Climate Change could make humans extinct says “expert”

Time to panic. Climate Change could make humans extinct, warns the Sydney Morning Herald.

“The Earth is warming so rapidly that unless humans can arrest the trend, we risk becoming ”extinct” as a species, a leading Australian health academic has warned.”
The trend, the trend, which trend exactly? The trends have been flat on the surface for 17 years, so if that trend continues, we risk “staying the same”? That’ll be deadly. In 1997 global population was 5.8 billion. Since then, there has been no significant warming in the part of the world that humans live in, and global population plunged to 7.2 billion.  Hold off on the End-of-Humanity Party.

Helen Berry, associate dean in the faculty of health at the University of Canberra, said while the Earth has been warmer and colder at different points in the planet’s history, the rate of change has never been as fast as it is today.”

Luckily Helen Berry has seen the Neanderthal global data sets from the paleolithic era which recorded those climate changes. Otherwise how would she know the exact rate of global warming from, say, 11,900 -11,860BC or 42,040 – 42,000BC? The only records I’ve seen (like, the ice cores) suggest things were warming pretty fast sometimes. Who knows? If only they had satellites over ancient Sumeria.

Evidently Berry is talking about the rate of the last 40 years, and seems pretty much unaware of the 4 billion years before that:

”What is remarkable, and alarming, is the speed of the change since the 1970s, when we started burning a lot of fossil fuels in a massive way,” she said. ”We can’t possibly evolve to match this rate [of warming] and, unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction eventually.”

What Helen Berry (and Peter Hannam, the SMH journalist) don’t realize is that the warming in the last 40 years was entirely “precedented” and we don’t need to go back to the last ice age to find that kind of warming rate, just to the 1930s. It’s all happened before. Indeed (as I keep saying) the peak decadal rate of the 1870s was the same was that of the 1980s.

All that CO2, and nothing happened that was new.

Source: Phil Jones BBC interview  You get the drift.


Right about now if I were a global warming troll and an Associate Dean of Health said that the rate of change was entirely precedented and probably natural, I’d be reminding everyone that she hasn’t published a single paper on the paleoclimate, and ask why the Sydney Morning Herald felt the need to provide balance from non-experts talking outside their subject areas.

But of course we skeptics wouldn’t say that, and instead we take apart the statements, not the person. My point here is not an ad hom, it’s about the hypocrisy of the trolls. Where are they now?

Helen Berry seems to have run the extrapolation straight off the last 40 year trend, without realizing the cyclical nature of the long slow rise that started 300 years ago. Akasofu compared the projections of cherry pickers to the cyclical curve back in 2009 with this beautiful graph.

The highest “projections” come from lines drawn from 1975-1999

 

Climate Change could make humans extinct warns the Sydney Morning Herald.  Will that be before or after readers of the Sydney Morning Herald become extinct?

9.2 out of 10 based on 116 ratings

287 comments to Climate Change could make humans extinct says “expert”

  • #
    March

    No surprise, my letter to the SMH and The Age did not appear in today’s paper. I guess it’s best not to let little things like facts stand in the way of an alarmist story.

    Here t’is Sent 31/3/2014

    Dear Editor,
    Palaeoclimate and geological evidence appears to have been ignored by health experts claiming that “the rate of (climate) change has never been as fast as it is today”.The dramatic changes in environment that occurred just 10,000 years ago at the end of that last ice age are considerably greater in scale and effect. Remarkably during this time homo sapiens saw off their less resourceful rivals, the Neanderthals, and went on to dominate the planet. With this in mind, predictions of humanity’s imminent demise due to the current mild warming seem more than a little overblown. The exaggerations and sensationalism in the projections of these health experts perhaps one of the reasons some climate researchers choose to disassociate

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    • #
      March

      …last line… disassociate themselves with the current Ipcc report, branding it “alarmist”.

      I’m certainly extinct when it comes to paying for SMH or The Age. Spooner the only saving grace.

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      • #

        I loved the crosswords but it came to the stage where I was doing the whole puzzle page before reading the news. It then changed rapidly to not bothering to even read the sport pages so I stopped buying it.

        I found a stash of old crosswords on the net but they had it removed, yet they still couldn’t figure out that it wasn’t cheapness but the poor quality of journalism.

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    • #
      Andrew Griffiths

      I think this is a very concise, thoughtful letter which should be published by the SMH,maybe give it a day or two to see what happens,otherwise the letters editor should be taken to task to explain why they see fit to suppress debate on this subject. I must admit I only read the crossword and word jumble in the SMH,the rest of the paper is mostly junk,sorry the TV guide and finance pages are worth a look and Paul Sheahan’s column is a token conservative view that gets a run once a week,otherwise I wonder what the editorial staff think they are doing. Is it a business decision to publish all the crap they do,or is it the case the organisation has been captured by staff takeover? The business explanation may make sense in that most readers with a brain read The Australian and Jonova and there is niche market for lefties,old socialists,teachers federation members and the like. They do make up at least 30% of the population and buy wine and go out to restaurants on the taxpayer funded salaries and super pensions provided by a generous state.

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      • #
        Peter C

        I think this is a very concise, thoughtful letter which should be published by the SMH,maybe give it a day or two to see what happens,otherwise the letters editor should be taken to task to explain why they see fit to suppress debate on this subject.

        I agree completely.

        I have sent several letters to the Age which have not been published. I gave up.
        I suggest that unpublished letters to the papers be published here initially.

        Then we can all write in requesting publication!

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      • #
        Steve

        I find it instructive that the labels the CAGW minders have the complaint media crowd put on the articels effectovely reflect their own state of mind :

        “time to panic”

        Exactly.

        They tried screaming at people – fail.
        They tried money incentives ( like solar etc ) – fail
        They tried making movies ( the infamous “10:10” sceptic snuff movie, The Incovenient Truth ) – fail.
        They tried controlling the media – fail.
        The tried UN schmooze fests – fail

        They are now trying bliand panic – failing…..

        Have I missed anyting?

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Halve the length.

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  • #

    Just want to call attention to last 2 paragraphs of page 23 of the Report. It’s that kind of deliberate Mind Arson and attempts to use climate change to shift political institutions that is the real threat.

    The language about adaptation is a specific reference to the global pushes coming out of the UN to deemphasize what is sneered at as “techno-rational” knowledge. The reference to the mindsets of the more primitive people is what I refer to as jettisoning the Axemaker Mind. It has been one of Paul Ehrlich’s fondest wishes going back to the late 80s. It is also consistent with the work he is doing now with the UN related to the MAHB-Millenium Assessment of Human Behavior.

    Please call attention to those 2 smoking gun paragraphs in addition to rightfully jeering the assertions in the report. The UN allies do have the power to push those intentions without anyone’s consent unless they are publicized.

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    • #
      Gamecock

      Zactly. It’s not really about climate change; it’s about convincing the West to give up it’s prosperity. Any lie that works will do.

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      • #
        bullocky


        “… it’s about convincing the West to give up it’s prosperity.”
        Excepting the academic, bureaucratic and corporate elite.

        “Any lie that works will do.”
        Lewandowsky anybody?

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        Yes.

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    • #
      Steve

      I agree – I also think one of the casualties of all this is that once the communists got hold of science, they trashed its credibility by turing into a 3 ring circus by having it all collapse under proper scrutiny.

      In many ways Brokeback mountain movie did a simialr thing – trashed the image of a structural strength ( the rugged individual cowboy ) and make him look camp. The fact the cowboy was also a fondational part of america and its strength of rugged individualism, strength, perserverence, adapatability and outcomes driven results, is telling.

      The Mind Arsonm mentioned above is very true. These people are evil – they trash the good to bring in the bent, twisted and demented, define bad as good, try to remake the world in their obsessive and deranged image.

      No thanks.

      The best gift we can give our children is to teach them to make sure of facts, ignore emotion, question motives and be thorough in our analysis.

      10

  • #
    James Bradley

    The only extinction will be among those who fear global warming, and rather than accept adaptation are trying to reverse it.

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  • #
    Backslider

    Hannam is, how shall I put it?…. rabid. I have not read one article from him that was not alarmist to the extreme.

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  • #
    Peter Miller

    I have a strong feeling that this IPCC report will be viewed by our descendants in the same way we view the Battle of the Bulge in Northern France in late 1944.

    In other words, a last desperate fling by those who know they have lost the war/argument.

    There has been an almost unprecedented amount of BS spewing out of left wing media sources over the past few days. It all smacks of desperation, especially the report that Ed Davey, the UK’s odious climate minister, sent a team to demand the conclusions of the IPCC report be made much more scary.

    So there is lots of shrieking about global warming and climate change happening right now.

    I know of not one single instance of this, so can someone please enlighten me about just where this is supposed to be happening?

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    • #
      Manfred

      ‘Climate Change is here…..what are you going to do about it?’ This time they prattled on about the Marshall island atolls being overwhelmed by rising sea levels.

      Thundered relentlessly from MSM outlets in UN adoring NZ, the climageddon-cudgels used to bash people over the head for years appear to have recently been replaced by the frenzied use of tactical nukes.

      I am unsure that the MSM automatons realise that most homo sapiens have already had their crania pulverised into a chronic state of unresponsive habituation.

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      • #
        the Griss

        They know there is a cooling phase coming.

        They know the end of their farce is near.

        They know the money trough is going to dry up pretty soon.

        ITS PANIC TIME
        … for them.!!!

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        • #
          PeterK

          I took an interest in Global Warming only in the last three / four years. Prior to that I didn’t care and didn’t follow this junk but when I started to see that government wanted to install big wind fans and this would raise the cost of my electricity, for some reason I took note. I’ve learnt a lot on this site and other blogs and have been able to cut and paste items into letters I have sent to the powers that be questioning why they would want to waste money on unproven technology but also that climate alarmism was just a cash cow for the dead beats working in climate science.

          I pasted the following from JoNova post of April 2009 entitled:

          Global Warming: A Classic Case Of Alarmism

          The global temperature has been rising at a steady trend rate of 0.5°C per century since the depths of the little ice age in the 1700s (when the Thames River would freeze over every winter; the last time it froze over was 1804). On top of the trend are oscillations that last about thirty years in each direction:

          1882 – 1910 Cooling
          1910 – 1944 Warming
          1944 – 1975 Cooling
          1975 – 2001 Warming

          In 2009 we are where the green arrow points, with temperature leveling off. The pattern suggests that the world has entered a period of slight cooling until about 2030.

          http://joannenova.com.au/2009/04/global-warming-a-classic-case-of-alarmism/

          My Question: When all of this climate nonsense became main stream and every Tom, Dick and Harry was tooting their horn about it, did no one in this genius group not look at trends and not realize that their alarmism would back fire on them in twenty to thirty years (cooling would once again occur) or were they that smug and thought that they would gain control of the world before anyone realized it. I just shake my head in wonder what kind of sick mind would perpetuate this type of nonsense (and not to mention the untold hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted worldwide on something that will never happen).

          Can anyone enlighten me on this groupthink mentality?

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          • #
            Peter Carabot

            Simple explanation:
            Lots of money available! Climate thingy has been an enormous money spinner for all involved, environment ministers, minister for climate change, countless department pouring over the regurgitation of the IPCC, complete political parties, “Green” Merchandise…,whole universities dedicated to research on the topic, scientist climatologist paleontologist and whatever other ..ologist is involved, all relying on the scaremongering to pay for their kids schooling!! The biggest problem that the movement had was Democracy, it’s hard to push such a radical message onto the masses without having someone (Skeptic) dissenting with the “science…”. Labor woke up late, eventually they tried to jump on the bandwagon with the greens and hold Oz to ransom, unfortunately the skeptics were already organized and had started debunking the IPCC poop! In short: Money + malleable group-think = Power + “Climate Church” religious supremacy = more money…..

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          • #
            James Bradley

            Thought Process:

            Ok so shock and awe worked with the Ozone Layer thingy so lets try it again and go Global Warming Catastrophe then before anyone realizes that this is horse crap and the planet goes back into its cooling phase we’ll have it all under control and we will claim that it was through our efforts then all we have to do is look for another catastrophe to justify our jobs and increase our academic status.

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          • #

            Peter, I find the timeline interesting too. I’ve asked around, and some people estimate the crazy zone really started in 2004 (perhaps with the Kerry election campaign?) and peaked in 2007 – 2009.

            I like to ask when the term “denier” went mainstream? Does anyone know?

            For me, in the science communication field, things were different evidently. Science Communication is possibly the most politically-correct career there is — after being an activist for an NGO (some science communicators do both). When I was in Bali at the UNFCCC, the journalists from the ABC BBC and New Scientist were more hostile than Greenpeace.

            For me the influence of the religion began way back in the early 1990s. That was when colleagues started passing around books on the greenhouse effect. Nearly everyone who has ever been trained in science communication was “raised” to believe.

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            • #
              James the Elder

              I didn’t really notice until Forrest Gore lost the election and took to preaching the gospel. With his “extra chromosome”, Neanderthal, and flat earther rants it kicked into crazy gear around 2000-01.

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            • #
              scaper...

              Jo, I was a believer until early 2008 and denier was not mainstream then.

              I believe denier went mainstream in late 2009/early 2010. Did a bit of research and I believe it was first used by Al Gore in relation to Sarah Palin (Dec 2009) and became popular after the first release of the CRU emails.

              A diversion of sorts.

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            • #
              Another Graeme

              I agree with you Jo. During 2000/ 2001 I was studying B. Environmental Science and found major inconsistencies with the burden of proof within the field. Basically, if you suggested that any environmental issue was not as bad as reported, then you needed evidence far in excess of that required for agreeing. At this point of my education I was not even aware there was a skeptical position on global warming, it was simply treated as a given. I don’t expect much has changed.

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            • #

              Bjorn Lomberg copped it for his 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist, so I’d say 2002.

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            • #
              Rod Stuart

              It goes back at least to early 2007.

              I would like to say we’re at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

              It backfired on Dana Nuttertelly in 2011 on WUWT.

              dana1981 Submitted on 2011/09/24 at 5:42 pm
              Please, can people stop using the acronym “SS”? The correct acronym is “SkS”

              REPLY: On this we agree, folks please stop using it. Now Dana, would you agree to stop referring to people here and elsewhere using that other distasteful WWII phrase “deniers”. You’ll get major props if you announce that. – Anthony

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            • #
              Gary Luke

              “I find the timeline interesting too. I’ve asked around, and some people estimate the crazy zone really started in 2004 (perhaps with the Kerry election campaign?) and peaked in 2007 – 2009.”

              “For me, in the science communication field, things were different evidently. … For me the influence of the religion began way back in the early 1990s. That was when colleagues started passing around books on the greenhouse effect.”

              The different periods of awareness for public and science communicator could be due to two apocalypses vying for attention. Pre-millennium we had the imminent cataclysm of Y2K, so there wasn’t room for the post-millennium slightly warmer horrors until Y2K was out of the way.

