“What data?” David Suzuki on Q&A 2013
It’s a science debate, and Suzuki pops up again, as he does periodically, with innuendo, namecalling and feets of logic. (He’s reasoning with both feet.) He’s not even offering well researched ad hom attacks. They’re not only irrelevant and unscientific, they’re wrong too.
On June 18, Suzuki told us that irrational attacks diminished the debate. On Sept 1, Suzuki is firing fallacies, no data, no research, no reasoning.
David Suzuki, National Observer: Deniers are all over the map; climate realists all over the world
He laments that political leaders are not gullibly swept away (as he is) by baseless rumours, ad hominem attacks and articles in The Guardian. I can’t think why myself, but Suzuki explains, with his science guru hat on, that there is an”enormous” amount of fossil fuel funding, which is also secretive and unrevealed. I guess he’s putting his psychic powers to the test. Who needs evidence or sources anymore?
Suzuki really unleashes his full fantasy ad hom. Fossil fuels are funding practically every player in the US, UK and Canada: Heartland, GWPF, ICSC. Even the unfunded, volunteer run, Watts Up is an “industry funded website” – I bet Anthony Watts can’t wait for those cheques to start arriving. (Neither can I). For the record, Climate Depot gets 80% of it’s support from citizens. It has thousands of supporters.
Deniers are all over the map; climate realists all over the world, David Suzuki, National Observer
“Part of the problem is that fossil fuel interests spend enormous amounts of money to sow doubt and confusion, often by funding or setting up organizations like the Heartland Institute in the U.S., the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the U.K., Ethical Oil and Friends of Science in Canada and the International Climate Science Coalition, based in this country but affiliated with similar organizations in Australia and New Zealand and with close ties to Heartland. A number of industry-funded websites also promote fossil fuels at the expense of human life, including Climate Depot and Watts Up With That?”
This line of attack is so old, it’s like Suzuki got trapped in 2007, but the world moved on. When Suzuki finds out that Royal Dutch Shell has been lobbying against coal, funding “progressive” think tanks, and promoting carbon capture, he’s in for a headache. When he finds out Exxon paid four times more to the Stanford Global Climate and Energy project, than they every gave to “deniers” he’ll have to become a skeptic.
Someone needs to tell Suzuki that “fossil fuels” are not just one industry, with one union and one big chumpy PR office, but industries called coal, oil, gas, and shale, and they all compete with each other. Big-Oil and Big-Gas like the anti-CO2 message because it hurts Big-Coal, their main competitor. Big-Gas like wind farms, because they are useless erratic things, and any country afflicted with them needs gas powered turbines. But the world is such a complicated place.
All skeptics are wrong because they don’t all say the same thing?
Apparently skeptics have been falsified because thousands of independent unfunded people cannot agree on one single theory. They should only have one permitted opinion, (like believers do, right, because that’s how science advances, one dogma at a time?):
In a Guardian article, co-author Dana Nuccitelli said their study found “no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming.” Instead, “Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on.”
A consensus is profoundly unscientific, and Suzuki ferments that fallacy. Argument from authority, here we come:
Nuccitelli and fellow researchers Rasmus Benestad, Stephan Lewandowsky, Katharine Hayhoe, Hans Olav Hygen, Rob van Dorland and John Cook note that about 97 per cent of experts worldwide agree on a cohesive, science-based theory of global warming, but those who don’t “are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.”
Cook found 64 papers out of 12,000 that support the consensus. In Cook-calculations, 64 is 97% of 12,000 (when will Environ Res Letters retract it?). Believers not only cherry pick, ignore thousands of observations, but they are also bad at maths. There is no inconvenient data that skeptics “ignore”, there is only adjustimongered data that no one can recognise, and inconvenient data that believers won’t give to skeptics.
As David Suzuki said on June 18th 2015:
Canadians must continue to speak out for our water, land, air and wildlife, for justice for Indigenous Peoples, and for a clean energy future — without fear of harassment, intimidation and hatred.
Exactly. So when will David Suzuki stop calling dedicated scientists “deniers” and inventing fantasy claims about their motives and funding? If skeptics have got the science wrong, just explain it Dr Suzuki. There is not one single word of scientific truth in that article.
Suzuki explains how hard it is to be an activist:
…environmental advocacy has never been easy. As Heiltsuk community organizer and First Nations leader Jess Housty says, “Activism is hard. It pits you against forces that have a lot at stake, and who fight dirty and bite back hard.
I’ve spoken to thousands of environmental and community activists during many years of meeting with Canadians across this country. I’ve heard too many stories of people being harassed, ostracized, sued for standing up to large corporations and even fired from jobs because of their environmental advocacy.”
It’s true, it’s hard being a science advocate. We keep having to explain what logical fallacies are and whatthe scientific method is to people with PhD’s in environmental religions.
For the record, Climate Depot, Marc Morano and CFACT are mostly funded by concerned citizens. I asked Marc, and he replied:
“In its most recent 2014 annual report, CFACT reported that it had received 80% of its annual budget from citizen supporters, 16% from foundations, and 4% from corporations. It is not CFACT’s policy to identify particular sources of funding.
However, we can also report that the Climate Hustle film project has been funded 100% by the support of nearly 1,500 private individuals.”
The reason they, like Heartland, no longer discuss particular sources of funding is because of harassment by environmental activists who think views should be shouted down with innuendo and attacks rather than debated politely.
Once upon a time, when I was training in science communication, we went and saw David Suzuki “live” because he was held up as a prime example of what we should be when we grew up, so to speak. That tells you all you need to know about how immature the field is.
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I suppose that it is unsurprising that the likes of Suzuki rail on about, “Big Fossil Fuels”, while ignoring the distorting effects of,” Big Government”, without the slightest hint of irony? Big Government is far more dangerous to humanity than any conglomeration of business or industry.
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Agree Kevin. As Jo pointed out, Big Oil supports global warming to out compete Big Coal, and Big Gas supports wind power to compete with big Oil. But all the “Bigs” put together couldn’t contribute a fraction of the $Green Blob’s $trillions, and growing, even if they wanted to. And the “Bigs” produce useful and essential fuels to our civilization.
The $Green Blob contributes nothing as it wastes $trillions of taxpayer funds.
How the alarmists can say such things with a straight face is beyond me.
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The $Green Blob (as you aptly spell it) does not waste the $trillions. They spend it on travel and accommodation so they can protest and lobby at any meeting they take a dislike to. They also spend it on promotional material, and advertorials in trashy magazines.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot, they also pay themselves extremely good salaries, in a recompense for having to work in shabby offices, in run-down businesses premises, in the wrong part of town. Well, people would be less inclined to donate, if they thought that the organisation didn’t need the money.
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Rereke. I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
True these $Green Blobbers do spend a lot of money on travel that benefits airlines, hotels, etc. and they spend money for for print shops, radio, TV ads and so on. And of course, their salaries, offices, etc. that also pay workers and companies. So they do help some people. But I object to them wasting all this money when they could help workers and companies to do something worthwhile.
Infrastructure, agriculture, etc. for the poor in Africa, medical research, space research, any legitimate research on real problems. Something to advance our knowledge, our well being,our electric grids to protect against EMPs, and things of this nature. Last, but by no means least, they could reduce taxes and spending of big government, and start trying to live within a balance budget.
So, I think the $Green Blob wastes our money that does not need to be spent in the first place.
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Sorry, Leonard. I didn’t realist that using the “/sarc”, would be necessary. My bad.
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Guess It was my error. Should have asked you.
Forgive me, please.
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A couple of points:
1. Most Canadians fing Zusuki to be a major embarassment.
2. He hasn’t done a lick of science since his PhD disertation on fruit fly genetics; he is instead a talking head for the climate nuts. Since his PhD, he has only been employed by the CBC as a narrator and talking head. He is still on their payroll though he is also paid a princely sum by the Suzuki foundation, which he created to pay himself (although it is technically a non-profit so the eithical problems of that should be obvious not to mention the potential criminality of it).
3. Zusuki owns 4 mansions including 2 in greater vancouver, each of which is over 10,000 square feet and uses a huge amount of energy whether he it there or not. http://www.ottawasun.com/2013/10/10/david-suzuki-a-man-of-property His primary abode is a sprawling mansion in the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver, worth approximately $8.2 million.
4. He flies the world at your expense to tell you how evil mankind is and how we are all going to die of clmate change and warming.
5. He charges huge sums to preach to school children, and even more to preach at you.
6. When he appears at a university, it is in his contracts that he must be “escorted” by at least one pretty girl…who knew such selflessness existed. “Although the Dr. does not like to have bodyguards per se, he does not mind having a couple ladies (females) that would act as body guards in order that he may travel from one venue to another without being accosted too many times along the way,” Mary Milburn, who works in the college’s Dean’s office, wrote in an email to colleague Jim Anderson. “Why females you ask? Well, he is male.”
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/01/29/david-suzuki-appearance-cost-30000
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/the-nature-of-david-suzuki/
Is it any wonder many Canadians cannot stand him?
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Excuse the typo’s, having a hand missing 2 fingers makes typing a hit & miss affair.
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More “miss” than “hit”, I presume?
I have all ten fingers, and spell-checker is still my best friend.
Thankfully, we are judged by our thoughts and opinions, and not by our typing ability.
And on that basis, I rate your opinions highly. I will live with the typo’s.
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I wouldn’t worry. In my case it’s the missing corpuscles that are at fault.
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He should be 100% behind the non-emitting safest generation fuel type of all then … nuclear. Without checking, I imagine he isn’t.
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I sometimes wonder if the likes of Suzuki rail against ‘Big Oil” in the hope they will give them huge grants in order to shut them up.
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Mr. Ezra Levant a Canadian media personality, conservative political activist, broadcaster, and author has put together a pretty damning image of David Suzuki.
Overall it is not exactly flattering.
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To quote my Grandfather:
“He has the appearance of a man who was unlucky enough to fall into a midden, but fortunate enough to climb out with a gold piece in his mouth.
He must rail against everything and anything he can, in order to avoid any discussion regarding how the gold piece got into his mouth in the first place”.
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Rereke, your Grandfather was an exceedingly wise man, because he aptly describes how so much of influence and effect is brought about by happenstance and circumstance. Like most smart people I bet he refused to join a gang.
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…and by that I mean his mind was his own, not captive by any prevailing political more. I read what I wrote and realised it could be badly misconstrued!!
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Mr Ezra Levant was a presenter on the now closed Sun News Network Canada, he was a joy to watch in a media world of staged left wing sycophant’s, when the broadcaster finished the glee expressed with spitting vitriol from the left was absolutely disgusting even though expected, the biggest crime Ezra Levant seemed to be accused of was being conservative and Jewish.
Once again the hypocrisy of the left shows where they claim to be unbiased by using weasel words like embrace, community, diversity, celebrate, acceptance, or awareness only to dig up and use a horrible myth like anti-Semitism when it suits their propaganda agenda.
If revisiting past crimes seems appealing then having a selective memory has it’s drawbacks as we know only 70 years ago similar thinking idealists were rightly judged by good people that didn’t do nothing and evil did not triumph.
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Ezra’s now at the heart of TheRebel.media.
They’re dealing with the surge of bovine effluent related to the upcoming elections in Canada but manage to fit in the occassional story on Suzuki, et al.
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Thanks Bernd, I’ve found Canadian politics to be an interesting indicator of the bigger picture.
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Strangely, I don’t find that very comforting.
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http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/david-suzuki-bombs-on-qa-knows-nothing-about-the-climate/
An oldie but goldie illustrating the paucity of intelligent thought between the grey clad ears of the elderly buffoon.
I,m trying to remember my favourite quote from him,,, something like ” It is the CO2 trapped in the windscreen of cars which warms up the interior”” a Classic to be treasured ,demonstrating his all encompassing (lack of ) knowledge.
