The new UWA logo?
Bizarrely the UWA debacle has opened many eyes in Australia. People who have never mentioned the climate debate to me are now approaching me to talk about it — aghast that something so tame was treated like an outbreak of Ebola.
The over-reaction to Lomborg’s Consensus Centre is priceless — it has exposed just how much the pro-climate-crisis team are scared of even the tiniest deviation from their religious doctrine. They depend so entirely on their unchallenged “university” authority that the threat of any official dissent could cause the collapse of the whole facade. (What a disaster.)
Figure just how innocuous and banal their target was: The Consensus Centre at UWA wasn’t even going to discuss the climate. Lomborg wasn’t going to work there, he wasn’t going to be paid a salary, and he completely accepts the IPCC scientific position, wild exaggerations and all. He’s not a climate scientist and doesn’t pretend to be one. He is a political scientist who discusses economics. On other campuses and in other contexts, Lomborg tries to find ways to help the environment with smarter spending. Oh the crime, twice removed, to seed an errant thought that doubts the power of windmills and solar panels to stop floods and storms?!
UWA is sending a message to skeptical scientists everywhere that they dare not speak their mind. But this message is too clumsy and public, the world can read between the lines, and the message they see is that this is not a science debate. They might have thought a 97% consensus mattered, now they know that the skeptics at universities can’t speak up.
UWA — reap what ye sow
Years of propaganda have gone into creating the idea that academic pronouncements are the Word of God, that climate change is “settled”, and that people who question it are sub-human leeches paid by big-oil. All that poison just came back to sting the Big-Scare-Campaign. UWA had not trained its own staff or students in the scientific method, or free speech, or to be skeptical — and they paid for it. The intellectual vacuum at UWA was put on show for all to see (and how it sucks). The students and staff did exactly what their UWA training had taught them: protest with passion, but without rational reason. There was no argument given, other than the emotional reaction. Hence the new logo ;- ). Passionis non causa — everything the post-modern uni aims to be.
Global Worriers have overplayed their hand again, and it’s woken up a new layer of people. If the Centre had gone ahead, it would have been crippled in the climate debate anyhow (they weren’t planning to discuss the topic anyhow), yet it would have been cited as proof “deniers” got millions in funding. The illusion that our universities were esteemed places of reason, could have been maintained.
On the night the banishment was announced, the ABC News told Australia that Lomborg was a “controversial academic” (which is code for not respected, not popular, and not eminent). Most curiously he was also described incorrectly as a “scientist” and “dubbed a climate contrarian”. Getting his career wrong is embarrassing for national prime time news. Was it sloppy research, blinded by their devotion to the faith, or was the intention to hide that even climate economics is a sacred taboo? Was the ABC trying to cloak the fact that even climate believers get evicted if they don’t believe enough?
Bjorn Lomborg needs to stay out of the science debate
Meanwhile, Lomborg himself has reminded us how little he knows about science (which makes him qualified for UWA 🙂 ). “We should listen to scientists” Lomborg says in the National Post, not meaning “scientists” as people who follow the scientific method, but “scientists” who are government-approved and hold mainstream views on any complex, unproven topic that happens to be politically correct. Bizarrely, his life’s work is to point out that economists and policy-makers ought be questioned, but here he is saying that consensus-scientists are gods who are always right. Are scientists not human too?
It’s hard to say if he is just saying this to appease the global-bullies, or if this is his genuine belief. So much of what the rational economist says is rational, so it makes no sense that he holds such a simplistic and contradictory notion that most professions need auditing but one profession is “perfect”.
Since he knows so little about science, and the attack dogs hate him no matter what he says, he would be wise to say nothing on the science debate. It’s a realistic thing for him to say he believes the IPCC, he’s not a scientist — and leave it at that.
Skeptical scientists have been his strongest supporters, so his pandering and illogical argument for authority achieves nothing but to burn off the people who are listening to him. As I said, the Consensus Centre was already crippled — it wasn’t going to publish on climate-economics anyway. Instead, it’s gone down in a flaming heap, leaving a blazing message across the sky. We need to be relentless in keeping this case study of the fall of academia in the public conversation. Shame about the reputation of my old alma mater, but then Lewandowsky had already trashed it and the Lomborg assault-team could hardly outdo that.
h/t to an emailer — thank you — that I can’t find. I wish I could…
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What next?
Having said it was a brilliant PR coup that it was axed, it would be another brilliant PR coup if it could be reinstated or set up somewhere else. To that end, a lot of good people are working to fix this ridiculous situation.
Nick Cater wrote a column in The Australian last week: ” It must have been something of a shock for Johnson to discover that despite what it says on his business card, he doesn’t actually run the university.”
The Menzies Research Centre is planning to host a symposium on academic freedom on the UWA campus in August. They’re seeking funds to fly in national and international speakers for this important event. Find out how to make a tax deductible donation to the Menzies Research Centre’s Public Fund by clicking here.
From the Australian Taxpayers Alliance wants to run full page adverts supporting academic freedom:
Is this what we want our education system to be? Run not by evidence or ideas, but by what the mob wants? How can we really have a free and fair future when all dissent is censored? I think we are better than this. I believe in our future. I want our universities to be world-class and not run at the first sign of trouble. But that means we need to take a stand now.
This is why I desperately need you to join our campaign for academic freedom: We need to send a loud message that can not be ignored- ideological Censorship will NOT be tolerated!
And without you – this just won’t work.
The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance is running an open letter in full-page newspaper advertisements proudly supporting academic freedom. But we can’t do this without your help.
By joining our campaign, you will be publicly stating your opposition to this disgraceful attempt at academic censorship, and putting your commitment to intellectual freedom on the record.
If you believe in sound policy and academic freedom, click here to join our campaign!
https://www.gofundme.com/BjornLomborg
Two of my friends — both lawyers — have never raised the topic of climate at social events. But in the last week both mentioned it, and it was the Lomborg event they said they were astonished at. This is the first time they’ve showed an interest and even said to us “gosh you are both unemployable”. They finally understand the “danger” of being a skeptical scientist. Thanks to UWA.
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UPDATE: Thanks to Doc Robbo for improving my dog-latin to “passiones” the plural form. Technically, if UWA is thinking of picking this new logo up, the more accurate phrasing is “commotio non ratio” or (plural) “commotiones non ratio” or Passion, without reason. “Passiones non causa” is more accurately translated as “Suffering without cause”. I’ve stuck with that because there is a still a truth there (plenty of pointless suffering, like the angst and insult at having a heretic in their midst), and it works better in satirical dog-latin.
How can a recently reputable institution (UWA) suddenly fall off a cliff?
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By taking an awkward step to the left…
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Har har!
the one legged hokey cokey
you put your left foot in , your left foot out, in out in out and shake it all about!
Love that comment Yonnie
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Because that is the way academia has been shuffling since the sanctimonious, self righteous seventies. Over the decades it has filtered out and replaced people of objective disposition with those of a (“correctly”) polarised one. Data from the US indicates this is in the ratio of 40:1 in the (in)humanities areas as I understand it.
Forget about hanging judges, inquisitions, witch hunts and burnings, pogroms and cleansings of other times and other places, the same phenomenon has happened in ‘rational’, ‘progressive’, Western culture albeit softly, softly exposee monkee.
The cadre of apparatchiks responsible for this are irrational intellectual eunuchs whose objective isn’t knowledge, it is power, influence and the financial security that follows. All societal mechanisms are just a tools to be used to that end. These are cowards with knives, turn your back on them at your peril.
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Whitlam’s legacy!
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Because lemmings do…..
( and yes I know lemmings dont do this, but for the sake of the comment…)
Also – labor commits electoral Hari Kiri ( note the relious reference in “Catechism” ):
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/chris_bowen_announces_dont_vote_for_labor/
Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen demonstrates with his global warming catechism at the National Press Club why Labor is not fit to govern and won’t. It’s parked its brains:
We continue to believe firstly that climate change is real.
Meaningless. Who doesn’t believe the climate changes?
Secondly, that it’s caused by humankind…
False. No serious scientist, even die-hard warmists, would agree that all climate change is caused by humans.
…and thirdly, the best way of dealing with it is a price on carbon.
Useless. What not one Labor MP will tell you is what difference their carbon tax would make to any warming. The reason: the answer, embarrassingly, is effectively zero.
We continue to believe that, and that will be reflected in our detailed policy that we announce and seek a mandate to implement.
Suicidal. Labor promising to bring back a tax on electricity will just remind voters why they loathed the Gillard Government.
Mad.
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At this rate, it seems like ALP have gift-wrapped a 2nd term to Abbott.
Their behaviour shows us they have not learned anything…I highly suspect the ALP-Left have totally taken control of the party. Shorten’s appeasement is going to destroy is own leadership.
Side note:
I don’t know if its just me, but I find Shorten is an empty suit who thinks we’re all mugs that he can blow hot air at. He’s a union guy, right?
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No dollars Bill was a senior executive of the AWU, he attempted to persuade his boss, Bob Kernohan, to drop complains of fraud he made to the police relating to a certain unofficial slush fund created from monies “gifted” by a major construction company in WA. The fund was allegedly created by a solicitor who later resigned from her position with a major law firm and later became our PM. The slush fund and related other matters are subject to an investigation by Victoria Police Fraud Squad and Western Australian Police. Some of the evidence has been produced at the Royal Commission into trade union governance and corruption. Two former union executives alleged to have been behind the slush fund fraud have now been charged and are awaiting a court of law appearance. One has stated that his legal representatives will be calling witnesses including the former PM.
Bill, who if elected to govern would become Bankcard Bill, allegedly offered Kernohan a safe Labor seat in Parliament if he dropped his police complaint. Kernohan refused and was later beaten senseless by a person or persons unknown and spent months recovering in hospital. His union severance pay was withheld for almost ten years, and then was paid shortly before Bill stood for election to Parliament. All on the public record. See Michael Smith News website for two years of information.
As were Rudd and Gillard, Shorten is definitely a union guy.
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Listening to “electricity bill” is like listening to a wet tissue. Probably wet with electrolyte.
He performs best when he has a lot of union thugs around him.
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Guess they are the electrodes.
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That’s a gross disservice to the role of tissues (even wet ones) in society. They have a purpose, and people find them useful.
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The eco-marxists are all at it around the world, high on the prospect of strutting their stuff on the Champs-Élysées at the end of the year and looking fashionable, a most unlikely outcome when you consider the average eco-dresser. But then the jet setters are not the usual are they?
So, this from Obama when speaking to the military recently, who…
I posted this in The Telegraph,
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To be expected from a marxist sock puppet…..
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UWA fell off the cliff the moment the Left made their “long march” into academia during the 1960s to 1980s. UWA isn’t the only one. You see pockets of it in various universities and colleges around the Developed World. Its always some ivory tower professor (often former radical activist) or some Left-leaning student group filled with members who have less than 3 hours per week of courses in their timetable. (Much time on their hands!)
What gives them away is their own behaviour! ie: They cannot stand someone with a different opinion, view, etc. Because to have another view can potentially mean their own narrative could be wrong! They must not allow that!
In our particular case, its the Climate Change narrative. ANY deviation from that narrative must be quashed! There must be no doubt to their narratives! Any doubt could lead to questions! People must not freely question! Questions lead to the truth!
Through observing their behaviour, you can pretty much logically conclude they treat Academia as some Authoritarian System.
ie: They figure if they can control it, they can steer the conversation and no one would question them. eg: “Look! I have a degree! You must listen! What I say is gospel! You must not question me! I am educated!”
Their mis-calculation is that they themselves don’t understand the genuine rigours and discipline of science and engineering. Very few, if any, in their ranks understand or even practice scientific method…A simple application of logic can pretty much collapse their arguments in an open debate.
This is why they resort to Totalitarianism…There must be no doubt. There must not be open debate. There must not be an alternative view. There must be no challenge to their views! It is their view. It is the only view. It must not be questioned!
