Wow. Just wow. Tony Thomas has uncovered the material the AAS provides to thousands of Australian teachers and students under the guise of science education resources.
As far as climate science goes, they might as well have hired Greenpeace. Mining is a questionable activity, Bob Brown is a hero, students should be lobbyists, and climate activists are champions. Forget the calculator, just whip out the placards. Science is not about evidence or thinking, but about following “reputable web sites” (which is code for “give me your brain and I’ll tell you what to think”). Coal is not so much a combustible mineral, as the number one “climate killer”. Not quite the dispassionate, logical path we used to think an Academy of Science might pursue.
“Ask students if they have ever taken action or advocated for a cause.” — AAS advice to teachers.
Or how about this:
Lesson outcomes: At the end of this activity students will … appreciate the need to lobby at all levels of government to ignite and lead change – even if it is unpopular with the voters.”
Because 15 year olds obviously know more than the voters, right?
But the young ones will be voters soon, and the Academy presumably wants to train them to vote the right way. The AAS is kind of union for scientists so it’s in their interest to get students to vote for bigger salaries, projects and grants for scientists.
“If you were concerned about Earth’s sustainability, who would you vote for?” — AAS
Watch the unspoken corollary: If you want to trash the planet, you’d vote for the other side.
The AAS have quietly become a political lobby group, so it’s a bit like letting the CFMEU* write school coursework on social history for teens. Worse, it’s like the government has given them a $9 million grant as well. The AAS describes mining not as a marvel of hominid enterprise, but as a controversial activity and “not a pretty site (sic)”. They even prompt the kids to ask:
Could we do without it?… Would you work for a mining company?
Mining companies are so beyond the pale these days that good people have to ask whether they would work for that sort of group. (Like a tobacco company — oh, the smell.) Can I suggest that the Minerals Council and AMEC, will find this interesting, and any large miners who sponsor or plan to leave bequests to the AAS might want to reconsider? (There are independent scientists who need your help and understand the value of mining.)
The thing that shocks me most about what Tony Thomas has found is not that the AAS has become a political activist group, and lost all sense of what the scientific method really is, but that this course has been running for two years and that science teachers have not protested. (And nor have academics). Where are the good science teachers, and can they get in touch? (Comment here or email joanne AT joannenova.com.au). Anonymity guaranteed if needed. Thanks…
The AAS is rationalizing these resources right now. They need to hear from real scientists.
— Jo (PS: For non Australians *CFMEU = Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.)
___________________________________________________________________
Under the hood on Science Academy’s climate schooling
By Tony Thomas
Jemima, aged 16, trudges home from high school.
Mum: “Have some Milo, darling. How’d that Australian Academy of Science assignment go?” Jemima: “Terrible! I flunked Advocacy and Campaigning in Searching for the Truth.”
“What? I thought you were doing monotremes!”
“Nah, I had to do a poster supporting action on climate change to share with the school, but my science teacher Mr Smith said it wasn’t emotive awareness-raising enough. Then he asked me, if I have ever taken action or advocated for a cause? I said no. And then he asked me if I know anyone who has? I said, yes, my Climate Champion is Bjorn Lomborg.”
“Jemima! You wicked creature! Want to get yourself suspended? What we pay for fees! Wait till your father blah blah…”
Links to the Academy’s school material need registration, so I’m using bold type for important quotes from the material.
The Reach of the Academy Courses
The Academy operates in schools alongside activist groups Greenpeace, Cool Australia, Oxfam Australia WWF, GetUp, Lock the Gate, you name it. But unlike those, the Academy’s on–line course Science by Doing (SBD), including the exhortations to activism, has been directly taxpayer-funded with about $9m from Labor and conservative federal governments[1]. SBD is a total secondary science course for Years 7-10, delivering the required curriculum, whereas the other external purveyors offer only supplementary material.
Since the SBD site went live in mid-2013, about 9300 secondary science teachers, or 37% of Australia’s 25,000 science teachers, have signed on for the free course, along with 50,000 students. Total registrations at last week were 62,300, despite little marketing – word of mouth among delighted science teachers is doing the job. Hits on the website were running at 2.7m in August. Growth of penetration into school is so high that the courses’ executive director Professor Denis Goodrum expects “market saturation during 2017”.
Source: Academy of Science
The Academy’s SBD and primary courses have flown under the public radar, because registration forms required school affiliation. Last month President Holmes[2] at a green conference in Hobart, invited the public to register and inspect[3]. Which I’ve done.
SBD was officially launched in October 2013 by Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt. The bulk of the primary and secondary science modules is not just good but excellent. Lord knows, science help is needed in Australia, where 40% of adults don’t know how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun, 30% think humans lived with dinosaurs, and science/maths students are tumbling behind their OECD peers.
Academy ex-president Sue Cory was 90% correct when she said SBD “reaches into science classrooms around the nation to inspire students with the wonder of curiosity and discovery.”
The Bad Apple in the Barrel
But the climate alarm-and-activism material (about 10% of the total) is a soggy Jonathan added to the Academy’s barrel of crisp Pink Ladies – see for example the absurd cover page for 16 year olds below.
…
The material’s not just crude, it’s also stale, with most climate material from the 2007-09 era of ‘settled science’. [4]
SBD director Professor Goodrum has explained the courses’ rationale like this: “Science influences, or should influence, the decisions we make…all those types of decisions should be based on evidence, not on superstition, not on irrational thinking, but on facts, and this is important in every student’s life.” But the climate material features propaganda songs, cartoons of “CO2 elephants” dropping from the sky, conspiracists like Naomi Oreskes and video rants by alarmists competing with Al Gore to depict the coming apocalypse.
As of now, SBD climate-change agitprop is confined to the Year 9 (15 year olds) unit “Big Systems” and Year 10 (16 year olds) “Systems on the Big Scale”. The Year 10 unit will mercifully be replaced shortly by “Science Futures”, which according to Goodrum, “will not have an earth science focus”. He further explained that the Year 10 unit “Big Scale” was too unwieldy for Term 4 in Year 10 (although some teachers are still using it) and the Year 9 and 10 units are being rationalised.
In the current Year 10 “Big Scale” module, the modestly-named In search of the truth section suggests work on “advocacy and campaigning (e.g., produce a blog)”.
The material adds, I hope not threateningly, “This activity could be used for an assessment task – see assessment overview.”
- Teachers are advised, in all seriousness, to “Ask [15-16 years old] students if they have ever taken action or advocated for a cause. Do they know of anyone who has?”… Key vocabulary: advocacy, campaign, champion, environmentalist.
Teens are grilled in Activity 6.4 Climate change champions:
“Which is more effective, science awareness or advocacy, when it comes to generating community action? What cause would you sign up for?”
And,
“Students analyse the media’s role in public education, delivering scientific truths and swaying opinion. They make a short film or poster supporting action on climate change to share with the school. Do we always tell the truth?”
The Academy provides a cartoon-video sample for kids.
We see a city with everything belching mysteriously-black CO2. Voiceover (note the stale data): “In 2006 , the US pumped 5,877,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the sky.” [They mean 5.8 billion tonnes, but whatever]. Banner: “That’s equal to 1,194,600 elephants!” Elephants then fall from the sky, crushing everyone.
One man is unconcerned, but then an elephant falls on him too (Geddit?). Video:
“It’s time to stop ignoring the 1,194,600 elephants in the room.”
How to Network, Lobby and Vote
There’s a special Activity 6.6 Climate change and Politics. “Lesson outcomes: At the end of this activity students will … appreciate the need to lobby at all levels of government to ignite and lead change – even if it is unpopular with the voters.”
The young climate zealots are to pester politicians: “Encourage students to engage with a local MP or councillor about science policy, environmental concerns and action. Do they have a voice? How would they vote in light of current policy and action?”
And yet more. Teens are to invite local community environmental campaigners and champions into the class, “with your teacher’s permission”, to “discuss their cause and the science behind their campaign.”
The Climate Change Champions guide for teachers explains,
“Step 1: Start with a broad discussion on local champions and heroes – who are they?”
And “Students learn more about climate change action by studying environmental champions and campaigns in their local areas. What cause would you stand up for?”
Occupy Highpoint Shopping Centre, perhaps?
..
The guide continues, “Students research the political debate on climate change, analyzing scientific credibility and political agendas. Who will you vote for when it comes to science policy?” (Academy’s emphasis).
…
Sixteen year olds are exhorted: “In pairs, write a short speech, advocating for a change in policy or practice at a national level, to address global warming. The best four speeches will be put to the class vote.”
The course concludes by asking, “If you were concerned about Earth’s sustainability, who would you vote for?” [Conservative? As if!]
The Academy happens to feature Greens icon Bob Brown to both age groups, literally at the top of the tree among its group of 27 esteemed scientists and communicators. They are named in “The Australian Biodiversity Knowledge Tree: 20th and 21st century contributors”. We learn that St Bob “was the leader of the campaign against the Franklin Dam, director of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society, member of the Tasmanian parliament and the founder of Bush Heritage Australia. He was an Australian senator and leader of the Australian Greens Party. While in the Tasmanian parliament he successfully campaigned for a large increase in protected wilderness areas. He has published several books on the Tasmanian environment.” I couldn’t discover any other politician accorded an Academy encomium, other than Al Gore.
The Warming Debate (Minus Any Opponent)
The Teacher Guide lays out “A structured class debate on climate science. In one lesson, teams prepare and, in the following lesson, every student takes part in the live debate. Pink bat or sun hat?” A dull debate, given that students have been ruthlessly quarantined from discovering any sceptic argument. Indeed in the Academy’s anti-sceptic fatwa, students are warned to browse “only reputable science websites” (UQ’s John “97%” Cook’s site perhaps?) . World top-rated blogs like Anthony Watts (wattsupwiththat.com, with 250m views) and Joanne Nova (joannenova.com.au with 600,000 visitors a year) are obviously beyond the pale. The course does concede there’s a “debate”, viz “Over time, the debate has gathered momentum and national leaders are taking action …but is it enough?”
At several points in the course, presenters such as ABC “comedians” and Al Gore fabricate sceptic arguments and then ridicule their own fabrications. Real sceptic arguments such as peer-reviewed downgrading of the IPCC’s CO2 sensitivity estimates, are unmentioned. The Academy thus presents to kids a poor example of professional courtesy in scientific discussion.
One surprise is a little Year 10 accolade to Dr Garth Partridge (sic) who “has conducted research into Earth’s atmosphere, often from aircraft during thunderstorms. He is famous for his research on clouds and their effect on climate change.” The Academy does not mention that Academician Garth Paltridge is Australia’s most-honored climate sceptic.
Nor could I find one reference to the (now 18 years and 9 months) halt to atmospheric warming this century, as shown by RSS satellite-based measurement . In other words, not one of the 16 year old students the Academy is preaching to about horrific global warming, has experienced any global warming in their lifetimes. The warming stopped three years before they were born.
Academy’s Self-Interested Appeals
Most remarkable of all, the Academy instructs students on the need for scientists’ salaries and gear to get a bigger share of the grant-funding cake, even relative to medical research.
…
The Year 10 Teacher Guide includes 4.5 Big funding for big science: “Students debate the merits of government spending on science. They research six big-systems experiments and justify their funding proposals. Which big experiment will you fund?”[5]
We see an inspirational picture of youthful demonstrators holding high their protest placards.
…
One sign: “Climate science and research cents is all common sense”; another “Fund education in science”.
Students are shown pictures of the local synchrotron, the Square Kilometre Array, the Parkes radio telescope etc and asked, “For each, what percentage of the total Australian Government funding would you recommend be allocated? Share your findings with the class.“ Maybe the Academy needs to footnote a “Declaration of Interest”?[6]
A Unique “Sciencey” Perspective
To really catch the teenagers’ interest, the Academy transposes climate instruction into song by melodysheep, “A musical investigation into the causes and effects of global climate change and our opportunities to use science to offset it. Featuring Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley and Isaac Asimov.”
The song’s lyrics go:
Climates all start in the sky/
When the C02 is high/
the temperature is high/
Moving together in lock step/
When the C02 is low/
the temperature is low/
Moving together/
We can change the world.
(The song is wrong. Even the orthodox climate crowd accepts ice core evidence that CO2 has lagged temperature by 800 years or so.).
“Hottest summer EVER” shouts a sign about Australia’s 2012-13 summer, a big fib to children doing the “Big Scale” module as the Academy has no idea what temperatures got to in the pre-1900 millenia. Indeed the 1890s peak could well have been hotter than any in the 2000s – the Met Bureau trashed all of its temperature data pre-1910. Also odd is the Academy claim here that “climate” involves a 20 year span of weather[7]; the convention is 30 years. That’s an own-goal: the warming halt is now nearly 20 years and hence significant on the Academy’s definition of climate.
…
The diagram here is headed “Our Record Melting Summer” with all sorts of heat and rain records shown as broken , without mention of data reliability at, say, “Lenora” WA [sic]. For some reason there is no equivalent diagram for breaking of cold-temperature records, which also happens often. To really labor the point, the map shows Australia heat-melting southwards to about 500km below Hobart. Southwards apparently equals down-hill. [Jo adds that there are alternate maps of record heat across Australia in the 1800s which were hotter].
Misleading Experiments and Experts
Thoroughly bad science work is promoted to bolster the warmist narrative – students put thermometers inside closed ‘greenhouse’ jars and tip acid into test-tubes of seawater contained crushed shells.
Students are invited to “research how computer modelling has improved knowledge and predictability of phenomena, atmospheric pollution, ocean salinity and climate change.” Drawing attention to the models seems risky, as students may stumble across the IPCC’s 5AR admission (Box 9.2) that 111 of 114 of climate models wax too hot. Warming predictions and actual temperatures have been widening progressively for the past decade.
The Academy also displays a carbon credits propaganda video for Year 10 created (ostensibly) by a colorful UK broker. The video shows wind-tower blades transformed to beautiful green leaves. Alas, the broker was attacked by the Daily Mail for dubious hard-sell and other malpractices — including misappropriating other parties’ videos.
In “The Experts Speak”, 16 year old students are advised to “Click here to hear some scientific points of view.” What they get is videos of conspiracist Naomi Oreskes (warming sceptics = tobacco lobbyists); Greenpeace Australia/Pacific ex-CEO and Gore-worshipper Linda Selvey; US alarmist teacher Greg Craven (caution: not our ACU vice-chancellor Greg Craven); and a producer of alarmist videos James Balog. Alongside them is a suffering earth-globe holding a sign, “Act Now”.
Oreskes should be the front-running joke with her fiction about a mass climate extinction of kittens and puppies in 2023 (not cited in any Academy material). But Craven takes the cake:
“The worst case – this is sea level rising 10-20ft, entire countries disappearing, hundreds of millions of people displaced, crowding in their neighbours causing widespread warfare over scarce resources and longstanding hatreds. Entire forests dying … a world that makes Al Gore look like a sissy Pollyanna with no guts, sugar coating the bad news.”
The Teachers’ Guide says: “As a class watch the video by Greg Craven and have a class vote on whether action is warranted.“
Other videos feature Gore himself in another of his error-riddled rants. This time (2009), he claims that worrying climate trends are even worse than scientists predicted, and agonises about polar ice shrinkage –the Academy does not alert kids that Arctic sea ice has recovered strongly and global sea ice trends show nothing abnormal. ( Arctic sea ice extent is now at its highest level for November since at least 2005). The Antarctic, Gore says, “is now in negative ice balance” – it’s actually positive, says NASA .
In yet more inaccuracy, Gore claims weather disasters “have been increasing at an absolutely extraordinary and unprecedented rate.”
- Gore even adverts respectfully to the IPCC’s 2007 melting Himalayan glaciers howler. Are the science teachers slamming or reinforcing Gore’s errors? I suspect the latter: Gore’s video is labeled “Al Gore campaigns on the need for action”. The Year 10 Teacher Guide also says, “You may stimulate discussion with local media articles or by showing the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth.”
Typically loaded questions include
# Will mining scar the Tarkine forest?
# Is the Murray-Darling on the brink?
# Big waves and high tides: do we need to re-think coastal living? [The NSW government this month threw the IPCC sea-rise scenarios under the bus] and
# Is eco-tourism a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Even now, teenagers are still being poked with the notorious Hockey Stick of Michael Mann: “While Earth’s average temperature has risen over time, the increases now observed are unprecedented and thought to be largely due to population and human activity.” The “unprecedented” bit surely deserves an errata.
At the end of term, students are invited to select a (green) world conference to hypothetically attend, including (by backward time travel) the June 2012 Rio+20 Agenda-21-touting jamboree. Links lead them to the preliminary conference on “Degrowth in the Americas” in May 2012 in Montreal, run by and for certifiable eco-lunatics. Aiming for a “post growth healing earth” they want to send Western economies backwards to “avert ecological collapse while enhancing social justice and improving life’s prospects… and build towards a truly prosperous world.” A click away, kids can browse a paper on eco-friendly and humane policies of the Cuban government.
Another suggested world conference is a student one at Perth’s Murdoch University, with urgings for a world free of ‘scary plastics’ (a new industrial revolution?) and tips for students on “where to buy bulk bicarb, and how to make your own deodorant .
The Academy’s Distaste for Mining & Business
Miners aren’t the heroes of the Academy course. The Year 10 Teacher Guide asks: “Mining is used to illustrate conflicting factors in scientific and technological progress… Is mining a scientific or environmental quandary?” Huh? Mining’s a “quandary”? Try doing without it.
At one section there is a reasonable treatment of mining, albeit on a pro and con basis. But then it segues to “Searching for the Truth” and “THINGS TO CONSIDER AND HINTS FOR SUCCESS”
“ This activity is not just about mining. Encourage students to reflect on the bigger issues – are there links between the impact of mining, human activity and climate change? What is mining doing to the lithosphere? Are the changes manageable? Irreversible?”
Another video shows the ABC’s Emma Alberici claiming coal is “the number one climate killer”.
Students are told, “Mining attracts its fair share of controversy. It is not a pretty site! [Cue picture of open cut stretching to the horizon]. Could we do without it?… Would you work for a mining company? In what capacity? [An example given is ‘an environmental geoscientist’].
“Explore two different sources of media and business websites on mining. What do you notice? Is mining portrayed as an asset or adverse experience for Australia? Are they telling the truth? [Cue picture of youthful protestors with a placard, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our CHILDREN”]
At Year 9 (age 15) level, kids are shown an ABC video about Arctic sea ice disappearing, with plenty of spooky music and shots of melting ice. An unnamed scientist intones, “There is a group that makes a very strong case that in 2012 or 2013 we will have an ice-free Arctic – as soon as that!” Reality: the 2013 minimum figure was about 5.1 million square km of ice. Have science teachers been pointing that out – or might such objectivity hurt their careers?
At Year 7’s Circle of Life module, 13 year olds get a picture of a horrid grey open cut mine with a poisonous looking pond at the bottom. A couple of stunted trees are at the top, not long for this world. What’s to like?
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The 13 year olds course Part 6. Can you defend your position about ecosystem management?” has this picture:
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Could one imagine the material’s loaded? Kids are directed to the scientific analyses of recreational hunting by rag-trader Prue Acton, super-model Tara Moss, show-offy Germaine Greer and ABC comedian Wendy Harmer. Egad, they are all against recreational hunting!
To further make the case, illustrations show a small wallaby, a brolga, a climbing lizard and a cassowary, all with bull’s-eye targets on their chests. According to the Academy’s teacher notes, this sort of thing is how students “create a well constructed scientific argument to support their view.”
A 13 year old would presumably be flunked for wanting judicious development in national parks to help taxpayers afford the employment of Academy Fellows.[8]
It may seem a wonder that none of 9000 high school science teachers (let alone Academicians of integrity) has had the wit or integrity to complain to the Academy about force-feeding climate-activism to students. Those with qualms may be relying on the Nuremberg defence – “I was following union orders”. The all-powerful teachers’ unions have not only endorsed “action on climate change” and “lobbying in support of a sustainable low carbon economy” but proffered to teachers their own “Environment Resources and Action kit” and backed a Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) climate campaign based on “a union perspective”.
