Last week Harry Clarke noted that Senator Fielding was heading to the US to attend a delusionist love-in on climate change organised by the Heartland Institute. The Australian Libertarian Society went one better and sponsored the conference, whatever that means.
The resulting condition of the ALS is not known, but this thread on their blog gives some idea.
Senator Fielding seems to have come back with at two least ideas, if that’s the right term, he didn’t have before.
The first is:
“The idea that climate change is a result of the variation in solar activity and not related to the increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is not something that I can remember ever being discussed in the media,” Senator Fielding says.
“The question of whether global warming is a new phenomenon or something which is just part of the naturally occurring 1500-year climate cycle was never raised in any of the discussions I have had with the the Rudd government.”
The second is:
“Can the minister explain why over the last 100 years, global temperatures have not changed in proportion to the changes in carbon emissions?” he asks.
Apparently he thinks the science on solar activity is compelling, so he’s off to see the Minister, Senator Wong with some graphs and charts he picked up.
According to Graeme Pearman, formerly the chief of atmospheric research at the CSIRO, the old solar flare thing has been known about for yonks, and it’s just not true, ie. the notion that solar flares are the major driving force behind climate change.
It’s a bit hard to know what he’s on about with the second, because CO2 has been going up, the temperature has been going up, so what’s the problem? Does he expect them to track perfectly smoothly? If so he should consult a climate scientist, but he’s probably picked up an allergy to believing real scientists.
So he wouldn’t take any notice of Barry Brook’s attempt to help him out.
He runs a blog and has asked for help there. But unless you know exactly what graphs and charts he’s got in his bundle you are probably wasting your time. And even if you do know, now that he’s been infected by the delusionist virus, again you’ll be wasting your time.
When you type a query into google the search software suggests different ways of completing the phrase, including this one for senator Fielding with 34,000 entries. The problem Wong has is that if she wants to veer left with the CPRS legislation and convince the Greens she’s also got to convince Senator Fielding. That suddenly looks like mission impossible.
Ah, this was on Lateline last week.
It’s bad with this one. He’s convinced himself that the angriest denialists are the ‘reasonable counterpoint’. And worse—he told Tony Jones in the satellite interview that it was important that he travelled to America as it was, “One of the world’s largest economies.”
Fielding doesn’t sound like a good one for research.
I think he’s looking to drum up party donations from the worst polluters. Let’s see how this influences his vote in the Senate.
I know there’s more than a few members of the major parties who aren’t exactly rocket scientists, but Fielding just makes you shake your head.
Steve Fielding is a credulous dope.
I want compulsory IQ testing for prospective Parliamentary candidates.
The Senate is not exactly overcrowded with eggheads, as Robert noted.
But he is arguably the biggest dill to enter that chamber since his near namesake, Albert Patrick Field, a generation or so back.
Fielding has been looking for a constituency other than surplus labour votes for a while – he tried the elderly and assorted others. I notice if you go back to the front of his website he was out campaigning to ‘protect the jobs’ of workers in the Latrobe valley before this trip.
His new-found climate skepticism may have baser motives.
Gee, you all reckon Fielding is an idiot. I guess that consensus of opinion proves it must be true and so, with it, AGW. Thanks for the lucid argument. I’ll never doubt again.
Whatever one thinks of Fielding, at least he’s prepared to come to the issue with an open mind which is more than can be said of these bloggers. I would have thought for such a key issue as ETS it would be incumbent on all MPs of all parties to do likewise and not parrot the party line.
(Ah gee, I don’t why I bother to look at these useless blogs. Perhaps it’s just fun to peek into the dust bins where mindless fanatatics reside. Or perhaps I’m the same sort of sucker that AGW proponents seek to beat over the head into submission not with calm argument but by insulting others – except this sucker has thicker skin which just gets thicker the more name calling school bully tactics I hear. No doubt I will also receive similar or else some carefully crafted witicism in reply.)
Don’t worry Ian R, I visit this blog often to read how the ‘enlightened left’ thinks, you should always be open to other viewpoints.
The lack of coherent argument from commentators here, whom am sure would regard themselves as intelligent is embarrassing for them. Well of course he must be dumb, he only has an Engineering degree and an MBA, complete idiot obviously. Great argument
Fielding’s previous efforts do seem to indicate he has difficulty forming arguments and voting accordingly based on best available evidence – aka the alcopops debacle and his post-vote doorstop comments. And his electoral vulnerability will have every greenhouse-emitter lobby group gleefully reaching for their blackberries.
However, what about the other senators? Particularly the coalition senators. The Greens may vote against say an ETS as its targets are too low; Xenophon may horse trade over water allocations, but the coalition will vote against it because… they have better scientific data? or they have compelling knowledge that Copenhagen will offer better greenhouse reduction processes? No, they will vote against it because they believe it will strengthen their relationship with relevant industries (the defining of industry as constituents) which will no doubt also be beneficial as to donations, and the real politik of opposing the government for the sake of opposing the government. Reasons that do not appear to be any more substantial than those seemingly to be used by Mr Fielding. Reasons that will not lead to a reduction in greenhouse gases emissions, nor mitigate the impact of climate change nor secure Australia’s long term interests.
Which one would rather think were some of the roles our elected representatives are expected to at least attempt to achieve. Silly me – party discipline trumps logic and reason. Of course.
“The idea that climate change is the result of the exhaust emissions of large alien space craft and not related to the increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is not something that I can remember ever being discussed in the media.”
Now I can has meeting with Senator Wong?
Sometimes there is a good reason why the media doesn’t report things.
The question is, what is Fielding’s mind open to?
I’m very surprised Fielding hasn’t clicked to the George Pell Theory of Climate Change – its the end of the world, the earth is gonna burn up and Jesus is a-comin’.
The problem isn’t that Fielding has an open mind. It is that he has opened it too far and his brains have fallen out.
Actually the George Pell Theory of Climate Change is that it’s caused by changes in the movement of the sun around the earth. What you’ve outlined is the Pentecostal-Charismatic Protestant Theory of Climate Change.
“Whatever one thinks of Fielding, at least he’s prepared to come to the issue with an open mind which is more than can be said of these bloggers.”
You cannot be serious. A fundamentalist christian approaching the issue of man’s part in climate change with “an open mind” is an impossibilty. As Paul points out, it is “Do Not Pass Go or Collect $200..Go Straight to… Armageddon”, for Steve.
I think he’s remembering his grade 8 mathematics on ‘proportionality’.
That is, if CO2 has gone up by a third since the 19th century then the average temperature should have gone up by a third as well.
Paul Norton@ 14 lol. I am sure Paul will appreciate your fine theological expertise.
“Steve did a Bachelor of Engineering degree at RMIT University which he completed in 1983. He then started work at Hewlett Packard (&) later moved into management and executive roles with NEC and Siemens”
Maybe Shaun @ 13 is right, his brains have fallen out.
Has anyone asked Fielding who paid for this trip? He seems to have only talked to the Heartland mob although en passant he asserts he spoke to people in the Obama administration. If so who? He really is a useful idiot for the deniers. An empty vessel into which an be poured any half baked idea.
His solar flare theory is bullshit: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-global-warming-is-down-to-the-sun-not-humans.html .
The Heartland Institute is funded (secretly by the tobacco lobby and is anything but independent check out this doozy) http://www.heartland.org/suites/tobacco/
He claims to have had his epiphany after reading Plimer, which just goes to show what a fool he is . This book is a joke, as factual as the Bible. Try this http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/04/the_science_is_missing_from_ia.php or have a listen to this http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/06/ssw_20090606_1205.mp3
It is criminal that the climate change debate now turns on the idiocy of this man.
Fielding is a fool and a religious ratbag,the two defending him sound much the same
Please don’t feed the climate trolls, we’ve already Fielded one in the Senate.
Which gets to the heart of the epistemological crisis that is the climate change issue. For Senator Fielding and others, “science” is just another discourse claiming authoritative knowledge, along with religion, politics, the media etc. There is no clear distinction in his mind between empirical truths, personal opinions and political ideology. Truth is whoever shouts loudest or believes with all their heart.
That is important to critique, but I have to say that on climate change, the scientific community is being complacent. They don’t fully grasp the implications for knowledge of a media-saturated society. They might like to read a little Baudrillard or Lyotard to understand the challenge to the project of science.
Apropos degrees; I once gave a paper at an International Solar conference. I was challenged by a young engineering graduate from the States. It became apparent during the discussion that he really thought that the Sun rotates around the Earth! I challenged him on this and he said “but your own maths demonstrate this”. I spent a rather futile half hour trying to explain that the maths I used were the easy model used by practically every-one in the field. Not reality.
The debate ended when he tried to quote the Bible at me.
I guess that Fielding is in the same bag as that guy and Archbishop Pell.
Send a Theistic Moron to University and you get an “educated” Theistic Moron back.
Huggy
Well, we’re talking about the man who clearly, audibly and solemnly (ie it was not a joke) referred to a ‘double disillusion’ at least twice, or was it three times, in a recent speech. It wasn’t just a slip, it was a clear indication of the limits of his understanding.
I’m still boggling about the first “idea” quoted in the post. If Senator Fielding has never seen these things discussed in the media or with the government, perhaps there’s a reason for that. Surely he’s just being manipulated by the more conservative forces in the Opposition (whenever they take a breather from fighting the good fight about sacred sperm and Kerry O’Brien’s birthday)?
Exactly, and that problem is a hell of a lot bigger than the tin-can and used-chewy arrangement that Fielding calls his mind. As far as I can see, those distinctions are collapsing all around us.
More stuff here:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/fielding-the-hard-questions-on-climate-change/
And this is definately worth reading: http://tinyurl.com/cknayk
He certainly has caused a stir.
He may think himself clever in getting some publicity for himself as an investigative sort a guy, discovering teh truth on Global Warming and asking the hard questions.
And unfortunately, he may have succeeded somewhat – it sounded a little that way on RN Breakfast Radio this morning although Penny Sackett, Chief Scientist, put it right.
But no-one, mainstream, has yet picked up that his chosen fountain of wisdom, the Heartland Institute started life as and still is a pro-tobacco campaigner that has a small business on the side for Global Warming in addition to ’smoking – it’s bloody good for ya’. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute
So, Chief Scientist or tobacco-lobby science – I’m worried most will go for the latter as it will be the smoothest and most often spun
You people have a lot ot fear from Fielding as he will grudgingly get the media coverage other sceptics can’t. He’ll ask you to actaully prove your theory and he’ll air the counter arguments and merely repeating mantra’s about govt sponsored peer reviewed scientists say so, so it must be so and your just a silly Christian so we can dismiss you out of hand won’t work. The great risk is the vast majority of the population have not been exposed to the full weight of the sceptical case, when they hear the arguments and realise there not is a mere “handful” of sceptical scientists but thousands you are going to have real trouble.
