So much for “higher” education. James Cook University (JCU) has blackballed Professor Bob Carter, not because of any flaw in his scientific reasoning, but because he speaks outside the permitted doctrine. His views on climate science do not fit with the dominant meme (or the grant applications). And then there were pesky complaints and emails from disgruntled fans of the prophets-of-doom. (Quite a drain on the office.)
They took his office a while back, then they took the title. Carter was still supervising a student, and another professor hired him for an hour a week with his own budget. It meant Carter could continue supervising and keep his library access. But that wouldn’t do. Professor Jeffrey Loughran blocked that as well. The library pass and the email was shut off on June 21. It takes an active kind of malice to be this petty.
Bob Carter
In years to come when everyone admits that the Great Global Warming Scare was hyped, JCU could have been seen as one of the rare beacons of academic honour and principle. Instead, apparently, it’s as spineless as any other bureucratic collective. The irony for JCU, is that Bob Carter has been working there for 31 years, and they only had to put up with him for a little bit longer in order to claim their glory (albeit post hoc) and then pretend that really they had supported him all along. The dominant meme is collapsing, thousands of respected scientists are speaking out and skeptic blogs are storming the awards. The evidence has turned, the carbon market has sunk to junk status, and assertive daring articles are appearing in mainstream media in places they would never have been seen a few years ago, like the New York Times, and the Economist. The climate scientists themselves are admitting they don’t know why the world isn’t warming. But the man who was right about that all along is persona non-grata.
Professor Bob Carter has been a key figure in the Global Warming debate, doing exactly what good professors ought to do, challenging paradigms, speaking internationally, writing books, newspaper articles, and being invited to give special briefings with Ministers in Parliament. He’d started work at JCU in 1981 and served as Head of the Geology Department until 1998. [UPDATE: to clarify, sometime after that he retired]. Since then he’s been an honorary Adjunct Professor. All JCU had to do was to approve an extension of this arrangement, giving him library and email access, at little cost to them, and he could have continued to help students and staff, provide a foil, a counterpoint, and keep alive the spirit of true scientific enquiry. (Not to mention his continued speaking, books, and influence on the National debate).
Chris Cocklin
Instead every person in the chain of command tacitly, or in at least one case, actively endorsed the blackballing. Each one failed to stand for free speech and rigorous debate. In the end, JCU didn’t even make any effort to disguise the motive. The only reasons given were that the staff of the School of Earth and Environmental Studies had discussed the issue (without any consultation with Carter) and decided that his views on climate change did not fit well within the School’s own teaching and research activities. Apparently it took up too much time to defend Carter against outside complaints about his public writings and lectures on climate change. (Busy executives don’t have time to say “Why don’t you ask Carter yourself?” or “We value vigorous debate here.” Presumably they are too busy practising their lines and learning the litany? )
Each of these eminent professors, no doubt, is certain that they are independent minded, tolerant of other views, and have exacting ethical standards. I gather any one of them could have risen above the lap-dog obedience to the dogma of the day. None did.
- Head of School, Professor Paul Dirks
- Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Jeffrey Loughran (scroll in the link)
- Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Cocklin (Lead Author for the IPCC’s 2007 Report)
- Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sandra Harding
As well as being a former IPCC lead author, Professor Cocklin currently holds ARC Discovery grants for two projects, one of which is ‘Sustainable Farming in Australia’.
Professor Cocklin is presently a member of the Advisory Board of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), the International Scientific Advisory Committee, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the Expert Advisory Panel, Northern Australia Ministerial Forum, and the Scientific Steering Committee of the Tropical Ecosystems Hub of the National Environmental Research Program.
Prof Cocklin might not welcome the discovery that SUVs don’t have much influence on cyclones. You think?
But since Bob Carter and John Spooner are about to release a new book (“Taxing Air”, more on that soon), now was as good a time as any for JCU to lift Carter to that rare seat in the Hall of the Blackballed. Bob Carter has really made it now. But JCU has surely lost far more than they have gained.
Bob Carter wins the cartoon war
Cartoon by John Spooner: The Age Gallery
UPDATE: To hear Stewart Franks talk about this listen to Andrew Bolt on the radio on 2GB at 43 minutes.
During a port visit to Freemantle aboard the USS Kennedy, I took a bus tour of the outskirts of Perth. On a bluff overlooking the city an aged man came up to me a asked if I was from the aircraft carrier. I allowed as I was and he proceeded to thank me as a Yank for coming to save Australia in WWII. I was touched. I fear we did not save you at all if this is the type of antics that take place in universities. Freedom is a dwindling feature in the land of the kangaroo. It may be abating in the US as well.
555
Well, Professor Carter joins a long list of eminent persons who were just too intelligent, or had too much integrity, or were too visionary, for their contemporaries. In a way, it is a badge of honour.
(p.s I originally mistyped “contemporaries” as “contemptaries”. The non-word fitted so well, that I was tempted to leave it.)
403
The chap who invented Geology as a profession (see the book “The map that changed the world” was treated in a similar (well actually worse) manner.
It’s usually only many years later that those who are correct, but not mainstream, are realised for their greatness.
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William Smith was also corrupt. He was dismissed for purchasing land where he knew canals were to be built by his employer. This is totally unethical.
11
It wasn’t just land, it was a beautiful little stone house. Which he spotted while out surveying, bought, and then lived in after he was sacked. Seems like he was sacked as a matter of principle only, because the canal company soon hired him again. I suggest the real corruption in the William Smith story should be reserved for those who plagiarized his life’s work (the great map) and drove him to debtor’s prison. In the Bob Carter story, I guess that although when the wind turns, career academics can easily disown their former discredited catastrophist leanings, yet their names and what they have now done to Bob Carter, and their reasons for doing it, are immortalized here on this blog for everyone to see – forever.
60
Rereke, I have heard it stated, that Climate Change is an intelligence test.
Never underestimate the ability of righteous do-gooders to shoot their own feet off. As the scam collapses the righteous rush to stand on the losing side.What will be their motto? “We stand with group think & delusional belief systems”?
Recently I have read of a concerted effort to attack sceptical sites and commenters, if its happening, it is being done with the usual IPCC skill.
As in hard to detect from noise and random acts of idiocy.
Of course a tactic of increased vileness and misinformation is about due, it is all the team has left.
Probably why the big zero, Obama, is leaping to “act” on climate change,CO2, AGW, extreme whatever..just more proof that yes, one can make a donkey sheriff, but it will still be a donkey.
91
I reckon you’re right. And when you flunk the test, the Uni sacks you.
36
No, when you don’t toe the party line, the Uni sacks you.
Carter was sacked because it all got too hard for the University heirarchy to stand up for their employee.
30
Sitting on my yacht in Tahiti and reading amazing stuff how these agw people still may go on treating scientists this way is really amazing. How the hell can we stop it ? We should also remember all of them doing the dirty work now so we may release them from office as soon as we can. They are just not serving science and has to go.
Back to scuba diving, it’s better for my health.
121
Realistically, the University has to be able to choose who it employs. University lecturers are by no means a protected species – anymore than anyone else is, IMO.
It does, however, appear that the James Cook University is not the place for students to go to get a free and diverse range of perspectives on issues.
If you want to expose yourself to intellectually myopic views and to learn very little as a consequence, then JCU appears to the the university of ignorance for you.
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Suppose Tony Abbott needed an advisor on climate change?
A highly qualified one prepared to think independently about the problems.
One who could decide where research grants should go?
I wonder if there mightn’t be a sudden vacancy for a vice-chancellor at JCU.
230
Are you suggesting the grant process should be circumvented by politicians in order to push a political barrow?
Doesn’t sound like a very flash idea to me…
20
This indicates a poor future for the credibility of JCU. Over the past three or four decades, various universities have been created by attempting to ‘up-market’ a group of institutions that were, essentially, vocational colleges. Somehow these vocational colleges were expected to lift their game and become places where true learning and debate occurred. They were to be places of true intellectual and scientific enquiry. They were to be places of independent and free thought. JCU has just dropped the ball on this one. No matter what other fine work the institution may ever do, its name has now been besmirched as a ‘university’. And they’ve done it to themselves!
