Have the Australian anti-deniers fallen at the first hurdle?

There is a new site here which rather grandly announces that it is going to put an end to "deniers" for once and for all.

The anti-deniers seem as usual to be heavily reliant on appeals to authority and offer a long list of academics who support Warmism. Most of them are not climate scientists or anything like it however so are irrelevant authorities.

And a lot of them are the usual suspects. I note that Hoagy is there for instance. Hoagy used to be very vocal about how warming was going to destroy Australia's huge and much-loved coral reef (the Great Barrier Reef). Since his own research showed that was not going to happen, however, he has been strangely quiet.

Then there is my old sparring partner, the greatly overpaid economist John Quiggin -- who is about as far-Left as economists get.

And the list of academics would amount to only about 1% of Australia's acdemics anyway so it is pretty poor even as an appeal to authority.

Nonetheless, the site has attracted a lot of comments, both pro and anti, and a lot of the comments are "answers" to one-another.

There is however one super-simple question (by someone I know) that everybody has at the time of writing avoided like the plague. It reads as follows:

Hey guys!

I gather that the global temperature has risen by less than one degree Celsius in the last 150 years

That sounds to me like we live in an era of exceptional climate stability

What am I missing?

Is no answer possible?






Global warming is no longer about warming

It had to happen. Even Warmists have finally noticed that the globe is NOT warming, contrary to their past prophecies. So by some strange twist they claim that there are OTHER reasons for believing in global warming. It sound like loony bin stuff to me but here is part of it:

In reality, the correlation between global mean temperature and carbon dioxide over the 20th century forms an important, but very small part of the evidence for a human role in climate change.

Our assessment of the future risk from the continued build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is even less informed by 20th century changes in global mean temperature.

For example, our understanding of the greenhouse effect – the link between greenhouse gas concentrations and global surface air temperature – is based primarily on our fundamental understanding of mathematics, physics, astronomy and chemistry.

Much of this science is textbook material that is at least a century old and does not rely on the recent climate record.

For example, it is a scientific fact that Venus, the planet most similar to Earth in our solar system, experiences surface temperatures of nearly 500 degrees Celsius due to its atmosphere being heavily laden with greenhouse gases. [The fool has obviously never heard of adiabatics. The high surface temperature of Venus is ENTIRELY explicable by the greater atmospheric pressure of the huge Venusian atmosphere]

Back on Earth, that fundamental understanding of the physics of radiation, combined with our understanding of climate change from the geological record, clearly demonstrates that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will inevitably drive global warming.

Dusting for climate fingerprints

The observations we have taken since the start of 20th century have confirmed our fundamental understanding of the climate system.

While the climate system is very complex, observations have shown that our formulation of the physics of the atmosphere and oceans is largely correct, and ever improving.

Most importantly, the observations have confirmed that human activities, in particular a 40% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations since the late 19th century, have had a discernible and significant impact on the climate system already.

In the field known as detection and attribution of climate change, scientists use indicators known as fingerprints of climate change.

These fingerprints show the entire climate system has changed in ways that are consistent with increasing greenhouse gases and an enhanced greenhouse effect. They also show that recent, long term changes are inconsistent with a range of natural causes.

Many more vague and unreferenced assertions here. It's one big wriggle -- an attempt to wriggle out of the fact that the bottom line of their theory -- a significant rise in average global thermometer readings -- is just not there.

BTW: The author above is Karl Braganza, a Kung Fu devotee (I kid you not) from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. I suppose that I had better watch out that he doesn't come and Kung Fu me





The dilemma of a Warmist

For years we were told: “nothing other than manmade warming can explain the late 20th century rise in temperature”. To which the sensible sceptic asked: “what about natural variation”. To which the alarmist replied: “there is no such thing” or if they were more informed “the hockey stick proves that natural variation is too small and could not affect global temperature”.

Now of course it hasn’t warmed for over a decade and there’s only so long that you can hide such an obvious fact before even the most gullible start asking: why? So how do they explain this?

If natural variation is so small that it cannot have been responsible for the 20th century, then it is too small to have stopped the “warming”. If natural variation is big enough to cause sufficient cooling to cancel out the warming, then it is clearly big enough (when working in the opposite way i.e. to warm) to explain all the apparent warming in the 20th century.