(16): He can’t believe in proportionality: the disproportionality of his own electoral appeal (1.8%) and his parliamentary power potential stares him in the face every day. Fairies in the bottom of the garden, benign CO2 emissions, the results of ALP factioneering: it’s a toss-up which is the more incredible.
Where his calculations and strategems will be more rigorous is: does he have more chance of getting the gig again in a normal or a double dissolution election, or has he buckleys anyway? For him the pragmatic transform could be: is there a full senate election quota to be gathered by radical championing of business as usual in Victoria, and can that stance be welded to family first and its asscociated brands? All else is flummery, he’s a political animal like most of the rest. And being the middle child in a family of 18, he’ll know all about caucusing, playing some off against others. Playing the fool has still got legs as a strategy.
David #26, the Sydney Morning Herald has picked up on that point.
There there Kingsley.
He has an MBA? I didn’t think my opinion of that qualification could go any lower but I stand corrected.
Someone ought to point out that even if burning coal gives us vitamin C and burning oil does nothing more offensive than make your car go “vroom vroom” in a manly way, the stuff is finite, will run short, and thus we should not be in a hurry to burn it all.
Easter Island and Haiti, after all, give us fine example of what happens when people burn everything they possibly can – there wasn’t global climate change, but they still starved.
But perhaps Fielding thinks the Earth has a creamy nougat center of oil.
You have to be a bit of a drongo, or corrupt, to deny climate change, or to deny peak fossil fuels. You have to be a true fruit loop to deny them both.
I guess he is just desperately looking for something to help him get re-elected, since his chances of the 1.8% combining with ALP preferences a second time are not very great.
The idea that climate change is a result of the variation in solar activity and not related to the increase of CO2 into the atmosphere is not something that I can remember ever being discussed in the media
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He really should be reading his Andrew Bolt.
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The question of whether global warming is a new phenomenon or something which is just part of the naturally occurring 1500-year climate cycle was never raised in any of the discussions I have had with the the Rudd government
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This is true. There’s a natural cycle of climate change. There’s actually lots of them. The solar activity hypothesis is apt but our data doesn’t go back that far. So, altho’ it could be that the sun started flaring up 150 years ago we don’t know that. One way or the other. We do know that carbon dioxide and methane trap heat however.
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What is being proposed is that we ignore the hypothesis of industrial precipitated warming because it might be inaccurate. That’s true it might. But it’s very likely not and where would the smart money go?
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I can’t believe that these people are being so deliberately obtuse and contemptuous of future generations whilst out the other side of their faces crapping on about ‘family values’. And all for what? Their investment in resource companies?
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It’d almost be worth the environmental shit hitting the fan hard really soon. Then I could drag Bolt and Fielding and all the rest and actually force them to take responsibility for their lies. I’d bet green money that they’d still find someone else to point the finger at tho’.
What MH said at 22.
As a supporter of the Australian Libertarian Society, I admit I am unfortunately in the minority when it comes to defending climate change science. However I will note that opinions vary from the crackpot and ignorant, to moderate scepticism about policy solutions rather than the science. I certainly tried my best to sway some on the fence on an earlier thread.
I also tried to put the libertarian case for government action on climate change on my currently-in-hiatus blog.
It occurs to me that I should update my rhetorical devices – donuts are typically much more than a dollar!
I should add that I think that open debate on climate change and the politics attendant to it should be welcomed and that it’s not just the denialists that contribute to the perversion of such. The hockey stick for example is an over-simplified icon that creates a false impression that the globe stays the same temperature. How surprising is it then that we have counter false icons which portray the Medieval Warm Period as hotter than the present?
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Add to this the myriad environmentalists who will proclaim each and every ecological disaster as caused by AGW even tho’ it is not possible to attribute singular events to it.
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I see in this a lack of respect for, and even awareness of, the distinctions one should make between what is reliable knowledge and what is in fact merely speculative or desirable. And it happens across the board. That we’ve simply added the environment to the long list of issues around which we fight the old socialist/liberal battles tells us that maybe it’s high time Nature kicked our arses reminding us of those things on Heaven and Earth that our philosophies fail to dream of.
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Or even acknowledge.
donuts are typically much more than a dollar!
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Another reason to have a recession.
That’s true Jarrah @ 36 – I’m sure those lobbying Senator Fielding donate much more than a dollar towards his worthy causes!
This is becoming awfully repetitive – first luxury cars, then alcopops, then Medicare surcharge, now climate change…but of course, it’s all just about keeping ‘an open mind’…
Remember too that Fieldings long weekend media soapbox at the Oz is consistent with that organisations climate denialist strategy, one where they actively seek to frame the debate on their terms.
From the SMH last week.
How the carbon lobby blackens media coverage.
And for what reason? Simple really. Climate science is a left wing Trojan horse to undermine capitalism.
I like the angydwarf’s “error 404….brain not found” line the best. If it is true, then it confuses the “keeping an open mind” defence.
And what is about engineers? They’ve had a long history of being over represented in creationism as well.
Well, one thing the climate change delusionists have got right is that the “green lobby” has a vested interest in pursuing action on climate change.
I’ll declare my vested interests right now:
1) I have a vested interest in living in an Australia that doesn’t face an influx of 100 million Bangladeshis looking for somewhere new to live circa 2070.
2) I have a vested interest in living in an Australia that isn’t adversely impacted by an ozone hole, depleted rainfall and depleted soils throughout our agricultural belt.
3) I have a vested interest in living in an Australia that doesn’t face economic collapse through dependence on carbon-based fuels long after the point those fuels have ceased to be economically viable or recoverable.
4) I have a vested interest in living in an Australia that can grow enough food and supply enough water to feed my grandchildren after I’m gone.
Yep, that’s me — I’m the selfish, vested-interested “green lobby”.
If only I could be more like those altruistic “sceptics” who ask for nothing more than to be left in peace to consume every last available skerrick of food, water, oil and clean air — and just every so often to be lavished with gentle praise and admiration for being such open-minded, enlightened beings.
I note that Greg Combet and Penny Wong have been extremely careful in their public comment on Senator Fielding”s fact finding mission. It will be interesting to see what can be achieved in their inevitable private consultations with him.
You people have a lot ot fear from Fielding as he will grudgingly get the media coverage other sceptics can’t.
Fear is not the emotion I feel about Fielding. It’s contempt. I think organisations like the Heartland Institute who play down the dangers of smoking are only worthy of derision. I say that as a smoker (who wants to give up). If the senator is stupid enough to get his information from them, then I will think even less of him.
The great risk is the vast majority of the population have not been exposed to the full weight of the sceptical case, when they hear the arguments and realise there not is a mere “handful” of sceptical scientists but thousands you are going to have real trouble.
You are right, but not quite for the reason you write. It’s not the arguments that are going to cause trouble – it is disinformation. For example, one favorite denialist point is that warming stopped in 1998. It didn’t. One can refute it using ideas such as moving averages, but it really depends on how receptive the laypeople are to the concepts.
I guess it is easier to pull off in Australia than America (home of “positive abstract adjective” + “organisation synonym” astroturfers), because our ecology is perceived to be vulnerable to damage. I grew up with concepts such as “erosion” and “feral animals”, as that’s what they taught in my primary school. So did many people of my age. In the circumstances, AGW appears as just another way for humans to fuck up the Australian environment.
Something for “Ian R” and “Tropsmurf”
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/something_a_few_of_our_comment.php
Shaun@42: It’s because we expect engineers to be more grounded than that. Look at the Liberal party… a bunch of lawyers and bankers that we’ve already written off because who expects a lawyer to understand anything important? But when we’re dealing with an engineer suddenly everyone demands that they be not just rational, but right. SOL in this case, but you can’t win them all.
Partly it’s also the outsider effect – he’s different and stands out, so you’ll notice him more. Because he didn’t come through the usual party machine he’s less likely to be a party hack with a degree in law or politics, ditto more likely to have had non-hack jobs and so on.
FWIW, in NZ Nick Smith (Minister for Environment) is also an engineer and while I disagree with him vigorously, at least he’s fairly competent.
Yep most interesting Patricia WA@44. Too bad Greg made that funny little stumble in the interview on Aunty where he spoke of “talking (down) to Steve”. Whoops. He knew what he had said, then tried to cover.
The great global warming shibboleth begins to totter and sway. Can collapse be far away ? Reputations, careers money – so much at stake it’s not going to be pretty. Latest news for the denialists on this site: Artic sea ice is about normal, ocean temperatures are not rising, ambient temperatures are not climbing.
apparently the generous Federal subsidy ($8,000 for 1 kW) is being closed off today, a little earlier than expected
I dunno, Down and Out, he frightens the bejesus out of me. Well, not so much him qua him, but the fact that he is where he is, doing what he does.
Horrie, “Arctic” has two Cs in it. I can’t help wondering what else about it you’ve got wrong.
And what is about engineers?
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This: because they’re so brilliant they don’t realize just how fantastically stupid they are. Come from a long line of ‘em so I know what I’m taking about.
There is a difference between approaching an issue with an open mind and approaching an issue with a vacant mind.
Kingsley – The great risk is the vast majority of the population have not been exposed to the full weight of the sceptical case, when they hear the arguments and realise there not is a mere “handful” of sceptical scientists but thousands you are going to have real trouble.
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There are thousands of scientists who claim that the AGW hypothesis is a ruse? Thousands? I do hear about these myriad hordes of scientists who are rebelling against this amazing Marxist conspiracy that’s inexplicably grabbed the hearts and minds of so many climatologists. But when I go looking for them all I can find is a few spruiking the usual selective interpretation of data and advocating the amazing unwisdom that says that because the AGW theory might be wrong we should ignore it.
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And, surprise, they’re almost always receiving payment from a petrochemical concern. Not that that means anything. When the American Coal Association supplies Science textbooks which say AGW is good for us I’m sure their interest is strictly in cultivating fearless skepticism.
@49
Have you looked at this?:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Still Fielding’s good for us doncha think? And we can thank the ALP for getting him his current job. Apparently the ALP feel justified in this because the Greens sometimes prefence the Tories over them. And the Tories are evil.