My comment to the people who have allowed Bob Carter to be sacked is, ‘If you just want to be a technical college, then get on and be a technical college. Be a good technical college. But, if that’s all you want, please drop the word ‘University’ from your title’.
My comment to Bob Carter is, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ This advice may not actually be needed because I know that Bob Carter is already ‘tough’ and that he is already ‘going’. But, Bob, please keep going, logically and persuasively.
271
JCU was created as a fully fledged research university with a special emphasis on tropical research. It was never a College of Advanced Education or any sort vocational institution.
20
Heaven forfend that the JCU forego any funding from the AGW lobby
50
The University of New South Wales has just honoured ex-Prime Minister John Howard with an Honorary Doctorate. It has taken this long for this Australian conservative politician of world stature and national importance to be given recognition by a leading Australian research university (Howard’s Hon Docs starting at 2009 with Bond University, and 2012 with Macquarie University), whereas Honorary Doctorates have been widely offered two-a-penny by major Australian universities in the past fifteen years for all sorts of ragtag and singularly unimpressive individuals of leftist views and limited real achievements.
That is universities for you in the era of political correctness. They are in many ways quite shameful places of constraint on academic freedom. That is why thoughtful people in science and culture are retreating and regrouping on the internet, to seek elsewhere a greater sense of academic integrity than is currently on offer in many disciplines within institutions termed ‘universities’.
Vice-Chancellor Harding may wish to consider how her university, under her watch, will be recalled in the future over this ungenerous and unscholarly piece of academic nastiness concerning Professor Bob Carter, a scholar of merit who has given James Cook University a much-needed national presence in a complex and on-going and by no means ‘settled’ scientific endeavour and debate.
434
You are probably right about the later stuff but give us a break about John Winston Howard, authoritarian hypocrite. A jumped up suburban solicitor who somehow managed to get to the top of the Liberal party at the right time which shows how bereft of talent they really are. Costello managed to keep little flak jacket johnny’s spending somewhat under control (only somewhat) but the little turkey had such an ego that he didn’t know when to quit. What a ghastly, sanctimonious little creep. Instead of shutting the hell up, sinking into well deserved obscurity and enjoying his grossly over inflated taxpayer funded retirement he’s lecturing the Americans about how to do gun control.
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John Howard graduated from Sydney University. He was a Senior Partner at Mallesons Stephens Jacques – one of the ‘Big Six’ commercial law firms in Australia. To say he was a suburban solicitor is ludicrous.
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John Howard was a Senior Partner at Mallesons Stephens Jacques one of the ‘Big Six’ commercial law firms in Australia. [He decided not to become a barrister because he has a hearing defect.]
It is offensive and totally incorrect to imply that John Howard was an unimportant solicitor dealing with minor issues such as land conveyancing.
11
“Got to the top of the Liberal party at the right time”? Are you mad or completely ignorant of the history of politics in Australia or just small minded and nasty? Throughout the 1980s the leadership of the Liberals oscillated between John Howard and Andrew Peacock. Do you not recall Howard’s “Lazarus with a triple bypass comment”? It is said that if you say nothing people may think you’re a fool but if you speak (in your case write) they will know that you are. Why not check a few facts before making yourself look a fool on a website for adults
41
And global temperatures haven’t significantly increased over the past fifteen years. We have a correlation. Obviously, handing out Hononary Doctorates prevents climate change.
Can I have mine now, please?
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The whole concept of “honorary doctorates” is an obscenity. Anyone with any insight and self-respect would refuse it.
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I dunno Winston, I’m sure I could come up with a few I could accept 🙂
00
I have heard Bob Carter speak and read his book and he is one of the most lucid and credible sceptics I know. This is a BLOODY disgrace. Now, in order to counter Bob’s arguments, alarmists will just be able to refer to the ‘discredited’ Bob Carter.
581
The advertising for his new book is replete with obvious errors of fact and bizarre non-sequiturs (see below).
It’s pretty obvious why he isn’t trying to get any academic work published on the issue.
20
Spineless, just spineless.
Someone close to me working in education has recently been made to jump through hoops to ensure they “understand and implement” the new framework, this entails using exact words in reports or observations that are provided by the framework.
Failure to do so will result in termination of contract, they are now considering a new career.
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It gives an appearance of there being an over mind, perhaps body snatchers. A single mindedness that cannot stand to be challenged.
I know humans aren’t rational and all, but one would hope a Universities own ethics standards, dispute settlement procedures and constitution would have prevented such a naked display of prejudice.
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They advertise for students on TV claiming “World Leadership” besting Harvard, Yale, Cambridge & Oxford.
You could almost bet some JCU luminaries could give advice to the “World’s Best Treasurer” or at least a cosy retirement jobs (Thinkers in Residence?) for for some of our Federal Politicians or advisors.
/sarc.
80
I’m looking forward to reading “Taxing Air”. This time, I will know better than when I asked for “Climate: The Counter-Consensus” at the JCU bookshop [oops … silly me].
Have the usual suspects above had a knee-jerk reaction to the Chinese Academy of Sciences deciding to translate the NIPCC “Climate Change Reconsidered” reports?
If so, I wonder how they are going to cope with the following if/when it materialises?
http://www.liberal.org.au/sites/default/files/The%20Coalitions%202030%20Vision%20for%20Developing%20Northern%20Australia.pdf
The above is a bit woolly and repetitive, but one initiative they won’t be able to “stack”.
60
Bob Carter should count himself lucky. In the good old days, we used to just take dissidents out into the woods and shoot them.
Yours sincerely,
Trofim Lysenko
Kiev Agricultural Institute
360
Possessing only a meager BS in Geology, I hold Professor Carter in high esteem. I hope that he is otherwise positioned to overcome loss of position, access, and income. Hopefully one day the CAGW fallacy will finally and fully collapse and he, and others, will be recognized and honored for their sacrifices and resoluteness.
Charles Rushton
Raleigh, NC, USA
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In the short term, the people judge the science. In the long term, the science judges the people. Long live Bob Carter!
260
In these days of the Climate Inquisition, be assured no truth teller will go unpunished.
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Science is not determined by institutional orthodoxy.
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Can I have that tattooed on Tim Flannery’s forehead?
70
In a previous generation, there were Soviet Dissidents, like Andrei Sakarhov. Maybe we should refer to Bob Carter not as Prof, but “Australian Climate Dissident”.
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Jo – we need the email address of Bob Carter. I for one would like to send him a support email.
No point sending emails to the professors. If Bob with his knowledge and common sense has not been able to move them, what chance to I have?
—–
I’ve emailed it to you Gaz – Jo
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Gaz, I’ll ask him if I may publish his email, I can certainly pass on messages. I’m sure he’d like to hear from you.
But there very much is a point of emailing these folk at JCU. They are, after all, sheep who follow a herd. Where reason and logic doesn’t work, the knowledge that thousands of calm intelligent people disagree will put the fear of God into them.
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Jo, You should also suggest to Professor Carter that he put himself forward as climate change advisor to the Liberal Government.
What an opportunity for both !!
140
In the end the weather/climate will decide. It will take another 5 years for AGW to totally be forgotten.By then Abbot will be in, Obama out, Rubio in, The european Union will no longer exist, the common person will be very angry about the scam as temperatures continue to fall so no worries.
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I am disgusted by this action by JCU.
They put themselves in a league with Oregon State University, who fired chemist Nick Drapela because of his views as a climate sceptic.
As Jo points out, not only is JCU’s action foul, tacky and sinister, but they know that the Federal Opposition is going to repeal the carbon tax. So they as stupid too. Can they not see that they are destroying their own seed corn by doing this? Why should students go to JCU when it becomes so clear that they are ideologues of one side of politics, the minority side?
I am sad that what has been a good regional university with strong chance to make a real international reputation chooses to commit academic suicide like this, and negate all the good work of decades.
