Stephan Lewandowsky’s work is a case study in government funded inanity. Some Australians are sure that burning coal will make storms stronger. Others are not convinced. In November 2012 Lewandowsky’s intellectual contribution to science in Australia was to call the unconvinced “stupid”. If that’s not inane enough, at the same time he claimed that he didn’t recieve funding from any organisation that would benefit from his article.
How many taxpayer dollars went towards funding that? No conflict of interest?
Are Australian Research Council funds used as a form of third party advertising for Labor Government policy?
Writing in “A storm of Stupidity, Sandy, Evidence and Climate Change” on The Conversation, his reasoning is like this: some scientists reckon that a very bad storm called “Sandy” has “links” to man-made emissions of a trace gas. Lewandowsky reasons that because those scientists are called “experts”, anyone who questions them should be called stupid. (He thinks this article and that tweet were overdue). Though, in a twist, apparently he doesn’t actually think the unconvinced are actually stupid, he thinks they are ethically “disembodied” people who “mislead”. (As an aside, notice how he approves of news articles that call them stupid even though he doesn’t really think they are. Is that a commitment to accuracy, science, and evidence, or a commitment to marketing and PR?)
In the end, a government appointed group of “experts” like the Climate Commission, declared that humans made a storm worse, and a government funded psychologist says they’re right and everyone else is dumb (or as good as liars) because they are not convinced we are changing the weather.
Note the “Disclosure Statement” next to the “Stupid” headline.
“Stephan Lewandowsky
Australian Professorial Fellow, Cognitive Science Laboratories at University of Western Australia
Stephan Lewandowsky does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.”Disclosure Statement
The Conversation November 5th, 2012
Stephan Lewandowsky is funded by Australian Research Council Grants (ARC). The ARC is headed by a Labor Party Minister (though you’d have trouble figuring out which one, after Julia Gillard’s emergency reshuffle). The ARC site has a link to a “Minister” which now points at eight ministers. The top dog, probably, is The Hon Craig Emerson.
Let the money flow
Stephan Lewandowsky is a Winthrop Professor according to his CV. UWA tells us that is the highest level of researcher, earning $ 162,396. And that says a lot about standards at UWA, in the School of Psychology, and at the mostly government funded “Conversation” (which got $6 million in grants to get started). Lewandowsky’s name is listed on ARC grants totalling $2 million since 2007. (See here and here). More often, his “Disclosures” simply say he gets money from the ARC and has no commercial interest.
No Conflict of Interest?
The Australian Labor Party is an organization which has hinged everything on a belief that man-made climate change is a problem worth spending billions on. Their future and status are arguably “improved” if seemingly independent experts write about how smart they are, and how stupid the voters are who disagree with their climate policy. The Labor Party is not funding Lewandowsky directly, but Labor party members are in Government now, and decide what the Australian Government funds. The ARC is “an independent body” whatever “independent” means when the panel appointments, and the size of their funding is determined by the Government (and amount to about $880 million per annum). The ARC mission is to deliver policy and programs that advance Australian research and innovation globally and benefit the community. Note the word “policy”.
Fundamentally, Lewandowsky and most academics are reliant on big-government handouts. He scorns the small-government crowd, and thinks they are the blindly driven free-market-people who can’t make rational decisions:
People who subscribe to a fundamentalist conception of the free market will deny climate change irrespective of the overwhelming strength of the scientific evidence.
Which only goes to show how little he knows about the free market, and how divided on tribal lines this is. The free market ultimately is what provides the funds for big-government to feed its fans. It’s not perfect, but irrational decisions don’t last long in a competitive market.
Yet, here is a Prof of Psychology, apparently unable to see even the potential for a “conflict of interest” in this chain. His entire career depends on big-government, and he thinks he can write quasi-science-opinions that slur opponents of big-government policies and pretend there is no conflict?
Blinded by his own ideology perhaps?
It’s not a conspiracy
I may be called a “Conspiracy Theorist” for pointing out the conflict. But there’s no conspiracy necessary here. I’m suggesting a systematic failure and incompetence on every level. Craig Emerson probably has no idea how badly ARC funds are spent. The ARC may not know either. I seriously don’t think anyone higher up has ever phoned Lewandowsky to ask him to write this kind of fallacious and barren prose. As far as I can tell, he is pursuing his own personal belief rather than being “hired” to do so. The editors of The Conversation didn’t see the inanity, possibly because it’s their personal pet topic too, they are a product of big-government, and they were never trained in logic and reason either. And all of the lack of rigour is funded by the taxpayers of Australia. Layers and layers of sloppy thinking that would never survive in the free market.
The real problem here is that someone is responsible for handing hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to incompetent people, and no one has demanded that Professors of science follow the tenets of science or the laws of reason. Lewandowsky, of course, is welcome to call us stupid deniers if he feels that way, but why is the taxpayer funding this kind of unscientific namecalling?
——————————————————-
As an aside: the science on Sandy
Attributing exact causes for storms is such a mess that even the experts who blame man-made climate change don’t agree with each other. The Climate Commission thinks that hotter water made Sandy worse. Oceanographer Matthew England disagrees, saying that’s “less of a factor”:
“The ocean temperature anomalies of 3-5C off New York that would feed energy into the extra-tropical cyclone in that part of the world matter much less than if such anomalies were located under the storm in the tropics,” Professor England said.
“Basically tropical cyclones are very sensitive to underlying ocean temperatures, but cyclones outside the tropics care somewhat less about the underlying ocean temperatures.
More rational people, like Bob Tisdale, take the long term view and point out that sea surface temperature anomalies along Sandy’s track haven’t warmed in 70+ years, while Roger Pielke points out that there is no recent trend in US Hurricane Intensity from 1900-2012 …“the last five years have been the “lowest period of landfalling hurricane intensity of any five-year period dating all the way back to 1900.” Sandy apparently wasn’t an unprecedented record storm surge either (Tropical Cyclone Mahina, Bathurst Bay, Australia in 1899, was). There have been plenty of worse storms.
Bob Carter and William Kininmonth wrote a good summary here saying that the Climate Commission was wilfully misleading the public on “Sandy”. Essentially the massive damage was mostly due to inundation and flooding in areas where infrastructure and houses were not designed to cope. Spring tides made it worse too. (Thanks to reader Jaymez)
UPDATE: See Bob Tisdale reply in comments below. Help his do his work and buy his inexpensive ebooks here! (Thanks Bob)
…. 
See also: Are ARC grants for science or a form of government advertising disguised as research?
Posts tagged Stephan Lewandowsky
—
UPDATED: Minor edits and additions were made. The phrase Labor Party in the headline was changed to Labor Government. h/t TheInquirer for proof-reading. Additional information was provided about the ARC mission, & funding.
SSTs haven’t warmed in 70 years?
It’s amazing how sceptics can pick a 15 year trend off the end of a series but can’t spot a 50 year one, eh Jo.
And your heading is a lie, isn’t it?
——-
TheInquirer:
1. SST’s? — follow the link.
2. Which 15 year trend are you talking about?
3. I’ve put “Government” back in the title instead of “Labor Party” (the Labor Party is the Government, and they certainly benefit if Lewandowsky gets away with calling skeptics “stupid”, or “nutters” or “conspiracy theorist”). It’s better. Thanks. I thought I had restored the original draft. – Jo
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Can’t make a factual case? Bollocks. It’s so obvious it shouldn’t need making. But for the people Jo mentions above: There is a clear approx. 50 year increasing SST trend in Teasdale’s plot here. It corresponds with the period of global warming and the preceding period of cooling is also consistent with the well-known global temperature cooling over the 20 or so years over 1940 to 1950 – see the global temp plot. Teasdale would know this. Jo – who knows?
Teasdale is being disingenuous and misleading.
(The link you use states right on the chart that it is COOLING at the rate of -0.002 degree C/Decade and it is 74 years not 50 as you state) CTS
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the SSTs are probably being controlled by the government with their big money projects for “mates”!!! the icey pole cores too —- more crap from the government probaganda machine!!! —- http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-15/antarctic-melting-ten-times-faster-than-600-years-ago/4628404
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Re: Ice cores as temperature proxies. I have read somewhere recently whre they are questionable and that ice core work is more a reflection of humidity NOT temperature. This is suposedly due to cahnges in the isotopic depletion rates during inital rainfall.
Whilst I am not a CAGW proponent, I do think that as a sceptic, proxy data that support the failings of CAGW – or even GHG effets, can still be in doubt.
01
Quack:
you don’t understand CAGW “science”. Increased heat causes lower temperatures and unexpected snow. Increasing ice levels in the Antarctic means it is melting faster than before.