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As we all know the Tories never do anything for the environment. And the ALP are the real battlers for the environment. They’ve never done wrong by it. A friend of mine has a business across from this posh restaurant in Carlton. Steve Bracks and his environmental minister robot had dinner there once. And their driver stood across the road outside my friend’s shopfront for two hours waiting.
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He left the engine running the whole fucking time.
Love it, Horrie. ‘Cos Bolta, Plimer, Carter etc. have none of their reputation, careers or money tied up in their denialism. If they’re right, they’ll win a friggin’ Nobel Prize, just like the Australian scientists who went against the grain with their discovery of the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers. But of course Bolta and Plimer are motivated by nothing more than a benign concern for humanity, whereas all those climate scientists are nothing but carpet-bagging pirates. It’s true because…because…it just is! I mean, look how many of those environmental scientists have beards — they’re clearly shifty characters!
Latest news for your Horrie…Arctic sea ice this summer is tracking towards the same record low melt of 2007 : http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png . Is a record low the new definition of “about normal”?
Surface and satellite atmosphere readings show an uptrend is still current, even allowing for the 1998 El Nino, and corrections to 2005 data modeling discrepancies for surface temps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png
Monthly ocean surface readings from late 1940s-2009 (PDF file) http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/SST.glob+Nino3.4.pdf
But thanks for telling us how it is, Horrie! Come back when you have something useful to add. Or, actually, just…don’t.
Personally I think that this is all good news, as it may bring an early collapse to the current CPRS and offer a convenient premise for a total rework. And if that does not happen then the government’s hand will be plainly shown.
“He left the engine running the whole fucking time.”
Personal hate of mine.
I’d love the sceptics to be right – truly. Then I wouldn’t have to think about this stuff. They’re like little kids with their fingers stuck in their ears going, ‘La, la, la – I can’t hear you’. They’ll still be crapping on like that the day the Murray dries up completely, forever.
I recommend a British documentary that will be released here later this year called ‘The Age of Stupid’. Great title, eh? It’s set sometime in the future with Pete Postlethwaite playing the last man alive pondering why we ended up destroying the planet when we didn’t have to. Fun viewing.
Personally I think that this is all good news, as it may bring an early collapse to the current CPRS and offer a convenient premise for a total rework.
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Carbon tax, carbon tax, carbon tax. Carbon tax, carbon tax, carbon Tah-ax.
‘The Age of Stupid’. Great title, eh?
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It’s set sometime in the future
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But it’s about now right? This is the Age of Stupid. It’s what we aspire to. Be dumb and be proud.
Some of you may have heard about the Carteret Islands, which is an atoll just north of Bougainville. It looks like these people might become the first climate change refugees. Here’s a clip about their islands. The quality is a little rough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRxpLnfv6xA
I’ve recently finished a half hour documentary about them called ‘The First Wave’, which I’ve started to distribute, so it might be coming to a tv station near you.
“But it’s about now right?”
Too true, Adrien.
Denialists remind me of my dog hannah and her ball.
No matter how many times you pick the ball up that she has just dropped at your feet she’s back in a flash dropping it at your feet again, and again and again. Perpetual motion.
Denialist makes a statement, somebody corrects said statement, shows it to be factually incorrect and actually cites evidence to support said correction but the denialist is back, just like hannah, with another ‘fact’, which gets corrected but the denialist is back, just like hannah, with another ‘fact’ which ….
Perpetual motion going nowhere.
Mercurius @ 57 – why focus only on Arctic ice? Why not global? (Which is currently close to the 1979-2000 average (and why is it this the best average to use apart from the fact that 1979 is when satelites first started measuring it).
We’ll look out for it, Fine!
I love the way Fielding thinks an open debate can ‘get to the bottom of it’. I’m not sure what forum he envisages for the debate – maybe he thinks our collection of elite senators can succeed in divining the truth where thousands of other mere mortals failed. Or maybe there can be an MBA summit co-chaired by him and George W Bush.
Truth is the AGW denialists are in a no-lose position. First they demand that nothing be done until the science is ’settled’. Then they take the denialist circus on an endless roadshow, in the certain knowledge that the Plimers and Carters and Marohasys and the rest of the mob who have made a career from denialism will never, ever change their positions. Consequently the science can never be settled and their condition precedent to doing anything can never be satisfied, which means nothing can ever be done.
It’s all too late now anyway. They’ve won, and if (as seems probable) they are wrong, they’ll all be dead long before anyone can rub their noses in the human catastrophe they prevented anyone trying to stop.
In the end its all about “dominion” over the earth. Scratch a denialist and you will find one of these:
1. A meddelsome Priest (Pell for example)
2. An Christian fundamentalist
3. A Trotskyite (Global teraforming any-one)
4. A sad little Marxist who fails to see that there was no point to removing God from the centre of the world if you simply replace her with humans.
Hey, how can we have “dominion” if we cannot do exactly as we damn well please: burn lots of coal and oil and stuff that God put there for us?
Huggy
Hey, Mercurius, the nasa surf temp thing clearly points to rising temperatures. It is not that temps oscillate, they will keep doing that until the ice is gone, but it is for how long and in which direction. That is the blue graph. And on artic ice coverage, it is not just the area, it is the thickness. This is the problem for polar bears. The ice is mozaiced and will no longer hold their weight. So for the time being the ice coverage area appears to be similar, but the amount of ice has dramatically reduced, by all reports. You will recall that glaciers appeared to be growing for a time. Well that turned out to be them becoming warmer and softer causing oozing down the slopes until they finally started retreating drastically. Same thing with surface ice.
Genesis 1.28
“And god said to them [Adam and Eve], “Be fruitful and multiple and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”
The thing I find interesting about you guys on the believing side is you have a correlation b/w CO2 and temperature over a particular timeframe which is something, it is some level of evidence but it also needs to be said that that is all it is too, “just” a coorelation. Yet you guys are full signed up, no hint of scepitcism. I have no problem with people wanting to investigate the link, it is strong enough and serious enough for that to be quite reasonable but the full sign up to the doomsday Bangladesh ceases to exist in 2070 type stuff amazes me.
If I showed an equally strong correlation between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism you’d be throwing up every sceptic argument you could muster but on AGW you can’t sign on to the most extreme we’ve already passed the point of no return viewpoint quick enough.
Hannah’s Dad:
Thanks HD for this wonderfully apt analogy. Right on cue:
Razor @ 65.
Shorter Razor: Ruff! Ruff ruff ruff ruff! Yap! Yap yap! Pant! Pant pant pant!
Sigh. Well, if you want to talk about Antarctic Ice, let’s do this. A slight (<1C) warming in the Southern Ocean this last 50 years has increased precipitation over the Antarctic continent, which has fallen as more snow==>more ice on the Antarctic continent and, with the rupture of ice-bridges in recent years, has led to more land-ice flowing out seaward into the Southern Ocean. In other words, prosaically put, warmer global temperatures lead to less ice in the Arctic (where there’s no land to raise precipitation and catch the resulting snow) and more ice in the Antarctic (at least, for a while, anyway).
And are you happy to use the 1979-2000 average or not? You seem a little unsure of this, since you say in one breath that the current ice levels are close to the 1979-2000 global average, and then in the next breath question why we’re using that average. So, uh, if you don’t want to use the 1979-2000, fine, then don’t. But I’m not going to let you get away with asserting that global ice levels now are close to an average that you’ve specifically disavowed using.
OK, I’ve thrown the ball. Go fetch! Run along now! Ruff! Ruff ruff ruff! And don’t forget to move the goalposts while you’re at it!
“If I showed an equally strong correlation between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism”
There is one. It’s pretty strong.
I’ve never heard anyone dispute it.
The main difference is, to effectively counter the threat of terrorism, we’d have to painstakingly and fundamentally alter the worldview of people who are dogmatically attached to their cause, and won’t deviate from it in the face of evidence of any kind. Whereas with AGW…
Your dog is probably a faster learner, Hannah’s Dad.
Your dog is probably a faster learner, Hannah’s Dad.
BTW Kingsley, I like your analogy. Drawing parallels between AGW sceptics and crazed terrorists – that’s a bit extreme even for me!
Kingsley @ 71, let’s dance:
Sheesh. Steve Fielding says we’re not open-minded enough. Kingsley thinks we have no scepticism at all – that we’re completely credulous about climate science.
Make up your minds, people! Are we not sceptical enough, or not open-minded enough? You must get tired moving those goalposts around all day.
I love it when people tell me what I think. It saves so much time. /sarc.
‘No hint of scepticism’? Could you consider, Kingsley, for just a second, the possibility that maybe I just find the evidence for the AGW scenarios to be more convincing and persuasive than anything the denialist camp has thrown up (and I use that term literally, sic). That I actually find climate models from climatologists, and the evidence of oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, physicists and so-on to be more convincing than the daily dogs-vomit of Andrew Bolt, with its primary-school age interpretive and factual errors, or the ethically-compromised albeit earnest treatises by fossil-industry funded contrarians such as Plimer, Carter and Morohasy?
Do I 100% believe, like some latter-day Rapture zealot, that Bangladesh will be underwater by 2070? Well, I don’t know the future and neither do you. But if what the climatologists and oceanographers are saying is true, and I do find their evidence compelling, then we ought to consider the possibility that millions may be displaced by rising floodwaters later this century, and ask ourselves how best to prepare for the possibility. These are not wild-eyed, raving prophecies of doom, they are prudent questions to ask and to check our preparedness.
Great kingsley. Not content with telling me what I think about global warming, you also now want to tell me what I would think if hypothetically you made some pronouncement about Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.
Kingsley, there are plenty of moderate Muslims who’ve made the connection between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism — so you don’t have to! In fact, there’s an awful lot of corpses over the last decade to attest to it. Those same Muslims are also show quite convincingly where, qua Islam, those terrorists don’t reflect the true spirit of their religion, any more than Torquemada reflected Christianity. And yes, I’d accept testaments from learned and articulate moderate Muslims about the Islamic credentials of terrorist fundamentalists over your opinion any day. I happen to think they know more about the Islam than do you, or I. Kind of like climate scientists know more about climate than Andrew Bolt or Ian Plimer.
(and just to pre-empt a threadjack, let’s not argue the toss over Islam. I only went into the point to explain why I’d not accept your opinion about it, and why there are other voices I would consult first on the substantive point. And it’s not an ‘argument from authority’. It’s an argument from ‘they’ve been studying and living for years, and you haven’t, so they know their s**t’).
