Those who depend on silencing opponents have already lost the intellectual war. But they cling to the hope that they can keep the news of their loss from spreading.
“Should newspapers ban letters from climate science deniers?
Graham Readfearn
The LA Times decides not to print letters from readers claiming there’s no evidence for human-caused climate change”
Note the example Readfearn chooses of a letter most dangerous and unworthy:
“Here’s an excerpt from a Letter to the Editor, printed earlier this week in The Australian newspaper.
“While [temperatures] have been higher than before the past 15 years, they have not increased in line with fossil fuel emissions, just as they failed to do over the 1948-77 period. This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.” Des Moore, South Yarra, Victoria.
Wrongheaded and simplistic views like this …”
Except it’s not wrongheaded and Readfearn is the one who is simplistic, not Des Moore. (As it happens, the unworthy know-nothing denier was probably the same Des Moore who used to be the deputy secretary of the Australian Federal Treasury). Would Australia really be better off if we silenced people like Des Moore from public debate? If people as influential as he is are wrong, wouldn’t it be better if their views were printed, and then truth politely explained in replies? The truth is (and Readfearn must know this on some level) those who think Moore’s point is utterly, completely wrong know they can’t defeat it with rational polite debate, which is why they ache for censorship.
The world has been at a warm plateau for 15 years, but CO2 emissions were “worse than we thought”. According to 97% of models, the world should have warmed faster. It didn’t, and while that in itself doesn’t tell us much about how much effect CO2 has, it does tell us that the models don’t have a clue. Seems like a fair point for national discussion especially when it is already a national tax. Moore rather cuts to a key point (the correlation of CO2 and temperature is a weak one. If something else drove temperatures down lately, perhaps that same factor drove things up earlier.) If only we knew…?
In context, Moore was merely reiterating a point made by another unworthy denier, the former head of Australia‘s National Climate Centre at the Bureau of Meteorology (that would be William Kininmonth). In Readfearn’s world, journalists with no science degree can write whole articles about the climate, but editors should be wary of letters from climate and economics experts. Readfearn, it seems, thinks we should all slavishly obey authority in climate science, except for when the authority doesn’t agree with Readfearn.
Readfearn’s simplistic views
After all these years, Graham Readfearn still apparently doesn’t realize what the climate change debate is about. In his view, if humans cause any climate change at all it is equivalent to humans causing a disaster. It’s a binary black-and-white world for simple minds, no numbers involved. Half-a-degree equals three, equals six. It’s all the same.
“Some letter writers have accepted that humans cause climate change, a conclusion backed by multiple lines of evidence from thousands of studies around the world going back a century or more.”
Some readers haven’t.
Sure the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is backed by multiple lines of evidence, but the feedbacks that might make this into a disaster are guesses backed by contradictory, weak, or indirect findings.
The grown-ups in the room are asking “how much”, and Readfearn’s answer is “yes!” (“You’re a denier”.)
We skeptics aren’t afraid of letters, so here’s the full exchange. Just look at the fuss that ensued over William Kininmonths innocuous statement:
[October 12] The IPCC was not able to give a confident explanation for the lack of global warming over the past 15 years, yet some climatologists claim an ability to predict the year when average temperatures will be outside their historical ranges (“Extremes to be the new norm as weather turns”, 10/10). Does hubris come naturally to climate scientists, or is it a required trait for those entering the profession?
William Kininmonth, Kew, Vic
————————————————
The Australian was happy to publish this name-calling, confused reply. (And how many skeptics called for editors to ban confused irrelevant letters?) Kininmonth was probably using the same verifiable facts from NASA as Roylance, but Roylance wasn’t even discussing the trends, he was talking about something else entirely, records.
[Oct 14] WHAT’S the difference between a computer and a global warming denier? You only have to punch information into a computer once.
William Kininmonth’s repetition of the disproved myth about “the lack of global warming over the past 15 years” (Letters, 12-13/10) proves the joke’s punchline, as NASA’s empirical data shows that “2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years have all occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record”.
Unless Kininmonth can give a “confident explanation” as to why his easily disproved opinion should triumph over NASA’s verifiable facts, then it is crystal clear to whom “hubris comes naturally”.
Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld
————————————————
[October 15] IN asserting William Kininmonth incorrectly claimed a lack of warming over the past 15 years, Chris Roylance clearly fails to understand the debate about temperatures (Letters, 14/10).
While they have been higher than before the past 15 years, they have not increased in line with fossil fuel emissions, just as they failed to do over the 1948-77 period.
This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases. In fact, the temperature increase from 1977 to 1998 resulted from natural changes.
Des Moore, South Yarra, Vic
Right now we can’t be sure that the rise from ’77 – ’98 was natural rather than man-made, so I would’ve added the words “more likely” to the last sentence. But since dozens of commentators declare daily that it was man-made without being able to point at empirical evidence, if we start censoring opinions on this, the fans of man-made global warming will suffer more cuts than skeptics will.
[Oct 16] CHRIS Roylance takes a swipe at Bill Kininmonth for daring to speak of “the lack of global warming over the past 15 years” (Letters, 14/10).
Roylance gives a confused account of records of individual years and perhaps overlooks the fact that Kininmonth as a retired Bureau of Meteorology scientist is well-qualified to analyse trends. Roylance also overlooks the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth report acknowledges the lack of warming, calling it a hiatus, although not analysing causes.
Informed scientists will also pay attention to recent peer-reviewed publications from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Both papers recognise the temperature hiatus and analyse possible natural causes in terms of ocean dynamics.
They predict a further 10 or 20 years of hiatus respectively – sound science which is subject to scrutiny, and falsifiable or provable with another decade of observations.
Michael Asten, Monash University, Vic
————————————————
[Oct 16] If global temperatures rise for 50 years, then plateau for 15, of course all the temperatures on the plateau will be higher than those on the rising part of the graph. So Chris Roylance (Letters, 14/10), it is no surprise that the nine warmest years occurred on the plateau.
It’s time we stopped all this hottest-year-on-record stuff, and addressed the crucial issue of why global temperatures have disconnected from CO2 levels.
Michael Guppy, Moruya, NSW
————————————————
And it goes on… here Roylance is back in confusion — thinking that a steady flat trend (at a high point) can’t possibly produce more “hottest year” records, even though that is exactly what it implies. His “demonstrably false” declaration is obvious nonsense.
[October 17] THERE is no ambiguity in a statement purporting “the lack of global warming over the past 15 years”, so if the hottest years in recorded history have occurred within that timeframe, then the statement is demonstrably false, and no amount of obfuscation by Michael Asten or Michael Guppy (Letters, 16/10 ) can disprove that.
I am cognisant and respectful of Bill Kininmonth’s previous history, but presumably Asten is aware that NASA is also “well-qualified to analyse trends” , so if Kininmonth’s opinion is to triumph over NASA’s data, he should submit his facts through the established process to determine their veracity.
And rather than shooting the messenger, perhaps those who persist with the no-warming mantra could also provide facts that disprove what the British Met Office had to say when this myth first appeared: “Anybody who thinks global warming has stopped has their head in the sand.”
Ignoring every credible scientific organisation on Earth and the extreme weather events that they say are linked to anthropogenic global warming in favour of nit-picking pedantry over the minutiae of climate modelling that can never be 100 per cent correct is idiocy, especially when the only thing humanity has to lose from reducing emissions is money.
Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld
————————————————
PS: Dear Chris, since it’s “only money”, can you give me yours? – Jo
Chris Roylance surely must have meant to say “especially when the only thing humanity has to lose from reducing emissions is money, and all the essentials that money buys, such as energy, food, housing, clothing, medicine, clean water…”
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There is an absolute link between human progress and CO2 emissions.
Any attempt to stop CO2 emissions is an attempt to stop human progress.
This is absolutely apparent, and is the OBVIOUS aim of the whole CO2 scare.
They want a new dark age.. with themselves in charge.
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And he/she daring to questioning them be burned at the stake.
51
Wind back the Renaissance and reproduce a pre-renaissance world where Authority determines what the facts are – and you shall believe and obey the Authority.
30
Authority = Truth and Truth = Authority.
Authority and Truth have no beginning and no end, all hail the Authority and bow down before those who speak the Truth in Authorities Name.
10
BTW – /sarc
00
The IPCC, using a Greenpeace economic model, produced figures that fundamentally disagree with this statement. If you look at Table 10.3, page 1187, chapter 10 IPCC SRREN of 2011, compared with the baseline, the wrong set of policies will result not only in global GDP per capita being 43% lower by 2050, but global population being 330 million lower. That is equivalent to the current population of the USA not existing due to a global foul-up in policy-making. You just need to do some simple maths to work this out.
Problem is, the IPCC does not know how to read and interpret figures. If they did, the message would be that policy needs to be properly devised and enacted. The wrong policies will unnecessarily condemn a generation to a global depression much worse than the 1930s. That level of misery is far more than the loss of some money.
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What happened to logic? This post modern fuzziness where everything is a matter of opinion is just a circus. In the time since I stopped growing in my late teens, I have had nearly two decades of no growing. No, the growth isn’t hiding in my little toe or my large intestine, there simply hasn’t been any that I can measure. True, I’ve had nearly two decades of the highest level of tallness on record, but I have not grown in that time. Come on. It’s not that hard is it?
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I believe logic went the way of the dinosaurs. No longer here and hopefully cannot be cloned and reintroduced–the world is so much more simple with only one viewpoint and a few “caring” dictators in charge, don’t you think?
(/sarc)
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Too true to be funny, Sheri. 🙂
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It is astounding how often the argument regarding record warm years within the last however many years comes up. I had assumed proponents of the argument just hadn’t thought it through properly. It hadn’t occurred to me that people might not understand that it didn’t prove anything after an explanation. There are other examples we can use like record height while walking level on top of a mountain plateau or record tide at high tide, but record tallness at the end of growth is far more brilliant and hilarious! Could everyone please bring up the record tallness concept any time someone mentions the number of record warm recent years?
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So let me get this straight, we’ve been in a period of hockey stick style runaway warming since the beginning of the 20th century, with the out of control warming being particularly acute in the second half of 20th century, as that is when green emissions increased sharply.
Fine. Except a little detail. Going back to 1948, of the last 65 years, only 20 have been warming years. 20 of 65, this does not look like catastrophic warming. Quite the opposite, and in fact there is a lot of evidence that the 1930s was hotter than today.
“It is clear that 1998 did not match the record warmth of 1934.” -James Hansen, NASA
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Eric,
Its complicated, a long time ago the planet started to warm because of CO2, then it started to cool because those nasty chinese where pumping sulfates etc into the air from their coal fired power stations, then they stopped and so the planet began to warm again, then the planet began to cool/not warm because the nasty ocean stole all their global warming.
We cant go back to a long, long time ago because that temp data will not be acceptable it needs come from Jim or the team and nowhere else.
71
Oh? I thought a dozen bristlecone samples was acceptable data.
30
A dozen? It only takes one tree in Yamal.
A special tree, the one tree to rule them all and in the darkness (due to a lack of cheap electricity) bind them.
Muahaha… but I digress …
50
Go tell the poor people it’s only money, fool.
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Money comes from work.
For those who can spout such ideas “it’s only money” well, the implications are that they were born with rich parents and live a life or ease, or are just born politicians with a finger in the pie and they know how to get their share of the Global warming spoils.
KK
290
Many of those to whom you refer did have rich parents and/or live a life of ease and/or are born politicians etc. If they aren’t yet any of these then they are striving to become so. The comment by Roylance is a disgrace as it assumes all the humans in the world enjoy the same standard of living that he and most of the other denizens of the Western world enjoy. There are so many humans in the developing world whose personal development requires the availability of cheap and reliable energy. Electricity supplies are needed to warm or cool your house, to provide light, to provide refrigerated storage and supplies of hot water This Roylance person totally ignores these people and their aspirations as he loftily looks down from his energy resplendent eyrie I’m sick to the back teeth of the Greens and the Roylances and Michael Mann’s and Tim Flannerys of this world who luxuriate in the comforts provided by reliable constant power while endeavouring to ensure that those that don’t enjoy such privileges never will. Nicola Roxon summed up perfectly my opinion of the lot of them. And to conclude this rant where the …. is the evidence that humans are solely to blame for the current episode of climate change. That the models supply this evidence is utter tosh as it is becoming ever more plain that the models are not entirely reliable. Perhaps someone should ask Roylance and others of his ilk that if the models were a car would he buy one?
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We should find out where this [SNUP Absolutely NOT – Jo] We should make him an “energy refugee” and see if his smugness persists.
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I know where he lives, phone number and all. He lives in [SNIP No personal details, even if they are still non-identifiers thanks]
Why does that not surprise me?
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My apologies Jo. My comment was not meant to be taken seriously.
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I’m reminded of a scene in ‘The Aviator’. Howard Hughes who made himself rich was having dinner with a rich family whose wealth had been handed down the generations. They sneeringly said that discussing money was beneath contempt. Hughes exploded saying (paraphrasing) , “It’s all very well for folk like you to say that because you have money!” Hughes knew that money can come by either hard work or dropped into peoples’ laps. The latter are often the most non empathetic, greedy, non philanthropic and feel they have earned their money to assauge their guilt.
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Never forget just plain lazy or afraid of failure. I have a sibling that lives in their car. They claim money means nothing–which then means they don’t have to work and they cannot fail.
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‘…especially when the only thing humanity has to lose from reducing emissions is money.’
Sure, chris, who cares about putting a few (hundred thousands) more people into poverty? Won’t hurt your bank account, now, will it?
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Gosh Joanne,
That is a pathetic line of argument. For starters your Des Moore is clearly environmetally illiterate. That particular slump in emissions has been linked to huge amounts of sulphur dioxide emitted from coal fired power stations as the world got back into production after the second world war but before electrostatic precipitators became standard kit for such power stations. The need for this was brought to light by the acid rain that was killing Europe’s forests.
As for “guesses backed by contradictory, weak, or indirect findings” , the assumption that such attempts to determine if there is risk are flimsy are themselves equally if not more flimsy.
Just becasue someone may have held high office this does not ensure that they are qwel informed.
I held a conversation with NZ’s Richard Prebble who was at the time minister environment, energy and resources, who when asked did not know that the substance of tree trunks, the Carbon, was extracted out of the air. Fundamental knowledge.
Massive fail for a person in the role of making decisions on energy and resources.
I can understand why editors do not want to be entangled in poiintless discussions with science dunces spouting ideological diatribes which are little more than wives tail calibre myths.
Scientists and public officials exercising their duty of care to the broad public should not have to suffer the torrents of abuse delivered by the kind of excitable lazy thinkers that seem to be attracted to the denialist cause.
The fact is that science is still coming up to speed to develop a full understanding of the multiplicity of ways in which human activity damages the environment. the other side of the field is the “I don’t give a damn, I like things the way they are” field of thinking, and, frankly, most of us would prefer that to be a safe way to be. But the evidence is so heavily weighted against this to the extent that it is immoral to intentionally support it.
I would like to flesh this out fully but I have to go and clean up some of the mess from these nothing whatever to do with Cliamte change mid October wild fires.
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Ah, Thank You! That means that the heat is definitely NOT ‘hiding in the deep oceans.’ You are a life saver!
272
“An electrostatic precipitator (ESP), or electrostatic air cleaner is a particulate collection device that removes particles from a flowing gas (such as air) using the force of an induced electrostatic charge.”
“Sulfur dioxide (also sulphur dioxide) is the chemical compound with the formula SO2. At standard atmosphere it is a toxic gas with a pungent, irritating smell.”
Just sayin’
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Heywood you are completely wrong about EPS and SO2 as they do remove Sulphuric Acid, and the SO2 emitted from power stations dissolves in water (hot steam) becoming sulphuric acid vapour, and this can be removed by EPS devices. In fact this was amongst the earliest experimental uses of EPS. so you may want to read the rest of that wikipedia article. You’d fail year 10 science but go ahead and keep on spouting rubbish here you intellectual pigmy.
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Oh look. Matty B weighs in to defend a fellow warmist.
Oh yes, so it is. It was in the section marked ‘citation needed’, so unreliable info Matty. Whoops. Actually, Scrubbers are generally used to remove acid gases, including SO2, from the combustion process, not EPS devices as you and your fellow traveller has claimed. EPS devices, although capable of removing some of the acid, are primarily used to remove solid particulate ie. soot and dust. Scrubbers have been used in European power stations since the 1920s although came a little later in the USA.
Tsk Tsk. Resorting to abuse won’t get you anywhere Matty. You sound a little angry. Maybe you should have a snickers.
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FYI I’ve switched to EPS from ESP and you’ve followed. ESP yeah.
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EPS – Electrostatic Precipitator System.
You’re welcome.
61
This is what happens is when all you know is when you read the 1st paragraph of the 1st link you find Heywood. You are so so so far out of your league sonny you should just read and shut the f’ up. The bad things about letters to the editor is they sit there as gospel… at least on a blog you can get a real-time ass-whuppin’
http://www.sulphuric-acid.com/techmanual/GasCleaning/esp.htm
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=X-s2xn-r_kwC&pg=SA2-PA37&lpg=SA2-PA37&dq=sulphuric+acid+esp&source=bl&ots=DCgFlgVYK7&sig=hwKNM6lX0xWabhd11NWAgKQS-vg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=juJfUqy1HYWdiAf2mYCACQ&ved=0CFEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=sulphuric%20acid%20esp&f=false
http://www.breenes.com/White_Board_Sessions-Sulfuric_Acid_Measurement_for_ESP_Conditioning_Control.html
http://www.isesp.org/ICESP%20VII%20PAPERS/VII-ICESP%20P522.pdf
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Why are you such a c ock Matty?
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“Mattb”, every day, sunshine, you stick your head up over the parapet and it is shot down
You must really enjoy being ridiculed !
Any normal individual would be embarassed to consistently demonstrate their abject stupidity to the world !
YOU however seem to relish it.
Get some therapy before it is too late …..
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Matty, You obviously missed the part where I stated “although capable of removing some of the acid”. A nice collection of links too, thanks.
Link one appears to be a bit of a plug for a company that manufactures ESPs. They mention use of ESPs in sulphuric acid manufacture, gold smelting process and manufacture of cement (to remove cement kiln particulate) . No mention of use in a power plant. Funnily enough, the company also manufactures Baghouses, Dry FGD systems using NIRO Atomizer technologies, Wet FGD systems, Multiclones and small scrubbers.
Link two seems to be where most of the descriptive text from link one was stolen from. I didn’t read the whole document (‘aint nobody got time for that!) but a quick skim didn’t mention coal fired generators, and considering it is the ‘Handbook of Sulphuric Acid Manufacturing’ I doubt it’s in there.
Link three is page discussing improving the collection efficiency of an ESP through measurement techniques. Relevance?
Link four was a document from the 7th International Conference on Electrostatic Precipitation. It backs up what I said earlier. “This precipitator
type is suitable for the collection of particulate matter from power plantoffgases and in the steel industry.” “These substances (mainly vanadium) convert most of the S02 to S03. Consequently, sulfuric
acid aerosols (the SO3) are forming in the wet scrubber. These aerosols are collected in wet ESPs arranged either upstream or downstream of the- flue gas desulfurization unit. If the wet ESP is arranged upstream of the flue gas desulfurization unit, this has an additional advantage in that together with the sulphuric acid mist also dust is separated so that the gypsum from the flue gas desulfurization unit occurs in are largely pure form. (Fig. 10)”
————–
Fact is that use of EPS (or ESP Systems to titillate you if you like) to remove Sulphur Dioxide (one component of a dry scrubbing technique) from flue stacks is less common and less efficient than wet scrubbing.
Also worthy of note in this document is the fact that the ESP is used to remove the particulate waste product (gypsum) AFTER the scrubber has converted the SO2.
SOURCE : http://www.epa.gov/ttn/catc/dir1/ffdg.pdf
Some nice diagrams in this one depicting real world plants, nearly all of them showing that the SO2 is removed via wet or dry scrubbing , not via the ESP.
SOURCE: http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/ie/se/pp/coal/alstom.pdf
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NO NO NO!!!!
typically of your kind, you ignore where this conversation actually started…
Bilb: “That particular slump in emissions has been linked to huge amounts of sulphur dioxide emitted from coal fired power stations as the world got back into production after the second world war but before electrostatic precipitators became standard kit for such power stations.”
To which you responded:
“An electrostatic precipitator (ESP), or electrostatic air cleaner is a particulate collection device that removes particles from a flowing gas (such as air) using the force of an induced electrostatic charge.”