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            • #
              Andrew Griffiths

              Jo , I think Denier is a relatively recent term of abuse,say 3-4 years ago. I remember my wife was reading an article in the SMH a couple of years ago and asked me “what is a denier?” using the French pronunciation,denya.I thought she was talking about a term used commonly in the 1950’s to describe the fineness of nylon stockings worn by women at the time,denier is a term of micro measurement used in the textile industry

              00

            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              Jo,

              The term “denier”, meaning unbeliever, or contrarian, first came to my attention around 1997/1998 in connection with the Y2K “bug” (which, of course wasn’t a bug at all, but rather the result of sloppy programming).

              It was coined by one of the big six consulting companies,* in regard to clients who adopted an attitude of, “Well, we don’t think computer clocks are a big deal, they are never right anyway, and if our systems break, we will know where and how, so we can fix them later.”

              I know that a lot of Universities were in that camp, so they would have picked up the meme, and it is then a very small step for academia in general to use the epithet for anybody who adopts an attitude of, “I don’t believe you, and anyway I don’t really care”.

              * I am fairly sure I know which one it was, but I won’t name it for fear of being sued — they have much deeper pockets than I.

              10

              • #
                Roy Hogue

                Mein Gott! “Denier” is certainly getting a whole lot more attention than it’s worth. 😉

                But that’s not my point. I expect I’ll appear defensive about this though I have no reason to be because I had nothing to do with it. The Y2K bug was not the result of sloppy programming. It was a failure of foresight. The code all worked as it was supposed to and would have continued to work right up until the number of bits or digits allotted for the year overflowed. It was a plain and simple case of failure to ask the necessary questions: how long will this code be around and in use and how many digits are required to handle the year through the life of the system? These are questions you ask about the size of numbers in any system and they got it right for everything but the year. They fell into a trap, thinking that the shorthand notation humans can (and still) use would work for the computer.

                There is a similar bug waiting to appear in 2038 when the 32 bits used to keep time as the standard DOS clock in Windows can no longer handle the job and overflows. And Windows is still keeping that DOS clock around because a lot of programs still use it. And Microsoft is still keeping Windows around forever because they need to sell new systems every few years, yet they dare not suddenly render expensive software, billions of lines of code, unusable by removing legacy support for a whole lot of things — like the DOS clock.

                00

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                @Roy – The Y2K bug was more hysteria and hype than a bug. Long before the century hit, people had been planning for it (I know I had been). So the number of legacy systems that needed to be fixed was not great.

                But the number of lines of code that had to be checked was VERY great. It was a boom time for old programmers (I dipped my beak into the trough even though I had long ago moved on to Network Engineering).

                It paid for my divorce! And that was not cheap!

                00

              • #
                Roy Hogue

                Phil,

                Just so.

                My forte was Windows and they had the thing taken care of in the OS long before it became a problem. But when I ported code from 3.1 to XP I had to change my timing code to use the new timekeeping and that was a bit of work. That was about 1997 so Y2K was a non issue for me.

                The 2038 bug is still there, at least in Windows 7 because I have a program on a Windows 7 system that I wrote that depends on the DOS clock to work. It still works.

                00

              • #
                PhilJourdan

                @Roy – the 2038 “feature” is both DOS and Unix. But there is a big difference between that one and Y2K.

                I will be 82 and DEFINITELY retired or dead. So I do not care. 😉

                00

              • #
                Gary Luke

                The point of bringing up Y2K here is nothing to do with the technicalities of programming. It’s the similar apocalyptic dressing that surrounded Y2K and the little bit of warmer weather we can expect for a short while. Planes will fall out of the sky. No they won’t – the meals will heat at the wrong time. Banks will have to shut their doors and the world economy will collapse. No it won’t – you might receive a comic bank statement for a month but please ignore it.

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              • #
                Roy Hogue

                So I do not care.

                Phil,

                Me too! I’d have to be 99 to still be breathing in 2038.

                Old code, on the other hand, seems to live forever. IBM may still be selling 1401 Autocoder emulation on their latest and greatest mainframes for all I know. 😉

                Windows does have a better system since WIN32 took over from WIN16.

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              • #
                PhilJourdan

                @Roy – 99!?!?! Congratulations! I bet you make it. me? Not a chance! 😉

                00

            • #
              Mindert Eiting

              Jo, I would say that the term “denier” went mainstream about one year ago. Has to do with frequency of usage and fashion. Initially, words like these are tried out for some years by spin doctors. Less than one year ago it was used in a quasi-scientific article, showing that it had become fashionable. Same development of the climate change and climate extremes tale. Climategate already showed that before 2009 some spin doctors worried about the lack of warming. We have had here in Western Europe five cold winters on a row, the last 2012-2013. It was only in the third winter (2010) that the MSM began to spread the message that CO2 would produce both warm and cold winters. It was done so clever that people saw it as a remarkable scientific achievement to come with this sophisticated result. For people with a sense of logic a version was spun that CO2 would produce extremes. Perhaps I am wrong but the subject is interesting as it may show how propaganda works.

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            • #
              Ted O'Brien.

              Jo, are things out of whack here? Lots of #5.1.1.1.1s, and other apparent inconsistencies.

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              • #
                Ted O'Brien.

                Roy @ 1:15 am, without reply button.

                “Wot’s in a name?” She sez,
                Strewth, I dunno,
                Billo’s just as good as Romeo,
                She may be Julier or Juliet
                ‘E loves ‘er yet.

                C. J. Dennis.

                00

            • #
              Steve

              I recall in 2007 some eco troll on smh haranging me for having an electric water heater – so my guess is that would be about the peak of the hysteria.

              00

          • #
            Boris

            She could only be working for the CSIRO. No one else would employ someone that dizzy.

            00

          • #
            Michael P

            That’s the exact reason I first got involved as well. When I first heard that apparently we needed a “tax on carbon” It got me interested enough to start doing a little digging on the subject and what I found and the group-think mentality that seems to ignore all facts expect when they seems to fit the agenda alarmed me. The lies and spin on the subject annoy me to no end,as I refuse to tolerate that idiocy. I expect to be told the pure facts no more and no less. Is that to much to ask,as some of these idiots seem to think? What I saw in the ClimateGate emails shocked me to no end..

            20

        • #
          tom0mason

          The cooling phase is coming ans the Malthusians haven’t got total control on fossil fuels.

          20

    • #
      Safetyguy66

      How come so may Australian…. um scientists (what else do you call them?) are contributing. Like every story on the RED(ABC) starts with “an Australian scientist and contributor to the IPCC napkin…. I mean report…. said”….. we have our grubby hands all over this nonsense…. SHAME!

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    • #
      Peter C

      You have provoked a lot of discussion here Peter!

      This is not quite the quote I was looking for but General Patton did not hold back:

      Regarding the Battle of the Bulge ( almost the last gasp of the German resistance in the Second World War- although it did not seem like it at the time).

      Michael Korda described the reaction(in response to a comment by General Eisenhower)in his book Ike: An American Hero: “Patton, who grasped Ike’s strategy intuitively, smiled broadly and said, ‘Hell, let’s have the guts to let the sons of bitches go all the way to Paris, then we’ll really cut ‘em off and chew ‘em up.’”

      Translating: The Alarmists are digging themselves a deeper and deeper hole!

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    • #
      Bones

      So there is lots of shrieking about global warming and climate change happening right now.

      I know of not one single instance of this, so can someone please enlighten me about just where this is supposed to be happening?

      Peter,for the answer to your question,you need to look no further than the ipcc report release date,APRIL 1,but surely there is no CONection,is there,nah can’t be.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        So there is lots of shrieking about global warming and climate change happening right now.

        I know of not one single instance of this, so can someone please enlighten me about just where this is supposed to be happening?

        And no one can tell you where it’s happening because it isn’t happening, shrieking voices notwithstanding. The harder they work to convince the world the less they have to show for it. Unfortunately and I mean terribly unfortunately, the political world is believing them. It gives them another opportunity to be self-important big wheels in what is really a pretty small machine. I dread the next few years. There is a horrific disconnect between politics and reality and politics is in control. You would believe from all the rhetoric that human life couldn’t go on without the UN and governments of the world to tell people how to live their lives. And they’re now saying exactly that. And it’s all a crock.

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  • #
    Pathway

    Of course the premise that homo sapiens are going extinct from a change in global temperature is laughable on its face. We occupy virtually every niche on the earth. From the cold of Antarctica to the heat of the Sahara Desert has a human foot print.
    In any other time we would think these people silly, but in today’s world they are probably dangerous.

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    • #
      Safetyguy66

      Spot on Pathway. If there was any justice in the world they would be locked away in a padded room for their own safety.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      It is not homo sapiens they are concerned about, but caffeine hominis — Latte Man.

      They are afraid that members of the urban chic might be slightly inconvenienced by an increase in temperature of a third of a degree per decade.

      It is simply too awful for words, to be seen with perspiration marks on ones clothing.

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      • #
        Boris

        Yes – Latte man – house of the green people. Thank God evolution will stop for Latte Man. Their brains couldn’t be any deader.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        It is not homo sapiens they are concerned about, but caffeine hominis — Latte Man.

        They should be called Homo Sap? As in Homo Sucker — those about whom P. T. Barnum famously didn’t remark, there’s one born every minute.

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    Jo it’s ok, the editor of my local unbiased Fairfax News Publication gives a very clear and accurate explanation http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/2183743/lets-embrace-super-cold/?cs=64 sarc off/

    The MSM tantrums since the IPCC’s latest report released have been annoying but predictable, you get that when trying to alter the boundaries of a spoilt child, well back in my day if a kid……..

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      Graeme No.3

      Yonniestone:

      I don’t know if the Ballarat Courier counts as MSM but it is showing the way for them.

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      Steve

      The “newspaper” in Albury is now a F*****x rag.

      When the heat was on last summer, it seems every every dust gathering Leftie made an appareance when anyone disputed “the sky is falling” nonsense.

      A friend basically “dug in” and proceeded to sink every argument with science the lefty fear mongers threw at the wider population in the hope to baffle them with BS dressed up as “science”. In the end they quietly slunk away, but it was like trench warfare, so I was told.

      One thing mentioned in despatches was their incandescent hate for anything that talks about their “hiding the decline”.

      A master stroke was the graphic that showed the the comparison between the AR5 models prediction of temp increase vs the actual observed data.

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      Roy Hogue

      …well back in my day if a kid… … ..

      Yoni, I know exactly how you feel. Act like a misbehaving child, be treated like a misbehaving child. Simple justice really.

      And unfortunately not acceptable. So you and I have to swallow our frustration and can use only words against them. In today’s world I choke on that almost daily.

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        Roy an old saying here from my childhood is “…a good clip over the ear…” I’m sure variations are used worldwide but effective none the less 😉

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  • #
    DT

    Who had the sense of the ridiculous to appoint a former train driver to head the gravy train?

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    • #
      Peter Miller

      The same people who thought a soft porn writer should head a supposedly scientific organisation, and amazingly the train driver on the gravy train are one and the same person.

      It all helps to bring the IPCC, and especially its leadership, into perspective.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        I guess it’s really true then — sex sells product!

        Only in this case it’s the general public being screwed. Funny though, I’m not enjoying it. 🙁

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      tom0mason

      He’s good at railroading the public!

      10

  • #

    Speaking as a Homo Sap, the climate hasn’t yet managed to kill us off. 70% of our 200,000 years have been ice ages, so this little interglacial is right up our street. Roll on the good old times when there weren’t any icecaps anyway.

    Pointman

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  • #

    Shouldn’t “leading health professional” Berry and her mates be more worried about …… errrr health.

    The World Health Organisation’s 2009 study ranked global warming as 22nd out of 23 risks to human mortality. The WHO estimates humans are 700 times more likely to die from heart disease than from global warming. Tobacco use 360 times, high blood pressure 280 times etc.

    By 2085, under IPCC’s scariest scenario, warming is projected to contribute less than one-seventh of total human mortality from hunger, malaria, disease and the like.

    Why would Berry use her leading health expert reputation and intrude into the murky global warming arena?????

    260

  • #
    MadJak

    Time to panic. Climate Change could make humans extinct, warns the Sydney Morning Herald.

    Time to Panic. Selfish self serving, Ideological Catastrafarians will push societies’ most vulnerable beyond the precipice of starvation towards death, warns MadJak.

    There, put into perspective.

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    James Bradley

    If the rabid Luddites of Climatology were genuine they would keep quiet and retire to their mountain strongholds to sit back and let it all escalate in order to finally rid the planet of our technology culture.

    But if that happened they would no longer have a purpose – just like the prophets of the next ice age, crown-of-thorns starfish, ozone layer, sea level rise – wait a minute aren’t they the same people?

    Now why on earth would anyone run around promoting imaginary catastrophes?

    Cah-ching…

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    • #
      DT

      “The IPCC is not trying to galvanise public opinion”.

      10

    • #
      Annie

      It was disgusting, wasn’t it? My husband and I were appalled at the ABC bias. I’ve run out of energy to challenge them (recent big move and so on) but I hope someone with more time and energy will call them out.

      My ABC? I think not. It’s hard to believe but unfortunately we have to concede that they could be even worse than the BBC and that’s sure saying something! Lord Reith must be turning in his grave.

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  • #
    diogenese2

    The third paragraph of Helen Berry’s article reveales the fallacy that refutes the thesis.
    “we cannot possible evolve to match this rate (of warming) and,unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction”.
    It is ironic that the geneticist Steve Jones’, (the one who exonerated BBC “science” of bias), in his work on the human DNA and RNA. indicates nothing impliying human “evolution” has occured in hundreds of millenia. “Pathway” @ 4.37am, has his finger firmly on the point. The supreme charateristic of Homo Sapiens is the ability to ADAPT to different and changing environments and , indeed , to change the environment.
    The power and wisdom of adaption, ignored by the IPCC from AR1 and discounted by Lord Stern,
    is now emerging as the only rational approach to this entire issue.
    That is obfuscated in AR5 WG2, but Richard Tol’s action has provoked the response that exposes the underlying conflict.
    The only way forward is retreat.

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    • #

      Agree. Is there any evidence that we adapted genetically to the beginning of the interglacial period?

      Evolution is slow. Not all species adapt. Most die out if the environment changes even over 1000 s of years. We will not evolve even if the temperature rises 10°C over 10 000 years. We will adapt our culture.

      30

      • #
        Mattb

        “We will adapt our culture.” or we’ll be wiped out. if you look at the geological record… 10C is probably pretty bloody awful. Exctinct… maybe not… but I’d suggest there’d be a lot of death somewhere along there.

        07

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Matt,

          Don’t be a jerk. The U.S. Army had thousands of men and women in Iraq for years where summer temperatures are 10 C (18 F) higher than what most of them were used to at home. No one curled up and died. They took the necessary measures against the heat and kept on going.

          People live their entire lives in such regions. We might need to abandon some places if a 10 degree rise is really going to happen. But it isn’t going to happen, at least not from carbon dioxide.

          30

          • #
            Gee Aye

            they don’t die from the heat but from the direct and flow on affects of diminished agricultural production and water availability.

            02

            • #
              Mattb

              he’s right you know.

              00

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              Gee Aye, Matt,

              If I could reasonably believe human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere would really endanger people I would be with you, not opposed.