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I smiled then laughed. At the very least Dana Nuccitelli et al. should have stuck to the party line and claimed the assurance of ‘settled science’.
They unwittingly conceded that AGW remains a ‘a theory‘.
Someone at the UN will surely be administering a severe group knuckle rap.
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Only in your dreams, Manfred. I am sorry to say.
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My oversight. I omitted the /sarc tag RW. The absence of the UN reflexive auto-peddle ‘settled science’ stands in stark contrast to the predetermined UN definition of ‘climate change’ without end, Amen.
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Ah yes Manfred, truly the joys of settle science.
🙂
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An appeal to ignorance is the the best he can do?
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We really shouldn’t take the bait Eddy. That statement of his is just a rant not worthy of a response.
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No, Eddy, and I suspect it’s not the worst, either. I have moved amongst our young often, and I’m afraid that many ofthem see Suzuki as some form of
profitprophet. If we cannot break out of the union dominated educational groupthink prevalent here in Oz then I have no hope for us.00
Suzuki is an actor portraying a scientist evolved6 into an activist advocate. He is not even an ideologue but a professional promoter of a Cause. He is a hypocrite and a soapbox ranter. He calls himself an “Elder” as if he acquired an aboriginal heritage by adopting the image of a native owl.
As a Canadian, I find him embarrassing, an egomaniac with the reality of the blue-eyed Englishman who took on the name Gray Owl to support First Nation culture.
Suzuki is an artifact of the Canadian media and his bathroom mirror. He ain’t much but in small-pond Canada he is the biggest fish swimming around.
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I always remember Julius Sumner Miller. Now there was a scientist and a good actor, for all the right reasons. He was the guy that really got me interested in science. Suzuki would more than likely get me interested in motorbikes.
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I am amazed by the fury they can mobilise for those petty 3%. It is like a religion, where even the slightest questioning or opposition is condemned, because it could rub the right believe.
Their own believe must be on a very week foundation, since they attack every person that asks even the most polite question.
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Svend. The Marxist-Leninist in the USSR perfected this technique in the 20s and 30s. Admit nothing, deny everything, and counter attack. In addition to this, they invented Political Correctness (PC) to destroy the culture of western civilization. In the USA, they skillfully used education, academia, the press, and Hollywood to plant PC into our culture and it took root and has grown to what we see today.
For more information a good place to start is the Venona files. The leftist NYT reference to a book is here: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/haynes-venona.html
And a conservative take on the Venona files is here: http://www.conservapedia.com/Venona_files
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There is also Kent Clizbe’s book Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America
Kent seems to really know his stuff.
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Gai, thanks for bringing up Kent Clizbe. His “Willing Accomplices…” is a very good source in addition to the Venona files. Like you, I read his book and enjoyed it. I would give it a good recommendation.
Thanks again.
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Congratulations Svend (#5). Two red thumbs at time of writing this. Wear them as one would a medal. They represent an endorsement of the veracity of your post.
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That reminded me of an Australian Army joke from years ago: ‘There we were, three against 1000, up to our armpits in beer cans, and boy did those three give us hell.’ 🙂
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Tiresome, irrational and out of date, yet much of the media lap it up without thought.
And they wonder why they are losing circulation and viewers.
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Ah the Media, the “MSM” who treat us all like latrine buckets. They chase each others tails and stories, personal PA systems and mega egos attached, parroting each other for want of an original thought, wandering through the maze of information they are privileged to get only to find themselves back at the dead end. There are notable exceptions but they are few and far between and when they emerge, they are set upon like an injured chicken in the flock.
Journalists should set the same high bar for veracity as scientists should. If they don’t they are just cheerleaders, mostly for reasons they themselves don’t even understand and that makes them really DUMB.
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CEETEE,
Both my Brothers-in-law are journalists. The family is fifth generation newspapermen going back to the Civil war and Elijah Lovejoy’s era**. It is interesting to note that my husband and his youngest brother both think CAGW is a complete crock, while the middle brother, who was the only one to go to school to become a journalist, is a dyed in the wool hard core leftest. He also refuses to even LOOK at information that might push him out of his comfort zone.
Looks like the problem in journalism is brainwashing at the Uni level, but we already knew that.
**The family was friends and corresponded with Lovejoy and others who were part of the underground railway. After Lovejoy’s printing press was destroyed, and he was forced out of St. Louis, the families letters and journals were burned to protect the names of others. And so an important part of history was lost.
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Gai, I understand history and heritage and did not mean any disrespect to true pioneers. My beef is with the dross we have now and I have no doubt that they are the successful progeny of their respective ‘learning’ institutions. Hard core leftists are petrified by anything that threatens the sanctity of their deeply held prejudices.
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I never took it as disrespect. I was just showing a family example of a True Journalist, one willing to put his life on the line, his descendants and what a Progressive Education did to one of them.
At this point I have very little respect for journalists. There are good ones out there but they are brow-beaten into submission or fired if they do not toe the line.
Freedom of the Press means he who OWNS the Press is Free to print whatever crap he pleases.
I know of five different cases of suppression of the press that occurred during the fight over Animal ID and the Food Safety Modernization Act. In one case the article was yanked at the last minute by the owners of a big New York Magazine despite the approval of the editor. In two others the journalists were fired. In the fourth, the independent radio broadcaster was denied access to the equipment by his former business partner following demands made by Monsanto. In the last case a group was allowed a TV program on horses as long as they did not voice their opinions of Animal ID.
Much of this info comes via private e-mail when we were trying to get the MSM involved. At that point the scales fell and I realized just how slimy the MSM is.
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George Orwell, anyone…? I salute you Gai!!
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Hmm, Big Green is very well funded, including the hidden skimming off of taxpayer and unsuspecting charity donor money, with many people making good livings out of it.
There must now be scope for some anti-big-green charities, does anyone know of any that already exist?
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There’s a similar rant from Prof Peter Doherty in the latest Australian Geographic magazine titled “An evidence-based world” ~ the evidence being that 97% consensus nonsense. The article is a teaser for his latest book “The Knowledge Wars”.
He winds up:
“Knowledge is power ~ and empowered, we can seize the opportunity and act to promote the long-term well-being of our families, our species, and, indeed, of all complex life forms.”
How such an eminent scientist can side with this ‘religious’ fervour, I cannot fathom!
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Knowledge is not power, knowledge just is, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t demand, and it gains the holder nothing, unless it is shared.
If that is not understood by an Australian University Professor, he should resign forthwith, and book himself into a mental institution.
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Because if he doesn’t, his entire financial security and his career, collapses.
Jim
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So he will spend his entire life living a sham, and knowing he is living a sham, and also knowing that he did not have the cojones to do anything about it?
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That kind of depends on how craven he is. Knowledge and morality are not mutually inclusive
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I’m sure he believes what he says. What you don’t understand is that when you view someone like this, you’re looking into a parallel universe. You see the person and assume he’s in the same world you are, but he’s not.
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My favorite David Suzuki quote-
“Watch what people do, don’t listen to what they say, just watch what they do.”
David Suzuki, in Rescue the Earth! By Farley Mowat, 1990
Science has estimated that every child you have adds 9441 tons of CO2 emissions to your carbon skidmark.
Suzuki as five children.
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chris y,
Suzuki fathered 5 children, also produced the video PAUL EHRLICH AND THE POPULATION BOMB, for PBS.
Strange logic of the greens.
This video (I’m hoping I have the correct one) shows Suzuki explaining his nasty philosophy. The other video links and comments are truly frightening about how some people think.
Also here.
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The Left scarcely apply their rules to themselves. They are exempt in their minds because they are saving the world and therefore so much more important.
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Maurice Strong Also has FIVE children.
David Rockefeller has FIVE children.
Al Gore has four children.
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I have six children 🙂
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Yeah, but you are not pushing Population Control and the destruction of Western civilization.
The Hypocrisy of these guys is breath taking and yet when you point it out the bootlickers and adoring hangers on just shrug it off.
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Cool. Now just make sure you teach them to think properly. That way if you had ten it would be a cost benefit situation.
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Four that we know about, anyway.
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I didn’t even make a try at counting Bill “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” Clinton’s children.
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Thanks for the reminder, we are also embarrassed by Strong et al. Wish we could strip them of citizenship and toss them out of the best country on earth, but that wouldn’t be nice would it.
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Algore’s wife had 5 children, the first one was the one she married.
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Damn, that explains why I am not a mover and shaker on the stage of world affairs. I should have worked less, and bonked more.
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” I should have worked less, and bonked more”
I think that applies to us all !! 🙂
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Thanks for a good laugh RW! 🙂
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I made enough ‘cock-ups’ at work to cover the lack of bonking, so I’ll call it even….
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Like you Jo I saw Suzuki when he started touring in the early 70’s ( a was a lot younger then, 21) ans at first he made some sense. He was at the time really stressing the fact that Canada was becoming a third world nation, a few years later as I learned about our economy I saw his self serving tactics of “educating” the “people” when he started “the Nature of Things” on the taxpayers dime. It has only gotten worse with his bus tour and his “security” detail he is now just senile but still collecting taxpayers money ( via royalties) and has become a miniature Gore. What is so scary is the fact they don’t even dispute that anymore.
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“something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
(Hamlet: Act 1, scene 4)
off topic but of interest to Pat and Tony;
http://www.thegwpf.com/worlds-greenst-nation-readies-u-turn-on-ambitious-climate-targets/
After decades of selling surplus (i.e. unwanted) wind power at negative prices (giving it away) to Norway for hydro-storage and buying it back at premium prices when the wind doesn’t blow, the “worlds greenest nation” has admitted that its renewable energy business model sucks and is wrecking its economy. It beautifully mirrors the last time the green blob came to Copenhagen. Hans Christian Anderson himself could not
have made this up.
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My apologies if I am wrong, or if I misinterpreted your statement, but isn’t selling power at a negative price really just paying someone to take it?
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Yes. Think of it as a clearance sale on an overstocked energy market. You sell at a loss to avoid a complete write-off. Stores do it all the time.
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Jo superb article 😀
This struck me as being at the heart of the problem…
As a lowly engineer I look to Scientists and their work as the Standard, but when I am shown a patchwork “hockey stick” shaped graph, hear of temperature records throughout the world being edited and modified , shown computer model output that resembles Italian spaghetti and told that I must accept it ALL …because everyone (with a PhD) says so.
I have to ask questions….many questions
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On a serious note, it looks like the NDP could possibly form the next government in Canada after the forthcoming election, whereupon Suzuki will be in his element, lauded by one of the most socialist ecoloon political parties on the planet.
An NDP government in Canada will, as always, be an economic disaster, but at least Obama will have someone to talk to in Paris later this year, who will back him in his obsession for a legacy.
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What a horrible thought! Nanos’ polling machine is unabashedly anti-conservative, much like the MSM. Luckily, Canadians will not be dumb enough to vote in Angry Tom and his party. The Orange implosion is coming. Bring on another Conservative majority.
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There in a nutshell is the reason Suzuki felt obliged to open his noise hole.. The federal election.
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Suzuki is such a tool!
He looks like the character Mr. Miyagi from the original Karate Kid.
I can see him now instructing Obama on global warming, “Warm on, Warm off” and “Step back Obama san!” Unfortunately, its too late as there is Obama with his arms stretched out perched on one leg. Obama has about as much of a chance of persuading the American public that global warming is a threat as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest!
Is Suzuki still getting a salary or receiving a pension? What a worthless rent seeking piece of work this guy is!
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Or one of those aliens that they dragged out of those crashed spaceships all those years ago..
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Good to see you back here, Eddy.
I have missed your insights. I hope you have not been unwell?
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Thanks RW! My health is fine. I have been cancer free for over six years!
I just moved back to Southern California and I can see the ocean from my office. Now, I actually have time to comment once in a while so here I am.