Temporary loss of ice in the Arctic means it is worse we thought.
Temporary gain of ice in the Arctic means means it is worse we thought.
TheInquirer is a scientific illiterate who cannot read a caption let alone a graph which means it is worse we thought.
He probably thinks that when floating ice melts, it raises the sea level.
See simple science for simple minds. e.g. reporters for the ABC and Professors at some not too choosy universities.
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GreameNo3 sorry i dont understand what you mean with temporary loss & gain. how does it gain and lost temporarily?
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My mistake, left off the sarc/ warning.
The ice level in the Arctic fluctuates naturally, as it has for thousands of years. If the level decreases temporarily the alarmists stand on their hind legs and chant “It’s worse than we thought”.
Should the level of ice temporarily increase then the alarmists stand on their hind legs and chant “It’s worse than we thought”.
It doesn’t matter what happens, and whether there is any evidence at all, they always assume the change is bad and the alarmists stand on their hind legs and chant “It’s worse than we thought”.
Climate change caused by humans is almost certainly occurring, but in the 41 years since the hysteria took hold (in some quarters) there has never been any definite proof offered. This means that the effect on climate by humans (CO2, soot, land clearing etc.) is very small and it is definitely a minor matter.
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Greame..I also heard that the government and greens are sending out a scientific over funded research panel to investigate the catfish that walk backwards in Antarctica to keep the sand from blowing in their eyes…!!
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What TheInsider doesn’t do is reply to requests to answer specific questions on points he has made. Good at dishing it out but not at all good at accepting criticism. Bit like Lewandowsky, John Cook et al
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The title should say Antarctic peninsula warming for 600 years, with the huge increase of 1.5 deg C,
When the science isn’t scary make up a headline that is!
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LOL, Bob Tisdale is THE leading expert in the world on this subject at the current time.
You aren’t even sufficiently lucid to be allowed to make such remarks … probably because this is beyond your payscale. Pretty much everything would be beyond your GetUp! payscale … do us a favour, GetOut!
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“Leading expert”
Geez, you people live in a fantasy world, don’t you. Tisdale flogs a book on Watts, which claims that energy is created in a system by an oscillation. Can’t get his rubbish published though.
So you are going to stick to the delusion that there is no 50 year increasing trend in SSTs and no correlation with the global temp plot?
Jo, you agree with this do you?
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TheEnquirer, Tisdale is talking about the water SST under the storm path. Are you talking about global trends? Your questions are not worded well enough for me to know what you are asking.
Jo
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These ranting youngsters appear to pop up around once a month.
After a couple of days of being sliced and diced they disappear again.
I guess it means something, probably not very interesting or relevant – kind of like Lewandowsky’s ‘work’.
Sandy was a slow moving storm, not a hurricane, which came ashore in New York at high tide during a spring tide and collided with another weather system. Happened before, no big deal, and it will happen again. You have to be a real charlatan, or a West Australian Professor of Psychology, in order to be able to make a conspiracy theory issue out of this.
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Lew is at UWA but is from the USA, whence his left ‘liberal’ (in the US sense) ideas no doubt originate. I doubt that he holds any allegiance to the state of Western Australia, and he is very likely still a US citizen. He may find it amusing to goad the ‘denialists’ from his ivory tower safe haven in the most conservative state in the land.
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Well put Jo. TheInqueerer is not the sharpest knife in the draw. That is probably [why he] thinks it is smart to be blunt.
[Replaced missing words for you -Fly]
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.
Rereke,
I agree, reminds of a kid I knew in Grade 8, during a maths exam, must have been TheInquirer:
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OMG ! you truly a base level moron, aren’t you !!!!
I’ve taught low IQ 15 year olds with more mental acuity than you seem to possess.
FFS…. try to understand… just once !
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You must admit his timing was good. Up within minutes of the post with an instant retort at the ready.
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TheInquirer – You are aware I presume of Gleckler et al 2012, with our own John Church and also Ben Santer as co authors?
I expect so since you mention rising SST’s in the last 50 years, which is what that paper found, with their conclusion it was all due to humans (the ABC got quite excited about this at the time).
Well as it happens I, as a climate sceptic, agree.
They found a rise in SST of 0.125 C in those 50 years. Due to humans.
Now what does 0.125 C over 50 years mean? Well if you turn it into an implied climate sensitivity the calc is as follows (where 390 and 315 are the respective ppmV CO2 concs at the start and end of the 50 years):
2XCO2 = 0.125 x log 2 / (log 390 – log 315) = 0.4 C/ doubling of pCO2
So the SST rise in 50 years is equivalent to a 2XCO2 of only 0.4 C/doubling, which is even smaller than Lindzen’s median number.
What does a 2XCO2 of 0.4 C mean? Well it means that an increase in global temperature of 2 C would require pCO2 to rise from 395 ppmV to 12,640 ppmV. Which is kind of impossible unless we import hydrocarbons from Titan.
In other words yes, SST’s rose over the last 50 years. So what? The quantitative amount they rose is so small that CO2 by implication is quite harmless. That is what the data says from a peer reviewed climate science paper by authors with impeccable “consensus” track records.
Now what were you saying about SST’s rising for 50 years?
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Exactly right Bruce; as I said to you before The Gleckler paper is a shocker but it is the best they have right now and as you say it produces an ECS much less than predicted by AGW.
When you combine it with the findings by Levitus et al which shows a forcing of 0.27 Wm-2 compared with the official forcing of +1.6 [+0.6 to +2.4] W m–2 we see a scramble back to reality by some major papers coming from the AGW camp.
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Ah Bruce, didn’t you see what they were doing? You were meant to deny the 50 year trend and pretend you didnt understand and call me stupid. You’re not going to get as many nice thumbs up for that.
Now they’re going to have to contemplate the fact that Bob cherry picked the start of his SST series to get the peak before the 40/50 cooling period and his overall no warming trend. But even letting that go, to imply the temps on the Sandy track were “normal” when they’re at least in the highest 10% in his series is a clear deceit.
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And if you go back 59 years you get storm Hazel in 1954 which was a similar combination of a low pressure system coming from the north and a hurricane coming up from the south. Hazel though was classed as a level 4 hurricane whereas if I recall Sandy didn’t even get classed a hurricane when it crossed the coast. About the only other difference is Hazel crossed a bit further south than Sandy.
Interesting thing is that number 59 years…same phase of the AMO one wavelength ago. You should read up on the ~60 year cycle. People are condemned to repeat history if they forget it.
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TheInquirer says:
Cherry picked? Deceit? Your comments are laughable. You’ve again highlighted for all to see that you haven’t bothered to read or understand the linked posts. Just in case you’re simply not blowing smoke and really do think I’ve started that graph in 1938 with some disreputable motive, here’s a graph of the long-term sea surface temperature anomalies along Sandy’s extratropical path, TheInquirer:
http://oi47.tinypic.com/2a4vjix.jpg
1854 is the start year of NOAA’s ERSST.v3b dataset. I cannot go any farther back in time with it. Now, please explain to all of the readers here at Jo Nova’s blog why the primary warming took place from the late-1910s to the 1930s and why, if carbon dioxide warmed Sandy’s extratropical storm track, the sea surface temperature anomalies in the 1930s to 1950s were clearly warmer than present temperatures. Please also link the multitude of climate model-based, peer-reviewed papers that explain why the sea surface temperatures along Sandy’s extratropical track were warmer in the 1930s to 1950s.
Take another look at the data. The sea surface temperature anomalies at the very start of the dataset are comparable to those now.
Data trumps nonsense. And all you present here is nonsense, TheInquirer.
Have a nice day.
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Bruce–People repeat history even when they know it. They are convinced things will work out differently this time.
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@TheInquirer
April 15, 2013 at 2:30 am
.
TheInquirer’s global temp plot has 11 years of warming from 1977 to 1988.
1. A GLOBAL ICE AGE was happening until 1979
2. There was NO WARMING from 1979 to 1988.
To be fair to TheInquirer, this link confirms the warming in the 1950’s the “global temp plot” claims.
If it appears familiar, that’s because it is.
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What mattered to the Hurricane was what the sea was doing AT THE TIME OF THE HURRICANE, not what the small section of cherry picked ocean did over the past 70 years.
The amateur Bob failed to look at what the SST was AT THAT POINT IN TIME.
Globally, the trend in SST is increasing.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/plot/hadsst2gl/trend
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[Looks like this comment got stuck in moderation — forgotten under the deadweight of others stuck there… sorry for the delay.]
Nice One, “Amateur Bob” is talking about the water under the path. You, on the other hand, are so “Pro” right, you are arguing that the temperature of water of cape town, norway, hong kong and the galapagos are all just as important. To which we all say “bollocks”.