              But there is no case for human induced climate change that stands up under examination by competent, thinking scientists. The thing doesn’t even stand up under examination by amateurs. The body of evidence against it has grown to overwhelming size. A lot of it has been revealed to be fraudulent. Yet those like you persist with a case that would be laughed out of court by the judge if it was a criminal complaint.

              I don’t know what the future will bring and neither do you. Feast or famine are both real possibilities. Something in the middle is the most likely. But who knows? And whatever those things do, they do. And no one has enough power to stop it.

              The world all around us is deteriorating toward war and that’s where some real effort to solve problems should be applied. Climate change has been a non problem for all of its miserable life.

              00

    • #
      tom0mason

      The third paragraph of Helen Berry’s article reveals the fallacy …

      “we cannot possible evolve to match this rate (of warming) and,unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction”.

      …Oh, so humans have a method to control global temperatures?

      Her preferred method, I assume, is to tax the Western world so more then because that works – not.

      10

  • #
    Cookter

    Thanks for jumping on this one Jo. The Sydney Morning Herald has been awash with articles of this type in recent days in anticipation of latest IPCC report. In reading Berry’s article I remembered your explanation of the similar rates of warming in the 1870s and 1930s and posted as such in the SMH comments. Needless to say my comment was dismissed by several of the SMH’s devote fans. BUT: By being posted my comment will have been read by many many more. Enough to hopefully have people look into this themselves and discover the truth.

    The most annoying thing is we have academics like Berry wading into a subject they seem to know little about except to accept the official position of the IPCC without question. Berry is obviously a very intelligent and capable woman. And yet she does not seem to be aware of basic facts that contradict her assertion that late 20th century warming was unprecedented. Once again more evidence that to stop the global warming politics we need to fix the pollution of science.

    But…the tide is indeed turning. Today the SMH Political Editor Peter Hartcher has posted an article today arguing exaggeration of impending climate doom by climate scientists is not helping the cause. The article is still mostly alarmist but we can sense some wiggle room in Peter’s wording which would not have existed up until very recently. In any case, Peter won’t be too popular with the SMH disciples today.

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/no-need-for-extra-fear-in-climate-change-report-20140331-zqp2c.html?rand=444201#comments

    80

  • #
    the Griss

    Couple more degrees warming, and we will be up near the MWP and RWP, times when the human population thrived.

    They would have us back into the Dark Ages of cold, misery, death and disease.

    I see this nonsense as the death knell of the warmist meme.

    The general population will surely see that they have gone way over the top with their alarmism, into la-la land.

    Into the loopy realm of the rabid extremist.

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    • #
      Robert JM

      The environmental editor at the age seemed to think climate didn’t change until humans started producing CO2! Thats the whole thing about post modernism, the only thing that matters is opinion!

      00

  • #
    Cookster

    Thanks for jumping on this one Jo. The Sydney Morning Herald has been awash with articles of this type in recent days in anticipation of latest IPCC report. In reading Berry’s article I remembered your explanation of the similar rates of warming in the 1870s and 1930s and posted as such in the SMH comments. Needless to say my comment was dismissed by several of the SMH’s devote fans. BUT: By being posted my comment will have been read by many many more. Enough to hopefully have people look into this themselves and discover the truth.

    The most annoying thing is we have academics like Berry wading into a subject they seem to know little about except to accept the official position of the IPCC without question. Once again more evidence that to stop the global warming politics we need to fix the pollution of science.

    But…the tide is indeed turning. Today the SMH Political Editor Peter Hartcher has posted an article arguing exaggeration of impending climate doom is not helping the cause. Peter won’t be too popular with the SMH disciples today

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  • #
    Another Graeme

    April fools!!! Er, ah, no? Just fools then.

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    Dave N

    Move over, Ehrlich

    50

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    handjive

    Luckily Helen Berry has seen the Neanderthal global data sets from the paleolithic era which tracked those climate changes.”

    Neanderthal extinction maybe due to extreme cold

    “Neanderthals in Western Europe were nearly extinct, but then recovered long before they came into contact with modern humans, claims a new research study, in a demographic crisis that seemed to coincide with a period of extreme cold in Western Europe.

    The study, at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. looked at ancient DNA sequences from 13 Neanderthal individuals and challenges the theory that competition from modern humans caused a reduction in Neanderthals around 30,000 years ago.”
    . . .
    Of course any period of extreme cold can be used as evidence of man made global warming.

    This is covered extensively in the latest UN-IPCC report ar5, released on April Fool’s Day 2014.
    Here is a summary by the BMJ (helping doctors make better decisions):
    Climate change and human survival

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    Ross

    I maybe thick or read in the wrong places but all I hear or read from people like Berry is all the things that will go wrong but very little about how to solve their problems. Yes they say reduce emmissions but I want them to spell out exactly how they would do it. But they don’t –it is all just attention seeking waffle.

    Until someone takes Tonyfromoz’s repeated challenge and says, we will do this and this and then turn off the coal fired power stations in Australia in say 5 years time ( because the problem is so terrible it needs to be done quickly !!)then all of the Helen Berrys of this world don’t deserve a second of our time.

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  • #

    No climate change will make climate experts extinct. Correction: “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away”

    30

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    Ron Cook

    I wonder that since many polls are showing ‘climate change’ is dropping down the list concerns of the populace if this latest frantic push by the IPCC is to try to stay in control. Channel 7 in Melbourne (31/03/2014) ran a news report on the latest IPCC’s doomsday predictions.

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    scaper...

    The more ridiculous the predictions, the more the populace wake up to the scam.

    Keep up the good work, warmists.

    140

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    Backslider

    LMAO!! I just read the article in question:

    Body temperatures rising above 38 degrees impair physical and cognitive functions, while risks of organ damage, loss of consciousness and death increase sharply above 40.6 degrees, the draft report said.

    So, I assume this rise in human body temperatures is due to the increased CO2 we are inhaling…. amazing gas. Anybody feel a little feverish yet? We are all going to die of CO2 induced fever!

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    • #
      James Bradley

      Yeah, but only if inhaled with effluvia spouted by IPCC.

      40

    • #
      Ron Cook

      Hu!!! since when did external temperatures raise body temperature? I thought infections did that.

      10

      • #
        Backslider

        Apparently she is a doctor, so she must know better than you or I…..

        I can sit in a sauna at 80C for an hour or more without dying (don’t wear jewellery!). I wonder just how high the good doctor expects these external temperatures which will raise our body temperatures to be?

        I have worked in extreme temperatures (hot). You can work quite normally, although it may feel somewhat uncomfortable at first. With extreme heat you just drink a lot more water…. amazing thing that perspiration is.

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        • #

          I had a summer job at the end of my first year of university in a dried fruit packing shed in my home town. They had not packed the dried sultanas from the previous season so they hired three of us to pick up the buckets of the dried fruit coming from the hopper and tossing them into wooden boxes for storage (the third guy stacking the boxes). Each bucket was 16 kg (a balance was under the hopper. Its 35 lbs) and the second day was the official record for the town of 46.9°C. Someone said that the thermometer at the back of the shed had hit 51°C. We did this for 6 hours without even a fan before my arms cramped up and we just stopped.

          Two of us came back and kept working because the job was not that bad when it wasn’t that hot (35°C was fine) and we would store about 40 tons in the 8 hours.

          00

  • #

    Berry hasn’t done a worse performance since Catwoman.

    30

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    Backslider

    While some adaptive measures are possible, limits to humans’ ability to regulate heat will affect health and potentially cut global productivity in the warmest months by 40 per cent by 2100.

    I lived and worked in Lightning Ridge for many years, with summer temperatures generally in the high 40’s and often over 50C.

    Still alive and kicking here….

    I like my sauna to be at least 80C…. why am I not dead?

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    scaper...

    Forget ice cores, tree rings and sediment to ascertain past atmosphere.

    The new observation is…drum roll-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.“Famous paintings help study the Earth’s past atmosphere.”

    Bizarre!

    40

    • #
      Yonniestone

      Yep that’s a doozy for sure. 🙁
      I believe the IPCC will soon parody da Vinci’s “The last Supper” any ideas on a Judas?

      00

    • #
      Robert JM

      Yes i believe pictures of the frozen Themes is another example of global warming in action!

      00

  • #
    TdeF

    Did anyone expect any less from the IPCC? This is an organization fighting for its very survival in the face of quite reasonable questions about its honesty. The melting glacier story was a lie. Even with the most kind interpretation, it was a lie. The Hockey stick was a lie. The erasure of previous warming periods was more than one lie. And I believe that the failure to measure the age of the aerial CO2 is the biggest lie. If the extra 50% of CO2 in the air is not from fossil fuel, we have no control over the planet anyway except micro regional effects like vegetation and water. This, I thought, was what the IPCC was set up in 1988 to study as climate is local, not global. Meteorologists never intended this. Still governments love the newfound ability to tax the air we breathe and Green governments are not going to give up so easily. In the longest period of world peace in history, the Profiteers of Doom are not going to give up so easily. Clothed in faux science where a peer is someone who agrees with you, we are getting the same old stuff. Paucheri clearly thinks he can squeeze a few more years of 360,000km a year jet travel out of this scam. The faux science Profiteers of Doom live well.

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    Bruce of Newcastle

    Interestingly in the SMH this morning Peter Hartcher is saying hey guys all this screaming woe! woe! isn’t actually helping your cause. When someone of the left like Mr Hartcher says this you really know they have gone off the deep end.

    Ordinary voters are not fools, which Hartcher knows but the catastropharians don’t seem to comprehend.

    140

  • #
    handjive

    Crazy Talk

    Part 1- Slattsnews, 6/10/08:
    “The once exalted CSIRO is reduced to publishing half-baked hypotheticals:

    And the retreat of mangrove forests and seagrass beds could leave commercially farmed banana prawns, mud crabs and barramundi without their habitats, the study found.

    Even if it were true, why on earth would mangroves retreat?
    If the ocean temperature did increase by 2-3 degrees as the CSIRO predicts, with all the credibility of a country trots tipster, the mangroves and their inhabitants would expand in area and number.”

    Crazy Talk
    Part II- @theconversation, 1 April 2014:
    How wetlands can help us adapt to rising seas

    “Sea levels around Australia are likely to rise 40 cm and up to 60 cm by 2100, driven by rising temperatures and melting ice-caps.
    Instead of costly levees and seawalls, coastal ecosystems could offer an alternative way to protect Australia’s coastal communities from rising seas, saving money and storing carbon(sic) along the way.”
    . . .
    April Fool’s Day?
    Or junk science?

    40

  • #
    A C of Adelaide

    This really is an escatological religion

    es·cha·tol·o·gy (ĕs′kə-tŏl′ə-jē) n.
    1. The branch of theology that is concerned with the end of the world or of humankind.
    2. A belief or a doctrine concerning the ultimate or final things, such as death, the destiny of humanity, the Second Coming, or the Last Judgment.

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    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    ”We can’t possibly evolve to match this rate [of warming] and, unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction eventually.” Surely Berry & Hannam mean adapt rather than “evolve”. This alarmist rant is yet another example of chickenlittleitis in that part of the brain responsible for reasoning ability.

    40

  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    ”We can’t possibly evolve to match this rate [of warming] and, unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction eventually.” Surely Berry & Hannam mean adapt rather than “evolve”. This alarmist rant is yet another example of chickenlittleitis which affects that part of the brain normally associated with logic and reasoning.

    10

  • #
    Truthseeker

    CAGW is a dead horse theory.

    The source of this theory is from the Dakota native Americans that is passed down from generation to generation and is as follows;

    “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”

    Governments however choose one or more of the following “more advanced” solutions;

    – Buying a stronger whip.
    – Changing riders.
    – Appointing a committee to study the horse. Better yet, bring in an army of consultants to over study the horse.
    – Say things like, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse.”
    – Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
    – Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
    – Ride the dead horse “outside the box.”
    – Compare the state of dead horses in today’s environment.
    – Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
    – Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
    – Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
    – Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
    – Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line than do some other horses.
    – Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
    – Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
    – Declare that “This horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.”
    – Form a charity so that others can pay for the dead horse.
    – Get the horse a Web site.

    140

  • #
    handjive

    01/04/14
    The sun unleashed a major solar flare on Saturday (March 29), causing a radio blackout for several minutes on Earth, space weather experts say.

    The flare also produced what Phillips calls a “magnetic crochet,” a rippling in Earth’s magnetic field that occurs during the flare.
    The effects of a CME are usually only felt a few days after the flare, when the plasma has time to reach Earth and disrupt its magnetic field.
    A magnetic crochet, on the other hand, appears during the flare.

    20

  • #

    What is it about “a leading Australian health academic” and “Sydney Morning Herald” that causes me to switch off immediately. It’s like those magic capitals, “IPCC”. Instant switch-off.

    Just how many times can you try something on and expect it to work? Granted, there are still people falling for Nigerian emails scams – but there can’t be many. The Herald’s glory days were back in ’08, when Marian Wilkinson was able to publish her front page lift-out detailing an evacuation plan for the NSW coastline. (Remember? Whiny Fairfax readers complained there was too much emphasis on coastal real estate and not enough panic about their estuaries.) The IPCC peaked around the time Pachauri was writing his first dirty novel and was commuting from NY to India for cricket practice in a private jet.

    It’s over. Somebody tell ’em.

    They need to give it up. Just give it up.

    60

  • #
    handjive

    Situation: “Purple”
    “The problems have gotten so bad that the (UN-IPCC) panel had to add a new and dangerous level of risks.
    In 2007, the biggest risk level in one key summary graphic was “high” and colored blazing red.
    The latest report adds a new level, “very high,” and colors it deep purple.”

    “Things are worse than we had predicted” in 2007″
    ~ ~ ~
    That’s it!
    I will be the first to call “BINGO” with my “Climate Alarmist Bingo Card!”

    I win!

    50

  • #
    Karen

    The trends have been flat on the surface for 17 years

    Your graph shows the temperature has warmed.

    07

  • #
    Mark D.

    Extinct? What kind of idiot would say that? Is there no place on the globe that would be habitable even if we got say 20 degrees warmer?

    No faith in humanity and extreme guilt makes stupid people say such stupid things. I don’t believe anyone but morons will listen to this crap.

    40

  • #
    Ursus Augustus

    All I can offer is that we probably will go extinct if we listen to brain dead zombie bots like Helen Berry.

    That said I was shocked to see an interview with a scientist last night on ABC 24 arguing for a scientific disciussion in lieu of the current politicised slanging match. I wonder if he still has a job this morning.

    30

  • #
    pat

    just great!

    29 March: ABC Science Show – Robyn Williams: Last call for science writing entries
    Author Ashley Hay describes her two big tasks in 2014; motherhood, and editing Best Australian Science Writing 2014. Submissions close 31st March 2014.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/last-call-for-science-writing-entries/5352820

    41 views (includes two by me), 1 comment:

    Youtube: Bill McKibben, in conversation with Ashley Hay (p1) (at Sydney Writers’ Festival May 2010)
    Part 1 Twenty years ago, in The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he argues,…
    ONE COMMENT: by plank ton:
    Ironically, the worse it gets the sooner fat cats will get off their power lunches and drop kick the fossil fuel pimps – BP, and Exxon, etc Exxon being the most anti social of a venal bunch.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_GF_RESDRM

    72 views, no comments:

    Youtube: Bill McKibben, in conversation with Ashley Hay (p2)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTg14xqc7cE

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  • #
    JDAM24

    If Adelaide reaches the predicted maximum of 35C today then it will be the hottest start to April on RECOOOORRRRD.

