What insight. ‘Tis prosaic — Nick Cohen in The Guardian packs more truth — runs tantalizingly close to a major insight, yet skates off, one single word short.
It’s projection on a rampage, and Cohen almost seems to realize it. Perhaps we can help him?
“The climate change deniers have won”
Where else, but The Guardian?
Yes, Mr Cohen, those whom you deliberately and with malice call “deniers” are winning. Incredibly, even though they have only 0.03% of the funds, none of the machinery or the institutions, the enmity of western governments, existential opposition from the $350 billion renewables industry, no support from the large global carbon trading market, and only scorn and derision from the entire UN, and yet they are winning with nothing but wits and facts.
“Scientists continue to warn us about global warming, but most of us have a vested interest in not wanting to think about it”
Exactly! If you care about the environment you need to think. How serious is the problem of CO2? Here’s a handy list of topics that won’t tell us that answer:
- Any list of organizations, associations, committees.
- Any survey of keywords used in publications.
- Psychoanalysis, pop psychology, anonymous internet surveys
- Funding, imaginary or real.
- Studies of cults.
- Speculation about vested interests, oil companies, political ideology.
Here’s a list of topics that will:
- Observations about the climate – weather balloons, ice cores, satellites, corals, rocks, thermometers, stuff like that.
Cohen talks about the green-gravy train grinding to a halt, and says:
All of which is a long way of saying that the global warming deniers have won. And please, can I have no emails from bed-wetting kidults blubbing that you can’t call us “global warming deniers ” because “denier” makes us sound like “Holocaust deniers”, and that means you are comparing us to Nazis? The evidence for man-made global warming is as final as the evidence of Auschwitz. No other word will do.
It’s neat how he compares being skeptical of the climate to being skeptical of Auschwitz, then calls people cry-babies who point out that “deniers” is namecalling and a tactic that bullies and people who have no arguments use. See, I wouldn’t have said “holocaust denier” in an email, because I’d assume he uses the denial word simply as cheap shot, an abuse of English. Indeed — in a sense, this is the only word he’s got wrong in the whole article, and his logic is sort of sensible and understandable if there were deniers denying scientific observations. But everything he’s written depends entirely on the accuracy of that highly unscientific word. He uses it as a tool to shut down debate, without realizing the minds it closes are those of him and his friends.
I mean, go figure, who would listen to a denier? It’s like talking to your cat. No wonder he finds this debate so baffling.
Tempting though it is to blame cowardly politicians, the abuse comes too easily. The question remains: what turned them into cowards?
What turns politicians into cowards? How about a rampant vicious namecalling campaign run by second rate journalists calling people deniers? Could be…
And when the world makes no sense you have to resort to rabid conspiracy theories eh?
Rightwing billionaires in the United States and the oil companies have spent fortunes on blocking action on climate change. A part of the answer may therefore be that conservative politicians in London, Washington and Canberra are doing their richest supporters’ bidding. There’s truth in the bribery hypothesis. In my own little world of journalism, I have seen rightwing hacks realise the financial potential of denial and turn from reasonable men and women into beetle-browed conspiracy theorists.
Go on Mr Cohen, tell us the names of these right wing hacks, just one. Or even one oil company that has spent even a tenth as much on skeptics as alarmists in, say, the last 10 years.
These are my favorite paragraphs. He writes about cultists of Dorothy Martin, willing to work for no money at all:
Climate change deniers are as committed. Their denial fits perfectly with their support for free market economics, opposition to state intervention and hatred of all those latte-slurping, quinoa-munching liberals, with their arrogant manners and dainty hybrid cars, who presume to tell honest men and women how to live. If they admitted they were wrong on climate change, they might have to admit that they were wrong on everything else and their whole political identity would unravel.
So let’s fix that paragraph:
Climate change believers are as committed. Their belief fits perfectly with their support forfree market economicsgovernment handouts,opposition to state interventionthe green religion and hatred of all thoselatte-slurping, quinoa-munching liberals,those who stand on their own two feet, and contribute more tax than they take, with theirarrogantunfashionable good manners and refusal to be told how to live. If the believers admitted they were wrong on climate change, they might have to admit that they were wrong on everything else and their whole political identity would unravel.
Then here’s an admission, any illogical ranting namecaller can write “about the environment every week” and no editor will knock it back:
I am no better than them. I could write about the environment every week. No editor would stop me. But the task feels as hopeless as arguing against growing old. Whatever you do or say, it is going to happen. How can you persuade countries to accept huge reductions in their living standards to limit (not stop) the rise in temperatures? How can you persuade the human race to put the future ahead of the present?
Dear Nick Cohen, the answer you are looking for is easy. Start with tolerance, respect and compassion. Assume that other intelligent beings have an opinion worth listening to. (Know your enemy, if you prefer). Find holes in our arguments, stop calling us names, and if you come up with something logical, we’ll be back on your team in no time flat.
Cohen is crying out to be saved here. (Send him some flowers!) He even admits he is as blind and ideological as he imagines those he attacks to be. He’s projected the money grubbing, social vanity and irrational beliefs onto everyone who disagrees. It’s the only way he can keep calling thousands of independent scientists and more than half the population petty names and still kid himself he’s a free thinker and he cares about the planet.
Calling Dr Freud. Projection alert. Emergency case.
PS: Commenters please don’t use the term Holocaust or discuss that topic at all. It’s unfortunately not a topic we have the resources to moderate any more.
We will win!
However, the battle for the hearts and minds of the undecided rages on! One thing I have learned over the years from reading and commenting on various blog sites is that you cannot really expect to change very many minds. those who are skeptics are usually intelligent people who have reasoned it out, and those who are warmist are religious fanatics or people with a vested interest.
The way I see it, only two things will persuade the undecided to join with the skeptics: a continuation of dire forecasts that fail to materialize and an economic threat to their financial well being. As the warmist continue to dig deeper into the average citizen’s wallet the majority will finally ask, What warming?”
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Nothing quite like watchinga dummy spit from a warmist…he he
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I cant believe you got two red ones, must be a couple of deniers passing through.
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I’d give you a red one too Craig, just for old time’s sake.
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Thanks GA, i too get sentimental at times
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even gave you a green one for your troubles
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Congrats Eddy. Now all you have to do is to convince the world to stop warming.
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What warming?
The earth has been a lot colder than it is now, and a hell of a lot warmer as well. We didn’t cause it all. The answer you are looking for, is called “natural solar variation”, but don’t tell your friends.
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So, which one are you, Karen? Religious fanatic or vested interest?
Since the world has ceased warming significantly in the last 16-17 years, Eddy must be pretty persuasive.
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Karen it’s quite obvious you haven’t been paying attention.
I think it’s 17 years 7 months at last count since there was any measurable rise.
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But Leigh, it’s catastrophically plateauing! Quick, everyone: Duck and Cover!
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I know, I know but its demonstrablescientific validity says we must do something.
Winston, quick save the children.
I’ll get the beer.
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Are the children on the roof, again?
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If we take out the ENSO variations, as per one of the recent attempts to explain the “pause”, then you can extend that to 20 years…
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And all you have to do Karen, is look at some real data!
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I don’t see how there can be winners and losers. In 1000 years time we will still be trying to find patterns in a system for which we have a fraction of a poofteenth of a percent of the information required to make that determination. If in fact predictable patterns exist at all, to a degree that understanding them has any practical use or benefit. In fact in 1000 years at least we will be able to start the debate from a semi informed position rather than staggering in the dark playing climate Marco Polo like we are now.
In exactly the same way as many of us regard warmists as making their prognostications by a method similar to casting a handful of goat bones on the ground, we are doing something similar if we contend there will be a definitive answer any time soon.
As each year passes and the planet is still habitable, the argument mounts that warmists are a bunch of spineless panic merchants desperately searching for something to wet their pants over, but that’s about all.
I mean lets face it, Christians have been predicting the so called “end of days”/return of Christ scenario since 1AD. But here we all are. Given that the bible contains significantly more factual and corroborative evidence of its arguments than all of the IPCC reports combined, what exactly are we hoping to call a victory? Christians will continue to bleat that its coming any minute now, just as warmists do the same. Any minute now folks, we will reach the “tipping point” (insert ghost noise special effects) and then its ALL OVER!
Yawn…. go outside and play, you’ve just been watching too much TV son.
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Safety Guy,
I accept your point up to a point. The second coming is much more simple than some would have you think. Christians believe that when we die we will meet Christ for the second time, the first being His visit 2000 years ago. At that time He let us know that we were much loved by God and those who accepted that love would be with Him in eternity. As for trying to put some time limits on when God might do something we waste our time. For a being who was around before the start of the universe a few thousand years has no meaning. And yes I agree that, particularly in the New Testament, we have far more credible evidence for Christs existence, at least as much as for the existence of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, than the IPCC has for it’s hypothesis for AGW.
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Cohen is a horses butt. He gets paid to write this stuff?
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Keep it polite Mark.
I have owned several horses, over the years, and all of them were very sensitive about derogatory comments, especially in regard to their butts.
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Family used to breed thoroughbreds on our farm just outside Liverpool, Sydney. My cousin who comments here grew up there and I lived there in my late teens.
The horses’ racing names began with “Pagan”. The venture commenced in the seventies. Imagine if the venture commenced in these times?
The poor horses would begin with Warmist”. Big butts would be the least of their problems!
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I own a couple of fine horses, whose most excellent hindquarters are in no way deserving of this tasteless comparison
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Horse hindquarter is definitely not tasteless.
Lovely in piroshky.
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Komment Makt Frie is still censoring the debate in favour of the Narrative however. Why let those pesky facts get in the way of a good story?
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Real Scientists, for that is what skeptics are, cannot win without all the resources you have listed which currently belong to the Green liars.
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The truth, or even the search for the truth, creates it’s own resources. Credibility, Transparency, Objectivity and Honesty get folk like Jo, Stevie Mac, Judith Curry and Anthony a form of wealth beyond the imagining of the Idolators. All the material goods given to the Haters of Mankind have only sufficed to demonstrate their wrongness. Cohen’s Threnody for AGW, together with the comments which have been allowed to stand, amply demonstrates the oceans of fantasy and unknowing in which the Believers are c sat adrift..
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Cast adrift, Dammit.
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Idolatry is a word that is seldom used when it comes to “man caused weather change”(just change the word climate for weather and watch the green acolytes go into a paroxysm of splutter),but that is what it is,a worship of an idol of nature the weather.
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The evidence for man-made global warming is as final as the evidence of Auschwitz. No other word will do.
Let’s see. In 1989 the ipcc claimed that the ice core data proved that CO2 causes climate temperatures to change. This was the very foundation of the ipcc scare mongering. Well, that foundation of bs has been removed. Because in 1999 a paper came out showing that when the ice core data was looked at with greater granularity … there was NO causal correlation between temps & CO2. The ipcc bitterly fought this revelation, but in 2003 the ipcc had to concede the major point. Nevertheless, in 2005, two years after the IPCC had admitted no causal correlation, Al Gore went ahead in his movie and falsely claimed a proven causal correlation. The public at large still doesn’t know the truth about CO2, so they need to see the following 3 minute video en masse, see Al Gore’s willful deceptions on CO2 exposed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag
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Not all skeptics are scientists, real or otherwise. And, unfortunately, not all real scientists are skeptical enough.
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I am not a scientist, far from it. I am a skeptic with a bent metal spoon!How can I trust the same people that in the 70’s was telling me to prepare for a new ice age! How can I “believe” (for lack of a better word) that this time around they are even close to correct? How can I trust a bunch of self interested public servants, scientist and commentators whose livelihood depends on the supposition that the world will ( One day) warm up because of my wood fire oven! I might have been sitting on the fence to start with, now I am convinced that I have been fed a lot of BS. Al Gore sealed the fate of the warmist: another endangered species…Milne to the rescue….
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The whining of the global warming scam collaborators is a joyous sound. The squealing of the little piglets as the flow of tax-dollars slows is a beautiful sound. Sadly he failed to include my favourite part where the greenie tells me how my personal excesses and frivolous waste has condemned his children to a cruel and brutish life eking a miserable existence from a ruined planet. I so love that image, yet he failed to invoke it.