Global SST doesn’t seem to have much impact on Global Tropical Cyclones. I’m just sayin’
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TheInquirer says: “Teasdale is being disingenuous and misleading.”
Apparently you didn’t read the post or grasp the significance of the start year of 1938. Either way, it’s your failure, not mine. Your failings are further highlighted by your inability to spell my last name correctly.
Have a nice day.
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welcome the best of the “down-under” realist blogs, Bob 🙂
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Yes Andy LOL.. great comment.
That’s the quality of our Aussie trolls…
Ludicrous, Laughable and Lamentable!
Good comeback Bob!
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Aussie trolls. AKA ‘Wustralians.’
00
TheInquirer: I had also prepared a follow-up post to the one you’re so happily complaining about:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/october-2012-sea-surface-temperatures-and-anomalies-along-sandys-path-were-not-unusual/
If we look at the sea surface temperature anomalies for the extratropical portion of Sandy’s path…
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-4.png
…we can see there was a downward shift in the 1960s. Please explain how manmade greenhouse gas-induced warming caused the blatantly obvious downward shift in sea surface temperatures of the extratropical portion of Sandy’s storm track.
TheInquirer says: “Tisdale flogs a book on Watts, which claims that energy is created in a system by an oscillation.”
Apparently you, TheInquirer, can’t read and comprehend time-series graphs of data. The data presents quite clearly how and when ENSO as a process creates ocean heat content in the tropical Pacific during La Niña events, and releases and redistributes that heat during El Niño events. If you’d like to try to understand, refer to the following illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge”:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/the-manmade-global-warming-challenge.pdf
If you’d prefer to continue to misrepresent my work, that’s your choice.
TheInquirer says: “Can’t get his rubbish published though.”
I’ve never submitted my work to a peer-reviewed publication so your statement is obviously wrong.
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This is Bob’s reference to this figure.
I guess I’m a sceptic after all: How is it Bob can call 1 of the 5 warmest years in a series of over 70 years “NOT unusually warm”?
Yes, that’s right, Bob, you can’t get published only because you haven’t tried!
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What part of “along Sandy’s storm track ” don’t you understand?
How many papers have you had published?
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No, you don’t even have sufficient brain cells to be called a ‘Skeptic’, you qualify only to comprehend, in a round about way, the drivel from the unmitigated SS site and GetUp! press releases.
Here’s an example of how easily your soft cranium is controlled by warmista propaganda: NCDC omits inconvenient data in public climate releases?
Or maybe this ? On the scales of warming worry magnitudes–part 1
Or this ? an interesting admission at RealClimate
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TheInquirer says: “I guess I’m a sceptic after all: How is it Bob can call 1 of the 5 warmest years in a series of over 70 years ‘NOT unusually warm’?”
We must have different definitions of “unusual”, TheInquirer. According to Merriam-Webster.com, unusual means “not usual: uncommon, rare.” Being of lesser magnitude than 3 other years and comparable to 4 others does not appear uncommon or rare to me. If the October 2012 sea surface temperature had been the warmest on record, I’d call that uncommon or rare, but it wasn’t.
I’ve never exchanged words with you before, TheInquirer. Maybe the English language is new to you. Maybe I need to present the definitions from Merriam-Webster’s “Learner’s Dictionary”. See the definitions here:
http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/unusual
You’ve also failed to address the question I asked you in my earlier reply to you, TheInquirer. Here it is again: If we look at the sea surface temperature anomalies for the extratropical portion of Sandy’s path…
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-4.png
…we can see there was a downward shift in the 1960s. Please explain how manmade greenhouse gas-induced warming caused the blatantly obvious downward shift in sea surface temperatures of the extratropical portion of Sandy’s storm track.
If you’re not aware of it, the downward shift in the extratropical portion is what gives the warming trend along the entire storm track for last 50 years, the period that you elect to discuss. Unless you can explain that cooling, you can’t claim the warming was caused by something else, so the ball is in your court, TheInquirer.
TheInquirer says: “Yes, that’s right, Bob, you can’t get published only because you haven’t tried!”
I’m not interested in having my work published in peer-review publications, TheInquirer. The general public are my intended audience—not scientists. Apparently only a few persons reading this thread find a need for peer review. Maybe the others reading this thread can read and interpret time-series graphs. For the post Jo Nova linked and the one I later linked, the ones you’re complaining about, I simply identified Sandy’s storm track and plotted sea surface temperatures and anomalies. Most of the persons reading this thread could have done the same, plotting the data and preparing a blog post. Why didn’t you, TheInquirer? The data is available to the public. Could one of the reasons be that then you’d have to discuss why the sea surface temperatures along the extratropical portion of Sandy’s storm track shows a cooling shift that your beloved CAGW can’t explain? Or in other words, the data doesn’t confirm your belief, TheInquirer.
Additionally, I’m not paid for the service I provide—other than an occasional book sale and donation. I’m not contractually obligated to have papers published in peer-reviewed publications like government-financed researchers. The phrase “publish or perish” does not apply to me. If you’d like to provide me with a grant worth a couple hundred thousand dollars and require that I submit my work to peer-reviewed journals, then you could complain if I don’t submit them. Right now, you’re simply blowing smoke.
Or you could look at it another way: I write op-eds in which I present data.
I also occasionally provide a service that you won’t find in peer-reviewed publications. I provide step-by-step instructions so that the average person who’s interested can download the data and confirm for themselves that I’ve presented the data correctly. For example, I provided those instructions in my essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge”, which I also linked earlier, starting on page 154:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/the-manmade-global-warming-challenge.pdf
Satellite-era sea surface temperature and the 55+ years of ocean heat content data do not support the hypothesis of human-induced global warming, TheInquirer. It’s blatantly obvious, and each year more and more people understand it.
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Thanks for the assignment, Bob, but there’s enough people here doing bad amateur science. I don’t put myself forward as a climate scientist. Youre the one claiming you know more and better than the published scientists. But I know bluster when I see it. As I’m sure you know, my criticism of your claims in the paper are valid and SSTs are clearly around as high as they’ve been in any of your series. To claim this as “normal” or “not unusual” is incorrect. And Sandy was a very unusual event. No one claimed AGW causes these event. What it does and what it will increasingly do is increase the probability of them occurring and, later, increase their intemsity and/or longevity.
I’m sure you believe strongly in your claims – them try to have them published and have them tested – if you want credibility, then I suggest you stay well away from sites like this – unless selling books to satisfy tribal group think is what you’re all about.
(It is funny that you write like this because Bob answered your comments and with charts,links and reason and this is all you can come up with in reply.You need to improve your writing if you want to make a good case for your position) CTS
06
The Inquizinator says:
What is your evidence to support this?
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TheInquirer: Regarding your April 17, 2013 at 4:21 am comment, I present data. I’m not “doing bad amateur science”. I am not “claiming [I] know more and better than the published scientists”. I present data. The data does not confirm the hypothesis of manmade global warming.
TheInquirer says: “And Sandy was a very unusual event. No one claimed AGW causes these event.”
Did you read the Lewandowski article about Sandy that was linked at the beginning of Jo’s post? Lewandowski wrote: “But is it really a matter of mere ‘stupidity’ to deny the link between climate change and Sandy’s fury — a link that has been drawn carefully but quite explicitly by scientists around the world, including in Australia?”
Lewandowski repeated that message numerous times. So your statement “No one claimed AGW causes these event” is obviously wrong.
TheInquirer says: “…if you want credibility, then I suggest you stay well away from sites like this…”
That statement, TheInquirer, broadcasts for all reading this thread that you have a limited grasp of reality. Are you aware that Jo Nova would be considered skeptical of manmade global warming? Are you aware that the majority of the visitors here are also skeptical of it? Are you aware that Jo Nova linked my work in her post? Why then should I “stay well away from sites like this”, when Jo and the majority of the bloggers here agree with me that the hypothesis of human-induced global warming is flawed? Your statement is utter nonsense.
Have a good day, TheInquirer.
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DFT clueless T.
00
So why don’t you join the scientific debate and submit for publication Bob? Is it because the only way to get junk science published is on a junk science blog?
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or maybe because ‘skeptics’ have been deliberately blocked from publication … evidence climategate emails. Don’t deny it, the warmista collusion and buggery is there in black and white.
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Exactly; we know from the emails and many episodes involving prominent sceptics such as Spencer, Lindzen, Paltridge, Stockwell etc, that the peer review system within AGW is corrupt.
For trolls to use the “why don’t you publish” complaint reveals a level of idiocy that only AGW trolls could sink to.
Tisdale is one of the clearest and informed commentators on AGW and regularly beats up such luminaries as tamino.
