“Merchants of Doubt” — the new attack-umentory released last week — has been a box-office bomb. Even the anti-carbon activists can’t be bothered watching the rehashed malevolent fantasy speculation about the scientists who dared stand against the establishment.
Jim Lakely at Heartland reports that total takings were $23,300 last weekend.
It uses 20 year old documents to absurdly try to tie the smoking campaign to the climate debate. Oreskes fights on the side with billions of dollars but tries to paint herself the victim of intimidation. No one is buying it. The Merchants of Doubt is an unwitting self projection of her own obsession trying to sell doubts about honest, upstanding scientists.
Fred Singer got his PhD in 1948 on cosmic ray showers. His thesis committee included J. Robert Oppenheimer and Niels Bohr. I’d like to see Fred Singer discuss atmospheric physics with Naomi. Bring on the debate that matters and let the smear campaign get all it deserves.
Debate? Hell and the world will freeze over before that happens.
400
Well judging by N. America, the world is well on the way to freezing over, so better home up on your debating skills…
240
you can always count on Obama to have a free and open debate on climate!!
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/us-president-openly-attacks-us-citizens/
30
Well, not all is lost. They can always make primary school kids watch it. There’s no better way to build an audience than compulsory attendance. Just like the old days in the USSR.
730
Karim G,
Yep, I agree they should make it compulsory for all primary school children, just like any other vacination…
1615
Wow, that got a reaction.
Who on earth does not want to be vaccinated against catastrophic climate propaganda?
60
This would be the primary purpose for which this doco was made. Every school will get a DVD.
Has the ABC broadcast it yet on a school program? Won’t be long!
150
I agree!
My guess is the main reason for the release was to put it up for some “Inconvenient Truth” type of propaganda awards.
Even if they only get nominated they’ll use it.
Plus, how much did Naomi make from this capitalist product?
50
Just like “An Inconvenient Truth” in Australian public schools. Last I checked, this is still being played under the premise of “teaching students about propaganda” (Or some such BS excuse).
This reminds me of the same BS I went through during the 1990s. Just replace “Climate Change” with “Hole in Ozone Layer”.
The rhetoric was the same: The ice caps will melt and Sydney will be destroyed by a tidal wave…A tidal wave I’m still waiting for 20 years later!
As for this “Merchants of Doubt”. People are tired. Tired of the emotional manipulative BS that is the staple of the modern political Left. Their endless, nonsensical activism that are becoming more and more disconnected from the real world. They pretend to be open by talking about debate and dialogue, when in reality, they want monologue. THEIR monologue! People are switching off to the rhetoric. Now they’re trying to associate Climate Change with the cigarette industry? Give me a break! The big, rich, powerful folks are FOR climate change, extra taxes, “green technologies” that simply don’t even meet our base loads.
There’s only so much activism one can take before you just nod, smile, and walk away…Activists have a right to freely speak. They just don’t have a right to an audience to listen to them!
Seriously, there is this big push for more BS!
UK’s BBC push via their “Climate Change By Numbers” program
=> http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/03/05/climate-change-is-real-because-shut-up-explains-the-bbc-again/
The tactic is to “appeal to authority” …You should believe its real because three people with mathematics degrees said so!
Like Australia’s ABC, UK’s BBC no longer follows its own charter.
=> http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/03/09/the-bbcs-climate-change-coverage-is-not-just-dishonest-but-illegal/
Criticism of BBC’s program
=> http://www.thegwpf.com/climate-change-by-the-numbers/
By the way, bankers are involved in this nonsense…(They stand to gain something out of it!)
=> http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/03/11/bank-of-england-governor-talks-rubbish-on-climate-change/
210
Aussieguy. Good point. I remember they took CFCs off the market because of their role in causing the hole in the ozone layer. Thu ultimate insanity was that there was a small amount of CFCs as propellant in inhalers for asthma. They worked like a charm and got the anti-asthma medicine deep in the lungs. This was especially so in children with lung diseases who had trouble with asthma and taking deep breaths.
The replacement propellant does not work near as well, so many people with severe asthma or those with other lung diseases had to switch to steroids or the less effective inhalers with steroids added to the regular medication.
Once again the green leftists lied, lobbied, protested, and coerced the pharmaceutical industries and the governments to ban the most effective treatment–and guess what the hole in the ozone crisis disappeared. But the laws banning the old style inhalers were never rescinded. Another classic negative outcome of the leftists.
121
Yes but the nett effect would have been more deaths from asthma.
This is what these whack jobs want – less humans.
Job done…..
91
They’ve also caused another issue…
During the banning of CFCs period, they also went after refrigerants. End result? It has caused anyone who rely on freezing goods (like meat) to pay 10x more to keep things cool. What used to cost less than a few hundred became a few thousand. The costs are then passed onto the consumer (increased living costs) or absorbed by the business until it economically forces them to close down.
…But isn’t that what the political Left fundamentally want? A big govt controlling everything at the cost of individual liberty. The eco-nuts want to circumvent sovereignty of nations (the people’s voice) under the banner of UN: Their utopia of a “One World Govt”. (They openly say what they’re doing through all the papers they publish, but everyone is ignoring them! The media don’t mention a single word of it!)
This last point is becoming more obvious when the UN (an email from United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), is now talking about a “International Climate Tribunal” as part of the upcoming Paris climate thing.
The coming climate court
=> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/8/chris-horner-paris-climate-agreement-a-global-powe/
The real objective is to legally circumvent the USA. More specifically, the powers of the US Senate. The voice of the American people. Taking down the USA means removing a large obstacle to their end goal. A One World Govt cannot happen if the American people’s voice can still be heard.
And then there’s us. A defiant grass-roots movement who are sick of the propaganda BS and want some honesty and integrity on the issue. We stand in their way by calling out their questionable behaviour…And they don’t like it! They don’t like the fact they’ve been caught lying! They growl and snarl about it as they label us with all sorts of names, talk about suppressing our voice, referring to us as terrorists, and other nonsense because we simply question them and not blindly bend over to their BS. (Seems like they want to be rulers and want us to be their willing subjects!)
The most interesting part is that the more they push with these propaganda films, the more people wake up and realise the whole thing is a total sham! They wouldn’t need propaganda films if their arguments can stand on their own merits and can withstand genuine scientific scrutiny.
They cannot be honest and upfront about what they do and their intentions or goals. If they do, NO ONE would support them! They can’t use force because they know the people would rise up against them. So they try to circumvent things via culture, economics, and legal frameworks.
101
Ozone hole is still there. It is just no longer fashionable, in polite circles, to mention it.
It did, however, have the effect of removing a lot of very efficient fire extinguishers from the market, forcing up everybody’s fire insurance premiums.
Comes to think about it, it was a fairly useful dress rehearsal for the climate scare. So, what comes next, I wonder … ?
81
Predictably it got mostly rave reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and a high audience score. Of course the audience score is worthless as it’s a blatantly self-selecting group Who could stomach such a movie except the most hopeless of the kool-aide drinkers.. As to the critics, they’re in way over their heads. A.O.Scott from the NYT’s calls it ‘informative and infuriating.” Right. At least he got the infuriating part right.
92
They are like reef fish. One turns and swims in a different direction, and they all turn to swim in the same direction.
50
Even school kids can discern between the genuine and the propaganda. In the USSR where there was no alternative to the state media apart from rumors, people read between the lines. If they heard about the heroic efforts of the students to help bring in the harvest, people knew the harvest was a disaster. If they no longer heard about a politburo member, or other leading figure, they knew that they had gone to the gulag. They knew who the promotions by who was praised.
210
Speaking for myself I’ve long passed the point of terminal burnout with their claims and rantings. I suspect many others have as well or are rapidly approaching it.
Most “normal” people eventually just stop listening. They may nod their heads and look as thought they agree in order to limit the level of shrillness they must endure as well as to speed up the process by which they will eventually be left alone, but people can only take so much of that kind of thing before they just turn off when someone like Oreskes shows up.
570
There is also the fact that most folks have known all along that they were being bullied.
It is not just this weird story about humanity being able to control the climate, too fantastical, on par with alien-abduction stuff if we are honest with ourselves.
It is also the way in which it has been pushed down our throats as a just-around-the-cornet catastrophe of biblical proportions brought about by our sins.
190
It’s worse than we thought. Climate change is turning ancient mummies into black ooze.
http://www.straitstimes.com/news/world/united-states/story/ancient-mummies-turn-black-ooze-because-climate-change-20150310
140
Isn’t that just about the limit. Saving the whales, rain forests, and the earth didn’t sell the greens program of death, now they think saving the long dead will do it. They really are getting desperate. Overtly dangerous is soon to follow.
I say, leave the dead to take care of the dead and let’s focus on living and thriving.
181
There are those who would say, that if a group want to take care of the dead, they should join them.
30
As Barry O might put it…
“History has spoken, and if we don’t act now then future generations won’t have a past.”
80
This is hilarious. The dodgy way they report this tells all. They claim the 7,000 year old mummies from the arid Atacama Desert are turning to goo due to global warming raising humidity. The part you’ve got to tease out for yourself is that the mummies have not been in the Atacama desert for decades, they are in a university museum in Arica, Chile that is 150 meters away from the Pacific Ocean. The evil “black goo” is, wait for it, normal bacteria found on people’s skin. Oh the horror. They take mummies out of the desert, put them right next to the ocean surrounded by living people covered by bacteria for a decade or more and are then blaming “global warming.”
Arrrrgggghhhh… my brain’s gonna explode with all this stupidity.
400
When it does explode you will have to get a job with the Straits Times.
Motto – we publish what National Enquirer won’t.