The greatest weakness of the Left is to be held accountable for their actions. They behave the way they do because they know they can get away with it!
One of the most interesting characteristics about them is that they don’t like serious challenge or competition. (Explains why they hate Capitalism). It leads me to believe they are fundamentally lazy. They rely on emotionally bullying others. This is typically done by threatening someone’s livelyhood/career, verbal/physical intimidation, or deliberate mis-characterisation. (Paint you as sexist, racist, homophobe, denier, skeptic, etc. To discredit you, so they don’t have to debate you!)
They can try to hide themselves, but eventually, they must reveal their true colours. Just as this example with Lomborg!
The problem with taking a callous Totalitarian-style stance is that one tends to lose the public. Its the unjustified excessive nature of their behaviour that will cost them.
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You’ve hit the nail on the head, and here’s why:
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/touching-the-raw-amygdala-an-analysis-of-liberal-debate-tactics-preface/
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One reason could be that this political movement is international, at least in the Western World, and that they have a political Agenda. That is International Socialism/Marxism. And to get that with their “progressive enlightened liberalism”.
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The UWA is starting to look very foolish. I didn’t see all of tonight’s 7:30 Report and it isn’t on iView yet, but they appeared to run a properly reported story on Bjorn Lomberg and the UWA debacle. Two attempts to watch Malcolm Turnbull on The Bolt Report were also interrupted, but it seems that the ABC has at last responded to criticism of its behaviour by doing an unbiased report.
So it may not be just the UWA that has fallen off a cliff.
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This should be the transcript:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4239449.htm
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This is the root of the problem:
They simply don’t understand that nobody is authoritative in science.
Previously, Amanda founded the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Before that, she got a BA in Politics (UniMelb) and an LLB (Emissions Trading). I suppose that she’s just looking after her career in emissions trading.
I noted that yesterday in my blog article that the AYCC had most likely kindled the protests within UWA: Australia’s Climate Youth’s March.
As for the other person interviewed; “KaDoh! Institute” has a few words on Totalitarianism, Lizzie O’Shea And UWA. Bad smells carry far.
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Most disturbing is Lomborg does not claim to be a climate scientist and he is not a den*er. The press is apparently labeling people randomly and just sticking by the label no matter what. It’s very remeniscent of the McCarthy era, where accusations were all that were needed. It makes these people look very uneducated and ridiculous.
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let s say he denies to be a denier.
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University Lecturers have stopped using the allegory of monkeys and typewriters to demonstrate how you can even find patterns in random events.
They now use the allegory of Journalists and word processors, because the monkeys apparently have more cognitive ability.
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… and also refused to keep cleaning journo crap off the seats.
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Speaking of journalists and word processors: http://www.engadget.com/2015/05/20/robotic-news-writer-showdown/:
And: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/20/406484294/an-npr-reporter-raced-a-machine-to-write-a-news-story-who-won. I think the computer won.
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No, it’s not random
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They may not be authoritative Bernd, but they are agreeable as you know and that’s why they should get the funding.
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This appaling exercise in blatant academic censorship by UWA has helped awaken skeptical minds to the blinkered faith underlying the UN IPPC’s dogmatic climate catastrophism power play in Paris at the end of 2015.
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That already started a few years ago, when not one of the predictions has turned out to be correct. And here’s another nail in the coffin (from Tim Blair):
I think Paris will be where the final commiserations will be read out.
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Speaking of predicting the future, I find “climate change” to be highly noticeable due to its absence in this ABC article discussing why predictions by ‘experts’ are so often wrong.
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As highlighted by this ridiculous banning of free speech by a totally compliant academic and as in the previous post, the topic has always been money, politics and power, not climate. It was always a Leftist political issue, never science. There is no warming! Big Carbon is now bigger than Big Tobacco and as corrupt. At least you can choose not to smoke.
Global Warming has been the all important political tool of the Greens, the communists (I repeat myself), the economists (Garnaut, Dennis,..) and they are the ones who push their views and create insane phrases like ‘The Science is in’ and ‘deniers’ as they know no science and could care less.
Most importantly, it is seen as a major income for the absurd UN, the retirement home for failed politicians already on massive retirement packages. They manufactured this. Where else would ex NZ PM Helen Clarke get a job, apart from extreme left Universities, lecturing on how to get to the top and introduce a carbon tax no one wanted. We in Australia have two ex-PMs who would love to get into the UN, but Helen was there first.
So of course they want to keep the talk about ‘The Science’, where most people are ignorant and can be bluffed. Even doctors and especially lawyers. Lomborg dares question the holy grail, the $1Trillion, now $89Trillion which can be milked from Global Climate Warming Change Acidification Polar Bears. Never mind the morality. It is all about the cash and the power. It always was.
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“Big carbon is now bigger than big tobacco”.
The total WWII cost was more than 1.6 trillion dollars according to some in money of the day.
The official financial cost of world war II is as follows:
1. U.S : $296 billion (roughly 4104 billion dollars today)
2. Germany : $272 billion
3. Britain : $120 billion
4. Soviet Union : $192 billion
5. Italy : $94 billion
6. Japan : $56 billion
Germany and Britain destroyed each other at the end of the war, Germany was turned to rubble and Britain was virtually bankrupt. Also the European economy had collapsed with 70% of its infrastructure destroyed.
Converting to today’s money the cost of WWII would be 1.6 trillion x 14= 22 trillion
Big carbon is asking than for >4 times more money than the cost of the biggest war in human history.
See conversion under point 1.
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Ms Gillard started work for the UN about 6 months ago in charge of their education expenditure.
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Ms Gillard gifted the UN education fund $300 million of our money, and was later appointed a director of that fund.
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Your mention of the Helen Clarke left a bad taste in my mouth.
Even though I think it’s a complete waste of money achieving nothing tangible in having her in the UN, at least she’s not here (NZ).
Sorry, I just did not like what she stood for.
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I’d be concerned about working anywhere Lew and Cookie are well protected and treated like research scientists while Bjorn is considered to be a leper.
Talk about an alternate universe…or is that an alternate university.
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Maybe this is a black swan event?
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Perceived as a win by the gullible, the withdrawal of UWA turned out to be what Taleb called a black swan event, for both the university and alarmists instead: rare, big impact and unpredicted by the apparent victors who lost. But the VC did not seem to relish following the order to hide the welcome mat and bolt the doors. Maybe he sensed the university was finally admitting that in spite of the fine Latin phrases chiseled around the campus, the bust of Socrates and Plato’s teacher Diotima by the Hall pond, chreshed academic freedom and principles of unbiased enquiry had just been thrown out with the trash. Apparently the statues dating from the early 1930s, represent “the ideal symbol of the spirit of free discussion and scientific inquiry from which universities arose.” What a blunder for the warmists and a gift to the sceptical empiricists, in spirit, the true disciples of unfettered enquiry. The Vice-Chancellor may as well have chucked the two sculptures in among the pond lilies.
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Or replaced them with busts of Lomborg.
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In the end, it’ll be the eco-fanatics compulsion towards excess which will alienate them from public opinion.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/i%e2%80%99m-not-a-scientist-but-%e2%80%a6/
Pointman
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I enjoyed your post and the comments that followed it. Your analysis is always interesting and often enlightening.
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Thank you JLC, glad you enjoyed the piece.
Pointman
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I have always enjoyed Pointman’s insightful posts. It started when I read his article giving a profile of “The Climategate whistleblower” –
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/profile-of-the-climategate-whistleblower/
If you haven’t acquainted yourself with his thinking, you should.
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Madness of the crowd.Enamor with new paradigm,
boom, euphoria, profit taking, panic.
http://www.thebubblebubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Tulipomania.gif
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Logically then, if we keep speaking the scientific truth, they should spontaneously “self-combust” then…..
When lies become normal, the truth has a powerful edge to it. And they wont get away with it forever….
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil…” ( Isaiah 5:20 )
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It also says a lot about modern universities.
The voice you hear is always that of the strident academics. The scientists are quiet, diligent, very hard workers who in fact are changing the world for the better. When Historians are not busy changing the past and attacking anything British or Christian and their own country and the hand that feeds them, they are tyring to silence real scientists and conservative voices. They are aided by a new class of pseudo scientists, a new class who take can take paleoentolgy and become Australian of the Year and making fortunes by telling a simple story of horror and fear. In an area far from their area of any expertise, like psychology and climate change.
There was a time a University Professor of History was a font of knowledge and wisdom gleaned from years of study. There was a time the ABC was the independent and very accurate reporter of the facts utterly without prejudice. There was time the BOM actually just did their jobs with recording, reporting and predicting the weather for the good of all. There was a time when the head of the Centre for Conflict Studies was not openly assaulting people. (ironic?)
Now they are all caught up in political activism and the money and fame and power which comes with it. Anyone who does not want to join this army of activists is forced out. Blainey, Windschuttle, Selby, Willie Soon and now even Lomborg who agrees with them on climate! However they all dared question. They even dared disagree. Disagreement will not be tolerated in a modern publicly funded University, ABC, BOM, NASA, EPA or UN.
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Palaeontology is a prominent branch of geoscience. It has been instrumental in unraveling evolution, demonstrating movement of continents, making a significant input into DNA research, human and prehistoric history. He is no palaeontologist. Flannery is a teacher that has done is his post-grad in dead marsupials.
He is an insult to any thinking geoscientist. He is an insult to me, a geologist with some 25 years of experience that deals with palaeontologist, palynologist, professionals that provide information not only about the age of the rocks but also paleoenvirormnets. I bet you he does not even know what I am talking about.
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Thanks Dariusz.
As someone who studied invertebrate palaeontology at post graduate level I can confirm what you say. I never met a professor in the school of earth science at my university who thought that CO2 was changing the climate. This was in the early to mid 2000s when the global warming hysteria was taking over everything.
Every time I hear Flannery described as a palaeontologist I want to puke.
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Very few historians are involved in this nonsense. Most are warning people not to read to much into this green fetish.
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No, I did not suggest it. Rather the explosion of University populations has created a new class of activists in huge numbers. They are pushing out the university I remember or hard working, dedicated students and from history to psychology to geology and science and law. Non physical scientists like Flannery are chasing careers where someone will listen and how successful has he been financially?
We did not even have a facetiously named “Centre for Conflict Studies” let alone headed by someone like the aggressive Prof Jake Lynch who, like the Green parties, hates Israel.
So new chairs, as occupied by Flannery. New whole departments. Universities have grown like the UN. Traditional historians like Blainey were forced to resign by people not a tenth as competent, historians to whom history is far less important than activism and politics.
Whatever the reason the UN formed the IPCC at the urging of the World Meteorological Society. Why? By definition weather had to be controllable by Governments or the whole thing was nonsense. Now a trillion dollars has been spent to fix a non problem created by a fantasy UN department and Labor/Greens still demand a Carbon Tax.
The Universities are similar and full of people who want money and power and fame. Then governments get involved and you get absurdities like our Climate Commission (disbanded) and the funded Clean Energy Council who want another 1,000 windmills quickly. Of course they do.
No, universities, especially government funded but unsupervised university departments are a law unto themselves now. The ABC, SBS, BOM,.. have gone the same way. No war, nothing to do, so they have created one. Global Warming, Climate Change, Aborigines, Israel, boat people, Islam and rewriting history and Science to suit a blatantly communist political agenda.
It is not just ‘our’ ABC which is out of control but a symptom of a wider and more dangerous malaise. The once respected Age in Melbourne is being driven into the ground by its own extremist journalists who detest their own readers. It is a wider problem and it starts at the very left universities where to disagree is to be forced to leave.
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You can delete my comment awaiting moderation.
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Thanks for publishing my comment. I feel it was fair.
Also I read so many others, Geo, Jo, myself who do not recognize the Universities they left. Freedom of speech has not been an issue in science for a hundred years. It is being made an issue by people who are not scientists and science itself is being twisted to political ends.