I hope you are well. BTW, those recent thumbs up your comments received a few minutes ago were from me! I always learn something every time I read them! 😉
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Thank you. I am pleased. It has made my day.
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And you got 3 down ticks from the Lone Troll operating the night shift, although it stopped working between 6.10 & 6.20 am.
Check it out, all original comment got a thumbs down but few responses except yours copped the honour of being disapproved.
It is obvious that the Lone Troll didn’t read the comments, probably beyond his comprehension, but he had a little list of people who mustn’t be missed.
I think we should start a competition to see who gets the most thumbs down in, perhaps a year. We need to handicap this for frequent posters, so use the number of thumbs down as a percentage of posts. We would need a little statue like the Oscar for the winner, and obviously only a Troll would do. You could be a contender!
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I read these articles on my phone, scrolling the screen with my thumb. If I am scrolling with my right thumb it sometimes randomly clicks the “thumbs up/down” buttons unintentionally. I often probably don’t even notice, even so I don’t know if I can reverse the input. What I’m saying is that at least some negative impact is unintended and random.
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Suzuki is a pig ignorant fool who didn’t even understand about the various temp data-sets. I mean could anyone really be this stupid? Apparently yes if you’re the Suzuki numbskull.
Here he is on Q@A thanks to the Bolter.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/david_suzuki_proves_hes_pig_ignorant_about_global_warming/
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‘I’m not a climatologist. I wait for the climatologists to tell us what they’re thinking.’
David Suzuki
——
He’s in the same class as Flannery.
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“No, well, there may be a climate sceptic down in Huntsville, Alabama, who has taken the data and come to that conclusion.” – explaining UAH, though not sure what it was.
Maybe some skeptics haven’t snuck on board the satellites. Of course, they’d still need a buddy on the ground in Huntsville to send up supply rockets with food and water. They could fire the rockets with geothermal rocks from under Huntsville. According to Al, “it’s millions of degrees down there!”.
What do you think, David?
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One question for Climate Scientists – The Oceans
How much of the Ocean have we mapped and to what resolution ? (okay that was two)
and just how much do we know about the Ocean Floor? (okay three ..)
The ocean is covers more than 70 percent of the planet’s surface, driving weather, regulating temperature, and is the basis on which ALL coupled climate models work
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html
Yet for all of our reliance on the ocean, 95 percent of this realm remains unexplored, unseen by human eyes.
The entire ocean “floor” has now been mapped to a maximum resolution of around 5km, which means we can see most features larger than 5.0km across in those maps.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/just-how-little-do-we-know-about-the-ocean-floor/
But there is only so much that the gravity map can do. It can resolve sea-floor features to about 5.0km, which is enough to discover a seamount but not enough to pinpoint smaller features
Getting down to a resolution of about 100 meters will still require research ships pinging sonar to the seafloor. sharper detail requires the time-consuming process of towing sonar apparatus behind a ship.
Thus less than 0.05 percent of the ocean floor has been mapped to a level of detail useful for detecting items such as the spires of undersea volcanic vents
so …
when Scientists such as Suzuki claim they are the realists …. ?
oy vey !
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Apart from a very small amount of geothermal heat the dominant heat input to the oceans is through the surface. If you have ever tried to heat a saucepan of water with a blow torch on the surface you will know that convection works against the heat transfer from top to bottom. Same situation with oceans. From a heat storage perspective only the first 500 to 700m really matter up to the state of snowball earth:
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse/ocean/images/graph.jpg
In the snowball condition a 1km thick layer of ice is enough to insulate the oceans from heat loss enabling the geothermal heat input to keep everything below 1km deep in liquid state.
In my view there could be a good deal of historic climate information stored in the long thermal lag of the oceans but I expect it will be a long time before that is ever revealed.
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follow @viviankrause for more insight as to who pays whom. Her website postings on suzuki are revealing.
fair-questions.com/media-coverage
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I have. The money trail is very interesting. If it were anyone else involved, we would call it money laundering.
00
Here is a reference to a psychological study of the failure of a prophecy which may be relevant to believers in the failed CAGW hypothesis.
When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World is a classic work of social psychology by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter which studied a small UFO religion in….
“When Prophecy Fails” on @Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails?wprov=sfia1
81
O/T, but interesting: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that Britain can make a fortune storing carbon http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11840558/AEP-Lucky-Britain-to-win-21st-century-jackpot-from-carbon-capture.html
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Just read it.
Interesting isn’t the word for that one. Whatever that guy is smoking, it isn’t legal.
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I saw a Suzuki lecture once.
His audience loudly applauded two proclamations:
Firstly that we* have too much ‘stuff’. Secondly, that the solution to the overpopulation crisis** was to give women employment***.
* ‘We’ being the poor students (pun intended), not globetrotting millionaire “environmentalist” corporate heads, like Suzuki.
** Not the ‘overpopulation crisis’ that was going to destroy England before the year 2000. Today’s one that just has too many other human beings alive for
Adolf’sDavid’s taste. Other people’s kids being the problem of course, not David’s five.***Apparently Suzuki thinks we should pay women in Monopoly money. Otherwise they’d just use it to buy ‘stuff’.
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No, David Rockefeller already implemented the idea in the USA. With two working you can then confiscate 1.5 salaries.
When I first started working in 1970, the overt tax was ~12% ( 4.7% Fed + 4.2% for SS + state) by 1980 it was up to 64.5 %. Thanks to inflation people were bumped up to much higher tax brackets without any actual increase in real wages. (It was just after 1970 that sales tax started spreading to most states.)
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As far as I am concerned that is a big black check mark on the positive side.
If ” fossil fuel interests spend enormous amounts of money to sow doubt and confusion,” then like the CAGW con artists we would have a very cohesive storyline that would be pushed by ALL the “fossil fuel” funded sites. The fact we are arguing amongst ourselves is a great big clue we are just individuals with more, less and different knowledge coming together for discussions of science and politics and not a slick propaganda machine.
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I guess we already knew that the hysteria would reach fever pitch before the knees-up in Paris. There is more to come yet. Lots more.
(PS, Thanks for the recent email Jo, apologizing for the delay in posting a previous comment. I didn’t ask for it, or expect it. It’s actually the first time I have ever had such an email from any website owner, which is pretty conscientious for someone who isn’t getting funded by big anyone.)
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Susuki has at least 4 houses and 5 kids so exactly what does he have to get all preachy about ? Didn’t he have a place in Australia ? Well maybe that was before “carbon footprints ” became so politically incorrect .
Imagine if we all had nice little cottages in Australia ?
His one house in Vancouver,(KITS) area, is located in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in North America . Susuki Foundation collections can pay a lot of bills . Talk about waiting for cheques to role in .
How much has David Susuki received from the foundation and which energy ,fossil fuel and utility companies have made contributions to the foundation ?
Hypocrite is too kind .
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Saw Mr Suzuki some years ago and he came across as rude and arrogant in his manner.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/david-suzuki-bombs-on-qa-knows-nothing-about-the-climate/#comment-1321087
KK
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Prof. and talking head Brian Cox http://www.climate-resistance.org/2015/06/brian-coxs-weird-science.html , and Bill Nye are just as bad and dangerous as Mr. Suzuki
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I did not find a reference to it anywhere but a long time ago, Suzuki co-hosted some sort of a science show on CBC radio with Faruiza Balk. It seemed like they used each others name, annoyingly, in every sentence. It was all about self promotion and brand building. I can’t stand the sound of his voice to this day.
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This guy is very weird, a hypocrite with multiple homes and did some fruit fly studies decades ago. He has been successful in parleying a journalist career into a multi-million$ fortune, is well regarded by many, but nothing but a really weird charlatan IMO.
his weirdness pops up when he lectures at schools’,he demands to be escorted around by all the good looking girls but never takes question. He sort of thinks he is a king….
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Are we talking about adult “girls” or children that he demands escort him?
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My other half said that would have led to an immediate cancellation of his appearance at any place he ran.
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He also had a series of sexual harrassment allegations against him years ago but they mysteriously “went away”
20
I found this link on a CBC Radio page with something about Suzuki.
“Should gas pumps have climate change warning labels”.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-234-heckling-as-sexual-harassment-anti-nsa-pranks-the-police-chief-who-won-t-arrest-addicts-more-1.3080851/should-gas-pumps-have-climate-change-warning-labels-1.3080894
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The warmists are fighting in vain,
For their anthropogenic false claim,
With their incessant raving,
For the planet they’re saving,
Which skeptics consider inane.
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On the funding issues: http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=c1a59624-ab64-45f1-8aa6-96d57cdd0689&c=8f4f1c20-2926-11e4-ba9e-d4ae5292c2ac&ch=8fb0c420-2926-11e4-babb-d4ae5292c2ac
I keep pointing out that the real problem for global warming people is that the skeptic arguments are far more convincing. I think the warmists are actually mad that underfunded, non-professionals scientists are more convincing than their well-paid propaganda folks, including Al Gore. For all the money put into this global warming thing, there should have been a better return on the money. Guess you can’t elevate a bad idea and poor science to a national policy level unless you have no opposition.
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Jo wrote:
Indeed so complicated that in some places that coal is so cheap that it costs less to keep brown-coal-fired power stations running than to keep gas turbines spinning. i.e. it’s cheaper to waste coal power or to pay others to take it away; than to buy the gas to keep gas turbines spinning. A number of the 57 power plants applying for permission to shut down in Germany; because they are operating at a loss; are OCGT (open-cycle gas turbine) and CCGT (combined cycle gas-turbine) plants. IIRC, some of them aren’t even 10 years old.
So even a grossly distorted energy market, where priority of supply is mandated to the subsidized unreliables, brown coal still ends up being cheaper than gas; especially where the gas isn’t domestic and the coal is being dug up at next to the power plant. Stack emission control and ash collection costs are offset by revenue from by-products such as gypsum and ash as a cheaper and better alternative to cement.
Germany should have learnt from the 40-year “experiment” of the GDR that a command economy does not work. Government forcing subsidies for production of a particular thing in any market only disrupts the industry and causes consumers to pay more for a product of lower quality. Perverse effects, such as the oned described here, are normal.
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Bernd writes this:
There’s something in this that green urgers and believers will NEVER understand.
Coal fired power is so cheap that, hey, who cares, just leave the thing running. It costs less to keep running than to shut it down and then go through all the procedure to get it back operational again.
Greenies actually think that they can shut those coal fired plants down. They think that if they put in wind plants, then they also will force coal fired plants to shut.
Coal fired power, nearly all of them, can generate their power for around $28 to $35 per MWH which equates to 2.8 to 3.5 cents per KWH, and the generating entity is still making a profit. Even at a fraction of a cent profit, then a typical large scale coal fired plant, which is making around $600 to $700 million a year just from the sale of electricity, and a fraction of a cent is still around $100 million clear profit. They can actually afford to keep the plant on idle, or spinning/rolling reserve. All their costs are calculated over the life of the plant, 40 to 50 years, and with most of them going out beyond that 50 years, then it’s virtually years and years and years of free money, so they just keep the plant running, and any costs they miss out on by not actually selling the electricity, hey who cares, they are still making heaps.
When you are actually generating humungous amounts of power, then a few days here and there is absolutely nothing.
The same with wind power. Coal fired plants just know, (unlike wind power urgers and believers) that sooner or later, the wind is going to drop and they will be getting the call from the grid controller to start delivering. They just roll up from idle to max, set the frequency to the grid, and hey presto, power on tap, in huge amounts and at a fraction of the cost of virtually everything else.
Green believers will never understand this, thinking they can just shut down coal fired power.
When you generate absolutely huge amounts of power, something renewbles will never do, then it’s easy just to wait for the call while the plant still hums along.
Tony.