31
At least the “black goo” is man made. They got that part right. It is from the fact that man moved the mummies from a dessicated desert into a damp and microbe infested environment.
They were hoping you wouldn’t notice and would continue to believe it was “climate change” due to man’s use of fossil fuel. Even that part is sort of right in that they used petroleum products to power the transport vehicles.
Still, to find the few minute particles of truth in what they said requires parsing their words until there is very little of the original intended meaning left. Their real intent was to further justify the destruction of modern technological civilization based upon what is essentially a lie by omission of the essential truth behind the reported event.
60
Well, at the very least, the mummies have had a change in climate 🙂
60
“Oreskes fights on the side with billions of dollars but tries to paint herself the victim of intimidation. No is buying it.”
I suspect you mean no-one is buying it.
And I wish you were right, but unfortunately this country is still paying the peddlers by offering far more political clout than they deserve.
Does anyone remember the campaign to ban chlorofluorocarbons? Someone should remind the public of what a real scientific consensus looks like.
141
You mean the consensus that we saved the ozone layer? – Cough – (quickly in a soft voice): and market share. Sallie Baliunis is reportedly not convinced. Every now and then the newspapers report the hole is as big and variable as ever. Maybe in the future the world will smugly look back and similarly say: this is how we stopped global warming, just as we once saved the ozone layer.
41
you did notice that it is only playing in 4 cinemas so far…
516
Blaz, yes, I guess all those other cinema’s who aren’t playing it made a choice…
542
Nailed it!
170
Cinemas wasn’t the intended market. Nor was making a profit.
Propaganda for a captive audience in the education system more like it.
360
and those cinemas may have been bought to screen it. It goes on in the film industry to get better distribution in the secondary markets.
51
If it is a success in those four cinema, word will quickly spread and more mainstream cinemas would show it. But if it bombs even among the intelligentsia, the mass cinemas will avoid it like the plague.
120
here is the release info – look like its a rolling release typical of films in the past that had a limited budget for prints but is also a strategy to also roll and concentrate the media and advertising. Oreskes cant talk on morning radio/tv in hundreds of cities when it is released nationally at once.
is falsified
216
hmmm where is that link i implied above?
http://www.sonyclassics.com/merchantsofdoubt/dates.html
16
Release info please and what is your definition of a flop?
Jo has a link above to the Box Office results. None in the top 100 made less than $100 000 in the opening weekend and the lowest opened in 4 cinemas. The lowest opening take to eventual make over $10M is $38,608 from 3 cinemas is the documentary America (2014) by Dinesh D’Souza (It made $14M). It made $2.7M in its first full release weekend and was derided as a flop.
90
Great timing, Gee Aye.
70
Most modern cinemas use digital prints, not film on reels so print stock is no longer a concern. One interview on Good Morning America or the Today show would cover your 100’s of cities argument as well.
FAIL…..
51
Not so. Local talk back and media gives quite a different impact
02
Was there any doubt this would happen? Hahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahah
A box-office bomb and “Merchants” hoisted by their own petard, how sublime. 🙂
210
Poor Naomi,
Sad Naomi,
Invited them all
To her doomsday party
But none of ’em come.
50
The accusing judge
With a desperate display
Lost lonely echo
20
Climate science isn’t science, it’s climate science.
193
It is mandatory to place the term within inverted commas ie. “climate science.”
81
And preferably spell “climate”, with a “k”, so that everybody know you aren’t actually serious.
50
I’ll confess to usually being quite serious, as in ‘Die Klimate’. I find the use of ‘k’ provides a visual innuendo suggestive of a darker, more ‘compelling’ political overtone. I’ll agree though, most don’t get it, much as they don’t when alluding to axiomatic climate change, quite unaware that the phrase has been formally
politiciseddefined as “klimate khange” by the UN, and is presumably the usual phrase of choice by MSMBC.I do however take great comfort in the idea that Clarkson, and likely the 500,000+ petitioners urging for his immediate restoration by the BBC would be able to reflexively discern the distinction. In fact, I would go so far as to speculate that 98% of the petitioners would be defined as ‘Merchants of Doubt’ by the Doubtful Merchants of the UN. I wonder vaguely what Professor Stephan Lewandowsky thinks of Clarkson. Would you consider him a possible closet supporter?
72
“Keep Clarkson” has now reached over 800,000 signatures. A lot of those will be, “Screw the BEEB” motivation.
50
How about Klimate séance?
141
Classic LL. And I see a couple of red thumbs on 8.1.1.1, eminently satisfying.
51
I’m beginning to see a pattern in the types of post trolls avoid.
They avoid posts where real opinion polls – referendums or box office sales – incontravertably prove their belief system is wrong.
333
I’ve noticed that too.
They’ll jump into any thread where they can pick at a point no matter how trivial. In fact, the more trivial the better. But where it is obvious that the population as a whole makes a single incontrovertible statement, such as a vote, or where one of their group gets arrested, or they stomp all over a heritage area; they do not make comment.
72
Greg,
And another thing I noticed is the trolls seem very insistent on trying to force others to their way of thinking.
It seems anathema to the socialist ideal these lefty/luvvie/greenie bedwetters are trying to portray.
They seem very scared of people who think for themselves.
I just don’t get that bit, because I certainly don’t go out of my way to change their beliefs.
I don’t give a rats ar$e how the trolls think.
83
Or even if they think.
Lets not forget that the socialist ideal is for a small group of elite administrators, and highly skilled professionals, with the rest of the population being unthinking, unquestioning, working serfs.
I have yet to see any trolls from the first two categories, but we get loads from the third.
82
Lick the spittle from your boots shall I?
13
James,
You know damn well that I was not including you in either of those groups. We are the observers. The fish can’t see the water.
20
😉
30
all that free PR from the CAGW-infested-invested MSM came to nought, or near enough.
all that smearing of Willie Soon ditto:
11 March: WUWT: New paper from Willie Soon, Hong Yan, & Bob Carter: Fingerprints of the Sun on Asia-Australia Summer Monsoon Rainfalls during the Little Ice Age
A new paper has been published in Nature Geoscience entitled ‘Dynamics of the intertropical convergence zone over the western Pacific during the Little Ice Age ’ by Hong Yan of the Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences and an international team of co-authors from the Alfred Wegener Institute (Wei Wei), Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (Willie Soon), Institute of Earth Environment (Zhisheng An, Weijian Zhou and Yuhong Wang), University of Hong Kong (Zhonghui Liu) and Institute of Public Affairs (Robert M. Carter). The results of the research indicate that both the East Asia Summer Monsoon and the Northern Australia Summer Monsoon retreated synchronously during the recent cold Little Ice Age in response to external forcings such as solar irradiance variation and possibly large volcanic eruptions…
The research was found by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Natural Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Academy of Science.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/11/new-paper-from-willie-soon-and-bob-carter-fingerprints-of-the-sun-on-asia-australia-summer-monsoon-rainfalls-during-the-little-ice-age/
122
IMDb rates it 7.0 (out of 10) but it has only 5 reviews, one from Monckton who pans it of course.
The rating obviously has not been updated because at present it should be 3.8 if my math is correct.
60
What does it rate on DUMb?
70
5 reviews and 3 are negative!
80
That’s almost 97% negative!
60
It’s, ‘we’re 40% certain that we’re correct’
40
stop it stop stop it…..
hee hee…laughing too hard…..
Nice one , Centurion!
40
I like imdb – I always consultant it after watching a movie.
Apparently there is a new a movie coming out soon about CAGW called “Dumb, Dumber & Dumbest” and yes don’t worry “rubber face” Jim Carrey is in it. I believe when the a “Polar Vortex” appears on the scene and “freezes Jim’s character’s home fountain” his eyes pop out of his head just like they did in “The Mask” (1994)”.
50
Maybe IMDB is using some kind of computer model to homogenize voting results. By calculating only average from vote data you won’t get reliable result.
70
LoL.
They noticed a movie 300km away was doing great so they adjust this movie’s ratings because they think it should have done better.
70
“I’d like to see Fred Singer discuss atmospheric physics with Naomi.”
I’d pay to see that.
190
Although the antics of the desperate can be amusing they can also be quite dangerous also, people this spiteful will inflict as much damage as possible before their times up.
I do wonder if the warmists will end up merging with the Dianetics crowd?, it would make for some interesting math….
101
Indeed. You and Lionell are both spot on in that assessment. Failing to get their way they will, out of spite and some distorted notion of revenge, try and do as much damage and harm as many as they are able. They have already shown they do not care who they hurt or what damage they do, there is no reason whatsoever to think they will behave any better as things fall apart. I think the only difference is that previously, to some extent, they have tried to hide what they do. As Lionell observed they will become more overt, and I would add rampant, in how dangerous and uncaring they become.
I’ve been through a bit over the years, I’ll survive them. I expect it will get pretty ugly, but if the end result is we don’t have to hear anymore of this crap for awhile then bring it on.
100
Agreed Robert, the key point here is “Maturity Level” or lack of it from the warmista when it comes to dealing with criticism, discussion or loss, while having a good sense of humor is a healthy trait for clear thinkers it’s the ability to be self critical when alternate views are presented that begins a path to valid answers, this glaring avoidance of honest debate was for many the warning sign that something was more than amiss with the claims of CAGW proponents.
When you consider the ‘authorities’ on CAGW have resorted to repeated ad hominem, public slander, attacking careers,
threatsplans to tattoo, imprison, prosecute, execute, torture, exile and other uncivilized actions you can identify what your dealing with, a socially dysfunctional person who has been given way too much attention and power.131
The original plan was to create the perception of a problem that was so big, that the mass population would run around screaming and asking for someone to save them. Thoughts of the early 1960’s, B-Grade Flying Saucer movies come to mind.