These manifestly incompetent academics should be sacked forwith.
It is my regret that I cannot post this under my own name for reasons that these totalitarians make absolutely plain.
{name withheld}
BSc hons 1, PhD
300
Academics are notoriously left wing (except for a few of the smarter historians).
100
When there is no longer any question, quite soon I expect, we will know who’s pensions to cancel.
80
abbott will sack that fool flannery and give the job to carter.then bob can give the middle finger to the jcu.
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Mr. Flannery isn’t doing a “job”. Bob would not be such a hypocrite.
60
Simply outrageous…. I am lost for words.
50
I am still just completely stunned…. 31 years is a life time.
This shows the sheer desperation of the warmists – no science, so damn the real scientists.
This reflects exactly the same spirit as the most awful chapters in the history of the past 100 years.
These people are criminals of the very worst kind.
In the eyes of God, they are murderers.
50
I suppose the tertiary institutions are under the thumb of Federal funding.
Perhaps this may be a golden opportunity for Bob Carter to do some consulting the the Queensland Education Department on their science curriculum. On the evidence Campbell Newman appears to live in the real world.
It would be a great investment in the future to get a few state secondary school students off the “green railroad” & into the world with a capacity to reason & argue with confidence in facts & understanding the limits between facts, perceived reality & speculation.
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Pattoh:
Seems to know the difference, yes, but the official line is still supportive of a curriculum cobbled up by the likes of Steffen, England et al. I have done my bit by expressing my concerns, hopefully I am not the only one? What is needed is a form of “crowd sourcing”, eg a lot more complaints, so the file, electronic or actual, gets fat enough to be noticed.
60
Congratulations for listing the names of the people responsible for this outrage (Dirks, Loughran, Cocklin and Harding).
Some courageous website should keep a Carbon List (let’s not call it a Blacklist) of all the people pushing AGW. They should be informed regularly that they are on the list. They can come off the list by demonstrating that they have now become AGW skeptics.
131
No lists please. Civilisation is degraded enough by these fascists already.
But a budgetary hit on JCU until they behave? By all means!
Also sensitivity and antidiscrimination training for the JCU administrative staff, every three months, until they can heartfeltly recite from memory ‘I will not discriminate against any other human who disagrees with me’.
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Bruce, I was about to write the same thing but saw your post after refreshing the screen. The history of shaming lists is er shameful and this suggestion sounds like a similar sort of thing.
I appreciate and empathise with your earlier comments (#17).
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I am sure that there are lists already in existence.
The scary thing is that they are not published, and probably won’t be published until after those on the list have been rounded up.
50
.
I’m with you Jayman.
Once I’ve got the Themm Nunnov election website up and running, I see a “Wall of Shame” site coming on, with full details of these germs.
.
Sorry to have to disagree with you on this one Bruce, but the very reason we keep winning all the battles, and yet continue to lose the war, is precisely because we are just too nice about it all. The people who are the generals now in their positions of power in the universities, were the foot-soldiers and captains during the ozone-hole scam in the late 80’s, early 90’s.
We let it go back then, and rather than be grateful for being let off the credibility hook, it simply emboldened them to further totalitarian acts, culminating in the subject matter of this article.
These people are like an infestation of cockroaches throughout our schools and universities, and until we start treating them as such, nothing is really going to change, regardless of who we vote for.
It is well past time to bring in the pest exterminators.
.
And no, Tony Abbott’s Liberals will NOT do anything about it. This abscess has been festering since the Whitlam days of the early 70’s. It not only survived, but prospered under nearly twenty years of “conservative” government.
.
Ditto for the ABC.
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I assume everyone is aware that the warmists keep lists on us – see “An extensive database of individuals involved in the global warming denial industry” at DeSmogBlog.
And that warmists have conspired to try to have skeptics sacked from their jobs. The evidence for that is in the Climategate emails.
I would like a list of warmists that should never be trusted or quoted, unless of course they relent and start behaving like real scientists, in which case they would be removed from the list.
30
We have Bob to thank for telling us that polar bears didn’t go exinct “during the many warmer interglacial periods”. Of course this is partly because that was thousands of year before they even walked the planet.
An “amazing” man.
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Care to present some evidence, would you? Or are you just a drive-by troll with learner plates?
70
Crawl-by more likely; this guy is still in diapers.
51
Bob shows a graph of ANTARCTIC temperatures and claims the polar bear would have already died out http://youtu.be/FOLkze-9GcI?t=8m51s but polar bears didn’t evolve from the brown bear until relatively recently and they don’t live in ANTARCTICA as Bob thinks.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/arctic-bears/how-grizzlies-evolved-into-polar-bears/777/
Rereke Whakaaro, care to find any research that supports Bob’s claim? Never mind the ANTARCTIC aspect 😉
—–
REPLY: So you admit yourself, that there is genetic research suggesting that polar bears existed up to as long as 1.5million years ago, and for Bob’s point to be valid polar bears would only need to have evolved more than 130,000 years ago — before the last warming. The last bone found was 100,000 years old and you want us to believe that this means there were definitely no polar bears in 130,000BC? The Antarctic ice cores are widely used by everyone to talk about the glacial and interglacial pattern over the last 800,000 years. That’ll be because the Arctic ice cores going back that far don’t exist right? This is the best you can do? – Jo
00
There is a CHANCE. But Bob says this is definite. He’s guessing that polar bear existed and relying on MODELS, not hard physical evidence (ring a bell for you?).
The local temperature in Melbourne today does not reflect the world average.
Don’t you get it? He CANT support HIS argument. You and Bob need to do better.
14
Interesting. While Bob does not rely on models, warmists such as yourself do.
Its interesting to note that you see the use of MODELS as a point of ridicule and admit that they lack “hard physical evidence” (such as the real temperature readings which falsify them).
Time to look at yourself in the mirror sonny…. please feel free to giggle, laugh or roll on the floor.
00
Gosh Wallace did you even look around a little?
From Discover:
600,000 years
Polar bear origins revised – they’re older and more distinct than we thought
LINK
From Wikipedia:
Excerpt: “A comparison of the nuclear genome of polar bears with that of brown bears revealed a different pattern, the two forming genetically distinct clades that diverged approximately 603,000 years ago,[21] although the latest research is based on analysis of the complete genomes (rather than just the mitochondria or partial nuclear genomes) of polar, brown and black bears, and establishes the divergence of polar and brown bears at 4-5 million years ago.”
LINK
From the New York Times:
How Brown and Polar Bears Split Up, but Continued Coupling
Excerpt:
“The last estimate, published in April in Science, put it at 600,000 years ago, and the new study has it at five million. It reinforces the previous conclusion that polar bears are not a recent spinoff of brown bears, and it paints a more detailed picture of what the bears have been doing all this time as they evolved into the charismatic megafauna we now use to sell soft drinks and promote environmental causes.”
LINK
It is now over 4.5 MILLION years Wallace and maybe further back is yet to come?
Maybe if you stop trying the “gotcha game with Bob Carter you would be learning what HE already learned about a while ago.
20
Oh hello lost your Wally!
We are still waiting for you to “perform some proper science” for us all (as you put it).
By the way dimwit, the current Holocene interglacial has persisted since the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,400 years ago. The Pleistocene era spanned 2.5 million years, during which there were numerous glacials and warm periods. Polar bears have been around at least 4-5 million years.
60
I love the copy and paste diatribe in the third paragraph. Is it really necessary to punctuate a serious story with such chest beating irrelevance?
This story has enough going for it with or without the context of the climate science debate ie academic freedoms eroding and Universities acting out of self interest so as to placate their funding sources at the expense of being a quality institution. Why corrupt the reporting of this with a collection of slogans?
25
Because, given the current state of academia, they are relevant!
50
sorry they are not relevant. Take out the remainder of the paragraph after “The dominant meme…” and it brings together two related arguments by removing irrelevant interruption.
Sorry this is the 4th para not the third… I’m sure it was the third when I wrote that.