“Sulfur dioxide (also sulphur dioxide) is the chemical compound with the formula SO2. At standard atmosphere it is a toxic gas with a pungent, irritating smell.”
Which is to say, dear Heywood, that you had the opinion that ESPs did not do what Bilb claimed.
I’ve demonstrated that to be completely untrue. Now it may well be true that we’ve since found better ways to do the same job… but that is COMPLETELY UNRELATED to Bilb’s point you were hopelessly arguing against.
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What a cacophony.
As far as I can tell, the story about ESPs being first used for removal of sulphuric acid from waste gas is true, and the source probably is the page on Frederick Cottrell authored by the organisation that he founded. But that is not flue gas. Sulphuric acid (H2SO4) may co-exist with sulphur dioxide (SO2) in the combustion exhaust because it can be formed from SO2 and H2O, BUT that reaction requires excess oxygen to be present and the whole point of the furnace is to use all the oxygen with virtually none remaining. The H2SO4 cannot form under such conditions, but can form later after it gets into the open air, thus the acid rain problem.
This is why the exhaust must have an extra reagent injected into it to do the oxidation step while it’s inside the plant, hence the “semi-dry scrubber” mentioned by the EPA document in which an ESP can then be used to remove the large particulate product which has absorbed the SO2.
My point here is that Cottrell’s original application of ESP was not the same chemical process as in the coal furnace exhaust situation, so it’s irrelevant, and MattB was (IMO) incorrect to say “this was amongst the earliest experimental uses of EPS” which implied furnace SO2 scrubbing was the application.
The Wikipedia page and MattB’s 3rd link established the existence of a “Wet ESP” for removing sulphuric acid droplet mists, but again in the oxygen-depleted flue gas only a small amount of SO2 will have been converted into SO3 in the furnace.
Longannet Power Station is an example of ESPs being used in a coal-fired power station, but again it does not say the ESP is used to reduce SO2 emission, only to reduce particulate emission. This is confirmed by the power station’s official Longannet site fact sheet which, in the diagram on page 2, explicitly shows SO2 being emitted to the environment after passing through the ESP stage.
It doesn’t matter if ESPs can be used to remove SO2, it only matters for the present dispute as to whether they were actually used to remove a large proportion of SO2 emissions from coal-fired power stations after 1975.
Again the EPA document tells us “[Wet limestone scrubbing] is the preferred process for coal-fired electric utility power plants burning coal”.
There is no indication as to how the “mist eliminator” stage performs its job and theoretically an ESP could be used, but it is strange that ESPs are mentioned everywhere else in the document but not in the context of the wet scrubber. My guess is that’s because the mist eliminator of a wet scrubber is not an ESP because simpler and cheaper panel or vane type separators can be used. This is echoed by a clean-energy engineering study which states (my bolding):
The phrase “chevron-shaped baffles” perfectly describes the inertial and condensation-based (ie non-ESP) vane-type mist-eliminator product linked above.
Therefore ESPs are not used in the most common type of Flue Gas Desulphurisation process for power stations.
ESPs certainly seem to be used today for removing a variety of pollutants (including coal ash) from a variety of processes, but removing sulphur dioxide from large post-WW2 coal furnaces is not one of them.
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Honestly Matt i have not even bothered to read you comment and let me tell you why.
I have read your bile smelling [snip]for so many years that i now have no interest in what you have to say. 99% of the time you talk [snip], you troll this place just to piss people off, you have no interest in the science of weather/climate in fact i doubt you even believe the bullshit spread by the IPCC but yet you will sit on your [snip] and defend the most basic of the indefensible.
I think its time you packed up your bag full of hate [snip].
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Classy Crakar… classy indeed. It seems to me that overnight all reponses to me are vitriolic and down right nasty… so I can only assume I won?
113
Thanks Matt i thought it was pretty classy aswell and yes by all means assume that you have whatever it was you were trying to win.
111
.
And at the end of the first day’s competition Andrew Mcrae wears the Maillot Jaune.
HINTS FOR COMPETITORS – DAY 2
1) – In over 20 years, I’ve never seen an ESP installation at a power station. Scrubbers roolz. Usually wet.
2) – Air preheating and forced draft induction have largely eliminated soot as a problem, except during black starts.
.
Now may the tournament continue.
100
I liked Andrew’s contribution too:)
07
This has been a very informative conversation if one ignores the irritants.
I touched on the subject the other day, more on the qualities of Australian black thermal coal.
Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) Gypsum (by-product) I believe is more pure than mined Gypsum and apart from the use in concrete, wallboard and such is a soil improver that boosts yields in crops.
I would like to add this link to the discussion.
50
.
Fly ash from coal fired power stations is also a major constituent in bitumen road construction.
I’ve often wondered what the Greenies intend to build their bicycle tracks out of, once they close all the power stations.
Not concrete, surely?
70
MV: Merci beaucoup Monsieur Vault. It was indeed an uphill struggle and in the early stages it looked like Heywood had been talking out his proverbial in a well-trained knee-jerk response to his favourite victim. But eventually the red herrings and chemical ineptitude of the Electric Boogaloo crowd became more obvious with further research.
It was the best I could manage considering I’ve never strayed far enough from my lattés to have set foot inside a coal-fired power station. (Actual longwall coal mining though… that’s a different story… for another day.)
Nice to know those with boots on the ground can confirm the assertions emanating from the ivory tower.
_
MattB: You should have thought twice before following BilB into battle against Heywood. You realise the bilby is endangered because it is easy prey for cats? 🙂
80
To be fair Heywood did pick on the only sentence of Bilb’s that was at lease vaguely reasonable.
03
I will let you in on a secret though Andrew… and don’t share… but I do enjoy having a lengthy argument with people who clearly do not know jack about the subject matter, even though I do not know jack either:) I honestly find the process quite amusing. It was an irrelevant subject and it is not important who is actually right or wrong (generally both the latter).
44
Allllllrighty Matty, I’ll take the high road and admit I was wrong to imply that ESPs are unable to remove SO2…
…however, there was no need to start throwing insults, which is why you copped a couple in return.
BilB-o’s initial comment came, as usual from him, without links or references, and sounded fishy (especially when he references an emissions slump as opposed to a temperature slump). I guess I have you to thank for making me research the matter.
I think Andrew McRae summed up my thoughts on the matter here, in a clearer manner than I could. The point I was trying to make was that whilst ESPs can remove SO2, they are generally not used for the purpose of Flue Gas Desulfurization. As for BilB-o’s initial comment, from what I have read Wet scrubbing was used extensively in the UK and Europe from the 1920s and in the USA from the 1970s. This seems to be inconsistent with BilB-o’s claim that acid rain in Europe was curtailed by the installation of ESPs when scrubbers where already in widespread use.
Well done, because I am. My surname is Jablome 😉
60
*chuckle*
40
poor Matty, failed year 9 science, and thinks everyone is nearly as stupid as he is.
Sorry Matty… but do keep trying, you may pass eventually.
(I use “may” in a climate scientist way.)
92
Seriously Andy… I totally kicked ass in year 9 science. like totally.
36
Darn, then you forgot it VERY quickly !.
61
lol 7 thumbs up for Heywood’s scientifically illiterate rambling… says a lot really.
339
You think that earns some thumbs up. What about this.
Thumbs Up if you thing Matty B is a complete tool!!!
613
Wow . 48:1 (at the moment).
That’s a 98% consensus.
31
I tried to vote twice, or thrice…
but it wouldn’t let me 🙁
20
Vote early, vote often. 😉
00
I wish I had the influence on other people that knuckle-dragging Communist opportunists have on Matt B
There is some secret formula they use, I haven’t figured it out
91
I guess 30 “thumbs down” for you also says a lot. 4x a lot actually if 7 is “a lot”
30
What is this ‘denialist cause’ you speak of. What is it that this cause denies?
291
That is the question, isn’t it, Heywood.
I really don’t think that there is a cause so much as this is the way some people approach a problem. I’m coming to the idea that much of what is said here is just what some people say before they eventually get to “why didn’t you tell us that this stuff was real and actually happening”.
I keep a photo from, we’ll say America because that is where this sort of thing happens, of a guy with one nostrel and half of his face ripped off. The story is that this guy put the bit of an electric hand drill up his nose, and then for some reason pulled the trigger. He became known for his act because he tried to sue the drill manufacturer for not putting a sign on the drill to warn against putting a drill up ones nose and pulling the trigger.
Now that’s denialism.
347
By any objective assessment, that has to be the dumbest false analogy I have ever read of this blog site, against some very stiff opposition from several of your fellow climate hysterics over the years.
If there was a semblance of a point there, I think it must have been lost in translation. Either that, or as you wandered through the dense forest your unsubstantiated assertions, you somehow lost that trail of breadcrumbs you were following.
332
I agree. There is absolutely no connection between an idiot putting a drill up his nose and turning it on, then suing the drill company (even assuming idiot jurors awarded him money, which does happen in these cases at times).
You can’t sue the drill company because 10 or 20 or 30 or 50….. years in the future some idiot will put it up his nose and turn it on. Which would be at least a closer false analogy. No one can come to the “why did you tell us this stuff was real” until it is real. Right now, you’re arguing that a cartoon with a guy and a drill is equal to a real person. Best rethink that one.
140
It is the question BilB-o, and you didn’t even get remotely close to answering it.
200
Got your ‘b’ mixed up with ‘d’ on your keyboard???
100
So, you draw an analogy to one of your fellow idiots to avoid answering a question.
Now if you say we “deny” something, I expect solid scientific proof that it is actually real.. Not assumptions or models based on assumptions. Not corrupted climate records.
Real, solid, scientific evidence.
So, Bilbo… bring it on !!
101
Actually Bibly it seems more a demonstration of gullibility. A search at Scopes turns up an article about a solider who suffered a bullet wound that became a wild tale about someone scratching their face with a drill.
81
Snopes to the rescue!
20
Without a doubt Bilbo has proven to be one of the most gullible, brain-washed, non-entities yet to abuse and insult this blog with his odious presence.
50
“nothing whatever to do with Cliamte change mid October wild fires.”
Hmmmm. Do I sense some sarcasm??
Perhaps you can provide some empirical evidence which links these “mid October wild fires” with climate change.
You can back it up can’t you? We wouldn’t want people to think that you are a one of the “science dunces spouting ideological diatribes” now do we?
321
‘We wouldn’t want people to think that you are a one of the “science dunces spouting ideological diatribes” now do we?’
Too late by the time he hit his sixth word.
190
Heywood
How about a correlation between bushfires and green-inspired bans on land clearing and controlled burnoffs?
I’ll bet there’s a fair correlation on that one. Maybe even a causation…
Cheers,
Speedy.
261
A few years ago I calculated that the present rate of controlled burns in Victoria was so low that it would take 180 years to cover the whole State. Naturally, you would not want to control burn the whole state. I was making the point that tiny areas were burned each year for prevention/mitigation.
At the time, I rationalised that controlled burns were expensive, they carried a high risk of becoming uncontrolled and there was no guarantee that they could be targeted selectively. Therefore, not much controlled burning was done. Perhaps the same applies today. Is a large controlled burn program the best way to spend that elusive scarce dollar?
( Additionally: It is not possible to make a claim that fires are affected by climate change. Arson is a factor that is hard to control for.)
100
I think you are right Geoff. They do have a tendency to become uncontrolled. That is what happened in Margaret River a couple of years ago. However the controlled burn season is pretty short. Near Perth you’d be lucky to be able to start burning in June, and you’d probably have to finish in August/September.
And no amount of controlled burning will help on the really high fire danger days. The flames jump from tree top to tree top.
12
Just as a note, in California several years back the Forest Service stopped calling these “controlled” burns and went with “prescribed” burns. Seems you can’t always control fire.
10
Yes, you’re right. I can’t prove it, but it does fit a trend. I am going to have to wait to see if there are more events to make the connection more solid. What I am suggesting is that global warming set up the situation to make the probability of fires more probable.
235
more likely duh its been a long day
023
Oh. So you wait to see if there are more fires, and that somehow proves your hypothesis that the fires are caused by global warming? On the flip-side, if there are no more fires, does that mean that global warming is disproven?
Bit of a logic fail methinks.
250
BilB, I rarely engage in stuff like this, but this comment of yours is epic.
Climate is the average weather for a region over a 10 year period. (World climate appears to be a 30 year average, I’m not sure).
Climate does not cause things to happen. Climate is the result of things happening.
Climate can not cause a fire, or cause an increase in fires.
162
Climate causing fires is a confusion of weather and climate, perhaps deliberate on the part of climate scientists. They use weather/climate interchangeably as to whatever need they have at the moment. (The 30 year interval reportedly came from the American Meteorological Society in the 1930s) Weather influences fires–and can cause them. Lightening started fires are very common and wind, heat and lack of humidity helps spread the fires and keep them going.
Now, if we jump to the very creative “extreme weather” is cause by climate change, we get drought (less fuel), and heavy rains and snow (extinguishes fires). I suppose we could toss in thunderstorms, but again, extinguishes the fires. So not much luck there either. (No mention of “dry” lightening in the predictions, so far as I know.)
You are absolutely correct that average weather, a 10 or 30 year average, cannot cause fires. Doesn’t look like the predicted climate changes can either.
30
Oh goody. Lets not understand his meaning and split hairs instead.
04
Did we miss it? Please enlighten us your tilted headedness.
10
BilB. Exactly what do you base that assumption on, when the global temperature of the last 150 years has risen by 0.8 deg C. Just how has mankind caused this great threat, besides the obvious of not taking sufficient steps to reduce the overall fuel these fires are running on. You and your ilk are mindless alarmists just like that opportunistic Green MP Adam Bandt.
If you cretins ever get it sorted out in your own minds we might have society end up somewhere worthwhile but while we have this “Dark Age” mentality it won’t change.
You guys had the opportunity to talk about all of this but decided to go out half cocked and instigate supercilious policies aimed at wrecking the lives of millions.
If someone like Crakar gives you a mouthful you in my view deserve it.
/end rant
20
Bandt made comments about bushfires *before* the latest lot of fires. He was perhaps, using psychic abilities to make opportunistic comments about fires that were yet to happen.
14
That is absolute BS Brooks,
Adam Bandt tweeted his disgusting political garbage at 4.04pm on 17th October.
So John, the bush fires started after this? Then how about you explain this to the dozen owners that lost their homes on Buena Vista Rd, Winmalee, on Thursday (the 17th) morning.
You are worse than Adam Bandt.
21
It most certainly does fit a trend….. the rising trend of ferkin’ lunatics committing arson.
00
Adam Bandt would seem to agree.
Well, nuff said, surely. /.sarc, in case…
30
I for one am glad mister Bandt is getting an earful. It should have happened years ago.
20
Translation: Scientists, being people of superior intelligence, will just keep inventing different ways of separating the peons from their earnings. You might as well give up now, and save us all some hassle.
Also note: The unstated assumption that it is only human activity that is capable of damaging the environment. All other changes to the environment are from natural causes, and are therefore axiomatically not damaging.
Then we get the regulation statement of dismissal, that starts: “I can understand why editors …”. Which is an appeal to sympathy, but is not even creative enough to warrant a block quote of its own.
This is the first bit of propaganda that is half-way decent. It is, of course, and appeal to anonymous authority, but it is also finessed with an appeal to pity, which gives it its poignancy.
And how do we know that doing nothing is not a safe way to be?
Ah yes, we are told that climate scientists believe that the earths climate is out to kill us off. But hang on, that is only the logical fallacy of an Appeal to Anonymous Authority, and so it probably doesn’t count.
The original comment adds zero new information to the debate, it only seeks to deflect and denigrate the information supplied by other commentators.
That is what I call Troll-spore.
412
As Rereke noted, there is an underlying assumption that only humans are hurting the planet. How can that be? Did we not evolve just as everything else on this planet? How did we become the blight on the planet? And even if we did somehow manage to be a blight, doesn’t Darwin say “survival of the fittest”? If we mess up, nature takes us out. Why all the hand wringing by scientists? We are told evolution is a fact. So, factually and scientifically, humans cannot “hurt” the planet. It’s impossible. It’s just part of nature. (If we act against our own best interests, then evolution says we die out and that’s it. If we can’t adapt fast enough, too bad. No other species calculates with certainty 100 years in the future and tries to act on it. Only we delusional humans.)
140
“there is an underlying assumption that only humans are hurting the planet. ”
So what else do you know of that lives on this planet that is hurting the planet. That aside, however, I’ve never come across such an underlying assumption.
226
Nothing that lives on this planet is hurting it.
100
“Nothing that lives on this planet is hurting it.”
Except rabid green (RED) nut jobs…….
161
The “rabid green nut jobs” are hurting human society. The planet can fix anything the nuts do.
81
Well actually Sheri there are many examples of animals hurting the planet.
1, We cant build dams because we damage the environment therefore beavers should be erradicated.
2, Here in (the land of) Oz we are shooting camels from helicopters because they shit methane and breath CO2
3, Cattle are restricted to certain areas otherwise they will damage the environment
4, Rabbits, foxes and cane toads are destroyed due to the environmental damage they do.
4A, some may claim this is due to being an introduced species, ok therefore the damage they do in their native country is now considered not damage but natural and how long does an animal need to live in a location before it is considered part of the natural habitat? The Australian Dingo has lived here for over 5000 years bit is still considered a pest and hunted vigorously.
The list goes on but depending on the animal it may or may not be destroying the environment or at least our perception of what the environment is.
111
Well said, Cracker. It is often said that we, humans, are citizens of the planet. So, is it fair to say that a rabbit or a fox or a bear is a native in one place and vermin in another?
10
Or, everything that lives on this planet is hurting it. Go figure.
20
According to the logic of “the people who say global warming”, these are hurting the planet.
Welcome to the illogical.
60
So what else do you know of that lives on this planet that is hurting the planet.
Elephants. Locusts.
Does not have to be living things. Volcanoes, meteorites, earthquakes are highly destructive. Also ice, hurricanes and drought.
70
Maybe we should determine the meaning of the word “hurting” or “harming”. As far as I can see, what lives on the planet is part of the planet and the planet cannot hurt itself, right? What would constitute the “unhurt” state? I’m not being sarcastic here–I really don’t understand this. Or are people being sarcastic and I’m missing that?
40
Can anyone demonstrate that the planet can actually suffer?
Otherwise talking about “hurting” the planet seems a bit futile.
30
I’m hurting, does that count? Am I part of the planet?
30
Greg: Those are the kinds of questions that make people’s head explode! 🙂
30
Perhaps we need to define what we mean by ‘environment’ and what is included and excluded from such a concept.
Let’s listen to the experts, especially towards the end:
00
No Bilbo. It is the absolutely DISGUSTING matter of the pseudo environmentalist not allowing the pre-burning of grasses that people like your Flannery and Bandt sad would never grow because of lack of rain.
To even suggest that these fires are anything to do with climate change EXCEPT for the derangement of the greens stopping sensible scrub management marks you as a TOTALLY DESPICABLE and DISGUSTING person.
The green bureaucracy is TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE for this situation because they have made it totally impossible to do the right thing and get the bush into a sustainable condition. !!
482
This fire had nothing whatsoever to do with bush condition.
It started in a military range (firing range?) then jumped to Mt Victoria and crossed the Bells Line of Road. Then it very likely spotted 20 or more kilometers away in Springwood, then to Mt Riverview, then to Castlereagh. It travelled that distance in not much more than an hour. I don’t ever recall a fire travelling that far that fast.
Last week over 50 cars sitting in a car park were torched by a small grass fire in a very similar way to Canberra fire.
We are seeing a whole new connection between climate and fire.
There. Now go rupture a vein over that.
237
Oh. Were the cars parked next to an overgrown, unkempt pine plantation as well? Was management of the fuel load in the carpark and access to the area lacking just like the McLeod enquiry found with respect to the Canberra bushfire?
280
If it is the Military Reserve that I know, it is now a disused Ammunition Depot and therefore, empty of any ammunition.
20
If I remember correctly, that small grass fire that burnt out those 50 cars, was started by a cigarette butt…..NOT climate change! I think you need to stop watching the ABC or reading the SMH.
51
Well, you know about the connection between big tobacco and climate change denial 😉
03
And remember the green environ – mental – ists ‘no dams’ promotions and bumper stickers? Pumps draw water from dams to fight fires.
160
Tim
I always thought that water came out of the sky from buckets slung beneath Helicopters running at $19,852 a day?
With two loads every half hour that’s 32 kiloliters at a cost of $620 per kilolitre.