Where the pushers of climate catastrophy miscalculated, was in the sophistication of the majority of kids today, in the ways they are connected.
If you put up any major proposition today, the hive-minds of Twitter and Facebook, and dozens of other alternative communication tools, analyse it and bring any inconsistencies to the fore.
Instead of being frightened, these kids are getting cynical.
141
Yes it’s cynicism via high speed connection, I guess it’s not called viral for nothing, if the catastrophe creators miss read the internet influence this time they could use it’s massive content as a distraction next time while the real damage is being done unseen, maybe this has already occurred as the kids aren’t being cynical about the relevant issues and are directed to vent distain at red herrings.
60
I think the internet is what stopped them.
I also believe they think the same thing and that’s why the admin is pushing net neutrality.
A free internet is absolutely necessary for the world’s freedom, and they know it.
100
Net neutrality is as I understand it, a term used to broadly describe the transmission of information on the internet in general and ‘data packets’ in particular. I have mentioned this before, but data packets being transmitted can be prioritised (delayed) by their content. This applies in particular to the requirement of a nearly instantaneous transmission of data packets in a Skype or FT call. If delayed, the Skype conversation would become difficult or impossible. On the other hand, data packets of info associated with a large movie download (frequently illegal with no payment) take up substantial band width. In effect they impede transmissions requiring of greater immediacy. Internet providers may therefore slightly ‘delay’ less important datapackets in favour or those requiring of immediacy. This requires that they ‘see’ the handle of the data packet. Net neutrality (supported in particular by Soros et al., Obama et al) favours ALL data being treated equally. These supporters alone raise concern, there are many others.
40
Well, we’ve had this sort of thing up here, in “climate change by numbers” an al-beeb effort and poor it certainly was.
Whence, the bbc dressed up some old figures threw in a few non sequiturs ala blurb about formula 1 racing cars and Tottenham Hotspur FC and thought that would crack open the man made warming nut or, nutter – you choose.
Hollywood, seesh is full of it, we’ve known that for a very long time. What with, the tinsel town luvvies, because they all live in gilded palaces protected from real world problems but are won’t to lecture the real world on all sorts of stuff that actually, luvvies know bu**er all about.
Cue, ‘Merchants of dumb’.
Oreskes V Singer?
Fred would get so bored.
BUT?
Much esteemed and very learned gentlemen, Professors. Fred Singer V Freeman Dyson now that would be something………..oh damn – how remiss of me they’re on the same side! And Willie [Professor. Soon] and Richard [Professor. Lindzen] too! So, lets see here, learned Physics dons versus Hollywood and Oreskes – not even towel in the ring, a walkover would have to be declared.
140
$23,300?!
That won’t even cover ‘gas money’ for the film crew! 😉
Abe
130
Who funded the Film?
30
Get ready to laugh!
The 97% certified Australian Doomsday Society have
invoked the scripturessigned a letter:The Intergenerational Report underestimates climate threat: an open letter to the government
(theconversation.com)
Panic excerpt: “the present 400 ppm, currently rising at more than 2 ppm per year, threatens to transform the planetary climate, creating conditions in which large parts of the continents become subject to droughts, fires and other extreme weather events.
> Always with the “burning in hell”, unless it is some other weather event, in which case it was foretold in the ambiguos reference above.
But there is salvation at hand:
“Australia has many excellent renewable and low-carbon energy resources and access to commercially available technologies that would enable Australia to transition to zero-carbon electricity …”
> Repent, ye sinners, and pay. Pay some more. And more. Signed …
192
“Australia has many excellent renewable and low-carbon energy resources and access to commercially available technologies that would enable Australia to transition to zero-carbon electricity …”
.
😆
Ha, ha, ha, …they said ” commercially available technologies” 🙂 ha!
What without a subsidy?
And everyone really wants the unreliability “renewable and low-carbon energy resources” have to offer? 😆 🙂 😆
e e
. ¿
ªªªª
213
Gllkson worries our planet is returning to a state before ice ages, which was the very reason some apes came down to settle on the savanna. Climate change made us human.
‘New research published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports has provided a major new theory on the cause of the ice age that covered large parts of the Northern Hemisphere 2.6 million years ago.
‘The study, co-authored by Dr Thomas Stevens, from the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, found a previously unknown mechanism by which the joining of North and South America changed the salinity of the Pacific Ocean and caused major ice sheet growth across the Northern Hemisphere.’
—–
Knowing we are at the end of the Holocene it maybe in our best interest to separate the Americas once again. Larger canals without impediment might even stave off a LIA.
70
Yes, we have lots of trees we can chop down and pelletise and burn instead of coal, because the carbon in “biofuels” is not counted when adding up the carbon budget. It is considered to be “carbon neutral”.
Let’s do it!!!
80
.
Wasn’t Naomi Oreskes reported as saying that Big Oil was forcing the cinema owners not to show this epic movie. Also where it was showing, Big Oil with assistance from a well organized and highly trained band of ardent skeptics, were making the public to stay away?
Maybe not.
Maybe the public are more knowledgeable and already know what it is — it’s not entertainment, it’s not factual or informative, it’s just another boring piece of green-wash propaganda from the loonie left. As appealing as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
150
“As appealing as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”
I’m not so sure it is. Show me the stick.
40
handjive – i’m laughing, but only because i knew it was inevitable.
to all those academics, take note:
11 March: UK Independent: Christopher Hooton: There are too many studies,
new study finds
Science is drowning in studies, and it took a study to expose it.
In a paper entitled ‘Attention decay in science’ (LINK), professors from
universities in Finland and California conclude that “the exponential growth
in the number of scientific papers makes it increasingly difficult for
researchers to keep track of all the publications relevant to their work.
“Consequently,” the say, “the attention that can be devoted to individual
papers, measured by their citation counts, is bound to decay rapidly.”…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/there-are-too-many-studies-new-study-finds-10101130.html
& this bunch didn’t even focus on CAGW studies!!!!
172
True. I read of a “study” recently showed dogs do not have a memory! That is proof of too much money going to social science, especially Klimate Séance.
61
another laugh:
Cinema Nova, Carlton, Vic: Transitions Film Festival: Merchants Of Doubt – Now Showing
By Robert Kenner. (2014) USA. VICTORIAN PREMIERE.
Presented by Climate Council.
Followed by panel discussion.
Release Date: February 27, 2015.
http://www.cinemanova.com.au/movies/9394.php
“Merchants” director, Kenner, might not appreciate the Climate Council being credited with his expensive docu:
Facebook: Transitions Film Festival
25 Feb: Great video from the The Climate Council.
Come along this Friday the 27th at Cinema Nova #Melbourne and hear what CEO Amanda Mckenzie has to say why you’re watching this on facebook and not on the news.
http://www.transitionsfilmfestival.com/…/merchants-of-doubt/
Also screening in #Adelaide on Saturday
http://www.transitionsfilmfestival.com/…/merchants-of-doub…/
https://www.facebook.com/TransitionsFF/posts/874416072620639
with Amanda on the panel was Dan Cass, sustainability and communications consulting, & Luke Taylor, ***Sustainable Living Foundation.
***among Sustainable Living Foundations’s Partners: City of Melbourne, Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, Future Super etc etc.
112
Don’t worry all the “progressives” will ensure our tax money is used to pay for at least one copy for each state school and public library in Australia.
141
But! But! But!
You’ve got it all wrong about the 60 + whatever explanations for the temperature pause being in conflict.
As it is a known chaotic problem what they illustrate is that it has at least 60 * whatever dimensions.
I hope /s is not really necessary here.
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Speaking (well typing actually) as somebody of experience, it is no fun living in six dimensions, let alone 60. Banging your knee on a table in three dimensions is bad enough, but just think of all the corners that exist in 60 dimensions!
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Probably an item Jo might like to follow up.
From the GWPF;
The further monstrous grab for totaL global power by the increasingly corrupt and iniquitous so called “United Nations” organisation.
Time for Australia to reduce or stop its annual UN payments.
Wiki;
The Washington Times via the GWPF;
The coming climate court
The proposed Paris agreement is another reach for global power;
[quoted ]
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recently circulated an email breathlessly titled, “Governments on Track to Reaching Paris 2015 Universal Climate Agreement — Negotiating Text Officially Published.”
The message triumphantly claimed that “Another key step towards a new, universal climate change agreement has just been taken as the negotiating text for the agreement was officially issued by the [UNFCCC].”
This refers to the upcoming talks in Paris in December on a successor pact to the 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty.
&
Could they do worse? It appears that they certainly are trying.
This text agreed to for negotiation by the federal government includes a remarkable proposal. Buried deep inside, it proposes an “International Climate Justice Tribunal in order to oversee, control and sanction the fulfilment [sic] of and compliance with the obligations of Annex I and Annex II Parties under this agreement and the [1992 UNFCCC climate treaty].”
Translated, this means that even if the Obama administration refuses to call the Paris agreement a treaty, as it already telegraphed its position: A new climate court would hold us to its terms — even the terms of a prior, “voluntary” agreement.
This presumably seeks to address the problem our Constitution’s ratification requirement poses to any binding “climate change” treaty. In recent months, the Obama administration has made clear that whatever is agreed to in Paris won’t require two-thirds Senate approval. It will not because the president will say it’s not a treaty.
Do not confuse that with “not binding,” however. Creating a “climate justice tribunal” would purport to undercut such perception, by its own terms. Which is to say: Everyone but President Obama would think the document is, in fact, a treaty.
What “justice” would this climate court enforce? Technically, this is unknown until a final text is presented in December, though the actual purpose is to renew the expired Kyoto Protocol. That pact (a treaty) imposed caps on the use of reliable energy sources (“fossil fuels”) by a handful of countries.