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No global warming ‘Bingo‘ for you!
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To use Cohen’s own projection, this article is his attempt at a Nuremberg rally.
He is hoping that thousands of the faithful, noble, upright and dim-bulb climate alarmists will leap to their feet and shout “No! The deniers shall not win!” and rush off and Occupy something.
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A march in March kind of rabble?
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Available for any cause @ $22.50 P/H plus penalty rates for Sunday marches. Hair cut and conservative clothing surcharge of $100.00 ea. ( Just in case the Libs need a hand)…
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They can occupy The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, USA. It would be nice to have that house actually occupied by “someone” for a change rathr than a “no one”. And I’m sure they’d be very comfortable there. 😉
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Nah, To many guys in very badly fitting suits. Wearing suit jackets in Washington DC, outside in the middle of summer … bit of a give-away.
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I think this story by Nick Cohen is just a rallying call for the “True Believers”. Shake them up a bit to get them to raise up and have another go at people that understand the way things work in science, you know the “gold standard” and we know when we don’t see it. We know that Scientific debate is like what happens in a court room, think Law and Order. We haven’t been seeing that for the Climate Scientist for a long time now haven’t we. Us “Deniers” are just asking again and again for things to be done the right way and properly. We can see that it isn’t and no one will listen to us. Well I really do hope that Nicks right and we are winning and people are listening and the climate scientist start to clean up their act. I’m not holding my breath. I know a “believer” or two will have a go at me so if you can answer this question please by all mean have your go “Believer”. Explain this one for me according to Wikipedia, *Ordovician period 485-443 million years ago had a mean Co2 content of 4200ppm (15x pre-industial levels) and a mean temperature of 16 degrees,2 more than today.
*Silurian period 485-419 million years ago had a mean Co2 content of 4500ppm and a mean temperature of 17 degrees, 3 more than today.
And so on and so on there allot stuff there, question is A/ Have you herd of the Grand father paradox. Why didn’t the world blow up and life end way back then hey. B/ With global mean Co2 levels 15 times pre-industrial level why was the global mean temperature only 2 degrees warmer than today in the Ordovician period. So a simple doubling of Co2 today is going to cause a mean global temperature rise of 2-3 degrees when 15 times that amount of Co2 in the past couldn’t do it then, how can it do it now. Please answer that one “Believers”, answer me that please.
Here’s the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician/
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He’s livid because ‘climate action’ and ‘climate justice’ are nowhere to be seen.
But who actually let him down? It was the hundreds of politicians who, despite their politically correct Green rhetoric, refused to take action on climate at any number of UN climate get-togethers.
But rather than admit that, Cohen has to find an alternative and less threatening explanation, so he invents a ‘denier’ conspiracy on which he blames everything. That feels much better.
Really, these people are so transparent they could be made from cling-wrap.
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Well, they certainly ‘cling’ to their beliefs . . .
They’re a funny bunch, these believers.
I reckon they’re not a homogeneous group but more fall into three broad but overlapping categories.
1. The ideologues who pursue social justice and equity (climate action & climate justice), as they define it. This is the angle that says the polluters should pay etc. They exude the marked hubris of the self confident and harbour the will to take their political struggle all the way if necessary. These are the louder and more caustic voices in the debate.
AGW is the vehicle for their political objective.
2. The eco-warriors who believe the planet is more broadly under threat and that we’re doing a poor job of stewardship etc. These folks consider we’re overburdening our resources and are staunchly anti-consumerism but they don’t ponder the social or economic rationale very deeply as far as I can tell.
AGW is their crusade.
3. The born worriers. This group is primarily worried about the fate of their grandchildren etc. and if anything, are the ones being most duped. One might argue they’re more gullible, but I have the feeling they are at least genuine. These are the meek that will inherit the Earth . . . apparently.
It’s a bit of a pity about the ‘born worriers’ actually.
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Yes. I worry about the worriers.
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No worries mate!
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Evan Sayet divides them into two categories:
The True Believers: those who know it is possible to discriminate between Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, but believe such discrimination is undesirable.
The Mindless Foot Soldiers: those who have been taught, and have believed, that it is impossible to discriminate between Right and Wrong, Good and Bad.
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It’s Gaia who has let him down,she keeps on making ice and snow and other wet cold stuff even though the CO2 output is going gangbusters,which is contrary to their “CREED” of worship,maybe the need to dump her and bring in another demi-god such as Nantosuelta.
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Fox
Temperatures in the geologic past are a reflection of several things which we do not know how to quantify:
1. The Earth has been steadily further away from the Sun
2. The Sun has been steadily increasing its energy output
3. Days have been steadily getting longer, which must have had an impact on weather and climate
4. The continents have drifted across the surface of our globe and their configuration has a huge impact on climate. For example, there are many who believe the appearance of the Panama Isthmus 4-5 million years ago severely affected the oceans’ circulation of currents, thereby precipitating the current Pleistocene Era, several degrees lower on average than the previous Pliocene Era.
Nevertheless, you are right, the geological record is not a friend of the alarmists, as it shows no evidence of CAGW and global CO2 levels always follow changes in temperature and not vice versa.
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The alarmist view:
But, but, that means that it will get colder, and we are all going to die …
But, but, that means that it will get hotter, and we are all going to die …
But, but, that means there will be more accidents because of sleep deprivation, and we are all going to die …
But, but, as the continents get closer, the sea levels will rise, and there will be huge tidal waves washing over the Himalayas, and we will all drown …
Somebody ought to get in touch with James Cameron, and suggest he does a documentary movie about the risks we all face …
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Thank goodness daylight saving is shortly coming to an end for this year – the extra hour of sunlight was fading the curtains.
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Thank goodness daylight saving is shortly coming to an end for this year – the extra hour of sunlight was fading the curtains.
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Awful echo in here …
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“the extra hour of sunlight was fading the curtains.”
UPDATE.
Daylight Saving causes Global Warming!
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I do hope the writer had tongue firmly in cheek!
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Now I know why I hate daylight savings!
BTW handjive, I have nominated the above article for the ‘Climate Duplicitist of the Year’ Awards on WUWT. Hope you don’t mind…… 🙂
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/nominations-are-open-for-the-first-annual-climate-duplicitist-of-the-year-award/
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Yes Peter, but its because of CO2 that they do not conveniently cancel each other out. Its not called climate change for nothing.
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Available for any cause @ $22.50 P/H plus penalty rates for Sunday marches. Hair cut and conservative clothing surcharge of $100.00 ea. ( Just in case the Libs need a hand)…Union clothing and Hard hats at no charge.
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Thanks Peter Miller for you reply and answers to my question. Thanks for showing that there are many reasons for the Temperature Changes seen over time. Not just the level of Co2 in the atmosphere. Thanks for using facts not beliefs. The very points I was trying to bring up, and make any “believer” that dared reply to think of. Just me trying to plant a seed in the back of their minds. It mite grow, there’s usually plenty of fertilizer in there. The Climate changes over time are the norm and history does I repeat DOES prove this. Climate Change has been going on for a very very long time and the world is still here and so is the life that lives on it. No need to fear. Life is still here and here to stay.
Oh I forget to add to my original post in the link I posted that the coloured letters above the map of the world from the Ordovician period are links to the other time periods. Have a look at the interesting levels of mean temperature and Co2 levels in these different time periods. Very interesting.
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It’s not about whether “we” are winning.
It’s about whether the facts are winning.
If the facts change, so must “we”. It’s all provisional.
“Global warming” became “climate change”, and now the plateau is described as a “pause” – as if anyone knew which direction the next movement will be in (it’s only a pause if the next move is up). And no one knows when we will see that movement.
How come, over the past 15-17 years, the warming effect of CO2 has been exactly cancelled out by new factors? (New because they weren’t cancelling it before.)
Would anyone now be proposing a new theory of CO2 driven AGW? It would seem the height of oddness.
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The problem with all these environment reporters is they all start out as students at our universities where they are brainwashed about global warming. Their professors and lecturers tell them it’s real and anyone who disagrees doesn’t understand the science. They probably don’t understand the science either but if the professor says it’s so, then it’s so.
They can’t believe how anyone could think differently as to do so would mean their professors are wrong – heaven forbid!
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You are spot on janama. Last Wednesday I had a lecturer (education) promoting the March in March during a lecture. After the lecture I spoke to her privately and suggested that we should maintain a professional attitude and not associate or identify with groups inciting hatred and violence. She avoided the question and and rambled on about boat people being real people. What do you do eh?
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Modern universities are the last place for someone to search for the truth. They are becoming more and more like a religious cult.
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If the students don’t agree they will fail,it’s the old hearts and minds,if ya got em by the goolies their hearts and minds will follow.
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It’s actually much worse than that. If the lecturers and professors don’t agree they are expelled, and it has happened a number of times.
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Once in a while, I like to see how the black-hatted guys ‘think’ and have a brief look at Skeptical Sciene, possibly the most inappropriately named blog on the internet.
I rarely bother to read the articles as they usually consist only of opinion or rant, but what is interesting is the number of people who make comments on each article. This usually varies between one and five. Of course, this blog is heavily censored, which may be a partial explanation, but much more likely is that previous readers have been turned off by the lack of quality in the content of the articles.
Leaving that aside, if we look at the alarmist community’s favourite scare stories, they are not doing very well:
1. The glaciers are retreating – well yes, but that started over 150 ears ago and gas not accelerated in recent times.
2. “The models conclusively show ………….”, well yes, but the models have all been shown to be very wrong, when they are compared to actual observations.
3. The ice caps are melting, well yes, but this has recently reversed in the Arctic and never happened in the Antarctic.
4. Sea levels are rising, well yes, but this has been happening for over the last 150 years and the rate of rise has been decelerating in recent years,
5. Temperatures continue to rise, well yes, but global temperatures have been largely static over the past 17 years and recently may have started to decline.
6. “The polar bears are in dire staits, well yes, er no, the polar bears are thriving wherever any non- biased research has been undertaken.
7. Extreme weather events are becoming more common, well yes, but only in the minds of the alarmist community, as observations indicate the exact opposite, namely a small decline in the trend of extreme weather events.
So now it is climate shift, not climate change, whatever that might mean.
No wonder the alarmists are losing, despite being able to outspend the sceptics by a thousand to why, as they are just plain wrong.
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It’s like re-branding cheap merchandise – doesn’t matter how many knock-off labels you try it will eventually fall apart because of poor workmanship.
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Point six is interesting.
Imagine Polar Bears being smart enough to be able to shun the biased researchers. Perhaps it is all of the photographic and film equipment that puts them off?
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They don’t shower.
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I don’t know about your cat but mine is very much in favour of global warming!
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Some things you need to understand about Nick Cohen.
He and a handful of other left wingers supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They created something called the Euston Manifesto which united those who believe in the liberal case for humanitarian intervention. Now I need to state for US readers that in the UK the incumbent Prime Minister was Tony Blair, leader of the Labour party and so the left right split over Iraq was rather different than in the US. However the Labour party lost most left wing support as a result, particularly the readership of the Guardian which was firmly opposed.
[Note: this comment is not intended to take a stand on the rights and wrongs of the Iraq invasion]
The result has been that Mr Cohen has placed himself “out on a limb” with the the faithful. Consequently, he is faced with a dilemma: either he has been mugged by reality and must now take an independent line on all topics, or alternatively he can try and redeem himself with the faithful by quoting the party line on AGW. Given that this is a subject, he hasn’t show a great deal of interest in, I suspect he has chosen the hope of redemption.
Call me a cynic but there isn’t a single unique thought in his article.
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That is useful background … thank you.
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Pretty hard to talk about the politics of anyone with that surname without being tagged as… well you know….
But Im certainly not surprised someone with that surname would be in favour of any destabilisation in the middle east, since their society basically relies on as much middle east chaos as possible to survive.
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Closer to home, ABC rhetoric will continue to get warmer…
IPCC Working Group II report: Scientists predict Australia will continue to get hotter
…blah blah… 2 degrees… potentially means whole ecosystems could be wiped out …blah.
Evidence from the future? The guy’s a riot. To predict the future you have to have a working model which extrapolates. As WG2 has already swallowed the poison pill of WG1 I’m sure everything else that follows is internally consistent with that logic.