I can buy pure tap water for 70 CENTS a kilolitre.
Maybe we should use dams instead?
KK
90
Good one!
40
Thanks Sheri
We are in the middle of a man made bushfire catastrophe here in NSW Australia.
This is after the deaths of over 190 people in Victoria a few years ago.
It seems that the “green dream” rolls on, covering everything and transfixing every mind in a layer of green impenetrability.
When using the term, “man made” I certainly don’t mean the CO2 type of CAGW hwich most would assert.
Rather it is man made, as are the annual California fires, because of a failure and a refusal to carry out back burns,
hazard reduction burns or clearance burns to limit undergrowth.
For the last forty years it has been the exception, rather than the rule to be able to do a hazard reduction burn and so, lives are at risk unnecessarily.
Group think at its finest.
KK
40
$620 per kilolitre is still cheaper than bottled water in shops!
03
So we use tap water and not bottled water.
20
Further more, you craven , gutless little worm.
.
….. You are obviously a marginally post pubescent know-it-all, so I DARE YOU to go out and join up with a volunteer bushfire brigade.
I did my bit a couple of decades ago.
Time for you supercilious young prats to do your bit.
Put down your latte, and go and help….
.
.
.
I DARE YOU
263
You’ve really got to calm down Andy. You’ll break a finger typing that way.
229
Coward.
Back to your latte, pusillanimous little worm.
But make sure its a decaf soya.. or you might hurt yourself.
102
That makes you older than you write.
I started within CFA 30 years ago – spend time in Penrith 2001/2. Still a member, but away from home.
I have to say that watching the forests change over the time tells me, if not you, that more has changed than a failure to implement sensible management (a lot of which in my area is developer instituted).
62
You absolute abysmally ignorant ….. For how long you buffoon have we been told that the sole cause of global warming is CO2 from human use of fossil fuels. Now there is a hiatus in warming despite an increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 we’re told that of course there are naturally occurring factors that affect climate. And tell me and the rest of us why the output of only 3 of 87 of the GCMs used to predict climate change has agreed with the observations from 1979 to 2012. Well explain that you ignoramus
132
BilB
Hardly. You can’t name any empirical evidence that backs up the main assumptions of the models on feedback especially on water vapor. I was being kind suggesting the evidence was contradictory. Actually, almost all the empirical evidence suggests the net feedbacks are negative.
Aerosol effects are highly debated (see Judith Curry) and since the models don’t contain all the major forcings and didn’t model the recent plateau, it doesn’t mean anything that they claim to “have modeled” the plateau before that. The aerosol emissions mostly occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, which warmed more than the Southern Hemisphere, so the locations dont fit well. The IPCC have revised down their estimates of aerosol forcing. There are studies that show aerosols are net warming over some areas (like the Himalayas, eg Marcq 2010).
PS: What does “denialist” mean? You’ll need to substantiate that with a paper denialists deny, or apologize. Your comments will be moderated until this is resolved. Commenters must speak English. – Jo
411
You are not making any sense Joanne. On the one hand you are saying where is your modelling, then in the next para your saying models don’t work, but Judith Curry knows all.
Don’t bother misquoting me. All you have to do is cut and paste. If you are honest that is. – Jo
Actually I remember when science was trying to resolve the dying forests dilema, when acid rain became the topic of the day. I remember the time before vehicle emissions were tackled and how the skylines looked with the huge volume of particulate matter in the air. It was never as bad as Bejing is today but Los Angles had visibility of just 10 kilometres on many days. The cleaning up of these messy environemnts has made a climate difference and that appears in the measurements. Moving on you would have to examine the huge amount of pollution from China and what impact that is having on temperature growth by reflecting sunlight and suppressing surface temperatures in that very large region. There is a high probability that China has a role to play in the supposed flat spot.
I’ve covered denialism as far as I can understand it at 5.3.1 . This may not suit you as it is a little fanciful but I think in time it will bear up to be substantially true. The other aspect of “denialism” is the essential contrary view regardless of the facts or benefits.
This is a science site in a science debate. IF you call us deniers, we must deny something scientific. You need to name it, or admit you were wrong to misuse language. – Jo
For example I put up a case for a solar combination talking of the improvement to standard of living with some figures. Not one person here challenged the figures. Instead I was roundly abused and debased as knowing nothing and being stupid. It is that type of performance that has become synonymous with the notion of denialism.
Another face of “denialism” as others perceive it is framed by the Shimkus affair
http://www.juancole.com/2010/11/energy-committee-chairman-candidate-says-god-promised-no-more-catastrophic-climate-change-after-noah.html
pseudo science trailing off into some form of religeous vodoo.
A third face of “denialism” exibits in the cynical manipulations of the Koch brothers and others. This is the cash is king approach, and only “my” interests matter in this world.
Joanne, have you ever had close dealings with a full on psychopath?
It is something that you need to experience and contemplate the difference between creative persuasion and outright compulsive lying. Having done that then revisit the Koch Brothers and their dealings.
Now none of this matters if this is all for entertainment, but I think that you are trying to do more than that, and really make a difference.
You need to write English. No more comments until we resolve this. – Jo
311
“pseudo science trailing off into some form of religeous voodoo”
“…… outright compulsive lying”
Bilbo, you describe yourself to a tee !! Again.
And yes it is beginning to look like Jo is dealing with a psychopath… YOU !!
140
I have been trying to make sense of what the wittily described BilB is saying but I fear it is hopeless.
At least matty writes short posts.
90
You put up a case for shoving people into dongas hooked up to the durdy coal grid while raking in subsidies because they use useless solar panels.
Total garbage.
How about putting up a case for:
No cars
No other transport reliant on fossil fuels – you can have a donkey, but just make sure your feed is not trucked
No more super markets – like to see how you are going to feed yourself
Rainwater only – no way you can be hooked up to a water system reliant on fossil fueled power
I could go on.
Now please tell us how its done… without being a total hypocrite.
20
The trouble is that you are trying to debate the science, and the science is pretty well settled. What should be discussed is the value of climate sensitivity. Is it 1.5C or 4C? This tells us how urgent action on reducing emissions is.
But that is not what people here are interested in discussing. And popping up and saying that climate sensitivity is 0.7C or less doesn’t really count as sensible discussion. Its wishful thinking.
So the discussions here, while often interesting at the level of individual experience, are now irrelevant. And this relates to the topic of this post. Because the attitudes here are irrelevant, letters pushing them should not get published in the letters to the editor page. In just the same way as flat-earther letters, holocaust denier letters, 9/11 conspiracy letters, etc should not get published.
There is another reason they should not get published, and that is because most of them are boring. If someone has an interesting take on climate change, a novel way of looking at it, then even if they come from the “skeptic” end of the spectrum, they might get published. But if it is a simple re-hash of some oft debunked “skeptic” talking point, then why clog up the letters page?
I used to be a regular contributor to The Australian’s letters page. I was happy when one of mine made the grade and got published. Then some time about 10 years ago, many more very ordinary letters started to get published. No longer was there any sense pride. My letters were rubbing shoulders with rubbish. I stopped writing.
04
John, crikey, this is big news! You mean you’ve found some empirical evidence that climate sensitivity is above 1.5C, why the heck have you been keeping it a secret? Please, do share. So far all the empirical evidence suggests net feedbacks are negative. What is so baffling is that after all these comments you’ve made, you’ve never thought to tell us before?
60
Jo, I only go on what others write. The ones with expertise. Yes, I know that is an appeal to authority, but at least its a relevant authority, not Lord Monckton 🙂
04
Baaaaaaaaaa
10
So John, you agree that:
Snow is now a “rare and exciting event” in the NH (Viner).
Eastern Australia is now in permanent drought (Flannery).
The Himalayan glaciers will be be all melted away by 2035 (IPCC, NASA).
The Arctic will be ice free by 2013 (Flannery, IPCC).
For the last five years the UK has experienced “mild winters and bbq summers” (MET).
CO2-induced global warming cannot be affected by “natural variation” (Jones, various).
CO2-induced global warming is being masked by “natural variation” (IPCC, various).
The “missing heat” is located in the Tropical Tropospheric Hot Spot (IPCC, various).
The “missing heat” somehow made its way into the “deep oceans” (Trenberth, various).
Sea levels will rise by 20 metres globally by 2100 (Gore).
Sea levels will rise by 100 metres in Sydney by 2100 (Williams, ABC).
Just to name a few.
40
john as soon as you say that science is settled that pretty well gives you away. No science is ever settled. There is only eg a theory of evolution of evolution or of relativity. The evidence for both may be comprehrnsive but it would take but one piece of evidence for those to be revised or even turned over.
40
Andrew, you could at least try not to look stupid. Lets take gravity. Newton’s formulation obeys an inverse square law for gravitational force. But its not settled, because Einstein came up with a different theory, which produced very slightly different results. If every anyone figures out quantum gravity, it will replace Einstein’s formulation.
But it is settled in the sense that if someone comes up and says that gravitational force drops off with a 1.8 power law. They are just plain wrong.
So while no science is ever settled, it is settled enough to say that certain things are just plain wrong. As you are.
04
In America, at least until recently, letters to the editor were to give people a chance to voice their opinions–whether they wrote “redneck” style or where college professors. They are opinion pieces, not scientific literature.
As for repeating oneself, one of the Washington cadre of wind industry representatives just wrote a letter to our paper about eagles and wind turbines. It bore a striking resemblance to others he has written for different cities. I end up writing a response that, sadly, is often a repeat of the same points over and over because the wind industry uses the same information over and over. I try to come up with new information to keep people from “getting bored”. However, when the original letter is just a rehash, if I respond, I have to respond to a rehash. The same is true of the climate science advocates–same literature and arguments over and over and over in the letters. Personally, while I am sure printing only the “exciting” ones might marginally increase readership, this is suppose to give everyone a voice. My letters go on the same page as the guy who’s angry the city hasn’t gotten to his downed tree branches yet–we both have a right to heard. It’s up to the public whether they listen.
20
Sometimes, Sheri, the secret to being interesting is to find a different way of looking at things, and not just “bang the drum a little bit louder”. But its not easy…
03
No John,
give your wrists a break.
20
John…. you really DO think you are intelligent, don’t you? Oh my.
00
I have tried all kinds of new approaches. On my wind site, I explained how wind works by comparing it to a bakery. However, you can’t get past the bottom line that wind fails as an energy source and climate change really isn’t good science. The analogies only go so far.
20
Actually thats not a bad analogy, the bakery down the road from me runs out of bread by 9 am.
20
Brookes says:
John, you don’t look good in denial.
40
Like meets like. And?
20
Now come back and answer Joe, BilB. She’s provided links to her claims that you are wrong.
Read those links and give us the benefit of your knowledge.
90
Speak up Greg – I can’t hear you over the sound of crickets.
50
Deafening, isn’t it ! 🙂
Gunna have to buy a megaphone !
41
He gave a good rant above, but I didn’t see him address any of Joe’s points made.
I tried to encourage him. It looks like I didn’t even get close.
30
“The fact is that science is still coming up to speed to develop a full understanding of the multiplicity of ways in which human activity damages the environment…”
So, until we finally ‘come up to speed’, we can pass global edicts to drastically lower standards of living in western nations and suppress development in the third world.
Let’s hope we come up to speed soon.
80
“science dunce spouting ideological diatribe ”
You are exactly as you describe…. why should Jo publish your trash here ?
Your underlying ignorance on every subject you touch on is obvious to all.
81
Sounds just like you BilB.
Ok BilB. Explain to us, in your own words, how CO2 “damages the environment”, keeping in mind that atmospheric CO2 levels have been far higher in the past and the fact that at current levels plants are actually struggling.
Do you also believe that CO2 is “pollution”?
101
The killer to me is that nobody has yet published a quantitative link between global temperatures (imperfect as that concept is) and GHG concentrations in the atmosphere.
Attempts at calculating a verifiable Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity have been so unsuccessful that the IPCC recently declined to give a figure, giving instead a wide and not very useful range of estimations (but omitting those estimates that were published as inconvenient, low figures).
There is no scientific joy in following a hypothesis that man-made GHG cause warming, when it cannot be quantified to usual scientific standards.
That is enough argument.
110
Couldn’t agree more with this. Scientists
– exaggerated the influence of acid rain
– falsely predicted that climate change would wipe out 20-30% of all species
– falsely predicted warming would cause the collapse of the Antarctic ice shelves
– falsely predicted that tropical cyclones were on the increase after Katrina
– falsely predicted that the Arctic Ocean would be effectively ice-free by 2013 (IPCC now thinks a 50% chance of being ice-free by 2050)
– falsely predicted that children in England would grow up never seeing snow (I live in the most snow-free area of England. Last Winter my teenage children got sick of the sight of the white stuff.)
– falsely predicted in 2007 that climate change could reduce crop yields in some African countries up to 50% by 2020.
When scientists start coming up to speed, they will realise that human activity has a much more trivial impact on the environment than they claimed. They will also start to see the worst impacts recently are through the building of wind farms.
220
It is pretty hard to argue that:
“While [temperatures] have been higher than before the past 15 years, they have not increased in line with fossil fuel emissions, just as they failed to do over the 1948-77 period. This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.”
Is anything other than “Wrongheaded and simplistic”
It’s simply not that simple. Even if you are a skeptic… it’s just not that simple. It is the exact kind of letter should have you guys tearing your hair out because he’s wrong (even if he is right about AGW)
243
Tell me anything you’ve ever said, Matt, that isn’t completely wrongheaded and simplistic. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Seriously, Matt, not only is the burden of proof entirely upon alarmists to absolutely prove their case for “action” through accurate quantification of the exact human contribution to our current global climate, but also the onus of proof is upon alarmists that the costs of that so called action are entirely commensurate with the adverse consequences that are proven to be likely to occur (by showing detailed cost/ benefit analysis), while also demonstrating exactly how and by what mechanism the temperature can be altered and by what amount this “investment” can be expected to produce the said reduction.
Unsupported assertions, suppositions and guesswork is simply not good enough, and if the CAGW paradigm is shown to eventually be false, those responsible for producing such irresponsible speculation which then leads to substantial economic losses to taxpayers should be sued, especially if they have misled or deceived those same taxpayers to obtain money under false pretences. It is clear to me that if climate scientist were prepared to only offer advice knowing they were financially liable for the accuracy and consequences of being incorrect, we would be hearing a totally different emphasis in their statements and a far more measured, responsible and conservative response to the uncertainty in the data would be occurring. It is only because they are not sufficiently professional to warrant their opinion financially that they feel emboldened and unfettered to suggest any hysterical extension of the facts to try and force unwarranted acknowledgement of certainty.
I think this shield of immunity by which alarmists feel protected may become increasingly tenuous and the threat of financial loss may lead to recanting much of what is presented as “fact” currently more accurately as largely unsubstantiated speculation.
321
Well maybe it is that simple. The argument seems correct to me. I agree with Des Moore. If you have a better explanation of why CO2 causes warming but CO2 increases do not correlate with temperature (which has stayed the same), then lets hear it?
130
there are natural cycles of warming and cooling that are completely integrated within mainstream climate science. there is nothing that suggests that CO2 is the only thing that is capable of warming (or cooling)… it is totally reasonable there will be some other forcing that is cooling things against CO2 warming. The fundamental problem with Des’ letter is that nowhere in the scientific literature does it say that each year where CO2 is rising will be warmer than the year before it. nowhere. thus stating that what is expected actually happens cannot prove or disprove anything.
027
Wasn’t the hockey stick in science literature? Maybe I missed the downward trend in all that upward shooting of the end of graph. Actually, if you can produce a graph that shows a possible downward trend or flattening, that would be great. I look forward to seeing the link.
Oh, and there’s that pesky graph at SkS that shows “realists” see the trend line shooting up and up and up. And only the “skeptics” see possible stairsteps. In fact, it says skeptics are wrong, wrong, wrong for using a trend that has steps. So we should disregard that silly argument about the “no stepped trends” now? Now that it hasn’t come true, of course.
90
sorry sheri that does not flow from what I was saying sorry. a graph showing the CO2 impact on temperature would always go up, but that is different from a graph showing total temperature. In 50 years I can’t tell you when the next La nina event would be, no one can, so you don’t graph that there will or will not be such events… but they happen and they don;t prove anything wrong.
Here’s a heap of science with cycles:
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/08/how-hot-should-it-have-really-been-over-the-last-5-years/
022
Sorry, Mattb, but until the models can predict, including the natural factors, they are useless for policy assessments. If nature overcomes CO2, then there is NO way to predict the effect of CO2 in the future. Therefore, there is NO way to scientifically react to the assessment. Which one assumes is why bullying and authoritarian behaviour is what is used to push AGW.
Example: You have a car in which the speed of the vehicle always goes up when you push on the gas (we know that to be true). Rigged into the car is a random switch that puts on the brakes and randomly disengages the transmission. Knowing that pushing on the gas always increases speed is worthless as far as figuring out trip time, etc. Worse, the driver is being told he absolutely will crash if he keeps pushing on the gas, even though it’s entirely possible the brakes and transmission will prevent that from ever happening. He has totally insufficient data to make any scientific assessment of the situation until he knows when, for how long and how often the brakes and transmission override the gas pedal. In addition, if the driver chooses to exit the car, he has to do so at whatever speed he’s going–he cannot actually make the car stop (that CO2 can stay in the air for decades and decades–so in our example, the gas stays on for some period of time after the accelerator is disengaged. How long is unknown–only a guess). AGW says go ahead, open the door, exit the car at whatever MPH, then buy a horse and be safe, assuming you survive the exit.
110
“Sorry, Mattb, but until the models can predict, including the natural factors, they are useless for policy assessments.”
Are you serious? many natural cycles simply CANNOT be predicted. but that has no impact on whether something is a useful tool for looking in the future. I can’t predict the weather next July 22nd but I can make a good policy assessment that people would find umbrellas useful in winter.
017
Recommending an umbrella is a far cry from demanding the reduction of CO2 planet-wide. Unless the umbrella costs several billion dollars and redistributes wealth. (Last year, your recommendation would have been a complete waste–we got 1/2 inch of rain all summer–luckily, there were not millions of dollars involved, huh?)
One cannot “look into the future” (unless we’re back to the ESP thing). AGW is based mainly on the idea the world will warm. So instead of shutting down fossil fuels, use them to adapt. WAIT!!! We can’t do that! We have to stop burning fossil fuels. If I was to venture into the ESP thing, I’d say this is all about money and nothing about climate. But, of course, who can predict???
100
And there you have it ladies and gentleman. Matt, you have now joined the skeptic position as this is what we have suggested all along. There is NO way to apportion effect (or quantify proportionality, or separate cause from effect even) of a myriad of internal climate system, solar (TSI and non-TSI), cosmic and galactic influences that shape our climate. Therefore the ability to modify the climate is potentially NIL, while the ability to deliberately tamper with that natural system and guarantee a positive outcome (rather than even a catastrophic negative one) is NIL.
Can you not see, Matt, the utter futility of meddling with a system which you don’t have the vaguest idea of all the significant factors involved? Hence, that such speculative ideas as seeding the oceans or the atmosphere to lower temperatures and/or to reduce CO2 is certifiably insane, while ruining the economies of the western world is ridiculously ill-conceived lemming-like behaviour?
So Grasshopper, now it only remains for you to snatch the pebble from my hand, then you will be ready to leave.
220
“people would find umbrellas useful in winter”
Always have, always will.. often useful in summer, spring and autumn as well.
You are not predicting anything.
You are saying that the climate is acting normally, as it has and will.
Seems your little analogy shows that climate has not changed.
60
MattB,
Are you claiming that CO2 causes temperatures to go higher irreversibly? That while we have high CO2 we will always have a higher base temperature +/- any natural variation?
I don’t think proxy evidence supports this notion.
50
The sum of all the climate forcings create the temperature. That is, the temperature is not independent of the physics of the situation.
So yes, higher CO2 (GHGs) levels will create higher temeratures, +/- any other variation. Those things that drive us to ice ages for example clearly overwhelm any CO2 impact in the other dirction… or at least they have done in the past.
THere is no magic switch that would suddenly make more CO2 cool things down, and I’m interested to see where you think the proxy evidence suggests otherwise.
I’m not sure the above is controversial from either a warmist of skeptical perspective.
19
MattB Oct 18 at 1:05 pm –
The experimental evidence for a CO2 effect is so lacking that anyone who tries to exploit it is guessing.
You do not need a magic CO2 switch if the CO2 effect is insignificant.