    We are all hoping and praying we get to 35C because here in Adelaide we dont get much recognition for anything.

    60

    • #
      DT

      It is heat rising from voters who realise they have been snookered again by Gerry Mander and a Windsor and Oakeshot clones otherwise known as Labor sleepers masquerading as former conservative now independents.

      40

    • #
      James Bradley

      Don’t sell yourselves short there Adelaide – I do believe you are still the Serial Killer Capital of the world.

      00

  • #
    Ross

    Donna Laframboise is onto it again. It looks like the Summary for Policy Makers document that came out of Stockholm in October has been rewritten again and then there is still another 4 day meeting to be held in Yokohama to go over it line by line again.

    http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2014/03/25/a-mother-a-daughter-a-new-ipcc-leak/

    20

    • #
      the Griss

      And still NOT ONE WORD about the effects of a significant drop in temperatures.

      If the Sun stays in its ‘quiet’ phase for any length of time, that is by far the more likely scenario.

      30

      • #
        tom0mason

        A significant drop in temperatures just as the Malthusians make a grab for control of fossil fuels (aka IPCC alarmist report)

        20

  • #
    pat

    ABC doesn’t provide a transcript for these “Big Ideas” of Krebs. program broadcast twice overnight. on Nigel Lawson, Krebs says to Williams: i would call him a “denier”, u would call him a sceptic. horrific stuff from Krebs & Williams throughout. hilarious stuff too, such as the mocking references to how Krebs doesn’t rely on the leftist MSM, haha, he prefers to quote The Economist, which is just as CAGW-infested as the Financial Times, of course:

    AUDIO: 31 March: ABC Big Ideas: Lord John Krebs on Climate Change Adaptation
    Extreme weather events, like bushfires and droughts in Australia, can awaken us to the impact of climate change, even if a direct link is hard to establish. The UK has just experienced the most devastating storms and floods in many years. Some wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come. Lord Professor John Krebs, a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change, speaks with Robin Williams about what the UK and Europe are doing to prepare for, and respond to, climate change and what action Australia should be taking.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/lord-john-krebs-on-climate-change-adaptation/5341474

    cannot tell u how long i’ve searched this morning to find this partial transcript and, even then, the page kept disappearing the minute i tried to open it or the cached version. gives an idea of the audio above:

    26 March: Deakin University: Beyond the Impasse
    The challenge of reconciling science with politics was one of the key issues raised during the recent visit to Deakin of one of the world’s most eminent ecologists, and climate change expert, Professor Lord Krebs FRS…
    Lord Krebs was brought to Australia by Professor Andy T.D. Bennett, from Deakin’s Centre for Integrative Ecology, in partnership with the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research.
    “I arranged for John to spend several hours talking to our undergraduate and PhD students and postdocs at the Waurn Ponds campus,” said Professor Bennett. “He was delighted to do this, and provided us with a lively, amusing and wonderfully informative day.”
    Professor Lord Krebs also gave a plenary lecture at the Victorian Adaptation Forum, and a public lecture in conversation with the ABC’s Robyn Williams, at Deakin Edge…
    So how can scientists affect change? Professor Krebs said that if an issue concerns people’s health, such as tobacco use, it is not so hard for governments to take an intrusive stance. Climate change, however, is a very different ball game.
    “Where the benefit will be to our children and grandchildren, it is more complicated, and the response required is not a simple action, like stopping smoking. It is multi-factorial, requiring reducing greenhouse gas emissions, achieving global agreement and developing alternative technologies.
    “I think that climate change is driven by ideology. The argument that climate change is a figment of the imagination and ‘the weather has always changed’ is not good enough. I don’t think it’s a valid reason not to act. The weight of the science is too strong.”
    The book “Merchants of Doubt,” by Naomi Baskis, clearly outlines the tobacco industry tactic of “conflating uncertainty with doubt,” Professor Krebs explained.
    “While there is doubt, there is no need to take any action. This tactic was successful for decades for the tobacco industry.
    “For various reasons, exactly the same tactic is being used with climate change. The difference is that we know from the isotopic signature – from burning hundreds of millions of years of carbon that has been stored underground, that the rate of change is ten times that of the last ice age. It is not just the result of natural variation, when the animals coped with the change.
    “As recently pointed out in “The Economist,” the change in temperature has not been a predictable increase. But, in the past three decades, each decade has been hotter than the previous one and each one has been the hottest since records began.”
    So why is the world moving so slowly?
    In their public discussion, Professor Krebs and Robyn Williams agreed that, while change may not be happening fast enough, there is a great deal going on, with all but five of 66 countries passing around 500 pieces of relevant legislation by 2013, and only Japan and Australia “going the other way.”…
    The final “crucial element of the story” concerns consumption, with the world’s population currently growing by about 80 million a year.
    “As pointed out in “Freefall,” by (economist) Joe Stiglitz, if everyone consumed what the average US or Australian citizen does, it would have the same carbon footprint as the equivalent of a world population of 77 billion,” said Professor Krebs.
    “If we could all reduce our carbon footprint to two tonnes of carbon per person per year, we could bring levels down to below 1990 levels. In Australia, the carbon footprint is 20 tonnes per person per year. (The footprint) would need to go down more than 90 per cent to achieve this goal.”
    So what is the best way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere? Professor Krebs said that the latest thinking concerns carbon capture and re-use, which involves treating the waste as a resource – by turning it into useful chemicals.
    This is where places like Deakin come in, with scientists making tremendous advances in new technologies.
    Also, scientists could learn something from the “twitchers” – with the UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds having more members than both political parties put together. The society is “brilliant at engaging people and using crowd sourcing to get the public to help scientists.”…
    Deakin’s Professor Bennett particularly liked this idea, with Deakin now being home to the largest number of ornithologists in the southern hemisphere.
    “Australia only produces 1.3 per cent of global gas emissions, but Australia and the UK are lucky and very rich. It is a moral responsibility for us to take action. We, of all people, can afford it. From an economic perspective, for the reasons we’ve discussed, and from a political perspective, ‘walking the walk’ gives you more power when you ‘talk the talk’.”
    The conversation between Professor Lord Krebs and Robyn Williams will be broadcast Monday 31 March on Radio National’s “Big Ideas” program, from 8.00pm.
    http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/stories/2014/03/26/beyond-the-impasse

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    pat

    19 March: The Conversation: Rod Keenan In Conversation with Lord Krebs: full transcript
    Disclosure Statement
    Rod Keenan does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
    Rod Keenan: Has view on nuclear changed since Fukushima?
    Lord Krebs: The UK public is not been hostile to nuclear power, and interestingly public attitudes didn’t change in the aftermath of Fukushima. Unlike Germany, where Angela Merkel announced that Germany is going to go nuclear free…
    Lord Krebs: With the incredible success of fracking in the US, many people in UK are very excited about the possibility of fracked gas…
    The hype that has been built is over-optimistic, when people become aware of environmental concerns fracking will likely be more difficult to get through…
    Rod Keenan: How are Australia’s climate policies viewed in the UK?
    Lord Krebs: What we read in the papers in the UK is that Australia is a country likely to be very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. You already have many areas that are water-stressed, and you’ve had some interesting weather events in recent years.
    I would have thought Australia ought to be very alive to the risks of climate change, and the need to adapt and play a part in mitigation. The political environment doesn’t seem uniformly positive, so I can see an interesting challenge to maintain momentum…
    Lord Krebs: A recent study by an organisation called Globe (parliamentarians from around the world) on climate actions surveyed 66 countries around the world, responsible for over 80% of greenhouse gas emissions. In those countries there were around 500 different pieces of legislation to do with climate mitigation or adaptation. There is a hell of a lot happening out of self-interest.
    It may be that a global agreement emerges from a kind of synthesis of national action.
    http://theconversation.com/in-conversation-with-lord-krebs-full-transcript-24575

    Feb 2014: Naked Scientists: Naked at the AAS Condensed Transcript
    Robyn Williams, ABC: Yeah. My time goes back to the big data problem and of course, having too much data is something that’s hitting all aspects of science. One way to solve the problem is to go to the public. This has been done with Galaxy Zoo where someone had – I think it was a million different galaxies that had to be categorised and he just went almost blind after a week, not being able to do it. They thought, why not put this on the internet and ask the public to join in. someone said that the server nearly melted. There are other examples of this such as in Tasmania where they have a red map where you take a picture to see whether certain organisms have moved further south or north. They normally are and showing that climate change is biting. This was mentioned in a programme series on the BBC and the ABC by Lisa Jardine called “The 7 Ages of Science.” In the last episode, Lord John Krebs in Oxford said, “We’ve been doing this in environmental science forever because you need to track say, where the birds are and how many of the population have changed, and various animals as well.” So, that public science can elicit 6-year-olds or 90-year-olds, and they’re working together fabulously and they’re part of science, real science and it makes all the difference…
    http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/show/20140214-1/nocache/1/?cHash=52d0714e8a&tx_nakscishow_pi1%5Btranscript%5D=1

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    john robertson

    Don’t know about extinction,but civil society will most likely collapse if we continue to tolerate the fools and bandits who brought us CAGW.
    These idiots are fully exposed, if we continue to allow them access to public treasure and the levers of power, we deserve the logical result.
    I can not fix stupid.
    But I will not let stupid have the keys to my truck either.

    The coordination of this orchestrated pro IPCC propaganda does not go unnoticed, the media does not know how to stop digging, the hole is massive, citizens point and snicker, then move on to the internet to find out what is happening.
    The Cult of Calamitous Climate AKA freeloaders R us are aware of the climate change coming their way, people are getting this nonsense.
    Right in the wallet.
    This is what is accelerating the public contempt for the IPCC and its pushers.
    Voters are getting awareness of the cost of fools in power thrust upon them with every utility bill and gasoline fill up.
    No taxpayer is better off.
    The robbery of the many to enrich those select few is finally coming to hurt the non-engaged voter.
    Once these voters start counting their cost, God help the scammers.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      You are dead right John.

      But the thing that bothers me, is that the general public will not be able to distinguish between the scientists who are climate charlatans, and the scientists who do useful work.

      All of science will be bought into disrepute when this scam collapses.

      Now, would be a good time for the real scientists to stand up and be counted.

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        john robertson

        Thanks Rereke, however given the silence of genuine scientists since the CRU emails, I am all out of sympathy.
        If government funded science gets the chop because of public distaste for scientists, I feel a large group of mediocre persons will swell the welfare rolls, to the general benefit of taxpayers.
        Until the bureaucracies built up around such research are dismantled, very little science comes from the tax dollars input.
        As with the post office and motor vehicles branches of government, generally govt destroys that which it claims to promote.
        Reminds me of the crazed scientist in Damnation Alley, by Rodger Zelazny.
        Life may imitate art.
        Science will continue, as the distinction between the method as a very useful tool and the tools of academia are already clearly understood by practical people world wide.

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    pat

    warcroft –

    the finale of the 7.30 report transcript:

    SARAH FERGUSON: I appreciate, Dr Field, on such a busy day, you taking the time to talk to Australia. ***We have of course a great interest in the subject…
    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s3975401.htm

    ***the royal “we”? the auntie “we”?

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    PeterS

    Yes climate change could make us extinct, but so could a lot of other more likely things, such as a killer asteroid, world war, and disease. So, why aren’t we focusing on these other moire likely events? Of course! There’s no money to be made by the money hungry and fraudulent climate scientists.

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    pat

    April 1?

    1 April: Australian: AAP: Microbes blamed for mass extinction
    CLIMATE-CHANGING microbes may have caused the biggest mass extinction in history 252 million years ago, scientists believe.
    Volcanic eruptions had previously been blamed for the sudden loss of 90 per cent of all species on Earth at the end of the Permian era.
    But new research suggests volcanoes only played a bit part in the catastrophe.
    The chief perpetrators were a microscopic methane-producing archaea life-form called Methanosarcina that bloomed explosively in the oceans…
    Alarmingly, the same effects are starting to happen today as a result of global warming caused by man-made carbon emissions.
    Analysis of geological carbon deposits reveals a significant boost in levels of carbon-containing gases – either carbon dioxide or methane – at the time of the mass extinction…
    “A rapid initial injection of carbon dioxide from a volcano would be followed by a gradual decrease,” said US scientist Dr Gregory Fournier, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Instead, we see the opposite: a rapid, continuing increase.
    “That suggests a microbial expansion. The growth of microbial populations is among the few phenomena capable of increasing carbon production exponentially, or even faster.”…
    A timely combination of two factors may have sent Methanosarcina into overdrive, according to the findings reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/microbes-blamed-for-mass-extinction/story-fn3dxix6-1226870748281

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      ianl8888

      Thanks Pat

      Analysis of geological carbon deposits reveals a significant boost in levels of carbon-containing gases

      As reported in the Aus, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. A “geological carbon deposit” … a Permian coal seam ?? Hosting “carbon-containing gases” … again, a Permian coal seam ? How I wish journos had even a modicum of geological knowledge. Reporting like this is excruciatingly stupid

      I’m trying to trace the actual PNAS paper but the last PNAS-listed paper from Fournier is back in 2009

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      Peter Carabot

      I knew it!!! The dinosaur farted themselves into extinction!!!
      No more beans please!!

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    Colin Henderson

    And the lack of “climate change” could make “experts” extinct 😉

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      You wish.

      They will simply take of their hats, with “Climate Scientist” written on them, and replace them with other hats, saying, “Chronometer Observer”, because they have observed that the world is slowing down, and loosing a number of seconds every century. This, of course, is because the demands of industry require the mining of minerals at an unprecedented rate, therefore reducing the mass of the earth and affecting its angular momentum. This of course will require considerable financial investment, in order to reprogram all of the super computers so they can play Call Of Duty in real time.

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        Bones

        RW,its not only the slowing down,but the increase in dynamic earth wobble,caused by industry moving millions of tons of evil fossil coal from one side of the earth to the other.this throws the earth out of balance,causing vibrations which can only be felt by the sensitive UN.The movement of refugees around the planet is their attempt to rectify this wobble.If I can get this peer reviewed by Clive Palmer do you think I could get it into a journal.

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          john robertson

          Don’t forget the wobble due to water reservoirs.
          To correct for this and thus rebalance the ball, we must create more dams at geographically strategic positions.
          Or stockpile some equally heavy material, perhaps the big brains of CAGW.

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          Another Ian

          Isn’t it counterbalanced by all the Toyotas, Nissans etc coming back?

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        Colin Henderson

        The consumption of fossil fuels is decreasing the weight of our planet! This is decreasing the gravitational attraction between the earth and the sun resulting in earth moving into a wider orbit. This new orbit will move us away from the sun (colder) and into the path of many asteroids. The only solution is a new UN bureaucracy, the IPEO (International Panel on Earth’s Orbit). If the bureaucrats put on enough weight the problem can be mitigated.

