How to create a crisis graph in 6 simple steps

One of the main arguments from the IPCC is that essentially, we can’t explain temperature changes any other way than with carbon forcings. This is matched with impressive pink and blue graphs that pose as evidence that carbon is responsible for all the recent warming.

This is argumentum ad ignorantiam — essentially they say: we don’t know what else could have caused that warming, so it must be carbon. It’s a flawed assumption.

It’s easy to create impressive graphs, especially if you actively ignore other possible causes, like for example, changes in cloud cover and solar magnetic effects.

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January 23rd, 2010 | Tags: , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

The Australian gets serious

In Hot and Bothered, the Australian has ramped up the descriptors of the hacked emails from the CRU. The terms are appropriate: “apparent fraud”, “disturbing”, “doctoring evidence”, and “scandal”.

This is a story finally that the media just cannot ignore.

Nick Minchin is also elevated to unofficial chief climate change sceptic of Australia, a post that didn’t exist yesterday. Suddenly unconvinced people have credibility.

“Minchin says the apparent fraud signifies a “rather disturbing culture, at least in the East Anglia CRU, which is one of most significant in the world in terms of determining outcomes of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.

“For those who don’t think the IPCC should be taken as gospel, this does confirm that we shouldn’t be unquestioning of the opinions of the UN committee.”

Brendan O’Keefe also collects comments together from Ian Plimer, Phil Jones, Minister Penny Wong, Kevin Trenberth (“I feel violated”), as well as Tom Nelson, Tim Ball, Greg Hunt (opposition climate change spokesman) et moi. Yes, a whole paragraph.

Finally, a major paper is investigating, and it’s just in time. Today is D-Day for Turnbull. A big day in Australian politics. The Rudd government hands down a new […]

November 24th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Funded arrogance

Professor Matthew England

The debate that Senator Steve Fielding started continues, this time between heavyweights in Australian climate science. Yet again, the side with the funding, the power, and the large claims is unable to answer basic polite science questions. The pompous arrogance is evident. Why not just answer the question?

Professor Matthew England’s research teams have received nearly $2.5 million in funding from the Australian government, much of it for studying oceans and climate change. So when we need good answers on the topic, he would be the man. If a school student asked for help, we might expect only a two line reply passing on a link. But when the question comes from one of the most informed climate scientists in the country, with 12 years as head of Australia’s National Climate Centre, and it’s about a graph at the centre of legislative negotiations, it’s inexcusable that the reply was vague, poorly reasoned and didn’t answer the question. All this, in a conversation that England himself started.

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June 30th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming, Logic & Reason | Print This Post Print This Post | |

The Wong-Fielding meeting on global warming

Finally, the question we’ve all wanted to ask of the people in power: Where’s the evidence?

Senator Fielding holds a crucial vote on the proposed Emissions Trading Legislation. Fielding and four independent scientists faced the Minister for the Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, The Chief Scientist, Penny Sackett, and Professor Will Steffen, director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. Read what happened from someone who was there. Joanne Nova

Guest Post by Dr David Evans

8.8 out of 10 based on 10 ratings […]

June 19th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Global Warming | Print This Post Print This Post | |