It is not enough to show by experiment that light into CO2 generates heat. It is further required to show that such heat hangs around and is not nullified through loss to space in a short time. This second part is the main worry. I can’t even see the experts agreeing on where the main heat is generated.
Besides, many are convinced that heat anomalies in proxies precede CO2 anomalies, throwing questions about cause and effect.
What you are writing – and I agree with this – is that past natural variations have been large, as measured in proxies. I’m asking why they can’t be large now, absent any effects of CO2.
80
G’day Matt!
Des Moore neither stated that the temps would have to increase every year nor did Des Moore write that there are no other forcings at work. Another straw man from the king of straw man arguments.
The effects of CO2 are monotonic according to the CAGW theory. So, the heat has to be going somewhere. The scientists who support this scam are flummoxed by the pause in warming which is why Tremberth wrote a paper that says that the heat went into the ocean deep.
Conveniently, the amount of heat is so infinitesimal as to fall within the error bars. Not one scientist or model predicted even the remote possibility of the heat being absorbed into the oceans or the hiatus which is occurring. Moreover, there has never been an instance in the past where temperatures plateaued or declined because the heat suddenly decided to hide in the ocean deep.
Santer, et al stated two years ago that 15 years was not enough to discern a trend but that 17 was. It turns out that his statement was nothing short of hubris! Now, he has to eat those words as the warming did not come roaring back as anticipated. As time passes the rate at which temperatures would need to increase to meet the IPCCs predictions is becoming more and more incredible.
The reality is that CO2 is a minor climate forcing. As the world fails to continue to warm in accordance with the models this scam will be consigned to the dustbin of history and taught in schools as an example of scientific activism gone wild.
300
Oh rubbish eddie. absolute rubbish. It’s the “This makes incorrect” that is the problem. it does not make anything correct or incorrect. don’t go trying to cloud things with your cheap car salesman routine… again.
126
“it does not make anything correct or incorrect.” Gotcha!!!. That’s new age epistemology at it’s finest. Having read your posts I now think I know what makes you tick. It’s to do with one of the worst words in the English language, that being “faith”. Faith is a concept that allows people to be rigid in their beliefs without actually having to reasonably justify or verify them. It makes people intellectually lazy, possibly fatalistic and very ripe for coercion. It is most associated with religion but quite often is a hallmark of political zealots. I bet you you could trace the backers of every evil political movement to legions of their faithful. I don’t want science to be about faith. I want it to be about pure unadulterated reason. It certainly doesn’t need cheerleading journalists or rent seeking politicians. It shouldn’t need them. The mere fact that some think that it does should ring alarm bells for any rational person. Quite simply the fact that you would continue to argue unwaveringly with everyone here (many of whom are obviously far smarter than you) suggests to me you are a captive of your faith. Which is why you’ll never make any headway here.
40
““it does not make anything correct or incorrect.” Gotcha!!!. That’s new age epistemology at it’s finest.”
Rubbish… the statement provest nothing. It is an irrelevent statement from which no conclusion can be drawn. Noting to do with faith – where did you rustle that up from.
011
Everything to do with faith, YOUR faith since your science is collapsing yet your belief is unwavering.
80
CAGW will be discussed in the same class as Lysenkoism.
20
Matt, you used a straw man and got caught with your pants down.(Nothing to see here folks (literally) so move along.)
Besides your usual juvenile temper tantrum that you display when I hand your intellectual ass to you, my comment was factually correct. Care to show otherwise?
BTW, I would never try and sell you a car. Now, the Brooklyn Bridge, that is another story!
50
it’s not a straw man… it’s what des said!
“This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.”
as i say you disagree with him but argue with me? interesting…
12
Des says. “This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.”
I disagree
Eddy says “The reality is that CO2 is a minor climate forcing”
meaning he disagrees with Des too. Interestingly he argues with me and says Des is right… which is it Ed?
122
Matt you are consistent. Telling half truths the way you do probably makes you an effective politician.
I never posted anywhere on the web that CO2 has absolutely no influence on climate. It is such a minor forcing that other forgings have overwhelmed it and thus the hiatus in the rise in temps.
Care to show me where Des said that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas or has absolutely no influence on temps?
Most skeptics agree that CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas. But, you already know that, don’t you, Matt? Then again, you have never let the facts get in the way of embarrassing yourself have you, Matt?
You spin so much straw into bogus arguments that you must have been the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz in your last life!
50
“Care to show me where Des said that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas or has absolutely no influence on temps?”
here: “This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.”
03
From what I read Matt he said that fossil fuel emissions do not cause temperature increases. So, man contributes a small fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere and that small contribution constitutes a claim that the total CO2 in the atmosphere has no effect whatsoever on temps and that there is no greenhouse effect from CO2? That is beyond a stretch and another example of your total lack of ability to think critically and logically.
You have knocked down an argument Des never made. You used a straw man. You are in a hole Matt so quit digging!
50
Eddy you are defending an argument Des never made. I’m saying the one he actually made is wrong. it
s your strawman dude.
03
“Eddy you are defending an argument Des never made. I’m saying the one he actually made is wrong. it
s your strawman dude.”
You do love to obfuscate. I never made an argument for Des. I merely showed using logic and reason that just because one believes that burning fossil fuels does not cause global warming does not mean that one believes that CO2 does not act as a greenhouse gas.
I believe, as do most skeptics, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that along with other greenhouse gasses, primarily water vapor, keeps temps on earth from being the same as the moon’s. What most skeptics don’t believe is that man’s contribution to the CO2 content of the atmosphere will have a discernable effect on temperatures.
“The fundamental problem with Des’ letter is that nowhere in the scientific literature does it say that each year where CO2 is rising will be warmer than the year before it. nowhere. thus stating that what is expected actually happens cannot prove or disprove anything.”
The above quote from you is something Des never said. It is a straw man.
What he wrote was,
“While [temperatures] have been higher than before the past 15 years, they have not increased in line with fossil fuel emissions, just as they failed to do over the 1948-77 period. This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.”
He was talking about multi year “pauses” in warmth. He never stated, “each year where CO2 is rising will be warmer than the year before it.”
You wrote it, Matt, not Des. You used a straw man so put the shovel down before you embarrass yourself further.
20
Like the Phlogiston theory.
40
Des Moore Says:
Mattb says:
Peter C says:
Mattb says:
Peter C says: The Emporer has no clothes Matt. You are trying to cover him up with a sheet.
110
Problem with your argument about natural factors MattB is that this is a new one for public face of climatology. It is nothing more than an excuse for a failing theory, just as Lenin developed the bogus theory of Imperialism to explain away the failure of Capitalism to collapse and Stalin developed conspiracy theories about economic saboteurs to explain away the disaster of communism. Climatologists have spent years trying to suppress natural temperature increases, now they bring it in to explain away the lack of temperature increases.
The mark of true science is making predictions that are capable of being false. A mark of pseudo-science are predictions as precise as those of astrology.
130
“Problem with your argument about natural factors MattB is that this is a new one for public face of climatology.”
That’s news to me.
08
“That’s news to me…..”
According to Mattb, we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
The IPCC’s view of the science, consistently held since the 1990s and brought up time and time by ‘climate activists’ like you , is that CO2 is the key driver of modern climate change, and that natural variability is too small to count in comparison. This is the “mainstream” view of climate science, and it is what is programmed into all modern climate models.
I didn’t realise that Minitrue has revised the historical records to now report the that CO2 is not the key driver anymore.
What about the recent statement from the IPCC which says that the planet is warming and that they are 95% Certain Climate Change Is Man-made.
So if Global Warming is man-made, it obviously rules out ‘natural forces’.
70
well your “natural forces” have only resulted in a pause, not a cooling, which may otherwise have happened. A slow unrelating CO2 forcing, overlaid with up and down natural variations, leaves to an increase but with some periods increasing faster and some not so fast.
07
.
I appreciate that is now the “consensus” point of view, MattB (having run out of other excuses).
But have you ever stopped to consider how utterly implausible it is as an explanation?
70
I don’t think it is implausible, but I accept it may be wrong.
06
Not implausible?
To work the way the “consensus” claims, requires the application of what I term the:
“ALICE IN WONDERLAND FEEDBACK FORCING FUDGE FACTOR” (AIW 4F) Effect.
Since what is claimed cannot possibly exist without the AIF 4F Effect, and since nobody in the “97%” has even mentioned it, let alone acknowledged the need for its existence, let alone explained it, then I can only assume the whole “natural variation” hypothesis remains totally implausible.
70
Mattb….
Do you understand the following?
CO2 is the key driver of modern climate change, and that natural variability is too small to count in comparison.
So nearly one third of CO2 emissions occurred since 1998, there has been no warming in spite of CO2 being the key driver of modern climate change.
A rational person would argue that CO2 is not the key driver, natural factors overwhelm the effect of CO2 or/and feedback is overwhelming negative.
100
Mattb–The oft used “it’s just a pause but it WILL get warmer” sounds exactly like a psychic who predicted a lovely wedding for her client, only to have the whole thing blow up and not happen. The psychic then shifts to “This was not the person who you will marry. You WILL find your love soon and have that beautiful wedding.” No time limit, no hard data, no identifying the actual groom–all of it allows the psychic to keep her clients coming back. Climate change “science” has also found this a useful technique.
70
Maybe then I am mistaken Mattb that natural factors have long been included. You can show how mistaken I am by a couple of references from 2011 or before.
On this sudden inclusion of natural factors to explain the lack of warming, is it not logical to ask why similar natural factors could not similarly explain the C20th warming, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan (Bronze Age) warm period, or the vast leap in global average temperatures from the last ice age?
20
Matty says:
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] “most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” [AR4, Working Group 1, page 10].
The very strong implication there is that human CO2 is solely responsible for temperature increase; every MSM coverage of AGW is predicated on that implication; there are no corrections from the AGW industry; it is therefore very weasel like of you matty to pretend otherwise.
50
“it is therefore very weasel like of you matty…”
Matt weasel like? Wow! You could knock me out with a feather!
Now I remember! Matt compared himself once to a professional wrestler that everybody loved to hate. I believe he wrestled under the stage name of “The Greased Weasel.” 😉
30
“This makes incorrect the theory that fossil fuel emissions cause temperature increases.”
Perhaps a better statement of recent observations, of say the last 15 years or so, is that recent relatively strong annual increases in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have not had any significant impact on global temperature.
When that observation is combined with the generally accepted rule that annual human emissions of CO2 are about twice as great as the annual increase in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 it does give some credence to the view that the theoretical relationship between increasing human CO2 emissions and (global) temperature increases is pretty tenuous and the original statement may not, for all practical purposes, be far off the mark.
70
the fact there are perhaps better ways to say something does not make the initial statement any better.
015
Nice try Bilby, but electrostatic precipitators do not remove gas phase components like sulphur dioxide. They are only effective in removing particulate matter such as soot. That’s why power station stacks don’belch black smoke any more.
190
It is, apparently, important to maintain balance (i.e complete dominance) of the airwaves and print media, under the rationale than “flat-earthers” and “evolution deniers” should not have their views aired. Their ideas are so scatty they must be banned for the public good.
Yet Bob Geldof’s announcement that humanity has only 17 years left before extinction is plastered over the worldwide media in approving, even glowing terms.
Hypocrisy and double standards is what the Left does best.
290
Double speak, double think. Sadly, it’s not just the left either. Human beings disconnect from reality continues to widen–maybe even at hockey stick levels.
40
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
The late Stephen Schneider 1989
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Quark
Star Trek DS9
21
Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld
It’s only the Money that could be spent researching cures to Cancer and Malaria
It’s only the same money that could be used to immunize African children against fatal diseases
It’s the same money that could be spent on useful infrastructure building your nation so your children will have meaningful jobs
It’s the same money that could be spent on feeding the poor
It’s the same money that could be saving the whales
Instead Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld, you would rather spend that money on chasing a reduction in temperature in 100 years that rounded to the nearest thousandth of a degree equals, Zip, Nada, ZERO
Instead Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld, you would rather spend that money burning food for fuel adding to starvation and death among the poor
Instead Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld, you would rather hand that money over to rich moguls in Africa who murder or displace landowners in order to grow carbon credit producing forests on their former lands
Instead Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld, you would rather spend that money on solar panels and windmills that blight the landscape and kill birds and animals, and barely if ever pay back even the CO2 that goes into creating them.
Instead Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld, you would rather rip these billions out of the pockets of the poor and pensioners that cause them to die of cold in the winter because they are too afraid to use their heating.
Instead Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld, you want to reduce CO2 back to preindustrial levels and reduce bio-productivity to a point where 50% of mankind will starve to death.
Yes, Chris Roylance of Paddington, Qld you are such a wonderful moral agent for our planet, a true saint /sarc
Wake up Chris and smell the roses, you know the ones now growing 6% faster because of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere
381
What Roylance is desperate to avoid, at all cost, is for people to think too deeply about the supposed three-way correlation between human industrial activity, the level of atmospheric CO2, and the rise in global temperature.
For a while there, all three tracked together. And while it existed, the correlation was used as evidence for causation. But the correlation between CO2 and temperature has gone. Poof, no correlation, nothing, gone. So the cause of the previous rise in temperature must have been something else, other that CO2.
And if CO2 is not the culprit, then the increase in CO2 from industrial processes, could possibly be quite benign, and may actually be beneficial in the production of food crops.
The last fifteen year “hiatus” has broken the foundations of the scam, and the only defense is now deflection. Oh look, over there, isn’t that Prince Harry?
430
It would be fun to have him debate here, but he woud be such easy pickings. Clearly the chap exists in a logic vacuum and prefers insults over logical debates, eg:
http://m.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/letters/belief-is-no-substitute-for-science-on-climate-change/story-fn558imw-1226579134985
And
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2013/oct/16/climate-change-letters-editor-newspapers-denial-sceptics
Spends a fair bit of time spreading the gospel according to IPCC from the looks of it, but no original thought judging by his posts.
20
Free speech has to be aloud to be free. The Globe Warming Alarmists have had decades of free speech. Would they have liked it if their letters to the Editor were band and their free speech denied them? The theory that they believing did fit the facts as we then knew them back in the late Eighties and early to mid Nineties. But then new more powerful technology came along and then the hiatus of course. Now the facts no longer fit their theory so nice and neatly, and every time someone try’s to talk about that, they the true believers just hate it. They go mad about it and call people Climate Deniers. Deniers are evil and as bad as pedophiles or worse to these people. So if your more up to date on the Climate science than a “believer” and understand that the theory has to fit the facts not the other way round, you like me my friends must be evil or something. If a website or newspaper want to band a us deniers point of view then it should also band the believers point of view as well. What would the believers do and think about that. Also to answer Des Moore, South Yarra, Vic why the was warming from 1977-98, in the seventies emission of cars and industry were reduced at the instance of the environmentalist. Just one simple scientific fact these gases emissions were for the most part Globe Cooling Gases. These Gases last for up to 5 years in the atmosphere. In 98 China started to increase their emission of these gases and then Hiatus starts. Its as simple as filling a bath with hot and cold water at once and someone turning off the cold tap and the water warming up and then the cold water tap been turn back on,the temperature in the bath water would warm up and then its warming would slow and then stop just as been seen with the Hiatus. Unfortunately 20 million people died and as long as they point fingers at us the Believers are not going to get locked up for their crimes against Humanity that they deserve to be. I’m happy to be call a “denier” just as long as I can call then “mass murders believer” back in return. I wonder why the letters of “Mass Murdering believers” are OK to publish but not the letters of people that are trying to expose them isn’t. Expose the holes and mistakes in their theory’s and beliefs. And hopefully one day their crimes to.
100
This is an issue I’ve had some concern about for a few years, the issue is censorship or moderating an individual’s point of view that is given in a mature, objective, genuine manner in the available media offered by a MSM publication or outlet.
From my experience locally in 2007 there was a lot of leeway given to both sides of the AGW debate but at around 2010 there was a definite moderation and bias towards the warmist side, which coincided with their increased pro AGW news and advertising, most of the time my comments were simply not posted even though they were (unusually) polite and informed.
Slowly towards 2013 I managed to get my comments posted usually with the prompting of an online post directed to the moderators pleading my right to free speech and their duty to uphold it, I even phoned the papers office where I was directed to an editor and was invited to visit his office if I was still concerned, guess what I did then?, the brief meeting was fine (nice bloke) and he agreed that the moderation process had been less than fair and was going to address it.
I believe there has been a slow backpedaling overall by the MSM to include and increase skeptical AGW articles and comments however there will always be pockets of extreme resistance that will endure for some time still, and I shouldn’t be complaining too loudly as a few local news publications in this country are so heavily pro AGW moderated they might as well not offer the public a platform to start with.
The internet has been the savior for publishing a personal opinion, right or wrong I’ve grown to like the internet.
210
[“So the transit of Venus will be visible from Saturn on December 21 – the very day that the Mayan calendar goes to the next b’ak’tun at Long Count 13.0.0.0.0 and the world possibly ends,” writes Chris Roylance, of Paddington, Queensland (Column 8, yesterday), and we checked – his Mayan calendar lingo is sound. ”Coincidence or not, I’m taking no chances and will be awaiting my fate at the Conrad Maldives Hotel on Rangali Island. Should the end of humanity not transpire, the end of my credit card limit almost certainly will.” We checked this, too – Chris’s choice of a venue to experience the end of the world and/or one’s credit rating is also sound. Damn sound.]
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/column-8/column-8-20120611-2063p.html#ixzz2hyBGJBff
Roylance awaiting the end of the world. A fruitcake ?? or what?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hJQ18S6aag
80
And now you understand why everyone Avoids fruitcake at Christmas.
90
Um, not if the fruitcake has been doused in Cognac and fine liqueurs … my bad.
80
Can’t remembe the first line but the rest fits
“?
But fruitcake has rum
And each little bite turns a man to a bum
And can you imagine a sorrier sight
Than a man eating fruitcake till he got tight”
30
No, not bad at all! Delicious and perfect when fruitcake is awash with fruit and brandy…yum!
30
From Saturn there are also transits of Mercury, Earth, Mars and Jupiter and all their satellites. Granted the Sun is smaller in the Saturnian sky, but the transits would still occur. The date December 21 is irrelevant to Saturn, which turns on its axis more than twenty-four thousand times in one orbit around the Sun.
40
Graham Readfearn LOL
Recording here of him desperately trying to surmise false connections.
http://www.galileomovement.com.au/media/GrahamReadfearn-1_06_11-3_51PM.mp3
Summary here:
http://www.galileomovement.com.au/docs/GrahamReadfearnPhoneCallNotesShort.pdf
More comments from alarmist journos here::
http://www.galileomovement.com.au/restoring_morality_justice.php#H
They’re desperate.
Malcolm Roberts
170
Well, hello fellow warrior.
One does get desperate when one’s ideological back is against the wall…or is that war???
Come a long way since the brain storming in that historic building in George Street years ago. A long way to go yet.
How was that Bandt, scoring political/warmist points whilst houses were smouldering and burning solar panels releasing toxins into the atmosphere?
Makes me more determined to destroy the Greens as stated at that meeting!
70
Mr Roylance probably drove a Volvo before Prius hit the market. After all you can’t carry a case of Chard’ on a bicycle/sarc.
40
Um!
Irrespective of the vehicle part
You can carry a case of Fosters big cans – from experience.
30
A Ian
Blokes like Mr Roylance would not see the practicality of un-breakable containers like “Big Cans”.
Further, judging from his attitude & address ( Paddington Qld) he would not be seen dead carrying a cardboard cask!
20
Nah. A simple White Pages search and a wife in the judiciary can learn a lot about a person in an hour.
20
In the comments section at the Guardian I made the following 3 points:
1) Why would seemingly intelligent people CHOSE to limit their own access to information ?
(its not the skeptics that are effected by censorship – its the readers)
2) Are there any extreme claims made by warmists that should be censored as well ?
3) Much of what the skeptics use as information is scientific as well (the censorship should
only be of skeptic lies not facts apparently).
130
Awkward facts for the AGW believers require extreme censorship. Can’t have the public putting 2 and 2 together and working out who has been robbing them blind over the years can we?
The fact that the models have been predicting a temperature curve that has flatly refused to come about should be enough on its own to put this whole sorry expensive exercise to bed for good.
As an aside, it looks like NSW is coping it bad for the lack of bush land management over the years. The Greens seem to be more about wrecking the environment and letting things go ‘feral’ than about being responsible and rational.. Just waiting for the ABC to tag AGW onto the bush fires…
110
I know a number of people on this list are possibly caught up in the NSW fires right now.