FDB – I’ll take a hit there as didn’t make myself clear at all. More trying to point out that Islamic extremism could be just as disastrous as supposed AGW predictions just that many on Left aren’t prepared to do much about combatting that at all or doing anything preventative either. For instance 2% of NATO’s forces are in Afghanistan. If I argued for raising that to 10% I’d get a lot of opposition from many left wingers. Even if I argued for a much larger effort going into expanding training and equipping the ANA I would meet with resistance, maybe not from you, no doubt you’ll let me know either way, but certainly many on the Left.
But don’t get too distracted by the exact analogy I draw. Main point is you guys are very ready to do some drastic things on the basis of a correlation over a particular timeframe. Now you can counter with the “the consequences of doing nothing are so great” and fair enough if your predictions prove up but I don’t see anywhere near the commitment to any other threat merely on a correlation. Look at the field of economics. If I showed a correlation between say low taxes and economic growth you’d demand more evidence saying only a correlation and probably dig up say some stats from Scandinavia showing they’ve done alright with high taxes etc. Yet with AGW that correlation is all you guys need to see on something as complex as climate.
Kingsley, for someone who regularly purports to have an ‘open mind’ (and seems like a nice-enough fellow from reading you on Bolt’s blog over the years), why is it that you always recycle Bolt’s talking points?
Not that this question has any bearing on the *overwhelming weight of evidence* in support of AGW theory (I mean, fair enough, if that didn’t exist, you’d be more than entitled to call us ‘mindless fanatics’, etc, as per Lord Pot @ 7, trying to set the kettles straight…), but has there ever been an issue on which you’ve substantially disagreed with Bolt? Just curious…
You’re all over the place mate.
But yes, it’s precisely the potential consequences of GW that make the threat more worthy of our attention than certain others. When you say:
“Islamic extremism could be just as disastrous as supposed AGW predictions”
You’re making a pretty wild assertion.
There are other differences of course, to do with how we respond to a threat, that make the analogy even less useful.
Sending more troops to Afghanistan, for example, might not be as cheap or effective in the long run in combatting terrorism as other methods. You might have heard “leftists” arguing for such non-military methods (engagement rather than diplomatic stonewalling, pulling in Israel’s worse excesses, curbing the Holy War rhetoric from “our” side etc etc), which is hardly commensurate with not caring – it’s just a view you don’t particularly like.
What are you going on about, Mercurius. Your swerving all around the place like a 5 year old driving a tractor.
Kingley @78
You are missing the point. I am not a climate scientist or any kind of scientist but when real scientists publish refereed articles about global warming, establishing a body of scholarly literature over many years, I accept their propositions, just as I accept the scientific propositions that make my digital watch work even though I have no idea how it does.
The political and social response to climate change is a different matter entirely, but lets leave the facts to the people who produce them.
Isn’t Fielding a creationist? Maybe locking him in a room with Plimer might do both of them a power of good in terms of realising the errors of their ways.
Speaking of senators and climate change: how outrageous is the costs ruling again Bob Brown?
The thing is Brown won the initial case, then Howard and Paul Lennon changed the regional forest agreement to exclude provisions about wildlife protection which sustained Browns argument in the first place. Thereafter he was screwed. So it was a major party cookup, and all along, barely a centimetre above a conspiracy to hold a court ruling in contempt.
Here’s what I think: I think we should shut down Forestry Tasmania if their lawyers enforce it, as threats to Australian democracy and its elected representatives.
Kingsley – The thing I find interesting about you guys on the believing side is you have a correlation b/w CO2 and temperature over a particular timeframe which is something, it is some level of evidence but it also needs to be said that that is all it is too, “just” a coorelation.
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Oh dear. Anyone who completed a reasonably well designed science class will know that carbon dioxide traps infra-red radiation. Fourier’s theory has been borne up. So the correlation has a probable causal relationship.
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Yet you guys are full signed up, no hint of scepitcism.
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There is a lack of rigour on both sides of the screaming match. There’s a certain number of nutbags either side. But when it comes to reasoned voices the spectrum seems a tad asymmetrical.
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but the full sign up to the doomsday Bangladesh ceases to exist in 2070 type stuff amazes me.
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True. And what also amazes me is the refusal to acknowledge the possibility. Most of the projections are based on models which have a limited utility. There’s quite a broad range of scenarios. Some of them make the Bangladesh anecdote look benign.
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If I showed an equally strong correlation between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism you’d be throwing up every sceptic argument you could muster
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I have yet to see anyone anywhere ever say that there’s no correlation between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Could you please supply a citation of such after you give me the names of a few of those thousands of scientists of which you speak.
More trying to point out that Islamic extremism could be just as disastrous as supposed AGW predictions
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How?
Horrifying to think that Bob Brown will be kicked out of the Senate and that moron Fielding is still there.
I couldn’t agree more.
Poor old Kingsley, must have dropped out of high school science class.
CO2 has long been known to contribute to the natural greenhouse effect. That’s the fact that our atmosphere traps some heat from the Sun, just like greenhouse glass does. With no greenhouse effect, the Earth would be about -30C even at high noon.
So, CO2 causes a greenhouse effect. Less CO2, less greenhouse. More CO2, more greenhouse. Pretty simple in principle – the devil’s in the details, exactly how much more CO2 gives exactly how much more warming, etc.
Anyone who wants to claim that more CO2 doesn’t mean more warming has to explain why the Earth isn’t a frozen iceball right now. It’s sort of like saying that the first three drinks I have at the pub will make me tipsy, but another three drinks, “well, how do you know it was those extra three drinks that made you pissed? Yes, you were drinking at the same time as getting pissed, but correlation isn’t causation!” If the first three drinks made me tipsy, it’s reasonable to suppose that my being pissed came from the next three drinks, too.
If you accept that the historic 270ppm of CO2 gives us enough warming to stop the planet being an iceball, then you have to explain why 380ppm or 550ppm or whatever will not give us more warming.
If you don’t accept that the historic 270ppm of CO2 stops us being an iceball, then you have to explain what does. I’m sure the Nobel committee looks forward to your insights which will overturn century-old established science in several fields simultaneously (chemistry, physics, meterology, etc).
Fielding’s party is Family First. A warm, fuzzy, ‘keep the bastards honest’ image. So if it is family first, this means workers first, which means jobs first.
This means that any disruption to the status quo has to be challenged by Fielding because it will impact on employment.
Family First could have a charter that protects families from catastrophic natural disasters brought about by big poluting companies,improving non poluting forms of public and private transport,preserving sensitive ecologies for future families. But that would be too hard.
This garbled party line is reinforced by its myopic leader, who is in parliament by default if numbers and true democracy is any guide. Nick Zenophon is a man of much clearer principals as an example of an independent. He wouldn’t budge on water for the Murray. Why? Because it is dying. True that many his constituents are Murray dependent but I live in Sydney and consider myself ‘Murray dependent’ Love my food. As does my partner and my 22 month old daughter. Family first!
Starting from the top
Sally R. Thanks for acknowledging I try to be nice. Re Bolt. You are quite correct that I agree with a lot of what he says. Example of some disagreement – best one currently and one where I think I depart from most of my conservative colleagues is I would have implemented Rudd’s first stimulus package even though it would have been spent on a lot of short term ‘toys” etc. Main reason is something was required to break the negative news cycle that was feeding upon itself and it was imperative that the December/Xmas retail figures held up. I guess I have an interest via admiration for Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett for behavioural type economics so I am happy to engage in some of this type stimulus expenditure. I also think it is overlooked that there is not so much difference between a stimulus package handing out dough to taxpayers and a tax cut. That said I think rudd and Swan now have over reacted and would be better to try and rein it in a it or spread the timeframes they spending the money over. I think also as Andrew Bolt comments that too much is going on stuff going forward that won’t make a material difference to productivity which sort of makes Lindsay Tanners comments on the weekend look a wee bit silly
I actually find I disagree with Tim Blair a bit more often. Some times he just a bit too cheeky and his views on Guns I disagre with. It was a necessary evil.
MH – you make a practical point but I think most people on this site and others, do try on both sides, and perhaps in vain to understand the issues as well as they can. I guess the point I would make again is your side has decided to make enormous changes to how we live on the basis of a correlation and you’ve decided to follow that line because you believe the majority of scientists agree
rather than examine each sides talking points and see which is stronger.
FDB – a Talibanised PAkistan which I gather has an estimated 60 to 100 nuke warheads is nasty enough threat for me. Put those nukes in the right place and there’s a lot of dead people and that’s without any retaliation let alone the second order effects of say a economic depression etc.
Lets also put aside such a doomsday scenario, what about just some conventional attack like 9/11? The world recovered from that quite well but no guarantees. I also point out people die from Islamic extremeism right now.
I take your point about there is more than one suggested way of dealing with Islamic extremeism but all of them I think need to be enabled by superior military power. I’m by and large of the Kilcullen way of thinking which involves a lot of soft power stuff you guys are keen on but in the very first instance it all needs the population to feel secure to enable it to happen and there’s no cheap short cut for this other than troops on the ground
Adrien – re CO2 trapping infra red radiation – no argument. The real question surely is how big an effect that actually has on the climae as a whole and on that score you guys are relying on a correlation only. As I said above that is not nothing but it is only a correlation
Take your point on extremeism on both sides of AGW debate and I acknowledge this is a more sober site than most but some of your “colleagues” elsewhere do trot out the 100m sea level rises etc and Gore I think has ultimately been as much a hindrance to your cause as a help
re broad range of scenarios – agreed but I could make the same case about my Islamic terrorism analogy. The Talibanised nuclear armed Pakistan is obviously at the scariest extreme end versus say just a continual lost of lives at current levels indefinitely say.
With regards correlation b/w Islamic extremeism and terrorism I have already ackowledged worded badly above more trying to point out there are doomsday possiblities with it but I don’t see the Left arguing for anywhere near the effort to be made there even on the “soft” power options.
Thousands of scientists – I can guess in advance that you’ll scoff at the Oregon list but my obvious comeback is to point what Flannery’s qual’s are etc.. I don’t think any of us have the energy to go over that ground one more time. There was however a survey done that Ex Chancellor of Exchequer Lawson was quoting in criticism of I think Stern recently showing that about half were doubtful ie not saying definitely AGW not happening just ot convinced it is. From memory sample was a touch under a thousand. I’ll see if I can dig up a link for you.