Through clever construction and an overly enthusiastic Al Gore, that document gave Europe a largely free ride while targeting the United States, Canada and Japan. Since then, Canada and Japan (joined by Russia) have excused themselves from any such sucker deals going forward. Not the U.S.
What of the part about this climate court enforcing the 1992 UNFCCC, agreed to in Rio de Janeiro? That was the one that set the whole enterprise rolling by getting the targeted customers, such as the United States, nodding. The Rio treaty was merely aspirational, “non-binding” and “voluntary.” Yet even that required Senate ratification and — being “voluntary” — was approved by the Senate with embarrassing haste in that campaign year.
The Rio pact used the word “shall” 118 times in its commitments. Apparently, it is time to give those terms meaning.
Rio has been amended several times before, including by Kyoto. No one questioned whether those amendments required ratification. Why are we now to allow the president to commit us on his own authority? To a climate court, no less?
In a rational world, rather than alleviating the problem posed by the Constitution’s ratification requirement, even a failed attempt to slip a “climate justice tribunal” into any agreement would fatally wound the enterprise.
This seems to be a proper hook for the Senate to deliberately and forcefully block the administration’s effort to avoid ratification of an obvious treaty on the grounds that Paris won’t include the specific “binding targets and timetables” prohibited by the Senate’s 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution.
[ more ]
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.
No wars stopped, no conflict reduced, no lives saved, the UN’s “peacekeeping costs of approximately US$60 million,” was (and still is) completely ineffective !
.
Just like the UN-IPCC panel.
.
Just a waste of money.
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Not completely ineffective.
You, yourself, have just demonstrated that the way the UN approaches any problem, can always serve as a bad example.
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Rereke Whakaaro
.
Unfortunately you are very correct.
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ROM – thanx for posting that (sigh). something i now have to go read up on.
meanwhile, remember McKibben’s lengthy MAJOR CAGW piece in the Guardian last week. well, this is the rationale behind it!
6 March: BusinessGreen: Alan Rusbridger: Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre
As global warming argument moves on to politics and business, Alan Rusbridger explains the thinking behind our major series on the climate crisis
For these, and other, reasons changes to the Earth’s climate rarely make it to the top of the news list…
There may be untold catastrophes, famines, floods, droughts, wars, migrations and sufferings just around the corner. But that is futurology, not news, so it is not going to force itself on any front page any time soon.
Even when the overwhelming majority of scientists wave a big red flag in the air, they tend to be ignored. Is this new warning too similar to the last? Is it all too frightening to contemplate? Is a collective shrug of fatalism the only rational response?
The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian even though nothing exceptional happened on Friday. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.
***One reason for this is personal. This summer I am stepping down after 20 years of editing the Guardian. Over Christmas I tried to anticipate whether I would have any regrets once I no longer had the leadership of this extraordinary agent of reporting, argument, investigation, questioning and advocacy.
Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species…
So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening and what – if we do nothing – is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termed as “incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community”.
It is not that the Guardian has not ploughed considerable time, effort, knowledge, talent and money into reporting this story over many years. Four million unique visitors a month now come to the Guardian for our environmental coverage – provided, at its peak, by a team including seven environmental correspondents and editors as well as a team of 28 external specialists.
They, along with our science team, have done a wonderful job of writing about the changes to our atmosphere, oceans, ice caps, forests, food, coral reefs and species.
For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the skeptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics.
The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C (35F) by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet’s remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground…
Next week, McKibben will describe how the cause of divestment is moving rapidly from a fringe campaign to a mainstream concern for banks and fund managers…
We will look at who is getting the subsidies and who is doing the lobbying. We will name the worst polluters and find out who still funds them. We will urge enlightened trusts, investment specialists, universities, ***pension funds and businesses to take their money away from the companies posing the biggest risk to us…
We begin on Friday and on Monday with two extracts from the introduction to Naomi Klein’s recent book, This Changes Everything. This has been chosen because it combines sweep, science, politics, economics, urgency and humanity. Antony Gormley, who has taken a deep interest in the climate threat, has contributed two artworks from his collection that have not been exhibited before – the first of many artists with whom we hope to collaborate over coming weeks.
Where does this leave you? I hope not feeling impotent and fearful.
Some of you may be marching in London on Saturday 7 March…
And we hope that many readers will find inspiration in our series to make their own contribution by applying pressure on their workplace, or ***pension fund, to move.
But, most of all, please read what we write…
This article first appeared at the Guardian
BusinessGreen is part of the Guardian Environment Network
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/opinion/2398526/climate-change-why-the-guardian-is-putting-threat-to-earth-front-and-centre
Business Green is still listed as part of Incisive Media:
Wikipedia: Incisive Media
In January 2015, Incisive Media’s lenders agreed a restructuring which saw private equity house ***Alchemy Partners take majority ownership of the business.
Publications: Incisive Media publishes more than 100 titles (in print and online) and offers a range of conferences, events and training products. It provides information and education for professionals working in financial and other professional services, including investment bankers, asset managers, financial advisors, accountants, lawyers, IT professionals and online marketers…
Alchemy Partners – The Team
http://www.alchemypartners.co.uk/the-team
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pat:
His stepping down wouldn’t have anything to do with lousy financial results, would it?
The Guardian has had to sell their cash cow and is losing money on their attempts to break into overseas markets such as Australia. Plunging circulation in the UK also. That’s the sort of performance that normally precedes an exit, but this is the Guardian so expect them to keep on keeping on with the same old crap.
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I was skim reading Heartland and thought this was referring to the film:
” [it] is a “documentary about an aspiring filmmaker’s attempts to finance his dream project by finally completing the low-budget horror film he abandoned years before.””
Looking again perhaps the other one they compare it with could be as well :
“[it]is a documentary about “eight of the U.S.’s top high school [team competing] in the first ‘Elite 24′ tournament at Rucker Park.””
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Tropical Cyclone Olwyn WA) is officially a cyclone based on ground observations (sustained winds greater than 34kt for more than 6 hours at Barrow Reef.
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Those are obviously Hoax Office figures Jo! Nyuk, nyuk
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Show of hands:
Am I the only masochist who’s actually suffered through the Merchants of Venice book from cover to cover?
I posted the following review at The Guardian, but here it is for safekeeping:
—
It’s a rollicking read, an imaginative tour de force in escapism. Gelbspan and Oreskes/Conway have staked a claim for themselves as the Michael Baigent and Dan Brown of climate, respectively.
Like Oreskes’ best work (e.g. her 2004 “Essay”) this novel defies genre. The story ostensibly takes place in an alternate world where neutral pH is 6, “prions” are simply “folded proteins”, common words like “refute” mean something different (though the reader is never told what), and humanity has lost all interest in the pursuit of knowledge, reducing science to a kind of colosseum for the acting-out of old ideological and moral vendettas.
But every so often the authors add a little touch of realism to make the reader wonder: is this Earth really so different from our own? One such clever detail is the names given to the main villains, a tight-knit cabal of skeptical scientists who’ve been pulling the strings of international opinion from behind the curtain of history: Singer, Seitz, Nierenberg, Jastrow. Ah yes, people with that kind of surname. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
The premise, as I recall, is this: that to understand why half the population of the developed world—muggles and scientists alike—are unable to admit the compellingly obvious future fact of catastrophic AGW, we have to go back. Way back. To a period archaeologists call the Tobacco Wars.
According to a memo dated 1969, unearthed by top historians and immediately handed over to Ross Gelbspan, a history-changing meeting took place in that year. (This document, opening with the famous words Doubt is our product, is known as the Protocols of the Merchants of Doubt.)
The heads of the major cigarette corporations are taking a hammering from the increasingly-good oncological evidence on tobacco use. They need a way to attack lung-cancer science, but without looking like they’re attacking lung-cancer science.
So they decide to send an elite team of top scientists forward in time—to a point long after the Tobacco Wars are over, when everyone knows smoking causes lung cancer, miniskirts have given way to upskirts, Global Cooling has become Global Warming and the last thing anybody expects is a guerrilla marketing attack from nicotine shills.
It’s a plan so pointless, it just might work. For this suicide mission they choose 4 brilliant, corrupt scientists, of whom only one is still alive to take legal action.
Their orders: to attack Science at its weakest point, sowing confusion and ambiguity in the public mind.
And what point could be weaker than climatology, the unprotected groin of science?
Once the man on the street saw that there was no connection between what mainstream scientists were saying and empirical reality, he’d start to question everything—even whether smoking was bad for you!
“If a thoroughly-politicised, hand-waving, grey-literature-based, unfalsifiable, decline-hiding, non-replicable ‘Consensus’ about the Earth’s climatic future isn’t credible, then obviously neither is the massively redundant, endlessly-validated epidemiological data showing that smokers have a Relative Risk [RR] of 23.0 for respiratory neoplasms—or the fact that I’ve watched my own relatives die of emphysema! It’s all just speculation!”
And that, boys and girls, is why some Bad People say you don’t need to fight ‘carbon pollution.’
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🙂 🙂
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The tobacco war was a dirty little spat that ended in the nick-o-tine….. 🙁
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Oh….groan! 😉
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The only way Obama can do anything is through his administration czars like the EPA.
Without a law, the next prez can dump the whole executive order thing along with the EPA head.
The next congress can realign priorities.
I want to hear from the USPOTUS candidate who will end this power grab.
It’s time to save the free world.
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Theoretically possible, but not likely. Plus, the Bureaucracy is going along with Obama and could lose the e-mail / have hard drive failure / insert your own fictitious disaster and fail to fully comply with revised orders. It’d make Abbott’s difficulties look like a walk in the park after the US MSM got through with the President that tried reversing this after implementation.