Academy at Primary Schools: Some Praise
At primary-school levels, the Academy’s separate Primary Connections includes loaded material for 12 year olds about [intermittent, expensive] wind and solar power vs [cheap reliable] coal-fired electricity “that can damage the environment”.[9]
The Essential Energy text makes good points about careful use of the scientific method (without mentioning the Feynman honesty test of doing your utmost to refute your own findings pre-publication). However, the text harps on the “pollution” from fossil-fuel-powered electricity, ecological footprints (“choosing to purchase locally grown produce”), “clean energy” and exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves – however remotely into the future.
Energy issues for 12 year olds are seen through the prism of the warming catastrophe hypothesis. The primary course has nothing to say about how fossil-fuel powered electricity has rescued billions from poverty and early graves, and how its increased take-up is essential to lift the world’s remaining billions from squalor.
The teachers also teach 12 year olds that fossil fuels produce CO2 which raises the air temperature [how much?] or acidifies the ocean [how much?]. “The pollution released can cause ‘acid rain’ if its concentration is very high.” [The “acid rain” scare was scare de jour a decade ago and has petered out].
“All of this is based on the best available science, and is reviewed by Academy Fellows,” President Holmes sums up the primary course reassuringly.
That material is certainly more sober than the Academy’s secondary-school activism. For example, it alerts kids that supposed black clouds in pictures of power stations are merely steam, not CO2,[10] and that renewables’ ecological impact calculations must also include energy used for their manufacture and disposal.
Kids are also asked to critique propaganda by super-heroes Professor Pitch-black and Short Circuit (comic book figures) who claim to save the planet by totally shutting off electricity. This exercise could be viewed by greenie parents and maybe the secondary-course writers as sacrilege.
Summing up: the school lessons explored in this article are, sadly, normal in schools these days. But who’d have imagined the author is the Australian Academy of Science?
# Tony Thomas blogs at No B/S Here I Hope
His previous pieces on the Australian Academy of Science include here, here, and here
REFERENCES
[1] AAS annual reports
[2] A Melbourne University chemist, Professor Holmes “has been recognised for his groundbreaking work on light-emitting polymers”.
[3] The same speech in which Holmes painted climate scientists as victims of abuse and harassment
[4] The courses were at “concept plan” in 2006 and Stage One was worked on in 2009-11. The Academy’s relatively sober climate booklet “Questions and Answers” of mid-2010 gets only passing mentions in the course. Goodrum says, “The Q&A material is available world wide, while Science by Doing is restricted for copyright reasons to only Australia.”
[5] “Students are probably unaware of the huge costs and budgetary restraints on scientific research. They may be aware there tends to be support for areas which give immediate benefits to the public e.g., medical advances, and not realise the general impacts of more academic research projects e.g., nuclear physics and astronomy.”
[6] Should History and Phys Ed associations (and medical research associations) also rev up school students to lobby for grants for History and Phys Ed professionals?
[7] The course consistently transfers to students its own muddles about climate and weather
[8] 20 out of 20 Academy Fellows I sampled (using successive alphabet letters) were working or retired academics.
[9] President Holmes says of the 12 year olds “Essential Energy” unit that it “gives students the opportunity to explore different energy sources—both non-renewable and renewable—and to begin to understand the environmental impact of using each one to generate electricity… Students also read and discuss information about how most power stations in Australia burn fossil fuels to generate electrical energy and how burning these fossil fuels produces waste products that can damage the environment.”
[10] Science By Doing routinely mis-uses the black-smoke image
“It’s worse than we thought.”
In the last graphic, the sign post should read “Australian Academy of Science”.
In similar tone, here’s something noteworthy:
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/federal-government-lifts-tony-abbotts-wind-farm-investment-ban/417200
Didn’t Turnbull commit NOT to change climate policy?
This should be stuck into Denis Jensen, who helped put this man in the Lodge.
Alerting voters in Nat districts might inspire the illustrious 54 to reconsider their future.
410
it is economic policy
614
it is a Goldman Sachs policy
380
The willingness to buy junk carbon credits was probably Malcolm’s idea, but apart from that they went to Paris with Greg’s clever accounting which was developed by Tony.
Throwing money at the CSIRO under the guise of innovation has Malcolm’s fingerprints all over it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, the small island nations and isolated communities on this big island could have diesel generators on hand only as a backup.
We are talking of breakthrough innovation, it should be an easy political sell.
81
There is nothing “economic” about it. A nation dependant on wind power cannot afford to build or repair wind turbines. The EROEI is too low for this failed technology. Big Wind subsidy farming is just a ponzi scheme that can’t continue without the taxpayer subsidies Lord Bouncy Waffle just reinstated.
330
that is your opinion of the policy but that does not change its classification
139
Gee Aye,
fallacy of equivocation: The fallacy of equivocation occurs when a key term or phrase in an argument is used in an ambiguous way, with one meaning in one portion of the argument and then another meaning in another portion of the argument.
economic : adjective
1. of or relating to economics or the economy.
“the government’s economic policy”
synonyms: financial, monetary, budgetary, fiscal;
“economic reform”
2. justified in terms of profitability.
“many organizations must become larger if they are to remain economic”
synonyms: cheap, inexpensive, low-cost, economical, cut-rate, discount, bargain
“an economic alternative to carpeting”
You, Gee Aye, are obviously referring to the first definition and Konrad is clearly referring to the second. My question to you is: “Should economic policy be based on factual scientific evidence or should it be based on some pre-defined political agenda?”
Abe
371
depends on the proposal and the solution. Neither.
131
Gee Aye,
Internal contradiction. If you’re right, and it depends on the proposal and the solution, then the correct answer must be both not neither.
neither : determiner & pronoun
1. not the one nor the other of two people or things; not either.
“neither side of the brain is dominant over the other”
neither : adverb
1. used before the first of two (or occasionally more) alternatives that are being specified (the others being introduced by “nor”) to indicate that they are each untrue or each do not happen.
“I am neither a liberal nor a conservative”
But I don’t think you’re right. Can you outline one proposed solution to some economic problem that would require a solution based solely on a pre-defined political agenda that would also be the proper course of action in that case? Remember that we’re discussing the climate when you answer.
Abe
271
Gee Aye,
Now that I think about it my last question wasn’t properly phrased.
What I should have written is:
Can you outline one problem that would require an economic solution based solely on a pre-defined political agenda that would also be the proper course of action in that case?
Remember that we’re discussing the climate when you answer.
My apologies for the mix up. I should have thought it through before posting.
Abe
221
Abe,
neither if your options are N/A
325
Jo,
I just *love* the cauldron added to the AAS image….classic…..spot on….
I think the AAS have really forfieted all credibility from here on in.
If it walks like an activist, quacks like an activist, chances are…..
281
Its a Dodo.
140
When I was a kid I thought it was the Jupiter II.
50
Now I think back on that, and in light of current matters, they act like Dr. Smith.
50
… especially around kiddies.
50
Hee hee
00
I recommend that copies of this be sent to all school principals and to all parent bodies involved with schools. It’s high time we gave them feedback of what we think of this nonsense.
500
Too late. I tried a few years ago to have this nonsense headed off by the Minister for Education…he squibbed it.
Talk about ‘Stolen Generations’!
At least I saved my daughter.
190
They already know what they’re doing and really aren’t caring what the general public thinks about it. The concepts have been getting into Western education for some time now. Lots of UN stuff in all of this. Robin at http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/ has been trying to bring attention to the changes in education, although primarily for the US.
110
Thanks Spetzer. A reader just alerted me to jo’s post. In particular this post on what the very phrase ‘science understanding’ now means is apt http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/harnessing-the-meaning-making-capacities-of-the-human-mind-and-then-assessing-for-the-tightness-of-the-fit/ because it refers to the New Zealand concept of Te Whariki and how formative assessments get used to shape the desired perceptions of reality.
If you remember my book Credentialed to Destroycovered a great deal of the constructivism in math and science by citing to Australian sources because they were so graphic. Likewise, when I was first coming to grips with what Transformational Outcomes Based Education was, it was everywhere in Australia by the mid-90s.
The Russian term obuchenie means when a student’s perception of a concept is what the Bureaucrats and social planners desire. The US is not the only place using education and the law to scientize politics.
110
The AAS betray themselves at every turn. It’s been done before by another Academy of Science, a sustained propaganda effort in education that required equally compliant teachers and institutions willing to subvert biology and history. It ended disastrously in a global catastrophe of ‘correction’ with the death of some 50 million people.
Doubtless the UN definition of ‘climate change‘ doesn’t feature in this Australian curriculum.
It would only take a few bright sparks to frame the awkward question focusing on the obvious, that the presence of a single human on Gaia alters both atmospheric composition and land usage, the core of anthropogenic ‘climate change’.
The answer may be found in Maurice Strong, Al Gore and Christiana Figueres devotion to a ‘final solution’.
210
Manfred,
There was another example of an Acadamy of Science promoting a false doctrine.
It seems that rather than learn from history we’re being forced to repeat it.
I also found this case to be chillingly reminiscent of the current push towards reliance on wind and solar energy in that the yield in electrical output, like the crop yield was under Lysenkoism, is lower per dollar than the yield from fossil fuels as TonyfromOz and many others worldwide have so clearly pointed out.
Abe
220
The seemingly limitless audacity and mendacity of climate sponsored totalitarianism is breathtaking.
Listening to the MSM TV this evening, they advise that it will cost everyone in NZ $100 pa to ‘save the planet’…not a bad deal they say… but is it enough… they ask. Meanwhile, young school children vote about 3:1 to keep the current flag in NZ because…’it connects us with our history and the people who died for it’.
The UN iconoclastic ideology would separate us all from any meaningful touchstone, making it far easier to impose their
new world orderAgenda based on the delusional premise that we can control the weather if we follow the Green Gospel. No one except ideologues would or indeed could peddle this deranged unsustainability. And once absolute power is gained, as we all well know, the requirement for any further rationale vanishes, as strangely does the dissent, usually in the small hours of the night.Nevertheless, forewarned is as they say, forearmed.
201
I wonder if you gave the AAS and the science teachers a multi choice, test question such as this what results would be:
Where does Australia generate most of it’s wealth from :
( you get a bonus mark for trying hard)
1. Climate change taxes
2. School fees
3. Mining and related industries
4. The tooth fairy donations
5. Fuel taxes
6. Government grants.
420
Australian Academy of Science, following this success, will shortly start distributing material showing that the Earth is really flat, that it rides on the back of a turtle, that the sky is a sphere of blue CO2 held up by elephants, that the World was created in seven days and that species do not evolve.
240
Your comment reminded me of a wood engraving called the Flammarion; “has been used to represent a supposedly medieval cosmology, including a flat earth bounded by a solid and opaque sky, or firmament, and also as a metaphorical illustration of either the scientific or the mystical quests for knowledge.” (info from Wiki), and seen here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flammarion.jpg
50
Of course, this could be a symbolic painting, with the explorer discovering the alternative realities (parallel universes) that some present-day scientists say could exist alongside our own. Not all paintings are photographic representations (see Dali or Picasso as examples).
20
That’s odd. Paintings of Dali and Picasso seem as photographic representations to me. Hmm!
20
Monty Python, as always, seems to be wiser than the AAS.
The “Witch” scene, whereby cutting edge “Science” is used to provide rather rubber “proof” :
Cast:
(V) Sir Vladimir
(King) King is Arthur, King of the Britains!
(W) ‘Witch’ woman
(P1,P2,P3) Peasants one, two and three
Peasants: We have found a witch! (A witch! a witch!)
Burn her burn her!
Peasant 1: We have found a witch, may we burn her?
(cheers)
Vladimir: How do you known she is a witch?
P2: She looks like one!
V: Bring her forward
(advance)
Woman: I’m not a witch! I’m not a witch!
V: ehh… but you are dressed like one.
W: They dressed me up like this!
All: naah no we didn’t… no.
W: And this isn’t my nose, it’s a false one.
(V lifts up carrot)
V: Well?
P1: Well we did do the nose
V: The nose?
P1: …And the hat, but she is a witch!
(all: yeah, burn her burn her!)
V: Did you dress her up like this?
P1: No! (no no… no) Yes. (yes yeah) a bit (a bit bit a bit) But she has got a wart!
(P3 points at wart)
V: What makes you think she is a witch?
P2: Well, she turned me into a newt!
V: A newt?!
(P2 pause & look around)
P2: I got better.
(pause)
P3: Burn her anyway! (burn her burn her burn!)
(king walks in)
V: There are ways of telling whether she is a witch.
P1: Are there? Well then tell us! (tell us)
V: Tell me… what do you do with witches?
P3: Burn’em! Burn them up! (burn burn burn)
V: What do you burn apart from witches?
P1: More witches! (P2 nudge P1)
(pause)
P3: Wood!
V: So, why do witches burn?
(long pause)
P2: Cuz they’re made of… wood?
V: Gooood.
(crowd congratulates P2)
V: So, how do we tell if she is made of wood?
P1: Build a bridge out of her!
V: Ahh, but can you not also make bridges out of stone?
P1: Oh yeah…
V: Does wood sink in water?
P1: No
P3: No. It floats!
P1: Let’s throw her into the bog! (yeah yeah ya!)
V: What also floats in water?
P1: Bread
P3: Apples
P2: Very small rocks
(V looks annoyed)
P1: Cider
P3: Grape gravy
P1: Cherries
P3: Mud
King: A Duck!
(all look and stare at king)
V: Exactly! So, logically…
P1(thinking): If she ways the same as a duck… she’s made of wood!
V: And therefore,
(pause & think)
P3: A witch! (P1: a witch)(P2: a witch)(all: a witch!)
V: We shall use my largest scales.
(V jumps down)
100
My post should read…..”provide rather rubbery “proof””
Need more coffee 🙂
20
The most appropriate lines surely must be
“And that my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped!”
“This new learning amazes me Sir Robin. Explain again how sheep’s bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.”
160
Meh… they did some of those, too. But when did you last see a lady with both eyes on the same side of her nose?
All I am saying is that, not having the artist to explain the meaning of his picture, it could be his view of the science of the day, or his own conception of alternative realities. Who knows?
00
This mob is essentially an ecological (Paganism disguised as science) activist group.
Check out the activities it is so fervently into: https://www.science.org.au/news-and-events/news-and-media-releases
50
This is not good news.
The pursuit of science requires a type of mental humility where you are always building on known verifiable experience for yourself and relying on the honesty, ability and integrity of those who have done the earlier work.
You interact with the physical world and come to understand the difference between the possible (reality) and the not possible but at some stage it will be necessary to take some things as fact because we cannot, for example, all go through the process of determining the speed of light nor of determining atomic weights.
The type of misinformation and indoctrination currently in Australian schools will further lead Australian students into an acceleration of the current trend downwards.
International rankings show that Australian school students rank very low in science.
I have joked before that they are even behind West Krygistan but it is no longer a joke.
It would seem that the target political ideal is to have the Australian economy in ruins, to have everybody dependent on the dole and to continue devaluing the Australian dollar to deal with the massive borrowing needed to fund the “New Order” here in Oz.
Science is a demanding and rewarding study when faced properly and it is extremely depressing to see this cancer invading schools and society generally.
I am part of a small group which meets every week for a couple of hours. Two weeks ago during tea break a lady in the group proudly announced that she had marched in Sydney with the group advocating support of the Paris Climate Change Conference. She stated that there were 42,000 supporters marching for the climate, but the dagger to the heart was the comment that white flags were carried to represent science and presumably to confirm it’s importance.
She, and presumably the entire 42,000 marchers were totally unaware of that incongruity.
Politics and manipulation are out of control in the structure we here in Australia think of as a democracy. We have lost too much control and the drones don’t even suspect they are being had.
Without science training it is very hard to think for yourself.
KK
500
This kind of thing has been happening for a long time. The trouble that we see here is that 1. It is still developing, and 2. It seems that it may be approaching the 50% + 1 saturation that is needed to gain control in a democracy.
Make no mistake. These people operate on the basis that winner takes all. They have no qualms about destroying peoples’ lives.
On 5th December 1986 the Hawke government appointed the National President of the Australian Labor Party as chairman of a new board of management for the CSIRO. He was the first non scientist to hold that position.
Since that time our science has been corrupted with partisan politics. This is just the latest iteration.
211
“white flags were carried to represent science and presumably to confirm its importance”
Perfectly apt, science surrenders to dogma..
150
The #COP21 Deal, December 12, 2015: The Day Science Died:
“President Hollande of France slid to the microphone, and, with great Gallic aplomb, announced December 12th, 2015 will be a day that lives in “infamy.” Or maybe it was “history.” It’s hard to tell since that gentleman was rather excited when he spoke, seeing that the world had just entered into a momentous agreement to spend as much of your money as humanely possible to prevent the unpreventable.
So take your pick: infamy or history. Either way, this fateful date will be remembered as the Day Science Died.”
https://stream.org/cop21-december-12-2015-day-science-died/
130
The day the beaurcrats launched a Socialist pearl harbour-style attack against democracy inder the guise of “science”….
50
This is one of the most disturbing articles I have seen published on your website 🙁
380
But they are going to save the planet.
110
They have! The planet is saved! Accord has been reached:
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/un-climate-conference/paris-climate-conference-2015-well-done-on-the-deal-but-the-real-test-still-to-come-20151212-glm6oa.html
But soft, what scepticism through yonder window breaks:
And either this is a typo or it implies China is berating Australia for lowish tagets:
That would be impressive, being slagged off by the world’s greatest emitter, with emissions growing at a pace equal to Australia’s total every year…
130
I’d suggest that the AAS is a union for non-scientists.
340
In fact, could not the AAS be described in the same vein as the Church of Scientology, as the former is now clearly a pseudo religious organisation?
120
Years ago..I was talking to friend who is a science teacher..somehow, “climate change” came up..
I made a joke about it..and he said “dont you believe in climate change ? “.. (he was an advocate of course and owned a car, connected to the grid etc..as they all are..)
Now I can appreciate asinine rhetorical questions for humour..anyway..so I started asking him questions..and he did not have a %$# clue..
And I do mean he knew nothing..
So..I mailed him a book “The Hockey Stick Illusion” by Montford..Cue “”but he is not a climate scientist“…yawn..anway.
This was the conversation.
Drapetomania– “what did you think of the book”
Science teacher – “I did not read it..this scares me”.
That is the exact response he gave me.. 🙂
We are doomed.. 🙂
Zombie “science” and billions of $ …for nothing..
As an aside..have any of the $CAGW$ fans ever explained how the billions spent so far..have actually made the planet “better”..or that just to difficult a question for the faithful?
431
Was he a public school teacher or private school teacher?
Does anyone know if there is a greater takeup of the CAGW fairy story in public school than private schools ( I’d hope the private schools just a smidge smarter in this space …)
101
As an evil mining industry ogre (even worse i specialise in coal, mmmmmwwwwwwwhhhaaaaaaaaa), I regularly check on my 9 year old son’s science learnings at a catholic school. As yet there has been no global warming stuff at all.
I have also been to several “What my Dad does.” days. Let me tell you kids love videos of big equipment and blasts. I always throw in the question “Touch an object (not a person) in the room which does not have any mining products in it.” After only a couple of guesses where it becomes obvious that nothing in the room doesn’t rely on mining, it then moves into them asking “What mining things does this have in it?”
Best response has come from several teachers. “I had no idea what materials it takes for us to live today!”
440
Brilliant, well done.
130
Hi Dean,
Any chance you could email me your photos and notes?
With your permission, I’d like to try to create PowerPoint and YouTube presentations. It’s a message I’d like to see spread.
I authorise the mods to disclose my eddress to you.
10
I don’t know what the trend was across the country, that would require finding an old copy of the Australian national high school standard curriculum, which I believe private schools had to mostly adopt if they wanted Government money to partly subsidise costs.
If my old private school is any indicator, the indoctrination started very soon after Rio.
The indoctrination has now compounded because, as Jo said about my sad tale, “Teachers today were raised on this”.
(The good thing about being a long-time commentator at Jo’s blog is I have to type out full replies progressively less often as I can just link to an older comment to the same question more often.)
80
I also have a teacher mate (D&T) who was oblivious to arguments outside of the “consensus”, although in this case, he was receptive to new information. We discussed the virtues of skeptical views which he then planned to incorporate into his lesson plans on sustainability. When another teacher in his staff room saw that he was going to discuss the problems with wind and solar power generation he was told quite firmly “you can’t teach that”
Clearly a case of teaching what to think rather than how to think.