07
Gee Aye, since JCU staff clearly don’t respond to reason it is important to warn them that they are following a shrinking herd. It’s only fair. They probably haven’t heard if they watch the ABC.
Since they follow “the consensus” I’m just trying to speak their language.
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sorry Gee Aye, I deem your response to be irrelevant.
See how that line doesn’t work?
Perhaps I should instead do as the Green/Labor hybrid beast did to 4500 members of the public during 2011; I deem your comment above to be merely “correspondence” and not a counter-argument of any kind.
That’s a bit unsatisfying too, isn’t it? Okay I’ll try harder.
Your excuse still doesn’t wash because the sentences you wish to elide are a continuation and substantiation of the argument which begins in the previous sentence:
The way reality is departing from the CAGW hypothesis is the REASON for believing that Bob’s activities will not be ruffling feathers many more years. Even if they were intent on dumping him anyway, they would only need to figure out how much time and data is needed to falsify CAGW to estimate how long to tolerate Bob. OHC measurements began only 10 years ago, that’s not even half a data point of a climate measurement (30 years). By Santer’s (?) standard it would take 17 years of insignificant warming in surface GAT to falsify the 1990 models – and that has actually happened but nobody wants to admit it.
On top of that there’s my detailed rebuttal below which I will presume you concede is true unless you indicate the fault in it. 🙂
00
Irrelevance? Okay, but why is the state of the science irrelevant? Imagine it’s any issue other than global warming and any academic other than Bob Carter. Is your reasoning still the same?
Seems academics are one of the few types of jobs where people should NOT be judged by their end results but on how they go about the process. In any other job the end result is planned and the person can employ whatever techniques will achieve the desired end result with the least cost.
In academia the starting assumption is that we don’t understand everything about the universe perfectly, so the end result cannot be fixed in advance, instead a reliable process is designed which the academic applies with integrity. The result is whatever the result of the process turns out to be, hopefully a step towards the truth of nature (though even this is not guaranteed if disconfirmatory evidence is beyond technical or financial limits).
Even leaving aside the FACTS that show the skeptics were generally right and the warmists were generally wrong, who has executed the process of academic inquiry with the greatest integrity? On the warmist side do I really need to (as you say) “copy and paste” a long list of deception, outright fraud, unfounded alarmism, and statistical techniques that can at best be described as “novel”? You can search Jo’s blog and the rest of the web as well as I can.
Indeed, in the face of many corrections being provided by so many skeptics, a FALSE hypothesis could not be sustained for so long without the aid of deliberate chicanery.
Now if you’ve got any dirt on Dr Carter then you’d better be sure of it before posting it here, because we don’t know of any, none at all. My recollection is that he has pointed out the facts of past climate change, he illustrates very clearly how present day temperature trends are within the historic natural range, he has generally refrained from making any detailed predictions of what will happen in the near future one way or another, has accurately summarised the state of the science in several reports, and has put great effort into highlighting shortages of reasoning, judgement, and perspective in climate debate in numerous presentations to the public.
His contributions to published work on ocean drilling, sedimentology, and Chronostratigraphy is a list as long as your arm. These have been cited by over 1400 other authors in over 1000 scientific papers since 1975. He was awarded a Royal Society (NZ) Fellowship in 1998 when the Royal Society brand was actually worth a damn.
Indeed it’s because he can’t be discredited that the corrupt bureaucracy’s only option is to just shut him out for no good reason.
That is why the state of climate science in global warming is highly relevant to his present ordeal. The deplorable state of climate science is the real reason he’s being booted and it shouldn’t be, it’s not a good reason. The preponderance of evidence points towards him being right about his hypothesis and the University bureaucracy are now being paid to suppress that truth.
Bob deserves a job.
140
Clarification on the last line; I didn’t know until hearing the 2GB interview just now that Dr Carter hasn’t had a paid job with JCU for over 10 years.
The way Jo’s article was written I got the impression he’d been fired, though I’m sure this misinterpretation is half my fault for not reading it closely enough. Strange that most other commentators here have also been outraged that he’s been fired when in fact he hasn’t.
Which doesn’t change the merit that Bob deserves a job if he still wants one.
30
Andrew, an unpaid job is still a job. This is something he has done at the university for over ten years. For over twenty years he was salaried with the same university.
Yes, he has been fired.
20
Andrew, sorry, yes Bob officially retired quite a long time ago, but we all know he’s been doing a lot of work as an adjunct professor. What is extraordinary about this is just how far out of their way JCU have gone to stop Bob being recognized as an expert authority with the credible backing of a university. His JCU account was his main email. He was still helping to mentor and train students. It was costing JCU next to nothing to gain the value of his long experience and they had to go to some effort to cut him off, despite the wishes of some other staff and students.
141
Yes, okay, I accept the argument from Backslider and yourself that Adjunct Professor was a job. I should have known from my own experience that a “job” is multidimensional and is not just a source of money but is also a role in society.
Shutting down his email account was a real punch below the belt. I remember the day, two months after I graduated, that my University closed my student email account. A rather sad day at work that week.
Robotic collaborator bastards!
Barry Brill comments that the Declaration of Human Rights may provide a legal recourse, but the wheels of justice turn slowly.
00
The warming continues unabated
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://iceagenow.info/2013/06/%e2%80%9cnew-zealand-ski-season-sees-record-snowfall%e2%80%9d-shouts-headline/
63
Ha ha a red thumb
33
Don’t forget, the truth is sometimes offensive to some.
😉
31
New Zealand used to have a news paper called “The Truth”.
It was always offensive to most people.
61
The problem for Mr Carter is that on his website it states that “He receives no research funding from special interest organisations” and yet he received undisclosed funding from the Heartland Institute. Regardless of the veracity of his views, this should have been publicly disclosed.
523
A massive $1000 a month? He would have got more than that from Centrelink if he was on the dole.
Don’t think so. Even if disclosed to Centrelink, it would have made very little difference. To ATO maybe?
After costs/revenue adjustment, would have resulted in a declarable business loss.
111
it is USD29000 pa not $1000/month. And yes, as an academic he should have disclosed that money no matter how small even if not directly commenting. JCU should have openly made its position clear on this as is required of respected academic institutions. Instead it has acted in an underhanded way.
312
But, you see Gee Aye, that is the problem isn’t it. Government funding is above reproach and confidential, as are various GONGOs and QUANGOs who are free to unduly influence, fund or sponsor their viewpoint on any matter whatsoever. hardly a level playing field, is it? And you wonder why the system is failing so miserably.
140
Bob’s statement on his site is correct. He has not recieved any funding for his research work. No vested interests have influenced his results, or his opinion on climate change (which was already well formed long before Heartland offered him any small consulting work for editing and other non-research related duties.)
If this is the best the character assassins have got it speaks volumes. You think everyone with a dissident opinion on a science topic has to declare their entire tax return in public while those on the Gravy train collecting hundreds of thousands get to call themselves “independent”?
131
How is it “character assassination” to be associated with the Heartland Institute? The issue is one of transparency. If Mr Carter had undertaken “small consulting work” (as you put it) for, say, Greenpeace, then should this not also be made public?
I think that everyone who takes part in a public debate should declare the source/s of their funding.
02
(*yawn*) We’ve been through this one before.
Dr Carter’s definition of research is the practicing scientist’s definition of research – original research gathering observational data from the real world beyond the office and reconciling hypotheses against these real measurements. This field work and attendant papers have been funded by government grants and international science project bodies.
His occasional efforts towards summarising the state of climate science publications in two NIPCC metastudies does not count as “research” under that practical definition no matter what the lay public might think of it.
His funding declaration evaluates as true.
His first recorded public opinion piece about the global warming debate was in Sep 2003. The first recorded association with Heartland is not until March 2008 with the first NIPCC report emerging 6 months later. It does not take 5 years to summarise the gaps in climate science. He was concerned about the public climate debate being nonsensical well before his association with Heartland/NIPCC, the main effect of which has been to give a much needed defense of CO2 when no government seemed interested in examining ALL the available evidence.