Very politically incorrect for Prof Hughes to disparage the need to build consensus as it has been a high priority for The Cause for many years, even perhaps vital.
With the Coral Whisperer pitching in towards the end of the article, Nick “Euston Manifesto” Cohen also piling it on in the Grauniad today, and an ecological professor in India warning on Saturday of starvation, seems the usual global warming goons are suddenly putting on a song and dance. Could it be because the IPCC AR5 WG2 is beginning their big political editing meeting tomorrow?
♫ Funding in the air… ♫
♫ everywhere I look around…
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You get a thumbs up for the song at the end. If it gets stuck in my head however…
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Absolutely, scratch up a mound of muck to raise your own profile then start screeching mindless claims that wont survive any proper examination and hope that the attracted audience curiosity, will spark some mindless echo rant or chant, then tap into any base of dissent in the community and the mindless can then be manipulated by those with darker more directed motives.
It is in this area of directed motives and agenda, that real evil develops, as the manipulators, know what they are doing is a means to an end. They also know that once they have the headless chooks (a great Australian observation of the effect of separating a chicken from its brain) running around in circles, it is easy to work on the curious bystanders, feed them with whatever line you can spin and they will then imprint the visual with the “facts” you tell them are true. Effective propaganda is a mixture of truth and carefully constructed lies.
True believers once converted to accept propaganda and spin as creatures of habit (traits) will spread the gospel of convenient spin, and outright propaganda. Today this is much easier due to the fast avenues of human communication.
Spend a short time on social media like facebook to understand the effect of authoritative spin when repeated among other true believers, the echo chamber becomes deafening!!, and that of course is the intent of dissemblers to create in the minds of those reasonable and normal citizens who associate/communicate through those echo chambers will be convinced by repetition any agenda must be true, and the only “truth”, the next step is to steadily feed the echo chamber with like minded propaganda that can be enthusiastically taken up by the mob effect that develops, much like a crowds behaviour can be whipped up by skilled orators, to the point that it spills out as a cohesive mob reaction or spontaneous over reaction. At that point the truly evil can rub their hands and enjoy the fruits of their creation while mentally absolving themselves from the direct result of their own actions.
Its hard to stop a mob when it is running towards cohesive punishment, though if you afterwards interview individuals they will have no idea why they participated other than being swept up unthinkingly by the whipped up crowd psychology and the need to do something, anything to reflect anger, dissatisfaction about whatever it was the oratory effect intended to create.
This is exactly what the ABC and some sections of the media is doing, working the crowd and feeding it with propaganda, alarm, bias, building a crowd hysteria within the echo chambers of the internet, in the hope that the many ordinary citizens will mistake propaganda for truth and propagate the subtle lies.
It sometimes takes a public event like an election to show the echo chambers that just because a few repeat the chant over and over, that is not the way a vast majority seek the reaction in the wider community. Normally that return to reality would be enough of a jolt to remind the reasonable citizen that the perception they had in that echo chamber was false!!
But today, with the power of the internet the truly committed don’t want to relinquish that feeling of being right and indignant and the manipulators have discovered they can feed that by insisting there was no defeat, they were really winners and the upholders of the truth, and their true believers need to rally around them and be more convincing, forget facts, forget reality, we are the truth, the light the way! If we hold true we will conquer all and when we have power we will convert by force (the dicta of authority we must have that power then we truly win).
The most glaring examples are the denial in Federal labor that they were wiped out at the election, its the public that didn’t understand the message and the truth, its only a minor temporary setback, we will win if we believe and convince others to be true believers, ignore facts, hammer the belief that even a lie if repeated often enough might eventually be accepted as truth then re-presented with religious conviction.
It was also interesting to listen to the long “winning” speeches by both the labor leader and the Greens leader in the recent Tasmanian election. Truth and reality just didn’t come into their personal space, we were the real winners, our truth is the only truth no matter what the misguided electorate has said we need your religious fervour to break out of the echo chambers of isolation and achieve our message. (achieve self delusion?)
You can see this new message to the faithful also emerging in the hysteria of climate, with professors knowing they can’t fight with science and fact or even the observable weather, so willing to abandon all realty and substitute fantasy as somehow our authority, our truth must convert enough of the faithful to get our propaganda accepted, its not our fault but the inferior intelligence of those we wish to convert and the bad influences of those who oppose us. We won’t change, as we MUST win or I will lose my place at the trough, but by hell I am fighting for my right to be first at the trough!!
Read, weather and temperature trends are not helping the cause, and people and real scientists are now questioning our authority at all levels, we are in danger, so must fight the good fight even if we are wrong, there is no going back, belief and conviction must prevail and if it gets colder then our lies must be bolder, stuff science, its win or Armageddon for us, so anything is o.k. as long as we win.
That is the reality we face right across the spectrum of science and the politics of winning hearts and minds and, more than ever before, those who really value truth and freedom need to sceptically examine and THINK! We need to appreciate the deteriorating situation and the effect of the corner that alarmists have created for themselves, they have their backs to the wall and propaganda and outright lies are all that is left in the armoury of those single minded cement heads!!
The desperate rat fight is beginning, and will only end when the silent majority stand up and tell the ABC’s, the Getups and manipulators of opinion, the facebook crowd, enough is enough, at that point the media propaganda will turn, but only, till complacency replaces the sceptical alert mind.
A return to the scientific method and scrupulous and searching peer review will in part prevent a repeat of this intellectual disaster.
91
So then why all the talk about consensus? It looks like they’re always trying to convince themselves.
Evidence apparently resigned his job and went off to live on a government handout.
30
I pondered over it for about 30 seconds and came to the realisation that after looking at a map of Australia it dawned on me that there would be plenty of ecosystems that would be lost from a 2 deg rise,consider this the rise in temp will cause a lot more evaporation of the oceans and thus a lot more rain to fall which will have a drastic effect to our deserts,all that extra rain will cause a rapid growth in vegetation and with it the animal and insect species will grow and others will also move into the areas that were formally hot and dry,there will be a higher humidity which will see a further growth in rain forest and fungus.
Which sort of leaves me baffled(not hard to do),so what is the down side the enviro’s keep on harping on about?
70
I bet 2 bob each way.
Im a sceptic who moved to Tasmania, just in case. My logic being if Im wrong, Tassie should be paradise in a +2c world. Its paradise now, just by the by.
20
Gasbo,
From the eco-loons perspective the downside to the greening of the continent , is that the eco-loons aren’t pro-nature so much as they are anti-human and if they have to F%#@ up other life on the planet to make things difficult for humans then they will .
The whole “save the forests” and “stop slash and burn logging” thing by the greens in Tasmanian is a good example . The Greens claimed to support selective logging , just a few problems with that . Selective logging is actually very , very bad for Tasmanian forests as Eucalyptus Regnans reproductive cycle is actually fire climactic , without an intense fire the forest will slowly cease to exist as the trees reach their maximum age ( 400 years ) and then the heartwood rots out , the trees fall over and die and low level scrub will take over the area . Fire is required to burst the seed cases , provide the nutrient rich ash bed the E.Regnans thrives on and to reduce the numbers of various parasites that the seedlings/saplings are particularly vulnerable to . it’s no coincidence that all the E.Regans in a particular forest are the same age i.e. If You have a forest of 300 year old Tasmanian Eucalypts it’s because 300 years ago , while there was still viable seeds present in the leaf litter and enough timber for fuel , there was a massive bushfire triggering the “death”, “birth” and regrowth of a forest .
The reason why the Greens support selective logging of Tasmania’s dry sclerophyll forests is entirely because it makes timber recovery expensive and dangerous for the people who work in the forests . By eco-loon logic , the slow death of the forest itself is a small price to pay as long as humans are inconvenience or harmed in the process.
30
They are losing and will continue to lose. Their crisis blitz to try and push Kyoto and so much more upon us and destroy the capitalist system and relatively cheap energy in the name of “climate change” has failed. And the only way they would have been successful is to get their changes through and complied with before the terrible results of it could be perceived by the masses. Similar to the way here in the US the “Affordable Healthcare Act” was foisted upon us by only being able to read the bill after it had been passed.
As time goes by the alarmist case gets ever weaker as observations continue to diverge from the model predictions and the ridiculous predictions of the doomsayers fail to materialize.
The alarmist cause, and their progressive dreams and hopes for what it would produce, is still the first stage of the five stages of death and dying for the faithful. DENIAL!
Stages to follow:
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
Of course it will never completely die. There will always be those that will buy snake oil cures.
80
These things don’t die, they become zombies.
Remember the Ozone Hole? Big hype about that at the time, redesigned the propellent industry, all kids in school in Australasia had to wear approved (and expensive) hats, people were told not to sunbathe …
Where is the hype now? Gone.
Where is the Ozone Hole? Right where it was when the whole scare started.
190
There is no more talk about the ozone layer in public because there is no need for more talk. The mythology of ozone depleting substances as settled science is firmly bedded into the bureaucracy and the imposition of regulations for ever more expensive and less effective refrigeration gases that need to be changed, before the patients of the major rent seekers run out, continues below the surface. This is where the renewable energy rent seekers and cronies want to get to. Unfortunately, the costs of energy supply and the visual pollution from eco-crucifixes are all pervasive and cannot be easily disguised. This is one of their main downfalls.
20
One of the reasons why so many people are vitamin D deficient…
20
How much is not enough?
It would appear that the science is NOT settled.
00
Stages to follow:
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
To the standard list above should be added No 6. apply either Renewal, Recycled or Revisited (take your pick). In the 70’s we had the onset of the “global cooling” scare. Unfortunately for the “coolists” at that time, the temperature trended in the wrong direction, “up” (a trend depends on the chosen starting point).
How many of the “coolists” simply re-invented themselves as the “warmists”, soon followed by a deluge of others?. And how many might potentially re-emerge, as “coolists”, again,should the trend go “down”? The only consistent criteria for the “coolist/warmist”, and identifier for skeptics, is the willingness to hop on any gravy train, irrespective of the “cause”.
For both “coolists” and “warmists”, the core motive is to follow the money, never an honourable principle. The former delivers easy cash and short term notoriety, the latter truth and integrity. Does that distinction underpin the core motive of “sceptics”?
50
You forgot one:
6. Grovelling for forgiveness
30
If Only! I doubt that we will ever get asked for that.
00
Ah, but you all seem to have missed something: the AGWistas are covering all bases – as James Roger Fleming points out in http://climateviewer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/06_fleming_pathological-geo-eng-history2.pdf: “In October 2003 U.S. Pentagon released a controversial report, ‘An abrupt climate change sce¬nario and its implications for United States national security,’ that explored how global warming could lead to rapid and catastrophic global cooling.”
So, if the world plummets into another ice age by 2020, it is still the fault of AGW!
00
Pieces like this are the reason this great-grandson of a Holocaust survivor contributed in your recent fund drive. Sometimes it is more about maintaining our civility to one another than observing the climate.
170
The evidence for Auschwitz was thousands of dead bodies, dead bodies of which there are hundreds of photographs taken by combat photographers as those camps were discovered, as well as by the Germans documenting their own butchery.
Where are the dead bodies caused by climate change denial? What, no photographs? How inconvenient. But wait, maybe the four dead Polar Bears count.
I’m not laughing. Such a statement is so dumb it’s not even worth a chuckle.
[Just a gentle reminder: We would prefer not to have this thread drift off in that particular direction -Fly]
140
Nick Cohen has a tough job. He’s trying to sell a lower standard of living to a struggling middle class. Politicians aren’t stupid, but often hope the folks that vote for them are, so they take the climate campaigner’s money and play games with energy companies to collect the climate indulgences they imposed. Well you can’t fool all the people all the time and people have realized that cost are very high and the benefits are lost in the noise. Australia is a good case of environmentalists given enough rope to hang themselves and the people of Europe are catching on. There is a lot of economic and environmental damage being done in the name of climate change mitigation. Mr Cohen admits that he’s lost the battle for hearts and minds but he’s lucky this has occurred before more damage is done so he can move onto the next cause before too much anger develops.