Even Science degrees are becoming suspect as pseudo science chairs multiply like mushrooms in a system awash with government largesse as young people are pushed into second rate universities and second rate courses instead of other essential, often well paid and rewarding professions. Our Technical colleges have all been renamed Universities, killing manufacturing. We do not need nations of philosophers.
There is no global warming. There is no hot spot, so no essential enhancement of a small CO2 greenhouse effect by water vapour. C14 proves man made CO2 does not hang around very long, so the increase is natural. There is no acidification of the oceans. The barrier reef is fine. We do not need a carbon tax and we certainly do not need to hand taxation to the rich retirees of the UN.
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I spent ~ a decade at UWA in the 1970’s and early 1980’s studying geology [BSc Hons + PhD] and I will never set foot on that campus again until they adopt the “former principles of learning based on sound reasoning & research which is not dictated to by populist political opinions of the time”, that currently being the “AGW Religious Cult” promoted relentlessly by the UN’s IPCC. That “cult” effectively put the sword to Lomborg’s Consensus Centre. The “Theory of AGW” is a failed theory which is seriously flawed because it is at total odds with “Real Global Temperature” data, at least for the past 18.4 years, and scientific reasoning, ie Earth’s Climate Cycles being driven by Solar effects, clearly shows that the potential for GW in the foreseeable future is extremely unlikely, with GC a lot more likely with the latter far more deleterious to mankind than GW. Lomborg’s Consensus Centre was specifically going to focus on the US$trillions wasted trying to combat AGW when the funds could have been better spent on helping the hundreds of millions of planet Earth’s poverty stricken people in third world countries have a better standard of living.
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Thank goodness I studied geology at UWA back in the 1960’s when it was a sleepy little campus that told its students to “Seek Wisdom”. Unfortunately they’ve stopped following that dictum ages ago. As an old alumnus I am appalled at the recent events.
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May I suggest that each of you writes a concise letter to the UWA. No need for endless detail, just register your unease so as to spread the unease around.
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el gordo pointed this video out a couple of days ago, but it might be worth revisiting in this discussion. Melbourne acedemic Peter Christoff is fanatical, to put it mildly.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/5/1/academic-demands-totalitarian-response-to-agw.html
I just watched Peter Christof’s presentation and wasted 10 minutes of my life. He is running scared because public support for extreme carbon abatement has dropped from 2/3 to 1/3 over the last few years. To him climate science is completely settled and it is only greedy consumerism and uncontrolled desire for material goods (such as meat) that compels us to OD on fossil fuels. The markets are working too slowly for him, therefore we have a “regulatory problem” which of course can be overcome with tough laws. He also thinks the media is biased against his cause, specifically mentioning Lord Monckton and The Heartland Institute. Obviously he doesn’t watch the ABC or SBS or have much to do with the MSM. He then becomes somewhat fanatical and compares “climate change trivialisation” to holocaust denial and asks, in regard to legislation “is this using a sledgehammer to crack nutters” ..ha ha ha. He comes out with the usual stuff about climate change and it’s denial causing the death of thousands , loss of entire cultures, genocide, etc. He suggests substantial fines and bans on certain individuals he does not name (look out Jo and Boltie). This will have a “disiplinary effect on debate”, but what HE considers to be peer reviewed science will still be permitted.
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Doesn’t he know?
When an economy goes bust, or even degrades, the amount of CO2 that economy can produce is impeded. If it is a gloabal economic downturn, then the amount of CO2 produced is reduced globaly, (Not including Molotof Cocktail production. The CO2 produced by this method actually increases.)
Where is all the rejoicing amongst climate intelligensia that the one great thing about poverty and austerity meausures is the effect of lowering CO2 emissions? If the gentleman in question is an economist, why doesn’t he point this amazing fact out?.
In January last year i pointed out in candor/joking,
” January 31, 2014 at 12:15 am
The baltic dry index drop is analagous to a sharp drop in CO2 emissions, or indicates the use of the fossil fuel (Coal) is decreasing which causes the weather to cool down and the polar vortex and global cooling according to the adherents of CO2 climate science.
Had any one of them checked the batlic dry index before departing, they could have anticipated the increasing Antarctic sea ice and thus avoided the embarasment. 🙂 Since Australia is a top location for the manufacture of climate scientists, it is hoped that in the future, the Baltic Dry Index is consulted more diligently so that the production levels of climate scientists are maintained.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-30/baltic-dry-index-collapses-50-december-highs-drops-5-month-lows#comment-4383652
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UWA in bed with Big Oil, The Hypocrites!
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A possible word of the week.
‘Cant’
“1. Tedious or hackneyed language, especially when used sanctimoniously: “a merciless onslaught upon the cant of the age, the cant about progress, equality, [and] universal education” (C. Vann Woodward).
2.
a. The special vocabulary peculiar to the members of an underworld group; argot.
b. The special vocabulary of a profession, discipline, or social group; jargon.
Or “2. stock phrases that have become meaningless through repetition
3. specialized vocabulary of a particular group, such as thieves, journalists, or lawyers; jargon.
The word is used in these two examples. Various of those among them there began at once to ‘cant’ at full blast about the creation of a consensus center, & ‘they began to ‘cant’ about the need for 89 trillion dollars at full blast.’ 🙂 Have fun.
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The answer to your two examples of cant is can’t.
30
yes, Lewandowsky surely trashed UWA’s reputation long ago, jo.
John of Cloverdale posted about the Chevron/UWA link. you have to laugh.
how about this one!
***the joke is it’s barely warmed in these graduates’ lifetimes:
20 May: Reuters: Roberta Rampton: Obama: climate change poses risk to U.S. military, national security
Rising seas, thawing permafrost and longer wildfires caused by warmer global temperatures threaten U.S. military bases and will change the way the U.S. armed services defend the country, President Barack Obama is set to say on Wednesday.
In his commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, the White House said Obama will underscore the risks to national security posed by climate change, one of his top priorities for action in his remaining 19 months in office.
***”You are part of the first generation of officers to begin your service in a world where the effects of climate change are so clearly upon us,” Obama is set to tell the 224 graduating cadets, according to excerpts from his prepared remarks.
“Climate change will shape how every one of our services plan, operate, train, equip, and protect their infrastructure, today and for the long-term,” Obama will say.
The Pentagon is assessing the vulnerability to climate change of its 7,000 bases, installations and facilities, many of which are on the coast, the White House said…
“Climate change poses a threat to the readiness of our forces,” he is expected to say…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-usa-climate-obama-idUSKBN0O513H20150520
LOL.
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I watched Juan Williams on Fox defending Obama’s speech this morning. Seriously, what is wrong with these people? They would never even be able to lie straight in bed either. They are Insane!
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With a paleontology/geology/archeology/paleoclimatology background, I was from the beginning somewhat skeptical of the growing chorus of climate alarmism.
But it was the Scientific American four-way ad hominem appeal-to-authority pile-on against Lomborg’s book back in 2002 that made me wake up to the threat (and cancel with prejudice a 30-year subscription to SA!).
I counted pretty much every Aristotelian rhetorical fallacy in those articles, putting me in mind of the old legal/debate slogan “have no case, abuse your opponent.”
So thank you, Bjorn, once again for fighting the good fight by rope-a-doping the alarmists.
331
This is a remarkable story that is getting no coverage whatsoever by the MSM in North America.
Funny about that, huh?
100
But to be fair, they did cover Australia’s “war on terrier” about Johnny Depp’s dogs. They can’t spend time on every little thing.
90
“…brilliant PR coup if it could be reinstated or set up somewhere else. To that end, a lot of good people are working to fix this ridiculous situation.”
What happened to the offices vacated by the Climate Commission?
80
UWA has more embarrassment on the horizon.
If you can understand the science (math) that temperature change occurs as a transient in response to the time-integral of net forcing (not directly with the instantaneous value of the net forcing itself), you can discover that CO2 has no effect on climate and perhaps even discover what actually does cause climate change.
143
For professors or teachers to flout,
The dogma of warming or doubt,
The climate-change creed,
Would be censured indeed,
Then likely be sacked and thrown out.
242
Hi Ruairi,
Love your limericks. Wish I were that talented.
Mods: This “Reply” is completely off-topic, and I request that it be allowed to post. Thanks!
As you are the master of the limerick, I have a request. I have made the same request to several resources, and no one is able to help find the original form. I suppose you are free to “create” the first two lines if you choose, but if you locate the original, I authorize Jo and her mods to supply you with my e-mail address.
This is an old limerick my mother knew part of; she could not remember the first two lines, and I have had no luck learning what they might be.
The context: the limerick deals with a lady of virtue and purity, who dwells within some kind of forest/rain forest/jungle(?); it is possible the referenced lady is “Mother Nature” herself (OK, let’s keep in mind this is all fiction anyway … ). In the limerick, this lady is corrupted by a ne’er-do-well; in United States American vernacular (we don’t speak English here — — we speak ‘Murr-kan’), a “rounder” is a con artist, who seeks gain at the expense of others (illegally, of course), or one who engages in other highly non-virtuous activities, again seeking personal gain at great expense to others.
I only have the last three lines; the limerick is:
[unknown line]
[unknown line]
A rounder espied her
And plied her with cider
And now she’s the forest’s prime evil
“May the odds be ever in your favor”, and you have better luck than I have had.
Thanks,
Mark H.
20
Little Miss Muffet Wanted to tough it,In a cabin old and medieval, A
rounder espied her, And plied her with cider, Now she’s the forest’s prime evil.
20
THANK YOU!!!!
Maybe Ruairi would be inclined to ‘tough it up’ a bit. I was under the impression that “Little Miss Muffet” was colloquial — — or not … … …
Again, a big thank you DaveK!
20
Hi Mark,
The limerick you’re looking for is on the Internet from a book…IQ83(page 202)by ARTHUR HERZOG.
The first two lines are:
There once was a maiden medieval,
Who lived in a forest primeval,
10
Excellent! Thank you! Blessings upon you and Dave. It would seem that either version is most acceptable.
Keep up the great limerick-ing; they are all gems,
Mark H.
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Trapped by the same web they worked so long and hard to weave over everyone else. Sweet irony.
Funny thing about deception, it eventually fails. When it fails, the cost greatly exceeds the apparent short run gains. Sadly, nearly everyone pays the price.
The long ignored explanation is quite simple. Things are what they are. What they can become is causally related to what they are. Neither wishes, hopes, fantasies, lies, nor commands can change those simple facts. The facts are obvious to anyone who looks and pays attention.
One can argue over the fine details but you can’t argue with reality. It is in control. It always has been and always will be.
To make it still more simple. Rocks are hard, water is wet, and fire is hot. Wishing that such things were not what they are only results in disappointment and failure.
It is better to take advantage of those simple facts and use the rocks to build a fire place. Then use fire to make water water. Finally, use the hot water to make coffee, tea, or soup. Then be nourished, relaxed, and enjoy.
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The Lomborg event highlights part of the the global warming modus operandi . Infiltration of our institutions is key to winning the battle. The governments, schools, universities, trade unions, legal systems , religious institutions and media have been hijacked by fanatics. It is all part of what has become a global propagander operation. Web sites such as this are like the underground and resistance that can make inroads to this insidious campaign. Thank God for the internet. Without this means of global communication the evil plague known as global warming fascism could not be stopped.
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Can we expect to see Bjørn on the list of speakers at the Menzies Research Centre’s symposium on academic freedom?
60
The Lomborg episode highlights how prejudiced and ignorant are those who denounced the funding.
I had an exchange with a well-known blogger, who is a physicist in the real world. I found out that he (like others)
– Does not use a dictionary.
– Does not correct errors.
– Repeats the falsehood that Lomborg was personally obtaining the funding.
– Rejects the authority of experts in economics in favor of cranky notions that concur with his beliefs.
– Cannot point to a single predictive achievement of climatology. Instead attacks those who convey the message.