80
dryliberal?… more like wet-green !!
30
The line about tolerance reminded me of this story
While the context is different, it is remarkable how tolerance is only required in one direction…
230
A couple news items of interest, but I will post them seperately:
Firstly, Obama will use executive power to push through EPA CO2-related regulations:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/17748756/us-uniquely-poised-to-fight-warming-obama/
I hope your breakfast/lunch is well and truly settled – here’s a taste:
80
Second item – in what comes as no surprise, the cowardly betrayers of their respective electorates have announced they will resign/not run at the next election:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-pulse-live/politics-live-june-26-2013-20130626-2ovyx.html
Bye bye Windsor and Oakeshott … they knew they would be out anyway. This is the ultimate coward’s way out.
90
Interesting twist – Windsor threatens to back Abbott if Gillard is replaced by Rudd:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/departing-windsors-showdown-threat/story-fn59niix-1226669911856
00
When the ship called Labor pulled into port in 2010, these two rats scurried up the ropes to get on board.
Now, with only the stern showing above water, like all good rats, they leap right off.
Tony.
81
Hey Tony,
A little OT but have you seen this?
Worth a giggle, especially when they make the assumption that the carbon price will drop to $15/t in 2016 and go up 6.5% per year after.
10
Oh nyuk nyuk nyuk!
If any of you take the link, and it’s a pdf document, look at Table 2 on Page 3.
Notice specifically how the author uses Capacity instead of actual electricity supplied for consumption.
The use of Nameplate CAPACITY always artificially inflates renewables in any comparison.
That’s as far as I needed to read.
Tony.
130
Thought you would like it.
20
Discourse:
: verbal interchange of ideas; especially : conversation
a : formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject
b : connected speech or writing
c : a linguistic unit (as a conversation or a story) larger than a sentence
=====================
Twits need not apply.
10
shameful…
also let go…
26 June: SMH: Reuters: Coal miners cut hundreds of jobs
Peabody Energy Corp and Glencore Xstrata will cut around 500 mining jobs in Australia, a company official and trade publication says, as a global glut in coal supply pushes down prices…
Peabody said the cuts would take place across its operations in the coal-rich eastern Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales, where it produces both coking and thermal coal.
Xstrata’s job cuts would reduce Ravensworth’s mine workforce by about 26 per cent, with around 130 employees remaining…
Glencore Xstrata has cut around 700 jobs since late last year, about 100 more jobs than it said it planned to eliminate late last year…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/coal-miners-cut-hundreds-of-jobs-20130626-2ovzg.html
26 June: Australian: Matt Chambers: Miners slash jobs, production in a black day for coal
The cuts extend a bout of slashing by coalminers, including BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, which are reacting to steep falls in prices for coal and other commodities that have affected earnings projections and development plans.
Before the latest cuts had been flagged, more than 9000 jobs had already been lost at Queensland and NSW mines…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/miners-slash-jobs-production-in-a-black-day-for-coal/story-e6frg9df-1226669739851
30
Universities are now hives of groupthink.
Whatever it takes to snatch up that grant money.
30
You imply it wasn’t always thus…
20
This is outrageous and I am appalled that in the 21st Century, we still have the Eco-Nazi’s ruining it for everybody.
Prof. Bob Carter was one of my favorites and to try and silence him this way is disgraceful.
I have sent off a letter to both The Cairns Post and Townsville Bulletin bemoaning this decision.
Lets hope they print it… but just in case they don’t, here it is!!
James Cook University (JCU) has always been a shining example that we can do things in North Queensland just as well as everywhere else in Australia.
However the recent sacking of one of their best Professors has been a disgraceful way to treat an educated and enlightened man. Professor Bob Carter has written several books and appeared on TV through The Bolt Report and many other programs. He tried to tell it as it is.
Professor Bob Carter had worked at JCU Townsville for 31 years, devoting many hours to the education of willing students, however it seems because he does not fit the Group Think of other Educators there, they have seen fit to sack him from the University. A very sad end to an outstanding man who had the courage to stand up to the Man Made Global Warming Scaremongers, who continually claim we are doomed!
The Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor of JCU is Professor Chris Cocklin, a global warming alarmist who was a lead author in the IPCC’s 2007 Report. Obviously he didn’t like the home truths that were coming from Bob Carter. Professor Cocklin and others all depend on the Global Myth to continue, so they will receive their funding from the Government. It is a disgrace and I am writing this letter to let everyone know that this should not be happening in the 21st Century.
The Global Warming Alarmists it seems, are taking over our schools and universities and educating our children in group think. This is not the way we should go. Do we all want to be lemmings, or are people still able to have individual thoughts and the right to express those thoughts! Shame on you JCU for failing this most honourable Gentleman and failing the first rule of Education, to have an open mind.
180
No doubt I’ll get shot down in flames but I cannot help admiring the bravery and timing of JCU in their re-enactment of that ’67 classic thriller ‘Get Carter’
The supporting cast for this 2013 adventure is impressive-Dirks,
Loughran,Cocklin and Harding.
In the words of Sir Humphrey they clearly have made a courageous decision to put on a show just as the rest of the world starts to question the previously unchallenged, consensus-claiming dogma of their ‘Holier than thou’ neo-numbtiness.
I look forward to purchasing the ABC box-set of Green-Ray DVD’s of ‘Yes Professor’
For sure, Bob is no Michael, but somebody is going to get a caning!
And it won’t be Bob.
110
Astute readers will have noticed that I misspelled suppurating.
Apologies
30
I prefer that other Michael Caine movie, The Italian Job.
These guys are the crooks in the bus in the last scene. Balanced over a precipice. Them at one end the gold at the other.
Do they do the right thing and survive or do they take the gold and take the consequences. Stay tuned. Meanwhile the global temperature is falling even as we speak.
40
Wow- what a sad day for Australia. This is really hard for me to comprehend as a retired scholar (Canadian). Obama’s statement today that he has no time for debate suggests that these purges could get worse before they get better. Everything a university stands for just went out the window. If a change back to original values occurs in any of the Western countries these folks will be in big trouble. If a change doesn’t occur, we are all in trouble, as statism will weed us out as the population is dumbed-down. The NSA in the States has everyone’s emails and posts- scary- real scary.
110
[…] Jo Nova has the full skinny, delivered in the right tone of […]
00
Rothchilds are a huge contributor for funding that want carbon trading and then you have John Cook from craptical science working there as well.Obama just coming out helping Goldman Sachs with carbon trading.The Weather Channel is blathering on about President Obama’s upcoming speech about Climate issues. They claim that he’s going to discourage us from using Coal. There also appear to be rumors he is going to introduce cap and trade. A Presidential present for Goldman Sachs?
This is why I’m talking about Goldman Sachs and Cap & Trade
How Goldman Sachs invented cap and trade
http://quidsapio.wordpress.com/2012/06/06/how-goldman-sachs-invented-cap-and-trade/
Goldman Sachs Buys Into Carbon Offsets
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/goldman-sachs-buys-into-carbon-offsets/
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cid=N00009638
30
Shameful, just shameful!!
So much for free,unfettered academic inquiry.
As to you, dryliberal, with your fatuous plea about “money from the Heartland Institute”: Carter receives a normal honorarium for his regular speaking engagement there each year. Are you going to deny him that, too, hmm? Get lost with this claptrap about how “skeptics are shills for big corporations”. We’ve had enough of that! The real shills are those (like JCU!) who cosy up to government or big banks for their research grants, and won’t let anyone upset their financial applecart.
90
Further to comments in 22 et al. We have shrines all over the country to honour the names inscribed of those who gave their life in times of war for this country. Some would say in futility, given history of seemingy endless wars.
We should also recall the global cooling scare of the 1970’s, which flipped into “dangerous” global warming a few dacades hence. The political agenda of all “scare-em” claims is control of thinking and behaviour; classical socialism with politically correct, NOT scientifically correct behaviour, forced, incrementally across a populace, the “collective view”. JCU has demonstrated it is not a beacon of democracy nor pursues scientific excellence. Is a degree from JCU now as valuable as one printed on the back of a Weeties packet?