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Also, remind the Greens that oil companies love renewables. Renewables are a great way to get government money. Virtually all large oil companies own wind plants and some solar. They make a guaranteed amount of money from these whether or not they produce what was promised. They get generous tax breaks and were getting generous handouts. The Greens are in effect giving the oil companies many millions of dollar through their green subsidies because there is no requirement that the builder not hold oil, gas or coal plants. Nor will there ever be. Warren Buffet, Anschutz in Colorado, Duke Energy will all make absolutely certain the gravy train keeps rolling. I keep pointing out that those “green projects” make tons of money for oil and gas, directly. Just keep repeating this over and over and over. One of the large contributors to oil and gas are the Greens through their renewable mandates. Oil and gas loves the Greens.
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Isn’t this the ‘crony capitalism’ the left loves to accuse the right of engaging in?
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No. Only the right can engage in crony capitalism. The left is pure of heart and would never do that. These are just good business dealings. (sarc)
If people actually knew what was going on and believed it, there would be a massive outcry. Sadly, few know and even fewer believe. Liberals have huge finance machines and are some the richest people in the USA. Yet their faithful followers just think that because these people “care” it’s wonderful. Never mind these same people make a fortune off oil and gas. George S*ros bought coal stock when it fell after the EPA regs were announced, but that was no big deal. (The * is to hopefully circumvent moderation for using said person’s name.)
40
Can’t help myself.
Every time I hear Dr Karl on Your ABC waxing lyrical on any subject, but especially on CAGW, I keep getting a picture of David Suzuki in my head.
Yes, I am contemplating getting professional help with this problem.
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I saw Kruszelnicki once at a conference in the early 90’s. In those days before data projectors 35 mm slides were in use and the volunteer projectionist was having trouble with the projector which was not her fault. He refused to continue talking and demanded in front of everyone that the poor lass be replaced “with someone who knew what they were doing”. That incident is etched in my mind.
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Why, that’s even worse than giving Rudd the wrong sandwich or running out of Shorten’s favourite sausage rolls. Dr Karl should have struck that serf with a riding crop.
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Isn’t it interesting how Lefties tend to treat people badly.
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OH Boy DO they ever!
Senator Edward Kennedy, aside from drowning a pregnant girl**, was well known for his bad treatment among those who had the bad luck to serve him.
It came out one election cycle that he had been paying for economy class flights from Boston to DC and then sitting his fat rump down in first class. As expected, it caught up with him when first class was fully booked on one flight. The attendant went nuts trying to find who didn’t belong and finally had to ask the Senator for his ticket which he refused to show. The co-pilot and the pilot finally had to confront the Senator and then asked him to move to his correct seat. The Senator refused and had the entire flight crew FIRED!!!
This story hit talk show radio and I was listening as caller after caller after caller told about the rude nasty and unfair treatment they had received at the hands of Edward Kennedy and how he got them fired. Shortly after I asked my neighbor if he had heard the show. He had. I asked if he was still going to vote for Kennedy and he said he was. I asked why and he said ‘because he has done so much for us.’ When I asked for examples he could not name even ONE! Kennedy’s voting record was voting on 3% of the bills that came up for vote.
Such is the mind deadening power of propaganda. It can make you think being flayed alive is nice.
…….
***I know the daughter of the first responding officer in the ‘accident’ Talk about a major cover-up!
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“Ronald Reagan would constantly interact with his secret service agents and other staffers who worked for him. He was apologetic when he would take secret service agents away from their families on holidays. While Carter would make secret service agents pay for any leftover food they consumed after White House parties, we are told Reagan would insist the secret service eat leftover food (without charge, of course)…Vice President Al Gore was exceedingly obnoxious to his agents according to Kessler. When scolding his son for not doing well in school, Gore chastised him by warning that “if you don’t straighten up, you won’t get into the right schools, and if you don’t get into the right schools you could end up like these guys.” The “guys” Gore was referring to were his secret service agents!” – Free Republic
I wonder how it feels to know you might have to take a bullet for Al. Or see him living and flying high on the money you paid him to be called one of his “climate ambassadors”.
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The Secret Service really hates Hitlery Clinton. An old story said she expected them to carry her luggage a real no-no for a bodyguard. When they refused she screamed at them in vulgar language.
Here is a newer story about a new book.
Hillary Clinton is so nasty to the Secret Service that they consider it punishment to be assigned to her
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Obama gets US Marines to hold umbrellas.. https://youtu.be/tSAKcKMncfY
10
Anyone with half a brains surely knows that people like David Suzuki follow a version of science not unlike superstition and religious bigotry. Why anyone would even listen to his crap is beyond me. But then I suppose there are lots of non-thinkers in society. It could be easily rectified if we had an honest and truly open media to bring the non-thinkers into reality.
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what is it with Canadians? jet-setting, media darling Klein’s political ideology remains rigid, even when Tony Jones points out PM Abbott prefers direct action as she does.
her claims about India & China makes no sense – her upcoming documentary will show Indians are against coal! lol.
what we have here are folks with tired, old ideas masquerading as the progressive’s idea of “dangerous ideas”.
their ideas are “dangerous” … but not in the way they mean.
suitably set in the luxurious, elitist, environment of the Sydney Opera House!
Transcript: 31 Aug: ABC Q&A: Cheating, Climate, War & Democracy
Welcome to Q&A live from the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House.
CLIMATE VS CAPITALISM 00.24.41
ALEC RITCHIE: My question is for Naomi Klein. In your book, you suggest that combatting climate change is incompatible with capitalism, that we are locked in politically, physically, and culturally to a world that capital has made. Naomi, I am a diehard lefty, who would love nothing more than to grow organic beetroot with you in a communal system of food production that would be carbon neutral. Do you think we will ever be rid of such an environmentally destructive economic system?
NAOMI KLEIN: I’m a terrible gardener, I hate to but I can learn. You know, one of the things, I think that we’re hearing is that his economic system we have, which is very brutal, is failing us on a lot of different fronts…Of course we need to make the polluters pay. But, as you see here in Australia, right, when you have a right wing government that comes to power, it rolls back a carbon tax, it rolls back a mining tax, it takes the resources that we need to get off fossil fuels and invest in renewables…
TONY JONES: Can I just bring you up on that point, because you talk about the carbon tax which, of course, was going to become a market based system, a capitalist system essentially, of carbon trading, do you say that capitalism is not going to work at all because a carbon trading system is meant to be one of the key elements for bringing down emissions?
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, it’s failing miserably, by the way, in Europe, which has the largest Emission Trading Scheme in the world. The European trading system is riddled with fraud…And, rather than trying to create a market and pollution and create incentives and ways for corporations to make more money, you would respond the way we respond to collective civilisational crises in the past.
TONY JONES: Maybe strangely enough, Tony Abbott would probably agree with most of what you just said there. He is against the market based carbon trading system too.
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, he’s against…
TONY JONES: That’s why he is for direct action on climate change?
NAOMI KLEIN: Direct action. I’m in favour of direct action on climate change, too. I’m in favour of the people in the Bentley blockade, the people who have successfully stopped, so far, the Carmichael mine. I think direct action is great, especially when our politicians fail to act, but I’m referring to a different kind of direct action than your Prime Minister and I should say, you know, being a Canadian I live in a very large glass house. Our government rivals the Abbott Government in terms of climate criminality. We’re hoping to vote our government out soon, which might mean that Abbott will be quite isolated at the UN talks at the end of the year.
TOM SWITZER: What you’re hearing from Naomi is that she is quite frank that if we really want to decarbonise the global economy, we need to change the economic structure that has been in place for generations and she is being intellectually honest. Now, my disagreement with her would be that this is a radical agenda. It is bad politics because it stands virtually no chance of gaining widespread support, not just here in Australia but around the world, especially in those developing countries that are chugging along the smoky path to prosperity and I think it’s bad economics because, as unfashionable as it is to say so, history shows that capitalism, for all its flaws, is responsible for lifting so many people out of poverty and if you undermine the capitalist system, you’re going to entrench poverty, you’re going to hurt malnutrition, preventable diseases and many people would rightly say that is not just immoral but wicked…
NAOMI KLEIN: Wicked?…
NAOMI KLEIN: Look, you know, there’s a reason why climate change denial is so strong on the right side of the political spectrum. I mean, all the polls show this is that overwhelmingly those who adhere to a world view which doesn’t see a role for government, that believes that the market is always right, that people essentially deserve what they get, people who believe that overwhelmingly deny the reality of climate change or, you know, say it’s not such a big deal and they’re not concerned about it and the reason for that is that if the science is true, then their world view collapses. So, thank you for saying I’m intellectually honest…
TOM SWITZER: The broad cross section of conservatives, at least in this country, accept the broad science that there is a connection between carbon emissions and warming of the planet. I think there’s a general consensus about that. Where they would disagree is about the level of uncertainty. You know, we all sound like pub bores talking about this subject but it is worth reiterating the IPCC models that predicted that as the carbon emissions would sky rocket as they have during the course of the last 20 years, that would coincide with sky rocketing temperatures. Temperatures are going up but they’re going up marginally. They’re not in accordance with the model. So, this is where the doubt comes about. It’s not denial. It’s just healthy scepticism…
***NAOMI KLEIN: No, what it is, is spreading doubt and we have just come off the hottest July in record in the hottest year on record and the hottest year before that was the year before. Okay…
TOM SWITZER: Professor Richard Lyndon from MIT, Judith Curry from Georgia Tech, William Happer from Princeton. They’re distinguished – there are many distinguished climate scientists. Now, admittedly they are a minority but they take issue with the prevailing wisdom. But, look, there’s a broader point here and this gets back to the economic argument. If you decarbonise the economy, you are going to hurt a lot of developing countries. Now, you go to China, you go to India, their political leaders, their priorities are to grow their economy and reduce poverty…
TOM SWITZER: And the cheapest way of doing that for the foreseeable future is on the back of carbon based energy…
NAOMI KLEIN: …All of us in industrialised countries have a responsibility because we had a 200 year head start on burning coal ahead of India and China. So, if we want to support those forces in India and China, because these are huge, diverse countries, where there is a battle going on. There are people who, yes, want that dirty development model but there are also people who say you know, “I’m tired of sending my kid to school in a pollution mask. We can do this with renewables”. Both India and China have very ambitious renewable programs…
And, in India, yes, you know, Adani wants to build a coal mine but at the same time, you know, in my research in the documentary film we’ve made that’s coming out soon, we document an incredible uprising in Andhra Pradesh of people who are rising up to say we don’t want a coal burning power plant in our back yard, and they’re are uprisings like this across India…
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4277313.htm
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This was an interesting admission:
But viewed in the context of her later comments, it is quite clear she is a closet communist/socialist. She sees no redeeming features in markets.
To call her ignorant is insulting to ignoramii. I guess clueless is a better description.
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I have just had a phone call from a lady who was asking advice about interviewing her 91 year old father who is a holocaust survivor.
With the accusations of Climate Change denial, Does that make us Climate change survivors?
30
***talk about dumb!
1 Sept: Bloomberg: Wind-Power Producers Find Profits as Elusive as a Summer Breeze
by Jim Polson and Mark Chediak
Western wind production below five-year average, U.S. says Blue Arrow
NextEra earnings took a hit while NRG Yield cut its forecast
NextEra Energy Inc., NRG Yield Inc. and Duke Energy Corp. all said a lack of sufficiently windy days cut into second-quarter sales.
***And neither power generators nor forecasters seem to know exactly why.
“There was a definite trend with several utilities talking about weak wind resources,” said Shahriar Pourreza, a New York-based analyst for Guggenheim Partners LLC. “This isn’t something that has been major in the past so definitely a phenomena worth following to see if it’s sustainable or an anomaly.”…
Wind credits may reach $3.6 billion annually by the fiscal year ending in 2018, the committee reported…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-01/wind-power-producers-find-profits-as-elusive-as-a-summer-breeze
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Suzuki is known as “Dr Fruit Fly” to many Canadians. The Slime Stream Media consider him to be a saint, and never report anything that would make him look bad.