– Changes the argument when losing.
191
I don’t wish to be rude, but I didn’t even try to read your blog, as the repeating background image virtually obliterated all the text. Additionally, the text went right across my entire screen, which also makes reading very difficult/visually tiring.
00
bemused, just check if your browser is blocking any of the wp site’s scripts or style sheets as it seems to always render ok for me (in IE, FF and Safari). The text is in a nice central column on a white background not even as wide as Jo’s wp site here.
10
It appears that the site doesn’t like my IE11 security settings (Andrew Bolt’s blog will not even open in IE11 due to all the crap that the Herald-Sun wants to download and which I block in IE11). Firefox, which I use for some known sites that require ActiveX scripts or which have black backgrounds and white text (that play havoc with my eyes so colours are overridden), works better. If I allow site colours in Firefox, then the repeating image is visible (and annoying).
20
I am sorry that you cannot view my blog. It is a standard WordPress blog, running the Comet theme. In Google Chrome the repeating background (a view from Parque Baragui in Curitiba) is quite stable. The text is on a white background.
If I had funding, I would invest in something much better.
10
I have viewed your site often with a wide variety of browsers (qupzilla, Sea Monkey, FF, Opera, Midori, Slimboat, Surf, PaleMoon, Chrome, Lynks, eLinks,) and they all render the pages reliably readable, though they are not always rendered the same. Inserted graphics do sometimes overrun the page (usually on Midori, Qupzilla, and Surf browsers) but adjustment of the browsers magnification allows particular items to be readable.
One site that I consistently have problems with is Sunshine Hours, who uses WordPress Rubric theme.
I suspect the default CSS and/or HTML page specifics (fonts, spacing, tab size, browser specific callouts, etc) called by the web page are the root cause of these difficulties.
10
Kevin you present an erudite opening on the matter at hand and receive a response of “Look, I’m not really interested. It’s pretty clear you have no great interest in any kind of actual dialogue.” that there was the stagger from the first blow, the rest was ATTP grappling on the ropes, well played sir!
30
Kevin,
Having the paperwork to say you’re a physicist is a long way from thinking scientifically.
And yes some people may indeed be a “physicist in the real world” but their thinking is more like one that should be renamed ‘And Then There’s Phantasy’.
30
Tom,
An area I try to explore is the difference between the hard sciences like physics and the soft (borderline) sciences like climate and economics. The hard sciences can have testable hypotheses, that can be falsified by experiment. The soft sciences look at the highly complex empirical world, for which we only have very limited and imperfect data. In climate, as in economics, I propose that if a theory is to say anything meaningful about the world there needs to be established a track record of bold predictions that turn out to be true. Neither I, nor ATTP, could provide a single example of short-term bold predictions holding true. ATTP, like practically every other defender of climatology, resorts to changing the language, deflecting and generally being abusive.
30
Kevin,
I agree with your observation about the soft sciences. My particular despair is with the public’s perception of, and regard for, all sciences being tarred with the same brush of unreliable outcomes from out-of-touch scientists.
‘Climate science’ in particular is a case in point where imperfect theory, computer approximate models, misapplied, erroneous & incomplete observations, and politics are all mixed with outrageous predictions.
‘Climate science’ will, in my estimation, become reduced to a hit-parade of consensus theories, propagandized by various political elites, and all paid for by the increasingly confused and resentful public.
So good luck to ATTP and his campaign to enlighten (or not) the public on the chaos of climate, and the lack of true science that underpins the understanding of it. I just wish he would learn those words —
“…at this time, we just don’t know.”
and when necessity dictates use them.
10
Tom,
I agree with you on the way “climate science” is going. It is the exact opposite direction to where it should be going if it those involved want to develop the subject. For instance, a developing subject would distinguish between
– positive and normative statements.
– trivial and non-trivial statements.
– relevant and less relevant evidence.
– quality of the the evidence (like in a Court between high quality evidence forsenic evidence at one extreme and hearsay at the other)
In a highly empirical subject, they would also have been setting professional standards, and separating the data collection from the data analysis. In professionalizing the subject, there would have also been an effort to clearly define the core subject, so as to separate it from policy formulation, political bargaining, policy implementation and evaluation of policy outcomes.
10
Kevin,
Oh, but for a less imperfect world…
00
I’ve read your blog article and referred to it in my own, more brief one based on pretty much teh first point that you made: Anti-Lomborgs Object to a Sense of Proportion
20
The new UWA logo color scheme competition.
The new logo can only include these colors listed below.
NOTE: The inclusion of Islamic Green and British Racing Green are mandatory in all applicant’s design.
Absinthe Green, Amazon Green, Android Green, Apple Green, Army Green,Asparagus Green,Avocado Green, Beryl, Bice Green, Bottle Green, Bright Green, British Racing Green, Brunswick Green, Cadmium Green, Cal Poly Green, Camouflage Green, Caribbean Green, Castleton Green, Celadon Green, Citron Green, Dark cyan Green, Dark Green, Dark jungle Green, Dark khaki, Dark moss Green, Dark olive Green, Dark pastel Green, Dark sea Green, Dark spring Green, Dartmouth Green, Deep jungle Green, Deep moss Green, Dollar bill Green, Electric Green, Electric lime, Emerald, English Green, Eton blue, Eucalyptus Green, Fern Green, Field drab Green, Forest Green, Forest Green, French lime, GO Green, Granny Smith Apple, Crayola Green, Green Green, Green (Munsell) Green (NCS), Green-yellow, Guppie Green, Harlequin Green, Heart Gold Green, Hooker’s Green, Hunter Green, Illuminating Emerald, Inchworm Green, India Green, Islamic Green, Jade Green, June bud Green, Jungle Green, Kelly Green, Keppel Green, Laurel Green, Lawn Green, Light Green, Light moss Green, Light sea Green, Lime, Limerick Green, Lincoln Green, Loden Green, Lovat Green, Malachite Mantis Green, Medium aquamarine, Medium jungle Green, Medium sea Green, Medium spring Green, Metallic Seaweed Green, Midnight Green, Mignonette Green, Mint Green, Moss Green, Mountain Meadow Green, MSU Green, Mughal Green, Myrtle Green, Napier Green, Neon Green, North Texas Green, Office Green, Old moss Green, Olive Green, Olive Drab #7, Olivine Green, Pakistan Green, Pale Green, Paris Green, Pastel Green, Persian Green, Phthalo Green, Pine Green, Pistachio Green, Rifle Green, Russian Green, Sacramento State Green, Sap Green, Screamin’ Green, Sea Green, Shamrock Green, Skobeloff Green, Spring Green, Spring bud Green, Tea Green, Teal deer Green, Teal Green, Tropical rain forest Green, Turquoise Green, UFO Green, UP Forest Green, Viridian Green, Yellow-green and Green.
60
Well, there is “wisdom” to distill from this.
Lomborg is not a “denier.” Yet somewhere somehow he was tainted with the label. Analysis of this event exposes the “rules of the game.”
1. Insert the words “denier” as many times as necessary to enable an unconscious link between the name and that term to be made without actually accusing. Sprinkle in a few “climate” and “scientist”s too, to further encourage the link.
2. Use the word “denialist.” This is an invented word so there are no ties or links to other types of denial.
3. If evidence is demanded (and it shouldn’t be if “denialist” has been used often enough) just brandish or allude to assorted Lew-papers. If someone wants harder evidence, fake a web survey and arrange it’s conclusion.
4. Conclusions must always be “97%” even when they’re less than 0.1%.
Cry “Havoc” and let slip the “Climate Pit Bull Terriers” to do the rest.
We’ve now seen this work; it works well.
122
What do you have against Pit Bull Terriers? Surely you are not buying into that other media myth!
00
That was a genius appointment by Christopher Pyne. Surely sane people must be aware how stupid the left have become over the climate change agenda. The sequel to ‘dumb and dumber’ springs to mind! Would that be dumberer?
70
If everyone read Lomborg’s “Cool It” or watched his movie (of the book) on youtube we would have a much better educated population.
BTW I just posted this at Bolt’s blog in response to Bowen’s stupid understanding of AGW.
Don’t forget it has taken about 100 years to raise co2 levels from 300 to 400 ppmv or about one part co2 in 10,000 parts of the air we breathe. That’s correct that’s an increase of JUST 1 in 10,000 parts of the atmosphere. Yet the alarmist scientists like Trenberth, Flannery, Solomons, Schmidt etc also tell us there is nothing we can do about the mitigation of CAGW for thousands of years. The mitigation of so called CAGW is the greatest con and fraud in science for over one hundred years. And it will cost OZ 100s of billions $ over the next few decades for zero change to the climate, co2 levels and temp. Just refer to the PR study from the Royal Society and National Academy of Science report.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2015/05/nearly-3500-days-since-major-hurricane-strike-despite-record-high-co2/
40
“Meanwhile, Lomborg himself has reminded us how little he knows about science (which makes him qualified for UWA 🙂 ). “We should listen to scientists” Lomborg says in the National Post, not meaning “scientists” as people who follow the scientific method, but “scientists” who are government-approved and hold mainstream views on any complex, unproven topic that happens to be politically correct. Bizarrely, his life’s work is to point out that economists and policy-makers ought be questioned, but here he is saying that consensus-scientists are gods who are always right. Are scientists not human too?”
Which is precisely why the only mention of Lomberg should be in relation to ridicule and humiliation. There is nothing good to come from supporting anything he says in any way. He is as bad as the alarmists who have turned on a guy who is essentially one of their own, except without a spine.
61
What you say is true, the irony burns.
41
I don’t think you are being rational or stating the facts correctly.
Lindzen, Christy, Monckton, Spencer, Pielke, Watts,Bolt, Nova?,etc also think that co2 increases may cause some initial warming.
But they also think the feedbacks may be negative and not cause much extra warming.
Lomborg understands the impact of mitigation of CAGW better than most scientists and certainly better than most of the public and certainly better than most pollies.
81
‘But they also think the feedbacks may be negative and not cause much extra warming.’
Wishy washy sceptics, CO2 has nothing to do with global warming. We need to get real before global cooling sets in.
71
Exactly. Everyone simply needs to watch Prof. Salby’s video from about 3:00 to 10:00 and if you still think any of the following propositions are valid.
Seek help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ0R1MCkSOU
1. Our contribution to global CO2 total is the key driver of global climate
2. If 1. is true it can be separated as data from the back ground noise
3. If 1. and 2. are true, we can use our production of CO2 to manipulate climate
I mean really? Your pulling the other one arnt you folks?
Does anyone really believe warmist/alarmist nonsense? Its a happy confluence of greedy, moralistic, pseudo intellectuals feeding off ignorance. Nothing more, I don’t even credit them with the wit or ability to conspire.
00
That’s luke warmist talk to my ears Neville.
Show me the evidence that our CO2 contributions are driving the climate.
00
Safetyguy66,
Here’s another guy who thinks like Lomborg. Steven E. Koonin – Climate Science Is Not Settled. (WSJ).
I personally believe that the atmosphere as a whole, water vapor, CO2, and clouds, all contribute to an overall cooling of the earth’s surface. This is what basic physics has been telling us all along. And, without this effect, we’d fry. The only thing remotely resembling a ‘greenhouse effect’ is the atmosphere’s ability to slow the loss of heat at night. Think Moon.
When we look at the global warming controversy, (I’m being generous with the word ‘controversy.), we see over and over again that the aim is political and economic reform. The climate was never the issue.
Because of this, it’s important that the views of Lomborg and Koonin above, be heard and discussed.
Basically what they’re saying is, “Even if we agree that climate change is real and affected by human activities, you’re all crazy if you think your policies are correct.”
I don’t agree with the pseudo-science they promote, but their economics are spot on. Cold, calculated, rational thought there.
So. When the science is finally recognized as flawed, the validity and prudence of these people’s policy positions will turn out to have been the right way to go.
Abe
40
Forgot the link. Sorriez.