Now I think that’s everybody covered. I don’t know whether to be pleased I generated quite a few responses or not I don’t think I’ve ever done such a long reply.
CO2 has long been known to contribute to the natural greenhouse effect.
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And let’s not forget CH4. Poor old CH4. Always gets left out. ‘Cept in elevators.
Sally R – hopefully I can be forgiven for being way off topic but another area I know I diverge with most conservatives, whether Andrew Bolt does or not I do not know is I am in favour of the superannuation guarantee. Again I guess on grounds of behavioural based economics that unless some new research has come to light there is still no strong link between any economic variable say low taxes and higher savings ratios. Consequently if you want to solve the funding of the baby boomers retirement problem for absolute sure a complusory scheme as offensive as that may be to me philosophically is the only answer. Pragmatism tells me we will have to pay via higher taxes later if we don’t and I think most conservatives would find that more offensive but aren’t aware of the very weak relationships between low taxes etc and savings.
It has been one of the big surprises to me of the Rudd govt thus far that they show no sign of going above 9% and I’m even more amazed that Keating isn’t out there arguing for it nearly every day.
Did we really expect much more from Fielding?
Boswell from the Coalition is at least a big sceptic as Fielding. He spent the inquiry into the ETS trying to convince scientists that the world was cooling.
The level of debate on global warming in this country never ceases to disappoint. Whenever someone takes a position opposing the ‘consensus science’ of the IPCC they are invariably attacked personally, as if this in someway negates their position. I personally do not believe the science is ‘done’ on this subject, one has only to look at the how the computer modeling used by the IPCC fails to agree with the observations of the past 6 years. If CO2 is such a bogey why has the Earth not had runaway warming in the past??? I have researched the subject in depth and find there are many unanswered questions; the science is not ‘done’ (true science never is). If we are to have further debate why can we not use logic. It is far more becoming of us as human beings than childish name calling.
infrared and CO2, CH4 – not “just a correlation”: real physics, real chemistry, real amospheric science.
Kingsley – I’m disappointed that as a ‘rational skeptic conservative’ you have failed to back up your assertions viz these 1000s of scientists who think the AGW theory a crock. Would you please have courtesy to actually cite some of them or withdraw the comment.
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Remember the first principle of reason is to understand what you do not know! Reading Andrew Bolt is not gaining reliable knowledge.
Just in case anyone wants to see a smaple of the Heartland Institute’s commitment to quality journalism, try this. Then have fun watching the Greena episodes, if you haven’t discovered her yet.
Some of you may have heard about the Carteret Islands, which is an atoll just north of Bougainville
Yes Fine, we’ve heard of them – and we all know that they are not being inundated by rising oceans. They are sinking largely due to geological reasons. But you make your inaccurate and alarmist documentary and make a name for yourself.
Don’t worry about the truth
I’ve got a problem with this open mind bullshit. As far as I can figure it out Graeme Pearman probably had an open mind back in 1980 when his peer reviewed paper “The global carbon cycle and increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide” was published. That strikes me as a good time for an open mind on this issue. Maybe even 1981, when Barry Tucker wrote “the CO2 – Climate Connection” was still a good time for an open mind. But as far as pondering the question “can increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 lead to higher temperatures?” the answer now is a resounding yes. Are we producing CO2 by burning fossil fuels? . . . . I’m not even going to answer that question.
Ok that is the simple stuff, anyone who wants to claim that we ought to have a debate about it is stuck in some state of denial caused by the fact that they have come to the discussion late. Look I can relate, I want to have a debate and an open mind about nuclear weapons, but oh feck they already exist and have all my life, esp that hedonistic bit when I lived in the shadow of a first strike target.
As for the complicated stuff, there is a debate and lots of open minds, but to get there you have to accept the first principles. Frinstance, what about all that other stuff we make. As a recent example; Golstien, Kovan, Heald and Fung from UC Berkeley have been arguing that a combination of anthropogenic and biogenic volatile organic compounds react to produce secondary organic aerosols that form a cooling haze over the South East of the US. They conclude that “this secondary aerosol source is climatically relevant with significant potential for a regional negative climate feedback as BVOC (Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds) emissions increase with temperature.” The Key word there is ‘potential’ and the possibility that as temperatures increase, emissions of BVOCs increase, (no controversy there) and therefore there will be an increase in secondary organic aerosols and local cooling. Unfortunately there is little or no real understanding of whether, with higher temperatures, these aerosols will continue to precipitate at their current rate to form haze, and therefore provide a cooling effect and a base for H2O nucleation and cloud formation or stay in their gas phase, in which case we go uh-oh. So the complicated stuff is fecking complicated, and is it any wonder that the climate models are works in progress, as is climate science.
Dunno why it’s assumed that someone with a BEng has to be bright and worth listening to. I’ve got one and I’m pretty average really, and some of my fellow graduates had considerable difficulty in thinking without moving their lips.
Anybody that has a problem with keeping an open mind is definitely in a hard place.
What evidence exists that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere raises the temperature? The latest results when compared to IPCC climate modeling disproves the hypothesis.
Adrien – been looking for a direct link only found the original post from Andrew Bolt referencing the survey of climate scientists that show 66% believe in AGW and 38% strongly believe in AGW which obviously means most climate scientists do indeed have some confidence in the theory but those that don’t are at least a third. Hardly a mere handful of cranks as many on the Left have tried to portray it. Extrapolate that across all climate scientists and you’ll soon get thousands who are doubtful.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/world_still_cooling/
you’ll need to scroll down to the update about Sir Nigel Lawson.
As I stated above you then have the oregon petition project
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
which many of your colleagues have attacked by critising some of the petition signatories which is fine but that is a two way street. As I presume you are aware there is 31,000 signatories.
You can choose to dismiss both articles or not, that’s your choice I’m not really fussed.
kiashu – no one is denying the base physics but obviously the worlds climate system is not quite as simple as you make out or we could whip up a very accurate climate change model on a spreadsheet in 10 minutes. I think everyone here accepts there is a range of competing and complimentary effects going on otherwise the correlation would be so close to 1 the debate would have been over long ago. I could just as easily say if I eat fats I’ll gain weight but of course I could be doing any amount of exercise or things that accelerate my metabolism. I’m afraid its a touch more complex than the high school science class you believe I skipped.
Kingsley, please. Petitions in science are a meaningless stunt. Surely you know that? Otherwise, where can I sign the petition to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in favour of the Second Law of Disappearing Bikini Tops?
Science is not a matter of opinion, no matter how much Andrew Bolt wants to make a career out of broadcasting his brain-farts to the gently addled.
MurrayB, methinks your mind is open to anything — except the possibility that human activity may be affecting the climate in ways that future generations may profoundly regret.
And Murray B, if you think a measured outcome outside a predicted result disproves the hypothesis upon which the model rests, then I have news for you: The Pioneer satellites launched in the 1970s have begun to follow trajectories that are at variance with where the models upon which their orbits were plotted predict they should be at this time. Does this fact disprove the theory of gravity?
I’ve been out all day. What a relief!
Kingsley @ 102 the oregon thing has been worked over so many times.
The second isn’t Sir Nigel Lawson. He’s quoting a survey by Dr Dennis Bray and Professor Hans von Storch. I recall this from Quiggin’s blog, so if you want to find out the full story you might search there. I translated a bit of the German which was essential to understand what was going on. Bray is a social scientist and von Storch is a statistician. Between them they buggered up the survey pretty well. I remember wobbly questions, a problem with the sampling and many respondents not actually climate scientists. Or something along those lines. But it’s not worth the effort to dig it up again.
On Carteret Islands, Fine, I didn’t watch the YouTube right through but I think they are being evacuated as we speak. There’s a report in the Solomon Times, also a blog post and an article by George Monbiot. Monbiot says:
PeterTB @ 98, if you’ve got a different story you might document it for us. Certainly the sea level rise wouldn’t be helping matters.
Kiashu @ 88, as you probably know, the greenhouse effect is mostly water vapour and in it’s entirety is worth about 30C which needs to be considered as sitting on top of a fair bit of heat when you consider zero Kelvin or -273C. But within that 30C CO2 is important, more important than denialists like Bob Carter, for example, think it is, as this post shows.
Bob Carter was listed as one of the conference speakers, which really destroyed the credibility of the conference.
I had the unhappy experience when wanting to do some stuff with the Friends of the Earth in Melbourne,of being told I was an impractical environmentalist for not owning a car as an activist.Since then,I have asked myself that any number of times,and finally concluded, that really I support conservation matters, in my own sense of practicality.The Professors get paid heaps more than me,and if reason starts from a proposition, my first proposition will always be..Why is that person so confident? Or even questioning the confidence.My experience and understanding,are already ritualised by the process of learning and more specifically the rote of learning as in use of a blog to establish what I consider is the worthiness of how I am concluding about matters.Therefore if I was to establish the front of reason by reference to matters unknown..it remains highly speculative to dismiss Fielding on the basis of references to his Christianity,and to decide by family references that the nature of engineers is a bit batty.I do not find the man’s personality offensive,but it may also be said quite observantly in doing so, that that isn’t a condition of reason,but a product of applying reason to himself.So the ability to moralise about another human being,by the process of finding some faults with his character by references to matters public,but, not matters private in the sense of why he would stick his neck out about not complete acceptance of AGW cannot be a motivation to be financed by the ciggy lobby.To claim from some haughty height that or this means global warming and dont listen to anyone who has a opposite view in the making..is a sort of business that has no idle moments .You cramp my style!? Snow was predicted on the mountains of Victoria today.El Nino predicted suggesting a dry spring and summer in the making.If it is getting hotter,or if it is getting cooler, it wont be in the minds of global warmers,who have obviously overcome the problem of internal flare ups by the process of seeing the failures of Fielding completely,with such acerbic wit and insight,that their words will be remembered forever.For they usher in the actions of reason from reasonable people. And Al Gore’s trading company in CO2 resonates with his absolutely brilliant insight into what the temperature and carbon dioxide figures reduced to lines on a graphical backdrop,while the brilliant audience of laughing American Hyenas.see his point so clearly.Now if as one Professorial type,by the name of Bob Brown says the sun spotters are wrong and have been for twenty years…when did Al Gore develop his trading company,and also his Global Warming credentials!? Specific date please!? And what evidence in a scientific sense,if that happened within the last twenty years,is so overwhelming, that he would punt on this!?Remember twenty years ago would put it in the 1989 year!? Which bloody,Earth event please,that cannot be explained away by other cycles in weather or temperature matters associated with those weather cycles, because as it is, the majority of cycles track closely over a long time with sunspot activity.Declare now, free of any repeating cycle of weather ,and declare clearly,your confidence in that event!? Temperature ……….in 1989.