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struggling to find the right words!
2 pages: 12 March: Forbes: Jeff McMahon: Forget Global Warming And Climate Change, Call It ‘Climate Disruption’
“Positive mental attitude is a really wonderful way to deal with change,” research meteorologist Doug Sisterson (Argonne National Laboratory) told about 200 people at the University of Chicago’s International House Tuesday night. “We’ve learned that we want to be optimists and have a positive mental attitude, and the way we deal with that is by thinking ‘Not all change is bad.’ Well, talking about climate change, it’s not good. So maybe it’s wrong to portray climate change with a positive mental attitude.
“Maybe we should start talking about climate disruption, because the things I’m talking about would seem to be highly disruptive.”…
Sisterson is not the first to propose adopting the term climate disruption. John Holdren, the senior advisor to President Obama on science and technology issues, proposed the term global climate disruption in 2007, in 2010 and again last year….
Tuesday night, Sisterson said it’s hard to talk to people about global warming when the effects of a warmer planetary average may include colder colds.
“We’ve been talking about global warming, but as you can see on a global scale increased greenhouse gases lead to a warmer planet on average, but it really doesn’t tell the whole picture. Because it’s complicated. In fact, temperature itself is probably not the biggest thing that we’re going to have to worry about about global warming,” he said…
A Google search of Argonne’s website, anl.org, finds six references to climate disruption compared to 1,930 mentions of climate change. Worldwide, Google finds 236,000 references to climate disruption and 107 million references to climate change…
According to Google Trends, climate change only recently caught up with global warming as the preferred term in searches worldwide. NASA and other public agencies may have helped tip the scales by preferring climate change in official reports…
Sisterson has worked with 5,000 climate scientists who have used the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility, which he manages. He is also something of a climate-science evangelist. He has appeared on a TEDx Talk, in a video, and he co-authored a book with molecular scientist Seth B. Darling called “How to Change Minds About Our Changing Climate,” which he said provides scientific evidence to debunk the 15 most common arguments made by climate deniers…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2015/03/12/forget-global-warming-and-climate-change-call-it-climate-disruption/
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Gandel goes in for plenty of character assassination, naturally:
11 March: Fortune: Stephen Gandel: Top hedge fund manager: Global warming isn’t a danger
In a recent paper, hedge fund manager Cliff Asness claims that the earth’s temperatures are not rising as fast as many think. The scientific community disagrees.
Cliff Asness, who runs AQR, one of the largest hedge fund firms in the world, e-mailed out a research paper on Tuesday to reporters and others making his arguments on climate change. The paper is labeled “very preliminary,” and Asness asked that it not be directly quoted.
The paper focuses on a chart of the Earth’s surface temperatures going back to 1880. Asness, who wrote the paper along with his co-worker Aaron Brown, does not deny that global temperatures are rising. But he says temperatures are rising at much slower rate than many suggest. What’s more, Asness and Brown say, based on the current pace of global warming, it will take another 500 years before the changes become a real problem…
Asness is bound to win some fans with his argument.
***Florida, for instance, reportedly banned workers in its Department of Environmental Protection from using the terms “climate change,” “global warming,” and “sustainability.”
But many scientists say there is little question that the Earth is warming and that it is a serious problem. “I’m not sure about the idea of beating people about the head and shoulders, but within less than a year, you will look like complete fools (if you buy this crap),” e-mailed Columbia University environmental science professor James Hansen, who took a look at the Asness and Brown paper at Fortune’s request.
Asness’ AQR manages about $100 billion…
In an e-mail response to Fortune, Asness declined to comment on why he decided to take on climate change again now. “In all honesty I’m just a curious guy and think this was an important point,” he wrote…
Asness declined to say if his beliefs on global warming have affected the way he invests. Some advocates have suggested that large funds should factor in the likely outcome of global warming when choosing their investments.
In the paper, Asness and Brown say that, at least so far, temperatures have risen much more slowly than scientists have predicted, and that we are still far away from the point at which rising temperatures would cause a problem. Asness admits that temperatures may rise more quickly in the future, but he argues that the data doesn’t show it. Asness asserts that if the next 135 years deliver similar temperature changes from what we saw in the past 135 years, we should be fine.
Gavin Schmidt, who is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says the paper that Asness and Brown put out is “not science, it’s just wishful thinking.” Schmidt says looking at temperatures in a vacuum, as Asness and Brown are doing, is misleading…He says that’s a much better method of predicting future temperatures, rather than just taking a chart of past temperatures and drawing a future trend line, as Asness and Brown have done.
“It’s not a happy thought, but this kind of folksey chartism is not going to cut it,” says Schmidt.
http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/climate-change-cliff-asness/
***Gandel obviously hasn’t noted FCIR are walking back those allegations about a “ban”. it looks more like there was overkill on the use of the words prior to Scott!
11 March: Miami Herald: Gov. Rick Scott’s ban on climate change term extended to other state agencies
By Tristram Korten, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
FCIR conducted a year-by-year keyword analysis of PDF files on DEP’s public website — which included reports, agendas, correspondence and other communications. The analysis shows a steep decline in the use of the term “climate change” after Scott took office.
In 2010, Gov. Charlie Crist’s final year in office, DEP’s website hosted 20 documents that contained a total of 209 references to “climate change.” The next year, Scott’s first in office, the numbers declined to 15 documents and 123 total references.
That decline has continued through Scott’s tenure as governor. Last year, there were 16 documents with a total of 34 references to “climate change…
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article13576691.html
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Just an interesting addendum (I didn’t know this, but looked up his Wikipedia page). In addition to his committee members, his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler. One of Wheeler’s other doctoral students was (get this) Richard Feynman. If I were to make an appeal to authority, I rather doubt it that authority would be to Oreskes.
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And Fred Singer’s thesis advisor was John Wheeler.
60
And one of Wheeler’s other doctoral students was Richard Feynman. 🙂
60
It bombed at the box office?
I’d say it couldn’t happen to a more deserving group.
Life sometimes hands out an appropriate
rewardpenalty for your effort.120
The alarmists continue to tout,
Their bile in Merchants of Doubt,
But the film has flopped,
And will likely be dropped,
As it doesn’t pack much of a clout.
250
While we can measure the box office take on this film (tiny), perhaps the real effect has been the out right murder being done to the coal industry. Peabody coal is now trading at all time low price of $5.77 US. I can’t find a stock quote lower going back to the year 2000. They can’t give this stuff away so when will they close down the mines and cut supply? Any coal mining engineers here that can explain why they are selling coal at a loss?
30
Actually, the weekend takings on Box Office Mojo were $20,300 not $23,300. It looks like the Heartland website made the mistake.
Let’s do the numbers – $20,300 divided by 4 theatres = $5,075 per theatre.
It was weekend takings so divide by 2 days = $2,538 per day per theatre.
Let’s be generous and say that there were only 2 showings per day = $1,269 per showing
Average ticket price say $15 = 84 people per showing.
That’s a pretty empty theatre.
Yep, this dog has “HIT” written all over it. Or is that SH…
An alarmist friend dared me to read the book. I read the opening sentence, which from memory went something like “”Ben Santer is the kind of guy you could never imagine anyone attacking.” What?
I stopped reading my kindle version at 16% through. Talk about a laborious load of waffle.
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So she is getting a Nobel Prize for this, yes…?
70
Well the Nobel Prize was founded on bombing results. 😉
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OT,
Cyclone Olwyn off Western Australia:
NSW Channel 7 Sunrise is reporting leaves being stripped from trees with 195klm/h winds as it crosses the coast.
Just watching the live news and I’m doubting the reports.
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Can’t find anything stronger than 180km gusts at Learmonth. Probably a US C5A transport plane doing take off and touch landing exercises.
11
I see National Geographic magazine is currently beating the same drum as Oreskes. The current issue is entitled “Why do so Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?“, which, I suppose, is better than “deniers”, or “war criminals”. Nevertheless, the cover is illustrated with an image of a stagehand helping to set up the Moon-landing, so it is no surprise to find this sort of drivel in the main text:
“The idea that hundreds of scientists from all over the world would collaborate on such a vast hoax is laughable—scientists love to debunk one another. It’s very clear, however, that organizations funded in part by the fossil fuel industry have deliberately tried to undermine the public’s understanding of the scientific consensus by promoting a few skeptics.
The news media give abundant attention to such mavericks, naysayers, professional controversialists, and table thumpers.”
So there you have it. If you are unpersuaded by the the great god Consensus, you are a “controversialist” and, NB, a “professional” one, at that. Being a humble “naysayer” must explain why I am still missing out on all those cheques from Big Oil.
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I should add that the mentality behind the NG article (previous post) mirrors, not coincidentally, recent forays into the climate arena by US Senator Markey and Rep. Grijalva.
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Jo,
Its looks like Heartland have misled you, Merchants of Doubt opened in just four cinemas and on the Hollywood Deadline Box Office list was 61 out of 93 for weekend takings and elsewhere received a 75% favourable audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
You might be able to say it bombed if it had taken the same amount across 100 cinemas but in just four cinemas with little advertising that’s a strong start.
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I don’t actually see your point. From my perspective, the distributors chose to restrict the movie to just four outlets. To me, it shows that they have no confidence in the box office potential.
That is quite common in the film industry, if it does crash and burn, nobody notices. However, if it crashes and burns on general release, then it is all over the press, and everybody is covered in omelette.
The ranking system is meaningless within a short timeframe. Being at 61 is not bad, but it is also not good, given the amount of social media publicity. But 61 is the starting point. The proof in the pudding is whether the ranking goes up or down. Most skeptics are of the opinion that it will go down, and will not end up on general release. But we may be wrong, and it may be a blockbuster. Such is the industry.