Steven E. Koonin – Climate Science Is Not Settled. (WSJ).
Abe
20
Just-A-Guy, I take issue with your use of the word “reform” in “the aim is political and economic reform“. Reform means fixing something whereas the aim of the of the climate alarmists is economic change not necessarily (or very improbably INMHO) for the better.
30
me@home,
Thanks, I stand corrected. Especially when I’m the one whose constantly pointing out how leftist-green-progressives torture the language to mean what they want it to mean.
Which reminds me of how pollies very often talk about tax reform when the really mean tax hikes.
Abe
20
Here is the Bolt post exposing Chris Bowen’s abysmal ignorance about so called CAGW.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/chris_bowen_announces_dont_vote_for_labor/
61
I just by chance read this recent article by Kathleen Parker. I think you will find her thoughts on freedom of speech in academia not that for off this topic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-swaddled-generation/2015/05/19/162ea17a-fe6a-11e4-805c-c3f407e5a9e9_story.html
30
Future historians will look back at this time of a vast collective madness and roll their eyes at the hubris and chutzpah, the ignorance and the blind arrogant stupidity of an entire generation of scientists who firmly believed they had the knowledge and the power and the influence over mankind’s seven billions of peoples and over the global climate to both alter the course and control the shape and future of the entire global climate and the role those seven billions of humanity played in shaping that climate.
They will see the hypothesis of a few scientists on the possibility of a minor warming of the global climate escalated into a full blown climate catastrophe cult with a cynical scientific pseudo priesthood reaping the immense power, influence and monetary rewards for it’s endeavours in promoting the belief in a future man created climate catastrophe amongst the science trusting populace.
They will probably also be able to pin point a time in the past of around the latter half of 2013 through most of 2014 where there was a very subtle shift in the fulminations of the scientific priesthood and the adherents of the climate catastrophe cult against the unbelievers and those skeptical of all the predictions and claims of the scientific priesthood of the climate catastrophe cult where the cultists began to become increasingly defensive in their fulminations.
The historians will see a point around the same period where the unbelievers and skeptics developed a new found confidence as they repeatedly and successfully began to challenge and demand undeniable and fully verifiable proof supporting every comment and claim of the climate catastrophe’ scientific priesthood and their adherents to the cult.
They will also see that in the evolving circumstances surrounding the climate catastrophe scientific priesthood and their adherents there was also a point where the populace at large and the media slowly began to understand the evil and the depths of depravity the priests and adherents of the cult were taking them down to as fr__d, scams, threats, racial discrimination as in depriving undeveloped nations access to the better things in life, threats of murder, discrimination and all that was evil was openly promoted and fully condoned by the climate catastrophe scientific priesthood and the adherents of the cult as they furiously railed against against the skeptics and doubters of the cult’s claims.
And all of this evil promoted and openly published without any perceivable attempts by the priesthood to prevent or condemn those extreme excesses of their followers and adherents.
There will be many a PhD history paper written in the times ahead as both a historical study of past western society’s socially and scientific tumultuous times and as a warning to the politicals of those future times on the extreme dangers of first allowing and then faithfully following a humanity depriving, extremist social cultist movement that was based on and promoted on nothing more than a mere shadow and chimera of science proven fact.
140
why would the future historians bother? You’ve just written it for them. The blog will be cited forever.
41
The psychology and role of all those who played a part in this scientific debacle such as for example, you and myself will also be analysed and with yours and my contributions plus those millions of other thoughts from other contributors to the climate debate on the blogs, if the electronic archives this is recorded in survives the decades ahead which I have my doubts on, they also will also be a part of that analysis of the social attitudes of the times.
So guard your lips Gee Aye, You might just get quoted for good or bad, sometime many decades into the future.
40
ROM… if I get quoted and I am wrong about something but thought I was right for good reason then let them quote me. I hope you are not suggesting that I should articulate my opinions based on how I envisage a future historian will describe them?
11
Your reply applies to both of us plus all those others who have taken part in this climate saga and argument.
If the electronic archives survive, something that based on the last half century of constantly changing formats and programs and losses of entire proceedings and data I seriously wonder about and question, then future historians are going to have a massive bank of opinions, data and plain garbage on this climate saga to sort through which should keep them busy for a century or so.
[ The quite good definition NASA tapes taken direct from the Appollo 13 moon landing cameras which were over taped and lost for good due to sheer utter stupidity. Not the horribly blurred pics we saw which were actually taken by a TV camera focussed on the monitor screen in NASA’s control room, are a classic example of the irretrievable loss of electronically recorded data and information, repeated in any number of occassions in the not very distant past ]
50
My post @ #30.1.1.1.1 is in moderation as I write this but a personal face slap and correction is required here.
I hope its not dementia creeping up!
Apollo 11 not Apollo 13, was the first moon landing where the original NASA recorded tapes were over taped due to nothing more than total stupidity and the real time original visual records of mankind’s first setting foot on a world not his own was lost for ever.
Apollo 13 was the almost complete disaster flight which got home with only enough power left to fire the recovery chutes for the capsule.
40
Gee Aye,
Do you actually have an opinion about anything?
If so please tell us!
20
‘Scientific debacle’ I guess that’s one of the few options left when there is no scientific debate.
30
Gee Aye,
Probably because none of these posts are kept as a hard copy and this electronic medium is evolving so quickly that current data and storage systems will be undecipherable.
30
ROM,
Last night I had a conversation with a neighbor of mine, 22, and unaware of the whole climate change debate. (Yes, there are still people like this.)
I made this statement somewhere in the middle of the conversation: “These people believe that they can stop the earth from overheating by using taxes and CO2 emission limits to control the weather.”
I had to repeat myself three times before he could even understand how taxing CO2 emissions could control the weather. It’s not that he’s got a low IQ or anything like that. Pretty smart really. It’s just that when a person hears these things for the first time, the very idea of it is so ridiculous that they think you’re joking.
Abe
120
… and they’ll notice it was not many years after the Y2K cult, when the world was able to compare the unamended control group in the developing countries and verify that planes don’t fall out of the sky when computer displays truncate the year number. But they neglected the comparison and the opportunity to laugh at themselves. And it was only a few centuries after the witches scare, and they indulged for a while in baking people after Zyklon gas. Periods of weird beliefs often sweep through for a while then disappear.
30
I don,t trust many historians. In fact most of them are as bad as greenies. No wonder we are doomed to repeat mistakes as no one remembers history. History keeps on being rewritten all the time and only a few make an effort to make an independent analysis. Critical and independent thinking is always in short supply. Only some 25 years ago communism has fallen and now we best friends with china that keeps on savings us. Hardly anyone knows that de Gaulle has killed more French in reprisals after the war than the nazis during the war. History is written by the victors, how true.
GW crap will morph into another scare soon “the battle for the privilege to reproduce”.
30
This is presupposing that future historians will be allowed to gain a PhD from their re-education gulags.
20
This comment might be slightly off-topic to the direct matter of UWA and the Lomborg issue. It does, however, relate to the browbeating that is directed against any scientist who even hints at disagreeing with the party line on global warming.
The case is reported in the morning’s Courier-Mail – a Fairfax paper in Queensland. A professor, Peter Ridd, claims scientists have “overhyped” reports of up to 50 per cent loss of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef.
He is a Townsville-based marine geophysicist. He says that his own review of Australian Institute of Marine Science research on coral loss and calcification found those studies to be incorrect, with factual and statistical errors.
Now the Professor could be right or wrong. He is expressing a considered view after he has researched the matter. It would be reasonable to dispute Peter Ridd’s view with argument and counter argument. But the journalist doesn’t do this. Instead, the journalist, Peter Michael, takes the liberty of slipping just one word into the lead paragraph of the article. This single word then poisons the mind of the reader against the view Peter Ridd is expressing.
That one word – in capitals is ‘ROGUE’.
So, for expressing a dissenting view, the professor is labelled a ROGUE.
As a journalist myself, I consider this to be an appalling standard of journalism.
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The MSM have been deliberately poisoning the well like this for well over twenty years now. It’s the feel-good of “Noble Cause corruption” in constant action, now well ossified by a concrete refusal to admit the possibility of being wrong, or at least of being highly exaggerated – this is just too embarrassing and humiliating of vanity
50
My error. Apologies for misleading anyone on the ownership of the Courier-Mail. Silly and careless mistake, I admit.
40
David,
The Courier Mail is owned by News Limited. The Brisbane Times is a Fairfax paper.
40
David Mason -Jones –
Courier-Mail is News Ltd (Murdoch); Brisbane Times is Fairfax.
20 May: CarbonBrief: Sophie Yeo: Mismatched graph creates confusion in Canada’s UN climate pledge
While the ***EU has pledged to reduce emissions 40% below 1990 levels, Canada’s target actually represents a 6% increase if this is taken as the baseline…
Like other countries, Canada’s emissions dipped in 2008 in the wake of the global financial crisis. Since then, its emissions have been flatlining…
Carbon Brief has asked Canada’s environment ministry to explain the disparity, and will update this article if we receive a response…
Canada has included the option to use carbon credits, which means that it could buy emissions reductions from abroad, instead of making them domestically.
This contrasts with the approach of the ***EU and the US, which both pledged to make their promised emissions cuts on home territory…etc
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/05/mismatched-graph-creates-confusion-in-canadas-un-climate-pledge/
***CarbonBrief – Britain is part of the EU, surely:
21 May: Guardian: Revealed: BP’s close ties with the UK government
Documents show the extent of BP’s influence on government policy and how their intimate relationship is at odds with UK commitments to reduce carbon emissions
by Felicity Lawrence and Harry Davies
Although the government viewed the financial hit as BP’s problem, it was worried the oil giant’s vast bill for the Gulf accident would hit many UK pension-holders, according to Tom Burke, former BP employee, now chairman of the environmental organisation E3G and advisor to Shell, Rio Tinto and Unilever. About 1.5% of UK pension industry money was invested in BP shares, which had plummeted. And BP had scrapped its dividend payments.
“Around 7% of UK pension fund annual income came from BP at the time. A further 12% came from Shell, so nearly one-fifth of pension funds were intricately linked to the profits of these two oil and gas companies,” explained Burke.
At that meeting, BP was assured by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) that it would do what it could, with lawyers from the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the business department, to find “an operational solution” to allow BP to reopen the major North Sea gas field it owned jointly with Iran despite the EU’s sanction regime against that country.
The solution, a couple of years later, would be for Iran’s share of the profits to be held by the British government in a frozen account.
These extraordinary insights into the extreme closeness between the British government and one of its biggest companies came to light after a Freedom of Information (FoI) request. Nobody, perhaps, should be much surprised by it. After all, they have shared mutual interests since the first British involvement in commercial oil exploration in the Gulf over 100 years ago…
And yet there is one big difference now: on climate change, the interests of the government, signed up to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% on 1990 levels by 2050, are not aligned with those of BP, which is pressing on with the pace of fossil fuel exploration. Critics say BP’s business model of continuing to prospect for more reserves is at odds with attempts to limit carbon emissions to keep the rise in the Earth’s temperature below 2C, the widely-agreed threshold for dangerous climate change…
Despite the UK government’s commitment to tackling climate change, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that BP and the British government are still hand-in-hand.
***John Ashton, the UK’s top climate diplomat until 2012, fears they are caught in old habits.
He has been highly critical of the oil companies’ failure to embrace the speed of change needed.
“Britain’s overriding national interest is an effective response to climate change, which will require a carbon-free energy system within a generation or so,” Ashton told the Guardian. “This is an existential challenge to the oil and gas companies. They now face an uncomfortable choice between finding new business models, or clinging to the status quo of fossil fuel dependency and coming increasingly to be seen as enemies of the national interest.”…
The Foreign Office, for example, held its annual “BP high level dinner” last July, “to strengthen the strategic relationship between BP and the FCO on global economic and energy issues”, according to heavily redacted documents marked “sensitive” and “restricted”. All the top FCO directors from the head of the diplomatic service down through the directors of the main regions, to the heads of the FCO economic, strategy, and “prosperity” units, were on the attendees list…
The coalition agreement in 2010 promised – at Liberal Democrat insistence – to help move to a low-carbon economy. But the Foreign Office was being refocused by Conservative foreign secretary William Hague away from diplomacy towards the promotion of British trade.