90
Yes
The most damaging comment from Cohen is this one:
Greenies mostly tie themselves in wet knots to avoid saying that
110
Poor diddums. In spite of overwhelming evidence running contrary to his increasingly baseless assertions, this acolyte’s faith appears unwavering. It is merely the less intellectually gifted than he who fail to perceive the urgency of the perilous situation we now face. Gasp.
The stasis in global temperature rise is obviously a mirage, an illusion that has blinded everyone to the blatant reality of our current dire situation. Holding his swag of Depend garments at the ready, he remains prepared for the cataclysm he’s sure will follow.
This jerk, and the leftist academic sheep who populate this meme, have bet the farm on this whole anti-human crusade, based on so many logical fallacies that its hard to know where to start. Cohen is merely one of an endless parade of outspoken morons who have been monumentally and grievously in error, and who continue to fail to acknowledge it.
If they think their is a hope in hell that we’ll ever let them forget what they tried to do to western civilisation, they had better think again. Do I sound bitter? You bet I am. But I don’t get angry, I just get even.
20
Dear Nick Cohen: As a professional writer, you should know better. “I am no better than them.” Ugh. That is short for “I am no better than them are.” The word is “they”, nominative case.
110
It’s called bitterness.
But actually I’d much rather talk to my cat…
40
Does your approve of global warming, too?
20
Does your cat approve …
30
It is cold at the back of the room, warm in front of the fire. Locate cat for answer.
70
And if you’re the one taking up the space in front of the fire the cat will be on your lap.(which is one of the best ways of getting rid of stress,sitting by a warm fire and with a sleeping cat on your lap)
10
With a glass of wine.
00
He undoubtedly knows the answer but I’m afraid he’s not told me, Rereke.
00
On windless sunny days, my cat sometimes sits on a rather large rock in my backyard.
I noticed the rock was slightly warmer than the air. I once sat next to her and started to explain what was happening.
I told her that the rock was absorbing the sunlight causing the molecules to vibrate, and that it takes time to warm up the rock. Similarly when the air temperature drops, it takes time for the rock to cool down. She seemed interested because she was following all my hand waving gestures.
I told her that’s why we call it a greenhouse rock. When I’d finished she rested her head on the rock and seemed happy.
I’m glad that my cat now knows more about the greenhouse effect than most warmist trolls.
110
Priceless !
20
What Irks me about Cohen, aside from the obvious, is that he would trade on the agonies of his people in order to put a point across. “As sure as eggs is eggs” (sorry Jim Brock) would have sufficed, or “As day follows night”, “Death and taxes”, or any number of others I could think of. Cheap and nasty!
30
Whilst Nick Cohen types irritate me with their true insensitivity which is obviously meant to create a many faceted diversionary tactic for the masses, they will never see the irony that in doing so they ultimately become the true deniers both in facts and morals.
As for the Auschwitz reference in the context of the survival of apparent “climate change deniers” this time hard work will set us free, unlike those poor helpless souls that Cohen flippantly uses their suffering in a personal twisted selfish attempt at character assassination.
70
There are so many faults in the Global Warming argument, quite apart from the fact that the planet is not warming (which is itself now hotly denied by the ‘hidden heat’ argument), that the outstanding observation is that the differences in science align perfectly with political views.
It is not possible for facts to be political. An asteriod is heading towards Earth or it is not. Science does not admit opinions on facts, just the explanations.
That people who could normally be excused from logic for not being scientists are convinced of man made global warming universally because they are of the left of politics makes you question it. Of course Mr Cohen and The Guardian believe utterly in man made global warming. So do their readers, all the Greens, the ABC, Fairfax. Without exception. Even ABC Science. And they all want your money and call you a denier if you object. Now doesn’t that make you suspect that there is no asteroid after all?
As Lord Monckton observed, if we really believed an asteroid was heading towards earth, the whole planet would be contributing to a giant cricket bat. (Newton’s First Precautionary Principle) However it is very worrying that only the left of politics can see the asteroid.
100
I think I would prefer Bradman’s First Precautionary Principle, it would be much safer. Newton was a number 11.
20
TdeF
March 24, 2014 at 3:43 am
… Quote: “..which is itself now hotly denied by the ‘hidden heat’ argument”
Yes, about the ‘hidden heat’ argument …
It seems there is no evidence of any “excess heat” going into the oceans. The Argo floats data shows that the oceans have only warmed at an overall rate of 0.03°C per decade.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/02/argo-temperature-and-ohc/
Anyway, if warmth was absorbed by the oceans it would quickly get distributed by the currents and convection. There is no known process that would re-combine the distributed ‘warmth’ at a later stage. However, approx. every 4 or 5 years there is the El Niño effect, where a warm ocean current appears in the Eastern Pacific. It is a relatively brief event on decadal (and geological) time scales, that doesn’t much affect the overall average global temperature trends. An example is the 1997-1998 El Niño.
‘Some scientists’ have been looking into the future (again). They are expecting the next El Niño to appear within about a year or so. …
“..some scientists think this event may even rival the record El Niño event of 1997-1998. If that does happen, then 2015 would almost be guaranteed to set a record for the warmest year on Earth, [in recent history!] depending on the timing of the El Niño conditions.”
http://mashable.com/2014/03/19/intense-el-nino-maybe/
… We will have to wait and see what effects the next El Niño has on the global trend, providing that they are not masked by significant aerosols and any possible eruptions, and the effects of the other internal and external variables. … Too bad that we haven’t got another full-size Earth (and Sun, Moon) to experiment on!
00
It just so happens that we do have exactly that.
It is called our “lunar surface”.
Or, at least, it is a spherical orb essentially the same distance from the sun, and it has little or no atmosphere.
It has been probed via the Deviner.
Guess what it reveals about the fantasy of the “green house effect”.
00
However the slow heating of the oceans would explain the increase in CO2, if you check out the decreased solubility of CO2 in cold water. My calculations show 1C is enough to increase aerial CO2 by 50% in the last hundred years. 98% of the world’s free CO2 gas is dissolved in the oceans, so a decrease of solubility of 0.5% would be amplified 50:1 in total aerial CO2 to produce the 50% increase. Tim and others have seized on this to try to explain the lack of heating and still pushing the barrow that CO2 is producing the heating? The fact which fits is the heating producing the CO2. Dr. Murry Selby’s exact correlation of the integral of temperature with CO2 proves this conclusively, but who wants real science?
If that everyone on the Left of politics has the one view, without exception, without question, then this is Political Science, not real science. That in itself is proof.
21
On Flannery’s ‘hidden heat’ theory, the new excuse for the ridiculous failure of the temperature to go up, you would think that the computer models which all predicted increases in the temperature to match CO2 would have taken this into account in the first place. Trillions have been spent trying to prevent air temperatures going up and now we are told that the failure to go up was fully expected by Professor Flannery. What? Then why were we worrying anyway? As an intellectual, Adam Goodes leaves Tim far behind.
90
How is the Flannery & Expedition Fool company based in New Zealand going with the CO2 killer microwave machine?
70
I have been told recently that “heat” is a relative term, so in some instances you can have “cold heat” as well as “hot heat”, and this “cold heat” can account for the “hidden heat” predicted by the models.
So basically, the real story is that, “hidden heat” has come out of the closet. Aren’t we all happy for it, and totally delighted?
140
Sounds like spin of latent heat in evaporated water or maybe the difference in specific heat capacities of water and air. My new game, ‘Spot the sceptical argument that has been spun into meta-physics’.
20
Im in favour of same heat marriages, just for the record.
20
For an amazing story – go to bing ‘cbc news desert in southern manitoba disappearing’
Peter Miller you said it all perfectly
20
This article in the Australian:
This article in The Australian, summarised on slashdot for some reason has been given the tag “science”. Does anyone have any information about the report?
10
It is usual for major UN Reports to be leaked “in draft” to the media, so the media can do what they did, and whip up a few eddies in the stream of public consciousness.
If history repeats, this “draft” will only pay passing reference to the final report.
(I am obviously in a poetic mood today – my apologies).
30
“UN scientists are set to deliver their darkest report yet on the impacts of climate change, pointing to a future stalked by floods, drought, conflict and economic damage if carbon emissions go untamed.”
GLOBAL WARMING / CLIMATE CHANGE / CLIMATE VARIABILITY – we’re not quite sure what we should call it. We have to keep changing the name so that we can alarm you more to get more money to study more useless crap that won’t change a damn thing!
Everything stated above may increase or it may decrease due to natural variability and has absolutely nothing to do with CO2. If anything, hasn’t CO2 improved world wide greening of the planet and haven’t quantity and quality of harvests increased because of this? Floods will come and go due to regional yearly moisture variances (or how slow or fast the snow melts in the spring) and the same can be said with drought. Conflict has been with us since mankind has emerged and will vary from century to century depending on what kooks are alive at the time to bring it on. And economic damage will only result if we follow the greenies / leftards down the garden path to destroying our way of life.
We can also say that the impact on human life will see increases in the number of people dying from old age (larger population), more people will die from cancer, heart disease, get hit by vehicles, accidents due to being stupid, et cetera (because of a larger population). We can also say that with the current population growing, more food will be consumed world wide, more cars will be manufactured, more gasoline will be consumed, more roads will be built, more people will become fat, more women will go on diets, there will be more pets in the world…………blah, blah, blah, blah.
60
Nice one, Jo.
Just a passing thought…. An interesting question just occurred to me: I wonder what Cohen thinks “deniers” were spending so much time denying before global warming was firmly on the agenda. And why?
They/we must have been denying something else, even before the Apollo moon-landings, right? Or is that just a question that transports us straight to planet Lewandowsky?
50
Aside from the article on “Deniers” I would give Cohen some credit elsewhere. http://nickcohen.net/2014/02/15/twenty-five-years-on-from-rushdie-we-are-frightened-to-say-we-are-scared/
00
Jo: Thank you for this superb polemic, helped, I guess, by righteous exasperation.
60
The carbon tax is another sign of leftist total belief in global warming caused by fossil fuel CO2. You have to wonder why Greens really want a carbon tax in Australia? Why chase 20% reduction in Australia and not protest in front of the Chinese embassy? Their CO2 goes up more every year than our entire output, but nothing is ever said, as long as we tax ourselves and send the cash to the UN to show them how it’s done. Is it that because China is already communist?
You can tell when a country is no longer communist. Greenpeace turn up. As in Russia, protesting on a Russian oil rig and demanding their democratic rights. Too bad the Russians call it terrorism or vandalism.
120
I was on the sauce a few years ago at a party with a very, very highly achieved (Internationally) environmental scientist, who said “I know CO2 is not a problem, but I push the issue because it will help bring about my Political goals.”
No names, not even gender will be mentioned. The person involved is a stated Communist. But as soon as I state that, the argument has to be over. If I am lying, well, who’d bother to talk to me? If I’m telling the Truth, well that would send them to jelly. I always ask the Warmy I’m arguing with:
“Who am I going to believe, the person above, an Environmental Scientist of International standing, or you?”
81
Cohen, when your side ignores the historical record of climate, you are bound to fail. It is clear that the claimed effect of CO2 on the climate is grossly exaggerated. Normal people see this – it is only the loony left that refuses to, and this is because the real goal of the left is to control humanity on a global scale, not environmental protection. We will never stop throwing your garbage back at you.
70
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
Someone should free Cohen from the shackles of his Guardian newspaper desk and peddle him across London to Hyde Park, stand him on his blerdy soap box at Speakers’ Corner, and let him go for his life.
40
Denial:
A statement that something is not true
Refusal to acknowledge an unacceptable truth
Refusal to acknowledge someone as one’s leader
– Oxford English Dictionary
http://informativestats.com/2014/03/18/in-defense-of-denial/
10
The “luke” deniers have not won: this is important.
Skeptical Science team member Neal J King writes on Lucia’s Blackboard, referring to thermodynamic equilibrium: “a transfer of energy δE between two sub-components, j = 1 and j = 2, will change neither E_total nor, to 1st order, S_total”
Yes, and that is exactly what happens when there is a thermal gradient such that the difference in mean kinetic energy per molecule (temperature) exactly matches the negative of the difference in mean gravitational potential energy per molecule.