I don’t give any credence to Rotten Tomatoes. Four people bothered to vote, and three did not say it was awful. That will give you a 75% favourable rating.
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Yes and no, it depends on how Sony see the film e.g. they might see it as gathering audience through word of mouth. You don’t know what Sony’s distribution and promotion plans for the film are.
If you look further at the numbers on the link I gave only 8 films across the US beat MoD per cinema for that weekend and some of them had huge advertising budgets. It would be interesting to know where the four cinemas are and of course what other cinemas will be showing the film over the coming weeks.
25
Aw come on Jeremy, lets not start bandying facts about here, thats just downright provocative!
510
That would be true, if Jeremy was using facts, and not spin.
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Oh lookee…. it’s the TAG TEAM…….!!!
32
\ /
O
\\ //
\\/
V To you Thomas.
40
Hmm, well that didn’t work … ho hum.
40
Are those hieroglyphic, hieratic or demotic glyphs Rereke, and from what dynasty?
30
I was trying to give Thomas a two-finger salute by using the ancient technique of creating pictures with punctuation marks.
It worked in the days of teleprinters, and computer line printers, and somewhere in my attic, I have a replica of the Mona Lisa, 133 characters wide. But in this modern age, proportional font and auto-align, has killed that art.
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Jeremy,
That’s climate change statistics for you, they turn 84 theatre goers at each sitting in 4 cinemas as a 75% consensus and they turn 69 papers out of 11,944 papers into a 97% consensus.
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Jeremy,
Movies like “Merchants of Doom 3” or whatever its called, self-select like minded people to attend through the very nature of its content.
Much as the latest offering from a renowned feminist film maker about 2 lesbians fighting against an unjust, homophobic, hetero-normative, male-oriented, overtly misogynistic world might garner a 75% approval rating even if it was utter tosh, edited in a blender and scripted with a dictionary of clichés and LGBTG platitudes, purely because it plays to the prejudices of its audience. That doesn’t make it good, even as propaganda, it doesn’t make it intelligent, it doesn’t make it entertaining and it certainly doesn’t make it translate to a wider audience, who I am sure would meet this magnum opus of warmist mumbo jumbo with complete apathy, if not disdain.
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be great if someone went and checked the facts… i wont repeat my earlier comments but maybe you folks might want to consider the release approach http://www.sonyclassics.com/merchantsofdoubt/dates.html
31
But at least one of us did check the facts.
The second list is “Coming Soon”. What that means, is the dates, and times of screenings, are probably penciled in, but not yet confirmed. Also, see the number alongside some of the theatre names? That means that they are part of a multi-screen complex. Some of those “cinemas” only seat ten people – in comfort, it is true – but it is still only ten.
If it does turn into a blockbuster, then it will be rescheduled to a bigger auditorium, if it fizzles, it will be shown in a broom closet. My guess is that it will be somewhere in between, but as I said before, we will have to wait and see. The market will determine it.
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all true!
It wont be a blockbuster. The strategy appears to be about awareness of the product, not necessarily bums on seats. The media release hits the town, NO and others are sought for interview etc with – my speculation – the hope for longevity of the product rather than a big box office splash.
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So, do you support it being shown to children in the same way that Gore’s junk was….? Do you think that Gore’s flik was OK…?
40
J C your link reports an even lower box office take than the first one. Yes, a roaring success!
40
Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine in the US, is proudly advertizing his appearance in Merchants of Doubt.
Mr. Shermer’s March 6 eSkeptic “Insight” essay features a hit-piece on Willie Soon, penned by geologist Donald Prothero. It’s standard issue insult.
Prothero uses “denialist” and its congers thirteen times. He contrasts Willie against Richard Muller, who accepted money from ExxonMobil and “ and other denialist sources.” Prothero goes on to observed that, nevertheless Muller did not “bias his results to please those who paid him.,” implying directly, dishonestly, shamefully, and without any evidence whatever that Willie did so.
Last night, I sent Mr. Shermer an email, subject line “shame”, asking when skepticism included character assassination. He’s not yet replied.
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Strangely, the most passionate believers of state propaganda are sometimes those who call themselves “skeptics”. They are those who who bravely fight alongside the state against astrologers, spoon benders, and psychics. On every issue involving money and politics they gullibly swallow whatever the state “officials” say.
They pretend to argue from logic and reason, but underneath all their evidence, it always boils down to their trust of officials.
They kid themselves they are independent thinkers. They don’t react well when you point out how they are using Argument from Authority and are useful idiots for the state.
Look at what happened when I mistakenly thought “Skeptico” might be skeptical. One of my earliest blogs.
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/02/the-skeptic-that-wasnt/
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/02/emails-with-an-unskeptical-skeptic/
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Jo, for a giggle I had a look at Skeptico’s site and found he has written a book called “Why Science Is Wrong…About Almost Everything”. Really?
50
I read parts and scanned others at “the skeptic that wasn’t,” Jo. You’re right, that person’s thinking is pretty pathetic and certainly doesn’t merit the title, ‘skeptic.’
An interesting aside is that one need not know scads of climate science in order to critically evaluate the AGW claim.
Its entirety rests on the physical reliability of climate models. All one need do is examine the magnitude of the model errors, and compare them to the effect they’re trying to resolve.
When, as in this case, the model errors are hundreds of times larger than the effect modeled, the scientific standing of the claim is obvious: it has no scientific standing. Climate models are completely unable to resolve the effect (if any) of greenhouse gas emissions.
Anyone familiar with how physical science works can make that judgment including Mr./Ms. Skeptico, presuming familiarity.
Given their obvious lack of resolution, the real mystery is why so many practicing scientists credit the AGW claim; even those who have no investment in it.
By the way, one should not dismiss the possibility of intellectual cowardice as a reason why prominent skeptics go with the AGW consensus; especially considering the vituperative political climate.
I submitted a science-based manuscript critical of AGW to The Skeptical Inquirer some years ago. Kendrick Frazier, the editor, said he could not consider it without peer review. So, I got it peer-reviewed by two credible climate scientists, and passed those reviews on to Mr. Frazier. Mr. Frazier responded with total email radio-silence. I believe he was afraid to publish a critical analysis. I think that now Michael Shermer also suffers that affliction, as he no longer considers them either.
Fortunately, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen at Energy & Environment has more courage than the lot; included in that lot, I might add, are editors of certain prestigious science journals.
41
Brilliant:
Speaking Truth To Telepathic Power.
31
The “team” can attach AGW to anything -even slavery !!
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mass-deaths-in-americas-start-new-co2-epoch/?WT.mc_id=SA_ENGYSUS_20150312
It’s amazing what BS can be generated by the appropriate funding. /sarc
h/t Real Science blog.
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Crowbar of Daintree Rainforest –
i checked yesterday and it was 19 sessions at the four cinemas. by 2 days = 38 sessions. can’t be bothered looking them all up again, but here’s an example:
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, NY: Merchants of Doubt
12:20 | 2:20 | 4:35 | 7:00 | 9:15
http://movies.eventful.com/theaters-showtimes/lincoln-plaza-cinemas-/T0-001-000000646-5
by your calculations: $20,300 divided by 38 equals $534 divided by min $15 per ticket equals 35.6 punters per session!
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we’ll measure it if we can call it “extreme” & then claim it’s a result of CAGW!
one small pic is the best WaPo can do, but click on http://goo.gl/UuP4Gb above the pic to see more:
11 March: WaPo: Angela Fritz: World record? 100 inches of snow may have clobbered Italy in 18 hours, review pending
The Italian weather Web site MeteoWeb reports that Capracotta, Italy, saw 100.8 inches of snow in just 18 hours on March 5 — a total that, if verified, would set a new world record for snowfall in a 24-hour period….
An investigation of the measurement by the World Meteorological Organization would need to be conducted in order for this to go down in the “official” record books, but the WMO does not currently track snowfall for any location. According to Randall Cerveny, WMO’s chief rapporteur of weather and climate extremes, this is because accurate snowfall measurements are fairly limited and have been “markedly difficult” to verify.
***But there is hope for an investigation of the Italy total. “The WMO is currently evaluating the addition of world snowfall extremes as a new category for the WMO Archive of Weather and Climate Extremes,” Cerveny said. “We will likely be adding it to the Archive in the near future. When we do so, we certainly will be investigating this interesting report from Italy as a possible record snowfall extreme.”…
Official snowfall measurements in the United States involve the use of a “snowboard” — typically just a 16-by-16-inch piece of plywood painted white — which is cleared at the time of each measurement….
If Capracotta’s snow total is eventually verified, it would surpass the accepted world record by just over 10 inches – 90.6 inches (about 7.5 feet) on Mount Ibuki, Japan, on Feb. 14, 1927…
Even if the WMO does decide to take up snowfall records, it would be quite awhile for the investigation to conclude. Investigations include both internal committees and climatologists and meteorologists from the observing country (in this case, Italy). “Those committees discuss all aspects of the event (such as equipment, monitoring techniques, site location) and then recommend to the WMO chief rapporteur … whether or not to accept the event as an official world record weather extreme,” Cerveny said. “When that decision is made, we then issue an announcement through the WMO offices in Geneva.”…
One recent and notable record investigation by the WMO was the overturning of the world’s hottest temperature — previously 132.8 degrees in El Azizia, Libya, in 1922. The committees found that the measurement was erroneous, which elevated Death Valley’s temperature of 129.2 degrees in 1913 to the world record.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/03/11/100-inches-of-snow-may-have-clobbered-italy-in-18-hours-review-pending/
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Off topic:
The BoM has the average temperature anomaly for February up to 5C above the 1960 — 1990 average and most of the continent anomaly up to 2C while the UAH February anomaly with 1979 — 2010 reference period is to only 0.5C.