It upgraded its presence to a full consular office in Calgary, Canada, in 2011 to support UK businesses investing in the region — BP and Shell both have major tar sands projects in the area…
The door swung the other way last week, as BP appointed the recently-retired head of the UK’s secret intelligence services to its board. The former MI6 spy chief, Sir John Sawers, would bring invaluable geopolitical experience, said BP’s chairman.
The significance of all this for climate change is profound. Being embedded in Whitehall, it appears, has given the oil and gas multinationals confidence that the government will not act on emissions in a way that will restrict their growth…
Asked how the company reconciled the urgent need to cap dangerous greenhouse gas emissions with its exploration of new frontiers, BP said: “Affordable, secure energy is essential for economic prosperity and we forecast that global demand for energy is set to grow by nearly 40% by 2035. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) estimates that by 2040 up to 60% of the fuel mix will still be fossil fuels; investment to develop oil and gas will continue to be needed.”…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/20/revealed-bps-close-ties-with-the-uk-government
***Wikipedia: John Ashton
Director for Strategic Partnerships at LEAD International, and is the founder and CEO of Third Generation Environmentalism (E3G)…
Climate Advisor:
Ashton is a Member of the Green College Centre for Environmental Policy and Understanding. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Climate Institute, Washington DC, and of the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research…
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the most extraordinary load of CAGW tosh ever written!
30 March: Guardian: Open letter to Shell’s Ben van Beurden from John Ashton
(John Ashton is an independent commentator, founder of think tank E3G and was the UK envoy for climate change from 2006-2012. The open letter was first delivered as a speech to the 4th European Energy Forum in Paris.)
Those who have dedicated their lives and careers to your industry must sometimes feel your virtues go unacknowledged while the sins of the world are heaped at your door.
The story of civilisation is an energy story…
From beneath soil and sea you have wrested oil and gas in unimagined abundance, often under technically challenging and physically dangerous conditions, never failing to meet the demands of energy-hungry societies.
It would be only human if you were to reflect occasionally that without you, the prosperity enjoyed by billions, and aspired to by billions more, would not exist. Human beings would be living shorter, more difficult lives, exposed to more hazards, trapped within narrower limits of experience, opportunity, and imagination. And as your industry has grown to maturity, it has forged strong values, nowhere stronger than in Shell itself.
You are rooted in reality…
While our political discourse descends ever further into a miasma of dogma, artifice, spectacle and celebrity, you have done your best to remain reality-based. This is surely a virtue…
***Now you are being asked to play your part in the response to climate change, the biggest challenge your industry has ever faced…
You accept the “moral obligation” to respond to climate change, including for your industry. COP21 will be crucial. The stakes here in Paris will be high.
But meanwhile, there is a march of progress. As we stride forward, a golden thread of growth links the size of the economy, demand for energy, and demand for oil and gas. This should continue indefinitely. Yours will remain “an industry that truly powers economies”, as “the world’s energy needs will underpin the use of fossil fuels for decades to come”.
You do not, it appears, see climate change as a threat to the steady march. But you fear we might be overzealous. Excessive concern for the climate might lead us to break the golden thread by constraining the combustion of your products.
This too is a question of morality…
Your response is that we should ease off on climate. We can have a transition but it cannot transform…
***You have no compunction in immediately excluding coal, the product of a rival industry, from this endeavour. But that is to accommodate a shift to gas, not faster deployment of renewables (which would divert investment from gas); still less energy efficiency, which you do not mention at all…
Narcissus gazed into the pool and was dazzled by his own reflection. Climate change is a mirror in which we will all come to see the best and the worst of ourselves. In that mirror you seem to see the energy system you have done so much to build and to find it so intoxicating that you cannot contemplate the need now to build a different one. There is a touch of narcissism in the story of your face.
The paranoiac fears conspiracies that do not exist. You fear a non-existent conspiracy to bring about your sudden death. There is a touch of paranoia in the story of your face.
The psychopath displays inflated self-appraisal, lack of empathy, and a tendency to squash those who block the way. All these traits can be found in your text. There is a touch of psychopathy in the story of your face.
I am sure you are not in your personal life narcissistic, paranoid, and psychopathic. But yours is part of a collective voice, and those attributes colour that voice. To that extent you and your peers cannot complain if society increasingly comes to see in your behaviour the characteristic marks of the professional narcissist, paranoiac, and psychopath.
The story of the mask and the story of the face behind the mask. The one, a picture of reason. The other in the grip of all too human emotions. They are not at peace with each other. Nor with the world.
The story of the world is as old as antiquity. It is the story of the writing on the wall. The warning to the last King of Babylon at his last great feast that he has been weighed in the balance, as it is written in the Book of Daniel.
The high carbon, resource-profligate modernity you helped build is a new Babylon. Every bite from its fruit poisons the tree from which we pluck it. King Belshazzar of Babylon plundered goblets of gold from the Temple of Solomon. We take our plunder from an ecological fabric we no longer recognise as our first Temple. But if it crumbles we die both in body and in spirit.
Climate change is the writing on our wall. If we heed it we can repair our Temple and avoid the fate of Babylon. If we don’t, we, too, fall. You know this. If you didn’t, your exploration of the nexus must have shown you…
We are now entering a period of politics that is non-linear, politics whose outcomes will, from the old frame of reference, your frame of reference, be harder to predict. You are not skilled in navigating non-linear politics…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/30/open-letter-shell-ben-van-beurden-john-ashton-climate-change
27 March: Guardian: Suzanne Goldenberg: Rockefeller family tried and failed to get ExxonMobil to accept climate change
Founding family of the US oil empire Exxon, begged the company to give up climate denial and reform their ways a decade ago – but attempts at engagement failed
When the Guardian asked for a comment on the Rockefellers’ attempts to engage with the company it issued this statement. “ExxonMobil will not respond to Guardian inquiries because of its lack of objectivity on climate change reporting demonstrated by its campaign against companies that provide energy necessary for modern life, including newspapers.”
Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil’s vice president for public and government affairs has previously been dismissive of the concept of fossil fuel divestment, saying that it is “out of step with reality”.
“There are no scalable alternative fuels or technologies available today capable of taking the place of fossil fuels and offering society what those energy sources provide,” he wrote in a blog in October…
no doubt Geoff Chambers could do an update on Ashton, but this is a great start:
2013: John Ashton: Just Another Jerk in the Circle
by Geoff Chambers
https://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/john-ashton-just-another-jerk-in-the-circle/
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Dr Carl was on the abc saying that Australia could transform to 100% renewables in 10 years and it would be a third cheaper than coal.
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Do you believe him?
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No. But a lot of people I know do.
30
And a lot of people I know also believe everything he says, its clearly aunty’s fault.
00
If I was only getting ⅓ of the electricity I used to, I would expect to spend less on it…
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I’d like to see who underwrites his professional liability insurance.
Oh, that’s right: He has none. His “facts” more often than not; lack the “f”.
Best to keep reminding people that “Dr Karl” is just a performance artist with a heavy metal streak: If you can’t be good; be loud.
30
20 May: NYT: Obama Recasts Climate Change as a Peril With Far-Reaching Effects
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
President Obama used a commencement address on Wednesday at the Coast Guard Academy to cast his push for urgent action to combat climate change as a national security imperative, saying that the warming of the planet poses an “immediate risk” to the United States…
“I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country,” Mr. Obama told about 4,200 people on an athletic field overlooking the water here, including about 200 graduates in crisp white dress uniforms. “And so we need to act, and we need to act now.”…
“I know there are still some folks back in Washington who refuse to admit that climate change is real, and on a day like today, it’s hard to get too worried about it,” Mr. Obama said on a sunny day ***cooled by a chilly sea breeze. “The science is indisputable,” he said. “The planet is getting warmer.”…
The president argued that climate change had set off dangerous domino effects around the world, prompting a severe drought in Nigeria that was exploited by the terrorist group Boko Haram, and drought, crop failures and high food prices that “helped fuel the early unrest in Syria” before it descended into civil war.
He told the graduates that their generation would have to invent, build and pioneer the energy-efficient technologies that would be needed to reverse the damaging effects of climate change. He said the Pentagon regarded the planet’s warming as a “threat multiplier.”…
In a report issued on Wednesday, the White House said climate change would act as “an accelerant of instability around the world,” prompting water scarcity and food shortages that could escalate tensions and lead to overpopulation…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/us/obama-recasts-climate-change-as-a-more-far-reaching-peril.html?_r=0
the Herald’s geopolitical perspective ain’t mine, but at least they see the humour:
21 May: Boston Herald Editorial: O’s climate gambit
Large parts of the Middle East are in flames. Ramadi is lost to ISIS. Russia has gobbled up parts of the Ukraine. And the Chinese are building islands in the Pacific to which they can lay claim — that is when they’re not outright stealing U.S. intellectual property.
But President Obama yesterday put his finger on what is really wrong with the state of the new world order:
“I’m here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate threat to our national security,” Obama told cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut.
“It will impact how our military defends our country. We need to act and we need to act now,” he added. “Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security. It undermines the readiness of our forces.”
It is as if the writers at “Saturday Night Live” had suddenly taken over the speech writing chores at the White House…
Is this rhetorical flight of fancy meant merely to divert attention from his administration’s many policy failures? Or does the president really believe this stuff? The latter is an even scarier possibility than the former.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/editorials/2015/05/editorial_o_s_climate_gambit
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That SNL analogy is really funny and spot on. I’ll try to answer the question, which is mostly unanswerable, from what I’ve observed of Obama as though he is a [lower] animal that talks.
Imo, Obama believes “this stuff” as much as he believes anything, or anything else he conjures up by way of the “armchair philosophy” characteristic of a de-realized Academic – where verbiage becomes “reality” or “true” solely under its own power, and is thus totally unfettered by reality, and so that perfection and a pretense of personal superiority can be achieved. In other words, Obama can be completely delusional whenever he wants to be by using the tactic of “rhetoric over reality” [Charles Krauthammer] or what I call “perception is reality delusionalism” – where mere words are used as convenient or self-serving “perceptions”, then arranged to form a perfected Fantasy World. Reality itself is much too imperfect and difficult to deal with.
But it is a tactic of Propaganda which also comes to delude the severely Narcissistic Propagandist himself. Obama beguiles himself by means of the convenient use of words which essentially “entrance” him, to lead him directly away from reality. [Wittgenstein]
The specific delusion of CO2CAGW – as easily manageable if we “act now” and do what he commands – is also useful as a diversion from the much more stark reality Obama has created and we face, a reality which he also transforms into a more pleasing or less threatening form by using the same Propaganda tactic of “rhetoric over reality”. In this verbal space anything goes and lies are perfectly acceptable, if not even preferrable if he thinks the MSM enc. will participate in and spread them.
Meanwhile back here on the ground, Ideological Obama can also rotely pursue his main goal which is to “transform” = destroy America from within using its own institutions, much like a virus does to its host. The workers did not revolt, and America’s system of Constitutional Capitalism actually works to create wealth and an increasing standard of living, a middle class, and Individual Freedom, so America is an insult and even a mortal threat to Obama’s [Marxist] Academic Fantasy World, the only place where Communism works and can defeat America. The situation we face is frightening indeed.
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***U.S. officials say the new economic strategy complements Washington’s vision for the region!
16 April: WSJ: Saeed Shah: China Readies $46 Billion for Pakistan Trade Route
The largest part of the project would provide electricity to energy-starved Pakistan, based mostly on building ***new coal-fired power plants. The country is beset by hours of daily scheduled power cuts because of a lack of supply, shutting down industry and making life miserable in homes—a major reason for the election in 2013 of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who promised to solve the electricity crisis.