There are various monuments to Marx, Hitler, et al as reminders of the anarchy despots and other totalitarians have prepetrated on humanity. Is it therefore not innapropriate to place on the public record those who are anti freedom of liberty in thought, as exampled by JCU and countless others of the same political pursuasion? Are not Universities supposed to be the forefront of encouraging intellectual debate, not sheltered workshops for sycophants pushing personal political agenda including groupthink?
Lest we forget. If we fail to learn the lessons of history…….? Whom and what do we wish to honour? What lessons does this time in history do “we” wish to leave for the future for others to learn from? We traded the lessons of the “golden years” from the 50’s to the 70’s, in exchange for Leftism, entitlements, political correctness, etc. Stupid, short term selfish self-centered thinking. Now look at what we have lost. What and whom do we wish to honour; the totalitarians, or the free thinkers, the beacons who stood for principle, liberty and freedom of thought, excellence in science, etc?
90
A university preventing one its own professors from using the library.
It doesn’t set a very good example, does it?
110
It was either that or engage in some good honest book burning- Farenheit 451 style.
50
For some reason, Universities assume that each person who uses the library must consume resources, in some way.
I used to be able to use the university library as an “extramural researcher”, now I cannot. The reason for the change was because of cost-cutting, and the need to meet budgetary constraints. Go figure …
Institutions of higher learning, indeed.
60
OT. . .
Obama calls sceptics “flat Earth science deniers” as he lays out his plan to fight climate change.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-26/obama-lays-out-plan-to-fight-climate-change/4780474
30
Say, I know this is way off topic, but wow, ain’t Science grand.
The story is at this link on the ABC website, and I’ll place the headline in block quotes so I can place the, umm, relevant part in bold.
Astronomers have found what they believe to be some Earth like Planets in what is euphemistically referred to as The Goldilocks Zone, planets not too hot and not too cold, possibly containing water, and maybe able to sustain life. (our human life that is) They are in a group of seven Planets orbiting the three star system Gliese 667C, which the ABC terms as relatively close to us here on Earth, and, as our erstwhile ABC reports, these Planets are only 22 Light Years away.
So then, let me see now, at our current maximum speed for space travel, 17,500MPH, it’s only going to take us a relatively short, umm, 841,748 years to get there.
Hope they take enough toilet paper.
Tony.
70
Well, it is close in astronomical terms. Lovely if you are an astrophysicist.
A touch impractical for any realistic purposes, however.
20
Reminds me of the popular Drake “equation” which “calculates” the zillions of possibly-habitable planets in the galaxy. Very popular around the time of Star Trek (original TV series) and for the following 3 decades.
A close examination of the “equation” reveals it to be factored hogwash. The assumptions are brilliantly simplistic.
And, anybody who’s read The Chilling Stars and other publications on cosmic radiation will be able to add in their own multipliers that put the result pretty close to zero habitable worlds besides our own. The Earth is a very special place and it seems that astronomical observations are quite inadequate at determining long-term habitability as they cannot see the cosmic ray flux intensity or the magnetic fields that would be needed to protect those prospective habitats from deadly radiation and eventual erosion of atmosphere by their own sun’s solar winds. It is highly unlikely that there are habitable planets near the centre of the galaxy where there are proximate neighbouring suns, gasping to explode.
When we do identify such a world, the time to travel there will be many years. So for humans to visit, the star ship must be able to sustain a small population. Obviously, the best people to send on such a mission are those with experience in sustainability; “environmentalists”, climate “scientists” and Google executives.
60
Thanks Bernd, and as you mentioned it, I was taken back to a time when I was a Technical Trades Instructor at the RAAF School for Technical Training back in the late 80’s.
We had a Warrant Officer (our middle manager for our Electrical Trade Instructors) who sat in on one of the many discussions we had in our Staff room.
He wrote this formula on the white board and explained it, explaining that it was not something he made up, but he couldn’t tell us where it came from.
I actually included it in a short series I added to my home site at the following link.
Liftoff (Part 3)
It’s basically all conjecture, and is not something I believe, but at the time it was really interesting.
What he actually succeeded in doing was to extend the conversation for almost weeks in fact.
Tony.
30
Thats fascinating Tony. I see where you get your unfailing instinct for putting things in context with numbers now.
As more impressionable minds might think though, like with the Lottery, the only certainty is if you’re not in it you cannt win it and people do actually win at the Lottery.
Your 63 out of 4.5 billion years though is the one that does it for me. While our own EM emissions needn’t be the only thing that would give us away, anyone / anything else finding us would have to be a bit of a fluke.
OTOH if we don’t keep looking outwards, we may go crazy by turning inward and developing paranoias, like we’re all gonna be cooked by CO2, a natural coolant.
If there are others out there, what would they think if they could see how we behave?
Belief in our own supremacy may be unhealthy.
10
That’s why I liked Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy so much, as I thought that might actually be closer to the truth than anything else. The only reason that they found us was that they were putting in an interstellar bypass, and the Earth was marked for destruction.
Without saying anything, I watched our beloved Warrant Officer go through the Maths, all the while hoping against hope that the result would be 42, and then, well, for me anyway, everything would fall neatly into place.
Tony.
21
I wonder why he was so cagey , your WO, about where it came from though .
On what planet do they write x 1/n as f/n ?
10
Hi Tony and others.
Your Warrant officer used the equation first thought of by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan in 1961. The original form was:
N=R*.fp.ne.f1.fi.fc.L
Where N is the number of communicative civilisations, R* the number of stars in the galaxy, fp those stars which have planetary systems, ne the average number of Earth-lie planets in each system, f1 the fraction of Earth-like planets where life actually exists, fi the fraction of life systems which have intelligent life, fc the fraction of intelligent life forms willing to communicate and L the average lifetime of a communicative civilization as a fraction of the age of the Galaxy.
Astronomer George Abell came up with a figure for N of between 100 and 10000 million.
And I don’t think you should give up on FTL travel yet!
10
The equation can be simplified to:
N = S.ci.fiN is always “billions of billions”
10
Carter about to speak in 2GB
20
And AFTER a practical mountain was built in the chattersphere out of a principled molehill, Bob Carter’s own words[7:08] on the matter are:
This infraction of an important principle has luckily had little practical harm and upset on this occasion.
10
It’s very sad what has happened to Professor Carter
Remember the stirring words of Hal Lewis
It’s no recompense but Professor Carter can be proud to find himself in such company
131
If they get Carter get even
Guys don’t take this nonsense. They are trying to take one of our own out of the picture. It’s the Communist version of srubbing the photograph of the last person they shot.
Dirks works in the mining industry. All those other oleaginous creatures in one way or another rely on goodwill from the private sector. Make sure that they all understand the consequences of their actions.
Bob may have been due to retire shortly but at least you in you own way can make sure that Dirks,Loughran,Cocklin and Harding retire much earlier.
70
If anybody writes to these creeps please be sure to include the line –
“This is a letter of complaint and is not repeat NOT a death threat.”
Australian academics often seem to struggle to distinguish between the two.
40
Well, if their work is their life, as many of them claim, then any criticism of their work can be interpreted as a death threat.
But since their work is often hostage to the the bearer of grant monies, that probably isn’t the case, and they are just being precious.
40
was wondering how come CAGW gatekeeper Hannam was writing this article until i got to the final para***!
26 June: SMH: Peter Hannam: US, Australia don’t spy on each other: ex-intelligence chief
The US does not use its internet surveillance to spy on Australia, and fugitive American intelligence leaker Edward Snowden is a “delusional young man” who ought to be behind bars, President Barack Obama’s former director of national intelligence says.
Admiral Dennis Blair, who is also a former commander-in-chief of US forces in the Pacific, said Australia and the US worked closely on security matters and had no need for surveillance on each other’s activities.