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Didn’t Descartes say that doubt is the beginning of knowledge?
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I’ll probably get Serengetied again for saying this, but:
dubito ergo sum
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12 March: ABC America: AP: Snowstorm Closes Major Highway Into Mexico City for 8 Hours
A snowstorm disrupted traffic on one of central Mexico’s most heavily traveled highways Thursday, initially causing an eight-hour closure and then another shutdown after a brief reopening because of slippery conditions…
The federal highway and bridges agency announced the re-closure of the highway that crosses the mountains east of Mexico City late in the afternoon as temperatures dropped. Earlier in the day, the Federal Police said several sections of the road were closed in both directions after the storm dumped more than 2 inches (50 millimeters) of snow.
The highway links the central state of Puebla and Mexico City and has one of the higher volumes of traffic in the country as the key transit link between the capital and the Gulf coast.
Mexico’s water commission said Thursday that the country has been hit by a cold front that sent temperatures below freezing in parts of the country, including Puebla.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/snow-closes-major-highway-mexico-city-29588969
not much MSM coverage of the snow in Mexico, & what little there is mostly has what was probably AP’s original “Mountain” headline:
“Mountain snowstorm closes a major highway into Mexico City”
Fox News – 7 hours ago
give the above, thought this headline was cute at DM…plenty of great pics as usual:
12 March: Daily Mail: Corey Charlton: The Italian village buried under EIGHT FEET of snow in one day (and it’s not even in the mountains)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2989975/Italian-village-buried-100-INCHES-snow-18-hours-Locals-forced-leave-homes-second-floor-windows-freak-weather.html
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***McCarthy throws the developing world under the bus! State Dept denies:
11 March: RTCC: US denies U-turn after EPA chief calls for ‘legally binding’ Paris deal
State Department swiftly quashes suggestion Washington could support a binding UN climate treaty later this year
Gina McCarthy – a senior official directly appointed by the president – made the remark during a talk at the Washington DC based Council on Foreign Relations.
“We need a legally binding agreement,” she said, after outlining the scale of US clean energy cooperation between the US, China and India and talking about her hopes for the Paris summit this December where a UN climate deal is set to be agreed.
The comment is significant because US diplomats have historically opposed any kind of climate pact like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that would see the country face legal sanctions…
Any new treaty requires the approval of the US Senate, which is highly unlikely given the current dominance of Republicans.
In a statement emailed to RTCC a State official stressed the US had not changed its position…
“The US has made clear that it is interested in the hybrid approach put forward by New Zealand, in which elements of accountability would be legally binding but country commitments would not be.” …
Later McCarthy told ClimateWire’s Lisa Friedman she had made the comment “casually” and did not mean to imply anything…
While hostility to any US commitment is growing among Republican lawmakers, McCarthy said she believed the wider public were supportive of efforts to decarbonise.
“Attitudes in America are changing – people accept the science and they are demanding action,” she said.
McCarthy said new a clean power plant plan – which would see coal gradually phased out and cut climate-changing emissions 26% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels – “will be” delivered by the summer.
“Successful economies invest in where the world is going… they don’t invest in where it has been,” she said…
Embassy air monitors in emerging economies, which shine a light on otherwise hidden levels of particulate pollution in cities like Beijing were a “textbook display of soft diplomacy” she said.
Poverty could not be an excuse to allow future investments in polluting fuels, she added, arguing there was a “moral obligation” to protect future generations from climate impacts.
The EPA chief said she had spoken to officials from the Vatican ahead of an expected statement from the Pope on the environment later this year – who agreed that clean energy opportunities offered hope to “millions of poor” around the world.
“We can no longer accept the false premise that pollution is part of the growing pains of growth. If that’s the case, then that growth is not built to last,” she said…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/03/11/us-denies-u-turn-after-epa-chief-calls-for-legally-binding-paris-deal/
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lengthy & brilliant…only excerpting the CAGW stuff:
9 March: Spiked: Brendan O’Neill: ‘I’m taking on the establishment, and they hate me for it’
Nigel Farage on consensus, conformism and the virtue of dissent
It isn’t only the aloof, not-proper-people of the New Conservatives, New Labour and the Lame Lib Dems who fail the Farage Test: his strongest ire is aimed at another group that has of late become a major player in British politics, a key pillar of establishment thinking — the media. He’s cutting. ‘The media have now become a bigger problem than the politicians. We talk about the Westminster Village in politics, [but] forget it — the media village is even tighter, even narrower, even more inward-looking, and even less in touch with their own potential readership and with the country.’
Ouch. But Farage’s barely disguised fury with the media is understandable. It’s hard to remember in recent years any other person or thing being the recipient of as much samey, uniform media bashing as Farage. Even ‘Jihadi John’ has been the subject of some sympathetic editorials — ‘Us brutes made him like this!’ — but not ‘Nasty Nige’. From the newspaper of record, The Times, to the favoured newspaper of the new elites, the Guardian, and in pretty much every shade of commentary in between, Farage is bogeyman du jour, potential destroyer of Europe and repressor of Romanians. The anti-Farage hysteria reached its crescendo with Channel 4’s mockumentary UKIP: The First 100 Days, which provided a better insight into the cut-off, swirling, masses-fearing minds of TV execs and the newspaper hacks who cheer them than it did into UKIP’s policies or potential. Now Farage is firing back…
Consensus, and the breaking of it, and the blowback you get as a consequence, comes up again and again in our chat. And there’s no doubt that Farage is off-message, sometimes gloriously so, on a lot of what passes for mainstream, unquestioned political thought in modern Britain. Take climate change. What politician these days would admit to laughing about the polar bears? Farage would. ‘My boys, who were spoonfed climate change all through school, used to think it was hilarious when I ranted at the Six O’Clock News about that bloody iceberg and that bloody polar bear HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.’
He declares himself ‘agnostic on climate change’. ‘I haven’t got a clue whether climate change is being driven by carbon-dioxide emissions.’ But he does think that shutting down industry in response to climate change, and shutting down debate about climate change, are very bad ideas indeed. ‘We are a nation that produces 1.8 per cent of global carbon dioxide, so I do not get closing down our aluminium smelters, most of our steel production, and now our refining industry, and all that production being moved to India, and therefore the steel-based products made in India then having to be shipped back to Britain! This to me makes no sense at all.’
The politics of environmentalism is utterly hostile to progress, he says. ‘If Natalie Bennett won the election, we’d all be living in caves’, he says with a chortle. ‘[This politics] is very regressive. There is nothing progressive in terms of the evolution of society or living standards in what these people stand for. And the whole thing is based on a fallacy: that our fossil fuels are going to run out and therefore we have to adapt the way we live. Actually, the shale-gas [revolution] has shown over the past decade that we are finding more and more of this stuff.’ As for the idea that we should stop digging for coal or shale or uranium and instead turn to renewable energy — ‘I think wind energy is the biggest collective economic insanity I’ve seen in my entire life. I’ve never seen anything more stupid, more illogical, or more irrational.’…
Here, Farage is kicking against one of the key planks of 21st-century consensus politics: the idea of planetary vulnerability and human hubris. And he gets massive flak for it. ‘[Climate change] is like a religion’, he says. ‘And you’re demonised if you question it. Ostracised completely. Johnny Ball. Think Of A Number. Brilliant man. He compares the amount of CO2 we produce in the whole atmosphere to a ping-pong ball in the Albert Hall, and he is completely ostracised for years. We’re almost back to Galileo. Whether it’s Galileo or Darwin, you challenge consensus, whether it’s in science, whether it’s in politics, and you are demonised for doing it.’ He remembers, in 2006, being on a Sunday morning TV show and being branded a ‘DENIER! DENIER!’ (his emphasis) after he raised issues with climate-change orthodoxy. ‘I thought I was attending the Salem witch trials. Quite extraordinary.’…
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/im-taking-on-the-establishment-and-they-hate-me-for-it/16758#.VQBBLnysXks
Delingpole covers it:
11 March: Breitbart: James Delingpole: The real reason why the media hates Nigel Farage
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/03/11/the-real-reason-why-the-media-hates-nigel-farage/
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12 March: RTCC: Ed King: Cardinal hints at main themes in Pope’s climate change encyclical
Leader of Catholic church will offer leaders hope, says official, and address causes of poverty and environmental degradation
The Pope will seek to bring the “warmth of hope” to the wider debates on climate change and development, he (Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace) said, while steering a path away from the “Herods” and “omens of destruction and death.” ..
Turkson, who was speaking at a conference in Ireland, added the next 10 months were “crucial” to determine the stability of the environment.We’ve picked out some of his key comments below – you can read the full address here…
“In an aeroplane interview while returning from Korea last August, the Holy Father said that one of the challenges he faces in his encyclical on ecology is how to address the scientific debate about climate change and its origins.
“Is it the outcome of cyclical processes of nature, of human activities (anthropogenic), or perhaps both? What is not contested is that our planet is getting warmer…
In the words of Thomas Stocker, the co-chair of the IPCC Working Group I: “Our assessment finds that the atmosphere and oceans have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, sea level has risen and the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased to a level unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.”
Challenging sceptics
“Yet even the compelling consensus of over 800 scientists of the IPCC will have its critics and its challengers. For Pope Francis, however, this is not the point. For the Christian, to care for God’s ongoing work of creation is a duty, irrespective of the causes of climate change…
“As we confront the threat of environmental catastrophe on a global scale, I am confident that a shaft of light will break through the heavy clouds and bring us what Pope Francis describes as the warmth of hope!”