The plans envisage adding 10,400 megawatts of electricity at a cost of $15.5 billion by 2018. If those projects deliver, plugging the electricity deficit, Mr. Sharif would be able to go into the 2018 election saying he has lived up to his pledge.
After 2018, adding a further 6,600 megawatts is outlined—at a cost of an additional $18.3 billion—that in cumulative total would double Pakistan’s current electricity output.
The plan has gained political momentum—and new funding sources—since Mr. Xi outlined his vision to build modern-day equivalents of the ancient Silk Road between East and West.
***Despite the more-muscular Chinese ambitions, U.S. officials say the new economic strategy complements Washington’s vision for the region.
“We think there’s a great amount of potential complementarity between a China-Pakistan infrastructure corridor and the interests we’ve talked about in South and Central Asia for some time,” said a State Department official…
In the energy sector, the U.S. program is adding some 1,500 megawatts of generating capacity…
Frederick Starr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and an expert on Central Asia, said the new corridor has potential to link Europe to China through Central Asia and the Caucasus, and reach onward through Pakistan and India to Southeast Asia, a route that he said “will in 30 years be more important even than China’s [current] route to the West.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-to-unveil-billions-of-dollars-in-pakistan-investment-1429214705
20 May: Euractiv: Turkey to double coal capacity in four years
Turkey is planning to double its coal power capacity in four years, the third largest investment in the polluting fossil fuel in the world, health campaigners have warned…
EU member state Poland is planning the tenth largest investment in coal in the world…
19 May: Euractiv: Balkan coal rush risks lasting damage, campaigners warn
Balkan countries and Ukraine are making “substantial investments” in polluting coal power stations to sell cheap electricity to the European Union, as the bloc searches for new suppliers to reduce its dependence on Russian gas…
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine are planning to build a total of 14.82 GW of new coal power capacity, much of which would be additional to existing capacity, according to a Change Partnership study commissioned by NGO CEE Bankwatch…
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19 May: Reuters: Caroline Copley: Coal row takes shine off Germany’s green image before G7 summit
Energiewende policy hamstrung by coal row
Germany’s clean energy drive earned it a reputation as a green leader but a domestic row over coal has highlighted the challenge of balancing economic and environmental demands and threatens its ability to lead by example.
Angela Merkel, once dubbed the “climate chancellor”, hopes to encourage the Group of Seven industrial nations to commit to tough goals to cut greenhouse gases at a June 7-8 summit in Bavaria before a larger year-end United Nations climate meeting in Paris…
But stalled projects, including her government’s attempt to impose penalties on old, highly polluting coal plants, have put Germany’s 2020 goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990 at risk.
“Germany cannot get around the truth that in order not to fail its climate commitments it has to reduce its emissions from its enormous fleet of lignite coal technology,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International…
Its brown coal addiction meant CO2 emissions actually rose slightly in 2012 and 2013 and Germany still emits more CO2 per capita than the European Union average.
“If Merkel and Gabriel aren’t able to repair the market, reduce the share of coal and therefore emissions, the credibility for other nations to be convinced to go for stronger climate targets will be very low,” said Claudia Kemfert, energy economist at the DIW in Berlin…
The latest row over coal again underscores the dilemma of whether to stick to climate commitments while safeguarding the energy supply and protecting industry.
“The economy ministry’s proposals are eroding fair competition in Europe’s electricity market at the expense of German coal-powered stations,” said Eric Schweitzer, president of Germany’s DIHK Chambers of Commerce.
“The inevitable increase in electricity prices will place an additional burden on the German economy and stunt the competitiveness of many companies.”
Nevertheless, the green lobby is hoping that Merkel will push for a pledge to phase out fossil fuels by the middle of this century ahead of the Paris meeting…
“Like it or not, if we were to single out one leader in the world we have the greatest hope in, it would be Chancellor Merkel,” said Greenpeace’s Naidoo…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/19/germany-merkel-climate-change-idUSL5N0Y10W920150519
20 May: Business Green: Jessica Shankleman: Weakened coal pollution rules will cost UK millions, green groups claim
Greenpeace and EEB aim to show financial impact of planned industrial emissions rules, which they say have been weakened by industry lobbying
European Commission plans to water down pollution laws for coal power plants could cost the UK more than £500m each year in healthcare and sick days, new analysis by environmental groups has found.
A report unveiled today by Greenpeace and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) shows how proposals under the so-called “Seville process” which plans to update air quality limits for large industrial plants, including lignite coal power plants, look set to be weaker than the highest standards adopted around the world.
The report says the new rules could lead to 71,000 premature deaths over the next decade in the UK alone.
The European Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Bureau has tabled a set of proposed standards that will be examined by an EU working group later this year, before formal adoption in early 2016.
Greenpeace and EEB say that the latest proposals are so weak that they would allow Europe’s coal plants to emit more fumes than those in China…
Greenpeace has previously expressed concerns that the new standards have been heavily influenced by industry lobbying. It found that out of 352 members of the technical working group that is formulating new limits on air pollution across Europe, 183 are either employed by the companies that are being regulated, or by lobby groups that represent those companies…
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2409255/weakened-coal-pollution-rules-will-costs-uk-millions-green-groups-claim
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19 May: UK Telegraph: Andrew Critchlow: Shell CEO: ‘carbon bubble’ campaigners ‘ignore reality’
Royal Dutch Shell bombarded by climate change criticism at annual general meeting
Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell has given a robust defence of the fossil fuel industry saying that “carbon bubble” critics “ignore reality”.
The head of the UK’s largest oil company told shareholders that the world faces an energy crisis unless investment into producing fossil fuels is maintained. This is because of there is likely to be a dramatic increase in demand as three billion people emerging from poverty over the next few decades.
“We will need sustained and substantial (oil) investment to support economic growth,” Mr van Beurden told shareholders gathered in The Hague, Netherlands…
Proponents of the “carbon bubble” theory believe that the share prices of energy companies could crash if the world turns its back on fossil fuels. Activists have argued that pension funds and major institutions should divest from fossil fuel companies such as Shell.
However, the argument ignores the dramatic increase in total energy demand that will be required over the next 25 years. ***According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) global energy demand will increase by 40pc through to 2040…
At the same time global oil demand is expected to hit 111m bpd of crude as growing economies in Asia require increasing amounts of fuel. Based on the IEA’s projections, a 20pc increase in overall emissions by 2040 will result in an average temperature increase of 3.6°C.
***Despite concerns over global warming, a binding agreement to limit emissions may be difficult to achieve at UN climate change talks to be held in Paris in December. Proposals may face opposition from developing nations such as India who are fearful that curbs on fossil fuel burning will limit the potential of their economies…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11615079/Shell-CEO-carbon-bubble-campaigners-ignores-reality.html
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‘So in addition to arguing against the alleged need for CO2 emissions reductions, I believe skeptics might usefully argue for increasing CO2 emission levels to the extent that this will promote economic development (and in time environmental improvements).’
Alan Carlin (WUWT guest post)
70
Jo, I like your writing style and approach to the topic, so I visit this blog every once in a while.
I wonder if you should not reconsider your references to religion. I am no fan of it but I wonder if a simple word like ‘fanatic’ is not more appropriate. After all, many religious people are decent folk, whatever our opinion of their beliefs. And, let us be honest, AGW is not a religion in any serious sense of the word. Figuratively, perhaps. But not otherwise.
Anyway, thanks for sharing. Be well, a friend.
50
Brute, I don’t think that Jo is suggesting that either the religious folk or the CAGW folk are indecent by nature, but simply that there is a common element in how the belief systems of both are supported, propagated and reinforced. Indeed those two belief systems and their adherents probably have heaps of overlap.
50
You are correct, Joe. I took the meaning in context to be “fanatic” and perhaps the fault lies with me. And, again, you are also correct in pointing out that a person might believe in AGW and be a decent human being. A double error on my part.
I wonder, nonetheless, if the word religion is not being used with frivolity in the context of this discussion. It is, unless I’m mistaken, used to imply “unquestionable obstinacy” and “aggressive intolerance towards others”.
00
‘AGW is not a religion in any serious sense of the word.’
They tell fairy tales and have high priests, it looks like a religion to me.
70
Sorry Jo but at the risk of sounding like a pedant: Climate change is settled.
We know the Earths climate has changed for at least 4 billion years and there is no reason to think it will not continue to change for as long as the planet exists.
What is not settled is the hypothesis that small increases in the levels of a trace gas in the atmosphere is going to result in catastrophic disruption, by warming, to the climate system and cause the end of humankind.
It is amazing how the global warming believers have got us all reacting to the word climate change as if it is the same thing as global warming. We need to start calling out these people for what they are.
The UWA has been captured by the global warming lobby not climate science or anything to do with science.
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DonS they don’t mean “global warming” and they don’t mean “climate change” nor do they mean “ACD”,which never really took off as I think people are really over this garbage. They are refering to thermal runaway caused by man (greedy westerners mostly) burning ancient fossil fuels (as opposed to recently grown stuff) which generate the noxious pollutant called carbon dioxide, the affect of which is amplified by H2O. This is too big a mouthful for them to regurgitate and most have forgotten the basis for their belief anyway (I won’t say religion out of respect). Asking if someone believes in “climate change” or “global warming” is a way of wrong footing that person. Does one answer “yes” or ask “what do you mean by climate change/global warming”. You can answer yes and be added to the list of believers or elaborate and exceed the attention span of the questioner. Needed to get that off my chest!
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Perhaps it’s time we stopped calling ourselves “Climate Sceptics” or “Climate Change Sceptics” or even “Global Warming Sceptics”.
It’s hard to dispute that:
(a) the Earth’s climate has always changed and is still changing;
(b) the Earth has warmed a bit since the Little Ice Age and may still be warming (erratically)
What we do dispute (for many reasons) is the notion that carbon dioxide is a major driver of the Earth’s temperature. Thus we should call ourselves “CO2 Sceptics”.
StefanL
CO2 Sceptic
10
I wonder if this observation has any contributory factor to current academic standards?
Back in the 1980s when I was an adult student doing my first degree I was really intrigued to find that well adjusted and or academically gifted graduates got good jobs with bachelor degrees. Those who didn’t get jobs were largely less well adjusted psychologically and towards the bottom of the class. As these people couldn’t get jobs and as education was still government subsidised they went on to Masters degrees and if they couldn’t get jobs, then on to PhDs. they were then offered temporary positions at low pay teaching students often moving slowly up the ranks of the university. So many of these people are now senior lecturers and even professors. They weren’t very good when doing their first degrees and still aren’t clear thinkers nor very good at what they do. But they hung on in there firstly taking scrappy jobs then being in the job and non-demanding of the institution while supporting the local politics with everything they had – remember they couldn’t get jobs in the outside world, so they weren’t going to blot their copy-books by going against the status quo in the university. I was aware at the time that probably half those doing PhDs when I did mine were of this ilk.
60
It’s the old story: those who can do, do. Those who can’t do, teach.
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Retired now: I don’t know which country you’re from, but here in my part of the UK it was necessary to have a good first degree (2(i) or a ‘first’) to be in any chance at all of getting into a science-based Ph.D. in the 1970s – only the best ones academically were recruited.
JLC: I can’t agree with the ‘those who can’t do, teach’ saying – a good teacher is worth their proverbial weight in gold, and those with plenty of experience in their field even more so.
I do however wonder if the Ph.D. is now a shadow of what it used to be, given the climate ‘science’ out there!
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This was the 1980s in New Zealand. The government opened up advanced degrees to as many as possible – to encourage the knowledge economy and to keep graduates off the unemployment lists as that didn’t look good.
I agree that while a good teacher is worth their weight in gold, just that the practicality of the issue is that few go into teaching because they will be great at it, many had it as a fall back position.