“We do not spy on each other. We just ask,” Admiral Blair, who resigned from his intelligence director’s role in May 2010, said…
***Admiral Blair is in Australia to be a keynote speaker on The Future Global Security Agenda at the National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development on Thursday in Canberra.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/us-australia-dont-spy-on-each-other-exintelligence-chief-20130626-2owa3.html
27 June 2013: National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development
Venue: Main Committee Room, Parliament House
Welcome: Dr John Hewson AM Executive Chairman, Shartru Capital
Keynotes: Admiral Dennis Cutler Blair, former United States Director of National Intelligence retired United States Navy Admiral
‘The Future Global Security Agenda’…
With some of the biggest expanding global markets at our doorstep, as well as some of the poorest nations in need of sustainable business investment, we have an important business leadership opportunity…
Moderator: Fran Kelly, Journalist and Host of ABC Radio National’s Breakfast program
Setting the scene: Professor Robert Hill AC United States Study Centre, University of Sydney and former Howard Government Defence Minister and Environment Minister
Discussion Leaders INCLUDES
The Hon Greg Hunt, MP Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage…
Q&A
Video: Sustainable Security for the Poorest Amongst Us
Introduction and reflection Reverend Tim Costello AO Chief Executive Officer, World Vision Australia…
SESSION 3: Security in a Warming Century – from Havana to New Delhi to Townsville: how do we build adaptive and resilient business models?
In a world that is 4 to 6 degrees warmer, heat waves, sea level rise and more intense severe weather events will threaten the security of our communities…
To mitigate future warming risks, we will need to adopt low carbon technologies as we adapt to our changing climate and create opportunities for future prosperity…
SESSION 5: Unlocking Sustainable Investing: security for the future…
http://www.nblf.com.au/2013-forum/program
NBLF Forum: Partners
http://www.nblf.com.au/sponsors/forum-partners/
10
Hewson has form of course:
21 Nov 2012: Business Spectator: Tristan Edis: John Hewson: Climate change the next sub-prime meltdown
Over the Carbon Expo I managed to catch-up with John Hewson, the former leader of the Coalition in the lead-up to the “unlosable” 1993 Federal Election. I was hoping we might talk about the carbon tax scare campaign given he knows a thing or two about political scare campaigns, but he was so passionate about the risks presented by climate change for the finance sector that we ran out of time.
What many people may not realise is that after Hewson fell victim to the mother of all scare campaigns (before Abbott topped Keating with the carbon tax), he became active in trying to raise capital for businesses and technologies in carbon abatement, building on his earlier career as an investment banker. John Hewson has now taken up the Chair of the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, an initiative aimed at getting retirement and superannuation funds to pay more heed to the risks of climate change and the need to invest more money in companies that reduce carbon emissions…
In the interview John Hewson makes some pretty interesting points. In particular he equates climate change as equivalent in its likely impacts on financial markets to that of the sub-prime loan crisis that led to the GFC (HUH? HOW?)…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2012/11/21/climate/john-hewson-climate-change-next-sub-prime-meltdown
the entire article is worth reading. watch your Super and don’t hold your breath witing for the Coalition to employ Bob Carter.
20
Lysenkoism is alive and well and in control at James Kook University.
30
Warragamba dam overflowing…onya Tim
20
Having taught ESL overseas for several years, I am often asked by past students for recommendations on Australian Universities for further study. JCU has often come up as an option, and I have had to say it was an unknown to me. Henceforth I will say it does not have the academic integrity required for a serious University…let them be a glorified Technical College, but with the current leadership they will never be a serious University.
20
I’d be very surprised if universities, as we know them, will even exist in 50 years time. The MOOCs are rapidly supplanting many undergraduate teaching roles. The big corporations already employ the best technology, engineering, biotechnology and mathematics graduates.
10
Labor Party ballot for PM is on in an hour. Discuss it here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/watch-the-spectacle-that-is-australian-politics-ballot-tonight/
11
Hi Jo,
Out of curiosity, I looked at Professor Cocklin’s qualifications – a Diploma in Business Studies, a Bachelor in Social Sciences, an MA (area of specialty not given) and a PhD (again, I couldn’t find out his area of study but I would not expect it to be in science given his other studies) Are you able to advise what scientific credentials he has that clearly trump Professor Carter’s?
10
They are just grant whores. Once you whore yourself you’re a whore forever.
I’m not sure it would matter if most universities were shut down.
30
wow.. this is fun.. ya goota keep updating Blair and Bolt blogs
quoting Tim Blair blog………………..
UPDATE V. Lanai Scarr reports:
A key Rudd backer just told me that there was no petition.
If this is the case, and Rudd wins, he’s pulled off one of the greatest scams in Australian political history.
UPDATE VI. Bill Shorten TURNS AGAINST Julia Gillard. He’s just announced he’ll vote for Rudd. Whoa!
10
Has this got anything to do with the university unions backing the Greens in the federal election? Is it a factor?
10
Makes me wonder on which side is the “real” flat earth society. On the side of those who are actually trying to get answers with real science or on the side of those who silence any voice dissenting from their dogma.
10
What an obscene thing for a so-called centre of learning to do to a truly independent and honest thinker. Shame!
20
The cooling Earth and Bob Carter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43CGvmOSD0M
02
Global earnings not dead, he’s just sleeping…
00
Global warmings not dead, he’s just sleeping…
00
In a sarcastic spirits I’ll say that their names will be remembered when the revolution comes.
00
Coincidentally, we may see the so-called climate consensus approach 100%, soon. This kind of motivation is what drives climate science and leads people to believe the science is settled.
Nothing about climate science can be believed in the foreseeable future.
00
R2Dtoo: As I keep repeating here and many other “climate” blogs: the weather/Climate will decide and it already is. There is no warming and it seems we are entering a cooling period now. Sooner or later the “people” will notice more and more each day and the AGW scam will slowly but surely die out.. so extremism is not warranted. LOL
01
The most troubling aspect of the JCU action is the flagrancy of Bob Carter’s termination. This man could no longer be tolerated because he persistently failed to comply with the faculty’s party line – and for no other reason. There was no dissembling or pretence about the grounds – “if you won’t agree with us, you must go”.
This form of coerced thought control would be disturbing in any context. The surprise is that an institute of higher learning should feel free to bludgeon a non-conformist thinker without even blushing. Universities have fought for the principle of academic freedom for centuries, but their overwhelming liberal bias now seems to be in the ascendancy.
More than any other liberal cause, global warming brings out the “you can’t say that” brigade. In his extraordinary little AGW book “An Appeal To Reason”, Lord Nigel Lawson notes that no UK publisher would touch the manuscript, despite the fact that they had scrambled for the rights to his other three books. The longest serving Chancellor of the 20th century was unpublishable on this special topic.
Perhaps Professor Carter (is “professor” a lifetime title?) should look to his remedies with the Human Rights Commission. Discrimination on grounds of religious belief is unlawful and actionable, and who could doubt that DAGW is a religious belief at JCU? Michael Crichton established a decade ago that environmentalism has become a religion: http://www.cougarinfo.org/lionsupl/crichton.html.
Wikipedia: “Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts (including those that are inconvenient to external political groups or to authorities) without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.”
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Hello and welcome, Barry.
I thought I’d heard your name somewhere before, and with a quick Googling I found your “profile” on DeSmogBlog, the mere existence of which immediately paints you in a favourable light. 😉
Yes this plucking out of a thorn in the side of The Collective has certainly trashed an old principle of universities. Judging by Bob’s recent statements the harm is probably more about principles and sentiment than material and financial loss. Whether he could still find some law or treaty JCU broke and use some pro bono counsel to make an example of them is another issue.
It’s also a peculiarity of the modern malaise that the word “liberal” in the USA vernacular (and in the same sense you’ve used it) has come to mean the opposite of what it means everywhere else. It’s not liberal at all to go around telling people what to do and what to think.
Do you follow insidious developments and injustices in the world in any aspect other than global warming? Any blogs related to it you could suggest?
