissions trading market, having traded some 300 million tonnes as at February 2007″.
Barclays Closes US Carbon Desk In Latest Cap And Trade Setback
8.9 out of 10 based on 94 […]
They control our money, our armed forces, our tax inspectors, jails, and police. Against that, we the people wield our biggest weapon — information.
The biggest threat to people in positions of power is the flow of news and ideas. The internet is the largest menace, the most powerful tool of the people, so we always knew the pushback was coming. Those who control the net, control the ability of the people to organize en masse, and to judge who is being honest, and who can be trusted. The Internet was vital in publicizing the climate data that contradicts the government climate scientists, because the mainstream media sure didn’t do it.
If SOPA PIPA is stopped (as it appears it might have been, as 6 supporters pull out) the only thing we can be sure of is that there will be other attempts to stop us speaking freely. This is an unending battle.
How bad is SOPA PIPA?
On closer inspection, the legalese in the bill has the potential to eviscerate free speechā¦.and like NDAA, without proofā¦only with suspicion of “wrong-doing”. It’s all about copyright infringement. If you tick off the powers that be, and you’ve quoted someone, somewhere, […]
“Climate change skepticism seeps into science classrooms”
The LA Times laments the loss of the totalitarian educational view — pity the poor students subjected to hearing both sides of the story:
Texas and Louisiana have introduced education standards that require educators to teach climate change denial as a valid scientific position. South Dakota and Utah passed resolutions denying climate change. Tennessee and Oklahoma also have introduced legislation to give climate change skeptics a place in the classroom.
In May, a school board in Los Alamitos, Calif., passed a measure, later rescinded, identifying climate science as a controversial topic that required special instructional oversight.
The news itself is interesting, but sadly viewed through the usual green-colored glasses.
Is it “reporting” or a propaganda piece? Let’s check the three boxes:
Box 1: One half of the story is reduced to Orwellian nonsense. Tick yes! — who, exactly, teaches children to deny we have a climate? Johnny, there are no clouds… Which state passes resolutions declaring that the climate does not change? Henceforth California will be 78…
Box 2: Look for the Mandatory Ritual Pean: “scientific evidence increasingly shows that fossil fuel consumption has caused the climate to change […]
Ron Paul is painted as fringe by the Establishment. (If you’re not part of the establishment then you must be “fringe”, right?).
Ten years ago Ron Paul made long series of detailed economic and foreign policy predictions that he hoped he would be proven wrong on. It was a year before the US started action in Iraq. Five years before the housing bubble busted. Six years before the Global Financial Crisis. Nine years before the Arab Spring. (At least he was wrong on the US “draft”. So far).
How many mainstream politicians can point to a speech like this? How many presidential candidates saw it coming?
“Let it not he said that no one cared,
that no one objected once its realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy”
Ron Paul
Ron Paul 2002 April 24th.
There’s a copy of the video of the speech without newspaper overlays, and background music, for those who prefer the uncluttered view.
“He saw these things coming because he reveres liberty above all else and when you cherish liberty you can see the things that threaten it. “ John Carey
[…]
For all those comments that don’t fit somewhere else…
Jo
6.8 out of 10 based on 16 ratings
This is a post for those who like the intellectual stimulation of unraveling the cause and effect links at the bleeding edge. It’s a weekend puzzle.
Frank Lansner (of Hidethedecline) wants to toss out his latest thoughts and findings for discussion. With a very simple equation he’s managed to recreate a curve just like Hadcrut temperature profile, using just the Nino 3.4 data (see Fig. 1). If it stands up, this would imply the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) pretty much determined a significant part of the climate — which is not a shock, but nonetheless there’s not a lot of room for CO2. The turning points do seem to match well (unlike the temperature versus CO2 “turning points”). As William Kininmonth reminded us, the oceans cover 70% of the planet, and are 4km deep, and most of that water is very very cold, even under the equator. If the surface of the central pacific cools by 1 degree does that drop global temperatures by 0.1C?
Of course, the mystery of what drives the PDO still stands. On that score, Frank looks at Siberia and Alaska, and finds an interesting correlation with the Nino3.4 when it is lagged by 15 -18 […]
Nir Shaviv, the well known astrophysicist from Israel, points out that climate sensitivity (according to the IPCC and co) has barely changed in 33 years. Therefore their predictions from the FAR (IPCC, First Assessment Report) in 1990 ought to mean something. Yet observations are now tracking outside and below even their lowest bounds of estimates. When will the IPCC admit those models need to change?
–Jo
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On IPCCs exaggerated climate sensitivity and the emperorās new clothes Guest Post by Nir Shaviv (Reposted from ScienceBits , with permission. Thank you Nir). A few days ago I had a very pleasant meeting with Andrew Bolt. He was visiting Israel and we met for an hour in my office. During the discussion, I mentioned that the writers of the recent IPCC reports are not very scientific in their conduct and realized that I should write about it here.
Normal science progresses through the collection of observations (or measurements), the conjecture of hypotheses, the making of predictions, and then through the usage of new observations, the modification of the hypotheses accordingly (either ruling them out, or improving them). In the global warming āscienceā, this is not the case.
What do […]
Years before Climategate, THAT email, from Phil Jones to Warwick Hughes told us everything we needed to know about the scientific standards at the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia. THAT email was the tip of the iceberg, and below is what lay underneath the surface — the things that were said behind the scenes at the time. Geoff Sherrington has pieced together a sequence of climategate emails, his own emails, and parts of Warwick Hughes work to recreate the sequence.
And for the true skeptic-aficionados, here’s a new layer of history to the skeptical chronology. Where did this volunteer audit movement begin?
Who would have guessed that at least one skeptic, Hughes, was asking for the data Phil Jones worked with, as long ago as 1991? (That was way back in the days where people worked with hard copy print outs, and drew graphs by hand!) Does Hughes rank as volunteer Skeptic Number 1?
UPDATE: I asked Warwick, and he thinks the first unpaid skeptic was Fred Wood in 1988*. — Jo
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Guest post by: Geoffrey H Sherrington, Scientist.
This is the longer story behind one of […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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