Stay safe.
60
We can stand by for the flow of connections between the current bushfires in NSW by those who never knew or have forgotten the Black Friday Fires on January 13th 1939 in Victoria.
These fires all occurred when CO2 levels were quite low, relatively.
The Black Friday fires of 13 January 1939, in Victoria, Australia, are considered one of the worst natural bushfires (wildfires) in the world. Almost 20,000 km² (2,000,000 ha) of land was burnt, 71 people died, several towns were entirely destroyed and the Royal Commission that resulted from it led to major changes in forest management. Over 1,300 homes and 69 sawmills were burnt and a total of 3,700 buildings were destroyed. It was calculated that three quarters of the State of Victoria was directly or indirectly affected by the disaster.
120
They were terrible fires which culminated in fires in 1945 that in turn led to the formation of the Victorian CFA. The Forest Fire Danger Index FFDI is calibrated to give 100 for the calculated peak index of those fires.
Ash Wednesday is calculated to have had peak FFDIs of 120, and Black Saturday exceeded 200. Figures are hard to put together but there is rising trend in FFDIs howeverthere are so many variables, that attribution is tricky. In general rising temperatures outpace rises in soil moisture levels and the result is increasing fuel loads for a given burning regime.
Fires in 2003 burned for 54 days and were comparable in size.
Fires in 2007 burned for 69 days and were comparable in size.
One area round Myrtleford was burned in both these fires and a portion of that area burned again in 2009.
30
If only they had had the foresight to have a carbon tax in place it never would have happened!
50
And of course, the bushfires that threatened the colonists at Sydney cove, so well described in Watkin Tench’s “1788”. The only earlier records are from [another] Cook, James,who documented the smoke all along the east coast as he sailed up past Pigeon House Mountain-a great view from the top if you don’t mind heights- to up past the Glass House mountains in Qld. I don’t think todays fires are any bigger, it is just that we have so many more humans and habitations at risk
60
What has to stop is newspapers like The Guardian printing illiterate opinion pieces like Graham Readfearn continually writes. Where was the editor? did he/she read his opinion piece and check it for facts or just simple common sense?
The Guardian is quickly overtaking the ABC as the most pathetic left wing rag in the nation.
80
Janama, I think market economics will do it for us. Guardian subscriptions are falling.
220
I suggest billboards. More noticeable and on private land, hard to silence. It’s pricey, but it does get the message out. Idaho has a couple of really good ones about the wind industry.
Maybe a billboard that says “Warmng?” and a graph of the temperatures going down.
80
At what point does one become very concerned about those in power actually censoring and ending free speech? What does examples in history say about that? What authority or system of checks and balances is available to right this wrong?
As a mater of principle, the Mattb’s John Brookes, and a host of Leftists SHOULD be screaming in unison with Skeptic about the necessity of free speech.
But where are they?
70
Mattb and John Brookes may not operate on principle. Liberals/socialists/ ommunists, whatever label you put on them, have only one principle–win at all costs. Skewer your enemy, call names and lie, lie, lie. Those aligned with the leaders of the movement never believe they will fall victim to the censorship later on. It simply is not possible.
As to “at what point”, now might be a good time. Considering in the US there is only one party now–Republicans are just Democrats with different name. The question is, where do you get people to stand up? Historically it seems the standing always came after being knock flat, pillaged and losing everything. We’re not there yet, so I am guessing getting someone to stand up is not happening soon.
There are no checks and balances available. You need people who care about these things, will go into politics and keep their promises. Right now finding such individuals is probably equivalent to find the Higgs Bosen. Had our current politicians been in power in 1776, we’d still be a British colony.
90
Sheri
October 18, 2013 at 1:03 am ·
Nope!
More likely about a dozen different small bitter scrapping, fighting entities calling themselves nations, speaking dutch, french, irish, english, indonesan, possibly chinese after the gold rush plus maybe a few others..
Poor in both spirit and wealth.
Sharing little and calling on their big unintersted by now except for the ores, european nations, the sources of the various immigrant settlers for support.
We are indeed the lucky country, a blessed country compared to so many others in that our forefathers, our politicians and true patriots of past days were foresighted enough to bring all of Australia together as one nation.
With the current debacle that now passes for politics in this nation it will be many a long day before we see their likes again
40
” Right now finding such individuals is probably equivalent to find the Higgs Bosen. ”
Mr Higgs lost his hi-fi speakers?
I’ll look for them with a ColliderScope.
10
yes indeed, however anyone with half a science brain on this blog should be telling Heywood it’s an idiot. I do not agree with censoring free speech, however newspapers should really show some level of critical thinking in terms of publishing letters to the editor. Many many letters go unpublished, so why publish tripe, when that tripe is clearly tripe.
124
So Matt, why aren’t you attacking the Australian for publishing Roylance when he illogically “debunked” Kininmonth with records, when Kininmonth was talking about accurate trends?
211
fair enough… they should publish no tripe of any persuasion.
85
..and yet you get published here continuously. Go figure!
131
So, you admit you only have half a science brain.
Maybe you should try finding the other half.
Dumpster diving. !
41
You seem a little upset Matty. Did your boyfriend find out that your were faking it by spitting on his back?
63
Janama:
Tell me again why saying some people on this blog wouldn’t be great on Jerry Springer? I forget after reading this comment.
20
Trying again–Tell me again why saying some people on this blog would be great on the Jerry Springer show is an insult. I forget after reading this comment (and apparently I lost the ability to type, too).
50
Don’t sweat it, Sheri.
There are some wonderful people on this blog for whom, nonetheless, humour is an unknown and difficult concept.
Personally, I found your thought-picture very funny.
Mangles Matty in the red corner, tagged with Basher BilB, versus Hammer Heywood in the blue, with Masher MV.
Running commentary provided by Spangles Springer on the microphone.
.
“Layyydies and gennelmen. First round, Toothpicks at Ten Paces”.
CLANG
50
MV,
I’ve been watching (and smiling) for most of the day, busy with other things, but looking in occasionally.
Your boxing analogy immediately made me think of this song, and hey people, sorry to link to a music clip ….. yet again.
This is again from Floyd, hey who else, and contains a boxing clip embedded in the song, which in some ways echoes what has been happening here today in this Thread.
Lost For Words
Man, you hear music like this from David Gilmour, and all other guitarists just pale into insignificance.
Tony.
CAUTION: There is the use of an, umm, indelicate word.
20
Now thats funny Rastuz………
Just one question to MattB
.
I must ask Heywood what “it” is or did your lack of english comprehension fail you again and you really meant to say “Heywood is an idiot” thus showing all of us who the real idiot is?
41
Heywood is a non-gender specific poster with a grumpy cat avatar. Man or woman, I do not know.
23
The name Mattb would normally be associated with a person of the male gender however it is just a name, the name Mattb does not give any indication as to whether the user of said name is a male or female does it.
Therefore by applying logic and common sense you must also be defined as an “it”, damn using the words logic and common sense in your presence would be construed as nasty i am sorry, on the bright side though you are once again a winner.
61
I have never heard of a man called Heywood. It sounds like a cat’s name, possibly.
04
I take it back… it appears Heywood is actually a real boys name (rare). 1st time I’ve ever come across it.
21
Its probably……most likely…..not there real name having said that i did once have a teacher called Ms Hey d she was female but then she got married and became Mrs Wood so i suppose using your logic heywood is a girls name
31
I’m definitely of the male gender Matthew. So no need for ‘it’ references anymore.
30
Now that’s a strange comment Rastuz.
23
Strange but curious Mattb ?
31
that sounds like an offer?
13
Settle down cowboy, I think I’ve worked you out.
You are seen as a Troll here when your really Trolling for something else. 😉
They say nothing is as tempting as something taboo.
20
No need to be smutty. We here in NZ have had an overdose of salaciousness in the last week. (Google Auckland Mayor sex scandal). What is it with male lefty pollies?
30
Its actually male leftys in general…. just look at Mattb, backslagger from wayback.
20
Always.
110
The time to worry was nearly 100 years ago. History says those interested in power suppress free speech in whatever way they can. There is presently no system of checks and balances because the press is in bed with the devil.
If Obama decided to try real censorship, who would step up and stop him? If he defied the supreme court, who would step up and remove him from office? If Obama tried to make himself president for life, would enough people rise up to stop it? What actual power do the federal courts have? None! They rely on the Department of Justice, now run by arguably the most corrupt Attorney General in history and a man completely in Obama’s pocket. Would enough states rise up and attempt to stop it? And if they wanted to, what power could they bring to bear against a Department of Homeland Security that now has a private army capable of defeating any citizen uprising and the National Guard, even the National Guard of many states combined?
90
Great paper on past weather events going back to 2AD.
It’s a 15 mb download pdf
60
Just what I have been looking for!
20
Amazing find Janama, It’ll take a while to digest this 1103 pages.
20
Here’s a good one for Flannery.
“In July 1900, there was a major flood at Hawkesbury/Nepean Valley in New South Wales, Australia. The
water level was recorded at 46 feet (14.08 meters) above the sea level height at Windsor Bridge.”
50
I would seriously enjoy seeing Flannery’s Hawkesbury River house under 14m of water, due to flooding from rainfall.
Unfortunately lots of others would suffer too 🙁
20
Propaganda is a form of communication aimed towards influencing the attitude of the community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument. Propaganda statements may be partly false and partly true. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status.[1] Pseudoscience is often characterized by the use of vague, contradictory, exaggerated or unprovable claims, an over-reliance on confirmation rather than rigorous attempts at refutation, a lack of openness to evaluation by other experts, and a general absence of systematic processes to rationally develop theories.
H/t Wikipedia.
50
Of course you, do realise that every propagandist, and pseudoscientist, will dismiss your comment out of hand, because of the reference to Wikipedia? 😉
I would add though, that propaganda must contain a majority of truth, in order to protect the minority of lies that produce the desired outcome.
Similarly pseudoscience must have some basis in real science. You might get away with bending the law of physics, but you mustn’t break them. As the climate catastrophists have discovered with the missing heat (conservation of energy, and all that).
50
And they will no doubt provide their own links to Wikipedia in order to prove it.
70
LATimes = LATrines
30
Perhaps that is why it is read by those people who hang around in the mens room, at rail stations?
40
Reading through some of these “exchanges”, I think maybe we could get some of you on an episode of “Jerry Springer”. (Apologies to those who may not have seen the show–it’s a talk/fight show on TV in the US) I can see it now: “Today, on Jerry Springer, warmist trolls versus skeptic deniers. Battle for the warming of the planet!” The louder and more insulting the whole exchange is, the better. Since we can’t do letters to editor, may Jerry Springer could work…….
20
We are well aware of Jerry Springer here in Australia as he was on daytime TV for years. To equate the discussion on this blog with that TV show is insulting to all who participate and to the blog creator.
40
Thank you! Now I can feed the trolls since their contribution is invaluable and it’s insulting to say they belong on Jerry Springer. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
10
Hey Sheri,
Jerry Springer
wouldn’tcouldn’t rise to the intellectual level of the fight between trolls and skeptics. He’s a bottom feeder.No sarcasm intended.
40
True, but if they yell a lot and pull hair, that’s all it takes. I don’t the subject really matters to show.
10
Sheri,
I would settle for just one honest mainstream news outlet in addition to Fox News Channel. Just imagine what it could do if CNN had some real investigative journalists who were looking into such things as global warming and Obamacare with the intent of understanding them rather than supporting a preconceived position. Better yet if it was ABC (the American ABC), CBS or NBC (not MSNBC).
I expect that’s a hopeless desire. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting it.
20
I have to disagree with the comment “Right now we can’t be sure that the rise from ’77 – ’98 was natural rather than man-made, so I would’ve added the words “more likely” to the last sentence”
We CAN be sure that it wasn’t man made as CO2 emissions increased afterwards while temperatures plateaued. Not to mention the fact that the incline was OBVIOUSLY El Nino/La Nina instigated and coincides with oceanic oscillation as well.
Then there’s also the fact that it has been climbing steadily since the Maunder Minimum well before human heavy industry and warmer in the mediaeval Warm Period ERGO CO2 cannot have caused the warming.
110
I don’t think anybody would disagree with your disagreement.
Unless, of course, somebody would like to disagree with my agreement.
30
The Washington Post will nopt publish any stort, editorial, or letter to the editor that contradicts the fiction of Global Warming Theory.
60
The bush fires were deliberately lit as multiple police reports show. Not to mention the multiple disparate points of origin.
A globalist group is likely doing this to push the global warming scam and to cause destruction, fear, loss of private property and general economic harm, and quite possibly enabling the government to buy the burned land remains cheaply.
It’s well known to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about what’s really going on that globalists want to collapse the economy and society to make everyone poor, divided, scared and weak enough that they will meekly accept a draconian world government that promises to solve the problems.
Fires are one good way to help further this agenda.
A common aspect to false flag attacks is the failure for emergency services to properly respond leading to more damage and deaths.
This has occurred in all the large bushfires of late as it did on 911, 7/7 etc.
51
I can accept your initial assertion. Multiple points of origin are a bit of a give-away.
But the leap from a few bored bogans driving around lighting fires, to something organised by a global conspiracy, is hardly credible. It is also less than credible that every fire crew in the area could be persuaded to finish their breakfast before responding, and agreeing to keep that secret, secret.
And anyway, the evil global conspiracy would probably have much more important things to do, like destroying the utility of the US dollar as the global currency, for example?
40
Easy on the bogans Rereke. Although Sabretruth’s assumptions are a bit far fetched I would not at all be surprised they are indeed warmists loonies…. of the bottom feeding kind we often find hanging around here. Many are clearly Unbolted, Unhinged, Surrealist etc. etc…..
There is indeed a “cause”…. and history shows what some people will happily do for those.
30
I’m always amused at the way both those sides of politics want to dissociate from bogans and claim that the bogans are only on the Other side.
Who’s on the side of the bogans then?
Who’s standing up for bogans? 🙂
00
I’ll stand up for bogans. Where would Australia, for example, be without them? Who would pick up your garbage, stack the shelves in your supermarket and collect the trolleys, who would keep caravan parks in business?…. and who would there be to say “Who gives a flying f*ck!” to all the garbage that’s daily rammed down our throats?
10
.
I’ll stand corrected on this, but as far as I remember, of all the bush fires over the past week or so, the cause of only two have been positively identified. In both cases the cause was arcing power lines.
So much for BilB’s “gold plated transmission grid”, even if JuLIAR did claim it to be true.
Most Australians are about to learn the hard way, that far from being “gold plated”, in most places the transmission grid is falling to pieces through lack of maintenance. Expect plenty more bush fires this summer, caused by arcing and fallen power lines (exacerbated by lack of brush-clearing), plus regular drop-outs during electrical storms, plus the inevitable blackouts from a system attempting to run at 110% and balance useless feed-in from windmills and solar panels at the same time, as soon as it gets hot.
40
The NSW government can’t say they don’t know how much backburning to do.
Interesting document from the NSW EPA “State Of The Environment 2009”.
It says the MAXimum recommended interval between fires in “Wet sclerophyll forests (shrubby subformation)” should be 60 years. Knowing nothing of botany, that just my guess as to the biome these bushfires were in. If it’s any other type then the max interval is actually shorter.
So if nobody can find evidence of major bushfires in these central coast forests during the last 60 years then they were way overdue for a botanic barbecue.
20
We are talking about the same Graham Readfearn who’s been a contributor to Desmogblog since 2011, correct?
The elemental reason why Readfearn, Desmogblog, and any others (who’ve enslaved themselves to repeating the “skeptics are fossil fuel industry shills” mantra) don’t want ‘climate denier’ letters-to-the-editor published is because those letters eventually eventually end up mentioning detailed science-based climate assessments by skeptic scientists, which Readfearn and his crowd doesn’t want the public to know about, and which the various publications never bother to tell their readers about. That’s what prompts those letters to begin with, the sheer mainstream media malfeasance on not telling half the story of the science of global warming.
180
It’s not just the newspapers. Here (with identification removed) is a letter I sent to my Member of Parliament (MP) here in the UK on August 3rd. The MP concerned is one of those who voted for the Climate Change Act. As you see, I kept the tone of the letter fairly neutral and sent a full copy of the Central England Temperature Record as well as the other documentation referred to. I could of course have sent more, but wanted to keep the letter brief.
Now well into October, I still haven’t had an acknowledgement or a reply. I wonder if I’ll get one?
Here’s the letter.
Dear ………
I write regarding the proliferation of wind turbines across the U.K., and suggest that the policies regarding these machines be reconsidered. I’ve stood in the middle of a wind farm to see for myself, looked at the reasons why they’re there – and come to the conclusion that they’re a blight, an industrial nightmare threatening to destroy our heritage (please see the enclosed image of Fullabrook Down wind farm) – and all for little benefit in the real world.
In support of my comments, I present atmospheric temperature data from reputable sources.
These are the U.K.’s Met Office and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), a part of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Division (NASA).
The graph entitled ‘Monthly Mean Global Surface Temperature’ is from GISS. The authors have taken the average global temperature for the 30 year period 1951-1980, and then looked at recent temperature deviations (for the years 1996 to 2012) from that average – the so-called temperature ‘anomalies’ on the vertical axis. This gives a useful idea of temperature changes over a longer period of time. Note that these deviations are measured as fractions of a degree.
The graph clearly demonstrates that global temperatures overall have changed little over the last sixteen years.
Yet during that time carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased from 359.54ppm (1996) to 400ppm (2013), an increase of just over 11%, suggesting that CO2 isn’t in fact the threat to humanity it has been portrayed to be.
I would now like to draw your attention to the enclosed copy of the Central England Temperature Record (CET). This began in 1659. In the right hand column is the average temperature for each year. I find it hard to reconcile the temperatures shown here and also in the GISS graph with the idea that we are faced with runaway man-made global warming, necessitating the erection of thousands of gigantic wind turbines.
Meteorologist William James Burroughs offers interesting insights into the CET in his book ‘Climate Change’ (Cambridge University Press). He comments on a sudden warming from the 1690s to the 1730s, saying that ‘in less than forty years the conditions went from the depths of the Little Ice Age to something comparable to the warmest decades of the twentieth century. This balmy period came to a sudden halt with the extreme cold of 1740 and a return to colder conditions, especially in the winter half of the year.’
He goes on: ‘A more striking feature is the general evidence of interdecadal variability. So, the poor summers of the 1810s are in contrast to the hot ones of the late 1770s and around 1800.’
It would appear that the warmer recent years in the UK are quite normal – and given the recent hard winters, cooler years might be on the way.
I would now like to consider the turbines themselves.
The enclosed data from the Digest of United Kingdom Energy Statistics (DUKES) published in July 2013 (p133) shows that wind energy currently produces slightly less than 5% of electricity generated in the U.K.
Renewable UK, the wind power energy trade association, claim that each turbine saves two thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. This figure is in broad agreement with other internet sources. Earlier this year there were just over four thousand operational turbines in the U.K., making a total of eight million tonnes of CO2 ‘saved’.
This appears impressive, yet on a global scale is effectively zero because the total amount of CO2 from all sources in the atmosphere is some three trillion (3,000,000,000,000) tonnes, and the eight million saving is a vanishingly tiny fraction of this (0.000003, or three millionths).
Moreover, atmospheric CO2 is increasing at an average of about 2ppm a year – that’s 16 billion (16,000,000,000) tonnes, an amount which clearly massively overwhelms any savings make by the U.K.’s wind turbines, or indeed any erected elsewhere, for example in America.
In summary:
1) There is no evidence that global average temperatures have risen since the late 1990s.
2) Nonetheless, CO2 (a trace gas, present in the atmosphere at about 0.04% or 400ppm) continues to rise. This along with the lack of a global temperature increase as described supports the view that CO2 does not represent the threat to mankind it was once perceived to be.
3 The ‘saving’ of CO2 per turbine is essentially zero.
4) The erection of wind turbines continues unabated, with scant regard for the heritage of the British countryside.
For these reasons, the question should surely now be asked as to whether the continued
building of wind turbines is, to use current parlance, sustainable or necessary.
Yours sincerely,
180
Readfearn , the cretin who made an absolute fool of himself trying to debate Lord Monckton, after which he lost his job.
What a NUMBNUT!!
91
What should be banned is effort to limit free speech, as defined by those behind the effort of course.