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Don Cherry is more credible on the environment than David Suzuki.
Canadians will understand.
Environmentalism — concern that we use resources wisely and don’t foul our own nest, is reasonable.
The “green” movement is a new surrogate religion for wealthy dilettantes.
There are all kinds of outlandish behavior that are relatively harmless if restricted to those who believe. No problem with obsession with healthy food, for example. Even OK if you want to promote your ideas, please provide data. But when you make it a social experiment by imposing on others, especially when you impose on others behavior that differs from your own…..
Face slap selfie! Ad hominam attacks are bad both ways. Besides, it is probably useless to let people know what you think of them when they don’t care. So I will show restraint and not rant. Would that the favor might be returned by the “activists”.
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I now call myself a conservationist to distinguish myself from the Marxist eco-nut who is using ‘Environmentalism’ as the sheepskin covering the wolf of Totalitarianism.
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I call myself a “Conservative Environmentalist”.
That really plays with their minds 😉
50
I call myself an “accidental conservationist” because never in my wildest dreams did I think that helping wisely use the resources we have and clean up messes we make would be vilified by the very people who called themselves “environmentalists”. In the beginning, environmentalists were supposed to be caring people who wanted to make the earth a better place. Now they’re rabid environmentalists who hate human beings (except of course themselves in notable exceptions). I never thought I’d be writing about why wind turbines kill millions and millions of bird and destroy habitat. After all, wasn’t that what environmentalists did—protect wildlife? It became clear that anyone protecting wildlife no longer was part of the environmental movement. So I took up the cause of conservation and protecting people from those environmentalists who were trying to destroy them.
AndyG55—I do like the term!
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I’ve been a conservationist all my life, and a hunter. Responsible stewardship is not what the greenies want.
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I have it in my memory that “conservation” is related to value. As in: conserving the value of timber til it is mature and ready for useful harvest and profit.
Greens don’t want anyone to profit. Indeed the word is a a curse word to them.
Hence Conservationists are enemies to Greens.
10
I have been called an extreme right-wing eco-nut, to which I thanked the naming-calling Uber-Leftwing Nasty.
20
A badge to wear with honour!
10
YES!!!!
Environmentalism — concern that we use resources wisely and don’t foul our own nest, is reasonable.
Thankyou, we’ve been living that for years!
30
sounds pretty rational to me:
2 Sept: UK Independent: Tom Bawden: Big Six energy companies have ‘quietly abandoned their green electricity tariffs’
The commitment of the Big Six energy companies to tackling climate change has been called into question after it emerged that they have all quietly dropped their green electricity tariffs.
A day after The Independent revealed that British Gas and SSE use more coal to produce electricity now than they did ten years ago, it can now be disclosed that not a single one of Britain’s biggest suppliers – which together provide 90 per cent of UK household power – offers a renewable energy tariff…
A DECC spokesperson said: “This Government’s priority is to keep bills down for hardworking households and combat climate change in the most cost-effective way…
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/big-six-energy-companies-have-quietly-abandoned-their-green-electricity-tariffs-10481787.html
***looking for a skeleton:
2 Sept: RTCC: Ed King: Pressure mounting on UN as Bonn climate talks stutter
But all that was clear from the 90 minutes of interventions and statements from countries was that the foundations for this deal are at present looking shallow and frail.“We must have clarity on the way forward before we leave Bonn,” urged Amjad Abdulla, chief negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States.Progress on slimming a set of proposals numbering more than 80 pages into a manageable document fit for a UN treaty was far too slow, he insisted. Pete Betts, a UK official speaking for the EU, struck a similar note of alarm. “We are running out of time. After today we will have 7 days [before Paris],” he said, referring to a penultimate Bonn meeting next month…
***He added: “We need a skeleton we can build an agreement on by end of the week.”…
One envoy from a developed country wore a baffled look when asked what had been achieved so far…
Parallel talks on finance remain deadlocked, as richer nations have yet to work out how they can meet a 2010 promise to deliver $100 billion a year in climate funds to the developing world…
“The fear is that the co-chairs develop their own text,” said Jacobs, suggesting it would lead to comparisons to Copenhagen in 2009, when control of the talks was wrested away by major economies…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/09/02/pressure-mounts-on-un-as-bonn-climate-talks-stutter/
50
1 Sept: Reuters: Alister Doyle in Bonn: Australia, New Zealand defend climate plans, say face high costs
Australia, giving details of a plan issued last month, said that its relatively strong economic growth, a rising population and dependence on coal for 64 percent of electricity generation made it costly to rein in emissions.
“We think it is an ambitious target,” Australia’s climate ambassador Peter Woolcott told delegates at week-long talks in Bonn of a goal of reducing its emissions by between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
New Zealand’s climate ambassador Jo Tyndall, the only other developed nation representative at the same session, said her country’s dependence on dairy farming and sheep was a big source of the greenhouse gas methane, produced by the animals’ digestive tracts…
http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/09/01/us-climatechange-summit-australia-idINKCN0R14CY20150901
50
He’s been like exactly this for a while: J. Philippe Rushton and David Suzuki debate at the University of Western Ontario, February 8th, 1989
140
Susuki used to” get off” on his idea that humans were like fruit flies and maggots . I doubt you’d find a hypocrite maggot but Susuki is one .
Where has all that Susuki Foundation money come from ? Just regular fruit flies and maggots ?
No dirty oil ,fossil fuel users ,utilities sending checks ? Really ? . Rant ,embarrass ,intimidate from a government support soap box and collect the cash.You too could find yourself in a multi million dollar shack or four.
Selling green scare is a big business and Susuki got in at the ground floor .
130
Reading comments that elude to David Susuki as a Paul Erlich ( population control ) advocate ,reminded me that Lord Monckton often used to site Suzuki as a leading advocate for the ban on DDT that cost the lives of millions of children from Malaria and Ambers “fruitfly” reference above,reminded me of a youtube video :Lord Monckton on no DDT vs David Suzuki on people as maggots:( sorry i can’t post from my works PC ,hope someone can do that for me)the second part of that video has Suszuki passing on his “wisdom” to a group of very young impressionable children and is quite spine chillin
70
The ban of DDT cost the lives of 40 million people. Is this the video you had in mind doubtingdave? https://youtu.be/XPa37cxlj5k
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Thanks David your the man. I wonder since that DDT ban has been lifted has Suzuki been challenged for his active role in supporting the ban,has he got the character or is it within his nature to apologize for that catastrophic error of judgement
60
You are joking, right?
30
posted online 14.57 AEST. did former-Fairfax-now-Guardian journo Alcorn read my comment on Q&A above? hard to believe she didn’t given the absurd opening about jetsetting Klein not travelling much these days on principle! give us a break.
Oh! what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive!
3 Sept: Guardian: Gay Alcorn: Tony Abbott and Naomi Klein agree: we can’t beat climate change under capitalism
Abbott and Klein both know that climate change threatens what powerful people hold dear: free markets, limited regulation and unending progress
(Gay Alcorn is Melbourne editor, Guardian Australia. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and is a three-times Walkley award winner. She is a former editor of the Sunday Age and columnist for the Age)
***Environmental author and activist Naomi Klein doesn’t fly much these days on principle, but she’s come to Australia for the first time in 14 years because now is a crucial moment for climate change…
Abbott, in rhetoric and deed, has not embraced the pro-market view of climate change…
He appoints sceptics to key government positions. He has cut Australia’s renewable energy target, speaks of coal in reverential terms and has done much to discourage “visually awful” wind farms…
Labor’s policies, he says with relish, would “hit our economy with massive and unmanageable costs, massive increases in power prices, massive increase in the hit on families’ cost of living”.
***Klein understands people like Abbott. Global warming threatens what they hold most dear: free markets, limited government regulation and unending material progress. So it makes sense, as Klein said on the ABC’s Q&A this week, that the political right is often so resistant to climate change.
“The reason for that is that if the science is true, then their world view collapses,” she said…
She helped advise the Vatican before Pope Francis’ extraordinary June encyclical, Laudato Si. It was imbued with ideas that Klein would recognise – that unending material progress had a disastrous and destructive side, especially for the poor…
Mark Wakeham is the CEO of Environment Victoria. He and 80 others spent a full day with Klein in Melbourne this week workshopping how to put her book’s ideas into practice.
***The big lesson, he says, is that green groups need to work much more closely with other organisations, such as ***unions.
As for Klein, she and such figures as Desmond Tutu and the founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, are calling for mass action ahead of the Paris conference…
Only a public uprising will force governments to treat climate change as the crisis it is, she argues. With that kind of movement, everything else will be shaken up, too. Which is, of course, Tony Abbott’s worst nightmare.
Naomi Klein will speak at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sydney on 5 September.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/03/tony-abbott-and-naomi-klein-agree-we-cant-beat-climate-change-under-capitalism
Alcorn – eventually the naïve CAGW followers, who believed the rubbish you & the likes of Klein/McKibben espouse, will realise the scientific case for CAGW collapsed long ago. they might even read the Climategate emails for themselves.
they will also reject the fate you wish upon the poor in the developed world, but not on your elitist, hypocritical selves.
if they also grasp that you are condemning the developing world to never-ending, grinding poverty, they might well rise up against the CAGW pushers. your worst nightmare?
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Actually the pants setters don’t seem to have a single coherent position. If they do, please identify the consensus position on
– the actual ECS (1.5, 4 or 6-8 of the hyperloons)
– whether the hockey stick is exponential, linear or logarithmic
– whether it brings more or less rain, cyclones, tornadoes, and Antarctic sea ice
– whether plant yields will fall or rise (and if fall, why haven’t they and why do greenhouses use CO2)
– whether latency in the atmosphere is short or long (and if long, where is alleged ocean acidification coming from)
– whether there’s a hotspot
– why satellites can’t find tropospheric warming (actually imagining cooling) but went berserk at the 1998 great El Niño
– the most effective response technology and ecopolitical settings to facilitate it
– response or adaptation
While at it, why the 2001 datasets were so faulty that they hadn’t detected half of all global warming to that date (the 20th century warming having since doubled in size in latest sets).
AFAIK, sceptics are much closer to internal consensus – low or very low ECS coupled with 60yr cycle peaking 2000 does an excellent job matching hindcasts and lab properties, require no imagined feedbacks, and work out of sample. 97% of sceptics agree on the lukewarmer position.
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More, from their ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rnafternoons/airlines27-carbon-emission-programs/6747408
Airlines’ carbon offset programs – do they make a difference?
A growing number of airlines are offering their passengers the opportunity to pay a few dollars extra, to offset the carbon emissions generated by their flight.
Australia is one of the countries leading the way on this.
Yet global CO2 emissions from the aviation industry are so vast that they dwarf the emissions of many countries around the world.
So it’s no wonder there’s a degree of cynicism surrounding the value of airlines’ carbon offset programs, and whether they are little more than ‘feel good’ measures.
But ANU’s Professor of Climate Change Law, Martijn Wild argues that these schemes are highly regulated and do make a difference.
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QANTAS used to ask me whether I would like to contribute a dollar or two to offset my ‘carbon’ whatsit. I used to reply ‘No thank you; I have planted hundreds of trees myself recently’. Mind you, they were to produce windbreaks, not offset any supposed ‘carbon’ emissions.
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Planting trees as windbreaks is a heck of a lot more useful to the actual environment. It provides cover for wildlife and helps slow erosion. All well known and agreed upon benefits.
The tree of choice for carbon credits is an aggressive invasive plant you Aussies are well acquainted with the Eucalyptus.
DesertYote mentioned a science fair project he helped with. In the USA the only species that did well (as in thrived) under the gum trees was Toxicodendron diversilobum, western poison oak. It is even worse than poison ivy.