My view in general terms is that we have to have very good reasons for departing from mainstream science. The IPCC puts AGW at 90% probability or better. If they are right, Martin Weitzman worked out that we had a 1 in 100 chance of getting 10C temperature rise, or with long term feedbacks 20C. It is generally considered that 2C is dangerous, although there is a view that the effects we are getting right now are unacceptable.
The bottom line is that if we look at the situation in terms of risk management the chances of ending civilisation as we know it under BAU are way too high.
The denialists in order to persuade us that we should do nothing can’t just caste doubt on the mainstream view, they have to demonstrate that it is wrong. That’s the minimum. We have to be dead sure otherwise sensible risk management demands that we act.
If you are tempted to place your faith in Plimer, I suggest you read Ian Enting’s analysis of his many mistakes and what real sea-level scientist Kurt Lambeck has to say. If I had my work taken apart like that I’d crawl under a log and never put my head up again.
The AGW case is being weakened by the short term focus. The consequence is that every temporary cooling has to be explained with complex and sometimes questionable arguments. To make matters worse, every unwanted change in weather patterns etc. is blamed on AGW which raises another set of doubts when the weather pattern reverses. It all reminds me of how the bomb was blamed for everything when I was a boy.
For a dumb process engineer like me, the most convincing set of data are the graphs from the Vostock ice cores They plot how CO2 and temperature have changed over the last 400,000 years. They show the relationship between temperature and CO2 and, at least to my eye, the way temp and CO2 ramp up quickly during the warming stage of the 100,000yr cycle because of a positive feed back loop. They also show that the story is more complex than greenhouse heating.
Other reading emphasizes how a whole range of factors such as ocean currents, airflow patterns, changing vegetation etc can have significant effects on temperature. For me all this emphasises the risk of moving into ucharted territory but I can understand how others will sieze on this uncertainity to convinve themselves that it is worth risking doing nothing.
Part of the problem at the moment is that people see the choice between the uncertinity re climate changes and the ucertainity associated with ETS. Perhaps those supporting action on climate change should start campaigning for alternatives to CPRS that are easier to understand and present less economic risk.
So in the Senate, Fielding’s basically a fair weather friend?
*rimshot*
Thank you, thank you. Try my punch lines, they’ll be here all week.
And now the next comment, which needs no introduction.
Thanks, Kingsley.
BTW, I sincerely hope you have a listen to the link Brian provided @ 109, Kurt Lambeck speaking on Ockham’s Razor last weekend.
Brian@106: Interesting links you provide from which we might learn how these stories get out of hand.
1. The Solomon Times (6/5/2009) link presents no science, but takes the line “There were reports in the media earlier in the year and even late last year stating that the Carteret Islanders will be the first refugees of climate change and this has come to pass.”
2. The Ecologist (22/4/2009) link presents no science, but boldly asserts “On the Carterets, king tides have washed away their crops and rising sea levels poisoned those that remain with salt. The people have been forced to move.”
3. The Monbiot article (9/5/2009?) links to the first two links – and laments that there is insufficient fuss being made over the evacuation. No science – but some of the comments are interesting:
“Dear George….Are you sure this is due to rising sea levels. Bougainville which is quite close is not affected by rising sea levels…..Could the island be sinking?”
Further down there is a reference to: “Sinking atolls trigger Papuan evacuation plans” http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/05/28/866600.htm where we get this: “The problems had been growing for some time, and Ani said he did not have the scientific background to explain why the atolls were sinking. “It probably is because of the effects of the greenhouse [effect]. There is talk of islands sinking everywhere in the world. We would not be isolated.”" Still no science.
Further down in the ABC article we get a bit of science: “Australia’s National Tidal Facility, a specialist centre based in Adelaide, has for the past decade monitored sea-level changes across the Pacific, but sayd it does not have enough long range data to explain what might be occuring with certainty.
Their tide-measuring station on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, 1,100 km west of the atolls, has measured an annual 8.2 mm rise in sea-levels over the past seven years.
The Solomon Islands station, 750 km to the south, has recorded an annual 6.2 mm rise over the past eight years. Nauru, 1200 km northeast, has recorded 5.6 mm per year over nine years.
The area is at a junction of the Australasian-Indian tectonic plates, which produce a large number of major earthquakes. Some experts believe the quakes are responsible for the sinking of some islands and the rising of others.”
The link “http://www.ntf.flinders.edu.au/” to the National Tide Facility doesn’t work, so I don’t know what it is that they are measuring. Regardless, you can see how a whisper becomes a roar with articles linked and re-linked without much substance as a foundation. It certainly seems that the science is far from settled.
I haven’t had a chance to research it, but Wikipedia has quite a few links you might want to chase.
PerTB, I wasn’t saying that Monbiot was right. It does seem that the Carteret evacuation will go down in the lexicon as the first due to climate change. Whether that was the main cause may be unknowable, but it would be hard to argue that climate change was not a factor.
We did have this discussion once before on an earlier thread. At the time I said that sea level rise was not like a big bathtub where the sea rose uniformly. This was greeted by some mirth and derision by my interlocutors, as I recall, but I was right and this aspect is even better understood now. You’ve had a look at some surrounding levels, but there are several other factors. One is that climate change can bring changes in circulation systems in the atmosphere and the sea. Whether this is the case in the Carterets I don’t know. Secondly, there is the possibility that the area is suffering more severe weather as a result of climate change. Again I don’t know. Third, as sea level rises the risks from rare events increases quite markedly. Rare events become less rare. I did know that a large part of the problem was salt penetration rather than direct inundation. This is borne out by the ABC link you provided:
I did check the Wiki article, but thought it too out of date to be worth linking to. That’s about as far as I have time to take it.
Mercurius
“Kingsley, please. Petitions in science are a meaningless stunt” – so next time one of your mob trot out the old ” the consensus of….” I can dismiss it out of hand?
That’s it for me folks, I think we’ve worked it over pretty good and ended up about where we always do. Nice chatting to you, see you on another post
Sally R I’ll check out the link as suggested
Brian, I know Ursula and she’s been tireless in her work for her people. This relocation is probably a good thing. But it’s complex. Many families don’t want to relocate to Tinputz. There is tribal friction, Bougainville is unstable and poverty stricken, many Bougainvilleans don’t welcome them, and there are issues with the land allocated to them. You’ll notice that it mentions just five families, so it’s in the nature of a pilot scheme. The islands have a population of about 4,000. Naturally enough the younger people are keen to relocate but the older ones don’t want to leave their home. Relocation has been tried before and foundered because of these problems.
Mercurius, The science of gravity is governed by Newton’s LAWS, that is L-A-W, in particular Newton’s second LAW. The science of global warming due to CO2 increase is not a LAW nor even a THEORY, it is no more than a hypothesis desperately seeking the evidence to take it to a higher level. The science of global warming has become so politicised that we now have science by consensus. Newton would turn in his grave.
Climate changes, that is what climate does, sometimes it is hotter sometimes colder, that does not mean it is caused by CO2. Look at the temperature graphs for the past 1500 years (not the discredited one used by Gore in his fairy tale) sometimes it has been hot sometimes cold, as I said climate changes. There have been ice ages with CO2 rising, how can there be any cause and effect? Climate change is due to a combination of many phenomena, to put it all down to one i.e CO2 is a very narrow view indeed.
If the present level of CO2 were doubled it would still be only 20% of levels that existed for hundreds of millions of years, there was no runaway effect, the Earth did not fry.
The warmists in this debate base there argument on computer climate models that cannot accurately predict 10 years ahead let alone 100 years. There is no cause and effect in action, in fact the result is more in line with the logical fallacy ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’.
MurrayB have you heard of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) when there was a release of carbon, as far as we can tell, roughly equal to what we are engaged in at present, but 30 or more times slower? The temperature went up by 6C. Albeit from a higher base and the planet wasn’t infested with humans at that stage. So there was no worry about the destruction of human civilisation.
Other than that to be frank I don’t think you are at first base in your understanding of the issue.
Brian, So warming will cause the destruction of the human race? I think cooling would be more a danger (as proved by recent events i.e. mini ice age)….
I find whenever someone makes a personal attack (‘Other than that to be frank I don’t think you are at first base in your understanding of the issue’) they are either unsure of themselves or their argument, and perhaps both.
Show me the proof that CO2 rising increases warming of the Earth and I will become a believer!!
you could always try reading it for yourself, murrayb. May I recommend ipcc.org?
Its worth noting that current tracking of CO2 and global temperatures puts us at the high end of the ‘worst case’ modelling the IPCC reports from past years contain. Those whining about scaremongering are so wrong its not even funny anymore; if anything the consensus on CC has been overconservative.
That said, discussion of the effects often gets carried away, most notably by denialists indluging in hyperbole for ‘comic’ effect. Barring a number of catastrophic events of relatively unknown probability, sea level is unlikely to rise more than a metre in the next hundred years. Flooding isn’t really a concern. What is a problem (a big problem) is the high-probability and marked rise in extreme weather events (storms, bushfire weather, etc), increased variablity of climate, and the effects of climate range shifts within agricultural lands.
But you don’t really want to talk about that, do you. Much more fun to bleat about Teh Scary Floods and how we’re all crying wolf.
Fielding is still at it.
The irony of it all is that the probable end result of the concerted efforts of the greenhouse denialists and those like Fielding, the National Party and the Howard nostalgiacs who they’ve been able to influence is likely to be the adoption, sometime in the Rudd government’s next term, of an emissions trading scheme which will have Christine Milne’s prints all over it.
MurrayB @ 119, see my comment @ 109. Also here is a comment by Ender on Fielding’s site. Ender is one of the better informed commenters around the traps on climate change:
Oy vey, the fricking Oregon Petition.
Go to the site. Anyone can print the thing off and send it in. There’s no way to verify that the people sending it in have the degrees they claim, nor even to verify that the people exist.
If some busybody neighbour comes around with a petition to, I dunno, stop an Islamic school from opening nearby, I have to put my name and address on it so that the authorities can verify by way of the electoral that I actually exist. Otherwise they could just fluff the petition up with 4,321 John Smiths.