You can see this in the second stage of the four molecule experiment: when thermodynamic equilibrium is attained we have homogeneous entropy (which must take PE into account) and every collision involves molecules with equal KE, and so KE for the system does not change, but is different per molecule at different altitudes. Similar happens in diffusion in a horizontal plane – KE of all molecules approaches homogeneity. But in a vertical plane you have to remember that KE changes because PE changes whenever there is a non-zero vertical component in the free path vector between collisions.
The gravito-thermal effect is blatantly obvious when convection stops in the early pre-dawn hours. It is then that the pre-determined thermal profile has a “supporting temperature” at the base of the troposphere on any planet. That is what explains all the observations on all planets with surfaces, and even planets without surfaces. Temperatures are set based on radiative balance and the gravito-thermal gradient.
The probability of these thermal gradients being so close to the -g/Cp value on all planets with significant tropospheres just because of some assumed warming by the Sun (whose radiation barely reaches some planetary surfaces) is absolutely infinitesimal. The evidence for the gravito-thermal gradient is blatantly obvious everywhere, as is the theory behind it.
And as for radiation from carbon dioxide supposedly helping the Sun to attain greater maximum temperatures each day (despite the Second Law) or even just slowing radiative cooling – so what? Oxygen and nitrogen slow non-radiative cooling and outnumber carbon dioxide 2,500:1. Radiation from carbon dioxide (with its limited frequencies) is like a picket fence (with most of its pickets missing) standing up against a torrent of full spectrum radiation from the surface. The mean temperature of carbon dioxide molecules in Earth’s troposphere is far colder than the mean temperature of oxygen and nitrogen molecules colliding at the boundary with surface molecules. Rates of cooling depend on temperature gaps, so think!
But arguing with lukes and warmists is like playing chess with a pidgeon. No matter how good a player I am, the pigeon knocks over the pieces, craps on the board and struts around looking victorious.
84
Just to give credit where it is due …
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/03/unthreaded-weekend-19/#comment-1408902
Heywood
March 23, 2014 at 8:29 am · Reply
Saw this on FB. Thought it appropriate.
“Arguing with warmists…it’s like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and strut around like it’s victorious.”
90
Thanks Peter, but anyone can feel free to use it. I stole it too 😉
20
Yeah – but I added the “lukes”
00
THIS HAS JUST MADE MY DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pigeons……haw haw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
( the comparison is correct too…..)
21
☉
“We have enough facts now and none of them are good.
Yet here we are, in Fraser’s words, watching the “bad guys” win.”
Quote– Rod Lamberts: Facts won’t beat the climate deniers – using their tactics will
Pessimists with descriptions of bad weather telling optimists it’s the end of the world?
What could possibly go wrong?
☉
Selling ‘the end of the world’ can be a tough gig.
Just ask Jim Jones.
10
“you can’t fool all the people all of the time”
Sadly, that’s not necessary. You only need to fool 50.1% of the people (47% in South Australia) on one day every three years.
Is there something wrong with our electoral system?
70
Actually, it is four years.
Enough time to turn SA into another Tas.
50
It has been written about the so called SA Independents that one hates Liberals and the other loves Labor. Now the Liberal hater is a cabinet minister with Labor and the other is on extended sick leave with a heart problem. In NSW Labor used the disguise of Independent to place friends into electorates that Labor Green combined could not win at state and federal level, think Oakeshott and Windsor. Then a reminder, Windsor hates the Lib-Nats too.
The question is: will the majority of voters turn on their pretended to be trustworthy former Liberal turned Independent as did the voters in Lyne and New England electorates in 2013?
Union Labor are a tricky lot aren’t they, and care not about throwing truth and democracy overboard.
10
SA was the only state and the first election since 2007 where the greens increased their vote.
SA deserves everything it gets basically. It makes the USA’s decision to vote Bush Jr. in for a second term look like sound decision making.
01
So it wasn’t as bad as the decision to vote in Obama for a second term?
10
Perhaps not as bad as Dubya, but yeah he sucks too.
I guess the difference was Dubya was obviously a complete moron and most people knew it, where as Obama is obviously a lying sack of @!#$ but hes been better at convincing people hes not, so they have less culpability lol
01
Actually, you only need to fool enough of the people enough of the time…
10
In reply to:
“The climate change deniers have won”
William:
I am struggling to understand what the so called deniers or skeptics are denying. The developed countries are losing due to the idiotic warmists and the idiotic warmist policy. The EU due to warmist policy is a world leader in the destruction of industrial base and competitiveness.
There are at least 8 fundamental observations and analysis results to support the assertion that the majority of the warming in the last 70 years was due to solar magnetic cycle changes as opposed to the increase in atmospheric CO2. It appears the planet has started to cool.
Regardless of the above, observations and analysis supports the assertion that the planet resists (negative feedback) rather than amplifies (positive feedback) forcing change so even if all of the warming in the last 70 years was due to the increase in atmospheric CO2, the is no extreme AGW problem to solve.
If the increase in atmospheric CO2 was a problem which it is not (commercial greenhouses inject CO2 into their greenhouses to increase plant yield and reduce growing times, most of the warming that has occurred is at high latitudes which causes the biosphere to expand, if the planet resists rather than amplifies warming the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is roughly 1C) the solution would be nuclear power not green scams. Massive investment in green scams (wind, solar, and biofuel) has not significantly reduced the CO2 emissions in the countries that push that course of action.
Regardless of all of the above, the developed countries have run out of tax payer money to spend on everything and will be forced to make hard choices (See Steven King’s book When the Money Runs Out: The End of Western Affluence). Higher energy costs are an indirect tax and results in more job losses to Asian countries which reduces the government’s revenue to spend on other more pressing needs such as infrastructure, schools, health care, pensions, support for the poor, and so on.
50
Is that point is a mere seventeen days away?
http://philosophyofmetrics.com/2014/03/22/the-world-holds-suicidal-america-hostage/#more-318
10
this 17 March piece showed up at the top of a search i did today. can’t recall seeing it posted here previously:
17 March: SMH: James Massola: Bill Shorten vows to fight climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has lashed out at the conspiracy theorists, keyboard warriors and social media trolls who have hijacked the debate about man-made climate change.
Mr Shorten told the annual Science Meets Parliament conference in Canberra on Monday the climate change debate was a “cautionary tale for what happens if we abandon the field to the conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors, the social media trolls and the angry shouts of talkback radio”…
“There’s an important difference between tackling the misinformation peddled by climate change deniers, and stooping to their level.”…
Mr Shorten told the room of about 150 scientists that Australia needed to make science a national priority, but that it could take years to build the public case for this – as it had taken years to build support for a National Disability Insurance scheme.
“I believe that making science and innovation a national policy and political priority is nothing less than an investment in Australian brainpower,” he said…
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-vows-to-fight-climate-change-deniers-and-conspiracy-theorists-20140317-34×01.html
Peter Hannam tries to tweet up some enthusiam for the piece, but fails miserably:
https://twitter.com/p_hannam/status/445378350018596864
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A little OT but of interest:
Delingpole writes: “Department of Health and Human Services Official Calls Agency ‘Secretive, Autocratic, and Unaccountable‘ in Resignation Letter”
“David E. Wright, a respected science historian, has just quit his job as director of the Office of Research Integrity”
Delingpole opines that “This kind of skullduggery is especially prevalent in the fields of “climate science” and environmentalism because so much government, European Union, and United Nations money has been pumped into these fashionable areas of concern.”
10
Is that former AWU boss, former solicitor employed in industrial law, good friend of a former female prime minister under investigation by Victoria Police Fraud Squad regarding several serious matters including a certain AWU slush fund?
00
Climate change: the situation is hopeless…let’s take the next step
Peter Burdon is a lecturer in law at the University of Adelaide. (via the abc)
Transitional projects like these need to be nurtured and expanded.
“Groups like Transition Towns are facilitating the most exciting movements toward these goals.
Other initiatives like Intersection Repair focus on community building by converting private property into public space on a neighbourhood street.
While other organisations such as Post Growth or the Simplicity Institute remind us that much of the social and community infrastructure for the post-carbon world already exists and are being implemented by communities around the world.”
. . .
Enjoy the links.
Jim Jones would.
10
Monitoring daughter’s on line science class. Global warming is being discussed. Teacher is copping a flogging by 90% of the class. Damn little deniers!
90
From Tim Blair’s blog.
Someone tweeted
I suspect that 97% of gardeners believe in AGW Climate Change.
10
Two good stories today from Andrew Bolt worth reading…..
Labor foolishly breaks a second carbon DIOXIDE (PLANT FOOD) tax promise:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_labor_foolishly_breaks_a_second_carbon_tax_promise/
If temperatures don’t rise, the hype must:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/if_temperatures_dont_rise_the_hype_must/
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Copy of today’s letter to PM of Australia
(copy of text of my book attached)
The Hon Tony Abbott
PO Box 450
Manly, NSW, 2095
Sir
I write on a very serious matter, namely the now proven fact, based on sound 21st century physics, that all the carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is doing nothing but having a minuscule cooling effect estimated to be less than 0.1 degree.
I have carried out extensive research on this matter, and speak from my knowledge and understanding of the physics of radiative heat transfer and thermodynamics.
Because of this, the Australian government should firstly circulate leading physicists with my material and ask for any attempted rebuttals, to which I would expect right of reply. It is doubtful that any of them have the background in this very specialised field of atmospheric physics that I have, so some may be mistaken.
I would be willing to address parliamentarians and/or participate in a senate enquiry.
I anticipate that, if genuine science prevails, it will be the inevitable conclusion that all policies based on the fictitious propaganda promulgated by the International Panel on Climate Change will be withdrawn or revised accordingly.
It is my hope that Australia will lead the world in this matter.
Yours faithfully
Douglas J. Cotton
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He is a busy lad, Doug, and the chances of him reading it are the square root of Jack S***.
However, if you include some skeptical-but-afraid-to-say-so parliamentarians, as a CC, you might find that they goad him into paying attention.
Try dennis.jensen.mp@aph.gov.au, senator.abetz@aph.gov.au, senator.cash@aph.gov.au, senator.bushby@aph.gov.au, senator.colbeck@aph.gov.au.
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Will do Rod. I am also sending by registered post today, Monday, a similar letter, (also with a 37 page printout of the text of my book) to Greg Hunt.
When a month goes by, and the book is in print, I’ll lodge an official complaint to the Ombudsman, but will circulate several MP’s (including your suggestions) a week or two before complaining to the Ombudsman with advice that I will be taking that course. I am also hopeful of getting TV coverage or maybe Alan Jones on radio.
30
Douglas, broke some protocols in your correspondence.
There is a thread somewhere here that I can not locate on such.
Help!
00
there are no threads that will do Doug the justice his posts deserve.
02
lol
117
Are you having trouble forming sentences again Mattb?
Ahh, so many words to choose from, so many places to put them.
Yeah, best if you just stick with non-words.
80
nah. He’s just swaying to music like a true hippy.
lol . /o/ . lol . \o\ . lol . /o/ . lol . \o\ . lol . /o/ . lol . \o\ . lol
140
I think that I spotted him in a Bolt Report segment showing extreme Green Climate Change Nazis singing to their god led by Bob Brown, the venue was not mentioned but I suspect it was the Church of Climate Change Cult.
50
“lol”,
What an intelligent response from the “Mattb” TROLL……
Clearly a deep thinker !
31
if only:
23 March: UK Daily Mail: David Rose: Eureka! How a magic doughnut that fakes the sun could save our planet: But the Chinese will get it first thanks to the billions we spend on the ‘eco-power’ gravy train
Nuclear fusion could stop man-made global warming once and for all
The technology could give the world limitless clean energy
But fusion is being starved of funds as Britain, the U.S. and EU spend billions on subsidies for wind farms, solar panels and power stations
The job of developing the technology – pioneered by scientists in the U.S. – has fallen to China and South Korea
Expert says a large-scale demonstration of nuclear fusion could happen in around a decade
Construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is now underway at Cadarache in France
However, enormous obstacles remain – not least those imposed by humans.
At about £17 billion, building ITER isn’t cheap, but this compares to the £46 billion the UK will have spent on subsidies for wind, biomass and other types of renewable energy by 2020, plus many billions more on connecting installations to the grid.