70
JFC, Brother of KFC!
Begot by the GFC.
Employed by the ABC!
Your Mum should have used an IUD!
Reprinted with permission from Me!
30
JFC: “So why don’t you join the scientific debate and submit for publication Bob?”
See my reply to TheInquirer above:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/lewandowsky-prof-of-psychology-thinks-the-labor-party-doesnt-benefit-if-he-calls-their-opponents-stupid/#comment-1265844
JFC: “Is it because the only way to get junk science published is on a junk science blog?”
I present data, JFC, not junk. If you haven’t grasped that, you obviously have not read my work and/or cannot comprehend data presented in time-series graphs and zonal-mean graphs or in animations. Or are you suggesting the data is junk?
30
But you allow others to attack and abuse me. Group Think 101.
Remember what you wrote about me?
“(Wow, CTS. What a demonstration of obfuscation and diversion. Either you know what I said is true and you are merely seeking to deceive readers or you are flat out dumb.)”
You called me “flat out dumb” for my correctly posting something that is on the chart you referred to,to support your claim that covers 50 years when it was actually 74 years as shown on the chart you referred to and that the chart shows a cooling trend from 1938 to 2012 as stated at the top of the chart you referred to
You attacked me without justification and without using facts to support your apparently baseless claims.Try to lift the quality of your future comments and cut out the attacks on me or anyone else.
CTS
020
Debate is a two way proposition. If you say something on an open blog like Jo’s expect to be required to give justification for it.
I just now showed that your comment about 50 years of SST rise due to human activity is at best a strawman, and actually is a proof of the low sensitivity hypothesis if I am correct that you were tangentially referring to Gleckler et al 2012. If you disagree I would welcome a polite scientific discussion. If you prefer to be impolite, we can still have a scientific discussion although it might be more entertaining to spectators.
80
Sorry, this was meant to be a reply to TI’s #35.
00
hmm.. seems to be some post displacement happening !
00
That sometimes happens, when they alter the programming of the Matrix …
30
Hmm… more of that post normal stuff, which like common sense ain’t so common, just isn’t normal.
30
” Group Think 101″
Oh. Visited SkS recently have you?
60
You qualify admirably for the position of ‘abuse icon’. We just don’t grok why you continue to make unfounded claims and infantile abuse of scientific icons like Dr Tisdale … you’d make a great psychological study though. School hols are finished now, should you be back in the classroom or do you have one of those neat ‘high toxic manufacture’ personal devices that you’re using in the playground ?
10
LOL, that was supposed to have been a response to theinquirer at #36
00
Ha,ha!! That’s funny! You should try your hand at stand up comedy Streetcred!
07
JFC,
When you can be as polite as Dr. Tisdale, who argued against his tormentor politely with facts and sound logic, then come back. In the meantime stop acting like an out of control pubescent boy with a terminal case of the zits running down his face. No one is impressed.
120
#47 … there’s no help for you, I’m afraid. To you, John Cook, cartoonist, is an icon of climate science. Dr Gleick would be your shining light in ethics. So sad.
60
I have no idea what you are talking about; your 4th paragraph is incomprehensible.
20
TI – the point of skeptics picking a 15 year trend as you put it, is that climate alarmists were forever telling us that CO2 was directly linked to global warming. They told us that the climate was very sensitive to increasing CO2. They told us that global warming was accelerating. We kept asking for proof that the warming that we were experiencing wasn’t all or mostly natural, as a recovery from the Little Ice Age. We weren’t given the proof. But we were offered computer models which predicted that the temperature rise would continue to accelerate. None of the models predicted a pause in global temperatures, particularly under a scenario where CO2 emissions continued to escalate. So of course we point to no warming in the last 15 years or so!
Come back if you have any proof that human CO2 emissions will cause anything more than moderate warming which in fact may well be beneficial for the earth which the warming since the LIA has undoubtedly been.
651
They told us that the trend should be for at least 15 years … well, now it is.
220
And its going to hilarious watching the poodle brains chaing their tails over the next several years as global temps begin to decline.
Not even Hadcrud of GISS will be able manufacture upward trends like they did before the satellite records became usable.
140
I am sure they will find “a new set of data” that shows that the satellite records are unreliable.
90
“a new set of data”
derived from models, no less .. MUST be correct !
40
Maybe that’s why Hanson has left the building. So a NEW analysis model can be created, and bingo “it’s worse than we thought”.
10
Like this data, Rereke 🙂 On the scales of warming worry magnitudes–part 1
40
They’re still blaming warming, that’s the weird thing. And of course they rewrite history to say they predicted it, after all. “Retrospective predictions”. They think we’re all dumb and can’t remember what they actually said a million times at high volume in true alarmist panic. I can still hear the echo…
10
In the good old days, science was about crafting of hypotheses that could be tested and refined through observation via studies that were challenged – then replicated by others until the hypothesis was generally accepted or rejected.
Unless for propaganda purposes, it wasn’t originated as material for instant media releases to be published without due investigation and did not include ad hominem attacks against those who might disagree.
Rather, it answered the valid scientific criticisms or differing viewpoints from sceptics and others.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned.
170
Not according to climate change advocates. Peer-review takes care of all that wasted time testing and replicating. If your peers see no problem, then no one else’s voice counts. It’s the new science(or it’s how it always was we skeptics are just not understanding how things have always worked) and they are adamant about it being the only ‘correct’ method. You would certainly be called unscientific by climate change advocates.
90
TheInquirer… …now my favorite troll for irrelevance and wasted time.
He’ll soon enough disappear like so many others. 🙁
80
Besides his support for the Labour Party program and his reception of funding from the Australian government, how about Lewandowsky’s connection with “Skeptical Science”?
The November 2012 piece reminds me of something else. Has he forgotten his prophecy, back in November 2007, that within five years the effects of climate change would be beyond reversing?
Not nearly enough of the environmental suppressive measures that he was demanding in 2007 have been enacted. So by his own “reasoning,” our planet is now beyond the point of no return…
—
Comment edited slightly with permission from JP for clarity. – Jo.
311
Do you have a source for that JP?
41
“The same simple, clear, and inescapable logic applies to climate change. In fact, this logic has applied to climate change for several decades now, as most of my fellow scientists know all too well. Some 20 years ago, we could have dealt with climate change for the price of an oil change. Ten years ago, the price had gone up and it would have cost us a new engine. Right now, as revealed by the UN’s top scientific panel in their report last week, we are in for the cost of a new car. And if we do nothing for another five years, our planet will undergo unstoppable remodeling with us no longer in the driver’s seat.”
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6687
November 27, 2007
170
Thanks JP, everyone should read that article to show just how ideologically driven Lewandowsky is: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6687
Lewandowsky couldn’t have got it more wrong. We are beyond the 5 years he predicted it would take for our planet to undergo unstoppable remodelling yet he can’t point to a single instance of such event. It was also ludicrous to suggest we could have ever been in the ‘drivers seat ‘ when it comes to the Earth’s weather and climate systems.
Perhaps we should check with the esteemed Prof of Psychology on how he plans to change the Earth’s tilt on its axis which when combined with its cyclical changes in the elliptical orbit around the sun will bring on the next ice age? Or perhaps he can let us know how humans are in the ‘driver’s seat’ when it comes to the level of solar activity and the solar winds and the impact that has on our magnetic field and the consequences that has for our weather and climate?
Never mind about explaining to our children or grandchildren about dramatic climate events that didn’t happen, how does Lewandowsky plan to explain to his current and immediate past students who he inculcated with his beliefs, that his predictions of unstoppable climate remodelling which should have happened by now haven’t done so? How does he explain to the community that he is still justified in being paid his tax payer funded University position and the hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer research grants he has attracted each year?
341
Good point Jaymez. has anyone thought to ASK Lewandowsky’s students what they think about their esteemed Professors odd-ball ideas?
Could be illuminating!
110
Lew hasn’t asked them; there were no student responses in his survey.
50
Isn’t Bruce Willis between gigs?
20
As a professor of psychology, it’s not his job to change the tilt of the earth. It’s his job to make sure everyone believes it has been changed, irregardless of facts, and to intimidate and name-call if people resist.
20
All this “unstoppable” talk. If we are at or very, very near that level, perhaps instead of trying to fix the climate, we start adapting. But wait, that means Lew would be out of the alarmist job. Scratch that. Let’s throw billions at something Lew claims we have little chance of stopping and pretend we don’t see the lack of logic and reason.
40
Or just ignore the jerk! He’s going to do what he’s going to do even if we publicize it and tear it apart.
Well, I wish we could.