So that’s the minimum for a petition – being able to verify the people actually exist.
Now, if you want a petition where the people’s qualifications matter – say, a petition that “scientists don’t believe in global warming” – well then you have to be able to verify their qualifications. You’ll want their degree, where they got it from and when – and let’s have a photocopy, at least, of their certificate.
The Oregon Petition doesn’t have that. So it could all be made up. Who knows?
By the way, here’s a list of people with PhDs in science who believe in creationism. There are only a hundred or so on there, (though there are almost a thousand talked about here) but at least they’re verified as existing and having those qualifications. Yes, a bunch of fundamentalist Christian creationists are more thorough, honest and professional than the drongo behind the Oregon Petition.
Come back to us with the Oregon Petition when the signatories’ existence and qualifications are verifiable.
Perhaps Kingsley can explain how 70 national Academy of Sciences – recognised as the key scientific bodies in each country – have called for urgent action on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide. Is his position that they are all wrong and the motley collection of deniers are right, or is he a believer in the David Evans view (you know, the self-proclaimed rocket scientist who wrote for The Australian) that all these scientists are on the global warming gravy train?
Call these idiots ‘deniers’, call them ’skeptics’, call them whatever you like. The truth is that they are environmental vandals of the worst sort. They are endagering the future of our planet and our children, for what? An ideological battle? A points scoring exercise? I don’t really know, but I would be interested in what motivates them to peddle distortions, half truths and blatant lies tp prevent action on climate change.
One thing’s for sure – it’s pointless to engage most of these people with facts or evidence, because it plays into their hands, giving them the attention that they so desperately seek.
Mercurius, Brian et al, I thank you all for your input to the debate. However nothing has changed from my viewpoint. Making an appeal to the authority of the IPCC (and their reports) does nothing to prove the AGW argument. In the past 8 years the IPCC predictions have demonstrated there is no relationship between temperature prediction and actual results. If the IPCC models were accurate one would have a reasonable argument, however computer predictions are not representative of the complexity of the planet we live on. To attribute climate change to one factor i.e. co2, and only a small percentage of that i.e. human produced co2 is not science in my book.
Back in the 70’s I can clearly remember we were all going to die due to a predicted ice age (yes folks the temperature was falling back then). Climate expert Stephen Schneider authored a book warning of the coming ice age where we were being confronted with the most important social, political and life challenges for 100,000 years (sound familiar). The same climate expert now warns us of the horrors of global warming (we are all going to die – again!!!).
The debate has become so ludicrous that evey time something unusual occurs it is attributed to global warming and co2. Floods – global warming! Drought – global warming! Cyclones – global warming! Extreme winter snow – global warming! Malaria – global warming! Swine flu – global warming! Aunt Mary’s bunions – global warming !! etc etc.
Australia needs a rational debate, it does not need the logical fallacy ‘argumentum ad hominem’ where every sceptic is considered barking mad.
My personal opinion about AGW believers is that they will never admit the possibility they may be proved wrong. They also confuse the greenhouse effect with global warming. Nobody is arguing that co2 is not a greenhouse gas. The sceptics are arguing the importance it is given by warmists and the Draconian changes we must make to to address this belief.
In the USA the debate has become so twisted that there are now people of authority who believe that co2 should be defined as a pollutant. Here we have a colourless tasteless odourless gas, produced with every breath we exhale, necessary for the growth of plant life and consequently our own existence, now considered by some to be a pollutant. They talk about the amount of carbon in the air, giving the impression of this black cloud hovering over us. It would be just as logical to descibe water as dangerous hydrogen pollution. Some describe AGW as the new religion, an interesting observation don’t you think..
“Some describe AGW as the new religion, an interesting observation don’t you think..”
No.
I’d rather appeal to authority than tired old uncited talking points and scaremongering, but that’s just me.
Can’t help but notice that the denialists seem both far more afraid of the future and less willing to talk about ways of coping with it than anyone else. We’ll all be rooned, indeed…
OK hannah, that’s enough playing with the ball, ball go nighty night and we’ll go inside and look out at the lagoon thats not there and pray for the rain that doesn’t fall. Come on girl, lets go.
Adrian at 125, I agree with your sentiments. Perhaps what is needed is to send these deniers on to a new hobby horse. For instance, do they know that The Australian Museum is promoting climate change in its exhibition “When Mammoths Roamed” from 10 April to 24 July and its exhibition “Climate Change. Our Future. Our Choice” from 2 May to 16 August.
A pamphlet on these exhibitions will surely horrify the deniers. The pamphlet says of the mammoths under the sub-heading Mystery Disappearance: “The woolly mammoths disappeared at the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, leaving frozen carcasses, bones – and a mystery. Climate change victim? Hunted to extinction? Decide for yourself when you visit this evocative special exhibition”.
But, horror of horrors for the deniers, the pamphlet says about the Climate Change exhibition: “Whether you’re confused about climate change or just want the latest information, this new interactive exhibition is for you:
” – melt icecaps to see which parts of Sydney flood first.
” – discover the real cost of that hamburger.
” – get your dancing shoes on to generate green energy.”
That makes it fairly clear what side the Museum is on. Doesn’t seem if the views of 30,000 or so gullible deniers who signed the infamous US petition are getting much credence at the Museum.
Then, under the heading Climate change – get involved, the pamphlet says: “Ask the experts. Get the answers to your climate change questions – just ask our friendly Museum experts at Science Direct, the Museum’s online climate change hotline. You can also share your green tips online from 2 May.”
It’s great that the Australian Museum is bringing climate change information to young people in an intersting way. Not only is it an investment in the future, it’s one small step for the earth.
Oh my, the ’70s Ice Age meme.
/facepalm
I wonder if Evolution is ‘just’ a ‘theory’ too?
Oh, what the heck. Meh.
A somewhat overlooked (though I’m sure hardly novel) aspect of the psychology of denial is that basically nobody except the odd genuine hairshirter deep green misanthrope, wants AGW to be true*. We would all love it to be utterly wrong – natural variation, trend levelling off and back to the ‘normal’ range, nothing to see here, keep it up Industrialised Civ, you’re doing super!
So of course denialists are hard to prise from their positions: they can’t contemplate the horror of being wrong, not just because of their contrarian anti-elitism and narcissicism, but also with a good solid helping of understandable unwillingness to confront a problem on such a scale.
This is at least my explanation for how so many otherwise reasonable and thoughtful people have such a brain snap on the issue; enough that they can blithely denounce the mainstream for being closed to “alternative views” while themselves being closed to 90% of the science out there.
MurryN 126 says that “the debate has become so twisted that there are now people of authority who believe that co2 should be defined as a pollutant”
So what does it mean to pollute? Here is part of a dictionary definition “To make unfit for or harmful to living things, especially by the addition of waste matter”.
So is putting tonnes and tonnes of CO2 into the air, polluting the atmosphere, making it harmful for living things? Perhaps the consequent changes in temperature are harmful to a few living things.
I think that this is a pretty clear cut case. It is not any particular person in authority that is defining CO2 as a pollutant. That is the generally accepted definition.
but but CO2 is Life!
MurrayB @ 126, it’s not just CO2. That’s why I say you are not yet at first base in thinking about these things. Here is one representation of the main climate forcings with error bars, so there is still plenty scientific work to do, but it would be a major surprise if the net effect turned negative.
Ross Garnaut is a smart guy. Last night Phillip Adams asked him what he thought of Fielding’s position. He said that he looked at the science and the doubters and came to the view that the only rational position a nonscientist could take was to accept mainstream science.
On GHGs as a pollutant, look what happened in the USA:
On that page you’ll find a link to the Administrator’s findings.
Brian @125: good work, that’s a very clear diagram of the main contributing factors to warming. With solar irradiance so relatively low in the list, minor variations a la “Fielding solar flares” seem unlikely to make large differences in the net outcomes.
Viva arithmetic!
Kinglsey – Thanks for backing it up. I haven’t read the whole Bolt thing. I was stopped by his first graph which measure lower atmosphere averages. These fluctuate and don’t, as Bolt suggest. show any downward trend.
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But this is not how global temperatures are measured. This is how they are measured. And as you can see Mr Bolt’s claim that the Earth has flatlined since ‘98 is not true.
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The Oregon Petition Project is meaningless.
Brian, Thanks for your input. Yes atmospheric pollution by minute particles derived from industry is one of the uncertainties. A similar comment could be made regarding extraterrestrial dust particles and volcanic outputs. There is no real agreement on which way these drive temperature, but I would agree that such types of pollution must be addressed. However it is co2 that is in the sights of the IPCC; Governments world wide are being blindly led to develop a carbon trading scheme which will have no effect other than making some clever people rich and the rest of us out of pocket. Meanwhile there will be little or no effect on temperature.
Co2 is represented by about 4 parts in 10,000, the smallest volume of atmospheric gases. But the part which the IPCC has its sights on is the 1 part of these 4 as a result of the industrial age (1 part in 10,000). Co2 is a basic food for plants therefore it is the base to the food chain for all life on Earth. The present level of co2 is not high by historical standards, and if reduced it is not beyond possibility that it may affect food supplies while having little effect on climate. Co2 is not a pollutant, it is the staff of life.
Those who fear this miniscule amount are doing nature a disservice. Our Earth’s atmosphere has reached its existing milestone after millions of years of earthquakes, volcanoes, plate shifting, solar activity, cosmic activity and so on . No doubt it will continue to change (as it has always done). Those who think by messing around with 1 part in 10,000 they are going to have a significant effect on any rise in temperature are displaying a peculiar type of arrogance. My vote is for nature continuing as it wants, regardless of our unfounded fears. Humans are versatile creatures, we will adapt to change as we have done in the past if and when it happens. Our desire to return to a horse and buggy era to save the planet may just be causing the man in the moon to crack a smile…
Yes Keep attacking the man, keep calling him an idiot and that is the level of your debate. In the process you might note – over the last 60 years the globe has warmed for 45 years and cooled for 25. Stop the vitriol & check the science you are in for a surprise.
My vote is for nature continuing as it wants
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Aren’t we concerned about what we’re doing.
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regardless of our unfounded fears. Humans are versatile creatures, we will adapt to change as we have done in the past if and when it happens.
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Indeed if the scenarios turn out true we will adapt. As we have before. Something about the 2nd millenium BCE comes to mind I forget what.