This is NOT a nice tree to dump on African and South American third world farmers.
US universities in Africa ‘land grab’
Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/08/us-universities-africa-land-grab
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I wss surprised to learn that the eucalyptus species is the world’s most widely planted tree crop. It is also extensively planted throughout Africa, the Middle East and parts of the USA.
In Israel it has been extensively planted as under Otterman rule almost all the native trees were cut down and the native trees are too slow growing to replace. Eucalypts are ideal there as a near identical climate to much of Australia.
Some years ago the trees in Israel and elsewhere started to be killed by a gall wasp as there was no native enemy. After an extensive research program an enemy of this wasp was was found in Queensland by CSIRO and Israeli scientists and that solved the problem. It was another wasp.
I know someone who was involved in that project and the predator insect, Selitrichodes kryceri, was named after him so I am a rare example of a person who knows someone after whom an insect was named…
More of the story at:
http://www.kkl.org.il/eng/research-and-development/forestry-research/saving-eucalyptus-trees-worldwide/
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Even in Australia it is quite a weed… well that’s what I call it. Big problem is that it exudes hydrocarbons that make it particularly volatile. Makes great bonfire material, after tea tree and gravillea. Eucolyptus strains help keep us aussies all cosy and warm in winter coz they grow fast and burn really well in the wood burner or fireplace.
20
Also used to make charcoal for refining silicon to metallic grade.
IIRC 9 tons of Jarrah woodchips per ton of silicon in Kemmerton.
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For those who are not Aussies, a bit more on ‘Genocide by Eucalyptus.’
According to OXFAM New Forests Company (NFC) controls around 90,000 hectares and with governments’ blessing evicted thousands.
This is the World Bank Press announcement:
Just think it is OUR tax dollars that was invested in New Forests Company and resulted in Friday Mukamperezida death by burning, but you will never see a dime of income only people like Al Gore will.
The problem is not just the displacement of peasants whose families have farmed the land. The other problem is with Eucalyptus outside its natural habitat.
The grass “fogged” with eucalyptus oil is also “unpalatable” and if even a goat won’t eat it and you can’t grow crops in the contaminated soil….
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gai – perhaps we can send you some koalas? They’ll eat the eucalyptus leaves and control them somewhat. Or what about a eucalyptus gall wasp without its associated predator?
Unfortunately, koalas are at an evolutionary dead end, it has one of the smallest brains in relation to body weight of any animal and the brain occupies only 61% of the cranial cavity.
They are really stupid.
From Wikipedia: “Because of its small brain, the koala has a limited ability to perform complex, unfamiliar behaviours. For example, when presented with plucked leaves on a flat surface, the animal cannot adapt to the change in its normal feeding routine and will not eat the leaves.”
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I am sure there are Africans who would love to receive a shipment of eucalyptus gall wasp.
As far as the Koala, I figured they were the advanced evolutionary model of Progressive Activist evolutionary path.
(I really wish I could post pictures and graphs.)
http://media.ourstory.com/11/77/91/25ee81ee77b82306c31f7ce1a4268d8faba96982/9281731847a820e2f518ef9e8a5a06c110ce50c6-l.jpg
A close-up
https://i0.wp.com/thepeoplescube.com/images/Brain_Socialist_600.png
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“it has one of the smallest brains in relation to body weight of any animal”
Have they done relative brain size studies on “climate change™” believers yet?
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What you should have said was “Why, what’s on the menu? but the again thats probably a very blokey thing to say … I guess!
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In reply to Annie at #45.1.
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Seen, Ceetee 🙂
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“The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics.”
The Klimatariat is renown for it.
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Ok! It was only a quick scan down through the posts but perhaps a lot of posters could brush up on their knowledge of our language a bit.
Nowhere although I might have missed it, has anybody called David Suzuki for what he is and thats nothing more than a small time, low calibre demogogue with every nefarious attribute that demagogues of every calibre are likely to exhibit.
Compared to the big time demagogues of history particularly recent history, Suziki is very small beer indeed and pretty innocuous to boot.
So a bit of googling to find a reasonable description of your classic demagogue which turned out to be harder as sources were scarcer than I originally thought.
This description following which pretty well sums up Suziki in the first para, surprisingly came from a very small blog run by History Girl Amelia Sinclair.
Demagogues Through History
[ more ]
The real McCoy as far as modern demagogues go was of course a certain former corporal in the Kaisers army of WW1, an Adolf Hitler with a former candidate for the Russian Orthodox priesthood, a Georgian called Joseph Djugashvili aka, Joseph Stalin , ie; “Man of steel’, trailing along not far behind.
Of course Mussolini, the Italian stallion, could hold his own quite well in that company as a full scale demagogue although he failed to deliver the practical side of classic demagoguery when it came down to the crunch.
Another good candidate for the role of a classic modern demogogue would have to be Fidel Castro who specialized in 5 hour hate filled rants that were passed off as speeches.
Victor Chavez of Venezuela took over Castro’s demogoguery role for Latin America until he to died in 2013.
But to check how David Suzuki lines up against the classic demogogues of history and modern times this following opinion article although somewhat dated, from the “Washington Post” of December 2006 is worth a read.
The New Demagogues
Suzuki, the demagogue, as it turns out is nothing more than just a very small time rattler of empty tin cans, lots of noise, nothing of substance and somewhat very smelly if you ever get to lift the lid compared to the achievements, vicious and nasty as they were, of the giants of demagoguery in past ancient and modern history.
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Excellent
Thanks ROM, it is always useful to have the correct word and good examples when it comes to debates that matter as much as this one.
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ROM
And they have the hide to refer to rural folk as uneducated!
10
From Wikipedia:
“The work that led to Giaever’s Nobel Prize was performed at General Electric in 1960. Following on Esaki’s discovery of electron tunnelling in semiconductors in 1958, Giaever showed that tunnelling also took place in superconductors, demonstrating tunnelling through a very thin layer of oxide surrounded on both sides by metal in a superconducting or normal state.[5] Giaever’s experiments demonstrated the existence of an energy gap in superconductors, one of the most important predictions of the BCS theory of superconductivity, which had been developed in 1957.[6] Giaever’s experimental demonstration of tunnelling in superconductors stimulated the theoretical physicist Brian Josephson to work on the phenomenon, leading to his prediction of the Josephson effect in 1962. Esaki and Giaever shared half of the 1973 Nobel Prize, and Josephson received the other half.[1]
“Giaever’s research later in his career was mainly in the field of biophysics. In 1969, he researched Biophysics for a year as a fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, through a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he continued to work in this area after he returned to the US.[4]”
“Other prizes
“In addition to the Nobel Prize, he has also been awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize by the American Physical Society in 1965, and the Zworykin Award by the National Academy of Engineering in 1974.[3] He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[8]
“Global warming
Giaever has said man-made global warming is a “new religion.”[9] In the minority report released by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in March 2009,[10] Giaever said, “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.”[10][11]
In a featured story in Norway’s largest newspaper, Aftenposten, 26 June 2011, Giaever stated, “It is amazing how stable temperature has been over the last 150 years.”[12]
On 13 September 2011, Giaever resigned from the American Physical Society over its official position. The APS Fellow noted: “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”[13]
As part of the 62nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, Giaever referred to agreement with the evidence of climate change as a “religion” and commented on the significance of the apparent rise in temperature when he stated, “What does it mean that the temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees? Probably nothing.” Referring to the selection of evidence in his presentation, Giaever stated “I pick and choose when I give this talk just the way the previous speaker (Mario Molina) picked and chose when he gave his talk.” Giaever concluded his presentation with a pronouncement: “Is climate change pseudoscience? If I’m going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely.”[14][15]
Giaever is currently a science advisor at The Heartland Institute.[16]
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Human-caused global warming is a panoply of theories which are purported to explain a significant temperature rise in the troposphere over the equator with increasing greenhouse gas concentration and consequential global surface temperature increases.
Why should it be necessary to search for an alternate explanation for non-existent observations?
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‘Why should it be necessary to search for an alternate explanation for non-existent observations?’
The ‘precautionary principle’ was invented to feed the gravy train.
Its probably not fraudulent in itself and hopefully they’ll leave the PP in place for global cooling.
30
‘Climate Realists’ are sceptics who adopted the term in about 2008,long before Al Gore tried to steal it:
http://climaterealists.com/about.php
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One thing about skeptics is that they are more interested in real world observations and data, and accurately measuring such observations to start with. The resulting complexities demand in depth study.
Warmists on the other hand have fallen in love with a simple basic theory (that just happens to meet their perceived political expediencies) and have gone about cherry picking, manipulating, adjusting, homogenizing, and fabricating, the observed data to fit the theory and the resulting models. They have constructed theoretical models, and then claimed the models settled the science on the matter, and also refer to the models when asked about the data, as if models are data.
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I run into this statement a lot. The answer is “There does not have to be an alternative theory to discard a WRONG theory”. Nothing in science says you cannot reject a theory proven to be wrong or inadequate because you have no other theory. It’s twisting scientific method to “We made a theory and no one gets to oust it without coming up with something new. Disproving is NOT enough”. Science says you keep the theory until evidence proves it to be outright wrong or so woefully inadequate as to make incorrect prediction and require constant defense against those who see the holes in the theory. A bad theory is not better than no theory.
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A theory full of holes does seem to carry a lot of weight. It’s not unlike the spiders that sometimes attach themselves to the light that runs all night on my patio. They can get onto the patio under the door that leads from the garage. They know insects are attracted to the light so they build webs around the light fixture. But the patio is screened in so nothing with wings ever shows up. Yet to the spider the choice of location is sound theory so they stay until they starve to death rather than leave for better hunting grounds. They aren’t moved by day after day of nothing to eat.
A spider has almost no brain power at all and you don’t expect much from it. Strangely though, humans, who have immense brain power by comparison, sometimes use it no better than the spider.
81
Just a conclusion from watching what happens. And I don’t need to be an expert on arachnids to figure it out.
What’s the matter with the world about climate change? Has anyone seen it happening? I doubt it.
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I like your example. Spiders do what instinct tells them and don’t actually think or reason things out. Humans can be the same way.
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David Suzuki — the man who should have been a motorcycle. Just think of how much more useful he could have been if he had two cylinders that actually fired when they should. 😉
But joking aside, a pun on his name doesn’t begin to account for the number of people who should know better yet don’t. How can so many be so well educated as Suzuki and yet be so ignorant of the reality they live in every day? I truly do not get it. It’s as though they were handing out degrees in Crackerjack and cereal boxes instead of kid’s toys.
And who is the more guilty, those who speak this imaginary danger or those who hear it and believe it. Any leader is powerless without followers. That Suzuki gets so much traction is a greater indictment of the followers than of Suzuki.
Personality seems to count for more than truthfulness. Get yourself a degree, take up a cause, pass yourself off as an expert, keep your mouth going and suddenly you’re a personality and be taken more seriously than you deserve. You speak and thousands hold their breath waiting for your inspired words. Nuts!
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You are assuming Suzuki believes the things he says. That may or may not be true. When one jumps in bed with politics, saying and believing become two different things. Also, take into account that people like Suzuki crave attention and the spotlight. It’s not unreasonable to think this person says what he does simply to be with the “in” crowd—the rich spoiled crowd that seems very much in favor of ruining everyone’s lives so these people can have more power and wealth. As I pointed out in a letter to the editor at my paper, professors with tenure don’t lose their jobs. The people who lose their jobs are those these professors condemn for disagreeing with them and actually using fossil fuels. Suzuki has nothing to lose. (Tenure does work both ways, of course, keeping some skeptics still employed where without it they may have fired.)
Yes, people are nuts. Actually, people are just what they have always been—gullible and lazy. We are no different than those who bought from gypsy medicine wagons in the previous century. And who doesn’t love a good apocalypse?