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Retired Now, here’s a view from the US in the 1970s:
The baby boom brought huge growth in students from 1965-1975, with concomitant increases in funding and need to fill tenured positions. I abandoned a lifelong interest in an academic science career in the mid-70s because almost all the tenured positions were already held by people 5-10 years older than me. It was painfully obvious to me and any of my classmates who could count that academic career paths were severely limited for the next 20 years (shrinking demand, fixed supply) unless one was willing to be a postgraduate peon for the foreseeable future (or too stupid to pursue anything else).
Furthermore, the seeds of the New Left lock on the Academy were already apparent–leftist activism, creeping political correctness and an attitude that noble ends justify intellectually dishonest (and unscientific) means.
So I bailed out of graduate school and took an MBA instead.
No regrets. I’m now a science writer with economic and financial knowledge as well as freedom from the academic monoculture.
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Somewhat O/T but quite remarkable:
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2015/05/btl_20150521_1930.mp3
The ABC’s RN giving fair time to Nigel Lawson
My only real criticism of Tom Switzer (ABC) is his continued and deliberate use of the phrase “carbon emissions” in place of the accurate “carbon dioxide emissions”. One wished Lawson had taken a moment and asked Switzer directly for the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide
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Glad you found, and reported that Ian. Wow. And it was on the ABC. My mind is boggled.
Cheers,
Dave B
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Thank you Jo, in the case of the UWA, they seem to have proven that hubris can cause collateral damage, to themselves, I truly hope.
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And I would like to support the Australian Taxpayers Alliance!
However they have a skimpy web site! They cannot answer their telephone and they do not have PayPal.
Would I trust them with my credit card details?
Well I decided not to.
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They’ve got a valid ABN. Valid business registration. Definitely not a fly-by-night operation.
It’s a small organization. Financially too small to register for GST so they won’t have somebody sitting around, waiting for a phone call.
Their web site is basic. So what? If your core business isn not to provide online services or to deliver services online, then anything beyond a basic site is a waste of resources. Very few people have the talent to quickly develop a secure web site that’s comparable to the flash commercial ones which cost upwards of $100,000 to build; and a fair proportion of that in annual maintenance.
If you employ one person full time just to answer the phone and to sound reasonably intelligent, you need to earn about $100,000 just to pay them a fair wage, allowances, insurances, … So the first $100,000 in donations has to go to just that one employee.
They’re trying to raise $30,000 for a one-off advert (campaign).
The “cheapskate” image is in line with the stated “vision” of the organization: “to transform Australia into the low-tax, small-government market-based economy needed for continued personal and economic prosperity.”
i.e. they’re setting a good example.
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So write them a cheque and send it snail mail.
The stamp will cost you 70c.
Your excuse is pathetic.
No cheque-book?
Use a Postal Note.
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OK,
Sending a cheque is a good idea!
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My Latin is worse than your’s Jo. I propose the following motto for the activist-managed UWA:
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News Ltd has the following, but i can find nothing on ABC or in Fairfax or in The Guardian, for that matter:
21 May: UK Daily Mail: Belinda Grant Geary: Greenpeace slammed for using photo of storm-ravaged Philippines coral in new ad claiming government is putting Great Barrier Reef under threat
Greenpeace under-fire for using non-Australian images in recent campaign
The campaign was released leading up to a UNESCO vote about whether the Great Barrier Reef is in danger
Greg Hunt said Greenpeace’s campaign is ‘dishonest and deceptive’
Greenpeace said it never claimed the image was taken in Australia
The offending image was taken after a typhoon ravaged the Phillipines
The controversial campaign, which is posted on Australian bus shelters, features two very contrasting images of a coral reef.
On the left is a picture of bright, vibrant and thriving coral, while the image on the right features a pile of damaged, bone-white coral with a warning: ‘Don’t let them turn this, into this.’
Upon completing further research, it was discovered the image of the damaged reef was taken at Apo Island’s marine sanctuary in The Philippines, which was severely damaged by two typhoons in the past four years…
The Federal Minister for Environment, Greg Hunt, said Greenpeace has been ‘caught out’ by its own website in a ‘deceptive campaign to have the Great Barrier Reef listed in danger.’
‘It is another example of how Greenpeace and a number of the green groups are using the Great Barrier Reef in a dishonest campaign domestically and internationally.’…
Shani Tager, reef campaigner for Greenpeace, told Daily Mail Australia that the government’s claims were completely unfounded.
‘The advertising you are referring to was intended to show visually what we want to have, with the healthy reef, and what we are trying to avoid, with the damaged reef…
‘The intention of the campaign was to visually depict what is at stake for the future of the Great Barrier Reef. We never said they were two pictures of Australia.’
Mr Tager said images are an important tool to show the public ‘what is at stake in the future.’
‘It is so easy to get stuck in the details of complex policy issues, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to if we want a healthy reef or one that has been devastated. The pictures portray that.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3090545/Reef-beef-Greenpeace-denies-government-claim-new-ad-campaign-tries-deceive-people-believing-Great-Barrier-Reef-destroyed.html
21 May: Rockhampton Morning Bulletin: QLD Senator takes on Greenpeace over false advertising
GREENPEACE is under fire from Senator Matt Canavan after it was allegedly caught substituting a photograph of a typhoon-damaged reef in the Philippines in an advertisement about the Great Barrier Reef.
Mr Canavan, a Rockhampton-based senator, said environmental organisations should be held to the same advertising standards as any other business.
“If a public company did that sort of thing, they could be charged with false advertising,” he said…
“Greenpeace and other anti-mining activists are campaigning against job-creating mine and port projects by falsely suggesting those projects will destroy the Great Barrier Reef…
Mr Canavan said environmental lobbyists continued to collect millions of dollars in tax-deductible funding to employ advertising agencies, lobbyists and demonstrators to try to sabotage resource development projects.”This is the sort of activity that should be examined by the current House of Representatives inquiry into tax-deductible eco-charity donations and the extent to which they are used in supporting communities genuinely taking practical action to improve the environment,” he said…
http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/qld-senator-takes-greenpeace-over-false-advertisin/2646224/
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[…] news. Nigel Lawson on the ABC! Jo Nova retrieving some value from the wreck of the Lomborg centre at […]
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i can only access a small part of the following, but the politics are clear in these excerpts:
19 May: Financial Times: Jamie Smyth: Great Barrier Reef: Battle under the sea
Environmentalists wage a high-profile campaign against Australia’s mighty coal industry
Environmental groups including Greenpeace and WWF are bankrolling a ***multimillion dollar campaign to save the reef, the earth’s largest living organism, which stretches for 2,300km along Queensland’s coast.
The battle threatens to embarrass the Australian government, which campaigners claim is failing in its duty of care for the reef. Next month Unesco’s World Heritage Committee, which first raised concerns in 2011, will decide whether to place the reef on its “in danger” list, a move designed to pressure governments into more vigorous conservation efforts…
***The campaign played a role in the defeat of the previous Queensland government. Now activists are focusing on the pro-coal policies pursued by Tony Abbott, prime minister, casting doubt on his government’s commitment to tackling climate change and reducing the economy’s dependence on fossil fuels.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5fa694fa-fae8-11e4-9aed-00144feab7de.html
Mumbrella includes pic of the deceptive ad:
18 May: Mumbrella: Greenpeace posts warning of Reef devastation in new global advertising campaign
Greenpeace has launched a new global advertising push with a stark warning over the future survival of the Great Barrier Reef.
The organisation’s ad shows a thriving and colourful reef next to a dead coral wasteland, with the words ‘Don’t let them turn this….into this’.
The ads will appear in buses and trams in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane from next week and will run until the end of June.
The creative was produced in-house using stills from nature cinematographer and photographer Daniel Stoupin.
A Greenpeace spokesman said the campaign aims to demonstrate what will happen to one of the world’s most unique natural environments if a mine being proposed for construction on the north Queensland coast gets the go ahead…
A different version of the advertising will be launched internationally.
http://mumbrella.com.au/greenpeace-posts-warning-of-reef-devastation-in-new-global-advertising-campaign-294475
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apparently it was Graham Lloyd who broke this story:
21 May: MichaelSmithNews: Greenpeace might as well have photoshopped Tony Abbott with a stick of gelly into a photo
Anyone surprised? Here’s The Australian’s Graham Lloyd writing in the paper today:
—Greenpeace accused of substitute reef ruse
Environment group Greenpeace has been accused of running a deceptive campaign by using images of a typhoon-ravaged coral reef in The Philippines as part of its global bid to have the Great Barrier Reef declared in danger….
Ironically, the sanctuary has been used elsewhere by Greenpeace as an example of how coral reefs are capable of recovery… — etc http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2015/05/greenpeace-might-as-well-have-photoshopped-tony-abbott-with-a-stick-of-gelly-into-a-photo.html
P.S. unrelated, but still not a hint anywhere online as to the identities of the two hapless abseilers at the 350.org Commonwealth Bank anti-coal protest in Melbourne yesterday. such shyness seems so out of character.
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A MUST READ:
19 May: Quadrant: Tony Thomas: March of the Climate Cult Kiddies
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition seems a formidable bunch. Its leaders, for example, use their vast membership roll as a weapon, such as badgering the Big Four coal-lending banks “on behalf of 110,000 young Australians”. The number dwarfs membership of the Liberal Party, about 80,000, and the Labor Party, 54,000.
Along the way, co-founders Anna Rose and Amanda McKenzie have been showered with honours and accolades from Labor governments, business, media (Fairfax), academia, even non-political Rotary. Rose’s latest citation, ACT Finalist for Australian of the Year 2015, says AYCC “now boasts more than 110,000 young Australians who are standing up for their future.”.
But there is something odd about this membership roll, which the 2014 annual report puts at 120,000. First, it’s free to join…
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/05/attack-climate-cult-kiddies/
Bolt has a thread on the above:
22 May: Bolt Blog: How to breed young warming extremists
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_to_breed_young_warming_extremists/
just noticed Bolt has also put up a thread on the Greenpeace Deception.
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Jo,
No. They were putting other academics and professionals on notice. i.e. If you go against the ‘meme’ or ‘status-quo’ or ‘concensus’ be prepared to have your good name dragged through the mud. Relentlessly.
Abe
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Codewords: Restore the Middle Class translates to “empower the unions”. So how did we get to where we are? And how is a protectionist regime gonna help?
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About 10 years ago I worked at a well known mining firm with a recent geology graduate from UWA. This graduate had managed to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree with Honors majoring in Geology, whilst at the same time being a young earth creationist who literally viewed the Earth as only being a few thousand years old. I was astounded, not only at the ignorance of well established facts about their chosen fields, but that UWA had failed so utterly to bestow this student with any critical thinking faculties whatsoever.
Sadly, I am not terribly surprised by this latest turn of events.
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As a Christian, I am compelled to explain this every time I see this assumption. The Bible does not say the Earth and the Universe were created in 6 of our days about 6000 years ago. It says, in the Hebrew, It was 6 periods of time (Hebrew word YOM). Each day could therefore be up to 600-700 Million years in length. Using 6 days 6000 years ago as a basis to establish the events of Creation is absurd and shows the lack of understanding of Religionists and Academics. True Christians know how the Lord works and base their Faith on facts and experiences not on what someone tells them to believe. For example, in the church I go to, We are told don’t believe us just because we say it is true. Believe because you have experienced what the Bible says to do.
The method of Salvation is simple: Repent and be Baptised and you shall receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost (Acts ch.2vs38). Also, when you have received the Holy Ghost, ther will be certain Signs in evidence (Mark ch.16vs15-20). The first sign you can practically use when you receive is to “speak in new Tongues” as verse 17 says. It is proof that you have done what the Lord says to do but it is only the beginning. For more google Revival Fellowship for your nearest assembly (we are Worldwide). My name is Craig and I go to the Morley, Western Australia Assembly. Happy Trails.
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