260
I imagine much of the problem lies with the fact that school teachers must have teaching degrees, but knwoing much about the field they are supposed to teach is a secondary consideration. It’s weird… in universities the exact opposite applies (must have PhD or similar in subject, no one cares if you even have a weekend course certificate in teaching). You wonder why there isn’t more balance …
130
Well it seems to me that there is much “educayshun” but limited learning….
20
In much of the USA, teachers are trained as “teachers” – that is, the subject matter is of much lesser importance than the rules, regulations, and how to design a lesson plan. Teachers are very busy with multiple classes per day and considerable paper-work. Thus, whatever help (materials and prepared handouts, questions, movies, presentations) an organization supplies is appreciated. [As an aside, preachers can get similar help via sites on the internet – and do.]
Maybe a few OZ teachers can comment on how they were trained and if a science teacher, how much science training they received.
170
So where in all this is the actual Science content? This is utterly science free, fact free political indoctrination. Like all Group Think in education and the media, real science is absent. You can only hope the Council is not aware of this anti science propaganda. This may be quite different from NASA, BOM, ABC, CSIRO, the Royal Society, even the IPCC which all have mostly serious scientists at the bottom and political activism at the top. Yes, this is scandalous abuse of education by utterly science ignorant fifth column activists inside the AIS. Then what exactly does the Federal government expect us to innovate in a public service landscape without miners, without manufacturing, without farmers and serving drinks to rich tourists who come to look at our kangaroos?
321
Whatever happened to nullius in verba?
90
Motto of the Royal Society. Even they ignore it now. Politics and self promotion, not physics.
50
All part of the “Long March” by the Club of Rome and Frankfurt school grads to the taking of the minds and hearts that has been going on for decades.
Now they don’t even try to conceal it.
I’m 64, live in California, am getting out as soon as I can and am damn glad I won’t live to see the final takedown.
360
yeah but did you see him play? Was a joy to see Carlton completely bamboozled in the GF of ’93.
214
Call me “Cassandra” but there are no surprises in all this, seen this coming for years. Schools and universities are well on the way to fulfilling their true purpose for our future society as it is imagined in the minds of a certain type of person , that is they are a training complex for producing the compliant citizens who will create the Glorious Collectivist New World Order. The psychological type driving this kind of development in society want to control everything so why would they not be operating in every conceivable social institution? Once the momentum builds it is extremely hard to stop, it has the irrepressible dynamism of mass psychology. As history shows this kind of thing is usually brought to an end by the social disaster contained in potential form within the movement itself.
190
Forty two thousand marchers for climate in Sydney can’t be wrong!
KK
44
I like asking questions of them – I keep asking for scientific proof of catastrophic man driven climate change – they often point to the IPCC or CSIRO – again I ask for the actual proof, the numbers…..
Usually I get a cranky repsonse ( purely emotive ) and anger…..becasue I dare question their rank stupidity and blind faith.
I keep asking…eventuallY I get yelled at. Only a matter of time. I almost got thumped one day. The bloke was a nasty bit of work anyway…
The only problem is when the mask is completely gone, there will be internment of sceptics and secret executions – all you have to do is look at how socialists/Communists deal with dissent…..
The irony is – nothing ever good comes out of Socialism. It collapses in on itself.
The best thing we can do is keep speaking the truth, carefully teach our kids that they will be used as cannon fodder by society unless they dont learn to think for themselves, and teach them what socialism is and how it works.
the problem is also the 20 somethings I doubt have any knowledge of why the Korean war was fought, and how evil communism actually is – Communism is cruel, it has a badnes about it that is hard to explain but its the ultimate pointless exercise – you either agree with them or be killed. I fyou agree you are monitored 24 x 7 and made to agree, and live in misery. Its completely pointless, soul destroying misery that rewards ineptness and stupidity, crushes anything individualistic and promotes humanistic emptiness….
Bah.
80
@ OriginalSteve
Most of those who allude to the CSIRO and IPCC also have no idea what it is that those organisations say.
I remember one CSIRO report I saw that said increased CO2 (and temp?) would increase Australia’s sugar production fivefold, but the industry would suffer from the fact that Brazil would benefit even more.
This was spun by alarmist politicians as ‘bad news’.
00
Ouch! Pavlovian education. The conditioned reflex.
20
Fuel Filter. Good description of the source of much or our troubles. Thank you.
50
aweful. Imagine students acting on their beliefs!
shocking. What sort of world do we live in?
720
Awful- very bad or unpleasant
Aweful- inspiring awe, dread etc
140
I know thanks.
311
The problem is that the authorities are pushing this agenda from a non-scientific perspective, because the science is settled.
In the first instance, any teacher worth his salt should ask the students have they heard of the hiatus?
121
No scientist asks children to write essays and elect class leaders and criticize each other’s opinion. Scientists do not write essays on physics, mathematics or chemistry or anything else. Mathematics is not addition by consensus! This agenda is Stalinist Marxism and communist education. Differences of opinion will not be tolerated. A gulag will be created for dissidents and those who question the wisdom of Bob Brown. Punishment Tribunals will be formed. Soon students will be asked to report their teachers and parents as deniers and elect school political officers, preferably with side arms.
191
I saw that the COP21 agreement did use the phrase ‘climate justice’ in the Annex, so you may not be too far off the mark…
“…Noting the importance of ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems, including oceans, and the protection of biodiversity, recognized by some cultures as Mother Earth, and noting the importance for some of the concept of “climate justice”, when taking action to address climate change…”
followed by:
“…Affirming the importance of education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information and cooperation at all levels on the matters addressed in this Agreement…”
110
Climate Justice is spelt “Klimate Ju$tice”
92
Its spelled “kill all deniers…”
Again – educate our kids, they *need* to know what they are dealing with. They need to understand what socialism is, how they ahve been sold out by schools who were too gutless to push back on this nonsense. And yes, teachers need to be held acocuntable.
Even if Klimate Change is in the curriculum, teachers need to push back on this nonsense or at least show the kids its questionable….
I refuse to stay silent when my kids young mind is at stake.
20
Richard Feynman was a scientist I heard
hmmm I could go on with dozens of his essays and dozens more from dozens more scientists. All of whom,according to you, are not scientists. It is almost like you are saying that scientists must stick completely to the generation and interpretation of data and offer society nothing else. Your statement is not just wrong but utterly stupid.
427
Of course scientists do write theses and papers and are able to both read and write. I read Feynman’s lectures at the time. Was my comment too subtle for a non scientist? Would you like a short essay on the functionality of Schroedinger’s equation? It has a plot.
202
you don’t teach young minds to think and be skeptical by handing them equations. Or maybe you do.
326
Its not only the young minds that need a science education, their parents are woeful too.
‘The bulk of the primary and secondary science modules is not just good but excellent. Lord knows, science help is needed in Australia, where 40% of adults don’t know how long it takes the earth to orbit the sun, 30% think humans lived with dinosaurs, and science/maths students are tumbling behind their OECD peers.’
Tony Thomas
130
Try these
2*pi*r
pi*r^2
4/3 pi*r^3
f=ma
s=ut+1/2*a*t^2
HCl+NaOH=NaCL+H2O
etc.
Science is not about essays and consensus about what you feel the circumference of a circle ought to be, or the distance to a star. Teaching science is about teaching equations, mathematical logic, absolutes if possible. This is rational science. 1+1=2, not 3, 4 or 4 1/4. However you can write essays about science. One does not preclude the other.
Children learning science learn equations, what they mean, how they work and how to use them in practice. That is science. Data, facts, conclusions, workable rules and absolutes based on absolutes, if possible. In the new progressive world of faux science and faux history, facts are irrelevant. Progressive historians consider truth is irrelevant. This is nonsense. Facts are all you have. Debate has to be constructive. Calling people stupid because you do not understand something reflects badly on you and no one else.
181
TdeF why would I try those? And what has stating equations got to do with science or science education.
btw… your chemical equation is wrong 😉
322
“your chemical equation is wrong” ?????
Please explain.
71
Gee Aye
Only wrong in the last part of Sodium Chloride
HCl+NaOH=NaCL+H2O
Which should have been a lower case (l)
The equation is ONLY wrong through a typographical error
Any one with an ounce (OZ) of brains could have concluded that the equation itself was correct.
BTW Gee Aye
There is no element with the letter L!
103
gees probably noticed the capital L on the RHS….. being the pedantic little a**ewipe that he is.
(except of his own posts of course, which are always loose and incoherent)
122
Let me guess….. you have never taught anyone, anything.
101
2*pi*r The circumference of a circle
pi*r^2 The area of a circle
4/3 pi*r^3 The volume of a sphere
f=ma The most basic formula in motion, force = mass times acceleration
s=ut+1/2*a*t^2 The most basic formula in calculation of distance with constant acceleration
HCl+NaOH=NaCL+H2O The making of salt water and the foundation of stoichiometric chemistry.
So you do not have to ‘try’ these equations. They are for ten to twelve year old children, as elementary as the alphabet. My point is that rational science is not about opinions and essays, but in the spirit of Rene Descartes, the making of new ideas on a solid foundation of established knowledge and irrefutable mathematics, not your nutty waffle and pointless abuse.
173
TdeF,
You have managed to “out” Gee Aye very nicely. He/she has no concept of having the utility of a set of unambiguous symbols to convey ideas, concepts, and laws, as they apply to the natural world, physical research, practically all of the engineering fields, and a lot of abstract concepts as well.
165
I am not outed at all. A very unsophisticated chemical simplification is not science. Equations that are descriptions of the physical world are no more science than is a planet or a tree. It takes science and scientific curiosity to use those equations, or to discover the planet or to work out how a tree lives but none of those things themselves are science.
You might learn equations in science just as you learn about planets, but they are not science and they don’t inspire curiosity or ambition in of themselves. Science will go nowhere if no one is curious.
510
TdeF and RW
Some time ago I studied psychology.
As an engineer and scientist I was struck by the precision of the meaning of words we were introduced to in the course.
A lot of the intro work was learning what words implied so that very specific comment could be made.
The point probably is that all science has a basic body of material that has to be rote learned, that term so hated by post modern science.
KK
71
KK… you just made that up. When in the history of science was rote learning de rigueur? Maybe you are confusing science with engineering?
My anecdote is that the minds I’ve known who can recall phenomenal detail or long lists or large webs of associations came to that position from quite different routes. One route was rote learning (e.g physiotherapists and every muscle in the body) and others were immersive learners, exemplified by those characterised as nerds, who learned it all out of intense interest. I know a guy who can name every butterfly in Australia and wrote the book. Another who can identify a thousand frogs by their croak and others with precise mental maps of the sky including the objects that can’t be seen and which are moving about at a fast rate relative to the others. Rote learning is just a sub category of learning and holds no special place and is used when it is needed. Science has not had any particular need for it ever, not for Newton, Einstein, Watson and Crick, Leaky, Darwin, Rutherford or Pasteur.
18
KinkyKeith December 15, 2015 at 10:45 am
“The point probably is that all science has a basic body of material that has to be rote learned, that term so hated by post modern science!”
This is true! Many, however, end up with ‘only’ formula and symbols, still no understanding!
40
Hi Will
“Many, however, end up with ‘only’ formula and symbols, still no understanding!”
Better that than pretending or imagining you are “understanding” with ‘no’ formula and symbols skills.
KK
30
“you just made that up”
NO!
you just made that up
50
Gee Aye “… When in the history of science was rote learning de rigueur?….”
In Organic Chemistry for one. I still have my deck of flip cards. In my Grad level analytical class we had to have the wavelength were each functional group absorbed IR memorized too.
00
Uncertainty: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2tm2ub/heisenberg_schrodinger_and_ohm_are_in_a_car/
20
KinkyKeith December 15, 2015 at 1:03 pm
(Hi Will, “Many, however, end up with ‘only’ formula and symbols, still no understanding!”)
“Better that than pretending or imagining you are “understanding” with ‘no’ formula and symbols skills. KK”
I disagree! Feynman was good because he could and did explain every symbol and how that applied in this case!
For months now, I have been arguing that the atmosphere, with mass has no “weight”, as it expresses no heaviness, only pressure. The response is that weight “is” W = mg, always, with no need for the concept of being heavy!
This leads them to the belief that it requires ‘work’ to change the location of part of the atmosphere within that same atmosphere. Such weird-dity is rampant amongst meteorologists and other of the CCC.
All the best! -will-
212
Will
Have you ever sailed a boat using that non heavy mass-less air ??
Have you ever seen a mass-less wind push over a tree in a storm??
Think hard.
KK
111
KinkyKeith December 15, 2015 at 5:30 pm
“Will, Have you ever sailed a boat using that non heavy mass-less air ?? Have you ever seen a mass-less wind push over a tree in a storm?? Think hard.KK
Ah Keith of Nuevo-physics belief let me highlight it for you.
Both momentum and pressure can do many things without expressing any heaviness, also called weight!
310
@KinkyKeith
Will may be a grumpy old person, but do have care.
Will is far better than me at radiative physics, and I can beat Spencer, Lindzen, Watts, and yes, Evans. Within the Hohlrumn of the LWIR translucent atmosphere it’s field theory, not two stream approximation.
You are shooting at a guy who helped develop MODTRAN. You are shooting at a guy who knows why “line by line” is good for military sensors and useless for energy transport in a convecting atmosphere. You are shooting at a guy that helped with my empirical experiments into hemispherical emissivity of water. Not smart!
I know Lukewarmers hate hard sceptics. We got it right, but you chose bring to politics to a science fight. You lose along with any “warming but less than we thought” quislings.
Either adding radiative gases to our radiatively cooled atmosphere reduces our radiatively cooled atmosphere’s ability to cool the solar heated surface of our planet, or it increases it. Black or white, right or wrong. There is no middle ground on this.
Seems you’re on the wrong side of the line Keith. Wanna try “sawpsies” in the Internet age Keith? I don’t think that’s gonna work out.
314
Konad… We know you are the greatest, the proof is right there in front of us if we only took the time to look. Now it is time for your carers to take you back.
45
Hello Will and Konrad
I see both your points to some extent but I also have some depth of experience in this matter especially regarding mass, heat and momentum transfer.
I take Will’s point that in some situations the air can be seen as mass-less, however when a parcel of air near the ground starts to rise through the bulk of atmosphere surrounding it there are energy considerations.
A parcel of air will rise because it has absorbed energy from either many people with sharpened pitchforks breaking open a heat sources below that air or absorbed from the Sun.
A parallel for the two views of the mass or non mass of the air may be had in the view people sometimes take of EMR.
Sometimes its a wave, at others it’s a photon.
Still the same thing.
I’m not sure where Konrad got the inspiration for the last three paragraphs but they are not relevant to me.
If Will is perfect how is it that he gave me a relationship to look at in an earlier post that was going to cease operation some thousand metres above ground level. He didn’t think I would check but I did and he admitted the error.
How much of the other stuff he spouts is also that careless.
Let’s not start rubbishing each other with “lukewarmer” stuff.
I am not a lukewarmer and have made that plain over the years on this site.
And lastly, what the h is a “sawpsies” ????
KK
101
KinkyKeith,
Konrad probably meant swapsies. It’s like saying, “going punch for punch”.
Abe
20
Thanks Just-A-Guy
there was something under the spelling given but it related to some Irish concept or a guitar.
I once asked Will if he was actually Konrad but couldn’t be bothered asking Konrad himself if he was Will.
11
KinkyKeith December 15, 2015 at 9:36 pm
“Hello Will and Konrad
I see both your points to some extent but I also have some depth of experience in this matter especially regarding mass, heat and momentum transfer.”
OK acknowledged.
I was writing that some with only ‘formula’ believe that ‘weight is’ but mass scaled by 9.8, but still mass! Weight is a specific stress vector that results in a strain (elongation of a spring) as the spring attempts “to lift” that mass from its resting place from on the surface.
Lifting 1.0 kg (mass) of lead will elongate the spring. This elongation will indicate 1 kg_weight, 2.2 lbs weight, or 9.8N force downward. This is how the force (property to accelerate mass), of gravity is measured.
One kg of atmosphere near the surface occupies 0.8 m^3 of volume near sea level, as set by its pressure. With an open weightless 0.8 m^2 container, how much will the spring elongate as it ‘lifts’ 0.8 m^3 of atmosphere from the surface? To 1 meter? To 100 meters? To 1 km? To 10 km? Where is your weight and how is this ‘weight’ expressed?
“I take Will’s point that in some situations the air can be seen as mass-less, however when a parcel of air near the ground starts to rise through the bulk of atmosphere surrounding it there are energy considerations.”
Can you show anywhere that I claimed that air or atmosphere is considered mass-less?
Can you describe your “parcel of atmosphere” in some way that distinguishes your parcel from that of everybody else?
If there is no lifting force required, just what are your “energy requirements”?
“A parcel of air will rise because it has absorbed energy from either many people with sharpened pitchforks breaking open a heat sources below that air or absorbed from the Sun.”
What total meteorological nonsense! If adding energy increases the temperature of some atmospheric mass; some of the molecules leave that “airmass” and the density decreases. Same thing if some molecules are replaced by lower mass WV. All of the rising is spontaneous, work free, and entropy free; except for mass accelerations and shear forces acting between a continuum with relative velocities. This work can be considered necessary to accomplish the isentropic relocation within a finite time interval.
With your defense of meteorological fantasy, How can you claim to be “not a lukewarmer “?.
09
Will
I read your latest comment and just don’t know what to say.
The last line contains a bunch of labels?? Is that line going to make all above it true or real?
The Earth’s diurnal bulge phenomenon occurs because of the Solar energy absorbed by relatively stagnant, cool air which then rises to create a vacuum which draws colder air in from the west.
Should the Sun not rise tomorrow there would be no early morning westerly and the air would be still.
There would be no spontaneous movement of air.
?
KK
70
KinkyKeith December 16, 2015 at 8:25 am
“Will, I read your latest comment and just don’t know what to say.”
The last line is an interrogatory; asking how how you can support disgraced meteorological fantasy and still claim to be a skeptic and not a lukewarmer.
“The last line contains a bunch of labels?? Is that line going to make all above it true or real?”
The paragraph above that is “my technical description” of how this atmosphere actually relocates sensible and latent heat to higher altitudes and poleward for maximum efficacy in the dispatch via EMR to space. Longitudinal relocation is minimal as most atmosphere has a circumferential velocity near that of the surface, in the direction normal to Earth’s spin axis. Can you please point out my errors in that technical description?
The rest of what you claim is but a repeat of meteorological fantasy! This sloppy fantasy is so bad that upstanding astrological predictors and other fortune tellers are truly incensed. Does that get “my” point across?
29
@Gee Aye
”Konad (sic)… We know you are the greatest, the proof is right there in front of us if we only took the time to look. Now it is time for your carers to take you back.”
Your faux praise smear is pointless. I am a contractor in design and engineering. I am my own harshest critic, the job requires it. The only praise I will accept is ETF transfer directly to my accounts. And that’s at a flat after tax hourly rate. Tax, super and insurances are floating and carried by the client, and all those that want my services strangely agree to these demands. Against this faint praise what good your Alinsky tactics? I get paid to fight the herd. You try to silence me saying I don’t conform to the herd? What madness is this?
49
@KinkyKeith
”I’m not sure where Konrad got the inspiration for the last three paragraphs but they are not relevant to me.”
If you believe increased CO2 can cause net surface or atmospheric warming, even a slight amount, then they are relevant to you. As I pointed out, warming or cooling, black or white there is no middle ground. Less wrong doesn’t count, wrong is still wrong.
Why did I write “Will is far better than me at radiative physics, and I can beat Spencer, Lindzen, Watts, and yes, Evans.”? This was not for now, this was for the future. The Internet never forgets. Spencer, Lindzen, Watts, and yes, Evans all fell for the “255K average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere” folly. (David tries to avoid surface properties and temps, but he, like Dr. Robert Brown have some awareness as to where the hideous error lays.)
Many here and on other sites dislike what they perceive as attacks on “warming but less than we thought” Lukewarmers. But an end to this madness cannot be achieved their way. This is not about side, this is about science. Only when the bulk of sceptics understand that CO2 can only cause immeasurably slight cooling can science, reason, freedom and democracy advance.
29
HI Konrad… apologies for Konad before although it is what you typed but I should have remembered you from before.
this quote plus some pipe organ music and a kooky laugh and you have a classic cartoon villian.