The taxpayer-funded Engineering and Physical Science Research Council budget for fusion costs just £40 million a year, but research into renewables is more than three times as much at £130 million…
As for Europe, by 2011 the total EU investment in renewables was running at £67 billion a year – a figure which, thanks to colossal subsidies, has continued to rise.
Yet though the EU is one of the main international sponsors for ITER, its total contribution is just £400 million a year.
The reluctance to spend big money means ITER has had to be funded by an unwieldy coalition, including the US, China, India, Japan, the EU and South Korea…
Greens hail MoS expose of forests destroyed to give UK ‘clean’ energy
Britain’s leading green groups yesterday condemned the practice of burning American hardwood trees in British power stations – as revealed by this newspaper last week…
Greenpeace UK called on the Government to rethink its approach to biomass, saying that contrary to the claims made by the Department of Energy & Climate Change, it was not ‘sustainable’…
… as BBC boss gags ‘sceptics’ from climate change debates
A BBC executive in charge of editorial standards has ordered programme editors not to broadcast debates between climate scientists and global warming sceptics.
Alasdair MacLeod claimed that such discussions amount to ‘false balance’ and breach an undertaking to the Corporation’s watchdog, the BBC Trust.
Mr MacLeod, head of editorial standards and compliance for BBC Scotland, sent an email on February 27 to 18 senior producers and editors, which has been obtained by The Mail on Sunday.
It reads:…ETC
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2587072/Eureka-How-magic-doughnut-fakes-sun-save-planet-But-Chinese-thanks-billions-spend-eco-power-gravy-train.html
00
Don’t forget the superannuation investments of BBC employees are heavily reliant on the “global warming SCAM”…..
20
Henbury…but behind paywall:
24 March: Australian: Damon Kitney: Losses looming as grand carbon capture scheme evaporates
THE former Labor government’s grand scheme to establish the world’s largest — and the nation’s first — carbon farm on prime cattle land in the Northern Territory has collapsed…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/losses-looming-as-grand-carbon-capture-scheme-evaporates/story-e6frg6xf-1226862694892#
24 March: ABC Rural: Lauren Fitzgerald: Henbury to be marketed as a cattle station
Henbury Station will be marketed as a pastoral lease despite being destocked of cattle and earmarked for a conservation project in 2011…
The company bought the property in 2011 with $9 million grant from the Federal Government, with the intention of running a carbon farming project.
PPB Advisory was appointed manager and receiver of the property the month before it went on sale.
The Northern Territory Cattleman’s Association (NTCA) has always been opposed to destocking Henbury of cattle, arguing it has a negative flow on effect to the entire cattle industry.
(The Northern Territory Cattleman’s Association ) NTCA’s Alice Springs based executive director, Tracey Hayes, says she isn’t surprised the property is now being marketed as a cattle station.
“We’ve always held the view that Henbury must stay in the pastoral state, it’s a significant contributor to the region,” she said…
Tracey Hayes says she is confident the property will now sell…
Greg Quinn from PPB Advisory is not available for comment this morning, but says in a media release that he anticipates significant interest from both local and international parties…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-24/henbury-pastoral-lease/5340568
00
unbelievable!
23 March: Guardian: Oliver Milman: Greg Hunt confident of ‘helping’ China, US, India and EU cut carbon emissions
Environment minister says Australia will use G20 presidency as catalyst for new deal
Hunt said Australia would use its presidency of the G20 as a “catalyst” to help the “G4” – the US, China, the European Union and India – complete the groundwork for a new deal to lower emissions.
But the minister faced scepticism and heckling as he argued for the government’s environmental credentials at a Melbourne forum…
Hunt said the annual G20 talks, to be held in Brisbane in November, would be used to facilitate a long-term deal even though climate change is not on the official itinerary for the event.
“As we head towards 2050 the great global challenge is to have a real and genuine agreement and that has to involve the G4,” he told the Doctors for the Environment conference in Melbourne.
“We are proposing bringing together the largest four sources of emissions as a catalyst for a 2015 agreement. I don’t think the US and China will bind themselves legally but I think they will make a real and genuine commitment.
“Our task is to work towards not just the 2020 outcome but towards a global agreement through to 2030 and 2040 and leading into 2050.”…
Dr Kingsley Faulkner, national chairman of Doctors for the Environment, told Guardian Australia that the healthcare sector was increasingly concerned about the prospect of worse heatwaves, and many doctors were critical of the Coalition’s climate-change policies.
“I think the Australian Medical Association will get more involved in lobbying on this, as they previously have with tobacco,” he said. “I made the point to [Hunt] that history will be very critical of him and this government if the country does not pull its weight.
“The worry is that federal policy is driven by narrow vested interests and not the public interest, which is deeply short-sighted. The government has done some foolish things, such as getting rid of the Climate Commission, backing away from its commitment to the renewable energy target and overseeing a huge expansion in coal mining which will completely overcome any domestic emissions reduction.”
Faulkner said the government’s target of a 5% cut in emissions by 2020, based on 2000 levels, was “grossly inadequate”, The independent Climate Change Authority, which the government plans to scrap, has recommended the target be trebled.
The authority’s chairman, Bernie Fraser, recently backed carbon pricing as a key tool in lowering emissions, joining such people as former treasury head Ken Henry, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the OECD.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/greg-hunt-confident-of-helping-china-us-india-and-eu-cut-carbon-emissions
2011: Doctors for the Environment: “Coal a Health Hazard” Say Doctors
Health advocate against tobacco, Dr Kingsley Faulkner has turned his sights on coal as a major direct and indirect health hazard.
“Australia is addicted to coal and we need to embrace alternatives to our reliance on it, as it is making many of us sick.” said Dr Faulkner…
Doctors for the Environment Australia is a voluntary organisation of medical practitioners who advocate that a change from coal generated power to renewable sources is vital to ensure that the health standards of present and future generations can be maintained.
http://dea.org.au/news/article/coal_a_health_hazard_say_doctors
AGM Report 2013 – Doctors for the Environment
http://dea.org.au/images/general/Annual_Report_-_2013.pdf
10
greg hunt a communist global warming fanatic pretending to be a Liberal Party member.
A cat would have a higher IQ !
A bloody traitor to all Australians !!
01
Oh dear
00
worth reading all. the Maori Party realises it’s been conned, but unwilling to admit – as yet – that CAGW itself is a scam. if i were them, i wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on compensation:
20 March: NZ Herald/Wanganui Chronicle: Tariana Turia: Emissions law is costing dearly
In 2008, the Labour Government established the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) by introducing the Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill.
The Maori Party opposed the bill for a number of reasons. Since its inception, we believe the ETS should have reduced emissions. As a consequence of the failure of the ETS, Maori have been clearly disadvantaged through a huge reduction in the value of assets received in the Treaty settlements process.
We voiced our concerns at the limitations of the bill because we believed it was focused on trading, rather than reducing emissions.
The economic imperatives heavily outweighed environmental responsibilities. We also believed it was relatively ineffective and created inequalities, including the subsidisation of the nation’s largest polluters at the cost of households and small-medium businesses.
We believed the worst polluters would purchase cheap overseas carbon credits and pay their way out of the pollution they created in Aotearoa – and we were right.
Unfortunately, ordinary New Zealand families now pay for that pollution through increased power and petrol prices…
As a result of our concerns over the original bill in 2009, we negotiated a raft of very significant amendments which focused on both maintaining environmental integrity reducing the costs for our low-income whanau and making industry accountable for cleaning up.
We expected as a result of our negotiated gains that there would be investment in low-emission technologies, but this has not happened and as a result we have seen forest owners leaving the climate change scheme. Some iwi were given forests as part of their Treaty settlement and these were assets with a value of between $20 and $30 per carbon credit. These credits have been reduced in value to as little as $3 per credit, therefore reducing the value of the overall settlements. The loss is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This is unacceptable and hapu and iwi should be compensated for these losses, as Maori have a right to have their Treaty settlements protected…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/wanganui-chronicle/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503423&objectid=11222865
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no opportunity for bribery – however small – ignored:
23 March: Essex County Standard:£100,000 EU funding for Chelmsford firms in low carbon scheme
BUSINESSES in Chelmsford will be able to apply to a £100,000 pot to help make their workplaces more environmentally friendly.
Chelmsford Council has been handed over the cash through the EU’s Low Carbon Business programme to be distributed around local firms.
The money can be used to install equipment to help decrease carbon emissions at work.
A drop-in information day is being held on Wednesday 9 April at the Waterhouse Business Centre, Cromar Way, between 10am and 6pm.
http://www.essexcountystandard.co.uk/news/localnews/11095349.__100_000_EU_funding_for_Chelmsford_firms_in_low_carbon_scheme/?ref=var_0
00
I gave up on Nick Cohen after “You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom”. I think that Calvin Coolidge, possibly the greatest US President, famously reluctant to waste words, was asked to summarise a parson’s sermon after church. The subject was sin. “He was against it,” Coolidge said.
Since Cohen is a journalist, he should be “against” censorship, by definition. Why did he even need to write a book about it? I suspect that the reason, as displayed in Joanne’s article, is that Nick Cohen is the kind of leftie who is entirely opposed to censorship, except when he is favour of it. Purportedly, he recognises the value of true science:
“The scientific method is opposed to secrecy, and has no respect for status. It says that all relevant information must be open to scrutiny. The ideal it preaches – not always successfully, I grant you – is that men and women must put their pride to one side and admit mistakes.”
Sounds great, Nick! Where do we sign up?
Unfortunately, Nick Cohen spoils all that by blatantly ignoring the climate issue. His book was published well after “Climategate”, but has nothing at all to say, on either side. By failing to tackle the corruption of climate science in his book, Nick Cohen skipped aside from the most blatant censorship of our time. His supposedly authentic views about censorship pretty much equate to my own definition of “censorship”.
50
if Putin shuts down the pipelines, Hugo has CAGW solutions:
23 March: NYT: Reuters: Hugo Dixon: Weaning Europe From Russian Gas
(Hugo Dixon is editor at large of Reuters News)
That said, European Union nations should not prioritize security of supply to the exclusion of their other objectives: increasing competitiveness and fighting climate change. The question is how to best balance these conflicting goals. Part of the answer is to distinguish between short-term and long-term measures.
In the short run, European Union countries can use more coal and less gas in their electricity generation. Coal imports from the United States are particularly cheap, so this would advance the competitiveness agenda. The snag is that coal produces much more carbon than the equivalent amount of gas, so that is not good for global warming. Given the imperative to stand up to Russia, the European Union should delay, but not scrap, rules for phasing out dirty coal-fired power stations…
Longer term, European Union nations should embrace shale gas. It is cheap and local. Britain and Poland have the most potential. It is important that the Union does not get in the way of its exploitation.
Meanwhile, countries such as Germany should abandon their knee-jerk aversion to nuclear energy. While it has its risks, it has the benefit of being carbon-free — and of cutting the Europe’s dependence on Russian energy…
Finally, the European Union is devising new plans to combat global warming. At present it has targets for cutting carbon emissions and increasing renewable energy. The problem is not the carbon goal, said Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe, a research institute. Rather it is the renewable target, which results in uneconomic wind and solar power being built across the Union. There are, after all, other potentially cheaper ways of achieving carbon emission targets, such as nuclear power.
Fortunately, the European Union is considering a target for 2030 that is more focused on cutting carbon emissions than increasing renewable energy. Such an approach could help competitiveness and wean Europe off its Russian gas.
So the European Union does have options that can reduce its energy dependence without contributing to climate change or damaging competitiveness. It just needs to grasp them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/business/international/weaning-europe-from-russian-gas.html?_r=0
Speakers’ Profile – Hugo Dixon
Hugo Dixon is the founder and editor of Reuters Breakingviews. Before founding Breakingviews in 1999, Hugo spent 13 years at the Financial Times, the last five as Head of Lex. He began his journalistic career at the Economist.
http://www.speakers.co.uk/our-speakers/profile/hugo_dixon
00
***so why is Greg Hunt putting it on the agenda?
21 March: Reuters: EU leaders accelerate quest to reduce energy reliance on Russia
By Barbara Lewis and Robin Emmott
Leaders are expected to call on the European Commission, the EU executive, to draw up detailed proposals by June on how to diversify away from Russia in the short and long term.