He’s bound to fall from his own dead weight eventually. The sooner the better. 🙂
20
I am reminded of Paul Ehrlich, who went from strength to strength, dispite him being constantly wrong.
10
It’s always five years, isn’t it?
David Bowie sang “Five Years” over 40 years ago. Some things never seem to change, however many five years pass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Years
Is Lewandowsky a latter-day Spider from Mars, a member of the cAGW backing-group?
10
The CAGW-related intellectual deterioration of academia and scientific publication may be beyond reversing.
10
In his article Prof Lewandowsky accuses our national Newspaper of “ethically disembodied, intelligence to mislead the public about the link between climate change and Sandy”. Lewandowsky is accusing the editors and journalists at ‘The Australian’ of misleading the public because they lack ethics and intelligence. Now that is a pretty big claim for a Psychology Professor, who is not expert in climate or weather matters.
Lewandowsky also states boldly: “There is also no doubt that ideology is the principal driver of climate denial.” So Lewandowsky makes it clear he believes political ideology is what drives ‘climate deniers.’
So if Lewandowsky so clearly thinks political ideology is at the basis for peoples views on this important subject, then it is dumbfounding how he couldn’t see the relevance of disclosing his actual or potential conflicts of interest in writing that article.
Lewandowsky is well known for his position on Climate change. He has been writing pro Climate Action articles for years. Lewandowsky has also been very active flying around the country and indeed the world to give presentations to anyone who will listen on what he considers the reality of human caused climate change and the dangers of ‘climate denial’. In fact he and his colleague Professor Carmen Lawrence, ex Labor Premier of WA, and Ex Labor Federal Member for Fremantle have been busy running campus presentations and even getting people to sign petitions in support of the ‘climate science consensus’. This is a very political activity beyond the scope of psychology research; of that there can be no doubt!
So it is remarkable that in his statement about potential conflicts of interest, this very senior Professor of Psychology didn’t feel the need to point out to readers that he and his colleague’s research has been significantly funded by the research grants from the Labor Government whose policies he so ardently supports. And that much of his research to date has been specifically spent trying to demonstrate that those who do not accept his and the Government’s position on Climate Science are suffering anything from cognitive dissonance to conspiracy ideation. There is no possible conflict between his ability to attract research funds to the university, and therefore increase his own status, which is enhanced because he so obviously supports the Government’s climate policy and rejects the climate skeptics? Now that is someone in denial!
Lewandowsky further shows his lack of any objectivity in this matter as Jo quite rightly points out by not even considering that there were many well qualified scientists who clearly stated that Sandy could not be blamed with any certainty, on human CO2 emissions. That in fact Sandy was not unusual given history of similarly strong storms. This article by in the Age “Hurricane Sandy was not due to global warming, and the Climate Commission is wrong to claim otherwise” proves Lewandowsky’s is not objective on the subject.
It seems to me that when looking for someone suffering from ‘ethically disembodied intelligence designed to mislead’ Lewandowsky should look no further than the mirror!
492
He represents a planned and organized attack on the basis of the Western worlds science and democracy. Mostly with policy based “dogma”. They are few but organized. Many are today gatekeepers. In other words, not the team, but more the mafia or left side think tanks.
And it’s funded heavily by left side because they are to benefit politically.
100
The Gillard government has just announced its intention to strip $2 Billion / year from University funding to help pay for its $5 Billion / year Public School ‘Gonski’ education reforms. Should this eventuate I suggest Prof Lewandowski’s faculty might be a very good place to start.
350
If the Gillard government wont, the new Abbott Government, I hope, will.
150
OT: The usual suspects are at it again.
Is the UK heading for ANOTHER Arctic winter? Met Office calls emergency meeting to discuss if melting ice is causing Britain to freeze
How much more government money can be spun out of every such change. Climate Experts can no doubt conjecture as well as the rest of us, but we don’t ask for money for pretending to do something about it.
180
As it takes the same amount of heat to melt a block of ice (at the same temperature) as it takes to raise the temperature of the same amount of water by about 80 deg. C, melting ice can act as a huge buffer on temperature rise.
Did Trenberth’s missing heat ever have to reach the deep ocean ?
80
The missing heat got no farther than Trenberth’s mind. Trying to hide heat is like trying to steal lit candles from a church in a bucket full of water.
00
What on earth is the “emergency”?
Nothing they can do about it. Just deal with the cold weather like every other government before them had to. It’s as though they are suddenly confused.
40
Isn’t the Emergency, they’ve been caught out yet again ? Indulging their warm bias with their Supercomputer while Piers Corbyn calls it right again, with just his SLAT8C technique & his laptop. This is getting soo… Embarrassing .
40
45 Day Ahead SLAT8C Jan 13.
20
How many UWA graduates out there have dropped the UWA bit when stating their qualifications? I wonder…
70
You will have heard of the University of Easy Access , in East Anglia. What sort of name is the the UWA making for itself, from the actions a just a few departments ?
122
I failed, phew …
52
Yes, folk the time has come. What time is this? the time is when people who actually generate weath as opposed to have jobs/ don’t have jobs band together and be counted. Damn it- if you produce something someone else consumes (no matter how indirectly) in a free market then its time you we stood together and stopped this disgraceful squandering of Austrialia’s wealth by these parasites for which we receive NOTHING TANGIBLE other than BS not even suitable for aiding and abetting plant growth in return. We are constantly divided by the left-right wing paradigm but if you clean houses, are a CEO, drive a truck, are an engineer, a pastry chef or run your own business as wealth producers we need to stand together to stop this nonsense. My contribution in life is something sombody ultimately consumes. What is yours’ ?
180
But let’s be clear that generating wealth isn’t the same as making money. The “financial services” fraudsters make lots of money, but they do not contribute a thing to the total sum of products or the services that actually help people.
121
Here’s some homework for Lewandowsky … he can get his mum to read it to him.
New video from Bob Tisdale explains The Impact of Manmade Global Warming on a Blizzard Called Nemo and on Hurricane Sandy
161
… no, the ‘reading’ comment is deliberate 😉
71
*Ahem* Jo …
“Some Australian’s are sure …”
—–
Point taken. fixed. Thanks 🙂 Jo
20
Imagine if all the money that has been wasted on the GW/CC agenda and propaganda had been wisely spent, one area might have been eliminating poverty, in Australia one in every eight people live in poverty while our government hands 10 per cent of carbon dioxide tax to the UN, gifts billion of dollars in increased foreign aid, wastes money left right and centre and funds the great climate change hoax.
180
And supports the great social impact hoax of welcoming people smuggler passengers without passports and, according to recent information, argues against 457 visas and ignores so called asylum seekers who are not permitted to work being hired out by underground labour hire contractors for below award wages while at the same time collecting Centrelink benefits.
10
Totally O/T but I’ve got an Occom’s Razor solution for Australia’s people smuggler passengers: Take them to a UN centre and do a swap for real refugees with ID’s, who have been waiting patiently in line for years. Surely the UN couldn’t criticize this.
60
That was Julia’s Malaysian solution, but the best she could get involved an 80% discount on the returns.
10
O/T, but…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-15/antarctic-melting-ten-times-faster-than-600-years-ago/4628404
02
600 years ago = Little Ice Age (1350 AD – 1750 AD)
70
Uh, Redress, that is 1.5 degrees C over 600years, is it not. Please note the ABC closed its comment section after only two commments had been published. You also have to understand that it is our tax money that pays for all these scientific investigations in the Antarctic summer. Pretty good holiday, too, and you get to see [and do] a lot that tourists never see. One of my friends worked down at our Antarctic base for a year, and showed me his photos when he returned. Water skiing in survival suits around ice bergs used to be an annual event, but there are so many mean spirited funsuckers around these days ,I’m sure its now only a legend…
40
If Sandy is evidence of CAGW, then, on the “evidence”, the climate must be getting milder. Sandy had far less force than the hurricane of 1938 which grazed Long Island, which had far less force than the 1821 whopper. (That’s leaving out some biggies in-between.)
You don’t have to tell me I’m talking rubbish. Unlike Lew, I know rubbish by the smell. What we can really learn from Sandy: Never build a major city near sea level in a notorious hurricane belt, never narrow the mouth of an urban river to make more real estate, never dictate soft-drink sizes while forgetting to stock bottled water for a predictable catastrophe…I could go on!
The only good thing about giving research money to guys like Lew is that it keeps them out of real jobs…where they can mess up like Bloomberg!
160
The media insists on calling Sandy a “superstore” but it was a Cat 2 hurricane. Yes, it was large, but as Robert notes, the problem was not that the storm existed but rather that a large city unaccustomed to such storms was in its path. Had a similar size hurricane hit an area where the residents were prepared, the damage would have been far less. The only thing “super” about Sandy was the political BS that she inspired.