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My previous reference to the criteria regarded as ‘essential’ to hold a position at an Australian university, criteria that are determinants of ‘behaviour’ and group think ‘fit’, are now more important than those considered merely ‘desirable’. The latter are those characteristics associated with academia such as research publication, active research, grant acquisition and the like.
We are re-running the 1930’s in Germany.
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Manfred, I’m concerned that not enough people know or remember.
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Mark D, it is a compelling parallel isn’t it, and on a grand scale – take the euphemistically named Dept. of Homeland Security – all in the name of ‘we have your best interests at heart’ coupled with a global economic sag.
Some detect the historical parallel, certainly not the bureaucrats concerned. God help us if we find ourselves repeating the error of history, which I might add, we really do appear to be doing.
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SO… Rudd’s back in! Let’s all write telling him that is he get’s rid of the Gaist lunatic Flannery and appoints Bob Carter we shall all vote for him.
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He might just do that, until after the Election.
Anything to get elected now.
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The only reason I ever heard of JCU was because of Professor Carter. Who first opened my eyes to the alarmist nonsense in print and on a utube video.
The non-entities that you list are all ne-er do well grant seekers who’s only achievement is to mis-lead and sponge off the tax payer.
Now which other country was it that persecuted academics who didnt toe the party line?
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Was that the peer-reviewed youtube science channel?
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So Mr lost your Wallace, you are saying that people should not listen to highly respected scientists, whether warmist or not and should only read/believe whatever they write in peer reviewed papers.
You really, really are a DF.
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Bob Carter has previously suggested that global warming is not occurring using the argument something along the lines of, “1958 was the same temperature as 2009”.
I mean, come on!
You can check a few of his more obvious mistakes here:
No warming:
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11639/dn11639-2_808.jpg
Sea level rise decelerating:
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html
Australian rainfall static:
http://www.bom.gov.au/web01/ncc/www/cli_chg/trendmap/rain/0112/aus/1970/latest.gif
Ocean temperature cooling:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=sst&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=0
His statements about the Murray-Darling Basin are completely non-sensical: in 3 of 4 areas of the M-DB, vegetation is decidedly on a downward trend, while animals inarguably rely on *flow* and that flow has greatly dwindled. Salinity at the lower end is also massively increased.
Anybody willing to invest 60 minutes in informing themselves about the Murray-Darling by reading this,
http://www2.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/665/mbdcmc_eov_exesummary.pdf
,will thereby easily exceed Carter’s apparent knowledge of the Murray-Darling’s ecology and how it is affected by human activity and climate change.
Personally, I think his book is aimed at people with a very low level of knowledge of any of these issues, because even the slightest bit of knowledge would cause the reader’s sceptical alarm bells to go off.
I’m not in the slightest bit surprised a University would be happy to become dis-associated with him. It’s embarrassing.
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Typical troll quality comment.
1. Your newscientist graph is 5 years old. The five year average line ends before 2005. IF Carter is talking about 1997-2013 that graph is useless. You don’t quote Carter, so how can anyone compare?
2. Australian sea levels are not rising as fast as they were.
The rise in sea levels is often due to adjustments. Australian sea levels have been falling for 7000 years. See also:
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/12/australian-sea-level-rises-exaggerated-by-8-fold-or-maybe-ten/
3. You’ve cherry picked the steepest rainfall decline by starting at 1970 instead of using all the records.
4. Yes seas have been warming, and for probably 200 years. You don’t know why they started way back then, it wasn’t CO2, the rates are not unusual. They were warmer 7000 years ago. Any cause of warming would cause ocean temps to rise. As usual you lack a cause and effect link.
I could go on…
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Well, *I* can see the warming in that graph, and I think we all know there hasn’t been any cooling since 2005 (let alone 0.5 degree-worth of cooling), so the warming as depicted in that graph is the current reality that Bob Carter has said doesn’t exist.
For the rest, you are basically contradicting the work of professional scientists at BoM and CSIRO – people who aren’t taking money from lobby-groups to spread misinformation and whose opinions any sceptic should find more trustworthy than athose of someody who takes money from Heartland.
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Because the Government isn’t the mother of all lobby groups? CSIRO is simply the spokesman for warmism.
Or put another way, if Carter had massive grants from Big Government (the biggest entity in every world economy) he would be 100% error free. I see the light now … your logic is flawless.
Care to play again?
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The alarmist hysteria is still threatening. I was listening to the CBC radio (Canada) about how
teachers colleges are adding an extra year to the curriculum in order that the novice teachers
are sufficiently trained in “climate sensitivity” and “diversity issues.”
Brainwash the children—this reminds me of Red Guard re-education camps.
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I don’t think we have seen anything yet…. it is going to peak outrageously, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see violence.
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[…] kept their mouths shut and their heads down. Over the years more than a few of them, like Prof. Bob Carter this week, have paid the price for such integrity. For what it’s worth, they have my lasting […]
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What a cowardly bunch of over credentialled cretins and activists these light weight academics are.
They can’t even follow the protocols of scientific method, and are hung up on a method of assessment and review that if it was applied as the method for assessing the real giants, namely Einsteins, Darwin, Newton et al, they would not have been allowed to publish.
It doesnt surprise me one bit, that according to a recent survey, none peer reweiwed, that most academics Vote Green, and/or leftist Labor. So what they do, they turn out more brainwashed clueless leftist clones, all mostly unemployable, except back in education or politics/public services.
Our leader ship elites are now the worst this country has ever had.
Meanwhile the states of Australia now stuck with some of the highest power prices in the world.
Thanks a lot JCU et al
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[…] kept their mouths shut and their heads down. Over the years more than a few of them, like Prof. Bob Carter this week, have paid the price for such integrity. For what it’s worth, they have my lasting […]
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@ Wheres Wallace
“Was that the peer-reviewed youtube science channel?”
Anyone with a single brain cell could follow the scientific approach of Professor Carter and you obviously need someone else to tell you something is true.
Most Junkett Climate Scientists published papers are p**s poor peer review such as Mann, Gergis, Lewandsky and the rest of the pygmies.
I suggest you get someone to read to you the Climate Gate emails?
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The Green Labor parties with their left supporting public service near their own cyclical tipping points..
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Good riddance to bad rubbish – Carter long ago imploded from a scourge of creationist claptrap into a PR hack pouring vermouth to power.
He will not be missed.
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Russell, sorry if your cat died and your wife left you. This kind of fabricated venom isn’t going to help you feel better. I hope things improve for you. (PS: If your site is satirical I can only say “good luck”.)
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Poor Bob Carter
Crucified on the AGW cross for all to see
This will bring fear to many workers in Australia especially government bodies like the CSIRO, BOM , teachers, public servants
We quickly need a legal court battle to gets these imminent scientists head of the chopping block
Royal commission, Work place relations act, Discrimination act
Throw the human rights book /freedom of speech book at them before this precedent grows out of control.
Go Lord Monkton!!. I believe you will defend these fine men who have held integrity of the scientific method despite the deadly threat of termination of employment and shame
I hope these Universities get well and truly cleansed of this filth..
crikey. What next! or should l say who’s next?
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When I decided it was time to start obsessing over climate change in 2008, (I can only blame myself, my geologist brother, and Joe D’Aleo), The first gem I found was Bob Carter’s talk on YouTube on the scientific method and CAGW controversy.
He was the first scientist I contacted and that led to my first web page on the subject and its emphasis on scientific method. I was pleased to meet him in Chicago at one of the ICCC meetings, and pleased he remembered me.
I think the JCU needs him more than he needs the JCU, perhaps that will become obvious to them in a few more years.
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The deniers’ comments here are precisely why Carter got the sack. He was out of his league and involved with agendas other than science.
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Namecalling is where the problem starts. You need to speak English to have a conversation here, unless you can explain which scientific observation we deny, “denier” doesn’t make any sense, except as a tool to sabotage a real debate.
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That’s a remarkable allegation. Do tell us all what these so called “agendas” were…??
How?
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[…] JCU caves in to badgering and groupthink — blackballs “politically incorrect” Bob Carter « Jo… […]
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