72
Konrad
If you had read my comments over the years you would have seen me make specific challenges to the concession type science which says that we need to acknowledge some warming from CO2 to stay in the game and be taken seriously.
I have always been against that approach as I believe that only the science needs bringing out.
More recently you may have read my comments which indicated a lack of common ground with the approach taken in the recent work by David.
I think this site is great and even though it seems that the proprietors have a stance different to mine I have freely put my views. Your comments are off target.
KK
70
“Imagine students acting on their
beliefsbrain-washing!”113
Gee Aye #13
This the first time I can remember you initiating a comment line!
Congratulations.
70
you have a poor memory.
22
We can jump up and down as much as we like, it’s not going to change things. The wheels are already in motion. ETS’s are being devised and implemented as we speak all over the world. China is introducing theirs in 2017. We will probably do it a that time. We already have more than enough evidence to show the whole thing is a scam. The ETS scam has always been their priority. The Carbon tax was just a trial run. Now they will get serious and use all their power to introduce ETS’s throughout the world, and there is nothing we can do to stop it, except perhaps fight it in the court rooms. We would need a bunch of people with very deep pockets and a heap of very clever lawyers. Even then there is no guarantee but it’s a much better chance of stopping the scam than any other way, except by a majority number of whistle blowers from the scientific community, which is very unlikely to happen as they are not willing to sacrifice their livelihoods for the truth – shame on them.
202
China speaks with fork tongue.
‘Major issues ahead of the planned 2017 launch of a national carbon trading program include a lack of openness, transparency and fairness; a flawed system of allowance allocation which does not reflect real industry conditions; and an inadequate monitoring, verification and reporting system.’
La Cite
——–
Nobody signed up to a universal ETS.
70
So what’s new in China? 🙂
60
They have decided to intensify propaganda in schools, with the aid of Marxist thinking.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-12/14/content_22705533.htm
80
Prosaic, not inscrutable.
‘China, in the midst of a painful economic restructuring program that has slowed growth, sought to maintain as much policy flexibility at home as it could, particularly on the thorny issue of five-year reviews, arguing that any adjustments to its 2020-2030 climate goals should be voluntary.
‘Beijing helped secure an exception to the five-year review with a multi-track system that said “developing countries shall be provided flexibility” and could make the reviews optional, though Chinese officials said they were still assessing the details.
‘Details such as how national emissions-reduction efforts will be measured and verified, another issue that put the United States and China at odds, are yet to be worked out.
Reuters
70
File under YCMTSU (You Cant Make This Stuff UP):
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/30372069/chinese-environmental-group-sues-volkswagen-over-emissions-scandal/
A Chinese environmental group is to sue Volkswagen over the emissions scandal, because it is partly to blame for air quality issues in China:
Apparently related vehicles in China only number 1,950… as I said, YCMTSU.
60
Classic Catch!
10
This is moronic to the extreme. What, they only just noticed how bad their air pollution is and do something about it? Do they have a 10-year delay in the signal path from their eyes to their brains, assuming they have one?
10
Survey about living with dinosaurs, found here
Science literacy report
31
Not living with dinosaurs.
61
Ahh, Gary Larson. Brilliant!
00
That’s as interesting as it is utterly depressing. I have no idea how the downward trend could be turned around in a reasonable timeframe…
41
Classic mind control tactics , grab their minds whilst they are still young and impressionable so that they can be guided towards the social engineering project, so they become the next generation of dumbed down sheeple . Radicalise them by teaching a fake reality (ASTROTURFING), before you know it little johnny “quisling” is having his parents carted off by the jackbooted thought police to the local re-education concentration camp , just for saying ” just maybe it was the Sun what done it little Johnny” .
180
And this is why we need to educate our kids about what socialism is and ho wit lies to people all the time.
In many respects, we have partially destroy the propaganda part of the reality kids have , to displace it with truth. If parents do nothing, the State will own their minds. Period.
Its sad that kids have to grow up so fast, but the laternative is our kids being mindless socialist drones….and will have no hope, joy or fun. No thanks….
20
Near Parkes NSW one can see a cluster of 4 copper-gold mines that my colleagues and I discovered in the 1970s beneath paddocks of wheat that looked just like any paddock of wheat. The gold sales to date (7+ tonnes of gold) at present metal prices for easy calculation, are over a billion dollars and the present operators have said they expect 100 years of mine life.
Why mention this here? Apart from the anti mining propaganda from the AAS, this complex of mines is 80% automated with a target of 100% in 3 years.
That is, there will be no people underground. The entire operation will be managed from computers that can be put anywhere in the world. People safety.
It is plausible that these anti mining AAS authors have no idea that this extremely high level of science, technology, engineering even exists. Their mindset reads more like the era of life being short, brutish etc.
What is more, this astounding achievement involved many Australians and was financed almost completely by non-government money. Input from CSIRO and universities was welcomed and funded.
This is one example of what is becoming the norm for mining in developed countries. In a nutshell, it is top science and engineering from the private sector, delivering the goods demanded by society, efficiently and quietly and without the need for ignorant onlookers to stir up imagined public problems.
In recent years majority ownership at Northparkes has been bought by China Molybdenum Corporation. Some might be happier with 100% Australian ownership. Ownership of resources is a topic that could well be taught in schools. Accurately.
What is not to like about this mining?
As for gold, it seems to make a better wedding ring than (say) plaited strands of green seaweed.
320
http://www.rba.gov.au/chart-pack/balance-payments.html
No winking or nudging needed – 5/8 of Australia’s balance of payments comes from the Resource sector – NO IFS, NO BUTS
& for all the Weekend Earth Mothers, Armchair Socialists & Fairweather Feminists – THIS IS WHAT PAYS FOR JUST ABOUT EVERTHING YOU DRIVE, EVERTHING THAT GOES INTO IT, 99% OF WHAT FILLS YOUR HOUSE &
ALL THE ROCKEFELLER GENERATED EDUCATIONAL PROPAGANDA YOUR KIDS GET AT SCHOOL.
ENJOY!
180
Gold also makes a better monetary system then using a privately owned full fiat debt instrument loaned into existence by a fractional reserve banking system.
Just saying…
80
I’ve seen anti-mining propaganda waves before
For over two hundred years, Australia’s economic strength has been farming and mining, despite these intermittent blurbs of malicious propaganda
The question to ask is simple: “Ok, with what shall we replace this activity ?”
No one, including the AAS, will answer this beyond vague, hostile arm waving
Says it all, the wankers
130
In the early 1960s, it was a challenge to be a “good science teacher”. First, consider there were 90 qualified High School Physics teachers in the state of Indiana. I was one of them. My starting “salary” was $360 a month for ten months. Imagine trying to live and support a wife on $3600 a year.
I moved to another job the next year and received a bit less than $100 more a a month: It was $4300 for 10 months as I recall. I gave up and became a lab tech in a university pharmacology department for even more money.
In 1970, with Masters degree in Pharmacology, three years as a successful Biomedical Engineer, and two years as a Computer System manager/programmer, I became a technical consultant. I making roughly $16,000 a year PART TIME.
I accepted a position as a Physics teacher in a south side Chicago technical high school for the grand sum of $8000 a year. With my consulting and teaching, I made a good living. However, I worked twice has hard being a teacher as being a successful technical consultant. Ultimately, I had to quit teaching and become a full time computer programmer.
Where have all the good teachers gone? They have gone to private industry and are making four times as much money for less than half the work. The good teachers can make far more money, have far fewer political battles to fight, and be free from the dictatorship of the school administrators insisting that you join the teacher’s union or lose your job.
The bottom line really is: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, manage teachers. Those who can’t manage teachers, become school administrators. Those who can’t administrate the schools, become politicians and raise your taxes to make it impossible for a good teacher to teach.
The really good teachers are driven out of the profession if only to keep their sanity and to pay the bills. In the words of those who made the system the way it is, it is unsustainable!
310
I’ve seen anti-mining propaganda waves before
For over two hundred years, Australia’s economic strength has been farming and mining, despite these intermittent blurbs of malicious propaganda
The question to ask is simple: “Ok, with what shall we replace this activity ?”
No one, including the AAS, will answer this beyond vague, hostile arm waving
Says it all, the w@nkers
This comment is repeated because the first time, still in moderation of course, I neglected to use the “@” rather than “a”
150
Are you saying that you have lived for 200 years or more. I’m skeptical.
615
Is that the best you have?
Why not apply your analytical mind to why is there a need to homogenise.
131
there is no need. Marketing found that people liked the cream but not as a blob on the top.
12
One can see what I mean. Golly Gee fits the bill precisely … tedious
120
A leaf that hates CO2.. what more is there to say. !
No wonder he has no substance.
114
Well… indeed I have…
Beware the powers of the Ex-Warmist for they are legion…
Moooooowawawawawawawhahahahahahahhahahah…………..
50
It seems that for climate-change,A.A.S.,
Want control of the whole science class,
To induce the young teens,
By unethical means,
To learn their Green dogma to pass.
190
“…appreciate the need to lobby at all levels of government to ignite and lead change – even if it is unpopular with the voters.”
So if you believe in democracy you don’t pass the lesson?
110
Ref:-
doubtingdave
December 14, 2015 at 9:09 am · Reply
Classic mind control tactics , grab their minds whilst they are still young and impressionable so that they can be guided towards the social engineering project, so they become the next generation of dumbed down sheeple . Radicalise them by teaching a fake reality (ASTROTURFING), before you know it little johnny “quisling” is having his parents carted off by the jackbooted thought police to the local re-education concentration camp , just for saying ” just maybe it was the Sun what done it little Johnny” .
That is certainly there intention – and the weak minded will follow.
But those that matter will always look at what they have been force fed and reject bollox when they see it.
Yet again – advocacy tries desperately to trump real science and whilst real science has to take a back seat every so often because those “on a mission” have hijacked a given scientific discipline – all that happens is that the fall from grace by the advocates of a false premise, may be delayed – but the fall is that much steeper the longer we wait.
I personally have no idea how long the Pause in global temperatures is going to continue for.
All I know is that in our kids upper school and Sixth Form – the “Pause” is openly discussed and the Teachers “on a mission” get difficult questions thrown at them when they try to fool the kids.
Kids are great – have faith in them.
120
Doug i agree , as every parent knows , when your kids reach their teenage years they begin to think for themselves and rebel against authority both inside and outside the home , and develope their own peer groups . When , in the early 1970’s the envinromental activists began to emerge from the hippie movement, such as Dr patrick Moore’s Green Peace , they were making a stand against what they saw as the wrongs done by authority , but now days the likes of Green peace have become the ” big brother style” authority machine that the founders used to despise , and that is how many young teenagers will see them .
111
I also agree Doug ”kids are great” but they need to hear the other side. That’s where parents come in, we must take more of an active interest in what our children are being taught in the classroom. It only takes one child in a classroom to stand up to this propaganda and the rest will follow, trust me it works.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/12/two-high-school-students-take-on-teacher-over-climate-and-win-standing-ovation/
131
And let’s not forget that this is the culture which Turnbull wants to REWARD with another billion dollars (to produce gobsmacking innovation). That will buy a lot more propaganda and many more Tim Flannerys to jet off to Paris, all on the taxpayers’ back.
When’s that election?
130
Martin
I fear that it is more likely to produce a re-run of something like British Leyland.
70
Off the topic of science in schools in Australia, a key phrase just used by the UN as reported in the Australian today. Note the inclusion of one new and very significant word.
The UN says the agreements for the first time “brings all nations in to a common cause based on their historic, current and future responsibilities”.
Did you spot the new word? This is the new Chinese approach to deflect any responsibility and in fact demand their majority share in the rivers of cash, that if the world is warming because of the admitted 50% increase in CO2 since the 19th century, then the developed world owes everyone else for their historic responsibilities. For the group of 133 countries, this also includes colonialism and imperialism, so the US, Japan, Germany, UK, France and their running dogs, Australia and Canada and New Zealand are to pay warming reparations and colonial reparations indefinitely while the group of 133 do exactly as they please.
110
I guess plus Italy, Spain and Portugal, evil Imperialists. Plus reparations for the crusades. Plus money to allow rich oil states like Saudi Arabia to diversity their incomes. It seems more like a list of demands than aspirational.
80
Also in the Australian,
“Tim Flannery” says the agreement “signals the end of the fossil fuel era as the world rapidly replaces coal, oil and gas with clean energy sources”. Really? Like your $92Million you recommended spent on hot rocks Tim? With the directors on $400K pa each? The technology was “relatively straightforward” but they lost the lot? Who would expect studying English and then dead kangaroos made our Tim, Australian of the Year, an expert in technology? Fellow Australian of the Year, footballer Adam Goodes might know more, possibly with a traditional understanding of both rocks and kangaroos.
181
One last surprise..
Internationally, Greenpeace has dropped its support for carbon trading and now favours direct intervention.
This will not please our unelected faux PM Malcolm, who has based his political career on achieving an ETS.
190
why is this not surprising? the indoctrination continues.
BBC’s Newshour last nite began with 18-year-old delegate for Marshall Islands addressing COP21. she recalls when she was 6 or 7, her grandpa told her of her islands being submerged by water. he told her about how the earth was warming. even at that young age, she had noticed that it had gotten warmer. he told her how the ice at the north & south poles where Santa lives(?) would also melt away and the water would rise and soon flood the islands…etc. whoops & hollers from the audience when she finishes.
then it’s on to Amber Rudd:
BBC: there will be no implications for failure.
Rudd: what do you want? gun-boat diplomacy? we have political will.
***not mentioned were the bracketed interests of Araya & Jacobs.
followed by renewables shill, Monica Araya, former Costa Rican climate negotiator ***(founder of environmental advocacy group Nivela and co-founder of Costa Rica Limpia etc) plus Michael Jacobs, New Climate Economy ***(former General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Senior Adviser at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations in Paris, Visiting Professor at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, former Special Adviser to the UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown etc): solar & wind are now at about the same cost as coal & gas in many countries around the world, etc etc.
energy storage have come on to the market much quicker than people thought.
AUDIO: 50mins: 13 Dec: BBC Newshour: Climate Deal Agreed: What Next?
Picture: Environmentalists take part in a bicycle ride to show solidarity for the global movement for climate justice in Manila.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03b6t99
110
The Northern latitudes reach +25C in summer and the ice melts across Siberia, Canada, everywhere and every year and nothing happens. Most of this ice is on land. It is a short, hot summer.
“The average Arctic winter temperature is -34°C, while the average Arctic summer temperature is 3-12° C. In general, Arctic winters are long and cold while summers are short and cool.”
In Antarctica, a huge continent the size of South America, the summer can reaches a balmy -12C, far warmer than -50C in Winter. A few degrees will make no difference at all. In fact Antarctic ice seems to be getting deeper. “The coldest temperature recorded in Antarctica was -89.6°C at Vostok station in 1983. The average winter temperature at the South Pole is about -49°C.”
In fact “At the South Pole, the highest temperature ever recorded was −12.3 °C (9.9 °F) on 25 December 2011.”
So what are these people going on about with the ice melting? Sea ice melts every summer, which makes no difference at all. Like an ice box, the summer is too short to make much impact on glaciers, as was known in the days when people had ice boxes.
122
speaking of Marshall Islands (or not).
noticed the following in google results & presumed it would be about de Brum/Marshall Islands/High Ambition Coalition.
yet none of that even gets a mention. however, I found it interesting the story had been “UPDATED”. did it get changed because the origins of the High Ambition Coalition had been exposed? can’t find a cached version or any other references that would explain the update:
12 Dec: WaPo: How tiny islands drove huge ambition at the Paris climate talks
By Chris Mooney and Joby Warrick
(This story has been updated)
did, however, find a Mooney tweet linking to the following show today on WAMU, which is licensed to American University in Washington, D.C. and distributed nationally and internationally by National Public Radio:
14 Dec: WAMU 88.5 (American University Radio) Diane Rehm Show: Negotiators In Paris Agree To A Landmark Climate Accord
Guests
Chris Mooney energy and environment reporter, Washington Post
Joseph Romm senior fellow, the Center for American Progess; he runs the blog ClimateProgress.org; former acting assistant secretary of Energy under President Clinton
Sarah Ladislaw senior fellow, Energy and National Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies.
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2015-12-14/negotiators-in-paris-agree-to-a-landmark-climate-accord
earlier program:
Environmental Outlook: The Earth’s Melting Ice Sheets
Wednesday, Dec 09 2015: For this month’s Environmental Outlook: The earth’s great ice sheets are shrinking at an accelerating rate…
Guests
Chris Mooney energy and environment reporter, Washington Post
Richard Alley professor of geoscience, Penn State University
Eric Rignot professor of Earth system science, University of California, Irvine; principal scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Dr. Ben Strauss Chief Operating Officer and Director of the Program on Sea Level Rise, Climate Central.
nothing biased or propagandistic about this show!
80
3 R’s, 21st century:
Reading, writing, arithmeticRecycle, Reduce, Re-useAll that book stuff above, plus the time spent cleaning beaches (Young Legends Award), tending gardens and worm farms.
No time for that 20th century stuff.
71
Brainwashing of this kind should not take place in our schools and I cannot accept that it could in way be sanctioned in a democratic society!
We need laws (if we don’t already have them) in order to protect our school kids from this kind of political dogma and bigotry.
This behaviour of the AAS in school classrooms, sanctioned of course by government political lefties, is akin to encouraging a form of ‘terrorism’.
I wonder just how many parents are aware that this type ‘social activism’ is being ‘taught’ to their children in the name of science and humanities.
And if they were aware I suspect that many would be very angry people and rightly so. Surely Politicians must act on this matter.
Regards
Geoff W Sydney
160
Geoffrey,
Too true! As a professional scientist I truly despair for the future when I read of this.
Following up on the AAS website I found links through to their ‘new’ Earth Systems Science program: https://www.science.org.au/files/userfiles/support/reports-and-plans/2015/ess-report-2010.pdf
Based on the input fields for this new multidisciplinary science, 1 is scientific and 5 are humanities….. It ain’t science at all. ’nuff said.
The way the good name of ‘science’ and its hard-won respect have been co-opted and debased in the pursuit of political ideologies truly sickens me.
110
It needs to be renamed correctly: “The Australian Academy of Propaganda”, (a part of The Ministry of Truth)!
171
Hey “Gee Aye”….King of the Keyboard Klimate worriers..
I like reading your posts because it reminds me of the phrase
Your so worried (cough cough) that your always here..but not so worried that you went off the grid and sold the car.. 🙂
Fess up tiger..you care about the planet as much as us.. 🙂
ps..I was joking with the fess up bit..you will always remain silent when queried with questions that expose you..or you will tell porkies..because your “saving the planet”..
Noble Cause corruption and all that..
Its everyone elses problem..not your`s right ?? ..as long as
I realise that this “conversation” is like playing cards with the family dog..the dog knows your doing something in front of it..and sometimes “responds”
Game..set and match…as usual.. 🙂
142
Drapetomania,
The neighbors could hear me laughing! 🙂
Abe
94
Funny as…..
Nice one, Centurion!
10
profound your, as yoda would write if his apostrophe key was alsobroken.
32
When one sees the influence on the green agenda in our education institutions it’s no wonder that we are becoming the not so clever country. I suspect our educative competitors especially those situated in Asia don’t have the same debilitating influences in their education system. Propagander is a common denominator in most evil regimes that are looking for global domination.
82
Being late in this post, I’m offering an off-topic note:
Australia is one of the “parties” to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty negotiations.
Other countries are:
Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia,
Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore,
the United States, and Vietnam.
Musings from the Chiefio has a post on what this might mean to the United States. Others may want to take note.
110
Free trade agreements are one of the planks of implementing Communism….
Look at how the EU has done….or not….
30
The AAS will not rest until the last molecule of CO2 is removed from the atmosphere!
90
the plan is to raise a new generation which will accept the madness of trading carbon dioxide emissions!
13 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: Mike Szabo: Paris Agreement rings in new era of international carbon trading
The mechanism’s rules now need to be drawn up, in a process that could take several years, and while few countries are expected to use the mechanism initially when it’s launched after 2020, parties including the EU and Brazil pushed hard at the COP-21 summit for certain items to be included in the text.
“[The Paris Agreement] has provisions to support robust accounting and avoid double counting. We didn’t get everything we wanted but we have what we need,” Jos Delbeke, the European Commission’s top climate official, told Carbon Pulse on the sidelines of the conference.