30
and now for a bit of light relief a short flick from the AGW battle lines:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VImnpErdDzA
40
The truth is coming out, but will not be welcomed:
Thanks to information received today from author, Mr. Bill Streifer, his Russian co-author, reporter Irek Sabitov, and Stanford physicist Kenneth N. Ricci, it appears the destruction of western economies may not be a mere coincidence.
USSR troops found a facility to produce deuterium (H-2) in the Japanese nuclear bomb production site that they captured at Konan, Korea in Aug 1945. Since H-fusion bombs use atomic bomb triggers to ignite fusion of deuterium (H-2), . . .
USSR possessed information to build the first H-bomb and could negotiate for unconditional surrender of Allied countries when they met to form the United Nations on 24 Oct 1945.
That explanation for Climategate and the collapse of Allied constitutional governments will be in the autobiography currently being written, “A Journey to the Core of the Sun.”
A summary has already been posted here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/fuddites/#comment-55802
21
Really? Care to show me some? None of the observational evidence seems to say that …
(Mods – no complaints about turning this into a “Slayer” thread. Jo brought it up.)
70
Now this is at the bottom of some 140 or so comments so i doubt many will get down this far to read this even though it could easily be of very large significance as to the direction that the global climate is now heading.
And the news or trends are not good at all in my humble opinion
The CAGW alarmists might have very good reasons to be running scared although I doubt that they are smart enough to ascertain the real reasons for doing so for themselves.
As many denizens of this blog might already know, western and central Europe have over the last 5 consecutive winters, experienced some of the most severe winters seen there since records began.
Furthermore the predictions for this imminent upcoming 2013 /14 European winter, the sixth consecutive winter, are that it will be especially severe and cold with heavy snow falls already reported in germany and the UK some 2 months ahead of the accepted normal dates.
“Most Severe Winter Start In 200 Years!” + Euro Municipalities Now Ignoring Foolish Predictions Of Warm Winters –
&
Meteorologists Continue Foreseeing Harsh European Winter, “The Worst For Decades” + Greenpeace Update –
[ The Russians locking up the Greenpeace protesters who are being charged with piracy with the possibility of quite a few years jail time after ramming a Russian oil barge is the bonus in this post. And the Russians don’t appear to be kidding so congrats to the Russians for doing something that should have been done a long time ago to rein in the Greenpeace thugs / eco-terrorists.]
I quote from the Sunshine Hours blog [ originally via Lubos Motl’s blog “the reference frame”. Lubos Motl is a string theory physicist who dabbles in climate. The physics section of his blog fries my limited number of brain cells ] which is using the Northern Hemisphere data and temperature trend graphs from the blog Sunshine Hours
Quoted from “the reference frame”
From the Sunshine Hours blog
There are a series of graphs accompanying these blog articles which our hostess might be interested in posting to convey the message that, yes, the alarmists might have a very good reason to become alarmed.
It’s just that they are too damn stupid and ignorant of the real temperature trends to realise that all their angst and fear about warming is for nought because they have their plus and minus signs on the global temperature trends all reversed.
140
Yep it can be fun when realists play the “short term linear trend” game that so many warmists like to use, and is, in fact what the whole global warming faith is built on. (a brief period between 1960 – 1998 when the temperature record was manipulated to show that temp and CO2 were both heading upward at the same time.)
The imaginary hypothesis of CO2 warming the atmosphere can ONLY be sustained when they concentrate on choosing the lowest point in the created record as the starting point.
Playing this game with the last decade or so of data, that has so far mostly avoided the gross manipulations of the pre-satellite record, really gets their knickers in a knot. 🙂
91
The best rule would be to ban all letters except mine.
20
For some real science journalism you need to check the latest killer, the air you breath…. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/outdoor-air-pollution-a-leading-cause-of-cancer-who/story-e6frg8y6-1226742047579
Its a masterful stroke by the UN’s World Health Organization and moves Carbon Pollution beyond arguments related to temperature variability.
I don’t have a calculator to calculate the percentage of cancer deaths attributable to air born pollutants but in 2010 there were 223,000 deaths worldwide which number alone should form sufficient reinforcement to do something NOW.
111
I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with trying to reduce particulate and other pollutants
but….
CO2 is NOT a pollutant at any concentration that will ever occur at whole of atmosphere levels.
120
And its always been known that particulate mater and other combustion products cause respiratory and cancer issues. This is nothing new at all !!
Why the heck do you think so much has been done to clean these things up, so that the only major outputs H2O and CO2, both of which are highly necessary and beneficial for the environment at any likely atmospheric concentration.
There are FAR LESS people (percentage wise) getting ill from airborne pollution nowadays than there were a few decades ago. But sure, places like China do need to figure out how to control their real pollution output.. They shouldn’t WASTE funds trying to control CO2.
Wasted funds has been the REALLY BIG issue with climate alarmism.
So much could have been accomplished with that money..
But its now gone.
A despicable waste cause by despicable people, all based on a lie and a fabrication.!
30
You beat me to it Andy.
Just a headline from the UN Foundation
NEW STUDY ESTIMATES 4 MILLION DEATHS FROM HOUSEHOLD COOKING SMOKE EACH YEAR
A completely solveable but dreadful blight on the capabilities of our civilisation, Completely solveable by providing clean coal generated power from large central power stations with modern scrubbers and air cleaning equipment just as the Chinese are doing right now.
Fought at every turn by the rabid warmists and greens because the CO2 from the coal or oil or gas might harm the environment or the planet or something thought up by their lurid, fevered imaginations.
Human beings other than themselves don’t count at all in their lexicon.
See my just posted post on Africa’s minimum energy needs by 2030 at post 55
20
“Household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels kills 4 million people annually”
Its more likely it will be my cooking, rather than any smoke, that will kill me !! 🙂
20
Show me a death certificate with CO2 as the cause? Unless you are trapped in a disabled submarine or a mine shaft that caved in I just can’t see it happening.
BTW, we are talking about CO2 gas not carbon.
31
Eddy, it might be rare but it does happen
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/09/14/georgia.mcdonalds.death/index.html
co2 should be respected where ever it is used especially in high pressure cylinders (as used for beverage dispensing and fire extinguishers, definitely contain enough volume to raise the co2 level around them if the space is somewhat limited and poorly ventilated.
Even brewers need to be cautious when entering fermentation vessels.
You probably don’t need to worry about sniffing your beer though.
20
There was a similar incident in Phoenix, Florida. Then there’s this one: http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/11/us/north-carolina-hotel-deaths
CO2, if you get a high enough concentration, is lethal. Crime shows on TV have had plots involving dry ice and people killed while sleeping as the CO2 built up. One article said that the Phoenix McDonalds had a CO2 detector but it was not working–meaning warnings are available but if you don’t check the monitoring devices, the devices are more than worthless.
Many things in life can kill under the proper circumstances. It does not mean we should stop using them. People will always make mistakes that can be lethal. The goal is to minimize the occurrances. We need to be wary, as Mark D. states.
20
16 Oct: Bloomberg: Thomas Penny: U.K. Food-Bank Users Return What Needs Cooking as Bills Rise
The number of users of food banks in the U.K. tripled in the past year, with some of them abandoning cooking because of increasing energy prices, an anti-poverty charity said.
The Trussell Trust, which supports food banks that provide three days’ emergency supplies to people in need, said today 355,985 people had been helped between May and September this year, compared with 113,570 in the same period last year. It wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron requesting an inquiry…
Food prices have risen by 12.6 percent more than inflation over the past six years, outstripping wages, and higher energy prices are likely to see more people forced to choose between eating and heating this winter, the charity said. Food-bank clients are giving back food items that need cooking because they can’t afford to turn on the electricity, the trust said…
Food-bank use increased from 2,814 people in 2005-2006 to 40,898 in 2009-2010, when Labour lost power, the Trussell Trust said. Food banks supported by the charity were used by 346,992 people in 2012-2013.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-15/u-k-food-bank-users-return-what-needs-cooking-as-demand-triples.html
17 Oct: Guardian: Angela Monaghan: British Gas raises energy prices by 9.2%
Centrica move – which follows SSE’s price rise last week – will add £107 to the average annual dual-fuel bill with British Gas
Electricity bills will rise by 10.4% and gas bills by 8.4% from 23 November. With usage and regional variations this equates to an average price rise of 9.2%, Centrica said…
Ian Peters, managing director of British Gas residential energy, said: “I know these are difficult times for many customers and totally understand the frustration that so many household costs keep on rising when incomes aren’t keeping pace. We haven’t taken this decision lightly.”
He said the best way to keep bills down was by increased energy efficiency, and urged customers to check whether they were eligible for measures such as insulation…
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/17/british-gas-energy-prices-gas-electricity-centrica
00
if i was one of the elderly men in the picture illustrating this article, i’d be complaining to LA Times:
10 Oct: LA Times: Julie Cart: finds link between long-lived humans and species extinction
The longer humans live, the more likely they are to push other species to the brink of extinction and, conversely, spur the rise of invasive birds and mammals species.
That sobering news comes via a new study from UC Davis, published in the journal Ecology and Society…
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-longevity-species-20131010,0,2439.story
Social-Ecological Predictors of Global Invasions and Extinctions
Aaron Lotz and Craig R. Allen
University of California, Davis, Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
…The debate as to what aspects of humanity are most responsible for environmental degradation has been ongoing since the 1970s (Commoner et al. 1971, Ehrlich and Holdren 1971). Regardless of particular mechanisms, current governance regimes have been largely unable to mitigate the decline of the Earth’s supporting services (United Nations Environment Programme 2007).
One of the unresolved problems at the forefront of global environmental concerns is the increase in biological invasions and extinctions…
Studies have recognized the need to couple human and environmental systems (Turner et al. 2003, Fischer et al. 2012) and have noted the convergence of environmental and financial markets (Sandor et al. 2002), the importance of social-cultural dynamics in natural resource management (Stratford and Davidson 2002), and the tremendous impact of humans on the environment in comparison to other species (Fowler and Hobbs 2003). Numerous studies have focused on only one aspect of the social-ecological relationship, for example carbon emissions (Kratena 2004), water (Postel 2003), and human population growth (Struglia and Winter 2002)…
We found a positive relationship between life expectancy and the percentage of endangered and invasive species in a country. Previous studies found no relationship between life expectancy and environmental impact (Dietz et al. 2007). The overall trend in high-income countries with improvements to the Human Development Index, which includes human life expectancy as one of its variables, is toward a disproportionately larger negative impact on a country’s ecological footprint…
Increased life expectancy means that people live longer and affect the planet longer; each year is another year of carbon footprint, ecological footprint, use of natural resources, etc. The magnitude of this impact is increased as more people live longer…
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss3/art15/
BBC Radio spoke to Aaron Lotz last nite about this study and it ended with Lotz saying his parents lived to 100, but now we need to better manage the elderly population! BBC has not put this interview online.
10
http://www.youtube.com/embed/HMnMgX7GiOA?rel=0
[Please do not post links without a short explanation of what it is about, preferably in your own words. mod oggi]
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Mod oggi, my apologies and you are quite right.
If you could edit my post to reflect the following comment to accompany the video clip,
“The longer humans live, the more likely they are to push other species to the brink of extinction and, conversely, spur the rise of invasive birds and mammals species.”
The video displays a graphic case where man has interfered with nature… but nature wins!
(Warning. May not be suitable for young children.)
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i thought this writer was mocking this, but not at all:
(2 pages) 12 Oct: MarketWatch/WSJ: Paul B. Farrell: World’s top problem is overpopulation, not climate
Commentary: 2,000 scientists focus on the wrong problem, not world’s biggest
Warning: Mother “Earth didn’t replace the dinosaurs after they died” in the last great species extinction, reports Nobel physicist Robert Laughlin. She “just moved on and became something different.” But so what, you say, that was 65 million years ago. Right?
Wrong. Today humans are the new dinosaurs, the next species slated for extinction, warn 2,000 United Nations scientists. Soon. We’re also causing the extinction, even accelerating a new timetable. Signing our own death warrant. Not millions of years in the future, but this century. Thanks to our secret love of climate change. Yes, we’re all closet science deniers…
So nobody’s dealing with the world’s biggest problem. Listen:
Scientific American says global population growth is “the most overlooked and essential strategy for achieving long-term balance with the environment.” By 2050 world population will explode from today’s 7 billion to 10 billion, with 1.4 billion each in India and China, and China’s economy nearly three times America’s.
In “The Last Taboo,” Mother Jones columnist Julia Whitty hit the nail on the head: “What unites the Vatican, lefties, conservatives and scientists in a conspiracy of silence? Population.” But this hot-button issue ignites powerful reactions. So politicians won’t touch it. Nor will U.N.’s world leaders. Even if it’s killing us.”
Five years ago billionaire philanthropists meet secretly in Manhattan: Gates, Buffett, Rockefeller, Soros, Bloomberg, Turner, Oprah and others. Each took 15 minutes to present their favorite cause. Asked what was the “umbrella cause?” Answer: Overpopulation, said the billionaires.
Jeremy Grantham’s investment firm GMO manages about $110 billion in assets. He also backs the Grantham Institute of Climate Change at London’s Imperial College. He says population growth is a huge “threat to the long-term viability of our species when we reach a population level of 10 billion” because it is “impossible to feed the 10 billion people.” We don’t need more Big Ag, we need fewer small mouths to feed.
But how? Bill Gates says let’s cap global population at 8.3 billion, even as his vaccine and contraceptive plans extend life expectancy. Columbia University’s Earth Institute Director Jeff Sachs says even 5 billion is unsustainable. To stop adding more is tough enough. But how do eliminate two billion from today’s seven billion total?…
The dinosaurs didn’t even know what hit them in the last great species extinction. We know what’s ahead. We can make the big, tough decisions … if only we wake up in time
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-report-proves-humans-are-the-new-dinosaurs-2013-10-12?link=MW_latest_news
VIDEO: 15 Oct: CNN: Alan Weisman: We don’t need another billion people
Editor’s note: Alan Weisman’s new book is “Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?” (Little, Brown and Co). He is also the author of “The World Without Us,” a 2007 New York Times and international best-seller translated into 34 languages.
There’s a direct link between those two hard-to-grasp figures — the more humans, the more carbon…
Third, we can use incentives such as carbon taxes and moral persuasion to bring down energy consumption. Again, these help, and must be encouraged. Although a number of countries and some U.S. states have passed carbon taxes, consumption is exceedingly hard to control in a world where, for example, even the world’s poor masses, increasingly living in cities, manage to get cell phones. Whether the power is pirated or not, they plug in their chargers nightly…
Last, however, if we can’t control consumption, we can control the number of consumers. This is technology we already have, and it’s cheap. Every woman, everywhere, could have contraception…
Population management can’t do it all; we need a full-court press on all fronts. But if we want a secure future, we need to start with the fastest, most affordable way we know to limit carbon emissions: by bringing fewer emitters into the world.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/15/opinion/weisman-climate-population/index.html?hpt=hp_mid
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17 Oct: UK Daily Mail: Tamara Cohen: Britain’s lights could go out next winter! EU green directives have left grid ‘close to limit’
Capacity is so stretched that a cold spell, combined with routine problems at one or more plants, could overwhelm the system and see blackouts in 2014-15, their damning report claims…
However, coal and gas-fired power stations are being forced to close as they do not meet EU regulations on pollution, while four nuclear plants are scheduled to be phased out by 2019…
Dame Sue Ion, fellow of the RAE: “We have quite a lot of renewable energy being installed but it is intermittent, so unless you have gas to back it up it’s a problem.
Whether the turbines are onshore or offshore, if it’s a cold winter that is not windy then only a very small amount of energy will be generated.’ …
And now China’s allowed to control our nuclear plants by Jason Groves:
China will be allowed to own and operate a new generation of nuclear power stations in Britain despite warnings the move is a ‘serious error’ that could undermine national security…
Officials insist the national security implications of extending China’s reach in the UK have been fully considered.
French energy firm EDF has been negotiating with three Chinese nuclear giants on the Hinkley C project. Initially Chinese companies are likely to hold a minority stake in any project, but this could rise over time to a majority.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2464131/Britain-facing-high-risk-blackouts-5-years.html
10
Well, I am watching ABC24Live, and they are in a panic about the bush fires, showing burnt out houses in the Blue Mountains.
Can’t help but noticing all the burnt houses with solar panels lying around in the ashes.
If only these people had spent those thousands of dollars on something useful to fight and protect the houses like a sprinkler system on the roof and sensible fire break protection.
Nope, they bought solar panels and let the undergrowth build up. Then they panic.
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Maybe they can get compensated by suing the government for not doing enough to stop global warming.
There is some leftist judge, somewhere, that will side with them
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You missed Adam Bandt saying ” GREENS Deputy Leader Adam Bandt has been accused of using the destructive NSW bushfires to launch a political attack on Tony Abbott’s climate change policy…
He tweeted: “Why Tony Abbott’s plan means more bushfires for Australia & more pics like this of Sydney.”
The photograph depicted a burnt-out and barren landscape on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island after a bushfire, and the post linked to Mr Bandt’s column entitled: “By repealing the carbon tax, Tony Abbott is failing to protect his people”.
I’ve already noted that Adam Bandt is a hypocrite, having three years ago preached that “trying to turn a tragedy so quickly into some kind of perceived political advantage” was “outrageous”. He is also deceptive, given that the main cause of the fires’ ferocity is not global warming, which the Greens once claimed would bring permanent drought, but the heavy rains NSW got instead, promoting a huge growth of grass. ” Full story at http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/pciture_this_adam_bandt_is_not_just_a_hypocrite_but_a_fool/
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Its disgusting. The man has no shame.
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What do you expect from a lawyer? Far too many of these science illiterates in all our political Parties.
Here’s Pickering’s “Dear Mr.Bandt” response:
http://pickeringpost.com/story/dear-mr-bandt-/2175
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I predict that David Karoly will join in the fearmongering quite soon (if he hasn’t already, I haven’t seen the TV news in the last 2 days). Dr K has previous form for that sort of ambulance chasing and he’s no stranger around here.
If he doesn’t pipe up about it within a week I would interpret that as a sign that he’s given up, gone to ground, and is looking to exit from global warming.
40
I am also worried that the universe is unsustainable. Quick! Give government power to control all human activity!
50
What about the Klingons?
60
Have you been tapping Christine Milne’s phone again?
50
Maybe we should propose making idiot Green policies that have no common sense like this illegal and see how much they appreciate it. After all according to them we should be “re-educated”.
40
Excellent post Jo.
I have heard more and more stories in the media recently exploring the theory that “the science” is just not being properly communicated and that’s why 100% of worthy opinions published arnt AGW cookie cutter rhetoric pieces, but only a mere 97%.
I think even the most rusted on greeny would have to admit the overwhelming amount of coverage in the mainstream media for at least 10 years has been shrill and uniformly in accordance with green policy. The rare occasions informed, well spoken sceptics get a run, its the usual suspects and the medias Ad Hom. does in their credibility with most average people in 10 seconds flat.
The church of AGW has had the “science”, the media and the money all their way for a long time now and yet they continue to bleat about being drowned out. Censoring counter opinion is about all they have left between here and making scepticism a criminal offence. Actually I understand that’s a proposal for a second term of a Shorten Labour/Green coalition Government.
The simple fact is, the arguments are garbage and even with all that propping up, they still fall as flat as a vegetarian, organic, locally produced, fair trade, sustainable pancake.
60
I occasionally do weather chat at Weatherzone forum and noticed that the closure the Climate Change discussion thread
It is with sadness and regret that I announce that Weatherzone has made the decision to close to Climate Change forum.
The administration and moderation team have been left with no choice but to take this course of action due to the persistent and unrepentant disruptive behaviour of a small number of forum users over a long period of time.
They seem to be a wise, well mannered bunch, so this was a surprise.
Perhaps we need a psychologist to explain this passion towards opinions that proceed down blind alleyways. I don’t care if I am wrong, I just clear evidence that I am.
40
This sort of thing is not without precedent
http://spice.stanford.edu/docs/134
20
The same is happening in the US – the LA Times:
Los Angeles Times riles climate-change skeptics by banning letters: A Closer Look (poll)
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Thank you Jo. “It’s only money”, my modelling predicts there are taxpayer funds being redistributed in there somewhere.
40
Governments in Australia ought to make bush fire hazard reduction during autumn to early spring MANDATORY for all councils, especially ones in major bushfire prone area (ie. basically everywhere except inner city areas)
Use the “direct action” funds to fund it. !!
40
.
Basically you are describing South Western Western Australia from after the Dwellingup bush fires in 1961, up until about ten years ago when the Greenie filth took over state government departments and local councils.