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Our desire to return to a horse and buggy era to save the planet
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I am so disappointed both in the lack of vision of those who actually want to do that and those who think that that is the only way forward. Did you say something about adaptation before?
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Well so what? The govt’s on the case with their
yet another way to fleece taxpayer’s and line the pockets of our future employerscarbon reduction scheme. And we signed thetotally symbolic documentKyoto protocol. So it’s alright!Correction and more specifics re my last posting – approximate dates are Global cooling 1940 to 1975 and 2000 on-going to 2009 – Global warming 1975 to 2000 giving 70 years total. Variations apparently independent of CO2 rise.
A somewhat overlooked (though I’m sure hardly novel) aspect of the psychology of denial is that basically nobody except the odd genuine hairshirter deep green misanthrope, wants AGW to be true*.
So FDB, why, do you think, has the issue become political? I think that there are many more extremists than the hairshirters you refer to who find the AGW cult attractive.
Colin Barton, what is your source for those figures? Can you please link to the graphs/tables?
FDB, John Quiggen and John Mashey have worked on a Taxonomy of Delusion here http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2009/05/27/a-taxonomy-of-delusion/
Very interesting stuff
Quiggin said:
That goes for me too, at least on this thread.
Like Michael S. @6 said.
Fielding, Mr 1.9%, is a man on mission. Or is that a boy with a gun? (to quote Devo).
But seriously, this is more evidence that “politics as usual” and politicians are incapable of taking real action on climate change. More details here: [link]
Kudos to Kim Carr for doing the preference deal that got this dope elected.
Brian, I just had comment swallowed. Can you please retrieve it?
That was the one @ 57. Went to spam for some odd reason.
To those who have an open mind, there’s a new book coming out by the former chief scientist of CSIRO’s Marine & Atmosphere research division – Prof Gareth Paltridge; title The Climate Caper.
Happy Reading
Via Connorcourt, I see, a publisher exclusively focused on Christian conservatism.
One live and shining thing in the usual handful of bilge – great article by Elizabeth Farrelly.
The chap’s name is Garth Paltridge and he has previously won fame by claiming to have been censored by the Australian Greenhouse Office at a time when it didn’t exist!
Thanks to the efforts of Plimer, Paltridge and any other muffin puffer who gets published between now and December, we can predict with certainty what topic of conversation will be foremost in the minds of the mad uncle and/or obnoxious male cousin in every extended family who must, as a matter of courtesy, be invited to the family Christmas dinner and who unfailingly renders the event one to be endured rather than enjoyed each year through their inability to change either their mind or the subject, and their lack of emotional intelligence when discussing said subject with anybody outside their quotidian echo chamber.
If the Colin Barton above is Colin Munro Barton, whom you might remember from such scientific breakthroughs as “Review of the engineering geology aspects of an investigation of slope stability in strip coal mining at Goonyella”, we obviously should be granting him climate science guru status.
Looking at the trajectory of his CSIRO redoubt: back when CSIRO was a genuinely scientific, not just industrial, research organisation, and when agriculture was economic king, it was configured as “Soil Physics”, then “Soil Mechanics”. By the time our Col got a gig, it was “Applied Geomechanics” then just “Geomechanics” ( creeping managerialism anyone, ‘applied’ is such a demeaning apellation when you have pretensions to science?), and finally they came clean (ahem) as just “petroleum resources”.
It brings to mind Barry Jones’ bitter description of late 80’s CSIRO, as the Hawke government progessively starved science in favor union-ophile Button planning, of as “panel beating for industry”. It must have been terrible for Baz, doing the full Cassandra/Laocoon, prescient, prophetic and powerless against the wheeler dealers. It was ever thus did I hear someone say?
How presumptuous of Fielding to decide to evaluate the evidence. You know what fundamentalism is ? It’s believing the orthodox viewpoint without any regard to the evidence. I’d say there’s plenty of fundo bloggers on this site. What a cheek Fielding has to try and sort through both sides of the argument before deciding what to do.
Fortunately we know he has some religious belief so we can quickly dismiss anything he has to say and impugn motives without even listening. Much easier to call him an idiot or a ‘denialist’ (lets throw in a Hitler link here – we know all about Holocaust deniers) than to support his quest for open debate with informative objective replies.
Fail troll is fail.
Clive, Ross Garnaut said he felt he was in no position to rule on the science and the only rational thing to do was to accept the science (although from internal evidence in his report and related writings he understands the science a good deal better than any of the ‘anti-warmist’ commenters here). As a non-scientist my position is essentially the same.
Against my better judgement I tried to be helpful where material was easily available. But when you come to things like the pattern of temperature increase over the last century, this is well-understood, but I didn’t have a handy single link.
From past experience I know that any longer explanation would be a waste of time. Denialists, delusionists or whatever will find some factoid, bodgie graph or something they think thousands of scientists have wilfully left out of account to throw up as evidence that the whole AGW paradigm is false. So we carry on to 600 comments or more when there is real work to do elsewhere.
Brian, my wife is currently having a discussion about immunisation on a mother’s forum with similar results. She has a degree in biomedical engineering and medical science but she didn’t mention this when she posted and she got patronising replies about how she wouldn’t understand the literature. As she has gradually mentioned more about her own knowledge and capability and mentioned my own skills in assessing information sources, the goalposts have been moved all around the field and are now placed in two separate alternate universes.
Is this winter cold or just a pr stunt.
Dallas for an overview you can go to the BOM temperature maps and check out the max and min anomalies for the last month. It’s kinda thereabouts for most places. Zoom in by clicking on the map.
We got out our thermals for the last 2 nights in Brisbane. It’s cold in these old wooden houses. But tonight’s better.
Insofar as its possible to understand any of the drivel Fielding comes out with, I gather from this morning’s Insiders he didn’t know the “scientists” who told him the earth’s temperature was going down while carbon emission levels were going up were funded by the oil industry. Also, I’m cynical enough to believe that his current idiocy is just a way of keeping himself on the political radar. trouble is, some people will probably listen to him. My tip – he’ll vote for the Government’s horrendously inadequate package because he’ll have more than one eye on the next election. I suppose one advantage of having a double “disillusion” is the idiot will be gone from parliament for good.
Paul, I think how Fielding votes is not going to be particularly relevant. The Greens won’t vote for the CPRS as it stands and it’s doubtful the Government will make changes they’ll find acceptable.
The Nats will never vote for it. That leaves the Libs, which is the Government’s best bet, but not until after Copenhagen.
Paul, you’re a better man than i am if you were able to understand what Fielding was on about on Insiders. This man is a complete loon, when Barry asked what he thought of the scientific arguments from the UN’s panel, he said he didn’t want to get into a ‘he said she said’ argument and just wanted to look at the facts and figures. When he says he’s open to all arguments, i can’t help but think that includes the possibility that the world is flat, and i’m only half joking.
Also if anyone is ever thinking they’ve got a bad job, spare a thought for the special assistants to Obi Wan in the white house…
He probaly also believes the sun goes round the earth.
True it doesn’t matter how he votes in terms of the legislation getting passed. But it does matter uin terms of how Fielding wants the electorate to perceive him. Or perhaps the Fundies who financed his Senate bid believe global warming is the end of the world, JC’s Second Coming and the lining up of the sheep and the goats etc and he’s been told not to do anything to stop it.
btw, I think goats get a bad run. I had a pet goat once years ago when I was living down the South coast (NSW) . It used to run into my seaside cottage,dash into the bedroom and jump up on the dressing table and stare at itself in the mirror and crap with excitement. I got rid of him after a week. He also used to think it was fun to butt me from behind when I wasn’t looking.
They have lovely eyes.
Goats have killer’s eyes, Paul. And they’re too damn clever for their own good.
OTOH, they’re tasty.
DI (nr)
You’re right about them being clever/
Where do you reckon he stands on evolution?
I don’t know CD, but I reckon hannah’s dad got it right. When he went to see Senator Wong and the Chief Scientist he took along four ’scientists’ for support to make sure there was no chance he’d change his mind.
Wong et al explained to him I gather, because it’s true, that most of the heat from global warming ends up in the ocean, which covers 70% of the earth’s surface and is on average 3.6 km deep. So I expect they explained that the ocean is warming and that has an effect on the climate. But from the way he reacted it seemed as though he thought they were changing the rules.
I’m glad he’s not working as an engineer.
Senator Fielding has made up his mind. It’s always the way it was going to be. I wonder what took him so long.
Lovely letter in the AGE this morning, had a LOL moment on the train over this:
Classic!
Heh, Helen. There’s a good t-shirt in there somewhere.
Senator Fielding
Prove That You Exist
With a bunch of pigs flying in the background.
Congratulations and well done Senator Fielding. Can we look forward to more debate on issues that will affect us all. This ofcourse is before we are told the debate is over and the science is settled. Anthropogenic induced Climate Change is unproven science.
@John Michelmore:
The anthropogenic part may be debatable, but the Climate Change part isn’t.
Shouldn’t we be concerned about ameliorating as much change as we possibly can and preparing emergency plans for rising sea levels and coming up with some alternative farming techniques in the face of creeping desertification in order to survive what’s coming anyway?
#171 Heh!
No relation, but Halo can now be my new best cousin.
#174 tt – there is no get of jail free card. Either we act on anthro climate change or not. The risks are such that doing all these other good things (a la Lomborg) will have some initial benefits that will be wiped away as climate change accelerates under business as usual emissions.
I’m not at all surprised to find that yet another young earth creationist has trouble sorting his way around reason, evidence and critical analysis.
There has been no significant relationship between solar output and average global temperature since the late 70’s/ early 80’s. There has been a correlation in terms of the usual ups and downs from year to year but there’s no indication that the escalation of average global temperature in recent decades has anything to do with solar activity.
What there has been is a close correlation between rising atmospheric CO2 and average global temperature and, confirming the power of modeling even in the 1970’s, as it was predicted to do. Why can’t Fielding read the abundant graphs and data that are out there? The man is a fool. A dangerous fool. A fool who holds office at a critical time in this nation’s history because of a scam deal and the votes of 2,000 or so people.
@ John Michelmore
A common denier canard. Anthropogenic climate change is proven. It is and was predictable and unifying (bringing together other facts to clearly explain the reality before us). The alternatives: “it’s the sun” or “undersea volcanism” are all laughable and demolished. The forcing agents in this current warming event are the various gases placed in the atmosphere known as greenhouse gasses, including CO2, methane and water vapor, all of which are now increasing because of natural mechanisms but arising from the forcing created by humans.