20
Good to see the new computer is working well Jo!
I put Lewandowsky in the same category as Flim-Flannery…
Deluded!
And we are paying him??? It’s scandalous!
I really hope the LNP call a Royal Commission into all of these shenanigans!
Will they?
120
Nah! not a royal commission,
we want a [Snip…. trial] and they can be held in the country that contributed the most to fuel the CAGW hoax.
Or maybe we could wait and combine an Agenda 21 trial with CAGW, either way it’s going to happen until another 70 years time when we forget about this evil and fall for the next one.
Oh wait, silly me we wont be around then, sorry Lew. 🙁
71
You are right, the hoax brigade have been working on their plots since the Fabian Society was formed in the late 1800s however too many humans are like Sheep.
20
Yonnie Baby! We can’t wait 70 years!!
It’ll happen sooner than that!
00
Yonnie Baby! We can’t wait 70 years!!
It’ll happen sooner than that!
00
Marginally OT, but I thought I’d start by posting it here.
Readers will recall that the current Queensland Government dumped about $600m worth of green schemes when it came to power. That was the easy bit.
The following is one part of the new Draft State Planning Policy, link is:
http://www.dsdip.qld.gov.au/about-planning/state-planning-policy.html
Some of it looks ok. Open for comment until 12 June 2013. There are specific requirements for making a submission on the page above. I will be responding to this, starting with the item below.
This is going to be a major problem if it becomes law.
I can dig up the relevant stuff, but anyone interested who has already done this, by all means contact me via troppo19 at gmail.com.
Here we go:
http://www.dsdip.qld.gov.au/resources/policy/state-planning/draft-spp-mandatory-requirements-coastal-hazard.pdf
[From Page 5]
[Quote]
Adapting to climate change
Rising sea levels due to climate change are clearly demonstrated in current scientific literature. Sea
levels are projected to continue to rise at an accelerating rate to 2100 and beyond, and the severity of
cyclones is expected to increase. These factors will increase the area at risk from coastal hazards and
will compound the vulnerability of low-lying coastal areas to coastal hazard impacts.
Land-use planning decisions have long-term implications and urban development cannot be easily
relocated. Therefore planning and development decisions will need to take this projected increase in risk
into account. Adaptation planning will become a progressively more important requirement for at-risk
coastal communities.
Based on the 2007 Forth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and
more recent work by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) the
following factors should be included in coastal hazard assessments to take account of climate change:
~ progressive sea level rise from 1990 levels to an additional 0.8 metres by the year 2100
~ an increase in cyclone maximum potential intensity by 10 per cent
~ a planning period commensurate with the design life of the development, or to 2100 for new
urban development.
A Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due for release in late
2014.
[End of quote]
This will affect any development that is assessable, eg not as-of-right. Personally I’m not too bothered by the 10% cyclone intensity, as this is largely a building work matter, generally outside the scope of the policy, and 10% is what most sensible designers add on for design wind speed anyway. The design life and the 0.8m will be the big one. The fact that it contradicts other objectives of the SPP eg regarding access to the shoreline seems to have been overlooked.
50
The Japanese, or is it the Chinese, have sea level data that seems to show a long term oscillation. If this cycle is real, the question is, “where are we in the cycle?”
People making these sort of sea level rise predictions are going to look pretty darn stupid if we are currently nearing a high point and sea levels start to decline. The data does seem to show a slight deceleration in the underlying, but rather small, positive trend.
I have said before that anyone who implies linear trend for extrapolation to climate data is on a fools errand.
I suspect that the future will mark the IPCC reports as a total load of codswallop!
or is that already happening 😉
100
I believe sedimentary rocks show the rise and fail of our oceans. quite clearly, no need for any data on sea level changes have a look at natures own records
00
mr Tim Flannery, claimed the indigenous people of Australia forever changed Australias flora and fauna, with the introduction of FIRE too the continent. really?
absurd..every year in Victoria alone ,there are on average 4,000 fires started by lightning ,that are reported by the CFA.
he has no credibility, on this issue alone
151
Tony,
Sorry, but as much as I dislike Flannery, he might be right on this one. (And we are terribly of topic).
It is close to his training.
Point is people won’t accept Aust landscape used to be adapted to fire.
Doug
20
I understand it is close too his training, thats the point.my children are all being trained on AGW.by the same system. uni lecturers teach our teachers.
Our magnificent Mountain Ash the fastest growing naturally occurring hardwood in the world as a response too the naturally occurring fires started by lightning. they evolved long before humans inhabited our great land
OFF TOPIC? maybe but the AGW movement relies upon using conventional wisdom to push the cause. the emperor’s new clothes comes to mind
conventional wisdom is why we are in this debate.
conventional thinking is not always correct, far from it
31
Doug, the warmista don’t accept that our landscape is what it is because of fire … long before and subsequent to Aboriginal settlement. In this sense, Flannery is disingenuous.
00
Bloomberg!?? The Lew’ Borg takes his lead from Bloomberg?
Steffy, mate, if we want the inside scoop on the waterfront property futures market then Bloomberg is where we’ll go.
But for our climate facts, sorry, no crony capitalist frontrunners thanks, we’re proper skeptics.
The doctor’s prescription is clear: Don’t saddle us with your physics, skeptics, the market has spoken! 🙁
Oh I’m all for taking “a market solution” to climate change, but (IIRC) neo-classical economic theory assumes all players in a free market have perfect information… and a diversity of models of the future to avoid everybody making the same malinvestment… could be a problem there.
30
While having a look at dodgy, TallBloke has a look at some dodgy temperature readings
Poorly sited weather stations abound in the UK
30
Writing from Dublin, Ireland, Jo, great to have you babk fulltime and with two new “monsters” in your home.
Good things happen in twos.
Here is an article I copied from Anthony Watts a while back and it deals very efficiently with “Extra Tropical Storm Sandy” (which is what I believe experts in this type of thing call it). Originally it came from CFACT.Org
The political superstorm that devastated New York
Posted on December 29, 2012 by Anthony Watts
Satellite View of Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy on Oct. 30 (Photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video)
Incompetence, stupidity, diversion, blame shifting, and false solutions to imaginary problems
Guest post by Paul Driessen
“Superstorm” Sandy killed more than 100 people, destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, and left millions without food, water, electricity, sanitation or shelter for days or even weeks. Our thoughts and prayers remain focused on its victims, many of whom are still grieving as they struggle with the storm’s wintry aftermath and try to rebuild their lives.
Unfortunately, too many politicians continue to use the storm to advance agendas, deflect blame for incompetence and mistakes, and obfuscate and magnify future risks from building and development projects that they have designed, promoted, permitted and profited from.
Sandy was “unprecedented,” the result of “weather on steroids,” various “experts” insist. “It’s global warming, stupid,” intoned Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “Anyone who says there is not a change in weather patterns is denying reality,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared. We must protect the great NY metropolis from rising oceans, said the Washington Post. This storm should “compel all elected leaders to take immediate action” on climate change, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pronounced.
Unfortunately for the politicians and spin-meisters, the facts do not support this obscene posturing.
North America’s northeastern coast has been battered by hurricanes and other major storms throughout history. A 1775 hurricane killed 4,000 people in Newfoundland; an 1873 monster left 600 dead in Nova Scotia; others pummeled Canada’s Maritime Provinces in 1866, 1886, 1893, 1939, 1959, 1963 and 2003.
Manhattan got pounded in 1667 and by the Great Storm of 1693. They were followed by more behemoths in 1788, 1821, 1893, 1944, 1954 and 1992. Other “confluences of severe weather events” brought killer storms like the four-day Great Blizzard of 1888. The 1893 storm largely eradicated Hog Island, and the 1938 “Long Island Express” hit LI as a category 3 hurricane with wind gusts up to 180 mph.
Experts say such winds today would rip windows from skyscrapers and cause a deadly blizzard of flying glass, masonry, chairs, desks and other debris from high-rise offices and apartments. People would seek safety in subway tunnels, where they would drown as the tunnels flood.
Sandy was merely the latest “confluence” (tropical storm, northeaster and full-moon high tide) to blast the New York-New Jersey area. It was never a matter of if, but only of when, such a storm would hit.
People, planners and politicians should have been better prepared. Instead, we are feted with statements designed to dodge responsibility and culpability, by trying to blame global warming. The reality is, even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose to 391 ppm (0.0391%) today, average global temperatures have not changed in 16 years, and sea levels are rising no faster than in 1900. Even with Hurricane Sandy, November 2012 marked the quietest long-term hurricane period since the Civil War, with only one major hurricane strike on the US mainland in seven years. This is global warming and unprecedented weather on steroids?