The new trading provisions are open to developed and developing countries alike, meaning that similar to Kyoto’s Joint Implementation programme, any signatories can be buyers or sellers of emissions units, which may now be called “internationally transferred mitigation outcomes” or ITMOs…
The Paris deal has the potential to eventually revive international trade after 2020 “provided a reasonable rule book emerges next year”, said Dirk Forrister, president and CEO of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA).
“It needn’t take as long as it did to establish the rules for the CDM and JI – we’re not starting from scratch this time. We’ll be leaving Paris with significant momentum to take this forward.”
However, even with agreed rules and a solid infrastructure, demand is poised to be the missing ingredient…
WHAT WAS AGREED?…READ ON
The talks on markets were facilitated by new Canadian Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of Congo Raymond Tshibanda N’Tungamulongo.
http://carbon-pulse.com/13339/
14 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: Stian Reklev: Minister says expects Australia to allow international carbon units
Australia is likely to make a policy U-turn in 2017 to allow for the use of international carbon units to help it meet a potentially more ambitious 2030 emissions reduction target following Saturday’s agreement on a new global climate change deal, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said Monday…
Hunt’s comments on Monday gave the clearest signal yet that the government is about to reverse its policy on emissions trading after Malcolm Turnbull replaced ousted Prime Minister Tony Abbott, an opponent of carbon markets…
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop last week raised expectations that Australia would change course on allowing emissions allowances when she announced the country’s support of a New Zealand declaration on carbon markets, which was eventually released on Saturday night in Paris with the backing of 17 nations…
“Australia’s current pledge of 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030 is – like most countries – not consistent with the agreed goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. It will thus likely need to be deepened towards the 45-65% range recommended by the Climate Change Authority,” Kobad Bhavnagri, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s head of Australia, said by email on Sunday…
“Deeper cuts in emissions imply that Australia will also need to hasten the deployment of renewable energy, make more concrete steps to reduce usage of fossil-fuels, especially coal, and develop more robust, scalable and non-government funded carbon policy if the emissions reductions are to be achieved domestically,” he added.
“This could involve a 2030 Renewable Energy Target, specific policy aimed at retiring coal-fired generators and increased regulations on, or pricing of, carbon emissions.”…
http://carbon-pulse.com/13356/
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Thank you Jo, we need racketeering laws to put an end to this gross corruption, in every sense.
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Wow, the “Paris climate deal” is already working …
Wind chills below 32F: Cold Weather Alert To Go Into Effect Monday For Parts Of LA County « CBS Los Angeles
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Now, this is encouraging.
It’s off topic, (a little) but I was listening to The World Today, the ABC’s midday current affairs program.
One short(ish) segment was the doom and gloom of the coal industry, with the announcer even speculating on the death knell end of times for coal.
Greg Evans of the Minerals Council of Australia was asked about it (and goaded) and he replied that one thing to come out of Paris was that Developing Countries will still need access to reliable large scale cheap power, and that can only come from coal, and this was as stated at Paris, and that is coming from new tech coal fired plants, or as he referred to them, High Efficiency Low Emissions. (HELE)
When pressed again, he said that these were all that were being constructed now, and when pressed as to what would happen here in Oz, he then mentioned that our (aging) plants WOULD just be upgraded to this new technology.
Go to this link, scroll down to the heading Climate Deal etc, (the text is not Posted as of yet) and note the green play tab to the left there. Press play and then scroll forwards to a point where only 2 minutes remain. He only speaks for around a minute, and then some other guy comes on and waffles about CCS, and I can’t believe people still fall for that CCS cr@p.
Upgraded – Now that sounds like a plan. I’m maybe a little encouraged right about now,
Tony.
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Bah Humbug! Wrong Link.
Here’s the correct one. Should have checked.
Tony.
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followed the first link Tony .. aaggh
but thankyou for correct one 😀
so i took this quote from the article..
Until there is significantly better and more affordable batteries and storage capacity for wind and solar
there is no such thing as better storage for electrical energy
we must all understand that this is virtually impossible !
as a engineer who has studied and worked with this it is pure dellusion …
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Upgrading our COAL fired power stations to latest HELE tech, would reduce our CO2 output by probably many times more than any number of wind turbines or solar panels.
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I believe that’s what China is already doing and is the biggest player in that field. In fact HELE coal–fired power plants are a central element of the emissions reductions plans of China, India, Japan and South East Asian nations tabled in Paris this week. More than 650 units are already in place in East Asia alone, with more than 1060 of these units under construction or planned. So how many and when are we building ours, and why are there talks about reducing our coal usage? Have we gone mad? Don’t bother to answer as I know it already.
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One should always use resources as efficiently as possible.
I suspect that in a couple of years once the global temp starts to drop from “slightly warm” (we are currently in the Modern Slightly Warm Period, MSWP) back towards a slightly cooler period, common sense will again start to come to the fore…. and these projects will be allowed to progress in Australia as they should.
At the moment there is no real rush… only South Australia has power issues, and frankly who cares about what they have done to themselves.
If Qld under Palachet (or however you spell it) want to go the same way.. good luck to them, too.
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What a giggle, wind power in a state prone to Cyclones, are you daft?
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“only South Australia has power issues, and frankly who cares about what they have done to themselves”
Well, I care because I live there. But iI take your point.
I wonder how many blackouts it will take for sanity to prevail here in SA.
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sorry StefanL.. and commiserations. 😉
10
Yes but some 5 years ago I predicted the green lunacy would induce this sort of incompetance.
As such, people need to think about solar for their houses.
Once appliances start being manufactured with some form of “phone home”/ remote control capability by utilties you will need to install 50Hz notch filters to stop the appliance “snitching” on you….
How mad has our world become, when the utilities can pretty much crawl inside your home and see whats going on?
No thanks….
30
An article I read a few years ago referred to these modern coal plants being built in China, it maintained that although installed the pollution filtering equipment was not being used. Have lost the link but wonder if this is still the case.
BTW, Tony great information again, most encouraging.
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Bob Malloy:
With the current problems with air pollution you can be sure that the scrubbers etc. will be working in the near future. A lot of comments about air pollution in chinese cities ignore the major causes;
massive increase in road transport
old style coal fired power stations
use of charcoal/brown coal as heating/cooking fuel in houses.
The first is nothing to do with coal and the other 2 are being tackled by bringing new efficient power coal fired stations on line. The result is a massive reduction in pollution without a similar jump in electricity bills.
You will notice that nuclear and hydro are also in massive use. Wind and solar might be installed but my view is that it is partially “public relations” i.e. to fool the gullible greens and partly as a subsidy for those chinese factories so they can undercut any western producers. The amount of “renewables” in the chinese mix is negligible.
Also it must be note that the chinese are well aware of the medieval warm period when China prospered and agriculture expanded northwards. Hence they see no problem with any warming, although they cannot see it happening, and are buying up agricultural assets in Africa, South America and Australia in anticipation of harder times in Asia.
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Good comment. Got everything there.
00
This comes from a Forbes article published in 2009, old I know but probably hasn’t changed since:
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TonyfromOz –
13 Dec: AFR: Minerals Council says Paris agreement good for coal
by Jonathan Barrett and Jacob Greber with AAP
Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson says the Paris climate change agreement will increase demand for Australian coal…
“We provide the backbone of renewable energy infrastructure, whether it’s the 220 tonnes of coal in every wind turbine, or the 15 mined minerals in every solar PV panel,” Mr Pearson said.
“High efficiency low emissions (HELE) coal–fired power plants are a central element of the emissions reductions plans of China, India, Japan and South East Asian nations tabled in Paris this week. The boost for HELE plants is good news for Australia, because our high energy, low impurity coal is ideally suited to these power plants.”…
There are no specific mentions of coal in the primary text of the Paris agreement, although some commentators have claimed it implies an end to such energy sources.
Environmentalist Tim Flannery said the agreement marked the end of the fossil fuel era…
The agreement coincided with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull lifting a ban on government-backed investment in wind power…
A group of major banks, law firms and investment companies said on Sunday that the review mechanism sent a positive business signal.
“The built in review mechanism sends a strong message to business that the shift to a low carbon economy is on and will continue to accelerate, said Emma Herd, chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change…
“The smart money will now be on clean energy and low carbon technology solutions which help business transition”…
http://www.afr.com/business/mining/minerals-council-says-paris-agreement-good-for-coal-20151213-glmar6
14 Dec: ABC: Jessica van Vonderen: Queensland to boost renewable energy target in wake of Paris climate agreement, Palaszczuk says
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said her government was focused on wind and solar farms, while maintaining a commitment to coal.
“We will always be reliant on coal. Coal is a backbone of our economy, but we are diversifying,” she said in an exclusive interview with the ABC.
“We’ve got a really firm focus on renewables, so expect some more announcements next year in relation to that field.
“I’d like to see that [renewable energy mix] increase.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-13/firm-focus-on-renewables-palaszczuk-says/7024762
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Pat
There must have been a lot of itchy backs over there because there is a heap of back scratching going on.
But something tells me this will still end in a lot tears.
40
I accidentally read the Newcastle Herald at lunchtime (a rabid fewfacts paper).
OMG, were they going ape !!!!
Will be very funny when they finally figure out just how toothless this piece of toilet-paper is.
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Toilet paper with teeth?
00
13 Dec: The Conversation: The Paris Agreement won’t stop coal, but future climate talks might
by Luke Kemp, Lecturer and PhD Candidate in International Relations and Environmental Policy, Australian National University
Disclosure: Luke Kemp has previously received funding from the Australian and ***German governments.
The global climate deal reached at the Paris climate talks has left a big question unanswered: what do to about coal? It isn’t even mentioned in the agreement text…
While Paris will not deliver a global moratorium on new coal mines, or even a dialogue about it, it could still happen in the near future. There are climate conferences every year and each one adopts a set of new decisions…
(LUKE FOLLOWS WITH SUGGESTIONS HOW TO BAN COAL IN AND OUTSIDE THE UNFCCC.)
https://theconversation.com/the-paris-agreement-wont-stop-coal-but-future-climate-talks-might-51241
***11 Dec: GreenpeaceEneergyDesk: Zachary Davies Boren: German lawmaker: ‘I’m a lignite lobbyist’
With politicians like Albrecht Gerber, it’s little wonder coal and lignite still feature so prominently in Germany’s energy mix.
Gerber, minister of economics in the Brandenburg region, this week confessed at a town hall meeting: “Yes, I am a lignite lobbyist.”
What I think he meant is, seeing as Brandenburg is the country’s lignite capital, that he vouches for it at every opportunity.
And a quick Google search confirms that is in fact what he does.
He’s essentially the government spokesperson for brown coal.
Earlier this year he told Bloomberg: “The greatest part of the CO2 reduction in Germany since 1990 took place in eastern Germany, and we have to be careful that further reduction targets won’t threaten our
domestic economy.”
He added: “I don’t subscribe to scenarios with fixed time plans for exiting lignite.”…
And lignite isn’t the only fossil fuel with lobbyists in German politics; the state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia is fighting to keep coal…
http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/12/11/im-a-lignite-lobbyist/
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4 Dec: UK Independent: Tom Bawden: COP21: (Bank of England Governor) Mark Carney hires Michael Bloomberg to highlight companies at risk from global warming…
These risks cover everything from fossil-fuel companies being forced to leave their coal in the ground to meet carbon emissions targets to insurance losses to cover damage inflicted by increasingly frequent and intense storms. And they threaten huge losses at the firms involved, as well as those which finance them, he said.
These include the ***pension funds which invest huge amounts of people’s money in a wide variety of firms threatened by climate change.
Mr Bloomberg will head a task force representing The Financial Stability Board, the organisation responsible for monitoring the financial system of the biggest economies, that is led by Mr Carney.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cop21-mark-carney-hires-michael-bloomberg-to-highlight-companies-at-risk-from-global-warming-a6761121.html
following is being repeated on Bloomberg TV up til last nite.
Michael Bloomberg: more tornadoes, droughts, floods, sea level rise; target should have been 0 degrees or negative degrees. public demanding action. mentions his company Risky Business with Hank Paulson & Tom Steyer. has a go at Fox News (Murdoch). says not many people work in coal any more. enormous number of jobs have been created in solar and wind, etc:
VIDEO: 27mins: 5 Dec: Bloomberg: Changing Climate, Changing Business
From COP21 in Paris, Financial Stability Board Chairman and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney appointed Michael R. Bloomberg to be chairman of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. In a discussion moderated by John Micklethwait, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, Carney and Bloomberg talked about how the changing climate is changing business.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-12-05/changing-climate-changing-business
further down the same page:
Investing in Environmentally Conscious Companies
33:11 – CalPERS Global Governance Investment Director Anne Simpson discusses taking climate change into account in investing.
very creepy and another warning to people to watch their retirement funds.
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13 Dec: IndianExpress: Amitabh Sinha: Paris talks: All is well for India in deal, except coal line
India’s coal plans came under repeated attack from developed nations and western media during the two-week climate change conference in Paris.
India has reasons to be satisfied with the Paris Agreement on climate change that was finalised on Saturday night, but the inclusion of one line in the article dealing with the deal’s purpose might prove to be a big irritant in its plans to build coal-fired power plants.
That line, possibly introduced in the text with India in mind, says that one of the ways the purpose of the agreement could be achieved is by making ***global “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development”…
Observers say this line could be used by developed countries to arm-twist India on its coal plans on the grounds that it was not pursuing a low-emission pathway. They fear that by using that argument, developed nations can move to deny opportunities for India to raise money abroad.
An Indian negotiator admitted that India was not happy with the inclusion of that sentence but said it was “not the most important” provision of the agreement.
The sentence made its entry into the article in the penultimate draft that was released on Thursday night. In previous texts, it was embedded somewhere else. At that time, the language being used was that countries “should reduce international support for high-emission and maladaptive investments”. India had said that it would contest that line and have it removed…
While India has embarked on an ambitious renewable energy pathway, coal is likely to remain its primary source of energy for the next couple of decades at least…
In a recent projection, the government had said it hoped to bring down its dependence on coal for electricity production from the current 61 per cent to 57 per cent in the year 2031-32. But during that time, India also hopes to ramp up its total electricity generation capacity from the existing 260 GW to somewhere upwards of 800 GW…
But while there could be problems on account of coal, some other provisions in the Paris Agreement can open financial avenues for India to fund the grand Solar Alliance project…READ ON
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/paris-talks-all-is-well-for-india-in-deal-except-coal-line/
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Well the COP 21 Paris climate meeting is over and the media and politicians continue to talk nonsense and exaggerate the outcome. Here are a few facts that give a more honest assessment of the situation.
Lomborg’s expert group has brought out a new peer reviewed study that shows that the likely outcome by 2100 is a reduction in world temperature of just 0.17 C, but only if every country fulfills all their promises over the next 85 years. Of course this hasn’t happened in the past and will be most unlikely to happen in the future. They find that the more probable outcome is a reduction of just 0.05 C by 2100 or no measurable difference at all. His group includes four Nobel Laureates and 24 maths experts and economists to produce this PR study.
As well the father of the man- made climate scare Dr James Hansen ( NASA) immediately called the Paris agreement BS and a fraud. He has acted as Al Gore’s climate expert over the last twenty years. But here’s a few more facts to finish.
The sea level rise today at Sydney is just 0.65 mm a year ( 2.2 inches by 2100) and Brisbane 0.09mm a year or 0.31 inches by 2100. The latest PR studies show that droughts over Australia were much worse before 1900 than the period 1900 to 2015. Polar bears are thriving with a 4 to 5 fold increase in numbers since 1950. The latest satellite data shows no global warming for over 18 years and zero warming over Antarctica for about 37 years. There has been a 97% global reduction in death rates from extreme weather events over the last 100 years. The population at the start of the Industrial revolution was about 1 billion people and about 2 billion by 1900. But today over 7 billion people enjoy a much higher standard of living and much longer life expectancy than at any time in the past. Doesn’t it make you wonder why this is the case?
http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
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Lomborg is blissfully ignorant of how the system works and continues talking ‘sensitivity’ issues, in the absence of any positive feedbacks they make stuff up.
‘They find that the more probable outcome is a reduction of just 0.05 C by 2100 or no measurable difference at all.’
00
This is a major cycle in the system. h/t Bruce of Newcastle
https://digitaldiatribes.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/pdo-wave.jpg
10
LSU paleoclimatologist Kristine DeLong on the ITCZ and orbital tilt, the road to a paradigm shift.
“I took the data and put it through a mathematical prism so I could look at the patterns and that’s where we see the obliquity cycle, that 41,000-year cycle. From that, we can go in and look at how it compares to other records,” said DeLong, who is an associate professor in the LSU Department Geography & Anthropology.
“This study was interesting in that when we started doing the spectral analysis, the 41,000-year tilt cycle started showing up in the Tropics. That’s not supposed to be there. That’s not what the textbooks tell us,” DeLong said.
WUWT
00
Or go really green – just go without deodorant.
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Do they realise just how much CO2 is released when they use bicarb !
Mix it with the yeast in their armpits.. they will look like they have underarm rabies.
62
I went to a hippy secondary school, underarm rabies was pretty normal.
70
Red thumb … diddums.. did I upset you again.. 🙂
Suck it up, child-mind !
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Not sure who you’re talking to AndyG55, I gave you a thumbs up.
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I have a couple of red thumb groupies..
I like to say ‘hi’ when they poke their heads out from under their rocks. 🙂
83
Go to the head of the class.
10
There is a lot that can be done with hemp to replace some plastics, but the powers that be wont take the plunge. Just in case they can’t tell the difference from the oily one.
61
ultimate insider & globalist, Michael Jacobs, New Climate Economy, with Carbon Brief’s Ed King: says Govts have are turning away from fossil fuels; says the TYPO could have been a terrible, terrible blow.
***claims in the end everybody joined the High Ambition Coalition. this was universally agreed, at the High Ambition level. says for those of us who are Internationalists, who believe in multilateralism, this is a triumph of multilateralism.
Soundcloud: 6mins36secs: ClimateChangeNews: The Emissions Factor: What to make of the Paris climate deal?
Ed King speaks to Michael Jacobs, an advisor to the New Climate Economy think tank, moments after a new global climate pact was agreed in Paris.
https://soundcloud.com/climate-home/cop21-what-to-make-of-the-paris-climate-deal
Nitin Sethi, the only real journalist at COP21, properly calls it LOW-AMBITION:
14 Dec: BusinessStandardIndia: Nitin Sethi: India defends most red lines in Paris pact
Almost anyone in the negotiations had seen the headwinds — it would NOT be an ambitious agreement…
India managed to create that differentiation between developed and developing world in almost all the elements that together made up the Paris agreement.
The differentiation in the agreement now is not as strong as the UN Framework Convention provides, but it is by far better than what the developed countries, led by the US and EU, were pushing hard for at Paris.
Under the Paris agreement, the developed countries are encouraged to take economy-wide emission reduction targets, and countries like India can decide the nature of their targets — they can be of the nature India has at the moment on emission intensity. Neither of the two sets of countries can be told how much more emission reduction is required to keep temperature rise in check.
The developed countries are to peak their emissions ahead of India and the year of peaking cannot be forced upon India.
In other words, there is really no metric now to goad the countries to do more than their voluntary choice, but the embedding of the principle of differentiation has been operationalised to ensure developing countries are not forced to do more than the rich ones in a LOW-AMBITION regime…
The US and EU were adamant till the penultimate night of Paris talks that all countries — and not just those with historical responsibility for the climate change — contribute to the climate finance pool. India and China, along with other developing countries, fought that off to make sure the option remained voluntary, not mandatory.
***But then India slipped. The Paris agreement says one of the objectives of the pact is to “making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate resilient development”.
Negotiators explained this meant India would find it more difficult to find global finance for its thermal power plant expansion in coming years, since funds would be locked in to conditions based on climate change parameters. India has been fighting against this with multilateral institutions like World Bank in the face of a movement by Northern countries to disinvest in coal. The current central government in India has led a huge campaign to ensure the country’s coal expansion plans are not restricted under the climate change regime; in that respect, it lost the battle in Paris…READ ON
http://wap.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/india-defends-most-red-lines-in-paris-agreement-115121300560_1.html
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TonyfromOz –
the Greg Evans interiew. audio is included, plus second audio of IEEFA:
14 Dec: ABC: Babs McHugh: Coal industry says Paris accord supports Australian coal and greater roll out of energy efficient coal-fired power stations
The council says ‘high quality Australian coal’ will support the development of more clean and efficient coal fired power stations.