In the intervening years all rural property owners had to maintain firebreaks around all boundaries, all grassy paddocks had to be slashed before the “bushfire” season, the Forestries Department maintained an extensive system of firebreak roads, there was an extensive, planned, regular schedule of “burning off” in forests to reduce trash, access roads were maintained with 25 yards of cleared land either side, and access ways for electrical transmission lines were maintained clear of trash and scrub, as extra firebreaks.
In the 40+ years from the early 1960’s until 2007, there was NO loss of life or major property damage until 2007, by which time the Greenies had undone all the previous good works. In 2007 SW Western Australia suffered its first major property loss through fire – ironically, in Dwellingup.
100
Question for the Aussies, my impressions of Australia is that it’s a place where fire has always been a part of it’s ecology. Why then do so many Australians insist on building their homes in amongst dense bush?. Also, have any rocket scientists tried to link any of your latest fires to AGW?
20
Yep. The rocket scientists never miss an opportunity – and every time there’s a heat bump, they call in the PR Department for a media release…
“A paper produced by the Royal Meteorological Society last year showed that there was a significant increase in bushfire conditions between 1973 and 2010. The study found that fire weather rose dramatically in 16 of the 38 sites examined across Australia. Experts have cited climate change as the cause behind the shift in bushfire seasons.” The Guardian.
10
BilBy the liar,
Three separate comments by this clown above:
At 6.43pm he says he’s off to clean up the bush fire mess.
At 8.46pm he comments on a comment by AndyG55.
At 9.20pm he’s arguing with Heywood.
At 9.21pm he say’s it’s been a long day!
1. I would like to flesh this out fully but I have to go and clean up some of the mess from these nothing whatever to do with Cliamte change mid October wild fires.
2. You’ve really got to calm down Andy. You’ll break a finger typing that way.
3. Yes, you’re right. I can’t prove it, but it does fit a trend. I am going to have to wait to see if there are more events to make the connection more solid. What I am suggesting is that global warming set up the situation to make the probability of fires more probable.
4. more likely duh its been a long day
So between 6.43pm and 8.46pm, you’ve cleaned up the mess from the CAGW induced October Wild Fires. I call BS in a big way. You leave your computer, go to the scene of the mess created by the WILD October Fires and then come back in 2 hours and argue with AndyG55.
TWO bloody hours BilBy, not counting travel there, changing into the correct clothes (probably Lycra for greenies), clean up the mess, travel back, shower/change etc, and then back into the fray of arguing on the keyboard. What did you actually clean? Your little broom or rake in the front yard?
And the big final, “it’s been a long day“, screaming out to all and sundry.
Build a bridge and get over it BilBy, you are now crowned the biggest clown ever to visit this site.
You are the biggest BS ever, even beating Tim Flannery and Al Gore.
BilBy the Bullshiteer.
30
And the expert view of the cold and hot.
The temperature at Canberra Airport fell to minus 3.4 degrees about 6am on Friday, eclipsing the previous October record of minus 3.3 degrees, in 1957. Weather stations at Braidwood and Goulburn both registered minus 5 degree temperatures about dawn.
Meteorologist Ben McBurney from Fairfax-owned Weatherzone said the freezing start in Canberra was in complete contrast to the fiery conditions just 200 kilometres to the north.
“It’s an amazing contrast – such conflicting air masses ahead of the trough. Before we had a very, very hot air mass, a dry air mass, and that dry air stuck around as well, and the cold front behind that was full of very cold air,” he said.
This bloke is as intelligent as the CAGW followers like the Mattyb’s, Brookies, Bilby’s etc, who can’t accept that real weather occurs throughout Australia every day, every week, every centuary without attaching the alarmist tag.
Bunch of blind, parasitic, Greenie fruit-loop idiots.
40
I didn’t know that Weatherzone was owned by Fairfax. Bugger. Now I’ll have to cancel my subscription. 🙁
30
I remember when I lived at Bungendore and worked in Queanbeyan.
On November 22nd 1998 (iirc) I was driving to work at about 8:30am, and all the pine trees up the top of the ridge out of Bungendore were covered with SNOW !!!
20
Mind you, it hadn’t snowed all winter, but had been BL**DY COLD !!
Certainly it was rather bizarre to see snow at that time of year.
(Might have been 1997, memory fad..i…n……g )
30
Wanting to ban any alternative view but their own is a trademark trait of the Global warming cultists worldwide, and probably our best asset in slowly alerting those who still have some thinking brain to analyse their way through the fog of propaganda, and the maze of agenda that have taken root in what should have been a very clean and honest scientific endeavour to discover and unravel the mysteries of Climate. To ensure that whatever nature serves up, we choose the best advice and the most credible way of dealing with the issues.
We didn’t get that initial response from science and Climate gate was a real eye opener, to those that were comfortable in accepting the notion that those in “authority” must know better, that using commonsense and asking questions was futile. I got quite a shock to find how unshakeable the warmist belief mindset had become, and to see how far the leading proponents would go to slime anyone who dared to chance their arm in looking at the science, or listening to atmospheric scientists who questioned the direction this was going. The warmists were so sure of themselves that they could invent the most shocking allegations against individual scientists, and almost got away with such malicious slander.
The great thing has been the rise of internet blogs and the gradual move of scientists to use them to correct both the science and open up data to public scrutiny much to the dismay of the inner cabal of this fraud on the world. Of course the unscrupulous among them will fight tooth and nail to maintain their agenda, their authority and the grant money so wrongly appropriated. The shut down cry has been prominent, the attempts to elicit emotional rather than scientific truth and prevent any truth reaching through to Media, is really the cry of the wounded megalomaniac the ones who crave regulating and ruling the lives of ordinary people and creating a grand place in their own mythology aware that dream is crumbling around them.
No wonder they are trying to counter – attack to wreck, use lies, in their war against science and our society, they want a new world order where they are kings, but I have news for them, they really are the useful pawns, who will be cast aside, and history is littered with such examples. Keep up the good work Jo, never give in we will keep the B**stards honest and in turn keep science honest and that is a worthwhile cause.
30
Now this post might appear to be off topic but it’s relevance to both this thread and the carbon capture thread and the constant, continual, almost nauseous theme of the rabid warmists and green watermelons is the need to reduce energy consumption. To be done by forcing the populace to conform to their ideology through making energy unaffordable or by making it scarce and / or hard to access. All supposedly to reduce CO2 output and thereby “save the planet” from a horrifying melt down or some such fanciful and fear driven product of their fevered, dark hued and grossly corrupted imaginations.
Quote from Jo’s headline posting;
especially when the only thing humanity has to lose from reducing emissions is money.
Chris Roylance, Paddington, Qld
If we want to have an example of where the greens and the rabid alarmists believe humanity, under their enlightened [ sarc/] guidance and harsh strictures of course should be forced to go down the track of minimum power and energy consumption, we only have to look at a recent study by the Center for Global Development on Power Africa’s [ an Obama initiative apparently ] future requirements for energy just to meet the barest of needs.
There are a couple of very enlightening graphs which are central to the argument which unfortunately i can’t reproduce here on this blog which tell the story of Arfica’s absolute minimum energy needs and the incredible increases in energy generation that will be required by Africa over the next 17 years to 2030,
When you see the data below please be aware that this is what the western greens and the CAGW alarmists as per the quote above from Jo’s headline post, are trying to perpetuate and are doing their damnedest to prevent the africans ever getting access to that energy and power that has the capability in even small increases per capita / person, to make their lives so much better , so much healthier, to live longer, suffer far less and make for a far more comfortable existence that will still be far, far removed from that we westerners take for granted every second of every minute of every day.
And that is exactly what the rabid crazies of the CAGW and green cults are trying to stop the Africans, let alone the other billions of human, human beings just like us, in Asia and South America from ever getting that access to energy to improve their lives.
It might damage the environment you know!
All in the name of the supposed results from some totally unproven, unvalidated, unverified very dodgy computer modeling of the global climate, modelling that can’t even accurately forecast the phase and strength or longetivity of the single greatest weather and climate controlling phenomena on this planet, the ENSO, less than 3 months from when it begins is great shifting of the seasonal weather and climate patterns around the globe.
The headline of this short article is;
How Much Power Does Power Africa Really Need?
To quote;>>>>>>>>>
We’ve been surprised at all the attention Todd’s new fridge has gotten recently—including comments saying the comparison against African per capita electricity consumption isn’t fair because many of those people don’t have refrigerators. Exactly our point!
Sparse grids and limited incomes make it hard to own or operate modern appliances, but plenty of Africans would consume a whole lot more energy if it was available. Regular rolling blackouts suggest that countries aren’t producing enough energy to meet current demand, let alone what would be necessary to achieve universal access by 2030 (possibly a post-2015 MDG).
So Africa definitely needs a lot more energy, but how much more? And will the White House’s new Power Africa initiative make a serious dent? It turns out answering these questions are no easy task. (Roger Pielke explains how estimating global energy demand is difficult and offers some jarring take-aways.)
Asking “how much energy production does Africa need to meet demand?” is not too different from asking “how much food should Africa grow to end hunger?” Any estimates require big assumptions about baseline data, undernourishment thresholds, nutrition gaps, average diet composition, availability of land, seeds, and fertilizer, seasonal growing periods, efficiency of distribution networks, spoilage rates, and so on. The result would be highly imprecise, but would provide some sense of the magnitude.
To estimate unmet energy demand, we made a series of assumptions using averages, conjectures, and imperfect data. On top of that, there are non-obvious conversions between power usage (measured as a rate over time) and energy capacity (the maximum electricity that can be produced or used at any one instant). Perhaps the most critical assumption concerns the definition of modern energy access (see a terrific essay on this question by Pielke and Morgan Bazilian). Does access mean being able to turn on two lightbulbs? A television? A fridge? What about an air conditioner? Is the goal to reach the IEA’s minimum “energy for all” threshold of 250 kWh/year, which is about the same as the average consumption in Bangladesh? Or is Tunisia a better model at 1260 kWh/yr? Or South Africa at 4800 kWh/yr? (Or, gulp, 13,395 kWh/yr for the average American?)
We’ve made an attempt at such an estimate here for current demand in the six countries targeted by President Obama’s new signature initiative, Power Africa. In each we use three different thresholds: the IEA’s minimum and the average consumption profiles for Tunisia and South Africa. (The full, nerdy explanation of the demand model is explained below.) Admittedly, it’s very, very rough, but the size of the gap is massive.
Highly explanatory Graphs are included at this point in the article
The figures, we hope, speak for themselves. Our immediate take-aways are:
As these countries grow more populated and richer (they are all posting impressive real GDP growth rates), the demand for electricity is going to be significantly greater than the modest targets currently envisioned by the international community.
Nigeria’s ambitious electricity expansion plans to reach 10,000 MW are only the tip of the iceberg. To reach Tunisia-level consumption, it will need at least five times that level of generation.
Even if Power Africa is a success, there’s a whole lot more pent-up demand out there!
—————————————-
Explanation of estimates
The figures show the various amounts of energy required to satisfy demand at differing levels of consumption in each of the Power Africa countries. It compares the Energy for All (“E4All”) threshold of 250kWh per capita (which, as their minimum for rural areas, serves as a lower bound estimate) with the actual average consumption levels for Tunisia (1260 kWh per capita) and South Africa (4800 kWh per capita). This presents a distinct illustration of the disparity between the definitions of energy access. For example, under the “E4All” projection, an individual could only power two standard 60W light-bulbs. Under the midrange “Tunisia” projection, an individual could power four light-bulbs as well as a fan, TV, and electric stove. Finally, under the “South Africa” projection, an individual could power all that and also a standard refrigerator, 50L water heater, washing machine, and one AC window unit.
The first figure shows the levels of current (i.e. most recent, 2010) consumption vs. projections of current unmet demand if universal access were extended today. The second figure shows current consumption against future demand (at 2030) due to population growth. The projections were estimated using the following models:<<<<<<<
[ end quote]
More following;
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This is a good post ROM:
“We utilize energy from carbon, not because we are bad people, but because it is the affordable foundation on which the profound improvements in our standard of living have been achieved – our progress in health and welfare.” (the increase in life expectancy should also be mentioned) If one travels to different parts of the world where people are not blessed with our energy resources and; therefore, the electricity and fuels provided by these fossil fuels, one can see just how hard and in most cases short life is. I was recently in Tanzania and the brownouts/blackouts where there was electricity made it difficult to get much done and this is true all over the country. Along with this dilemma, one must recall the banning of DDT based on a book by Rachel Carson reporting unverified consequences of using DDT has caused the deaths of millions in Africa and other parts of the world due to malaria.
I hope that there are some who remembers when this recently happed: (July 31, 2012) “On Tuesday, India suffered the largest electrical blackout in history, affecting an area encompassing about 670 million people, or roughly 10 percent of the world’s population.”
This is even more interesting regarding this incident:
“India’s power sector has long been considered a potentially crippling hindrance to the country’s economic prospects. Part of the problem is access; more than 300 million people in India still have no electricity.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/world/asia/power-outages-hit-600-million-in-india.html?pagewanted=all
It is nauseating to think that unprincipled anthropogenic global warming idiots think that they have the right to deny so much of humanity the right to the basic benefits that carbon based fuels can bring to satisfy an unproven hypotheses about CO2 being the driver of the climate.
This one comes from a special chapter of the Cleopatra Club – “God will take care of everything. We don’t need to worry about it.”
I would rather rely on some supreme being taking care of this, the earth’s climate, than some bunch of delusional fools running around crying that the sky is falling because of the use of fossil fuels that has improved the lives of humans more in the last 100 years than in all of the recorded history of human existence on the planet. Today in the US, 2% of the population is able to feed the other 98% of the population plus a good part of the world because of the use of fossil fuels. If you contest that, then show me along with showing me the proof of an experiment that shows that the amount of CO2 now present in the atmosphere has one damn thing to do with the earth’s climate. It has never done so in the past; so, why would it do so now? Temperature on earth have been gradually increasing since the end of the Little Ice Age or it would not have ended.
It is kind of hard to know just what to believe. I have a few questions for the alarmist. Just which period in the past would have qualified for your climatic “utopia” since you believe that things are so bad now?
Would it have been before 1900 when the life expectancy for men was 46.3 and 48.1 for women in the US; by 1998 according to a Berkeley study, that had improved to 73.8 for men and 79.5 for women.
http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html
According to another study in 1930 the life expectancy for both sexes was 59.7 years. and in 2010 it was 78.7 years.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005148.html
“Despite the rise in real income, by the end of the century life was still hard for the average European, compared to 21st century European standards. In Britain the average male was dead at 51.5 years of age, the average woman at 55.4. In France these figures were 45.4 and 50, in Spain at 41 and 42.5. Figures for the Russians, available in 1895, have the average male dead at 31.4 years and the average woman at 33.3.”
http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h49soc.htm
I would think that people being able to eat better food and with less effort to produce that food would have a significant bearing on this increase in life expectancy. It seems like weather extremes are not a new thing, and how much CO2 has to do with it is nothing, zero.
1963 One of the coldest winters in England and Wales on record lasting from 22 December 1962 till the thaw started on 6 March 1963.
1936 February–March: Record cold followed by rapid warming causes flooding across several northeastern states, killing 171 and leaving 430,000 homeless[32]
April: The Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak of tornadoes kills 436
July–August: A heat wave across the Midwest and Northeast U.S. claims 5,000 lives. Record temperatures from this event still stand across fifteen states.[33]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extreme_weather_events
Read About The World’s Worst Disasters
http://www.epicdisasters.com/index.php/site/comments/read_about_the_worlds_worst_disasters/
CLEVELAND – “The science is settled!” That’s the slogan used by the pro-Global Warming crowd. but is it really? Below is a list of 800 papers by respected and awarded scientists that question or contradict the Man-Made Global Warming Theory (AGW). The science is NOT settled… This list was compiled by Andrew over at PopularTechnology.net. This is worth sifting through!
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_news/800-reasons-to-be-a-man-made-global-warming-skeptic#ixzz1ozSTAnOv
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While banning letters to the editor is indeed disturbing, I’m not sure how much difference this will make. Many of the “true believers” for climate change are young–not the type to read newspapers. They live online, where the truth can posted without editing. As newspapers become obsolete, and they will, this will be irrelevant. As Jo noted, free market will take care of the problem in many cases.
In the meantime, send letters to editor where you can and keep on blogging. 🙂
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Which begs the question, “What is truth?”
Truth, on the internet, descends to majority vote by general agreement. Cyberspace creates memes which become vérité du jour — truth of the day – before the collective conscious moves on.
Truth, on the internet, therefore becomes whatever the collective conscious deemed it to be, at the time it moved on.
This is why other blogs are judged by their sources, on this blog. That is why Wikipedia is not credible as a source, anywhere. And, in the case of climate science (which I never dignify with capital letters), it is the reason why many of the published papers are not credible either — because they are generally the result of group think; in the way the modellers defined which calculations were required, and how they should be accomplished.
The faster we communicate – the less we actually know.
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I guess I wasn’t clear enough. The truth can be posted online without editing–but it won’t be marked with arrows and flashing lights to tell you what is the truth and what is not.
“What is truth”? is much too complex a question for the comments section. Since we are dealing with science, the “truth” is where the evidence leads us. There are some truths that remain unchanged (like gravity works) and some that are simply the best answer we have. For some of the population, yes, truth becomes the “truth of the day”. This is unavoidable. What the internet offers is an uncensored access to many different views. Articles that threaten to expose climate science for the scam it is are banned on some sights but published on others.
There is no mechanism by which we can disseminate just the truth. It’s something people have to be willing to look for. If the source of information has blocked one viewpoint, then the truth may very well be suppressed. It’s a matter of being able to present many different ideas for people to evaluate. Their failure to do so is beyond our control. You can’t make people believe what they don’t want to. You can only give them the information. It’s up to the person to decide whether to go with the group think or run with independent thought and evaluation.
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Chris Roylance says: NASA’s empirical data shows that “2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years have all occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record”. Then how can what follows still be the record high temperature for the earth?
I find these FACTS to be of great interest considering how this desire of the alarmist to purport that the earth is burning up and has a bad fever. If that is true, then why do these temperatures, some of which were set 131 years ago, still stand?
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001375.html
This link shows the same temperatures except for what I present below:
http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/weather_extremes.php
This is interesting, at least to me because it shows that even temperature records can be changed after standing for years but note that none have been broken recently.
“On 13 September 1922, a temperature of 58°C (136.4°F) was purportedly recorded at El Azizia (approximately 40 kilometers south-southwest of Tripoli) in what is now modern-day Libya…………. The WMO assessment is that the highest recorded surface temperature of 56.7°C (134°F) was measured on 10 July 1913 at Greenland Ranch (Death Valley) CA USA.”
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00093.1?af=R&
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John Swallow (posting no.57)
I’ve never seen the gimmicky need for ‘record temperatures’ – there will arguably always be a ‘record temperature’ somewhere on the globe – a high or even (dare we say it) low value.
I prefer S. Fred Singer’s view expressed on the ‘Watt’s Up With That’ website some time ago when he commented ‘…and the global average temperature simply isn’t good enough. It has to be based on geographic variation, or variation with altitude, temporal variation or much more detailed measurements.’
I always like to have a look at the Central England Temperature Record – it’s buried in the MetOffice website (I wonder why?), but worth downloading a copy if you haven’t got one. It’s interesting to note that at no time since 1659 has the average annual temperature ever exceeded 11 degrees Centigrade, including the slightly warmer years of recent times – yet global CO2 levels continue to rise. It appears that the UK has somehow escaped the catastrophe.
I give the whole man-made global warming saga five more years, then hopefully sanity will return.
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I have no idea what Carbon500 is talking about when they say: “I’ve never seen the gimmicky need for ‘record temperatures’ – there will arguably always be a ‘record temperature’ somewhere on the globe – a high or even (dare we say it) low value.” I suppose that they don’t see the need for records to be kept in any field of human record keeping, whether it be the temperature or a type of sporting event. Records are records that have been recorded for a reason and I feel that Carbon500 does not understand the point of my comment to be that if the earth is burning up with a high CO2 induced fever, then why have these longstanding records not been broken? These temperatures can certainly be interpreted to have a bearing on what the average temperatures at the time were and Carbon500 can look that up and verify that information and here is a site for them to start with.
An area I’m interested in is Dubois, WY, the town near where I grew up, and also Moran, WY. The annual mean of monthly mean max. temperature-RAW(F) 1895-2011 clearly shows that 1934 was the hottest year and the end of the graph shows a decidedly down turn trend. Moran, WY is another area of interest to me and obviously it shows the same trends with 1932 being the highest since the record began in 1895.