In Hurricane Sandy’s aftermath – with millions freezing hungry in dark devastation – Mayor Bloomberg sidetracked police and sanitation workers for the NYC Marathon, until public outrage forced him to reconsider. While federal emergency teams struggled to get water, food and gasoline to victims, companies, religious groups, charities, local citizens and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie worked tirelessly to raise money and organize countless relief efforts.
Most outrageous of all, though, was how ill-prepared the region was for another major storm – and how many political decisions had virtually ensured that any repeat of the 1893, 1938, 1944 and other storms would bring devastation far worse than would likely have occurred in the absence of those decisions.
In one of the most obvious, architects, city planners, mayors and governors alike thought nothing of placing generators in the basements of hospitals and skyscrapers built in areas that are barely above sea level. Past storms have brought surges12 to 18 feet high onto Long Island, and studies have warned that a category 3 direct hit could put much of New York City and its key infrastructure under 30 feet of water. Sandy’s 9-foot surges (plus five feet of high tide) flooded those basements, rendering generators useless, and leaving buildings cold and dark. Perhaps if Mayor Bloomberg had worried less about 32-oz sodas and seas that are rising a mere foot per century, he could have devoted more time to critical issues.
The mayor has also obsessed about urban sprawl. However, when new developments mean high rents, high taxes and photo-op ground breakings, he has a different philosophy.
Mr. Bloomberg’s Arverne by the Sea initiative transformed what he called “a swath of vacant land” into a “vibrant and growing oceanfront community,” with “affordable” homes starting at $559,000. (The land was vacant because a 1950 storm wiped it clean of structures.) The new homes were built on 167 acres of land raised five feet above the surrounding Far Rockaway area. Those Arverne homes mostly survived Sandy. But the high ground caused storm surges to rise higher and move faster elsewhere than they would have on Rockaway lowlands that are always hit head-on by northward moving storms.
If Sandy had been a category 3 hurricane like its 1938 ancestor, the devastation would have been of biblical proportions – as winds, waves and surges slammed into expensive homes, businesses and high-rises, and roared up waterways rendered progressively narrower by hundreds of construction projects.
Lower Manhattan has doubled in width over the centuries. World Trade Center construction alone contributed 1.2 million cubic yards to build Battery Park City, narrowing the Hudson River by another 700 feet. The East River has likewise been hemmed in, while other water channels have been completely filled. Buildings, malls and raised roadways constructed on former potato fields, forests, grasslands and marshlands have further constricted passageways for storm surges and runoff.
As a result, storms like Sandy or the Long Island Express send monstrous volumes of water up ever more confined corridors. With nowhere else to go, the surges rise higher, travel faster and pack more power. It’s elementary physics – which governors, mayors, planners and developers ignore at their peril.
No wonder, Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo and other politicos prefer to talk about global warming, rising seas and worsening weather – to deflect attention and blame from decisions that have put more people in the path of greater danger. Indeed, the very notion of packing more and more people into “sustainable, energy-efficient” coastal cities in the NY-NJ area is itself madness on steroids.
Worst of all, politicians are increasingly and intentionally obscuring and misrepresenting the nature, frequency and severity of storm, flood and surge risks, so that they can promote and permit more construction in high-risk areas, and secure more money and power. They insist that they can prevent or control climate change and sea level rise, by regulating CO2 emission – while they ignore real, known dangers that have arisen before and will arise again, exacerbated by their politicized decisions.
As a result, unsuspecting business and home owners continue to buy, build and rebuild in areas that are increasingly at risk from hurricanes, northeasters and “perfect storms” of natural and political events. And as the population density increases in this NY-NJ area, the ability to evacuate people plummets, especially when roadways, tunnels and other escape routes are submerged. Let the buyer beware.
Sandy may have been a rare (but hardly unprecedented) confluence of weather events. But the political decisions and blame avoidance are an all-too-common confluence of human tendencies – worsened by the dogged determination of our ruling classes to acquire greater power and control, coupled with steadily declining transparency, accountability and liability.
How nice it must be to have convenient scapegoats like “dangerous manmade global warming” and insurance companies – today’s equivalent of the witches whom our predecessors blamed for storms, droughts, crop failures, disease and destruction. It’s time to use the witches’ brooms to clean house.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
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Peter that looks like spam.
Next time just find the link to the original and paste the hyperlink to it instead of the text of the whole 1300 word article.
Then you could paste a small excerpt from it to highlight one part that interested you the most. Tell us your opinion. If you just paste the whole article then you haven’t said anything because it’s all somebody else’s words.
There’s no Internet Driver’s License, which is good because it makes censorship more difficult, but the downside is that people don’t learn netiquette before they dive in.
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Nor should there be a Drivers Licence! We all learn “on the job” so the speak”.
None the less thanks for the tip
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“Netiquette”, love it. Haven’t seen this expression before. Without it we’re just Twitter or Facebook. Pointless keystrokes on a fishing expedition.
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The political superstorm that devastated New York
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Lew has an article (pay-walled) in this month’s issue of Nature Global Warming
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n4/full/nclimate1720.html
a journal some people may think respectable because it belongs to the Nature group, but that is in fact a rag where you can publish all sorts of alarmist drivel if you are so inclined.
The article is (as usual) about why some people don’t accept the “science” of AGW, and the solution apparently is that we need to tell deniers that there is a consensus of 97% of scientists etc.
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Right.
In one of the studies in the article, Lewandowsky et al. report that they got participants to increase their agreement with propositions about anthropogenic global warming—after loudly prompting them with “information” about 97% agreement.
But no, they assure the reader, the increased agreement was not a response to “demand characteristics” (i.e., to noticing what the experimenter wants and responding accordingly).
They don’t even mention the literature on induced conformity.
Lewandowsky must have heard of the Asch experiment when he took Intro to Psychology. He needs to brush up on it.
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From all I know of Lewandowsky, observing this farce from over here in the UK, he is simply more of the same smug, belligerent political left – keen to spend public funds (after all, it’s a bottomless pit of largess, right?), less enthusiastic to engage in any meaningful way with climate sceptics. Like almost all of his ilk, he is running scared of actually being forced to argue his agenda with an informed opposition.
In the end, the intellectual and political hubris of the Lewandowskys of this world will prove their final undoing. And mother nature, bless her, will do all the rest.
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Wow, those rotters at ANU and BAS have gotten together to promote the ALP policies and drive the true dis-believer outrage meter as well!!! It must be a global conspiracy run by Phil the Greek, Charlie the Bike Seat and those other horrid Royals huh?? Or maybe some inscrutable UN bureaucrat pushing Agenda 21??? 🙂
Or, perhaps we are just getting more melting in the last 50 years?? Nah, that would be tooooooo way out there.
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wow.. serious over-indulgence on Nepeta cataria, fur-brain !!
re-had didn’t stick.. obviously !!
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Hmmmm, mindless mudslinging gets a thumb up. How surprisiment!
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suits the mindless post you made.. I always try to respond in-kind.
comes from once working with low IQ 15 year olds..
they sort of understand and appreciate the effort.
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Catamon, I’ll just come right out and say it, that was a particularly dumb post. See my post re Twitter and Facebook. Did you get your apps crossed or something. The Gods of your religion are persuasive politicians but lousy statisticians. They aren’t even scientists in the way that Newton, Rutherford et al would understand. The thumbs down rating is what you expected perhaps? Do they have the perverse effect of making you feel even more smug and self righteous, special and unique?. How are you going to cope when in a few months time all your political heroes get millions of “red thumbs downs”. (I’m assuming you’re an Aussie). No doubt you’ll be brave and resolve to rebound and conquer, like Mao, one sparrow at a time.
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Catamidst- yeh , warming on the Antarctic peninsula, which is, like, 3% of Antarctica. The other 97% continues to set new ice records every winter. Well, every winter since the 1950s ,anyway. Pretty, though, at least in summer.
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Oh don’t worry Cat, us derdy conspiraphiles are totally onto it already and, despite the complete absence of the Royal family from the analysis, the whole setup sounds shaky.
Team W says:
So the study went back 1000 years, but the range of the greatest warming change was since only 600 years ago.
Well how are they going to make that Medieval Warm Period disappear? 😀
And it’s been warming since 500 years before the post WW2 industrialization!
And it still doesn’t prove human causation!
tsk tsk. Sounds like an own-goal for Team W. 😛
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Arctic melt a worry? Got some good news. Same thing happened after Waterloo and WW1. But it all came back. Didn’t it ever come back in the 1970s! Brrr.