The International Energy Agency estimates more than 1,000 new coal fired power stations are being built across South East Asia alone.
Director of coal for the MCA, Greg Evans, said the Australian coal industry would benefit from growing global demand.
“Australia is well placed with its high quality, low impurity coal that is used to generate base load power,” Mr Evans said.
“We will provide coal for new generation clean, efficient coal fired plants throughout Asia.
“Some 24 times Australia’s coal fired capacity is actually under construction, or planned, within Asia with these new, modern super critical coal fired plants.”
So called ‘super-critical’ coal fired power plants are referred to as high-energy, low-emissions (HELA).
They are believed to reduce CO2 emissions by between 20 to 50 per cent, dependent upon their age.
The Minerals Council said according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the use of HELA plants in China has reduced CO2 emissions by 450 million tonnes annually over the past 7 years…
Pro-renewable energy organisation, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) claims the use of HELA is industry spin…blah blah…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-14/industry-says-paris-supports-australian-coal-despite-rhetoric/7026080
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pat,
it’s HELE to be specific.
I’ll tell you what industry spin really is.
That wind power and solar power are in reality pretty much worthless for the provision of stable reliable constant electrical power supply.
When THAT gets out, there won’t be anywhere to hide for these people who have pushed these renewables.
We have a couple of years now to explain HELE correctly to the public, and there is NO COMPARISON between this and their useless renewables.
When the public actually see what is happening in so many other places with this, the uproar that we here in Australia were not allowed to go down this path will be pretty intense, and those hiding places will have very bright lights shone on them.
I’m reminded of the cover of the Wings album, Band On The Run, (image at this link) where the escapees are illuminated in the spotlight.
Tony.
PostScript – And I wonder how many faces readers can recognise on that album cover. (and no, it’s not Tim Flannery)
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Tony, As always you’re comments are outstanding and informative on this vexed and ill informed subject of (rubbish) renewable energy that cannot work!
Whatever happens to the climate the ‘green masses’ of global climate catastrophe will have to come to terms with the reality of safe practical, coal supplied energy.
The Paris COP21 conference has signed it’s own death warrant on this occasion; With all the publicity and yahoo, their certain inability to meet their claims in the future will be their undoing.
Regards
Geoff W Sydney
20
plenty of spin, but plenty to chew on too:
12 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: Decoding the Paris climate deal: What does it mean?
Climate policy expert Gerard Wynn decodes a new global deal – which is likely to have profound impacts on business, finance and energy sectors
By Gerard Wynn in Paris
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/12/12/decoding-the-paris-climate-deal-what-does-it-mean/
John Kerry on Paris Agreement: “The result will be a very clear signal to the marketplace of the world, that people are moving into low-carbon, no-carbon, alternative, renewable energy, and I think it’s going to create millions of jobs, enormous investments into R&D, and that R&D is going to create the solutions, not government” – ABC’s “This Week”
Ban Ki-moon: “With these elements in place, markets now have the clear signal they need to unleash the full force of human ingenuity and scale up investments that will generate low-emissions, resilient growth”
13 Dec: WSJ: Business Supports Climate Deal With Varying Degrees of Enthusiasm
Some corporations worry lack of detail on costs could threaten competitiveness
By Emese Bartha and Cassandra Sweet (Lynn Cook in Houston and Scott Patterson in London contributed to this article.)
But in recent years, as the science of global warming has come to be more broadly embraced—and the dangers of continued greenhouse-gas-emissions growth have become clearer—many executives have embraced efforts to take action…
***Paul Polman, chief executive of consumer-goods giant Unilever PLC and an unusually outspoken climate-change advocate from inside the boardroom, said in a statement the deal sends an “unequivocal signal to the business and financial communities, one that will drive real change in the real economy.”…
Stephen Eule, vice president for climate and technology at the U.S. Chamber, said the same obstacles remain that have made past climate pledges a problem, including how to fund costly alternative energies.
“The Paris climate conference delivered more of the same—lots of promises and lots of issues still left unresolved,” he said. “The White House’s overall domestic strategy of making energy more expensive and less abundant to satisfy international constituencies, many of whom compete against the United States, should worry the business community, American workers, and consumers.”…
Hans-Werner Sinn, president of Germany’s Ifo Institute for Economic Research, said “the agreement contains mainly moral appeals and lip service,” and he called for more specific action like an emissions-trading system…
???U.S. consumers are increasingly concerned about climate change blah blah…said Edward Snyder, dean of the Yale School of Management…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/business-supports-climate-deal-with-varying-degrees-of-enthusiasm-1450032937
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13 Dec: UK Independent: David Usborne: COP21: President Obama celebrates Paris deal that ‘transformed the US’
The deal, which Mr Obama called a ‘turning point’, promises to become a major part of the president’s legacy
“The President is making promises he can’t keep, writing cheques he can’t cash, and stepping over the middle class to take credit for an ‘agreement’ that is subject to being shredded in 13 months,” sniped
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the US Senate…
The Paris accord almost became unstitched on Saturday, when US negotiators spotted a sentence saying wealthier nations “shall” blah blah…
In his response to the deal, the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, implied he could hardly believe it had happened, saying he was “in a bit of a shock, a happy shock”. He added, though, that implementation would be “hugely challenging”…
Donald Trump discussed environmental regulation in his own way, grousing about obligatory flow limiters in bathrooms and the trouble it causes him looking after his very particular hair. “You have sinks where the water doesn’t come out. You have showers where I can’t wash my hair properly, it’s a disaster!” Mr Trump told supporters in South Carolina.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/cop21-president-obama-celebrates-paris-deal-that-transformed-the-us-a6771841.html
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Climate Change is a Green Herring.
“Let’s say that science, some decades from now, said ‘we were wrong, it was not about climate’, would it not in any case have been good to do many of things you have to do in order to combat climate change?.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/climatechange/10313261/EU-policy-on-climate-change-is-right-even-if-science-was-wrong-says-commissioner.html
“Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated.”Ottmar Edenhofer,PIK
http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-official-climate-policy-is-redistributing-the-worlds-wealth/
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“Say that 30 years from now, science came back and said, ‘wow, we were mistaken …’
More likely less than a decade, as temperature drops, then they may attempt to combat natural climate change.
30
No, then they will invent a whole new version of climate change so they can say they were still right…..
The public however, dont seem to have noticed these people are very Don Qixote-like, which is kinda scary in its own right.
Although to be fair, it took me a long time to come to the reality that the general public dont really know that much about proper science,so to exopect them to understand is a hard slog job.
When I go to the gym from time to time, I cant hear the early morning commercial channel tv shows, but its instructional to weatch and see what joe six pack is absorbing each day.
TO put it in perspective, my wife was asked a hypothetical about if you were a kid and you wanted to hide the remote for the tv so your siblings couldnt watch tv before school, where would you hide the remote.
I was horrified – my question back to her was “thats appalling – why were children watching that complete brain-rotting rubbish before school?”
The elite a long time ago realised the majority of people dont think beyond their narrow day to day world – as such, if you can pummel the public with CAGW propaganda eventually it becomes “well everyone knows that is the truth”
It takes a certain mid set of “we know most of whats on tv is propaganda” before you actually start to search for the truth.
The public are also crowd / group think / popular driven – again doesnt require much grey matter but its safe and they can cosy up to the fact they are accepted becasue they all think the same….the old story though – two wrongs dont mkae a right, but 10,000,000 wrongs means yoj can get on your high horse and berate people becasue they dare question “popular wisdom”. As my wise granmother used to say – “if your mates jumped off the roof, would you do it too?
Most humans are lazy – they want it easy, they want to be lulled to sleep with “safe” thinking, they have no reason to assume they are being lied to constantly. Bad move.
I think Voltaire would have a lot to say about it….
00
Slightly O/T, but perhaps the most accurate summary of COP21 I’ve seen so far (sorry, Pat, but your 1-line package tours are not very useful for making sense of something as noisy as COP21):
http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/13/paris-impacts/#more-20646
comment by George Klein 11:20pm Dec 13th
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for some reason I can’t log in to comment on Judith site..
but under “JR’s Take” se types “and the U.S. (under a Democratic President)”
Sorry, but that should be Democrat
icPresident..the word Democratic should never be use wrt O’bummer.
40
***craven business sounds a bit religious:
14 Dec: SMH: Michael Pascoe: Climate denial is some people’s religion
As the initial enthusiasm and optimism over the Paris climate change agreement wears off, it looks like Australian business remains a long way short of the certainty it ***craves for rationally pricing carbon…
When WA Liberal member Dennis Jensen is happy with the Paris deal for doing nothing, it looks like we’re doing nothing. The dead hand of the government’s sceptics and deniers holds sway…
PHOTO CAPTION: Lord Monckton is noted worldwide for his views on climate.
They’re a strange lot, the local hard-right fans of Christopher Monckton – the loopy lord who thinks Tony Abbott was dumped because of a United Nations conspiracy, all part of a plot using climate change as an excuse for a world government and the end of democracy.
They’re an echo of the more numerous and louder gun-waving, Bible-thumping ratbags pulling the Republican Party’s strings…
Big Fossil pays them – but I suspect there’s a more complicated reason: blame God…
http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/climate-denial-is-some-peoples-religion-20151213-glmq1v.html
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Projection overload. How do they explain atheist/agnostic skeptics?
The straw man of the bible-bashing creationist denier is a favourite for hippies.
Ian Plimer, for example, used to spend his time fighting anti-science creationists before he took on anti-science warmies.
80
We would be better informed if Dennis Jensen (WA Lib) informed us about why he voted for Malcolm Turnbull.
90
Schools have become madrasas for ecofascist political thought and PC group think. You are more inclined to see posters of political and environmental propaganda on the walls of a classroom, than you are to see the alphabet and the times tables.
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PDF: 11 pages: IEA: Energy and Climate Change: World Energy Outlook
Special Briefing for COP21
The full implementation of climate pledges will require the energy sector to invest $13.5 trillion in energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies from 2015 to 2030, representing almost 40% of total energy sector investment. Around $8.3 trillion is needed to improve energy efficiency in the transport, buildings and industry sectors, while much of the remaining investment is to decarbonise the power sector.
More than 60% of total investment in power generation capacity is projected to be for renewable capacity, at $4.0 trillion, with one-third of this being for wind power, almost 30% for solar power (mainly solar photovoltaics) and around one-quarter for hydropower. While OECD countries absorb 60% of energy efficiency investment ($5 trillion), non-OECD countries absorb a greater share of the investment in low-carbon technologies ($2.7 trillion)…
The reorientation of the global energy system to one that is consistent with global climate goals is one of the biggest challenges facing the energy sector today, and the IEA will continue to place a high priority on its work on climate change…
http://www.iea.org/media/news/WEO_INDC_Paper_Final_WEB.PDF
40
An absolutely brill comment by Colorado W on NoTricksZone
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13 Dec: WSJ Editorial: Paris Climate of Conformity
It pays to be skeptical of politicians who claim to be saving the planet.
The moment to be wariest of political enthusiasms is precisely when elite opinion is all lined up on one side…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paris-climate-of-conformity-1450048095
50
UK on a suicide mission:
14 Dec: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: ‘Toothless’ climate change deal means Britain could be left pursuing ever tougher green targets
Other countries may fail to deliver on their promises to cut emissions, MPs warn, while UK’s Committee on Climate Change may recommend even tougher targets at home
Peter Lilley, a Conservative MP and member of the Environmental Audit Committee said: “The agreement is fairly toothless. The only people who take any notice will be people like us.
“We’re already out on our own, we’re the only ones with such a legally binding target and that’s going to be hugely costly and as a result of this treaty we’ve got greater legal obligations than we had previously.” …
The UK’s Climate Change Act, which requires 80 per cent emissions cuts on 1990 levels by 2050, is calculated by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the Government’s official climate advisers…
However, most other countries’ targets are less challenging…
Despite this, Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said he expected the CCC to recommend that the UK increase its own targets in the wake of the new Paris deal…
Nick Mabey, of climate change consultancy E3G, said: “We need China and India to cut emissions faster when pledges are reviewed in 5 years’ time. The best way to persuade them to be more ambitious is to carry on delivering steep cuts in the UK and EU.” …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/paris-climate-change-conference/12048834/Toothless-climate-change-deal-means-Britain-could-be-left-pursuing-ever-tougher-green-targets.html
dismantle the CCC.
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Anyone interested in polls may like to participate at ABC Radio National re Paris Accord usefulness.
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Its actually ABC News Radio. Whoops!
20
Are you convinced the Paris climate change deal is:
‘essentially meaningless’ 64%
‘arguably the most important environmental agreement ever’ 36%
297 votes counted
Thank you, your vote has been recorded.
10
Are you convinced the Paris climate change deal is:
‘essentially meaningless’ 68%
‘arguably the most important environmental agreement ever’ 32%
382 votes counted
10
If the result is not to their liking, they will “disappear” it – just like they “lost” a previous poll.
31
14 Dec: Guardian: Oliver Milman: John Kerry rejects leading climate scientist’s claim Paris talks were ‘fraud’
Kerry defends agreement after James Hansen, considered the father of climate change awareness, condemned talks over lack of potential for carbon tax
Asked about Hansen’s comments by ABC (America), in an interview broadcast on Sunday, Kerry, who led US negotiators in Paris, said he disagreed.
“Look, I have great respect for Jim Hansen and I was there in 1988 when he first warned everybody climate change was happening,” the secretary of state said.
“But with all due respect to him, I understand the criticisms of the agreement because it doesn’t have a mandatory scheme and it doesn’t have a compliance enforcement mechanism. That’s true.
“But we have 186 countries, for the first time in history, all submitting independent plans that they have laid down, which are real, for reducing emissions.
“And what it does, in my judgment, more than anything else, there is a uniform standard of transparency. And therefore, we will know what everybody is doing.
“The result will be a very clear signal to the marketplace of the world that people are moving into low carbon, no carbon, alternative renewable energy…
“Obviously, if a Republican were elected, they have the ability, by executive order, to undo things … but that’s why I don’t believe the American people – who predominantly do believe in what is happening with climate change – I don’t think they’re going to accept as a genuine leader someone who doesn’t understand the science of climate change and isn’t willing to do something about it.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/13/john-kerry-james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud
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Well done Tony Thomas, and also Jo for publishing his work here.
I have put some extracts in a post ‘An AAS goes Full Recruiting Sergeant for CO2 Derangement Activism in Schools’
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this is apparently on the front page of AFR today. no mention of renewables in the headline. bizarrely worded para inserted suggesting “increased use of wind power” blah blah after stating wind is causing the problem!
story not mentioned on ABC news bulletin i just heard:
15 Dec: AFR: SA government in energy market crisis talks with industry, suppliers
by Ben Potter, Simon Evans and Angela Macdonald-Smith
The South Australian government is considering intervening in the National Electricity Market after its commitment to renewable energy has generated sharp spikes in power prices that threaten its economic development strategy.
South Australian Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis called a crisis meeting of energy users and suppliers today to deal with sharp rises and falls in wholesale electricity prices that threaten the redevelopment of a Port Pirie lead and zinc smelter to make metals for solar panels and mobile phones, even with a $291 million government subsidy.
The volatility in wholesale prices – caused mostly by the state’s reliance on wind power and the ability of coal and gas power stations to charge high prices when the wind drops – is creating havoc for industry in the state, which is one of the country’s most economically depressed…
???Increased use of wind power is one way to meet the ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets embraced at the Paris climate talks…
Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad called for “rational argument” about what to do with coal-fired power stations, pointing to the absence of any realistic alternative for base-load power, and said more efficient coal power should be encouraged…
http://www.afr.com/news/politics/sa-government-in-energy-market-crisis-talks-with-industry-suppliers-20151214-gln55j
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Clearly, the resolution the SA Govt wants is to control the allowable “backup” price. Probably succeed to, as electrical power is still designated an essential service
10
Just like the post Pat put up a few days ago about what is happening in the UK with the requirement of subsidies for coal and nuclear to “keep the lights on” –this situation in SA is just another sign of reality striking back on the Green dreams.
BTW. Pat, thank you very much for the effort you put in to keep us up to date on the MSM coverage of the Paris talks especially, but also the work you have done throughout the year. Have a great Christmas and New Year.
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ABC did, however, go straight over to BBC’s Business Report after the news bulletin, with Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University saying wind & solar, as it is now, won’t be enough.
says with population growth of 3% a year, we’ll grow 16 times by the end of the century???
3 steps needed: first is to get out of coal as fast as possible, move to gas. second, set a hefty carbon price, & third develop new technology. Helm then tellingly says the attraction of a hefty carbon price is Govts around the world are running out of money. tax bases are shrinking so a carbon price is a good way of getting money. and, of course, emissions trading is a good idea too.
first nine minutes:
15 Dec: BBC Business Report: Will Climate Pledges Actually Become Policy?
We ask whether the lack of a legally binding deal in Paris will hinder progress. Dieter Helm, professor of energy policy at Oxford University gives us his assessment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0396ytp
some analysis of India’s reaction to the agreement also included in the above segment, with ridiculous mention of the $100 billion per year, and how India would need more than that to go 100% renewable energy.
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15 Dec: SMH: Elizabeth Knight: Suncorp gets cold shoulder from investors
With climate change and global gas emissions taking the main stage as a central policy issue for governments around the world, it was curious that one of Australia’s largest general insurers Suncorp was silent on the ramifications of climate-related weather events on the day it was forced to downgrade its profit forecast.
To be fair the issues that have played into a weakening outlook for Suncorp are not all about weather-related events, the falling Australian dollar has increased the insurer’s costs, while bigger than anticipated large losses in commercial insurance and increased claims frequency in compulsory third party insurance have also been in the mix.
But the $75 million increase in the natural hazards allowance that has come about from last year’s run of weather events – in particular a number of devastating hail storms – are taking their toll as they work through the insurer’s books…
???Insurers, more than arguably any other group of businesses, have been feeling the financial effects of an increased number of abnormal weather events, from hail to droughts and floods. But the insurance lobby is not yelling about the perils of climate change…
The key profit measure, the insurance trading ratio, will fall to 10 per cent in the December 2016 half year, down from an underlying 14.7 per cent in the year to June 2015.
Cameron maintained the group could improve its fortunes, that the group remained in good shape and that the downgrade was the result of short-term operational challenges in the general insurance division.
It wasn’t enough to calm twitchy investors, who sold the stock off more than 9 per cent.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/suncorp-gets-cold-shoulder-from-investors-20151214-gln520.html
not mentioned by SMH – Suncorp will release half-yearly earnings Feb. 11 and is forecast to report an “adjusted net profit of A$653.3 million”!
14 Dec: Bloomberg: Narayanan Somasundaram: Suncorp Slumps Most Since 2009 on Insurance Margins Warning
The Brisbane-based insurer has increased premiums to offset the rising claims, Chief Executive Officer Michael Cameron said in a statement Monday. Profit for the six months ending Dec. 31 would benefit from reserve releases of as much as A$140 million ($100 million), the insurer said…
Suncorp will release half-yearly earnings Feb. 11. The insurer is forecast to report an adjusted net profit of A$653.3 million, according to the mean estimate of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-13/suncorp-general-insurance-margin-set-to-fall-on-claims-aussie
50
pat, great research and reporting work by yourself – many thanks.
You do a fantastic job of informing us all about what is going on and being said around the world in the warming debate.
Regards
Geoff W Sydney
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Why do I get the feeling that “Science” is being promoted by people who don’t understand the method but are fully aware of its propaganda potential
91
It is what it is.
‘Dissident Libs have mocked the Paris agreement as economically destructive and environmentally meaningless.’
Owens and Hepworth / Oz
40
The Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and all of the other Liberals who are prepared to go along with a fraud stand condemned;
At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/021015-738779-climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism.htm#ixzz3uL19nsGg
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
30
‘This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,’
Which means:
‘This is the first time in the history of mankind that we have dealt with something that has been around for 150 years.’
Which is as meaningful as saying ‘This is the first time in the history of mankind that I have fed my cat today.’