Europe has increased the share of renewable energy to around 15 percent and has improved infrastructure and introduced a raft of legislation, which is beginning to take effect…
EU statistics office Eurostat’s energy dependence indicator, showing the extent to which EU relies on imports crept up to 65.8 percent in 2012 from 63.4 percent in 2009.
The share of Russian gas rose to around 30 percent from 22 percent in 2010, while Russia’s oil imports accounted for around 35 percent of EU use…
Although the Baltic nations and Bulgaria are among the countries most heavily reliant on Russian gas, Germany is one of those that imports the highest volumes.
It has been a very loyal customer and Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, specifically built to bypass Ukraine, ships Russian gas directly to Germany…
***Europe’s focus on Ukraine has pushed down the agenda attempts to agree a wider climate and energy framework for 2030 to replace existing energy goals, which expire in 2020.
A draft document sets a deadline of October for reaching a final deal, disappointing those saying an earlier agreement is vital to give investors in low-carbon energy confidence.
The renewable energy lobby says the Ukraine crisis has strengthened the case for setting a strong target to use more renewables. Others, however, are pushing for nuclear, coal or shale gas, which could also help the EU to become more energy independent…
(Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in London, Jan Strupczewski, Luke Baker, Andreas Rinke, Martin Santa in Brussels and John Irish in Paris, editing by David Evans)
http://news.yahoo.com/eu-leaders-accelerate-quest-reduce-energy-reliance-russia-120835438–finance.html
00
the entire abc environment homepage is a cesspit of CAGW drivel:
24 March: ABC Environment: Peter Burdon: Climate change: the situation is hopeless…let’s take the next step
(Peter Burdon is a lecturer in law at the University of Adelaide)
Confronting such a vast and final a loss as climate change brings sadness beyond the telling. After we grieve, we must summon the will to act.
IMAGINE THAT YOU woke up tomorrow with complete trust in climate science and its implications. By trust I do not just mean a kind of dispassionate intellectual understanding. I mean a trust that combines the intellect with an emotional and psychological acceptance. How would such a trust change your life?
Would you quit your job? Plant a vegetable garden? Have children? Have a vasectomy or tubal ligation? Write more? Write less? Talk to your neighbours? Build a survival bunker in the hills? Go inward spiritually and bear witness to the devastation? Phone your parents? Hug your children? Become an environmental activist? Cry?
Perhaps surprisingly, my own immediate reaction was relief. Relief that I could finally articulate what my rational brain had been telling me and that I could let go of the false hope that industrial society would voluntarily transition to a sustainable way of living…
As Joanna Macy suggests (pdf): “Confronting such a vast and final a loss as this brings sadness beyond the telling.”…
The bottom line is that if we don’t have a movement in the streets, prepared to get arrested, willing to take those chances, you cannot get the best out of even the most progressive government. By contrast, if you have a movement, you can get something even out of a terrible government.
For example, 1970s US President Richard Nixon hated the environment movement but he signed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and created the US Environmental Protection Agency. Why? There was a movement powerful enough to force his hand.
It is incredibly important that environmentalists around Australia become aware of this history — particularly as we face conservative governments around Australia and the regression of even the most basic environmental protection laws.
So, what gives me hope today is not our political leaders who are wedded to the strictures of State-capitalism. Nor the big environmental NGOs, many of whom have become disconnected from their membership and traded their integrity for the opportunity to become ‘insiders’ and ‘walk the corridors of power’…
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2014/03/24/3968981.htm
Uni of Adelaide: Dr. Peter D. Burdon, Senior Lecturer
As well as publishing in academic outlets I also feel a strong responsability to contribute to public debate and make my ideas availalbe in forums like ABC Environment, The Drum, New Matilda, Eureka St, Arena Magazine, Independant Australia and various state and national newspapers.
Since 2005 I have worked with Friends of the Earth Adelaide in the Clean Futures Collective. In this role I have engaged in community advocacy, developed submissions in response to mining projects in South Australia, acted as media spokesperson, organised working trips to aboriginal communities in northern South Australia and organised significant public conferences. I was a founding member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature and I currently sit on the management committee of the Australian Earth Law Alliance. From 2007-2011 I sat on the executive committee of the Conservation Council South Australia and from 2011-2013 I sat on the management committee of the Environmental Defenders Office (SA).
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/peter.d.burdon
10
Regarding Greg Hunt however a clue might be that he has listened to the climate change gravy train passengers at the CSIRO and BOM climate change departments. The Coalition dumped Tim Flannery and his office but retained the other government funded department? Does Hunt have blinkers like the ones Malcolm Turnbull appears to wear either side of rosy coloured glasses? They are both intelligent well educated people but are looking gullible and politically naive.
It is important to remember that the Howard Coalition signed the Kyoto Protocol (did not ratify it) and established their office of greenhouse to tackle greenhouse gases (remember that was the problem before CO2?). That government also considered an emissions trading scheme.
It is easy to look backwards and ask why but there appeared to be compelling reasons (lies as we now know) to take action, or as the Howard government aimed to do, take direct action using many projects to achieve lower greenhouse gas emissions.
My point is that Hunt could still be on that wavelength reinforced by gravy train brainwashing “experts”?
00
It’s simply the old tactic, the Galileo gambit e.g. Big Oil etc. are against us so we must be right, dressed up with an extra soupçon of pity.
00
“Observations about the climate – weather balloons, ice cores, satellites, corals, rocks, thermometers, stuff like that.”
I just finished re-watching Gores Inconvenient truth, and he says some things much like Cohen above, in that he couldn’t understand why politicians don’t ‘act’. But the main issue is that the politicians instinctively sense that the whole thing is not as concrete as they seem to think. Gore and Cohen just don’t get this, they are far too sure of themselves.
One example from Gores film which shows this, and why he is way out of his depth in talking about global warming. He shows at one point 2 blue line graphs of temperature and c02 over the last 1000 years, to illustrate how they are exactly the same (this occurs after he shows the hockeystick graph), the trouble is, that the first of these two graphs is fake, the temperature one actually comes from Mann’s hockeystick reconstruction, although he implies in the film that the temperature one comes from the ice core data, which it doesn’t. In other words, he has taken the bait, and shows exactly what fakers want him to show and to believe, and the data is not as concrete about things as he thinks it is, he simply parrots what others want him to say, and in doing this shows he is out of his depth with regards to the issues he is dealing with. So politicians should quite rightly treat the whole thing with suspicion. (This is also discussed in the book climatism I think, or one of the skeptic climate books out there I cant remember).
00
Its like listening to CAARLT’N supporters with 15 minutes to go in the grand final, trailing Collingwood by 100 points and whinging about the umpires, the ball, the surface, the crowd, the weather and now….the frigging climate!
Nick Cohen et al lost because they played the man from the first bounce and the umpires, the crowd, the commentators saw them for what they are. Second raters who ran out of substance in the warm up and began their abuse before it even started. In short the third 18/15/13/11 got selected by some strange quirk of fate and the inevitable result is in.
Vale pretenders!
00
This is a good one !
BBC calls off global warming debates, having lost so often !!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/bbc_calls_of_more_global_warming_debates_having_lost_so_often/
11
Stop being so funny and insightful—I’m trying to remember this is a science blog.
10
More breaking climate news!!
The reason we haven’t found Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 yet? You guessed it. Climate Change!!!
10
Matter of time basically.
Setting aside pesky common sense and those even peskier facts for just a moment, based on the fact that Australia’s search teams have been dropping sensors to measure what the local currents are doing. So it wouldn’t matter if it was behaving like a 3000sqm washing machine on turbo in terms of finding any debris.
Sure its AGW, why not, everything else is.
How dumb are some people? Im not even going to ingratiate them by calling them scientists, because that’s an insult to people who use their brains and their skills to research things. Now its just blame CO2 and put in your time sheet.
Maggots.
20
ABC describing this item from ABC Breakfast today, includes response from Minerals Council of Australia:
24 March: ABC Breakfast: Australian coal investments at risk of becoming ‘stranded assets’
But is proposed investment in new Australian coal projects at risk of becoming a series of ‘stranded assets’?
Chief Executive of the Minerals Council of Australia Brendan Pearson offered this response:
‘Coal is a critical export resource for Australia generating hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars in export revenue and billions of dollars in taxation for State and Federal Governments. It will remain a critical component of the Australian economy for the foreseeable future and help lift the developing world out of poverty.’
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/australian-coal-investments-at-risk-of-becoming-stranded-assets/5340188
however, the entire item is an interview with the only guest on the program, propagandist Ben Caldecott, who is not even mentioned in the summary & Brendan Pearson’s response plays no part in it at all:
Guest: Ben Caldecott
Programme Director and Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment; director, Oxford Stranded Assets Programme
listen as Fran Kelly leads Caldecott into repeating why he thinks coal is a stranded asset.
Wikipedia: Ben Caldecott
Ben Caldecott is a British environmentalist, economist and commentator who is a Programme Director at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment and a Trustee of the Green Alliance. At the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment he founded and directs a research programme on stranded assets…
Caldecott has been recognised as “a leading thinker of the green movement” by The Independent and has written for The Guardian, The Independent The Telegraph and The Huffington Post. He has been a commentator for a number of national news outlets, including the BBC CNBC, The Financial Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal…
Prior to joining the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Caldecott was Head of Policy at investment bank Climate Change Capital and before that was Research Director, Environment and Energy at Policy Exchange.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Caldecott
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what Fran Kelly is publicising for Ben is his ANU appearance tomorrow. Frank doesn’t say who is organising Ben’s tour:
ANU: Stranded Down Under – are fossil fuels bankrupting Australia financially and ecologically?
Speaker:
Ben Caldecott
Date:
6:00pm to 7:30pm, 25 March 2014
Venue:
Coombs Lecture Theatre, HC Coombs Building, [Building 8a], Fellows Road, The Australian National University
The world’s top scientists estimate that global temperatures will rise by up to 6 degrees in the next century if we continue to burn fossil fuels at our current rate…
http://regnet.anu.edu.au/events/stranded-down-under-are-fossil-fuels-bankrupting-australia-financially-and-ecologically
is 350.org funding the tour? who knows?
350.org: Stranded Down Under – are fossil fuels bankrupting Australia financially and ecologically?
CANBERRA
ANU evening forum: 18:00-19:30, Tuesday 25th of March, full details here and flyer here.
Crawford School lunchtime panel: 12:30-14:00, Tuesday 25th March, Acton Theatre, full details here.
SYDNEY 19:00-20:30, Thursday 27th of March, full details here and flyer here.
MELBOURNE 18:00-19:30, Tuesday 1st of April, full details here and flyer here.
BRISBANE 18:00-19:30, Thursday 3rd of April, full details here.
http://act.350.org/signup/strandeddownunder_aus/?ak_proof=1&akid=.1243095.XQe29O&rd=1&t=2
350 Queensland Facebook:
You’re invited to Stranded Down Under – Are fossil fuels bankrupting us financially and ecologically? with Oxford University and Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Ben Caldecott on April 3rd at Southbank Tafe.
Hosted by the UQ International Energy Centre.
(Bookings can be made through the links below)
https://www.facebook.com/350Queensland/posts/1469367683278942
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Can you see now why closing down coal fired power plants ….. anywhere ….. is tantamount to political suicide.
And the text I have highlighted is telling.
Tony.
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What readers must understand is that this 39 year old project by the elite to create Fascist control of the World was always based on incorrect radiative physics, originally from Arrhenius but disinterred by Carl Sagan in his ‘Venusian Thermal Runaway’ model. This is to assume that a Radiation Field is a net IR flux, hence the ‘black body emitter’ assumption for the surface IR heating of the atmosphere.
With the equally stupid application of Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation at ToA, this increases surface heating of the lower atmosphere by just under 40%. This, and the even more stupid assumption of 33 K GHE, 3x reality, gives the modelled ‘positive feedback’; there is no such feedback.
What’s more, the aerosol optical physics of clouds from Sagan is supposed to hide AGW: Sagan got it wrong; the sign of the ‘indirect aerosol effect’ is really reversed so it has been the real AGW, from Asian industrialisation.