The reason we got this doomsday cult, is because they managed to argue from a small and scientific warming of around 1C due to CO2 doubling up to as much as 6C due to what I can only say are entirely mythical “feedback effects”. Feedback effects, with no scientific proof, but which “conveniently” multiply the real science by whatever number they needed to “prove” that all the (apparent) 20th century warming was due to CO2. They did this by saying: “it has to be CO2 that caused the 2oth century warming because nothing else can explain the change, therefore the relationship between CO2 and temperature is whatever number we need to make the increase in CO2 cause the (apparent) increase in global temperature.”

It’s not science, but it certainly fooled a lot of people into believing it was “science”. They managed to justify this nonsense scaling up of the known effects to suit their political agenda with what I call the Sherlock Holmes defence: “when you have eliminated all possible causes, what remains, however illogical, must be the cause”.

That is why the debate was so heated: they needed to “prove” that nothing else could explain the 20th century upswing. That is why they ruthlessly attacked anyone working on solar or suggesting natural variation. That is why they were forced to manufacture the hockey stick to “prove” that there was no medieval warm period, because if there had been significant warming in the past without CO2, then there could be significant warming in the present which was not caused by CO2, and did not necessitate mythical “feedback” multipliers and did not require the destruction of western economies to “save” the world.

They could do that with past climate, because they controlled how they interpreted the tree rings. The could decide how much warming they could attribute to any given change in tree ring size. In short they could remove the medieval warm period by scaling down the temperature change for any given change in tree ring size … except for the inconvenient fact that this bogus temperature record no longer matched the real record when we had actual temperature measurements hence the infamous “hide the decline” scandal.

So, it is now impossible for them to explain the 21st century pause without admitting that there is significant natural variation similar in magnitude to the change they say must be due to CO2. They cannot simultaneously argue that CO2 is the sole cause of climate change and therefore climate must “continue to change” as it did in the 20th century “due to CO2″ AND explain why it hasn’t changed in the 21st century!

Gotcha!

SOURCE




In some ways Leftists never change

Let me start by quoting a famous socialist:

"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side.'
I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already…
What are you? You will pass on.
Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp.
In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.'" -- Adolf Hitler

A report just in from the "Alliance for Earth Observations climate meet" below. Just as Hitler and Stalin did, they see children as the main hope for propagating their "Brave New World"

Bill Nye the Science Guy:

"Climate change is intrinsically connected to the weather we’ve been having," Nye says, although admitting that it's hard mathematically to connect 2011's record tornado outbreak with global warming. But it's "not rocket surgery" [First time I've heard of rocket surgery!], he says. "When you have 7 billion humans trying to drive to work you have the ability to change the climate.... We’re headed for a change, a huge change.” (Related: Is climate change becoming the new abortion debate?)

The Science Guy (real name: William) considers the skeptics the major problem in the ongoing debate. "It is much easier to tear things apart then build them.” Then he tells a story about trying to get his parents to quit smoking. Little Nye went to Al's Magic Shop in downtown D.C. to purchase "loads," small explosives that slip into cigarettes. “They’re like a Warner Brothers cartoon, the cigarette explodes and sort of peels back," he says. "It’s fantastic.”

The wayward scientist then inserted the loads into his parents’ cigarettes before they headed to the neighbors' place for dinner. All through the evening he could hear sharp reports as the cigs blew up in their faces. Result: No allowance for a year? Actually, "they quit," he says. Nye suggests the U.S. take a similar hard stance in psychologically conditioning people to think about climate change. Start early, he says, like in elementary school.

Says Nye: "This is it, man. This is our time. If we don’t get it in the next decade or two, things are going to change a little too much.... If we can get young people interested in climate change they can, dare I say it, change the world."

More HERE

A "hard stance in psychologically conditioning people"? Stalin could not have said it better





EPA, Greens keep HARMING children

Whenever the Environmental Protection Agency or the green movement uses the term "it's for the children" as a justification for their legislative and regulatory restrictions, it is the children who are the first to suffer.

First, the EPA banned DDT. And even though this ban in the United States did not require other nations to follow, so much economic pressure was placed on countries that didn't ban it outright that it became a de facto ban in all but a few nations.