There is a lot more buried in the statement to laugh or wonder at. Like that the last 150 years’ economic development under liberal democratic capitalism has blown the socks of anything prior, and created conditions of life for a quarter of the world’s population for which kings could once only dream. It also promises prosperity for countries that choose to come on board.
Sometimes I wonder if that is what the left really fear. To justify their fantasies, the left NEED the poor. Education and wealth have not turned the population into socialists, quite the opposite. So de-education (or education by lie) and reduction in prosperity is the only hope.
Tyrants, too, need the poor, or a money siphon system. Prosperity gained through individual effort is anathema to servility.
I really hope we can crack fusion, because then the whole AGW push would collapse in an instant.
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Persuade the kids to avoid government approved science — read economics instead ….
“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the marketplace.”
— Milton Friedman
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“…and the Academy presumably wants to train them to vote the right way.”
Um, no. The Academy clearly wants to train them to vote the left way.
40
It’s not education …….It’s Indoctrination !
Pink Floyd – Another Brick In The Wall (HQ)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U
41
15 Dec: AFR: Bloomberg: Mathew Carr: Kevin Rudd says Paris greenlights global carbon price
The Paris climate accord will pave the way for carbon markets in Asia, Europe and the US to link and form a global emissions price, according to Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister whose climate policies helped cost him his job.
“It’s easier for emissions-trading schemes to come into place now that we have the Paris agreement,” Rudd said by phone from New York.
“Prior to that we’ve had disputation across the fossil-fuel industry, with governments saying: ‘The rest of the world is not going to act. Why should we? Wash our hands of responsibility. Goodbye’.”
The Paris deal struck on Saturday won’t come into force until at least 55 nations accounting for 55 percent of the world’s emissions ratify it, potentially at a ceremony planned for April…
Eighteen nations including the US, Japan and Germany said they will work together to develop international carbon markets…
It’s inevitable Australia returns soon to carbon pricing “and hopefully with a floating price in order to become part of the system,” rather than a tax, Rudd said…
http://www.afr.com/news/politics/kevin-rudd-says-paris-greenlights-global-carbon-price-20151214-glnif3
more CAGW BUSINESS from BBC:
first nine minutes:
AUDIO: 15 Dec: BBC Business Daily: Paris Climate Pact: Corporate Winners & Losers
The success of the Paris climate change deal effectively calls for wholesale transformations of energy, transport and many other lines of business. We speak to Anthony Hobley, CEO of The Carbon Tracker
Initiative, a research house, about who wins and who loses in the business world following the Paris deal…
(Picture: Rusted out nodding-donkey oil pumps in Luling, Texas)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0396yq6
(rough summary)
HOBLEY: it really called time on the fossil fuel industry. they are the biggest losers if they don’t
respond. the winners are those in the clean tech space. those who provide services, PEOPLE LIKE UBER, who provide services and the things we need, in a far more carbon-efficient way.
BBC: give me an example of a project that is a waste of time.
HOBLEY: very, very clearly, any new coal mines.
BBC: essentially, the Paris agreement, for business, could be an extremely costly disruption.
HOBLEY: i would put it another way. ***it could be the biggest opportunity for business and the FINANCIAL MARKETS since the industrial revolution.
what was really different at Paris, for first time the FINANCIAL MARKETS were there in force.
we put on a number of events, where we had the CEOs of MAJOR pension funds, like Hermes, like CalPERS in the United States, Aviva, AXA.
interestingly, the Gov of our own Bank of England was there, announcing appointment of Michael Bloomberg as Chair of the Financial Stability Board to look at what climate change means in terms of financial risk.
then on to divestment, catastrophes, etc.
10
13 Dec: NYT: Climate Deal Is Signal to Industry: The Era of Carbon Reduction Is Here
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and KEITH BRADSHER
(Stanley Reed, Diane Cardwell, Melissa Eddy, Sewell Chan, Bill Vlasic and Jad Mouawad contributed reporting.)
It will spur banks and investment funds to shift their loan and stock portfolios from coal and oil to the growing industries of renewable energy like wind and solar…
Top executives from Bank of America, Citibank and Goldman Sachs dropped by the Paris talks or related side events, as did philanthropist business leaders like Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Chief executives of blue-chip companies like Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, HP and Unilever all expressed support for an ambitious deal.
On Twitter on Saturday night, BP, the British oil giant, called the Paris agreement a “landmark climate change deal” and pledged to be “a part of the solution.” In June, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Total called for a tax on carbon emissions, saying it would reduce uncertainty and help oil and gas companies figure out the future…
“The policy developed from these commitments will bring better market certainty to investors and open up significant opportunities,” Jack Ehnes, chief executive of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, said last week…
Beyond the auto industry, the money is flowing. According to a recent Goldman Sachs study, the combined market size of low-carbon technologies like wind and solar power and electric and hybrid vehicles exceeded $600 billion last year, nearly equivalent to the United States defense budget…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/business/climate-accord-draws-mixed-reaction-from-business-leaders.html?_r=0
(A version of this article appears in print on December 14, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Climate Deal Is Signal for Industry to Go Green)
20
On LinkedIn this morning from Bjorn Lomborg, President at Copenhagen Consensus Center, firm believer that we can change the weather.
We have a Treaty – but at what cost? Dec 13, 2015
20
Pars done…we can talk about Abengoa again!
cute aw shucks angle from the Guardian:
15 Dec: Guardian: Spanish energy giant Abengoa’s collapse predicted by 17-year-old
Teenager’s economics project noticed flaws in accounting a year before solar and wind power firm tries to avoid becoming Spain’s biggest bankruptcy
by Stephen Burgen in Barcelona
As Spanish engineering and renewable energy giant Abengoa struggles to avoid becoming the country’s biggest bankruptcy, it has emerged that a 17-year-old schoolboy predicted its collapse a year ago, spotting accounting discrepancies apparently overlooked by both Deloitte and Standard & Poor’s.
Pepe Balta, a secondary school student in Barcelona, chose Abengoa as his economics project and noticed flaws in its accounting. “If it does not act soon, there is a strong risk Abengoa will go into bankruptcy,” Balta wrote last year in his 18-page paper, titled Analytical report on Abengoa, 2012 and 2013…
The company has already started to lay off some of its 7,000 Spanish employees. It is based in Andalucia, a region with a more than 30% unemployment rate – the highest in the EU. However, the government – which faces a general election on Sunday – has ruled out any form of state bailout…
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/14/spain-energy-giant-abengoa-collapse-predicted-by-17-year-old
14 Dec: Reuters: UPDATE 1-Abengoa admits to lines construction halt in Brazil, eyes sales
Spanish conglomerate Abengoa told Brazil’s power sector regulator Aneel that it has stopped work on concessions to build and operate new transmission lines in the country, according to a document seen by Reuters on Monday…
The stoppage could become a serious setback for Brazil’s efforts to emerge from its worst energy crisis in 14 years.
Abengoa holds concessions to build and operate 6,300 kilometers (3,900 miles) of transmission lines in Brazil that are vital to connecting dozens of wind farms to the grid.
It is also due to construct a line carrying power from the word’s third-largest hydroelectric power dam, Belo Monte, in the Amazon state of Para, to Brazil’s power-hungry northeast region starting in August…
http://www.reuters.com/article/spain-abengoa-brazil-idUSL8N14346320151214
20
http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/12/turnbull-will-always-paris/
30
I agree, but who do we vote for?
10
I will not vote Labor or Greens, and I will not vote for the Liberals, I am deciding about the Nationals.
What I am certain about is the need for an electoral backlash against the major parties, a wake up call.
60
Let’s float balloons:
Cory Bernardi might have the integrity to lead a new Conservative party with at least 10 disaffected Liberals.
The Nats would support them on climate change, in line with Ted Cruz et al.
It would fracture the Coalition and Turnbull knows it, so he will need to offer them a sweetener before the next election.
50
oops…should have typed:
PARIS done…we can talk about Abengoa again!
20
reminder:
11 Dec: PR Newswire: Shareholder Class Action Filed Against SunEdison, Inc. – SUNE
The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP announces that a shareholder class action lawsuit has been filed against SunEdison, Inc. (NYSE: SUNE) (“SunEdison” or the “Company”) on behalf of purchasers of the Company’s securities between June 16, 2015 and October 6, 2015, inclusive (the “Class Period”)…
SunEdison finances, builds, owns and operates various solar and wind power plants…
The shareholder class action complaint alleges that SunEdison and certain of its senior executive officers issued a series of false and misleading statements, and omitted to disclose material information, to investors during the Class Period. Specifically, the complaint alleges that the defendants misled investors “by creating the picture that the Company had the financial wherewithal to sustain continued growth,” but that “as the Company continued its acquisition binge, it was revealed that the entire scheme was nothing more than a house of cards.”…
SunEdison shareholders who purchased their securities during the Class Period may, no later than February 1, 2016, petition the Court to be appointed as a lead plaintiff of the class…
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shareholder-class-action-filed-against-sunedison-inc–sune-300191970.html
30
14 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: COMMENT: For carbon pricing in China, the question is not “if” but “how” – with lessons for the United States
By Valerie Karplus, Assistant Professor of Global Economics and Management, MIT Sloan School of Management Putting a price on CO2, however low it is at first, will gradually shift the economy away from CO2-intensive activity by taking reductions starting with where the cost is least. Emission trading systems have been shown to be highly effective when they are allowed to work. But a major sticking point has been how the costs of such a system would be distributed…
This month, we publish a paper, “Equity and Emission Trading in China” in the journal Climatic Change that outlines a sophisticated menu aimed at Chinese policymakers showing how the burden of reducing carbon emissions could be shared or divided across the country’s provinces under a market-based carbon pricing system. The paper is based on a regional model of China’s energy and economic system developed by Tsinghua-MIT China Energy and Climate Project (CECP) in the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The Tsinghua-MIT CECP is also supported through the MIT Energy Initiative…
In this work, we first use the model to analyze how alternative provincial-level permit allocation schemes under a possible Chinese emissions trading scheme could incorporate specific equity principles, for instance, by holding polluters responsible or ensuring equality or progressivity of regional impacts…
China’s experiment with emissions trading should give the United States pause to consider whether and how CO2 pricing might be a prudent solution…ETC
http://carbon-pulse.com/13359/
20
Mind you these scary political scientist catastrophists may well find they’re shooting themselves in the foot longer term.
“Each of the above mechanisms is based on published data showing the phenomenon exists, thus making it a scientifically plausible process. No one has shown that any of these four mechanisms cannot occur.”
Sound familiar denier folks?
011
And thus does the namecalling observa reassure himself that he is Roolly Smart!
In observa logic, if there are a few idiots among the 60% of the population that disagree with him, then all who disagree are idiots.
It’s tough having low self esteem and being unable to reason at the same time isn’t it observa?
110
It was tongue in cheek Joanne. If the warmies are going to rely on emotion rather than verifiable data and methodology then that’s what they’ll get. Hoisted on their own petard.
I’m no fan of windmills and solar as the answer to getting rid of fossil fuels (nor do I believe we should) but I’m not going to go off with the emotional fairies about them.
00
Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not confined to Australian schools. My daughter is completing the year 10 independent learning online “science” course in the Canadian province of Ontario, and the content and tone is very similar. Highly political, lots of emphasis on activism, and blatant scientific errors abound.
She, to her credit is having none of it, and when asked to provide her own reflections and feedback on the Climate Change unit, she delivered a well-directed broadside against the politicised and biased content.
130
Simply wonderful to read that Senex.
She is to be congratulated, admired and encouraged. An undeterred, budding independent and intelligent thinker.
60
Its the same fascist criminals (climate) that are trying to start WW3 in Syria! Mostly the fascist element in the GOP. (Read Republicans and fascist Democrats)
10
tRU, I can’t make up my mind whether they’re eco-marxists or eco-fascists, though one appreciates that the difference in semantics may not make much difference. The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei became every bit the goose stepping fascist, yet they called themselves socialists. The Greens blend extreme ecological activism with Marxism – in their own words. The mix is further blended by the UN and its Agenda into a cocktail that may defeat traditional nomenclature such as Democrat and Republican, though the Left appears more strongly inclined toward a Green disposition. As you point out, climate hysterics populate both ends of the political spectrum.
In my own view, bureaucratic eco-totalitarianism seems to describe the climate con quite well…for the moment. There is an extraordinary level of institutionalisation, which I think may be a defining element.
51
For me this is looking like national socialism on a global scale, the brainwashing of the youth will ensure a continuation of the agenda/solution with any future dissenters more easily silenced, the liberties with internet communication will die with us unless we have a generation to take our place.
I watched a silly movie the other night called ‘Idiocracy’ where an average person is put to sleep for a year for an experiment but ends up asleep for 500 years, he awakes to find the world in a bad state as people just got dumber each generation and finds that he’s the smartest person on the planet, I would normally not analyse such a movie but after the behaviour at COP21 this movie’s plot appears entirely plausible.
60
14 Dec: Guardian: Dana Nuccitelli: The Paris agreement signals that deniers have lost the climate wars
195 world nations have agreed to ignore climate science denial and cut carbon pollution as much as possible
While the Paris talks were ongoing, a group of fossil fuel-funded climate contrarians held their own sparsely-attended movie event and “counter-conference.” Their ringleader Marc Morano complained of the COP21 conference, “They haven’t been too friendly to sceptics this year.”
Indeed, those who deny the scientific evidence were ignored; instead, scientific arguments in favor of an even more stringent target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures won the day…
In the wake of the Paris negotiations, we now need a real policy debate to decide how we’re going to most efficiently cut carbon pollution. For example, in the United States should we stick with EPA greenhouse gas regulations, or replace them with a free market solution, as President Obama would prefer? Should that solution be a carbon cap and trade system or a tax? What should be done with the revenue that would be generated?…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/dec/14/the-paris-agreement-signals-that-deniers-have-lost-the-climate-wars
report this, Dana:
14 Dec: NYT: Reuters: India Says Paris Climate Deal Won’t Affect Plans to Double Coal Output
by Krishna N. Das and Tommy Wilkes
India still plans to double coal output by 2020 and rely on the resource for decades afterwards, a senior official said on Monday, days after rich and poor countries agreed in Paris to curb carbon emissions blamed for global warming…
Minister for Power, Coal and Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal, said India’s contribution to global greenhouse gases emissions was just 2.5 percent with 17 percent of the world’s population, while developed countries contributed a fifth of emissions with just 5 percent of the world’s population…
State-owned producer Coal India, for example, has enough internal cash resources to drive more production, Swarup said…
India, which is targeting to more than double coal output to 1.5 billion tonnes this decade, says coal provides the cheapest energy for rapid industrialisation that would lift millions out of poverty.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/12/14/world/asia/14reuters-climatechange-summit-india-coal.html
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14 Dec: Reason: Shikha Dalmia: Why the Paris Climate Change Agreement Will Fail
World leaders are looking in all the wrong places for a solution
In fact, literally every country gamed the process—demonstrating, yet again, the utter folly of trying to save the world by putting it on a collective energy diet…
Every major climate change initiative to date has gone up in smoke…
India, which vociferously condemned Western pressure at Paris as “carbon imperialism,” has refused to even set a peak emissions target. It is willing to commit only to cutting emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent, arguably a slower rate of improvement than it’s seen over the last 15 years. Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin, who remains firmly in the global warming denialist camp, has offered an emission reduction plan that is actually an emission increase plan…
The Paris talks were suffused with a false sense of urgency. The vast majority of scientists agree that the earth is warming but the severity and pace is hotly disputed given that world temperature has increased only half as much as climate models predicted in 1990. In fact, the two-degree centigrade tipping point being peddled is based less on science and more on the political need to spur action…
But perhaps when the Paris agreement fails to deliver, the world can finally approach the problem with a cooler head. It might be another decade — but fortunately, there is time for the world to try everything else before doing the right thing.
https://reason.com/archives/2015/12/14/a-happy-agreement-in-paris-wont-fix-glob
14 Dec: UK Express: Ross Clark: Climate change agreement is a terrible mistake
AS LORD Lawson once observed there is no greater sign that bad decisions are being made than when a consensus emerges.
The result, I fear, will be that only one country takes its targets seriously: Britain. We are already alone in having legally bound ourselves to the most severe carbon-reduction target of any country: to slash emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Carbon taxes have already incentivised the drift of manufacturing industry to countries where no such targets apply. The result of Paris may be that we end up with no industry at all. While not promising to
reduce their carbon emissions, developing countries have nevertheless won a promise from richer countries to pay them £66billion of handouts to develop their green energy infrastructure…
Much of the money may end up funding presidential jets – or worse. It wouldn’t surprise me if Islamic State is already planning disguised subsidiaries to cream off some of that money…
It may well be that the world doesn’t warm by more than 1.5C. But again, that won’t be thanks to the Paris summit. It will be because the models which try to link levels of carbon emissions with temperature rises are faulty. Given that global temperatures are rising at less than half the level predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its first report 25 years ago there would seem to be plenty of room for doubt.
Yet hardly anyone among the 40,000 delegates at Paris was prepared to question the science. It has been drummed into politicians and officials that only a fool would dare to question the “scientific consensus” on climate change. But the opposite is true. Only a fool would not be sceptical about a science whose predictions have so far proved so wide of the mark.
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/626800/Climate-change-agreement-terrible-mistake-Paris
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God! Am I glad that someone like Tony Thomas has conducted this expose of the travesty of “education” that is occurring in ours schools under our very noses!!! I first became aware of the partisan garbage that passes for “science” teaching (as well as other social agenda areas) when visiting my grandchildren’s classrooms. I was shocked to the core.
I am not exaggerating when I say that the major part of what seemed to be the teaching “content” appeared to be warnings against the wilful destruction of the planet by human beings, “racism” against our fellow humans & the primary need for cooperative and communal environments in the classroom & elsewhere. Textbooks were non existent & teaching modules were as little as 10 minute periods in year 3 before “groups” swapped topics. I was informed by a worried looking teacher (she must have noted the horror on my face) that “we don’t teach as we did in your day, “we facilitate learning”!!!
Now that was in a state public school at primary level. I imagined that when I visited the classrooms of my other teenage grandchild at one of Australia’s most expensive & renown private schools, that things would be different. But no!!! An open day in the science labs devoted to the Year 1 projects in relation to “Man’s effect on his environment” produced nothing other than the dire and murderous effect of humans on the planet. No projects devoted to advances in medicine, the “green revolution” which transformed are ability to feed the world etc etc.
Many people think that this ideological grip on the education sector can be overcome. At the moment – I am in despair.
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God! Am I glad that someone like Tony Thomas has conducted this expose of the travesty of “education” that is occurring in ours schools under our very noses!!! I first became aware of the partisan garbage that passes for “science” teaching (as well as other social agenda areas) when visiting my grandchildren’s classrooms. I was shocked to the core.
I am not exaggerating when I say that the major part of what seemed to be the teaching “content” appeared to be warnings against the wilful destruction of the planet by human beings, “racism” against our fellow humans & the primary need for cooperative and communal environments in the classroom & elsewhere. Textbooks were non existent & teaching modules were as little as 10 minute periods in year 3 before “groups” swapped topics. I was informed by a worried looking teacher (she must have noted the horror on my face) that “we don’t teach as we did in your day, “we facilitate learning”!!!
Now that was in a state public school at primary level. I imagined that when I visited the classrooms of my other teenage grandchild at one of Australia’s most expensive & renown private schools, that things would be different. But no!!! An open day in the science labs devoted to the Year 1 projects in relation to “Man’s effect on his environment” produced nothing other than the dire and murderous effect of humans on the planet. No projects devoted to advances in medicine, the “green revolution” which transformed are ability to feed the world etc etc.
Many people think that this ideological grip on the education sector can be overcome. At the moment – I am in despair.
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Your concerns are warranted Vicki, where once education taught not only known facts but encouraged students to question them freely we are regressing back to compliant indoctrination through fear, this was done to great effect in the Hitler Youth movement outlined here .
Not wanting to be the harbinger of despair I believe in encouraging people to seek for themselves as the neglect of this basic human ideal is a major reason why the west is in such decay, cheers.
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Vicki, same here. We visited our youngest grandson’s very upmarket and very expensive Sydney school for a final Grandparents’ Day.