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    pat

    31 March: Reuters: Anna Driver: Exxon sees little climate change risk to assets
    Exxon Mobil Corp, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, said on Monday that risks related to climate change pose little risk to its oil and gas reserves because the resources will be needed to meet expected growth in energy demand.
    Responding to queries from shareholder activists, the company also said it is “confident” that none of its oil and gas reserves will lose value or become “stranded” if governments act to slash carbon emissions.
    “We believe producing these assets is essential to meeting growing energy demand worldwide, and in preventing consumers – especially those in the least developed and most vulnerable economies – from themselves becoming stranded in the global pursuit of higher living standards and greater economic opportunity,” Exxon said in a report released in response to call from activist shareholders…
    Based on its previously published long-term outlook, Exxon expects the world to require 35 percent more energy by 2040 and greenhouse gas emissions are expected to plateau in that period…
    To mitigate risk from climate change, Exxon has a “constant focus on efficiency” and looks for ways to reduce emissions from its own operations, it said.
    (FINALE) Also on Monday, the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a report that global warming poses a growing threat to the health, economic prospects and food and water sources of billions of people
    http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/exxon-carbon-idUKL1N0MS1UF20140331

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    Safetyguy66

    On the bright side, surely it cant get much more shrill and alarmist than “extinction”. They have now officially run out of hyperbole, I mean whats left? Double extinction? We go extinct then fate is so peed off with us we get reincarnated and made extinct again. Im sure if you are a warmist you probably think this is possible.

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      Tim

      Perhaps it’s time for re-education camps and tattoos on foreheads of non-believers.
      (Oops! Did I just give them a tip?)

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      JDAM24

      S66,

      Most religions evolve to a point where everything ends in a judgment day/end of days type event, what we are witnessing is simply the evolution of the agw religion.

      Noahs flood was an end of days event, the muslims believe Allah will descend from the heavens and take on the Jewish God (who just happens to be the devil which probably explains a lot) once Allah kicks the devils ass all over the arabian desert he will smite the Jews then turn to the christians and say “well for all these years you have prayed to a false god, easy mistake to make i suppose but if you drop to your knees and pray to me i will let you live, all those that dont will be smited just like the jews”.

      Christians have their own version of end of days, those who believe will be invited up to the big house whilst those that remain will be smited.

      AGW is a little different in that there is no competition, there is only one version of the end of days which makes it a little unique as far as religions go, in their version everyone will become extinct because not everyone believes, it will require a majority belief or consensus if you will to ensure mankind survives.

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        The Muslim God of Ibrahim is the same as the Jewish God of Abraham.

        These predictions are more along the lines of “if we do not do something about the alarmists, civilisation will go regress back to what it was in medieval times.”

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        PeterK

        JDam24

        The problem with all religions it that the faithful don’t eat bacon…Jews and Muslims don’t eat it at all and Christians don’t eat enough. If everyone would just eat lots and lots of bacon, human love, understanding and cooperation would most definitely follow.

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          Safetyguy66

          Ive always said you cant trust anyone who doesn’t eat bacon. Incidentally I just finished the most excellent BLT on toasted sourdough for dinner.

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      Peter Carabot

      ….well it can,not as much as double extinction but the way we will become extinct. My Modelling (IBM Computer) says that there are several degrees of death, starvation, burns, massive epidemics, indescribable illnesses and so on. The next report/warning will start cataloging all the various forms
      of death with all the gory details…. That is my modelling!!!

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    Geoffrey Williams

    So now we are about to become extinct! What utter nonsense from the IPCC in their report and from Helen Berry in particular. I am tempted to say that her comments are either ‘out and out’ lies, or complete incopmetance.
    The IPCC through people like Helen Berry are trying to put the ‘fear of God’ into ordinary people in order to gain political control worldwide!
    Shame on the SMH for proliferating such blatent untruths and rubbish.
    Geoff W-Sydney.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      There is nothing worse than becoming extinct, except not becoming extinct, if everybody else has.

      Think about it. If all of the “top one percent”, survived, whilst the rest of us became extinct, what would be the point of them being at the “pinnacle of achievement”? Wealth and status and power are only relative concepts. Remove the comparative basis and …

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    Sunray

    Would it be too much to ask the leaders of FreeTV to have people like Jo Nova commenting on the credibility of IPCC doomsday statements, to give the people the accurate and relevant facts??!!

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      Bob Malloy

      Would it be too much to ask the leaders of FreeTV to have people like Jo Nova commenting on the credibility of IPCC doomsday statements, to give the people the accurate and relevant facts??!!

      People like Jo Nova commenting on the IPCC in the MSM or free tv, really, you are joking? they can’t allow that, it’s totally against the meme, they would be ostracised from the church of climatology, no more junkets to pacific islands, no definitely can’t have that.

      sarc:

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    Lynn Clark

    In a rational world, you might think that a “Dean of Health” might know that humankind is a tropical species. As such, a few degrees of warming would most likely be mostly beneficial to said species.

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    Bulldust

    O/T I know … but in case you forgot the teachers hva ereminded you there is an election this weekend coming…

    http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/22285248/grog-lure-for-striking-teachers/

    We got lots of strikes before the State election, and coincidently nothing until this week’s election. Pure coincidence I am sure…

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      Mattb

      well yes technically this strike WAS organised well in advance of the senate election being called. So yes it is actually a coincidence, on state issues.

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        And Bill Shorten did not fly in for it. He just happened to be walking past.

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        Bulldust

        So the strike was organised long before they alledgedly “knew” of unannounced budget cuts? And assuming the budget cuts are real, I assume the leak has been detected and sacked?

        Yeah… right…

        I think it would be more realistic to suggest that the union hacks knew there was going to be a Senate election around this time (give or take a weekend) and had a “pre-cooked” strike up their sleeves. Any reason why it wasn’t a month ago or in a month’s time?

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        Bulldust

        Oh and BTW the unions were out in force distributing flyers at my work a couple weeks ago… the reason I and so many of my colleagues aren’t members is that we are too intelligent to fork out money for the corrupt Labor machine that couldn’t give a fat rat’s clacker about WA. I bet Shorten can’t wait to be out of the State.

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        Bulldust

        And while I am at it… why would anyone in WA support a party that deliberately targetted the State financially through the GST distribution review (Gillard specifically changed the terms of reference of the review to target WA)? The new ToR were targetted to influence State decision-making over their Constitutional right to set royalty rates. I haven’t seen such Federal antagonism towards a State since I have lived in the country (well over 20 years).

        Also, the MRRT is effectively placing additional royalties on WA iron ore mining activity – the entire philosophy of the tax was flawed from beginning to end, but the Labor luvvies lapped it up, supposedly sticking it to the mining billionaire tycoons. The simplistic rhetoric seems to appeal to the typical Laborite.

        Let alone the carp about “carbon pollution” which Shorten desperately clings to … for reasons only known to him.

        Shambolic doesn’t begin to describe it, but morons keep voting for them … go figure… an indictment on the education system I guess. Oh wait, those are the luvvies that go on strike despite the massive spending increases they saw under the last few years of State Lib leadership…

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    Neville

    Bob Tisdale shows the IPCC model mean since 1979 to 2014 is 2.72 times too high for OZ recorded temp observations and CSIRO latest model is 2.33 times too high for the same period.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_change_in_the_intellectural_climate_and_not_the_real_one/

    Remember this period is over a third of a century. Anyone trust climate models now?

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      the Griss

      Neville, what Bob uses is NOT, I repeat NOT recorded data.

      In many places in Australia, the original recorded data actually trends downwards, but has been massively adjusted so that it nearly all of it shows approximately the same warming trend. Start here.. there are several pages as Ken works through the BOM “cooling the past” adjustments state by state.

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      the Griss

      So to say that the models are 2.33 or 2.72 times the massively adjusted BOM data, when the real data actually trends downwards, is really showing just how MANIFESTLY WRONG the models are.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        It is not the models that are wrong. They seem to work just fine.

        You put garbage in, and you get new and improved garbage out. Works every time, and to the same degree of acceptable garbage error.

        Sounds a lot like the definition of quality to me.

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        tom0mason

        The models are correct.
        Nature and the measurement of it is in error!
        😉
        /sarcoff

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    markx

    Helen Berry, associate dean in the faculty of health at the University of Canberra, said while the Earth has been warmer and colder at different points in the planet’s history, the rate of change has never been as fast as it is today.”

    Helluva silly statement above.

    The end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,500 years ago, was particularly abrupt. In Greenland, temperatures rose 10° C (18° F) in a decade (Figure 6; Cuffey and Clow, 1997).


    Bond Events
    Just below the Central Greenland ice core record the “Bond” cooling events over this 18,000 year period are noted7. The Bond cooling events average around 1,500 years apart and some are more dramatic than others. The 8.2, 5.9 and 4.2 kiloyear events were major events8,9, with dramatic cooling and they were huge disruptions for civilizations around the world. Others, like the 2.8 kiloyear event in the Iron Age were hardly noticed.

    During the last glaciation, the Greenland ice core record documents rapid climatic change events called Dansgaard-Oeschger events or “D-O events.”10 These are very rapid warming events, followed by slower cooling, that occur in a cycle of roughly 1,470 years +- 12%.11,12 These events are probably the glacial period equivalent of the Bond events.

    In modern times, the cooling period, which is slower to develop, is more noticeable than the warming, because the cooling (and the droughts that accompany the cooling) seem to cause more disruption of civilization. Warming events tend to coincide with man’s better times, since they are associated with more precipitation and more abundant plant life. At the beginning of a D-O event, temperatures increase rapidly, perhaps 8 degrees C over 40 years as they did at the end of the Younger Dryas period. A more normal D-O event warming period is about 5 degrees C over 40 years. The cooling period after a D-O event normally lasts a few hundred years. Although most of the evidence for D-O events is from the Greenland ice cores, some have suggested that they are global events13. These events can also be seen in Antarctic ice cores, but they are more subtle.

    Climate and Human Civilization over the last 18,000 years
    Posted on November 17, 2013 by Anthony Watts
    Guest essay by Andy May

    Andy May’s essay is great and covers the period under discussion: “human civilization”.

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      the Griss

      “Helen Berry, associate dean in the faculty of health at the University of Canberra, said while the Earth has been warmer and colder at different points in the planet’s history, the rate of change has never been as fast as it is today”

      Um Helen..

      The rate of change (and the amount of warming) is FAR SURPASSED ..

      by what happens every morning of every day…

      ….and every spring of every year.

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    Anyone who can do simple arithmetic can see that Dr Berry has made an elementary logical blunder by claiming that global warming can cause the extinction of mankind.

    Dr Berry claims that emissions of CO2 will cause the world to overheat and the overheating will cause the world’s population to decline.

    (I am not arguing against the CO2 claim or against global warming, although I do not accept the alarmist view. Here I am examining the logic in Dr Berry’s thought process.)

    If we follow Dr Berry’s logic, then as a result of death from global overheating fewer people will be emitting CO2 etc. Emissions must decline and therefore the Earth would cool. As a result of cooling fewer people would die from global warming.

    Dr Berry’s model doesn’t work because death from global warming would be a variable with negative feedback. Like a room thermostat controls an air conditioner, increase of CO2 emissions would act to reverse its own effects.

    This study be Dr Berry is the most illogical analysis population I have read so far. This is not science. This is a travesty of science.

    I base this comment on experience on several years of academic population studies, population research for a large UK local government, and as demographic consultant for a major UK Government project.

    Unfortunately, Dr Berry did not get advice from a demographer when she conducted her own research.

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      It fails because dogs have been domesticated for 17 000 years. They have been bred to be small like a chihuahua or massive like a newfoundland, but they are still the same species as a grew wolf. Whether they live in the cool climate of Korea or the arid inland region of Australia, the difference between Asian wild dog and dingo are barely discernible even though they separated before the Holocene. And wild dogs do not adapt their environment like humans do.

      It is a completely unscientific thing to postulate that humans couldn’t evolve because the temperature change would be too rapid. They probably wouldn’t evolve if the temperature changed 20°C in 10 000 years.

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        Safetyguy66

        Agree completely Vic.

        The existence of the species we see around us, including us, is incontrovertible evidence of life’s ability to adapt to extremes we cant even dream of, such as ice ages, asteroid impacts and regular localised volcanic activity.

        To an alarmist, anything other than 25c, mostly sunny with light winds represents a threat to survival.

        Bed wetters is the term that readily springs to mind.

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          Mattb

          Safety guy – sorry but “The existence of the species we see around us, including us, is incontrovertible evidence of life’s ability to adapt to extremes we cant even dream of” is incorrect. for your comment to be true we’d have dinosaurs wandering the streets. It is pretty clear that climate change in the past has been responsible for mass extinctions. Sure life goes on, but it doesn’t mean humans would. Again forget I’m a warmist and please take this as impartial advice.

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            Gee Aye

            We do have dinosaurs wandering the streets and supplying you with your morning omelet.

            Just admit you don’t understand evolution. It is the first step.

            Safety guy’s comment suggests he needs more than just a confessional.

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              Calling birds ‘dinosaurs’ is like calling us ‘fish’.

              Modern birds are nothing like the species identified in fossils as the closest species at the time of dinosaurs (they had teeth). We cannot claim that birds descended from these particular species. They might have similar morphology to a branch of dinosaurs but saying that birds are dinosaurs is grossly stupid (and typical for an evolutionary biologist).

              And MattB, dinosaurs did not die out from a simple climate change. They couldn’t compete with the new array of animal life that flourished after a catastrophic event that didn’t completely wipe out the dinosaurs. Species that evolved better adaptions survived. My point was that we do not have to evolve one iota to adapt to climate change.

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                Gee Aye

                Calling birds ‘dinosaurs’ is like calling us ‘fish’.

                no it isn’t. That is wrong.

                A stegosaurus and a velociraptor are dinosaurs. Birds share a more recent common ancestor with velociraptors than do velociraptors and stegosaurs. The better analogy is calling humans and whales mammals; in taxonomy, calling a bird a dinosaur is just as controversial.

                So birds are dinosaurs. Please admit that you don’t understand taxonomy. It is much more fun learning new things than just making stuff up and irritating some and misleading others. Your second paragraph was astoundingly ignorant of theory, data and observations.

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                Please admit biologists are all over the shop when it comes to taxonomy.

                Now you do not know why dinosaurs died out but you should be educated enough to realise that they didn’t die that suddenly. They were not wiped out within a year let alone a day of an impact by a large meteorite. What data am I ignorant of (let alone what observation from 65 mya) and what theory? Do you know what theory even means?

                We have more in common with a salmon than it does with other things we call fishes, so by your logic, we should be called fish.

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                Biologists are all over the shop and you are not. Thank goodness you are here to make it all clear. Those silly experts.

                Your second paragraph has little to do with anything I have written.

                Your third paragraph is false.

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              Mattb

              “Just admit you don’t understand evolution. It is the first step.”

              I am interested in this comment though GA? For the record I’d never claim to be an expert,as in that there are things that the experts know that I clearly do not know. But what I do know, well I’m pretty certain is not wrong.