As for the Antarctic, it’s chocka-block with sea ice. There’s a melty bit in the West, but I’d hold off on building condos there for climate refugees. Right now, the whole Northern Hemisphere is over the whole snow and ice thing. Gore effect, they’re calling it.
On the other hand, if you happened to own some Maldives real estate…
http://www.ilre.com/maldives-luxury-real-estate.html
It’s a great place to meet the rich and green these days. Fab new airports, quick fly-in access for busy Eurocrats and tree-hugging royals.
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Our research ship was stuck in sea ice returning to Hobart from the Antarctic in 2012
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QUOTE:
Catamon
April 15, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Catamon’s “inscrutable UN bureaucrat” conspiracy fantasy or reality?
Published on Apr 5, 2013
Vice President Joe Biden calls for the creation of a “new world order” at the Export Import Bank conference in Washington on April 5, 2013.
.
It’s a jedi mind meld trick, “This is not the inscrutable UN bureaucrat you are looking for.”
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Great link Handjive!
Agenda 21 is insidious!
Catamongst Men is one of them!
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Joe Biden IS the missing heat I reckon.
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“How surprisiment!”
Catamon- The Jar Jar Binks of warmist trolls.
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I hate to say this but Lew has it exactly right. We are stupid!
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Jo,
Here is a story good for a laugh…especially the last few words in the article…
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=4abc39fc-99fe-43a2-a169-9e52a8148a38&k=70647
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Here in the Lower 48 (my digs are Wyoming) we are expecting our second major ***WINTER*** storm in a week. I came into work this morning, and the only words on everyone’s lips were, “Where is the Global Warming?”
While I cannot prove it, I stated in January that the current La Nina had the potential to make a wet spring for Wyoming and environs, and as of now, based on Anthony’s ENSO meter, I would like to go on record as forecasting a wet summer in the Western US.
Loved the article Joe!
Mark H.
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Yes, we just had a major snow storm and it’s 23 degrees right now. I hope Mark is right about the wet spring! On March 17th, we had a dust storm and later in the day a snowstorm. None of this is unusual, however. The dust keeps increasing as building and subdivisions go in and the drought continues. Snow occurs in every month of the year. I have seen snow in every month but July where I live. This is just the way weather works.
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Tony Abbott along with sacking Tim Flannery must do us all a favour and cut all funding to Lewandowsky and preferably in the first week in office. And hopefully the University will recover from its shame and utterly disgraced reputation.
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Jo, I was going to say Lewansky is a prat.
But that would be derogatory to all the prats of the world.
He is vile, arrogant and so incapable of understanding people that he simply cannot entertain the idea that we not only right, but (unlike him) do what we do for altruistic reasons.
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I see the “monster” is up and running. Welcome back, Jo! 🙂
It’s regrettable that the new computer has to start off with such a subject as another round of Lewandowsky though.
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Re url by Robert Townsend On Maldives ultimate beach front
properties for sale.
http://www.ilre.com/maldives-luxury-real-estate.html
These include large swimming pools with sunken dining rooms,
no mention of island sinking in the brochure. In fact the
ownership contract includes a sub letting clause currently
of 33years and registered by the Maldivian government.
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Tim Flannery worked out that his Hawkesbury River north of Sydney waterfront properties were also safe. But everywhere else will be swamped, and the Cow jumped over the Moon.
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Tim Flannery worked out that his Hawkesbury River north of Sydney waterfront properties were also safe. But everywhere else will be swamped, and the Cow jumped over the Moon.
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OT – worth a look: Apollo-era NASA officials say climate change research ‘corrupted’ by politics and special interests
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Hi BS
I was going to congratulate you and then I had a look at the item.
Things are not always what they seem are they.
KK
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It looks like more of the usual suspects for sure. When will they get their heads out into the sunshine?
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Hi Jo,o/t,I attended Lord Monckton’s talk last night in New Plymouth NZ.Was a highlight of my life to meet and talk to such a knowledgable person.He is a hero of mine.
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Gee Billy, you are gullible. Highlight of your life?? You need to get out more mate.
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JFC — the bell with no clapper! 🙁
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Monckton is never off topic btw. Billy.
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And Flannery is your hero..
or is it John Cook or Lewy.
or perhaps even Mann or Hansen.
Now there’s 5 names straight from the gutter. !
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Ignore JF’ngC Billy. He/She/It has no conception of what they’re missing.
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Monckton gets his chance to debate Gore at long last.
Next Wednesday, 24 April , on the penultimate appearance of his NZ tour.
Not Al, the eponymous Climate Alarmist, but the good people of Gore, 40miles from that end-of-the-Earth NZ’s (Mainland) Southern tip. I’m sure he’ll make it a fitting epitaph the whole AGW era.
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Hi Eddie,yeah,a bit of knowledge would brighten his life.Maybe not,he loves living in a world of doom and gloom.LOL.These morons don’t know what they are missing.I bet a $100 to a knob of goat $hit,(and he/she can hold the stakes in his/her mouth)that I have lived a more exciting life than him/her/it.
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I should apologise to UWA, home of the irrepressible Dr Lewandowsky who has such amazing web poll design expertise. Apparently not everyone in UWA has a brain comprising 100% tofu:
Abstract. The threat of dangerous climate change from anthropogenic global warming has decreased. Global temperature rose from 1975 to 1998, but since then has levelled off. Sea level is now rising at about 1.5mm per year based on tide gauges, and satellite data suggests it may even be falling. Coral islands once allegedly threatened by drowning have actually increased in area. Ice caps cannot possibly slide into the sea (the alarmist model) because they occupy kilometres-deep basins extending below sea level. Deep ice cores show a succession of annual layers of snow accumulation back to 760,000 years and in all that time never melted, despite times when the temperature was higher than it is today. Sea ice shows no change in 30 years in the Arctic. Emphasis on the greenhouse effect stresses radiation and usually leads to neglect of important factors like convection. Water is the main greenhouse gas. The CO2 in the ocean and the atmosphere are in equilibrium: if we could remove CO2 from the atmosphere the ocean would give out more to restore the balance. Increasing CO2 might make the ocean less alkaline but never acid. The sun is now seen as the major control of climate, but not through greenhouse gases. There is a very good correlation of sunspots and climate. Solar cycles provide a basis for prediction. Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Many think that political decisions about climate are based on scientific predictions but what politicians get are projections based on computer models. The UN’s main adviser, the IPCC, uses adjusted data for the input, their models and codes remain secret, and they do not accept responsibility for their projections.
Link.
UWA vice chancellor is probably quite unhappy with that Professor. I am glad. Some sense seems to be creeping into that university despite everything MattB and John Brookes can do fighting guerilla campaigns in the blogosphere.
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Good piece Bruce.
Everything in its’ place; all nice and logical.
KK 🙂
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and SkS’s newest attack worm gets all huffy ! roflmao !!
go somewhere else and PANIC, fool !!
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oh, that was meant to be at #36.1 in reply to the poodle’s latest yapping….. oh well.
20
.
The Climate Commission just gets worse:
A drought of a month or more??? So now droughts can be called after 4 weeks of no rain??
This is from an article “Australia wheat, wine vulnerable to climate change”
They seem to lie instinctively or Lewandowsky the truth.
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Tell me,who is this Just Fkn Clueless .(JFC) warmist?He/she/it seems to have his/her/it’s balls and brains in the same bag.LMAO
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What? You’ve never heard of a scrotebellum before?
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Thanks for the kind words and links to my books, Jo.
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Hold on to your electorates, Liberals, there’s a redneck rampage rolling Mr Rabbit!
Fourteen years of nothing and suddenly this suit appears now?? Surely somebody put Ettridge up to this and by the timing and the motives it must be the ALP.
Couldn’t we have an election JUST ONCE where ANY candidate actually represents my views and the election is fought on POLICY and not PERSONALITY!
Sick of the muckraking! Grr!
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@moderators
Looks like the “Posts” RSS feed might be broke.
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It’s the behaviour and demeanour of posters like JFC and TheEnquirer that helped convince me long ago about the ‘threat’ of AGW.
That and science.
A fine gravy train she’s been, but the engine has jumped the tracks.
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Corrupt science:
what lysenko spawned.
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/lewandowsky-prof-of-psychology-thinks-the-labor-party-doesnt-benefi… […]
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Kind of hitched his wagon to the wrong horse, when you look at the polling and all that.
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I hope come September that Prof Lewandowsky will be quickly shown the door out of academia. His low level of logical critical thinking is not worthy of any academic post I can think beyond a cleaner.. Maybe he should be shown the brush instead?
It’s probably not his fault, when you are surrounded by so many ‘like minds’ its difficult to see reality for all the wooden heads. Combine this with a government willing to fund anything that may aid their cause and you have a really bad case of woolly thinking.
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