I specifically looked for the “environmental” section of the various displays – and there it was, man’s devastating effect on the environment, dirty coal, wonderful ‘clean’ renewable energy, and so on.
I corralled the teacher (a pleasant young male, for a change) and quizzed him. He did not have a CLUE! The look on his face when I told him that Earth had not warmed for the last 18 years said it all! He had no idea that CO2 was at an historically low level, that it was essential for plant growth, that the earth was greening, thanks to ‘pollution’ and that all the climate models, on which he had based his lessons, we’re now grossly diverging from the actual data.
His response? Apart from admitting total ignorance – that he was given a lesson outline to teach, and that was what he taught!
The problem is that my grandson’s father (my son in law) is brainwashed and I am not allowed to discuss ‘climate change’ in his earshot!
What to do?
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Peter
The admission from the teacher “Apart from admitting total ignorance – that he was given a lesson outline to teach, and that was what he taught!” is the worst part of it. He is saying he is happy to just stand in front of the class and be a robot.
The one hope “on the horizon” is the inquiry learning skills being introduced within the system whereby the kids are made to do a lot of the fact finding and analysis or critical thinking themselves
( IF it is done properly) — not sure if the teacher Vicki (above) spoke to was talking about the same thing. With the Internet and the research skills they should learn the kids may come out with more balance assuming the teachers do not knock them back by marking work with better grades for the those that go with the PC agenda. If the latter happens then the kids will be well and truly confused and poorly educated.
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This is “scarey”. I have one grandchild just starting 2ndary education and 3 in primary plus a couple not yet in prep. (Australia).
What do I do?
Do I present them with the facts and risk that they will be “failed” and made to repeat a year?
Or do I ignore this inforamtion and try to rectify when they’re are not “threatened” by acedemia?
Decisions, descions
R-COO- K+
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Present them with the facts in a casual sort of way, ask them what they think of the hiatus and slowly take it step by step from there.
They may already have heard of global warming and what to do about it, which means your task will be that much harder. Also be aware of adult family members who maybe brainwashed, you don’t want to ruin friendships arguing over the weather.
The other day a high school student (a family member) told me what was in the curriculum and I said its a disgrace because global cooling has begun, and she laughed.
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Changing schools is hardly an option when the crisis hysteria is epidemic.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to hold two contradictory thoughts at once and believe neither of them. Perhaps your descendants will have to learn this skill earlier than expected. Tell them to remember the propaganda for the exam, but to only argue against it sparingly, preferably in class discussion or mid-semester essays and not final exams, and only where the contrary evidence is unimpeachable. The situation is probably much better than you have presented it; they aren’t going to fail the whole subject just because of a few questions about global warming. The curriculum is too broad and has too little spare time to be as obsessive about global warming as your average JoNovian is. 😉
Simply having more than one source and needing to discriminate the best defensible option is going to be more beneficial as a learning process than any single factoid or content they memorise along the way. Make that struggle happen rather than shield them from it.
But make sure they know they cannot change the world from the classroom, there will be time for that later in life.
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Ron
It can be done in this climate.
We raised our sons to think and question – and dealt with where that lead.
A high point was in the Queensland “football fields a minute tree clearing beat-up” when I got an email from one with a link and the comment
“Hey Dad, take a look at this bs”
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El gordo, Andrew McRae, Another Ian.
Thanks for your reponses. Much appreciated.
R-COO- K+
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Joanne; I have drawn the attention of the Minerals Council of Australia to the material in your post. The chief executive expressed appreciation and said they will follow up with the AAE as well as bureaucratic and political levels as appropriate. Let me know if you would like copies of these messages.
Email coming your way. Thanks Jim — Jo
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China taking care of business…without a mention of CAGW:
14 Dec: SouthChinaMorningPost: Mandy Zuo: China needs to build 10 more megacities to ease pollution and traffic pressure on Beijing, top planner says
Yang, who is the deputy chair of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs, supported the government’s urbanisation plan for 2014-2020, calling for megacities to be etablished in the northeast, central and western areas.
But he went a step further, by putting the number of new giant cities needed at 10, and said they should be built within five years…
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/1890976/china-needs-build-10-more-megacities-ease-pollution-and
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CAGW = BS is all the kids need to learn .
Thy CON21 was no more than a BS Fest and an attempt at a Grand Ponzi Scheme …..Trading in hot air !
Little wonder it was rorted to the max by the Commissars and buddies in the New World EuroZone …..The Mini-Me Unelected Nutters(U.N.)!
What crap will they come up with I wonder if it cools or even doesn’t warm as has happened for the last 19 Years ?
NO doubt , another bout of hysteria will make up for any inconvenient climate disobedience with the CAGW True B’lver Brethren and with plenty of willing help from the Marxist Main Stream Presstitutes.
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Australian Academy of Child Abuse.
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Comments from ABC The Drum website;
Dennis:
15 Dec 2015 12:47:44pm
At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Is there any point arguing about climate change?
Alert moderator
Reinhard:
15 Dec 2015 2:47:39pm
Ms Figueres was arguing that we have to move away from the model of unsustainable growth, burning fossil fuels for energy, towards a model of more sustainable growth using renewable energy
Are you saying you honestly don’t comprehend what Ms Figueres was saying or are you, like the fossil fuel lobby, just trying to confuse the argument?
Alert moderator
RealityCheck:
15 Dec 2015 2:58:18pm
Hi Dennis. 🙂
Beware ‘confirmation bias’ when reading statements. The lady merely made an observation that the processes which transition us away from fossil/nuclear and towards green renewable energy/industries are basically as revolutionary in effect as the Industrial Revolution was to the pre-existing economic development models of the past.
See? She merely made the obvious connection between the total reorganizing effect which the Industrial Revolution brought about as a matter of course if things were going to change for the better at that stage in our economic development model; just as the same will in effect happen at THIS stage of our economic development model if we are to avoid some of the unintended consequences of the changes that happened last time. It’s not a ‘conspiracy’, but an observation of effectively what will be happening as a result of global action re AGW. Take it easy and don’t make innocent observations into conspiracy, hey? And its small ‘s’ socilaistic secular democracy that is evolving as the only sustainable model for govt/society/economy to develop into the future without the past chaos that superstitionism, religionism, comminism, capitalism and all sorts of greed/insanity-isms has brought throughout millennia. Time to start trying science, humanity, reason and compassion informing small ‘s’ secular democracy govt/economy model for a few centuries, hey?
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I don’t suppose there was any mention in the material about how the open pit uranium mine (pictured) could eliminate dozens of coal fired plants!?
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This is a perfect demonstration of why I chose to bring my children to Finland rather than return to Australia.
Bye Aus…. I will truly miss you, but…..
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A generation of lobbyists
By teaching students to become lobbyists first! instead of increasing their knowledge for use in debate, the AAS is setting up the future of Australia as a population of “self interest groups” who inevitably must resort to progressively more effective methods of persuasion.
Especially when they do not get their way.
It is a recipe for extremism , as can be evidenced by the direction GreenPeace has taken
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Teaching always is, and always has been, a subversive activity
If it had not been, mankind would never have made any progress.
And the first step is to ensure students develop ICDs*.
*Inbuilt Crap Detectors”.
That is why Conservatives have it in for teachers – they are afraid of the power and scrutiny of inquiring minds.
[You missed the point. There is a big difference between teaching children critical thinking and what this post is about which is called indoctrination in the particular way of thinking that the political power at the time want’s to foster instead of teaching them the knowledge they will need to become successful adults in a very competitive world.] AZ
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Bob, I’ve not met any conservatives who “have it in for teachers”. The conservatives I know want kids to be taught to think and question. What they resent are teachers pushing their own personal politics.
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I’m about as conservative on most issues as they come. But I definitely do not have it in for teachers. My problem is this, the teachers want to run the schools in many places. However, by law the elected schools boards, a group accountable to the voters are specifically there to run the schools. The teacher’s unions are at the root of this problem and neither the teachers themselves nor their unions are accountable to the voters. I hope you can understand it if I think this is bass ackward and should not be happening.
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Why is a number unsuitable?
This number is my regimental number, given to me when I was conscripted for service in Vietnam in 1970 in 7 RAR. Go here to check my bona fides.
I didn’t ask to be conscripted, nor did I asked to be assigned a number, but I was, so believe that I have the right to use it any way I please.
Your reaction suggests that it is my opinion, rather than my tag which is “unsuitable”.
[My decision to block your comment pending Jo’s approval was one of those judgment calls about what’s worthwhile and what isn’t. Now that I understand from your message above that you’re using your military serial number it makes a difference in what I would have decided. If your comment hadn’t ended up in moderation and I saw it already made public I would not have removed it. But since it was trapped I had to make a decision. Please accept my apology for the inconvenience.
PS: I also served in Vietnam, 1962 and 1963. I enlisted but certainly did not ask for Vietnam.] AZ
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1735099 December 16, 2015 at 12:04 pm · Reply
Why is a number unsuitable?
This number is my regimental number, given to me when I was conscripted for service in Vietnam in 1970 in 7 RAR. Go here to check my bona fides.
WOW Sir!
Any string of symbols is suitable for personal identification. Most folk avoid ‘password’, consecutive numbers, or any subset of the decimal expansion of PI! Of course your sequence is somewhere in that expansion, but as long as ‘you’ do not know that location, the sequence identifier is unique.
“I didn’t ask to be conscripted, nor did I asked to be assigned a number, but I was, so believe that I have the right to use it any way I please.”
Indeed! Numbers are not subject to patent, trademark, or copyright!
I look forward to any opinion from your identifier. Sir!
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A few things –
As a teacher for over 40 years, I learned long ago that knowledge is not “taught” but learned. Teaching is not shovelling information into empty brains. Teaching is about helping children acquire the necessary basic skills (specifically literacy and numeracy) so they can learn (defined as a permanent change in behaviour) from all life’s experiences, institutionalised and otherwise.
One vital lesson most children learn early in middle school is the capacity to recognise indoctrination when they encounter it.
Conservatives are very uncomfortable with this, as it encourages young people to challenge what they are “taught” instead of accepting it uncritically.
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WoW again!
“As a teacher for over 40 years, I learned long ago that knowledge is not “taught” but learned. Teaching is not shovelling information into empty brains. Teaching is about helping children acquire the necessary basic skills (specifically literacy and numeracy) so they can learn (defined as a permanent change in behaviour) from all life’s experiences, institutionalised and otherwise.”
Yes yes yes! If your new teenager (13) has not learned
how to thoroughly piss off Mom, Dad, or Both; within a millisecond, you now have a very very stupid teenager on your hands! 10 years of careful learning of that! Mostly trial and error, not from a book!
“One vital lesson most children learn early in middle school is the capacity to recognize indoctrination when they encounter it.”
Are there any studies that show, that child with no older siblings are late to recognize? Seems that older
siblings know very well ‘how to indoctrinate’, while the third of three can teach ‘even you’ how to recognize indoctrination!
“Conservatives are very uncomfortable with this, as it encourages young people to challenge what they are “taught” instead of accepting it uncritically.”
I cannot understand your use of the word conservatives. Parents are both pissed at the new teenager. But after reflection and consultation with spouse, are proud of that smart young turkey! And truly wish the best!
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Rather similar to my thinking. Knowledge cannot be given to a student, the student must take it, actively. It has to be taken with full involvement, attention, focus, and passion. The teacher is there to guide the steps and to set an example. The student must do the work.
Most children know this when they are young. Just watch how seriously they play and the joy they show when they learn something new. Sadly, very little of that joy survives into adulthood. Our so called educational system is specifically designed to extinguish it. After a few years, it becomes difficult to distinguish between a mind and a boring recording.
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Lionell,
On each visit I’m watching what you describe as my 9 month old grandson (today, 18th) shows his determination to emulate what he sees around him. He can’t quite crawl yet but if you try to pick him up by his hands (he still falls over in the playpen and can’t quite get back to a sitting position) he wants to walk, not sit and will try to do so for quite a while before giving up. He can’t do it yet but he’s bent on emulating what he sees the adults doing and they don’t crawl on the floor. He’ll discover that too but only because it’s an easier means of locomotion for the time being.
They’re wired to learn and desperately want to.
Sadly even before they get to school their parents have a tendency to knock this desire to learn and explore right out of them for various reasons, including the desire to keep them safe.
I’m not sure I know a good tradeoff.
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Yes. They want to learn as if their life depends upon it because it does. I suspect the drive is mostly embedded in their genes. Learning how to learn and what to learn is a different matter.
I doubt there is one perfect tradeoff but I do know there is a multitude of bad ones best avoided.
Try sharing their joy and making sure their environment won’t kill them before they learn to deal with it. Part of that is setting up circumstances in which they can learn on their own. Another is to read to them until you lose your voice. Then do it some more. They will learn. That way you have a chance of finding a tradeoff that is good enough. Even what is good enough depends upon the parent, the child, and the situation they find themselves in.
From my experience, learning how to help a child learn is as difficult for you as it is for the child to learn how to deal with you helping him. Children or parents come upon the task of being what they are without a users manual nor a detailed theory of operation specification. It’s on the job training from the get go. Everyone has suggestions. No one has “The Answer.”
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On trade offs, I think the idea is to make good compromises between one thing and another. I just don’t know where the line is in every case.
That lack of a user manual is definitely a problem. But the normal human tendency to not learn from their elders is even worse. Maybe we need to temper that criticism with knowledge that some parents don’t get it right for various reasons and shouldn’t be emulated. But one way or another, parents and child both come to the experience having to do OJT (on the job training).
In any case, yes, do read to the child, even before they can hope to understand what you read. I credit the fact that we read to our son every night before bed for many years for his interest in reading and communication that developed into the people skills to do well at selling, first advertising and now insurance. There’s no way to be sure but follow the evidence as Jo would say. Since it was made to seem obvious to him that we thought it important, he began to think it important and finally went through a communication major in 4 years with flying colors.
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“so they can learn (defined as a permanent change in behavior) from all life’s experiences, institutionalized and otherwise.”
Interesting concept “learn (defined as a permanent change in behavior)”! If I ‘learn’ to ride a bicycle, skill levels change, but my behavior ‘desire to learn other’, has not changed at all! Failure to learn to ride bicycle may inhibit such desire to learn!
Just what are you advocating here?
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1735099,
As one who has also taught — almost 16 years in a large community college district as adjunct professor of computer science — I think I’m qualified to weigh in with my opinion.
Yes you do want to teach students to be independent thinkers and to question what’s going on around them so they can learn from the mistakes of their elders. The problem here is that when no framework is taught to the student about what the society the student lives in holds for values, thinks is acceptable behavior and so on, things rapidly deteriorate in just a few generations to the point that everything that was good and proper about society is abandoned along with the mistakes. America is almost there as I type this.
An example of how things can go straight to hell can be seen in the incidences of cheating in the class I taught. During my last 3 years cheating went up 3 fold or more. Carelessness in following instructions for an assignment went up at least 2 fold. This is not an acceptable way to run any society. You either stand for something and you uphold it against all comers or you cease to be what you once were and become anarchy.
As for how students learn — I am eternally grateful that I went through school when facts and book knowledge were still king and the mistaken idea that the student could or would learn what’s needed if only given some “tools” by which to magically do so, hadn’t penetrated the classroom. I was no doubt taught some of my elder’s mistakes but I had the necessary thinking ability to discover what was wrong and still preserve what was right.
There is a difference between an ability to learn from mistakes — one’s own and society’s — and simply rejecting the past because you disagree with it. If you do the latter you end up throwing the baby out with the bath water.
00
1735099,
Unfortunately in middle school students don’t have the ability you ascribe to them and cannot tell the difference between indoctrination and useful information. They can’t even tell the difference in high school or college. It takes a lot of life experience to be able to tell the nonsense from the useful stuff. If students could do as you think they can we might not have to operate expensive school systems for so many years of education.
A school should give the student a big boost toward being able to distinguish fantasy from reality, nonsense from useful and so on. Do I need to continue?
00
This is old, but relevant – http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/69/3/318/
I was using it to describe an ideology.
To be “conservative” is to defy biology.
If an organism is not growing or changing, it is dead.
The same could be said of conservative political ideology.
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1735099 December 16, 2015 at 4:05 pm · Reply
“This is old, but relevant – http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/69/3/318/
Thank you!
(“I cannot understand your use of the word conservatives.”)
“I was using it to describe an ideology.
To be “conservative” is to defy biology.
If an organism is not growing or changing, it is dead.
The same could be said of conservative political ideology.”
OK thank you.
To me the word ‘conservative’ As describing some individual, means ‘reserved’, not the first to leap from the cliff to observe others following, or not!
Earthling society needs such, or else there will be none! The word ‘liberal’ seems to be a much more rapid path to extinction!
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About siblings and acquisition of skills.
There is a book I read many years ago about the French revolution.
It’s specific focus was on families and how they lined up in the Big Rev where many got the chop.
btw once saw a guillotine in Saigon. No doubt very scary.
It seems that most of the first born ended up on one side of the conflict and later born on the other.
Lot of family friction there.
Birth order does have an effect on personality.
How many of each group are on this web site.
I am first born which probably predisposes me to getting the big G.
KK 🙂
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I’m not advocating anything – just exercising pragmatism.
Learning is the lifelong process of transforming information and experience into knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attitudes.
If that transformation doesn’t result in behavioural change, it is not functional and isn’t worthwhile.
00
“I’m not advocating anything – just exercising pragmatism.”
Seems not this is but promotion of your individual fantasy!
“Learning is the lifelong process of transforming information and experience into knowledge, skills, behaviours, and attitudes.”
OK nothing wrong with that!
“If that transformation doesn’t result in behavioural change, it is not functional and isn’t worthwhile.”
Only in your madness.
Learning how beer is actually produced, may get me to change brands, or not. You seem to think that there is no value in learning without measurable deviation in behavior! How absurd. What happened to learning, just to learn?
10
There is no fantasy.
Try to define and measure “learning” without recording behaviour.
Your beer example is useful.
If you don’t drink it, your “learning” is pointless.
00
I would just love to hear you definition and measurement of learning based on, and as a function of change in behavior? You might also try to define a measurable change in behavior. Do you give a test? Is it multiple guess? You still seem to be advocating measurable indoctrination, that has nothing to do with learning! With your approach what will be learned, measured, and remembered is your attempt at indoctrination. All you will get from your measurement is satire!
00
You still seem to be advocating measurable indoctrination,
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1735099 December 16, 2015 at 7:05 pm
The above is your written advocated indoctrination! Such is not psychology, education, or learning! This is the definition of “brainwashing”.
00
It is not.
It is an clarification of my definition.
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1735099 December 18, 2015 at 5:31 am
WJ(“The above is your written advocated indoctrination! Such is not psychology, education, or learning! This is the definition of “brainwashing”.”)
“It is not. It is an clarification of my definition.”
So sorry to have happened upon you, at JoAnne’s blog! Bye!
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Will
How come the pitchforks are missing in this comment?
KK
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How many you want? For you my special friend a very good price.
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It’s quite alive and well. I do it all the time. I can’t imagine not satisfying my curiosity about things, not even when there’s no other benefit in it for me except to satisfy my curiosity. And this habit, one I picked up as a teenager, ultimately got me a gem of a position many years later.
I heartily recommend it.
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[…] Australian Academy of Science trains school children to be lobbyists and teachers don’t mind « Jo… […]
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Old vet seems nice, hope he hangs around.
Having dinner with retired teachers, so I cornered one and asked him if he taught AAS stuff in class.
He did and I questioned whether it was wise pushing propaganda on students, in light of the fact that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming.
I had my arguments clearly slotted, to prove my point, but he turned off after my third dot point.
The situation is clearly hopeless, only satire will remedy the problem in the short term. Young people love to mock old fools, how hard could it be?
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These academies always were political bodies. Always existing as lobbies- Newton became the Royal Society president to put down his enemies. Its just a natural progression to become total political animals.
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[…] manipulation of children by the Australian Academy of Science. You can read his full article, Under the hood on Science Academy’s climate schooling, at Jo Nova’s […]
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[…] for secondary schools, organizes an experiment for 16-year-olds where crushed ocean shells go into a test tube of sea water. You add acid or vinegar or something, and then watch the shells fizz and […]
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[…] for secondary schools, organizes an experiment for 16-year-olds where crushed ocean shells go into a test tube of sea water. You add acid or vinegar or something, and then watch the shells fizz and […]
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