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I can’t disagree with you, Sheri. Fooling one’s self and fooling others are both as old as the human race.
And I didn’t say he actually needs to believe what he’s saying.
50
In the Casper paper?
30
It will be, yes. My emailed letter to them may have been missing information, so I sent a second email. The letter was in response to the professor writing on Wyoming being in touch with the earth. Sometimes it takes a while before the letters get published, but I’ve not had one rejected yet.
30
Yes, finally today they published it. (Sept 9)
00
The argument that because CAGW sceptics don’t have a consistent and coherent “alternative theory” to the apparent “global warming” is a clever argument (at least to compel those who are not yet acquainted with the encyclopedia of evidence that the warming kind of stopped, and when it was warming, most of that warmth came from “scientists” cooking the book, and them and their government handlers engaging in every [snip] dirty unethical trick in the book!
Most importantly, the argument presupposes that there HAS been the type of evidential warming that fits with the grandiose theory. The argument also presupposes that the warmists themselves have a grand unified theory. While this may be true from the point of view of “the club” on any given day, the theories surrounding this glorious expansive paradigm of “global warming”, “climate change”, “tipping points”, “climate disruption” have NEVER (in a temporal, chronological sense) been unified or consistent through the years. Instead, they have constantly evolved and mutated, in what can only be described as a Darwinian Wet Dream. This evolution has ensured that no matter what was said before on the subject, when reality did not accord with prior predictions, the theory could always be maneuvered or changed in such a tricky fiendish way, that it would look to the casual observer like the theory was still intact, even though in reality it was shot to [snip]
So now we come to the argument that because sceptics (scientists, engineers, philosophers, cunning linguists etc), even argue amongst ourselves on what is happening with the ASTRONOMICALLY COMPLEX and indecipherable whole bloody world climate system, that our position must be wrong, because the other team apparently is all 97% in agreement, holding hands, and singing hand in hand as they usher in the beautiful New World.
[Sorry for the late publication of this comment. A few spelling errors, and edits required. Please keep ALL CAPS yelling to an absolute minimum. – Jo]
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All skeptics are wrong…
The rush by Climate Scientists to agree on CO2 as the cause of global warming is like the behavior of a herd of wilder beast congregating around a singular water hole.
Skeptics by our refusal to “rubber stamp” a singualr theory and by suggesting other ideas are merely acknowledging that Climate Change is years away from a solid evidential theory.
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Something posted on WUWT that is a good description of the problem with people like Suzuki.
Worth the eye strain.
20
3 Sept: WUWT: Trillions and Trillions of Trees make that ‘giant sucking sound’ of CO2 from the atmosphere
WUWT reader P Wilson writes;
There are just over three trillion trees on Earth, according to a new assessment. The figure is eight times as big as the previous best estimate, which counted perhaps 400 billion at most.
It has been produced by Thomas Crowther from Yale University, and colleagues, who combined a mass of ground survey data with satellite pictures.
The team tells the journal Nature that the new total represents upwards of 420 trees for every person on the planet…
More http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34134366
The press release from Yale…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/03/trillions-and-trillions-of-trees-make-that-giant-sucking-sound-of-co2-from-the-atmosphere/
from the BBC link:
“The previous estimate of trees in the world was 400 billion. The new estimate is three trillion large trees. There are so many margins of error in this study that the real number could be anything between the two – or even 10 times higher.”- Dr Martin Lukac, University of Reading
to be cont’d
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NOW COMPARE SETH’S REPORT THAT UN-AFFILIATED PLANT FOR THE PLANET HAS UPPED THEIR GOAL TO 18 BILLION, AND CROWTHER’S RESONSE, INCL THAT IT MIGHT BE HARD TO FIND ROOM!, WITH NPR’S CLAIM FROM CROWTHER THAT THEY’VE UPPED THE TARGET TO 1 TRILLION! NOT TOO GOOD WITH FIGURES THESE CAGW PROPAGANDISTS.
2 Sept: ABC: AP: Seth Borenstein: Lots of Trees to Hug: Study Counts 3 Trillion Trees on Earth
So if there are so many trees on the planet, the planting of a billion trees wouldn’t do too much to fight climate change on its own, Crowther conceded. But he said that didn’t stop the tree planters group; they just upped their goal. On its website, Plant for the Planet says the objective is now ***18 BILLION.
Now that’s over many decades, and it might be hard to find space, but it can be done, Crowther said…
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/lots-trees-hug-study-counts-trillion-trees-earth-33483802
2 Sept: NPR: Nell Greenfield Boyce: Tree Counter Is Astonished By How Many Trees There Are
Thomas Crowther was inspired to do this tree census a couple of years ago, when he was working at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He had a friend who was working with a group with an ambitious goal: trying to fight global warming by planting a billion trees. A billion trees sounded like a lot. But was it really?
“They didn’t know if planting a billion trees was going to add 1 percent of the world’s trees, add 50 percent of the world’s trees,” recalls Crowther. “They didn’t even know if it was even possible to fit a billion trees on Earth.”…
So did all of this news discourage that group that wanted to plant a billion trees?
“Based on this, they really want to upscale their efforts hugely,” says Crowther, who explains that the new analysis has spurred them on. “Their goal is now to plant ***A TRILLION TREES.”
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/02/436919052/tree-counter-is-astonished-by-how-many-trees-there-are
BTW I heard BBC quote the UN-affiliated youth group had upped their target to 1 trillion trees on radio this morning, without even a giggle. of course, the 3 trillion figure will no doubt be factored in by all the carbon groups, who will update the availability of carbon offsets, etc.
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Huh! Only a trillion trees. That’d be a snap eh!
These green prats are patently maths challenged, not only on this, but on everything. Numbers mean nothing to them, and that goes especially for the numbers when it’s associated with (other people’s) money as well. They just pluck their numbers out of their fundament, and hey presto, it’s a done deal!
A trillion trees.
You know, two and a half Amazons. The Amazon has, conservatively, 400 Billion trees.
Let’s hope that these greenies don’t actually attempt to plant them in the Amazon, but hey, being greenies, this trillion trees will only apply to the already Developed World, where they hold the greatest sway in this PC World.
The Amazon has lost just on 20% of its coverage since just 1970.
Funny thing eh!
Brazil was an economic basket case back then. Worse even than Greece is now. They owed Billions, to the U.S. mainly. The U.S. did a deal with the government of the day, and said that they would totally forgive that debt on the condition that Brazil looked after the Amazon and kept it as pristine as it was. Hey, what do you think the Brazilian Government did. Jumped at it, and signed up so fast.
Wait around a coupla years and the inevitable South American coup takes place, and the new Government, no with no debt, looked for an increased source of income, and what better than the American ground beef demand, for, well, you know who, so the clear felling of the Amazon started in earnest and then just ramped up even further. Almost ten percent lost in just ten years from 1970.
Now, not only do they do that ground beef market, they also are the second largest soy bean grower, and hey, I wonder where those soy beans go. Why, straight to the U.S. biodiesel market eh.
Nothing like destroying the environment to, umm, save it from those filthy fossil fuels eh!
A trillion trees. Two and a half Amazons. Good luck with that.
At least it achieves one thing though. It makes that other ridiculous claim of 18 Billion trees look almost eminently achievable.
Give me strength.
Tony.
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That would be a tough ask for them Tony considering every tree planted would require a circle of hands and a kumbaiya. It would take a century of Wednesdays.
20
I will also point out that Dr Fruit Fly OWNS a double wide waterfront property in Kitsilano on English Bay, in Vancouver, BC. A few years ago I heard it had an assessment value of between 9 and 10 million dollars – today it will be pushing 15 million. He also owns two large properties on two island in the Strait of Georgia – I do NOT think he rows a boat to get to these; he probably takes a water plane.
So ALL of his property values are extremely high.
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Please…I’m beggin’ ya.
Put up another post so that when I check your page I no longer have to look at this asshat.
best,
jb
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Seconded!
30
You could try using the Hogwarts counter spell for Bodgits. You point your wand, say the magic phrase, “Rediculus”, and the picture changes to one of Al Gore, wearing a bikini.
Would that solution be better, do you think?
20
RW
Am trying not to picture Mr Suzuki in a Bikini
KK
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Jim
From what I have seen of him in person and heard about him here that “look” is one of total bewilderment that he could have
managed to fool so many people for so long; considering he has a had nothing of substance to contribute.
KK
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3 Sept: Daily Mail: Sara Smyth: August was the coldest for three years – and it’s about to get even colder as polar plume sends temperatures plunging below freezing
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3220458/Washout-August-wettest-century-parts-UK-s-set-chillier-frosts-expected-week.html
Steven Goddard’s website has:
Long Heatwaves Are A Thing Of The Past In Nebraska
Missouri Heatwaves Are Only Half As Long As They Were 100 Years Ago
Missouri Heatwaves Are Only Half As Long As They Were 100 Years Ago
20
This is somewhat old news but intersting. Go to the link to see the full article.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-19/waubra-foundation-stripped-of-health-promotion-charity-status/5977530
Waubra Foundation, prominent anti-wind farm lobby, stripped of health promotion charity status
By environment and science reporter Jake Sturmer
Updated 19 Dec 2014, 6:16pm
Government regulators have stripped a prominent anti-wind farm lobby of its health promotion charity status.
The status allowed the Waubra Foundation to receive tax deductible donations, concessions the Greens described as “enormous public subsidies”.
A year ago the ABC revealed the Greens made a complaint to the Taxation Office and Australian Charities and Not for Profits Commission (ACNC), claiming there was no credible evidence to suggest a direct link between wind turbines and health problems.
University of Sydney Professor of Public Health Simon Chapman supports that view.
“There’s very, very poor evidence of any direct effect – in fact there have been 22 published reviews since 2003 which have all reached that conclusion,” Professor Chapman said.
“So in other words there’s nothing intrinsic that’s emitted from wind farms – sound etcetera – which in itself can cause human health problems.”
Four months after the Greens made the complaint, the Commission sent a show cause notice to the Foundation.
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Suzuki is Canada’s Tim Flannery. When I studied botany, zoology, ecology, genetics, it was in the Science department, but it was a struggle to find the science. Most of it was observational, categorization and memory work. Mathematics was not necessary.
Biochemistry and physics changed all these areas dramatically but like Flannery, Suzuki speaks with an authority in physical sciences he plainly does not have. At least, unlike Flannery, Suzuki defers to others on most hard science questions where Flannery will happily pronounce on nuclear power and complex technologies and pretend to having hard science qualifications as when his degree was in English and this at the brand new university of La Trobe.
A PhD in zoology in the 1970s was simply in the Science department but was no more science than the history of medieval Italy. Suzuki is possibly as puzzled as anyone that he is accepted as an expert in chemistry, physics, mathematics, mathematical modelling, computing, engineering and defers to others, the infamous climate scientists including essayists Flannery and Gore.
Who would have thought a PhD in zoology could make anyone so rich and world famous? Amazing nonsense.
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speaking of the Greens –
on ABC Breakfast today, Greg Hunt was Fran’s attack target. she had already had John Connor & Nick Xenophon yesterday to attack the Govt on the exact same topic. Fran interrupts Hunt almost as soon as he begins talking and, at one point, Hunt returns serve on Fran’s “with respect” game, a favourite ploy of Fran’s, almost always spoken in a decidedly disrespectful tone, when the interviewee is from the Coalition. Fran then throws in the Murdoch tweet below about a “snap election” because the country is “almost ungovernable” “with any Senate majority impossible for either side to execute”. Fran doesn’t include the Senate bit, & she doesn’t mention Murdoch also tweeted that he saw the PM as the best alternative, because Murdoch considers him “principled and a fighter”. Hunt said there were no plans for an early election.
here’s Fairfax’s take:
4 Sept: SMH: Liam Mannix: Rupert Murdoch calls for snap elections in ‘almost ungovernable’ Australia
Newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch has called for a snap Australian election as the “only hope” for a country that has become “almost ungovernable”.