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            Rereke Whakaaro

            Matt,

            You seem to ignore the significance of adaption.

            Life has adapted to live in the coldest places in the world, and in some of the hottest. There are even marine worms, living presumably happy lives, in the deep sea volcanic trenches in the Pacific. You show me a niche, and there will be some form of life that has adapted to exploit it. That was the point that Safety guy was making.

            Different species have different degrees of adaptability. The deep sea boiling water worms, for example, would probably find it hard to survive anywhere else, because they are so well adapted to their environment. That would probably have been the same for most species of dinosaur. The principle is known as “over-adaption” to an environment that changes for other external reasons, such as an asteroid strike.

            The species with the highest adaptability factor, is homo sapiens (with the possible exceptions of bacteria and viruses). We are the only species that can live and thrive in a temperature range that spans around -30oC to around 40oC, (I don’t know the exact figures).

            It is the food supply, that mankind might need to be concerned about. But there again, plants, especially grain crops have an ability to adapt very quickly to changes in temperature and humidity. The speed with which plants migrated to man-made oasis in North Africa attest to that.

            Depending on your point of view, we may well be a scourge on the planet, but we are still part of nature. We came from here, and we evolved here, and we just happen to be the dominant species because we evolved, and adapted, faster than any other species.

            But that doesn’t mean that other species will not also adapt to gradual change. They will, if the time-frame is long enough. It is cataclysmic events, such as massive volcanic eruptions that kill species globally. It is not a gradual change in a trace gas over a fairly long period of time that does the deed.

            By the way, the dinosaurs are not extinct. New Zealand has a dinosaur, called the Tuatara. It looks quite fierce, but it is not particularly dangerous. In fact it tends to move at the speed of bureaucracy.

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              Gee Aye

              The principle is known as “specialisation”, you can’t “over adapt” and specialist can find themselves trapped on an adaptive island if conditions change. An example hereabouts where the island is literal as well as figurative is Australian high altitude, fauna and flora. There are low mobility and motility species located on mountain peaks in south eastern Australia that were once part of very large (spatially) connected population (ie during the last glacial). Now they are confined by their specialist needs to mountain tops and if climate warms further will have nowhere to go.

              PS It is “Homo”. Genera with a capital.

              PPS Birds are dinosaurs and are a highly successful dinosaur group. That was my point to mattb.

              PPPS Tuatara are a reptile not a dinosaur

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                Rod Stuart

                I thought when you said that “dinosaurs still walk the streets today” that you must be referring to lawyers.

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                PPPPPPPPS

                Mammals and Birds are excluded groups from Reptilia, despite evolving from animals that would be considered reptiles. Dinosaurs are not.

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                Gee Aye

                vic… for someone who is named after a bird your comment is complete tosh.

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                Mattb

                sigh GA yes birds are likely fairly “close” relatives to some dinosaurs. We are talking survival of a single species, however, not whether some sort of distant relative of humans may or may not exist some time after humans are wiped from the planet for whatever reason that occurs.

                Call me anthropocentric, but survival of Homo Sapiens is what is being discussed here.

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                Mattb

                and further to that – the existance of my chooks in the back yard is categorically NOT proof that dinosaur species of the past were able to survive/adapt to whatever the climate threw at them.

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                Sigh mattb. If something is a closer relative to a dinosaur than that dinosaur is to another dinosaur it makes the first thing a dinosaur, not just a “close relative”.

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                Mattb

                you present this as though there is not debate amongst your experts. whether brids are dinosaurs, are descendents of dinosaurs, or share a common ancestor. You’re just a random internet commentator who sides with a particular version. Me – it’s kinda irrelevent. I’m not here to argue whether birds are or are not dinosaurs, and I’m not wedded to either.

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                since you are clearly confused about “descendents OR common ancestors”, let me assist. They are both. All birds are a sister group to what you might call a dinosaur group. Both those groups descended from earlier dinosaurs and both share CAs with other dinosaur groups (and so on back through time and clade). So they are descendants AND share RCA’s.

                I am not that random by the way – I am a member of the consensus of 97% of evolutionary biologists who have studied the evidence and have drawn a consensus.

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                Mattb

                fair enough. to keep up with current consensus on birds/dinosaurs I should have said T-Rex wandering down the streets, or any number of dinosur species, or other species often mistakenly referred to as dinosaurs in common language, when I said dinosaurs.

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            I’m not going to waste time arguing with VGG if he is going to have a starting point of just making stuff up, there are books he needs to read first, and I don’t intend to write one to fill him in.

            For the benefit of those who want some sort of starting point, this is an excellent site http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html.

            Amazingly wiki is very through on this as it has a taxonomy project linked to academic specialists. Go to this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelurosauria and after you’ve read at least the introduction go to the right hand column and click on “Maniraptoriformes”

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            • #

              You’re an irritating little troll. If you have no idea then don’t argue instead of this pretending its wasting your time. I am aware of this non-avian dinosaur BS and have been critical of it for a while. I know what authority says.

              If mammals and birds evolved from animals that could be considered reptiles, as is thought, they are reptiles along with dinosaurs. Either that, or a bird is not a dinosaur. A bit of consistency would be good.

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                two things. First is that the common language term reptile represents a paraphyletic group and is therefore not a valid taxonomic group. Second is that your second paragraph is confusing levels of taxonomy and, indeed, requires a large effort to unpick.

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                Mattb

                is the common language term “dinosaur” a valid taxonomic group.

                as an aside, when people tell me tomatoes are a fruit not a vegetable, I correct them and let them know that they are both.

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                fruit and vegetab les are vernacular. To confuse tell them add in some more definitions like that tomatoes are a fruiting body of a plant and that all edible plant material is vegetable.

                Dinosaur is a common name in many contexts and includes things that wre clearly not dinosaurs that lived pre 65 million but too rarely to the big group of dinosaurs living today. Derivatives of the name appear at different taxonomic levels – dinosauria, dinosauriforms etc

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                Mattb

                dinosaur is also vernacular though. all edible plant material is vegetable. all big things that wandered in ancient forests maybe with scales and stuff, they are dinosaurs. So when I said dinosaurs all way up the post, your reply was a bit like telling me that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable.

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                JDAM24

                This is gold, a debate between my arch nemesis versus someone who asked for my email address once but refused to have a conversation with me.

                So far i would have to say my arch nemesis has it on points 🙂

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                Mattb

                there are a few “debates” here. (not that GA and I are having anything more than a polite discussion) – who are you referring to?

                02

              • #

                that was some guy named craker. Who are you?

                I also think it is forgotten that the email address episode was a confusion of context.

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                crakar24

                Oooops sorry used wrong username and yes of course it was a confusion of context you just wanted my email address for some other purpose.

                I just thought that while you two are clogging up my inbox i would show my support to both of you and as i said i think Matt has it on points.

                Cheers

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                Firstly, knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. (Sorry, but I can’t remember the author).

                Its a bit the same with the chook-are-dinosaurs debate. That birds evolved from a branch of dinosaurs was pretty much accepted before I was born. That we should refer to birds as dinosaurs is a recent edict rather than a discovery, and it annoys me.

                More importantly, humans did not adapt to live at very cold latitudes by evolving to have a fur coat. They learnt to take one from an animal that did and that is what the discussion is about.

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      Mattb

      that’s not actually why it is wrong Fred. if it gets hot enough to start actually reducing human population then it would take a long time for CO2 in the atmosphere to drop just because humans were not emitting. As with many of my comments here please forget that I am a warmest and please take this as impartial advice that your comment “Emissions must decline and therefore the Earth would cool.” is not accurate.

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        James Bradley

        Mattb, your comment “if it gets hot enough to start actually reducing human population then it would take a long time for CO2 in the atmosphere to drop just because humans were not emitting” presupposes that humans have caused large increases of CO2 now and in the past – and this just aint so – many periods in the history of the pre-human planet have experienced larger increases in CO2 and this has gone hand in hand with accelerated growth and diversity of flora and fauna.

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          Mattb

          no actually james, as my reply was clearly about the logic gap in Fred’s post. His post was based upon AGW being a credible hypothesis, and as such so was my reply. You are gish galloping to suggest now that CO2 does nothing, as that would also be a flaw in Fred’s argument.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Do demographers not drink tea, made with real tea leaves? Hmm. They are not like statisticians then?

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    pat

    more MSM space for the Greens. it’s already on rotation on the A-PAC Channel, not to mention coverage it will undoubtedly get on ABC/Sky News, etc:

    1 April: Australian: Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer: Greens aim to move beyond low tide
    Senator Milne told the National Press Club the Tasmanian result was “disappointing”.
    “But we will see the vote turn around now,” she said, pointing to the WA Senate election and the Victorian state poll due in November.
    Asked whether her leadership depended on improved results, Senator Milne joked that WA voters “better get (Senator Ludlam) over the line … a lot rests on it”.
    Senator Milne said the WA election was important because electing two Labor and one Greens senator could shift a vote from conservatives to progressives.
    Taking a line from the hit Australian comedy The Castle, she said there was a “vibe” across the nation that the Abbott government was taking the country down a path of “intolerance, discrimination and climate denialism”…
    “They are governing for the greedy few, the vested interests of yesteryear, not the Australians of tomorrow,” she said.
    “It’s like a CEO delivering for only a small component of a corporation.”.
    Senator Milne said Prime Minister Tony Abbott would find it difficult to negotiate with the “right-wing circus” in the Senate after July 1…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/greens-aim-to-move-beyond-low-tide/story-fn3dxiwe-1226871117881

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      scaper...

      The only vibe Milne can feel is the one she stores under her pillow!

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        Safetyguy66

        She also said today that the WA Bi Election will be the “turning of the tide for The Greens electoral fortunes, with Tasmania having been the low tide”

        Id say she is thinking of a river in Egypt rather than a tidal estuary system.

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        So, scaper, it only massages her brain then.

        No wonder we mistake her for Pixie Anne Wheatley. Her brain has been scrambled!

        Cue Curly!

        Tony.

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          scaper...

          Yeah, an improbability drive. A heavy duty brain scrambler.

          I believe it has been leased on a time share contract. Young Sara has the bulk of the share.

          Cue Muttley…hehehehehe.

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        Yonniestone

        Thanks scaper I just ate 🙁

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    Safetyguy66

    Phillip Adams couldn’t resist grovelling on to the bandwagon.

    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/new-ipcc-report/5357230

    David Karoly makes a series of extraordinary and unsubstantiated claims while PA strokes him.

    When Karoly says “we can now see the results in the observational data of the predictions made in the first IPCC report”. A switched on interviewer would have said “such as?”. PA just swoons and moves on. Its nauseating listening if you can stand it.

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      Bones

      What is going on here,first scraper has christine moan with a ‘vibe’ under her pillow,then Tony has reference to massage,now we have safety with phillip adams stroking david karoly and swooning,whoops,forgot sarah the oxygen thief got a mention.Have we turned ‘R’ rated?,the best ‘R’ would be for all these spongers to be Removed

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    sophocles

    The dinosaurs coped well! So why shouldn’t we?
    T-Rex was biiiiggg! It was big because there was plenty of food for it. It’s prey was just as big and even bigger. Look at the argentinosaurus at 30-35m long, 7m high and weighing in at a mere 80-odd tonnes. It’s little brother apatosaurus was 23m long 5m high and weighed about 16-18tonnes. These are only two of the species of giant herbivores from around 100MY ago. There were herds of them. They grazed the forests. T-Rex hunted them and their off-spring along with other hungry theropods and allosaurs.

    These giants were only giant because there was enough food for them. The CO2 level was around 4000ppm. The forest regenerated so quickly it could be grazed hard. And T-Rex didn’t starve.

    Now the largest land animal is the tiny elephant. CO2 levels are too low to support anything larger.

    Homo Sapiens sapiens is one of the most recent species on this mud ball and it is still evolving. It’s one of the fastest evolving species known to man, so I feel pretty comfortable with its ability to survive. The only danger to its longevity as a species is itself, not Climate Change. I’m thinking of its ability to make bigger bangs.

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      Mark Hladik

      Just a quick clarification:

      The “T-rex” to which you refer was a Late Cretaceous critter, while the large sauropods (Brachiosaurs and Apatosaurs) were Jurassic-age fauna. Ol’ Rexx-y boy missed them by better than 70-million years.

      Brach’s and Apato’s would have been feasted upon by Allosaurs.

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        sophocles

        So I was a little loose with my dating. Where’s that wet bus-ticket?

        Replace argentinosaurus with adamantisaurus at 30 plus metres long and 100 tonnes. There are plenty of titanosaurs to choose from of similar size which survived right through to the K/T extinction. My point was that T-Rex evolved to the size it did because it had the food supply to support it. The titanosaurs it predated were as large as they were because they were also well supported with food.

        They were all the product of high levels of atmospheric CO2.

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    Mattb

    this certainly was a pretty crazy article/comment.

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      Mattb

      I was talking about the ABC article and expert comment btw.

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      Graeme No.3

      Nothing stranger than what has been going on here. For the first time in my life (I think) I gave Mattb a ‘thumbs up’ for a correct and reasonable reply, and when I came back 3 hours later the comment has gone.

      It was the one with the link to Coelurosauria in Wikipedia. Obviously under Section 18C you’re not allowed to mention their ancestry.

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        Mattb

        that was actually Gee Aye’s post 60.1.1.1.3

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          Graeme No.3

          Mattb:

          Actually it was one of the 5 labelled as 60.1.1.1.1. I wonder why I got confused.

          Anyway thanks for the help, and since you missed out on a thumbs up I have added one above.

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    pat

    31 March: WSJ: Denmark’s Dong Sells Half of Westermost Wind Project
    By Kjetil Malkenes Hovland
    Dong Energy, a Danish energy firm part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., sold half of its Westermost Rough wind project to the U.K.’s Green Investment Bank and Japan’s Marubeni Corp. for £240 million ($399 million) in a move designed to fund Dong’s push to triple installed offshore wind capacity by 2020…
    The deal, announced Monday, is the latest salvo from the Green Investment Bank which was established by the British government to accelerate the U.K.’s transition to a greener economy. The bank has so far invested £600 million ($1 billion) in five offshore wind projects and will take 25% ownership in Westermost, which sits off the Yorkshire coast…
    Dong, which is Denmark’s largest energy company, in January divested 50% of its 630 megawatt, 175 turbine London Array 1 offshore wind farm to Canadian pension fund Caisse de Depot et placement du Quebec for $1.06 billion…
    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303978304579472813614729426?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303978304579472813614729426.html

    haven’t had time to try to confirm the following, as i couldn’t open the link, but i’ve posted a google result below the WUWT link:

    31 March: WUWT: Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup
    COMMENT BY richard:
    DENMARK WIND POWER
    Energy minister ready to scrap offshore wind farms
    http://cphpost.dk/news/energy-…
    The cost of wind energy needs to drop, or the government will not be building any more wind farms in the future. Rasmus Petersen (R), the climate and energy minister, said that although the government wants more energy from wind farms, it is not willing to pay any price for it.
    “I am sorry that the price of power from the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm is so high,” Petersen told Jyllands-Posten newspaper. “I think it is too much to pay 1.05 kroner per kilowatt-hour (kWh). We need to have a clear objective that energy from future offshore wind farms be significantly lower in price.”

    google result:

    Energy minister ready to scrap offshore wind farms – News – The …
    cphpost.dk/…/energy-minister-ready-to-scrap-offshore-wind-farms.8763. html‎Cached
    3 Mar 2014 … Price of wind energy needs to drop, or government will pull plug. … http://cphpost.
    dk/news/energy-minister-ready-to-scrap-offshore-wind-farms.