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/03/11/cardinal-hints-at-main-themes-in-popes-climate-change-encyclical/
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response to Cardinal Turkson:
if the Pope is to steer a ‘a path away from the “Herods” and “omens of destruction and death”’, with a message about the “warmth of hope”, does that mean he will criticise the CAGW catastrophists & prophets of doom, who don’t tolerate dissent?
just asking.
91
pat,
No. It means that from now on only the church (sic) will be allowed to make predictions of fire and brimstone. Like this one . . .
Don’t you just see the “warmth of hope” shining out in that statement?
Just sayin’. 😉
Abe
90
I would also remind Cardinal Turkson that if he believes this . . .
. . . then he shouldn’t forget that His ongoing work of creation includes human beings and that it is the duty of every human being to, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
My neighbors are dropping like flies for lack of clean water and minimal to no sewage removal.
My neighbors are freezing to death because of the exorbitant rates charged by energy companies for electricity to heat their homes in the winter. Energy companies whose rates are so high because of the foolish integration of non-effective renewable energy sources. The only thing renewable about wind and solar is the renewed subsidies, tax breaks and grants these companies enjoy.
My neighbors are starving all over the world because farmers can make a higher profit from planting corn-as-fuel for automobiles than they can from planting corn-as-food for humans.
And while the first two points may seem harsher than the third, it is the third point that has the most diabolical connotations because . . .
In some instances, those farmers who decide to plant corn-as-fuel do so because they themselves are living in poverty. In order to keep from starving, they inadvertently cause the starvation of others.
Has the world gone mad? 😮
Abe
110
O/T
Big dump in Italy might be a regional cooling signal.
http://gizmodo.com/what-it-looks-like-to-receive-a-world-record-snow-dump-1690962058
50
No way.
It is entirely due to global warming/
10
11 March: RTCC: Megan Darby: IPCC calling: Who will head up the UN’s top climate science body?
Three candidates have been nominated to succeed Rajendra Pachauri as chair of the IPCC, with 7 months to the election
All are male and only one comes from a country classed by the UN as developing: South Korea. Their bios can be found below…
Countries have until a month before the election to put forward any scientist they please…
The most obvious contenders are the 31 members of the Bureau, who lead the IPCC’s scientific work.The dearth of women on the shortlist for chair reflects a wider gender imbalance, with only five in the Bureau…
The IPCC is “at a crossroads,” Robert Stavins, a Harvard professor, warns in a recent blog.
“Its size has increased to the point that it has become cumbersome, it sometimes fails to address the most important issues, and – most striking of all – it is now at risk of losing the participation of the world’s best scientists, due to the massive burdens that participation entails.” …
The Candidates:
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Belgium)
If elected, he would lobby for more funds to support IPCC authors, outreach and communication efforts – and to elevate the chair role to a full-time position..
Thomas Stocker (Switzerland)
A contributor to the famous “hockey stick graph”, he specialises in mining historic climate data from polar ice cores…
Chris Field (US)
Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and a professor of interdisciplinary environmental studies at Stanford University.
He matches Stocker for productivity, with more than 200 publications…
And the unconfirmed runners…
Vice chair Hoesung Lee, a South Korean academic focused on the economics of climate change, is expected to stand for election.
Germany’s Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the mitigation workstream and expert in technological change and policy, is understood to be considering the position.
Austria and the UK may put forward candidates from outside the Bureau: Nebojsa Nakicenovic and David Griggs. Nakicenovic specialises in energy economics, while Griggs has a meteorology background.
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/03/11/ipcc-calling-who-will-head-up-the-uns-top-climate-science-body/
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Breaking News o/t
Agricultural Secretary Grimes terminated by Barnaby Joyce.
Strongly suggest Bob Carter replace him, if feasible, because he knows what’s coming.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/11/new-paper-from-willie-soon-and-bob-carter-fingerprints-of-the-sun-on-asia-australia-summer-monsoon-rainfalls-during-the-little-ice-age/
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12 March: CarbonBrief: Global emissions trading scheme ‘should be based on UN carbon budget’
by Sophie Yeo & Simon Evans
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) carbon budget could provide the scientific basis for a global cap on emissions, suggested Tim Yeo, the outgoing chair of the UK’s energy and climate change committee.
In its most recent report, the UN-backed panel of climate scientists calculated that total carbon dioxide emissions must be limited to 3,670 gigatonnes in order to prevent warming of more than two degrees Celsius. Around 1,890 gigatonnes of this “budget” had already been emitted by 2011.
Yeo told a conference in London today that the remaining gigatonnes could guide governments in capping carbon globally through an emissions trading scheme…
This would mean translating the IPCC’s scientific budget into a political target. While scientists have worked out the how many gigatonnes remain in the budget for two degrees, it remains for governments to decide whether they want to convert these findings into policy…
Despite growing calls for a global price on carbon from leading policymakers and economists, including World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, the prospects for a global emissions trading scheme remain murky.
Some governments, such as British Columbia in Canada, would prefer to simply tax carbon, rather than setting an absolute cap. Others, including socialist governments such as Bolivia and Venezuela, oppose markets altogether, which they see as a way for richer nations to buy their way out of cutting their own emissions.
One possible outcomeof the UN climate negotiations in Paris this December is the establishment of an international emissions trading scheme, which countries with economy-wide emissions targets could choose to participate in…
A vision for the UK’s future energy system set out today by the energy and climate change committee puts a well functioning and increasingly international EU trading system front and centre of national efforts to curb climate change.
“A price of carbon has spread around the world to other emissions trading systems which are increasingly linked to one another in order to benefit from cheaper carbon reduction opportunities,” the report imagines.
Launching the report, Yeo expressed his hope that enthusiasm for emissions trading within the US and China could accelerate efforts to put a cap on emissions.
The outcome of the UN climate negotiations this year should take care not to interrupt the growth of these kind of regional schemes, he stressed…
David Hone, climate change advisor to Shell, backed a focus on carbon pricing. Speaking at the same event, he said his climate policy priority for the next five years was for the EU’s emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) to be rescued from current low prices of around €7 per tonne.
Carbon prices of €25 to €30 per tonne in the early years of the EU ETS had demonstrably changed behaviours, including at Shell’s own operations, Hone said, but even higher carbon prices would be needed in the longer term…
Yeo speech to today’s conference criticised “flat earth” climate sceptics, along with opponents of onshore wind and fracking. He said a ban on new onshore windfarms would increase energy bills, reported the Telegraph. The Guardian focussed on Yeo’s support for fracking.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/03/global-emissions-trading-scheme-should-be-based-on-un-carbon-budget/
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love this bit: “A spokesman for Labour’s shadow energy minister, Caroline Flint, said London Labour’s position on divestment did not reflect the national party’s opinion that divestment is untenable because the UK will need to use fossil fuel energy for decades to come”:
11 March: Guardian: Karl Mathiesen: Boris Johnson told to divest £4.8bn pension fund from fossil fuels
London assembly members vote in support of motion calling for mayor to support divestment from coal, oil and gas companies
Boris Johnson has been told by the London assembly to pull City Hall’s £4.8bn pension fund out of coal, oil and gas investments, after assembly members voted on Wednesday on a motion in support of the fossil fuel divestment movement.
The motion calls on the mayor to publicly support the principle of divestment and to begin the process of dumping the fossil fuel portfolio of the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA). But the vote is non-binding, meaning the mayor is bound only to consider its proposals and write a response.
The motion was proposed by the Green party’s Jenny Jones and was unanimously supported by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Six of the Conservative’s nine members were absent. Those who were present voted against…
The LPFA manages the pensions of City Hall employees and many other local authorities. It holds roughly £48m worth of shares in some of the companies most exposed to stranded fossil fuel reserves – Rio Tinto, Shell, BP and BHP among others. It also holds shares in several cigarette giants…
A spokesman for Labour’s shadow energy minister, Caroline Flint, said London Labour’s position on divestment did not reflect the national party’s opinion that divestment is untenable because the UK will need to use fossil fuel energy for decades to come…
The Assembly also passed a motion urging the mayor to recognise the science of climate change, which has been confirmed by ***97% of scientists, and take it into account in his policies. All assembly members voted in favour except the three Tories present.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/11/london-assembly-votes-to-divest-48bn-pension-fund-from-fossil-fuel
***97% of SCIENTISTS. anything goes when it’s in the cause of CAGW.
41
Jo, don’t know if you’ve seen this but NASA are launching 4 spacecraft to study the magnetic fields of the earth and sun, looks like an interesting concept of collecting data also.
Could this be the first tentative steps to accepting CO2 is not the driver of earths climate? maybe David can give them a few pointers and bring them up to speed. 😉
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If you didn’t know NASA have a policy of actively promoting environmentalism and other kinds of “sciency-like” activities that will tend to make the public receptive to spending billions of pounds on NASA projects.
So think of it in purely commercial terms. Hansen was clearly a paid lackey whose job was to promote the global warming scare so as to secure funding for various temperature monitoring and atmospheric monitoring satellites.
But if NASA are now seeing an income from solar observation, then I would be looking to see whether or perhaps better HOW MUCH are NASA stoking up the “it’s sunspots” scare.
I can see from their self-interest it make perfect sense to try to manipulate the public debate to support their funding. But it really does bugger up the public debate on issues and I WISH THEY WOULD JUST STOP.
30
Love the factoids on Dr. Singer’s thesis committee. He has studied among the giants. Awesome.
00
Let us hope that the sceptic movie/documentary titled ‘Climate Hustle’ by Climate Depot’s Marc Morano, due to be released this year, is far more successful.
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[…] seen the movie, but I understand that it is not exactly tearing up the movie theaters [link]. LA Weekly has a good summary of the movie […]
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