To summarise, we have IPCC fake fizzicks of a similar nature to the Phlogiston debate of the 18th Century, with the arguably fanatically religious Sir John Houghton reprising the role of Joseph Priestley. And to rub it in, real CO2 climate sensitivity is near zero.
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Joseph Goebbels knew more about maintenance of the something proven to be wrong.
Those who believe in climate alarmism are not Nazis. Further, they believe the myth of global political solutions. But they never establish the truth for themselves, by thinking through the problem. Further, alarmists continually try to block others thinking for themselves.
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funding would obviously not be difficult for Caldecott, but why did abc & smh leave out his connection to Bloomberg New Energy Finance? why did it take a 350 Queensland Facebook page to tell us that?
16 July 2013: Bloomberg: Caldecott joins Bloomberg New Energy Finance
Ben Caldecott, one of the UK’s thought-leaders on energy and climate change issues, is joining research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Caldecott, who spent the last four years as head of policy for investment bank Climate Change Capital, will take on a new role at Bloomberg New Energy Finance as head of government advisory. His focus will be on helping to build the company’s engagement with governments and international institutions, working closely with chief executive Michael Liebreich, as well as Chief Editor Angus McCrone and global head of policy Ethan Zindler.
Caldecott’s experience includes periods on secondment to the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, and to the Conservative Party’s Implementation Unit before the 2010 General Election. He is also programme director and research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, a role he will continue to hold.
ABOUT BLOOMBERG NEW ENERGY FINANCE
Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) is the definitive source of insight, data and news on the transformation of the energy sector. BNEF has staff of more than 200, based in London, New York, Beijing, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Munich, New Delhi, San Francisco, São Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Washington D.C., and Zurich.
BNEF Insight Services provide financial, economic and policy analysis in the following industries and markets: wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal, hydro & marine, gas, nuclear, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency, digital energy, energy storage, advanced transportation, carbon markets, REC markets, power markets and water.
http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/caldecott-joins-bloomberg-new-energy-finance/
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to SMH, Caldecott is simply an “Oxford academic”
24 March: SMH: Angela Macdonald-Smith: Coalminers starting to count the cost of activist pressure on funding
Campaigns to get banks and big funds to drop their support for fossil fuel enterprises are gathering momentum and are likely to increasingly lead to reputational damage for coal miners, says an Oxford academic.
The campaigns are also likely to lead to increased financing costs for fossil fuel projects, according to Ben Caldecott, director of the Stranded Assets Program at Oxford University.
Mr Caldecott, who is in Australia for two weeks for a series of lectures and meetings with investors and politicians about his research, said that moves by large funds to exclude coal stocks from their portfolios were spreading remarkably rapidly…
His comments come after the Norwegian Parliament last week rejected a proposal to ban the $US840 billion Government Pension Fund Global from investing in fossil fuels. However, the threat has not gone away, with the opposition Labour Party that brought the move signalling it may re-submit the proposal after April.
The fund is one of BHP’s top three shareholders and also has holdings in Glencore Xstrata, Woodside Petroleum and Whitehaven Coal…
Last year, the United Church of Christ became the first major religious body in the US to vote to divest from fossil fuel companies…
BHP Billiton chief executive Andrew Mackenzie earlier this month said bans on fossil fuel investments would “seriously” slow global economic growth and often failed to properly understand the realities of life in poorer countries.
Last week, Rio Tinto’s head of energy, Harry Kenyon-Slaney, also argued coal would continue to be vital to address energy poverty in the developing world.
In his meetings around Australia, Mr Caldecott will also explain his report released last year that found large coal and port projects planned in Australia were at risk of being unviable because of a multitude of factors that would weigh on demand from China…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/coalminers-starting-to-count-the-cost-of-activist-pressure-on-funding-20140324-35dbe.html
24 March: SMH: Jens Meyer: Markets Live: China stimulus hopes boost shares
3.01pm Campaigns to get banks and big funds to drop their support for fossil fuel enterprises are gathering momentum and are likely to increasingly lead to reputational damage for coal miners, says an Oxford academic.
The campaigns are also likely to lead to increased financing costs for fossil fuel projects, according to Ben Caldecott, director of the Stranded Assets Program at Oxford University…(links to previous story above)
http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets-live/markets-live-china-stimulus-hopes-boost-shares-20140324-35cgr.html
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given SMH brings up “United Church of Christ became the first major religious body in the US to vote to divest from fossil fuel companies”, might as well note that ARRCC, The Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, are also helping publicising Ben’s tour:
ARRCC: Events: Stranded Down Under public lecture, Ben Caldecott
25.03.2014 – 25.03.2014 18.00 – 19.30
Coombs Lecture Theatre – ANU, Canberra
http://www.arrcc.org.au/index.php?view=details&id=165%3Astranded-down-under-tour-ben-caldecott&pop=1&tmpl=component&option=com_eventlist&Itemid=89
if the public really understood how dangerous the Bens of this world are, with their only interests being the financialising of CARBON DIOXIDE emissions, there would be an uproar. Ben’s company for four years up until he joined Bloomberg:
Wikipedia: Climate Change Capital
Climate Change Capital (CCC) is a private asset management and advisory group authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK. CCC was founded in 2003 with a mission to channel capital into the solutions to climate change and resource depletion…
The asset management business, which was established in 2005, includes: a carbon finance fund that invests in emission reduction projects, predominantly in developing countries; a Private Equity fund that invests in late stage technology and services companies headquartered in Europe and a property fund that buys commercial green buildings or retrofits existing commercial properties in the United Kingdom.
The company’s think tank was established in 2009 to promote discussion of how capital can be deployed to mitigate and adapt to climate change…
In April 2012, Bunge Ltd acquired 100% of Climate Change Capital Group Limited. The parent company of Climate Change Capital, Bunge Ltd is a global agribusiness and food company founded in 1818 with over 35,000 employees in more than 40 countries.
Climate Change Capital’s Chairman is James Cameron, a member of General Electric ‘s ecomagination board, Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Measuring Sustainability and its Advisory Board of the Global Competitiveness Index, a trustee member of the UK Green Building Council and the Carbon Disclosure Project . He was also a member of the UK Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group (2010-2012) and the Green Investment Bank Commission (2010).
Climate Change Capital’s Chief Executive Officer is Alfred Evans. He is also responsible for the Bunge Environmental Markets team. Prior to joining Bunge, Alfred was employed by GE Energy Services, Cargill’s Financial Markets Group and Clifford Chance and the US Environmental Protection Agency .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Change_Capital
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Let’s translate Nick Cophen into what he really means:
“Climate ni**ers have destroyed the perfect belief system we had. We climate concerned were really on to something- evil human CO2 causing a climate apocalypse and we lucky few had the key to solving it. Very lucratively, by the way.
And then those ni**ers showed up, with all their questions and refusal to go along with us special people, and it just hasn’t worked out. And everyone knows ni**ers are subhuman, lazy, working with bad intentions. So even though we cliamte enlightened control media, schools, most governments, it only takes a few ni**ers in there asking their wicked questions and working tirelessly in their conspiracy to destroy it all.
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24 March: WUWT: IPCC Admits The Scientific Consensus Was Wrong in a Stunning Reversal on Biofuels
It just goes to show you that sometimes, consensus in science amounts to a “whole lot of nothing” as this story from Robert Mendick in The Sunday Telegraph tells us..
Growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, IPCC admits in dramatic U-turn
The United Nations will officially warn that growing crops to make “green” biofuel harms the environment and drives up food prices, The Telegraph can disclose.
A leaked draft of a UN report condemns the widespread use of biofuels made from crops as a replacement for petrol and diesel. It says that biofuels, rather than combating the effects of global warming, could make them worse…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/24/ipcc-admits-the-scientific-consensus-was-wrong-in-reversal-on-biofuels/#more-106015
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When the likes of Nick Cohen writes an ‘article’ such as this; a venomous splurge of bile if ever, from a bad loser aimed at those of us think for ourselves and dare to disagree with him, then we can be sure that we are winning the argument. And when he turns like a mad dog on his bedfellows, those ‘cowardly politicians’ and others, then we can doubly sure that we are winning the argument.The truth is on our side.
GEOFF W. SYDNEY
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I think the most important lesson to take from Mr Cohen’s ill-advised piece is that warmists will never stop trying to advance their agenda, no matter the observable scientific facts that might contradict their claims. They have all the money. They have all the power and all the vested interests. They have infiltrated schools, universities and governments around the world. The indoctrination is firmly entrenched and possibly here to stay until or unless there is some seismic challenge to the CAGW narrative. NGOs play their part – again for their own selfish political and financial reasons – in promulgating this deception, as does almost all of mainstream media, especially public services broadcasters (for the same reasons).
I don’t think this battle will ever end…probably not in my lifetime (I’m 50). We can reassure ourselves that the CAGW scare is under threat from hard scientific evidence, but it just never seems to gain traction. Committed climate zealots don’t want the facts. They want the hype; the sensationalism, the obfuscation, deception and dissembling – these things, allied to their easy access to a compliant unquestioning, uncritical MSM, will allow them – always unchallenged – to propagate the myth of CAGW (or whatever it’s being called this week).
I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment on my Kindle: ‘Liberal Fascism’ by Jonah Goldberg. Google for it. It’s all in there, you just have to want to read it for yourself.
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The move towards censorship just picked up speed. I was recently banned from Scientific American for pointing out the fully supportable and verifiable fact that Michael Mann lied about being a Nobel Laureate. Several other Skeptics have also disappeared from the boards as well.
We are the new “Los Desparacedos”.
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Poor old Mr Cohen, a double whammy for him,
writing about a dying cult in a dying newspaper.
Well actually after they sold off the car magazine for megabucks, that was propping up the newspaper, they could still go to print even if they had one reader.
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I have found, or I should say, in my honest opinion, that for a person who believes that the world will end in a flooded fireball to accept a skeptics point view, or even entertain that a skeptic has a point of view, would mean that they would have to question their own beliefs, which with years of building up isn’t always an easy thing to do. Much easier to just take a mob mentality and and insult them.
You would think people would like the idea that things may not be as bad as they believe, I know I felt a sense of relief.
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It’s more than just a matter of pride. Follow the money: the majority of those pushing AGW on climate blogs are doing so to protect their vested interests in maintaining the status quo, or even just the value of their domain names.
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“I mean, go figure, who would listen to a denier? It’s like talking to your cat. No wonder he finds this debate so baffling.”
Oi!…… My cat’s a damn fine conversationalist, especially when announcing that it is dinner time….. Plus I think she knows more about climate than our intrepid news hack, Nick Cohen.
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We can’t account for the lack of Auschwitz, and it’s a travesty that we can’t.
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Once an alarmist I was. Then I started to assess, consider and think. I researched and called in my knowledge of Astronomy and Physics. I considered IR CO2 and H2O vapor absorption lines and Wien’s Displacement Law. Gosh, I started to become skeptical when I found out the 15 (+/- 1.5)micron CO2 IR absorption line (which is blamed for the warming) is equivalent to the emission peak of a black body radiator at 193 degrees Kelvin (that is minus 80 degrees centigrade!) – 1.5 degrees colder than the freezing point of CO2 into dry ice. And, to boot, H2O has a far wider IR absorption line than CO2 which also includes the 15 micron IR wavelength. Yes that is right, CO2 is a very mild greenhouse gas, water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas of all the gasses in the atmosphere. It’s all there in John Tyndell’s notes, the 19th century physicist who discovered the IR absorption of the atmospheric gases. An don’t get me on about Venus.
For my thinking, a denialist I am alleged to be now.
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AndyS is now being moderated at Hot Topic, as the catastrophists work themselves up into an apoplectic fit of abusive invective. But that’s O.K. because they are sticking to the narrative. AndysS is a BAD guy.
And as for that bloody Biofarmer . . .
http://hot-topic.co.nz/aaas-molina-ozone/#comment-41397
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[…] have had a lot to say, too, about the proliferating “denier” meme: Monckton here and Nova here. After reading Nova’s initial response to him, Dr Paul Bain – and Nature – issued a partial […]
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