But current Prime Minister Tony Abbott is still by “far the best alternative”, and so presumably should be voted back in for a second term…
Mr Murdoch appears to fear the growing constituency that votes Green at election time. Perhaps he should – the latest Fairfax/Ipsos poll pegs the party’s support at ***16 per cent, well up on their election result…
Murdoch Tweet: Extreme greenies, increasing in support hold balance. Against growth and subsequent jobs. Seem beyond reason.
Murdoch Tweet: In spite of some blind spots, Abbott far the best alternative. Principled and a fighter.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/rupert-murdoch-calls-for-snap-elections-in-almost-ungovernable-australia-20150903-gjes1x.html
yesterday:
3 Sept: ABC Breakfast: Nick Xenophon on the Coalition’s ‘safeguard mechanism’ for carbon emissions
The mechanism, part of the Government’s Direct Action plan on carbon emissions, was passed through the Senate with the help of Independent Senator Nick Xenophon…
Senator Xenophon joins Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast.
i’m not listening to Fran/Xenophon, but here’s what Fran apparently got him to say, even tho he voted in favour! no need to wonder what Connor had to say:
3 Sept: AFR: Mark Ludlow: Nick Xenophon slams ‘feather-duster’ carbon penalties
As other critics derided the scheme as “all gum, no teeth”, Senator Xenophon warned the Abbott government climate policy would become a major issue at next year’s federal election.
Senator Xenophon, who lobbied Environment Minister Greg Hunt to include the safeguard mechanism as part of the Direct Action climate policies, said he would be arguing for it to be beefed-up during negotiations over the next few weeks.
“We need to make it very clear to the government that it needs to do much better with what it’s proposing to ensure it’s a real stick rather than just a feather-duster,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday…
He denied he had been “duped” into voting for the Coalition’s Direct Action scheme…
“I think Greg Hunt and the government need to realise this will play out as a significant election issue. I think if they don’t have an effective safeguard mechanism it will be very damaging to the government’s credibility on this issue and I worked very hard to get it included.”…
Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said the safeguard mechanism rules were riddled with loopholes…
The Investor Group on Climate Change said setting the baseline at the highest level of historical emissions and allowing companies exemptions from compliance penalties risked undermining the intent of the safeguard mechanism.
http://www.afr.com/news/politics/nick-xenophon-slams-featherduster-carbon-penalties-20150902-gjdzup
taxpayers pay Fran’s salary. unbelievable.
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The man was ugly as far back to 1972,when he says Humans are like Maggots……
David Suzuki people are maggots 1972
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKLFYsXhwrk
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just to be clear, Fran had John Connor as a separate item yesterday. how ABC is the “so-called” in the summary:
3rd Sept: Fed Govt unveils first draft of emissions penalty regime
The ***so-called ‘safeguard mechanism’ is supposed to stop rogue companies from increasing emissions to counter reductions made elsewhere in the economy…
John Connor, Chief Executive of the Climate Institute
in case anyone missed it, ABC had Connor on The World Today at lunch-time!
3 Sept: ABC The World Today: Hunt defends fines for big polluters, critics say they’re too soft
The Government has revealed the system it wants in place from July next year, to fine those who pollute above business-as-usual levels.
It hasn’t gone down well with John Connor from the Climate Institute…
oh and Fran had more heat to report for Breakfast yesterday!
3 Sept: ABC Breakfast: Meteorologists warn Australia may be facing most severe El Nino in two decades
Last month, surface water temperatures in the Pacific’s east-central tropical region exceeded their average by as much as two degrees celsius.
Experts say that points to a strong El Nino event developing in the area.
Guest: Dr David Jones, Manager of Climate Monitoring and Prediction, Bureau of Meteorology
and today, Fran had ABC’s Wendy Zukerman do her science bit which included the trillions of trees rubbish & how it was important for climate science or whatever.
as for the Greg Hunt interview today, which came conveniently after ABC had given “critics” a platform, this is the summary on the Breakfast homepage – note the headline is not “the GOVERNMENT’S ‘safeguard mechnanism’:
Greg Hunt on the Coalition’s ‘safeguard mechanism’
Critics have slammed the Government’s new penalty regime, saying the baseline levels of emissions for big polluting companies have been set far too high.
ABC should choke on their own bias.
20
… and in passing I noticed Andrew Bolt has Greens leader Richard di Natale on his Sunday show.
‘The first Greens MP to accept an invitation in the nearly five years of my show. All credit to him. On what he’s got that Labor hasn’t, and his plans for the Greens. Plus a polite discussion on global warming (of course)…’
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given the crazy Yale trees’ story, which the MSM is mostly portraying as catastrophic, despite Yale claiming to have found an extra 2.6 trillion trees, thought this pruning headline was fitting:
listed in Carbon Brief’s Daily Briefing MSM coverage – 3 Sept:
Green heating subsidies to be pruned
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is playing down rumours it could be effectively axed, according to the Financial Times, which quotes “one insider”. However, DECC faces “heavy job cuts” and its Renewable Heat Incentive is to be scaled back, the FT says. – Financial Times
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/09/daily-briefing-earth-has-3-trillion-trees-but-theyre-falling-at-alarming-rate/
other HIGHlights at the above Daily Briefing link!
How the (UK) government’s latest assault on the solar sector could be on shaky legal ground
BusinessGreen
Emma Thompson joins giant polar bear at Greenpeace protest outside Shell HQ
The Guardian
Underwater sculptures emerge from Thames in climate change protest
The Guardian
Fat cat pay at fossil fuel companies drives climate crisis – report
The Guardian
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3 Sept: RTCC: UN climate chief expects national pledges to cover 80% of emissions before Paris
By Ed King in Bonn
“What is clear… even when we have 100% of INDCs, they in themselves will not deliver 2C,” she (Christiana Figueres) said…
A stormy meeting of envoys from the 195 participating governments on Wednesday saw most warn progress was too slow, although few offered any sense of why or how this could be resolved.
Figures – who observed that 90-minute meeting ***from the back of room – said she sympathised with the frustration, but emphasised this is “not an easy process”…
Help could come from a series of carefully staged meetings between now and Paris, including a set of ministerial gatherings and a proposed conference of 40 selected world leaders chaired by Ban Ki-moon on the sidelines of the General Assembly…
Ronnie Jumeau, Seychelles climate ambassador, questioned whether a separate process was taking place away from the official UN talks as a back-up in case too little progress was made.
“Are we being set up? Is there going to be a political decision where we said ‘look guys, we gave you enough time, this is how it’s going to be’,” he asked.
“Some people here have noted that China and India are not as vocal as they have been. People are saying –***is there another process going on somewhere?”
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/09/03/un-climate-chief-expects-national-pledges-to-cover-80-of-emissions-before-paris/
***is there another process going on somewhere? yes.
3 Sept: RTCC: Rich countries to unveil climate finance package at World Bank summit
Lima billed as venue for proposal to help developing countries invest in green energy and prepare for extreme weather By Ed King in Bonn
A long-awaited plan detailing how developed countries will meet a 2009 promise to deliver US$100 billion a year of climate funds to poor countries will be presented on 9 October, the UN’s top climate official has told RTCC…
In an exclusive interview, Christiana Figueres said she expected top donors to outline their proposals at the start of the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in Lima next month.
Top finance ministers including US Treasury secretary Jacob Lew, Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble and the UK’s George Osborne will be in Peru for the summit, one of the most important economic meetings of the year…
The plan needed to be “detailed and credible” she added, with a clear pathway towards hitting $100 billion and meeting demand for low carbon investment experts believe could top $45 trillion between 2015-2030…
In a webcast briefing on Wednesday, World Bank climate envoy Rachel Kyte said the climate finance commitment had become “totemic”…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/09/03/rich-countries-to-unveil-climate-finance-package-at-world-bank-summit/
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The AMA (Australian Medical Association) is on the Climate Change bandwagon as well.
See http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4306277.htm
Transcript to be soon posted but you can listen to the audio. Utterly insane!
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3 Sept: RTCC: Megan Darby: California state pension funds to divest from coal
CalPERS and CalSTRS will sell up to US$240 million in mine holdings after lawmakers’ decision, in win for campaigners
Lawmakers backed the “investing with values and responsibility” bill by 43-27, as part of the state’s push to tackle climate change. Governor Jerry Brown is expected to rubber stamp the law in the next few days.Worth a combined US$500 billion, CalPERS and CalSTRS will become the first US funds to divest on such a large scale…
Boeve (May Boeve, executive director of 350.org) called on California to go further, divesting from oil and gas and banning shale gas fracking…
Meanwhile, six ethical banks with assets exceeding €15 billion from Bolivia, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden and the US have pledged to stop financing coal…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/09/03/california-to-divest-up-to-240-million-from-state-pension-funds/
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‘I’m now convinced that the way to deal with so-called climate sceptics is simply to take the piss, relentlessly.’
Brian Cox
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Firstly Coxie, “so called” suggests you’d prefer your own descriptor but be assured we wear the skeptic title proudly and perhaps you should show some respect. Every skerrick of knowledge you now have is derived from someone somewhere who was a skeptic and chose to to ask questions in place of adopting assumptions.
Soft left entitled Pillock!.
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..and secondly if the politics are so damn important to you, put your name on a ballot paper and submit yourself to real scrutiny. Your mates in the MSM will give you a soft ride but the public at large will send you scurrying back to the confines of the echo chamber you live in. Where money comes easy and ideas are policy. Man that guy makes me angry.
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“when will Environ Res Letters retract it?”
They won’t so long as you have an editorial board composed of some of the main warmists, http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/page/Editorial%20Board
Executive Board:
Myles Allen, Oxford Environmental Change Institute
Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute, hacker, http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/
Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam and Real Climate
Michelle L Bell, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, previously headed by Rajendra Pachauri.
Johan Rockström, long time activist and friend of John Schellnhuber, (by appointment to the Pope)
Stockholm Resilience Centre, vice-chair of the science advisory board at Potsdam.
Mark New, Oxford University, member of Climate Systems and Policy research cluster with Myles Allen, http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/climate/people.html
Felix Creutzig, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Germany, director, Otto Edenhofer of Potsdam.
and more IPCC authors.
10
Sounds like Suzuki is trying to win the Bill Nye Science Award /sarc , kind of
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“All skeptics are wrong because they don’t all say the same thing?”
Since many prominent alarmists contradict each other (and themselves), that makes them all wrong too.
I expect alarmists will claim that they all say there is impending doom, but none can agree on when, and how bad it will be (or even is now) (amongst a number of other factors). That in and of itself speaks volumes about how little understanding they have; of both climate and logic.
30
Well nailed, Jo.
It explains Dr. Suzuki’s semi-regularity and adherence to cliched utterances. We all know ethyl alcohol and Carbon dioxide are the major products of a good fermentation. A little too much of the ethanol and logic and reason are, well, incoherent. Sampling one fermentation too many is a good explanation for Shuzukeesh app–apper–appear-incesh and … hic … hish formulaic utterancshesh. Burp.
[ mandatory /sarc ]
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The Revenue (ie taxman) consistently declines to investigate Suzuki’s charitable foundation for political activity (which charities are not permitted by law to engage in, in Canada), although it has set up a federal election campaign website:
http://www.ezralevant.com/audit-suzuki-tell-canada-revenue-to-investigate-his-political-charity/
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Usually people that lash out and blow big smoke have something to hid . The problem for
“FOUNDATIONS ” is they grow their spending (usually on bigger and bigger salaries )
then have to pump the tires and donors even harder to keep . It’s enough to make anyone short tempered and no amount of dope smoking can stop it after awhile .
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