U.S. Historical Climatology Network – Monthly Data
You have chosen site 486440, MORAN 5 WNW, Wyoming
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?_PROGRAM=prog.climsite_monthly.sas&_SERVICE=default&id=486440
Even after deceptive & biased methods used by Hansen’s GISS were used, RECORDS were not broken.
“Rural US Sites Show No Temperature Increase Since 1900
Using data downloaded from NASA GISS and picking rural sites near, but not too near, to urban sites, a comparison has been made of the temperature trend over time of the rural sites compared to those of the urban sites. 28 pairs of sites across the U.S. were compared. The paired rural site is from 31 to 91 km from the urban site in each pair. The result is that urban and rural sites were similar in 1900, with the urban sites slightly higher. The urban sites have shown an increase in temperatures since then. The rural sites show no such temperature increase and appear to be generally unchanging with only ups and downs localized in time. Over a 111 year time span, the urban sites temperatures have risen to be about 1.5C warmer than the rural sites. So, the much touted rising temperatures in the U.S. are due to the urban heat island effect and not due to a global warming such as has been proposed to be caused by human emissions of CO2 due to the combustion of fossil fuels.”
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2009/12/rural-us-sites-show-no-temperature.html
Even after these flimflam methods of collecting date were employed, no all-time high temperature records were broken.
“Perhaps the key point discovered by Smith was that by 1990, NOAA had deleted from its datasets all but 1,500 of the 6,000 thermometers in service around the globe.
Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population, particularly considering that these stations provide the readings used to compile both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) datasets.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
Yet as disturbing as the number of dropped stations was, it is the nature of NOAA’s “selection bias” that Smith found infinitely more troubling.
It seems that stations placed in historically cooler, rural areas of higher latitude and elevation were scrapped from the data series in favor of more urban locales at lower latitudes and elevations. Consequently, post-1990 readings have been biased to the warm side not only by selective geographic location, but also by the anthropogenic heating influence of a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI).
For example, Canada’s reporting stations dropped from 496 in 1989 to 44 in 1991, with the percentage of stations at lower elevations tripling while the numbers of those at higher elevations dropped to one. That’s right: As Smith wrote in his blog, they left “one thermometer for everything north of LAT 65.” And that one resides in a place called Eureka, which has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to its unusually moderate summers.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
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If you look at unadjusted data the 30’s indeed were “the hottest decade on record”….. Worldwide.
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John Swallow comments that: “I have no idea what Carbon500 is talking about when he says: “I’ve never seen the gimmicky need for ‘record temperatures’ – there will arguably always be a ‘record temperature’ somewhere on the globe – a high or even (dare we say it) low value.”
The point I’m making John (and I apologise for not making myself clear) is that isolated spikes don’t have much bearing in the broad view.
‘Record temperatures’ have become a propagandist’s tool.
As an example, let’s have a look at the Central England Temperature Record. In 1666, there’s a July temperature of 18 degrees Centigrade – a record high. In 1701, there’s a new record high for July of 18.3 – the highest temperature for July in 40 years. Fast forward to 1757 and the July record’s 18.4, and so it goes on.
Average temperatures over a year need to be viewed with caution as well.
1659,1754,1902, 1956,1902, and 2010 all have the same average temperature over the year (8.83 degrees Centigrade).
This of course doesn’t tell you anything about what happened during each month for a given year.
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Carbon500 said “‘Record temperatures’ have become a propagandist’s tool.” and I agree but Carbon500 also needs to understand how long it has been that these “tools” have failed the anthropogenic global warming fools by not being broken, in the case of the highest on earth ever recorded at the Greenland Ranch, which holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on Earth at 134°F & was set on July 10, 1913, or 100 years ago. That the AGW crowd was making a big deal out of this is obvious and it is also obvious that the record still stands, to the chagrin of folks like this group who try to make themselves out to be non biased observers of the climate. It is also obvious that record temperatures occur during record producing trends in the climate’s temperature trend at the time the record is broken.
“Climate Central Researching and reporting the
science and impacts of climate change
Heat Wave May Threaten World’s Hottest Temp. Record Published: June 26th, 2013 , Last Updated: June 27th, 2013
A brutal and potentially historic heat wave is in store for the West as parts of Nevada, Arizona and California may get dangerously hot temperatures starting Thursday and lasting through next week. In fact, by the end of the heat wave, we may see a record tied or broken for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth.[…]While each heat wave has ties to short-term weather variability, increasingly common and intense heat waves are one of the most well-understood consequences of manmade global warming, since as global average surface temperatures increase, the probability of extreme heat events increases by a greater amount. Data already suggests that heat waves have are becoming more common worldwide.
[…]Some scientists think the jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere is becoming more prone to such extremes due to the changes wrought by melting Arctic sea ice from global warming, and it’s an active area of scientific research.”
(It seems that Mark Twain had an answer for this bit of nonsense above: “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
– Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, Ch. 17)
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/heat-wave-to-threaten-worlds-hottest-temperature-record-16161
Climate Central mentions recent heat waves but for sure will not tell any of their readers about this one below:
“Marble Bar heat wave, 1923-24
The world record for the longest sequence of days above 100°Fahrenheit (or 37.8° on the Celsius scale) is held by Marble Bar in the inland Pilbara district of Western Australia. The temperature, measured under standard exposure conditions, reached or exceeded the century mark every day from 31 October 1923 to 7 April 1924, a total of 160 days.
The highest temperature recorded during the record spell was 47.5°C on 18 January 1924. There have been higher temperatures at Marble Bar, with the highest recorded being 49.2°C, on 11 January 1905 and again on 3 January 1922.”
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Perhaps Chris would understand it better if an analogy was used.
Chris, let’s say you invest with a firm that predicts a 5% return on your investment every year based on their investment model. For 20 – 30 years, you indeed get 5%, giving the model some credence. Then, for the next 15 years, you earn nothing. You complain to the firm that you are not making what they predicted. Their reply, “But look, you have more money than you have ever had before!” Would you, Chris, accept such an explanation and believe their investment model was valid, hmmm?
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Nothing could be further from the truth. The Greenhouse Effect is not mentioned in any legitimate spectroscopy textbook – except as a “strawman” argument designed to be ridiculed. The GE does not exist either in theory or practice.
The idea of the “Greenhouse Effect” was thoroughly discredited almost as soon as it was published in 1896. By the 1920s scientists had demonstrated that the atmosphere was heated by purely physical processes [almsot entirely by the evaporation and condensation of water].
THe GE was almost totally forgoten until the 1960s when environmental activists, inspired by Carl Sagan, rediscovered the work of Arrhenius and Tyndall. Environmentalists distorted the work of these scientists and relied on their reputations to further an anti-industrial agenda.
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Bananabender: I offer up this challenge to the alarmist and they have never answered it with a verifiable, repeatable experiment that shows that CO2 has anything to do with the earth’s climate.
Alarmist need to provide us with the experiment that shows that CO2 does what some maintain as far as being the driver of the earth’s climate. I do not need to be reminded of Tyndall’s 1859 lab experiments that do not prove that humanity’s CO2 emissions are warming the planet. In the real world, other factors can influence and outweigh those lab findings and that is why these experiment must deal with the real world and not computer models that do not have the ability to factor in all of the variables that effect the earth’s climate. If they can not provide a verifiable experiment regarding the present amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and how it effects the climate and creates their anthropogenic global warming, then believing that it does so is akin to believing that Santa Clause is real and you need to be good to get something left under the tree. One could also ask for the mathematical derivation of CO2 forcing.
It is a fact that real scientist devise experiments to either prove or disprove their hypotheses and welcome people to try to disprove them so that they can move on. They sure do not say that the science is settled and the argument is over because there are REAL scientist out there doing REAL scientific work that are not blinded by some agenda that they support so that they can get more “research” money or money to fund a boondoggle renewable energy scheme that will never work.
Albert Einstein addressed the theory of quantum entanglement. In Dec. of 2011 this experiment was carried out:
Quantum Entanglement Links 2 Diamonds.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=room-temperature-entanglement
Speaking of Albert Einstein, he had an answer for those continually trying to claim that there is a consensus for their flawed, unproven hypothesis regarding anthropogenic global warming, such as John Cook, for climate change or what ever the charlatans now call it: “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of the truth” Albert Einstein.
Einstein was right, neutrino researchers admit.
“The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action.
“The neutrinos were timed on the journey from CERN’s giant underground lab near Geneva to the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, after travelling 732 kilometres (454 miles) through the Earth’s crust.”
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-einstein-neutrino.html#jCp
Jasper Kirkby photographed inside the CLOUD chamber.
“There are a lot of observations suggesting that particles hitting the atmosphere might affect the production of clouds and, in turn, the planet’s climate”, continues Kirkby. “However, given the complexity of the climate and the many parameters involved, a clear answer doesn’t exist yet”. “For the first time, we want to do definitive, quantitative measurements of the underlying microphysics”, states Kirkby. “CLOUD has been designed to follow all the processes involved from the birth of the embryonic aerosols, which then grow to a big enough size to become the seeds for cloud droplets. CLOUD will also study the effect of cosmic rays on the cloud droplets and ice particles themselves”.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2009/47/News%20Articles/1221077?ln=de
Henrik Svensmark, being a scientist, devised experiments of his own to test his theory and that demonstrates how science works. It is not about a group of self serving charlatans proclaiming that “the debate is over” when they have no experiment that shows that CO2 drives the earth’s climate or even provide the mathematical derivation of CO2 forcing.
“Svensmark: Evidence continues to build that the Sun drives climate, not CO2″.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxstzCXSMH0&feature=player_embedded
“New Data Boosts Case for Higgs Boson Find.
The Higgs boson is the only particle theorized by the standard model of physics that hasn’t been conclusively observed in an experiment. The model describes how matter is built and how particles interact.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324077704578359850108689618.html
“Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the Nobel Prize in physics for independently proposing a particle, now known as the Higgs boson, that confers mass to all other particles and whose recent discovery stands as one of the seminal moments of modern science.
Nearly a half-century after predicting the existence of the particle, the pair’s work was confirmed last year, in a nail-biting experiment undertaken at the atom-smashing machine built by the European particle physics laboratory at CERN in Switzerland. That July day, in a packed hall in Geneva, Drs. Higgs and Englert met for the first time.”
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304171804579122832781080304
Have you ever noticed that an alarmist has never won a Nobel Science Prize for anything?
It seems to me that if the experiments above could be devised and carried out, that one showing how carbon dioxide can cause the earth’s climate to act as some seem to want people to believe it does should have been carried out long ago.
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John Swallow: I agree entirely re. the need for experiments using modern monitoring techniques to demonstrate the effects of CO2.
Some time ago I looked over the internet for evidence that this had been done – nothing came up. I emailed the MetOffice – nothing. The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center in the USA couldn’t supply me with details of any such experiment. Indeed, they were impressively useless because the person who contacted me didn’t even know that CO2 had been measured many times prior to the Mauna Loa era!
I also posted this request on SkS. Not a single response from site visitors, nor any comment made by the usual suspects who run SkS – I wasn’t surprised.
I’ve seen computer calculations with no practical work whatsoever referred to as ‘experiments’ (as no doubt you have) – need more be said?
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Carbon500
October 21, 2013 at 8:41 pm · Reply
“John Swallow: I agree entirely re. the need for experiments using modern monitoring techniques to demonstrate the effects of CO2.” That we agree on almost everything is obvious and somewhat boring because I enjoy going to alarmist sites and confronting them with the truth and almost all except for Peter Sinclair at “Crock of the Week”( an example)
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
with Peter Sinclair
Meanwhile – Cap and Trade: Not Only Alive, but Creating Jobs, Revenue, and New Interest
July 12, 2012
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/12/meanwhile-cap-and-trade-not-only-alive-but-creating-jobs-revenue-and-new-interest/comment-page-1/#comment-11936
Also this site:
13 Responses to ‘Frozen Dirt’ and Methane … ‘We Cannot Go There’
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2013/02/video-on-frozen-dirt-and-methane-we-cannot-go-there/#comment-389040
Most of the rest of the alarmist site will allow no dissenting views to be registered such as this delusional individual who, no matter, what will never know the truth:
“Martin; It would appear that you are so afraid of the truth, even though you seldom bother you self by telling what is true but seem to believe that lies are more appropriate, as witnessed in your
“I blew my chance to ask a question. However, Prof. Lindzen kindly invited me to email them to him instead.”
http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/an-open-letter-to-richard-lindzen/
Or this other “Down-under” delusional, thin skinned proponent of this scam, Mike:
Western Australia’s catastrophic forest collapse
http://uknowispeaksense.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/western-australias-catastrophic-forest-collapse/#comment-195
Now to the point, this was sent to me on another site as proof of CO2 influencing the climate. The thing that this sophomoric experiment did not highlight was that unmetered CO2 from canister had to be added to get the results. They could have added water vapor and got the same result.
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
Experiment for CO2
I have posted information showing the increase in energy in the infrared spectrum showing an increase in energy being reflected back to earth.
Co2 not being a significant ghg is very hard to deny based in science. Based in denier blog sites, I’m sure you will have plenty to say.”
The Greenhouse Effect – Heat trapping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RTLU4VTZ9o&list=PLE57D4414FAA446C0&context=C3a0f840ADOEgsToPDskKfCui_OisXST4ZJuOjiNrb
This one is not worth wasting too much time on to discover how bogus it is.
Al Gore and Bill Nye FAIL at doing a simple CO2 experiment
Replicating Al Gore’s Climate 101 video experiment (from the 24 hour Gore-a-thon) shows that his “high school physics” could never work as advertised
http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
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Thanks for the links John. Martin Lack’s mindset seems fairly typical – no comment needed! Unfortunately ‘the science’ is a cliche which has become embedded, as has ‘peer review’. So convinced have people become by all the hype that some I’ve met will not countenance any discussion of the subject. The scientists say so, therefore it must be right, and who are we to question their pronouncements?
I’m very wary of ‘peer review’ because I’ve seen rubbish in an area I have experience in. The way this got into the hallowed pages of ‘Nature’ was because the paper took in two diverse areas of human biology. The reviewers clearly didn’t have any experience in one of the areas concerned, otherwise the paper would have been thrown out immediately.
Another issue is of course is the media and its lazy journalists and editors as discussed on this thread, but another is that it takes a lot of time to find information. A lot of people don’t have the time or inclination – raising families, exhausted after a day’s work and so on – unfortunately prey for the propagandist.
I’d better stop here – thanks for your earlier posting of record temperatures, I look forward to future comments.
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Carbon500: The peer review process for the alarmist has turned into, in some instances, a pal review process. I read a good book on this and the IPCC that I would recommend.
“The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert”
Donna Laframboise (Author)
This will lead one to the same conclusion regarding the IPCC and its “peer review process”.
In “Peer Review? What Peer Review?” McLean writes, “The IPCC would have us believe that its reports are diligently reviewed by many hundreds of scientists and that these reviewers endorse the contents of the report. Analyses of reviewer comments show a very different and disturbing story.”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/ipccprocessillusion.html
I will present a link to a person who disturbs me greatly, Eric Grimsrud.
“About the Author
I graduated from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, and received a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1970. I have been a teacher and research scientist at several universities and was a Professor of Chemistry at Montana State University, Bozeman, for 29 years. I have been an active participant in the field of atmospheric chemistry for almost 40 years. I presently live near Kalispell, Montana.”
http://ericgrimsrud.com/
The fact that this person got himself into a position where he was allowed by the U of M, Bozeman to influence generations of impressionable minds with his kind of far left nonsense tells the story of why the US educations system has deteriorated to this degree. One must bear in mind that those that he indoctrinated went on top spread his kind of nonsense in their own classrooms.
That I used the Huffington Post shows that I do have a certain amount of open mindlessness about me. Education is important for any society and is generally the defining element of that society but look at what is happening now in the US.
“Students in Latvia, Chile and Brazil are making gains in academics three times faster than American students, while those in Portugal, Hong Kong, Germany, Poland, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Colombia and Lithuania are improving at twice the rate.
The study’s findings support years of rankings that show foreign students outpacing their American peers academically. Students in Shanghai who recently took international exams for the first time outscored every other school system in the world. In the same test, American students ranked 25th in math, 17th in science and 14th in reading.
Just 6 percent of U.S. students performed at the advanced level on an international exam administered in 56 countries in 2006. That proportion is lower than those achieved by students in 30 other countries.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/education-olympics-how-do_n_1707968.html
Take a look at his kind of “science” presented in his short course where he shows a mythical “canopy” on his slide 2J and can not explain just exactly what it is. He goes on about CO2 being a major greenhouse gas but does not mention the greenhouse gas that causes over 95% of the greenhouse effect, H2O. He carries on about how he was not allowed to comment on Watts’s site after making over 30 comments but try to register a dissenting view on his irrelevant site. He in my mind represents the far left agw crowd.
Short Course
“……The scientific background required for any interested student is minimal. Every effort has been made here to accommodate the interests of those with essentially no prior backgrounds in science.”
http://ericgrimsrud.com/short-course_281.html
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Bananabender: I totally agree with you and below are a few reasons why it easy to do so. If CO2 drove the earth’s temperature, then why is what is below happening?
Hadley Centre Central England Temperature (HadCET) dataset
The CET dataset is the longest instrumental record of temperature in the world. The mean daily data series begins in 1772 and the mean monthly data in 1659. Mean maximum and minimum daily and monthly data are also available, beginning in 1878.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
Recent Monthly Average Mauna Loa CO2
August 2013: 395.15 ppm
August 2012: 392.41 ppm
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Then because the temperatures have not been raising for the last 17 years world wide the alarmist have to try to use every weather event as a reason to spout their anthropogenic global warming nonsense when this below is the truth about that:
“What Evidence Exists of a Climate Problem At All?
Speaking at his State of the Union address, President Obama said: “We must do more to combat climate change…It’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense.”
But there’s a big disconnect from facts here. In reality, there has been no increase in the strength or frequency of landfall hurricanes in the world’s five main hurricane basins during the past 50-70 years; there has been no increase in the strength or frequency in tropical Atlantic hurricane development during the past 370 years; the U.S. is currently enjoying the longest period ever recorded without intense Category 3-5 hurricane landfall; there has been no trend since 1950 evidencing any increased frequency of strong (F3-F-5) U.S. tornadoes; there has been no increase in U.S. flood magnitudes over the past 85 years; and long-term sea level rise is not accelerating.
So let’s maybe take a look at the importance of that “alarming” 400 parts-per-million atmospheric CO2 concentration we keep hearing about. As Steven Goddard summarized some results in an August 10 article he posted on Real Science, we are currently witnessing:
Coldest summer on record at the North Pole
Highest August Arctic ice extent since 2006
Record high August Antarctic ice extent
No major hurricane strikes for eight years
Slowest tornado season on record
No global warming for 17 years
Second slowest fire season on record
Four of the five snowiest northern hemisphere winters have occurred since 2000
Regarding those pending IPCC predictions that sea levels will accelerate, don’t plan to sell your beach front property any time soon, at least not for that reason. William Happer, a Princeton physics professor who has researched ocean physics for the U.S. Air Force, notes that, “The sea level has been rising since 1800, at the end of the Little Ice Age.” Isn’t that to be expected? In fact even the IPCC admitted in its most recent report that “no long-term acceleration of sea level has been identified using 20th-century data alone.”
Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, the former chair of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden, has been studying sea level and its effects on coastal areas for more than 35 years. He observes that “…sea level was indeed rising from, let us say, 1850 to 1930-40. And that rise had a rate in the order of 1 millimeter per year.”
Morner is very critical of the IPCC and its headline-grabbing doomsday predictions. He scorns the IPCC’s claim to “know” the facts about sea level rise, noting that real scientists “are searching for the answer” by continuing to collect data “because we are field geologists; they are computer scientists. So all this talk that sea level is rising, this stems from the computer modeling, not from observations. The observations don’t find it!”
http://www.cfact.org/2013/08/22/as-real-temperatures-subside-the-ipcc-heats-up-the-fight/#sthash.C8v5ig9M.dpuf
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Strange, that the LA Times is banning the letters, but include articles about “the pause”.
“Global warming ‘hiatus’ puts climate change scientists on the spot
Theories as to why Earth’s average surface temperature hasn’t risen in recent years include an idea that the Pacific Ocean goes through decades-long cycles of absorbing heat.
September 22, 2013|By Monte Morin”
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