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      Offshore Wind Plants.

      So, how do you think they’re progressing in the U.S.

      Well, you know!

      After Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar came out with this gem back in 2009, he went on in 2010 to approve Cape Wind, to be constructed in Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts.

      Cape Wind provides insight into wind power on a number of levels.

      First proposed before the turn of the Century, it is still waiting to be constructed ….. 16 years later, so keep that in mind when Australian green urgers reckon they can have a whole whack of green power (basically more wind) by 2020.

      Then there’s the that crock of they will become cheaper if you build more of them. This was originally costed at $800 Million, and now has a (base) price of $2.6 Billion.

      It will have 130 huge towers with 3.6MW generators in the nacelles, so a Nameplate of 468MW, around 71% of the nameplate for ONE of the four generators at Bayswater.

      It is hoped to generate 1500GWH a year, at the oft quoted (theoretical) Capacity Factor of 38%, and good luck with that. So, umm, 25 year lifespan, all going absolutely perfectly, then it will generate an amount of total (theoretical) power that will be generated by Bayswater in a tick over 2 years, and Bayswater is already 30 years old.

      They have a firm contract to sell half that yearly total power at around 20 cents per KWH (the wholesale price) which (for that area) is just on double the cost of retail electricity, so, you sort of wonder how much profit they’ll making, not very much if they only have a contract for half the power.

      It’s always been one of those projects I like to keep my eye on, because it is a prime example of how wind power will never live up to the hype which surrounds it.

      Tony.

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    pat

    UPCC vs NIPCC:

    (2 pages) 31 March: Forbes Op-Ed: Joseph Bast: The IPCC’s Latest Report Deliberately Excludes And Misrepresents Important Climate Science
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/03/31/the-ipccs-latest-report-deliberately-excludes-and-misrepresents-important-climate-science/

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    pat

    LOVE HOW IT’S INVITATION-ONLY, BUT U CAN REGISTER HERE, ON THIS WEBSITE:

    Bloomberg New Energy Finance BNEF: Welcome to the BNEF The Future of Energy Summit 2014
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    Summit 2014 partners (CHECK OUT THE PARTNERS)
    http://about.bnef.com/summit/

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    Michael P

    Senator Milne said Prime Minister Tony Abbott would find it difficult to negotiate with the “right-wing circus” in the Senate after July 1…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/greens-aim-to-move-beyond-low-tide/story-fn3dxiwe-1226871117881

    She seems to be clueless to the fact that there’s mechanisms to deal with an obstructionist Senate if they continue to block everything. Seriously do they think they can win if another election is called? Talk about having rocks in your heads..

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    LevelGaze

    Well I’m a “health expert” and I never heard of Helen Berry until now.

    But then again, that’s probably because I fritter away my days dealing with people’s trivial problems like diabetes, liver and renal failure, vascular disease, cancer…

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      Bones

      LevelGaze,you obviously don’t frequent the right troughs.How will you ever get ahead in this world?

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    Rogueelement451

    What is the difference between the IPCC and Vladimir Putin?
    One is a loonie left wing Nazi with political aims to control the World by way of propaganda and the silencing of opposition, the other is the President of Russia.

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    LG she is a psychologist (BSc psychology – which seems an oxymoron to me – a science degree in a nonsense non-science subject)with research interests in Climate change and mental health, Mental health and wellbeing among other interests appears to be very good at attracting funding.

    Full qualifications at http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/health/about-us/staff-profiles/berry-helen#833341 (mainly psychology + 1 arts degree: Thesis “Existentialism in the Novels of André Malraux”)

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    PhilJourdan

    The stupid part of the proclamation is that Man has adapted to temperatures that range from sub zero all the way up to over the century mark (Fahrenheit). In other words, Man has adapted.

    Even the most hysterical climate alarmist is not predicting temperatures to exceed ranges that man as already adapted to.

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    PeterB in Indianapolis

    If Climate Change may make humans extinct, then I would think that Erlich and Holdren and all of their modern-day-green-cult following would be highly IN FAVOR OF IT!

    GO-GO CLIMATE CHANGE!

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    richard

    we are going to be so extinct that the UN predicts that the worlds population will be 9 billion by 2100 , half of the population will be African.

    We should be celebrating,

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/re

    “Increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have helped boost green foliage across the world’s arid regions over the past 30 years through a process called CO2 fertilisation, according to CSIRO research.

    In findings based on satellite observations, CSIRO, in collaboration with the Australian National University (ANU), found that this CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa, according to CSIRO research scientist, Dr Randall Donohue.

    “In Australia, our native vegetation is superbly adapted to surviving in arid environments and it consequently uses water very efficiently,” Dr Donohue said. “Australian vegetation seems quite sensitive to CO2 fertilisation”

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    bill

    Jo the country is Sumer not Sumeria. Many use the incorrect name but I prefer the original.

    As to the IPCC it is a political body not scientific and by its own admission cherry picks data by only concentrating on papers referring to CO2 causes and no others. One of their advocates a few years ago stated that the IPCC needed to scaremonger in order to get the attention it wanted ( can’t remember who or the exact words).

    My problem is although I do not dispute many of the findings it is worrying that so many billions are being spent on what probably is the wrong cause so that when the true cause is proved where will the money come to tackle it.

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    Yonniestone

    bill you’ve answered a large part of your question, if the IPCC is not scientific, a political body, concentrates on one apparent cause (CO2), and needs to scaremonger to get attention, this should rightly set off alarm bells to be skeptical of IPCC motives.
    Be honest and consider human nature, money and power then start with the links on Jo’s homepage here and keep an open mind, it’s good your thinking outside the (consensus) box and don’t hesitate to ask questions no matter how silly they might seem, if we didn’t make mistakes we would never learn the trick is to actually learn, cheers.

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    More fear and BS from the Church of Global Warming. That is all they have, because they have not one piece of empirical evidence linking activities of humans to the climate – NOT ONE! Here are the facts about temperature, whether Professor Berry likes it or not.

    For the last 600,000,000 years temperatures have hovered around 12C about 14% of the time, around 22C about 50% of the time, and somewhere in between 36% of the time. Right now we are at 14.5C, about 25% above the bottom of the historical range. (Ref: Dr. Christopher R. Scotese‘s PALEOMAP Project at http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm). Contrary to the belief of some, we are no where near any temperature tipping point.

    The 0.4C rise in temperature since the Industrial Revolution (IR) pales in comparison to the 1.6C increase of the Medieval Warming Period (WP), the 2.5C increase of the Roman WP, and the 3.2C increase of the Minoan WP using the IR as a baseline. The average temperature has been declining for the last 6,000 years. (Alley, R.B. 2000, The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland, Quaternary Science Reviews, 19:213-226.)

    We are at the very end of the present 10,500 year old Interglacial WP. After this comes about 90,000 years of snow, ice, advancing glaciers and incredible loss of life. Enjoy the warmth while you can.

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    Dr Burns

    Sonny,
    Plot “denier” and “climate denier” against “global warming” and “climate change” on google trends.
    The first two barely register. “Global warming” has dropped 83% from it’s peak and “climate change” is also in decline.

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    Debbie

    Readers here will find this piece of spin interesting.

    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/conspiracist-climate-change-study-withdrawn-amid-legal-threats-20140402-35xao.html

    I also have a question that no one seems to be able to answer.
    There is much comment about the fact that it is extremely alarming on land and in the ocean, several species are found in higher latitudes.
    I note that these ’cause for alarm’ comments do not say that any of these species are no longer found in their original places. . .just that they are now also found in higher latitudes.
    My question is fairly simple:
    Why is that extremely alarming?

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      Roy Hogue

      Why is that extremely alarming?

      Debbie,

      It’s probably “extremely alarming” because they want it to be, not for any good science based reason.

      I wouldn’t take such statements too seriously.

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    pat

    what scamsters – Garnaut/ABC!

    2 April: ABC AM: Ross Garnaut intervenes in WA senate race
    CHRIS UHLMANN: Three days out from the re-run of the Senate election in Western Australia the man who advised Labor on its emissions trading scheme has weighed into the carbon tax brawl.
    Professor Ross Garnaut has told a business event in Perth that the consequences of climate change means there’s a huge amount at stake at this weekend’s poll.
    He says it would be a “costly mistake” to repeal the tax as the Government hopes to do and the Coalition’s been working hard to make it the key theme of the race, as Naomi Woodley reports from Perth…
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Labor says the repeal calls are not resonating with voters, preferring to focus on the prospect of spending cuts instead.
    But the Senate spots up for election this weekend are important to the future of the carbon and mining taxes. The final make-up of the Senate will determine how many votes the Government will require from a diverse cross-bench of independents, micro parties and the Palmer United Party.
    One more than interested observer is Professor Ross Garnaut…
    ROSS GARNAUT: True Australian conservatives would be barracking for votes against repeal in WA Senate election on Saturday.
    NAOMI WOODLEY: The Melbourne University climate economist was commissioned by Labor six years ago to advise on the design of its proposed emissions trading scheme.
    ROSS GARNAUT: I think that it would be a mercy for the Abbott Government and something to be sought by supporters of the current Government if the Senate were to block the repeal.
    Without the blockage of repeal, the budget problem – Australia faces a really severe budget problem – it becomes much harder if the climate bills are repealed.
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Addressing a business event in Perth professor Garnaut likened inaction on climate change to events in the lead-up to World War One a century ago…
    The elites of 1914 let down their peoples. I hope that the elites of 2014 are not letting down their peoples in the same way.
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Professor Garnaut is speaking at a series of events in Perth this week in support of retaining Labor’s carbon pricing package, ***but he says they were scheduled before the election date was set.
    http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2014/s3976414.htm

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    pat

    ABC as an arm of the Labor Party:

    2 April: Yahoo: ABC Resources Reporter, Sue Lannin: Climate change expert Ross Garnaut weighs into WA Senate election debate
    Professor Garnaut, who was the architect of Labor’s climate change laws, said around $7 billion in government revenue could be lost if the tax is abolished.
    The Melbourne University economics professor told a business function in Perth that carbon pricing should stay…
    Professor Garnaut said it was fortunate that the current Senate blocked the repeal of climate change legislation.
    “I think we can all be grateful to the Senate to that,” he said.
    “And I think the Abbott Government would be grateful in the end for being saved from what’s going to be otherwise a mistake, very costly politically as well as diplomatically and economically for Australia.”…
    He also weighed into the political debate ahead of Saturday’s Senate election in Western Australia.
    “True Australian conservatives would be barracking for votes against repeal in WA’s Senate election on Saturday,” he said.
    Professor Garnaut said south-west WA was the most vulnerable part of the country to climate change.
    He said average rainfall in WA had fallen and temperatures had increased over the past 70 years.
    “Australia is the most vulnerable of developed countries but the south-west of WA is the most vulnerable part of Australia,” he said.
    “For these reasons, Western Australians need to be aware the current policies will allow Australia to make a reasonable contribution to the international effort to combat climate change but the alternative policies will not,” Professor Garnaut said…
    (FINAL LINES) Mr Abbott has also sought to bring the carbon tax into the WA Senate election debate.
    Campaigning in Perth this week, he said the carbon tax “hurts the energy capital of the country, and it also hits every household in WA with $550 a year in higher costs”.
    http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/22309767/climate-change-expert-ross-garnaut-weighs-into-wa-senate-election-debate/

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      PhilJourdan

      said around $7 billion in government revenue could be lost if the tax is abolished.

      Here is an excellent example of the lie of omission. The statement is patently false. The money is not lost. And the revenue impact is indeterminate. The reality is that the creators of the money get to decide how to invest it. And when those investments pay off, as they do more often than not, government revenues are enhanced. Eventually exceeding the shortfall (note not “lost”) government revenue.

      And thus the left lies to you thinking that something is being destroyed. When in the reality, something is being created.

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        Roy Hogue

        Phil,

        Probably a waste of time since they understand neither money nor wealth.

        I have no idea how to convince them. Certainly history should if anything will. But not even the success of both a Democrat, John F. Kennedy and a Republican, Ronald W. Reagan in lowering taxes has the slightest impact.

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    pat

    1 April: Climate change expert Ross Garnaut weighs into WA Senate election debate
    Resources reporter Sue Lannin.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-01/ross-garnaut-weighs-into-wa-senate-election-debate/5360508?section=wa

    ABC on the campaign trail for Labor/Greens:

    1 April: ABC: WA Senate campaign intensifies
    BILL SHORTEN: Should we have a rubber stamp in the Senate? Do you want more Liberals in the Senate?
    (Crowd boos)
    Friends, this is a big group, but your voices will be heard not only in Western Australia, but right through Australia. Please, keep fighting for the kids and we will win! We will win!
    (Crowd cheers)
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Bill Shorten joined thousands of striking teachers, parents and students on a march to State Parliament. The WA Government has raised eyebrows at the timing of the event, so close to the Senate re-run – but that’s been scotched by Bill Shorten.
    BILL SHORTEN: I’ll give you cynical: cynical is the Abbott Government. They’re happy to be in Perth at photo opportunities, but they won’t turn up and talk to teachers and parents…
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Western Australia is a Liberal stronghold – the party took three of the six Senate seats on offer at last year’s general election – but are worried about the impact voter apathy will have on Saturday. The Prime Minister used a picture opportunity with his candidates to sympathise with weary voters…
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Tony Abbott also brought Cabinet to Perth, an often-used tactic to emphasise the state’s importance to his Government…
    (MILNE GETS THE LAST WORDS)CHRISTINE MILNE: If we can change the vote in Western Australia, if people in that state can return at least two ALP and one Green, even if the three Liberals remain, then Western Australia will change the nation. We will change the balance. We will move one vote from the conservatives across to the progressives.
    NAOMI WOODLEY: She’s used a National Press Club address to suggest Parliament should curb big spending campaigns.
    CHRISTINE MILNE: It is a concern that, when you have a wealthy individual prepared to put their money in and go wall-to-wall advertising in advertising markets like Tasmania and Western Australia, that is a concern about whether democracy is for sale.
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Senator Milne says she’s confident her colleague Scott Ludlam can retain his WA seat, and she’s rejected any suggestion that her leadership will be in question if he doesn’t.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-01/wa-senate-campaign-intensifies/5360326?section=wa

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    pat

    ABC on the campaign trail for Labor/Greens:

    1 April: ABC: WA Senate campaign intensifies
    BILL SHORTEN: Should we have a rubber stamp in the Senate? Do you want more Liberals in the Senate?
    (Crowd boos)
    Friends, this is a big group, but your voices will be heard not only in Western Australia, but right through Australia. Please, keep fighting for the kids and we will win! We will win!
    (Crowd cheers)
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Bill Shorten joined thousands of striking teachers, parents and students on a march to State Parliament. The WA Government has raised eyebrows at the timing of the event, so close to the Senate re-run – but that’s been scotched by Bill Shorten.
    BILL SHORTEN: I’ll give you cynical: cynical is the Abbott Government. They’re happy to be in Perth at photo opportunities, but they won’t turn up and talk to teachers and parents…
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Western Australia is a Liberal stronghold – the party took three of the six Senate seats on offer at last year’s general election – but are worried about the impact voter apathy will have on Saturday. The Prime Minister used a picture opportunity with his candidates to sympathise with weary voters…
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Tony Abbott also brought Cabinet to Perth, an often-used tactic to emphasise the state’s importance to his Government…
    (MILNE GETS THE LAST WORDS)CHRISTINE MILNE: If we can change the vote in Western Australia, if people in that state can return at least two ALP and one Green, even if the three Liberals remain, then Western Australia will change the nation. We will change the balance. We will move one vote from the conservatives across to the progressives.
    NAOMI WOODLEY: She’s used a National Press Club address to suggest Parliament should curb big spending campaigns.
    CHRISTINE MILNE: It is a concern that, when you have a wealthy individual prepared to put their money in and go wall-to-wall advertising in advertising markets like Tasmania and Western Australia, that is a concern about whether democracy is for sale.
    NAOMI WOODLEY: Senator Milne says she’s confident her colleague Scott Ludlam can retain his WA seat, and she’s rejected any suggestion that her leadership will be in question if he doesn’t.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-01/wa-senate-campaign-intensifies/5360326?section=wa

    ridiculous:

    2 April: ABC: Lauren Day: Records melt as Hobart swelters through hottest April day in 132 years
    Hobart has sweltered into the record books for April with the mercury soaring into the 30s.
    The weather bureau says yesterday’s 31 degrees Celsius was the hottest April day since records started in 1881…
    The overnight low was just 18.1C, with the weather bureau’s Alex Melitsis saying it broke a record set in 1959…
    But the sultry weather has been short-lived, with a cold front crossing the state this morning, bringing with it rain and gusty winds…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-02/hobart-swelters-through-hot-april-night/5361072

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    pat

    ***in the media ECOSYSTEM? i have never been a fan of the Murdoch media, or any MSM, but taxpayers pay for ABC, & i once admired ABC, Mr. Scott. u just don’t get it, going by this drivel:

    1 April: Guardian: Amanda Meade: Mark Scott: News Corp papers never more aggressive than nowABC managing director warns of dangers for Australian public debate in ‘winner takes all’ media battle
    Giving a lecture at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, Scott said despite the proliferation of smaller players it was still the mainstream media organisations that set the news agenda, and once Fairfax “retreated” from print, News Corp would be the only choice for the reading public in many cities.
    “Fairfax is on the road to becoming a digital media company, migrating its traditional broadsheets through a tabloid format while actively discussing the prospect that the day may come where they will not publish them in newsprint at all, certainly not every day of the week”, Scott said.
    “Given the aggressive editorial positioning of some of their mastheads and their willingness to adopt and pursue an editorial position, an ideological position and a market segmentation, you could argue that News Corporation newspapers have never been more assertive in exercising media power,” Scott said in his address, titled New Journalism for a New Public…
    News Corp titles, particularly The Australian, have repeatedly attacked media rivals Fairfax Media and the ABC, as well as political foes.
    The Australian has called for Scott to resign on numerous occasions and has repeatedly accused the ABC of leftwing bias. The paper is campaigning to have Media Watch presenter Paul Barry sacked for what they say is bias against News Corp…
    “People will draw their own conclusions about what this means for public debate and the contest of ideas,” he said. “It might be that all the new arrivals and strong voices find a place of agenda-setting and influence – new central players ***in the media ecosystem. “
    Scott defended the role of the ABC in the media landscape. He said while the commercial TV networks chased celebrity, crime and sport, the ABC offered a more sober diet of national and international news, and covered regional and rural issues which the commercials had all but abandoned.
    He rejected accusations of bias, saying the ABC remained the most trusted source of news and the great majority of Australians did not see it as biased.
    “We are concerned about any suggestions of bias at the ABC, but as I’ve said before — I feel that we are nowhere near as bad as our critics make out and not always as good as we would like to be,” he said.
    Scott ruffled feathers within News Corp when he gave the AN Smith lecture five years ago, by implying Rupert Murdoch was leading an empire in decline as newspapers became less profitable…
    “I expect that we’ll see in the Australian market what’s happened in the US and the UK — market segmentation in news based around specific political and ideological perspectives. As Fox News has shown in the US, it’s a way to make very significant money while others around are struggling,” he said.
    http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/apr/01/mark-scott-news-corp-papers-never-more-aggressive-than-now

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    GerardB

    If we are going to be extinct, what’s the problem

    Another Michael Mann “hockey stick” analogy.

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    pat

    1 April: Age: Matthew Knott/Madeleine Heffernan: ABC’s Mark Scott challenges PM Tony Abbott not to cut broadcaster
    ABC managing director Mark Scott says savings identified at the ABC should be reinvested into the broadcaster.
    As the Abbott government’s cost-cutting study into the ABC and SBS prepares its final report, Mr Scott told the University of Melbourne on Tuesday night the ABC was a sure bet in the midst of the media storm.
    ‘‘In all the uncertainty … the public’s financial support for the ABC is one sure investment,’’ he said…
    He added that politicians understand that the “great strength of the ABC comes from its independence and that independence is really entrused to the eminent Australians who serve on the ABC board.”
    Questioned on what would happen to ABC funding in the May budget, Mr Scott said: “It should be a pretty simple story, really. We’re one year into a three-year, trifunding agreement … the Prime Minister said before the election, after the election, most recently in parliament a few weeks ago, no funding cuts to the ABC. And I suppose what I’m saying is, we take him at his word and we think our audience takes him at his word. That was a clear commitment that was made.”
    He added that ABC News 24 “had very strong audience figures” and its catch-up service iView had 24 million plays a month. “And not all of them are Peppa Pig.”
    http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abcs-mark-scott-challenges-pm-tony-abbott-not-to-cut-broadcaster-20140401-35wr5.html

    what about corrections of all the CAGW false/exaggerated propaganda put out by ABC daily?

    2 April: Australian: Sharri Markson: Media watchdog to take close look at ABC
    THE journalistic practices of the ABC’s Media Watch and its host Paul Barry will be investigated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
    ACMA has launched an investigation into the program’s compliance with the ABC code of practice, in relation to its ­selective editing of a video interview with The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell and its failure to seek comment from the newspaper before broadcasting inaccurate claims about its ­finances.
    As the watchdog announced the investigation yesterday, the ABC launched a site for corrections and clarifications on ABC content across radio, television and digital platforms…
    The move followed criticism that the ABC routinely failed to apologise for its mistakes, from inaccurate allegations that Australian navy personnel had deliberately burned the hands of asylum-seekers intercepted at sea to an offensive portrayal of The Australian’s columnist Chris Kenny by the Chaser team.
    Mitchell welcomed the ACMA investigation and said it was imperative Media Watch upheld high standards of journalism. The authority will investigate Barry’s editing of a video interview with Mitchell where his quote was cut, distorting its context and meaning…
    ABC spokesman Michael Millett would not reveal whether managing director Mark Scott had read the Australian’s ACMA complaint, saying only that Mr Scott was “aware” of it.
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/broadcast/media-watchdog-to-take-close-look-at-abc/story-fna045gd-1226871352610#mm-premium

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    handjive

    Carbon Dioxide In Greenhouses
    by The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture & Food

    Introduction
    The benefits of carbon dioxide supplementation on plant growth and production within the greenhouse environment have been well understood for many years.

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     Doug  Cotton

    The blog for genuine climate science discussion and a $5,000 reward …

    See this blog for more detail, and feel free to discuss anything with me there. No spammers reproducing AGW “science” please – I know what they claim, OK?

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      Mattb

      ok so I bit and read your blog Doug. One problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a statement that one could disprove in order to earn $5k…

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    pat

    on google news homepage, below the following link, google has the following “related” topics:

    climate change denial – conspiracy theories – climate change

    2 April: SMH: Peter Hannam: ‘Conspiracist’ climate change study withdrawn amid legal threats
    Climate change academics say the decision by a publisher to retract their paper examining the links between conspiracy theorists and denial of global warming because of legal threats could have a “chilling effect” on research.
    Frontiers in Psychology last month retracted the paper, Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation “in light of a small number of complaints”, the Swiss-based journal said on its website.
    It means that if a paper is published that the climate deniers don’t like the look of, they can bombard the journal with complaints or threats A year-long investigation “did not identify any issues with the academic and ethical aspects of the study,” it said. However, the probe found “the legal context (to be) insufficiently clear”.
    The paper, though, is being carried by the website of the University of Western Australia (UWA), where one of its authors, cognitive scientist Stephan Lewandowsky, was based…
    “Sadly, it has turned into a routine for outsiders with no scientific standing to approach, bully, or intimidate journals, editors, and academics,” said Professor Lewandowsky, now at the UK’s University of Bristol.
    One person commenting on the Frontiers’ website asked for the ‘‘full details of the investigation,’’ saying the paper had been ‘‘derogatory and insulting’’ by naming people as conspiracy theorists who were ‘‘merely pointing out errors in the previous paper’’…
    John Cook, a researcher at the University of Queensland and a co-author of the second paper, said the Frontiers’ decision to retract the work might have a “chilling effect” on research.
    “It means that if a paper is published that the climate deniers don’t like the look of, they can bombard the journal with complaints or threats,” Mr Cook said.
    “Knowing they have had success once might embolden them to try to retreat the strategy again.” (Mr Cook also helms the Skeptical Science website.)
    Kim Heitman, a lawyer for the UWA, said the university had done its own risk analysis before publishing the paper online. “There’s no reason to take it down,” Mr Heitman said.
    The university had also received complaints from some groups. “It’s quite relentless,” he said.
    “There’s always a close interest in everything that Steve (Lewandowsky) does,” Mr Heitman said. “We are conscious that we are going to be targeted by people opposed to his works.”
    The university, though, had also received plaudits from around the world for its decision to publish the paper.
    “I couldn’t list them,” Mr Heitman said. “And I wouldn’t list them, having regard to the fact that anyone who issues a ‘thanks UWA’ will probably get their own enquiry.”
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/conspiracist-climate-change-study-withdrawn-amid-legal-threats-20140402-35xao.html

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    pat

    new report, living in dreamland***:

    2 April:Brisbane Times: Reuters: Far deeper emission cuts needed to curb climate change: draft IPCC report
    The world will need far tougher curbs on greenhouse gases, by both developed nations and emerging economies, to keep global warming from exceeding a promised ceiling, a draft UN report shows.
    Rich nations led by the United States would have to halve their emissions by 2030 from 2010 levels to keep warming below an agreed 2 degree Celsius ceiling above pre-industrial times, according to the draft obtained by Reuters.
    ***Asia, including China and India, would have to limit emissions to around 2010 levels by 2030 as part of a global shareout, a tough goal for countries that say they need to burn more fossil fuels to help end poverty…
    The Berlin report about solving climate change follows an IPCC report about impacts of warming issued in Japan on Monday that said the world was in many cases ill-prepared for severe and perhaps irreversible change…
    “The implications for all the big emitters are pretty stark,” said Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “All of them now have something to worry about.” Like others interviewed, he had not seen the draft…
    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/far-deeper-emission-cuts-needed-to-curb-climate-change-draft-ipcc-report-20140402-35×56.html

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    Radical Rodent

    Isn’t the extinction of our species one of the dreams of many enviroloons?

    Not sure that they yet realised that it will also include them.

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    pat

    final para of the reuters report on the new report!

    “The IPCC says that it is at least 95 per cent probable that human activities, rather than natural variations in the climate, are the dominant cause of recent climate change. Opinion polls show that voters in many nations are far less certain.”

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    Maggie1954

    Jo, as usual very well said.

    I am not a scientist but someone who uses anecdotal evidence. Here are some of my thoughts on the subject.

    1. the climate alarmists do not seem to understand the nature of cycles in our climate. You mention the 1930s but that same pattern was repeated in the 1950s-1960s. In particular, the summer of 1959 was a very hot one with temperatures reaching around 110F in the shade… and that was in Melbourne!

    2. Victoria in the 1960s was subjected to water restrictions. This was the era of only being allowed to water the garden on alternate days using an odds and evens system. It was also the period when the bucketing brigade was at its busiest. My grandmother maintained a lovely garden despite the restrictions :).

    3. There was a subtle change in the weather pattern during summer in the 1970s. Yes it really was a lot colder in that decade. That is precisely how I remember this period because there were fewer hot summer days from around 1971, especially in the January.

    4. Some of the current patterns including the flooding rains also occurred in the 1970s. In fact 1978 was very memorable as far as flooding was concerned, especially when the Hawkesbury-Neapan river system flooded because of the spillover of the Waragamba Dam. It was in the March of 1978 when the rains came crashing down. There were several deaths caused by cars going out of control, followed by the death of the 14 year old who was electrocuted as he was assisting to rescue people from around McGrath’s Hill. His boat touched electricity wires. There is a tide mark on the Jolly Green Frog that remains even today as a reminder of that flood. I know all this because I lived in the Windsor district at the time of the flooding (we were safe, even though the flood waters were surrounding us).

    In Victoria, by 1979/80 the hot summer temperatures had returned. Yes, I was back to living in Victoria for a short time. During those years, up until 1984 there were some very hot summer days, and this included the lead up to the very bad bushfires in Victoria and the Adelaide Hills when dozens of people were killed as a result of the bushfires that were raging in 1983.

    Since then we have seen the same pattern repeat in 2009, with the very hot days followed by a disastrous bushfire that killed dozens of people in Victoria and elsewhere.

    What I have noticed is that some patterns repeat themselves in long cycles and others in shorter cycles. It is always dicey where bushfires are concerned because so many of them are deliberately lit. As such these bushfires are discounted because they are not the result of spontaneous combustion, which seems to be a very rare occurrence.

    FYI, another person who would agree somewhat with my own comments on the subject is Germaine Greer, since she was one of the first to rebut the nonsense after the deadly 2009 Victorian bushfires, pointing out as you have done, that such patterns were observed in 1939. (I point to 1959 because that year is personally memorable).

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    Eddie

    Perhaps more likely to make human ‘Experts’ extinct, if nobody ever trusts them again. That may be no bad thing.

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    DaveGinOly

    A person shouldn’t be able to survive in orbit 120 miles above the surface of the earth, but people do because of technology. Astronauts didn’t have to evolve to be able to survive, our ability to innovate technologically permits them to survive in space. What makes Dr. Berry think that Homo sapiens was able to survive tens of thousands of years of climate change, with almost all of that time in pre-industrial societies, but somehow Homo is now suddenly incapable of responding technologically to a the threat of climate change posed during the industrial age?

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    Lance

    I am deeply disappointed. Does this mean I have to cancel my “End Of The Human Race” party? It had the potential to be awesome.

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