The cost to humanity has been staggering. Approximately one million people die from malaria each year. In many areas of the world there isn't a family that hasn't lost loved ones to malaria. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Each year approximately 500 million people are infected, with many people becoming infected multiple times during their lives. Children suffer the most, going months at a time sapped of the health and energy necessary to go to school and grow their bodies. In addition to physical misery, malaria imposes an economic burden that hamstrings entire nations.

Now the U.S. EPA has embarked on a program of rodenticide elimination that will prevent unlicensed consumers from using the most effective rodenticides. The number of people dying or getting sick from accidental rodenticide exposure is amazingly small. Most human poisonings from rodenticides are self induced in failed attempts to commit suicide. The attempts usually fail because it takes a lot of rodenticide to kill a person.

Yet the green activists’ ultimate goal is a complete ban on rodenticides.

By banning DDT and other safe and effective insecticides, EPA has created the regulatory nightmare that has caused the plague of bedbugs that is spreading around the nation. Children are especially at risk, as bedbugs increasingly invade public schools. Now children will be at heightened risk for diseases spread by rats and mice.

Let's hope that EPA stops banning important health and safety chemicals "for the children." When EPA does so, children end up suffering the most.

SOURCE





Australia: Carbon tax to hit the cost of the average shopping cart

CONSUMERS will be slugged with price rises on everyday items like milk, cheese, chocolate and pizza's as the carbon tax puts the squeeze on retailers and producers.

Even plane tickets and phone bills won't be spared when the Gillard government's greenhouse emissions scheme comes into effect as early as July 2012.

While Labor is preparing to compensate pensioners and low-income families, supermarket bosses are predicting across-the-board price rises.

Bega Cheese executive chairman Barry Irvin is also worried about the impact on the company's export business, including milk powder sales to Asia. "Anything that adds to our inability to compete is a challenge for us. The reality is that it's about our competitiveness in the international marketplace," he said.

Despite Canberra's spin that only the biggest polluters will face extra costs, the effect of a carbon tax will be felt on companies as diverse as the Uniting Church Property Trust, Nestle and Tabcorp.

Telstra, Optus and other telcos will also consider passing on higher energy costs to customers.

The Australian Coal Association claims that the carbon tax could force eight black coalmines to close, costing nearly 3000 jobs in regional NSW and more than 1100 jobs in Queensland in its first three years.

Murray Goulburn, with its 2700 dairy farmer shareholders claims it faces annual cost rises of up to $10,000 each. Robert Poole, head of industry and government affairs at Australia's biggest milk producer, said it was "highly likely" that dairy farm businesses will "still see significant additional costs from a carbon tax" due to higher costs of electricity, fertiliser and fuel.

And farmers will be forced to absorb this extra cost rather than pass it on to consumers, he said, "given that the price of dairy products is primarily set by international factors".

Coca-Cola Amatil group managing director Terry Davis is also worried about the impact of a carbon tax on local manufacturing. "Any costs associated with a carbon tax would be passed on (to consumers)," he said. "Our view is that a carbon tax is discriminatory because it advantages imported goods."

Based on a $26 a tonne carbon price, Wesfarmers - owner of Coles, Target and Kmart - faces extra annual costs of $134 million. This is based on calculating the direct costs of a carbon price, known as Scope 1 emissions, along with Scope 2 emissions, which measure the indirect costs of polluting based on energy consumption.

Woolworths' annual bill will rise by $73 million, while Qantas faces a yearly rise of $108 million. The company expects domestic ticket prices to increase by up to $4.

Retailer Harvey Norman is facing extra costs of $4.7 million, with boss Gerry Harvey saying his electricity bill will likely increase by 12.5 per cent under a carbon tax. Despite the government's offer of compensation for some consumers, Mr Harvey believes it "won't be a positive for retail. The majority of retail is in a pretty sorry state. If the mining boom disappears, we are in a bad way".

Chief executive of grocery wholesaler Metcash, Andrew Reitzer, also warned that struggling families would suffer, telling the ABC: "I think it's going to push prices up - the question is by how much. All I can tell you, the consumer's going to pay for it."

SOURCE

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